CHAPTER XX.
Loch Arroch once more.
EDGAR and Margaret (accompanied, as she always was, by her child) arrived at Loch Arroch early on the morning of the second day. They were compelled to stay in Glasgow all night—she with friends she had there, he in an inn. It was a rainy, melancholy morning when they got into the steamer, and crossed the broad Clyde, and wound upward among the hills to Loch Arroch Head, where Robert Campbell, with an aspect of formal solemnity, waited with his gig to drive them to the farm.
“You’re in time—oh ay, you’re in time; but little more,” he said, and went on at intervals in a somewhat solemn monologue, as they drove down the side of the grey and misty loch, under dripping cloaks and umbrellas. “She’s been failing ever since the new year,” he said. “It’s not to be wondered at, at her age; neither should we sorrow, as them that are without hope. She’s lived a good and useful life, and them that she brought into the world have been enabled to smooth her path out of it. We’ve nothing to murmur at; she’ll be real glad to see you both—you, Marg’ret, and you, Mr. Edgar. Often does she speak of you. It’s a blessing of Providence that her life has been spared since the time last Autumn when we all thought she was going. She’s had a real comfortable evening time, with the light in it, poor old granny, as she had a right to, if any erring mortal can be said to have a right. And now, there’s Willie restored, that was thought to be dead and gone.”
“Has Willie come back?” asked Margaret hastily.
“He’s expected,” said Robert Campbell, with a curious dryness, changing the lugubrious tone of his voice; “and I hope he’ll turn out an altered man; but it’s no everyone going down to the sea in ships that sees the wisdom o’ the Lord in the great waters, as might be hoped.”
The rain blew in their faces, the mists came down over the great mountain range which separates Loch Arroch from Loch Long, and the Castle Farm lay damp and lonely in its little patch of green, with the low ruins on the other side of the house shining brown against the cut fields and the slaty blueness of the loch. It was not a cheerful prospect, nor was it cheerful to enter the house itself, full of the mournful bustle and suppressed excitement of a dying—that high ceremonial, to which, in respect, or reverence, or dire curiosity, or acquisitiveness, more dreadful still, so many spectators throng in the condition of life to which all Mrs. Murray’s household belonged.
In the sitting-room there were several people seated. Mrs. MacColl, the youngest daughter, in her mother’s chair, with her handkerchief to her eyes, and Mrs. Campbell opposite, telling her sister, who had but lately arrived, the details of the illness; Jeanie MacColl, who had come with her mother, sat listlessly at the window, looking out, depressed by the day and the atmosphere, and the low hum of talk, and all the dismal accessories of the scene. James Murray’s wife, a hard-featured, homely person, plain in attire, and less refined in manner than any of the others, went and came between the parlour and the kitchen.
“They maun a’ have their dinner,” she said to Bell, “notwithstanding that there’s a dying person in the house;” and with the corners of her mouth drawn down, and an occasional sigh making itself audible, she laid the cloth, and prepared the table.
Now and then a sound in the room above would make them pause and listen—for, indeed, at any moment they might all be called to witness the exit of the departing soul. Bell’s steps in the kitchen, which were unsubduable in point of sound, ran through all the more gentle stir of this melancholy assembly. Bell was crying over her work, pausing now and then to go into a corner, and wipe the tears from her cheeks; but she could not make her footsteps light, or diminish the heaviness of her shoes.
There was a little additional bustle when the strangers arrived, and Margaret and her child, who were wrapped up in cloaks and shawls, were taken into the kitchen to have their wraps taken off, and to be warmed and comforted. Edgar gave his own dripping coat to Bell, and stole upstairs out of “the family,” in which he was not much at home. Little Jeanie had just left her grandmother’s room on some necessary errand, when he appeared at the top of the stair. She gave a low cry, and the little tray she was carrying trembled in her hands. Her eyes were large with watching, and her cheeks pale, and the sudden sight of him was almost more than the poor little heart could bear; but, after a moment’s silence, Jeanie, with an effort, recovered that command of herself which is indispensable to women.
“Oh! but she’ll be glad—glad to see you!” she cried—“it’s you she’s aye cried for night and day.”
Edgar stood still and held her hand, looking into the soft little face, in which he saw only a tender sorrow, not harsh or despairing, but deep and quiet.
“Before even I speak of her,” he said, “my dear little Jeanie, let me say how happy I am to hear about your brother—he is safe after all.”
Jeanie’s countenance was moved, like the loch under the wind. Her great eyes, diluted with sorrow, swelled full; a pathetic smile came upon her lips.
“He was dead, and is alive again,” she said softly; “he was lost and is found.”
“And now you will not be alone, whatever happens,” said Edgar.
I don’t know what mixture of poignant pain came over the grateful gleam in little Jeanie’s face. She drew her hand from him, and hastened downstairs. “What does it matter to him, what does it matter to anyone, how lonely I am?” was the thought that went through her simple heart. Only one creature in the world had ever cared, chiefly, above everything else, for Jeanie’s happiness, and that one was dying, not to be detained by any anxious hold. Jeanie, simple as she was, knew better than to believe that anything her brother could give her would make up for what she was about to lose.
Edgar went into the sick-room reverently, as if he had been going into a holy place. Mrs. Murray lay propped up with pillows on the bed. For the first moment it seemed to him that the summons which brought him there must have been altogether uncalled for and foolish. The old woman’s eyes were as bright and soft as Jeanie’s; the pale faint pink of a Winter rose lingered in her old cheeks; her face seemed smoothed out of many of the wrinkles which he used to know; and expanded into a calm and largeness of peace which filled him with awe. Was it that all mortal anxieties, all fears and questions of the lingering day were over? By the bedside, in her own chair, sat the minister of the parish, an old man, older than herself, who had known her all her life. He had been reading to her, with a voice more tremulous than her own; and the two old people had been talking quietly and slowly of the place to which they were so near. I have no doubt that in the pulpit old Mr. Campbell, like other divines, talked of golden streets, and harps and crowns, in the New Jerusalem above. But here there was little room for such anticipations. A certain wistfulness was in their old eyes, for the veil before them was still impenetrable, though they were so near it; but they were not excited.
“You’re sure of finding Him,” the old man was saying; “and where He is, there shall His people be.”
“Ay,” said Mrs. Murray. “And, oh! it’s strange lying here, no sure sometimes if it’s me or no; no sure which me it is—an auld woman or a young woman; and then to think that a moment will make a’ clear.”
This was the conversation that Edgar interrupted. She held out her withered hand to him with a glow of joy that lighted up her face.
“My son,” she said. There was something in the words that seemed to fill the room, Edgar thought, with an indescribable warmth and fulness of meaning, yet with that strange uncertainty which belongs to the last stage of life. He felt that she might be identifying him, unawares, with some lost son of thirty years ago, not forgetting his own individuality, yet mingling the two in one image. “This is the one I told you of,” she said, turning to her old friend.
“He is like his mother,” said the old man dreamily, putting out a hand of silent welcome.
They might have been two spirits talking over him, Edgar felt, as he stood, young, anxious, careful, and troubled, between the two who were lingering so near the calm echoes of the eternal sea.
“You’ve come soon, soon, my bonnie man,” said Mrs. Murray, holding his hand between hers; “and, oh, but I’m glad to see you! Maybe it’s but a fancy, and maybe it’s sinful vanity, but, minister, when I look at him, he minds me o’ mysel’. Ye’ll say it’s vain—the like of him, a comely young man, and me; but it’s no in the outward appearance. I’ve had much, much to do in my generation,” she said, slowly looking at him, with a smile in her eyes. “And, Edgar, my bonnie lad, I’m thinking, so will you——”
“Don’t think of me,” he said; “but tell me how you are. You are not looking ill, my dear old mother. You will be well again before I go.”
“Oh! ay, I’ll be well again,” she said. “I’m no ill—I’m only slipping away; but I would like to say out my say. The minister has his ain way in the pulpit,” she went on, with a smile of soft humour, and with a slowness and softness of utterance which looked like the very perfection of art to cover her weakness; “and so may I on my deathbed, my bonnie man. As I was saying, I’ve had much, much to do in my generation, Edgar—and so will you.”
She smoothed his hand between her own, caressing it, and looking at him always with a smile.
“And you may say it’s been for little, little enough,” she went on. “Ah! when my bairns were bairns, how muckle I thought of them! I toiled, and I toiled, and rose up early and lay down late, aye thinking they must come to mair than common folk. It was vanity, minister, vanity; I ken that weel. You need not shake your head. God be praised, it’s no a’ in a moment you find out the like o’ that. But I’m telling you, Edgar, to strengthen your heart. They’re just decent men and decent women, nae mair—and I’ve great, great reason to be thankful; and it’s you, my bonnie man, the seed that fell by the wayside—none o’ my training, none o’ my nourishing—— Eh! how the Lord maun smile at us whiles,” she added, slowly, one lingering tear running over her eyelid, “and a’ our vain hopes!—no laugh. He’s ower tender for that.”
“Or weep, rather,” said Edgar, penetrated by sympathetic understanding of the long-concealed, half-fantastic pang of wounded love and pride, which all these years had wrung silently the high heart now so near being quieted for ever. She could smile now at her own expectations and vanities—but what pathos was in the smile!
“We must not put emotions like our own into His mind that’s over all,” said the old minister. “Smiling or weeping’s no for Him.”
“Eh, but I canna see that,” said the old woman. “Would He be kinder down yonder by the Sea of Tiberias than He is up there in His ain house? It’s at hame that the gentle heart’s aye kindest, minister. Mony a day I’ve wondered if it mightna be just like our own loch, that Sea of Galilee—the hills about, and the white towns, as it might be Loch Arroch Head (though it’s more grey than white), and the fishing-cobbles. But I’m wandering—I’m wandering. Edgar, my bonnie man, you’re tired and hungry; go down the stair and get a rest, and something to eat.”
Little though Edgar was disposed to resume the strange relationship which linked him to the little party of homely people in the farm parlour, with whom he felt so little sympathy, he had no alternative but to obey. The early dinner was spread when he got downstairs, and a large gathering of the family assembled round the table. All difference of breeding and position disappear, we are fond of saying, in a common feeling—a touch of nature makes the whole world kin; but Edgar felt, I am afraid, more like the unhappy parson at tithing time, in Cowper’s verses, than any less prosaic hero. With whimsical misery he felt the trouble of being too fine for his company—he, the least fine of mortal men.
Margaret, upon whom his eye lingered almost lovingly, as she appeared among the rest, a lily among briers, was not ill at ease as he was; perhaps, to tell the truth, she was more entirely at her ease than when she had sat, on her guard, and very anxious not to “commit any solecism,” at Lady Mary’s table. To commit a solecism was the bugbear which had always been held before her by her brother, whose fears on this account made his existence miserable. But here Margaret felt the sweetness of her own superiority, without being shocked by the homeliness of the others. She had made a hurried visit to her grandmother, and had cried, and had been comforted, and was now smiling softly at them all, full of content and pleasant anticipations. Jeanie, who never left her grandmother, was not present; the Campbells, the MacColls and the Murrays formed the company, speaking low, yet eating heartily, who thus waited for the death which was about to take place above.
“I never thought you would have got away so easy,” said Mrs. Campbell. “I would scarcely let your uncle write. ‘How can she leave Charles, and come such a far gait, maybe just for an hour or two?’ I said. But here you are, Margaret, notwithstanding a’ my doubts. Ye’ll have plenty of servant-maids, and much confidence in them, that ye can leave so easy from a new place?”
“We are not in our house yet, and we have no servant,” said Margaret. “Charles is in lodgings, with a very decent person. It was easy enough to get away.”
“Lodgings are awful expensive,” said Mrs. MacColl. “I’m sure when we were in lodgings, Mr. MacColl and me, the Exhibition year, I dare not tell what it cost. You should get into a house of your ain—a doctor is never anything thought of without a house of his ain.”
“I hope you found the information correct?” said Robert Campbell, addressing Edgar. “The woman at Dalmally minded the couple fine. It was the same name as your auld friend yonder,” and he pointed with his thumb over his left shoulder, to denote England, or Arden, or the world in general. “One of the family, perhaps?”
“Yes.”
“Oh! I want to spy into no secrets. Things of this kind are often turning up. They may say what they like against our Scotch law, but it prevents villainy now and then, that’s certain. Were you interested for the man or the leddy, if it’s a fair question? For it all depends upon that.”
“In neither of them,” said Edgar. “It was a third party, whom they had injured, that I cared for. When is—Jeanie’s brother—expected back?”
“He may come either the day or the morn,” said Mrs. MacColl. “I wish he was here, for mother’s very weak. Do you not think she’s weaker since the morning? I thought her looking just wonderful when I saw her first, but at twelve o’clock—What did the doctor think?”
“He canna tell more than the rest of us,” said James Murray’s wife. “She’s going fast—that’s all that can be said.”
And then there was a little pause, and everybody looked sad for the moment. They almost brightened up, however, when some hasty steps were heard overhead, and suspended their knives and forks and listened. Excitement of this kind is hard to support for a stretch. Nature longs for a crisis, even when the crisis is more terrible than their mild sorrow could be supposed to be. When it appeared, however, that nothing was about to happen, and the steps overhead grew still again, they all calmed down and resumed their dinner, which was an alleviation of the tedium.
“She’s made a’ the necessary dispositions?” said James Murray’s wife, interrogatively. “My man is coming by the next steamer. No that there can be very muckle to divide.”
“Nothing but auld napery, and the auld sticks of furniture. It will bring very little—and the cow,” said Robert Campbell. “Jean likes the beast, so we were thinking of making an offer for the cow.”
“You’ll no think I’m wanting to get anything by my mother’s death,” said Mrs. MacColl; “for I’m real well off, the Lord be thanked! with a good man, and the bairns doing well; I would rather give than take, if there was any occasion; but Robert has aye had a great notion of the old clock on the stairs. There’s a song about it that one of the lassies sings. I would like that, to keep the bairns in mind o’ their granny. She’s been a kind granny to them all.”
She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and Margaret and Jeanie MacColl cried a little. The rest of the company shook their heads, and assented in different tones.
“Real good and kind, good and kind to everybody! Ower guid to some that little deserved it!” was the general burden, for family could not but have its subdued fling at family, even in this moment of melancholy accord.
“You are forgetting,” said Edgar, “the only one of the family who is not provided for. What my grandmother leaves should be for little Jeanie. She is the only helpless one of all.”
At this there was a little murmur round the table, of general objection.
“Jeanie has had far more than her share already,” said one.
“She’s no more to granny than all the rest of the bairns,” cried another.
Robert Campbell, the only other man present, raised his voice, and made himself heard.
“Jeanie will never want,” he said; “here’s her brother come back, no very much of a man, but still with heart enough in him to keep her from wanting. Willie’s but a roving lad, but the very rovingness of him is good for this, that he’ll not marry; and Jeanie will have a support, till she gets a man, which is aye on the cards for such a bonnie lass.”
This was said with more than one meaning. Edgar saw Margaret’s eyelashes flutter on her cheek, and she moved a little uneasily, as though unable to restrain all evidence of a painful emotion. Just at this moment, however, a shadow darkened the window. Margaret, more keenly on the watch than anyone, lifted her eyes suddenly, and, rising to her feet, uttered a low cry. A young man in sailor’s dress came into the room, with a somewhat noisy greeting.
“What, all of you here! What luck!” he cried. “But where’s granny?”
He had to be hushed into silence, and to have all the circumstances explained to him; while Jeanie MacColl, half-reluctant to go, was sent upstairs to call her cousin and namesake, and to take her place as nurse for the moment. Edgar called her back softly, and offered himself for this duty. He cast a glance at the returned prodigal as he left the room, the brother for whom Jeanie had taken him, and whom everybody had acknowledged his great likeness to. Edgar looked at him with mingled amusement and curiosity, to see what he himself must look like. Perhaps Willie had not improved during his adventurous cruise. Edgar did not think much of himself as reflected in his image; and how glad he was to escape from his uncle and his aunt, and their family talk, to the stillness and loftier atmosphere of the death-chamber upstairs!