‘Weel,’ he said, ‘ye’re bonnie hoosekeepers for a man to come hame to, wanting his tea! ‘Deed, I might just whistle for my tea, and the twa of you stravaigin’ naebody kens where. Joyce, my bonny lass, ye should just think shame of yoursel’, leading your auld granny into ill ways.’ He ended with a long, low laugh, which was his expression of content and emotion and pleasure, and which turned the reproach into the tenderest family jest—and made way for them, but not till he had said out his say. ‘Come awa,’ noo ye’re here; come awa’ ben, and mask the tea: for I’m wanting something to sloken me,’ he said.
‘Oh, my poor man—oh, my poor auld man!’ said Janet. She had not ceased to shake her head at intervals while he was speaking, and she uttered a suppressed groan as she went into the cottage. So long as all was uncertain, Janet had carefully kept every intimation of possible calamity from Peter; but now that the truth must be known, she had a kind of tragic pleasure in exciting his alarm.
‘What ails the woman?’ he said, ‘girnin’ and groanin’ as if we were a’ under sentence. What ails your granny, Joyce?’
‘And so we are,’ said Janet, ‘a’ under sentence, as ye say, and our days numbered, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. But, eh, that’s no’ what we do—far, far from it. And when misfortin’ comes, that comes to a’, it’s rare, rare that it doesn’t come unexpected. We’re eatin’ and drinkin’ and makin’ merry—or else we’re fechtin’, beatin’ our fellow-servants, and a’ in a word that the Lord delayeth his comin’. And in a moment,’ said the old woman, with a sob, ‘our house is left unto us desolate. That’s just the common way.’
‘What is she meaning with the house left desolate?’ said Peter, the smile slowly disappearing from his face. ‘The woman’s daft! Joyce what is she meanin’? I’m no’ very gleg at the uptake,—no’ like you, my bonnie woman, that are just as keen as a needle. What’s she meanin’? Janet, woman, as lang as the lassie is weel and spared——’
‘The lassie, says he—naething but the lassie. And have I no’ foreseen it a’ the time? How often have I cried out to ye, Peter, to keep a loose grip! oh, to haud a loose grip! But ye never would listen to me. And now it’s just come to pass, and neither you nor me prepared.’
Peter’s face, gazing at her while she went on, was like a landscape in the uncertain shining of a Scotch summer. It lightened all over with a smile of good-humoured derision which brought out the shaggy eyebrows, the grizzled whiskers, the cavernous hollows round the eyes, like the inequalities of the mountainous land. And then the light fled instantaneously, and a pale blank of shadow succeeded, leaving all that surface grey, while finer lines of anxiety and chill alarm developed about the large mouth and in the puckers of those many-folded eyelids, like movements of the wind among the herbage and trees. He stood and gazed at her with his eyes widely open, his lips apart. But Janet did not meet that look. She went to the fire, which burned dully, ‘gathered,’ as she had left it in her careful way, to smoulder frugally in her absence, and poked it with violence, with sharp thrusts of the poker, standing with the back of her great shawl turned towards her companions, and her big bonnet still on her head. There was nothing said till with those sudden strokes and blows she had roused the dormant fire to flame, when she put on the kettle, and swept the hearth with vigorous, nervous movements, though always encumbered by the weight of the shawl. Then Janet made a sudden turn upon herself, and setting open the doors of the aumry, which made a sort of screen between her and the others, proceeded to take off and fold away that shawl of state. ‘I’ll maybe never put it on again,’ she said to herself, almost under her breath, ‘for whatfor should I deck mysel’ and fash my heid about my claes or what I put on? It was a’ to be respectable for her: wha’s heeding when there’s nane but me?’
‘There’s something happened,’ said Peter, in his low tremulous bass, like the rolling of distant thunder. ‘Am I the maister of this hoose, and left to find oot by her parables and her metaphors, and no’ a word of sense that a man can understand? What is’t, woman? Speak plain out, or as sure’s death I’ll——’ He clenched his large fist with a sudden silent rage, which could find no other expression than this seeming threat—though Peter would have died sooner than touch with a finger to harm her the old companion of his life.
‘Grandfather,’ said Joyce, ‘I will tell you what has happened. Granny takes a thing into her head, and then you know, whatever we say, you or me, she never heeds, but follows her own fancy.’ The girl spoke quickly, her words hurrying, her breath panting,—then came to a sudden pause, flushed crimson, her paleness changing to the red of passionate feeling, and added, as slowly as she had been hurried before, ‘Somebody has been here—that knows who my mother was: somebody that says—that says he is my father. And she thinks I am to rise up and follow him,’ cried Joyce, in another burst of sudden, swift, vehement words,—‘to rise up and follow him, like the woman in the Old Testament, away from my home and my own people, and all that I care for in the world! But I’ll not do it—I’ll not do it. I’ll call no strange man my father. I’ll bide in my own place where I’ve been all my days. What are their letters, and their old stories, and their secrets that they’ve found out, and their injuries that they’re sorry for—sorry for after costing a woman’s life! What’s all that to me? I’ll bide in my own place with them that have nourished me and cherished me, and made me happy all my days.’
‘Eh, lassie! eh, lassie!’ was all Peter could say. His large old limbs had got a trembling in them. He sat down in the big wooden arm-chair which stood against the wall, where it had been put away after dinner, and from that unaccustomed place, as if he too had been put away out of the common strain of life, gazed at the two alternately,—at his wife still folding, folding that shawl that would not lie straight, and at Joyce, in her flush of impassioned determination, standing up drawn to her full height, her head thrown back, her slim young figure inspired by the rush and torrent of emotion which she herself scarcely understood in its vehemence and force. The little quiet, humble cottage was in a moment filled as with rushing wings and flashing weapons, the dust and jar of spiritual conflict: but not one of the three visible actors in this little tragic drama had for the moment a word to say. When this silence of fate was broken, it was by Janet, who had at last shut up her shawl in the aumry, and, coming and going from the fire to the table, filling the intense blank of that pause with a curious interlude of hasty sound and movement, said at last, almost fiercely, ‘Come to your tea. You’ll do little good standing glowering at ane anither. Sit down and tak’ your tea.’