THE SHADOWY HAND AT LONEWOODLEE.
During all this time that the summer had been verging towards autumn,
and the corn yellowing on lea and upland, Mary Lennox had been
unremitting as usual, in the lonely task of tending her father's
sick-bed.
She had only heard incidentally of Cyril's departure for the seat of
war--that he had gone without a word of kindness or farewell to her
who loved him as her own soul and more; and for a time, that soul had
seemed to die within her.
Her betrothal ring was a fond link--a species of sentimental
fetter--from which she had no wish to free herself, otherwise she
might have drawn it from her finger and cast it in the fire!
The first time that Cyril had called her Mary--her Christian
name--still dwelt in her memory with exquisite tenderness, from the
very novelty of the circumstance. The last time he had called her
Mary, dwelt in her memory too; but with anguish, for then it had been
uttered in a tone of wrath, of sorrow and upbraiding.
Music was the great solace of old Oliver Lennox's lonely days. He
loved to hear the rich and glorious voice of his daughter, and thus,
for many an hour she played and sung to him, while her heart was
full, nigh unto bursting, with thoughts that would not be repressed.
Like an angel of mercy had poor Mary hovered about that sick-bed,
where her only tie to earth was about to be severed; for at last
there came a day, she was never to forget, when the doctor assured
her that all his skill could "protract life no longer, and that ere
nightfall, too probably, all would be over;" and Mary heard him
without tears, for now they would not flow; but the old anxious and
clamorous sensation about her heart, became replaced by a gnawing
concentrated agony too keen for description; and as she listened to
the fatal words of Doctor Squills, felt the kind pressure of his hand
and heard his steps die away as he left the house, she gazed in a
kind of stupor across the landscape, where the setting sun shone so
warmly, and, it seemed, so mockingly, in his summer splendour, on the
green pasture lands, and on the trees where the birds were singing so
merrily, while through the open windows the hum of the mountain bee,
and sweet perfume of the honeysuckle came together.
"Must it be--must it be--at last--at last!" she murmured through her
clenched teeth; and creeping once more to his side, she kissed her
father's brow and caressed his silvery locks, that were now as thin
and fine as floss silk; and as she did so, there flashed on her
memory the old tradition that "a grey head was ne'er kamit" (i.e.,
combed) by a Lennox of Lonewoodlee, for in domestic brawls or foreign
wars, they all perished early; but the manners were changed for the
better now.
For a time he seemed unconscious of her presence, and spoke only of
her dead brother.
"Oh, my Harry," he murmured, "your mother was in her grave, and never
knew how gallantly you led your squadron on that terrible day against
the Sikhs."
"Mamma is in Heaven, and oh, papa, may know it all!" whispered Mary.
Then suddenly a light seemed to penetrate the darkness of his mind;
he recognised her, and drew her close to his breast in a tremulous
embrace.
"Mary, my own little Mary," said he in low and laboured accents, "the
bitterness of death is not in dying, but in leaving you without a
home--without a friend--for all passes away with me."
"God will guard and guide me, papa!"
"Our past, with all its traditions and history, has been an
honourable past; yet we Lennoxes have been going down in the
world--down so surely as I shall go to my grave--my poor child!"
After a long pause he spoke again; but more feebly.
"Play me something, Mary, while I can yet listen; for the music
soothes me into dreams and fills me with prayerful thoughts; play to
me once again, Mary," he added with a smile that made her heart
sicken, for it was the last flash up of the dying light, ere that
light went out for ever!
Mary seated herself at the piano in the adjoining room, and while
tears streamed over her face, and her tremulous hands could barely
touch the keys in accompaniment, she slowly sung two verses of a hymn:
"Gentle Jesus, look with pity
From Thy great white throne above;
All the night my heart is wakeful
In Thy sacrament of love.
Shades of evening fast are falling,
Day is fading into gloom;
So when shades of death fall round us,
Lead thine exiled children home."
For a time the old man had beat feebly with his fingers on the
coverlet; then all motion ceased, and when Mary stole in, a cry
escaped her, and she sank on her knees, burying her face in the
bedclothes.
The day had indeed faded into gloom; the old man had passed away to
the foot of the Great White Throne; and, a terrible reality, the
unseen, yet shadowy hand was resting on Lonewoodlee.
* * * * * *
There were now silence and utter desolation in that sequestered tower
among the moorlands. The blinds were drawn down; old and dingy
blinds they were, making the deeply set windows look more gloomy in
the walls which were of such strength and thickness.
Alison Home, after the first noisy explosion of her grief, when she
uttered spasmodic sobs and rocked herself to and fro before the
kitchen fire, moved about stealthily and softly in list shoes, as if
fearing still to disturb the old Laird, who died where so many of his
forefathers had lain, and where many of their brides had slept.
The stillness, the solemn hush of death were over all, and nowhere
more than in the desolate heart of Mary. Everything connected with
such an event in Scotland is so grim, so stern, so funereal, and
utterly without aught to alleviate the mind of the survivor, that it
becomes harrowing in the extreme. There are no prayers for the dead;
no pretty offices, such as the decoration of the body with flowers:
no service of any kind is performed beside it, so that the living may
linger near in a labour of love to the last. A white sheet is simply
spread over to hide it, and then the body is left to stiffen into
ghastly rigidity of outline.
And this death had not come unaccompanied by omens; the watch-dog had
moaned painfully all the preceding night; and Alison Home, and the
other domestic, had of course heard the dead-bells tinkling in their
ears, according to the peasant superstition in the old ballad:
"Yestreen I heard the death-bell sound,
When a' were fast asleep;
And aye it rung, and aye it sung,
Till a' my flesh did creep."
Though in days and months past, Mary had often, in anticipating the
present terrible contingency, thought of her own future, she forgot
all about it now. She had even ceased to think of Cyril Wedderburn
till his mother's card came, and a bitter smile crossed the girl's
pale face as she placed it on the table, where lay an open letter
from Messrs. Grub and Wylie, the solicitors, "threatening legal
proceedings anent the bill handed to us by our client Captain
Chesters of Chesterhaugh."
It might safely lie on the table unheeded now!
Mary Lennox was indeed alone! Sorrow-stricken as she was, there was
not on all the earth a being who could share her terrible emotion of
grief. She had no friend nigh to soothe her awful loneliness by a
single word that was not so conventional as to be repellant. She had
no home, no house, no shelter now from the too probable want that
must soon overtake her!
Dark and cheerless indeed was the prospect of the bereaved girl;
there were affliction and agony for the present, with vague terror of
the future. No hand was near to caress, and no voice to soothe her,
as she lay weeping on her bed, sleepless and without rest, though
prostrate from over-wrought emotion. There was something terrible in
the desolation of that young heart, thrust back upon itself, even in
its craving for sympathy. She had not even that relief afforded to
sorrow by having around her friends to whom she might speak of the
dead, and hear his real or imagined virtues extolled, remembered, and
descanted on.
The two old female servants sat cowering by the kitchen fire, talking
in low whispers of the Shadowy Hand on the wall, and wondering if it
was visible now; but then there was no moon. According to an old
custom, or superstition, they had covered up with white every piece
of furniture the chamber of death contained, and then the door
thereof was carefully closed, for in rural districts the people fear
the dead may speak if it is left ajar, though the whistle of the
locomotive is fast banishing all such foolish fancies.
The minister of Willowdean, a cold and somewhat pompous personage,
came on the morrow, and his extempore prayer--one stereotyped in his
mind, having been delivered on a thousand similar occasions--though
hard and unsympathetic, and most jarringly intoned, soothed her a
little, because his meaning was good, and he wished to be kind
apparently.
The Reverend Gideon M'Guffog was a burly, hard-featured, and
sandy-whiskered Galwegian, who seemed more like something between a
bluff grazier and a sleek attorney, than a clergyman. At the close
of his prayer, which he delivered with his eyes shut, he glanced with
surprise at the open piano, on which the music Mary had last used was
yet remaining neglected or forgotten.
"Music?" said he, in a tone of reprehensive inquiry, while glancing
at Mary, under, over, and finally through his spectacles.
"It is the hymn I sang to my darling papa last night; he loved it so,
next to _Adeste fideles_, indeed; and it was while I was singing it,
he passed away from me," said Mary in a choking voice.
The measure of the Reverend Gideon's reprehension became full when he
read over the hymn in question.
"It is ritualistic, even popish in spirit, Miss Lennox, and I deplore
that the last sounds heard on earth by the ears of your esteemed
father, were such as these. But oh, let not me bruise the bruised!
My poor young lady, this sort of thing comes of your being so sadly
left to yourself."
He retired, promising to call again. But nothing that he could say
had the effect of crushing Mary's spirit lower, though she felt that
in life or in death she had nothing to reproach herself with as a
daughter.
As he was in haste to address a meeting of the Sabbatarians and
self-righteous folks of Willowdean, who were getting up a petition to
the Home Office to prevent the working-men of Edinburgh from entering
the Botanical Gardens of that city "on the Lord's Day," and indulging
in the desecration of it by enjoying flowers and sunshine, he hurried
away; but permitted his wife, who had latterly ignored Mary's
existence (at least since the Chesterhaugh story), to remain with
her, till the funeral matters were arranged. This was but an act of
Christian charity; and when it became known in the neighbourhood,
that the impoverished Laird of Lonewoodlee was dead, many shook their
heads regretfully, when remembering, like honest Sir John Wedderburn,
his stately manners, his steady seat in the hunting field, his
convivial qualities, his dignified, old-fashioned courtesy, his queer
feudal notions; and all agreed that a link with the past was broken.
A few others speculated on what would become of his beautiful orphan
daughter.
The funeral day came at last, the great and final wrench to poor
Mary, who was secluded in her own room, as men alone are present when
"the Prayer" is given in Scotland; but she heard that Sir John
Wedderburn and his youngest son were present in deep mourning, and
she sobbed more heavily at the intelligence.
Cyril's father! Cyril's brother!
"Dead!--dead!" she would whisper in her heart. "How shall I struggle
through the world alone? Who will love me now that my dearest papa
is dead?"
So Oliver Lennox was buried in the Lennox aisle of Willowdean Kirk,
where are lying the tombs of his race for three hundred years, back
even to Oliver who built the Tower, as the legend above its door
records. And with a face of due solemnity, specially got up for the
occasion, his solicitor from Edinburgh acted as chief mourner; for
neither kith nor kin had Oliver left to stand by his grave on that
solemn day when the turf fell like a green curtain over the last
scene of his history.
"Better in his narrow home than in the Tolbooth of Willowdean or
Greenlaw; for it was coming to _that_, sir!" whispered his solicitor
in the ear of Sir John Wedderburn, to whom, as a Baronet and man of
property, he had stuck like a barnacle during the whole of the
melancholy ceremony.