The next day Eric sought Kilmeny again and renewed his pleadings, but
again in vain. Nothing he could say, no argument which he could advance,
was of any avail against her sad determination. When he was finally
compelled to realize that her resolution was not to be shaken, he went
in his despair to Janet Gordon. Janet listened to his story with concern
and disappointment plainly visible on her face. When he had finished she
shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Master. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I had hoped for
something very different. HOPED! I have PRAYED for it. Thomas and I are
getting old and it has weighed on my mind for years--what was to become
of Kilmeny when we would be gone. Since you came I had hoped she would
have a protector in you. But if Kilmeny says she will not marry you I am
afraid she’ll stick to it.”
“But she loves me,” cried the young man, “and if you and her uncle speak
to her--urge her--perhaps you can influence her--”
“No, Master, it wouldn’t be any use. Oh, we will, of course, but it will
not be any use. Kilmeny is as determined as her mother when once she
makes up her mind. She has always been good and obedient for the most
part, but once or twice we have found out that there is no moving her if
she does resolve upon anything. When her mother died Thomas and I wanted
to take her to church. We could not prevail on her to go. We did not
know why then, but now I suppose it was because she believed she was
so very ugly. It is because she thinks so much of you that she will not
marry you. She is afraid you would come to repent having married a dumb
girl. Maybe she is right--maybe she is right.”
“I cannot give her up,” said Eric stubbornly. “Something must be done.
Perhaps her defect can be remedied even yet. Have you ever thought of
that? You have never had her examined by a doctor qualified to pronounce
on her case, have you?”
“No, Master, we never took her to anyone. When we first began to
fear that she was never going to talk Thomas wanted to take her to
Charlottetown and have her looked to. He thought so much of the child
and he felt terrible about it. But her mother wouldn’t hear of it being
done. There was no use trying to argue with her. She said that it would
be no use--that it was her sin that was visited on her child and it
could never be taken away.”
“And did you give in meekly to a morbid whim like that?” asked Eric
impatiently.
“Master, you didn’t know my sister. We HAD to give in--nobody could hold
out against her. She was a strange woman--and a terrible woman in many
ways--after her trouble. We were afraid to cross her for fear she would
go out of her mind.”
“But, could you not have taken Kilmeny to a doctor unknown to her
mother?”
“No, that was not possible. Margaret never let her out of her sight,
not even when she was grown up. Besides, to tell you the whole truth,
Master, we didn’t think ourselves that it would be much use to try to
cure Kilmeny. It WAS a sin that made her as she is.”
“Aunt Janet, how can you talk such nonsense? Where was there any sin?
Your sister thought herself a lawful wife. If Ronald Fraser thought
otherwise--and there is no proof that he did--HE committed a sin, but
you surely do not believe that it was visited in this fashion on his
innocent child!”
“No, I am not meaning that, Master. That wasn’t where Margaret did
wrong; and though I never liked Ronald Fraser over much, I must say this
in his defence--I believe he thought himself a free man when he married
Margaret. No, it’s something else--something far worse. It gives me a
shiver whenever I think of it. Oh, Master, the Good Book is right when
it says the sins of the parents are visited on the children. There isn’t
a truer word in it than that from cover to cover.”
“What, in heaven’s name, is the meaning of all this?” exclaimed Eric.
“Tell me what it is. I must know the whole truth about Kilmeny. Do not
torment me.”
“I am going to tell you the story, Master, though it will be like
opening an old wound. No living person knows it but Thomas and me. When
you hear it you will understand why Kilmeny can’t speak, and why it
isn’t likely that there can ever be anything done for her. She doesn’t
know the truth and you must never tell her. It isn’t a fit story for her
ears, especially when it is about her mother. Promise me that you will
never tell her, no matter what may happen.”
“I promise. Go on--go on,” said the young man feverishly.
Janet Gordon locked her hands together in her lap, like a woman who
nerves herself to some hateful task. She looked very old; the lines on
her face seemed doubly deep and harsh.
“My sister Margaret was a very proud, high-spirited girl, Master. But I
would not have you think she was unlovable. No, no, that would be doing
a great injustice to her memory. She had her faults as we all have; but
she was bright and merry and warm-hearted. We all loved her. She was the
light and life of this house. Yes, Master, before the trouble that came
on her Margaret was a winsome lass, singing like a lark from morning
till night. Maybe we spoiled her a little--maybe we gave her too much of
her own way.
“Well, Master, you have heard the story of her marriage to Ronald Fraser
and what came after, so I need not go into that. I know, or used to know
Elizabeth Williamson well, and I know that whatever she told you would
be the truth and nothing more or less than the truth.
“Our father was a very proud man. Oh, Master, if Margaret was too proud
she got it from no stranger. And her misfortune cut him to the heart. He
never spoke a word to us here for more than three days after he heard of
it. He sat in the corner there with bowed head and would not touch bite
or sup. He had not been very willing for her to marry Ronald Fraser; and
when she came home in disgrace she had not set foot over the threshold
before he broke out railing at her. Oh, I can see her there at the door
this very minute, Master, pale and trembling, clinging to Thomas’s arm,
her great eyes changing from sorrow and shame to wrath. It was just at
sunset and a red ray came in at the window and fell right across her
breast like a stain of blood.
“Father called her a hard name, Master. Oh, he was too hard--even though
he was my father I must say he was too hard on her, broken-hearted as
she was, and guilty of nothing more after all than a little willfulness
in the matter of her marriage.
“And father was sorry for it--Oh, Master, the word wasn’t out of his
mouth before he was sorry for it. But the mischief was done. Oh, I’ll
never forget Margaret’s face, Master! It haunts me yet in the black
of the night. It was full of anger and rebellion and defiance. But she
never answered him back. She clenched her hands and went up to her old
room without saying a word, all those mad feelings surging in her
soul, and being held back from speech by her sheer, stubborn will. And,
Master, never a word did Margaret say from that day until after Kilmeny
was born--not one word, Master. Nothing we could do for her softened
her. And we were kind to her, Master, and gentle with her, and never
reproached her by so much as a look. But she would not speak to anyone.
She just sat in her room most of the time and stared at the wall with
such awful eyes. Father implored her to speak and forgive him, but she
never gave any sign that she heard him.
“I haven’t come to the worst yet, Master. Father sickened and took to
his bed. Margaret would not go in to see him. Then one night Thomas
and I were watching by him; it was about eleven o’clock. All at once he
said,
“‘Janet, go up and tell the lass’--he always called Margaret that--it
was a kind of pet name he had for her--‘that I’m deein’ and ask her to
come down and speak to me afore I’m gone.’
“Master, I went. Margaret was sitting in her room all alone in the cold
and dark, staring at the wall. I told her what our father had said. She
never let on she heard me. I pleaded and wept, Master. I did what I had
never done to any human creature--I kneeled to her and begged her, as
she hoped for mercy herself, to come down and see our dying father.
Master, she wouldn’t! She never moved or looked at me. I had to get up
and go downstairs and tell that old man she would not come.”
Janet Gordon lifted her hands and struck them together in her agony of
remembrance.
“When I told father he only said, oh, so gently,
“‘Poor lass, I was too hard on her. She isna to blame. But I canna go
to meet her mother till our little lass has forgie’n me for the name I
called her. Thomas, help me up. Since she winna come to me I must e’en
go to her.’
“There was no crossing him--we saw that. He got up from his deathbed and
Thomas helped him out into the hall and up the stair. I walked behind
with the candle. Oh, Master, I’ll never forget it--the awful shadows and
the storm wind wailing outside, and father’s gasping breath. But we
got him to Margaret’s room and he stood before her, trembling, with his
white hairs falling about his sunken face. And he prayed Margaret to
forgive him--to forgive him and speak just one word to him before
he went to meet her mother. Master”--Janet’s voice rose almost to
a shriek--“she would not--she would not! And yet she WANTED to
speak--afterwards she confessed to me that she wanted to speak. But
her stubbornness wouldn’t let her. It was like some evil power that
had gripped hold of her and wouldn’t let go. Father might as well have
pleaded with a graven image. Oh, it was hard and dreadful! She saw her
father die and she never spoke the word he prayed for to him. THAT was
her sin, Master,--and for that sin the curse fell on her unborn child.
When father understood that she would not speak he closed his eyes and
was like to have fallen if Thomas had not caught him.
“‘Oh, lass, you’re a hard woman,’ was all he said. And they were his
last words. Thomas and I carried him back to his room, but the breath
was gone from him before we ever got him there.
“Well, Master, Kilmeny was born a month afterwards, and when Margaret
felt her baby at her breast the evil thing that had held her soul in its
bondage lost its power. She spoke and wept and was herself again. Oh,
how she wept! She implored us to forgive her and we did freely and
fully. But the one against whom she had sinned most grievously was gone,
and no word of forgiveness could come to her from the grave. My poor
sister never knew peace of conscience again, Master. But she was gentle
and kind and humble until--until she began to fear that Kilmeny was
never going to speak. We thought then that she would go out of her mind.
Indeed, Master, she never was quite right again.
“But that is the story and it’s a thankful woman I am that the telling
of it is done. Kilmeny can’t speak because her mother wouldn’t.”
Eric had listened with a gray horror on his face to the gruesome tale.
The black tragedy of it appalled him--the tragedy of that merciless law,
the most cruel and mysterious thing in God’s universe, which ordains
that the sin of the guilty shall be visited on the innocent. Fight
against it as he would, the miserable conviction stole into his heart
that Kilmeny’s case was indeed beyond the reach of any human skill.
“It is a dreadful tale,” he said moodily, getting up and walking
restlessly to and fro in the dim spruce-shadowed old kitchen where
they were. “And if it is true that her mother’s willful silence caused
Kilmeny’s dumbness, I fear, as you say, that we cannot help her. But
you may be mistaken. It may have been nothing more than a strange
coincidence. Possibly something may be done for her. At all events, we
must try. I have a friend in Queenslea who is a physician. His name is
David Baker, and he is a very skilful specialist in regard to the throat
and voice. I shall have him come here and see Kilmeny.”
“Have your way,” assented Janet in the hopeless tone which she might
have used in giving him permission to attempt any impossible thing.
“It will be necessary to tell Dr. Baker why Kilmeny cannot speak--or why
you think she cannot.”
Janet’s face twitched.
“Must that be, Master? Oh, it’s a bitter tale to tell a stranger.”
“Don’t be afraid. I shall tell him nothing that is not strictly
necessary to his proper understanding of the case. It will be quite
enough to say that Kilmeny may be dumb because for several months before
her birth her mother’s mind was in a very morbid condition, and she
preserved a stubborn and unbroken silence because of a certain bitter
personal resentment.”
“Well, do as you think best, Master.”
Janet plainly had no faith in the possibility of anything being done for
Kilmeny. But a rosy glow of hope flashed over Kilmeny’s face when Eric
told her what he meant to do.
“Oh, do you think he can make me speak?” she wrote eagerly.
“I don’t know, Kilmeny. I hope that he can, and I know he will do all
that mortal skill can do. If he can remove your defect will you promise
to marry me, dearest?”
She nodded. The grave little motion had the solemnity of a sacred
promise.
“Yes,” she wrote, “when I can speak like other women I will marry you.”