WHEN Marjory went upstairs for the night, she made a strenuous endeavour to get Tom’s papers in order for her father, and to ignore the one paper which had opened a door, as it were, in her brother’s life, and of which nobody knew but herself. She went on working till long past midnight, always with a consciousness of that letter in the corner, which was like the presence of some one in the room with her, of which she was not supposed to be aware. She tried to forget it, but she could not forget. While she collected the bills and tied them together, her mind went on with a perpetual stream of questions—Who was this girl? Where had Tom met her? Had she really hoped to be Mrs. Heriot of Pitcomlie? and a hundred other mental inquiries to which, of course, there could come no answer. In her mind, she went over all the countryside, searching into every cottage in order to find out, if possible, who “Isabell” was. It is a common name enough in Fife—a score of Isabells presented themselves to her fancy, but she could not realize any one of them as the writer of that letter. And Tom had spent but little time at home. If it had not been so Scotch even, Marjory’s curiosity would have been less excited; but it seemed certain that she must know who it was who wrote in that familiar dialect. While her eye noted the dates of those very different documents which she was collecting—while she made out her list of them, and slowly added up the figures—though that was a mental process somewhat difficult, and not very rapid—her whole soul was absorbed in this other current of thought. She was even capable of feeling grieved and miserable about the effect the bills would have upon her father, while in imagination she was passing from door to door, from cottage to cottage, searching for this Isabell. Was she wondering, perhaps, what had become of her lover, poor foolish thing! perhaps after all, Marjory allowed, with difficulty, she might be truly fond of him, might love him even, after her fashion—might be suffering such tortures as she was capable of, wondering at his silence, wearying—was not that the word in the letter? wearying, wearying! for him who was to come no more. Was Tom’s sister, even for a moment, half sorry for the girl? If she was, Marjory scorned the sentiment as a weakness of nature. Then, in its musing, her mind returned to its first view of the matter. Was it certain, after all, that Tom had so far forgotten himself and his family as to woo Isabell for his wife, as the letter implied? might not this be a mere pretence. It seemed to Marjory that her brother was more likely to have sinned vulgarly by that system of false promises which women suppose men to make so lightly, than that he should have seriously intended to introduce such a mistress to the old house. Which would be worst? There could not be a purer-minded woman than she who pondered, with an aching heart and burning cheeks, this odious question. Was it possible there could be a question on the matter? Marjory hated herself for hesitating—yet there was something to be said on both sides;—that he should have meant well and honourably would be better for Tom—but for the race, the house—
The ingenuous reader will be disgusted with Marjory, as Marjory was with herself; but notwithstanding, the fact remains which we are obliged to record. She got rid of the dilemma with an impatient sigh, disowning it, refusing to answer her own question; and plunged into her additions, which were not much less painful. Oh! to carry that woeful list to Tom’s father! to be obliged to set in order the record of poor Tom’s prevarications (what a hard word lies is—yet sometimes the right one) and extravagances, and the unhappy meanness which must always mingle with extravagance—how it made her heart ache! She sat through half the night preparing that miserable list, and thinking of the other matter which was equally miserable in whatever light it was contemplated. It was two o’clock in the morning, when with her head and her heart alike throbbing with pain, she rose and went to her window and looked out upon the night. It was very dark; she could hear the monotonous rising and falling of the sea, sometimes like a long drawn sob, sometimes sharp like a cry, as it beat and splashed upon the rocks. “The moaning of the homeless sea.” How many people listening to it all over the world put their own weariness, and sadness, and discouragement into that great and ceaseless voice! Between the black sky and the black water, both cheerless and dismal, Marjory felt as if she stood alone, with no one to help her. The world was asleep—all human sympathy was closed up in unconsciousness. Was that other poor soul, that foolish creature, that Isabell, waking somewhere too, and wondering, wearying in her ignorance? Just then a revolving light, far off, sent a sudden steady, yet momentary, flash across the dark water. It was as well known to her as her own name—yet somehow at that moment it was unexpected, and flashed across the waves to her like a word of consolation. At the same moment, Marjory saw what she had not seen before, a figure standing out upon the cliff, turned with its back to the sea as if gazing up at the house. It seemed to her, for the moment, like a ghostly visitor, and gave her a little thrill of terror. Then she turned away with a nervous laugh. The red sparkle of the cigar, and something in the outline of the figure, revealed Fanshawe to her. She dropped her blind, and went in with a little comfort—a sense of society and security; probably had it been the old gardener, she would have felt that sensation of comfort just as warmly. But no; had it been the gardener, Marjory would have wanted, in the first place, to know what he did there; with Mr. Fanshawe, she asked no questions. It was as if some one had held out a friendly hand to her through the chilliness and dullness that wrapped the world.
It may seem to many people very strange that Marjory should have had so disagreeable a task to do, and not her father, or uncle, or even their solicitor. I cannot explain it further than by saying that this was the custom among the Hay-Heriots. It is so in some houses; the women of some families, as I believe I have already said, are always thrust forward to receive any domestic blow, and transmit it, blunted by its first penetration into the softness of their bosoms. Marjory saw nothing remarkable in this, nor did she even complain of it. Had her mother been living, they would both have received the thrust and taken the edge off, before it reached the father; but as it was, the eldest daughter of the house, heiress of its traditions if of little else, took up her inheritance without shrinking. Had it been out-of-door business, the solicitor would have been employed no doubt; but so far as domestic troubles went the wives and daughters at Pitcomlie were the attorneys of the head of the house and bore the brunt first, preparing the burden for him that he might put it on in the easiest way.
“Have you sorted the papers?” Mr. Heriot asked in his harsh voice next morning at breakfast. He never looked at any one now till he had been irritated into attention. His voice had altogether changed. There was a line of redness and heat under his eyes, leaving the rest of his face pallid though still brown—and this redness seemed to be reflected in the eyes themselves, which were bloodshot and heavy. The droop of his head, the inward look he had, the air of absorption, the passionate inclination to find fault when he spoke at all, altered his aspect so entirely that his friends of six months ago would scarcely have known the man. He never looked even at his daughters. He spoke to Marjory with his eyes fixed upon his coffee, which he swallowed in great gulps. Mr. Charles had insisted upon talking to him of the visits they had received the day before, which perhaps had something to do with the suppressed passion which showed itself in his tone.
“Not quite,” said Marjory, faltering, “nearly, papa—perhaps to-morrow—”
“To-morrow!” he said, “who can say anything about to-morrow? are you or I so sure of seeing it that we should put off our duty? You are a silly thing like the rest. What is to hinder you to give a day to your work like the most part of your fellow-creatures? They go out to their day’s darg, be it storm or fine, with a sore heart or a light one. But the like of you must be kept from every fashious thing.”
“I submit it to you, Thomas, whether that’s quite fair upon Marjory,” said Mr. Charles, “we’re all in sore trouble—sore trouble, and you worst of all, poor man! but as the Minister says—”
“Confound the Minister!” said Mr. Heriot, “am I to be insulted in my own house by an auld fool, with his cut and dry phrases? I know my duty as well as he does. Marjory, go to your work, and see you do it, and let me have the papers, not later than to-night.”
“I shall be ready,” said Marjory softly, as her father left the table. She was ready then, to tell the truth; it was but her reluctance to give him another blow that held her back. She was sorry for him to the bottom of her heart; had she been rich enough to satisfy those claims without carrying them to him, her path would have been easy enough. But she was poor—the eldest daughter, the trusted of everybody, was the only person in the house who had nothing. Her mother had been poor, so that Marjory had no fortune by that side; and Mr. Heriot’s sons had been expensive and cost him a great deal of money. Marjory would have something when he died, but so long as he lived she had her small allowance, and nothing more. Little Milly was in a much better position; she would have an independent fortune before she had nearly attained Marjory’s age. But Marjory in her mature womanhood, twenty-five, had nothing but fifty pounds a year for her dress; sometimes she felt it was hard, and this was one of these times. It was by way of escaping from herself that she turned to Fanshawe, who was a very close though silent observer of all that went on. She raised her eyes to him, and addressed him frankly with a look of confidence and friendliness which she had never shown to him before.
“You were very late last night,” she said, “I saw you upon the cliff.”
“Then that was your window,” he said, surprised into an admission, “I thought so—I had been walking up and down watching it. It looked like the protecting—light of the house.”
He had been on the eve of saying “angel,” but stopped in time.
“Not much of a protection,” said Marjory, still frank as she had never been before, “it was you who gave me that feeling. I had been working late and I was tired, and the very sight of you was friendly—you and the lighthouse together. You both shone out at the same time; though by the way, now I think of it, it was much too late for you to be out.”
“How did you know it was Mr. Fanshawe?” said Mr. Charles, “in the dark tous les chats sont gris; and it was very dark last night.”
“I knew him by his cigar,” said Marjory with a little laugh; not that she had any inclination to laugh, but that she had turned her back with a wild resolution upon the subjects that occupied her, determined at least for the moment to get rid of them. “It was improper, and he ought not to have been there smoking at two o’clock in the morning; but the sight of some one was a comfort to me.”
“That is a strange way of convincing me of impropriety,” said Fanshawe, delighted, “of course I shall go on doing it all the days of my life. The scene was very wild, as wild as any I ever saw. How black the Firth was, and the sky, and how the surf boiled upon the rocks! It looked like Norway or Canada, rather than this sober well-to-do Fife.”
“That is all climate, nothing but climate,” said Mr. Charles, “the thermometer has varied fifteen degrees since Sunday—fifteen degrees! it ‘is just astonishing. Of course anyone could see with half an eye that Sunday was too fine to last. Are you going to work, Marjory, my dear, as your father said?”
“I am going out first for a breath of air,” she answered. She was almost gay in her eagerness to escape from herself, and to stave off the painful moment which was coming. She took Milly’s hand and ran round to the drawing-room where the windows opened upon the cliff. She went out into the morning sunshine, which fell full upon her uncovered head; the wind blew her hair about, waking in it gleams of richer colour which the sun found out. Nobody knew that it was a kind of desperation which roused Marjory. Her uncle looked at her puzzled and half disapproving, and shook his head. He thought it was a doubtful example she was setting before the servants, so soon after—and Fleming, who looked on very seriously, was of that opinion too.
As for Fanshawe he followed her with delight. “Now is the time for the old house,” he said, as he went after the two pretty figures, the young woman and the child, to the edge of the rocks. The sea was blue and the morning bright, the whole world renovated by the new day; and mourning cannot last for ever any more than night. Fanshawe felt disposed to push old Fleming over the rocks when he came brushing past with evident satisfaction to interrupt this moment of ease, with a trayful of letters. But who is there in this nineteenth century bold enough to obstruct the passage of the post? He had to stand humbly by, and accept his own share, which Fleming handed to him, he thought with a certain triumph, and which consisted of three bills, a note from a livery-stable keeper informing him that his only horse had met with an accident, and an invitation to join a party who were setting out from Cowes on a yachting expedition that day. He got through this satisfactory and pleasant correspondence at a rapid rate, and then he sauntered to the edge of the cliff to wait till Marjory had satisfied herself with her letters. No doubt this would be a much longer process—no doubt she had a hundred dearest friends, who wrote about a thousand ridiculous nothings, and filled up her time and distracted her attention. She had seated herself on the mossy stone steps of the old sun-dial, which stood on that velvet green, undecorated lawn. She had her back turned to him, so that he could look at her at his ease. He thought what a pretty picture it would make; the grey house behind her, with trees appearing beyond that on the land side, and here nothing but the green, green turf, without any flowers, ending in the brown rock of the cliff which descended sheer down, a dangerous precipice to the sea. Milly’s golden hair, all blown about, was the central point in the picture; while Marjory with her head drooped over her letters sat on the steps of the old dial, with the wind lightly fluttering her black ribbons, and the golden lights in her brown hair shining out in the sun.
The next moment she uttered a low cry, throwing up her hands. Fanshawe rushed forward. Mr. Charles had gone away to his rooms; Milly had strayed back into the drawing-room; he and she were alone; he rushed up to her—
“Are you ill? What has happened, Miss Heriot?”
“I do not think I am ill. I do not think I can be dreaming. I am sick with fright,” cried Marjory. “Oh, Mr. Fanshawe, for God’s sake read that, and tell me what you think!”
He took the letter out of her hand. An Indian letter, on thin paper, written with faint ink. For the moment he could not make out the meaning of her terror. This is what he read:—
“Dear Marjory,
“You will be surprised to learn that we are on our way home, though I am sure I am anything but able to travel, nor the poor baby neither, who is a very wee, feeble thing, and not at all well suited with an Ayah. The reason is, Charlie has had the fever again. He would not let me tell you, but I may now, as he is too ill to know what I am writing. This is the third attack, and the doctor at the station, who is a very odd sort of man, coddling up all the men, and never caring for the ladies, has taken a fright; and, what is worse, has given Charlie a fright—and applied for furlough, without even consulting me, though we cannot afford it, and your father has always so opposed his coming home. You need not think it is my fault, for I am no more fit to travel than to fly, and probably will die on the way, and never trouble you. And if both of us die, as seems more than likely, I hope you will be kind to the children, or at least to Tommy, for baby, I feel, will go with me, if I go. I am sure if the doctor would but leave poor Charlie quiet he would get better, as he has done before; but he has to be lifted into a litter, and carried all the way to Calcutta; and how I am to be expected to look after everything—him, and the luggage, and the children—is more than I know. What with baby’s nurse not agreeing with him, and Charlie’s being so ill, and not a soul to give me any assistance, I get no rest night nor day; and when I recollect that it is only six weeks since I was confined, I cannot think how anybody has the heart to ask me to do it. However, the doctor has to be obeyed, though I hate him, and we have got leave, and the agents are to lend us the money (for we never have a penny). You need not write, for we hope to catch the steamer at Calcutta, and should be in England in the end of April. But don’t be surprised if Tommy comes alone; for even if Charlie gets a little better, I do not think I can bear the journey, and baby is sure to go along with me. Good-bye; if we reach England alive, I will send you word from Southampton; but I don’t expect it, for how we are ever to get through the journey—I as weak as water, and my poor baby only six weeks old, and Charlie in a litter—is more than I can say.
“Your affectionate sister,
“MATILDA.
“P.S.—Be kind to Tommy, if he is the only one that reaches home.”
“What do you think?” cried Marjory, raising her face to him.
She had forgotten it was Fanshawe. He was the first human creature at hand—the only one to whom she could turn in her distress.
“It is a silly letter; making the worst of everything. It is not, I am sure it cannot be, so bad as she says.”
“She does not make the worst of Charlie’s illness,” said Marjory. “Oh, my poor Charlie! She says next to nothing about him. It is not her I am thinking of. My brother—my poor brother, must be dying! Oh God! and what shall we do?”
“She does not say so,” said Fanshawe, kneeling down beside her. “Dear Miss Heriot, don’t be too easily alarmed. You are weak with the sorrow you have had already. You think everything must end badly—”
“I know it,” she said, with a moan; “I know it! We have had nothing happen to us for so long—so long. And it is all coming together now!”