Chapter Seven.
A Misfortune.
Miss Jean’s heart misgave her, for she knew that the thought suggested to her brother on the morning when Mrs Eastwood and Captain Harefield came to Saughleas to inquire about poor Tibbie Cairnie had returned to him more than once; and she feared that should Captain Harefield speak to-day, he might not refuse to listen, and then there would be troublous times before them.
That there was even a possibility that he should be willing to listen to him was amazing to Miss Jean. So wise and cautious and far-seeing as he had always shown himself to be, how could he think of trusting any part of the wealth which he had spent his life in gathering, to the hands of a man who had proved himself incapable of making a good use of that which had fallen to him? To say nothing of being willing to trust him with his daughter!
There was comfort here, however. Jean’s welfare was in her own keeping. Miss Jean was not so much at a loss as Mrs Eastwood, as to which of her nieces Captain Harefield intended to seek. And she was glad it was Jean, for Jean could hold her own against father and lover and all. But still there was trouble before them, for, strangely enough, her brother, hard-working and practical, a thorough man of business, had taken pleasure in the comings and goings of this young man so utterly unlike himself in all essential respects. She had seen it with wonder and a little amusement at first; but she knew now, or she thought she knew, that he had been preparing disappointment for himself and vexation to her bonny Jean.
“Truly we need guidance,” she said aloud, and then she rose and invited Mrs Eastwood to go in to the house and take a cup of tea, hoping all the time that she might refuse, and that she might be away before Mr Dawson came.
It was not to be so arranged however. Mr Dawson was delighted to see Mrs Eastwood, and expressed his pleasure so frankly, that Miss Jean thought it possible the lady might take courage, and make known to him as plainly as she had done to her the cause of her visit. So, instead of moving away with the help of her cane, as she had at first intended to do, she seated herself again. Not that she thought that her presence would be likely to prevent her speech, but she was curious to know how the matter, so interesting to the lady, should be presented to a new listener; and curious also to see how her brother might receive it.
There were the usual inquiries and compliments as to health, and the usual remarks about the weather and the appearance of the country, and then Mrs Eastwood spoke of the benefit she had received from her long stay, and her regret that the time of her departure was so near. Then Mr Dawson inquired with more interest than the occasion demanded, whether Captain Harefield was to leave also.
“If he take my advice about it, he will certainly do so,” said Mrs Eastwood. “But that is doubtful. The interest of the season is just beginning to him, and as he has had his leave extended, he may remain.”
“He is a keen sportsman, I hear,” said Mr Dawson.
“Oh, yes; and the shooting here is good, they say, and does not involve very much fatigue. Yes, he will probably stay for a little; though I think he had much better go, for various reasons.”
She spoke with a certain significance of tone and manner, and Mr Dawson remained silent, expecting to hear more; and possibly he might have had the pleasure of hearing of Captain Harefield’s hopes and his sister’s opinions, had no interruption occurred.
But at the moment a sudden outcry arose somewhere in the garden. They could see nothing where they were sitting, but they heard the sound of many voices—entreating, expostulating, scolding, and at last they heard words.
“Ye needna tell, May. Naebody will ken wha did it.”
“I wouldna tell Mr Dawson—for—oh! for ony thing.”
“An’ naebody will ken that it was you that did it.”
“It wasna me, but it was my fault; and if Sandy winna tell, I must, and just take the wyte (blame) mysel’.”
“Eh! Marion! Yon’s him speaking to the leddy. I wouldna be you for something.”
“Something untoward has happened, I doubt,” said Miss Jean. “I hope no ill has come to any of the apple-trees.”
Now Mr Dawson’s apple-trees were the pride of his heart. It is not easy to raise fruit trees of any kind so near to the sea; and as far as apple-trees are concerned, the fruit is not of the best, when success has crowned persevering effort. But on a few young trees, bearing for the first time, there hung several apples beautiful to behold, and they had been watched through all the season with interest by every one in the house, but above all by Mr Dawson. So when Miss Jean said “apple-trees,” he rose at once to satisfy himself that they were safe.
But alas! before he had fairly turned to go, all doubt was at an end. There were many children at a little distance, and two or three were drawing near, and in the hand of one, a girl in her teens, was a broken branch, on which hung two of the half dozen apples from the best of all the trees. Mr Dawson had watched them with too great interest not to know just where the little branch belonged. He did not speak,—indeed the little maiden did not give him time.
“It was a’ my wyte, Mr Dawson, and I’m very grieved,” said she, holding up the branch, and looking up into his face with eager, wistful eyes.
Mr Dawson took it, but he looked not at it, but at the child, saying nothing.
“I beg your pardon. I’m very grieved,” repeated she.
Mrs Eastwood whispered to Miss Jean what a pretty picture the child made, but Miss Jean was thinking of other things.
“It was Sandy,” continued the little pleader. “He was taking a’ wee David’s sweetees, and I couldna bide that, ye ken, and I just—just tried to hinder him; an’ he ran awa’, and me after him. And he ran in beneath the tree, but he wouldna have gone, if I hadna been after him, and so—”
“She licket me, and she tried to rug my lugs,” (pull my ears), said a voice in the distance.
The change in the girl’s face was wonderful to see as she turned to the speaker. A sudden colour rose to her cheeks, and her grey eyes flashed scorn and anger.
“If I only had been able!” said she, and then she turned to Mr Dawson again.
“I’m very grieved,” repeated she.
“It canna be helpit now, Maysie,” said Miss Jean. “Never heed. Run awa’ with the lave o’ the bairns.”
For Miss Jean knew that it was not the apples nor their destruction that had brought that look to her brother’s face.
“Are ye angry with me, sir? And winna ye forgive me?” said Maysie, the sweet wistfulness coming back to her eyes. “I’m very grieved.”
“It canna be helpit. Never heed,” said Mr Dawson, repeating his sister’s words. “I dinna think I mind your name,” added he, not meaning to say it, but making a great effort to recover himself.
“I’m Marion Calderwood,” said she, a sudden brightness, followed by a cloud as sudden, passing over her face. She lifted beseeching eyes to his face, and then she turned to Miss Jean.
“Run awa’, lassie, with the lave o’ the bairns,” said Miss Jean.
“Maybe I should go hame?”
“Hoot, lassie! Never heed. Only run away with the lave.”
Quite unconscious that he owed an apology to Mrs Eastwood for his abrupt departure, Mr Dawson turned and strode off in another direction.
“They must be precious apples,” said Mrs Eastwood, looking after him with surprise not unmingled with disgust.
“It’s an old trouble,” said Miss Jean sorrowfully. “He’ll hear none o’ her fine words the night,” she added to herself, conscious, amid her trouble, of some satisfaction that it should be so.
No, Mr Dawson was not likely to listen patiently to words of any kind that night. The very first look from the child’s eyes smote his heart with a pang in which there was regret, as well as anger and pain. For a sudden remembrance of eyes as sweet, and with the same look of wistful appeal in them came back to him—the eyes of bonny Elsie Calderwood, who had come between him and his son.
Almost the last words which his son had spoken to him, the very last such as a son should speak to his father, had been spoken while those wistful eyes entreated him. It had been a moment of great bitterness, and as he passed down the lane that led to the fields, and then to the sea, eager to get beyond the sound of the gay voices ringing from garden and wood, the old bitterness returned, and with it came the added misery of the vain wish that he had yielded his own will that day—a longing unspeakable for all that he had lost.
His boy—the only son of his mother who had been so dear, had he lost him forever? Would he never return? Could he be dead? Should he never see his face or hear his voice again?
He had a bitter hour or two, this man, whom even his sister, who knew him best and loved him best, called hard in her secret thoughts. And the bitterness did not pass with the hour, nor the pain. Silence reigned in the house before he came home that night, and in the morning something of the old gloom seemed to have fallen upon him.
Captain Harefield did go home with his sister; at least he left Blackford House with her, and that without returning after the night of the children’s party to say “Good-bye” to his friends at Saughleas. May remarked upon this with a little indignation, and Mr Dawson said it was not like the young man not to do what was polite and kind, and he also wondered at the omission of the visit. Jean said nothing; at least she said nothing to them. To her aunt she acknowledged that she had known of his intended departure, and that she had also known when he bade her good-bye that night, that she was not likely to see him again. But even to her aunt she did not acknowledge that he would have stayed longer if she had bidden him, or that even now a word from her would bring him back again.
Out of the unfortunate incident of the broken apple-tree, there rose a little talk between “the two Jeans.” Miss Jean had for a long time had something on her mind to say to her niece, but it was the younger Jean who spoke first.
“Aunt, what is this they are saying about my father’s anger at Marion Calderwood?”
“My dear, he wasna angry!”
“Did you see it all, auntie? Because Marion went home greeting, the other bairns say. Of course it was a pity about the tree, but it wasna Marion who broke it, and it wasna like my father to show anger to a guest, even to a bairn.”
“My dear, he showed no anger.”
“But, auntie, there must have been something; for I met Mrs Calderwood in the High-street this morning, and she went red and then white, and was stiff and distant, as she used to be when we first came home. She had grown quite friendly of late, and to-day she would have passed me without speaking. It must have been because of Marion.”
“It might have been, but I dinna think it. Mrs Calderwood is a proud woman, Jean, my dear,—and—”
“Well?”
“Weel, ye have been consorting with fine folk lately, and maybe—”
“Auntie Jean! Dinna say more, for that is not your real thought; and that is a terrible thing to say of you.”
“My dear, it is my real thought, as far as it goes. I ha’e little doubt that was present in Mrs Calderwood’s mind when she met you in the High-street—with other things.”
“We’ll take the other things first then,” said Jean, the angry colour rising in her cheeks. “You must think your friend but a poor creature, or she must think it of us.”
It was the first time in all the girl’s life, that her eyes with an angry light in them had rested fully on her aunt’s face. Her aunt did not resent it, or notice it, except by a gentle movement of her head from side to side, and the shadow of a smile passed over her face. She looked grave enough as she answered, however.
“I am far from thinking her a poor creature, whatever she may think of us. And, Jean, my dear, I think ye maun ken something of the other things, though ye never heard them from me.”
Jean’s look grew soft and sad, and she came and leaned on her aunt’s chair.
“Do you mean about bonny Elsie, and—our Geordie? Was it because of Elsie that Geordie went—and lost himself? Tell me about it.”
“I think ye maun ken all that I could tell you—or mostly all.”
“I only ken—I mean I used to think that they—cared for one another—oh long ago, before my mother died. And since we came home, I have heard a word dropped now and then, by different folk—Marion Petrie, and her mother; and once Tibbie Cairnie said something about my father’s cursed pride, and his fine plans that would come to nothing. But it wasna till afterwards that I knew that it was Geordie she was thinking about Auntie Jean, I have had my thoughts, but I ken little. Was my father angry? But he must have been sorry for George when poor Elsie died. And was it because of Elsie that my brother went away?”
It was not an easy story to tell, and Miss Jean put it in as few words as possible, having her own reasons for telling it to Jean. She dwelt less upon her father’s anger at his son’s folly, than upon the heartbreak that his loss had brought him. But she made it clear that “poor bonny Elsie” was the cause of their estrangement, and that it would have been the same had Elsie lived and had George carried out his determination to marry her against his father’s will.
“If the poor foolish lad had only waited and had patience in the mean time, much sorrow might have been spared to all concerned. Your father might have given in—though I dinna think it; or as they were little more than bairns, they might have forgotten ane anither—though I dinna think that either. But if George had won to man’s estate, and had been doing a man’s work and getting a man’s wages, he would have had a better right to take his own way, and your father might have given in then. At least he must have been silent, and let the lad go his ain gait. I whiles weary myself thinking how it might have been.”
Jean sat without a word, but with a face that changed many times from white to red and from red to white as she listened; and when her aunt paused, and took up the work which in her earnestness she had allowed to fall on her lap, she sat silent still, quite unconscious of the uneasy glances that fell on her from time to time.
“It has made an old man of your father,” added Miss Jean in a little.
“Poor father! and poor Geordie! Ay, and poor Elsie! and nothing can change it now.”
Jean rose from the stool on which she had been sitting at her aunt’s feet, and walked restlessly about the room. By and by, she came and stood behind her aunt’s chair, leaning upon it.
“Aunt—there is something I would like to tell you. I wonder if I ought?”
“Ye maun judge, my dear.”
“If I were only sure.”
Both were silent for a time.
“Would I be better able to give help or counsel to you or—to any one—if I were to hear what you could tell?”
Jean shook her head.
“Nothing can be done—at least not now,” said she sadly. “Weel then, dearie, dinna speak. Whiles troubles take shape and strength in the utterance and grow persistent, that might have died out or come to little in silence. If a time should come that you are sure that speaking would do any good, tell me then.”
“It would do no good now. And I am not sure that there is any thing to tell.”
There was a long silence between them. Jean was thinking of the “John Seaton” sailing away with her brother to the northern seas. Miss Jean was thinking of the “John Seaton” too, and of Willie Calderwood, with a sad heart.
“They were just a’ bairns thegither I thought, but I little kenned. And wae’s me! for my bonny Jean, gin she has to go through all that—and wae’s me! for her father as well. No’ that the pain and the trouble need be feared for them, so that they are brought through—and no unfilial bitterness left to sicken my bairn’s heart forever more; but I mustna speak, or let her speak. I think she hardly kens yet how it is with her, but she would ken at the first word; silence is best.”
And silence it was. But by and by more was said about the story of those two “for whom life was ended,” as Jean said sadly. She was not angry at her father’s part in the matter, as her aunt had feared she might be. It could not have been otherwise, looking at things as he looked at them, she acknowledged, and she grieved for him all the more, knowing that there must mingle much bitterness, perhaps remorse, with his sorrow for his son.
“If my mother had but lived!” she said sadly. “Ay, lassie! But He kens best who took her hence where we’ll a’ soon follow. We make muckle ado about our gains and our pains, our loves and our losses, forgetting that ‘our days are as a shadow, and there is no abiding.’”
“A shadow to look back upon, auntie, but a reality as we are going through with them day by day.”
“Ay! that’s true, my lassie, and a stern reality whiles. The comfort is that it is a’ ordered for us.”
Jean shook her head with a doubtful smile.
“Only it is not till afterward that we get the good of that knowledge.”
“And coming afterward it comes ower late, ye think, lassie. But bide ye still and see. And indeed no one need wait till afterwards to know the blessedness o’ just lying quiet in His hands. And ye needna wait a day for that, my dear bairn.”
If Jean had spoken, the tears must have come; so she rose and kissed her aunt silently, and then went away.