CHAPTER VI.
A Party in a Parlour.
THE dinner which followed was not, the first part of it at least, a very comfortable meal. Mrs. Murray herself was profoundly shaken by the conference altogether. She was unable to say anything to her grandson except the almost wild “No, lad; no, Edgar, my bonnie man!” with which she had endeavoured to stop him at first. After this she had not uttered a word. She had taken his hand between her old and worn hands, and raised her face as if to God—praying for blessings on him? No—I do not think her mind was capable of such an effort—she was looking up to the Divine Friend who had been her refuge in everything these seventy years, in a strange rapture of surprise and joy. How much part the sudden change in her circumstances had to do with the joy, I cannot tell—very little I think, infinitesimally little. “I have one son, one true son, after all; heart of my heart, and soul of my soul!” This was the predominating thought in her mind, the half-ecstatic feeling which flooded her old being like sudden sunshine. Amid all the griefs and disappointments to which such a soul is liable, there remains to one now and then the tender and generous delight of seeing others do by her as she would have done by them. How sweet it is; before all delight in gifts, or even in affection! We think of the golden rule more often in the way of a command, employing it to touch our own souls to languid duty; but there are occasions when it is given back to us, so to speak, in the way of recompense, vivified and quickened into rapture. This old woman had practised it as she could all her life, and others had not done to her as she had done to them; but here, at the end of her existence, came one—her reward, one heir of her nature, one issue of her soul. Thus she had her glimpse of heaven in the very moment of her lowest humiliation. She had done little personally for him—little—nothing—except to harm him; but she had done much for others, sacrificing herself that they might live, and the stranger, in whose training she had had no hand, who had with her no link of union but the mystic tie of blood, gave back to her full measure, heaped up, and running over. I must leave to the imagination of the reader the keen satisfaction and joy, sharp and poignant almost as pain, with which this aged soul, worn out and weary, received full in her heart, all at once, as by a shot or thunderbolt, the unthought of, unhoped-for recompense.
The men, as I have said, were the first to reconcile themselves to the sudden revolution. If any thrill of shame came over them, it was instantly quenched, and ceased to influence the hardened mail, beaten by much vicissitude of weather, which covered them. The women were thinner-skinned, so to speak, more easily touched in their pride, and were sensible of the irony with which, half-consciously to himself, Edgar had spoken. But, perhaps, the person most painfully affected of all was the young doctor, who had listened to Edgar with a painful flush on his face, and with a pang of jealous pain and shame, not easy to bear. He went up to the old lady as soon as the discussion was over, and sat down close by her, and held a long conversation in an undertone.
“Grandmother,” he said, the flush returning and covering his face with painful heat, “you do not think me ungrateful or slow to interfere? You know it is not want of will, but want of means. You know—”
“Charlie, was I asking anything, that you speak so to me? I know you could not interfere. You are in their debt still, poor lad?”
“Yes, I am in their debt still. I don’t know how to get out of it; it grinds me to the ground!” cried the young man. “But what can I do?”
Mrs. Murray patted his hand softly with her old worn fingers; but she was silent, with that silence which the weak nature, eager for approbation, but unable to make a bold effort after good, feels so profoundly.
“You don’t say anything,” said Dr. Charles, with a mixture of petulance. “You think I might have done more?”
“No, Charlie, no,” said the old woman; “as you say not. I would be glad to see you free of this bondage; but you must know best yourself.”
“There is so much to do,” said the young doctor. “I must get a position. I must make an appearance like others in my profession. So many things are necessary that you never think of here in a country place; and you know Margaret has no health to speak of. There is so much expense in every way.”
“She was always handless,” said Mrs. Murray. “She should come to me with little Bell, and let you take your chance. Living costs but little here, and what is enough for one is enough for two,” said the old woman, with her perennial and instinctive liberality of heart.
“Enough for one! Jeanie is going to leave you then, as the Campbells told me,” said the young man hastily. “He is to marry her as they said?”
“I ken nothing about marrying or giving in marriage,” said the grandmother, with some severity of tone. “If that is still in your mind, Charlie—”
“It is not in my mind—it was never in my mind,” he said with an eagerness which was almost passionate. “She has a lovely face, but she never was or could be a fit wife for a man in my position. There never was anything in that.”
“Charlie, my man, you think too much of your position,” said the old woman, shaking her head; “and if there was nothing in it, why should you gloom and bend your brows at the thought that Edgar might care for the bonnie face as well as you? He does not, more’s the pity.”
“And why should you say more’s the pity? Do you want to be rid of Jeanie? Do you want to be left alone?”
“I’m but a bruised reed for anyone to trust to,” she said. “Soon, soon I’ll have passed away, and the place that now knows me will know me no more. I would be glad to see my poor bairn in somebody’s hand that would last longer than me.”
A momentary flush of strong feeling passed over the young man’s face.
“Grandmother,” he said, “you were too good to me. If I had been bred a farmer like yourself—”
“You would have made but a weirdless farmer, Charlie, my man. It’s not the trade that does it,” said Mrs. Murray, with some sadness. “But Marg’ret had better come to me. She may hinder you, but she’ll no help you. The bairns are maybe right; I was injudicious, Charlie, and grieved for you that were all delicate things without a mother. I should have known better. You are little able to fend for yourselves in this world, either Marg’ret or you.”
“I don’t know why you should say so, grandmother. I am making my way in my profession,” said Dr. Charles, not without offence, “and Margaret is very greatly thought of, and asked to the best houses. If you have nothing more to blame yourself with than you have in our case—”
Mrs. Murray sighed, but she made no answer. It was not for nothing that her daughters had reproached her. Charles Murray and his sister Margaret had been the two youngest of the flock, her eldest son Tom’s children, whom the brave old woman had taken into her house, and brought up with the labour of her own hands. The others were scattered about the world, fighting their way in all regions; but Charlie and Margaret had been as apples of her eye. She had done everything for them, bringing up the son to a learned profession, and “making a lady of” the gentle and pretty girl, who was of a stock less robust than the other Murrays. And as Mrs. Murray had no patent of exemption from the failures that follow sometimes the best efforts, she had not succeeded in this case. Charles Murray, without being absolutely unsuccessful, had fulfilled none of the high hopes entertained concerning him; and Margaret had made a foolish marriage, and had been left in a few years a penniless widow dependent upon her brother. No one knew exactly what the two were doing now. They were “genteel” and “weirdless,” living, it was feared, above their means, and making no attempt to pay back the money which had been lent by their wealthier friends to set the young doctor afloat.
This was why the children she had trained so carefully could give their old mother no help. Margaret had cried bitterly when she heard that the old home was about to be broken up, and Charles’s heart was torn with a poignant sense of inability to help. But the tears and the pain would have done Mrs. Murray little good, and they were not of any profound importance to the brother and sister, both of whom were capable of some new piece of extravagance next day by way of consoling themselves. But though Mrs. Murray was not aware of it, the sharp shock of Edgar’s unlooked-for munificence towards her, and the jealousy and shame with which Dr. Charles witnessed it, was the most salutary accident that had happened to him all his life. The contrast of his own conduct, he who was so deeply indebted to her, and that of his unknown cousin, gave such a violent concussion to all his nerves as the young man had never felt before; and whatever might be the after result of this shock, its present issue was not agreeable. A sullen shadow came over him at the homely dinner to which they all sat down with such changed feelings. He had been the only one to whom Edgar had turned instinctively for sympathy, and Edgar was the first to feel this change. James Murray and Robert Campbell were the only two who kept up the languid conversation, and their talk, we need not add, was not of a very elevated kind.
“The mutton’s good, mother,” said James; “you’ve aye good mutton at Loch Arroch; not like the stuff that’s vended to us at I canna tell how much the pound. That’s a great advantage you have in the country. Your own mutton, or next thing to it; your own fowls and eggs, and all that. You should go on keeping poultry; you were a very good henwife in the old days, when we were all young; and there’s nothing that sells better than new-laid eggs and spring chickens. Though you give up the farm, I would advise you to keep them on still.”
“And I would not wonder but you might have grass enough for a cow,” said Campbell. “A cow’s a great thing in a house. There’s aye the milk whatever happens, and a pickle butter is never lost. It sells at as much as eighteen pence a pound on the other side of the loch, when those Glasgow people are down for the saut water. Asking your pardon, Agnes, I was not meaning the like of you; there are plenty Glasgow people that are very decent folk, but it cannot be denied that they make everything very dear.”
“And what is that but an advantage to everybody as long as we can pay, aye, the double if we like?” cried Mrs. MacKell, forgetting her previous plea of comparative poverty. “We like everything of the best, I don’t deny it; and who has a better right, seeing our men work hard for every penny they make?”
“For that matter so do the colliers and that kind of cattle, that consume all they earn in eating and drinking,” said Campbell. “I like a good dinner myself; but the way you Glasgow folk give yourselves up to it, beats me. That’s little to the purpose, however, in the present case. James’s advice is very good advice, and so you’ll find is mine. I would not object to being at the expense of buying in that bonnie brown cow, the one you fancied, Jean—women are aye fanciful in these matters—if there will be anybody about the house that could supper and milk a cow?”
He looked doubtfully at Jeanie as he spoke, and they all looked at her, some suspiciously, some contemptuously. They all seemed to Jeanie to reproach her that she was not a strong, robust “lass” ready to help her grandmother.
“I can milk Brounie; she’s so gentle,” said Jeanie, half under her breath, looking wistfully at her critics. James Murray uttered a suppressed “humph!”
“A bonnie young woman for a farm-house!” he said, “that can milk a cow when it’s gentle. I hope you’ll save the lad’s siller as much as possible, mother; no running into your old ways, taking folk into your bosom, or entertaining strangers on the smallest provocation, as you used to do.”
“I hope my grandmother will do precisely as she likes—in the way that pleases her best,” said Edgar with emphasis.
“I am saying,” said Campbell with emphasis, “a cow; and the cocks and hens, according to James. An honest penny is aye a good thing, however it’s got. If young Glen gets the farm, as is likely, he’ll be wanting a lodging till the new house is built. I would take the lad in and give him accommodation, if it was me. In short, there’s a variety of things that would be little trouble, and would show a desire to make the best of what’s given you; and any assistance that I can be of, or Jean—”
“Oh my mother’s above my help or yours either,” said Mrs. Campbell, with some bitterness. “You need not push yourself in, Rob, when neither you nor me are wanted.”
Mrs. Murray listened to all this with grave patience and forbearance. She smiled faintly at her daughter’s petulance, and shook her head. “Bairns,” she said, gently, “I guided my own concerns before you were born.” It was the only reproof she attempted to administer, and it was followed by a pause, during which the sound of knives and forks was very audible, each individual of the party plying his as for a wager, in the sudden stillness which each affronted person thought it doubly incumbent on him and her to keep up. Mrs. Murray looked round upon them all with a smile, which gradually softened into suppressed but genial humour. “I hope you are all making a good dinner,” she said.
The afternoon after this passed as a Sunday afternoon often passes in a family gathering. They all stood a little on their defence, but, with a keen appreciation of the fact, that the mother, whom they all intended to advise and lecture, had certainly got the upper hand, and had been on the verge of laughing at them, if she had not actually done so, were prudent, and committed themselves no further. They all went out after dinner to see the site where the new farm-house was to be built, and to speculate on the way in which young Glen would manage the farm, and whether he would succeed better than its previous occupant. The women of the party visited “the beasts,” as the men had done before dinner, and the men strolled out to the fields, and weighed in their hands the damp ears of corn, and shook their heads over the length of the straw, and pointed out to each other how badly the fields were arranged, and how the crops had been repeated year after year. “It’s time it was all in other hands,” they said to each other. As for Dr. Charles, he avoided the other members of the party—the uncles who might ask for the money they had lent him, and the aunts who might inquire with an undue closeness of criticism into his proceedings and those of his sister. He sat and talked with his grandmother in the parlour, answering her questions, and making conversation with her in a way which was somewhat formal. In short, it was very like a Sunday afternoon—and the sense of being in their best clothes, and having nothing to do, and being, as it were, bound over to keep the peace, was very wearisome to all these good people. The little excitement of pulling to pieces, so to speak, the house which had sheltered and reared them, was over, and thus a certain flat of disappointment and everyday monotony mingled with the sense of something unusual which was in their meeting. Their purpose was foiled altogether, and the business manqué, yet they could not but profess pleasure in the unexpected turn that things had taken. It was very like a Sunday afternoon.
And it is impossible to tell what a relief it was to all, when the big fishing-boat came heavily round the corner with the picnic party, and Jeanie, in her plain brown frock, ran down to the landing to bid her cousins come into tea. There were some six or seven in the boat, slightly damp and limp, but in high spirits; three of whom were girls, much more gaily dressed than Jeanie, yet with a certain general resemblance to her. They all rushed fluttering in their gay ribbons up to the farm-house, glad of the novelty, and threw themselves upon “Granny,” whom they admired without the criticism in which their mother indulged less than her brothers and sisters. They did not take much notice of Jeanie, but Dr. Charles was full of interest for them, and the unknown Edgar, who was still more emphatically “a gentleman,” excited their intensest curiosity. “Where is he? which is him?” they whispered to each other; and when Bell, the youngest, exclaimed with disappointment, that he was just like Charlie Murray, and nothing particular after all, her two elder sisters snubbed her at once. “If you cannot see the difference you should hold your tongue,” said Jeanie MacKell, who called herself Jane, and had been to a school in England, crowning glory of a Scotch girl on her promotion. “Not but what Charles is very nice-looking, and quite a gentleman,” said Margaret, more meekly, who was the second daughter. The presence of these girls, and of the young men in attendance upon them, to wit Andrew, their brother, and two friends of his own class, young men for whom natural good looks did not do so much as for the young women, and who were, perhaps, better educated, without being half so presentable—made the tea-table much merrier and less embarrassed than the dinner had been. The MacKells ended by being all enthralled by Edgar, whose better manners told upon them, (as a higher tone always tells upon women,) whose superiority to their former attendants was clear as daylight, and who was not stiff and afraid to commit himself like Charles Murray; “quite a gentleman,” though they all held the latter to be. As for Edgar himself, he was so heartily thankful for the relief afforded by this in-road of fresh guests, that he was willing to think the very best of his cousins, and to give them credit—that is the female part of them—for being the best of the family he had yet seen. He walked with them to their boat, and put them in, when sunset warned them to cross the loch without delay, and laughingly excused himself from accepting their eager invitations, only on the ground that “business” demanded his departure on the next day. Mrs. MacKell took him aside before she embarked, and shook his hand with tears gathering in her eyes.
“I could not say anything before them all,” she said, with an emotion which was partly real; “but I’ll never forget what you’ve done for my mother—and oh, what a comfort it is to me to think I leave her in her ain old house! God bless you for it!”
“Good-bye,” said Edgar, cheerily, and he stood on the banks and watched the boat with a smile. True feeling enough, perhaps, and yet how oddly mingled! He laughed to himself as he went back to the house with an uneasy, mingling of pain and shame.