CHAPTER VI

Then there ensued a period of total stillness in my life. It seemed to

me as if all interest had gone out of it. I resumed my old occupations,

such as they were, and they were not very engrossing. I had enough,

which is perhaps of all conditions of life, if the most comfortable, the

least interesting. If it was a disciple of Solomon who desired that

state, it must have been when he was like his master, _blasé_, and had

discovered that both ambition and pleasure were vanity. There was little

place or necessity for me in the world. I pleased myself, as people say.

When I was tired of my solitary chambers, I went and paid visits. When I

was tired of England, I went abroad. Nothing could be more agreeable,

or more unutterably tedious, especially to one who had even accidentally

come across and touched upon a real and bustling life. Needless to say

that I thought of the household at Ellermore almost without

intermission. Charlotte wrote to me now and then, and it sometimes

seemed to me that I was the most callous wretch on earth, sitting there

watching all they were doing, tracing every step and vicissitude of

their trouble in my own assured well-being. It was monstrous, yet what

could I do? They would not have accepted the help of my small

sufficiency. But if, as I have said, such impatient desire to help were

to come now and then to those who have the power to do so, is political

economy so infallible that the world would not be the better for it?

There was not a word of complaint in Charlotte’s letters, but they made

me rage over my impotence. She told me that all the arrangements were

being completed for the sale of Ellermore, but that her father’s

condition was still such that they did not know how to communicate to

him the impending change. “He is still ignorant of all that has passed,”

Charlotte wrote, “and asks me the most heart-rending questions; and I

hope God will forgive me all that I am obliged to say to him. We are

afraid to let him see anyone lest he should discover the truth; for

indeed falsehood, even with a good meaning, is always its own

punishment. Dr. Maxwell, who does not mind what he says when he thinks

it is for his patient’s good, is going to make believe to send him away

for change of air; and this is the artifice we will have to keep up all

the rest of his life to account for not going back to Ellermore.” She

wrote another time that there was every hope of being able to dispose of

it by private bargain, and that in the meantime friends had been very

kind, and the “works” were going on. There was not a word in the letter

by which it could have been divined that to leave Ellermore was to the

writer anything beyond a matter of necessity. She said not a word about

her birthplace, the home of all her associations, the spot which I knew

was so dear. There had been no hesitation, and there was no repining.

Provided only that the poor old man, the stricken father, deprived at

once of his home and firstborn, without knowing either, might be kept in

that delusion--this was all the exemption Charlotte sought.

And I do not think they asked me to go to them before they left the

place. It was my own doing. I could not keep away any longer. I said to

Charlotte, and perhaps also to myself, by way of excuse, that I might

help to take care of Mr. Campbell during the removal. The fact was that

I could not stay away from her any longer. I could have risked any

intrusion, thrust myself in anyhow, for the mere sake of being near her

and helping her in the most insignificant way.

From the time of their leaving London, the appearance I had seen so

often had disappeared. I need not say that I thought upon it often

enough to have raised up--had it been dependent upon my

thoughts--appearances in any number; but this one never came again. I

tried in my own mind every way to account for it. That it was a mere

delusion of my excited eyes and brain I could not believe, for I had

been aware of no excitement or reason for it when I first saw her in the

shrubbery at Ellermore; and if imagination was enough to produce such an

image, how much more reason was there now that it should have come back

to me! And then I thought, which gave me a certain pleasure, of a

possibility which had occurred to me, that Charlotte’s anxious heart and

thoughts had somehow assumed a shadowy form, a sort of veil of

substance, and that it was she herself unawares who had haunted me. If

our deepest thoughts could thus take form, how often, when we ourselves

were elsewhere, might a visionary shadow of us be about those we love?

It would be little wonder, I said to myself, if Charlotte were to see

_me_, under the trees or by the loch side at Ellermore. Often and often,

seated in my rooms, I had been there in the spirit following her,

remembering what she would probably be doing at that moment, flitting

after her from room to room. This was a solution of the mystery that was

very sweet to me. I said to myself, it might very well be that only to

one entirely in sympathy with the spirit thus gone out of itself in

passionate yearning could it be visible in its love-pilgrimage.

Therefore I felt, with a subdued humility, that it was very unlikely she

would see any adumbration of my longing and lingering about her; but

that I should see her was very natural. And this explained so entirely

why I saw nothing now. It was not me she had been thinking of, but of

Colin, both living and dead--all the dreadful tragedy of his soon-ended

story. If she had ever admitted me to any such place in her thoughts, no

doubt I should have seen her now.

I do not give this as a theory by which such apparitions might be

accounted for, I only state it as one of the many thinkings on the

subject which filled my mind, and the one which gave me most pleasure. I

thought that nobody save Charlotte herself--not even a visitor out of

the unseen--could have so made my heart beat; but it was all fanciful,

founded upon nothing, a supposition among so many other suppositions. It

was nearly Christmas when the insistence of myself with myself that I

could stay away no longer came to a crisis. They were to leave Ellermore

in a week or two. Mr. Campbell had been persuaded that one of the soft

and sheltered spots where Scotch invalids are sent in Scotland would be

better for him. Charlotte had written to me, with a half despair, of the

difficulties of their removal. “My heart almost fails me,” she said; and

that was a great deal for her to say. After this I could hesitate no

longer. She was afraid even of the revival of life that might take place

when her father was brought out of his seclusion, of some injudicious

old friend who could not be staved off, and who might talk to him about

Colin. “My heart almost fails me.” I went up to Scotland by the mail

train that night, and next day, while it was still not much more than

noon, found myself at Ellermore.

What a change! The heather had all died away from the hills; the

sun-bright loch was steely blue; the white threads of water down every

crevice in the mountains were swollen to torrents. Here and there on the

higher peaks there was a sprinkling of snow. The fir trees were the

only substantial things in the nearer landscape. The bushes stood about

all bare and feathery, with every twig distinct against the blue. The

sun was shining almost as brightly as in summer, and scattered a shimmer

of reflections everywhere over the wet grass, and across the rivulets

that were running in every little hollow. The house stood out among all

this light, amid the bare tracery of the trees, with its Scotch-French

_tourelles_, and the sweep of emerald lawn, more green than ever at its

feet, with all the naked flower-beds; the blue smoke rising peacefully

into the air, the door open as always. There was little stir or

movement, however, in this wintry scene. The outdoor life was checked.

There was no son at home to leave traces of his presence. The lodge was

shut up and vacant. I concluded that the carriage had been given up, and

all luxuries, and the coachman and his family were gone. But this was

all the visible difference. I was received by one of the maids, with

whose face I was familiar. There had never been any wealth of male

attendants at Ellermore, and this did not strike me as unusual. She took

me into the drawing-room, which was deserted, and bore a more formal

look than of old. “Miss Charlotte is mostly with her papa,” the woman

said. “He is very frail, but just wonderful contented, like a bairn.

She’s always up the stair with the old gentleman. It’s no’ good for her.

You’ll find her white, white, sir, and no’ like hersel’.”

In a few minutes Charlotte came in. There was a gleam of pleasure (I

hoped) on her face, but she was white, white, as the woman said; worn

and pale. After the first greeting, which had brightened her, she broke

down a little, and shed a few hasty tears, for which she excused

herself, faltering that everything came back, but that she was glad,

glad to see me! And then she added quickly, that I might not be

wounded, “It has come to that, that I can scarcely ever leave my father;

and to keep up the deception is terrible.”

“You must not say deception.”

“Oh, it is nothing else; and that always punishes itself. It is just the

terror of my life that some accident will happen; that he will find out

everything at once.” Then she looked at me steadily, with a smile that

was piteous to see, “Mr. Temple, Ellermore is sold.”

“Is it so--is it so?” I said, with a sort of groan. I had still thought

that perhaps at the last moment something might occur to prevent the

sacrifice.

She shook her head, not answering my words, but the expression of my

face. “There was nothing else to be desired,” she said; and, after a

pause, “We are to take him to the Bridge of Allan. He is almost pleased

to go; he thinks of nothing further--oh, poor old man, poor old man! If

only I had him there safe; but I am more terrified for the journey than

I ever was for anything in my life.”

We talked of this for some time, and of all the arrangements she had

made. Charley was to come to assist in removing his father; but I think

that my presence somehow seemed to her an additional safeguard, of which

she was glad. She did not stay more than half an hour with me. “It will

be dull, dull for you, Mr. Temple,” she said, with more of the lingering

cadence of her national accent than I had perceived before--or perhaps

it struck me more after these months of absence. “There is nobody at

home but the little ones, and they have grown far too wise for their

age, because of the many things that they know must never be told to

papa; but you know the place, and you will want to rest a little.” She

put out her hand to me again. “And I am glad, glad to see you.” Nothing

in my life ever made my heart swell like those simple words. That she

should be “glad, glad” was payment enough for anything I could do. But

in the meantime there was nothing that I could do. I wandered about the

silent place till I was tired, recalling a hundred pleasant

recollections. Even to me, a stranger, who a year ago had never seen

Ellermore, it was hard to give it up; and as for those who had been born

there, and their fathers before them, it seemed too much for the

cruellest fate to ask. But nature was as indifferent to the passing away

of the human inhabitants, whose little spell of a few hundred years was

as nothing in her long history, as she would have been to the falling of

a rock on the hillside, or the wrenching up of a tree in the woods. For

that matter, of so small account are men, the rock and tree would both

have been older dwellers than the Campbells; and why for that should

the sun moderate his shining, or the clear skies veil themselves?

Afterwards I went in and wandered about the house, which was so silent.

A subdued sound indeed came from the children’s rooms, and when I

knocked at the door I was received with a tumult of delight; but next

moment little Mary lifted her small finger and said, “Oh, Harry! oh,

Katie! how can you make a noise and disturb papa!” The old man in his

chamber dominated the whole house; the absolute quiet of it and

desertion (when the children went out for their afternoon walk) had an

indescribable effect upon my mind. It was as if the chamber, still and

clean, all garnished and decked as for daily living, yet empty of all

visible life, was full of beings unseen, for whom and for whose pleasure

they existed. A kind of awe stole over me when I sat down in one of

these rooms. I felt myself out of place there--as if all the solemn

visitors in their old house must resent the presence of a stranger.

Yes, I was a stranger; even Charlotte herself had called me so, though

no one had been so near to her, or had so much to do with her life in

the last crisis. It gave me a sort of bitter pleasure to think this,

even though I might be disowned by those others, as having nothing to do

with the house.

My mind was so taken up by these thoughts that it was almost

inadvertence that took me, in the course of my solitary rambles about,

to the Lady’s Walk. I had nearly got within the line of the birch trees,

however, when I was brought hurriedly back to the strange circumstances

which had formed an accompaniment to their family history. It gave me a

shock and start to hear once more the footsteps of the guardian of

Ellermore. She had come back, then! After that first thrill of

instinctive emotion this gave me a singular pleasure. I stood between

the trees and heard the soft step coming and going with absolute

satisfaction. It seemed to me that they were not altogether abandoned so

long as she was here. My heart rose in spite of myself. I began to

speculate on the possibility even yet of saving the old house. I asked

myself how it could be finally disposed of without Mr. Campbell’s

consent and signature; and tried to believe that at the last moment some

way might open, some wonderful windfall come. But when I turned back to

the house, this fantastic confidence naturally failed me. I began to

contemplate the other side of the question--the new people who would

come in. Perhaps “some Englishman,” as Charley had said with a certain

scorn; some rich man, who would buy the moors and lochs at many times

their actual value, and bring down, perhaps, a horde of Cockney

sportsmen to banish all quiet and poetry from Ellermore. I thought with

mingled pity and anger of what the Lady would do in such hands. Would

she still haunt her favourite walk when all whom she loved were gone?

Would she stay there in forlorn faithfulness to the soil, or would she

go with her banished race? Or would she depart altogether, and cut the

tie that had bound her to earth? I thought--for fancy once set out goes

far without any conscious control from the mind--that it might be

possible that the intruders into the home of the Campbells should be

frightened by noises and apparitions, and all those vulgarer powers of

the unseen of which we hear sometimes. If the Lady of Ellermore would

condescend to use such instruments, no doubt she might find lower and

less elevated spirits in the unseen to whom this kind of play would be

congenial. I caught myself up sharply in this wandering of thought, as

if I were forming ideas derogatory to a dear friend, and felt myself

redden with shame. She connect her lovely being with tricks of this

kind! I was angry with myself, as if I had allowed it to be suggested

that Charlotte would do so. My heart grew full as I pursued these

thoughts. Was it possible that some mysterious bond of a kind beyond our

knowledge connected her with this beloved soil? I was overawed by the

thought of what she might suffer, going upon her solitary watch, to see

the house filled with an alien family; yet, perhaps, by and by, taking

them into amity, watching over them as she had done over her own, in

that sweetness of self-forgetfulness and tender love of humankind which

is the atmosphere of the blessed. All through this spiritual being was

to me a beatified shadow of Charlotte. I felt that this was what she

might be capable of doing, if it were possible that those whom she loved

most were no longer dependent upon her care.

You will say all this was very fantastic, and I do not deny that the

sentence is just.

Next day passed in something the same way. Charlotte was very anxious.

She had wished the removal to take place that afternoon, but when the

moment came she was afraid. She said “To-morrow,” with a shiver. “I

don’t know what I am afraid of,” she said, “but my heart fails me--my

heart fails me.” I had to telegraph to Charley that it was deferred, and

another long day went by. It rained, and that was an obstacle. “I cannot

take him away in bad weather,” she said. She came downstairs to me a

dozen times a day, wringing her hands. “I have no resolution,” she

cried. “I cannot--I cannot make up my mind to it. I feel that something

dreadful is going to happen.” I could only take her trembling hand and

try to comfort her. “But if it must be done,” I ventured to say, “you

will be happier when it is over.” She gave me a wild look of panic. “I

don’t know what I am afraid of,” she said. “I wish it might be taken out

of my hands.” I understood her, and I made all the arrangements.

Next day, at noon, was to be the time. I ordered a carriage from the

nearest town, not without feeling the risk that the old man might

perceive it was not his own, and inquire into the meaning of it. Every

step of the way was beset by risks; but still, if it had to be done--“if

’twere done when ’tis done, then it were well it were done quickly.”

Those words had haunted me before. I settled everything. I made her come

out with me to get a little air in the afternoon. “You are killing

yourself,” I said. “It is this that makes you so nervous and unlike

yourself.” She consented, though it was against her will. A woman who

had been all her life in their service, who was to go with them, whom

Charlotte treated, as she said, “like one of ourselves,” had charge of

Mr. Campbell in the meantime. And I think Charlotte got a little

pleasure from her unusual excursion. She was very tremulous, as if she

had almost forgotten the way to walk, and leant upon my arm in a way

which was very sweet to me. No word of love had ever passed between us;

and she did not love me, save as she loved Charley and Harry, and the

rest. I think I had a place among them, at the end of the brothers. But

yet she had an instinctive knowledge of my heart. And she knew that to

lean upon me, to show that she needed me, was the way to please me most.

We wandered about there for a time in a sort of forlorn happiness; then,

with mutual impulse, took our way to the Lady’s Walk. We stood there

together, listening to the steps. “Do you hear them?” said Charlotte,

her face lighting up with a smile. “Dear lady! that has always been here

since ever I mind.” She spoke as the children spoke in the utter

abandonment of her being, as if returning for refreshment to the full

simplicity of accent and idiom, the soft, native speech to which she was

born. “Will she stay after us, do ye think?” Charlotte said; and then,

with a little start, clinging to my arm, “Was that a sound--was that a

cry?”

Not a cry, but a sigh. It seemed to wander over all the woods and thrill

among the trees. You will say it was only the wind. I cannot tell. To me

it was a sigh, personal, heart-rending. And you may suppose what it was

to her. The tears dropped from her full eyes. She said, speaking to the

air, “We are parting, you and me. Oh, go you back to heaven, and let us

trouble you no more. Oh, go back to your home, my bonnie lady, and let

us trouble you no more!”

“Charlotte,” I said, taking her arm in mine to support her. She cast me

a glance, a smile, like one who could not, even in the midst of the

highest thoughts, neglect or be unkind, but drew her hand away and

clasped it in the other. “We are of one stock,” she said, the tears

always falling, “and the same heart. We are too anxious; but God is

above us all. Go back to your pleasant place, and say to my mother that

I will never leave them. Go away, my bonnie lady, go away! and trust us

to God.”

We waited, and I think she almost expected some reply. But there was

none. I took her arm within mine again, and led her away trembling. The

moment, the excitement had been too much for me also. I said, “You tell

her to go, that she is too anxious, that she must trust you to God--and

in the same breath you pledge yourself never to leave them. Do you think

if God does not want her He wants you to stand between Him and them?” I

grasped her arm so closely and held it so to my side in my passion that

I think I almost hurt her. She gave me a startled look, and put up her

hand to dry her wet eyes.

“It is very different,” she said; “I am living and can work for them. It

has come to me all in a moment to think that one is just like another

after all. Perhaps to die does not make a woman wise any more than life

does. And it may be that nobody has had the thought to tell her. She

will think that she can stop any harm that is coming, being here; but if

it was not God’s pleasure to stop it, how could she? You know she

tried,” said Charlotte, looking at me wistfully; “she tried--God bless

her for that! Oh, you know how anxious she was; but neither her nor me

could do it--neither her nor me!”

At this moment we were interrupted by someone flying towards us from the

house, calling, “Miss Charlotte, Miss Charlotte! you are wanted,” in a

wild and agitated tone. It was the woman who had been left in charge of

Mr. Campbell, and Charlotte started at the sight of her. She drew her

hand from my arm, and flew along the path. “Oh, Margaret, why did you

leave him?” she said.

“It was no blame of mine,” said the woman, turning, following her

mistress. I hurried on too, after them, and the explanation was to both

of us. “He would come down to the library; nothing would stop him. I

tried all I could; but what could I do? And there is nothing to be

frighted for, Miss Charlotte. Ah! I’ve nae breath to tell it. He is just

real like himself.”

Charlotte flew along the path like a creature flying for life. She

paused an instant at the door of the house to beckon me to follow her.

The library, the room where her father had gone, was one of those which

had been partially dismantled. The pictures had been taken down from the

walls, a number of books, which she meant to take with her, collected on

the tables. Mr. Campbell had displaced some of the books in order to

seat himself in his favourite seat. He looked at her curiously, almost

with severity, as she came in anxious and breathless. He was greatly

changed. He had been robust and hale, like a tower, when I first entered

Ellermore, not yet six months since. Now he had shrunken away into half

his size. The coat which he had not worn for months hung loosely upon

him; his white hair was long, and he wore a beard, which changed his

appearance greatly. All this change had come since the time I parted

with him in London, when he told me he was going to join his son Colin;

but there was another change more remarkable, which I with awe, and

Charlotte with terror, recognised at a glance--the prostration of his

mind was gone. He looked his daughter in the face with intelligent,

almost sternly intelligent, eyes.

“Oh, father, you have wanted me!” Charlotte cried. “I went out for a

mouthful of air--I went out--for a few minutes”--

“Why should you not have gone out, Chatty?” he said. “And why was

Margaret left in charge of me? I have been ill, I make no doubt; but why

should I be watched and spied about my own house?”

She gave me a glance of dismay, and then she faltered, “Oh, not that,

father--not that!”

“But I tell you it was that. She would have hindered my coming

downstairs, that woman”--he gave a little laugh, which was terrible to

us in the state of our feelings--“and here are you rushing in out of

breath, as if there was some cause of fear. Who is that behind ye? Is it

one of your brothers--or”--

“It is Mr. Temple, father,” she said, with a new alarm.

“Mr. Temple,” he said, with a shade of displeasure passing over his

face. Then he recovered himself, and his old-world politeness. “I am

glad to see ye,” he said. “So far as I can remember, the house was much

disorganised when you were here before, Mr. Temple. You will think we

are always out of order; but I’ve been ill, and everything has fallen

out of gear. This is not a place,” he added, turning to Charlotte, “to

receive a stranger in. What is all this for?” he added, in a sharp tone,

waving his hands towards the books, of which some were heaped at his

feet on the floor.

Once more she made a pause of dismay. “They are some books to take with

us,” she said; “you remember, father, we are going away.”

“Going away!” he cried irritably. “Where are my letters? Where are your

brothers? What are you doing with a gentleman visitor (I beg ye a

thousand pardons, Mr. Temple!) and the place in such a state? It is my

opinion that there is something wrong. Where are my letters? It is not

in reason that there can be no letters. After being cast aside from

business for a time, to have your letters kept back from you, you will

allow, Mr. Temple,” he said, turning to me with an explanatory air, “is

irritating. It is perhaps done with a mistaken notion that I am not

equal to them; but if you think I will allow myself to be treated as a

child”--

He stammered a little now and then, in his anger, then made a great

effort to control himself. And then he looked up at us, once more a

little severely, and brought confusion to all our hopes with one simple

question. “Where is Colin?” he said.

What could be more natural? Charlotte gave me one look, and stood, white

as death, motionless, her fingers twisting together. How truly she had

said that falsehood was its own punishment, even such falsehood as

this. She had answered him with ambiguous words when he was in the state

of feebleness from which he had thus awoke, and he had been easily

satisfied and diverted from too close inquiry. But now she was

confounded by the sudden question. She could not confront with a

subterfuge her father’s serious eyes; her head drooped, her hands caught

at each other with a pitiful clasp, while he sat looking at her with an

authoritative, but as yet unalarmed, look. All this time the door had

been left ajar, and Margaret stood waiting outside, listening to all

that went on, without any thought of wrong, too much interested and

anxious to feel herself out of place. But when she heard this demand the

woman was struck with horror. She made a step within the door. “Oh,

Ellermore!” she cried. “Oh! my auld maister, dinna break her heart and

mine! To hear ye asking for Colin, and Colin in his grave this four

long months, poor lad, poor lad!” She threw her apron over her head as

she spoke, and burst forth into loud sobs and tears. Charlotte had put

out a hand to stop the revelation, but dropped it again, and stood by

speechless, her head bent, and wringing her hands, a silent image of

grief and guilt, as if it had been her from whom the blow came.

The old man sat and listened with a countenance growing ashy pale, and

with intent eyes, that seemed to flicker as if beyond his control. He

tried to speak, but in the trembling of his lips could articulate

nothing. Then he slowly raised himself up and stood, pallid and dizzy,

like a man on the edge of a precipice.

“My son is dead, and I knew it not,” he said slowly, pausing between the

words. He stood with his trembling lips falling apart, his countenance

all moving and twitching, transfixed, it seemed, by a sort of woeful

amaze, wondering at himself. Then he turned upon Charlotte, with a

piteous appeal. “Was I told, and have I forgotten?” he asked. The

humiliation of that human overthrow overpowered his re-awakened soul.

She came to him quickly, and put her arm round him. “Father dear, you

were so ill, they would not let us tell you. Oh, I have known--I have

known it would be so much the worse when it came.”

He put her away from him, and sat down again feebly in his chair. In

that dreadful moment he wanted no one. The horror of the individual

humiliation, the idea that he could have heard and forgotten, was more

terrible even than the dreadful novelty which thus burst upon him. “I’m

glad,” he said, “I’m glad,” babbling with his loose lips. I shrank away,

feeling it a profanation to be here, a spectator of the last mystery of

nature; but Charlotte made a faint motion that kept me from withdrawing

altogether. For the first time she was afraid; her heart had failed

her.

For some minutes her father continued silent in his chair. The sunset

had faded away, the misty twilight was falling. Margaret, guilty and

miserable, but still unable altogether to subdue her sobs, shaking her

white apron from her head, and looking round with a deprecating,

apologetic glance, had withdrawn to the other side of the room. All was

silence after that broken interchange of words. He lay back, clasping

and unclasping his hands, his lips and features all moving, whether with

a wish to speak or with the mere workings of emotions unspeakable, I

cannot tell. When suddenly, all at once, with the voice of a strong man,

loud and full, he broke out into the cry which has sounded through all

the world--the utterance of every father’s anguish. “Oh, Absalom, my

son, my son! Would God that I had died for thee, my son, my son!”

We both rushed towards him simultaneously. He did not remark me,

fortunately; but again he put Charlotte away. “What are you afraid for?”

he said, almost sternly; “that I will forget again? That is not

possible. Ye think sorrow kills; but no, it stings ye back to life. It

stings ye back to life,” he repeated, raising himself in his chair. Then

he looked round him solemnly. “Margaret, my woman, come here, and give

me your hand. We’re partners in trouble, you and me, and never shall we

part. As long as this is my house there is a place in it for you.

Afterwards, when it goes to--ah! when it goes to Charley,” he cried,

with a sudden burst of unforeseen sobs.

Charlotte looked at me again. Her face was white with despair. How was

this last news to be broken to him?

“Father,” she said, standing behind him, “you are sorely tried. Will you

not come back to your room and rest till to-morrow, and then you will

hear all? Then we will tell you--about all that has happened”--

Her voice shook like a leaf in the wind, but she managed to show no

other sign of her terror and despair. There was a long pause after this,

and we stood waiting, not knowing how the moment would terminate. I

believe it was the sight of me that decided it after all. A quick

movement of irritation passed over his face.

“I think you are right, Chatty,” he said; “I think you are right. I am

not fit, in my shattered state, and with the information I have just

received, to pay the attention I would like to pay”--He paused, and

looked at me fixedly. “It is a great trouble to me that we have never

been able to show you proper attention, Mr. Temple. You see, my son was

detained; and now he is dead, and I’ve never known it till this moment.

You will excuse a reception which is not the kind of reception I would

like to give you.” He waved his hand. “You were my Colin’s friend. You

will know how to make allowances. Yes, my dear, I am best in my own

chamber. I will just go, with Mr. Temple’s permission--go--to my bed.”

A faint groan burst from him as he said these words; a kind of dreary

smile flickered on his lips. “To my bed,” he repeated; “that is all we

can do, we old folk, when we are stricken by God’s hand. Lie down, and

turn our faces to the wall--our faces to the wall.” He rose up, and took

his daughter’s arm, and made a few steps towards the door, which I was

holding open for him. Then he turned and looked round with the air of

one who has a favour to bestow. “You may come too, Margaret,” he said.

“You can come and help me to my bed.”

This strange interruption of all plans, which it was evident filled

Charlotte with despair, gave me much to think of, as I stayed behind in

the slowly darkening room. It was evident that now nothing could be

concealed from him; and who was there so bold as to tell the bereaved

father, in his first grief for his firstborn, what horrors had

accompanied Colin’s death, and what a penalty the family had to pay? I

cast over in my mind every expedient, but nothing seemed practicable, no

way of disclosing the situation without such a shock as might kill. The

half-dismantled room looked more and more dreary as the light faded

away. The door stood open as when that little procession quitted it. My

senses were all on the alert. It seemed to me that the premonition of

some fresh calamity was in the air; and when Charlotte came down about

half an hour later, like a ghost through the dim-coming shadows, I

almost expected to hear that it had already occurred. But even in these

depths of distress, it was a happiness to me to feel that she came to

me for relief. She dropped into a chair close by the window where I was

standing. I could just see the soft, pale lines of her face--the look of

restrained anxiety in her eyes. She told me that he had gone to bed

without asking any further questions, and that Margaret, who had been

Colin’s nurse, seemed almost more agreeable to him than herself. He had

turned his face to the wall, as he had said, and nothing but a

long-drawn, occasional sigh told that he was awake. “I think he is not

worse--in body,” she said. “He has borne it far better than we could

have thought possible. But how am I to tell him the way it happened, and

how am I to tell him about Ellermore?” She wept with a prostration and

self-abandonment which alarmed me; but she stopped my remonstrances and

entreaties with a motion of her hand. “Oh, let me cry! It is the only

ease I have,” she said.

When she had gone away from me, restless, anxious, afraid to be out of

hearing, I went out, myself, as restless, as incapable of banishing all

these anxieties from my mind as she. The night was almost dark, soft and

mild. It was one of those nights when the moon, without being visible,

softens and ameliorates the gloom, and makes of night a sort of

twilight.

While I went pacing softly about, to occupy myself, a soft, small rain

began to fall; but this did not affect me in any way. It was rather

soothing than disagreeable. I went down to the side of the loch, where

the pale light on the water was touched by innumerable droppings of the

rain; then up again, round and round the house, not caring where I went.

At this hour I had always avoided the Lady’s Walk, I can scarcely tell

why. To-night, in my strange familiarity with everything, and

carelessness of all but one subject, I suddenly turned into it with a

caprice I could not account for, perhaps with an understood wish for

company, for somebody who might understand my thoughts. The mystic

footsteps gave me a sort of pleasure. Whether it was habit, or some new

sense of human fellowship which Charlotte’s impassioned words had

caused, I can scarcely tell; but the excitement with which I had always

hitherto regarded the mysterious watcher here was altogether gone out of

my mind. I felt a profound and tender pity for her rising in me instead.

Was it possible that a spirit could be “over-anxious,” as Charlotte

said, endeavouring vainly, and yet not undutifully, to take God’s

supreme guardianship out of His hands? The thought was new to me. To

think that a good and blessed creature could so err, could mistake so

humanly and persevere so patiently, though never able to remedy the

evils, seemed somehow more possible than that a guardian from heaven

could watch and watch for generations with so little result. This gave

me a great compassion for the lonely watcher thus rebelling in a

heavenly way of love against the law of nature that separated her from

visible life. My old idea that it might be Charlotte herself in an

unconscious shadow-shape, whose protecting, motherly love made these

efforts unawares, glided gratefully into the feeling that it was an

earlier Charlotte, her very kin and prototype, who could not even now

let God manage her race without her aid.

While I was thus thinking, I was startled once more by the same sigh

which I had heard with Charlotte. Yes, yes, it might be the wind. I had

no time to bandy explanations with myself. It was a soft, long sigh,

such as draws the very breath out of an over-laden bosom. I turned half

round, it was so near to me, and there, by my side, so close that I

could have touched her, stood the Lady whom I had imagined so often--the

same figure which I had met in the London streets and in the woods of

Ellermore. I suppose I stepped back, with a little thrill of the old

sensations, for she seemed to put out a hand in the pale gloom, and

began to speak softly, quickly, as if there was scarcely time enough for

what she had to say.

“I am going away like the rest,” she said. “None of them have ever bid

me go before; but it was true--it was true. I have never done any

good--just frightened them, or pleased them. It is in better hands--it

is in better hands.”

With this there came the familiar movement, the wringing of the hands,

which was like Charlotte, and she seemed to weep; but before I could say

anything (and what could I have said?) she said again mournfully, “I

must not speak to them; but you wish them well, and you may help if you

will--if you will--now, again, again!”

“How can I help?” I cried. “Tell me, Lady, whoever you are; I will do

it. I will do it--but how can I do it? I have no power. Tell me”--

I put out my hand to touch her dress, but it melted out of my hold. “You

may help if you will--if you will,” she seemed to say, with a breathless

faintness, as if of haste; and already her voice was farther off,

breathing away.

“What can I do?” I cried. So much had I forgot the old terror that I put

myself in her path, stopping the way. “Tell me how, how! Tell me, for

God’s sake, and because of Charlotte.”

The shadowy figure seemed to retreat before me. It seemed to fade, then

reappeared, then dissolved altogether into the white dimness, while the

voice floated away, still saying, as in a sigh, “If you will, if you

will.” I could hear no more. I went after this sighing voice to the end

of the walk. It seemed to me that I was pursuing her, determined to

understand, and that she softly fled; the footsteps hurrying, becoming

almost inaudible as they flew before me. I went on hotly, not knowing

what I did, determined only to know what it was; to get an explanation,

by what means I did not care. Suddenly, before I knew, I found my steps

stumbling down the slope at the farther end, and the pale water alive

with all the dimplings of the rain appearing at my very feet. The steps

sank upon the loch side, and ceased with a thrill like the acutest sound

in a silence more absolute than any I have heard in nature. I stood

gasping, with my foot touching the edge of the water; it was all I could

do to arrest myself there.

I hurried back to the house in a state of agitation which I cannot

describe. It was partly nervous dread. I do not disguise this; but

partly it was a bewildered anxiety and eagerness to know what it was

that I might be able to do. That I had the most absolute faith in it I

need hardly say. One does not have, or think one has, such an interview

as this without believing what is told in it. There was no doubt in my

mind, save an anxious, excited wonder--how was it, how could it be? I

searched all my horizon for possibilities. Before I reached the house, I

had forgotten all the other incidents in my eagerness about this. My

pursuit of her seemed nothing but natural, and the sudden silence that

had seemed to tingle and thrill about me went clean out of my mind. “You

may help if you will! if you will!” I said it over and over to myself a

thousand times with a feverish hurry and eagerness. Indeed, I did

nothing but repeat it. I could not eat, I could not rest. When Charlotte

came down late to tell me her father was asleep, that the doctor who had

been sent for had pronounced his recovery real, I was walking up and

down the half-lighted drawing-room repeating these wonderful words over

and over to myself.

“He says it is wonderful, but it may be complete recovery,” Charlotte

said; “only to tell him nothing we can help, to keep all the

circumstances from him; especially, if it is possible, about Ellermore.

But how is it possible? how can I do it? ‘Help if you will?’ Mr. Temple,

what are you saying?”

“It is nothing,” I said; “some old rhyme that has got possession of me.”

She looked very anxiously into my face. “Something else has happened?

You have seen or heard”--Her mind was so alive to every tone and glance

that it was scarcely possible to conceal a thought from her.

“I have been in the Walk,” I said, “and, being excited and restless, it

was more than my nerves could bear.”

She looked at me again wistfully. “You would not deceive me, Mr.

Temple,” she said; then returned to her original subject. The doctor

was anxious, above all things, that Mr. Campbell should leave Ellermore

to-morrow; that he should go early, and, above all, that he should not

suspect the reason why. She had the same dread of the removal as ever,

but there was no alternative; and not even a day’s delay was to be

thought of, for every day, every hour, made the chances of discovery

more.

“But you cannot keep up the delusion for ever,” I said, “and what when

it is found out?”

Again she wrung her hands. “It is against my judgment; but what can I

do?” She paused a moment, and then said, with a melancholy dignity, “It

can but kill him, soon or syne. I would not myself have my life saved by

a lie; but I am weak where my father is concerned, and God understands

all. Oh, I am beginning to feel that so, Mr. Temple. We search and

search, and think what is best, and we make a hundred mistakes; but God

sees the why and the wherefore. Whoever misunderstands, He never

misunderstands.”

She went away from me in the calm of this thought--the secret of all

calm. It seemed to me that I, in my blind anxiety, guessing at the

enigma that had been given to me, and my poor Lady vagrant from the

skies, still trying to be the providence of this house, were left alike

behind.

I could not rest all night. It was all I could do to remain in my room

after the diminished household had gone to rest. It was a weird night,

lighted up by that mystic light of the waning moon, in which there seems

to be always something that is baleful and prophesies evil. One can

fancy evil creatures about, ill dews falling. I sat at my window, as

often as I could persuade myself to keep still at all, with the damp air

saturating me, and the cold light enveloping everything below in a

whiteness and blackness of exaggerated contrast. I can say nothing less

than that I expected to see the anxious, wistful figure which I had seen

so often, looking up at me, appealing to me again. But nothing broke the

blank of the white light; nothing but the shadow of the bare trees,

outlined in every twig above the darkness of the shrubberies below,

interrupted the shining of the moon. When I threw myself upon my bed, it

was only to think more acutely, more restlessly than before. What was it

that I could do? How could I help them? What power of mine could save?

The dull morning was a relief to me which I cannot describe, and to hear

the first stirrings of the household. Now at least there would be

something which I could do--something not lying vague and shadowy among

the possibilities, but certain and feasible, which is of all things the

greatest relief to anxious thought. Charlotte came down to breakfast

with me, which she had not done before. She told me that her father had

passed a good night, that he had shed tears on awaking, and begun to

talk tenderly and calmly of Colin; and that everything seemed to promise

that the softening and mournful pre-occupation of grief, distracting his

mind from other matters, would be an advantage to him. It was pleasant

to be left with Margaret, who had adored her nursling, and who had been

fully warned of the necessity of keeping silence as to the circumstances

of his death. The post-bag came in while we were talking. It lay on the

table for a few minutes untouched, for neither of us were anxious for

our correspondence. We were alone at table, and Charlotte had rested,

though I had not, and was almost cheerful now that the moment had

arrived for the final severance. The necessity of doing inspirited her,

as it did me. And perhaps, though I scarcely dared to think so, this

tranquil table at which we sat alone, which might have been our table,

in our home, in a new life full of peace and sober happiness, soothed

her. The suggestion it conveyed made the blood dance in my veins. For

the moment, it seemed as if the hope I dared not even entertain, for one

calm hour of blessedness and repose, had come true.

At last she gave me the key, and asked me to open the bag. “I have been

loth to disturb this peaceful moment,” she said, with a smile which was

full of sweetness and confidence, “and nothing outside seems of much

consequence just now; but the boys may have something to tell, and there

will be your letters. Will you open it, Mr. Temple?” I, too, was

loth--more loth than she--to disturb the calm; and the outside world was

nothing to me, while I sat here with her, and could fancy her my own.

But I did what she told me.

Letters are like fate; they must be encountered, with all that is good

and evil in them. I gave her hers, and laid out some, probably as

important to them, though they seemed to me so trifling and unnecessary,

that were for the maids. Then I turned to my own share. I had two

letters, one with a broad black border, which had been forwarded from

one place to another in search of me, and was nearly ten days old--for,

like most people, I examined the outside first; the other a large,

substantial blue letter, which meant business. I can remember now the

indifference with which I opened them, the mourning envelope first.

There were so many postmarks on it, that that of its origin, which would

have enlightened me at once, never struck me at all.

Heaven above! what was this that met my eyes? An announcement, full of

periphrasis, of formal regrets, of the death of my old Cousin Jocelyn

ten days before. I gave a sort of fierce cry--I can hear it now--and

tore open the second, the official letter. Of course I knew what it was,

of course I was aware that nothing could interfere, and yet the

opportuneness of the announcement was such that human nature, accustomed

to be balked, would not allow me to believe in the possibility. Then I

sprang from my seat. “I must go,” I cried; “there is not a moment to

lose. Stop all proceedings--do nothing about the going, for God’s sake,

till I come back.”

“Mr. Temple, what has happened? Charley”--cried Charlotte, blanched with

terror. She thought some other catastrophe had occurred, some still more

fatal news, that I could not tell her. But I was too much absorbed in my

own excitement to think of this.

“Do nothing,” I said; “I will meet Charley on the way, and tell him. All

will be right, all will be right; only wait till I come back.” I rushed

to the door in my haste, then came back again, not knowing what I did,

and had caught her in my arms before I knew--not in my arms, but with my

hands on her shoulders, holding her for one mad moment. I could hardly

see her for the water in my eyes. “Wait,” I said, “wait till I come

back! Now I can do what she said! Now my time is come; do nothing till I

come back.” I let my hands drop down to hers, and caught them and kissed

them in a wild tremor, beyond explanation. Then I rushed away. I have a

recollection of meeting the children and pushing aside their little

outstretched hands and morning salutations. It was a mile or more to the

little quay where the morning boat carried communications back to the

world. I seemed to be there as on wings, and scarcely came to myself

till I descended into the noise, the haze, the roar of the damp streets,

the crowds and traffic of Glasgow. Next moment (for time flew, and I

with it, so that I took no note of its progress) I was in the clamour of

the “works,” making my way through the grime and mud of a great

courtyard, with machinery lying round me on every side, amid the big

skeleton houses with their open windows, into the office, where Charley,

in close converse with a stranger, jumped up with terror at the sight of

me. “What has happened?” he cried, “my father?” I had scarcely breath

enough to say what I had to say. “Your father,” I cried, “has come to

himself. You can make no sale without him--every arrangement must be

stopped at once.” All that I was capable of knowing was, with a

certainty, beyond all proof, that the man with whom Charley was talking,

a sportsman in every line of his countenance and clothes, was the

intending purchaser of Ellermore.

I remember little of the conversation that followed. It was stormy and

excited; for neither would Charley be convinced, nor would the other

consent to be off his bargain. But I made my point clear. Mr. Campbell

having recovered his faculties, it was clear that no treaty could be

concluded without his consent. (It would not have been legal in any

case, but I suppose they had in some way got over this.) I remember

Charley turning upon me with a passionate remonstrance, when, almost by

violence and pertinacity, I had driven his Cockney sportsman away. “I

cannot conceive what is your object, Temple,” he said. “Are you mad? My

father must give his consent; there is no possibility of a question

about it. Ellermore must be sold--and as well to him as to another,” he

said, with a sigh. I took out my blue letter, which I had huddled into

my pocket, and laid it before him. “It is to me that Ellermore must be

sold,” I said.

My inheritance had come. There was nothing wonderful about it--it was my

right; but never did inheritance come at a more suitable moment. Charley

went back with me that afternoon, after a hurried conference with his

young brothers, who came round me, shaking my arms nearly off, and

calling to each other in their soft young basses, like rolls of mild

thunder, that, whatever happened, I was a good fellow, a true friend. If

they had not been so bashful they would have embraced me, less, I verily

believe, from the sense of escape from a great misery which they had

scarcely realised, than from generous pleasure in what they thought a

sort of noble generosity. That was their view of it. Charley perhaps was

more enlightened. He was very silent during the journey, but at one

point of it burst out suddenly upon me. “You are doing this for Chatty,

Temple. If you take her away, it will be as bad as losing Ellermore.” I

shook my head. Then, if never before, I felt the hopelessness of the

position. “There is but one thing you can do for me: say not a word of

that to her,” I said.

And I believe he kept counsel. It was of her own accord that Charlotte

came up to me after the hurried interview in which Charley laid my

proposal before her. She was very grave, though the sweetness of her

look drew the heart out of my breast. She held out her hands to me, but

her eyes took all warm significance out of this gesture. “Mr. Temple,”

she said, “you may think me bold to say it, but we are friends that can

say anything to one another. If in your great generosity there may yet

be a thought--a thought that a woman might recompense what was done for

her and hers”--Her beautiful countenance, beautiful in its love and

tenderness and noble dignity, but so pale, was suddenly suffused with

colour. She took her hands out of mine, and folded them together--“That

is out of my power--that is out of my power!” she said.

“I like it better so,” I cried. God help me! it was a lie, and so she

knew. “I want no recompense. I will be recompensed enough to know you

are here.”

And so it has remained ever since, and may, perhaps, for ever--I cannot

tell. We are dear friends. When anything happens in the family I am sent

for, and all is told to me. And so do I with her. We know all each

other’s secrets--those secrets which are not of fortune or incident, but

of the soul. Is there anything better in marriage than this? And yet

there is a longing which is human for something more.

That evening I went back to the Lady’s Walk, with a sort of painful

desire to tell her, the other, that I had done her bidding, that she had

been a true guardian of her race to the last. I paced up and down

through the dim hour when the sun ought to have been setting, and later,

long into the twilight. The rain fell softly, pattering upon the dark

glistening leaves of the evergreens, falling straight through the bare

branches. But no soft step of a living soul was on the well-worn track.

I called to her, but there was no answer, not even the answer of a sigh.

Had she gone back heart-sick to her home in heaven, acknowledging at

last that it was not hers to guard her race? It makes my heart ache for

her to think so, but yet it must have been a sweet grief and easily

healed in those blessed regions, to know that those she loved were most

safe in God’s only care when hers failed--as everything else must

fail.

THE SHIP’S DOCTOR

The Gushat-house stood, as its name denotes, at the angle where two

roads met. These were pleasant country roads both--one, shadowed by

trees, here and there, threading through rich and broad fields, led up

into the wealthy inland country, the rich heart of Fife; the other, with

scattered cottages instead of the trees, growing after a while closer

and closer together, was the straight road to the “town,” and was open

to the sea view and the sea breezes. The town was the little town of

Anstruther on the Fife coast; the sea was the Firth of Forth, half

ocean, half river; the time was fifty years ago. In this locality, and

at that distant period, happened the very brief and simple story I have

now to tell.

In the Gushat-house lived Mrs. Sinclair and Nora, her daughter. The

house was, in its humble way, a kind of jointure-house, though it

belonged to no potent family or county magnate. It had been for

generations--since it was built, indeed--the refuge of one widow or

other, who had sufficient interest in the place to remain near it, or

some connection with the soil. The present occupant had been the wife of

the minister, and was the daughter of one of the smaller proprietors in

the neighbourhood. She was a woman whom the county did not disdain to

visit and honour; but yet she was not rich nor a great lady in her own

person. In those days life was simpler, more aristocratic perhaps, but

less luxurious, and far more homely. Nowadays the coast towns in Fife

are unendurable. In summer they are nothing but great receptacles of

herrings, not in their silvery state as they come in in glistening

shoals in the boats from sea, but in the hideous course of economical

preservation and traffic. Salt and smells, and busy women armed with

knives, operating upon the once harmless “drave,” line all the stony

little streets, and send up to heaven an unsavoury testimony. You

breathe herrings, if you are so unwary as to trust yourself in the

season on that too prolific coast. But it was not so fifty years ago.

Then the herrings came in to be eaten, not to be salted down in barrels,

and they had not got the upper hand of everything. There was no

lucrative trade going on, no salt and pungent harvest-time of the sea;

but the homely wynds were passable, even in summer, though cleanliness

was far from perfect. In place of the herrings there was the whale

fishery, which sent out its ships periodically, and brought back with

corresponding regularity the sailor fishermen to their families when

the expedition of the year was over. It was a trade more picturesque,

more dangerous, and less disagreeable, at least to the bystander. Nobody

could refuse to be interested in the solemn ships going forth to their

struggle with the ice, and the storms, and the monsters of the sea; nor

in their exciting return, when the well-known rig would heave slowly in

sight on the broad Firth, under eager telescopes, which reported the

signs she carried, the jubilant garland on the mast, sign of a

successful fishing, or the melancholy flag half-mast high, which

thrilled the whole town with alarm, no one knowing whose son or husband,

or what family’s father it might be. An interest almost more exciting,

and certainly more frequent, would thrill through the little salt-water

place when a gale came on suddenly at some time when “our boats” were at

sea. So that the “town” was not without its points of human interest,

before the herring barrels, and hideous trade consequent thereupon, had

appeared in the stony little streets.

And to Nora Sinclair it was a very interesting place. She was fond of

the fisher-folk, whom she had known all her life, and who, for their

part, were fond of her. She and her mother were local princesses, as it

were, in the parish; for the reigning minister was unmarried and

unsympathetic. In those days, before the advent of King Herring, even

the position of the minister was different. There was no dissent in the

place, except the little Episcopal church, “English chapel,” as it was

called, to which some of the adjacent gentry came, and which everybody

regarded with half indulgent, half contemptuous tolerance. It was

tacitly admitted as a kind of necessity that the fine people should

frequent this little conventicle. The common people granted them the

indulgence with a half smile at their weakness of caste and training,

but occupied the parish church themselves in close masses, filling the

pews with characteristic rugged faces, and the air with a faint breath

of fish and tar and salt water--the inalienable odour of a seafaring

population. Nora Sinclair was in most things a young woman of refined

tastes; but she had never had her eyes or her senses opened to these

little imperfections. She took all the interest of a daughter of the

place in its vicissitudes, and knew the boats and their crews, and was

as anxious when it blew a gale as if she herself had known what it was

to venture her heart on the dangerous chances of the sea. Her mother and

she lived a not uncheerful life in the Gushat-house, metaphorically

placed, as it was, with one eye on the country and one on the sea. The

“families” about were many of them “connections” of Mrs. Sinclair, who

was, as has been said, of a very good stock--old Auchintorlie’s

daughter; and those who were not connections were old friends. The

mother and daughter were not left alone when they had to change to the

wistful widow’s refuge from the manse. Kind friends and cheerful company

surrounded them. In the depth of winter, when the Firth was often black

with storms, and the weather too gloomy for enjoyment, the two ladies

would go “across” in the ferry-boat from Kinghorn to Edinburgh, not

without some trembling for the dangers of the passage, and settle

themselves there for a few months, during which time Nora would have her

gaieties, and be taken to a few balls, and take her share in the

pleasures of her youth. Altogether it was a very endurable life.

It was in Edinburgh she first met with Willy Erskine, though he was a

neighbour at home. He was one of the Erskines of Drumthwacket, of as

good a family as any in Fife. One of Mrs. Sinclair’s perplexities was

to make out in what way the Erskines and the Auchintorlie family were

connected, but she never succeeded in clearing it up. That there was

some connection she was sure, and Willy was very welcome when he paid

those frequent visits in Heriot Row, where they were living, and sat so

long that Nora grew tired of him, though he was a handsome young fellow.

“Poor callant! so far away from home, what would he do but come and see

me, that am his mother’s near connection?” Mrs. Sinclair would say. And

if she could have been angry with her Nora, it would have been for this

cause.

“Not so very near, mamma,” Nora would answer. “And if all our

connections were to come as often”--

“They all show a very proper feeling, my dear,” was her mother’s reply;

and nothing could be more true. Cousins to the fifth degree always

turned up to take care of Nora at her balls--to dance with her when

there--to cheer her mother’s solitude when she was gone, according to

their several ages and sexes. The Sinclairs were a very “well-connected”

family, and it was a circumstance which added much to the comfort of

their life.

As for Willy Erskine, he was a very nice young fellow, everybody

allowed. He was not rich, to be sure. The Drumthwacket household was

known not to be a rich one, and he was the third son. But he was doing

what it was the proper thing for a third son to do. It had not been his

vocation to go to India, like his second and fourth brothers, though, no

doubt, that would have been the best way; and New Zealand and Australia

had not been discovered, so to speak, in those days. His eldest brother

was at the Bar, and Johnny, the fifth, was to be the clergyman of the

family; so that Willy’s lot was clear before him, even had he not been

impelled towards it by a naturally scientific turn of mind. He was

pursuing his medical studies at Edinburgh University during those years

when Nora and her mother came in the winter to Heriot Row. In summer it

was quite a practicable thing to walk from Drumthwacket, which was only

sixteen miles off, down to Anstruther on one pretence or other--an

expedition which made it quite natural as well as necessary to “look in”

at the Gushat-house, somewhere near the time of the early dinner. The

fare on Mrs. Erskine’s table was homely, but it never occurred to her to

grumble at the frequent visitor, or put on company punctilios, or even a

fresh tablecloth, for Willy. The latter was a point upon which the

population of the Gushat-house were always very easy in their minds; for

no lady in Fife had a better stock of “napery,” and none were more

delicately, femininely alive to the beauties of clean linen. Besides

which, everybody in those days washed at home, and clean tablecloths

cost nothing--a matter of primitive luxury unknown in our days. Young

Erskine would look in, and nobody was otherwise than pleased to see him;

other people, too, “looked in” on other days. Sometimes there would be

two or three strangers, equally unexpected and welcome at the widow’s

table. There was glorious fish, fresh from the sea--cod, with great

milk-white flakes, and the delicious haddocks of the Firth, which cost

next to nothing, to take the edge off the wholesome appetites of these

young people; and savoury old Scotch dishes, such as exist no

more--Scotch collops, brown and fragrant; chickens, which were not

called chickens, but “hens”; dainty curries, in which the homely, rural

gentry, with sons and brothers by the score in India, were as great

critics as the old Indians themselves. To the board thus spread the

country neighbours were always kindly welcome; and Mrs. Sinclair took no

special notice of the frequency with which young Erskine made his

appearance. If Nora was more observant, she was also more tolerant than

she had been in Edinburgh. She did not even seem to dislike it much when

chance brought her in contact with the young student among the rocks, as

sometimes happened. Though that age was not so advanced as our own, it

was still possible, even at so rudimentary an epoch, to make good use of

the sea-coast, and the marine creatures which the young man was

studying, to further such encounters. He called them by their Latin

names when he walked with Nora up to the Gushat-house, and Mrs. Sinclair

respected his habits of research. “It’s little good he’ll get out of the

tangle on the rocks,” she would say, “but it shows a diligent mind.” At

which praise Willy would blush and Nora smile.

But there was no haste, no rush upon the inevitable, no rash effort to

put it to the touch, to win or lose it all. He would have lost his love

altogether had he been precipitate. Nora was the only child of her

mother, who was a widow. She had tender love to guard her, and full

freedom to do as she pleased. She was the favourite of all the

fisher-folk, the beauty of the town, admired, imitated, caressed, and

followed wherever she went. The Gushat-house was the cheeriest little

house in all the countryside, and Mrs. Sinclair was the most indulgent

mother: naturally, therefore, Nora had no wish, not the most distant

inclination, to sacrifice all this to become any man’s wife. Love lays

hold upon some people with a violent hand, but with others has to go

softly, and eschew all turbulence. Nora began to like young Erskine’s

society. She began to feel a certain lightness diffuse itself over her

heart when she saw him coming down the long country road, crossing the

shadow of the trees. When winter came, and these same trees were bare,

and the journey to Heriot Row drew near, it was a pleasure to her to

remember that Erskine was already there. Not that she went so far as to

form a good resolution to be kinder to him, to permit his attendance

more willingly. She was only pleased to think that he would be at hand

to be snubbed or encouraged as the humour might seize her--a very

improper spirit, as the youthful reader will perceive. But Nora was far

from being a perfect young woman. Thus things went on in a leisurely

way. There was no hurry; even Willy himself, though he was deeply in

earnest, was aware that there was no hurry. If any competitor should

appear, ready to carry her off suddenly, then Willy Erskine would wake

up too, and fly, violent and desperate, to the assault. But no such

catastrophe was threatening. Nora, everybody said, was “fancy free.”

Even her saucy sallies, her little caprices, proved this. Her lovers

were her friends, in a quaint, rural sort of way. She did not wish to

cast any of them from the latter eminence by regarding them in the

former capacity. She might go on wandering through the metaphorical

forest for years, some people said, and take the crooked stick at the

end. Whether he was the crooked stick or not, Willy Erskine, like a wise

general, kept a wary eye on her tactics, and held himself ready to take

advantage of any weakening in her defences. It had begun years ago, when

they were boy and girl; it might last till they were middle-aged, for

anything that could be said to the contrary. He was always at Nora’s

disposal, to do anything she chose to ask him; and she was always

friendly to Willy, ready to stand up for him when he was absent, and to

give him the most solemn good advice when he permitted her the

opportunity. Nora might have been his grand-mother, to judge by the

prudent counsel she gave him, and would try his devotion the next moment

by laying upon him the most frivolous and troublesome commissions. Thus

the time went on imperceptibly, marking its progress on these two at

least by no remarkable events. Nora was bridesmaid so often to her

youthful friends that she began to declare loudly that she had

forestalled her own luck, and would never be a bride--but without any

sort of faith in her own prediction. Yet, though this state of things

was a very pleasant one, it was a necessity that, one time or other, it

should come to an end.

The end was brought about, as it happened, by another event of great

importance to young Erskine, and in which Nora and her mother, as in

duty bound, took a lively interest. Willy’s professional studies came to

a conclusion, and the ladies went, well pleased, to witness the curious

ceremonial at which he was “capped,” as it is called--the outward sign

and token of his having attained the dignity of M.D. He had passed his

examinations with credit, and his friends were proud. At night there was

a little party of Fife folk at Heriot Row. The good people went to tea

and supper, and made one substantial but light, and one still more

substantial and very heavy, meal. Then the health of the young doctor

was drunk with kindly enthusiasm. “Willy, take you my advice and get a

wife next,” said one of the genial guests, and the suggestion was

received with general applause.

“A doctor without a wife is like rigging without a ship,” said another

adviser. “There’s two professions that must aye have the ballast of a

petticoat. As for a soldier, like your brother Sandy, he’s better

without one, if he could be brought to think it; and John will be the

laird, and he can take his time. But a minister and a doctor have no

choice. You’ll ask us to your wedding next, if you’ll be guided by me.”

“What Captain Maitland says is very true,” said Mrs. Sinclair; “a

doctor’s never well received in families till he’s a married man. You’re

but young, and there’s no hurry, except for that. When I was a young

woman myself, and needing doctors, not even a family connection would

have led me to call in a man that was without a wife.”

“Here’s a man that has no mind to be without a wife,” cried Willy.

Perhaps he was a little excited with drinking his own health, or someone

else’s. “I wish it only depended on me”--

“You can but try,” said one, patting him on the shoulder. “Faint heart

never won fair lady,” said another. “I would not wonder if it was all

settled a year ago!” said a third; and various looks, some veiled, some

openly significant, were turned upon the corner where, amid a little

knot of girls, Nora sat apart. It was no revelation to Nora; but the

thought of being thus openly indicated set her pride up in arms. She to

marry Willy Erskine for any reason whatsoever except her sovereign grace

and pleasure! She to take him because he was a doctor and wanted a wife!

She had to dance the first reel with him, when the room was cleared

after supper, and Mrs. Sinclair went to the piano--partly because he was

the hero of the occasion and she the daughter of the house, partly

because they were such old friends; but she would scarcely grant the

young fellow a look even when her hand was in his in the pretty,

animated dance. And Willy, in his excitement, held that soft hand longer

and clasped it closer than was at all needful. Nora’s girlish temper

blazed up; but he could not see it, the foolish boy. His own heat and

ardour, long suppressed, the pleasant intoxication of all those

friendly plaudits and flattering good wishes, the seduction of the

moment, when all were gone but himself, and the careful mistress of the

house had begun to put away the remnants of the feast and lock up her

“garde-vin,” were too much for him. Willy was so far left to himself as

to arrest Nora in the hall when she had said good-night to the last

guest. He was by way of leaving himself, when he stopped her and took

her hand. “Say a kind word to me, Nora,” he cried, drawing her into the

dimly-lighted little room behind, which was called the library. Mrs.

Sinclair was in the dining-room close by, with her confidential

handmaiden, putting away the things. They could hear her voice where

they stood, and there was no harm in this little chance interview. “Say

a kind word to me, Nora,” he pleaded; “you know how fond I am of you.

I’ve never thought of another since I was a boy at school. I’ve looked

forward to this for years and years.”

“What have you looked forward to, Mr. Erskine?” said Nora, with the

insolence of power.

“Nora--Nora, don’t speak like that!” cried the young man. “I’m not worth

it, but you must take me--you know you must take me; you’re all the

world to me. What do I care for my degree or anything else but for you?

Say you’ll take a poor fellow, Nora! You know you are all the world to

me.”

“Indeed, I know nothing of the kind,” said Nora. “I am very sleepy, and

I don’t care much about your degree. Must take you, indeed! I never do

anything that I must do. What with their toasts, and their talk, and

their nonsense, they’ve turned your head. Good-night.”

And she went away from him, while he stood and looked after her

stupefied. “Nora!” he said, in a voice of such pain that Mrs. Sinclair

heard, and left the “things” on the table. She came in while Nora stood

still, haughty and offended, at the door. The mother saw at once what

was the matter. She thought it was a lover’s quarrel, and she saw there

had been enough of it for the night.

“I thought you had gone with the Lindsays, Willy,” she said, looking at

him in her motherly way; “and you must be wearied and fit for your bed.

What’s Nora making her little _moue_ at now? But never mind her, my man;

to-morrow’s a new day.”

“Yes, to-morrow’s a new day,” cried Willy. “I’ll take no thought of what

I’ve heard to-night. To-morrow I’m coming back.”

And with that he rushed away. As for Nora, she flew upstairs, and went

to bed, that she might not come in for that little sermon which was on

her mother’s lips. When she had shut herself into her own room she had a

good cry. She could not have told anyone the reason of her perversity.

She was angry with herself and Willy, and the guests who had put such

nonsense in his head, and all the world. _Must_ take him! very likely!

If she, Nora Sinclair, ever had anything to say to a man who came to her

with such a plea--She paused, on the verge of a petulant vow. Perhaps,

on the whole, it would be as well not to make any oaths on the subject.

And, luckily, at that moment she fell asleep, which was the easiest way

out of the dilemma. To-morrow would be, as Mrs. Sinclair said, a new

day.

But, unfortunately, to-morrow is not always a new day. When Nora got up

in the chilly spring morning, she was, on the whole, rather more

irritated and petulant than she had been the evening before. As for Mrs.

Sinclair, it was her fixed opinion that the young folk should be left to

themselves to make up their little matters. “They know each other’s ways

best,” she said; “older folk do more harm than good when they

interfere.” So when Willy came in, pale and breathless, the kind woman

withdrew herself that the two might get it over undisturbed. It was not

a new day for young Erskine any more than it was for Nora. It was a

feverish supplement to last night. He had not perhaps gone to bed calmly

after all his excitement, as a girl has to do. There was a rere-supper

somewhere, to which his friends had dragged him, and where, probably,

Willy’s brain had been heated by strong drinks. The morning found him

parched with mental impatience and suspense, as well as with a certain

degree of bodily feverishness and misery. It seemed to his heated eyes

as if Nora meant to jilt him after all his devotion. He swore a big oath

to himself as he rushed along to Heriot Row. “If she’ll not take me now,

after all,” said Willy, “by----! I’ll go off to sea, and I’ll never be

heard of more.”

In this mutual mood the two met. It was not an amiable interview on

either side. The young lover took up precisely the line of argument

which was most prejudicial to him. He pleaded his faithful services--his

devotion which had lasted for years. He established a claim upon Nora,

which she was not the girl to put up with. And she, on her side,

scornfully denied any claim he had upon her. “If that is what you call

love,” said the indignant maiden, “to follow a girl about, whether she

likes or not, and then to tell her she _must_ take you, to pay you for

it!” This, alas, was not the way of settling their affairs!

“Nora,” cried the young man, desperate, “this is the moment that’s to

settle my life. It’s little matter for you, but for me it’s life or

death. I’m not asking you to take me now--say a year, say even two

years, I’ll be content; but I have to know. Nora, bide a moment. If you

turn me away without any hope, by----! there’s the _Pretty Peggy_ sails

from Anster on Saturday; I’ll go to Greenland in her, and never see you

more.”

“And why should I want to see you more?” said Nora. “What do I care for

your _Pretty Peggy_? It will do you a great deal of good, Mr. Erskine.

It will teach you that you can’t have everything your own way.”

“Is this your last word, Nora?” cried the poor fellow, with glistening

eyes. If she had looked him in the face, Nora’s heart would have given

way. But she felt her weakness, and would not look him in the face. She

stood by the table, turning over and over in her hand an Indian toy of

carved ivory, with her eyes fixed upon it, as if it was the intricacies

of the pattern that involved life and death; and then she said slowly,

while the blood seemed to ebb away from her heart, “I have nothing more

to say.”

In another moment the door shut violently, and Willy Erskine was gone.

The sound went through the house like a thunderclap, and threw down,

with its violent concussion, the castle of cards in which Nora had been

entrenching herself. She sank down upon a chair, stupefied, and listened

to the step that went echoing along the street. Was he gone? Was he

really gone, and for ever? Gone to Greenland in the _Pretty Peggy_, into

the ice where men and ships perished, into the whaling boats where they

sank and were lost for ever? Should she never see him more?

“You’ve made the bed, and you must lie on it,” said Mrs. Sinclair, when

she heard all, with an indignation that was soon lost in sympathy. But

Nora would not give way either to the sympathy or the indignation. She

declared steadily that she would do the same over again if it was in her

power. “What right had he to come making claims, and speaking of his

rights to me?” she said. “If a lad follows a girl, does that give him a

right to her--whether or no?” This was said with burning eyes, into

which tears refused to come. But yet Nora shed tears enough over it. She

took immense pains privately to find out when the _Pretty Peggy_ sailed,

and to know if she had shipped a doctor before she left Anster pier. Not

for her life would she have asked the doctor’s name, but she satisfied

herself so far. And when the fact could no longer be doubted, her heart

grew so sick that she could not go home. The Sinclairs had friends “in

England”--a vague sort of expression used by the untravelled Scotch

then, as untravelled islanders nowadays talk of “the Continent.” Nora

persuaded her mother that it would be pleasant to “go south,” and pay

the long-promised visit. She was glad to go away, glad to be anywhere

out of the range of those people and places with which Willy Erskine’s

name was so closely connected. But the other day it seemed he had been

so jubilant, so full of good prospects and high hopes. Now he was out

upon the Northern seas, surgeon in a whaling ship, like any poor student

or broken man. And he Drumthwacket’s son! and whose fault was it all?

Nora was ashamed to confront even the familiar rocks that knew him so

well--that knew how she had met him (by accident), and strayed with him

along the sea-verge, with the salt spray now and then dashed into their

fresh faces, and the surge rising to their feet. She dragged her

home-loving mother about from one “connection” to another all the summer

through, enjoying the visits but little, poor child. As for Mrs.

Sinclair, a British matron of the present day would not be more

disconsolate, nor feel herself more alien in the heart of French

society, than was this Scottish gentlewoman among her southern

connections. Their ways, their accent, their mode of living, were all

discordant to her. “If I were to live all my life among those English,”

she said, “I think I would rather die.” Her soul longed for the tents

of Jacob and the dwellings of Jerusalem. “But if I were not to humour my

own bairn,” added Mrs. Sinclair, with pathos, “who should humour her?”

Nora was her only child; somehow or other she had make a mistake in her

young life. Clouds had come up over the sun at the moment when that sun

should have been brightest. Her mother could have given her the best of

good advice, but she chose to give her something better instead--she

“humoured” Nora. She was her tender partisan, right or wrong. She took

up her cause and supported her silently against her own reproaches and

all the world. And that is the best way of healing the wounded, if their

friends but knew.

It was the end of summer before they returned to the Gushat-house. And

then, whether it was that they were unexpected, or whether from her

misdeeds towards Willy Erskine, as Nora thought, few people came to see

them at first, and nobody so much as mentioned the Drumthwacket family.

The name of Erskine was never, as Nora thought, named before her; and

she felt herself more guilty still as she seemed thus to read her own

condemnation in the eyes of others. But now the turn of the season had

arrived; when she cast wistful looks from the corner of the garden up

the long country road, going “north,” as those geographical, seafaring

populations described it, a leaf would now and then flicker down through

the sunny air, a sign that autumn had come. A few weeks more, and the

_Pretty Peggy_ might flutter up the Firth with all her sails set, like a

fine lady coming into a ballroom, as the sailors delighted to say; and

if Nora, penitent, with softness in her eyes, were by, could anyone

doubt that the eager face of the ship’s doctor would expand too, and

that the evil days would come to an end? No one could have doubted it

but Nora. It was as certain that it would all be made up as that the

_Pretty Peggy_ would come safe out of the icy seas. To be sure, ships

were lost there sometimes, sometimes detained among the ice. But look

what a season it has been! Even the men’s wives were easy in their

minds, and sung by their wheels, or mended the nets at their cottage

doors, and looked over the smooth Firth with contented hearts. A week or

two more, and the seamen, with their wages, and their curiosities, and

their rejoicing, would have come home.

There was not a man’s wife in the _Pretty Peggy_ who was so anxious as

Nora. But then it was _her_ fault. It was she who had sent him to

sea--he who was no seaman, he whom a wealthier lot awaited. And perhaps

he would look bitterly upon the woman whose caprice had wrought him so

much harm. This was the thought that made her heart ache, and made the

days so long to her. She used to walk out to the pier to watch the

sunset reflections, and listen in silence to the prognostications of the

fishers and seamen about. When they prophesied a gale, Nora’s heart

would beat wild with alarm; when they gave their word the storm was

past, a hush as of a consoled child would come over her. At last there

came a speck on the horizon, upon which all those ancient mariners fixed

their telescopes. They exchanged opinions about her rig, and her hull,

and her manner of sailing, till Nora, standing by, was half crazed with

suspense. At last the news flew through the town, waking up all the

wynds and cottages. It was the _Pretty Peggy_ at last.

It would be vain to describe the excitement into which Nora, like many

another woman, rose at the news. The other women were the sailors’

wives, who had a right to be moved. She had no such right. She had never

spoken even to her mother of the _Pretty Peggy_. She had been too proud

at first to betray the smallest interest in the movements of her lost

love, and she did not even know whether Mrs. Sinclair was aware that

Willy was coming with the returning seamen out of the icy seas. She had

to invent a reason for her anxiety as the ship drew near the port.

“Willy Morrison is in her, mamma,” said Nora. “I’d like to go down and

see them come in. His mother will be so happy.” Willy Morrison’s mother

had been Nora’s nurse, and that was her excuse.

“Well, well,” said Mrs. Sinclair, with an impatience unusual to her. “I

wanted you at home this afternoon; but Nancy will be proud to see you

have a warm heart to your foster-brother. Be home as soon as you can. I

would not be surprised if some friend was to look in to tea.”

Nora gave her mother a startled look, of which Mrs. Sinclair took no

notice. She looked as if she had her secret too; and most probably she

knew as well as her daughter did who was coming up the tranquil Firth in

the returning ship. Did her mother expect him too? Could it be possible,

after all the tragic hours that were past, that things should fall so

calmly into the old routine, and Willy Erskine, after his voyage, look

in to tea? She did not know if she walked on air or solid ground when

she made her way down again to the pier. If that were to be the end of

it, of what use had been all the agonies of those silent months? Life

seemed to swim before her like a dream and confused phantasmagoria, as

she thought, but yet a subtle sense of happiness was gathering at her

heart. He was coming so soon; he was so near; and all those ghosts

would roll up their gloomy wings and disappear out of sight, when Willy

Erskine once more looked in at the Gushat-house. She went quickly down

along the half-deserted road to the pier where the women were all

crowding. The _Pretty Peggy_ could not reach the harbour yet for more

than an hour; but still, to be so much nearer her, to be ready to meet

the men and hear that all was well, five minutes earlier, was

compensation enough for the wives. They made pleasant little speeches to

Nora as she came down among them. “Ah, Miss Nora, the day will come when

you’ll be lookin’ out for a man o’ your ain,” said one. “And I hope with

a’my heart it’ll be a good man and a pleasant day,” added another. “But

Miss Nora’s man will never be a seafarin’ man like ours, to make her

heart sair,” said a third. “Unless it was a grand captain of a frigate

in a’ his gold lace,” was the ambitious aspiration of Nancy Morrison.

“Sure I am, I didna bring up a winsome young lady for less than that.”

She was a favourite, and this was the pleasant chatter that passed, as

she went among them, from lip to lip.

“I want to see Willy come in from his first voyage, nurse,” said Nora.

What a lying, wicked little speech it was!--and what a true one!--but

before Nancy had time to answer, one of the men on the outlook threw

down his telescope with a groan--rather the glass slid out of his hands.

“Get out o’ my way, women, wi’ your cacklin’,” he said, as he stumbled

down. “Oh, Lord, and their mother that canna stir a foot from her bed!”

With this the old sailor turned his back on the advancing ship, and sat

down on the edge of the pier, and hid his face in his hands. This action

alarmed the entire community, for Peter Rodger was well known to have

two sons in the _Pretty Peggy_. Two or three of the women crowded round

him to ask what he meant, when another of the men gave a sudden cry. “My

God, the flag’s at the half-mast!” he exclaimed.

A sudden horror fell upon the group. It fell upon the town

instinctively, in the twinkling of an eye; the news flew by that strange

electricity which is quicker than the telegraph. It was a sunny

afternoon, the Firth was like glass, the sky was blue--nothing but the

white clouds above and the soft, gliding sails below disturbed the

glistening surface of the sea. The ship, with its white sails, came

softly on before a slight but favourable breeze; but the faces of the

little crowd grew pale in the sunshine, and a shudder ran through them.

There was a pause, and every heart stood still. “She’s got the garland

on the topmast; she’s made a good voyage,” said a younger sailor, under

his breath. “Oh, lad, how dare ye speak,” cried one of the women, “when

she’s bringing death maybe to your mother or to me?”

The strain of the suspense was terrible, as they stood and watched. Some

of the poor wives fell on their knees and prayed aloud--as if that would

bring to life the dead man, probably long ago committed to the

safe-keeping of the sea; some sat down and began to rock themselves,

crying silently, as if their individual fate had been sealed. As for

Nancy Morrison, she stood rigid, with a face as pale as stone, and with

big, dilated eyes watched the ship that was bringing her life or death.

Nora was shocked and disturbed, as was natural. Her heart went forth in

a certain passionate pity for the one, whoever it was, upon whom the

blow was about to fall; but she did not feel the same overpowering

anxiety as that which moved the others. She went softly to her old

nurse, and put her arm round the poor woman. “Oh, Nancy, take courage,”

she cried; “don’t think it’s him!”

“Let me be! oh, let me be!” cried Nancy.

There was no one there in a condition to take comfort or give attention

to anything but one.

And the ship came so slowly, as it seemed to everybody now. The Firth

lit up with all the glorious reflections of the sunset; the May rose

dark upon the blazing water, with the iron skeleton that held at night

its fire signal; the Bass lay like an uncouth shell against the dim

outline of land on the other side, and the long sun-rays slanted and

fell tenderly across the water. Then the horrible excitement of the

watchers was roused into a sharper crisis still. A boat darted forth

from the shore with six stout oarsmen, to the slowly gliding ship. Could

it be a ship of death, like that one that the Ancient Mariner saw

against the sun? Could there have been pestilence on board? It came on

gliding, as the other vessel must have done when “the men all light, the

seraph men,” brought her near the port. These wild thoughts passed

through Nora’s mind alone. There came into it a curious vague wonder

whether it might have been Providence, and not she, that sent Willy

Erskine into such a ship. She seemed to see him on the deck with all, or

almost all, the authority in his hands--the saviour of most of the

disabled crew; healer, ruler, hero. Such was the strange vision that

glided before her eyes as she too eagerly watched the boat. The thought

of his supposed devotion made Nora unselfish too. She ceased to tremble

about their personal meeting. She kept eye and hand firm, to be ready to

give help and succour to her who might be smitten, whoever she might be.

When the boat came back, and got within hailing distance, the

excitement grew terrible. Some of the poor wives threw themselves among

the rocks to get the news a moment earlier. Peter Rodger stood on the

highest ledge, with his broad hand curved like a trumpet round his eager

ear. Nora placed herself behind her nurse instinctively, for she loved

the woman. But the awful strain of all their ears and senses made the

first cry unintelligible to them. Twice the vague shout came over the

waters before it could be comprehended. Then it was caught up and echoed

by a hundred voices--“Only the doctor!” That was what they said.

Only the doctor! There was a shout, and then a cry, sharp with joy, from

all those women. Joy! though it was still death that was coming. They

clasped each other’s hands; they wept aloud; they cried out, in the

relief of their deliverance. The whole community, every living creature

about, began to breathe, and babble, and sob forth thanksgiving. One

figure alone fell forward against the wall on which Nancy Morrison had

been leaning. Nora was stupefied. It was like a great rock falling

suddenly down upon her out of the peaceful sky. She shrank, and gave one

wail and shudder, and then it came, crushing the heart and flesh. The

doctor! He had said true--she was never to see him more.

“Miss Nora, cheer up,” said Nancy, crying, and laughing, and shivering

with joy. “Dinna take it so sair to heart. It’s her nerves, my bonnie

woman. But they’re a’ safe, noo, baith lads and men. It’s but the

doctor--do ye no’ hear what they say?”

Then Nora rose up desperate, and turned her stony face upon them. “Do

you think there’s none to break their hearts for him?” she cried, with a

wild indignation. “Do you think there’s no mother, no woman watching? Be

silent, ye cruel women! How dare you tell me it’s only _him_?”

Then they all looked at her with pathetic faces, gathering round her

where she stood--she who did not know what she was saying. Impatiently

she turned from their looks. What could sympathy or anything do for her?

What did it matter? “Let me be!” she cried, as Nancy had cried. Let her

alone! that was all she could say.

“Eh, Miss Nora, if we had kent the doctor was onything to you!” cried

one of the pitiful women. Nora turned round with a certain wild

fierceness almost before the words were said.

“And who said he was anything to me?” she asked, with a strange scorn of

herself and them. He was nothing to her; she could not even wear black

for him, or let anybody know she mourned. She shook herself clear of the

pitying people, she could not tell how. Like a blind creature, seeing

nothing, with an instinct only to get home anyhow, she went straight

forward, not knowing where she placed her foot; and thus walked

sightless, open-eyed, and miserable--into Willy Erskine’s arms.

The cry she uttered rang in the ears of all the watching population for

years after. They forgot the ship and the men who were so near at hand

to gather round this curious group. Nora fell forward into her lover’s

arms like an inanimate thing. One shock she had borne, and it had taken

all her strength--the other she could not bear. For the first time in

her life she lost consciousness. The light had gone out of her eyes

before--now the very breath died on her lips. Mrs. Sinclair, who had

come down to the pier with him to find her child, could never be

sufficiently thankful that Willy was a doctor and knew precisely what to

do. He carried his love all the way along the pier, hampered by eager

offers of help, and still more anxious comments of sympathy, to Nancy

Morrison’s cottage on the shore, his heart full of remorse and

exultation. Though he had long ago forgotten his threat about the

_Pretty Peggy_, still it was quite true that he had come, like a

conspirator, to surprise from Nora’s honest eyes, from her candid face,

some revelation of her true feelings. She had so revealed them now as

that they never could be denied again; and though it was not Willy’s

fault, he was remorseful in his tenderness. He had never set foot on the

_Pretty Peggy_. He had forgotten so entirely even the use he had made of

her name, that he believed, like Mrs. Sinclair, that it was kindness to

her foster-brother which had taken Nora to the pier. Instead of an

unprofitable visit to the Greenland seas, he had been settling himself

very advantageously in an inland town, where his “connections” in the

county were sure to be of use to him; and after this interval, with the

mother’s concurrence, had come, with sober determination not to be

discouraged, to know what Nora meant, and what his fate was to be. All

this Nora learnt afterwards by degrees, with wrath and happiness. The

doctor who had died was a dissipated old man, of a class too common in

the Greenland ships. “I kent weel that doited body could never be

onything to Miss Nora,” cried Nancy Morrison, drying her eyes. The

mystery was cleared up in a fashion to all the admiring and sympathetic

population round when Willy Erskine appeared on the scene; and yet

nobody knew what it meant except Nora and he.

She was very angry and she was very happy, as we have said. But she had

taken all power of resistance, had she wished to resist, out of her own

hands. And the story came to the usual end of such stories, and there is

nothing more to say.

PRINTED BY

MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED

EDINBURGH

FOOTNOTES:

[A] The Paraphrases are a selection of hymns always printed along with

the metrical version of the Psalms in use in Scotland, and more easy,

being more modern in diction, to be learned by heart.

[B] Used in Scotland in the sense of weakness of body--invalidism.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Lady's Walk, by Mrs. Margaret Oliphant