THE party which met in the morning after this vigil regarded each other strangely, feeling the fever of their excitement still about them. Marjory did not appear, and it was from Mr. Charles that Fanshawe learnt that his own mission had failed, and that the missing witness had already appeared, a fact which he had guessed from all he saw, but had not been informed of. There was a long discussion over the breakfast table about this strange change in the family affairs, and all the revolutions it must bring about.
“An application must be made at once to the Court of Session to appoint tutors,” Mr. Charles said, who was full of suppressed excitement, “and these young women at Pitcomlie must be informed. It will be hard upon them, poor things, after all.”
“They had nothing to do with the house or the family,” said Miss Jean, briskly. “Strangers, all strangers; neither one nor another has any pity from me. Eight thousand pounds is not a bad provision for a younger son’s widow, with nothing of her own; but take you my advice, Charlie Heriot, and be very clear in your mind about this bairn. I’m not fond of chance bairns coming in when nobody expects them. This lass, that you all think so much of, may have been everything that’s good; but I would have the court to sit upon it, and make sure. I would trust nothing to chance, if it was me.”
“We’ll take every precaution—every precaution,” said Mr. Charles; and then he fell into a reverie, from which he roused up slowly, with a look of satisfaction in his face, rubbing his hands. “I am glad,” he said, “that I never began to dismantle my old room. I’ve thought of doing it more than once. If I could suppose,” added Mr. Charles, changing countenance, “that leaving Pitcomlie would be any heart-break to these young women; if they had had time to get attached to the place—But as one house or another is the same to them, and Mrs. Charles is not badly provided for, on the whole, with her pension and all—I hope it’s not any way hard-hearted on my part.”
“But you’re old, Charlie Heriot,” said Miss Jean, “old to be tutor to a little bairn. Granting that you may live as long as I have done, for instance, that’s about fifteen years—and nobody can calculate on more—that would leave the boy just at the worst age. You’re spare and thin, and I would not wonder if ye were one of the long-lived ones of the family; but granting even that you were spared to be as old as me—”
“You’ll live twenty years yet, Aunt Jean,” said Mr. Charles, who did not like the turn the conversation was taking.
“That may be, or may not be,” said Miss Jean. “I’m very indifferent; a year sooner or a year later matters very little. To be sure when you’re well over your threescore and ten, there’s no saying—but it’s never to be calculated on. If this bairn is young Tom’s lawful son, as you say, and but three months old, poor bit thing, he must have young guardians. The like of Mr. Fanshawe here now; or as women are coming into fashion, Marjory—”
Mr. Charles gave an alarmed look at the audacious proposer of such a conjunction. He was fairly frightened by it. He looked up with a certain consternation, to meet the bold response of Miss Jean’s black eyes, twinkling with satisfaction at the thought of having thus bewildered him.
“Ye need not look at me in that alarmed manner, Charlie Heriot,” she said. “There’s nothing but what is strictly reasonable in what I say.”
“If I were thought worthy of such a charge,” said Fanshawe, startled too. “I should, of course, do my very best to acquit myself of the trust; but I have, at present, no connection with Fife—I have no claim to such a distinction; there must be many others much better qualified—”
“It’s not a thing we can discuss,” said Mr. Charles, hurriedly; “it is not in our hands; there are a great many preliminaries. And in the first place there is one that’s not pleasant. These young women, how are they to be told? They must be told. What would you say, Aunt Jean, would be the best thing to do? Perhaps as you are going that way, if you were to see them and break it in a quiet way? a lady is always the best to do that; there’s more delicacy, and more sympathy, and understanding, and so forth. Some clergymen have a gift that way; but a lady is always the best.”
“I am much obliged to you, Charlie Heriot,” said Miss Jean, “but in my opinion you’re the only bearer of the news that’s possible. Nobody can do it but you.”
“Do you really think so?” said Mr. Charles. “Now I cannot help thinking a stranger would be better—or perhaps a letter—that might be the best of all—a letter now. Unless Mr. Fanshawe here, that could bring no painful recollections to their minds, a young man quite unconnected with everything—and pleasant manners, and all that—would be so obliging as to drive out, and just prepare them a little. My niece Marjory has so much confidence in Mr. Fanshawe. It is not a long drive, and the country is looking its very best. Would it be too much to ask, as a friend of the family?” Mr. Charles said, with an insinuating look.
Miss Jean’s chuckle, and the look she gave him out of her sharp black eyes, overcame Fanshawe’s gravity more than the proposal thus anxiously made. Even Mr. Charles saw the fun, and relieved himself and his anxiety with a long low laugh, under protest as it were—for laughing was far from appropriate at this juncture of the family affairs. But the most amusing thing of all was that, though they laughed at the idea of entrusting Fanshawe with this mission, after much talk and many suggestions, and a great deal of comic remark, it was after all he who went. He consented—because it was his fate, because it was propitiating Marjory’s friends, because it was a proof to her of his readiness to serve all connected with her; but chiefly, it must be allowed, because it was his fate. This was what he was born into the world for; to do what people asked him, to serve others, to be good for much so far as other people were concerned, but good for little to himself. Miss Jean looked on with a certain grim amusement while it was all being settled. She gave her opinion on the subject with her usual frankness.
“I would not have gone had I been you,” she said. “I would have let old Charlie do his nasty errands for himself.”
Fanshawe laughed with some conscious shame, feeling indeed that he had been somewhat weak; and the old lady resumed—
“Nobody thinks the more of you for being too kind. A willing horse is aye over-ridden; but that’s not all. In this world folk take you at your own word, Mr. Fanshawe. They think little of a man that holds himself cheap. It’s no advantage—either with man or woman. The best thing ye can do is to let folk see that a favour from you is a real favour, not easy to get, not given to everybody—”
“Miss Jean, you speak like Solomon himself,” said Fanshawe, with mock reverence and real confusion, “or rather like the Queen of Sheba,—which is the next wisest, I suppose.”
“Maybe I am like the Queen of Sheba,” said Miss Jean; “but it’s men far from Solomon that I’ve come to see. You like Fife, I suppose, Mr. Fanshawe, that I find you back here?”
“I suppose so too,” he said, with a rueful comic sense that he was by no means a free agent, “since you find me here, Miss Jean—as you say—”
“You should not repeat another person’s words, it’s not civil. And yet Fife has but small attractions for a young man. You’re fond of golf, I suppose, like all the rest?”
“Probably I might be,” he said, laughing, “if I had the chance; but I have never tried yet—”
“Oh, then you’re one of those archæ-somethings, that make the old stones speak?” said Miss Jean. “Oh, but the like of me could make them speak better, if we were to tell all we mind and all we have seen.”
“I am not an archæ-anything,” said Fanshawe.
“Then it’s very strange to me—very strange,” said the old lady, looking him in the face, “what pleasure you can find in staying here?”
He laughed—this time an uneasy laugh, and felt himself redden uncomfortably. Why, indeed, should he stay here? To go on Mr. Charles’s errands, to have all sorts of disagreeable offices thrust upon him, to be sent off, perhaps, at a moment’s notice, to be made use of on all hands. This was what his past experience had been, and why should it be different in the future? The old woman’s two black eyes, set deep in their shrivelled sockets, looked knowingly, not unkindly at him, with a gleam of amusement, but also with a certain sympathy. “There does not seem much reason, does there, why I should stay?” he said, and got up and went to the window to look out, avoiding her keen eyes.
“Young man,” said Miss Jean, “I don’t know much about you, and what I know is not the best that might be; but you’re not an ill young man as men go. On the whole, I’m inclined to be on your side. And take you my advice. Don’t make too little of yourself; don’t be at everybody’s call; stand up for yourself, if you would have other folk stand up for you. So far as I’ve seen, your fault is that you’re better than most folk. Don’t be that, that’s the worst of all mistakes.”
“You mean that I am a yielding fool, and cannot say ‘No,’” said Fanshawe; “but that, after all is scarcely the case. There are circumstances, perhaps, if I could tell them to you, that justify me—”
“No circumstances, but a man’s nature account for that kind of conduct,” said Miss Jean, briskly; “but if it’s any comfort to you, I’m inclined to be on your side.”
Whatever comfort there might be in this, Fanshawe had it to console him on his drive. He set out without seeing Marjory. When he found himself driving not too quickly over those long country roads, on the business which was not his, and realised the disagreeable mission he had undertaken, he felt more weak and foolish than even Miss Jean had represented him to himself. For what was all this? To commend himself to Marjory? or because it was his nature and his fate? He was thoroughly discontented with himself. Was he, who was thus driven hither and thither by the will of others, who seemed to have no business of his own in the world, but always and only the business of others—was he the kind of man to step boldly out of his groove, to begin an independent life, to ask any woman to share that existence? Nobody but those who are over-persuadable, ready to be over-borne by the appeals made to them by their more indolent neighbours, and to take upon their shoulders burdens which are none of theirs, can understand how ashamed Fanshawe felt of his own amiability in the business which he had at present in hand—or how disgusted with the piece of work which Mr. Charles had basely thrust upon his shoulders. As he approached Pitcomlie, he realized more and more clearly how disagreeable it was. The sight of the house which had filled so important a chapter in his life made his heart beat. There it was that he had been roused out of the equanimity of his placid, easy-going existence; and what good had that awakening done? None but to make him a dissatisfied instead of a very contented, happy sort of fellow; to show him the evil without opening the way to any remedy; to fill him with longings after the unattainable without conferring upon him the strength necessary to struggle and attain it. Marjory! the whole place was full of her; the cliff, with its velvet coverlet of green sward, round which so often by her side he had taken his “turn;” the sundial by which he seemed to see her seated; the roofless old house, against the grey walls of which he had watched her figure so often, and which formed so fit a background for her; everything was full of Marjory. The presence of her image there made it somehow more easy for him to do what he was going to do. He marched into the well-known drawing-room, almost regardless of the servant who rushed after, pulling on his coat, to announce him. He saw with a certain sharp sense of sarcastic pleasure somebody rise hastily from Mrs. Charles’s side, and retire into a distant corner. Somebody—that sentimental personage called Johnnie, whose presence had once made him furiously jealous. He was ready to laugh now at the sight of this young man, whom he recognised at once with that attraction of jealousy and dislike which is as strong as love. Why was he so pleased to see Johnnie Hepburn start disconcerted from Mrs. Charles’s side? It pleased him to think of telling it to Marjory; the power of discrediting her old admirer in her eyes was quite grateful to him; he was spitefully delighted—there is no other word that can describe his feelings. If Fanshawe had but thought of it, he might have felt himself quite delivered from the danger of being too amiable by this vigorous outburst of dislike and feelings quite un-evangelical. But somehow it did not occur to him to judge his own sentiments in that uncompromising way.
He had a hostile reception; from the moment of his appearance the ladies at Pitcomlie made sure that he was coming on no friendly errand. Verna came in from the cliff through the open window, having caught a glimpse of him; she was very pale, with a scared look which Fanshawe could not understand. They both looked at him with a stare of something like defiance, but took no other notice of his presence. This was very embarrassing at first. He faltered a little as he drew near, being very pervious to incivility, and all the smaller pricks by which the mind can be assailed.
“I have come to execute a commission from Mr. Charles Hay-Heriot,” he said, looking round him almost pitifully for support. Johnnie Hepburn afforded none. He even turned his back and gazed out of one of the windows. He did not stand by a brother in distress. He was too much frightened for the women, if truth must be told.
“Oh, yes; to be sure; and I think we could guess what it was,” said Matilda. “Pray speak out. Don’t be afraid. You need not have too much consideration, or that sort of thing, for me.”
“Indeed, I was told to have every consideration,” said Fanshawe, perplexed. “Mr. Charles——”
“Oh, why keep up the farce of Mr. Charles?” cried Matilda. “Say Marjory at once. We know it is all her hatching, this conspiracy; and oh! you may be quite sure whatever can be done, by law, against conspiracy—”
“Hold your tongue, Matty,” said Verna, in a sharp whisper. “You fool! don’t be always showing your hand.”
“As if I cared!” cried Matilda; “as if I did not see Marjory’s hand! Besides, it is well known that she keeps him to run errands for her, and do whatever she tells him. Oh! say it out! We are prepared for everything you have to say.”
“Then my errand may be all the shorter,” said Fanshawe. “It is only to tell you, from Mr. Hay-Heriot, that a discovery has been made about your brother-in-law, Tom Heriot. It has been found out that he was married, and has left a son—”
Here he was interrupted by a defiant peal of laughter, and looking up, surprised, saw both ladies laughing almost violently, as at the most excellent joke.
“Oh! this is too good,” the one said to the other; “too good; just what we expected. But Marjory might have invented something better,” said Matilda. “I could have made up a better story myself.”
Fanshawe stood, struck dumb, as a man of his breeding and character could not fail to be by such a rude and foolish reception of his message. He did not know how to reply. They spoke, as it were, another language, of which he had no comprehension.
“I had better withdraw, I think,” he said. “I don’t know what I can add, or reply; there is nothing, so far as I know, that I can say more.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt Marjory entrusted you with a great deal more to say!” cried Mrs. Charles. “She wanted to humble us; but you may tell her she sha’n’t humble us. We are people who can defend ourselves. If she isn’t clever enough even to make up a better story than this—”
“I think,” said Fanshawe, “it would be well to leave Miss Heriot out of the discussion; she has nothing to do with it—and, as it is evident, that you do not in the least understand her—”
“What do you mean, Sir, by saying Mrs. Charles does not understand?” said Hepburn, coming from his window. A burning flush covered the young man’s face; his eyes looked hot and bloodshot, and the veins were knotted upon his forehead; he was suffering such agonies of shame and pain as few people, perhaps, have gone through; shame for the woman whom he loved. Yes, though he was ashamed of her, though he perceived her meanness, her prettiness, her folly, still he loved her. He had stood aloof as long as he could; now, when the tugging at his heart, as well as her impatient looks, called him to her side—when very shame impelled him to come to her defence, to save her from her own folly, to hide from himself the gnawing pangs of his own shame—that shame took the fiercer form of passion. If he had worn a sword he would have drawn it; if there had been any other foolish way of rushing into mortal conflict he would have adopted it. It was the writhing of his own pain which excited him, but he tried to make it look like indignation. “If you have anything to say to Mrs. Charles, Sir,” he added fiercely, “or any objections to make, be so good as to address yourself to me.”
“To you! why should I?” cried Fanshawe, more amazed than ever.
“Because she has given me the privilege of standing between her and all impertinent intruders,” cried the unhappy young man, taking her hand in an agony of self-humiliation. Poor boy! he identified himself with her publicly at the moment when he saw most distinctly and suffered most sharply from the revelation of her character, which, to do her justice, she had never meant to withhold from him. He almost hated her in the vehemence of his love; hated her for not being what he would have had her, with a hatred which somehow intensified his passion. The sight was so strange and painful that it subdued the impulse of anger in Fanshawe’s mind.
“In that case,” he said gravely, “since I can neither fight with you, nor argue with you, I will withdraw, Mr. Hepburn; and Mr. Heriot’s communication can be made officially—if necessary, to you. Good morning, I have no more to say.”
Verna rushed forward as he opened the door. Already her better sense had perceived the folly of her sister’s words.
“Mr. Fanshawe, Matilda is always ridiculous!” she cried, breathless; “but we will not yield a step till we are forced—not a step!”
“So be it!” said Fanshawe; “though I hope your advisers will counsel you less foolishly. At all events, I have said what I had to say.”
“Forget Matilda’s nonsense, at least!” cried the sister. Matilda had thrown herself back upon her sofa, where the unfortunate Johnnie was kneeling by her, soothing her. “But I will not give up, I cannot give up!” she said passionately, under her breath, clasping her hands. She was not aware she had said it; her face, which was very pale, took a strange character of force and high purpose,—yes, of high purpose, such as it was. She did not wish to defraud anyone; but she was struggling for bare life; she followed Fanshawe out, going with him to the door, with rising uneasiness—the more generous part of her character waking with her better judgment. “All that about Miss Heriot,” she said, gasping, “was ridiculous; and Mr. Fanshawe, I am sure she did not mean to be rude to you; I never meant to be rude to you; it was only temper and surprise. And oh, when a blow like this is coming, it seems so much easier when you can feel it is somebody’s fault!”
“But you are much too sensible to believe so?” said Fanshawe, “who could—or would—attempt to deceive you in such a matter? Do you think an invention of this kind could ever stand the eye of day?”
“It is—it must be an invention!” cried Verna; and then, poor soul, she had recourse to that expedient which women employ by instinct, and which, did they but know it, always ruins their cause, though it may gain them a momentary triumph. She appealed to her companion, as if that could serve her. “Oh, Mr. Fanshawe,” she said, “we should do well if we were but left alone. The place would soon be got into order. I have given up all my plans about the house. I should see that Tommy was brought up as he ought to be. Why cannot they let us alone?”
“Do you think it possible,” he said, with some impatience, “that people like the Heriots are framing a lie in order to harm you?”
She looked at him with dilating eyes, in which the tears gradually rose. She had no understanding of the question. It came natural to her to think that somebody must have done it. “I would try to do what they wished,” she faltered, looking at him with a pathetic desire to understand. “I should be very glad to take their advice—I would do anything—”
“Miss Bassett,” said Fanshawe; “supposing it could affect the question in any way—which it could not—but supposing, for the sake of argument, that these good resolutions of yours could affect the question; how long will you be able to do anything if this piece of news Mr. Hepburn has told me is true?”
“What piece of news?” She looked so scared that he was almost frightened by the impression his words had produced. “Oh, you think there is something between—? But that is unjust to poor Matilda. She could not think of such a thing so soon. She is only amusing herself. You are very cruel to my sister,” cried Verna, turning her back upon him without another word. He went out with a smile, and jumped into his dog-cart, glad to get clear of the whole business. It was nothing to him; but she, poor soul, fled to her own room—so passionately excited that she could scarcely keep still as she rushed up those warm, noiseless, carpeted stairs which had seemed to her like the very path to Elysium, a little while before. There, at least, howsoever things might turn out, her power and reign were over. She could have torn her hair or her dress, or anything that came within her reach, in her passion. It was all over. A mean and small life of dependence and servility was all that now remained to her. To be turned out one way or another, what did it matter? Nay, it would be better to be turned out with Matilda than by her; better to share her downfall than to be crushed by her triumphant prosperity. Thus of the three people affected by Fanshawe’s message, there was but one person whom it affected mildly, and that the one most concerned. Matilda, after her fit of abuse of Marjory and the old family, shed a few angry tears, and then was comfortable again, and ready for such dalliance with her lover, interspersed by quarrels, as was her only fashion of mental amusement. But it would be hard to describe the mingled passions in Hepburn’s mind, as he knelt by the sofa, scorning, hating, adoring, the pretty, miserable, beautiful creature who had bewitched him. It was not her fault; all women were so; did not every sage bear testimony to it, from Solomon downwards? And the poor young fellow, in the revulsion of his feelings, took to admiring her more and more, dwelling upon her beauty, her movements, her glances, all the outward part of her. These were what women possessed to make men mad and happy—nothing more.
And Verna up-stairs sobbed in an hysterical passion. She had lost her very life.