“Your mother!” said old Janet, with the natural contempt of an old servant for the mistress; then she added in a different tone: “if it was only your mother”—shaking her old head.
“Who else?” said Fred with indignation. But Janet made no reply. She turned her back upon him and went off along the terrace, always shaking her head, which was slightly palsied and had a faint nodding motion besides. Something in this confirmed movement which was comic, and the jealousy of his mother, which had always been a well-known feature in old Janet, tended to give a ludicrous character to her appeal. Instead of deepening the sadness of his thoughts, it lightened them with a curious sense of relief. It seemed to take away at once the gravity of the recollection of his father’s reference to her, and the painful suggestion in it which had caused Fred so much trouble, when old Janet thus displayed herself in an absurd rather than a tragical light.
CHAPTER VI.
Mr. Wedderburn entered very naturally into the charge of his friend’s affairs. He had been Dalyell’s counsellor already on many occasions in his life, and knew much about his concerns, the resources of the estate, and all the original sources of income which Dalyell had increased, yet fatally risked, by his speculations. No one was better fitted than he to apply the welcome aid of the insurance moneys to the relief of Yalton from all the encumbrances which the dead man’s other affairs had imported into his life. A man so familiar with the household and all its affairs, nobody could know so well as he how to guide the revenues of the household so as to afford their usual comforts to Mrs. Dalyell and the girls without injuring Fred’s interests, or forgetting the very near approach of the time when he should take the control into his own hands. It was evident that changes were inevitable then; either that Mrs. Dalyell should retire to a house of her own, or that she should remain as Fred’s housekeeper, with her authority contingent upon his plans, and liable to be destroyed whenever the young man should think of marriage—a position in which the faithful friend of the house was unwilling to contemplate the mistress of Yalton. It was not a thing that would have affected Mrs. Dalyell. It would not have occurred to her to think that the house was less hers by being Fred’s. But Mr. Wedderburn was jealous of her dignity, and it wounded a certain imaginative sense of fitness for which no one would have given the dry old lawyer credit—the notion that the woman whom he had so long admired and liked should be dependent on her boy’s caprice and whether it should please him or not to marry. The event which would make another change, so great, in her position, troubled him more than he could say. Was it not enough, he asked himself, that she should have had this shock to bear, and her life rent in two, that she should now have to yield all authority to Fred, and be dependent upon him for her home and dignity? The thought did not disturb Mrs. Dalyell, who felt it as natural to continue as before at the head of a house, which was no less hers because her son was now its formal head, as to perform any other act of life. But it did disturb her champion and guardian, who made it more and more his office from day to day to watch over her comfort and spare her trouble.
It was astonishing how Pat Wedderburn, who had not for many years, indeed for all his independent life, known more of the sweets of domesticity than those which he shared at second-hand in the houses of his friends, and especially at Yalton, fell into the ways of the head of a family. He did not, indeed, come out to Yalton every night as poor Dalyell had done, but he spent at least half of his evenings there, and gave his mind to the consideration of what was wanted in the house, and what would be agreeable to both mother and girls, with a curious familiar devotion which was at once amusing and touching. No father probably ever was so mindful of the tastes of his children as Mr. Wedderburn was of Susie and Alice. He remembered what they liked, and noted every expression of a wish with an affectionate vigilance and thoughtfulness which surprised even the girls, though they were well accustomed to have their little caprices considered. As for Mrs. Dalyell, no wife ever had her likings more sedulously consulted, her suggestions more carefully carried out, than were hers by her co-executor, her trustee, and fellow-guardian of the children. She had but to speak to Mr. Wedderburn about any trifling obstacle and it was immediately removed out of their way. He regarded her wants and wishes as things which were sacred; not as a husband does, whose natural impulse it is to contest, if not to deny. Life had never been made so easy for the ladies of Yalton. When he came out it was almost certain that some pleasant surprise accompanied him—a book, a present, something that either girls or mother had wished for. And they all took Mr. Wedderburn as completely for granted as if this devotion had been the most natural thing in the world.
And it would be impossible to describe the sweetness that came into the life of old Pat Wedderburn (as Edinburgh profanely called him) from this amateur performance, so to speak, of the duties of husband and father. He had long been in the habit of considering Yalton as a sort of home. But yet his visits there, though he was always so welcome, were more or less at the pleasure of his hosts, and he had kept up the form, though it was not much more than a form, of being invited. Now no such restraint (though it had never been much of a restraint) existed. He put a certain limit upon himself, but save for that the house of his wards was to him as his own, always open, always ready. They were all his wards, the mother not less than the children. It is true she was joined with him in the trust, and that she was a woman, as he said to himself, of a great deal of sense, who could give him advice upon many subjects, and even took or appeared to take an intelligent interest in investments, and knew whether the claims of the farmers were just, and what was right in respect to repairs, &c., better than Mr. Wedderburn himself. But she had never been accustomed to do anything for herself, to act independently, to take any step without advice and active help. It is impossible to say how pleasant it was to the middle-aged bachelor to be thus referred to at every moment asked about everything, consulted in every domestic contingency. He would not have minded even had he been called upon to settle difficulties with the servants, or subdue a refractory cook, nor would it have bored him to have a housekeeper’s afflictions in this way poured into his ears.
Happily, however, in the large easy-going household at Yalton there were few difficulties of that kind. Mrs. Dalyell was an excellent manager, but she was not exacting, and her servants were chiefly old servants, who ruled the less permanent kitchen-maids, footboys, &c., under them with rods of iron, but did not trouble the mistress with their imperfections. When a house has been long established on such a footing, and there is no overwhelming necessity for economy, or interfering dispositions on the part of its head, it is wonderful how smoothly it will roll on, notwithstanding all human weaknesses. And the shadow of grief glided away. There could not have been a more desirable house, or a more pleasant routine of life. The very neighbourhood breathed peace into Wedderburn’s being. Before he had reached the gates the atmosphere of content enveloped him. He had something in his pocket for the girls—he had something to consult their mother about, generally her own business, but sometimes even his, so great a confidence was he acquiring in her common-sense. To think that the loss of poor Bob Dalyell should have brought so great an acquisition of happiness into his life! He was ashamed when he came to think of it, and felt a compunction as if he had profited by his friend’s disaster. But it was no fault of his.
And there was no doubt that Mr. Wedderburn enjoyed Yalton and the life there a great deal more than if he had been really the father whose office as far as possible he had taken upon himself. He was not responsible for the faults or aggrieved by the imperfections of the children, as a man is to whom they belong. The very distance between them increased the charm. Although it would have been death to him to have been thrust out of that paradise, it would perhaps have lessened its charm had he been absolutely swept into it, bound to it, by law and necessity. The freedom of the voluntary tie added sweetness to the bond. He was far more at the orders of his adopted family than any father would have been; but that shyness of old bachelorhood, which is as real as the reserve of old maidenhood and very similar, though it is little remarked, was in no way ruffled or wounded by the present arrangement. And thus good came out of all the evil, to one at least of the little circle who had been so deeply affected by it. Poor Bob D’yell!—to think that he should have lost all this, and that his most devoted friend should have acquired it by his loss! This gave Mr. Wedderburn a compunction which was of course entirely fictitious and visionary—for had he not taken that position it would have been much worse for the family as well as for himself.
This state of affairs was scarcely interrupted by Fred’s majority, for Fred, no more than any other member of the household, considered that it made any difference. Of course, in the progress of time he would marry, and probably desire to be as his father had been. But, in the meantime, he felt himself no less a boy on the morning after his twenty-first birthday than he had done the morning before; and the idea of taking the reins out of his mother’s hands or desiring more freedom than he actually possessed, especially the freedom of turning her out of the house which was now legally his, or disturbing any of her arrangements, never occurred to Fred. Young people brought up under such an easy sway as that of Mrs. Dalyell do not feel the temptation of rushing wildly into freedom as soon as it is legally their own. Fred had always been free, and he could not be more so, because his name was now at the head of all the family affairs, and Frederick Dalyell, Esq., was now the official proprietor at Yalton. What difference did it make? The family generally said none. Of course, Fred, as the only son and the eldest, would have been paramount in the house under any circumstances; he could not be more than paramount now. But it was not to Fred that Mrs. Dalyell looked for help and advice, any more than it had been before; this birthday did not add experience or wisdom to the boy. And Mr. Wedderburn came and went just the same, looking after Fred’s interests, spoiling the girls, always ready to be referred to. It made no difference, nor did anybody wish that it should, except perhaps old Janet, whose opinion was not thought much of, whom Fred avoided carefully, and whose very existence was scarcely realised by the adviser of the house. As for Fred himself, his troubled thoughts had worn themselves out. Whatever trouble there may be in the mind respecting a man who has been in his grave for more than a year, it dies away under the progress of gentle time. To keep up the pressure of such misery there must be new events occurring or to be dreaded. What is altogether past affects the spirit in a different way. If there was a tragic secret unrevealed in the story of Robert Dalyell’s death, it was hidden for ever in the bitter waves that had swallowed him up: and the course of his young life had gradually swept from Fred’s mind the burden of his father’s tragedy. He had decided to go back to Oxford at the end of the first year, and he was still continuing his unlaborious studies there when the second had ended, and October, with its shortening days and windy skies, returned again. The vacation had been a lively one to Fred, and Mrs. Dalyell had been obliged to come out of the seclusion of her widowhood on account of Susie, whose introduction to the world could not be postponed any longer. Mrs. Dalyell herself was not unwilling that it should be so. She was entirely contented in her home-life, yet pleased to vary it when need was, and the more smiling and brilliant side of things no longer jarred upon her feelings. And Susie, in all the fervour of her first season (though it was only in Edinburgh), was as happy as the day.
Thus it was, upon a household as cheerful as could be seen, that the shadows began to lengthen in that October, a little before the end of the vacation, when Fred, who had exhausted his own covers with the assistance of his friends, was flitting about the country in a series of “last days” before he went back to his college. Fred’s friends of the shooting parties had made the house very gay for the girls, and Mr. Wedderburn had thought it expedient to “put in an appearance,” as he said, even more frequently than usual, to support Mrs. Dalyell and help to preserve the balance of the house. He came “out” four or five nights in the week to the house which became daily more and more like his home, and found a continually increasing charm in the sight of the pleasure of the young ones and in the company of their mother. While they were carrying on their amusements, he considered it only his duty to sit by Mrs. Dalyell and keep her as far as possible from feeling the blank of the empty place. They could talk to each other, as only old friends can—of the people and places they had mutually known all their lives, of the different dispositions of the children, of Robert, how pleased he would have been to see them so happy, of the beasts in the little home-farm; and of the new leases, and the new Lord of Session, and the Queen’s visit to Edinburgh, and everything indeed that came within the range of their kindly world. It was very pleasant: Mrs. Dalyell found it so, who was thus able to relieve her mind of any remark that occurred to her, which the young ones were too hasty or too much occupied to listen to; and Mr. Wedderburn liked it still better, feeling that he himself, who had never ventured to risk any of the great undertakings of life, had thus come to have the cream and perfection of quiet social comfort, without paying for it, without cost to himself or wrong to any one in life.