“I will stay this night, if you can accommodate me,” was the answer.
The landlady curtsied.
“I’ll send up Susan to the Rectory for Mary, and mayhap she can tell.”
In half an hour Susan was despatched, her mother in the mean time taking upon herself to prepare the unbidden supper; and in about an hour and a half after, Susan returned alone. The Rectory Mary had deserted her post, and was now half a dozen miles away over the fell, visiting her mother, and the girl left in charge had been fain to keep Susan for an hour’s gossip to cheer her loneliness. She knew only that the Rector and her mistress had gone to Scotland; but as Scotland, in the reckoning of Susan of the inn and Sally at the Rectory was a word of quite indefinite signification, meaning sometimes a village like their own, and sometimes enlarging into the dimensions of a dale, or of a great town like the picturesque one near them, which filled up to overbrimming their idea of “the world,” the information thus obtained was anything but satisfactory. So Mossgray endeavoured to ascertain something further from the landlady.
“They came here eighteen months past, come Whitsuntide. I mind it particular, because my Susan and more o’ the young folks were up at the confirmation the Bishop had up yonder, in the town, the end of that summer; and it would have done any one’s heart good to have seen my girl in her white muslin, and her cap, and all of them trooping down the dale in the fine morning. But the Scotch lady wouldn’t have her daughter go, though the Rector took the trouble to talk to her himself. I donna understand such things, but mayhap, Sir, the like of you do that are learned, why the young Miss shouldn’t have gone with the rest, like any other Christian. But they were quiet, peaceable folks, no one can say again that; and except it were wandering about the dale, the old lady leaning heavy on Miss, and looking as faint when she came back as if she had done a day’s work, I know no pleasure they ever took, young or old of them; and they cared about nought but books and the post. I have seen them sit on the brow yonder in the summer time reading for hours; and in the winter time I’ve looked in at the window passing by—not that I’m a prying body, or care about my neighbour’s business, but only, there was nought like their ways in the whole dale—and there they would be, with a turf fire you could ’most have held in your two hands, one of them doing fine work, and the other reading; and beautiful Miss can work, Mary at the Rectory says, and it was all for some rich friends that sent them money now and again—though sure it wasn’t much—but it’s like you’ll know, Sir?”
A painful colour was on the face of Adam Graeme: “Poor, and in trouble, and ye visited me not.” He felt every word an accusation, and could scarcely answer “No.”
“And every month or two—I donna know but what it was every month—Miss went by herself into the town to get letters: and I’ve heard say she’d pay more for them than would have put a bit of something comfortable on their table many a day. They were from some far away part, and they came as regular as Sunday comes: but no one could tell who sent them, for she had ne’er a brother, and her father was dead. The Rector’s lady took a deal of notice of Miss and her mother; not that she is one of that kind herself, for she’s just a good easy creature, that doesn’t trouble her head about learning; but she came from Scotland herself you know. I’ve heard Mary at the Rectory say that the old lady had been in such a many places—never biding long in one, I reckon; and you know the old word, Sir, about the rolling stone. Well, they had been in this way more than a year—a good fourteen months it would be, for it was past Midsummer—when the old lady fell ill; and she kept on getting better and worse, better and worse, till a fortnight come next Friday when she died—and a week past on Monday they buried her. At the burial, I know for certain, Miss was like nought but a shadow, and just yesterday the Rector and his lady went off to Scotland and took her with them. I’ve heard Mary at the Rectory say she was gone to be governess to the Rector’s lady’s sisters; but I donna know what’s their name, nor where they live; and please, Sir, that’s all I can tell you.”
The talkative landlady recollected other scraps of gossip however, before she suffered so good a listener to escape her. The subdued and quiet life of the mother and daughter—the proud poverty that made no sign—the privations which were guessed at—which perhaps were magnified—the mysterious letters—the little incidental and unconscious touches which revealed through a mist of verbiage something of the second Lilias, in the fresh youth which knew no cares but those of poverty, and in the first paralysis and stupor of her heavy grief. But the other figure—the sad Naomi leaning on the girl’s arm, and sinking, amid hardship and the chill pains of penury, into a stranger’s grave—every new touch did but deepen the sad cold colours of the picture, and this was the lofty Lily of the old man’s dream—the sunny and joyous daughter of Greenshaw.
The next morning Mossgray left the Cumberland glen, resolving, if his search did not prosper in Scotland, to return when the reverend ruler of the little dale should have returned to his flock and his dominions. He remembered however with annoyance, when he had reached Carlisle on his way home, that he had not ascertained the Rector’s name. It had not been mentioned by his primitive parishioners, to whom “the Rector” was the title of titles; but Mossgray resolved to make immediate inquiry of Mrs Fendie, whose eldest daughter had married an English clergyman somewhere in this same district. He would write also to Walter Johnstone; he would advertise if other means failed, calling on the second Lilias to honour the bequest her mother had made to him. The trust was more sacred now than ever; it was enough that one had gone down uncomforted to the grave.