“Shenac, good, dear child, is it well with you?”
She had heard the words before. All the scene came back—the remembrance of the summer days, her dying brother and his friend—all that had happened since then. She strove to answer him—to say it was well, that she was glad to see him, and why had he not come before? But she could not for her tears. She struggled hard; but, long restrained, they came in a flood now. When she felt that to struggle was vain, she would have fled; but she was held fast, and the tears were suffered to have way for a while. When she could find voice, she said,—
“I am not grieving too much; you must not think that. Ask Allister. I did not mean to cry, but when I saw you it all came back.”
Again her face was hidden, for her tears would not be stayed; but only one hand was given to the work. Mr Stewart held the other firmly, while he spoke just such words as she needed to hear of her brother and herself—of all they had been to each other, of all that his memory would be to her in the life that might lie before her. Then he spoke of the endless life which was before them, which they should pass together when this life—short at the very longest—should be over. She listened, and became quiet; and by-and-by, in answer to his questions, she found herself telling him of her brother’s last days and words, and then, with a little burst of joyful tears, of Dan, and all that she hoped those days had brought to him.
Never since the old times, when she used “to empty her heart out” to Hamish, had she found such comfort in being listened to. When she came to the tea-table, after brushing away her tears, she seemed just as usual, Shenac Dhu thought; and yet not just the same, she found, when she looked again. She gave a little nod at her husband, who smiled back at her, and then she said softly to Mr Stewart,—
“You have done her good already.”
Of course Mr Stewart, being a minister, whose office it is to do good to people, was very glad to have done good to Shenac. Perhaps he thought it best to let well alone, for he did not speak to her again during tea-time, nor while she was gathering up the tea-things—“just as she used to do in the old house long ago,” he said to himself. She washed them, too, there before them all; for it was Shenac Dhu’s new china—Christie More’s beautiful wedding present—that had been spread in honour of the occasion, and it was not to be thought of that they should be carried into the kitchen to be washed like common dishes. She was quiet, as usual, all the evening and at the time of worship, when Angus Dhu and his wife and Evan and some other neighbours, having heard of the minister’s arrival, came in. She was just as usual, they all said, only she did not sing. If she had raised her voice in her brother’s favourite psalm,—
“I to the hills will lift mine eyes,”
she must have cried again; and she was afraid of the tears which it seemed impossible to stop when once they found a way.
Mr Stewart fully intended for that night to “let well alone.” Shenac had welcomed him warmly as the dearest friend of her dead brother, and he would be content for the present with that. He had something to say to her, and a question or two to ask; but he must wait a while, he thought. She must not be disturbed yet.