In that sleeping dream, and in that waking “vision,” she saw herself walking on a dreary road, between a dead wall and an open wold. Night was falling fast; wind and rain were beating upon her; her limbs were failing, and still she struggled on, and as she went, she seemed to wail, “Alone! Alone! Alone!”
The dream always broke off there; the vision went no further. She never knew how it ended.
Two days after Jane Smith’s exit and Clementina’s in-coming, Tom Black arrived. Miss Latimer and Lucy welcomed his cheery presence. Clementina certainly seemed highly respectable, and set about her work as one who wished to do her duty conscientiously. But her very presence was depressing. Her necessary sentences always ended with a sigh, and the depth of her mourning-raiment was never alleviated while she went about her household tasks. Indeed, one could scarcely fancy her in a cheerful lilac print. Of course, she had not worn caps on her father’s croft, and Lucy did not dream of suggesting them to her, though she could not help feeling that it would have been a joyful relief to see a white lace butterfly crowning the smooth black hair which seemed as much in mourning as all the rest of Clementina.
The only little personalities which Clementina contributed to the kitchen furniture were three memorial cards: one yellow and almost undecipherable with age, the other in commemoration of the piper, Niel Gillespie, the friend of Rachel’s dead lover; the newest, a tribute to the recently deceased father; also she possessed a piece of quaint and heavy pottery, the figures of two children kneeling beside a grave under a weeping willow, and a dim old print, “The Death of Abel,” in a thick black frame.
Tom brought quite a different order of things into the house. The pictures he hung up in his bedroom were of Skye terriers hopelessly watching butterflies, kittens playing with a ball, a group of cricketers on the green of his native place. He had his mother’s portrait, too, set up in a dainty little frame, on which he had evidently lavished some pocket-money. He brought it into the dining-room to show Lucy, and Lucy, with one moment’s reflection, asked him whether he would not like to keep it there, where he would pass his waking hours. “Oh, yes, certainly, Tom would like it, only wouldn’t Mrs. Challoner feel——” but while he was yet speaking, Lucy had taken it from his hand, and had found room for it on the mantelshelf. Her own father’s portrait and Charlie’s were there already. There had been one of herself and little Hugh, but her husband had taken that away with him. Lucy slipped Mrs. Black’s picture into the empty place. Clementina crooned eerie Gaelic songs in the kitchen. Tom went about the house singing—
“For a-hunting we will go!”
It is, perhaps, needless to say in which song Hugh learned to join. Indeed, the oddest thing about Clementina was that Hugh did not seem to like her—no, not though she always sent up a special little pie-cake for him whenever there was a pie, and though if her face ever wore a smile, that smile was put on for him. Alas, little Hugh had been so fond of the ill-starred Jessie Morison! It seemed a pity that such proven moral instability should have charms which this manifold respectability had not!
Lucy had not seen or heard from the Brands for some time. Such silences were not unusual between the two households, unless something special was going forward. Lucy knew that her sister had been paying some country-house visits, and felt sure she should hear from her when she came home to make her preparations for the annual family migration to the seaside.
The summer holidays began at the Institute. Of course, it was impossible for Lucy or Miss Latimer to think of leaving home when they had just received a strange servant and a guest. Still, the holidays meant considerable relaxation. Hugh had his holidays, too, and he and his mother, and sometimes Miss Latimer, too, used to go off together to Hampstead or Highgate or Greenwich, where he could gather wild flowers and play about, while she found quaint or pretty “bits” for sketches. Then, when they came home, there was Tom with funny stories about people and events at the office, or the “latest news” of the evening. The domestic group, with their varied ages and developments, made, as it were, a pretty household chime—the child’s exuberant inconsequence melting into Tom’s boyish enthusiasms, and those rising towards Lucy’s serious ideals and soberer outlook on life, and Miss Latimer’s gentle pathos. Of course, to old household loves and loyalties bred from years of mutual experience, this was but as a sketch is to a masterpiece. But it was good so far as it went. And every masterpiece has been but a sketch once!
It was certainly a lovely gleam of peace and content, but Lucy knew that for her its brightness was derived from her consciousness that Charlie, in all the elation of renewed health, might now be considered fairly on his homeward way! His last letter, which had arrived three days after Tom Black’s in-coming, had come from Hong Kong, whither Captain Grant had unexpectedly steered his course, owing to the unforeseen demands of a promising branch of business. They would leave that port a day or two after the letter was posted, and might reasonably expect to arrive at Vancouver well within the year of Charlie’s proposed absence. But the Slains Castle herself, after despatching her business at the Canadian port, would have to return home all round by Cape Horn, thus not only unconscionably prolonging her voyage, but doing this through stormy seas at an inclement season. Captain Grant, however, had declared that he had never had such a fortunate voyage, that Charlie had been such a “luck” passenger, and that as circumstances had broken his own promise that his ship would not be away more than a year, so on his side he would release Charlie at Vancouver, rebating from the hundred guinea fee enough to pay for Charlie’s land journey by the Pacific Railway and the short Atlantic voyage by a liner from New York.