THE Duke arrived with his eldest son as soon as post-horses could bring him. He had been in the north, not very far away, so that the interval, though it represented much more difficult travelling than the journey from one end to the other of Great Britain nowadays, was not very long. Lord John had been a trouble to his family all his life. He had followed none of the traditions of prudence and good sense which had made his race what they were. The scrapes in which he had been were innumerable, and all his family were aware that nothing but embarrassment and trouble was likely to come to them from his hand. Sometimes this state of affairs may exist without any breach of the bonds of natural affection; but perhaps when a man is a duke and accustomed to have many things bow to his will, the things and persons that cannot be made to do so become more obnoxious to him than to a common man. No doubt a shock of natural distress convulsed the father’s mind at the first news of what had happened, but after a while there came, horrible as it seems to say it, a certain relief into the august mind of the Duke. At least here was an end of it; there could be no more to follow, no new disgraces or inconveniences to be encountered. Scarcely a year had come or gone for many years past without some fresh development of John’s powers of mischief. Now, poor fellow! all was over; he could do no more harm, make no more demands on a revenue which was not able to bear such claims, endanger no more a name which indeed had borne a great deal in its day without much permanent disadvantage. On the whole there was thus something to set against the terrible shock of a son’s sudden death by accident. A few questions thrown into the air as it were, a general demand upon somebody for information burst from the Duke during that long drive. “Where is this linn, do you know? What could he have wanted there? On the land of that old ruffian, Drumcarro? And what did he want there?” But to the last question at least no one could make any reply. Even to speak of Drumcarro’s lovely daughter as an inducement would have been a jarring note when the poor fellow was so recently dead. And the Duke could answer his own question well enough; any petty intrigue would be reason enough for John, the worse the better. His only fear was that some dark story of seduction and revenge might unfold itself when he got there.
It was Glendochart who received his chief when he reached his journey’s end, and told him the little there was to tell. It was supposed that Lord John had somehow missed his footing when at the head of the linn. Some one had heard the sound of a fall, and the body had been found below at the foot of the waterfall. This was all that could be discovered at the end of two or three days which had elapsed. The Duke saw, with a natural pang, his dead son laid out upon the mistress’s bed, and then he visited the scene of the tragedy. He inspected everything with a clouded countenance, asking brief, sharp questions from time to time. To Glendochart he seemed suspicious of violence and foul play, a suspicion which was lurking in Glendochart’s own mind, with strange surmises which he could not put into words, but which his mind was on the alert to find some clue to. This, however, was scarcely the Duke’s frame of mind. After he had visited the spot where the body had been found, and looked up the foaming fall of the linn, and heard everything that could be told him, he put a sudden question which dismayed Glendochart. “Have you any suspicions?” he said. “Has there been any suggestion—of violence?”
“The idea has no doubt been suggested,” Mr. Campbell replied, “but I can find nothing to give it any countenance. There were signs as of stamping of feet at one place near the fallen tree, but the man who found the body accounted for that as having slipped and fallen there.”
“It has been suggested then?” said the Duke, with another cloud coming over his face. “Glendochart, I may speak freely to you that would bring no discredit on the name. Was there any story, any reason for his staying here?”
Glendochart felt his countenance redden, though it was of that well-worn colour which shows little. He suddenly realised, with a sense of relief unspeakable, what it would have been had Lord John lived and thriven, to have intimated to the chief that his son had married Drumcarro’s daughter. Glendochart had himself been flattered by the idea. He saw the reverse of the medal now.
“I know of none,” he said, “my Lord Duke. He was more at this house than at any other house round about.”
“And there was no story—no lass, disappointed perhaps—or angry father? You know what I mean, Glendochart. One of my own name, and not so far from me in blood, I know that I can trust you. You know, too—what my poor boy was.”
“I understand what your Grace means,” said Glendochart. “I have heard of nothing of the kind.”
“And who was it that heard the fall?”
“It was my father-in-law, Drumcarro himself. He was taking his usual walk. I don’t imagine he ever thought it was so serious. He called to the man in the byre to see to it, that he thought he had heard a fall.”
“I will see Drumcarro. I suppose——”
“If it will satisfy your Grace better—but he is an old man, and much shaken with his wife’s death which took place only a fortnight ago.”
The Duke gave his clansman what looked like a suspicious glance. But he only said, “It will be better not to disturb him. I would have thought,” he added, “that old Drumcarro was tough enough to stand the loss of his wife or anything else.”
“We sometimes do men injustice,” said Glendochart, a little stiffly; “and the shock of having another death, so to speak, in the house, has had a great effect upon his mind—or I should perhaps say his nerves.”
“Well, well, I will not disturb him,” said the Duke. He said no more until they reached again the head of the linn. Then he stood for a few minutes amid the spray, looking down as he had looked up the boiling foam of waters. The cloud had gone off his face. He turned to his son, by his side, who had said little all this time. “I think we may satisfy ourselves that it was pure accident,” he said.
“I think so,” said the taintless heir, with a solemn nod of his head.
The Duke stood there for a moment more, and then he took off his hat and said, “Thank God.” With all his heart, Glendochart echoed the surprising words. He thought that he indeed had cause for thankfulness—that he should never have had the occasion to approach his chief with news of an alliance that would have been so little to his mind; that Jeanie’s name should have been kept out of the matter altogether, and no questions put to the old man whose nerves had been so strangely shaken. He had indeed cause for thankfulness; but the Duke, why? Glendochart came to understand later why the Duke should have been glad that no new scandal was to be associated with the end of his son’s life.
And so Lord John was carried in great state to the burial place of his fathers, and was rehabilitated with his family, and mourned by his mother and sisters, like other men. And whatever the tragedy was that attended his last hours it was buried with him, and never told to man. There is no coroner in Scotland; and in those remote regions, and at that period, the Duke’s satisfaction that his son’s death was caused by accident was enough for all.
Drumcarro scarcely left his room while that solemn visitor was in the house. He appeared after, a singularly changed and broken man, and fell into something like the habits of his old life. There had been no secret in his strange retirement, but there was no doubt left in the mind of any who surrounded him, that something had happened which was not in the peaceful routine of existence. They formed their own impressions at their leisure; it was nothing to the laird what they thought. He had deceived no man, neither had he confided in any man. When Glendochart left the house, taking charge of the mournful conveyance which carried Lord John home, life at Drumcarro would, in any circumstances, have been a wonderfully changed and shrunken life. It was the first time that the diminished family had been left alone since the death of the mistress. At the family table, once so well surrounded, Drumcarro sat down with his one remaining son, and the vast expanse of the wide table-cloth vacant save in that corner. It did not occur to any one to substitute a smaller table for the long-stretching board where there had been room for all. Jamie, who was never seen without a book, compensated himself for the silence and anxiety of this tête-à-tête by reading furtively, while his father sat with his shoulders up to his ears, and his eyes, almost lost in his shaggy eyebrows, glaring out now and then with a glance of gloomy fire. It was rarely that he addressed the boy, and the boy escaped from him into his book. The mother was gone, Jeanie was gone, every one who could make that empty board a little brighter. The father and son swallowed their meal side by side, but did not prolong it any more than was possible. The sight of them affected Merran’s nerves when she served them, though that ruddy lass might well have been supposed to have no such things in her possession. “There’s the laird just glowering frae him as if he saw something no canny, and Jamie with his book. And me that minds all that fine family!” cried Merran. “Ye must just go ben yourself, Marg’ret, for I canna do it.” And there is no doubt that it was a piteous sight.
Jeanie, on the other hand, recovered her spirit and her ease of mind with singular rapidity under the sheltering roof of Glendochart. She was not told of Lord John’s death for some time, and never of the rapidity with which it followed her interrupted interview. She was very much moved and excited when she heard of his death, wondering with natural self-importance whether her resistance of his suit had anything to do with the breaking down of his health. It half relieved, half disappointed Jeanie to discover after that his death was caused by an accident and not by love. But indeed she had then only a limited space to give in her thoughts to that lover of the past. He of the present had the command of the situation. Determined as she had been not to understand Gordon, the effect of a few days in the same house with him had been marvellous, and when the fairy regions of youthful experience began once more to open before Jeanie, she forgot that she had cause of grievance against the companion who opened to her that magic gate. All tragic possibilities disappeared from the path of the girl who had no longer any distracting struggle, but whose desires and inclinations all went with her fate. Her father made no objection to her marriage. “Let him take her if he wants her. I have no need of her here,” Drumcarro said. Jeanie indeed, instead of brightening the house and soothing the fever in him, excited and disturbed her father: “I want no lass about the house, now her mother that keeped her a little in order is gone.” She was married eventually at Glendochart, the Laird making no appearance even. He was said to be ill, and his illness had taken the curious form, a form not unprecedented, but much against nature, of strong dislike to certain persons. He could not abide the sight of Jeanie: “Let her do what she will, but let her no more come near me. Let him take her if he likes, I’m well pleased to be quit of her.” When Jeanie came attended by her lover to bid her father good-bye, the Laird almost drove her away. He got up from his chair supporting himself upon its arms, his eyes burning like coals of fire, his now gaunt and worn figure trembling with passion. “Go away to the parlour,” he said, “and get your tea, or whatever you’ve come for. I want none of you here.”
“Father, I just came to bid you good-bye,” said Jeanie.
“Go ’way to the parlour. I suffer nobody to disturb me here. Go ’way to Marg’ret. Ye’ll get what ye want from her, and plenty of petting, no doubt. Go ’way to the parlour. Marg’ret! Get them what they want and let them go.”
“Oh, father,” cried Jeanie weeping, “it’s not for anything we’ve come but just for kindness—to say good-bye.”
He was a strange figure standing up between his chair and table, supporting himself by his hands, stooping forward, grown old all at once, his hair and beard long and ragged in aspect, a nervous tremor in his limbs. Could that be the hale and vigorous man who scarcely seemed beyond middle age? Jeanie assayed to say something more, but the words were checked on her lips by his threatening looks.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Consider it’s done and all your duty paid, and begone from my sight, for I cannot bide to see you.” He added a moment after with a painful effort over himself, “I’m an old man, and not well in my health. Marg’ret! Ye mind me of many a thing I would fain forget. Good-bye, and for the love of God go away, and let me see you no more.”
“Is he always like that?” Jeanie asked, clinging to Marg’ret in the parlour, where that faithful adherent prepared tea for the visitors.
“Like what?” asked Marg’ret with a determination to keep up appearances in the presence of the strange gentleman with whom she had no associations. “The maister’s not very well. He has never been in his richt health since your mother died. That made an awfu’ change in the house, as might have been expected. Such a quiet woman as she was, never making any steer it’s just by ordinar’ how she’s missed.”
“Is it that? Is that all?” cried Jeanie.
“And what else would it be?” asked Marg’ret with a look that could not be gainsaid.
Marg’ret did not know any more than the rest what had happened. Lord John had died of an accident, he had fallen over the linn, and from the Duke himself to the last of the name all were satisfied that it was so. And in Drumcarro House there was not a word said to alter this view. But many heavy thoughts had arisen there of which nothing was said.
Drumcarro did what is also not uncommon in such circumstances: he justified those who explained his strange conduct by illness, and fell ill. The doctor said it was a malady of long standing which had thus developed itself as it was certain to have done sooner or later. He recommended that a doctor should be sent for from Glasgow, who had become very famous for his practice in this particular malady. It is doubtful whether Glendochart, who had the conduct of the business, knew anything about Dr. Dewar. At all events, if he did, it did not prevent him from sending for that special practitioner. The result was a curious scene in the chamber of the patient, who raised himself from his bed to stare at the new comer, and after contemplating him for some time in doubtful silence between wrath and astonishment, suddenly burst out into a great guffaw of laughter. “This was all that was wanted,” he said. But he allowed Anne’s husband to come in, to examine him, to prescribe, and with a grim humour saw him wave away the offered fee. “Na, it’s all in the family,” said the grim patient with a sudden sense of the grotesque illumining the darkness of his sick room. He was not insensible to this irony of circumstance, and he made no resistance. It was the only thing that produced a gleam of amusement in these latter days.