THE drawing-room was but dimly lighted when the party at Pitcomlie assembled in it for dinner, and Matilda had been so little seen as yet, that the absence of her widow’s cap made but little impression upon the small silent company. She came in, feeling somewhat triumphant, with her pretty hair rising in billows from the low white brow, which people had told her was like that of a classic statue. There was very little that was classic about poor Matilda, but she liked this praise. It sounded lofty and elevated; nobody had ever called her clever—but this seemed to approach or even to exceed the point of cleverness. After a momentary pause, Mr. Charles offered her his arm. He was about to place her at his own right hand at the foot of the table, as became a visitor. Matilda, however, stood holding him fast until all the party had entered the room. Then she said, looking round upon the company, “To save inconvenience don’t you think I had better take my proper place at once?” and marched the unfortunate old uncle up to the head of the table. There she spread herself out complacent and delighted. “I always think when there is a change to be made it had better be done at once,” she said, beaming with a triumphant smile, with her jet ornaments twinkling in the light, upon the astounded party.
They were so entirely taken by surprise that a moment’s confusion occurred, no one knowing where to place him or herself. Mr. Charles, helpless and amazed, was pinned to Matilda’s side. To her other hand, Mr. Smeaton quietly looking on and enjoying the joke, led Verna, who was crimson with painful blushes, and not daring to lift her eyes. Marjory was the last to perceive the alteration that had been made. She was about to pass on to her usual place, when Fanshawe quietly stopped her, and placed her at the foot of the table. She looked up with an astonished glance, and met the triumphant eyes of the new mistress from its head. I am doubtful whether Marjory at the moment fully realized what it was. She gave a surprised look round, and then a smile passed over her face—could anyone suppose she cared for this? It hurt her a great deal less than it did Verna, who was her natural antagonist; but who thought it the most dreadful “solecism,” and wondered what people would think. “They will think we are nobodies, and know nothing,” Verna said to herself, and scarcely ventured to hold up her head. The company in general, indeed, was taken by such surprise that there was no conversation for a few minutes. Fleming’s face as he placed himself behind Mrs. Charles’s chair was a study of consternation and dismay. He carried the dishes to Marjory first, and pulled her sleeve and whispered,
“You’ll no be heeding? the woman’s daft, Miss Marjory, you’re no heeding?” with an anxiety which regained him his character in Fanshawe’s eyes.
“It is quite right,” said Marjory in the same undertone. “She is the mistress of the house, she was quite right. It is best she should take her place at once.”
Fleming marched round the table, shaking his head. He groaned when he served the new mistress. He called her Mistress Chairles till her patience was exhausted.
“Please to call me Mrs. Heriot,” she said angrily.
“Oh aye, Mistress Chairles,” said Fleming, “will ye take some chicken or some mutton?”
“If you do not call me by my right name I will send you away,” cried Matilda. She was “daft,” as he said, or rather intoxicated with satisfaction and triumph.
“You can do that, Mistress Chairles,” said the old man indifferently, going on with his service. Deeper and deeper blushed poor Verna. Oh, what solecisms! what ignorance of the world! She did not know whether she should refrain from noticing, or whether she ought to excuse and explain her sister’s conduct. The first was the most difficult, especially as her companion, the lawyer, looked on with suppressed amusement, and noted everything. Then Matilda began to entertain her neighbours on her other side.
“Is that gentleman—I don’t know his name—at the foot of the table, a relation?” she asked.
“No,” said Mr. Charles, who was just now coming to the surface after his consternation, “his name is Fanshawe, he is a friend of poor Tom’s.”
“Then he is engaged to Marjory, I suppose?”
“No,” repeated Mr. Charles once more, still more blankly; and then he looked down to the other end of the table, where certainly Mr. Fanshawe was talking very eagerly to his niece, and added, “Not so far as I know.”
“Ah, young ladies are sometimes sly in those sort of affairs,” said Mrs. Charles. “I should think Marjory was one of the sly ones. Now I never can hide what I feel; but I suppose Marjory is a great deal cleverer than I.”
Mr. Charles made no reply. He glanced at her confounded, without a word to say. Was this the little thing that had looked so gentle, and cried so bitterly? He was at his wrong end of the table, everybody and everything were out of their proper places. He was suddenly made into a visitor, he who had been at home here all his life.
“Where do you live, Mr. Heriot?” said Mrs. Charles, “it is dreadful to know so little about the family; but I always was an ignorant little thing. It would be so kind if you would tell me about everybody.”
“Where do I live?” he said, “I have lived here most of my life—it is a difficult question to answer; though of course I have my house in George’s Square.”
“Where is that?” she asked; but waiting for no answer, added suddenly with an innocent look of curiosity, “and will Marjory live with you?”
“Matty!” cried Verna in an agony; nothing but solecisms! she thought.
“Would you think Verna was much older than I?” said Matilda, turning to the lawyer. “She thinks I ought to do everything she tells me; but when once a woman has been married, nobody has a right to tell her what to do except her husband. Don’t you think so? One always knows one’s own affairs best.”
“It is common to say so,” said the lawyer; “but for my part, I think we are all most clever in managing our neighbours’ affairs.”
This speech puzzled Matilda, who was silent for a moment. The party was so small, and the others talked so little, that these brilliant remarks were heard by everybody, except, perhaps, the questions about Fanshawe, which she had had the grace to make in a somewhat lower tone. Even Verna was so paralyzed by the whole proceeding, and by her sister’s unparalleled audacity, that she had entirely lost her conversational powers. She plucked up a little courage now, and made an effort to regain the lead which she had lost.
“It is such a loss to go to India so young as we did,” she said; “we make no acquaintance with our own country. Our ways are all Indian. We are as bad as the Americans for asking questions. The reason is that we are always meeting new people in India. We should not know anything about them if we did not ask.”
This speech raised Verna very much in the lawyer’s opinion. It was clever, he thought, and good-natured, shielding the fool of a sister.
“I am sure you will be able to be of great service to Mrs. Heriot,” he said, in an undertone. “Your good sense will show what is best. It may be a difficult business, and your brother-in-law’s will is not worth a snuff if the family choose to oppose it. So she must not try their patience, you see, for old Charles Heriot, though very pleasant in his manner, is an old Turk when he’s opposed. There is no saying what he might do,” said Mr. Smeaton, enjoying the slander which he was uttering within hearing almost of the person assailed, “if his blood was up; and if your sister was to show any—well, incivility is a hard word, but you know what I mean—to Miss Marjory, Charles Heriot would take fire. You must advise her, Miss Bassett; you must advise her. Hoolie and fairly, as we say in Scotland, or as the Italians have it, Chi va piano va sano.” These words Mr. Smeaton pronounced as if they were broad Scotch; but Verna did not understand them, so it made little difference to her. And he added, “Everything here is long established, and hard to root up. You’ll have to make your changes with great discretion, and take time to them. Everything will be made more difficult for you if auld Charles Heriot should take fire at any little affront, and flare up.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you a thousand times for your advice!” cried Verna. “It is exactly my own opinion, and what I have said to her over and over. But I did not know Mr. Charles Heriot was so hot-tempered; he looks mild enough.”
“The very deevil—if you’ll excuse the word,” said Mr. Smeaton, “when his blood’s up.”
Perhaps Verna was the only one who was sorry when that dinner was over. She was anxious for advice, and to be thus fortified seemed to her of the greatest importance; and she received with religious faith those valuable hints about Mr. Charles Heriot’s temper, among other things. When the ladies left the table, she tried hard to persuade Matilda to go to her room, under pretext of fatigue; but the young widow was obdurate.
“I want to see the house,” she said, making her way, sweeping and rustling in her crape, to the drawing-room. Marjory followed, still with very little feeling of what had happened. But even Marjory was conscious of some painful feeling when she saw her sister-in-law laid luxuriously upon the little sofa in the bow-window, which was her own particular seat.
“Indeed, it is very comfortable,” said Matilda. “You know how to be comfortable. This is your favourite place, is it not, Marjory? Poor Charlie used to tell me of the bow-window, and how it was made for you.”
“Yes, I was fond of it,” said Marjory.
“Then I hope you will always feel you have a right to it when you come to see me,” said Mrs. Charles. “We shall change some things, no doubt; but you will always be welcome, Marjory. I suppose you are to be married soon. You may think it would hurt my feelings to hear of a wedding, being a widow myself; but I am not so selfish. I am sure I congratulate you; he looks very nice indeed.”
“There is nothing to congratulate me about,” said Marjory.
It was hard upon her to hear the conversation between the sisters which followed, about new curtains and chairs that were necessary. It was not Verna’s fault, who gave piteous, conciliatory looks at the daughter of the house. She bore it all as long as she could, and then she went noiselessly outside upon the cliff. The Spring was very mild that year. This was again a lovely night, with a faint blue sky all sprinkled with stars, and the vague, half-seen sea beneath, which sent up long sighing waves upon the rocks, not loud, but full of pensive moaning. There was a young moon shining, a moon covered with fleecy white clouds like a veil. Through the softened night rose the white rock of the May, with its steady light; and the lighthouse further off which Marjory knew so well, and which had so often turned and thrown a pleasant gleam at her across the broad waters, gleamed out all at once as she strayed round the well-known path. It was, perhaps, only Mrs. Charles’s gracious intimation that she would always be welcome, which roused her to the sense that the time was approaching when she must leave this dear old home. It was not in Marjory’s nature to make a lesser grief into a great one; and she had endured so much, that this additional trouble was not heavy to her, as it would have been in other circumstances. But it gave her a certain sore feeling of pain and loss in the midst of her heavier burdens. It seemed hard to have such a subject thrust all at once, without a moment’s notice, upon her. Her heart felt sore, as if a sudden new thrust had been made at it; sore with a feeling of resentment and impatient vexation. She strayed along the familiar round, the “turn” which she had taken so often, hearing now and then the voices through the half-open window; voices higher pitched and more shrill than any native to this locality. Even that difference of tone seemed somehow unreasonably offensive to her. She chid herself for the foolish feeling; but how could she help it? The moon gleamed softly upon the old Manor-house and on Mr. Charles’s tower; there was a glimmer of half-dying firelight making his windows visible. Had Marjory known that her successor, Verna, had already planned in her mind how to pull all those ruins down!
She had not been thinking of Fanshawe, nor of any one, when he joined her suddenly; her thoughts had been all vague, full of that soreness which was almost a relief from the heavy stupor of her grief. She had seemed to herself, not suffering actively, but stupid in sadness; sad, sad down to the bottom of her heart; a state of mind not without a certain repose in it, which this other sensation of being wounded and injured shot across, now and then, like a thrill of life. But it seemed very natural to her when Fanshawe came to her side, more natural even than if it had been Uncle Charles. He held out his arm, and she took it only half consciously, and with a kind of faint pleasure allowed him to lead her to the edge of the cliff, where the sea-line was visible, with the Isle of May rising well out of the waters, and the twinkling lights along Comlie shore marking out the length of the little town. Her heart was overwhelmed with this profound and gentle sadness; and yet there was a pleasure in it, too.
“Miss Heriot,” said Fanshawe; “I want to have you a little while to myself, to-night. This is no place for me any longer. I must go away.”
“It is no place for any of us,” said Marjory, instinctively adopting him into the number of those who belonged to her. They were so few now.
But he took no advantage of this inference. He took it for granted, simply as she did. Perhaps he pressed her hand a little closer to his side; but if so, the action was involuntary.
“No,” he said, “it is no place for you. This piece of impertinence to-night—”
“I never thought of it,” said Marjory; “it was nothing; that could not make any difference; but we must go.”
“It is selfish of me to say anything,” he said; “but it is I who must go first—not the same man who came here a month ago, Miss Heriot; just a month—though it might be an hour, or it might be a year. It has separated my life into two pieces. May I write to you after I have managed to take myself away?”
“Surely,” she said, in her gentlest tone.
“And will you write to me? I have no right to ask it; but you are—different, somehow. You know how little I am good for. I don’t mean to make any professions to you now—to say you have made me better. Perhaps I am past making better. I should like to try, first; but if you would write now and then, just three words—”
“Certainly I will write,” she said, looking frankly in his face. “How much you have been to us all this terrible time! Do you think I can ever forget it? And it is not only that we owe you a day in harvest—as we Scotch folk say—but people cannot feel with each other as we have done, and then cease and forget each other. Certainly I will write; it will be one of my pleasures.”
He held her hand tight in his arm; his heart was beating vaguely with many half-formed impulses. But even if anything like love had been ripe in him, it would have seemed profanation at that moment. He only held her hand closer to his side where his heart was stirring so strangely, and said—
“You make me almost happy—if it was possible to be happy in going away. I suppose I shall never come back—absolutely back here, to Pitcomlie; but we shall see each other? It is not a parting, this—only for the moment? say you think so, to cheer me.”
“I hope so!” she said. She was franker, more open than he was; but she was much less agitated. It was to her an easy thing to believe in this future meeting, because she wished for it without any passionate desire. But he longed for assurance, and doubted even while he affirmed; for it seemed to him as if his whole future was dark and uncertain till that moment should come.
“How good it is to hear you say so!” he said. “If you hope for it, it will come to pass. I have not so much faith in my own prayers.”
“Alas! the things I have hoped for have not come to pass,” she said, with a little outburst of sorrow. And then, when her brief fit of weeping was over (he would have liked so to have taken her into his arms, to have had her sob on his breast—but dared not), she looked up to him again with a faint smile. “I have got so used to cry and show you all my weakness,” she said; “how I shall miss you! It is luxury to have some one by who will not be impatient of one’s tears.”
This, however, was getting too much for poor Fanshawe; his heart was melting in his breast. It was all he could do to keep from some foolish demonstration or other. He had put his other hand on hers where it lay on his arm; he bent over her, stooping his head towards her—almost carried away by the tide of emotion in him. He felt that to save himself, and to save the sanctity of this last meeting, he must fly as long as he was able.
“May I say good-bye to you here?” he said, trembling; “I must go to-morrow. You will write to me about everything? about Milly, and Mr. Charles—and the book—and about Isabell, if you find out anything more; but chiefly, and above all, about yourself—you promise? Then good-bye, and God bless you; you will say the same to me?”
“God bless you!” she said, moved by his emotion, looking at him with tears still in her eyes; “God bless you, dear friend, and good-bye.”
He stood a moment irresolute, hanging over her; holding both her hands—not knowing very well what he did. If there had been light enough to show his face, they never could have parted so. But he knew he was not seen, and felt as if he had concealed his feelings. At that last moment he stooped suddenly, and kissed her hair just where it was parted; and then dropped her hands and disappeared—she could not tell where.