“Do you know where William went, when we came out, Hope?” said the banker.
Hope looked up doubtfully in her father’s face; but she hesitated only a moment. “He went to Mrs Buchanan’s, father.”
Mr Oswald said nothing. William had only been a few hours at home, but during these had undergone a scrutiny of which he little dreamed. The banker had been prepared to find his son changed, and had prepared himself to be contemptuous; but William was not changed: and the old pertinacity began to tighten its grasp upon his father’s heart.
In a quiet link of the water, not very far from Fendie, yet as still and solitary as though it were in the midst of a wilderness, lay a little mossy burying-ground. They are frequent in that Border district; melancholy, green, dewy places, sometimes clustering their tall, grey spectral gravestones about the ruined walls of an ancient chapel, sometimes altogether deserted by the reliques of the old faith—lying alone, by roadsides and in quiet places, disturbed only when grave processions come, to add to the number of the names of those who are dwelling there.
A few fine old trees grew within the enclosure and round it; through a fringe of long bare willow branches you could see the water. Mimic forests of moss covered the trunks of the trees, and minute white fungi specked the green with delicate flower-bells. Hope Oswald had a great admiration of those lichens—she entered the graveyard to seek some specimens of them—and her father good-humouredly followed her.
The strong man’s heart was softened; he was more open to kindly impressions than usual; and as he stood waiting for his favourite child, his eye fell upon a grave. Nothing had happened in his prosperous life to bring him near such solemn dwelling-places as this. He had lost no children; and the memory of father, mother, and brethren, had faded out of his heart long ago. He had never seen this humble stone before: “Sacred to the memory of Walter Buchanan;” it moved him like the dead man’s voice.
With a hushed and whispering tone the river passed by upon its way, and the willows rustled on the water with a low lamenting cadence. Amid such sights and sounds as living he would have loved to hear, the gentle man lay dead; where none could ask or give forgiveness—where none could alter the unjust anger, the evil sternness, the cruel pride which was past. The heart of the rigid man began to beat and tremble, as he remembered the absolute conclusion put to all human doings by that grave. A little time the glad vicissitudes of change should remain for himself—and then—
What life soever he had darkened—what truth dishonoured—what mercy neglected—absolute and stern, the coming death should fix them all unchangeable for ever.
He was a Christian man, despite of all the weakness which lay in his boasted strength. He felt that the secrets of his own heart lay bare before the Eye which judged the dead. Wonderingly Hope Oswald looked into her father’s awed and changing face. She dared not venture to say, “This is poor Mr Buchanan’s grave,” as, with simple art, she had intended, when she first observed it; and in silence he took her hand and led her away.
His stronghold was broken down—his worldly wisdom failed him. He had deliberated on all his actions all his life—should he obey the impulse now?