Had she been Eve, and he her Adam, he would have eaten the forbidden fruit without a question as to his right to do so, just because she gave it to him, but, unlike Adam, he would not have charged the fault to her; he would have taken it upon himself, as if the idea and the act had been his alone.
For Frank there was more toleration at Millbank. “He was not very bright,” Hester said; “but how could he be with such a mother? Little pimpin’, spindlin’, white-haired critter, there wasn’t half so much snap to him as there was to Roger.”
In this condition of things it was hardly to be supposed that Mrs. Walter Scott’s reception at Millbank was very cordial, when, on the evening after the squire’s death, the village hack deposited her at the door. Mrs. Walter Scott did not like a depot hack, it brought her so much on a level with common people; and her first words to Hester were:
“Why wasn’t the carriage sent for us? Weren’t we expected?”
There was an added air of importance in her manner, and she spoke like one whose right it was to command there; and Hester detected it at once. But in her manner there was, if possible, less of deference than she had usually paid to the great lady.
“Aleck had the neurology, and we didn’t know jestly when you’d come,” was her reply, as she led the way to the chamber which Mrs. Walter Scott had been accustomed to occupy during her visits to Millbank.
“I think I’ll have a fire, the night is so chilly,” the lady said, with a shiver, as she glanced at the empty grate. “And, Hester, you may send my tea after the fire is made. I have a headache, and am too tired to go down.”
There was in all she said a tone and air which seemed to imply that she was now the mistress; and, in truth, Mrs. Walter Scott did so consider herself, or rather, as a kind of queen-regent who, for as many years as must elapse ere Frank became of age, would reign supreme at Millbank. And after the fire was lighted in her room, and her cup of tea was brought to her, with toast, and jelly, and cold chicken, she was thinking more of the changes she would make in the old place, than of the white, motionless figure which lay, just across the hall, in a room much like her own. She had not seen this figure yet. She did not wish to carry the image of death to her pillow, and so she waited till morning, when, after breakfast was over, she went with Hester to the darkened room, and with her handkerchief ostensibly pressed to her eyes, but really held to her nose, she stood a moment by the dead, and sighed:
“Poor, dear old man! How sudden it was; and what a lesson it should teach us all of the mutability of life, for in an hour when we think not, death cometh upon us!”
Mrs. Walter Scott felt that some such speech was due from her,—something which savored of piety, and which might possibly do good to the angular, square-shouldered, flat-waisted woman at her side, who understood what mutability meant quite as well as she would have understood so much Hebrew. But she knew the lady was “putting on;” that, in her heart, she was glad the “poor old man” was dead; and with a jerk she drew the covering over the pinched white face, dropped the curtain which had been raised to admit the light, and then opened the door and stood waiting for the lady to pass out.