Chapter Seventeen.
Home Coming.
That night Mr Dawson and Miss Jean sat long together, when the others had gone away, and for the most part they sat in silence. Mr Dawson had some thoughts which he would not have liked to tell his sister,—thoughts which he knew she would call wrong and thankless—which he would gladly have put away.
The good things of this life, the glad surprises, the unhoped for reprieves from sorrow, rarely come without some drawback of regret or pain. That he should have got tidings of his son; that he should be coming home, and glad to come; that he should be well and worthy, a man to honour and to trust,—how utterly beyond his hopes had this been yesterday!
His son was coming home; but, alas! he could never have his light-hearted, bonny laddie back again. George was a man now, “knowing good and evil.” It could never be again between them as it had been before their trouble came.
“Ane o’ your kind, Miss Jean,” the mate had said; “a changed man.”
Mr Dawson’s thoughts went back to the time of his sister’s trouble, when she had become “a changed woman.” All the anger and vexation, that had then seemed natural and right, because of her new ways, had passed out of his heart, a score of years and more. It was as though it had never been. He glanced up at her placid face, and said to himself, as he had said before many times, “A woman among a thousand.” But he remembered the old pain, though it was gone, and he shrank from the thought that he might have to suffer again through his son.
“He is a man now, and must go his ain way,” he said to himself, moving uneasily on his chair and sighing. “We canna begin again where we left off. Ungrateful? Yes, I dare say it would be so called; but, oh! Geordie, my lad! I doubt your way and mine must lie asunder now.”
Miss Jean too had some thoughts which she would not have cared to tell, but they were not about George; for him she was altogether joyful. If Willie Calderwood’s words about him were true, and he were indeed “a changed man,” nothing else mattered much in Miss Jean’s esteem. The “good,” for which he had God’s promise as security would be wrought out in him whether by health or sickness, by joy or sorrow, by possession or loss, and through him might be brought help and healing, higher hopes, and better lives to many. The Master who had chosen him would use him for His own work, and that implied all that was to be desired for any one to Miss Jean.
But in the midst of her joy for him, she could not forget Jean’s silence, and Willie Calderwood’s averted eyes. And though she told herself that possible pain and disappointment could work good to her niece as well as to her nephew, she could not but shrink beforehand from the suffering that might be before her. But it was not a trouble to be spoken about.
Neither had spoken for a long time, when the door opened and Jean came in. She was wrapped in her dressing-gown, over which her long hair hung, and her face looked pale and troubled.
“Are you here still, Auntie Jean? No, don’t go, papa,” said she as he rose. “I have something to tell you.”
“It maun be late. I thought you had been in your bed this hour and more,” said her father.
“Yes, papa, I was in bed, but I couldna sleep.”
“For joy, I suppose?” said he smiling.
“Yes, for joy and—because—papa, I knew that my brother had sailed in the John Seaton.”
“You knew! And never spoke?”
“Would it have been better if I had spoken? Would you have suffered less? But I did not know it till after the ship had sailed, and I thought it would break your heart to know that he could have been here and gone away again, without a word. I tried to tell you afterwards, and you, Auntie Jean, as well. I longed to tell you. I could hardly bear the doubt and fear of the last few weeks. But I thought if it was so terrible to me, what would it be to you!”
Mr Dawson did not answer for a moment. He was thinking of the stormy nights of last winter, and the dread in her eyes as they looked out over the angry sea.
“No wonder that you were anxious often, and afraid.”
“Ought I to have told you? But you are not angry now, papa?”
“There is no good being angry—and you did it for the best.”
And then Jean told them about the note that Robbie Saugster had brought too late to let her see her brother before the ship sailed. Miss Jean said it had doubtless been wisely and kindly ordered, that the lad would come home and be a better son, and a better man for the discipline of the time. And then when they went upstairs together, she added a few joyful words to Jean, about the change that had come to her brother, and about the peace that would henceforth be between his father and him. But she would not let her linger beside her for any more talk.
“Ye need your rest, my dear, and we’ll baith ha’e quieter hearts, and be better able to measure the greatness of the mercy that has come to us. And other things will take a mair natural look as well.”
Though Mr Manners had only one more day at Saughleas at this time, he accepted Mr Dawson’s invitation to walk with him to Portie in the morning. Mr Dawson wished to show him the “John Seaton,” and Mr Manners wished to see again the fine young fellow, who might, if he chose, henceforth have the command of the ship. Mr Dawson had something to say to him on the way.
“You will get a scanter portion with your wife than you would have gotten if—we had heard no news.”
“Oh! My wife! My bonny May,” said Mr Manners with smiling eyes. “But then I shall have a brother—I who never had one—and I shall have a right to my share of the family joy.”
Mr Dawson did not speak for a moment.
“There will be something at once,” and he named a sum, “and there will be something more at my death.”
Then he went on to mention certain arrangements that were to be made, and Mr Manners, of course, seemed to listen with interest; but when he ceased speaking, he said gravely,—
“I have only one fear, lest the joyful expectation of having her brother home again, may make May wish to delay her marriage.”
“As to that—if he come at once he will be here long before the first. And if he should delay—no, I do not think that that ought to be allowed to interfere with your plans.”
“Thank you,” said Mr Manners. “Oh, he will be sure to be here in time.”
“Wha kens?” said Mr Dawson. “It seems beyond belief that I should ever have my son back again. I never can in one sense. He is a man now, and changed. I wouldna seem unthankful; but, oh, man! if ye had ever seen my George, ye would ken what I mean.”
He was greatly moved. If he had tried to say more, daylight as it was, and on the open road, his voice must have failed him. They walked on in silence for a while—for what could Mr Manners say?—and before they reached the High-street, he was himself again.
There were many eyes upon him as they went down the street, for by this time it was known through all the town that George had sailed in the “John Seaton.” But “the old man took it quietly enough,” some said, and others, who saw him in the way of business through the day, said the same. The sailors in the “John Seaton,” when later he and Mr Manners went down to the pier, saw nothing unusual in his rough, but kindly, greetings. There was not one of them but would have liked to say a kindly and admiring word of “Geordie”; for “Geordie” he had been to them all, through the long year; and doubtless it would have pleased the father to hear it. But he heard nothing of it there.
It did not surprise these men to see that he took it quietly. Their own fathers and mothers took quietly the comings and goings of their sons. But it would have surprised them to know that the old man kept silence because he was not sure whether his voice would serve him if he should try to speak. He turned back again for a minute when Mr Manners and the mate came on deck, when all had been said that was necessary on that occasion, and it would have surprised them to know that it was to shut himself into the little cabin where George had so long served and comforted the dying captain, and that he there knelt down and thanked God for His goodness to his son.
He seemed to take it quietly as far as people generally saw during the next ten days; but Jean put away all remorseful thoughts as to the silence she had kept during the last long year.
“He never could have borne the long suspense,” she said to herself, as she watched him through the days and heard his restless movements through nights of sleepless waiting. He never spoke of his son, or his anxiety with regard to him; but Jean took pains to speak of her brother to others in his hearing; and sometimes she spoke to himself, and he listened, but he never made reply.
“He will grow morbid and ill if this continues long,” she said one day to her aunt.
“It will not continue long,” said Miss Jean.
“No, he will come soon, if he is coming.”
“Oh, he is coming! ye needna doubt that. He is no seeking his ain way now. He’ll come back to his father’s house.”
And so he did, and he found his father watching for him. He did not go all the way to Portie, but stopped, as his father knew he would, at a little station two or three miles on the other side of Saughleas, and walked home. It was late and all was quiet in the house. Summer rain was softly falling, but Mr Dawson stood at the gate as he had stood for many nights; and George heard his voice before he saw him.
It might have been said—if there had been any one there to see—that Mr Dawson “took it quietly” even then. There were not many words spoken between them, and they were simple words, spoken quietly enough. How it happened neither of them could have told,—whether the father followed the son, or the son the father,—but instead of turning to the terrace, where the drawing-room window stood open to let them in, they turned down the walk, past the well into the wood; and whatever was said of confession or forgiveness was said by the grave of the lad’s mother, in the stillness of the summer midnight, in the hearing of God alone.
No one but Jean knew that night that George had come home, and Jean did not go to her brother till she had heard her father shut himself into his room. Mr Dawson himself brought food to his son, and wine, and watched him as he partook of it. But when he would have poured out the wine, he staid his hand.
“I promised Tam Saugster—we promised one another—not to touch or taste before he comes home to Portie.”
“It is for his sake then?”
“And for my own,” said George gravely.
His father was silent. Strangely mingled feelings moved him.
“Is he so weak that he cannot refrain? Is he so strong that he can resist?”
Even in the midst of his joy in having his son back again, “clothed and in his right mind,” he was more inclined to resent the implied weakness, than to rejoice in the assured strength. But he uttered no word of his thoughts then or ever, though George did not release himself from his vow even when Tam Saugster came home to Portie “a changed man” also.
When the house was quiet again, and the lights were out, Jean stole softly to her brother’s room, for one embrace, one kiss, a single word of welcome. But she would not linger.
“We couldna stop, if we were once to begin, Geordie; and you are tired, and my father would be ill-pleased. I only wanted to be sure that you were really home again. And I’m no’ sure yet,” she added laughing and touching with caressing fingers the soft brown beard, that she could just see, for a faint gleam of dawn was breaking over the sea. They looked at each other with shy pleasure, these two. Jean blushed and smiled under her brother’s admiring eyes, but she would not linger.
“My father will hear us, and he will not be pleased,” said she going softly away.
But was it not a joyful morning?
“May, are you ready? Come down quickly. I have something that I want you to see.”
“May, I think it is I who have something to see,” said George, as his younger sister came in. One might search the countryside and find no other such brother and sisters as these three. The father looked at them with proud but sorrowful eyes, for their mother was not there to see them.
George was changed, even more than his sisters. He had gone away a lad, and he had come back a man. There was more than the soft brown beard to show that. He had grown taller even, his father thought, he had certainly grown broader and stronger. The colour that used to be as clear red and white as his sisters’ was gone. His face was brown and his eye was bright and steady, and his smile—when it came—was the same sunny smile that his father had so longed for during the sorrowful days of his absence. But it did not come so often as it used to come, and at other times, his face was touched with a gravity new to them all.
But there was no gloom on it, and no trace of any thing that those who loved him would have grieved to see. It was a stronger face now than it had been in the old days, but it was none less a pleasant face, and in a little while they forgot that it had changed. It was George’s face. That was enough.
“It is a man’s face. And he’ll show himself a man yet, and do a man’s share in the work of the world,” said the proud and happy father. And in his heart he acknowledged his son’s right to take his own way and live his own life, even though the way might lie apart from his, and though the life he chose might not be just the life that his father would have chosen for him.
“Your aunt should have been here, Jean. You should have sent for her,” said Mr Dawson in a little.
“I will go and see her,” said George. “I will walk in with you to the town, by and by.”
“But we must have her here, all the same, for a day or two. Ye’ll send for her afterward, Jean.”
But they did not go in the morning as they meant to do. They lingered long over the breakfast-table, and then in the garden and in the wood, and the father and son went down the burn and through the green parks beyond, never thinking how the time was passing, till Jean came to tell them that dinner was waiting.
After dinner they went to the town. But they did not go down the High-street. They were both shy at the thought of all the eyes that would be upon them there.
“And it should be your aunt first,” said Mr Dawson.
So they went down a lane that led straight to the sea and then turned to Miss Jean’s house.
“You’ll go in by yourself and I’ll step on and come back in a while,” said his father.
He had not stepped far before a hand touched his arm, and a pair of shining eyes met his.
“Oh, Mr Dawson! Is it George come home? And isna your heart like to break for joy?”
There were tears as well as smiles on the beautiful face that looked up into his with joyful sympathy and with entire confidence that sympathy would be welcome. For an instant Mr Dawson met her look with strangely contending emotions. Then a strange thing happened. He took the bonny moved face between his two hands, and stooping down, kissed it “cheek and chin” without a word.
He would not have believed the thing possible a minute before, he could hardly believe if a minute afterwards, as he turned back again towards his sister’s house. Mrs Cairnie coming slowly down the street saw it—and then she doubted, telling herself, that “her e’en were surely nae marrows,” or that the last “drappie” she had taken at “The Kail Stock” had been ower muckle for her, and the first person to whom she told the story thought the same.
Bonny Marion’s mother and brother saw it from the window of their own house: he with amazement, she with dismay.
“It maun be that Geordie has come home, and that the joy of it has softened his heart,” said Willie.
“Ay. He has gotten his son back again?” said Mrs Calderwood. And Willie knew that his mother was thinking of her child who would never return.
Marion came dancing in with the glad news. She told it soberly after a glance at her mother’s face. And then they all sat waiting, knowing that George and his father would pass that way.
But George did not pass. Both men stood still before their door, and George’s hand was laid for an instant on his father’s shoulder. They knew what he was saying though they did not hear him speak, and then Mr Dawson went on “looking grave, but no’ angry,” Marion whispered, and George came into the house.
Mrs Calderwood received him as she had received her son, kissing him and thanking God for his safe home coming at last. Their meeting could not be all gladness, remembering how they had parted. George was very white and silent. Even Marion’s bright face and joyful welcome could not win a smile. Willie and he had much to say to each other, but all that must wait till another time. George could stay but a moment, for his father was waiting for him at the pier.
That night Mrs Calderwood and her son sat together in the gathering gloaming, and after a long silence Willie said, “Would it break your heart altogether, mother, to think of leaving Portie?”
“Hearts are no’ so easily broken as I used to think. I could leave it, if it were the wisest thing to do. I could leave even Scotland itself, for that matter.”
“Yes, it would end in leaving Scotland—if any change were to be made. But as far as you are concerned, you needna be in haste for a time.”
“A while sooner or later would make little difference,” said his mother.
Nothing more was said; but from that night, Mrs Calderwood knew that it might come to leaving Portie with them, and she set herself calmly to look the possibility in the face.
George came home about the middle of July, and the preparations for May’s marriage were nearly completed by that time. Jean had determined that it was to be a very pretty wedding, and so it was; and having said this, little more need be said about it. It was like all other pretty weddings—that is to say like pretty weddings in the north. The guests were many, and merrier than wedding guests usually are in other regions.
Mr and Mrs Seldon came from London to be there, and other friends came from other places. George was “best man,” and there were many bridesmaids. Marion Calderwood was one of them, and Willie was an invited guest. But at the last moment Willie failed them, and the only reason given, was the unsatisfactory one of “business before pleasure.” On the very morning of the marriage he left home “for London, or Liverpool, or somewhere,—before I was up,” said Marion, who came early to put on her pretty bridesmaid’s dress in Jean’s room; and George, when May questioned him, said with absolute truth, that not a word had passed between him and Willie as to the reason of his going away.
Mr Manners might have cast some light on the matter, though he also could have said that no word had been spoken with regard to it. Intent on making the acquaintance of George, they had set out the night before the wedding for a long walk along the shore, and meeting young Calderwood, he turned at their invitation and went with them.
Probably Mr Manners learned more about both of them in listening to their conversation with each other than he would have had he had one of them to himself. As it was he enjoyed it much. They went far and before they returned the gloaming had fallen.
Standing for a moment at the point where the High-street of Portie turns off from the road which leads in one direction along the shore, and in the other out towards Saughleas, they heard a voice, familiar enough to George and Willie, coming through an open cottage window.
“Weel, weel! I maun be gaen. Ilka ane kens her ain trouble. And them that ha’e nane, whiles think they ha’e, and that’s as ill to thole till real trouble comes, and then they ken the difference. But I maun awa’ hame.”
Mrs Cairnie lingered, however, at the open door.
“Eh, woman! wha’s yon comin’ up the High-street? Wha would ha’e thought it? The Dawsons are on the top o’ the wave enow! Do ye no’ see, woman? Yon’s young Miss Jean’s Englishman.”
Mr Manners had not followed all the speech, but he understood the last part of it, and never doubted that it referred to himself, “though she has mistaken the lady’s name,” said he, turning laughing eyes on young Calderwood.
But Willie did not meet his look. He was looking down the High-street, and George was looking at Willie whose face had grown white through all its healthy brown. Mr Dawson was coming slowly up the street, and by his side there walked a young man large, and fair, and handsome; a gentleman evidently whom neither of them had ever seen before. A groom driving a dog-cart followed slowly after.
“It must be Captain Harefield. May has spoken of him,” said Mr Manners.
It was Captain Harefield. Mr Dawson introduced him as they came up, and from his father’s manner George knew that he was pleased at the meeting.
“I have been trying to persuade Captain Harefield to come to the marriage to-morrow,” said he. “It is short notice, I know, but not too short, if you will come out to Saughleas to-night and see the bride.”
Captain Harefield murmured something about an engagement, but he looked as though he would willingly be persuaded to break it. Mr Manners first, and then George added a word, and he yielded, and he and Mr Dawson drove off in the dog-cart at once.
“Ye’ll come with us, Willie?” said George laying his hand on his shoulder, in boyish fashion. The friends looked at one another, and both changed colour a little.
“No’ the nicht, I think, Geordie.”
Then they shook hands and the mate went rapidly down the street, and the others were more than half way to Saughleas before George uttered a word.
That night Willie Calderwood startled his mother by saying suddenly after a long time of silence,—
“I am off to-morrow morning for Liverpool, mother. I have a letter that I meant to show to George, but I couldna, and you must tell him. I have a chance to be second officer on one of the great ocean steamships. What do you think of that, mother? I think I’ll take it.”
“Then you’ve given up all thoughts of the ‘John Seaton’?”
“Yes. This is a far better post—as you must see, mother, with a chance of promotion. I mean to command one of these fine ships yet.”
“But must you go so soon? You are expected to go to the marriage to-morrow.”
“Yes. And I would have liked to see the last o’ May Dawson. But ‘business before pleasure,’ ye ken, mother; and nobody will miss me, I dare say. And Marion will say all that is needful to the bride.”
Willie spoke cheerily—too cheerily, his mother thought, to be quite natural. “No thought of Jean Dawson shall ever come between my mother and me,” Willie was thinking. “Even if she cared for me, it could never be; and I must get away from the sight of her, or I shall do something foolish, and give my mother all the old pain over again.” Then after a long time of silence, he said, “If you were to live in Liverpool, or near it, mother, I could see you oftener than if I had to come to Portie.”
“Yes, I have been thinking of that.”
“Marion wouldna like it?”
“No, I dare say not. But it might be well for her to have a change.”
“Well, then, that is settled. But there need be no haste, mother.”
“A month or two sooner or later would make little difference.”
And then they were silent again. Mrs Calderwood was thinking, “I am sorrier for her than I am for him. He is a man, with a man’s work to do, and he will forget her. But as for Jean—she’s no’ the kind of woman to forget.”
So Willie kissed his sister in her morning sleep, and was away long before she opened her eyes on May’s marriage day. If any one but his sister missed him amid the gay doings of the day, no one said so. The eyes and thoughts of all were on the bride and her attendant maidens, and it was a sight worth seeing.
May behaved as a bride should, who of her own free will is leaving her father’s house to go to the house of her husband. Jean stood by her and her quietness kept the bride quiet also. But even Jean’s colour changed many times as they stood with all the kindly admiring eyes upon them.
And when the ceremony was over, and the breakfast, and the speech-making, and the few painful moments of lingering that followed, and the happy bridegroom had at last gone away with his bonny bride, then nobody saw Jean till a long hour and more was over.