Katie Logan was by herself in the manse parlor. Though the room was as
bright as ever, the little housekeeper did not look so bright. She was
darning the little stockings which filled the basket, but she was not
singing her quiet song, nor thinking pleasant thoughts. Katie’s eyes
were red, and her cheeks pale. She was beginning to go, dark and
blindfold, into a future which it broke her heart to think of. Those
children of the manse, what would become of them when they had neither
guide nor guardian but Katie? This was question enough to oppress the
elder sister, if every thing else had not been swallowed in the thought
of her father’s growing weakness, of the pallor and the trembling which
every one observed, and of the exhaustion of old age into which the
active minister visibly began to fall. Katie was full of these thoughts
when she heard some one come to the door; she went immediately to look
at herself in the mirror over the mantel-piece, and to do her best to
look like her wont; but it was alike a wonder and a relief to Katie,
looking round, to find the Mistress, a most unusual visitor, entering
the room.
The Mistress was not much in the custom of paying visits--it embarrassed
her a little when she did so, unless she had some distinct errand. She
dropped into a chair near the door, and put back her vail upon her
bonnet, and looked at Katie with a little air of fatigue and past
excitement.
“No, no, thank ye,” said the Mistress, “I’ve been walking, I’ll no’ come
to the fire; it’s cold, but it’s a fine day outbye--I just thought I
would take a walk up by Whittock’s Gate.”
“Were you at Mrs. Blackadder’s?” asked Katie.
“No,” said the Mistress, with a slightly confused expression. “I was no
place, but just taking a walk. What for should I no’ walk for pleasure
as well as my neighbors? but indeed, to tell the truth, I had a very
foolish reason, Katie,” she added, after a little interval. “I’ve never
had rest in my mind after what you said of the French lassie at Melmar.
I did ken of a person that was lost and married long ago, and might just
as well be in France as in ony other place. She was no friend of mine,
but I kent of her, and I’ve seen her picture and heard what like she
was, so, as I could not help but turn it over in my mind, I just took
the gate up there, a wise errand, to see if I could get a look of this
bairn. I meant to go through the Melmar footpath, though that house and
them that belong to it are little pleasure to me; but as guid fortune
was, I met them in the road.”
“Joanna and the governess?” said Katie.
“And mair than them,” answered the Mistress. “A lad that I would take
to be the son that’s been so long away. An antic with a muckle cloak,
and a black beard, and a’ the looks of a French fiddler; but Joanna
called him by his name, so he bid to be her brother; and either he’s
deluding the other bit lassie, or she’s ensnaring him.”
Katie smiled, so faintly and unlike herself, that it was not difficult
to perceive how little her heart was open to amusement. The Mistress,
however, who apprehended every thing after her own fashion, took even
this faint expression of mirth a little amiss.
“You needna laugh--there’s little laughing matter in it,” said the
Mistress. “If a bairn of mine were to be led away after ony such
fashion, do ye think _I_ could find in my heart to smile? Na, they’re
nae friends of mine, the present family of Melmar; but I canna see a son
of a decent house maybe beguiled by an artfu’ foreign woman, however
great an antic he may be himself, and take ony pleasure in it. It’s aye
sure to be a grief to them he belongs to, and maybe a destruction to the
lad a’ his life.”
“But Desirée is only sixteen, and Oswald Huntley, if it was Oswald--is a
very great deal older--he should be able to take care of himself,” said
Katie, repeating the offense. “You saw her, then? Do you think she was
like the lady you knew?”
“I never said I knew any lady,” said the Mistress, testily. “I kent of
one that was lost mony a year ago. Na, na, this is naebody belonging to
_her_. She was a fair, soft woman that, with blue e’en, and taller than
me; but this is a bit elf of a thing, dark and little. I canna tell what
put it into my head for a moment, for Melmar was the last house in the
world to look for a bairn’s of _hers_ in; but folk canna help nonsense
thoughts. Cosmo, you see, he’s a very fanciful laddie, as indeed is no’
to be wondered at, and he wrote me hame word about somebody he had
seen--and then hearing of this bairn asking questions about me; but it
was just havers, as I kent from the first--she is no more like her than
she’s like you or me. But I’m sorry about the lad. Naething but ill and
mischief can come of the like, so far as I’ve seen. If he’s deluding the
bairn, he’s a villain, Katie, and if she’s leading him on--and ane can
never tell what snares are in these Frenchwomen from their very
cradle--I’m sorry for Melmar and his wife, though they’re no friends to
me.”
“I think Oswald Huntley ought to be very well able to take care of
himself,” repeated Katie--“and to know French ways, too. I like Desirée,
and I don’t like him. I hope she will not have any thing to say to him.
When is Cosmo coming home?”
The Mistress, however, looked a little troubled about Cosmo. She did not
answer readily.
“He’s a fanciful bairn,” she said, half fondly, half angrily--“as indeed
what else can you expect? He’s ane of the real auld Livingstones of
Norlaw--aye some grand wild plan in his head for other folks, and no’
that care for himself that might be meet. He would have been a knight
like what used to be in the ballads in my young days, if he hadna lived
ower late for that.”
Pausing here, the Mistress closed her lips with a certain emphatic
movement, as though she had nothing more to say upon this subject, and
was about proceeding to some other, when they were both startled by the
noisy opening of a door, which Katie knew to be the study. The sound was
that of some feeble hand, vainly attempting to turn the handle, and
shaking the whole door with the effort which was at last successful;
then came a strange, incoherent, half-pronounced “Katie!” Katie flew to
the door, with a face like death itself. The Mistress rose and waited,
breathless, yet too conscious of her own impatience of intrusion to
follow. Then a heavy, slow fall, as of some one whose limbs failed under
him, a cry from Katie, and the sudden terrified scream of one of the
maids from the kitchen moved the Mistress beyond all thoughts but those
of help. She ran into the little hall of the manse, throwing her cloak
off her shoulders with an involuntary promise that she could not leave
this house to-day. There she saw a melancholy sight, the minister, with
a gray ashen paleness upon his face, lying on the threshold of his
study, not insensible, but powerless, moving with a dreadful impotence
those poor, pale, trembling lips, from which no sound would come. Katie
knelt beside him, supporting his head, almost as pallid as he,
aggravating, unawares, the conscious agony of his helplessness by
anxious, tender questions, imploring him to speak to her--while the maid
stood behind, wringing her hands, crying, and asking whether she should
bring water? whether she should get some wine? what she should do?
“Flee this moment,” cried the Mistress, pushing this latter to the door,
“and bring in the first man you can meet to carry him to his bed--that’s
what _you’re_ to do--and, Katie, Katie, whisht, dinna vex him--he canna
speak to you. Keep up your heart--we’ll get him to his bed, and we’ll
get the doctor, and he’ll come round.”
Katie lifted up her woeful white face to the Mistress--the poor girl did
not say a word--did not even utter a sob or shed a tear. Her eyes said
only, “it has come! it has come!” The blow which she had been trembling
for had fallen at last. And the Mistress, who was not given to tokens of
affection, stooped down in the deep pity of her heart and kissed Katie’s
forehead. There was nothing to be said. This sudden calamity was beyond
the reach of speech.
They got the sufferer conveyed to his room and laid on his bed a few
minutes after, and within a very short time the only medical aid which
the neighborhood afforded was by the bed-side. But medical aid could do
little for the minister--he was old, and had long been growing feeble,
and nobody wondered to hear that he had suffered “a stroke,” and that
there was very, very little hope of his recovery. The old people in
Kirkbride clustered together, speaking of it with that strange, calm
curiosity of age, which always seems rather to congratulate itself that
some one else is the present sufferer, yet is never without the
consciousness that itself may be the next. A profound sympathy,
reverence, and compassion was among all the villagers--passive towards
Dr. Logan, active to Katie, the guardian and mother of the little
household of orphans who soon were to have no other guardian. They said
to each other, “God help her!” in her youth and loneliness--what was she
to do?
As for the Mistress, she was not one of those benevolent neighbors who
share in the vigils of every sick room, and have a natural faculty for
nursing. To her own concentrated individual temper, the presence of
strangers in any household calamity was so distasteful, that she could
scarcely imagine it acceptable to others; and she never offered services
which she would not have accepted. But there was neither offer nor
acceptance now. The Mistress sent word at once to Marget, took off her
bonnet, and without a word to any one, took her place in the afflicted
house. Even now she was but little in the sick chamber.
“If he kens her, he’ll like best to see Katie--and if he doesna ken her,
it’ll aye be a comfort to herself,” said the Mistress. “I’ll take the
charge of every thing else--- but his ain bairn’s place is there.”
“I only fear,” said the doctor, “that the poor thing will wear herself
out.”
“She’s young, and she’s a good bairn,” said the Mistress, “and she’ll
have but one father, if she lives ever so long a life. I’m no feared.
No, doctor, dinna hinder Katie; if she wears herself out, poor bairn,
she’ll have plenty of sad time to rest in. Na, I dinna grudge her
watching; she doesna feel it now, and it’ll be a comfort to her a’ her
life.”
It was, perhaps, a new doctrine to the country doctor; but he
acknowledged the truth of it, and the Mistress, wise in this, left Katie
to that mournful, silent, sick room, where the patient lay motionless
and passive in the torpor of paralysis, perhaps conscious, it was hard
to know--but unable to communicate a word of all that might be in his
heart. The children below, hushed and terror-stricken, had never been
under such strict rule, yet never had known so many indulgences all
their lives before; and the Mistress took _her_ night’s rest upon the
sofa, wrapped in a shawl and morning gown, ready to start in an instant,
should she be called; but she did not disturb the vigil of the daughter
by her father’s bed-side.
And Katie, absorbed by her own sorrows, hardly noticed--hardly
knew--this characteristic delicacy. She sat watching him with an
observation so intent, that she almost fancied she could see his breath,
watching the dull, gray eyes, half closed and lustreless, to note if,
perhaps, a wandering light of expression might kindle in them; watching
the nerveless, impotent hands, if perhaps, motion might be restored to
them; watching the lips, lest they should move, and she might lose the
chance of guessing at some word. There was something terrible,
fascinating, unearthly in the task; he was there upon the bed, and yet
he was not there, confined in a dismal speechless prison, to which
perhaps--they could not tell--their own words and movements might
penetrate, but out of which nothing could come. His daughter sat beside
him, looking forward with awe into the blank solemnity of the future. No
mother, no father; only the little dependent children, who had but
herself to look to. She went over and over again the very same ground.
Orphans, and desolate; her thoughts stopped there, and went no further.
She could not help contemplating the terrible necessity before her; but
she could not make plans while her father lay there, speechless yet
breathing, in her sight.
She was sitting thus, the fourth day after his seizure, gazing at him;
the room was very still--the blinds were down--a little fire burned
cheerfully in the grate--her eyes were fixed upon his eyes, watching
them, and as she watched it seemed to Katie that her father’s look
turned towards a narrow, ruddy, golden arrow of sunshine, which streamed
in at the side of the window. She rose hastily and went up to the bed.
Then his lips began to move--she bent down breathlessly; God help
her!--he spoke, and she was close to his faltering lips; but all Katie’s
strained and agonizing senses could not tell a word of what he meant to
say. What matter? His eyes were not on her, but on the sunshine--the
gleam of God’s boundless light coming in to the chamber of
mortality--his thoughts were not with her in her sore youthful trouble.
He was as calm as an angel, lying there in the death of his old age and
the chill of his faculties. But she--she was young, she was desolate,
she was his child--her heart cried out in intolerable anguish, and would
not be satisfied. Could it be possible? Would he pass away with those
moving lips, with that faint movement of a smile, and she never know
what he meant to say?
With the restlessness of extreme and almost unbearable suffering, Katie
rang her bell--the doctor had desired to know whenever his patient
showed any signs of returning consciousness. Perhaps the sound came to
the ear of the dying man, perhaps only his thoughts changed. But when
she turned again, Katie found the reverent infantine calm gone from his
face, and his eyes bent upon her with a terrible struggle after speech,
which wrung her very heart. She cried aloud involuntarily with an echo
of the agony upon that ashen face. The sound of her voice, of her hasty
step and of the bell, brought the Mistress to the room, and the
terrified servants to the door. Katie did not see the Mistress; she saw
nothing in the world but the pitiful struggle of those palsied lips to
speak to her, the anguish of uncommunicable love in those opened eyes.
She bent over him, putting her very ear to his month; when that failed,
she tried, Heaven help her, to look as if she had heard him, to comfort
his heart in his dying. The old man’s eyes opened wider, dilating with
the last effort--at last came a burst of incoherent sound--he had
spoken--what was it? The Mistress turned her head away and bowed down
upon her knees at the door, with an involuntary awe and pity, too deep
for any expression, but Katie cried, “Yes, father, yes, I hear you!”
with a cry that might have rent the skies. If she did, Heaven knows; she
thought so--and so did he; the effort relaxed--the eyes closed--and word
of human language the good minister uttered never more.
It was all over. Four little orphans sat below crying under their
breath, unaware of what was their calamity--and Katie Logan above, at
nineteen, desolate and unsupported, and with more cares than a mother,
stood alone upon the threshold of the world.