“Nora,” cried the young man, desperate, “this is the moment that’s to settle my life. It’s little matter for you, but for me it’s life or death. I’m not asking you to take me now—say a year, say even two years, I’ll be content; but I have to know. Nora, bide a moment. If you turn me away without any hope, by——! there’s the Pretty Peggy sails from Anster on Saturday; I’ll go to Greenland in her, and never see you more.”
“And why should I want to see you more?” said Nora. “What do I care for your Pretty Peggy? It will do you a great deal of good, Mr. Erskine. It will teach you that you can’t have everything your own way.”
“Is this your last word, Nora?” cried the poor fellow, with glistening eyes. If she had looked him in the face, Nora’s heart would have given way. But she felt her weakness, and would not look him in the face. She stood by the table, turning over and over in her hand an Indian toy of carved ivory, with her eyes fixed upon it, as if it was the intricacies of the pattern that involved life and death; and then she said slowly, while the blood seemed to ebb away from her heart, “I have nothing more to say.”
In another moment the door shut violently, and Willy Erskine was gone. The sound went through the house like a thunderclap, and threw down, with its violent concussion, the castle of cards in which Nora had been entrenching herself. She sank down upon a chair, stupefied, and listened to the step that went echoing along the street. Was he gone? Was he really gone, and for ever? Gone to Greenland in the Pretty Peggy, into the ice where men and ships perished, into the whaling boats where they sank and were lost for ever? Should she never see him more?
“You’ve made the bed, and you must lie on it,” said Mrs. Sinclair, when she heard all, with an indignation that was soon lost in sympathy. But Nora would not give way either to the sympathy or the indignation. She declared steadily that she would do the same over again if it was in her power. “What right had he to come making claims, and speaking of his rights to me?” she said. “If a lad follows a girl, does that give him a right to her—whether or no?” This was said with burning eyes, into which tears refused to come. But yet Nora shed tears enough over it. She took immense pains privately to find out when the Pretty Peggy sailed, and to know if she had shipped a doctor before she left Anster pier. Not for her life would she have asked the doctor’s name, but she satisfied herself so far. And when the fact could no longer be doubted, her heart grew so sick that she could not go home. The Sinclairs had friends “in England”—a vague sort of expression used by the untravelled Scotch then, as untravelled islanders nowadays talk of “the Continent.” Nora persuaded her mother that it would be pleasant to “go south,” and pay the long-promised visit. She was glad to go away, glad to be anywhere out of the range of those people and places with which Willy Erskine’s name was so closely connected. But the other day it seemed he had been so jubilant, so full of good prospects and high hopes. Now he was out upon the Northern seas, surgeon in a whaling ship, like any poor student or broken man. And he Drumthwacket’s son! and whose fault was it all? Nora was ashamed to confront even the familiar rocks that knew him so well—that knew how she had met him (by accident), and strayed with him along the sea-verge, with the salt spray now and then dashed into their fresh faces, and the surge rising to their feet. She dragged her home-loving mother about from one “connection” to another all the summer through, enjoying the visits but little, poor child. As for Mrs. Sinclair, a British matron of the present day would not be more disconsolate, nor feel herself more alien in the heart of French society, than was this Scottish gentlewoman among her southern connections. Their ways, their accent, their mode of living, were all discordant to her. “If I were to live all my life among those English,” she said, “I think I would rather die.” Her soul longed for the tents of Jacob and the dwellings of Jerusalem. “But if I were not to humour my own bairn,” added Mrs. Sinclair, with pathos, “who should humour her?” Nora was her only child; somehow or other she had make a mistake in her young life. Clouds had come up over the sun at the moment when that sun should have been brightest. Her mother could have given her the best of good advice, but she chose to give her something better instead—she “humoured” Nora. She was her tender partisan, right or wrong. She took up her cause and supported her silently against her own reproaches and all the world. And that is the best way of healing the wounded, if their friends but knew.
It was the end of summer before they returned to the Gushat-house. And then, whether it was that they were unexpected, or whether from her misdeeds towards Willy Erskine, as Nora thought, few people came to see them at first, and nobody so much as mentioned the Drumthwacket family. The name of Erskine was never, as Nora thought, named before her; and she felt herself more guilty still as she seemed thus to read her own condemnation in the eyes of others. But now the turn of the season had arrived; when she cast wistful looks from the corner of the garden up the long country road, going “north,” as those geographical, seafaring populations described it, a leaf would now and then flicker down through the sunny air, a sign that autumn had come. A few weeks more, and the Pretty Peggy might flutter up the Firth with all her sails set, like a fine lady coming into a ballroom, as the sailors delighted to say; and if Nora, penitent, with softness in her eyes, were by, could anyone doubt that the eager face of the ship’s doctor would expand too, and that the evil days would come to an end? No one could have doubted it but Nora. It was as certain that it would all be made up as that the Pretty Peggy would come safe out of the icy seas. To be sure, ships were lost there sometimes, sometimes detained among the ice. But look what a season it has been! Even the men’s wives were easy in their minds, and sung by their wheels, or mended the nets at their cottage doors, and looked over the smooth Firth with contented hearts. A week or two more, and the seamen, with their wages, and their curiosities, and their rejoicing, would have come home.
There was not a man’s wife in the Pretty Peggy who was so anxious as Nora. But then it was her fault. It was she who had sent him to sea—he who was no seaman, he whom a wealthier lot awaited. And perhaps he would look bitterly upon the woman whose caprice had wrought him so much harm. This was the thought that made her heart ache, and made the days so long to her. She used to walk out to the pier to watch the sunset reflections, and listen in silence to the prognostications of the fishers and seamen about. When they prophesied a gale, Nora’s heart would beat wild with alarm; when they gave their word the storm was past, a hush as of a consoled child would come over her. At last there came a speck on the horizon, upon which all those ancient mariners fixed their telescopes. They exchanged opinions about her rig, and her hull, and her manner of sailing, till Nora, standing by, was half crazed with suspense. At last the news flew through the town, waking up all the wynds and cottages. It was the Pretty Peggy at last.
It would be vain to describe the excitement into which Nora, like many another woman, rose at the news. The other women were the sailors’ wives, who had a right to be moved. She had no such right. She had never spoken even to her mother of the Pretty Peggy. She had been too proud at first to betray the smallest interest in the movements of her lost love, and she did not even know whether Mrs. Sinclair was aware that Willy was coming with the returning seamen out of the icy seas. She had to invent a reason for her anxiety as the ship drew near the port. “Willy Morrison is in her, mamma,” said Nora. “I’d like to go down and see them come in. His mother will be so happy.” Willy Morrison’s mother had been Nora’s nurse, and that was her excuse.
“Well, well,” said Mrs. Sinclair, with an impatience unusual to her. “I wanted you at home this afternoon; but Nancy will be proud to see you have a warm heart to your foster-brother. Be home as soon as you can. I would not be surprised if some friend was to look in to tea.”
Nora gave her mother a startled look, of which Mrs. Sinclair took no notice. She looked as if she had her secret too; and most probably she knew as well as her daughter did who was coming up the tranquil Firth in the returning ship. Did her mother expect him too? Could it be possible, after all the tragic hours that were past, that things should fall so calmly into the old routine, and Willy Erskine, after his voyage, look in to tea? She did not know if she walked on air or solid ground when she made her way down again to the pier. If that were to be the end of it, of what use had been all the agonies of those silent months? Life seemed to swim before her like a dream and confused phantasmagoria, as she thought, but yet a subtle sense of happiness was gathering at her heart. He was coming so soon; he was so near; and all those ghosts would roll up their gloomy wings and disappear out of sight, when Willy Erskine once more looked in at the Gushat-house. She went quickly down along the half-deserted road to the pier where the women were all crowding. The Pretty Peggy could not reach the harbour yet for more than an hour; but still, to be so much nearer her, to be ready to meet the men and hear that all was well, five minutes earlier, was compensation enough for the wives. They made pleasant little speeches to Nora as she came down among them. “Ah, Miss Nora, the day will come when you’ll be lookin’ out for a man o’ your ain,” said one. “And I hope with a’my heart it’ll be a good man and a pleasant day,” added another. “But Miss Nora’s man will never be a seafarin’ man like ours, to make her heart sair,” said a third. “Unless it was a grand captain of a frigate in a’ his gold lace,” was the ambitious aspiration of Nancy Morrison. “Sure I am, I didna bring up a winsome young lady for less than that.” She was a favourite, and this was the pleasant chatter that passed, as she went among them, from lip to lip.