The Duke arrived with his eldest son as soon as post-horses could bring
him. He had been in the north, not very far away, so that the interval,
though it represented much more difficult travelling than the journey
from one end to the other of Great Britain nowadays, was not very long.
Lord John had been a trouble to his family all his life. He had followed
none of the traditions of prudence and good sense which had made his
race what they were. The scrapes in which he had been were innumerable,
and all his family were aware that nothing but embarrassment and trouble
was likely to come to them from his hand. Sometimes this state of
affairs may exist without any breach of the bonds of natural affection;
but perhaps when a man is a duke and accustomed to have many things bow
to his will, the things and persons that cannot be made to do so become
more obnoxious to him than to a common man. No doubt a shock of natural
distress convulsed the father’s mind at the first news of what had
happened, but after a while there came, horrible as it seems to say it,
a certain relief into the august mind of the Duke. At least here was an
end of it; there could be no more to follow, no new disgraces or
inconveniences to be encountered. Scarcely a year had come or gone for
many years past without some fresh development of John’s powers of
mischief. Now, poor fellow! all was over; he could do no more harm, make
no more demands on a revenue which was not able to bear such claims,
endanger no more a name which indeed had borne a great deal in its day
without much permanent disadvantage. On the whole there was thus
something to set against the terrible shock of a son’s sudden death by
accident. A few questions thrown into the air as it were, a general
demand upon somebody for information burst from the Duke during that
long drive. “Where is this linn, do you know? What could he have wanted
there? On the land of that old ruffian, Drumcarro? And what did he want
there?” But to the last question at least no one could make any reply.
Even to speak of Drumcarro’s lovely daughter as an inducement would have
been a jarring note when the poor fellow was so recently dead. And the
Duke could answer his own question well enough; any petty intrigue would
be reason enough for John, the worse the better. His only fear was that
some dark story of seduction and revenge might unfold itself when he got
there.
It was Glendochart who received his chief when he reached his journey’s
end, and told him the little there was to tell. It was supposed that
Lord John had somehow missed his footing when at the head of the linn.
Some one had heard the sound of a fall, and the body had been found
below at the foot of the waterfall. This was all that could be
discovered at the end of two or three days which had elapsed. The Duke
saw, with a natural pang, his dead son laid out upon the mistress’s bed,
and then he visited the scene of the tragedy. He inspected everything
with a clouded countenance, asking brief, sharp questions from time to
time. To Glendochart he seemed suspicious of violence and foul play, a
suspicion which was lurking in Glendochart’s own mind, with strange
surmises which he could not put into words, but which his mind was on
the alert to find some clue to. This, however, was scarcely the Duke’s
frame of mind. After he had visited the spot where the body had been
found, and looked up the foaming fall of the linn, and heard everything
that could be told him, he put a sudden question which dismayed
Glendochart. “Have you any suspicions?” he said. “Has there been any
suggestion--of violence?”
“The idea has no doubt been suggested,” Mr. Campbell replied, “but I can
find nothing to give it any countenance. There were signs as of stamping
of feet at one place near the fallen tree, but the man who found the
body accounted for that as having slipped and fallen there.”
“It has been suggested then?” said the Duke, with another cloud coming
over his face. “Glendochart, I may speak freely to you that would bring
no discredit on the name. Was there any story, any reason for his
staying here?”
Glendochart felt his countenance redden, though it was of that well-worn
colour which shows little. He suddenly realised, with a sense of relief
unspeakable, what it would have been had Lord John lived and thriven, to
have intimated to the chief that his son had married Drumcarro’s
daughter. Glendochart had himself been flattered by the idea. He saw the
reverse of the medal now.
“I know of none,” he said, “my Lord Duke. He was more at this house than
at any other house round about.”
“And there was no story--no lass, disappointed perhaps--or angry father?
You know what I mean, Glendochart. One of my own name, and not so far
from me in blood, I know that I can trust you. You know, too--what my
poor boy was.”
“I understand what your Grace means,” said Glendochart. “I have heard of
nothing of the kind.”
“And who was it that heard the fall?”
“It was my father-in-law, Drumcarro himself. He was taking his usual
walk. I don’t imagine he ever thought it was so serious. He called to
the man in the byre to see to it, that he thought he had heard a fall.”
“I will see Drumcarro. I suppose----”
“If it will satisfy your Grace better--but he is an old man, and much
shaken with his wife’s death which took place only a fortnight ago.”
The Duke gave his clansman what looked like a suspicious glance. But he
only said, “It will be better not to disturb him. I would have thought,”
he added, “that old Drumcarro was tough enough to stand the loss of his
wife or anything else.”
“We sometimes do men injustice,” said Glendochart, a little stiffly;
“and the shock of having another death, so to speak, in the house, has
had a great effect upon his mind--or I should perhaps say his nerves.”
“Well, well, I will not disturb him,” said the Duke. He said no more
until they reached again the head of the linn. Then he stood for a few
minutes amid the spray, looking down as he had looked up the boiling
foam of waters. The cloud had gone off his face. He turned to his son,
by his side, who had said little all this time. “I think we may satisfy
ourselves that it was pure accident,” he said.
“I think so,” said the taintless heir, with a solemn nod of his head.
The Duke stood there for a moment more, and then he took off his hat and
said, “Thank God.” With all his heart, Glendochart echoed the surprising
words. He thought that he indeed had cause for thankfulness--that he
should never have had the occasion to approach his chief with news of an
alliance that would have been so little to his mind; that Jeanie’s name
should have been kept out of the matter altogether, and no questions put
to the old man whose nerves had been so strangely shaken. He had indeed
cause for thankfulness; but the Duke, why? Glendochart came to
understand later why the Duke should have been glad that no new scandal
was to be associated with the end of his son’s life.
And so Lord John was carried in great state to the burial place of his
fathers, and was rehabilitated with his family, and mourned by his
mother and sisters, like other men. And whatever the tragedy was that
attended his last hours it was buried with him, and never told to man.
There is no coroner in Scotland; and in those remote regions, and at
that period, the Duke’s satisfaction that his son’s death was caused by
accident was enough for all.
Drumcarro scarcely left his room while that solemn visitor was in the
house. He appeared after, a singularly changed and broken man, and fell
into something like the habits of his old life. There had been no secret
in his strange retirement, but there was no doubt left in the mind of
any who surrounded him, that something had happened which was not in the
peaceful routine of existence. They formed their own impressions at
their leisure; it was nothing to the laird what they thought. He had
deceived no man, neither had he confided in any man. When Glendochart
left the house, taking charge of the mournful conveyance which carried
Lord John home, life at Drumcarro would, in any circumstances, have been
a wonderfully changed and shrunken life. It was the first time that the
diminished family had been left alone since the death of the mistress.
At the family table, once so well surrounded, Drumcarro sat down with
his one remaining son, and the vast expanse of the wide table-cloth
vacant save in that corner. It did not occur to any one to substitute a
smaller table for the long-stretching board where there had been room
for all. Jamie, who was never seen without a book, compensated himself
for the silence and anxiety of this _tête-à-tête_ by reading furtively,
while his father sat with his shoulders up to his ears, and his eyes,
almost lost in his shaggy eyebrows, glaring out now and then with a
glance of gloomy fire. It was rarely that he addressed the boy, and the
boy escaped from him into his book. The mother was gone, Jeanie was
gone, every one who could make that empty board a little brighter. The
father and son swallowed their meal side by side, but did not prolong it
any more than was possible. The sight of them affected Merran’s nerves
when she served them, though that ruddy lass might well have been
supposed to have no such things in her possession. “There’s the laird
just glowering frae him as if he saw something no canny, and Jamie with
his book. And me that minds all that fine family!” cried Merran. “Ye
must just go ben yourself, Marg’ret, for I canna do it.” And there is no
doubt that it was a piteous sight.
Jeanie, on the other hand, recovered her spirit and her ease of mind
with singular rapidity under the sheltering roof of Glendochart. She was
not told of Lord John’s death for some time, and never of the rapidity
with which it followed her interrupted interview. She was very much
moved and excited when she heard of his death, wondering with natural
self-importance whether her resistance of his suit had anything to do
with the breaking down of his health. It half relieved, half
disappointed Jeanie to discover after that his death was caused by an
accident and not by love. But indeed she had then only a limited space
to give in her thoughts to that lover of the past. He of the present had
the command of the situation. Determined as she had been not to
understand Gordon, the effect of a few days in the same house with him
had been marvellous, and when the fairy regions of youthful experience
began once more to open before Jeanie, she forgot that she had cause of
grievance against the companion who opened to her that magic gate. All
tragic possibilities disappeared from the path of the girl who had no
longer any distracting struggle, but whose desires and inclinations all
went with her fate. Her father made no objection to her marriage. “Let
him take her if he wants her. I have no need of her here,” Drumcarro
said. Jeanie indeed, instead of brightening the house and soothing the
fever in him, excited and disturbed her father: “I want no lass about
the house, now her mother that keeped her a little in order is gone.”
She was married eventually at Glendochart, the Laird making no
appearance even. He was said to be ill, and his illness had taken the
curious form, a form not unprecedented, but much against nature, of
strong dislike to certain persons. He could not abide the sight of
Jeanie: “Let her do what she will, but let her no more come near me. Let
him take her if he likes, I’m well pleased to be quit of her.” When
Jeanie came attended by her lover to bid her father good-bye, the Laird
almost drove her away. He got up from his chair supporting himself upon
its arms, his eyes burning like coals of fire, his now gaunt and worn
figure trembling with passion. “Go away to the parlour,” he said, “and
get your tea, or whatever you’ve come for. I want none of you here.”
“Father, I just came to bid you good-bye,” said Jeanie.
“Go ’way to the parlour. I suffer nobody to disturb me here. Go ’way to
Marg’ret. Ye’ll get what ye want from her, and plenty of petting, no
doubt. Go ’way to the parlour. Marg’ret! Get them what they want and let
them go.”
“Oh, father,” cried Jeanie weeping, “it’s not for anything we’ve come
but just for kindness--to say good-bye.”
He was a strange figure standing up between his chair and table,
supporting himself by his hands, stooping forward, grown old all at
once, his hair and beard long and ragged in aspect, a nervous tremor in
his limbs. Could that be the hale and vigorous man who scarcely seemed
beyond middle age? Jeanie assayed to say something more, but the words
were checked on her lips by his threatening looks.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Consider it’s done and all your duty paid, and
begone from my sight, for I cannot bide to see you.” He added a moment
after with a painful effort over himself, “I’m an old man, and not well
in my health. Marg’ret! Ye mind me of many a thing I would fain forget.
Good-bye, and for the love of God go away, and let me see you no more.”
“Is he always like that?” Jeanie asked, clinging to Marg’ret in the
parlour, where that faithful adherent prepared tea for the visitors.
“Like what?” asked Marg’ret with a determination to keep up appearances
in the presence of the strange gentleman with whom she had no
associations. “The maister’s not very well. He has never been in his
richt health since your mother died. That made an awfu’ change in the
house, as might have been expected. Such a quiet woman as she was, never
making any steer it’s just by ordinar’ how she’s missed.”
“Is it that? Is that all?” cried Jeanie.
“And what else would it be?” asked Marg’ret with a look that could not
be gainsaid.
Marg’ret did not know any more than the rest what had happened. Lord
John had died of an accident, he had fallen over the linn, and from the
Duke himself to the last of the name all were satisfied that it was so.
And in Drumcarro House there was not a word said to alter this view. But
many heavy thoughts had arisen there of which nothing was said.
Drumcarro did what is also not uncommon in such circumstances: he
justified those who explained his strange conduct by illness, and fell
ill. The doctor said it was a malady of long standing which had thus
developed itself as it was certain to have done sooner or later. He
recommended that a doctor should be sent for from Glasgow, who had
become very famous for his practice in this particular malady. It is
doubtful whether Glendochart, who had the conduct of the business, knew
anything about Dr. Dewar. At all events, if he did, it did not prevent
him from sending for that special practitioner. The result was a curious
scene in the chamber of the patient, who raised himself from his bed to
stare at the new comer, and after contemplating him for some time in
doubtful silence between wrath and astonishment, suddenly burst out into
a great guffaw of laughter. “This was all that was wanted,” he said. But
he allowed Anne’s husband to come in, to examine him, to prescribe, and
with a grim humour saw him wave away the offered fee. “Na, it’s all in
the family,” said the grim patient with a sudden sense of the grotesque
illumining the darkness of his sick room. He was not insensible to this
irony of circumstance, and he made no resistance. It was the only thing
that produced a gleam of amusement in these latter days.