CHAPTER XCVIII
The Leddy having so happily brought her second lawsuit to a victorious issue, and already menacing a third, did not feel that her triumph would be complete, until she had obtained the plaudits of the world; and the first person on whom she resolved to levy her exactions of applause was naturally enough the mother of Walkinshaw.
As soon as Pitwinnoch had left the house, she persuaded Milrookit to send the carriage for Mrs. Charles, with injunctions to the coachman not to say a word of what had passed, as she intended herself to have the pleasure of communicating the glad tidings. This he very readily agreed to; for, notwithstanding the grudge which he felt at having been so simply mulcted of so large a sum, he really felt his mind relieved by the result of the discovery; perhaps, in complying, he had some sinister view towards the Leddy’s good-will—some distant vista of his thousand pounds.
Mrs. Charles was a good deal surprised at the message to come immediately to Kittlestonheugh; and her timid and gentle spirit, in consequence of learning from the coachman that the old lady was there, anticipated some disaster to her son. Her fears fluttered as she drove on alone. The broad dark shadows that had crossed the path of her past pilgrimage were remembered with melancholy forebodings, and the twilight of the evening having almost faded into night, she caught gloomy presentiments from the time, and sighed that there was no end to her sorrows.
The season was now advanced into September; and though the air was clear, the darkness of the road, the silence of the fields, and the occasional glimmers of the fire that the horses’ hoofs struck from the stones, awakened associations of doubt, anxiety, and danger; but the serene magnificence of the starry heavens inspired hope, and the all-encompassing sky seemed to her the universal wings of Providence, vigilant and protecting with innumerable millions of eyes.
Still the devotional enthusiasm of that fancy was but a transient glow on the habitual pale cast of her thoughts; and she saw before her, in the remainder of her mortal journey, only a continuance of the same road which she had long travelled—a narrow and a difficult track across a sterile waste, harsh with brambles, and bleak and lonely.
So is it often, under the eclipse of fortune, even with the bravest spirits; forgetting how suddenly before, in the darkest hour, the views of life have changed, they yield to the aspect of the moment, and breathe the mean and peevish complaints of faithlessness and despondency. Let it not, therefore, be imputed as an unworthy weakness, that a delicate and lowly widow, whose constant experience had been an unbroken succession of disappointments and humiliations, should, in such an hour, and shrinking with the sensibilities of a mother, wonder almost to sinning why she had been made to suffer such a constancy of griefs. But the midnight of her fate was now past, and the dawn was soon to open upon her with all its festal attributes of a bright and joyous morning—though our friend the Leddy was not so brisk in communicating the change as we could have wished.
She was sitting alone in the parlour when the carriage returned; and as the trembling mother was shown into the room, she received her with the most lugubrious face that her features could assume.
‘Come awa’, Bell Fatherlans,’ said she, ‘come away, and sit down. O this is a most uncertain world—nothing in it has stability;—the winds blow—the waters run—the grass grows—the snow falls—the day flieth away unto the uttermost parts of the sea, and the night hideth her head in the morning cloud, and perisheth for evermore. Many a lesson we get—many a warning to set our thoughts on things above; but we’re ay sinking, sinking, sinking, as the sparks fly upward.—Bell, Bell, we’re a’ like thorns crackling under a kail-pot.’