CHAPTER XXVIII.
“You’re to bide away—you’re no to come near this place. Na, you may just fecht; but you’ve nae pith compared to Jenny, for a’ sae auld and thrawn as Jenny has been a’ her days. It’s no me just—it’s your mamma and the doctor. Bairn! will you daur struggle wi’ me?”
But Menie would dare straggle with any one—neither command nor resistance satisfies her.
“Let me in—I want to see my mother.”
“You can want your mother for a day—there’s mair than you wanting her. That puir old haverel there—guid forgie me—she’s a dying woman—has sairer lack o’ her than you. Keep to your ain place, Menie Laurie—muckle made o’—muckle thocht o’—but you’re only a bairn for a’ that—you’re no a woman o’ judgment like your mamma or me. I tell yon to gang away—I will not let you in.”
And Jenny stood firm—a jealous incorruptible sentinel in the passage which led to Miss Annie Laurie’s room. “Miss Menie, ye’ll no take it ill what I say,” said Jenny; “there’s death in the house, or fast coming. I ken what the doctor means. Gang you ben the house, like a guid bairn; look in your ain glass, and see if there should be a face like that in a house where He comes.”
Menie looks silently into the countenance before her—the keen, impatient, irascible face; but it was easy to see a hasty tear dashed away from Jenny’s cheek.
And without another word, Menie Laurie turned away. Some withered leaves are lying on the window-sill—the trees are yielding up their treasures, dropping them down mournfully to the disconsolate soil—but the meagre yew-tree rustles before her, darkly green in its perennial gloom. Rather shed the leaves, the hopes—rather yield to winter meekly for the sake of spring—rather be cut down, and rooted up altogether, than grow to such a sullen misanthrope as this.
And Menie Laurie looks into her own face; this gloomy brow—these heavy eyes—are these the daylight features of Menie Laurie?—the interpretation of her heart? Earnestly and long she reads—no lesson of vanity, but a stern sermon from that truthful mirror. Hush!—listen!—what was that?—a cry!
The doctor is leaving Miss Annie Laurie’s room—the cry is over—there is only now a feeble sound of weeping; but a shadow strangely still and sombre has fallen upon the house, and the descending step rings like a knell upon the stairs. What is it?—what is coming?—and what did it mean, that melancholy cry?