'I think,' said Auchendrayne, with a wiselike and grave sobriety that
set well on his reverend person, 'that she is presently in the orchard
house.'
'Will you bide here, or will you go with Mistress Helen?' he asked of
me.
'We would all go together,' said Nell, 'if it pleasure you.'
So with a courteous wave of the hand, he led us through stone passages
and along echoing corridors, till we came to a door in the wall, from
which we entered upon a pleasant prospect of gardens and orchards. Here
again there was the same curious silence, and, as it seemed, an absence
of the twitter and stir of a Scottish garden in the season of summer.
We came presently to a stone building like a tomb, all overshaded with
trees.
'This is the orchard house of Auchendrayne,' he said. 'I believe the
Lady Marjorie is within.'
The Dominie and I stayed without with John Mure, while Nell went in
alone to greet her sister. We heard the faint murmur of voices and now
and then a pulsing check as of a slow, smothered sob. We that were
without, stood with our backs to the cold, heavy, white stones under the
green shade, while John Mure discoursed learnedly and pleasantly of
flower-beds and tulips and the best form of dovecot tower for the supply
of the table with pigeon pie.
At last Nell came to the door.
'Launcelot, Marjorie wishes you to come in,' she said. Whereupon I
entered and found a large room finished in oaken panelling and moulded
archings. Roses looked in at the windows, and a stir of pleasant
coolness was all about. Marjorie was sitting by a table with many books
spread upon it.
My dear lady was pale and white as a lily. She leaned her head wearily
on her hand. But there burned a still and unslockened fire in her eye.
'Launcelot,' she said to me, 'this is not so wide a place to walk within
as the pleasaunce at Culzean, nor yet can we see from the garden house
of Auchendrayne the rough blue edges of Arran or the round Haystack of
Ailsa.
I bade her look forward to happy days yet to come, for, indeed, I knew
not what to say to her. She smiled upon me wistfully and indulgently,
as one does upon a prattling child.
'I thank you, Launcelot,' she said, 'but I was not born for happiness.
Nevertheless, you were ever my good lad. I see you still wear my
favour, but doubtless long ere this you have found another lady. Is it
not so?'
I told her no, blushing to have to say so in the hearing of Nell--who
afterwards might flout me, or, as like as not, cast up again the old
matter of Kate Allison.
Then through one of the windows I saw John Mure pacing up and down the
path with the Dominie at the other side of the garden, so I knew that it
was our time to speak.
'Ye have heard of your father's death?' said I. 'What think ye? How
was it wrought and how brought about? Can you help us to unravel it?'
'Nay,' said Marjorie, 'not at present. But in good time I shall yet
clear the matter to the roots, and that before I die.'
'Wherefore will you not come back to us at Culzean? We need you sorely,'
pleaded Nell, who stood holding her sister's hand.
'Nay,' said Marjorie, 'my work is not yet done at Auchendrayne.'
It was the self-same answer she had given when she rode away from the
gate of Maybole on the day of the death of Gilbert Kennedy of Bargany.
'Are they cruel to you here, Marjorie, tell me that?' I said, for I saw
that the old Laird was approaching, and that our further time would be
but short.
'No one of them hath laid so much as a finger upon me!' said Marjorie.
And this at least was some comfort to carry back to the sad house of
Culzean with us.
So with that, little satisfied concerning the thing which we came to
seek, but with somewhat more ease in our hearts for Marjorie's sake, we
went back through the passages and into the great hall. While we waited
there for a servant to show us forth to our horses, my eye rested upon a
large, closely-written volume, with the quill pen laid upon it, and
ink-horn set in a hole in the desk above it.
'I see that my clerkly work has caught your eye,' said John Mure. 'It
is a nothing that I amuse myself withal, yet it may live longer than you
or I. It is but a slight history of the mighty sept whose name you,
Master Launcelot, so worthily bear, with all their branches and noble
deeds at arms. For me, I am but a useless old man, past the labour of
fighting. Yea, I know it was your own lance that put me there. But I
bear no malice, it was the fortune of war. You know me better than to
suppose that John Mure bears a grudge for that shrewd thrust you dealt
me on the day of the quenching of our hopes in blood by the gate of
Maybole.'