CHAPTER XXXII—AN OLD MAID’S SECRET
Miss Mary bustled about her kitchen with a liveliness that might have deceived any one but Gilian, who knew her to be in a tremendous perturbation. She clattered among pans, wrestled with her maid over dishes and dusters, and kept her tongue incessantly going on household details. With a laughable transparency she turned in a little to the lad and said something about the weather. He sat down in a chair and gloomed into the fire, Miss Mary watching his every sigh, but yet seemingly intent upon her duties.
“Donacha Breck’s widow was over before we were up to-day, for something for her hoast,” she said. “She had tried hyssop and pennyroyal masked in two waters, but I gave her sal prunelle and told her to suck it till the cough stopped. There’s a great deal of trouble going about just now: sometimes I think——” She stopped incontinent and proceeded to sweep the floor, for she saw that Gilian was paying no attention to her. At length he looked at her and then with meaning to Peggy bent over her jaw-box.
“Peggy,” said Miss Mary, “go over and tell the mantua-maker that she did not put the leavings in the pocket of my jacket, and there must have been a good deal.”
Peggy dried her arms, tucked up the corner of her apron, and departed, fully aware of the stratagem, but no way betraying the fact When she was gone, Miss Mary faced him, disturbed and questioning.
“We had a quarrel in there,” said he shortly, “I am not going to put up with what they said about any friend of mine.”
She had no need to ask who he spoke of. “Is it very much to you?” said she, turning away and busy with her brush that she might be no spectator of his confusion. A great fear sprang up in her; the boy who had grown up a man for her in the space of a Sunday afternoon was capable of new developments even more rapid and extraordinary.
“It should be very much to anybody,” said he, “to anybody with the spark of a gentleman, when the old and the soured and the jealous——”
“I’m thinking you are forgetting, Gilian,” said she, facing him now with a flush upon her face.
“What? what?” he asked, perplexed. “You think I should be grateful. I cannot help it; you were the kind one and——”
“I was not thinking of that at all,” she rejoined “I was just thinking you had forgotten that I was their sister, and that I must be caring much for them. If my brothers have said anything to vex you, and that has been a too common thing—my sorrow!—in this house, you should be minding their years, my dear. It is the only excuse I can offer, and I am willing to make up for their shortcomings by every kindness.” And she smiled upon the lad with the most wonderful light of affection in her eyes.
“Oh,” he cried, “am I not sure of that, Auntie? You are too good to me. What am I to be complaining—the beggarly orphan?”
“Not that, my dear,” she cried courageously, “not that! In this house, when my brothers’ looks were at their blackest for you, there has always been goodwill and motherliness. But you must not be miscalling them that share our roof, the brothers of Dugald and of Jamie.” Her voice broke in a gasp of melancholy; she stretched an arm and dusted from a corner of the kitchen a cobweb that had no existence, her eyesight dim with unbrimming tears. At any other time than now Gilian would have been smitten by her grief, for was he not ever ready to make the sorrows of others his own? But he was frowning in a black-browed abstraction on the clay scroll of the kitchen floor, heartsick of his dilemma and the bitterness of the speeches he had just heard.
Miss Mary could not be long without observing, even in her own troubles, that he was unusually vexed. She was wise enough to know that a fresh start was the best thing to put them at an understanding.
“What did you come to tell me to-day?” she asked, composing herself upon a chair beside him and taking up some knitting, for hers were the fingers that were never idle.
“Come down to tell you? Come down to tell you?” he repeated, in surprise at her penetration, and in some confusion that he should so sharply be brought to his own business.
“Just so,” she said. “Do you think Miss Mary has no eyes, my dear, or that they are too old for common use? There was something troubling you as you came in at the door; I saw it in your face—ay, I heard it in your step on the stair.”
He fidgeted and evaded her eyes. “I heard outside that—that Turner’s daughter had not been got, and it vexed me a little.”
“Turner’s daughter!” she said. “It used to be Miss Nan; it was Miss Nan no further gone than Thursday, and for what need we be so formal to-day? You are not heeding John’s havers about your name being mixed up with the affair in a poor Sassanach inn-keeper’s story? Eh, Gilian?” And she eyed him shrewdly, more shrewdly than he was aware of.
Still he put her off. He could not take her into his confidence so soon after that cold plunge into truth in the parlour. He wanted to get out of doors and think it all over calmly. He pretended anger.
“What am I to be talked to like this for? All in this house are on me. Is it wonderful that I should have my share in the interest the whole of the rest of the parish has in this young lady lost?”
He rose to leave the room. Miss Mary stopped him with the least touch upon the arm, a lingering, gentle touch of the finger-tips, and yet caressing.
“Gilian,” she said softly, “do you think you can be deceiving me? M’eudail, m’ieudail! I know there is a great trouble in your mind, and is it not for me to share?”
“There is something, but I cannot tell you now what it is, though I came here to tell you,” he answered, making no step to go.
“Gilian,” said she, standing before him, and the light from the window touching her ear so that, beside the darkness of her hair (for she had off her cap), it looked like a pink flower, “Gilian, can you not be telling me? Do you think I cannot guess what ails you, nor fancy something for its cure?”
He saw from the shyness of her face that she had an inkling of at least the object of his interest.
“But I cannot be mentioning it here,” he said, feebly enough. “It’s a matter a man must cherish to himself alone, and not be airing before others. I felt, in there, to have it in my mind before two men who had worked and fought and adventured all their lives, and come to this at last, was a childish weakness.”
She caught hold of his coat lapel, and fingered it, and looked as she spoke, not at the face above her, but at some vision over his shoulder. “Before them, my dear,” she said. “That well might be, though even they have not always been the hard and selfish veterans. What about me, my dear? Can I not be understanding, think you, Gilian?”
“It is such a foolish thing,” said he weakly, “a thing of interest only to the very young.”
“And am I so old, my dear,” she said, “not to have been young once? Do you think this little wee wife with her hair getting grey—not so grey either, though—was always in old maid dolours in her garret thinking of hoasts and headaches and cures for them, and her brothers’ slippers and her own rheumatics on rainy days? Oh, my dear, my dear! you used to understand me as if it had been through glass—ay, from the first day you saw me, and my brother’s sword must be sending me to my weeping; can you not understand me now? I am old, and the lowe of youth is down in its ember, but once I was as young—as young—as—as—as the girl you are thinking of.”
He drew back, overwhelmed with confusion, but she found the grip of his coat again and followed up her triumph.
“Did you think I could not guess so little as that, my dear? Oh, Gilian, sometimes I’ll be sitting in there all my lone greeting my eyes out over darning hose, and minding of what I have been and what I have seen, and the days that will never come any more. The two upstairs will be minding only to envy and to blame—me, I must be weeping as much for my sin as for my sorrow. Do I look so terrible old, Gilian, that you cannot think of me as not so bad-looking either, with a bonny eye, they said, and a jimp waist, and a foot like the honey-bee? It was only yesterday; ah, it was a hundred years ago! I was the sisterly slave. No dancing for me. No romping for Mary at hairst or Hogmanay. My father glooming and binding me motherless to my household tasks, so that Love went by without seeing me. My companions, and she the dearest of them all, enjoying life to the full, and me looking out at this melancholy window from year to year, and seeing the traffic of youth and all the rest of it go by.”
She released his lapel and relapsed, all tears, upon her chair.
“Auntie, Auntie!” he cried, “do not let my poor affairs be vexing you.” He put, for the first time in his life, an arm about her waist, bending over her, with all forgotten for the moment save that she had longed for love and seemingly found it not. At the touch of his arm she trembled like a maiden in her teens and forced a smile upon her face. “Let me go,” she said, and yet she gloried in that contact as she sat in the chair and he bent over her.
“And was there no one came the way?” he asked. “Was I not worth it, do you think?” she replied, yet smiling in her tears. “Oh, Gilian, not this old woman, mind you, but the woman I was. And yet—and yet, it is true, no one came; or if they came, they never came that I wanted.” “And he?” said Gilian.
She paused and sighed, her thin little hands, so white for all their toil in that hard barracks, playing upon her lap. “He never had the chance. My father’s parlour had no welcome, a soldier’s household left no vacant hours for an only daughter’s gallivanting. I had to be content to look at him—the one I mean—from the window, see him in the church or passing up and down the street. They had up Dr. Brash at me—I mind his horn specs, and him looking at my tongue and ordering a phlebotomy. What I wanted was the open air, a chance of youth, and a dance on the green. Instead of that it was always ‘Hof Mary!’ and ‘Here, Mary,’ and ‘What are you wasting your time for, Mary?’” She was all in a tremble, moist no more with tears, but red and troubled at her eyes. “And then—then—then he married her. If he had taken any one else it would not have seemed so hard. I think I hated her for it. It was long before I discovered they were chief, for my brothers that were out and in kept it from me for their own reasons, and they never kent my feeling. But when she was cried and married and kirked, each time it was a dagger at my heart. Amn’t I the stupid old cailleach, my dear, to be talking of such a thing? But oh! to see them on the street together; to see him coming home on his furloughs—I am sure I could not be but unfond of her then! I mind once I wished her dead, that maybe he might—he might see something in me still. That was when Nan was born and—”
“What,” cried Gilian, “and was he Nan’s father? I—I did not know.”
She turned upon him an old face spoiled by the memories of the moment. “Who else would it be, my dear?” said she, as if that settled it. “And you are the first in the world I mentioned it to. He has never seen me close in the face to guess it for himself, before or since. It might have happened if I wished, after, but that was the punishment I gave myself for my unholy thought about my friend his wife.”
“Ah, little Auntie, little Auntie,” said he in Gaelic “Little Auntie, little Auntie!” No more than that, and yet his person was stormy with grief for her old sorrow. He put his arm about her neck now—surely never Highland lad did that before in their position, and tenderly, as if he had practised it for years, he pressed her to his breast and side.
“And is it all by now but a recollection?” said he softly.
“All by long syne,” said she, dashing the tears from her face and clearing herself from that unusual embrace. “Sometimes I’ll be thinking it was better as it was, for I see many wives and husbands, and the dead fire they sit at is less cheery than one made but never lighted. You mustn’t be laughing at an old lady, Gilian.”
“I would never be doing that, God knows,” he answered solemnly.
“And I am sure you would not, my dear,” she said, looking trustfully at him; “though sometimes I must be laughing at myself for such a folly. Lads and lasses have spoken to me about their courtships and their trials, and they never knew that I had anything but an old maid’s notion of the thing. And that’s the way with yourself, is it not, Gilian? Will you tell me now?”
Still he hung hesitating.
“Do you—are you fond of the girl?” said she and now it was he who was in the chair and she was bending over him.
“Do I not?” he cried, sudden and passionate lest his confidence should fail. “Ay, with all my heart.”
“Poor Gilian!” said she.
“Yes, poor Gilian!” he repeated bitterly, thinking on all that lay between him and the girl of his devotion. Now, if ever, was the time to tell the real object of his visit, how that those old surmisers upstairs were wider of the mark than the innkeeper, and that the person for whom the hunt was up through half the shire was sequestered in the lonely shealing hut on the moor of Karnes.
“I am sorry,” she went on, and there was no mistake about it, for her grief was in her face. “I am sorry, but you must forget, my dear. It is easy—sometimes—to forget, Gilian; you must be just throng with work and duty, and by-and-by you’ll maybe wonder at yourself having been in the notion of Nan Gordon’s daughter, made like her mother (and God bless her!) for the vexation of youth, but never for sober satisfaction. I am wae for you, Gilian, and I cannot help you, though I would tramp from here to Carlisle in my bauchles if it would bring her to you.”
“You maybe would not need to go so far,” he answered abruptly. “There is a hut behind the hill there, and neither press nor fire nor candle nor companion in it, and Nan—Miss Nan, is waiting there for me to go back to her, and here I’m wasting precious hours. Do you not see that I’m burning like a fire?”
“And you have the girl in the moor?” she cried incredulously.
“That I have!” he answered, struck by the absolute possession her sentence suggested. “I have her there. I took her there. I took her from her father’s home. She came willingly, and there she is, for me!”
He held out his arms with a gesture indescribable, elate, nervous with his passion. “Auntie, think of it: you mind her eyes and her hair, yon turn of the neck, and her song? They’re mine, I’m telling you.”
“I mind them in her mother,” said the little lady, stunned by this intelligence. “I mind them in her mother, and they were not at all, in her, for those who thought they were for them. This—this is a terrible thing, Gilian,” she said piteously.
He rose, and “What could I do?” he asked. “I loved her, and was I to look at her father selling her to another one who never had her heart?”
“Are you sure you have it yourself, Gilian?” she asked, and her face was exceedingly troubled.
“It’s a thing I never asked,” he confessed carelessly. “Would she be where she is without it being so?”
“Where her mother’s daughter might be in any caprice of spirit I would not like to guess,” said Miss Mary, dubious. “And I think, if I was the man, it would be the first thing I would be making sure about.”
“What would she fly with me for if it was not for love?” he asked.
“Ask a woman that,” she went on. “Only a woman, and only some kinds of women, could tell you that. For a hundred reasons good enough for herself, though not for responsibility.”
He bit his lips in perplexity, feeling all at sea, the only thing clear to his mind being that Nan was alone on the moor, her morning fire sending a smoke to the sky, expectation bringing her now and then to the door to see if her ambassador was in view.
For the sake of that sweet vision he was bound to put another question to Miss Mary—to ask her if the reference by her brother to Old Islay bore the import he had given it. He braced himself to it—a most unpleasant task.
“It’s true,” she said. “Do you mean to tell me you did not know he was the man?” “I did not. And the money?” “Oh, the money!” said Miss Mary oddly, as if now a great deal was explained to her. “Did Nan hear anything of that?”
“She knows everything—except the man’s name. She was too angry to hear that.”
“Except the man’s name,” repeated Miss Mary. “She did not know it was Young Islay.” She turned as she spoke, and busied herself with a duster where there was no need for it. And when she showed him her face again, there were tears there, not for her own old trials, but for his.
“You must go back there,” she said firmly, though her lips were trembling, “and you will tell Miss Nan that whatever Old Islay would do, his son would never put that affront on her. At the worst, the money was no more than a tocher with the lad; it was their start in Drimlee and Maam that are now together for the sake of an old vanity of the factors.... You must tell all that,” she went on, paying no heed to the perplexity in his face. “It would be unfair to do less, my dear; it will be wiser to do all. Then you will do the other thing—if need be—what you should have done first and foremost; youll find out if the girl is in earnest about yourself or only indulging a cantrip like her mother’s daughter. Ask her—ask her—oh! what need I be telling you? If you have not the words in your heart I need not be putting them in your mouth. Run away with you now!” and she pushed him to the door like a child that had been caressed and counselled.
He was for going eagerly without a word more, but she cried him back. For a moment she clung to his arm as if she was reluctant to part with him.
“Oh!” she cried, laughing, and yet with tears in her voice, “a bonny-like man to be asking her without having anything to offer.”
He would have interrupted her, but she would not let him.
“Go your ways,” she told him, “and bring her back with you if you can. Miss Mary has something in a stocking foot, and no long need for it.”