“I do not see what good I can do her,” she said. “I have no right to judge her, and I don’t judge her; but what can I do? If I can help her in any way, you have only to tell me; but I, whom she scarcely knows, who know nothing of her, why should I go to her? What good could I do?”
“Na, mem,” said the woman earnestly, “that’s mair than I can tell. It’s just a fancy. I’m no saying it’s more than a fancy; but ah, you ken yourself, sometimes all the world is no so much good to us as just something we have wished for and wanted; some bit thing that was nae solid advantage. Oh! if you would but come! You’re a leddy well kent and much thought o’, that can take no harm. It could not harm you; and oh! the comfort it would be to her!”
“Did you know me?” said Marjory, not knowing how to delay a little longer, and to make a last effort to stifle the melting of the heart in her own breast; “or did she know me? How did you trace me here?”
“Poor thing, she knows nobody,” said the woman; “and neither did I ken ye, mem. I ken few strangers. I found ye out by your description. I spoke to a friend of mine, a fisher’s wife, that comes whiles with her creel to the door; and as soon as she had heard me out, she said, ‘Unless I’m sair mista’en, I ken the young leddy;’ and, sure enough, she brought me to this door; but now I ken ye, Miss Heriot. My man has a cousin that lives at Comlie, and mony a time I’ve heard of the Laird’s family. Oh! Miss Heriot, come out with me! She’s in her bed, yon poor lass. Come and give her a little life, and hear her story. The sight of her would melt a heart of stone.”
Marjory’s was not a heart of stone, and it pled with her, more strongly than did this intercessor. She had seen the girl only three or four times, and had spoken to her but twice; though that had been enough to rouse in her a vague but powerful sentiment, for which she felt there was no adequate foundation. Now, however, this sentiment rose into a certain passionate force; she dismissed her visitor with a vague promise to go some time or other; but the moment the woman was gone, the pleading voice within awoke with double force, and gave her no rest. It interfered with her inevitable duties; it made her silent and pre-occupied, unable to respond to her little sister’s constant questions, and the remarks of Mr. Charles, who chose to come home for luncheon upon that day of all others, and was full of the doings of the new ladies at Pitcomlie, whom somebody he had met had been telling him doleful stories about. Mr. Charles’s brow was puckered with anxiety, and his niece did not give him the sympathy he hoped for. “I do not know what is to come of the old house, or what I can do,” he cried. “No doubt I am joint guardian; but how I am to fight against these two young women, or keep them from having their way—it’s a position I never anticipated, never anticipated, May.”
“No doubt.” She was thinking she heard the cry “bring back the leddy!” and Matilda and her sister had no interest for Marjory, even though they were turning upside down her father’s house.
“For you see,” said Mr. Charles, with his perplexed look; “though I am joint guardian, so is she; and you may say what you please, May, when it comes to be judged between two people, and one of them a pretty young woman, there’s no tribunal yet invented that will hold the scales of justice altogether even. I might do the best for the boy and his inheritance; but she’s his mother, and has nature on her side. The claims of nature might not tell so much if she were not bonnie; but the two together are irresistible. I do not know if I have your attention—”
“Oh yes, uncle!” said Marjory. But she was not, in reality, paying any attention. Her mind was away, speeding along the coast towards the Spindle Rock, and the lowly cottage under its shadow. Mr. Charles went back to his golf somewhat disappointed at the want of interest with which his plaints had been heard, and with a secret uneasiness in his mind as to the cause of Marjory’s abstraction. He ran over all the list of men whom he had asked to dinner, in the accidental manner suggested by Miss Jean, with an anxious self-inquiry whether any of them might have to do with it. The idea was not a pleasant one. He had obeyed the old woman’s suggestion because he could not help himself, and with a secret certainty that nothing would come of it; but the thought that something might come of it was not agreeable. It confused him in his playing that afternoon; he made such a failure on the putting green as had not been known to be made by an experienced player for many a day, and covered himself with confusion. “It’s all these young women,” Mr. Charles said to himself ruefully; as, indeed, many another man has felt, if not said.
“May I come with you, May?” said little Milly wistfully. This was another difficulty to be got over. “I never go with you now; and at Pitcomlie I never was away from you.”
“At Pitcomlie there were no links,” said Marjory, smiling; and with a promise to walk with her in the evening, she disposed of her little sister. The afternoon sunshine was blazing over the coast when she set out finally on her long walk. A whole fleet of red-sailed fishing-boats were out at sea, and dropping forth from the sheltered embrace of the little harbour; a brisk little wind was blowing from the west, a genial breeze which never disturbs the Firth, or brings up foaming waters in the bay. The sun shone with that soft and tempered light which rejoices the heart, without affecting unpleasantly the physical frame. Marjory hastened on, tracing the turnings of the coast, ascending and descending, now on the crest of the cliffs, now at their feet. She had no eyes for the landscape, no ear for the soft splash and murmur of the waves; her heart beat with anticipations for which it was impossible to give, even in imagination, any reasonable motive. Nothing that she could hear could affect her personally, and yet the emotion which possessed her was too strong to be entirely sympathetic. She said to herself that it must be some tale of pathetic shame for sin at the best, which awaited her; some story which might rouse her pity, but which would probably repel and disgust her at the same time. What better could she look for? But she hastened as if to hear news of the greatest personal importance, with a thrill in her veins, and a quite unusual palpitation in her heart.