Marjory stood looking after her as she disappeared into the night. Perhaps after all it was but a whim of her own, a fancy that had nothing in it. She turned away from the door with a sigh, and then the gust of chilly air which caught her from the garden, reminded her that she had left Fanshawe there, and that he must have heard all. She went slowly back to seek him, and make her apology, her mind, like the night, dark and wistful, full of chill airs and many clouds.
CHAPTER XIX.
If Tom Heriot’s funeral had called all the gentry of Fife to do the family honour, it may be supposed that his father’s, following so soon after, and in such circumstances of aggravated distress, brought out a still greater attendance. Mrs. Murray once more sat at the Manse window, with many tears, watching the mournful procession, and wondering much whether it would have been better for him had the Laird of Pitcomlie been “resigned,” or whether it was well for the old man to be thus removed quickly, that he might not have sorrow on sorrow. It seemed to her that his was the lot she would have chosen for herself, and she thought tremulously as she wept, of her daughter in India, and prayed for her as she cried for poor Charlie Heriot. Miss Jean had not ventured this time to join Mrs. Murray at her window. The old woman was peeping from behind her blinds in the white gable, with eyes that shone at sight of the many carriages.
“Thomas Heriot may be proud,” she said to herself, confused between the two deaths, and not feeling quite sure that her nephew was not in one of the mourning coaches enjoying the melancholy grandeur of which he was himself the object. All that was honourable in Fife was there, the old gentry, and the new people of wealth, and the tenantry, and the town—even the fishers, smelling of salt water, though arrayed in the suit of “blacks” which it is a point of honour with that class to keep in readiness for a funeral. The churchyard was quite full of people, intent upon showing their respect for Pitcomlie.
It was Mr. Charles who had received and arranged all this miscellaneous assemblage. People at his age do not mourn for each other very acutely, perhaps because the separation cannot be a long one, perhaps because that grand final event has become so ordinary an occurrence. To the young it is less familiar, less close at hand. The older one grows, the more one is disposed to represent death to one’s self as an every-day incident, and old men who are themselves approaching that verge are apt to dismiss somewhat summarily those who have preceded them. Besides, a week had elapsed between Mr. Heriot’s death and his funeral, and that long interval of seclusion, and absorption in one idea, is enough to take the edge of all but the most sensitive feelings. It was anxiety more than grief that sat heavy on the brow of Mr. Charles.
“We must think now of the living, not of the dead,” he had said on the previous evening.
And indeed there was reason enough to make that transference of solicitude, and to think of the living. For all the courses of nature had been driven out of trim, and no one of the party cared to confront the position, or ask themselves what was to come of it: except indeed Verna, who thought of nothing else; but her thoughts would have been far from pleasing to the others had they known.
It was a long business to get all the sympathizing friends away, and to thank and shake hands with the distant hereditary acquaintances who once more had come so far to do honour to the Heriots. The house was in a curious excitement during this interval. All round Pitcomlie many carriages were waiting, and profuse hospitality was being dispensed by Mrs. Simpson and her maids in the servants’ hall amid gossip, melancholy but consolatory.
Mr. Charles was doing his duty manfully in the dining-room, administering the excellent sherry, and making such serious remarks now and then as did not misbecome a mourner.
Marjory, with Milly at her feet, and Fanshawe, bearing her most sympathetic company, was in the drawing-room, where the shutters were still closed, letting in mournful lines of light through their interstices upon the group. She had felt herself “obliged” last night to tell him about Isabell. She was glad to feel herself obliged to do so, for her heart was aching with a desire for counsel and sympathy; and Fanshawe had taken her confidence very differently from Mr. Charles’s mode of taking it. He had been interested and touched by the letter. He had even suggested at once that this was what poor Tom had intended to speak of; and he agreed with Marjory that the visitor who had so totally declined to tell who she was, or why she came, must have been somehow connected with the unknown Isabell. The secret, which was now between them, added another delicate bond to their friendship. He sat beside her now, talking it all over; suggesting, now one way, now another, of finding out who and where Isabell was. Tom had never mentioned such a subject to him—