“Old Pat!—if it’s our respected superior, Mr. Wedderburn, that ye mean by that familiar no to say contemptuous epithet,” said Mr. Martin—“he has just heard of the loss of his dearest friend. You would do better to feel for him than to mock at a good man in trouble, my young friend.”
Mr. Wedderburn rushed to Portobello as fast as the train would take him, following in the track of his young clerk, who had already exhausted every means of information, but who fortunately met the lawyer on the way and gave him the result of his inquiries. These inquiries seemed to leave no doubt as to the catastrophe, and Wedderburn found to his horror that it was already very generally known, and that there had been a paragraph on the subject in the Scotsman, fortunately not giving the name of the sufferer, but indicating the general fear that a well-known member of society had been the victim. “They never read the papers,” Mr. Wedderburn said to himself, “and she would never think it was—him” (already it seemed too familiar to say Bob). When some one came hurrying up to him, grasping his hand and asking, “Is this awful news true?—is it out of doubt that it’s poor D’yell?”—the broken-hearted man felt once more fiercely angry at the question, as if it was not a thing to be discussed in ordinary words. But this was morbid, he knew. The questioner was Mr. Scrymgeour, Fred’s host, the giver of the ball on the previous night, who explained that he had seen the paragraph in the papers, and had secured it at once and come in to Edinburgh to inquire, that the poor boy should hear nothing till he could ascertain if it were true. And even while he spoke, others came pressing upon them with grave faces: “Was it true? Could it be D’yell?” The sensation was extraordinary. “He was said to be a little shaky in business matters,” said one. “That was all rubbish,” said another. “A man with a good estate at his back and plenty of friends—no fear but he would have pulled through.” “And Chili stock is looking up again, which was supposed to be his danger.” Thus they stood and talked him over. “I suppose there is no doubt it was an accident?” said another cautiously. This remark caught the lawyer’s anxious ear, upon whose own heart a heavy cloud of dread was hanging. But there was a chorus (thank God!) of assurances. No, no!—Bob D’yell was the best fellow in the world. He was a man always confident in his own mind, a man that had every inducement to live—with a fine family, his son at Oxford, with a good estate behind him, and an excellent character and plenty of friends. Even if there might be a little temporary embarrassment—that would soon have blown over. There were men that would have stuck by him through thick and thin. “Me, for instance,” said Mr. Wedderburn, careless of grammar. “I went out especially last night to tell him, if there really was trouble, I would see him through it——” “Poor fellow! Poor Bob! Poor D’yell!” the bystanders said in their various tones. Nobody had the faintest hope that he could have escaped. Such a prodigy as a man without clothes would soon have been known along the coast. And of course he would have hurried back, if he had been saved, to ease the anxieties of his friends. It was only Mr. Wedderburn who insisted upon every means being taken to secure the poor remains, and that not for certainty of the fact, but for decent burial. There is no coroner’s inquest in Scotland; but an inquiry into all the circumstances was immediately set on foot, an inquiry at first in which there was no certain evidence but the piteous heap of clothes, the respectable garments in which every man of business goes to town. The papers left in the pocket, the few shillings on the sands, the notes in his pocket-book, were all so many unconscious witnesses to the accident, all proving how accidental, how unlooked-for, was this cutting short of his career. There was even a withered rose in his coat, a pale China rose from one corner of the terrace at Yalton, which Mr. Wedderburn recognised with a pang, as if it had been one of the children. The tears blinded the middle-aged lawyer’s eyes as he took this faded thing out of his friend’s coat, brushed off the sand from the withered leaves, and put it in his pocket-book reverently. All who were present looked on at this little incident as if it had been a religious rite.
It may be added here that the naked remains of a drowned man were found a few weeks afterwards on the east sands of Portobello. Needless to say that they were quite unrecognisable; but the height and size, and the absence of clothing, made it as nearly certain as any such thing could be that this was all that remained of Robert Dalyell.
Meanwhile that fatal day passed over at Yalton, the first part very quietly, as usual, in the ordinary occupations of the household. It was a beautiful morning, full of comfort and good hope, and Mrs. Dalyell was busy in her house. It was the day for the overseeing and paying of the weekly bills, and there were various repairs necessary before the winter set in which she had to look after, and a great deal of linen—napery as she called it—had come in from the laundry, which it was essential to examine to see what wanted renewing and what it would be possible to darn and keep in use. Old Janet Macalister was famous for her darning. Old as she was, it was still, Mrs. Dalyell said, “a pleasure to see” her work. It was an ornament to the tablecloths rather than a blemish. Old Janet was in great activity, almost agitation. She appeared in the house, as she very rarely did, and talked so much in an excited way, that the servants thought her “fey.” She went with Mrs. Dalyell to the housekeeper’s room, uninvited, to examine the linen. “Dinna put that away. I can darn that fine,” old Janet said to many articles over which her mistress shook her head. “Losh! what’s the good o’ me, eatin’ bread and burnin’ fire this mony mony a year, if I canna keep the napery in order!” she cried. Her head, which was slightly palsied, nodded more than usual, her large pale hands shook; but her voice was strong, and she ended every sentence with a harsh laugh.
“I am afraid you are not very well to-day, Janet,” said Mrs. Dalyell.
“Oh, ’deed am I, very well; but ye must give me work, mistress, ye must give me work. Without work there are o’er many thoughts in a person’s head for comfort. And that fine darning, it just takes everything out of ye: it takes up baith body and mind.”
When her survey of the linen was over, Mrs. Dalyell came back to the drawing-room, having sent old Janet back to her room with an armful of sheets and tablecloths. And she was glad to escape from the old woman. There was a gleam in her eyes, often fixed upon her mistress with a penetrating look, as if she knew something, and her unusual flurry of speech and the harsh laugh of agitation which occurred so often, which Mrs. Dalyell did not understand, and which alarmed her—she could not tell why. Then came luncheon, to which she sat down with her girls, with a forlorn sense of the two empty seats which Foggo had placed as usual. “I thought, mem,” he said in his solemn way, “that Mr. Fred would have been home, if not the maister.”
“Why should you think Mr. Fred would have been at home?” she asked almost angrily.
“He is coming in the afternoon with some of the young people from Westwood for tea. We shall want tea on the terrace at half-past four, and there will probably be five or six people.”
“Very well, mem,” said Foggo, more solemn than ever, and with a look which, like Janet’s, meant more than his words.