Whereupon the laird took her in his arms with a view to kiss her; but there is many a slip not only between the cup and the lip, but between one lip and another; for no sooner had Thomas so prepared himself for, perhaps, the greatest occasion of his life—even that of kissing a woman, and that woman the very idol of his heart—than that dreadful cough came again upon him, and Dorothy could not help thinking that it was now more hollow, or, as the Scotch call it, toom, than ever she had heard it.
“I will awa to Mr Ainslie and get the contract written out at length,” he said, to cover his disgrace.
Nor was it sooner said than done. Away he went, leaving Dorothy virtually a bride, and the lady in esse of an estate, albeit a small one, yet great to her. At all which she laughed a most enigmatical laugh, as if some secret thoughts had risen in her mind with the effect of a ridiculous incongruity; but what these thoughts were no one ever knew. Nor shall we try to imagine them, considering ourselves to be better employed in setting forth that shortly afterwards Mrs Dorothy Dempster was joined in the silken bands of holy wedlock with Thomas Snoddy, Esquire, of Rubbledykes, and that by the hands of Dr Webster of the Tron, who accompanied the happy couple in the evening to the gray-slated mansion-house, where he made another celebration of the event by draining a couple of bottles of good old claret. Strange enough all these things; but the real wonders of our story would seem only to begin with the settlement of Mr David Dempster’s widow in the mansion-house of the veritable laird; even though, consistently with the manners of the time, there was a duck-pond at the door, a peat-stack on the gable, and a midden gracing the byre not five yards from the parlour window; spite of all which Mrs Dorothy was a lady, while David lay with glazed eyes in the Forth among the fishes scarcely a mile distant from his enchanted widow.
We think it a strange thing that mortals should laugh and weep by turns, yet we think sunshine and showers a very natural alternation; and surely it is far more wonderful that we often weep when we should laugh, and laugh when we should weep—of which hypocrisy, notwithstanding, there is a hundred times more in the world than man or woman wots of. And we are sorry to be obliged to doubt the extent of the new-made lady’s grief when she saw the laird’s cough increasing as his love waxed stronger and his lungs grew less. Nay, we are not sure that when she saw that he was dying, and hailed the signs with grief in her eyes and joy in her heart, she was under the impression that she was acting up to the amiable tenet of her religious creed—total depravity. Be all which as it may, it is certain that though Dorothy’s tears had been of that real kind of which Tully says they are—“the easiest dried of all things,” they would not have retarded the progress of the laird’s disease. It was not yet three months, and he was confined to bed, with Dorothy hanging over him, watching him with all the care of a seeker for favourable symptoms. But one evening there was a symptom which she was unprepared for—nay, she was this time serious in her alarm.
“I have done that which is evil in the sight o’ God.”
The words came as from a far-away place, they were so hollow.
“What is it, Tammas?” asked she.
“I have seen David Dempster’s ghaist,” said he. “It looked in at that window, and disappeared in an instant; but no’ before I kent what the een said. Yea, Dorothy, they said as plainly as een can speak—‘Tammas Snoddy, ye made love to Dorothy Dempster when I was alive in the body, and her lawful husband.’”
And the laird shook all over so violently that Dorothy could see the clothes move.
“Just your conscience, Tammas,” said she. “Ye maun fley thae visions awa in the auld way. It is the deevil tempting ye. We maun flap the leaves o’ the Bible at him, and ye’ll see nae mair o’ him in this warld at any rate.”