This was said with more than one meaning. Edgar saw Margaret’s eyelashes flutter on her cheek, and she moved a little uneasily, as though unable to restrain all evidence of a painful emotion. Just at this moment, however, a shadow darkened the window. Margaret, more keenly on the watch than anyone, lifted her eyes suddenly, and, rising to her feet, uttered a low cry. A young man in sailor’s dress came into the room, with a somewhat noisy greeting.
“What, all of you here! What luck!” he cried. “But where’s granny?”
He had to be hushed into silence, and to have all the circumstances explained to him; while Jeanie MacColl, half-reluctant to go, was sent upstairs to call her cousin and namesake, and to take her place as nurse for the moment. Edgar called her back softly, and offered himself for this duty. He cast a glance at the returned prodigal as he left the room, the brother for whom Jeanie had taken him, and whom everybody had acknowledged his great likeness to. Edgar looked at him with mingled amusement and curiosity, to see what he himself must look like. Perhaps Willie had not improved during his adventurous cruise. Edgar did not think much of himself as reflected in his image; and how glad he was to escape from his uncle and his aunt, and their family talk, to the stillness and loftier atmosphere of the death-chamber upstairs!
CHAPTER XXI.
The End of a Drama.
Mrs. Murray lived two days longer. They were weary days to Edgar. It seems hard to grudge another hour, another moment to the dying, but how hard are those last lingerings, when hope is over, when all work is suspended, and a whole little world visibly standing still, till the lingerer can make up his mind to go! The sufferer herself was too human, too deeply experienced in life, not to feel the heavy interval as much as they did. “I’m grieved, grieved,” she said, with that emphatic repetition which the Scotch peasant uses in common with all naturally eloquent races, “to keep you waiting, bairns.” Sometimes she said this with a wistful smile, as claiming their indulgence; sometimes with a pang of consciousness that they were as weary as she was. She had kissed and blessed her prodigal returned, and owned to herself with a groan, which was, however, breathed into her own breast, and of which no one was the wiser, that Willie, too, was “no more than common folk.”
I cannot explain more than the words themselves do how this high soul in homely guise felt the pang of her oft-repeated disappointment. Children and grandchildren, she had fed them not with common food, the bread earned with ordinary labours, but with her blood, like the pelican; with the toil of man and woman, of ploughman and hero, all mingled into one. High heart, heroic in her weakness as in her strength! They had turned out but “common folk,” and, at each successive failure, that pang had gone through and through her which common folk could not comprehend. She looked at Willie the last, with a mingled pleasure and anguish in her dying mind—I say pleasure, and not joy, for the signs of his face were not such as to give that last benediction of happiness. Nature was glad in her to see the boy back whom she had long believed at the bottom of the sea; but her dying eyes looked at him wistfully, trying to penetrate his heart, and reach its excuses.
“You should have written, to ease our minds,” she said gently.
“How was I to know you would take it to heart so? Many a man has stayed away longer, and no harm come of it,” cried Willie, self-defending.
The old woman put her hand upon his bended head, as he sat by her bedside, half sullen, half sorry. She stroked his thick curling locks softly, saying nothing for a few long silent moments. She did not blame him further, nor justify him, but simply was silent. Then she said,
“You will take care of your sister, Willie, as I have taken care of her? She has suffered a great deal for you.”