“But it may be all quite different from that. Many a thing may happen to change it all.”
“Oh! many things will happen, as you say. May and her bairns will be coming and going, and the bairns will fit into the places that the years will leave empty, and George will need a staff like my father, and I will grow ‘frail’ like Auntie Jean, and sit waiting and looking at the sea. And ye needna sit lookin’ at me with such pitiful e’en, for who is waiting so happily as she? And yet who will be so glad to go when her time shall come?”
Marion said nothing, but turned her eyes seaward with a grave face. Jean went on.
“Yes, many things will happen, but it will be just the same thing over again. The ships will sail away, and there will be long waiting, and some of them will come home, and some will never come, and the pain will be as hard to bear as if it had never come to many a sore heart before. And some folk will be glad, and some will be at least content, and some will make mistakes and spoil their lives and then just wait on to the end. Marion, what are you thinking about?”
“I’m wondering if it is really you who are saying all that. And I am thinking that is not the way Miss Jean would speak.”
“Oh! Miss Jean! No, she has won safely past all that. But once, long ago, before she had learned the secret of peaceful and patient waiting, she might have been afraid of the days. Come, it is growing cold. Let us go on.”
They rose from the Tangle Stanes where they had been sitting and moved away, and Jean said,—
“And as for you—Are you sure it is to be the grand school after all? Well, you will come back when the heat and burden of the day is over to take your rest in Portie. And you will be a stately old lady, a little worn and sharp perhaps, as is the fate of schoolmistresses; but with fine manners, and wisdom enough for us all. And the new generation of Petries will admire you and make much of you—not quite as the Petries of the present day would like to do,” said Jean laughing. “And behold! there is Master Jamie coming on at a great pace. Shall we let him overtake us? Or shall we go in and see poor old Tibbie and let him pass by?”
They were on their way to Saughleas, where Marion was to pay her first visit. Miss Jean had gone on already in the pony carriage, but the girls were walking round by the shore. There was no reason why Marion should wish to avoid Mr James Petrie, except that she wished no one’s company when she had Jean’s, but she was quite willing to go into Mrs Cairnie’s house where she had been several times already. It was a different looking place from the house to which Miss Jean had taken Mrs Eastwood long ago. Mrs Cairnie’s daughter Annie had returned and was going to remain, and the place was “weel redd up,” and indeed as pleasant a dwelling, of its kind, as one would wish to see. Poor old Tibbie had lately met with a sad mishap, which threatened to put an end to her wanderings, and keep her a prisoner at home for some time to come. Annie had come home to care for her, with the design of earning the bread of both, by making gowns and bonnets for such of the sailors’ wives and fisher folk, as were not equal to the making their Sunday best for themselves.
But a different lot awaited her. She had gone away with the English lady “to better herself,” it was said; but that was only half the reason of her going. She went because she feared to be beguiled into marrying a man whom she loved, but whom she could not respect, because of his enslavement to one besetting sin.