THERE is no coroner’s inquest in Scotland, as has been said; nevertheless there was a careful examination into all the circumstances of Mr. Dalyell’s death. It was known that he was going to Portobello to bathe. This he had stated not only to his family, but to the clerks at the insurance office and other persons whom he had met. One gentleman appeared who had travelled that little journey with him by the train, whom he had almost persuaded to join him in his swim, and who parted with him only at the corner of the road leading down to the sands; the porter at the station had seen him arrive, had seen the two walk off together. There was no mystery or concealment about anything he had done. It was his usual place for bathing, there was nothing extraordinary about the matter, up to the moment when the clothes were found on the sands and the man was gone. Every step was traced of his ordinary career, nor could one suspicious circumstance be found. The mere fact of the heap of clothing, the money in the pockets, the watch, all the familiar careless evidences of a day which was to be as any other day, with no auguries of evil in it, was all there was to account for his disappearance. But that was pathetically distinct and unimpeachable. And when after so much delay the body was found—which, indeed, no one could tell to be Robert Dalyell’s body, but which by every law of probability might be considered so—the question dropped, and all the endless talk and speculation to which it had given rise. Of course there were doubts at first whether it might be suicide. But why, of all people in the world, should Robert Dalyell drown himself? No doubt there had been rumours of unfortunate speculations, and possible pecuniary disaster. But everybody knew now that Pat Wedderburn, a man of considerable wealth and unlimited credit, had put his means at his friend’s disposal. It is true that what Mr. Wedderburn had said was that he was about to do so; but these fine shades are too much to be preserved when a statement is sent about from mouth to mouth, and all Edinburgh was persuaded that Mr. Wedderburn’s means made Dalyell’s position secure—if, indeed, it ever was insecure, with a good estate behind him, and all his connections. But what a fatality! What a catastrophe! A man in the prime of life, with a nice wife and delightful children, a charming place, an excellent position, everything smiling upon him. That he should be carried away from all that in a moment by some confounded cramp, some momentary weakness. What a lesson it was! In the midst of life we are in death. This was what, with many regrets for Bob D’yell and sorrow for his family, and a great sensation among all who knew him, Edinburgh said. And then the event was displaced by another event, and his name was transferred from the papers and everybody’s mouth to a tablet in Yalton Church, and Robert Dalyell was as if he had never been.
It proved that his life was very heavily insured—to a much larger sum than anybody had been aware of, and in several offices. Neither Mrs. Dalyell, nor any of his advisers knew the reason for these unusual liberalities of arrangement, if not that Mr. Dalyell, being himself concerned in an insurance office, thought it right to set an example to others by the number and value of his own. Enough was obtained in this sorrowful way to clear off everything that was wrong in his affairs, and to secure Fred, when he should come of age, in unencumbered possession of Yalton, as well as to leave the portions of the girls intact. So far as this went, and though it was a dreadful thing to think, much more to say, no doubt it passed through Mr. Wedderburn’s mind, who was the sole executor, with the exception of Mrs. Dalyell, that the moment of poor Bob’s death was singularly well chosen. Mrs. Dalyell left everything in his hands, so that the conclusion was in no way forced upon her, nor would she have entertained it if it had occurred to her. Nothing would have persuaded her that her Robert had drowned himself, and she knew no reason why. She was not a woman who demanded explanations, who searched into the motives of things. She accepted the event when it happened with sorrow or with thankfulness, according as it was good or bad, but she did not demand to have the secret told her of how it came about. And she grieved deeply for her good husband; the earth was altogether overcast to her for a time. She felt no warmth in the sun, no beauty in the world—a pall hung over everything. Robert was gone—what was the good of all those secondary things, the comforts and ease of life, which were not him, nor ever could bring him back? She would have accepted joyfully a life of poverty and privation with Robert instead of this dreadful comfortable blank without him. Her emotions were as sincere as they were sober and unexaggerated. But, as was natural, this gloom of early bereavement did not last. After a few months she was capable of taking a little pleasure in the spring weather, of watching the flowers come up. And though the first notice she took of these ameliorating circumstances was to say with tears, “How pleased your father always was to see the crocuses!” yet it was the beginning of a better time. Mrs. Dalyell was still in the forties; she was in excellent health, and she was of a mild, unimpassioned temperament. It was not possible that the clouds should hang for ever about such a tranquil sky.
But there were two of the mourners who were not so simply constituted. Fred, who had been so light-hearted a boy when his father talked to him on the terrace and bade him think of the catastrophes which overturned so many young lives, was greatly changed. He could not get that conversation out of his mind, nor the strange recommendation his father had given him, nor the stranger repetition by old Janet of what Mr. Dalyell had said. How did she know? Had the father confided to her what was about to happen? Confided?—a thing which was an accident, an unforeseen calamity, or—— what else? Confided to Janet that next day he was going to die? Fred turned this over in his mind, over and over, till he was nearly mad. How did she know? How did she know? Was it second-sight, witchcraft of one kind or another? But Fred was a young man of his time—or rather he was not sufficiently a young man of his time to believe in witchcraft or any occult power. How was it?—how was it?—how was it? This question went on in his mind so constantly that it became a sort of mechanical rhyme running through everything. How did old Janet know? Had it been discovered by her somehow by mystic art? Had it been confided to her? He could not turn his mind away from this question or forget it. How did she know?—what did she know? Fred felt as if he should have informed the commissioners who had investigated the circumstances of his father’s death of that conversation on the terrace. It might be only a coincidence; but it was a very curious coincidence. He ought to have reported it, made it known, that everybody might draw his own conclusions. Here was a man who as a matter of fact died by some mysterious accident next day, and who had talked to his son of what he might have to do were he left with the family on his hands, and advised whom he should take counsel with in difficulties: and the proposed counsellor had apparently been communicated with too. What would the little court of inquiry, he wondered, have said to that? What would the insurance people have said? Was it his duty to have told the strange and terrible detail? Was it better to have remained silent? Poor Fred could not tell what he ought to have done—what he ought to do. He was but a boy after all, when all was said. He had not been accustomed to form such momentous decisions for himself, and he was overwhelmed with grief and misery, not able to think. He remained silent, not betraying even to Mr. Wedderburn, who was now the guide of the household, looking after everything, what he felt. But the lad was very unhappy. There was no reason why he should not return to Oxford; but he had no desire to return. He did not care to do anything. He wandered about the grounds asking himself what his father meant, if he had it all in his mind then as he walked along the terrace in the dark, listening to his boy’s chatter of college jokes and light-hearted nonsense. Was he thinking then of what was to be done next day? Had he planned it all? and left perhaps his last instructions with Janet, the unlikeliest repository of such secrets. Could it be this? or only coincidence, a series of coincidences, such as may occur and sometimes do occur, perplexing and confusing every calculation? All this made him very miserable, as he pondered, many a weary monotonous night and day. He stole out in the evenings after dinner and strolled along the terrace, as his father had been used to do, with a sort of vague hope of enlightenment, of some influence that might come to him, or even voice that he might hear. But he never heard anything more than the wind moaning in the trees, which drove him indoors with the melancholy of their unseen rustling, and the eerie sounds of the night, rising over all the invisible country, tinkle of water, and sweeping sound of the winds and the drop of the autumnal leaves falling, the hoot of an owl, the stirring of unseen things in the woods and fields. But when he was indoors again, still less could Fred bear the cheerful air of the drawing-room with its bright fire and lamps, and the voices of his sisters which began after a time of silence to whisper and chatter again in the irrepressible vitality of their youth. Had it all been planned before that night? Did his father already well know what was going to happen on the morrow—all the incidents of the tragedy? And did Janet know? Fred repeated these questions to himself till his brain felt as if it were giving way.
All this time he kept himself carefully away from speech or look of Janet, who had been, strange as it was, less affected by the calamity than any one in the house, and had a look in her dry eyes which Fred could not understand. His heart revolted against her; a woman without feeling, who had no tears for the man who had surrounded her with comforts and ensured her well-being for her life—the man who was her child, whom she had nursed, but never mourned. A sort of hatred sprang up in the lad’s mind towards this old woman. He felt it a wrong and almost insult that he should have been bidden to take her advice—and avoided her as if she had been the plague. Janet, on the contrary, seemed to seek opportunities of encountering him, appearing suddenly about the house, as she had never hitherto done, in all kinds of unlikely places. Her unobtrusiveness had been one of her great qualities in former times. She had never been seen on the stairs or in the corridor, scarcely at all, except at the opening of the passage leading to her own room, or sitting in the sun by the laundry door, or about the servants’ part of the house. But now old Janet seemed to be everywhere. Fred met her in the hall, lingering about the library, in the gallery above which encircled the hall, everywhere save in his mother’s drawing-room. And whenever she met him, though she did nothing to stop him, she gave him a look full of significance. It seemed to say, “When are you coming to consult me? I want to be consulted,” till the young man became exasperated, and fled from her with an ever-growing sense of trouble or fear. Her apparition in her large white mutch, with a black ribbon round it, tied in a great bow on the top of her head, with her black and white shepherd’s plaid shawl, which she had adopted, instead of the old red and green tartan, in compliment to the family mourning—gave him a sensation of shivering, as if old Janet had included in her own person the properties of all the Fates. He was afraid of what she might have to say to him—afraid lest there should be something to tell which would be hateful to hear; afraid for his father’s good name and his own peace.
Mr. Wedderburn had no such addition to the many cares which this catastrophe had introduced into his placid life. He knew nothing about Janet, or any secret she might have in her keeping, nor had he any idea of that last interview which lay so heavily upon Fred’s mind; but he was not at ease. The public mind had been entirely reassured on the subject of Dalyell’s embarrassed circumstances by the announcement that Pat Wedderburn had taken upon him all the responsibility and was indeed the principal in Dalyell’s speculations, using him only as an agent, which was what Wedderburn’s statement on the subject had now grown to. But Wedderburn knew very well that he had only intended to make this offer to his friend, and that Dalyell’s troubles about money were weighing very heavily upon him when he went down to Portobello for his swim. And he knew that the very opportune cramp or failure of heart which caused his death accomplished at the same time the complete deliverance from all those cares, of his children and his wife. Everything was appropriate, perfectly convenient to the moment and to the needs of the man who gave his life for his family as much as if he had defended them to the death on the ramparts of some besieged city—with this only exception, that the weapons with which he fought were equivocal, if not dishonest. For the insurance money would never have been paid to the representatives of a suicide. Poor Bob! poor Bob! it was unworthy, it was dreadful to associate that title with his honest name. And yet—if it had been a planned thing, it was not an honest thing, although he had paid for it by the sacrifice of his life. This thought rankled in Mr. Wedderburn’s mind. Dalyell had been, so to speak, absolved by public opinion from that guilt. The payment of the insurances was in itself a full acquittal, and no one ventured to say or even think that the catastrophe on the Portobello sands was anything but a fatal accident. But Wedderburn’s mind was haunted by this doubt. It was not for him to bring it forward, to hint a suspicion which could never be proved, which would be ruinous to the prospects of those whose interests were in his hands. No, never to any soul would he hint such a doubt. But yet—he said to himself that poor Bob would have been capable of it. A thing that you are willing to give your life to purchase—it is difficult to believe that what is bought at such a sacrifice could be wronging any one, or a sin against the commonwealth. The suicide would be a sin before God, but many a desperate creature is ready to encounter that, with a pathetic trust in the understanding and pity of the great Father. But to die dishonestly for the good of your family, that was a different thing. Bob Dalyell, perhaps, was not a man who would attach any idea of guilt to this way of cheating the insurance companies, even his own office; but Wedderburn, who might have been capable of the sacrifice, would have stood at that. His idea of honour and probity was perhaps more abstract than that of a man who was involved in sharp business transactions, in speculation and commercial adventure, and who was, besides, a man with a family, bent upon saving them from ruin. He shook his head and acknowledged to himself that poor Bob was capable of not having taken that divergence from strict integrity into account. Had he made up his mind to die for his family he would not have considered the ease of the insurance companies. The thought of wronging them would have sat lightly on his soul.
Mr. Wedderburn took from this self-discussion a habit which remained with him for all the rest of his life, the habit of shaking his head, slowly, sadly to himself, as it were, as if in the course of some remark. It was while he questioned, and doubted, and laid things together, excusing his friend even while he judged him, that this habit was acquired. It was not a bad habit for a lawyer who was consulted by his clients on many delicate questions. It gave an air of regretful decision, of compassion and sympathy, when he had conclusions to announce that were not pleasant to his clients. And he never lost this gesture of reflection and compassion, which was as sacred to Bob Dalyell as his tombstone. It was thus, with many a vexing doubt and fear, that he mourned the friend of his youth.
The female members of the party were happily exempted from all these discussions. It does not often happen that the women have the lightest part to bear in any such calamity. But in this case it was so. Mrs. Dalyell mourned her husband most sincerely and deeply, forgetting every little flaw in his character, and gradually elevating him into the position of a perfect man—the best husband, the kindest father! And the girls mourned him with torrents of youthful tears, with a conviction that they never could smile again, never get beyond the blackness of the first grief, the awful sensation of the catastrophe. But there was nothing but pure sorrow in their minds. They thought no more of the insurance companies than the birds in the garden think of the crumbs miraculously provided for them when snow is on the ground. Neither had the slightest doubt ever entered their minds as to what they were told of his death. They knew every detail, laying it up in their hearts. How he had parted smiling from his friend at the corner of the street, and gone off to the sands with his buoyant step, in such health and strength, in such good-will and good-humour with all the world. This was what the girls said to themselves, trying to picture his last look upon life. And they hoped it was some unsuspected failure of the heart, which the doctor said was most likely—a thing which would give no pain, which would be over in a moment, so that he would never know he was dying, or have any pang of anxiety for those he was leaving behind. This was how the girls realised their father’s death: and their mother’s picture of it was not dissimilar. She felt that there must have been a moment in which he thought of her and of “the bairns.” Mrs. Dalyell added that to the imaginary scene—a moment in which, as people said was the case in drowning, all his life would rush through his brain, and he would think of her as he died. They had the best of it. Their innocent thoughts conceived no ulterior scheme, no darkness of doubt. Had they realised that any such doubt existed, it is probable that they would have canonised poor Robert Dalyell on the spot as a hero and martyr, dying for those he loved, and still never have thought of the insurance companies; but, happily, no such imagination entered at all into their simple thoughts.
The household had settled down completely into the habits of its new life, when Fred Dalyell came home from a long wandering tour he had made about Europe, not so much for love of travelling or desire to see beautiful things and places, as to distract his mind from the miserable thoughts that had gained so complete an empire over him. He had succeeded very well in that, for the most persistent trouble yields to such treatment at twenty; but the first return to Yalton, and all the recollections that were waiting for him under those familiar trees, brought back on the first coming much of the old trouble to the lad’s sensitive mind. It was now May, and Yalton was almost as cheerful as ever, though in a subdued way. The girls, “poor things,” as their mother said, had recovered their spirits. They were so young!—and Fred’s coming home had been a thing much looked for, like the beginning of a new era to the young creatures over whom the winter of gloom was naturally passing away. Susie and Alice were much disappointed by the cloud that came over Fred after the first joy of their greetings. Instead of sitting with them and telling them everything, he disappeared on the first evening, with a sort of impatient, almost angry, resistance of their blandishments.
“Oh, let me alone; I have a thousand things to think of,” he said, pushing them away as the manner of big brothers is. Susie and Alice forgave Fred when they saw the little red tip of his cigar on the terrace, and realised that he had gone there “to think of father.” For a moment it was debated between them whether one of them should not go to him to share his solitude and thoughts; but they decided, with a better inspiration, to leave him alone, and even withdrew delicately from the drawing-room window, not to seem to spy upon his sacred thoughts.
“Oh, do you mind how papa used to go up and down, up and down?” said Alice to Susie.
“Do I mind?” said Susie, half indignant. “Could I ever forget?” And they shed a few tears together, then hurried off to the table in the full light of the lamps, where Fred’s curiosities which he had brought home, and all his little presents, were laid out for inspection, and began to laugh and twitter over them, and compare this with that, like two birds.
Yes, this was just the place where father had stood when he had suddenly changed the conversation about the bump-suppers, and all the joys of Oxford, to that strange and sober talk about the vicissitudes of life, and what a difference a day might make in the position of a happy lad at college, thinking of nothing but fun and frolic. Fred remembered every word, every look—the wail of the autumnal wind, the clear break of sky among the clouds towards the west, the half shock, half amusement, with which he had felt that sudden change into what in those days of levity he had called the didactic in his father’s tone. It had seemed to him a sermon at the time; and then it had seemed to him—he knew not what—an awful advertisement of what was coming: a prophecy conscious or unconscious. He walked up and down, up and down under the trees, hearing the same sounds, the tinkle of the half-choked fountain, the rustling of the wind among the branches. The sentiment of the night was different, for that had been in September, and this was full of the soft and hopeful stir of May. The leaves were falling then; now they were but just opened, hanging in clusters of vivid young green, which almost forced colour upon the paleness of the wistful night. But nothing else was as it had been then. His father was gone, swept from the earth as though he had never been. Yet this great change had not brought the other changes which Mr. Dalyell anticipated. Fred had not been forced into the premature development of a young head of the family. He had not been plunged into care and trouble, into work and anxiety. If anything, he had been more free than before. He was still only a youth dallying upon the edge of life, not a man entering into serious duties. The contrast struck him strangely. This was not what his father had foreseen. It gave him a vague new trouble in his mind to perceive that this was so. He ought to be less free, perhaps more occupied, more responsible. He could not all at once decide what the difference was.
Here he was suddenly disturbed by the sound of a step upon the gravel—and it is to be feared that Fred uttered within himself an impatient exclamation, as he threw away the end of his cigar. “Here is one of those bothering girls,” he said to himself, though we know with what high reason and feeling Susie and Alice had withdrawn, even from the window, not to seem to spy upon their brother. He got up to meet them, remembering that he had just come home and that it would be brutal to show any impatience of their affection. But Fred might have known that the heavy, slow step which approached him was not that of either of the girls. A tall figure shaped itself out of the darkness—the white mutch, the bow of black ribbon, the checked shawl, became dimly visible.
“Eh, Mr. Fred,” said old Janet, “but I’m blythe to see you home!”
“Oh,” he said, “it’s you!” in a tone which was not encouraging. He had forgotten old Janet, happily, and it was with anything but pleasure that he felt her image thus thrust upon him again.
“Who should it be but me?” she said. “There is none that can take such an interest. And, Mr. Fred, it is time you should be taking your ain place. This house of Yalton should go into no other hands but them it belongs to. Oh, I canna speak more plain; but you must rouse yourself up, and you must take your ain place.”
“I don’t know what you have to do with it,” cried Fred angrily, “nor why you should thrust your advice upon me. I am here in my own place. What do you mean? I ought to be at Oxford, that would be my own place.”
“Na, na! that would be just more schooling,” said Janet, “and it’s no schooling you want, but to stand up like a man, and be maister of your father’s house, as is your right. Oh, laddie, I tell you I canna speak more plain; but take you my word, it’ll save more trouble, and worse trouble, if you will just grip the reins in your hands and take your ain place!”
He laughed contemptuously in his impatience and anger. “You had better save your advice for things you understand,” he said. “Don’t you know the law considers me an infant, and that I can do nothing till I’m of age—if there was anything to do? But all is going as well as can be—almost too well—as if he were not missed,” the young man cried abruptly with a movement of feeling, which indeed was momentary and had not come into his mind before. Perhaps it was an influence from the brain of the old woman beside him which sent it there now.
“That’s just what I wanted to say,” said old Janet—“as if he were not missed. All settled for her, and smoothed down and made fair and easy, as if himsel’ were to the fore. There’s trouble in the air, Mr. Fred, and if you dinna bestir yourself, and take your ain place, and get a grip of the reins in your ain hand——”
“Rubbish!” said Fred. “How can I get the reins, till I come of age? If there was any need, which there is not, my mother knows better than half a dozen of me.”
“Your mother!” said old Janet, with the natural contempt of an old servant for the mistress; then she added in a different tone: “if it was only your mother”—shaking her old head.
“Who else?” said Fred with indignation. But Janet made no reply. She turned her back upon him and went off along the terrace, always shaking her head, which was slightly palsied and had a faint nodding motion besides. Something in this confirmed movement which was comic, and the jealousy of his mother, which had always been a well-known feature in old Janet, tended to give a ludicrous character to her appeal. Instead of deepening the sadness of his thoughts, it lightened them with a curious sense of relief. It seemed to take away at once the gravity of the recollection of his father’s reference to her, and the painful suggestion in it which had caused Fred so much trouble, when old Janet thus displayed herself in an absurd rather than a tragical light.