“No,” replied Lady Carse, sharply. “You speak Gaelic, I think,” she said to Mr Ruthven. “Will you learn from the men all you can about this package, and tell me every word they say?”
Mr Ruthven bowed, cleared his throat, and began to examine the men. Lady Carse meantime said to Mrs Ruthven, in Annie’s hearing, that she must wait, and restrain her patience a little while. There was no saying what might be in the package, and they must be by themselves when they opened it.
Mrs Ruthven said she would send the children away; and Annie offered to take them home with her.
“The children!” exclaimed Lady Carse. “Oh, bless them! what harm can they do? Let them stay by all means. I hope there will be nobody to spoil their pleasure.”
Annie curtseyed, and withdrew to her own house. As she shut the door and sank into a chair, she thought how bad her rheumatic pains were. Her heart was swelling a little too; but it soon subsided as she said to herself, “A vale of tears, indeed, is this life; or rather a waste and howling wilderness, to that poor lady with her restless mind. God knows I would not reckon hardly with her, or anyone so far from peace of mind. Nor can I wonder, when I pity her so much, that others should also, and forget other things when she is before their eyes. I did think, when I heard the minister was coming— But I had no right to expect anything beyond the blessing of the sabbath, and of burial, and the ordinances. And oh, there is the comfort of the sabbath! The Word is preached, and there is prayer and praise now on sabbath-days for a year to come; or, perhaps, as many years as I shall live. If this was a place for peace of mind before, what can trouble us now?” The closing psalm of last sabbath had never been out of her ears and her heart since. She now began to sing it, softly at first, but louder as her soul warmed to it. She was soon stopped by a louder sound; a shrill cry from the next house, and presently Mrs Ruthven rushed in to know what she was to do. Lady Carse was hysterical. The package had contained no news from her friends, but had brought cruel disappointment. It contained some clothing, a stone of sugar, a pound of tea, six pecks of wheat, and an anker of spirits; and there was a slip of paper to say that the same quantity of these stores would be brought yearly by the steward when he came to collect the heather rent. At this sentence of an abode of years in this place, Lady Carse had given way to despair; had vowed she would choke the steward in his sacks of feathers, that she might be tried for murder on the main; and then she had attempted to scatter the wheat, and to empty out the spirits, but that Mr Ruthven had held her hand, and told her that the anker of spirits was, in fact, her purse—her means of purchasing from Macdonald and others her daily meat and such service as she needed. But now she was in hysterics, and they did not know what to do next. Would Mrs Fleming come?
Annie thought the lady would rather not see her; told Mrs Ruthven how to treat the patient, and begged that the children might be sent to her, if they were in the way.
The children were with Annie all the rest of the day; for their father and mother were exceedingly busy writing letters, to go by the steward.
In the evening the steward paid them a visit, in his round back to the boat. He was very civil, brought with him a girl, the handiest and comeliest he said, that he could engage among Macdonald’s people, to wait upon Lady Carse; gave order for the immediate erection of a sort of outhouse for her stores, and desired her to say if there was anything else she was pressingly in want of. She would not say a word to him of one kind or another, but turned him over to the minister. But the minister could not carry his own points. He could not induce the steward to convey a single letter of the several written that day. The steward was sorry: had hoped it was understood that no letter was to leave the island,—no written paper of any kind,—while Lady Carse resided there. He would not take these to Sir Alexander: he would not ask him to yield this point even to the minister. Sir Alexander’s orders were positive; and it was clear that in these parts that settled the question.
While the argument was going on, Lady Carse rose from her seat, and passed behind the steward, to leave the room. She caught up the letters unperceived, and unperceived slipped them into the steward’s pocket: so that while he bowed himself out, declining to touch the letters, he was actually carrying them with him.
Helsa, Lady Carse’s new maid, witnessed this prank; and, not daring to laugh at the moment, made up for this by telling the story to her acquaintance, the widow, when sent for the children at night.