It might have been said—if there had been any one there to see—that Mr Dawson “took it quietly” even then. There were not many words spoken between them, and they were simple words, spoken quietly enough. How it happened neither of them could have told,—whether the father followed the son, or the son the father,—but instead of turning to the terrace, where the drawing-room window stood open to let them in, they turned down the walk, past the well into the wood; and whatever was said of confession or forgiveness was said by the grave of the lad’s mother, in the stillness of the summer midnight, in the hearing of God alone.
No one but Jean knew that night that George had come home, and Jean did not go to her brother till she had heard her father shut himself into his room. Mr Dawson himself brought food to his son, and wine, and watched him as he partook of it. But when he would have poured out the wine, he staid his hand.
“I promised Tam Saugster—we promised one another—not to touch or taste before he comes home to Portie.”
“It is for his sake then?”
“And for my own,” said George gravely.
His father was silent. Strangely mingled feelings moved him.
“Is he so weak that he cannot refrain? Is he so strong that he can resist?”
Even in the midst of his joy in having his son back again, “clothed and in his right mind,” he was more inclined to resent the implied weakness, than to rejoice in the assured strength. But he uttered no word of his thoughts then or ever, though George did not release himself from his vow even when Tam Saugster came home to Portie “a changed man” also.
When the house was quiet again, and the lights were out, Jean stole softly to her brother’s room, for one embrace, one kiss, a single word of welcome. But she would not linger.
“We couldna stop, if we were once to begin, Geordie; and you are tired, and my father would be ill-pleased. I only wanted to be sure that you were really home again. And I’m no’ sure yet,” she added laughing and touching with caressing fingers the soft brown beard, that she could just see, for a faint gleam of dawn was breaking over the sea. They looked at each other with shy pleasure, these two. Jean blushed and smiled under her brother’s admiring eyes, but she would not linger.