“Life will not flow as rivers flow, or seas;
It is a flood, but made of raindrops; days,
And hours, and moments--several, pitiless.”
BUT still the days, each with its daily burden, wore out the faltering
strength, which tried to endure them calmly, and look towards the
end--the end great and solemn, which would demand all their might when
it came, was obscured with smaller miseries coming hour by hour, which
called for less preparation, and were less easily endured.
Secretly within herself, Agnes said again that this would kill
her--secretly Rose murmured that her heart was like to break; and from
the solemn calm of patience they descended into the burning fever of
constant anxiety, of hourly jealous fear and watching; but Martha’s
warning and the constant desire to see with their own eyes, and hear
with their own ears, what Harry did and said, preserved them from
the bodily maladies which might have attended this feverish strain
of heart and mind. They were one in their anxieties, their thoughts,
their fears; yet none could trust the other to report for her what was
every day’s state--none could afford to be ill, or take shelter in bed
or chamber. Day by day they watched, and night by night kept vigils,
taking only such sleep as nature compelled.
And Harry, poor Harry! went on sinking, neglecting the love which in
his real heart was dearer to him a hundred times, than all the objects
he pursued in his infatuation. Like a man on the smooth incline of
some frightful downright slope, he seemed to lose all power after the
first impetus was given, and went sheer down without a pause or stay.
Poor Harry! if he was sullen sometimes, at other some there came to
him bursts of exceeding tenderness, remorseful and pathetic, as if
his better angel was weeping within him, over his ruin; but still he
went down--clutching at the flowers which waved over the edge of the
precipice, and darting down its rapid incline with their torn blossoms
in his hand; but the downward progress was never stayed.
The next day after Sir John Dunlop’s unfortunate party, Harry,
heated and defiant, took his builder with him to visit the cottages
at Maidlin. Harry desired to see the finest plans, the best models,
and to plant such an exotic English village as great lords make for
playthings, on that part of Maidlin which bordered on his estate.
“Don’t mind uniformity--don’t take any pains to make it correspond with
the other half,” said Harry, in excitement and anger. “Let Sir John
Dunlop have pigsties if he likes for _his_ men. All I care about is my
share, and you must spare no pains on that.”
“But the expense, Allenders?” said the builder, with perplexity and
disconcertment, “it’s sure to take a heap of money.”
“Never mind the money,” said Harry loftily, “that is my concern--yours
is to make a handsome village on this side of the Cross, and the other
houses can be pulled down afterwards; let me have plans and estimates
as soon as they can be prepared, and see that you are not content with
inferior models. Let Sir John look to his own; I have nothing to do
with that.”
“Very well, Allenders,” said the man doubtfully, “very well; I’ll see
about the plans, and if ye’re pleased, and no scared wi’ the expense,
we may soon win to--but it’ll take a lot of siller.”
Young Mr. Dunlop passed on horseback along the highway as the man
spoke. The stiffest and most formal salutations passed between him and
Harry. Henceforth it was evident that there was no more friendship to
be looked for there. The builder went home much perplexed, and had his
plans prepared only very deliberately. He could not believe that so
small an estate as Allenders could afford such an expensive whim as
this.
And Armstrong shook his head over the fields, bearing still a scanty
insufficient crop, and honestly deplored and lamented the daily
visits which Harry paid to his lodger, Gilbert Allenders. Gilbert had
scarcely the shadow of an excuse, in the way of medical practice, for
his residence here; and the universal prejudice which accused him of
“leading away” the unfortunate young man of whom everybody was inclined
to think well, was not without its foundation. But Harry--poor Harry!
he was always “led away”--and it was so easy to find a tempter.
A life of coarse dissipation had become, by long practice, the natural
breath of Gilbert Allenders; he could not live soberly and quietly as
other men did; he felt it necessary to fill every day as it came with
its proportion of excitements and pleasures, as he called them; and in
a sense very widely apart from the commanded one, he took no thought
for the morrow. It pleased him, in some degree, to “lead” Harry “away;”
he felt a certain gratification in possessing the power; but though
there might lurk at the bottom of his heart a secret grudge against the
stranger who had dispossessed him of the inheritance he once reckoned
upon, and a secret pleasure in thus avenging himself, it lay far down
in the depths, and Gilbert was totally unconscious of its existence.
He rather liked Harry on the contrary--liked his society, his wit,
and felt his participation in them impart a keener zest to his own
recreations. For Gilbert was not a villain, nor ever pursued revenge
with purpose or malice; he was only a man of evil habits and impure
mind, who felt the burden of his own faults lightened when he could
make others partakers in them. And only so far was it true that he led
Harry away.
The harvest came with its sudden increase of labourers, and flocks of
shearers crowded into Harry’s fields; but the poor Highland wanderers
and far-travelled Irish lingered about the farm-steading of Allender
Mains, and lost days that might have been profitable to them, waiting
for the wages which Harry did not know were due.
The joyous autumn began to wane, and Harry’s thrashing-mill began
to work, throwing out its banner of blue smoke above the trees. But
Harry’s hopes came to no harvest--the long-neglected land still bore
scantily--the slender crops did not pay, nor nearly pay for their
culture. Not even William Hunter’s rent came in now to give the
embarrassed laird an income, and his second half-yearly payment of
interest was due at Martinmas, with only enough remaining to pay it
of his last thousand pounds; and no provision made for the whole long
year which must intervene between this and another harvest--nothing
to continue the cultivation which should make another harvest
profitable--nothing to maintain the expensive household, which now in
Allenders waited for its fate; and Harry looked before him, and around,
and muttered curses on his own folly, and saw no way of deliverance.
He could not spring out of his ruin, he could do nothing to make
himself free; but he could forget and drown it, and he did so.
No kindly neighbours now entered the house of Allenders. Good Lady
Dunlop took stolen opportunities of alighting from her carriage on
the road, when her daughter was not with her, to comfort the poor
little wife, over whom her motherly heart yearned; and the ladies of
Nettlehaugh and Foggo Barns, made their salutations at church, and
eased their consciences. Agnes herself began to grow nervous, to start
at sudden sounds, and be shaken by passing voices. Her hand trembled
more than Harry’s did, sometimes, and when he put away from him with
loathing the simple, wholesome food he could no longer take, Agnes grew
so sick that she could not keep her seat. Her baby did not thrive--he
scarcely could in a house where the one great absorbing interest
engaged every thought; no one sang to him now, except Mysie--scarcely
any one had the heart to play with him--and the poor infant
“--caught the trick of grief,
And sighed among its playthings.”
Rose, with no resource of dreaming left to her, tried to dull her
heart with constant labour, and wandered out in the early morning,
while the dew was still on the grass, to sit by the Lady’s Well, where
Lettie, wistful and anxious, found her out often, and sat at her feet
in silence, touching her softly with little caressing hands, and
wondering with pensive thoughts over the mystery which made Rose “like
to break her heart;” for Lettie knew that other griefs than the family
fear for Harry, bore down upon the gentle spirit of her sister Rose.
And when Harry was out, they drew together instinctively, and sat
working in Martha’s room. And Martha roused herself, and with the ready
associations and strange flow of simple words, which she thought were
signs and tokens of approaching age, told them stories of actual life,
homely, real histories, in which there was always interest, and often
consolation. She wondered herself at the clear memory which recalled to
her those numberless tales of the neighbour families in Ayr--stories
of household affliction, sometimes only too like their own--but still
one continued to lead to another; and Rose and Agnes worked beside her,
and listened, and the tedium of the long, sad hours was beguiled. Yet,
though she did all this to give some partial and temporary lightening
to them, heavy as death within her was Martha’s own strained heart.