Read Ebook: May; vol. I by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

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"Are you not going to wait?" said the laird.

Mr. Charles had hoisted himself up at the sound of the bell; he had folded his newspaper and laid it down upon his seat. He had picked up his shortsighted spectacles, which lay as they always did, when he was reading, on the edge of the wainscot, which was high and served him as a stand; and he had lifted the poker to administer, as he invariably did at this hour, a farewell poke to the fire before leaving it. He turned round upon his brother, looking at him over his shoulder with the poker in his hand.

"Wait!" he said. It was altogether a new idea. Marjory was punctuality itself, trained to it from her earliest years, and time was inexorable at Pitcomlie, waiting for no man or woman either.

"Wait?" he repeated, laying down the poker. "Thomas, my man, you're not well."

"Bah!" said the laird, taking up the poker which his brother had dropped, and applying such a blow to the coal as sent blazing sparks all over the hearth-rug. It was exactly what might have been expected, but his brother stood helplessly and looked at him, feeling that chaos itself had come, until the smell of the burning wool startled them both. Mr. Heriot stooped down, which did not agree with him, to pick up the smouldering sparks with his hands, out of which the morsels of fire tumbled again, sprinkling little pin-points of destruction all over the Turkey rug. Mr. Charles ran and opened the window, which let in a steady strong blast from the Firth, enough to wither up the very soul of any man not to the manner born. "Bless my soul!" they both said, between the fire and the cold, in confusion and discouragement. It was entirely Marjory's fault. Why was not Marjory at home? What did she mean by staying out at an hour when she was so much wanted? Mr. Heriot spoke quite sharply when old Fleming, the butler, came to answer the bell. "Where is Miss Marjory?" he said. "Come and pick up these cinders, and don't stand and stare at me. Where is Miss Marjory, I ask you? What do you mean by ringing the bell when she's not here?"

"Lord bless us, Sir," said old Fleming, gazing at his master with a consternation beyond words. "What for should I no ring the bell? I've rung it night and morning, midday and dinner-time, in a' times and seasons, even when there was death in the house; and what for should we hold our peace now?"

"Confound you!" said the laird; and then he recollected himself, and put on that peculiar politeness which is with some men a symptom of wrath. "Be so good as to leave the room at once, and bring me word if Miss Marjory has come in," he said.

Mr. Charles by this time had closed the window, subdued by his brother's unusual fractiousness. "Tom's letter must have been more trying than ordinary," he said to himself, and then in the curious pause that followed he looked at his watch. A quarter to two o'clock! In the memory of man it had not been known that the Pitcomlie household should be later than half-past one, in sitting down to its luncheon. Mr. Charles did not know what to do with himself. In his scheme of existence this half hour, and no other, was filled with lunch. He had other duties for all the other half hours, and every one of them must be pushed out of its proper place by May's singular error. This fretted him more than he could say. He walked about the room with his hands in his pockets and in much bewilderment of soul. "If you will not come, I will go by myself," he said at length to his brother, "I can't afford to lose all my afternoon. May must have stayed in Comlie with old Aunt Jean for lunch."

"Lose your afternoon!" said Mr. Heriot. "Bless my soul, what's your afternoon, an idle man! If it had been me that had complained"--

"There's Scotch collops," said old Fleming, suddenly appearing at the door, "and chicken with cucumber. They'll both spoil if they're no eaten; and Miss Marjory's not to be seen, no even from the towerhead where I sent little James to look. You'll do her little good waiting, if I may make so bold to say so, and the good meat will be spoiled."

Marjory had left her horse and little Milly her tiny pony at John Horsburgh's inn, and they were now going up and down the silent street in the sunshine about their various businesses, holding up their riding-skirts, the little girl keeping very close by her sister's side like a little shadow, and communicating with the outer world almost exclusively by means of a large pair of limpid blue eyes, clear as heaven, and wide open, which said almost all that Milly had to say, and learned a great deal more than Milly ever betrayed. Wherever Marjory went, this little shade went with her, sometimes holding by her dress, always treading in her very footsteps, a creature with no independent existence of her own, any more than if she had been part of Marjory's gown, or an ornament she wore. As for Marjory herself, she went along the street of Comlie with the free yet measured step of a princess, aware that every eye in the place , was turned to her; but so used to that homage that it gave her only a fine backing of moral strength and support, and made her neither vain nor proud. Vain! why should Marjory Hay-Heriot be vain? She knew her position exactly and accepted it, and was aware of all its duties, and considered it natural. She was like a princess in Comlie; she would have told you so simply without more ado, as calm in the consciousness as any young grand-duchess in her hereditary dominions. She had been going over her kingdom that morning, and had found a great many things to do.

At this moment when, if the reader pleases, we shall join ourselves like little Milly to her train, she was coming up from "the shore" as it was called, the fisher-region, where she had been paying a sorrowful visit. One of the boats had gone down in the last gale, a too frequent accident, and a young widow with a three months old baby, a poor young creature who not two years before had left Pitcomlie House to marry her Jamie, was sitting rocking herself and her child in the first stupor of grief, and replying by monosyllables to all the kindly attempts to console her.

"All well to-day, Mary?"

"Oh, ay, Miss Marjory, just about our ordinary, nae mair to complain o' than maist puir folk; if thae weary cauld winds would bide away that gie us a' our death."

"This is the first east wind we've had for a fortnight," said Marjory. "I think we have very little reason to complain."

"Ye see I'm frae the south," said the woman; "and my man has a hoast that drives ye wild to hear; and when we havena the east wind in Comlie we have the rain, and the bairns canna gang to the school, and there's naething but dirt and wet, and misery and quarrelling. It's a weary world, as our grannie says. Whatever the Almighty sends, there's aye something folk would like better."

"But perhaps that might be the folk's fault, and not the Almighty's," suggested Marjory.

"Maybe; I'm no saying," answered Mary Baxter, cautiously. "I hope's a' weel at Pitcomlie, and good news o' the young gentlemen. They tell me Mr. Charles's wife out in India yonder, has another son. Bless us! and I mind himself so well, a curly-headed laddie! It would have been mair like the thing if Mr. Tammas would settle down, and bring hame some bonnie young leddy and gie Mr. Heriot childhers' childher, as it's in the Bible. But there's nae word o' that that I can hear?"

"No, there is no word of that. I hope Nancy is doing well in her new place," said Miss Heriot, changing the subject with the same unconscious artifice which had prompted her humble interlocutor to carry the war into the enemy's country by introducing Charles's marriage and Tom's bacherlorhood. These two subjects were not pleasing to the house of Heriot; for Tom, the heir, unfortunately, showed no inclination to marry at all, and Charlie in India had become a husband and a father much too soon, contrary to all traditions. Marjory passed on when she had been satisfied on the subject of Nancy, but was stopped a few steps further on by a bareheaded girl in a pretty pink short-gown, the costume of the country, who ran after her with her fair locks falling loose in the wind.

"Eh, Miss Marjory, would you come in and speak to my mither?" cried this new applicant. This was Jenny Patterson, who lived up a stair just behind the Tolbooth, and a little out of Miss Heriot's way. How Jenny admired the young lady as she gathered up her heavy cloth skirts, and with a smile and a nod went on to the well-known door! If Jenny had ever heard of goddesses, just so would she have impersonified a feminine divinity; that mixture of splendid superiority and familiar kindness being of all things the most captivating to the unsophisticated soul. Jenny's brother, who was a watchmaker in Dundee, and held very advanced political opinions, considered her devotion servile, but blushed to feel that he himself shared it whenever he was brought under the same influence. "But it's no the leddy, it's the woman I think of," Radical Jock explained to himself--an explanation as false as most such explanations are.

"Jenny says you want me, Mrs. Patterson," said Marjory, sitting down on the chair which Jenny carefully dusted and placed in front of the fire. It was a small room, with but a little space between the bed and the fire, and with one window veiled by an immense geranium stretched upon a fan-like frame, which was the pride of its mistress's heart, consumed half the air and light in the little place, and curiously enough condescended to grow with splendid luxuriance. Jenny's mother was an invalid, but a good needlewoman, who got through a great deal of "white-seam" in her chair by the fire, and lived, she, her daughter, and her geranium on the earnings thus acquired, supplemented by help from her sons. Jenny stood by smiling and open-mouthed, twisting up the hair which invariably came down when she flew out into the street on any errand; and little Milly, familiar to the place, actually took the independent step of going to the window, and chirruping to the canary which hung above that geranium forest, and was the best singer in all Comlie, not even excepting the Minister's bullfinch, a strange and foreign bird.

"Dinna think I'm wanting anything from you, Miss Marjory. The worst o' puir folk is that they're aye wanting. Na, na, it was only for a sight o' your face, which does a poor body good, and to read ye my Willie's letter. Jenny, ye taupie, bring me Willie's letter. I can maistly say it off by heart, but Miss Heriot will like to see it, and I might forget something. Eh, I'm a happy woman! The captain o' the 'William and Mary's' dead out yonder , and Willie's to bring the boat home. It's as good as a ship to him; for ance a captain aye a captain, and his owners are no the men to put him back in a mate's place."

"I am very glad to hear of Willie's promotion," said Marjory; "was the captain a Comlie man?"

"Eh, you'll think me awfu' hard-hearted," said Mrs. Patterson, struck with compunction, and pausing with her large horn spectacles in her hand; "but you canna suppose I would have spoke as free and been as thankfu' if he had been a Comlie man. Na, na, if another house in the town had been mourning I would have held my peace. I've had trouble enough myself to have mair feeling; but he's no frae Comlie nor nearhand. He's a Dundee man, and I ken naething about him. His name was Brown, like mony mair, and he's no even married that I ever heard tell of, and it's to be hoped he's in a better place."

With this the new captain's mother dismissed the old one, and put on her big spectacles. "It's dated Riga, the fourteenth February, for that's the port where they were bound. 'My dear mother, I hope you and Jenny's in good health as this leaves me. Many and many a time I think of you and the cosy little room, and the flower, and the canary-bird--' Bless the laddie," said Mrs. Patterson, stopping abruptly, "he had aye the kindest heart!"

The reader probably, however, will not be so much interested in this letter as Marjory was, who listened and made her comments with thorough sympathy, feeling quite relieved, as was Willie's mother, by the fact that the dead captain was not a Comlie man. Dundee was large and vague, and far away, and was able enough to mourn her own dead. But as they went down the stairs after their visit was over, Marjory said to her little sister, "We shall be too late for luncheon at home; are you hungry, dear? I think we might go and dine with Aunt Jean."

"I am a little hungry," Milly confessed, not without a blush.

"Then run and tell Betty we are coming, and I will go on to the Manse; you can come after me or stay at Aunt Jean's, as you like."

"Walk slow, May, and I will make up to you," cried little Milly, who ran off instantly like a gleam of sunshine, her long fair hair fluttering in the breeze, anxious to be absent as short a time as possible from her sister's side. Marjory went on slowly making her royal progress through her dominions, casting a smile now and then through the low windows on the ground floor, stopping to nod and say a passing word to some one on an outside stair. The doctor, setting out in his gig on some distant visit, jumped down and crossed the street to speak to her, to ask for Mr. Heriot and Mr. Charles, and tell her how his patients were, of many of whom she had a secondary charge, if not as consulting physician, yet with a responsibility almost as great. "James Tod, poor lad, would be the better of some books," the doctor said, "and you're a better deceiver than I am, Miss Heriot; you might persuade old Mrs. Little that your father has some rare wine in his cellar, wine she could not get to buy."

"You pay me a charming compliment," said Marjory. "Could you not cheat her yourself with all your powers?"

"She laughed in my face," said the doctor, who was young, and not very rich, "and asked me how I could get finer wines than other folk? She was sure I might spend my siller better. And poor little Agnes dying before my eyes!"

"Will she die?"

"Don't ask me," said the too tender-hearted doctor, springing into his gig again. He was too sensitive to be a doctor, his wife said. As the gig drove away, some one else came up taking off his hat with profound respect. This was young Mr. Hepburn who lived in the house with the iron gates, and was the only unemployed person in Comlie. He was a young man tolerably well off, and more than tolerably good-looking, who had been brought up in a desultory way, was more accomplished than any other individual within twenty miles, did not in the least know what to do with himself, and was treated by Marjory with mingled kindness and condescension, as a clever schoolboy is sometimes treated by a young lady. For his part, Hepburn admired Marjory as he had never admired anyone else in his life. He was three or four years her junior, and he thought he was in love with, nay, adored her. The sight of her he said was as sunshine in the dreary silent place; and he had said this so often that it had come to Marjory's ears. It was not very original, and she had thought it impertinent, and treated him with more lofty condescension than ever.

"Oh, Mr. Hepburn," she said holding out her hand to him; "I did not know you were here. Some one told me you had gone abroad. I should have asked you to come to us sometimes at Pitcomlie, and bring your music, had I known. Not that we are very lively--"

"Pitcomlie is a great deal better than lively," said the young man. "I am not of such a frivolous mind as to be always looking for amusement. You know, Miss Heriot, how glad I am always to be there."

"But amusement is a very good thing," said Marjory. "Indeed, it is bad for young people to be without it. When Milly is a little older, I intend to make papa give balls and be very lively. I have always thought it a most essential part of training. I hope you go on with your music, and practice as much as you used to do?"

"I don't mean to use any word I ought not to use," said Marjory, with her gracious smile, "but I hope you keep it up, that and your drawing. It is good to have such resources when one has only a quiet life to look forward to. Of course a gentleman has many ways of occupying himself; but I am so sorry my education has been neglected. When I am dull, there is scarcely anything I can do but read."

"I should not think you were ever dull," said Hepburn, with adoring looks.

"Not very often, just now; but some time probably I shall be, and then I shall envy you your resources. Will you dine with us at Pitcomlie to-morrow, Mr. Hepburn? I fear we shall be quite alone; but if you will take the trouble to come--and bring your--"

"I will come with the greatest pleasure," said the young man, precipitately, drowning that last objectionable request. He would take no music, he vowed, for any inducement which might be offered him. His right hand would make an effort to forget its cunning. He would give himself up to riding and shooting, and trudge about the ploughed fields in leather gaiters, like her father, and make a boor of himself, by way of proving to her that he was not a schoolboy nor a dilettante. This he vowed to himself as she went on smiling, and little Milly passed him like a gleam of light, rushing after her sister. How unlike these two were to anything else far or near! Marjory, with her little sister, was like a deep-hearted rose, not full blown, yet perfect--one of those roses which you can look down into, as into a lovely nest of colour and fragrance--with a tiny little bud just showing the pink on the same stem. Young Hepburn had a great deal of superficial poetry about him, and this was the image which came into his mind. Not full blown--keeping the form of a bud, deep, many-folded, odorous as the very soul of Summer. That was the similitude which best expressed Marjory Heriot to his mind.

And she, laughing softly at him, wondering to herself what God could mean by making such men, deciding within herself that he would have made a nice sort of girl, pleasant and rather loveable, went on to the Manse, which indeed had been her destination all along.

The minister of Comlie was an old man who had held that appointment for a great many years. In many respects he was like a traditional Scotch minister, but in others he did not come up to that ideal. He had baptized the entire body of his parishioners, and married a great many of them, but he was not the genial, kindly old soul who is ordinarily conceived of as filling that position. When he walked through the town the children did not run after him, nor seek sweetmeats in his pockets. Any boy or girl in Comlie who had entertained that fond delusion would have been fixed to the earth by the Doctor's frown, and repented, all his or her life after, the profane thought and word. Dr. Murray was a man addicted to literature, full of Biblical criticism, great in exegesis--a man who had been Moderator of the Assembly, and thus reached the highest honour of which the incumbent of a Scottish parish is capable. After this a great calm in respect to distinctions and worldly advantages had been visible in him--he had contemned them gently with a benevolent superiority. His spirit had been, as indeed it ought to have been, in a professional point of view, rather that of Solomon than of Alexander; no new world to conquer had occupied his thoughts, but only a sense of that completion and fulness which must always be more or less sad. The thing that hath been is that which shall be, he said. He had everything the world could give him, and now there was no more to wish for. But this sense of having attained the highest honour that earth could afford, if somewhat depressing, had also a great deal of satisfaction in it. No doubt his career was over, and all its splendour and majesties were among the things that had been; but yet he had the profound and tranquillizing conviction that he had not lived in vain. Not in any way had he lived in vain. He had written the article on Hyssop in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and he had had a large share in the Popular Commentary on the Bible, which was considered the very best authority upon Eastern customs and geography, and the local peculiarities which throw light upon the sacred text. His name was one of those which had been connected from the very first with the "Christian Herald," and it was he who wrote all the articles, signed Alpha, in that well-conducted magazine. Therefore it will be at once perceived that his life had been well worth living, that he was not in any respect an unsuccessful man, and that the evening of his days might well breathe forth a certain gentle satisfaction. Comlie was very proud of the doctor, and even Fife was proud of him. When he heard that Marjory was in the drawing-room, he laid down the book he was reading and put a marker in it, and after five minutes or so had elapsed--for it did not suit his dignity to make any hasty movements--he left his library to see the young lady whom he felt a great interest in, as he always said. "She has too much imagination and a hasty mind that runs away with her sometimes; but she has fine instincts," he would say. The Manse stood on a knoll, and the drawing-room faced the sea. It was an old-fashioned room, with small windows set in the deep walls, and furniture which was somewhat dark and solemn. "You'll stay and take a bit of dinner with us, May, now you're here," Mrs. Murray was saying as the doctor came in. "It's no often we get a sight of you, and there's nobody the Minister likes so well to see. Milly, my dear, take off your hat, and tell Margaret, the table-maid, to get out some of the apple-puffs you're aye so fond of. Marjory likes them too."

"But, dear Mrs. Murray, we are going to Aunt Jean," said Marjory. "I will come back another day. Now the weather is mending, I shall be often in Comlie. We are all very well, Doctor, thank you, but wondering not to see you. Uncle Charles has some great argument, which, he says, he keeps in his pocket ready for you. I don't know what it is about. I thought perhaps you would come up quietly to dinner to-morrow, and then you could have it out?"

"We'll do that, my dear," said Mrs. Murray briskly; but the doctor was more formal in his ways.

"Hoots, doctor, you've no engagements," said lively little Mrs. Murray; "you forget you're at home in Comlie, and no in Edinburgh, where, to my tribulation, we go out to our dinner every night. You may laugh, but it's no laughing matter, May, my dear, and a destruction to my best gown--no to say to all my habits. You may wear point lace when it's dirty, but point lace is too good for a poor Minister's wife, and my suit of Mechlin is as black as if I had swept the chimney in it; and as for working a stocking, or doing any rational thing after one of their late dinners! But we'll come to you, my dear."

"I am afraid we are going to have a storm," said the doctor; "the wind is blowing strong up the Firth, and I doubt we'll have a dirty night. Nothing will teach these fishers to be careful when they're getting what they think a good haul. I have a great mind, when I see the glass falling and the wind rising, to send old Tammas to ring the church bells and warn their boats."

"And why not do it?" said Marjory, with a slight start which was peculiar to her when she heard anything that roused her interest. "There could not be a better use for church bells. Do it, doctor! If the men knew, it might save some of these poor fellows. Poor Jamie Horsburgh, for instance; I saw Jean to-day, and it almost broke my heart."

"Her that was laundry-maid at Pitcomlie?" said Mrs. Murray. "Ah, poor thing! and what she is to do to gain her bread with that bit infant of hers? But I do not advise you, doctor, to set any newfangled plan agoing for ringing the bells. Nobody would pay any attention. They would say: 'What does the minister know about the weather? Let him bide at his books, and leave the winds to us.' That's what they would say. And if you take my opinion, I cannot but think they would have justice on their side."

"I will not risk it, my dear," said the doctor; "they are a pig-headed race, like all the partially educated. I wish there was a higher standard of education in our schools. Reading and writing are very well, but a little attention to the common phenomena of the elements would be a great matter--as I said to Mr. Tom the last time he was here--"

"Speaking of your brother Tom," said Mrs. Murray briskly; "what is this I hear about Charlie? A second boy, and him not above two years and a-half married! My certy, but they're losing no time; and I hope both doing well?"

"Oh yes," said Marjory, with a shade of indifference stealing over her face; "people always do well in those circumstances, don't they? Fancy our Charlie with a family of children about him! I think it spoils a young man. It makes them grand-fatherly--not to say grandmotherly--and knowing about domestic matters. Charlie, of all people in the world! but it cannot be helped, or put a stop to, I suppose?"

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