May; vol. I

by Mrs. Oliphant

She said nothing; her sharp eyes glittered as she gazed; she folded her thin hands, all wrinkled and yellow, like old ivory, on the top of her cane, and nothing escaped her keen observation. She took in the new—or what she fancied new—fashion of Marjory’s dress, as well as the enormous train of county friends, old family connections, tenants, and neighbours, who had come to do honour to the Heriots. This gave her a thrill of pleasure in the chillness of her old age, which felt no very strenuous emotion. She counted them upon her withered fingers as they passed down into the grassy churchyard, and ranged themselves against the grey old lichened wall which surrounded it on that side, set close with the grotesque monuments of the last two centuries.

“I see scarce anybody wanting,” she said, with a certain subdued exultation; “scarce anybody on this side of Fife but the Sinclairs, and they’re away. Thomas does not please me in many of his ways; but I’ll say this for him, that he has kept up the credit of the house, and all the old family friends.”

Mrs. Murray was crying quietly, with her eyes fixed upon the central group, where stood Mr. Heriot himself, with drooping head, his tall figure showing among all the other tall men who surrounded him with a certain majesty of weakness which went to the heart of this looker-on. His daughter seemed to be leaning on his arm, but by the way in which she clung to him, moving as he moved, Mrs. Murray divined that in reality it was Marjory who supported her father.

It was a bright day, perfectly serene and calm; the sun shining, a gentle little breeze caressing the waving grass, and breathing softly over the mourners. There had been rain in the morning, so that everything was dewy and moist. It was what country people call “a growing day;” a day on which you could almost see the new buds opening out, and hear the new blades of the grass escape out of their sheaths; a day of life and overbrimming vitality; the kind of day in which it is hardest to think of dying or of death.

“Eh, waes me, waes me!” said the old lady, who knew what loss was, with the tears running down her soft old cheeks, as the coffin was lowered into the grave.

Then rose that strangely solemn sound—one voice rising in the open air in the daylight, amidst the hush of a crowd, a sound not to be mistaken for any other, and which chills the very soul of the chance hearer, while it so often gives a momentary consolation to the mourner. Mrs. Murray bowed down her old head, weeping at the sound of her husband’s prayer, which was too far off to be heard. But Miss Jean kept gazing, her bright little eyes shining out of her head, her cap pressed closely against the window.

“New-fangled ways—new-fangled ways!” she was saying to herself. “What the better is the poor body for all that praying? The lad’s soul is beyond the power of prayer. He’s in his Maker’s hand. He was but an ill young lad, and I’m glad for your sake that the doctor has nothing to say about things that can never be known till all’s known. I cannot abide these changes. I approved Marjory when she threw in her lot with the old Kirk, though brought up otherwise; but I do not approve of changing auld forms and ways to make them like anither ritual. No, no; that’s not a thing I can approve. But half Fife is there,” she added, with a long-drawn breath of satisfaction, “I am thankful to think that the family is not letten down, whatever happens. There’s Lord Largo himself, or I’m sore mistaken, and all the family from Magusmoor. It shows great respect—great respect. Thomas Heriot may be proud; there’s men there that would not have come so far for King or Commons. I’m thankful myself to see that real old friendship aye lasts. Marjory being there is the only eyesore to me. She should have stayed at home. Women should bide at home. It would have set her better to have learned a lesson to her young sister how life’s uncertain and death’s sure.”

“Poor bairn! she will learn that soon enough.”

Miss Jean made no reply. She leant her chin upon her cane, and kept looking out, the slight tremulous movement of her head communicating a certain vibration to all the outline of her figure and black drapery. Her mind was intent upon the different groups standing about against the grey churchyard wall, bareheaded under the sun. One by one she recognised them, with her keen eyes. She had known them and their fathers and grandfathers before them, every one. The central group of all was perhaps that which the old woman noted least. She had been grieved for “the family” chiefly because Tom was the heir, and the property must now go to the second son, a thing which was unknown in the Heriot traditions. But her grief was short and soon exhausted, as perhaps every strong sentiment is at her age. She no longer thought of Tom, nor of his desolate father, for whom at first she had been very sorry. What she was principally concerned with, was to see that all was done as it ought to be done, and that nowhere was there any failure of “respect.” And on this point she had been fully satisfied, so that the effect upon her mind, as she sat at the Manse window, was rather one of deep and sombre gratification than of grief.

“Thomas Heriot may be proud,” she repeated to herself, and she was sincerely unconscious of any incongruity in the thought.