_It’s a wide gulf that the arms of a child cannot bridge._
Marcus refused to wait even for the joy of wresting Shan’t from her
aunt. He was furious. Miss Carston had deliberately made a fool of him;
in doing it she had made a fool of herself, too, but that did not make
it any the better. With herself she might do what she liked; but she
had no right to treat him as she had done. He had come inspired with
the best motives; had been thinking of nothing but the happiness of
Diana. To secure that he had been willing to forget everything that had
passed between himself and the aunt.
That there was something she had promised Diana not to tell him was
quite evident, but she might have adopted some other means of keeping
her promise. Was it likely he would have wished to hear anything Diana
did not wish to tell him?
That was a question an injured man might ask himself without guessing
the right answer.
He had said he would wait in London for Shan’t—he could not disappoint
the child, and her Nannie had promised to deliver her up the next
day with sufficient overalls, jerseys, shoes, and socks, etc., for a
fortnight.
“You can manage the journey, sir?” Nannie had asked, doubting, and Mr.
Maitland had said a housemaid was returning to Scotland with him who
would look after her.
So Shan’t went to Scotland, and about what happened on the journey
Uncle Marcus forever held his speech, but he was a wreck when he got
to Glenbossie, and was thankful to hand her over to a housemaid who
could manage her. The travelling one had signally failed. “She didn’t
understand me a bit,” said Shan’t; “she simply couldn’t keep me in
order, could she?”—this triumphantly to Uncle Marcus. “She could not,”
he agreed; whereupon she informed him that it was no use just telling
her not to do things. “You must be firm,” she explained.
“I see,” said Uncle Marcus.
Shan’t must have written a letter full of boastful arrogance to Dick,
because she got one from him, by what she called “returnal post,” and
in it he said: “I don’t suppose your place is like this—it’s simply
toppin’. Mr. Taboret got forty brace of grouse to his own gun the other
day, and not content with that effort he went out when it was yet light
and got three salmon! I saw him do the mighty deed—then in the evening
he danced—he wears a kilt—does Uncle Marcus? This house is about as
big as the Albert Hall in London, I should think, from what I can
remember of it. They got four hundred brace of grouse the other day—I
sat in a butt, with a Duke, I think he was, but he wasn’t at all a bad
sort of chap; he wore a kilt too and his beard was red”: in answer
to which Shan’t wrote a pithy post-card: “we shoot dere hear,” which
brought forth a stinging reply: “I have shot two roe _deer_—not _dere_;
you spelt it wrong—write it out four hundred times—it’s not supposed to
be good form to shoot roe deer with a shot-gun; does Uncle Marcus?”
“Do you?” asked Shan’t anxiously of her uncle, her sporting world
trembling in the balance.
“No.”
Shan’t wrote, “He says he doesunt”—and there the correspondence ended.
To any reference on the part of Shan’t to her darlin’ Aunt Elsie,
Marcus turned a deaf ear, and to Shan’t a stony countenance, and Shan’t
learnt very quickly not to talk about her darlin’ aunt, but, child
though she was, she felt there was disloyalty in that, so she thought
about her a great deal—and when Uncle Marcus said: “What are you
thinking about, Shan’t?” she would piously answer: “You wouldn’t like
if I said!”
She lo-oved Scotland. She bathed and she paddled and she went out in
a boat with John and she f-ished! And John spoilt her, as only a man
knows how to spoil.
She quickly learnt at which farm—and it was at every farm—she could get
oat cakes and milk at any time of the day, and she was convinced it was
French the Scotch spoke, and when they called her wee, she said. “Mais
non!”
She sat with joy under the Minister. The service was never too long,
because at the end of it came a money-box on the end of a pole,
which was poked into the face of every member of the congregation,
and finally made its way upstairs and round the galleries, which
perambulations she loved. She rode a cream-coloured pony, with a black
stripe down his back, on the hill, and a fine swagger was hers as she
rode up the steep, narrow tracks with Sandy and John walking one on
either side of her, through the heather: she discoursing all the while
on the differences between a church and a kirk—which were mainly,
it seemed, the differences between dull bags or plates and a box on
the end of a stick; serious differences, these. “There’s an a’ful
difference between them whatever,” agreed John, but then he agreed to
everything she said.
She was frightfully spoilt and Marcus was not behind the others in
doing his share of the spoiling. So when she was thrown from the pony
and lay in her bed unconscious, a black cloud hung over the Lodge of
Glenbossie, and Marcus, in the depths of despair, wandered here and
there unable to do anything because he had done everything that could
be done and it had not availed. Sandy and John just stood around, to
be there if anything should happen—and nothing happened, that was the
worst of it. Anything—excepting, of course, one thing—would be better
than this lying still—conscious of nothing. Mrs. Oven was so cross no
one could go near her. It was the way sorrow took her, she told Pillar,
who had dared to demand an explanation.
The household refused to be comforted, and when the Minister came to
pray for the “wee lassie,” Uncle Marcus turned upon him furiously,
saying, “It’s not come to that yet,” which was an old story, but it
showed how true that old story was to human nature: and the Minister,
no doubt, went on praying: being too devout a man to be deterred, and
knowing probably that Mr. Maitland, like many another good man, had not
yet met God face to face.
Then Aunt Elsie arrived wearing what Diana would have called a hat
without a kick left in it, of which hat Marcus approved. It seemed
impossible now to associate her with absurd behaviour. Here was no
woman playing ridiculous jokes, with little fun in them, but a woman
calm, composed, and most unhappy.
Marcus was glad she wouldn’t have anything to eat until she had seen
Shan’t, and seen for herself how ill she was. Elsie thought it was
impossible she could be so ill as Mr. Maitland had led her to expect;
she was certain he exaggerated as all men did. The very fact of their
strength made them overestimate the weakness of others. She followed
him upstairs, and as he stopped at a door he put a finger to his lips.
At any other time she might have resented this and might have said, Was
it likely she would go into a sick-room talking and laughing? But now
she nodded her head. She was an aunt subdued. She followed him into a
darkened room: and a nurse rose from the bedside. She did not put her
finger to her lips because she knew how unlikely it was that Shan’t
could be disturbed by anything.
“There’s no change,” she said.
“Go and rest,” said Marcus, and she went; perhaps the calm grey eyes
of Elsie gave her a sense of security. At all events, she did not
question the right of the new-comer to wait and watch. Marcus sat down
at one side of the bed, Elsie at the other. They seemed so near to one
another, divided only by the ridge of bedclothes so slightly raised.
“Concussion,” he whispered.
Elsie nodded; she never spoke. He wished she would say something,
possibly: How terrible it must have been for him! Then he might have
said: What a journey it must have been for her! But she said nothing.
Her eyes never left Shan’t’s face. Sometimes Marcus looked from Shan’t
to Elsie. In the daylight darkness—the blinds were drawn—he could see,
he thought, why it was the children were so fond of her, and why, if
her brother in any way resembled her, Sibyl was so devoted to him. He
liked her quietness—although she might, perhaps, have said a few words:
but that was a thing no woman could do. If she had spoken at all she
must have spoken too much.
And so Marcus and Elsie, when they were not eating or sleeping, and
they ate very little and slept hardly at all, sat and watched. And
while they watched, Elsie had time to discover that Marcus had nice
hands and he to find that he rather liked the way her hair grew; and
that was all. He was the uncle on the one side—she the aunt on the
other—of Shan’t’s bed—so small a thing dividing them.