MRS. MURRAY was standing in the middle of the drawing-room in a state of dismay. The change which had come over it was greater than the actual transformation. One soul had gone out of the place, and another, a totally different soul, had come in. I suppose if this could be done with our bodies, we should cease to recognise even those familiar garments of flesh and blood. The furniture was the same, the old walls were the same, and yet the place was different. The Minister had found on the table, spread out to invite attention, Verna’s new plan, made out in very bright colours, which caught the eye—and was reading to his wife the words “new wing, on the site of old tower,” with a tone of consternation impossible to reproduce. The good people had come with friendly meaning to do what they could for the two young strangers, whom they were sorry for as having been thus suddenly thrown into a new country without any knowledge of its habits and traditions.
“Depend upon it, my dear, it is chiefly gaucheréé,” Dr. Murray had said, with a very broad accent on the last syllable. “Half of what is called rudeness is just shyness—and so it must have been in this case.”
The excellent Doctor said this as a compliment to Mrs. Charles’s beauty, which precluded the idea of impertinence on her part. Mrs. Murray had not seen Mrs. Charles, and therefore was unaffected by her beauty, but she accepted the suggestion as possible. Marjory was no doubt hasty, and Miss Jean crabbed, and very likely “the young women at Pitcomlie” were only gauches—not intentionally disagreeable. But when Matilda entered, leaning on young Hepburn’s arm, Mrs. Murray was confounded. Johnnie Hepburn! he whose hopeless devotion to Marjory had been known over all the country—who had written verses under so thin a disguise that no one could possibly mistake it, to her, in the “Fifeshire Journal”—who had tormented all her friends with offers of service, and who finally had come here upon Marjory’s business a messenger from her! Matilda did not relinquish his arm till she had reached the centre of the room, when she performed a curtsey to her guests.
“Excuse me if I put up my feet,” she said, as she placed herself on a sofa. The Minister’s wife could do nothing but sit and look at her, so entirely was she taken by surprise. Naturally it was Dr. Murray, as the most important person, who spoke first.
“I hope you have quite recovered from the fatigues of your journey, Mrs. Charles Heriot?” he said. “Sad as it was, and sore as this home-coming must have been, I hope you have now settled down. It is a favourable time of year for this part of the country, and I may say, under Providence, that it’s a very good season. We have had more bright weather than ordinary, and everything is looking very well. I hope you are beginning to like your new home?”
“Yes, I suppose it has been good weather for Scotland; but not at all like what we have been used to. I think sometimes I shall die of the cold,” and she muffled herself closely in the shawl which she had thrown off on coming in, “and the children feel it so very much.”
“Oh, but it’s new life to the children, my dear! You’ll soon find that,” cried good Mrs. Murray, “though yours are very young to be sure. My eldest daughter’s children have just come to the Manse, from the Bombay Presidency. Poor things, they were white enough and miserable enough when they came, but since then they have flourished every day.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Matilda, with a stare; “but my children have always been taken such care of; and they feel the cold very much.”
As if our bairns were not well taken care of! Mrs. Murray said to herself, and she was wroth in her heart, and concluded that this was more than gaucheréé, whatever the Doctor might say. The Doctor was not quite so easily discouraged.
“When you have been here a little longer,” he said, “and have got used to our ways, you will find it a pleasant neighbourhood—a very pleasant neighbourhood. St. Andrews is not too far for a drive, and there are a great many very agreeable families—”
“Oh, I shall never care for the Fifeshire society. They must be so stiff and so dry,” said Matilda; “and then they are all such friends of the old family, and set against us—”
“My sister means,” said Verna, “that people have not been very nice since we came. We have had a great many cards, but nobody has really paid us a visit, except yourselves.”
“They would think she was seeing nobody,” said Mrs. Murray, softly, “and very natural;” but once more the Doctor made himself the spokesman, drowning the gentle voice of his wife.
“I have always heard,” he said, “that there was a natural stiffness about our Scotch manners; but Mrs. Charles may be assured, and I take it upon me to say so, though I’m not a rash man by nature, that all that will soon disappear before her face. I hope it was not impertinent to look at the plans on the table. They are, perhaps, for some house in England?”
“Oh, no, indeed, for this house,” cried Verna, delighted. “This drawing-room, you see, is not much of a room, and that horrible old ruin close to us does so frighten my sister.”
“Frighten her! why should it frighten her?” cried Mrs. Murray. “You’re not meaning the old house?”
She turned to Hepburn with a look of dismayed inquiry, and he dared not say anything. How could he say a word that would cross that beautiful sensitive creature? but at the same time he had the fear of ridicule before him, and of the two people both looking at him, before whom he did not wish to show how foolish he was. He compromised, and fell between two stools, as was natural.
“Mrs. Charles has taken a—repugnance to it. I have been telling her it was on a mistaken idea. Snakes and scorpions don’t exist in ruins here. That is why she is nervous,” faltered Hepburn.
“Oh you naughty Mr. Hepburn,” cried Matilda; “you know you confessed you did not care a bit about the ruin, except for——. But I will not tell upon you—you confessed it was nothing but association; and as I never associated with anybody here——”
Dr. Murray was too much absorbed to notice this last speech; he was solemn, and not to be trifled with.
“Do you know, Madam,” he said, “that this is a very serious thing you are thinking of doing, a very serious thing indeed. Father and son have preserved the old house of Pitcomlie as long as I can remember. It was habitable in my young days—”
“That’s true,” said Mrs. Murray. “When I came here a bride, the old Laird—not the late Mr. Heriot, but his father, who died soon after—led me on his own arm to the best room, that was over the great door. The old lady of Pitcomlie was dead, and he had no woman-person, except the servants, in his house. It was a very handsome room, and but for its old age it’s that still; and I would do a great deal myself before I would see it pulled down.”
“I assure you,” said Verna, “there is no other way of doing—and then to us, as my sister says, it has no associations; besides, it is not beautiful, and of no use; and it is there the new wing must be built.”
“Does Mr. Charles know?” asked the Doctor solemnly.
“Oh, please don’t talk of Mr. Charles!” cried Matilda, vaguely perceiving that her side was having the worst, and beginning to cry; “it reminds me so of my poor dear Charlie. I cannot bear to hear the name. Please call him old Mr. Heriot, or something. When I think how I am left alone to struggle with everything, and poor, poor dear Charlie, who never would let the wind blow upon me! Please don’t talk of the old man by his name—please!”
Mrs. Murray’s kind eyes were quite moistened by this appeal.
“No, my dear!” she said soothingly; “no, my dear! Well, well do I know the feeling; and when I mind that dear boy—what a fine fellow he was—just the age of my Robert! Many and many a time I have held him in my arms. Oh, my dear, I beg your pardon!” cried the kind old woman, rising—with the tears dropping from her eyes, to kiss the young widow on her sofa. Matilda did not know what compunctions were expressed in this caress; and, to tell the truth, she submitted with a very bad grace to the salute, which she rather thought was a piece of presumptuous familiarity on the part of the Minister’s wife towards herself, a lady of property. The Doctor, however, this time resisted the beauty and the tears, and was less easily moved than his wife proved herself. Beauty is a fine thing, and tears are touching; but an assault upon property—property which, to a certain extent, is national, the antiquities which give importance to a parish—is not to be permitted even on such considerations. Dr. Murray was alarmed. If this was done in the green tree, what would be done in the dry? The Heriots of Pitcomlie were the chief heritors in the parish; and what if they should take upon them to interfere with the church or churchyard?
“I am sorry,” he said stiffly, “to have roused such very painful but natural feelings. I will endeavour to be more guarded again; but what I would ask is, does he—of whom we speak—know about this proceeding—or rather, I should say, this intention on your part? If he does not, I fear it would be my duty to tell him—”
“Could he do anything to us? he has no right,” cried Verna, “to interfere.”
“I hope he could; I hope he has!” said the Doctor. “He is joint guardian with the mother; and it will be my duty to let him know.”
“I will not have old Mr. Heriot interfering!” cried Matilda. “He has nothing to do with us. Poor Charlie put him in his will only out of compliment—”
“Hush!” said Verna softly, giving her a look; “do you think really he would mind? Do you know I thought they would have been sure to do it themselves, but for money, or something? I hear that old Mr. Heriot was for ever paying his eldest son’s debts; and I thought, probably, that was the reason why the ruins were allowed to stand. But if you are sure he would object, why then I will put all the plans aside,” said Verna magnanimously; “and wait until he comes.”
“Why, Verna, your heart was set on it!” cried her sister.
“Not so much set on that as on keeping right with the other guardian, and keeping you right!” said the magnanimous Verna, whose eyes sparkled with resolution. Dr. Murray was somewhat stiff in his response, but still he was very laudatory; and Verna bowed and smiled, and accepted his praises.
“It is better in every way to take no rash step,” said the Doctor; “if by any accident—which Heaven forbid—the lands should pass to another heir—”
“How could that be?” said Verna, suddenly turning pale to her very lips. It did not occur to her that the fragile lives of her little nephews were the slight threads that bound her to this kingdom, which she had been assuming should be hers for life. A sudden precipice seemed to open at her feet; she stood aghast for the moment, gazing at him with eyes dilating, and pale cheeks. Then she recovered herself, and said hastily, glancing at Matilda: “Ah, I understand! but you should not suggest such a thing before their mother;” and placed her hand upon her beating heart.
“It is a thing that must always be taken into consideration,” said Dr. Murray. “You forget, my dear young lady, that one in a succession is quite different from the possessor of independent property, which, perhaps, he has acquired for himself; he can alienate nothing, and he has no right to destroy anything. The next heir—”
“Oh, please,” cried Verna, with unaffected alarm, raising her hands in an attitude of supplication; “don’t make me unhappy with your next heir! I shall do nothing more—indeed I shan’t—till Mr. Charles comes. It was not my sister; it was I who wanted it. Please, please don’t say any more!”
But even after the visitors were gone, Verna could not shake off this uncomfortable impression. She went about all day with the words echoing through her head, and filling her with a hundred fancies. As it happened, both the children were ailing with some innocent baby-ailment. Verna went to look at them a dozen times in the course of the evening; she felt their foreheads and their pulses, and gave them their medicine with her own hands. Their father and uncle, both vigorous young men, had been cut off within a few weeks of each other; and why should these tiny children escape the dangers to which so many stronger people succumbed? The next heir! What loss, what misery and ruin, was in the suggestion! The poor little babies themselves and their mother seemed to Verna to have but a secondary part in it; but to herself, it would be destruction—an end of all her hopes—at once of the actual and of the ideal. She put the plans in the fire that very night with heroic resolution, and blotted out from her mind those dreams of a great drawing-room, and even of a snug bed-chamber, sheltered from all the winds, in which she had indulged. These were glorious visions, but they were not worth the risking of her power and influence. She said to herself that she knew when to draw back, as well as when to advance, and spoke of them no more.
Meanwhile young Hepburn, much against his will, had felt that decorum bound him to take his departure when the Murrays did; and notwithstanding various signs from Matilda, propriety prevailed. He walked down towards Comlie with the Minister and his wife; and, as usual in such cases, his virtue was very indifferently rewarded.
“I hear you are a great deal at Pitcomlie, Mr. Hepburn,” Mrs. Murray said, looking at him.
She had never addressed him so formally before. That painful attempt to convert Johnnie into John, which we have all of us made when the Johnnies of our acquaintance grew into men, had been her greatest effort hitherto; but now she looked him in the face with a disapproval which there could be no mistake about; and he felt the chill, being highly sympathetic and susceptible to all the risings and fallings of the spiritual thermometer.
“Yes,” he said, uneasily; annoyed to find himself blush, and with a desperate attempt at carelessness. “Sometimes I can do little things for them; they don’t know anybody, nor the ways of the country—”
“That is very well seen,” said Mrs. Murray, with emphasis; “but Mrs. Charles is very pretty,” she added; “a bonnie creature! and that goes further than anything else with some folk. Men are so easily led away,” she went on, reflectively; “even my old Doctor, that is a very wise man in his generation, and should know better—”
“What are you saying about me, Mary?”
“I was saying you were wiser than most men, Doctor,” said the Minister’s wife, “and yet not so wise but what you are led away by a bonnie face, like other men.”
“It is not, however, the bonnie face in this instance,” said Hepburn, feeling his mind much lightened by being united with the Doctor in a broad and general accusation. “It is the sad position, the melancholy circumstances. To see so young a creature left solitary; arriving among strangers, with little children dependent on her, and no one to sustain her—”
Mrs. Murray was too tender-hearted to resist the pathos of this picture.
“And that’s true!” she said; “that’s true. Poor thing! She may be a little carried away by her new position; but I cannot think she’s without feeling. No, she’s not without feeling. What she said about old Mr. Charles was very true.”
“That is all very well,” said the Doctor; “but we cannot allow such proceedings as these young women contemplate—not if I had to appeal myself for an interdict to the Court of Session. An admirable specimen of old domestic architecture, really in very good preservation, though the roof is gone in some places—and fully described in my account of the parish. No, no; it will never do. If you have any influence with them, John (the Doctor had never said Johnnie in his life), you should let them know seriously that this kind of thing is quite out of character—quite out of character! I have always defended the mother’s rights in the way of guardianship; but an attempt like this makes me doubt.”
“Well, Doctor, I must say I wonder at you,” said Mrs. Murray; “because a young woman does not understand your domestic architecture, as you call it, you begin to doubt whether she should have the care of her own bairns! I cannot see the connection.”
“Perhaps not, perhaps not, my dear,” said Dr. Murray; “but it’s very reasonable, for all that.”
Hepburn felt with secret content that he had escaped in the midst of this discussion, and he came boldly to a pause at the next corner, to take leave of his companions. But he was not so safe as he supposed.
“I am going to write to St. Andrews to-day,” said Mrs. Murray, as she gave him her hand. “I will tell Marjory that you are very kind to Mrs. Charles, and go to see her every day. It is very kind, though it is, perhaps, a little dangerous; but then, to be sure, you have a great deal of idle time on your hands.”
This shot was double, hitting both ways, and sent the unfortunate young man away in a fever of indignation, suppressed wrath, and uneasiness. There could be no doubt that he had a great deal of spare time on his hands; but few people like to be told this. And he was not anxious that Marjory should be made aware of his daily devotions at Pitcomlie. He did not return there, as he had intended to do, but took a long walk in a contrary direction, and reflected with much annoyance upon this unlucky encounter, and all the comments of which he would be the object.
“After all, I have a right to go where I please,” he said to himself—which was as true as anything could be, yet did not reveal a comfortable state of mind. “And I do not know how they could get on without me,” he added, also to himself, a whole hour after, with a gleam of complacency in the midst of his uneasiness. But he was not prepared to give up his allegiance to Marjory, or to meet again even in imagination the smile with which she had recognised his first infidelity. He wanted still, like so many other people, to keep both delights, his ideal and his foolish fancy, both together. Indeed, it may be said that Mrs. Murray’s threat had as serious an effect upon Johnnie Hepburn as that other appalling threat of another heir had upon Verna. Both of them felt, with a thrill of alarm, that their position was an assailable—nay, a dangerous—one, and that it was impossible to tell what an hour might bring forth. And both of them were moved instantaneously to the adoption of a more prudent course. Verna sacrificed her plans for the new wing, and Johnnie sacrificed the enervating delight of another hour’s philandering. Thus they propitiated Fate; which, however, seldom accepts such sacrifices. The chief sufferer by these prudential measures was Matilda, who, being impervious at once to reason and to sentiment, did not understand her sister, and was much annoyed by the withdrawal of her attendant, who amused her, if nothing more. She was the person really sacrificed, and that without seeing any reason for it. She yawned through the afternoon, until benign Providence sent her a soft slumber, which carried her through the time till dinner; and certainly it was hard, though natural, that she, the only one who had no responsibility, should thus be made the principal victim.