“I know you are a faithful friend,” cried the young man resentfully. “I never doubted you for a moment.”
“But never dreamed that I would push my devotion so far? Well, I have done it, you see. And it’s your business, my young man, to make the best of it, and accept what all the powers on earth shall not prevent, I promise you,” cried the old lawyer with some heat. There were many people throughout Scotland who were aware that it was not a safe thing to go too far with old Pat Wedderburn.
Mrs. Dalyell, however, insisted upon one thing—that the marriage should not take place until two years after her husband’s death, so that there were yet several months of discomfort to get through. However it might end, there could be little doubt that in the meantime an element of extreme discomfort was brought into the house. Mr. Wedderburn, whose happiness had been to spend half the evenings of his life at Yalton, came less frequently and was not happy when he came. Susie had turned into a little firebrand, all the more disdainful and offended by her mother’s intentions that she was on the eve of a similar change in her own person. Little Alice swayed from one party to the other, sometimes impertinent, sometimes mournful. The step which was to bring additional happiness in the end (or so it is the conventional necessity to suppose) in the meantime brought nothing but discord, division and doubt, and made the entire party unhappy. How much better, even the two principals secretly thought in their hearts, to have gone on in the old happy routine as things were!
Fred came home again in June after various wanderings, visits here and there. He intended to go away before the marriage, and in the existing state of circumstances to make as short a stay as he could at Yalton, from which his mother meant to remove after this event, leaving the house to be taken possession of by her son. Naturally it was not a very joyful visit: the mother held her domestic place with a kind of unsmiling composure, doing everything as before, ignoring as much as possible the difference in her children’s faces; and a little polite conversation went on between those who had been so happily united, and twittered and chattered like the birds a few months before. Mrs. Dalyell would not allow herself to be moved, would not show the impatience which possessed her, kept firm with an immovable steadiness, letting the young ones go and come without remark. It was more difficult for them, who could not ignore her, and whose foolish young hearts were eagerly bent on sending little darts into her, saying things between themselves which she could scarcely resent, yet which went to her heart. And the girls would drag their brother to the other end of the long drawing-room, hanging one on each arm, talking low in his ear, while their mother sat at the table by the lamp, apparently taking no notice. They were very cruel to her, chiefly in ignorance, resenting the fact that she did not mind, and unable to feel any human charity for her, as she sat there isolated, conscious of their conspiracy against her. Mrs. Dalyell’s spirit was roused a little by this persecution. She had been doubtful enough of the expediency of what she was about to do from the first, but she became more and more determined to hold to her resolution as they thus united against her: and—what she never thought could have been the case—began to long for the day when she should be delivered from this domestic tyranny and once more breathe freely in an atmosphere where she would not be constrained. Thus it may be supposed there was little comfort one way or another in the troubled house; and it became the order of the day to make the evening as short as possible, to go to bed early, to finish upon any terms, at the earliest moment, the dreary, unattractive evening hours.
Fred was following the little line of ladies with their candles up the stairs, when he was once more stopped, but this time openly, by old Janet. She came to the edge of the great staircase in her nodding mutch and checked shawl. “Will you give me two or three minutes, Mr. Fred,” she said.
“For what do you want two or three minutes? I have no time at present,” he said quickly, for Susie, who was nearest to him in the procession, had stopped upon the stairs, holding up her candle and looking back upon him. She was like a picture, with her light held up and falling upon her white dress.
“But you must come,” said Janet in a shrill whisper. “You must come. Remember what your father said—and this time it’s a matter of life and death.”
“How do you know what my father said?”
“Ay, that’s a question. Come with me, my bonnie man—oh, come with me and you shall know all.”
Susie stood like a little light-bearer holding up the candle. “Who are you talking to there, Fred, in the dark?”