The name of Willie Calderwood had never been spoken between the sisters
since the day when, standing on the high rocks above the Tangle Stanes,
they had watched the "John Seaton" making out to sea. Jean was silent
for one reason, and May for another; and there were reasons enough that
both could see why silence was best, to prevent either of them from
feeling such silence strange.
Willie Calderwood had been their companion and their brother's chief
friend in the days when they all played together on the rocks and sands
of Portie--in the days before George Dawson had admitted into his heart
the thought, that the wealth he had won, and the estate he had made his
own, gave his children a right to look higher for their friends than
among their less prosperous neighbours. But his children were not of
the sort that forget easily, nor were the Calderwoods the sort of
friends to be easily forgotten. Willie had always been a leader among
them, a handsome, fearless, kindly lad, and he became a hero to them
all, when he went to sea and came home to tell of shipwreck first, and
then of strange adventures among strange people; of hunger and cold and
suffering, and escape at last.
A hero! There were many such heroes in Portie who had suffered all
these things and more--old men and men old before their time who had
passed their lives in whaling ships on the northern seas; who had been
wounded or maimed in battles with northern bears and walruses, and with
northern frost and snow; and even they made much of the lad who had
begun his battles so early. So no wonder that he was a hero to his
chosen companions and friends.
"They were jist a' bairns thegither," as Miss Jean had said; but it was
during that summer, the last of his mother's life, that young George
lost his heart to bonny Elsie, and it was during that summer too, that
the visionary glory that rested on the name of the returned sailor
carried captive the imagination of his sister Jean. She did not forget
him while she was away from Portie; but when she returned they did not
fall into their old friendly ways with one another.
That would have been impossible even if the sad story of George and
Elsie had never been to tell; for Jean was a woman by this time, and she
was Miss Dawson of Saughleas, and he was but the second mate of a
whaling ship; a brave man and a good sailor, but not the equal of the
rich man's daughter as times were now. So they seldom met, and when
they did meet, it was not as it used to be in the old times between
them. He never sought her out when they met in the houses of their
mutual friends, and when the circumstances of the moment brought them
together, he was polite and deferential and not at his ease. Jean would
fain have been friendly and tried to show it, and not knowing then of
her father's anger, because of his son's love, she could not but wonder
at her ill success.
"Maybe he is like Tibbie Cairnie, and thinks you are set up with London
pride," said May laughing. "If I were you, I would ask him."
But Jean never asked him, and he was not long in Portie after they
returned. But when he came back again it was very much the same. He
was at home the greater part of the winter before he sailed with the
"John Seaton," and they met him often at other houses, though he never
went to Saughleas. There were times when they seemed to be felling back
into their old friendliness, and Jean, who was noted in their small
circle for the coolness with which she accepted or rejected the
compliments, or the graver attentions of some who seemed to seek her
favour, grew gentle and winning, and even playful or teasing, when any
movement in the room brought the young sailor to her side.
"She is just the Jean of the old days," poor Willie said to himself, and
he could say nothing better than that. They fell back at such times
into the kindly speech of their childhood "minding" one another of this
or that happy day when they were "a' bairns thegither." They could say
little of Elsie who was dead, or of George who was lost, in a bright
room with others looking on, but the tears that stood in Jean's "bonny
een" told more than words could have done of her love and sorrow for
them both. If she had known all, she might have thought it wise to say
nothing; but her words and her wet eyes were as drops of sweet to the
lad in the midst of much bitterness. He did not always go home cheered
and comforted after the sweetness; but Jean did, telling herself that at
last they were friends as they used to be--till they met again, and then
the chances were, that her "friend" was as silent and deferential and as
little eager, apparently, to seek her company as ever; and she could
only comfort herself with the thought that the fault was not hers.
So it went on strangely and sadly enough for a while, and then Jean
began to see that though he shunned rather than sought her, he seemed
friendly enough with her sister. He seemed to seek her out, and to have
much to say to her; and why he should be friendly with May and not with
her, she could not easily understand.
"Unless--and even then?" said Jean to herself with a little sinking of
the heart.
She did not follow out her thought at the moment, but it came back to
her afterwards, and on the high rocks as they watched the departing
ship, she thought she saw it all clearly, and that she was content. He
was her friend, and if he were May's lover, he would still be her
friend, and all the more because of that, and time would make all things
that might hinder their friendship now, clear to them both.
But she did not speak to her sister about this. It was for May to speak
to her, she thought at first, and after a while it would not have been
easy to speak, and on the whole, silence was best. Then as she listened
to her aunt's story of their brother and Elsie, and of their father's
opposition and anger, she was not sure that silence was best. How much
of it May might know, she could not tell; but sooner or later she must
know it all, and if there was trouble before her, it would make it none
the easier to bear, but all the heavier, the longer the knowledge was
kept from her. But she shrank from speaking all the same.
"I will tell her to-night," she said as she sat by her aunt's side. But
she did not, nor the next, and even on the third night she sat long in
the dark when the house was silent, listening to the wind among the
trees, and the dull sound of the sea, and the painful beating of her own
heavy heart, before she found courage to go into her sister's room.
"If she is asleep, I will not wake her."
But May was not asleep. She had been lingering over various little
things that she had found to do, and had only just put out her light
when her sister softly opened the door. She seemed to sleep, however,
as Jean leaned over to listen, but as she turned away, May laughed
softly.
"Well, what is it? I dinna think I have done any thing so very foolish
to-day--not more than usual, I mean."
For, in her elder sisterly care for her, Jean thought it wise to drop a
word of counsel now and then, and this was the hour she usually chose to
do it. She stooped down and kissed her as she turned, a circumstance
that did not very often occur between them. For though they loved one
another dearly, they were--after the manner of their kin and country--
shy of any expression of love or even of sympathy in the way of
caresses.
"Is there any thing wrong?" said May startled. "Did any one ever tell
you about--about our Geordie and Elsie Calderwood, May? Auntie Jean has
been speaking about them to me lately."
It was not a very good beginning, but she did not know what better to
say. May raised herself up, and looked eagerly in her sister's face.
"I have heard something. Do you mean that you only heard it the other
day?"
"Tell me all you know," said Jean, leaning down on the bed beside her.
"And why did you not tell me before?"
"I did not like--and I thought you must ken about it."
"Ah! yes. It is sad enough. No wonder you didna like to speak about
it. But tell me now all you know."
And May did so, and it was very nearly all there was to tell. She had
heard the story, not straight through from beginning to end, as Jean had
heard it from her aunt, but from words dropped now and then by one and
another of their friends. And Jean could not but wonder that, May
having heard so much, she herself should have heard so little. But May
knew little of the part her father had taken in the separation of the
lovers, how angry he had been, and how determined to put an end to what
he called the folly of his son. It was just this that May ought to
know, and Jean told it in as few words as possible. She wondered a
little at the way in which her sister seemed to take it all.
"Poor Elsie! But she might have died even if she had not been sent to
the school. How little folk ken! They say in Portie that her mother
sent her away that she might learn things that would fit her to be the
wife of young Mr Dawson, and by and by the lady of Saughleas--and that
her pride got a fall. It is a sorrowful story, Jean."
"And the saddest part of it to us is, that poor Geordie is lost and gone
from us. And even if he were to come home, it might be little better."
"Is my father angry yet, Jean? Or is he sorry? Would he do the same if
it were all to do over again?"
"Who can say! He has many thoughts about it, doubtless, and some of
them cannot but be bitter enough. But as to his doing differently--"
Jean shook her head.
"But, Jean, I canna blame my father altogether. His heart was set on
his only son, and George was but a boy."
"Yes, and Aunt Jean says if he had but waited with patience my father
might have yielded at last."
"Or George might have changed. He had seen no one else, and though
Elsie was good, and bonny too, there was a great difference between her
and--and some that we have seen,--ladies educated and accomplished as
well as beautiful. And, Jean, I canna but be sorry for my father."
"Sorry! That says little. My heart is like to break for him whiles--
and it might have been so different!" said Jean sadly.
"If he were living, we should have heard from him before this time."
"Who can say? Oh! he is living! I canna think he is dead. Poor papa,
he must have a sore heart often."
"Jean," said her sister after a long silence, "do you think he would do
it all over again? I mean--do you think he would be as hard on--you or
me?"
"Do you mean--Willie?" asked Jean at last. "Well--Willie or another.
It is not easy for my father to change."
"No, it is not. But, May, have patience. Things often come round in
strange ways when we least expect it. If George would only come again!
How long is it since the `John Seaton' sailed?"
"A good while since."
Jean could have told her sister the days and even the hours that had
passed since then, but she did not. When she asked the question, it was
her brother she was thinking of; but May, who could not know that,
believed that she was thinking of Willie Calderwood.
"He may be captain next voyage," said May. "But I wish he could leave
the sea altogether. My father could open the way for that, if he
chose."
"Leave the sea? Is it Willie you are speaking about? He would never do
it. May, you must not ask it of him. It would be putting him in a
false position altogether. He is a true sailor."
"Oh! I shall not ask him. It would do little good. But I wonder at
you all the same. You have no ambition. He can never be more than just
a sea captain--and always away."
"A sea captain!" repeated Jean. "A sailor!--And what would you have?
Would you put him behind the counter in a shop? or set him to casting up
figures or counting money in a bank? Would you even old Mr Petrie or
James or any of them with the like of him?"
May laughed. "Oh! well, a sailor let him be. But ye needna flee at me
as though I had said something horrible. And we needna vex ourselves.
That will do no good."
"It must be late," said Jean rising. "She takes it quietly enough, and
it is well she does. It would wear her out to be ay thinking and
fearing and longing for his coming home, as I long for poor George's.
She is ay light-hearted, dear child. God bless her," added Jean with a
sigh.
The rest of the summer passed quietly away. The little Corbetts went
home strong and brown and with a wonderful knowledge of and delight in
their father's mother tongue, rejoicing over the invitation for another
visit the next summer, if all should be well.
They were much missed in Saughleas, and so was Miss Jean, who, though
she enjoyed a visit to her brother and her nieces now and then, liked
best the quiet of her own house, and the silent secret doing of the work
which she had chosen among the sinful and suffering poor creatures of
which, especially in winter-time, Portie had its share. Her stay at
Saughleas had done her good. She left her crutch behind her there, and
she was able now to go with her staff in one hand and "help and comfort"
in the other, to those who in the back sheets and lanes of the town
needed her help most. At Saughleas they missed her greatly, for various
reasons, and chiefly for this, that at meal times, and at other times
also, Mr Dawson was ready to fall into his old habit of silence and
reserve, when left alone with his daughters. This silence was good
neither for them nor for himself.
"And I am going to try and have it otherwise," said Jean to herself, as
she sat behind the urn, waiting for his coming the first morning they
were alone.
He came in as usual with a bundle of papers in his hand, letters that
had been received last night, and that must be answered this morning as
soon as he reached the bank, and in the mean time he meant to look them
over while he drank his coffee.
"I think," said his daughter looking straight into his face as he
adjusted his spectacles, so that he might not let her remark fall as
though it had been made to her sister, "I think Aunt Jean is the woman
the most to be envied among all the women I know."
"Ay! Think ye that? And what new light ha'e ye gotten about her
to-day?" said her father, arrested by her look rather than her words.
"No new light. Only I have been thinking about her last night and
to-day. She is the best woman I know, and the happiest; and I envy
her."
"Ye have but to follow in her steps, and ye'll be as good as she is,--in
time," said her father dryly. "As to her happiness--I should say she
perhaps makes the most of the means of happiness given to her, but
otherwise I see little cause that you have to envy her. She is
reasonable, and doesna let her wishes and her fancies get the better of
her good sense, and so she is content."
"And if I were reasonable, would I be content, I wonder? As to being as
good--that must come of higher teaching and peculiar discipline, and I
doubt I shall never be good in her way."
"And what for no? Your aunt would be the first to tell you that you can
get the higher teaching for the asking. And as for discipline--the
chances are ye'll get your share as well as the rest of us."
"But not just in the same way. A long, patient, laborious,
self-forgetting life hers has been--has it not? She is strong and she
has been successful; yet she is not hard. She is good, but she is not
down on wrong-doers in the way that some good folk are. If I had my
choice, I think I would choose to have just such a life as she has had--
if it would make me like her."
Mr Dawson looked at his daughter in some surprise. Jean was not
looking at him, but over his head far away to the sea, bright for the
moment, under a gleam of sunshine.
"Would that be your choice? A life of labour, and then the life of a
solitary single woman! I think I see you!" said her father with
something like indignation in his tones.
May laughed. Jean's eyes came back from the sea with a vague, wistful
look in them that startled her father.
"I think, Jean, ye hardly ken what ye're speaking about."
"Yes. About Aunt Jean. `A solitary single woman?' No. Not solitary.
That has such a sorrowful sound. Oh! she is not solitary in an unhappy
sense; even when she is quite alone in her own house by the sea."
"What I mean is, that she has neither husband nor child. She is alone
in that sense. And if ye think that she hasna whiles felt--weel--as if
she had missed something in life--that's no' my thought."
"Yes--and that is part of the discipline, I suppose. Missed something--
yes. But then, having had these things she might have missed that which
makes her different from, and better than, any one else. I ken no one
like my Aunt Jean."
"Weel--ye're no' far wrong there. And if ye had kenned her in her
youth, you would have said the same. There were none like her then more
than now. But she's growing unco frail-like now, poor body?" added Mr
Dawson with a sigh.
And then there was more said. Mr Dawson went on to tell many stories
of his sister's youth, all going to prove that there were few like her
for sense and goodness even then. Most of these his daughters had heard
before, but they liked to listen all the same. And Mr Dawson forgot
his letters, and Jean forgot that it was only to keep his eyes away from
them, that she had begun to speak about her aunt, and she took courage
because of her success.