This shot was double, hitting both ways, and sent the unfortunate young man away in a fever of indignation, suppressed wrath, and uneasiness. There could be no doubt that he had a great deal of spare time on his hands; but few people like to be told this. And he was not anxious that Marjory should be made aware of his daily devotions at Pitcomlie. He did not return there, as he had intended to do, but took a long walk in a contrary direction, and reflected with much annoyance upon this unlucky encounter, and all the comments of which he would be the object.
“After all, I have a right to go where I please,” he said to himself—which was as true as anything could be, yet did not reveal a comfortable state of mind. “And I do not know how they could get on without me,” he added, also to himself, a whole hour after, with a gleam of complacency in the midst of his uneasiness. But he was not prepared to give up his allegiance to Marjory, or to meet again even in imagination the smile with which she had recognised his first infidelity. He wanted still, like so many other people, to keep both delights, his ideal and his foolish fancy, both together. Indeed, it may be said that Mrs. Murray’s threat had as serious an effect upon Johnnie Hepburn as that other appalling threat of another heir had upon Verna. Both of them felt, with a thrill of alarm, that their position was an assailable—nay, a dangerous—one, and that it was impossible to tell what an hour might bring forth. And both of them were moved instantaneously to the adoption of a more prudent course. Verna sacrificed her plans for the new wing, and Johnnie sacrificed the enervating delight of another hour’s philandering. Thus they propitiated Fate; which, however, seldom accepts such sacrifices. The chief sufferer by these prudential measures was Matilda, who, being impervious at once to reason and to sentiment, did not understand her sister, and was much annoyed by the withdrawal of her attendant, who amused her, if nothing more. She was the person really sacrificed, and that without seeing any reason for it. She yawned through the afternoon, until benign Providence sent her a soft slumber, which carried her through the time till dinner; and certainly it was hard, though natural, that she, the only one who had no responsibility, should thus be made the principal victim.
CHAPTER XI.
Marjory’s letter was brought to Fanshawe before he had left his room in the morning. This room was in the Albany, and though a most comfortable chamber, was not luxurious, nor of a character to have called forth the strictures of any reasonable Mentor. There were no opera-dancers on the walls. Fanshawe had long got over the period of artistic taste which delights in opera-dancers, if indeed he had ever gone through it. The few prints on his walls were good. To be sure there was a racehorse or two, but of these, of late days, he had the grace to be ashamed; and over his mantel-piece he had quite lately hung a print of one of Raphael’s Madonnas, in which he thought he saw a resemblance to Marjory. It was a fantastic resemblance, wholly existing in the imagination of the beholder; but such compliments of the heart have been paid before now even to plain women, and Marjory was not plain. It seemed to Fanshawe—to carry out the fantastical character of the idea—that it was only in his best moments that he saw this likeness. Sometimes he looked for it vainly, and called himself a fool to have entertained such a notion; but at other times it would shine out upon him, filling him with a kind of heavenly pleasure—that pleasure which glows in a man’s heart, and makes him feel his own nature exalted in a consciousness of the excellence of his love. Marjory’s little notes were very rare delights, and this all the more so for being utterly unexpected. He had written to her a long letter only two days before, and he had expected no reply. Was it possible that this could be the answer? The question was all the more interesting to him because he had delicately implied in his letter an inclination to visit St. Andrews. He had heard so much of that ancient borough; he had been quite excited by the account some of his friends had given him (he said) of the charms of the place; and London was empty, void, null, and unprofitable; he had never seen it so vacant, so uninteresting; he could not believe that he had ever found any pleasure in such a mental and moral desert. So he wrote, not without a certain eloquence. The centre of the world had shifted; it was no longer in London, but in St. Andrews; this, however, though he implied it, he did not say. And to receive so rapid an answer seemed to him a fortunate sign. He jumped out of bed in haste, and clothed himself, that he might read it with due respect. But soon the vague delight of anticipation on his face changed into something more serious. Marjory’s note was singularly different from the diffuse and much implying epistles which he was in the constant habit of addressing to her. In this there was not a word more than was absolutely necessary. It ran as follows:—
“I have made a discovery which is of the very deepest importance to us, and to the memory of my poor brother Tom, who was your friend. I have no right to ask your help, but I do, knowing you will not refuse me. Come to me, I beg of you, for Tom’s sake. I write in great haste to save the post. Oh, Mr. Fanshawe, come!
“M. H. H.”
Across this brief letter was written, very much blotted, a single line. “I have found——” He made out as much as this, but the last letters were so blotted that he could not decipher them. It looked like a name. Whom had she found? or what could have happened to excite her so? But he scarcely paused to ask himself these questions. He was too late for the day mail to Scotland—how he cursed himself for his indolence!—and had to wait the whole day through till the evening. At one time he thought of telegraphing to her; but there lingered a hope in Fanshawe’s mind that perhaps she had sent for him of her own impulse, and that “everybody” was not in the secret, a hope which he loved to cherish. He waited accordingly, most drearily, trying to get through the time as he best could, and finding it drag so that the day seemed to him as long as all the preceding year. He went from one club to another, by way of getting through the time; he went and made all sorts of ridiculous purchases; he looked at his watch about a million times; indeed, he kept dragging it in and out of his pocket, and watching the slow fluctuations of light in the afternoon, like a man possessed by one sole idea—which was a perpetual calculation how soon it would be nine o’clock.
Fanshawe arrived next day at St. Andrews, with a mist of excitement about him, through which he seemed to see but dimly the actual features of the place. He watched the long lines of the Links flying past the windows of the railway carriage, as he had seen all the intermediate plains and hills of the Scotch border and Midland counties since daybreak, with a strange sense that he himself was making no progress, but that they were rushing past and away from him. When he saw at last the group of spires which ended those long lines of grass, and stepped out upon ground which did not fly under his foot, it was as if he had dropped from the clouds into some mystic country which could not but bring him the uttermost weal or woe, yet was unknown to him as fairyland. He felt a tremour in his very frame as he stepped into that strange world, where it seemed impossible to him to conceive of the common accidents of every day, where there could be nothing, he felt, but great emotions, passions, excitement—events which he could not foresee, changes which he dared not anticipate. To fall into the ordinary stream of people arriving at a railway, calmed him down to some extent, and he set out to walk into the town without any self-betrayal. But he had not gone far before he saw a slight tall figure, clothed in black, detaching itself from the groups on the Links, and coming towards him with a step and bearing which he could not mistake. He stood still, restraining himself with difficulty from the cry of joy that seemed ready to burst from his lips. They say that love is but an accident in a man’s life, while it is everything in a woman’s; but it would be nearer the truth to say that a man’s absorption in this dream cannot last, while a woman’s may. Nothing could be more absolute than Fanshawe’s absorption at this moment in thought of the woman thus approaching him. Adam, when he saw Eve, the only human companion for him, could not have been more entirely bound and limited to the one being. This man saw nothing else, heard nothing else, felt nothing else in heaven or earth. He had asked himself sometimes whether he was at all, what is called, in love with Marjory Hay-Heriot. He asked himself no questions now. He did not care for what she was going to tell him, for what her business was, for the discovery affecting her family, for his friend’s memory, or anything else. He felt, saw, heard nothing but her. He did not seem even to have strength enough in himself to go to meet her. The very sight of her had caught him as in a trance of rapture. He felt that he could have wept over the hand she held out to him, like a baby, and mumbled it like an idol-worshipper. That he did neither, but only grasped it, and gazed at her with eyes full of speechless joy, seemed to him the most wonderful power of self-control. But Marjory’s eagerness was of a very different kind. As always, one of the two was at a disadvantage. He thought first and only of her; she thought of a great many other things, and then finally of him. Common consent allots this state of feeling to the man, but common consent is often wrong. It depends upon which of the two, man or woman, is the most deeply in earnest. “L’un qui se laisse aimer” is not always of the masculine gender, as a great many people know.
Marjory came up to him with an eagerness and satisfaction which would have been—oh! how delightful—had there not been other causes for it. She held out her hand to him, and then took his arm as if he had been her—brother. Yes, a great deal too much as if he had been her brother; but let that pass; it was very pleasant all the same, and then she said,