IT was according to all the rules of that condition into which Marjory was gliding unawares that next morning she should receive another letter from Fanshawe, which, however, was not the second nor the third. The incident had lost all its novelty, and become common enough in her experience. And there could be little doubt that these letters conveyed to her, with all the subtle difference which exists between a man’s self-accusations and the censures of another man, very much the same tale which had been told by the visitor of last night. Fanshawe allowed in so many words that he was good-for-nothing; he told her in covert language, but still plain enough, that he had been roused by meeting her into thoughts of, and dreams after, better things. But he did not tell her what better thing he was doing, what attempt he was making to attain a career worthy of a man. And probably had she been able to see him as he was at that moment, dropped back into all his old habits, occupied with his old busy round of idleness, and keeping up just enough of his nobler discontent as found utterance in his letters to her, Marjory would have felt with a pang that Seton was right and she herself wrong. She had a vague uneasy feeling to this effect, even while she read the unintentionally deceptive and skilful sentences by which he appealed to her sympathy, and by which he secured that sympathy, notwithstanding the sense of something unreal which floated vaguely over the surface as it were, stopping her in the full course of interest and belief. She said to herself uneasily, why does he not do something? or why, if he cannot do anything, should he lament over it? Had he been silent, Marjory would not have thought upon the subject; but Fanshawe, who knew no other means by which to recommend himself to her, unconsciously followed Mr. Seton’s lead. He abased himself, hoping to be exalted. He mourned over his uselessness, expecting her to receive these lamentations as virtue. And Marjory indeed, though she faintly perceived a certain hollowness in the lamentations, did accept them as such. She took a rapid survey of the position, and asked herself, if it was all true, wherein he was inferior to other men? Seton, who had accused him, how was he better? He had an estate to look after, which gave him a certain anchor, and object in life; “and I have no doubt he manages it very badly,” Marjory said to herself, with a certain spitefulness. And her uncle, for example, who had given up Fanshawe’s cause, and had shaken his head over the idea that he was nobody’s enemy but his own, of what practical use was his life that he should shake his head at another man? Marjory grew hot upon this subject in her private thoughts. The Pitcomlie papers, the portfolios of prints, and the golf at St. Andrews! Did these serious occupations give one man a right to erect himself in superiority as fulfilling all the duties of life over another? Marjory walked down to the Links in her fervour, and watched all the men going out for their game. Some of them were hardworking men taking their relaxation; but a great many of them were gentlemen living at home at ease, and considering, as we have before said, that two rounds of the Links was the whole duty of man. A meritorious individual who had won his game before luncheon, came sailing up to her with satisfaction beaming from every wrinkle. He had no sense of being a useless member of society; but probably he would shake his head at Fanshawe, who played no golf, and who could be, when occasion served, the truest, most self-denying of friends. Nobody’s enemy but his own! And whose enemies, then, were the busy groups on the Links? extremely busy—at what? Such were Marjory’s bitter feminine thoughts—thoughts which probably would never have crossed her mind had they not been provoked by injudicious criticism.
“I have not time to speak to you, May,” said Mr. Charles, waving his hand to her. “I am engaged for a foursome; and if I am late for dinner you must not be surprised, for I am very busy to-day.”
“Oh, very busy, I see,” cried Marjory, “and most usefully employed, uncle.”
“Yes, my dear, there is nothing in the world so good for the health,” he said, hurrying off with his long legs, and a countenance of the utmost importance and seriousness. And it was he who had said of Fanshawe that he was nobody’s enemy but his own!
Little Milly was golfing too, at the Ladies’ Links, whither some youthful companions had beguiled her from her constant clinging to her sister’s side. “But I’ll come with you directly, May, if you want me,” cried youthful Milly, ready to throw down her club at a moment’s notice. What a pretty sight it was!—groups of pretty girls (the girls are all pretty in St. Andrews) in the picturesque dresses of the period, looped up at every available corner, with bright flying ribbons, bright-coloured petticoats, a patch-work of brilliant colours—and such quantities of bright locks ruffled by the breeze, as might have set up a hair-market on the spot—were scattered in knots of two or three over the smooth slippery velvet of the grass. Across the burn on the other side, were the darker groups of the men, relieved by, here and there, a red coat. Yellow heaps of sand, upturned by the sea, which was little seen but much heard, and great rough whin-bushes scattered about the “bent,” or rougher edge of the Links, with a background of blue hills, and enough trees to swear by on one side—and on the other St. Andrews, on its headland, the sun shining full upon it, upon its grey towers and white houses, and the stretch of sea which filled in the landscape. The prettiest scene! Marjory was half softened by it, yet turned away with a certain scorn that did not belong to her nature. These were the people who found Fanshawe a good-for-nothing, nobody’s enemy but his own!
She made a long course to the Spindle after this, and I avow that it was a long walk for a young lady alone; but then she was in a condition in which our own thoughts are our best companions; and she liked the soft silence, the long meditative walk, the murmur of the sea. The day was fine, and shone with that pathetic brightness which a Scotch summer day so often has after a storm—as if Nature made anxious amends to her children for those frequent interruptions which she could not prevent. The sea was full, washing up to the very foot of the grey fantastic rock. Little blue wavelets, fairy curls of foam, crept about it, as if trying to soften the silent giant. They came up in little child-like rushes, as of glee irrepressible, to the very edge of the mossy grass; and Marjory had not been long there before she perceived the girl in, whom she had been so much interested, wrapped in a shawl, and seated in her former place before the door of the cottage. An old woman, with the old “mutch,” bound with a black ribbon, which has almost fallen out of use in Scotland, stood in the doorway. She had just placed a pillow to support the sick girl, and was looking at her wistfully, with an evident love, which had seriousness, and even severity, in it. Marjory went up to her with some eagerness. She was welcomed with a smile from the girl, who rose faltering in her pleasure. “Eh! but I’m glad to see you!” she cried; then dropped into her chair, too weak to stand. She seemed to Marjory to look even feebler than on the previous day.
“Good day!” said Marjory, addressing the old woman at the door; “I am afraid she is very weak; has the storm harmed her? and will you let me ask if she has the wine and strengthening food she requires? I beg your pardon if I am taking a liberty.”
Scotch cottagers are not always to be depended on in such particulars. Marjory knew that she might be speaking to some one as proud as a grand-duchess, though arrayed in an ancient mutch.
“I thank ye kindly, mem,” said the old woman, “we need nothing; but it was a kind thought. Na, she’s wanting for nothing, nothing; except an easy conscience, and the comfort of them that tell the truth.”
“Poor child,” said Marjory; “I am sure she tells the truth.”
“And that I do!” said the girl. “Oh, leddy, you said God never misunderstood; bless you for that; but whiles the best in this world do, and the kindest—Oh, mother, dinna speak. This lady’s heart speaks for me; she does not blame me. Tell her nothing but what I tell her. And if you would be real good and kind, mother dear, let me speak to her in peace.”
“I’ll do that!” said the mother, with a movement of anger; but in another moment she called Marjory aside with a sudden gesture, and whispered to her. “This lass,” she said, solemnly, “God help her; she’ll never be better; she’s my youngest, and she dying before my very ein. But she’s dying with something on her conscience; she tells me one story, and this horrible world believes another. She’s taken a great fancy to you. Oh, my bonnie leddy, take pity upon a poor family that’s heart-broken; bid her no go down to the grave with a lie in her right hand. I’ll forgive all the meesery and the shame if she’ll tell the truth.”
Tears were glittering in the woman’s eyes; tears which did not fall, but moistened the eyelids with a painful dew—though the eyes were red, as if they had wept much.
“If I were in your place I would believe her,” said Marjory. “Did she ever tell you lies before?”
“Never, never! never till now!” cried the mother; and two tears fell on the apron which she raised to her eyes hastily; but she added: “She never had any occasion; she never did a thing to be ashamed of—my poor, poor bairn!—till now.”
“I would believe her now,” said Marjory, who thus suddenly found herself involved in a family tragedy. The girl was looking uneasily towards her; the mother shook her head.
“Oh, if I could!” she said; “but go to her, go to her, my bonny leddy; and if you would speak a word!”
Marjory seated herself on the grass by the invalid’s feet; she was beginning to say something about the storm, and the interruption of her walks, but the sick girl was too much interested in subjects more important. She looked down upon the young lady with a sickening anxiety in her pathetic eyes. “Did she say anything?—anything to make ye leave me—anything to turn your heart?” she said, wistfully taking hold of Marjory’s dress.
“Nothing!” said Marjory. “She said you had something on your conscience. My poor girl, I believe all you said to me; but if you could relieve your mother by telling her anything you have not told her?”
“Oh! no, no!” cried the girl; “there is nothing I have not told her. It is all true—as true as the Holy Gospel. I would bear shame if I deserved it. I would na’ shrink from my just recompense. I’m bearing it now, and falsely, and it’s killing me; but the truth, and that alone, I will say.”
Marjory looked up at her with a strong and yearning pity, which she herself scarcely understood. It seemed to her that she would like to take the matter in hand, and clear the truthfulness of this delicate ailing creature, who looked so shadowy and worn, and pale. Whatever her fault might be, it appeared hard to pursue her to the edge of the grave with reproaches, as her mother seemed doing. She was young enough to be forgiven, Marjory thought, almost whatever she had done; young enough to be pardoned for maintaining some fiction of self-defence, whatever it might be. So young—and yet so near, it seemed, to those gates of death which shut upon everything, making an end of all pretences. “Poor child!” Marjory said, unconsciously, as she looked at her. The sight of such a creature dropping slowly, visibly into the grave at her age, was enough to move a heart of stone, without any addition to the sadness of the sight.
“I am twenty,” said the girl; “you think me younger than I am; and I’ve lived a long life, though I am not auld. I have had sad changes, hope and fear, and then a bit blink that was bright, bright, and then darkness, darkness, wherever the eye could see. It is hard enough to bear that when your own folk stand by you; but when they are turned against ye—and dinna believe ye—”
“Does no one stand by you?” asked Marjory.
“My sister,” said the girl. “She’s good, good, better than anyone I ever knew. She has given up her place to be near me. She puts her trust in me—which is a great strength when you have to face doubt. Oh, if I could be sure I would live till it’s all cleared up! But it would be hard, hard, to die before—though I can do that too—if the Lord will—But oh, seeing it’s the triumph o’ truth and right I’m wanting—seeing it’s no for mysel’, for I must die sooner or later—do you no think He’s sure to grant it before I die?”
“I do not know what it is,” said Marjory; and then feeling as if what she said was unkind and cold, she added quickly, “I hope you will live long, and see better days. You are so young—”
The girl shook her head. She held up her thin hand, interrupting the words. “I have no wish for length of days,” she said. “Many a time I’ve wondered how it was that long life was made so much of in the very Bible itsel’. But that was in the old days, before our Lord’s time, when folks knew little about it, or where they were going to. I mind, aye, a verse of a poem that runs in my head,
“‘The saints are dead, the martyrs dead,
And Mary, and our Lord, and I
Would follow with humility.’
that’s bonnie. Are you fond of poetry?”
“Yes,” said Marjory, in her surprise.
“You wonder to hear me say it? but we aye liked reading at home—though maybe not the like of that—and there were many things that I tried to learn.”
“I see that you have had a very different education from most girls,” said Marjory, with a certain buzzing and confusion of wonder in her mind, which puzzled herself. Some curious broken lights seemed to glimmer into her thoughts. She could not tell what they were, or what they meant; but a sensation of pain came over her in the midst of her wonder, pain for which she was quite unable to account.
“No—no that,” said the girl. “I liked it for itself, and so I tried; but oh, it’s a’ past now—a’ past and ended. I read my Bible most. My mother says the other books put things in my head. And oh, what wonders and mysteries there are in the Bible, more than anything in the other books.”
“But your sister always trusts you, and is good to you?” said Marjory. Her mind was disturbed, and her curiosity most warmly awakened. She would gladly have put some leading question to procure further information, but this seemed all that it was possible for her to say.
“Oh, ay, very good,” cried the sufferer. And she wandered off into those religious speculations, founded upon strong and child-like faith, yet having the appearance of doubts and questionings, which are so familiar to young and gentle souls chiefly occupied with the other world and its concerns. Marjory sat and listened, and interposed now and then a word. And thus a simple sad young soul unfolded itself before her, full of deep wonder, and pain, and sorrow, recognizing God’s hand in all the events of earth, and longing for an explanation of them—as only the truest faith can long. The poor girl thought herself wicked in some of her questionings—she thought no one had ever entertained such theories before. She poured forth all her chaos of pious difficulty upon Marjory’s ears, and it seemed to the hearer, who was so much more accustomed to the world, that these doubts and difficulties were more devout than anything she had ever heard in her life. As they thus sat, another woman, this time the mistress of the cottage, came out, and suggested that the invalid had been already long enough out of doors. She was an honest country-woman, with an anxious expression in her face, and she made signs apart to Marjory, begging her to wait. After the girl had gone in, which she did reluctantly, and with many entreaties to her new friend to come again, this good woman hurried after Marjory. She came up to her breathless, with heightened colour and anxious eyes. “Eh, mem, you’re a real leddy, and real good to poor folk, it’s easy to see that. I wanted to ask just one question. What do you think of her? I can see you’ll tell me the truth.”
“I am afraid she is very ill,” said Marjory, gravely; “and very weak.”
“Oh, it’s no her health I’m thinking of. She’s all that; but though Death is awful in a house, I’m no one that would put a dying creature to the door. It’s other things. We’re decent folk—and never have had a clash or a story about one of us, as long as I can mind. Am I right in keeping the like of her in my house?”
“But why the like of her?” said Marjory. “She seems to me a little saint.” She thought for the moment that the poor girl’s most innocent “doubts” had affected, perhaps, some one of Scotland’s rigidly orthodox critics, and that this was the result.
“Oh, dinna say it—dinna say that! I think so myself when I look at her, and when I hear her speak; but oh, mem, though she’s very good in words—the thing I cannot get over is—that bairn.”
“What bairn?” cried Marjory, aghast.
“Did they no tell you? I thought they would; for it’s no right to let a leddy come without hearing. It’s like deceiving a minister. Ay, mem, that’s just it. Poor thing, she has had a bairn.”
It would be impossible to tell the revulsion of feeling with which Marjory received this news. She gazed aghast at her questioner, she coloured as deeply as if she herself had been the guilty person, and finally she turned and fled homeward without reply. To such a question, what answer could be made.
“I cannot advise you, I cannot advise you!” she cried. She put her hands to her ears, that she might not hear more. She quickened her steps, stumbling over the grass. Was there then nothing in the world which could be accepted honestly, as pure and true, without horrors of questioning and investigation? When she had gone half the way, Marjory sank down on the turf, and covered her face with her hands, and wept bitter tears of grief and mortification. Her very heart was sick. After all her new friend was nothing to her—the chance acquaintance of an hour—a girl in a totally different sphere, where such sins were differently thought of; and yet, this new disappointment seemed somehow to chime in with the irritation of the previous night. Perhaps it was her nerves which were affected. Pain and shame, and a sensation of wounded and outraged feeling, such as she had never known before, overwhelmed her being. Was there nothing real—nothing reliable—nothing to be trusted in this whole miserable, sinful world?