MARY LENNOX.
"Shall I play to you, dear papa?" she repeated for the third time.
"No, Mary, no," said he, peevishly. "Your piano, child, is in that
shabby chintz-covered den you call a drawing-room."
"Oh, papa; what served poor mamma may very well do for me."
"And I fear we can't afford a fire there as well as here."
"But if I keep the doors open you could hear me. The cold is not
great to-night," she urged.
"No--no, child, thank you; but I wish to think."
"To-morrow, papa, I shall have my poor old piano brought here, and
then I shall play to you some of the airs you love so well."
"Pet Mary--but music makes me sad."
"But it soothes you too, papa."
"Your voice, my darling, would soothe anything, even the rage of a
lion," said he, as he drew her head upon his knee and held it
caressing there between his tremulous hands; "but it sounds so like
your mother's, that--that--even while I love to listen my heart grows
sad and sick within me! Music possesses such vast power, especially
over a shattered nervous system, and more than anything else can
conjure back the past, the lost, and the dead! But," he added,
suddenly, with a louder tone and a strange gleam in his eye, "where
is your brother Harry; why is he not here to-night?"
Then a kind of wail escaped the lips of poor Mary, and the tears
started to her eyes, for she knew that his mind was wandering again.
"Oh, papa!" she moaned, and looked at him imploringly.
"Where is he?" demanded Mr. Lennox, impetuously, and his eyes flashed
in the red light of the fire; then he struck his hand upon his brow
as a gleam of memory came to his aid, and he said, in a choking
voice, "I forgot myself! God help me--God help me! True,
Mary--true; my boy is lying in his Indian grave, far, far away, where
the bones of the Briton and Sikh lie thick on the battle-field. But
you must remember the night I saw him here--here, in this very room!"
"I was but a child of eight years when poor Harry died."
"Yes; and when I saw him."
"Oh, papa, that is a wild idea; as absurd as--as----"
"What, girl?"
"The shadowy hand."
"It is not so, and it was not so! It is not impossible, Mary, when
death, more especially a violent one, strikes at a distance one who
is dear to us--dear as your brother Harry was to me--that some
intuition, some mysterious presentment announces the event. How
often have I told you that as I sat here in the twilight of evening
in this chair, and on this very spot, reading the Gazette of the
killed and wounded on that disastrous Indian field, some secret
impulse made me glance towards the end of the room, and there I saw
the figure, the form, the face of your brother, regarding me
mournfully and tenderly for a moment, and then all faded away. I was
terror-struck, but deemed it fancy! Again I turned to the fatal
Gazette, and the next name that caught my eye among the killed--the
killed in action--was that of my own boy, Harry Lennox!"
"Hush, papa, oh hush!" said Mary, looking round anxiously; for it was
this story to which her father was fond of referring from time to
time, that had won the Tower, among the vulgar, the reputation of
being haunted, so that domestics were terrified to remain, though the
place was within a mile or two of the rail to Berwick.
After a long pause he drew a deep breath and spoke again.
"Did I not hear, or was it a dream--for I have strange dreams
sometimes--that Wedderburn's son buried him--buried my boy?" said he,
in a tremulous voice.
"Yes, papa;" said Mary, eagerly; "Cyril Wedderburn buried poor Harry,
and stood by his grave in that distant land. He did more, papa: he
cut off a lock of his hair for--for you."
"I could bless him for that, but for his father's sake. I hate that
elder Wedderburn. I hate his flaunting wife," he continued, raising
his voice and his clenched hand. "I hate the whole brood of them,
and shall never cease to curse----"
"Oh, dearest papa, do not--do not speak thus!" cried Mary,
imploringly, as she placed a hand upon his mouth, and saw with
growing terror the fire, as if of incipient insanity, flashing in his
eyes.
The paroxysm of rage into which he lashed himself when he thought of
his lost law suits, especially one in which Sir John Wedderburn
asserted and made good his right of pasturage upon a certain part of
the Lee, which the Lennox family had claimed as theirs alone for
several generations, weakened him so much that Mary was glad to give
him a soothing draught, and get him to his bedroom for the night.
After this he became more seriously ill, and there were more frequent
aberrations of intellect. Sometimes he imagined himself in the
hunting-field, and then he would shout in a quavering and childish
treble--
"Tally ho! tally ho! Hallo, my Lord Wemyss, what's up at the high
fence yonder? By Jove, John Wedderburn's brown mare is at fault--her
off forefoot is caught in the wires--and over they go, nag and rider!
I hope the young scoundrel's neck is broke at least!"
And Mary wept as she heard the fierce wish, which referred to some
sporting adventure years ago, when her father and Sir John were much
younger men, but seemingly no better friends.
Next night she had her piano moved close to the drawing-room door, so
that she might play to him as he lay abed in his own room. She had a
magnificent voice, and it had been highly cultivated. She exerted
herself to the utmost to please, and played and sang him to sleep, as
one might do a fretful child. Then when she was assured that his
slumber was sound, she kissed him softly, assumed her hat and veil,
her cloak and muff, and hastened from the Tower and its desolate
court, to where some one she well knew was awaiting her, at an angle
of the wood--but in this we are somewhat anticipating our story.
Two or three dreary days and nights followed his last outburst of
mental fury, and a certain revulsion of spirit and corresponding
bodily weakness followed it. Then he became more calm and coherent,
after some opiates had been administered by his medical attendant,
the young parish doctor, whom the charm of Mary's presence rather
than her father's necessity, rendered a pretty regular visitor at
Lonewoodlee; but in the hours of her tearful watching, the querulous
old man unwittingly stuck many a barb in his daughter's heart.
"I feel weaker every day, Mary dear. I won't be long a burden or a
trouble to you," he would say; "for something whispers to me that I
cannot last long now. Old and weak--old and weak--half blind and
wellnigh toothless!"
"Papa," said she, imploringly, "do not talk thus! You are not yet
sixty years of age."
"I know, darling; but the poor human machine is worn out for all
that. Look at Wedderburn! How hale and strong he is, for fortune
has ever favoured him and his family, child; while with me--with
me--oh, how is it with me? Ah, truly says Ossian, that 'age is dark
and unlovely, and that the race of men are like the leaves of woody
Morven; they pass away in the rustling blast, and other leaves lift
their green heads on high.' So--so shall I soon pass away, Mary; but
dearest, you are weary?"
"I am not, papa," sighed the girl.
"Your eyes are red and dim. To bed, Mary--to bed. Place the
sleeping draught at hand, then kiss me and leave me. Good night."
Then she would slip away to her room, the door of which was always
left ajar, so that no sound might elude her ear in the night; and she
would pray and sigh herself to sleep.
A day came anon when her father was too weak to leave his bed, and
from thenceforward he became more than ever a confirmed invalid.
The sturdy but shambling old shooting pony, on whose broad back he
had been latterly able to take a little exercise by a trot to
Polwarth or Prestonhaugh, enjoyed a complete holiday; and time, as
marked by the old-fashioned repeater at Mr. Lennox's bed-head, passed
slowly indeed!
And as he lay there, day after day, and too often night after night,
wakeful, and filled with keen and anxious thoughts, he strove to
picture--to fashion out--the future of that lonely daughter whose
life was, he hoped, to extend far beyond his own. He had plenty of
time for this profitless employment, for, save Captain Chesters or
perhaps the parish clergyman, no one ever dropped in to talk with or
enliven him now, for his ailments and complaints against friends and
fortune, his whims and fancies, rendered his society unpalatable to
all save poor Mary.
There was no rousing him to take an interest in anything; and news of
the coming war fell dull upon his ear. In vain did Mary read to him
of our preparations for the Crimean war; that already the Russians
and Turks had come to blows, and the former been defeated at
Oltenitza, with the loss three thousand seven hundred killed and
wounded; that a Turkish squadron had been destroyed by the Russians,
and the town cruelly bombarded; and that the British fleet, under Sir
Charles Napier, had sailed for the Baltic from Spithead; that the
destruction of Cronstadt was confidently expected, and so forth.
Oliver Lennox deemed the worthy minister an utter bore, and viewed
his attempts to soothe or console him as simply impertinence, which
his proud and fiery spirit resented.
Of Chesters he felt doubtful, and knew enough of the world to fear
such a visitor and such a friend for his unprotected daughter. He
knew his own debts and difficulties, his own poverty, and that the
annuity he possessed would die with himself, and then what would be
left for her--work--starvation--death!
It was horrible to lie there--helpless, fettered hand and foot as it
were, weak, powerless, and inert, weaving such dark, bitter, and
distracting fancies! He writhed and wept on his pillow, and
muttering, "Mary--Mary! my daughter--my daughter!" would press his
thin, wan hands on his burning breast, as if to stifle thoughts that
would not be stifled.
"I have been rash, wasteful, and unfortunate," he would often say,
"but what have you done, my poor Mary, that you should be stripped of
your inheritance? for this Tower, built by Oliver Lennox, and all the
land around it, even to the Whitadder, form your inheritance; but it
must pass away to others--others--oh, my God! while such people as
those Wedderburns live on, surrounded by every earthly blessing!"
"Calm yourself, papa," said the hopeless girl, in a choking voice;
"all may yet be well. Your health will revive with the warmth of
spring."
"The spring grass will be sprouting on the sod that wraps me, Mary;
and there I would lie in peace could I but see your future, child--if
God would only in His kindness lift the veil that hides it from me!
But, from the land of shadows, perhaps I may so see it--I may see it,
and be a guide and a watch over you."
Though Mary heard much of this querulous grief, she never became
accustomed to it; but seemed always to suffer the agony of his death
by anticipation when he spoke thus.
"Fear not, papa; fear not for me," she was wont to reply, while
caressing his head on her bosom. "If I lose you, I must trust then
to God only."
"To God and yourself, darling; but there are times when I think with
fear that--that----"
"What, papa?"
"That Ralph Chesters seems to love you."
Mary trembled and grew pale as she said--
"Do not speak of this again, I implore you, dearest papa."
"I am glad you don't like him; but what brings him here so often?"
"To see you, of course, papa," said Mary, as her pale cheek reddened.
"An old man sick and ailing! I don't believe it; but when was he
here last?"
"Three days ago."
"Did you see him?"
"No; when alone with him, his presence becomes intolerable to me."
"Why--how?" asked Lennox, eagerly, and half-raising himself in his
bed.
"There is an expression in his eye I do not like; moreover, I never
leave your room save when you are asleep."
"Thanks, my darling; that is kind and good; but beware of Chesters,
for he is a dog that bites but does not bark."
"Have no fear for me so far as he is concerned," said Mary,
emphatically.
"It is well. Kiss me, child, and then I shall try to sleep."
The girl kissed him tenderly, restraining her tears as she did. Then
with tremulous gentleness, her pretty, small hands adjusted the
pillow and coverlet, ere she glided noiselessly away.
Often had Mary pictured--for she was a sensitive creature and full of
imagination--how utter her helplessness and loneliness would be when
her father was gone; and, notwithstanding all the love which another
had succeeded in kindling in her heart, she longed and prayed that in
the hour her father was taken, she might be taken too!