THE doctor came, very careful to explain that he had come to call out of friendship only, because it was so long since he had seen Sir Ludovic. But he could perceive nothing to justify John’s alarm. Sir Ludovic was glad to see the neighbor who was more intelligent than most of his neighbors, and with whom he could have a little talk. The doctor was a plain man of homely Scotch manners and speech; but he knew all about the county and everybody in it, and was not unacquainted with books. Sir Ludovic, who was glad to be delivered from himself, and who found it easier to escape from the prospect which oppressed him, by means of society than in any other way, detained the doctor as long as he could, and listened with much more patience than usual to the gossip of the parish, and smiled at the jokes which Dr. Hume carried about from patient to patient to “give the poor bodies a laugh,” he said.
“Come back again soon,” the old man said, accompanying his visitor to the door. The doctor was pleased, for he had seen Sir Ludovic much less complaisant. He stepped into the vaulted kitchen before he left the house, to tell Bell what he thought.
“I see no difference in him,” said Dr. Hume; “he’s an old man. We are none of us so young as we once were, Bell; and an old man cannot live forever. He’s bound to get an attack of bronchitis or something else before long, and to slip through our fingers. But I see nothing to be alarmed at to-day. There’s a little bit of a vacant look in his eyes; but, Lord bless us! many of us have that all our lives, and never die a day the sooner. He tells me the ladies are expected—”
“Na, but that’s news, doctor!” said Bell; “the ladies! it’s no their time for three months yet, the Lord be thanked, and I’ve never heard a word.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “now you’re warned, and you can take your measures accordingly. He certainly said they were coming. They’re no the wisest women on the face of the earth; but still, if you are anxious, it would be a comfort, do you not think so, to have some of the family in the house?”
“Ye dinna ken our ladies, doctor—ye dinna ken our ladies,” said Bell.
“Atweel, I ken a heap of ladies,” said the doctor, with a laugh. He liked a joke at women when it was to be heard. “One’s very like another; but if it was only for his little Peggy, as he calls her, I should think he would be glad to have his daughters here.”
“He’s no a bit glad, no more nor the rest of us—nor Miss Margaret either,” said Bell; and it was with a clouded countenance that she saw the doctor mount his horse at the door of the court. And when John came in to ask what Dr. Hume thought, she gave him an answer which was full of sorrowful impatience. “He said nothing it was any pleasure to hear,” said Bell, and it was only later that she unbosomed herself of her vexation. “He says there’s nothing wrong; and syne he goes away telling me that the ladies are coming, and that it will be a comfort to have some of the family in the house. That means that a’s wrong, so far as I’m equal to judging. Sir Ludovic in his bed wi’ a long illness and the ladies here!”
Bell flung up her hands with a groan; the very idea was too much for her; but John was obstinate in his preconceived certainty.
“Na,” he said, “Sir Ludovic will no have a long illness. He’ll just fail, just in a moment; that’s what he’ll do. If I dinna ken him better than a dizzen doctors, it would be a wonder—me that have been his body-servant these twenty years.”
“I maun gang up the stair and see for mysel’” said Bell. She tied on her clean apron with decision, and could not quite banish from her countenance the look of a person who would stand no nonsense, who was not to be taken in—but whose inspection would be final. And Sir Ludovic was pleased to see Bell too. He was not annoyed to be disturbed. He turned toward her with a vague smile, and gave his book a scarcely perceptible push away from him. This little action made Bell’s heart sink, as she confessed afterward. She would much rather have seen him impatient, and been requested to cut her errand short. On the contrary, her master was not displeased to talk. He let her tell him about the drawing which was still going on, and her own wonder that one who had been the other day “a callant about the doors” should possess such a wonderful gift.
“Callants about the doors are very apt to surprise us as they grow up,” Sir Ludovic said, “and Rob Glen is certainly clever; but you must not let him lose his time here. It is certain that I cannot afford to buy his picture, Bell.”
“But maybe the ladies would do it, Sir Ludovic,” said Bell, seeing an opening; “maybe the ladies would like a picture of the auld house—though me at the door (as Miss Margret will have me) would be a drawback. I hear from the doctor, Sir Ludovic, that you’re expecting the ladies? I didna think it was near their time.”
“To be sure,” said Sir Ludovic, “I wrote, but the letter has never been posted. If you had not spoken I should have forgotten all about it. Bell, I thought they might come a little sooner.”
“It’s very true,” said Bell, with a grave countenance, “that it’s bonnie weather; and when they were here last, in September, we had nothing but wind and rain; but for a’ that, when ladies have made their plans, it’s a great deal of trouble to change them, and it’s aye in September they come. Do you no think, Sir Ludovic, they would like it better if you let them come at their ain time?”
“Do you suppose they would think it a trouble, Bell?” Sir Ludovic had written his letter as a matter of duty for his little Peggy’s sake; but he was not disinclined to get out of it, to allow a feasible reason for not sending it, if such a one should present itself; for he did not anticipate the arrival of his daughters with any pleasure.
“Weel, Sir Ludovic, you see they’ve all their plans made. They’re awfu’ leddies for plans. You ken yoursel’ it’s a’ laid out every day what they’re to do; and Mrs. Bellingham, she canna bide being put out o’ her way.”
“That’s true, Bell, that’s very true,” said Sir Ludovic, suddenly remembering how his eldest daughter received any interference with her projects. “I am very glad you reminded me,” said the old man; “after all, perhaps, I had better let things take their course. I thought it might be better, whatever happened, to have them here; but, as you say, Jean does not like any interference with— I think I will keep my letter to myself, after all.”
“And nothing’s going to happen that I ken of, Sir Ludovic. We are all in our ordinar.”
“That is very true, too,” he said, with a smile; “and now you can go away and tell John to bring me my wine and my biscuit. The doctor and you together have wasted my morning.” He drew his book toward him again as he dismissed her. This was the only “good sign” that Bell saw in her master; and her face was so grave when she went down-stairs that John paused in his preparation for his master’s simple luncheon with a sombre triumph.
“Aweel? You’ll not tell me I’m an auld fule again,” John said.
“Then I’ll tell you you’re an auld raven, a prophet o’ evil,” said his wife, with vehemence. “Gang up the stairs this moment and gie the maister his drop o’ wine; he’s crying for that and his biscuit, and there he might sit, and you never take the trouble to gang near him. Oh ay!” said Bell, dreamily—“oh ay! The bairn divined it, and the auld man saw it, and the doctor sees it too, though he winna say sae; and Bell’s the last to ken! In our ordinar, just in our ordinar! but them that has een can see the end.”
However, though this foreboding gathered force by the adhesion of one after another, it was not as yet any more than a foreboding, and the days went on very quietly without any new event. The next Sunday, on which Sir Ludovic had intended to go to church, was very wet, and it was not until a fortnight after his first announcement of his intention, that the old carriage was at last got out, and the horses, which had been making themselves useful in the farm, harnessed. They were not a very splendid or high-spirited pair, as may be conceived, but they answered the purpose well enough. It was a true summer Sunday, the sunshine more warm, the air more still, than on any other day. The roses were fading off the hedge-rows, the green corn was beginning to wave and rustle in the fields; the country groups that came from afar on every visible road, not all to the kirk on the hill (for there was a Free Church in the “laigh toun,” not to speak of “the chapel,” which was Baptist, and had a dozen members, like the Apostles), were sprinkled with light dresses in honor of the season, and all was still in the villages save for this gathering and animated crowd. The big old coach, with its old occupant, called forth much excitement in the Kirkton. Carriages and fine people had failed to the parish church.
Perhaps it is one of the penalties which Scotland has paid for being no longer unanimous, and dividing herself into different camps, that her gentry should have deserted that old centre of local life, and left the National Church which has played so large a part in Scotch history. It is one of the least sensible as well as the least lovely features of modern Scotland. Of all the squires in this division of Fife, not one but old Sir Ludovic united in the national worship. The others drove miles away to the “English Chapel” at the county town, which was gay with their carriages and finery, like the corresponding “English Chapel” in Florence or Rome; very like it, indeed, in more ways than it is necessary to mention. Gentility poured thither, even the rich shopkeepers, or at least the manufacturers of the second generation; for to belong to the English Church gave a kind of brevet rank. Sir Ludovic, perhaps, was too indifferent to change his ways in his old age; and then neither he nor the world required any outward proof that he was a very superior person. Why it was that he had set his mind on going to church at all after this long gap in his attendance it would be hard to tell. He could not have told himself. It was like a last visit to court, a last parade to an old soldier, a thing to be done as long as he could calculate upon his time, before the days had arrived, which he could see advancing, when he would no longer have command of his own movements.
Sir Ludovic felt a sensation of relief when he had fairly set out. Of this thing, then, which he had determined to do, he was not to be balked. He was to have power and time to accomplish this last duty. The burial-place of the Leslies was close to the east end of the church, the head of the vault touching the old chancel, a relic of the times when to be near that sacred spot in the morning quarter, “toward the sunrising,” was to be doubly safe. Here Sir Ludovic stood for a moment, looking less at the familiar grave than at the still more familiar landscape, the low hills round the horizon on three sides, the glimmer of the sea that filled up the circle, the broad amphitheatre of fertile fields that swept around. He did not care to turn from that wide and liberal prospect, all sweet with summer air and warm with sunshine, to the heavy mass of stone that shut in the remains of his kindred. He gave one glance at it only, as he walked past, though it was that spot he had chosen to view the landscape from. A faint smile came upon his face as he looked at it. There was his place waiting and ready, and soon to be filled. He asked himself, with a little thrill of strange sensation, whether he would feel the breezes, such as were always rife in Stratheden, or have any consciousness of the landscape, when he lay there, as, by-and-by, he should be lying. He walked very steadily, yet with a nervous tremor, of which he himself was conscious, if nobody else, and kept his hand upon Margaret’s shoulder, scarcely to support him—that was not necessary—but yet to give him a little prop. Some of the people, the elders and the farmers who felt themselves sufficiently important, threw themselves in his way, and took off their hats with kindly respect.
“I’m real glad to see you out, Sir Ludovic,” and, “I hope you’re well this fine morning, Sir Ludovic,” they said. The old man took off his hat and made them all a sweeping bow.
“Good-morning to you all, my friends,” he said, and, with a little additional tremor, hurried into church, to be safe from all these greetings. The church, as we have already said, was a monstrous compound, such as perhaps only Scotland could produce nowadays. The old door opened into a noble but gloomy old Norman church, very small, but lofty and symmetrical, in the corners of which some old monuments, brass denuded of their metal (if that is not a bull), rude in Northern art, but ancient, and looking, by dint of their imperfections, more ancient than they were—were piled together. In the little round basement of the tower, where there had been a tiny chapel behind the altar in the old days, a man in his shirt-sleeves stood pulling the rope, which moved a cracked and jingling bell; and the vast chancel arch opposite was blocked up with a wooden partition, through which, by means of a little door, you entered the new painted and varnished pews of the modern building, which Sir Claude Morton had built for the parish. The parish was quite contented, be it allowed, and Sir Claude went to the English Chapel, and did not have his sins brought home to him every Sunday; and among the higher classes you may be sure that it was the old Reformers and John Knox who were supposed to be in fault, and not an enlightened connoisseur like Sir Claude, who did so much for the art-instruction of the world away from home. Sir Claude was the chief “heritor” of the parish, for the lands of the Leslies had dwindled almost to nothing.
We will not affirm that Sir Ludovic would have done much better, but then, at least, he was not a connoisseur. He, for his part, made no reflections upon this as he went in, and placed himself in the great square pew, the only one of the kind in the new church, all lined with red cloth, and filled with chairs instead of benches, which marked his own importance in the parish. He thought of the difference between the old and the new without troubling himself about art, and with a little shiver acknowledged that the light and air and brightness of the wooden barn were more comfortable than the stately grace and dampness of the old building, which was, like himself, chilled and colorless with age. But how many generations of old men like himself had passed under the great gray arch that “swore,” as the French say, at the vulgar new walls! A lifetime of threescore and fifteen years was as nothing in the history of that ancient place. And there it would stand for generations more, watching them come and go— It, and he with it, lying so close under the old stones. Would it be anything to Ludovic Leslie, once placed there, who came and who might go? This thought gave him, as it always did, a kind of vertigo and swimming of the brain. To fancy one’s self—one’s self, not another, as insensible to everything in life—
“Whirled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stories, and trees.”
Is that possible? Sir Ludovic tried, but could not do it. It made his head swim round and round.
All the time the people were taking their places, clattering in with much noise, and perhaps not much reverence. Ordinarily they waited about, the men at least, until the bell stopped and the hour had struck. But perhaps out of respect to old Sir Ludovic, who had not been there for so long, and who might never—who could tell?—be there again, for he was an old man, they came in after him, making a great noise, shutting and fastening after them the doors of their pews. And then Dr. Burnside walked into the pulpit, solemnly preceded by the beadle with the big Bible, and the service began. Neither Sir Ludovic nor his daughter paid any attention to the fact that the singing of the old metrical psalms was very rough and tuneless. Margaret did not know much better, having had no training, and heard no music; and Sir Ludovic, it must be confessed, was full of his own thoughts, and paid but little attention. He was scarcely caught even by the words of that Psalm, known from their cradles to all Scots, which Dr. Burnside hastily, and with some perturbation, on hearing of Sir Ludovic’s presence, had changed for the one before chosen.
Dr. Burnside had not had it in his power for a long time now to set Sir Ludovic’s duty before him. And when his wife brought him the news that the old carriage from Earl’s-hall had passed, with the Leslies in it, the minister had a moment of great excitement. His sermon had not been at all adapted for such an occasion, but had been addressed very generally to the parish world about its commonplace sins of gossip and fibbing, and such-like. Dr. Burnside ran to his writing-table and hastily chose a sermon of a different complexion. He had preached it before, but he had a great and consoling consciousness that nobody paid much attention, and certainly Sir Ludovic had never heard it. It was about the conclusion of life. He did not think of it as touching himself, and never had known the tremulous attempt to realize that conclusion which made Sir Ludovic’s head turn round; but he knew that an old man ought to think of his latter end, and that it was of great importance not to neglect an opportunity that might not occur again.
“Will you tell the precentor, my dear, to wait a moment. I have some changes to make,” the Doctor said, hastily; and thus it was that the Psalm was altered, and the one now chosen sung to an unusual tune, which had been intended for the former one, and which put the rude singers out—
“Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill;
For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still,”
sang the rough, rural voices. They sang as if the object of their worship was far away at sea, and required a hearty shout to catch his ear. And Sir Ludovic did not pay much attention. He had known the words by heart ever since he knew anything, which made them less striking to him. Besides, he had no trouble on that point; he did not doubt the rod and staff that would support him; he wanted rather dimly to know what sort of place that dark valley was, and what—not whether it was bliss or despair, but what—lay beyond.
Dr. Burnside preached his sermon with great feeling and great meaning, so that everybody in church felt that it had a bearing upon Sir Ludovic; but Sir Ludovic himself did not see it. He propped himself in the corner and listened respectfully, sometimes asking himself, however, how Burnside could keep on so long, and why the fact of being in the pulpit should bring twaddle to the lips of a reasonable man. Once when the good Doctor was moved by his own eloquence almost to weeping, Sir Ludovic was quite roused too, and sat more upright, and gave his whole attention to the speaker; but it was rather with an amazed desire to know what could have so much moved his old friend than from any mere personal motive. Even then he could not make it out. He said to himself that what you say yourself may possibly seem more striking than what another says; but still he could not see what Burnside had to cry about. Notwithstanding those thoughts, which were not visible, Sir Ludovic was a most respectful and devout worshipper. Though prayer is supposed to be extempore in the Church of Scotland, and the idea of reading their devotions out of a book would have shocked the people beyond measure, yet Sir Ludovic having gone to church regularly for a great many years, knew Dr. Burnside’s prayers by heart, and was able to follow them as closely as if they had been in a prayer-book. He knew where and how the habitual supplications would come. He knew in what words the good minister would embody his ascriptions of praise. All was familiar to him, as if it had been going on forever, as if it would never come to an end.
By-and-by it was over, and the people all streamed out with equal noise and no more reverence, putting on their hats before they were out of church, and beginning to talk in loud whispers. It was over like everything else—another thing ended—another something removed between him and the end. This was the thought that came involuntarily to the old man. He smiled to himself, but not with pleasure, with a kind of amused pain or painful amusement, as the little roll of things to be done was worked out. Here was another over and done with, though it had begun only a moment since. Just so the philosopher might have watched the hours stealing away that lay between him and that slave with the hemlock, just so noticed the gradual development of the symptoms afterward—the beginning of the death-cold, the rising gasp in the throat. Sir Ludovic was like Socrates, yet with a curious sense that it was somebody else he was watching, not, it could not be, himself. He felt half inclined to laugh as the things to be got through lessened in number; and now this church-going was over, which was one of the last incidents of all.
“Even though I walk in death’s dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill.”
No, no, not any ill; but what? That was the question; and in the mean time this was ended too.
“I think we may go now, the crowd is gone, papa,” whispered Margaret; and he assented with a smile. They came out again, once more through the fine Norman arch, which had been there from time immemorial.
“Just there, my little Peggy, is where my place will be,” he said, still smiling, pointing to the wall of the apse, and came out, with his hand upon her shoulder, into the sunshine, his erect, delicate head, with its white hair, held up with unconscious, gentle stateliness, leaning upon the young creature in her white frock—leaning only a very little, rather for love than for support. A great many people had lingered about the church-yard, scattered among the graves, to look at them. The parish that day had listened to the sermon much less drowsily than usual. They had recognized by instinct that it was not themselves, but Sir Ludovic, who was addressed, and they had all been interested to hear what the Doctor had to say to Sir Ludovic. They stood with friendly and shy curiosity, pretending to study the tombstones, to look at him as he came out. It was a long time since he had been there before, and who could tell if he would ever be there again?
And the sight of the pair touched the people. An old man leaning upon his child is always a touching sight, and Margaret’s pretty, slim figure, in her white frock, her head raised to him, a look of wistful half-anxiety in her eyes, mixed with her pleasure in having him by her, made a great impression upon the kindly neighbors. Some of the women unfolded the handkerchiefs which they carried with their Bibles and put them to their eyes. He was “sore failed” since he had been last seen at the kirk—failed and frail, and no long for this world. And ah, how well the Doctor had set his duty before him! The father and daughter went softly round the east end of the old church; and it was when they were passing the Leslie vault again, that Sir Ludovic suddenly stumbled. It was not “a stroke,” nor any fainting on his part, as at first the trembling yet eager spectators thought, but only a projecting stone in his way, against which his foot caught. Margaret gave a cry of distress.
“It is nothing, my Peggy, nothing,” said the old man. But the shock and the shake affected him, and he turned very pale, and tottered as he went on.
“Will he take my arm?—ask him to take my arm,” said some one close by. Sir Ludovic did not wait to be entreated; he put forth his hand eagerly and grasped the strong young arm, which he felt, without knowing whom it belonged to, to be sustaining and steady.
“That is right, that is all I want,” he said, and walked along the rest of the path to the carriage, leaning upon Rob Glen. Margaret was at his other side. He smiled at her, and bade her not be frightened. “This is all I want,” he said, leaning upon the young man. As for Margaret, she, in her fright and anxiety, thought nothing of the words he was saying; but who can describe with what a thrill the repeated assurance went through the ambitious heart and glowing imagination of Rob Glen?