Next morning life began as usual for the saddened household. Breakfast,
which had once been so lively a meal, passed over in comparative
silence. Mr. Charles, indeed, did what he could to talk to the stranger,
making conversation about the news and the newspapers, with a vague hope
of enlivening the party.
“I daresay, as an Englishman, you don’t know much about Scotch affairs,
Mr. Fanshawe,” he said. “If we were an ill-conditioned people like the
Irish now, we might lead Parliament a pretty dance; but as we find it
more to our advantage to keep quiet and mind our own business, nobody
puts themselves out of the way.”
“And then you are very well off, which Ireland is not,” said Fanshawe,
who had Irish blood in his veins.
“I am not so sure about that. We have our grievances like other folk.
Our affairs are thrust to the wall for every kind of nonsense. Who cares
to come when it’s a Scotch night, or when Scotch affairs are to be
discussed? A handful of Scotch members--”
“It is like everything else,” said Mr. Heriot, breaking in harshly;
“even, if you come to that, who are our Scotch members? In the very
next county one of our best men was turned out the other day, to make
room for some English radical or other. They hire our houses, they shoot
our moors, they clear the fish out of our rivers, they treat us like a
hunting-ground. Our old habits are destroyed, our old families dying
out--”
“Not so bad as that, not so bad as that,” said Mr. Charles, soothingly.
“You see, Mr. Fanshawe, we’re proud, and we think a retired English
tradesman, though an excellent man--a most excellent man, perhaps better
than half the Lairds about--is out of his proper place in our old
castles. But still they bring money into the country, no doubt about
that, and it’s good for trade and all the rest of it. By the way, I see
there’s been a great match at St. Andrews--did you notice, Thomas?--with
Tom Morris in it. We must take you to St. Andrews, Mr. Fanshawe, to see
golf. You cannot say you know Scotland unless you know golf. Bless my
life, what a long time it is since I have been there--not once all last
season. What did you say, Thomas?--that is a most unusual thing for me.”
“I said nothing,” said Mr. Heriot. “Go to your golf, whatever happens,
Charlie. Golf over your best friend’s grave, if you like. What does it
matter? He would never feel it, you may be sure.”
Poor Mr. Charles and his attempts at conversation were thus cut short
wheresoever he turned his steps.
“I mean no disrespect,” he said, with a certain humility, looking
anxiously at his brother, who sat throned in the irritability of his
sorrow, strangely pale through the brownness of his country colour, or
rather grey--with a veil over his countenance such as had never been
seen on it before. His heavy eyebrows were curved over the eyes, which
shone out fiery and red from under them, red with sleeplessness, and
nervous irritation, and unshed tears.
“It is nothing to me,” he said, in a high-pitched unsteady voice,
“nothing to me! Let them amuse themselves that can. I am glad of it. Has
Charlie been written to yet--that is all I want to know.”
“I wrote on Friday, papa.”
“Ah! Before the funeral,” said Mr. Heriot, “to let him know what had
happened. But I mean more than that. I mean that he should be written
to, to come home. I want him home. Why should he stay out there now,
risking his health and his children’s lives? Write again, and say I want
him home.”
“Yes, papa,” said Marjory, gently. “I said so then. I gave him all your
messages. I said to come at once, as soon as Mrs. Charles could
travel--”
“Confound Mrs. Charles! What do I care for Mrs. Charles?” cried the old
man. And then he paused, and turned with a curious attempt at a smile to
Fanshawe. “You’ll think I am a hotheaded old Turk, but you see how I am
baffled by my family. I give a simple message, and it’s lost in a
hundred paraphrases. Mrs. Charles may come when she pleases. I want
Charlie. Do you hear, May? Write again this very day, and say I want
him home.”
“Yes, papa, immediately, as soon as breakfast is over.”
“I knew there would be something to wait for,” said Mr. Heriot, rising
up, impatiently. He was consumed by his grief as by a fire. The presence
of any other individual, even those most dear to him, the sound of
conversation, seemed to rouse into a kind of fury the smouldering heat
in his soul. And when they dropped into silence he was still more
impatient. “I fear I am a hindrance to conversation,” he said, pushing
away his chair from the table after a painful pause. “I’ll _levo
l’incomodo_, as the Italians say. If anyone wants me, I’m in the
library. And mind that Charlie is written to without more delay.”
So saying, he went out hastily, with a heavy step, which yet sounded
uncertain upon the floor, as if it might stumble over anything. He waved
his hand to Fanshawe, with a forced smile, as he disappeared. He met his
darling Milly at the door--she whom he had never passed without a
caress, and brushed by, taking no notice of her. Then he came back, and
looked into the room sternly.
“See that there’s no mistake about Charlie,” he repeated.
Marjory made an ineffectual effort to restrain the tears which fell
suddenly, in great drops, upon her sleeve. She, too, turned anxious
apologetic looks upon the stranger.
“He never was like this before,” she said. “Oh, don’t think he is rude
or unkind, Mr. Fanshawe. There never was anyone so good or so tender;
but his heart is broken. He can think of nothing but poor Tom.”
“And you’ll write to Charlie?” said Mr. Charles. “I don’t wonder at him
being anxious. If you’ll think what India is, and what the life is--a
life made up of accidents, and fevers, and everything that’s deadly. The
lad might be bitten by some venomous creature; some ill beast might fall
foul of him; or he might catch the jungle fever, which they tell me is
most dangerous--”
“But all this might have happened to him for years past, I suppose,”
said Fanshawe; “unless he went to India very recently. These dangers are
not new.”
“He was not the heir then!” said Mr. Charles very simply; and he too
rose from the table. “Would you like to come and see my room, Mr.
Fanshawe? There is not much to show, but I have some prints that are not
just what you will see every day, and a curiosity or two; while Marjory
writes her letters.” And as he left the room he too looked back to say:
“You’ll write at once, May; you’ll be very urgent? It will be good for
us all to have Charlie at home.”
“Oh, May!” cried little Milly, who did not remember her second brother;
“why are they so anxious for Charlie to come home?”
“Who is anxious, Milly, besides papa and Uncle Charles?”
“Oh, the whole house!” said Milly. “Mrs. Simpson asks me every time she
sees me; and old Fleming. ‘Mr. Charlie must come home now!’ they say.
May, will you tell me why?”
“To fill Tom’s place!” said Marjory, with an outburst of sudden tears.
“Oh, my little Milly, that is what we do even when we love best. My
father is breaking his heart for Tom; yet he wants Charlie to fill Tom’s
place.”
“Nobody could ever fill _your_ place, May,” cried Milly; “I would never
let them; dinna cry. I could cry too, for papa never minds me, never
looks at me; and oh, he’s so strange; the house is so strange! but May,
so long as there is you--”
The little girl’s arms clinging round her neck were a comfort to
Marjory. Little Milly was wounded too; she had received that first
lesson of her own unimportance, which is hard even for a child; she was
half indignant, half angry even with “poor Tom,” though she cried at the
sound of his name--and very sore about Charlie, whom everybody wished
for.
“They have May, and what do they want more?” this faithful little maiden
said to herself. “When Tom was living we never saw him; and nobody ever
thought of Charlie. Why do they make such a fuss now? when they have
May!”
Fanshawe went with Mr. Charles to his room. After the scene of the
morning he felt sadly out of place, an intruder into the family life. It
seemed to him that he ought to go away; and only the day before he had
felt the tediousness of the existence so much that any excuse for going
away would have seemed a godsend; but yet, at the same time, he felt
that he did not want to go. Why, he could not have told; he seemed to
have been caught in the web of this family’s life, to be waiting for
some _dénouement_ or for some new turn in the story. He had known
nothing of them two weeks before; yet now he was a member of the
household, a spectator of the father’s misery, of the effort of the
family to right itself after this terrible blow. They seemed all to be
playing their parts before him, while he was the judge chance had
appointed to decide how they all fulfilled their _rôle_. With this
curious sensation in his mind he went over Mr. Charles’s treasures--his
prints, his cabinets of coins, his little collection of old jewellery,
which he had ranged in boxes under glass covers. “Here is a necklace
that I sometimes lend to May,” the old man said, pointing out a delicate
circlet in fine enamel, and the lightest fairy goldsmith’s work. “It was
brought to her great grandmother, Leddy Pitcomlie, from Rome, in the
beginning of last century, and is said to have belonged to a line of
great Italian beauties, whom I need not name. They’re all written out on
the case. I can recollect seeing it on the old Leddy’s withered neck.”
“Then you had a title in the family in those days?”
“No, no; no title! Leddy is the feminine of Laird, in old Scots--not
Lady, mind, which has another meaning. This is a ring that belonged to
Robert Hay in the end of the fifteenth century. We bear the yoke still
in our arms, you see. Robert Hay, of the Erroll family, married the
heiress of Pitcomlie--who was Marjory, like our Marjory downstairs. It’s
a romance in its way. I have put together some of the facts in the shape
of a kind of family history; but whether it will ever see the light of
day--”
“Then you are an author, as well as an antiquary?” said Fanshawe; “and
an art collector; and all sorts of learned things besides. What an
impudent wretch I was to speak of dulness here!”
Mr. Charles blushed, and waved his hand in gentle deprecation.
“No more of an author than I am of an antiquary,” he said; “a bit
smattering here and there, that’s all the knowledge I possess. As for my
bits of family notes, I doubt if they would interest any but the family
and connections. We have never had any notabilities among us; good,
honest, ordinary folk; some soldiers that have done well in their day,
but never very remarkable; and some clever women--that’s been our
speciality. You may see it in Marjory at the present moment. Clever
women--I don’t mean authoresses, or that kind of cattle, but real
capable mothers of families, that could guide their house and rule their
children. We’ve been great for that. Here are some miniatures that,
perhaps, will interest you; some very good, some bad enough, but all the
same character, the same character running through them. There is one
you would say was done for May, and it’s her great-aunt I don’t know how
many times removed.”
Thus the old man chattered, leading the stranger from one corner to
another of his domain. Mr. Charles’s rooms were in the habitable corner
of the old house of Pitcomlie, which was connected with the new house by
a long corridor, a windy passage, with the garden on one side and the
cliff on the other. One wing of the old building had been preserved in
sufficient repair, and Mr. Charles’s study occupied the round of the old
tourelle, as well as part of the ancient front of the house. It was a
large, cheerful room, with many windows, which he had fitted up
according to his taste, and his taste was good. His writing-table stood
in the round of the little tower commanding views up and down the Firth.
All the wonderful panorama on which Fanshawe had gazed with so much
interest from the cliffs, unfolded itself round the old windows which
were set in the half-circle of the tower. Between these windows Mr.
Charles had placed frames of crimson velvet, set with miniatures, with
rare old prints, and with small but exquisite scraps of sketches. Only a
trained eye, indeed, could have divined the amount of modest wealth
contained upon these; delightful faces, lovely little scraps of scenery,
gems which nothing could replace, though to the ignorant they seemed
simple enough.
Fanshawe felt himself grow smaller and smaller as he looked. After all,
this was not the dull and level blank of existence he had supposed. This
homely old man, with his Scotch accent, changed under his eyes; he
became something a great deal more lofty and elevated than Mr. Charles.
In his compunction and shame, the young man went as far too high in his
second estimate as he had been too low in his first. As for Mr. Charles,
this change gave him a simple satisfaction which it was delightful to
behold.
“You see, after all, there are some things worth looking at in
Pitcomlie,” he said. “It is not such a humdrum house, after all, though
it stands in a county so little interesting as comfortable Fife.”
“Nothing could have made it a humdrum house,” said the penitent. He was
not thinking of Mr. Charles’s pictures: he was thinking of--something
else.
Just then an unexpected summons came to the door.
“Miss Heriot’s compliments, and would the gentleman step over to the
north room?” the maid said, who waited, curtseying, to show the way.
Mr. Charles’s countenance clouded over.
“That’s poor Tom’s room,” he said. “I’ll go with the gentleman
myself--and yet, no; on second thoughts I’ll not go. You two may have
something to consult about, that I should not meddle with; or Marjory
may think there is something. Go, as she has sent for you, Mr. Fanshawe;
you can come back to me another time.”
With a curious little thrill of interest, Fanshawe went, threading the
turret staircase down from Mr. Charles’s rooms, and the windy passages,
wondering what she could want with him. Marjory received him in a room
of a very different description. It was in the back of the house,
looking across the gardens to the level line of the ploughed land, and
the low hills on the horizon. It was a long, narrow room, with a door
opening from each end; and its decorations were of a kind as different
from Mr. Charles’s study as was its form. On the walls hung two crossed
swords, some old guns carefully arranged according to their antiquity, a
collection of whips, fishing-rods, clubs for playing golf--worn out
traces of a boyhood not yet so very long departed. In one corner was a
bookcase, full of old classics, thumbed and worn, the school-books of
the two boys whose progress in polite letters Pitcomlie had once been so
proud of. The pictures on the walls were of the most heterogeneous
character; languishing French “Etudes” in chalk, were mingled with
sporting subjects, heads of dogs, portraits of sleek race-horses led by
sleeker grooms, and one staring view of Pitcomlie, painted in
water-colours, with very lively greens and blues, and signed “Ch.
Hay-Heriot,” in bold boyish characters.
No contrast could have been greater than this mass of incongruous
elements, seen after the careful collection of Mr. Charles; and yet
this, too, was not without its attraction. It looked like the chaos of a
boy’s mind, a hopeless yet innocent confusion; all sorts of discordant
things connected together by the sweet atmosphere of youth and
possibility, out of which all harmonies might come. In the midst of this
schoolboy chamber sat Marjory. She had a writing-case placed before her
on a table, the key of which she held in her hand. Fanshawe recognised
it at once. It was one which Tom had used constantly, which he had
carried about with him everywhere. Tom’s sister looked up at him with a
wistful and anxious glance.
“Mr. Fanshawe,” she said, “this has been brought to me to open. My
father cannot bear to look at anything, and I--I feel as if we had no
right to search into his secrets. It seems dishonourable, when he cannot
defend himself--when he is in our power.”
Fanshawe went round to Marjory’s side, and took into his own the hand
which, half unconsciously, she held out, appealing to him, and touched
the fingers with his lips. Her eyes were full of tears, and the look she
turned to him, asking for counsel and sympathy, went to his very heart.
A slight colour came to her face at this answer to her appeal; but
Marjory was not vain, and took it in no other light than as an impulse
of sympathy.
“Must I do it?” she asked.
“Is there any reason why? is it necessary? must _you_ do it?” he asked.
“Miss Heriot, your brother was but a man like others. There may be
things he would not have had you see.”
Once more Marjory blushed; but this time more hotly. She drooped her
head not to look at him.
“That is what I thought,” she said, very low. Then after a pause, she
looked up suddenly in his face. “Mr. Fanshawe, you were his friend; you
heard what he said about something to tell me. He thanked God at the
last that he had told me, though he had not, you are aware. Do you know
what it was?”
“No.” It was a relief unspeakable to him to be able to say this. “I know
none of his secrets--if he had any. So far as I am aware, he was
irreproachable. I knew nothing of him which you might not have known.”
“Thanks!” she said, with a smile, once more holding out her hand. How
grateful she was to him for knowing nothing! “Do you think, if I keep it
by me, to refer to in case of need--do you think that would do?”
“Or your uncle might do it,” said Fanshawe.
To his astonishment, she shrank from this suggestion.
“Uncle Charles is very good and kind; but he would be hard upon poor
Tom--he was always hard upon him. I must do it, if it has to be done.
Must it be done? I am so unwilling to do it, that I cannot trust my own
judgment. Oh! why cannot our little treasures, our secrets, our
mysteries, be buried with us in our graves?”
“He may have left a will--instructions--something that concerns others,”
said Fanshawe, hesitating.
Miss Heriot was not perfect, or an angelical woman. She almost turned
her back upon him as she answered coldly,
“Thanks; you seem to think it necessary. I will not trouble you further,
Mr. Fanshawe. I am much obliged to you for your advice.”
“What else could I say?” poor Fanshawe asked himself, as he retired.
“What the deuce have I done? She talks as if it was my fault. I did not
kill Tom Heriot, nor lock up his secrets in his despatch box. I hope,
though, she won’t find anything to shock her. What do the people here
mean by leaving all this to her? They give her everything to do. By
Jove! if it was me she would find the difference. I should be her slave.
She should do just what she liked, and so would I. I wonder if she’d
like it? I mean not me, but the kind of thing--to be served instead of
serving, to be kept from trouble instead of being bothered by everybody.
Just for the fun of the thing I should like to know.”
At this stage of his thoughts, Mr. Fanshawe being outside on the
platform before the house, lighted his cigar; and then he strolled down
the cliff to the rocks, where he wandered about till the hour of
luncheon.
“I suppose it’s best as it is,” he said to himself, as he clambered up
again at the sound of the bell. Such a sentiment is perhaps less
contented, less satisfactory than it looks. “I suppose it’s best as it
is!” Certainly there was a certain ruefulness in the countenance with
which it was said.