CHARLES MURRAY did not return to the Campbells’ house for the night as he had originally intended. The relatives were all out of sorts with each other, and inclined to quarrel among themselves in consequence of the universal discomfiture which had come upon them, not from each others’ hands, but from the stranger in their midst. And as it was quite possible that Campbell, being sore and irritable, might avenge himself by certain inquiries into Dr. Charles’s affairs, the young man thought it wiser on the whole to keep out of his way. And the grandmother’s house was common property. Although only a few hours before they had all made up their minds that it was to be no longer hers, and that she thenceforward was to be their dependent, the moment that she became again certain of being mistress in her own house, that very moment all her family returned to their ancient conviction that they had a right to its shelter and succour under all and every kind of circumstances.
James Murray went away arranging in his own mind that he would send his youngest daughter “across” before the winter came on, “to get her strength up.” “One bairn makes little difference in the way of meals, and she can bring some tea and sugar in a present,” he said to himself; while Dr. Charles evidenced still more instantaneously the family opinion by saying at once that he should stay where he was till to-morrow.
“It seems much more natural to be here than in any other house,” he said caressingly to his grandmother.
She smiled, but she made no reply. Even, she liked it, for the position of a superior dispensing favours had been natural to her all her life, and the power to retain this position was not one of the least advantages that Edgar’s liberality gave her. But even while she liked it, she saw through the much less noble sentiment of her descendants, and a passing pang mingled with her pleasure. She said nothing to Dr. Charles; but when Edgar gave her his arm for the brief evening walk which she took before going to rest, she made to him a curious apology for the rest. Charles was standing on the loch-side looking out, half-jealous that it was Edgar who naturally took charge of the old mother, and half glad to escape out of Edgar’s way.
“We mustna judge them by ourselves,” she said, in a deprecating tone. “Charlie was aye a weak lad, meaning no harm—and used to depend upon somebody. Edgar, they are not to be judged like you and me.”
“No,” said Edgar, with a smile; then rapidly passing from the subject which he could not enter on. “Does he want to marry Jeanie?” he asked.
“That I canna tell—that I do not know. He cannot keep his eyes off her bonnie face; but, Edgar, the poor lad has strange fancies. He has taken it into his head to be genteel—and Marg’ret, poor thing, is genteel.”
“What has that to do with it?” said Edgar, laughing.
“We are not genteel, Jeanie and me,” said the old woman, with a gleam of humour. “But, Edgar, my man, still you must not judge Charlie. You are a gentleman, that nobody could have any doubt of; but the danger of being a poor man’s son, and brought up to be a gentleman, is that you’re never sure of yourself. You are always in a fear to know if you are behaving right—if you are doing something you ought not to do.”
“Then, perhaps,” said Edgar, “my cousin would have been happier if he had not been brought up, as you say, to be a gentleman.”
“What could I make him? Farming’s but a poor trade for them that have little capital and little energy. Maybe you will say a Minister? but it’s a responsibility bringing up a young man to be a Minister, when maybe he will have no turn that way but just seek a priest’s office for a piece of bread. A good doctor serves both God and man; and Charlie is not an ill doctor,” she added, hurriedly. “His very weakness gives him a soft manner, and as he’s aye on the outlook whether he’s pleasing you or not, it makes him quick to notice folk’s feelings in general. Sick men, and still more sick women, like that.”
“You are a philosopher, grandmother,” said Edgar.
“Na, na, not that,” said the old woman; “but at seventy you must ken something of your fellow-creature’s ways, or you must be a poor creature indeed.”
Meanwhile Charles Murray had gone back to the house, and was talking to Jeanie, who for some reason which she did not herself quite divine, had been shy of venturing out this special evening with the others. Perhaps the young doctor thought she was waiting for him. At all events it was a relief to go and talk to one in whom no criticism could be.
“You feel quite strong and well again, Jeanie?” he said.
“Oh yes, quite strong and well—quite better,” she said, looking up at him with that soft smile of subjection and dependence which most people to whom it is addressed find so sweet.
“You should not say quite better,” he said, smiling too, though the phrase would by times steal even from his own educated lips. “I wonder sometimes, Jeanie, after passing some months in England as you did, that you should still continue so Scotch. I like it, of course—in a way.”
Here Jeanie, whose face had overcast, brightened again and smiled—a smile which this time, however, did not arrest him in his critical career.
“I like it, in a way,” said Charles, doubtfully. “Here on Loch Arroch side it is very sweet, and appropriate to the place; but if you were going out—into the world, Jeanie.”
“No fear of that,” said Jeanie, with a soft laugh.
“On the contrary, there is much fear of it—or much hope of it, I should say. There are many men who would give all they have in the world for a smile from your sweet face. I mean,” said the young man, withdrawing half a step backward, and toning himself down from this extravagance, “I mean that there is no doubt you could marry advantageously—if you liked to exert yourself.”
“You should not speak like that to me,” cried Jeanie, with a sudden hot flush; “there is nothing of the kind in my head.”
“Say your mind, not your head, Jeanie; and like the dear good girl you are, say head, not heed,” said Dr. Charles with a curious mixture of annoyance and admiration; and then he added, drawing closer. “Jeanie, do you not think you would like to go to school?”
“To school? I am not a little bairn,” said Jeanie with some indignation, “I have had my schooling, all that Granny thought I wanted. Besides,” she continued proudly, “I must look after Granny now.”
“She has asked Margaret to come to her,” said the young man, “and don’t you think, Jeanie, if you could be sent to a school for a time—not to learn much you know, not for lessons or anything of that kind; but to get more used to the world, and to what you would have to encounter if you went into the world—and perhaps to get a few accomplishments, a little French, or the piano, or something like that?”
“What would I do, learning French and the piano?” said Jeanie; her countenance had over-clouded during the first part of his speech, but gradually gave way to wonder and amusement as he went on. “Are you thinking of Jeanie MacKell who can play tunes, and speak such fine English? Granny would not like that, and neither would I.”
“But Granny is not the only person in the world,” he said, “there are others who would like it. Men like it, Jeanie; they like to see their wife take her place with anyone, and you cannot always be with Granny—you will marry some day.”
Jeanie’s fair soft countenance glowed like the setting sun, a bright and tender consciousness lit up her features; her blue eyes shone. Dr. Charles, who had his back to the loch, as he stood at the farm-house door, did not perceive that Edgar had come into sight with Mrs. Murray leaning on his arm.
“May-be all that may be true,” said Jeanie, “I cannot tell; but in the meantime I cannot leave Granny, for Granny has nobody but me.”
“She has asked my sister Margaret, as I told you—”
“Margaret instead of me!” said Jeanie, with a slight tone of wonder.
“It is strange how disagreeable you all are to my sister,” said Dr. Charles with some impatience. “It need not be instead of you; but Granny has asked Margaret, and she and the little one will come perhaps before winter sets in—the change would do them good. I should be left alone then,” he said, softening, “and if Margaret stays with Granny, I should be left always alone. Jeanie, if you would but get a little education and polish, and make yourself more like what a man wishes his wife to be—”
Jeanie was looking behind him all the time with a vague dreamy smile upon her face. “If that is a’ he wants!” she said dreamily to herself. She was thinking not of the man before her, whose heart, such as it was, was full of her image; but of the other man approaching, who did not think of Jeanie except as a gentle and affectionate child. If that was a’ he wanted! though even in her imaginative readiness to find everything sublime that Edgar did, there passed through Jeanie’s mind a vague pang to think that he would pay more regard to French and the piano, than to her tender enthusiast passion, the innocent adoration of her youth.
“If you would do that, Jeanie—to please me!” said the unconscious young Doctor, taking her hand.
“Here is Granny coming,” said Jeanie hastily, “and—Mr. Edgar. Go ben the house, please, and never mind me. I have to see that the rooms are right and all ready. Are you tired, Granny? You have had a sore day. Mr. Edgar, say good night to her now, she ought to go to her bed.”
Thus Dr. Charles was thrust aside at the moment when he was about to commit himself. Jeanie put him away as if he had been a ploughman, or she a fine lady used to the fine art of easy impertinence. So little thought had she of him at all, that she was not aware of the carelessness with which she had received his semi-declaration, and while he withdrew stung all over as by mental nettles, abashed, insulted, and furious, she went innocently upstairs, without the faintest idea of the offence she had given. And Edgar went into the parlour after his cousin humming an air, with the freshness of the fields about him. The insouciance of the one who had that day given away his living, and the disturbed and nervous trouble of the other, self-conscious to his very finger points, irritated by a constant notion that he was despised and lightly thought of, made the strangest possible contrast between them, notwithstanding a certain family resemblance in their looks.
“I am staying to-night,” said Dr. Charles, with a certain abruptness, and that tone of irritated apology which mingled more or less in all he said, “because it is too late for me to get home.”
“And I am staying,” said Edgar, “because it is too late to start, I must go to-morrow. I suppose our road lies so far in the same direction.”
“You can get the London express at Glasgow, or even Greenock. I am going to Edinburgh.”
“I have business in Edinburgh too,” said Edgar. He was so good-humoured, so friendly, that it was very hard to impress upon him the fact that his companion regarded him in no friendly light.
“You will leave the loch with very pleasant feelings,” said Dr. Charles, “very different to the rest of us. Fortune has given you the superiority. What I would have done and couldn’t, you have been able to do. It is hard not to grudge a little at such an advantage. The man who has nothing feels himself always so inferior to the man who has something, however small.”
“Do you think so?” said Edgar, “my experience would not lead me to that conclusion; and few people can have greater experience. Once I supposed myself to be rather rich. I tumbled down from that all in a moment, and now I have nothing at all; but it seems to me I am the same man as when I was a small potentate in my way, thinking rather better than worse of myself, if truth must be told,” he added with a laugh.
“I wish I had your nothing at all,” said Dr. Charles, bitterly; “to us really poor people that is much, which seems little to you.”
“Well,” said Edgar, with a shrug of his shoulders, “my poverty is absolute, not comparative now. And you have a profession, while I have none. On the whole, whatever there may be to choose between us, you must have the best of it; for to tell the truth I am in the dismal position of not knowing what to do.”
“To do! what does it matter? you have enough to live upon.”
“I have nothing to live upon,” said Edgar, with a smile.
The young men looked at each other, one with a half-amusement in his face, the other full of wonder and consternation. “You don’t mean to say,” he asked, with a gasp, “that you have given her all?”
“I have no income left,” said Edgar. “I have some debts, unfortunately, like most men. Now a man who has no income has no right to have any debts. That is about my sole maxim in political economy. I must pay them off, and then I shall have fifty pounds or so left.”
“Good heavens!” said the other, “and you take this quite easily without anxiety——”
“Anxiety will not put anything in my pocket, or teach me a profession,” said Edgar. “Don’t let’s talk of it, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil there-of.’”
“But,” cried the other, almost wildly, “in that case all of us—I too—”
“Don’t say anything more about it,” said Edgar. “We all act according to impulses. Perhaps it is well for those who have no impulses; but one cannot help one’s self. I should like to start by the early boat to-morrow morning, and before I go I have something to say to Jeanie.”
“I fear I am in your way,” cried Dr. Charles, rising hastily, with the feeling, which was rather pleasant to him than otherwise, that at last he had a real reason for taking offence.
“Oh, dear no, not at all. It is only to give her some advice about our old mother,” said Edgar; but they both reddened as they stood fronting each other, Charles from wild and genuine jealousy—Edgar, from a disagreeable and impatient consciousness of the silly speeches which had associated his name with that of Jeanie. He stood for a moment uncertain, and then his natural frankness broke forth, “Look here,” he said, “don’t let us make any mistake. I don’t know what your feelings may be about Jeanie, but mine are those of an elder brother—a very much elder brother,” he went on, with a laugh, “to a child.”
“Every man says that, until the moment comes when he feels differently,” said Charles, in his uneasy didactic way.
“Does he? then that moment will never come for me,” said Edgar, carelessly.
Poor little Jeanie! she had opened the door, the two young men not observing her in their preoccupation, and Edgar’s words came fully into her heart like a volley of musketry. She stood behind them for a moment in the partial gloom—for they were standing between her and the light of the feeble candles—unnoticed, holding the door. Then noiselessly she stole back, closing it, her heart all riddled by that chance discharge, wounded and bleeding. Then she went to the kitchen softly, and called Bell. “My head’s sair,” she said, which on Loch Arroch means, my head aches. “Will you see if they want anything in the parlour, Bell?”
“My poor lamb!” said Bell, “I wish it beena your heart that’s sair. Ye are as white as a ghost. Go to your bed, my bonnie woman, and I’ll see after them, Lord bless us, what a bit white face! Go to your bed, and dinna let your Granny see you like that. Oh ay! I’ll see to the two men.”
Jeanie crept up-stairs like a mouse, noiseless in the dark staircase. She needed no light, and to hide herself seemed so much the most natural thing to do. White! Jeanie felt as if her face must be scorched as her heart seemed to be. Why should he have volunteered this profession of indifference? It seemed so much the worse because it was uncalled for. Did anyone say he cared for her? Had any one accused him of being “fond” of Jeanie? Shame seemed to take possession of the little soft creature. Had she herself done anything to put such a degrading idea into his mind? Why should he care for her? “I never asked him—I never wanted him,” poor Jeanie cried to herself.
Edgar never knew the second great effect he had produced on this eventful day. When Jeanie appeared at the early breakfast before he set out next morning, he was honestly concerned to see how pale she looked. “My poor dear child, you are ill,” he cried, drawing her towards him, and his look of anxious kindness struck poor Jeanie like a blow.
“I’m not ill. It’s my head. It’s nothing,” she said, starting away from him. Edgar looked at her with mild astonished eyes.
“You are not vexed with me this last morning? Take care of the dear old mother, Jeanie—but I know you will do that—and write to me sometimes to say she is well; and talk of me sometimes, as you promised—you remember?”
His kind friendly words broke Jeanie’s heart. “Oh, how can you look so pleased and easy in your mind!” she said, turning, as was natural, the irritation of her personal pain into the first possible channel, “when you know you are going away without a penny, for our sake—for her sake——”
“And yours,” Edgar added cheerily. “That is what makes me easy in my mind.”
And he smiled, and took both her hands, and kissed her on the forehead, a salutation which made little Scotch Jeanie—little used to such caresses—flame crimson with shame. Charles Murray looked on with sullen fury. He dared not do as much. This way of saying farewell was not cousinly or brotherly to him.