The minister of Comlie was an old man who had held that appointment for
a great many years. In many respects he was like a traditional Scotch
minister, but in others he did not come up to that ideal. He had
baptized the entire body of his parishioners, and married a great many
of them, but he was not the genial, kindly old soul who is ordinarily
conceived of as filling that position. When he walked through the town
the children did not run after him, nor seek sweetmeats in his pockets.
Any boy or girl in Comlie who had entertained that fond delusion would
have been fixed to the earth by the Doctor’s frown, and repented, all
his or her life after, the profane thought and word. Dr. Murray was a
man addicted to literature, full of Biblical criticism, great in
exegesis--a man who had been Moderator of the Assembly, and thus reached
the highest honour of which the incumbent of a Scottish parish is
capable. After this a great calm in respect to distinctions and worldly
advantages had been visible in him--he had contemned them gently with a
benevolent superiority. His spirit had been, as indeed it ought to have
been, in a professional point of view, rather that of Solomon than of
Alexander; no new world to conquer had occupied his thoughts, but only a
sense of that completion and fulness which must always be more or less
sad. The thing that hath been is that which shall be, he said. He had
everything the world could give him, and now there was no more to wish
for. But this sense of having attained the highest honour that earth
could afford, if somewhat depressing, had also a great deal of
satisfaction in it. No doubt his career was over, and all its splendour
and majesties were among the things that had been; but yet he had the
profound and tranquillizing conviction that he had not lived in vain.
Not in any way had he lived in vain. He had written the article on
Hyssop in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and he had had a large share in
the Popular Commentary on the Bible, which was considered the very best
authority upon Eastern customs and geography, and the local
peculiarities which throw light upon the sacred text. His name was one
of those which had been connected from the very first with the
“Christian Herald,” and it was he who wrote all the articles, signed
Alpha, in that well-conducted magazine. Therefore it will be at once
perceived that his life had been well worth living, that he was not in
any respect an unsuccessful man, and that the evening of his days might
well breathe forth a certain gentle satisfaction. Comlie was very proud
of the doctor, and even Fife was proud of him. When he heard that
Marjory was in the drawing-room, he laid down the book he was reading
and put a marker in it, and after five minutes or so had elapsed--for it
did not suit his dignity to make any hasty movements--he left his
library to see the young lady whom he felt a great interest in, as he
always said. “She has too much imagination and a hasty mind that runs
away with her sometimes; but she has fine instincts,” he would say. The
Manse stood on a knoll, and the drawing-room faced the sea. It was an
old-fashioned room, with small windows set in the deep walls, and
furniture which was somewhat dark and solemn. “You’ll stay and take a
bit of dinner with us, May, now you’re here,” Mrs. Murray was saying as
the doctor came in. “It’s no often we get a sight of you, and there’s
nobody the Minister likes so well to see. Milly, my dear, take off your
hat, and tell Margaret, the table-maid, to get out some of the
apple-puffs you’re aye so fond of. Marjory likes them too.”
“But, dear Mrs. Murray, we are going to Aunt Jean,” said Marjory. “I
will come back another day. Now the weather is mending, I shall be often
in Comlie. We are all very well, Doctor, thank you, but wondering not to
see you. Uncle Charles has some great argument, which, he says, he keeps
in his pocket ready for you. I don’t know what it is about. I thought
perhaps you would come up quietly to dinner to-morrow, and then you
could have it out?”
“We’ll do that, my dear,” said Mrs. Murray briskly; but the doctor was
more formal in his ways.
“Mr. Charles is no contemptible antagonist,” he said; “it will be our
old question about mortifications. I know I am on the unpopular side,
but a man who has convictions must make up his mind to that sometimes.
Did you say to-morrow? I do not remember what engagements I have, but if
Mrs. Murray says so----”
“Hoots, doctor, you’ve no engagements,” said lively little Mrs. Murray;
“you forget you’re at home in Comlie, and no in Edinburgh, where, to my
tribulation, we go out to our dinner every night. You may laugh, but
it’s no laughing matter, May, my dear, and a destruction to my best
gown--no to say to all my habits. You may wear point lace when it’s
dirty, but point lace is too good for a poor Minister’s wife, and my
suit of Mechlin is as black as if I had swept the chimney in it; and as
for working a stocking, or doing any rational thing after one of their
late dinners! But we’ll come to you, my dear.”
“I am afraid we are going to have a storm,” said the doctor; “the wind
is blowing strong up the Firth, and I doubt we’ll have a dirty night.
Nothing will teach these fishers to be careful when they’re getting what
they think a good haul. I have a great mind, when I see the glass
falling and the wind rising, to send old Tammas to ring the church bells
and warn their boats.”
“And why not do it?” said Marjory, with a slight start which was
peculiar to her when she heard anything that roused her interest. “There
could not be a better use for church bells. Do it, doctor! If the men
knew, it might save some of these poor fellows. Poor Jamie Horsburgh,
for instance; I saw Jean to-day, and it almost broke my heart.”
“Her that was laundry-maid at Pitcomlie?” said Mrs. Murray. “Ah, poor
thing! and what she is to do to gain her bread with that bit infant of
hers? But I do not advise you, doctor, to set any newfangled plan agoing
for ringing the bells. Nobody would pay any attention. They would say:
‘What does the minister know about the weather? Let him bide at his
books, and leave the winds to us.’ That’s what they would say. And if
you take my opinion, I cannot but think they would have justice on their
side.”
“I will not risk it, my dear,” said the doctor; “they are a pig-headed
race, like all the partially educated. I wish there was a higher
standard of education in our schools. Reading and writing are very well,
but a little attention to the common phenomena of the elements would be
a great matter--as I said to Mr. Tom the last time he was here--”
“Speaking of your brother Tom,” said Mrs. Murray briskly; “what is this
I hear about Charlie? A second boy, and him not above two years and
a-half married! My certy, but they’re losing no time; and I hope both
doing well?”
“Oh yes,” said Marjory, with a shade of indifference stealing over her
face; “people always do well in those circumstances, don’t they? Fancy
our Charlie with a family of children about him! I think it spoils a
young man. It makes them grand-fatherly--not to say grandmotherly--and
knowing about domestic matters. Charlie, of all people in the world!
but it cannot be helped, or put a stop to, I suppose?”
“Whisht, my dear, whisht; that’s a strange thing for a woman to say.”
“Is it?” said Marjory, with a sudden blush. “What I meant was that the
thought of Charlie turned into an old wife--Charlie knowing all about
nurseries, and what to give a baby when it has a cold--is so very queer.
I don’t like it; Charlie was always my pet brother. Poor fellow! and he
so far away!”
“I have no doubt he’s very happy--as he ought to be with a nice wife and
two bonnie bairns,” said Mrs. Murray, a little annoyed at Marjory’s
anti-matrimonial views; but this remark passed unnoticed in the doctor’s
question about what she was reading, which changed the character of the
conversation. Mrs. Murray was not booky, as she herself said; she was
too old for anything but novels; and though she had great enjoyment of
these on a wet afternoon, by the fireside, or when the doctor was busy
with his sermon, she did not say much about them, and kept them in the
background with a certain sense of weakness. Marjory, on the contrary,
discussed her reading with some eagerness, while the old lady and little
Milly cooed and whispered to each other in the background; the child’s
fair hair pressed lovingly against the net border--white and softly
plaited--of Mrs. Murray’s cap. And so long was the discussion carried on
that Marjory at last sprang up suddenly and held out her hand in alarm
to take leave, when the bell rang for the early dinner, which reminded
her how time was passing.
“Aunt Jean will be waiting for us,” she cried, with a compunction which
was quickened by the well-known tradition of punctuality which
distinguished the Hay-Heriots.
“Well, well, my dear, it will do her no harm for once,” said Mrs.
Murray, going to the door with the visitors, and opening it for them
with her own hands. She came out to the step to see them on their way,
while her husband stood behind. “Be sure you don’t sit too long with
Miss Jean--for there’s a storm coming up, as the doctor says; and come
soon back again,” said the old lady, smiling and waving her hand, while
her cap-strings wantoned in front of her in the rising wind. “That
lassie has strange notions,” she said, as she came in and shut the door.
“I wish I saw her with a good man and bairns of her own.”
“She’s a fine girl,” said the doctor, turning along the passage to his
dressing-room, to wash his hands before dinner. These words did not at
all resemble in sense the other expression of applause, “a fine
woman”--which they resemble in sound. Dr. Murray did not mean to imply
that he found May “fine” in physical development--_belle femme_, as the
French say, with a similar signification. He meant that she was
delightful, charming, the best specimen he knew of everything a young
woman should be.
We are obliged to confess, however, that it was with a somewhat
undignified precipitation that the two sisters crossed the wide street
to the dwelling-place of their old aunt. Miss Jean Hay-Heriot was
grand-aunt to the younger generation. Her father, the Laird of
Pitcomlie, was grandfather of the present Laird: but as she had been the
youngest of her family, she was scarcely ten years older than her
nephew. She had lived in this gabled house for five and forty years,
since the time when, still a young woman, she had given up the world in
disgust, after five or six years of wandering in places where lone
ladies resort to--Bath, and Cheltenham, and Harrowgate--for in those
days it had not become the custom to go abroad. Five and forty years!
What a waste of time to look back upon, and what a monotonous,
unfeatured expanse, May thought, who sometimes pondered over her old
aunt’s fate as one chapter among many of the phenomena of feminine
existence. But to Miss Jean this waste of years was not so unfeatured as
to her young relative. There seemed no reason why she should not go on
for ever in the same active yet tranquil way. From her window in the
gable she superintended all that Comlie did, every stranger who came
into it (they were not many), all the mild visiting that took place
among the higher classes, and the family movements of the lower,
quarrels, flirtations, marriages, catastrophes of all kinds. She was
seated in this same window, when Marjory, a little flushed with haste,
hurriedly gathering up her riding-habit, and finding it much in the way,
became visible running over from the Manse, Milly close behind, with her
long hair streaming. Miss Jean quietly smiled to herself, and prepared
for tempest. It roused her up sometimes, and gave her a pleasant
exhilaration, to get an opportunity of setting “that girl of Thomas’s”
right.
“Quick, quick, Miss Marjory,” said Betty, at the door. The door was in
the gable, and opened into a square hall, which was underneath the
drawing-room. “Quick, like good bairns, and dinna keep your aunty
waiting. The broth’s ready to come up, and Jessie making a terrible fyke
in the kitchen--and Miss Jean’s no pleased.”
She threw open the door of a little bedroom at the end of the passage as
she spoke--it was thought convenient in that region to have sleeping
rooms on the ground-floor--and began instantly to take off Milly’s outer
jacket, which was worn over her long riding-skirt. May smoothed her own
hair with a trepidation which was quite unusual to her. It was bright
brown hair, not so blond as Milly’s, but still full of soft colour,
though not red, nor even golden. Her eyes were brown too, large and
serious, but capable of lighting up with searching golden gleams. She
was softly coloured in every way, with an evanescent bloom that came and
went, and the most changeable of faces. Sometimes strangers thought her
almost plain, when her upper lip fixed on her lower with the resolute
look she sometimes had, and her eyes looked straight before her full of
silent thought. But most people who knew Marjory held it impossible that
she could ever be plain. She smoothed her hair as best she could, in
her hurry, for those were the days when young ladies were expected to
have smooth and shining hair--and put her tall hat and her riding gloves
on the table, and pulled out her handkerchief from her bodice. “Am I
tidy, Betty; shall I do?” asked, with tremulous accents, the young woman
who half an hour before had felt herself princess of Comlie. All these
pleasant pretensions failed before the tribunal of Miss Jean.
“Oh, ay, Miss Marjory, you’ll do,” cried anxious Betty; and attended as
ever closely by her little sister, Marjory ran upstairs. Miss Jean sat
in the end window, her favourite seat of inspection--and all her
“borders,” which were of blonde, not so closely put together as those of
Mrs. Murray, were quivering round her old face. “So you’ve come at last,
Miss May,” she said. “It’s a great honour to my humble house, and folk
that are gratified with the visits of their betters must be content to
wait.”
“Oh, Aunt Jean, I am very sorry! We ought to have come here at once,
instead of going to the Manse--”
“Far be it from me to say what a young lady like you should do. I’m
nothing but an old-fashioned person myself. In my days the young were
brought up to obedience and consideration of other folks’ ways. But I’m
not a learned man like the doctor, nor a whillie-wha like the doctor’s
wife. I’m of the old Hay-Heriot stock, that always spoke their mind.
Betty, bring ben the broth--if our young ladies can sup broth. They
tell me my nephew Charlie has brought a grand cook to the house, far
above our old-fashioned Scots dishes.”
“Indeed, Aunt Jean, it is the old dishes she is famous for,” said May,
very conciliatory. “She says she knows nothing about kickshaws, and one
of the things I specially wanted was to ask you for the old family
receipt for shortbread, which you always promised me, and your
particular fish and sauce, which Uncle Charles says is the best he ever
tasted.”
“I suppose you think you can win me over with your nonsense about fish
and sauce,” said Miss Jean. “Set Charlie up with his cooks and his
newfangled ways! In my days a man ate what was set before him, and said
his grace, and was thankful. The mistress of a house, with all her
family to provide for, might be excused for giving her mind to it; but,
ugh! a man studying what he’s to put into his vile stomach! If there’s a
thing I cannot abide--Dinner’s ready! You need not tell me that; it’s
been ready any time this twenty minutes. You may say to Jess I’m truly
sorry for her, but it’s our young ladies’ way. Go first, bairn, and go
quick, for I’ll not wait another moment, if it was for the Queen
herself.”
Thus adjured, Milly ran downstairs, followed by her sister. The old lady
brought up the rear, with her big cane. She was a little old woman over
seventy, in a large cap with many ribbons and borders of broad blonde,
which waved about her withered face as she moved. It was a small face,
much shrivelled up, but lighted with two blazing sparks of light, deeply
sunk within the eaves and folds of her eyelids--eyes which could see
what happened a mile off, and burn through and through any unfortunate
who was subjected to their gaze. She wore a red China crape shawl, very
old, but once very richly embroidered and handsome, on her thin
shoulders, and her short footstep and the tap of her cane rang through
the house as she moved. Everybody within her range increased their
exertions, and moved with doubled activity when the tap of Miss Jean’s
cane became audible.
As for Milly, running on before, her aunt was to her as the exacting,
but, on the whole, benevolent fairy who appears in all the tales, who
scolded Cinderella, yet gave her the pumpkin coach, and who had drawers
upon drawers full of shreds and patches, strings of beads, bright bits
of silk, everything that was necessary for the dressing of dolls and
making of needlebooks. The pat-pat of the cane seemed part of the old
lady to Milly’s ear, and she was by no means sure that the cane was not
a third leg upon which Aunt Jean moved as ordinary mortals did on the
more usual complement. No one except Miss Jean said a word as they sat
down to table, and Betty, with a speed and noiselessness, which were
born at once of terror and of long practice, served the broth. Milly
said they were very good, and asked for a little more of them, without
any perception that she was ungrammatical, and as they were hot and
savoury Miss Jean mollified by degrees.
“There’s one good thing,” she said, “that you cannot spoil broth by
waiting. That and porridge should always be well boiled. I hope your
grand cook knows that among her other accomplishments. But, maybe Milly
is above porridge, though her father was brought up upon them, and his
father before him, and all the best Scots gentry from the days of Robert
Bruce.”
“I have a few porridge in a saucer every morning,” said Milly, proudly,
“and May gives me the rest of the cream after papa’s last cup of tea.”
“A few in a saucer!” Miss Jean retorted, with renewed vehemence. (N.B.
The Scotch reader does not need to be informed that porridge is plural
as well as broth.) “I hope, Marjory Hay-Heriot, that you may never have
to give a severe account of the way you’ve brought up that motherless
bairn.”
“Cream is not immoral, I hope, aunty?” said Marjory, with rising spirit.
“Immoral! Luxury’s immoral, indulgence is immoral, and they’re immoral
that say a word to the contrary,” cried the old lady. “Will you tell me
that to bring up a fellow-creature to self-indulgence is no a sinful
act? But I never understood the ways of this generation, nor do I want
to understand them. You’re all alike--all alike! from Tom’s horse-racing
to Milly’s saucer of parritch--it is the same thing over again. What you
please! and not what’s your duty, and the best thing for you in this
world and the next. Betty, the boiled beef is too plain for these young
ladies. Bring it to me, and put the chicken before Miss Marjory. A
queen may eat a bit of chicken, but the boiled beef’s aye good enough
for me.”
The fact was that the chicken had been added to the meal, expressly for
the benefit of Marjory and Milly.
“Bairns are brought up different to what they were in my time,” Miss
Jean had said to her cook, benevolently, an hour before. “That chucky’s
young and tender, and they’ll like it better than the beef.”
But all this kindness had been turned to gall by the unfortunate delay.
Milly took this as a simple necessity of nature--rustled a little in her
chair, and ate her chicken; but Marjory resented the ungracious
reception.
“I am sorry we have come to trouble you, aunt,” she said. “I would
rather not have anything, thank you; I’m not hungry. The wind is cold,
and it has given me a headache. If I might go and sit quiet in the
drawing-room, while you finish your dinner, I should get well again.”
“The thing for a headache is to eat a meal,” said Miss Jean, alarmed.
“Bring me the chicken, Betty, till I cut Miss Marjory a bit of the
breast. You cannot carve; that’s why you want to go away. In my day,
carving was part of a lady’s education--and cooking too, for that
matter. My own mother, as good a woman as ever stepped, took lessons
from Mrs. Glass in Edinburgh. I had not that advantage myself, but I
know how to divide a chicken. And, Betty, bring in the apple-tart.
We’ll all go up to the drawing-room by-and-bye, and before ye go ye
shall have a cup of tea.”
Thus the storm fell a little, but still continued to growl at intervals;
however, when the dinner was over, and May took her place in the square
gable, her headache--if she had one--had disappeared. Miss Jean’s
drawing-room was a curious room, stretching the whole width of the
house, and wider at the back than at the other end. The narrower part
was the gable. It had an end window looking out upon the street, and one
on the east side, from which you could see the line of reddish rocks
rounding off towards the point on which stood Pitcomlie; the white
mansion-house of the present day shining in the sunshine; the old house,
with its high, peaked roof and half-ruined tourelles standing up on the
top of the cliff hard by, and the sea breaking in a white line
underneath upon the rocks. Though she professed no sentiment, that
window which commanded Pitcomlie was dear to Miss Jean’s heart.
On the south side of the room was another window, looking straight out
upon the sea, from which you could see far off the dim lion couchant of
Arthur’s Seat, and sometimes a ghostly vision of the Calton Hill, with
its pillars, and all kinds of cloudy pageants and phantasmagoria of the
elements. It was a grand view, Miss Jean allowed; but she preferred the
gable window looking down upon the High Street of Comlie; and here, too,
Marjory betook herself instinctively. The Firth, with its splendours,
was at her command any day, but so was not this little centre of
humanity. That curiosity about her neighbours and their doings, which
was sharp and bitter in Miss Jean, had a warmer development in Marjory,
who was young, and thought well of humanity in general; but probably it
was the same sentiment. She placed herself on the old-fashioned
window-seat, and looked out while she answered all the old lady’s
questions.
Comlie High Street was very quiet, especially at this tranquil
after-dinner hour, when the little world rested after its meal. The
children had returned to the school, and such men as had any business to
do had gone back to it till the evening. Marjory watched young Hepburn
walking up and down slowly, something between a spy and a sentinel,
keeping watch, as she very well knew, for her own re-appearance. She
smiled with a certain gentle contempt as she watched him, moving slowly
across the unbroken light in the still street. What odd fancies boys
take into their heads! What good could it do him to wait for her?
When Hepburn disappeared, another figure became visible coming the other
way--a man with a clump of his own shadow about his feet, which
gradually disengaged itself as he “came east,” and stalked along by his
side in a portentous lengthened line. The changes of this shadow
diverted her as she sat talking to Aunt Jean. “Yes, there had been
another letter about Charlie’s second baby--a note from Mrs. Charles
herself--well, no, not a very nice letter--a consequential little
personage, I think, aunty; as proud of her baby as if it was any virtue
of hers.” And here Marjory gave a little laugh, not at Mrs. Charles, but
at the dark shadow of the man approaching, which lay along the causeway,
and moved so, as if it pushed itself along, lying on its side. After she
had laughed, Marjory, half ashamed of herself, looked at the man, and
saw he was one of the porters from the nearest railway station, and then
that he was approaching the house. She raised herself up with a little
thrill of--something--yes, surprise, and more than surprise--though
probably it was only some parcel for Aunt Jean arrived by the railway,
which was ten miles off. By the time he had reached the door, and had
knocked heavily with his hand, May was sure that it was a parcel for her
aunt, but nevertheless was aware of a little fluttering at her heart.
“Do you often get things by the railway, aunty?” she asked.
“Me get things by the railway? You forget I’m a lone old woman, and no
acquainted with all your new-fangled ways. Not me. When I want anything
not to be had in Comlie, which is not often, it comes in the boat to
Anstruther, as was always our way, and then by the road, or private hand
when there’s an opportunity. Railway! said she?--What’s a’ this,
Betty?--what’s a’ this? A letter? Give it to me, you taupie, and make no
fuss. Oh! for Miss Marjory! My certy! Miss Marjory’s in great request
when her letters come following her here.”
“Eh, Miss Jean! it’s what they call a telegraph--it’s come from the
railway at Kinnucher, wi’ a man and horse. Eh, I’m awfu’ feared it’s ill
news!”
A telegram is always alarming to those who are unfamiliar with such
startling messages; and even in these accustomed days there are few
women who open one without a tremor. But at the time of which we write,
they were unusual and inevitably meant something tragical. Betty stood
gaping with excitement and terror, looking on, and Miss Jean let her
knitting drop on her knee, and turned her sharp eyes towards her niece,
while little Milly, pressing close to her sister, interposed her blond
head almost between Marjory and the brief, fated letter. Somehow, as she
read it, she felt in the suddenness of the shock a conviction that she
had known it all along, mingled with a curious confused self-reproach
for the levity of her thoughts about that man’s shadow. She read it, and
her head seemed to buzz and shoot as if a hundred wheels had started
into motion, and then stood still. She looked round at her aunt, as if
across a sudden distance at once of time and of space; all the colour
fled from her cheeks, and her voice changed like her feelings. “Tom has
had a bad accident,” she said.
“God bless us! Marjory, you’re trying to break it to me quietly; the
boy’s dead.”
“No!” said Marjory, with a slight shiver. “A bad accident; read it,
aunty. And, Milly, run quick and get on your things.”
Miss Jean, sobered too in a moment, took the terrible missive, which, to
her ignorant eyes, looked something diabolical. It was from somebody in
England she made out, and was worded with what she felt to be cruel
conciseness. “Tom has had a bad accident; thrown from his horse;
symptoms dangerous. He wishes you to tell his father; and to come to him
at once.”
“It may be a lie,” said Miss Jean in a low voice, and trembling; “very
likely it’s a lie. There’s no beginning and no ending; and the man, if
it is a man, has not signed his name.”
“Oh, I know his, name; he is one of Tom’s friends. It is no lie!” said
Marjory. And then she added, trembling too: “Aunt Jean, don’t you feel,
like me, that you always knew this would be the end?”
“The end! Who’s speaking of the end?” cried Miss Jean impatiently; and
then, all at once, she fell crying and sobbing. “Oh, poor Thomas, poor
Thomas; that was so very proud of his boy! Who’s to tell him?”
“Will I run for the Minister?” said Betty, who had come back with
Marjory’s hat in her hand, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and all
the excitement of a great family event in her mind.
“The Minister is the right person to tell the father such ill news,”
said Miss Jean; “and it’s best to have him at hand, whatever happens.
Betty, you can run--”
Marjory put up her hand to stop the eager messenger. In spite of
herself, even at that moment of excitement, a vision of Dr. Murray
clearing his throat, and preparing his way by a little speech about the
vicissitudes of life gleamed before her. She could see him hemming and
taking out his handkerchief with a look as tragically important as if he
were the chief actor in the scene.
“No!” she said; “not the Minister; send down to John Horsburgh’s to get
out our horses, Betty. I will tell him myself.”
“You’re not equal to it, my poor bairn.”
“He will take it best from me; and it’s Tom’s wish,” said Marjory,
putting on her hat. She felt the tears rising to her eyes; but this was
not a moment to let them fall.
“I doubt if Thomas will take it as he ought to take it,” said Miss Jean;
“he’s a good man, but he’s always had his own way. Perhaps, as you say,
Marjory, it is best to keep it all in the family, for a man’s apt to say
what he should not say in a sudden trouble. And I’m sorry I was so ill
to you about keeping me waiting; what was ten minutes, here or there? Oh
May, my bonnie lamb! the eldest son!”
And with this Miss Jean, melted by the bad news into use of the pet name
which had scarcely passed her lips since Marjory was a child, gave her
niece a sudden embrace, by putting her thin hands on May’s two arms, and
touching her chin with her own withered cheek. Very seldom was she moved
to such an outburst of affection. The wave of her blonde borders across
Marjory’s face was the most passionate demonstration she was capable of;
but when her nieces had gone, Miss Jean sat down at the window which
looked to Pitcomlie, with a genuine ache in her old heart. “Eh, the
bonnie laddie he was!” she said to herself; “eh, the stout and strong
young man! There never was an heir cut off that I mind of in our family
before. But Thomas was aye foolish, very foolish; and many a time I’ve
told him what indulgence would come to. Lord help us all, both living
and dying! It’s aye a special blessing of Providence, whatever happens,
that Marjory’s a courageous creature; and that Charlie’s babies are both
sons.”
Thus the old woman comforted herself, who was near the ending of all
mortal vicissitude; and Pitcomlie lay fair and calm in the sun, greatly
indifferent who might come or go--one or another, what did it matter to
the old house, which had outlasted so many generations? what did it
matter to the calm world, which takes all individual sorrows so easily?
But to some atoms of humanity what a difference it made! How dark the
heavens had grown all at once, and how clouded the sun!
Marjory said not a word all the way home, as she rode with her little
sister by her side. How they had chattered as they came; and how Milly
had called “May! May!” a dozen times in a minute; the prelude of every
sentence. Milly kept as close to her sister now as she could, and
sometimes stroked her skirt with her little hand and the whip in it, in
token of silent sympathy. There was urgent need to reach home; but
Marjory did not go fast. It was no easy task she had before her. Her
father was fond of her she knew; perhaps more fond than of either of
his sons; but his heir, with all his extravagances, with all his folly
and wildness, had been his delight and pride. There are some women who
are saved from all the shocks and pains of life; everyone around them
instinctively standing forth to protect them, and shield off the blow;
but there are some, on the other hand, to whom it comes natural to
receive the sharpest and first thrusts of adversity, and blunt the spear
in their own bosoms before it penetrates any other. Marjory was one of
this class,--a class instantly recognized and put to use by the instinct
of humanity. It had seemed natural to Tom to put this duty upon her;
natural to Tom’s friend to communicate it to her, without any attempt at
breaking the news. And she herself accepted her office, simply, feeling
it natural too.