“No.”
“They were bound for Quebec—hadn’t any notion of coming to P. E. I. They had a long rough voyage and water got scarce, so the captain of the New Moon put in here to get some. Mary Murray had nearly died of sea-sickness coming out—never seemed to get her sea-legs—so the captain, being sorry for her, told her she could go ashore with the men and feel solid ground under her for an hour or so. Very gladly she went and when she got to shore she said, ‘Here I stay.’ And stay she did; nothing could budge her; old Hugh—he was young Hugh then, of course—coaxed and stormed and raged and argued—and even cried, I’ve been told—but Mary wouldn’t be moved. In the end he gave in and had his belongings landed and stayed, too. So that is how the Murrays came to P. E. Island.”
“I’m glad it happened like that,” said Emily.
“So was old Hugh in the long run. And yet it rankled, Emily—it rankled. He never forgave his wife with a whole heart. Her grave is over there in the corner—that one with the flat red stone. Go you and look at what he had put on it.”
Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph was no scriptural verse or pious psalm. Clear and distinct, in spite of age and lichen, ran the line, “Here I stay.”
“That’s how he got even with her,” said Cousin Jimmy. “He was a good husband to her—and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family—and he never was the same after her death. But that rankled in him until it had to come out.”
Emily gave a little shiver. Somehow, the idea of that grim old ancestor with his undying grudge against his nearest and dearest was rather terrifying.
“I’m glad I’m only half Murray,” she said to herself. Aloud—“Father told me it was a Murray tradition not to carry spite past the grave.”
“So ’tis now—but it took its rise from this very thing. His family were so horrified at it, you see. It made considerable of a scandal. Some folks twisted it round to mean that old Hugh didn’t believe in the resurrection, and there was talk of the session taking it up, but after a while the talk died away.”