"Oh, no, no, Vincent!" she said, in earnest remonstrance. "Nothing would excite him more terribly. You know he has already been talking of some message coming from Balloray to me—of the possibility of it—and this would set his brain working in a hundred different directions. He might think they were coming to take me away from him—perhaps to do me some harm—or he might imagine that I had humbled myself before them, to make friends with them, and that would trouble him more than anything else: you cannot tell what wild fancies might not get into his head. So there must not be a word said about Miss Bethune, Vincent."
"Of course you know best, Maisrie," said he. And still he did not let her go. What was he to say next, to detain her? It was so long since he had heard her voice! "When you go upstairs, Maisrie, I wish you would look at the book of ballads that is lying on the table. There are some lines marked—you will see a bit of paper to tell you the page. Do you know what that means? Your grandfather thought that he might not have strength enough left to speak to me when I came; and so this was to be a last message for me. Isn't it strange that in the face of so serious an illness he should be thinking about a ballad; but you know better than anyone that ballads are as real to your grandfather as the actual things around him. And I want you to look at that message. I have told your grandfather that he may depend on me."
She went upstairs; he passed out into the golden glow of the afternoon. It was not a beautiful village, this: plain, unlovely, melancholy in the last degree; moreover, his own mind was filled with dim and dark forebodings; so that a sort of gloom of death and separation seemed to hang over those houses. Nor was there anything to look at, for the distraction of thought. An English village would have had a picturesque old church and a pretty churchyard; here there was nothing but a small mission-house of the most dull and forbidding exterior, while, just beyond the last of the hovels, there was a cemetery—a mound enclosed by a stone wall. He went to the gate, and stood there a long time, with some curious fancies and imaginings coming into his head. He seemed to see an open grave there, and a small knot of people, himself the chief mourner. And then, after the simple and solemn ceremony, he saw himself leave the sad enclosure and go away back through the unlovely street, rather fearing what lay before him. For how was he to attempt to console the solitary girl awaiting him there in her despair and her tears? But behold now, if there were any charity and commiseration left in the world—if one, hitherto obdurate, would but consent to bury her enmity in that open grave they had left—as well she might, for there was no one to offend her now—and if she were to reach out a woman's hand to this lonely girl, and take her with her, and shelter her, until the time of her sorrow was over? This was a bleak, plain, commonplace sort of a burial ground into which he was gazing: but none the less had human hearts come away from it heavy and remorseful—remorseful when it was too late. And if some little atonement were to be offered in the way he had imagined—if it were the only thing now left? This girl, sitting alone there in her desperate grief—without kindred—without friends—without any home or habitation to turn her face to: surely her situation was of all things possible most forlorn—surely no woman's heart could resist that mute appeal for sympathy and association?
As he walked slowly and aimlessly back to the inn, he began to think he had been a little too hard on those relatives of his. Death, or even the menace of death, was a solvent of many things: it made all antagonisms, animosities, indignations appear so trivial and unworthy. He could not but remember that it was not through any selfishness those relatives of his had acted (unless some small trace of family ambition were a minor motive): what they had done they had done, as they imagined, to serve him; there might have been errors of judgment, but no ill-will on their part. And now, in this terrible crisis, if he were to write to Lady Musselburgh—write in all conciliation and kindness—and tell her how Maisrie Bethune was situated, would she not allow her heart to answer? She was a woman; she professed to be a Christian. And if the worst befel, or even if the worst were threatened, surely she would come at once to Scotland, and make what little amends were now within her power? How many homes had she—in London, Brighton, Mendover—how many friends, relations, well-wishers—as compared with this tragically lonely girl, who had nothing but the wide world around her, and no one offering her a sympathetic hand? He would write to his aunt a long and urgent letter—appealing to her own better nature—and asking to be allowed to summon her, by telegram, if there were need. He would even humble and abase himself—for Maisrie's sake.
But when he got back to the inn, he found that all these sombre prognostications were, happily, not immediately called for. On the contrary, Maisrie came running down to say that her grandfather had been asleep, or apparently asleep, and that, when he woke up, he seemed much refreshed, with his memory grown infinitely clearer. He was especially proud that he could remember the verses about Allander Water. He wanted Vincent to go up to him at once.
"And you must please him, Vincent," she said, breathlessly, "by promising to do everything to help him with the book. Promise whatever he wishes. But be sure you don't mention that Miss Bethune was here—don't say a word about that—or anything about Balloray."
CHAPTER IX.
A BABBLE O' GREEN FIELDS: THE END.
There was a wonderful vitality, especially of the brain, in this old man; after long periods of languor and exhaustion, with low moanings and mutterings quite unintelligible to the patient watchers, he would flame up into something like his former self, and his speech would become eager and voluble, and almost consecutive. It was in those intervals that he showed himself proud of his recovered memory: again and again they could hear him repeat the lines that for a time had baffled him—
'How sweet to roam by Allander, to breathe the balmy air,
When cloudless are the summer skies, and woods and fields are fair;
To see the skylark soaring high, and chanting on the wing,
While in yon woods near Calder Kirk the wild birds sweetly sing.'