MR. WEDDERBURN entered very naturally into the charge of his friend’s affairs. He had been Dalyell’s counsellor already on many occasions in his life, and knew much about his concerns, the resources of the estate, and all the original sources of income which Dalyell had increased, yet fatally risked, by his speculations. No one was better fitted than he to apply the welcome aid of the insurance moneys to the relief of Yalton from all the encumbrances which the dead man’s other affairs had imported into his life. A man so familiar with the household and all its affairs, nobody could know so well as he how to guide the revenues of the household so as to afford their usual comforts to Mrs. Dalyell and the girls without injuring Fred’s interests, or forgetting the very near approach of the time when he should take the control into his own hands. It was evident that changes were inevitable then; either that Mrs. Dalyell should retire to a house of her own, or that she should remain as Fred’s housekeeper, with her authority contingent upon his plans, and liable to be destroyed whenever the young man should think of marriage—a position in which the faithful friend of the house was unwilling to contemplate the mistress of Yalton. It was not a thing that would have affected Mrs. Dalyell. It would not have occurred to her to think that the house was less hers by being Fred’s. But Mr. Wedderburn was jealous of her dignity, and it wounded a certain imaginative sense of fitness for which no one would have given the dry old lawyer credit—the notion that the woman whom he had so long admired and liked should be dependent on her boy’s caprice and whether it should please him or not to marry. The event which would make another change, so great, in her position, troubled him more than he could say. Was it not enough, he asked himself, that she should have had this shock to bear, and her life rent in two, that she should now have to yield all authority to Fred, and be dependent upon him for her home and dignity? The thought did not disturb Mrs. Dalyell, who felt it as natural to continue as before at the head of a house, which was no less hers because her son was now its formal head, as to perform any other act of life. But it did disturb her champion and guardian, who made it more and more his office from day to day to watch over her comfort and spare her trouble.
It was astonishing how Pat Wedderburn, who had not for many years, indeed for all his independent life, known more of the sweets of domesticity than those which he shared at second-hand in the houses of his friends, and especially at Yalton, fell into the ways of the head of a family. He did not, indeed, come out to Yalton every night as poor Dalyell had done, but he spent at least half of his evenings there, and gave his mind to the consideration of what was wanted in the house, and what would be agreeable to both mother and girls, with a curious familiar devotion which was at once amusing and touching. No father probably ever was so mindful of the tastes of his children as Mr. Wedderburn was of Susie and Alice. He remembered what they liked, and noted every expression of a wish with an affectionate vigilance and thoughtfulness which surprised even the girls, though they were well accustomed to have their little caprices considered. As for Mrs. Dalyell, no wife ever had her likings more sedulously consulted, her suggestions more carefully carried out, than were hers by her co-executor, her trustee, and fellow-guardian of the children. She had but to speak to Mr. Wedderburn about any trifling obstacle and it was immediately removed out of their way. He regarded her wants and wishes as things which were sacred; not as a husband does, whose natural impulse it is to contest, if not to deny. Life had never been made so easy for the ladies of Yalton. When he came out it was almost certain that some pleasant surprise accompanied him—a book, a present, something that either girls or mother had wished for. And they all took Mr. Wedderburn as completely for granted as if this devotion had been the most natural thing in the world.
And it would be impossible to describe the sweetness that came into the life of old Pat Wedderburn (as Edinburgh profanely called him) from this amateur performance, so to speak, of the duties of husband and father. He had long been in the habit of considering Yalton as a sort of home. But yet his visits there, though he was always so welcome, were more or less at the pleasure of his hosts, and he had kept up the form, though it was not much more than a form, of being invited. Now no such restraint (though it had never been much of a restraint) existed. He put a certain limit upon himself, but save for that the house of his wards was to him as his own, always open, always ready. They were all his wards, the mother not less than the children. It is true she was joined with him in the trust, and that she was a woman, as he said to himself, of a great deal of sense, who could give him advice upon many subjects, and even took or appeared to take an intelligent interest in investments, and knew whether the claims of the farmers were just, and what was right in respect to repairs, &c., better than Mr. Wedderburn himself. But she had never been accustomed to do anything for herself, to act independently, to take any step without advice and active help. It is impossible to say how pleasant it was to the middle-aged bachelor to be thus referred to at every moment asked about everything, consulted in every domestic contingency. He would not have minded even had he been called upon to settle difficulties with the servants, or subdue a refractory cook, nor would it have bored him to have a housekeeper’s afflictions in this way poured into his ears.
Happily, however, in the large easy-going household at Yalton there were few difficulties of that kind. Mrs. Dalyell was an excellent manager, but she was not exacting, and her servants were chiefly old servants, who ruled the less permanent kitchen-maids, footboys, &c., under them with rods of iron, but did not trouble the mistress with their imperfections. When a house has been long established on such a footing, and there is no overwhelming necessity for economy, or interfering dispositions on the part of its head, it is wonderful how smoothly it will roll on, notwithstanding all human weaknesses. And the shadow of grief glided away. There could not have been a more desirable house, or a more pleasant routine of life. The very neighbourhood breathed peace into Wedderburn’s being. Before he had reached the gates the atmosphere of content enveloped him. He had something in his pocket for the girls—he had something to consult their mother about, generally her own business, but sometimes even his, so great a confidence was he acquiring in her common-sense. To think that the loss of poor Bob Dalyell should have brought so great an acquisition of happiness into his life! He was ashamed when he came to think of it, and felt a compunction as if he had profited by his friend’s disaster. But it was no fault of his.
And there was no doubt that Mr. Wedderburn enjoyed Yalton and the life there a great deal more than if he had been really the father whose office as far as possible he had taken upon himself. He was not responsible for the faults or aggrieved by the imperfections of the children, as a man is to whom they belong. The very distance between them increased the charm. Although it would have been death to him to have been thrust out of that paradise, it would perhaps have lessened its charm had he been absolutely swept into it, bound to it, by law and necessity. The freedom of the voluntary tie added sweetness to the bond. He was far more at the orders of his adopted family than any father would have been; but that shyness of old bachelorhood, which is as real as the reserve of old maidenhood and very similar, though it is little remarked, was in no way ruffled or wounded by the present arrangement. And thus good came out of all the evil, to one at least of the little circle who had been so deeply affected by it. Poor Bob D’yell!—to think that he should have lost all this, and that his most devoted friend should have acquired it by his loss! This gave Mr. Wedderburn a compunction which was of course entirely fictitious and visionary—for had he not taken that position it would have been much worse for the family as well as for himself.
This state of affairs was scarcely interrupted by Fred’s majority, for Fred, no more than any other member of the household, considered that it made any difference. Of course, in the progress of time he would marry, and probably desire to be as his father had been. But, in the meantime, he felt himself no less a boy on the morning after his twenty-first birthday than he had done the morning before; and the idea of taking the reins out of his mother’s hands or desiring more freedom than he actually possessed, especially the freedom of turning her out of the house which was now legally his, or disturbing any of her arrangements, never occurred to Fred. Young people brought up under such an easy sway as that of Mrs. Dalyell do not feel the temptation of rushing wildly into freedom as soon as it is legally their own. Fred had always been free, and he could not be more so, because his name was now at the head of all the family affairs, and Frederick Dalyell, Esq., was now the official proprietor at Yalton. What difference did it make? The family generally said none. Of course, Fred, as the only son and the eldest, would have been paramount in the house under any circumstances; he could not be more than paramount now. But it was not to Fred that Mrs. Dalyell looked for help and advice, any more than it had been before; this birthday did not add experience or wisdom to the boy. And Mr. Wedderburn came and went just the same, looking after Fred’s interests, spoiling the girls, always ready to be referred to. It made no difference, nor did anybody wish that it should, except perhaps old Janet, whose opinion was not thought much of, whom Fred avoided carefully, and whose very existence was scarcely realised by the adviser of the house. As for Fred himself, his troubled thoughts had worn themselves out. Whatever trouble there may be in the mind respecting a man who has been in his grave for more than a year, it dies away under the progress of gentle time. To keep up the pressure of such misery there must be new events occurring or to be dreaded. What is altogether past affects the spirit in a different way. If there was a tragic secret unrevealed in the story of Robert Dalyell’s death, it was hidden for ever in the bitter waves that had swallowed him up: and the course of his young life had gradually swept from Fred’s mind the burden of his father’s tragedy. He had decided to go back to Oxford at the end of the first year, and he was still continuing his unlaborious studies there when the second had ended, and October, with its shortening days and windy skies, returned again. The vacation had been a lively one to Fred, and Mrs. Dalyell had been obliged to come out of the seclusion of her widowhood on account of Susie, whose introduction to the world could not be postponed any longer. Mrs. Dalyell herself was not unwilling that it should be so. She was entirely contented in her home-life, yet pleased to vary it when need was, and the more smiling and brilliant side of things no longer jarred upon her feelings. And Susie, in all the fervour of her first season (though it was only in Edinburgh), was as happy as the day.
Thus it was, upon a household as cheerful as could be seen, that the shadows began to lengthen in that October, a little before the end of the vacation, when Fred, who had exhausted his own covers with the assistance of his friends, was flitting about the country in a series of “last days” before he went back to his college. Fred’s friends of the shooting parties had made the house very gay for the girls, and Mr. Wedderburn had thought it expedient to “put in an appearance,” as he said, even more frequently than usual, to support Mrs. Dalyell and help to preserve the balance of the house. He came “out” four or five nights in the week to the house which became daily more and more like his home, and found a continually increasing charm in the sight of the pleasure of the young ones and in the company of their mother. While they were carrying on their amusements, he considered it only his duty to sit by Mrs. Dalyell and keep her as far as possible from feeling the blank of the empty place. They could talk to each other, as only old friends can—of the people and places they had mutually known all their lives, of the different dispositions of the children, of Robert, how pleased he would have been to see them so happy, of the beasts in the little home-farm; and of the new leases, and the new Lord of Session, and the Queen’s visit to Edinburgh, and everything indeed that came within the range of their kindly world. It was very pleasant: Mrs. Dalyell found it so, who was thus able to relieve her mind of any remark that occurred to her, which the young ones were too hasty or too much occupied to listen to; and Mr. Wedderburn liked it still better, feeling that he himself, who had never ventured to risk any of the great undertakings of life, had thus come to have the cream and perfection of quiet social comfort, without paying for it, without cost to himself or wrong to any one in life.
On one such evening Mrs. Dalyell had been called away on some domestic errand, and Mr. Wedderburn, feeling thus a little left to himself, strolled out upon the terrace to look at the rising moon and to enjoy the softness of the evening, one of the last perhaps before the winter came on. It was a still night, and the temperature was high for the time of year. The country had been blazing in the sunlight with all the colours of the autumn, and even the moon brought out the yellow lightness in the waving birches, if not the russet reds and browns of the deeper foliage. Nothing could be more still: the sky resplendent, with here and there a puff of ethereal whiteness, a cloud scarcely to be called a cloud, imperceptibly floating upon a breeze that was scarcely to be called a breeze—a soft sigh of night air. It was so warm that he did not hesitate to sit down, though at fifty-seven one is cautions about sitting down in the open-air in October, even in the day. But the night was very soft, and so were Mr. Wedderburn’s thoughts. It cannot be said they were sentimental, much less impassioned. He wanted no more than he possessed, the loving kindness of this house, the affection of the children, the friendship and trust of their mother. He was entirely satisfied to come and go, to feel that he was of use to them, to enjoy their society. A great sense of well-being filled his mind as he sat there and heard the sound of their young voices gay and sweet coming from the billiard-room, where Fred and a friend or two were amusing the girls. There was something like a suggestion that more might come of that partnership of jest and play which was springing up between pretty Susie and one of these young men—dear little Susie!—who had given up her big words, but whom her father’s friend still corrected and petted with fatherly tenderness. If it were possible to feel more fatherly than old Pat Wedderburn, the dry old Edinburgh lawyer, felt as he sat there and smiled in the dark at the sound of Susie’s voice, I do not know what that quintessence of paternity could be.
He was thus sitting in quiet enjoyment of the solitude (which is so much sweeter a thing with the sense of the near vicinity of those we love than when we are really alone) and his own thoughts, when he saw, as Fred had done on a previous occasion, a tall figure rise as it were out of the soil and approach through the dark—a shadow, but with that independent movement of a living creature which is so instantly distinguishable from any combination of shadows. Mr. Wedderburn was not superstitious, but the figure as it came slowly towards him was one which he did not recognise, and he was astonished at its intrusion here. He rose up to intercept it—whether it was an unlawful visitor prowling round perhaps to see the handiest way of entry into an unsuspicious house, or some lover bound for a rendezvous, or some servant come out unconscious of observation to take the air. But the new-comer was not afraid of his observation, and he now made out that it was a large old woman in her checked shawl and white cap. Even then Mr. Wedderburn did not recognise the old woman, with whose appearance he was but slightly acquainted. She stopped when they met and made him a slow curtsey, leaning upon a stick. It was too dark for him to see her face.
“Did you want anything with me, my woman?” said Mr. Wedderburn.
“Ay, sir,” she said, “I just do that. You’ll maybe not know me. I’m Janet Macalister, that was nurse to Mr. Robert D’yell.”
“I have often heard of you,” said Mr. Wedderburn, “and I am glad to see you, Janet; not that I do see you, for the night’s dark. And this is not an hour for you to be out at your years. If you have anything to say to me we would be better in the library or the hall.”
“Sir,” said Janet, “what I have to say is not for any place where we can be seen. I came out here that naebody might suspect I took such a thing upon me; and yet I’m forced to it—though I canna tell you why.”
“This sounds very mysterious,” said Mr. Wedderburn; “but I hope there’s nothing very wrong.”
“Mr. Wedderburn,” said Janet, “you’re very often at our house.”
“Eh!” cried Mr. Wedderburn, in amazement, “at your house? Oh, you mean at Yalton, I suppose. And have you any objections to that?”
“Yes, sir,” said Janet firmly, “the greatest of objections. Do you not know, Mr. Wedderburn, that the mistress is still but a young woman (to have such a family), and that she is a widow with naebody to defend her good name—and here are you, a marriageable man, haunting her house every night of your life. Bide a moment, sir, and listen to me. Oh, it’s nothing to laugh at—it’s just very serious. You are here morning, noon, and night”—(here there was a murmur from the unfortunate man of “No, no! not so bad as that”)—“and I ask ye to take your ain sense and judgment to your help and tell me what folk will think that sees that?”
“Think!” faltered Mr. Wedderburn. “Woman, you must have taken leave of your senses. What is it you mean?—and what should they think but that I’m the friend of the family and a very attached one, and that it’s my business to be here?”
“Oh, sir, ye’ll not content your ain judgment with that, far less the rest of the world! It’s no business that brings ye here. Ye come because you’re fain and fond to come. I am the oldest person about the house, and it would ill become me to see my bairn’s wife put in a wrong position, and never say a word. Sir, the mistress is a bonnie and a pleasant woman.”
“I have nothing to say against that.”
“And no age to speak of. And you yoursel’ what are ye? Comparatively speaking, a young man.”
“Comparatively in the furthest sense. I am much obliged to you, Janet.”
“Don’t think, sir,” said Janet, solemnly, “that you can carry it off with a laugh. I will not see the mistress put in a wrong position, and never say a word. It may be want of thought; but you must see, if you consider, that she’s not like a young lass to be courted and married. And still less is she one to be made a talk of in all the country side. I will not have my mistress exposed to detractions, and none to the fore to put a stop to them!” said Janet with excitement, striking her staff on the gravel.
Mr. Wedderburn stood, feeling the old woman tower over him with her palsied head and threatening air; he was half angry, half amused, wholly discomfited and startled. The situation was ludicrous, and yet it was embarrassing. To be startled out of the happiness of his thoughts by such an interruption, brought to book by an old servant, warned as it were off the premises by the nurse, was almost too whimsical and absurd a position to be treated as serious; and yet there was an uncomfortable reality at the bottom which he could not elude.
“Janet,” he said, “my woman—do you not think you are going a little too far? I was just as often at this house when Robert D’yell himself was here.”
“No, Mr. Wedderburn, not half so often.”
“Nonsense, woman, much more often! and in any way I am not answerable to you. The last thing I could think of,” he added in a troubled tone, “would be to—would be—— You are daft, Janet! I’m their trustee and the nearest of their friends; how dare you say a word about my visits? I will say nothing to your mistress, but I must request you to refrain from such remarks, or else——”
“Sir,” cried Janet, “you needna threaten me, for you’re not the master here!”
“No, I am not the master here,” said Mr. Wedderburn; “but if you think anybody will have encouragement to set up ill stories about—— No,” he said, checking himself, “I will not blame you with that. You’ve made a mistake; but no doubt your meaning was good—only never let me hear it any more.”
“Oh, sir,” cried Janet, “the human heart’s an awfu’ deceitful thing. I could find it in my heart to go down on my knees, and beg you—oh, for the Lord’s sake!—to go away before there’s any harm done from this misfortunate house.”
“The woman’s daft!” cried Mr. Wedderburn.
But it gave him a dazed and troubled look when he appeared in the drawing-room some time later. He was very silent all the rest of the evening, sometimes casting an almost furtive look round him from one face to another; sometimes red, sometimes pale. Once or twice he broke out into a curious laugh when there seemed little occasion for it. “I am afraid you have taken cold, Mr. Wedderburn; it was too late to be sitting out on an October night,” said Mrs. Dalyell.
“I don’t think I’ve taken cold—but I think I’ll return to my room, with your kind permission, for I have some things to plan out,” said the lawyer. It was so unlike him that they all agreed something must be the matter. Had he got bad news? Had he been troubled about business? “Perhaps he had taken something that had disagreed with him,” Mrs. Dalyell suggested. Whatever it was, he was not like himself.
No, he was very unlike himself. He gave a shame-faced look in the glass when he went to his room, and burst out into a low, long laugh. “I’m a pretty person!” he said to himself. And then he became suddenly grave—graver, almost, than he had ever been in all his serious life.