Fullarton rode home in the breaking morning, his long coat buttoned high round his neck. It was chilly and the new day was rising on a world poor and grey, a world which, yesterday, had held more than he understood, and to-day, would hold less than he needed. His loss was heavy on him and he knew that he would feel it more each hour. But what bore him down was the tardy understanding of what he had done when he forged the link just broken. He had accepted a life as a gift, without thanks and without the knowledge of what he did, for he had been too intent upon himself to see the proportions of anything.
Now only was he to realize how much she had lightened for him the burden of his barren life. How often he had seen in her face the forgiveness of his ungracious words, the condoning of his little selfishnesses, how often known her patience with his ill-humours! She, who was so impatient, had she ever been ungentle with him? Once only. It was not so many months since she had asked his pardon for it as they sat on the garden bench. With what magnanimity he had forgiven her!
He entered the house and sat down at the pale fire which a housemaid had just lit. His heart was too worn, too numb, too old for tears; it could only ache. His butler, an Englishman who had been with him twenty years, came in and put some wine on the table, but he did not turn his head; the man poured out a glass and brought it to him.
‘It will do you good, sir,’ he said, ‘and your bed is ready upstairs. You should try to sleep, sir, if you are going to see her ladyship again to-day.’
Robert looked up.
‘Her ladyship is dead,’ he said.
[CHAPTER XXII
CECILIA SEES THE WILD GEESE]
THERE are some periods in life when the heart, from very excess of misery, finds a spurious relief; when pain has so dulled the nerves, that, hoping nothing, fearing nothing, we sink into an endurance that is not far from peace.
Thus it was with Cecilia Raeburn. When the vault in the little cemetery between Morphie House and Morphie Kirk had been closed over Lady Eliza, Robert brought her and all her belongings to Fullarton, in accordance with a promise he had made at the bedside of his friend. She went with him passively, once that the coffin had been taken away, for the house, after the gloom and silence of its drawn blinds, was beginning to resume its original look and the sight hurt her. She had been uprooted many times since her early youth, and, like a wayfarer, she must take the road again. Her last rest had continued for fourteen happy years whose happiness made it all the harder to look forward. Her next would be Fullarton, and, after that, possibly—probably, wherever the solid heir to the house of Fordyce should pitch his tent. But a year was a respite, for who knew what might happen in a year? He might transfer his unwelcome attentions to someone else, or death, even, might step in to save her; she had just seen how near he could creep without sign or warning. She would not look forward, but, in her secret heart, she could not banish the faint hope that Gilbert might come back.