NO house possessed by the Hay-Heriots had ever gone through such a night as that house by the Cathedral in St. Andrews had just passed. First there had been the blank dinner hour, with no one at home to eat the food, no one but little Milly who stood at the window and cried, and imagined misfortunes unutterable which must have befallen “my May.” The crying of the child infected the whole house. One of the maids had joined her at the window, another climbed to the top of the house to an attic which commanded the road “east the town,” leading to the Spindle, another had stolen outside to the door in the wall, where she stood watching all comers and goers, with the wind blowing her ribbons about, and ruffling her hair. In the very midst of this suspense, Miss Jean’s old coach, like a family hearse, came jolting heavily over the stones—for all the world, the excited listeners thought, like the Phantom Coach, which, as is well known, drives along the streets of St. Andrews at midnight, after a storm, carrying the drowned to the hallowed soil round the Cathedral ruins. Had it been dark, this resemblance would have been more than the nerves of the women could have borne, and the impression was scarcely lessened when Miss Jean herself, tired yet alert, with her sharp eyes looking out from the shelter of her broad “borders” and big black bonnet, got out briskly tapping upon the pavement with her cane. Milly stayed her crying, out of very excitement, to explain her sister’s absence, and was then held silent by fear while the old lady remarked upon it. “A bonny like way to leave a house with a wheen maids and one bairn!” she said. “May Hay-Heriot must be out of her senses. Out of the house at seven o’clock—the hour ye dine—did ye say it was the hour ye dine? Then it’s worse than madness, it must be wickedness. Do not look at me as if ye would eat me, ye little spirit—”
“Then do not speak of May like that!” said the child passionately, smothering her sobs. “Oh! what has become of her—what has become of her? Something has happened; oh, Aunt Jean! let you and me go and seek her out. She never left us like this before. Oh my May! my May!”
“Hold your tongue you little haverel,” said Miss Jean, “she is out to her dinner or something. Do you think Miss Heriot will leave her friends or her business because the table-maid is out at the door watching, or her own woman greeting at the window? Go in to your work this moment. Where is Mr. Charles? He will come in to his dinner and find nothing ready, and send ye about your business—or I would if it was me.”
Then it was explained to her, by three speaking at once, that Mr. Charles too had gone out mysteriously towards the Spindle, accompanied by two strangers; and Milly, whose tears had been stayed, began again to cry more piteously than before, and the maids to rush to the windows. Miss Jean gave some decisive taps of her cane upon the floor—“Fools!” she said, “have you not sense enough to see that they’re both together with some sudden engagement they had no time to tell of? Stop this nonsense and bring ben the dinner—I’m hungry with my drive, and Milly, you’re hungry with crying—”
“Oh, Aunt Jean, I could not eat a morsel. Oh, what will I do if there is anything wrong with May?”
“You’re hungry with crying,” said Miss Jean, “we’ll wait for them no longer; bring ben the dinner. Is all the house to be turned upside down because they did not leave word where they were going? Help me off with my bonnet, woman, and dinna stand gaping. Milly, hold your tongue; is that the way to give me a welcome? You’ve let the child get low, you taupies, keeping her waiting. Bring ben the dinner, I tell you, we’ll wait for them no longer. Shut the doors and the windows, and get the spare room ready. I’ve come about business, Milly, and I mean to stay all night.”
By these decisive means Miss Jean brought the house into composure and subordination, and put a stop to the growing romance which the maids had begun to build up. They said in the kitchen that Miss Heriot could not be going so much to the Spindle for nothing, that it was fine to talk about a sick lass, but that more inducement was necessary to take a young leddy there in all weathers, and that Mr. Chairles had found it out. This invention Miss Jean so far nipped in the bud, that she gave them all work to do, which occupied them fully and diverted their thoughts from this delightful fiction. The old lady had the spare room prepared for herself, and a fire lighted, a luxury never much out of place in St. Andrews, though it was but August, and the flush of Summer still ought to have been over the world. It was a gloomy night, dark clouds and darker sea, everything that was dismal and discouraging out of doors, and not much that was cheery within. Miss Jean herself, with many thoughts in her mind, established herself in the drawing-room after dinner—having sent Milly, much against her will, to bed—to wait for some news of her relations who had thus left the house empty to receive her. She sat in the unfamiliar room, looking out upon the old pinnacles of the cathedral ruins which were associated with many an early passage of her youth—and going back into her life, lived in it as old people do, feeling it present with her, notwithstanding the lively threads of present interest which crossed each other like a network over that landscape peculiarly her own which lay behind. Her quick mind darted in a moment from recollections of an evening fifty years ago, when she had wandered, not uncompanioned, through these ruins, to many a speculation as to how her grand-niece, Marjory, her representative, might be occupying herself, and what manner of interference “auld Charlie” might be making in some possible complication of affairs.
For her nephew was “auld Charlie” to Miss Jean as well as to the youngest scoffer who called him by that name. The old maiden was contemptuous of the old bachelor. His age was an object of greater scorn to her than it was to the young men who on the whole liked “auld Charlie.” “A poor creature, a poor feeble old creature, with no character to speak of,” she said of him. She scorned him for being what he was, nobody’s husband, nobody’s father, and amid the openings of her old dream, while still she seemed to herself to be straying down the vast nave traced out by its old pillars, with her hand upon some one’s arm, who was dead and gone years ago—there recurred to her, now and then, a sarcastic criticism upon the old man who was so much younger than herself. She herself was two persons in one, difficult to identify in their separate characters: young Jean Hay-Heriot among the ruins, fresh and sweet as the youngest rose in the garden: old Miss Jean with her shrivelled face surrounded by her “borders,” her wrinkled hand leaning on her cane. But as for Mr. Charles he had never been but one, the same figure throughout, always lean, long, dried up, occupied about nick-nacks, buried in old books, unbending to nothing but golf. “And now he’s meddling with Marjory,” Miss Jean said to herself with a vindictive gleam of her black eye, “him that knows no more about it than a man of wood! But I’ll see to that, I’ll see to that;” and then the sweep of the great west window caught her eye, and she was young Jean again, looking up at it to hide her confused sweet girlish face from some one who would gaze too closely. Which was the real one between these two? which the most true, the past that lives for ever, or the present that is but for a moment? The old woman sat absorbed in this bewilderment of mingled memory and observation, and did not think the dim hours long as they stole past her. She would not have the lamp brought in till late. She sat at the window as Marjory had done, her old head framed in by the delicate crown of the broken arch, perfect on one side, an exquisite flowing shaft of ancient stone, with canopy work fit for a queen of heaven—on the other nothing but gloomy sky and sea. The darkness closed over her but Miss Jean noted it not. The scene before her eyes had brought all her life back to her; in that very room she had danced a girl. What need had she of lights, of books, something to divert her? as the sympathetic maid suggested who found the old lady in the dark and was sorry for her.
“Go away, and bring me the lamp in an hour. I like the gloaming,” said Miss Jean in a softened tone.
“Gloaming! it was mirk as midnicht, and her an old witch, sitting in the dark,” said the woman, reporting the circumstance below; and this further aggravation of a weird old woman seated by herself unseen at the window, seeing nobody could tell how far or how keenly, carried a still further element of mystery into the vague wonder and suspense of the house.
The arrival of Mr. Charles, which took place late, about ten o’clock, when it was quite dark, was the first thing that roused the old lady. He came in very unsteady on his long legs, with a somewhat dazed and pre-occupied look—too much absorbed by all the events of the evening to be much startled by anything that might happen, even by a visitor so unexpected. He came in and made some sort of greeting, taking her presence for granted in a way which bewildered her, and then threw himself upon a chair in the dim room. “She’s dying,” he said in that dull tone of spent excitement which expresses so much.
“Who’s dying?” cried Miss Jean in alarm, starting from her seat at the window. “Not our May?”
“May?” Mr. Charles said with a kind of dull wonder. “May? She’s yonder,” pointing his thumb over his shoulder, “as she was at Tom’s side, poor fellow! God be praised, no—it’s not her; but that poor thing—”
“The—gamekeeper’s daughter;—the—lass—? but that’s too good news.”
Mr. Charles looked at her with reproof in his eyes. “You know nothing about it. She is far from a common kind of lass; but that is a thing women never can understand,” he added, taking a certain vigour from his opposition. “How those that are on the other side, should have any title to respect—that is a thing you can never understand.”
“Maybe not,” said Miss Jean with lively and instant assumption of the quarrel. “We’re no so clever as you. You can aye discriminate; ye see at a glance, and tell the good from the evil. We’re weaker vessels; but, perhaps, if ye were to tell me some of the arguments that convinced your strong mind—”
Mr. Charles jumped up, galled at this speech and the tone in which it was uttered; but his weariness overcame him, and he sat down again, somewhat humbled. “No argument—no argument,” he said, “the sight of her—that is all. I’ve left Marjory there. She’ll not leave the bedside so long as life remains. I thought she might have come away now, for the poor thing is no longer conscious; but May feels it her duty to Tom.”
“And you left her—a lady—a young woman—to come home alone.”
“Ay,” said Mr. Charles, and then paused, “I am meaning, not quite alone. There is that lad Fanshawe,” he added in a deprecating tone.
“Fanshawe! him that was at Pitcomlie before—the English lad?”
“Yes, the English lad—I never thought of it till this moment; but he has a way of turning up when he’s wanted that is very extraordinary—very extraordinary! To see him appear, like a ghost, at that cottage door—and not one of us surprised within. To be sure,” Mr. Charles added with sudden gravity, “all our thoughts were turned another way.”
“But my thoughts are not turned any other way,” said Miss Jean. “I don’t know what folly you’re thinking of, her and you; but Marjory is my first thought. All this about your cottage doors, and your thoughts turned other ways, is not intelligible to me. I would like to know what you mean, Charlie. Who is this lad, and what has he to do with Marjory? You’ve left him to bring her home—in the middle of the night.”
“No—no,” said Mr. Charles, deprecating, “not so bad as that—not the middle of the night. And how could I help it? It was no place for me—a man that could be of little use. I came away by his advice. It’s a long walk, and I’ve eaten nothing. And, perhaps,” he said, pausing with his hand on the bell, “I should bid them get a room ready for Fanshawe—he must stop somewhere. So far as I know, the beds at The Royal may all be taken. I suppose I must give him a bed in this house.”
“You know best who to take in, and who to leave out,” said Miss Jean. “I never interfere with the arrangements of the house. Perhaps you would like me to go to The Royal? For otherwise, I have my boxes in the spare room.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Mr. Charles, waving his hand; and he gave his orders with a degree of explanatoriness to which Miss Jean listened with grim impatience. “There’s a gentleman, Mr. Fanshawe, that may be coming in late—with Miss Heriot; not that he’s with Miss Heriot now, or more than just in the neighbourhood. But she may be kept late, and at my request he will bring her home—you understand?”
“Oh ay, Sir, I understand!” said the maid cheerfully; “the English gentleman; he was here the day already, waiting long, and very anxious about Miss Heriot. He went off after you to the Spindle, when he heard ye had gone that gait; he was just off a journey; but he would take no refreshment, no so much as a glass of wine;” but aye, “where was Miss Heriot? where was Miss Heriot? that was all that was in his head.”
“It was me he wanted, in reality,” said Mr. Charles, looking anxiously towards Miss Jean; “on business. We have a great many business transactions, him and me; and put some cold meat or something in the dining-room. If Mr. Fanshawe is kept very late—as he may be, waiting at my request for Miss Heriot (for he is a young man, Aunt Jean, and I am an old one—he was more able to wait than me); he will have to sleep here.”
“And will Miss Heriot be late, Sir?” said the maid.
“She’s waiting upon a poor young woman that’s dying,” said Mr. Charles, with solemnity. “You’re amused, Aunt Jean? I’m sorry that I cannot join you, after the scene I’ve been going through—nor see the cause.”
“Oh, you blind auld beetle!” said Miss Jean; “putting it into the lass’s head every word you said, to mix up May’s name with this lad’s! Who is the lad?—is he worthy of her? or does he want her? or have you paid any attention, ye doited auld body, to what I took the trouble to say?”
“I have taken your advice,” said Mr. Charles shortly; “much to my own discomfort; but nothing has ever come of it, that I can see.”
“That’s no answer to my question,” cried the old lady peremptorily. “Is he worthy of her? and who is the lad?”
“So far as I can make out,” said Mr. Charles; “he is very little to brag of; a good-natured ne’er-do-weel—nobody’s enemy but his own.”
“And that’s just the bitterest foe of everybody that belongs to him,” said Miss Jean; “and it’s a man like that that you leave to bring May home; to wait for her, and feel for her, and bring her along a lonely road, and take advantage of all his opportunities—”
“The young man is a gentleman,” said Mr. Charles eagerly, with an indignant flush on his face.
“And you’re a fool, Charlie Heriot!” cried the old lady, growing red—as a woman of seventy-five could scarcely be expected to do. She was angry and ashamed at his interpretation of her words; she got up hastily to retire to her room, every fold of her shawl quivering with indignation. “Judging by what you say, it is little use sitting up for her, I suppose,” she said. “To think of a young woman like Marjory left to come home with a strange man in the middle of the night! You’re a bonnie guardian, Chairlie Heriot; you give us all great encouragement to trust the young women of the family to you.”
To tell the truth, something of the same feeling crept into Mr. Charles’ own mind, mingled with shame, as he went down to the dining-room to eat his long postponed dinner, and refresh himself with a little bodily comfort. He began to feel much discontented, and ashamed. To leave Fanshawe to take care of her had seemed very natural in the midst of the excitement at the cottage, as soon as he had recognised that his own presence there was uncalled for. But in the light of Miss Jean’s comments it had a very different appearance. He had put Marjory into Fanshawe’s hands; he had accepted him as in some sort her natural protector and companion. This thought entirely drove from his mind the real event of the night; the occurrence which had absorbed him so short a time before. Now that he was out of the shadow of the death-chamber, all that belonged to it flitted away from him. The same feeling was strong in both of the old people; they pushed death aside almost rudely, as a thing which once completed, should be thought as little of as possible—and plunged into the concerns of life again with eagerness. The scene had been solemn, the moment touching; but these were over, and life and its necessities were not over. Mr. Charles put himself upon three chairs in the dining-room, after he had eaten his late refection, and declared his intention of waiting there till Miss Heriot returned. He fell asleep very uncomfortably, waking up now and then with a crick in his neck, with pins and needles in his feet or his fingers, with an indescribable sense of discomfort penetrating even into his sleep. When he woke from a painful doze on his three chairs, he decided with himself that now he might venture to go to bed—that she would not now come till the morning, when no one could make any remark. Accordingly, when Marjory, half dead with fatigue and emotion, reached the house, there was no one up to receive her. She had scarcely uttered a single word the whole way, and sometimes Fanshawe, holding her fast with her hand pulled through his arm, had half fancied she must have fainted or fallen into some stupefying trance, though the mechanical motion continued and she kept walking on, like one galvanized. When at last a sleepy maid was roused to admit them, the early morning sunshine was lying warm upon the silent streets and houses. As she entered, and he after her, on the strenuous invitation of the maid, who was partly hospitable and partly afraid lest anyone, “from our house” should be seen making his way to The Royal “at such an hour”—the stillness of the house came over them both with a strange half-alarming sensation. At the top of the stairs in the bright solemn early daylight Miss Jean stood, in her broad-bordered nightcap, and with curious flannel draperies wrapped about her, looking down upon them as they mounted the stairs. Marjory was too weary to feel much surprise.
“Is it you, Aunt Jean?” she asked languidly.
“Is this the way you treat your visitors, coming in at this hour of the morning?” said Miss Jean, “and with so little regard to what folk may think? Let the young man bide below till I’m out of the way. I’ll see you to your room, Marjory. You want some woman-person to see after you, and that taupie of a maid is snoring, disturbing my slumbers for hours past.”
“I am sorry you waited for me,” Marjory said in her strange stupor, “but when you know the cause—”
“Oh, ay, I know the cause,” said Miss Jean, throwing a jealous glance over her shoulder at Fanshawe, who hesitated and lingered on the stairs. “I know the cause,” she repeated, following Marjory into her room and closing the door with much severity, “but for my part I’m a great deal more interested, to tell the truth, in what may be the result.”
Thus with one consent the elder members of the party—the ones who had lived longest and were nearest the ending—thrust the death-scene away from them, and went on with the threads of life as if there had been no interruption of its ordinary course. This was what they cared for—the living, not the dead.
And Fanshawe, dazed too with his watching, with his strange long walk through the unnatural yet fresh and lovely morning, which had seemed to spy upon them all the way, with wondering looks, like a child, went into the room prepared for him—having added that picture of Miss Jean in her dressing-gown to all the others, of which his mind was full. He did not hear what she said, but he made out her sharp look of disapproval, and the jealousy of her watch over Marjory, thus peremptorily parted from him, and taken out of his keeping the moment she crossed the threshold. She had been so absolutely confided to him before, that the contrast was all the more remarkable. When he was safe in his room, the ludicrousness of the old lady’s appearance came before him so strongly, that he laughed in spite of himself—and then was intensely ashamed of himself, and crept to bed, feeling guilty in the daylight, feeling as if he had been doing something he ought not to have done. How strange to glide into the stillness of an orderly sleeping-room after an exciting night! And he was dizzy with his journey, with fatigue, and long waking. But still, of all the memories of the night, Miss Jean at the top of the stairs was the one that lingered most in his memory. He dreamed of her, and laughed in his sleep, and woke with a half-hysterical mixture of laughter and emotion, as much moved by that momentary comic glimpse as by all that had happened. But this levity, fortunately, nobody knew.