“By George! you’re a clever fellow, Jamie Murray!” cried Campbell, with a loud laugh.
The two women did not say anything; they looked at each other, and Mrs. MacKell, who was the most soft-hearted, began to cry.
“It’s what we would all have liked to have done,” she said feebly, after an interval.
Her sister turned round sharply and scolded Jeanie, who had been sitting behind backs looking on, and who now looked up at Edgar with a face so radiant that it struck her aunt with sharp offence—more sharp than the real offence of the stranger’s superior generosity, of which it was a reflection.
“What are you doing there,” she said, “you little idle cutty? Did not Granny tell you to see after the dinner? It may be good for her, but it’s ruination to you, if you had the sense to see it. Dinna let me see you sit there, smil—smiling at a young lad! I wonder you dinna think shame! It’s all my mother’s fault,” she added bitterly, placing herself in the chair by the window, which Jeanie, in dismay and tears, hastily evacuated; “we were kept to our work and kept in order, in our day; but she’s spoiled every creature that’s come near her since. I’m glad I’ve nae girls mysel that she can ruin as she’s ruined Jeanie!”
“Poor thing, she has nae mother to keep her right,” said the softer sister.
I think, for my part, that the sharp offence and bitterness of the women at the sudden turn that things had taken, showed a higher moral sense than the eager satisfaction with which, after the first moment, the men received it. Murray and Campbell both felt the immediate relief, as far as they themselves were concerned. The women felt first the shame and stigma of not having attempted to do for their mother what this stranger was so ready to do. The result was much less pleasant and less amiable to witness, but it showed, I think, a higher feeling of right and wrong.
CHAPTER VI.
A Party in a Parlour.
The dinner which followed was not, the first part of it at least, a very comfortable meal. Mrs. Murray herself was profoundly shaken by the conference altogether. She was unable to say anything to her grandson except the almost wild “No, lad; no, Edgar, my bonnie man!” with which she had endeavoured to stop him at first. After this she had not uttered a word. She had taken his hand between her old and worn hands, and raised her face as if to God—praying for blessings on him? No—I do not think her mind was capable of such an effort—she was looking up to the Divine Friend who had been her refuge in everything these seventy years, in a strange rapture of surprise and joy. How much part the sudden change in her circumstances had to do with the joy, I cannot tell—very little I think, infinitesimally little. “I have one son, one true son, after all; heart of my heart, and soul of my soul!” This was the predominating thought in her mind, the half-ecstatic feeling which flooded her old being like sudden sunshine. Amid all the griefs and disappointments to which such a soul is liable, there remains to one now and then the tender and generous delight of seeing others do by her as she would have done by them. How sweet it is; before all delight in gifts, or even in affection! We think of the golden rule more often in the way of a command, employing it to touch our own souls to languid duty; but there are occasions when it is given back to us, so to speak, in the way of recompense, vivified and quickened into rapture. This old woman had practised it as she could all her life, and others had not done to her as she had done to them; but here, at the end of her existence, came one—her reward, one heir of her nature, one issue of her soul. Thus she had her glimpse of heaven in the very moment of her lowest humiliation. She had done little personally for him—little—nothing—except to harm him; but she had done much for others, sacrificing herself that they might live, and the stranger, in whose training she had had no hand, who had with her no link of union but the mystic tie of blood, gave back to her full measure, heaped up, and running over. I must leave to the imagination of the reader the keen satisfaction and joy, sharp and poignant almost as pain, with which this aged soul, worn out and weary, received full in her heart, all at once, as by a shot or thunderbolt, the unthought of, unhoped-for recompense.
The men, as I have said, were the first to reconcile themselves to the sudden revolution. If any thrill of shame came over them, it was instantly quenched, and ceased to influence the hardened mail, beaten by much vicissitude of weather, which covered them. The women were thinner-skinned, so to speak, more easily touched in their pride, and were sensible of the irony with which, half-consciously to himself, Edgar had spoken. But, perhaps, the person most painfully affected of all was the young doctor, who had listened to Edgar with a painful flush on his face, and with a pang of jealous pain and shame, not easy to bear. He went up to the old lady as soon as the discussion was over, and sat down close by her, and held a long conversation in an undertone.