The Ways of Life: Two Stories

by Mrs. Oliphant

“No one,” he said, with the prompt unconscious impulse of a child accused.

“No one! Why, it’s Janet. Oh, is that all?” said Susie. She lowered her light at once and turned away with the profoundest indifference. The sight of Janet conveyed no sense of excitement or mystery to the girl who saw her every day.

Fred obeyed the old woman sulkily and with the greatest reluctance. He would not have done so at all had not Susie seen her. But he could not show to Susie that he had any reluctance to speak to old Janet, whom the younger members of the family had always held by against all the objections of the younger servants. He went mechanically after her, with a strong return of that resentment which he had felt against his father for the recommendation to consult her. It was grievous to be made to think of that at such a moment, when his father had become more sacred to him than ever, in face of the desecrating change that was about to take place, the injury to that beloved memory. It was the only grievance Fred had against his father. He tried to force it from his mind, to have patience with the old woman as he followed her. She belonged to him. She had been faithful to him all his life. Perhaps she wanted to make sure that she should be provided for when his mother left the place, when Yalton was in his possession alone. Oh, certainly she should be provided for, till her last hour! The only one that was faithful to him. Neither friend nor wife had been faithful to him, but his old nurse was faithful. She was sacred to his son for his sake.

Fred made his heart soft with these thoughts; he overcame his own opposition almost altogether, partly with the sentiment of the nurse’s faithfulness, partly with his resentment against the others; and he was ready when he found himself in Janet’s room, face to face with her in the light of her lamp, to offer her any assurance of his protection and certainty she might require as to her living and her home. Janet, however, put no question to him on any such score. She shut the door and came up close to him in the lamp-light. “Mr. Fred,” she said, “you maun take courage, my bonnie man. There are dreadful things to be said to you to-night. Just summon all your strength and read that.”

Fred started at the sight of the paper she put before his eyes. “I see,” he said, “it is my father’s writing. But you need not show me any letter. He told me himself, the day before he died——”

“Oh, laddie, laddie! take it and read it before I go out o’ my senses,” Janet cried.

He took the paper into his hands. His father’s handwriting, there could be no doubt; but no suspicion of the truth was in Fred’s mind. He glanced over it, and thought to himself that he had gone out of his senses, as Janet said, or had lost himself in some incoherent dream. “My wife’s marriage must be stopped.” What did that mean? A man who died two years ago, how could he write about an event of to-day? Was he going mad? Was he in a dream? Was it some delusion which she had put by witchcraft before his eyes? “My wife’s marriage must be stopped.” “How could he know?” he asked with blanched lips. “How could he tell there would be a marriage?” He turned upon her a face blank of all expression, pale, in a horror of enlightenment about to come.

“Oh, boy, boy! cannot ye see?” cried Janet. She put forth a long trembling finger and thrust it at the paper, pointing to the date. Fred looked and read. He read it a second time aloud, a strange terror growing upon him: “June 3, 18—.” “Why,” he said, “why——.” Then, stammering and stumbling over the words, broke down. “Why, why,” he began again with a laugh, “we cannot all be mad and going to Bedlam! It’s this year: June 3, 18—.”

The old woman grasped him by both his hands. “It’s this year—and we’re no mad, though often, often I’ve felt on the edge of it. We’re no mad,” she repeated, “and it’s this year, and the man that wrote that is in the house this blessed night, Mr. Fred!”

God help the lad! He had but turned his black and terrible countenance upon her, holding the letter helplessly in his hands, when there sounded through the house, cutting the silence like a knife, a sudden wild cry, a shriek, lasting only for a second, but piercing to the heart of the night, to the heart of the house, like some sudden horrible event. It was followed almost immediately after by a rush of muffled feet along the passage: the door was pushed open violently, yet silently, and someone came in like a shot from a pistol, as sudden and unexpected. Fred felt himself shrink towards the wall in his horror and amaze. It was a man who had come in—a man with a beard which covered half his face, yet showed a curious kind of smile coming out of the midst of it, though the eyes were full of an almost tragic seriousness. Fred had fallen back against the wall as this new-comer appeared. The room swam round and round in his eyes, a darkness came over him, he saw nothing for a moment: then slowly came to himself, and saw again, within reach of him, so near that he could have touched him, this man—whom he had never seen before. Oh, could he but have been sure that he had never seen him before! His heart stopped beating—and then with a flutter and a spring went on again, as if it would have leaped out of his breast. The shock of the supernatural, the horror of an awful discovery, came into the young man’s brain and almost paralysed it as they clashed together. Ah, had it been but the supernatural! But as that face emerged out of the mist, Fred saw that it was that of a living man—and that he heard it talking—it—as living men do.