‘But what else was ye to tell me?’ she said, coming nearer.
‘There was nae mair nor that. Yon’s grand brose.’
With the exception of the old ladies in the close, no one but Barclay had heard anything of Speid. Macquean received his wages from the lawyer, and everything went on as it had done before Gilbert’s return, now more than a year since. Business letters came to Barclay at intervals, giving no address and containing no news of their writer, which were answered by him to a mail office in Madrid. To any communication which he made outside the matter in hand there was no reply. Miss Hersey had written twice, and whatever she heard in return from Speid she confided only to her sister. It was almost as though he had never been among them. The little roan hack and the cabriolet with the iron-gray mare were sold. As Wullie Nicol had said, he was ‘clean awa’ now.’
Gilbert’s one thought, when he found himself again on Spanish soil, was to obliterate each trace and remembrance of his life in Scotland, and he set his face to Madrid. On arriving, he began to gather round him everything which could help him to re-constitute life as it had been in Mr. Speid’s days, and, though he could not get back the house in which he had formerly lived, he settled not far from it with a couple of Spanish servants and began to wonder what he should do with his time. Nothing interested him, nothing held him. Old friends came flocking round him and he forced himself to respond to their cordiality; but he had no heart for them or their interests, for he had gone too far on that journey from which no one ever returns the same, the road to the knowledge of the strength of fate. Señor Gilbert was changed, said everyone; it was that cold north which had done it. The only wonder was that it had not killed him outright. And, after a time, they let him alone.
Miss Hersey’s letters did not tell him much; she heeded little of what took place outside her own house and less since he had gone; only when Sunday brought its weekly concourse to her drawing-room did she come into touch with the people round her. Of Lady Eliza, whose Presbyterian devotions were sheltered by Morphie kirk and who made no visits, she saw nothing. Now and then the news would reach Spain that ‘Miss Raeburn was well’ or that ‘Miss Raeburn had ridden into Kaims with her ladyship,’ but that was all. Gilbert had wished to cut himself completely adrift and he had his desire. The talk made by his departure subsided as the circles subside when a stone has been dropped in a duckpond; only Captain Somerville, seeing Cecilia’s face, longed to pursue him to the uttermost parts of the earth, and, with oaths and blows, if need be, to bring him back.
[CHAPTER XX
ROCKET]
THE January morning was moist and fresh as Lady Eliza and Cecilia Raeburn, with a groom following them, rode towards that part of the country where the spacious pasture-land began. The sun was at their backs and their shadows were shortening in front of them as it rose higher. The plum-coloured riding-habit was still in existence, a little more weather-stained, and holding together with a tenacity that provoked Cecilia, who had pronounced it unfit for human wear and been disregarded.
Rocket, the bay mare, was pulling at her rider and sidling along the road, taking no count of remonstrance, for she had not been out for several days.
‘I wish you had taken Mayfly, aunt,’ remarked Cecilia, whose horse walked soberly beside his fidgeting companion.