“It is not in my mind—it was never in my mind,” he said with an eagerness which was almost passionate. “She has a lovely face, but she never was or could be a fit wife for a man in my position. There never was anything in that.”
“Charlie, my man, you think too much of your position,” said the old woman, shaking her head; “and if there was nothing in it, why should you gloom and bend your brows at the thought that Edgar might care for the bonnie face as well as you? He does not, more’s the pity.”
“And why should you say more’s the pity? Do you want to be rid of Jeanie? Do you want to be left alone?”
“I’m but a bruised reed for anyone to trust to,” she said. “Soon, soon I’ll have passed away, and the place that now knows me will know me no more. I would be glad to see my poor bairn in somebody’s hand that would last longer than me.”
A momentary flush of strong feeling passed over the young man’s face.
“Grandmother,” he said, “you were too good to me. If I had been bred a farmer like yourself—”
“You would have made but a weirdless farmer, Charlie, my man. It’s not the trade that does it,” said Mrs. Murray, with some sadness. “But Marg’ret had better come to me. She may hinder you, but she’ll no help you. The bairns are maybe right; I was injudicious, Charlie, and grieved for you that were all delicate things without a mother. I should have known better. You are little able to fend for yourselves in this world, either Marg’ret or you.”
“I don’t know why you should say so, grandmother. I am making my way in my profession,” said Dr. Charles, not without offence, “and Margaret is very greatly thought of, and asked to the best houses. If you have nothing more to blame yourself with than you have in our case—”
Mrs. Murray sighed, but she made no answer. It was not for nothing that her daughters had reproached her. Charles Murray and his sister Margaret had been the two youngest of the flock, her eldest son Tom’s children, whom the brave old woman had taken into her house, and brought up with the labour of her own hands. The others were scattered about the world, fighting their way in all regions; but Charlie and Margaret had been as apples of her eye. She had done everything for them, bringing up the son to a learned profession, and “making a lady of” the gentle and pretty girl, who was of a stock less robust than the other Murrays. And as Mrs. Murray had no patent of exemption from the failures that follow sometimes the best efforts, she had not succeeded in this case. Charles Murray, without being absolutely unsuccessful, had fulfilled none of the high hopes entertained concerning him; and Margaret had made a foolish marriage, and had been left in a few years a penniless widow dependent upon her brother. No one knew exactly what the two were doing now. They were “genteel” and “weirdless,” living, it was feared, above their means, and making no attempt to pay back the money which had been lent by their wealthier friends to set the young doctor afloat.
This was why the children she had trained so carefully could give their old mother no help. Margaret had cried bitterly when she heard that the old home was about to be broken up, and Charles’s heart was torn with a poignant sense of inability to help. But the tears and the pain would have done Mrs. Murray little good, and they were not of any profound importance to the brother and sister, both of whom were capable of some new piece of extravagance next day by way of consoling themselves. But though Mrs. Murray was not aware of it, the sharp shock of Edgar’s unlooked-for munificence towards her, and the jealousy and shame with which Dr. Charles witnessed it, was the most salutary accident that had happened to him all his life. The contrast of his own conduct, he who was so deeply indebted to her, and that of his unknown cousin, gave such a violent concussion to all his nerves as the young man had never felt before; and whatever might be the after result of this shock, its present issue was not agreeable. A sullen shadow came over him at the homely dinner to which they all sat down with such changed feelings. He had been the only one to whom Edgar had turned instinctively for sympathy, and Edgar was the first to feel this change. James Murray and Robert Campbell were the only two who kept up the languid conversation, and their talk, we need not add, was not of a very elevated kind.