THE weather changed that evening, as was natural after three or four heavenly days. The East coast is not rainy like the West; but the soft continuous rain of the Western Highlands is scarcely so terrible as the westerly haar, which wraps everything up in white wool, and blots out sea and sky, and chokes the depressed wayfarer—not to speak of the penetrating chill which even in June goes down into the marrow of your bones, and makes the scrap of standing-ground, which is all that is left you in the misty world, as lonely as an alp, and as dull as a fen. Even the golfers at St. Andrews feel this miserable influence. When those bright links are reduced to so many dark sepia blots, when the sky can be expressed only by the same woeful colour, when the surf on the sands seems to send up a blinding woolly steam over the faint and limp yellow of the cliffs; when his very red coat hangs limp and damp upon the hero’s back, who goes out, notwithstanding the weather, and the best “driver” on the links cannot get his ball across the burn—then the very golfer is discouraged. But the population is accustomed to the infliction, and the matches still go on, and new fights are arranged in the club; and in the town, business and amusement proceed as usual, and the good people walk about the streets, and pay each other visits to keep their hearts from sinking. It is scarcely possible, however, though your heart may be stout, and your chest sound, to walk out to the Spindle in an easterly haar; so that Marjory did not see the new acquaintance who had interested her so deeply for some days. She saw, however, a sight which interested her almost as much, though in a different way—the young woman who had visited Pitcomlie the evening before her father’s funeral, and whom she had afterwards met at the family grave. It was in the chief street of St. Andrews that this meeting took place—a broad and handsome street, lined with old houses at the lower end, and terminating at the upper in an old gateway, one of the few perfect relics of the past that remain among so many ruins. Marjory was walking with little Milly, as usual, by her side, pressing into her very steps—her golden hair asserting itself as a point of colour, even in the persistent greyness of the street and the mist of the atmosphere.
“May, May!” Milly was saying; “there is a lady bowing to you from the carriage-window yonder; there is a gentleman taking off his hat. Why don’t you pay any attention? If it was me, you would say it was not manners.”
“Come in and look for a book at Mrs. Fletcher’s,” said Marjory, by way of repelling this attack. Milly was already a prodigious novel-reader, and instantly caught at the bait. Her sister stood at the door of the shop, while the little girl ran in eager to survey the many antiquated volumes, and the few fresh ones which form the circulating library of a country town. Of the many passers-by who went ghost-like through the mist, a great many knew and saluted Miss Heriot, of Pitcomlie; but it was on one who did not salute her that Marjory’s attention was fixed. The dress was precisely the same as that of half the other women moving about the town, but yet the little brown hat and cotton gown suddenly grew individual and remarkable, as Marjory recognized the wearer. She was walking briskly along, with the air of one profoundly occupied, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. Suddenly she raised her head as she passed in front of the shop door where Marjory stood, and their eyes met. The young woman grew suddenly red; she gave Miss Heriot a quick, defiant look, and would have passed on without any recognition. Marjory was startled and excited, but she did not lose her presence of mind; she made a step out from the door. “Surely you know me,” she said quietly. The young woman paused, as if perforce, but held her ground.
“Yes, Miss Heriot, I know you very well; you’ve spoken to me twice before—when I was not wanting,” she added doggedly, “to speak to you.”
Marjory had some difficulty in keeping her temper, for this persistent resistance was provoking, to say the least. She said with some haste: “There can be very little reason why I should insist upon speaking to you.”
“Well!” said Marjory, with an impatient sigh, “neither do I. You know, I am sure, a great deal more than I do. But remember—you may be sorry some day for having refused to tell me what you wanted at my father’s house; and by that time it may be too late.”
She turned away, disturbed vaguely, as she had always been, by the appearance of this strange woman; but her withdrawal seemed to affect the other more than her questions had done. Before Marjory had re-entered the shop, the stranger spoke in a hesitating tone: “Miss Heriot, I am meaning no harm to you; there is, may be, something that I may come and tell you—that concerns you and yours, as well as me and mine; but I canna do it now. I thought you were artful and proud, but now I think you’re true. Maybe there is nothing in it; if there is, I will tell you the first. But I will say nothing till I hear the truth.”
“What truth? Then tell me your name, at least!” cried Marjory, her heart beginning to beat loud with wonder and excitement.
“No, Miss Heriot, I’ll no tell you my name.”
“Do you know you are very rude, very uncivil?” cried Marjory, stepping back with a flush on her face.
“Maybe!” said the other, recovering her self-possession, which had been momentarily impaired. “I’m no a good judge what’s civil and what is uncivil; but I’ll no tell you my name—nor anything about me; unless it is true.”
And with these words the stranger walked away, not pausing to hear what Marjory had to say. This meeting had a painful effect upon her. She pondered over it for the next few nights and days, wondering, with a bewildered sense that her wonder was vain, what it could mean. If what was true? or what did it, what could it matter to the Heriots whether something known to this girl was true or not? She tried to scorn it, as some vulgar bugbear, probably concerning something quite unimportant; but she could not succeed. What was it? she kept saying to herself. She could not mention it to her uncle; she could not confide anything so serious to little Milly. What could it be? And the more a mystery of this kind, however petty, is kept to its original possessor, the more it vexes the mind, and becomes a daily annoyance. If Fanshawe had but been there! Him she could have consulted; with him she could have talked it over, and wondered aloud, and received strength from the wonderings of another. Probably between them, they might have come to some reasonable conclusion, to some explanation of the mystery. She was almost half-tempted to write to him, as the only person who knew about Isabell’s letter, the only one who could understand what she meant. Almost, but not quite; a hundred reasons of womanly reluctance, shyness, disinclination to avow her dependence on the opinion of another, came in to prevent the imprudence; but yet it was something strange in Marjory’s history, something new in her mind, that such an idea should have arisen in her. She quenched it with a certain shame.
And oddly enough, one of these days, Mr. Charles brought home a friend with him to dinner, who knew Fanshawe. I do not pretend to disclose exactly the sentiments which moved Mr. Charles. Miss Jean’s advice had never quite gone out of his mind. He was of the kind of man to whom an injunction, of whatever character, carries weight, and who feels that when a charge of any sort is laid upon him, whether accepted or not, it becomes a duty, and must be fulfilled. His good sense and his feeling of propriety struggled vainly against the prejudice of doing what he had been told. Instinctively, he looked about the links for men who were worthy of being introduced to Marjory. He made a little mental cross against the names of those who were specially endowed by any of the gifts of Providence, who were handsome, or wealthy, or well-spoken of. “Would So-and-So please her, I wonder?” the old man said to himself, with a comical terror of the older woman, who had given him this commission; and with a faltering heart he had obeyed her behest, and under the most transparent pretence of accidentalness, had already taken home with him two or three of the best men he could find. On such occasions, Mr. Charles did his best to look perfectly innocent and at his ease. He made in private many and voluble apologies to Marjory.
“I sometimes feel the want of a little conversation, my dear. Not but what I am perfectly happy in you, that are a far better talker than most folk. But a little change, you know; and it is good for you, too, Marjory. You may think not, and even you may not care for it at the moment; but depend upon it, it is good for you. It’s a break upon the monotony. It prevents you from falling out of the way of society. And I know you are too good a housekeeper, May, ever to be taken unawares in respect of the dinner.”
“You mean you are too particular about good eating to make it possible,” said Marjory, smiling. “But, Uncle Charles, of course you must see your friends when you please. You do not require to make excuses to me.”
“It is not that, not quite that, my dear,” said Mr. Charles, perplexed, not knowing how to avow that he would gladly have done without those friends; and the same little epilogue had been performed several times without the least apparent effect produced either upon Marjory or the eligible persons thus brought to see her. Marjory, perhaps, was somewhat disposed to retreat into her mourning on these occasions. She was perfectly civil and friendly to her uncle’s friends; but she kept them in that category, and never allowed them to become her own; and as Miss Jean had made the express condition that Mr. Charles was to interfere only so far as the first step was concerned, the poor man was still more confused and perplexed by the utter failure of his expedient. He had no head for such delicate negotiations; he never asked the same person a second time, nor took any steps to promote intimacy. That was not in his instructions. However, for once he did succeed in rousing Marjory to energy at last. The guest who knew Fanshawe was a Scotch squire, who had been a friend of Tom’s, and whom Marjory, too, had known in former days. There were reasons for inviting him of a perfectly feasible character, and which required no apologies from Mr. Charles.
“I’ve brought Walter Seton to see you; we’ll give him some dinner,” he said, as he knocked at the door of Marjory’s dressing-room, without thinking it necessary to apologize; and Marjory was more open, more friendly than usual to the old friend. It was not till after dinner that the conversation took place which moved her out of her friendly calm. Milly had come in, as the fashion of the house was, and taken her place by her sister’s side. It had been the old fashion in the days when Milly was the light of her father’s eyes. The little girl’s chair was drawn as close to Marjory’s as the conditions of chairs would permit. She stole her hand into her sister’s under the table. Milly, indeed, had no independent being when Marjory was by. She was a bloom growing on the stem of the elder flower.
“I hear you had Fanshawe at Pitcomlie,” said Mr. Seton, with complacent calmness, and without a suspicion that he was about to make himself intensely disagreeable. “Is he any steadier than he was, I wonder? You had him for some time at Pitcomlie? Somebody told me he was on a long visit.”
“Ah, yes. We had him for a week or two. Is he not steady, then?” asked Mr. Charles.
Marjory had pricked up her ears, and so did little Milly, to whom Fanshawe was an example of everything admirable in man.
“Well,” said the other, shrugging his shoulders, “I know nothing bad of him; but he’s a sad unsettled fellow; amiable, and all that, but, I fear, a good-for-nothing—a ne’er-do-well, as we say in Scotland. It is odd how many agreeable men belong to that species. For he’s a nice fellow, a pleasant fellow. Didn’t you think so, Miss Heriot? All ladies do.”
“He was good for a great deal when he was at Pitcomlie,” said Marjory, feeling her cheek flush in spite of herself. “A kinder friend never appeared in a melancholy house.”
“He was all that—all that,” said Mr. Charles, hastily.
“That is exactly what I should have expected to hear,” said Seton. “You have hit off his character in a word. Ready to do anything for anybody; always serviceable; good for other people’s concerns, but letting his own, you know, go to the dogs. When I said good-for-nothing, I ought to have said good for everybody but himself.”
“That’s a fatal kind of amiability,” said Mr. Charles, falling into this depreciatory estimate with a readiness which disgusted the two feminine partizans, to whom it was impossible to see their friend assailed without striking a blow in his defence. “I have known many men like that, nobody’s enemy but their own—”
“I think you would speak a little more warmly, Uncle Charles,” said Marjory, with a burst of which she was herself ashamed, “if you remembered all that Mr. Fanshawe did for us. Amiability does not make a man do what he did. Have you forgotten poor Tom’s bedside? and all his kindness to my father, and after—I beg your pardon; it is bad taste to introduce our private matters. But, Mr. Seton, I should be a wretch if I allowed anyone to speak disparagingly of Mr. Fanshawe without telling what I know.”
“Yes, yes; I quite understand,” said Seton, with a suppressed smile. “Ladies always give him that character. He is the most serviceable fellow. But I speak of his own concerns; he is a very unsatisfactory man to have anything to do with in business, for example. He is as ignorant as a woman—begging your pardon again, Miss Heriot. He is a nice fellow, but thoroughly unsatisfactory; as unsettled as a man can be; a complete rover, here to-day and gone to-morrow. I like him very much myself. I don’t know any pleasanter companion; but that’s his character. Socially, of course, it doesn’t matter; but it’s a great pity for himself.”
“No doubt about that,” said Mr. Charles; “a great pity. What are his means, now? That would be a kind of a way of judging.”
“I do not see that we are the people who ought to judge him,” said Marjory, rising from the table; while little Milly, with all her golden locks on end, holding by her sister’s dress, and turning looks of fire and flame upon the calumniator, rose too, in a flush of childish fury.
“Oh! how I would have liked to have done something to him!” cried Milly, as soon as they had got to the safe shelter of the drawing-room. “If I had been a man, I would have fought him, May! Our Mr. Fanshawe, that is good for everything! I hope Uncle Charles will never, never as long as I live, bring that man here again!”
“I hope so, too, Milly,” said Marjory, breathing quick in her suppressed excitement; and she seated herself at the deep window overlooking the Cathedral ruins and the sea beyond, with her arm round her little sister. Milly’s hair spread over their black dresses like sprinkled gold; Milly’s little heart beat against the bosom in which another heart was beating still more warmly; with indignation—only with indignation, and generous resistance to wrong.
It was the longest day of the year. What lingering silvery light, what soft tints of pale celestial colour, what opal radiance of enchanted hours that are neither day nor night, is involved in that description! I do not know what these evenings may be in the region of the midnight sun; but they cannot possess such mystic, poetic light as do the long Summer nights in Scotland, too poetic for any weird glory of unnatural shining. The young woman and the child sat enshrined in this visionary radiance long after Milly ought (I allow) to have been in bed. Mr. Seton had an engagement at the Club, and did not, fortunately, return to the drawing-room. His presence would not have been appreciated there.