The Lady's Walk (Longman's Magazine, 1883)/Part 2
CHAPTER III.
MR. CAMPBELL was not to be moved. He was very anxious, angry, and ill at ease; but he refused to be influenced in any way by this strange communication. It would be some intrusive woman, he said; some busybody—there were many about—who, thinking she might escape being found out in that way, had thought it a grand opportunity of making mischief. He made me a great many apologies for his first hasty words. It was very ill-bred, he said; he was ashamed to think that he had let himself be so carried away; but he would hear nothing of the message itself. The household, however, was in so agitated a state that, after the brothers departed to their business on Monday, I made a pretext of a letter calling me to town, and arranged my departure for the same evening. Both Charlotte and her father evidently divined my motive, but neither attempted to detain me: indeed she, I thought, though it hurt my self-love to see it, looked forward with a little eagerness to my going. This however, explained itself in a way less humiliating when she seized the opportunity of our last walk together to beg me to 'do something for her.'
'Anything,' I cried; 'anything—whatever man can.'
'I knew you would say so; that is why I have scarcely said I am sorry. I have not tried to stop you. Mr. Temple, I am not shutting my eyes to it, like my father. I am sure that, whoever it was that spoke to you, the warning was true. I want you to go to Colin,' she said abruptly, after a momentary pause, 'and let me know the truth.'
'To Colin?' I cried. 'But you know how little acquainted we are. It was not he who invited me but—Charley'
'And I. You don't leave me out, I hope,' she said, with a faint smile; 'but what could make a better excuse than that you have been here? Mr. Temple, you will go when I ask you? Oh, I do more—I entreat you! Go, and let me know the truth.'
'Of course I shall go—from the moment you bid me. Miss Campbell,' I said. But the commission was not a pleasant one, save in so far that it was for her service.
We were walking up and down by the side of the water, which every moment grew more and more into a blazing mirror, a burnished shield decked with every imaginable colour, though our minds had no room for its beauty, and it only touched my eyesight in coming and going. And then she told me much about Colin which I had not known or guessed—about his inclinations and tastes, which were not like any of the others, and how his friends and his ways were unknown to them. 'But we have always hoped this would pass away,' she said, 'for his heart is good; oh, his heart is good! You remember how kind he was to me when we met you first. He is always kind.' Thus we walked and talked until I had seen a new side at once of her character and life. The home had seemed to me so happy and free from care; but the dark shadow was there as everywhere, and her heart often wrung with suspense and anguish. We then returned slowly towards the house, still absorbed in this conversation, for it was time that I should go in and eat my last meal at Ellermore.
We had come within sight of the door, which stood open as always, when we suddenly caught sight of Mr. Campbell posting towards us with a wild haste, so unlike his usual circumspect walk, that I was startled. His feet seemed to twist as they sped along, in such haste was he. His hat was pushed back on his head, his coat-tails flying behind him—precipitate like a man pursued, or in one of those panics which take away breath and sense, or, still more, perhaps as if a strong wind were behind him, blowing him on. When he came within speech of us, he called out hurriedly, 'Come here! come here, both of you!' and turning, hastened back with the same breathless hurry, beckoning with his hand. 'He must have heard something more,' Charlotte said, and rushed after him. I followed a few steps behind. Mr. Campbell said nothing to his daughter when she made up to him. He almost pushed her off when she put her hand through his arm. He had no leisure even for sympathy. He hurried along with feet that stumbled in sheer haste till he came to the Lady's Walk, which lay in the level sunshine, a path of gold between the great boles of the trees. It was a slight ascent, which tried him still more. He went a few yards along the path, then stopped and looked round upon her and me, with his hand raised to call our attention. His face was perfectly colourless. Alarm and dismay were written on every line of it. Large drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead. He seemed to desire to speak, but could not; then held up his finger to command our attention. For the first moment or two my attention was so concentrated upon the man and the singularity of his look and gesture, that I thought of nothing else. What did he want us to do? We stood all three in the red light, which seemed to send a flaming sword through us. There was a faint stir of wind among the branches overhead, and a twitter of birds; and in the great stillness the faint lap of the water upon the shore was audible, though the loch was at some distance. Great stillness—that was the word; there was nothing moving but these soft stirrings of nature. Ah! this was what it was! Charlotte grew perfectly pale, too, like her father, as she stood and listened. I seem to see them now: the old man with his white head, his ghastly face, the scared and awful look in his eyes, and she gazing at him, all her faculties involved in the act of listening, her very attitude and drapery listening too, her lips dropping apart, the life ebbing out of her, as if something was draining the blood from her heart.
Mr. Campbell's hand dropped. 'She's away,' he said. 'She's away'—in tones of despair; then, with a voice that was shaken by emotion—'I thought it was, maybe, my fault. By times you say I am getting stupid.' There was the most heartrending tone in this I ever heard—the pained humility of old age, confessing a defect, lit up with a gleam of feverish hope that in this case the defect might be a welcome explanation.
'Father, dear,' cried Charlotte, putting her hand on his arm—she had looked like fainting a moment before, but recovered herself—'It may be only a warning. It may not be desperate even now.'
All that the old man answered to this was a mere repetition, pathetic in its simplicity. 'She's away, she's away!' Then, after a full minute's pause, 'You mind when that happened last?' he said.
'Oh, father! oh, father!' cried Charlotte. I withdrew a step or two from this scene. What had I, a stranger, to do with it? They had forgotten my presence, and at the sound of my step they both looked up with a wild eager look in their faces, followed by blank disappointment. Then he sighed, and said, with a return of composure, 'You will throw a few things into a bag, and we'll go at once, Chatty. There is no time to lose.'
They went up with me to town that night. The journey has never seemed to me so long or so fatiguing, and Mr. Campbell's state, which for once Charlotte in her own suspense and anxiety did not specially remark, was distressing to see. It became clear afterwards that his illness must have been coming on for some time, and that he was not then at all in a condition to travel. He was so feeble and confused when we reached London that it was impossible for me to leave them, and I was thus, without any voluntary intrusion of mine, a witness of all the melancholy events that followed. I was present even at the awful scene which the reader probably will remember as having formed the subject of many a newspaper article at the time. Colin had 'gone wrong' in every way that a young man could do. He had compromised the very existence of the firm in business; he had summed up all his private errors by marrying a woman unfit to bear any respectable name. And when his father and sister suddenly appeared before him, the unfortunate young man seized a pistol which lay suspiciously ready to his hand, and in their very presence put an end to his life. All the horror and squalor and dismal tragedy of the scene is before me as I write. The wretched woman, whom (I felt sure) he could not endure the sight of in Charlotte's presence, the heap of letters on his table announcing ruin from every quarter, the consciousness so suddenly brought upon him that he had betrayed and destroyed all who were most dear to him, overthrew his reason or his self-command. And the effect of so dreadful an occurrence on the unhappy spectators needs no description of mine. The father, already wavering under the touch of paralysis, fell by the same blow, and I had myself to bring Charlotte from her brother dead to her father dying, or worse than dying, struck dumb and prostrate in that awful prison of all the faculties. Until Charley arrived I had everything to do for both dead and living, and there was no attempt to keep any secret from me, even had it been possible. It seemed at first that there must be a total collapse of the family altogether; but afterwards some points of consolation appeared. I was present at all their consultations. The question at last came to be whether the 'Works,' the origin of their wealth, should be given up, and the young men disperse to seek their fortune as they might, or whether a desperate attempt should be made to keep up the business by retrenching every expense and selling Ellermore. Charley, it was clear to me, was afraid to suggest this dreadful alternative to his sister; but she was no weakling to shrink from any necessity. She made up her mind to the sacrifice without a moment's hesitation. 'There are so many of us—still,' she said; 'there are the boys to think of, and the children.' When I saw her standing thus, with all those hands clutching at her, holding to her, I had in my own mind a sensation of despair. Bat what was that to the purpose? Charlotte was conscious of no divided duty. She was ready to serve her own with every faculty, and shrank from no sacrifice for their sake.
It was some time before Mr. Campbell could be taken home. He got better indeed after a while, but was very weak. And happily for him he brought no consciousness of what had happened out of the temporary suspension of all his faculties. His hand and one side were almost without power, and his mind had fallen into a state which it would be cruel to call imbecility. It was more like the mind of a child recovering from an illness, pleased with, and exacting constant attention. Now and then he would ask the most heartrending questions: what had become of Colin, if he was ill, if he had gone home? 'The best place for him, the best place for him, Chatty,' he would repeat; 'and if you got him persuaded to marry, that would be fine.' All this Charlotte had to bear with a placid face, with quiet assent to the suggestion. He was in this condition when I took leave of him in the invalid carriage they had secured for the journey. He told me that he was glad to go home; that he would have left London some time before but for Chatty, who 'wanted to see a little of the place.' 'I am going to join my son Colin, who has gone home before us—isn't that so, Chatty?' 'Yes, father,' she said. 'Yes, yes, I have grown rather doited, and very very silly,'[1] the old man said, in a tone of extraordinary pathos. 'I am sometimes not sure of what I am saying; but Chatty keeps me right. Colin has gone on before; he has a grand head for business; he will soon set everything right—connected,' he added, with a curious sense which seemed to have outlived his other powers, that somehow explanation of Colin's actions was necessary—'connected with my retirement. I am past business; but we'll still hope to see you at Ellermore.'
I ought perhaps to say, though at the risk of ridicule, that up to the moment of their leaving London, I constantly met, or seemed to meet—for I became confused after a while, and felt incapable of distinguishing between feeling and fact—the same veiled lady who had spoken to me at Ellermore. Wherever there was a group of two or three people together, it appeared to me that she was one of them. I saw her in advance of me in the streets. I saw her behind me. She seemed to disappear in the distance wherever I moved. I suppose it was imagination—at least that is the most easy thing to say: but I was so convinced at the moment that it was not imagination, that I have hurried along many a street in pursuit of the phantom who always, I need not say, eluded me. I saw her at Colin's grave: but what need to linger longer on this hallucination, if it was one? From the day the Campbells left London, I saw her no more.
CHAPTER IV.
Then there ensued a period of total stillness in my life. It seemed to me as if all interest had gone out of it. I resumed my old occupations, such as they were, and they were not very engrossing. I had enough, which is perhaps of all conditions of life, if the most comfortable, the least interesting. If it was a disciple of Solomon who desired that state, it must have been when he was like his master, blast, and had discovered that both ambition and pleasure were vanity. There was little place or necessity for me in the world. I pleased myself, as people say. When I was tired of my solitary chambers, I went and paid visits. When I was tired of England, I went abroad. Nothing could be more agreeable, or more unutterably tedious, especially to one who had even accidentally come across and touched upon the real events and excitements of life. Needless to say that I thought of the household at Ellermore almost without intermission. Charlotte wrote to me now and then, and it sometimes seemed to me that I was the most callous wretch on earth, sitting there watching all they were doing, tracing every step and vicissitude of their trouble in my own assured well-being. It was monstrous, yet what could I do? But if, as I have said, such impatient desire to help were to come now and then to those who have the power to do so, is political economy so infallible that the world would not be the better for it? There was not a word of complaint in Charlotte's letters, but they made me rage over my impotence. She told me that all the arrangements were being completed for the sale of Eller- more, but that her father's condition was still such that they did not know how to communicate to him the impending change. 'He is still ignorant of all that has passed,' Charlotte wrote, 'and asks me the most heartrending questions; and I hope God will forgive me all that I am obliged to say to him. We are afraid to let him see anyone lest he should discover the truth; for indeed falsehood, even with a good meaning, is always its own punishment. Dr. Maxwell, who does not mind what he says when he thinks it is for his patient's good, is going to make believe to send him away for change of air; and this is the artifice we shall have to keep up all the rest of his life to account for not going back to Ellermore.' She wrote another time that there was every hope of being able to dispose of it by private bargain, and that in the meantime friends had been very kind, and the 'Works' were going on. There was not a word in the letter by which it would have been divined that to leave Ellermore was to the writer anything beyond a matter of necessity. She said not a word about her birthplace, the home of all her associations, the spot which I knew was so dear. There had been no hesitation, and there was no repining. Provided only that the poor old man, the stricken father, deprived at once of his home and firstborn, without knowing either, might be kept in that delusion—this was all the exemption Charlotte sought.
And I do not think they asked me to go to them before they left the place. It was my own doing. I could not keep away any longer. I said to Charlotte, and perhaps also to myself, by way of excuse, that I might help take to care of Mr. Campbell during the removal. The feet was that I could not stay away from her any longer. I could have risked any intrusion, thrust myself in anyhow, for the mere sake of being near her and helping her in the most insignificant way.
It was, however, nearly Christmas before I yielded to my impatience. They were to leave Ellermore in a week or two. Mr. Campbell had been persuaded that one of the soft and sheltered spots where Scotch invalids are sent in Scotland would be better for him. Charlotte had written to me, with a half despair, of the difficulties of their removal. 'My heart almost fails me,' she said; and that was a great deal for her to say. After this I could hesitate no longer. She was afraid even of the revival of life that might take place when her father was brought out of his seclusion, of some injudicious old friend who could not be staved off, and who might talk to him about Colin. 'My heart almost fails me.' I went up to Scotland by the mail train that night, and next day, while it was still not much more than noon, found myself at Ellermore.
What a change! The heather had all died away from the hills; the sunbright loch was steely blue; the white threads of water down every crevice in the mountains were swollen to torrents. Here and there on the higher peaks there was a sprinkling of snow. The fir-trees were the only substantial things in the nearer landscape. The beeches stood about all bare and feathery, with every twig distinct against the blue. The sun was shining almost as brightly as in summer, and scattered a shimmer of reflections everywhere over the wet grass, and across the rivulets that were running in every little hollow. The house stood out amid all this light, amid the bare tracery of the trees, with its Scotch-French tourelles, and the sweep of emerald lawn, more green than ever, at its feet, and all the naked flower-beds; the blue smoke rising peacefully into the air, the door open as always. There was little stir or movement, however, in this wintry scene. The out-door life was checked. There was no son at home to leave traces of his presence. The lodge was shut up, and vacant. I concluded that the carriage had been given up, and all luxuries, and the coachman and his family were gone. But this was all the visible difference. I was received by one of the maids, with whose face I was familiar. There had never been any wealth of male attendants at Ellermore. She took me into the drawing-room, which was deserted, and bore a more formal look than of old. 'Miss Charlotte is mostly with her papa,' the woman said. 'He is very frail; but just wonderful contented, like a bairn. She's always up the stair with the old gentleman. It's no good for her. You'll find her white, white, sir, and no like hersel'.' In a few minutes Charlotte came in. There was a gleam of pleasure (I hoped) on her face, but she was white, white, as the woman said, worn and pale. After the first greeting, which had brightened her, she broke down a little, and shed a few hasty tears, for which she excused herself, faltering that everything came back, but that she was glad, glad to see me! And then she added quickly, that I might not be wounded, 'It has come to that, that I can scarcely ever leave my father; and to keep up the deception is terrible.'
'You must not say deception.'
'Oh, it is nothing else; and that always punishes itself. It is just the terror of my life that some accident will happen; that he will find out everything at once.' Then she looked at me steadily, with a smile that was piteous to see, 'Mr. Temple, Ellermore is sold.'
'Is it so—is it so?' I said, with a sort of groan. I had still thought that perhaps at the last moment something might occur to prevent the sacrifice.
She shook her head, not answering my words, but the expression of my face. 'There was nothing else to be desired,' she said; and, after a pause, 'We are to take him to the Bridge of Allan. He is almost pleased to go; he thinks of nothing further—oh, poor old man, poor old man! If only I had him there safe; but I am more terrified for the journey than I ever was for anything in my life.'
We talked of this for some time, and of all the arrangements she had made. Charley was to come to assist in removing his father; but I think that my presence somehow seemed to her an additional safeguard, of which she was glad. She did not stay more than half an hour with me. 'It will be dull, dull for you, Mr. Temple,' she said, with more of the lingering cadence of her national accent than I had perceived before—or perhaps it struck me more after these months of absence. 'There is nobody at home but the little ones, and they have grown far too wise for their age, because of the many things that they know must never be told to papa; but you know the place, and you will want to rest a little.' She put out her hand to me again—'And I am glad, glad to see you!' Nothing in my life ever made my heart swell like those simple words. That she should be 'glad, glad' was payment enough for anything I could do. But in the meantime there was nothing that I could do. I wandered about the silent place till I was tired, recalling a hundred pleasant recollections; even to me, a stranger, who a year ago had never seen Ellermore, it was hard to give it up; and as for those who had been born there, and their fathers before them, it seemed too much for the cruellest fate to ask. But Nature was as indifferent to the passing away of the human inhabitants, whose little spell of a few hundred years was as nothing in her long history, as she would have been to the falling of a rock on the hillside, or the wrenching up of a tree in the woods. For that matter, of so small account are men, the rock and tree would both have been older dwellers than the Campbells; and why for that should the sun moderate his shining, or the clear skies veil themselves?
My mind was so taken up by these thoughts that it was almost inadvertence that took me, in the course of my solitary rambles about, to the Lady's Walk. I had nearly got within the line of the beech-trees, however, when I was brought hurriedly back to the strange circumstances which had formed an accompaniment to this family history. To hear once more the footsteps of the guardian of Ellermore had a startling effect upon me. She had come back then! After that first thrill of instinctive emotion this gave me a singular pleasure. I stood between the trees and heard the soft step coming and going with absolute satisfaction. It seemed to me that they were not altogether abandoned so long as she was here. My heart rose in spite of myself. I began to speculate on the possibility even yet of saving the old house. I asked myself how it could be finally disposed of without Mr. Campbell's consent and signature; and tried to believe that at the last moment some way might open, some wonderful windfall come. But when I turned back to the house, this fantastic confidence naturally failed me. I began to contemplate the other side of the question—the new people who would come in. Perhaps 'some Englishman,' as Charley had said with a certain scorn; some rich man, who would buy the moors and lochs at many times their actual value, and bring down, perhaps, a horde of Cockney sportsmen to banish all quiet and poetry from Ellermore. I thought with a mingled pity and anger of what the Lady would do in such hands. Would she still haunt her favourite walk when all whom she loved were gone? Would she stay there in forlorn faithfulness to the soil, or would she go with her banished race? or would she depart altogether, and cut the tie that had bound her to earth? I thought—for fancy once set out goes far without any conscious control from the mind—that these were circumstances in which the intruders into the home of the Campbells might be frightened by noises and apparitions, and all those vulgarer powers of the unseen of which we hear sometimes. If the Lady of Ellermore would condescend to use such instruments, no doubt she might find lower and less elevated spirits in the unseen to whom this kind of play would be congenial. I caught myself up sharply in this wandering of thought, as if I were forming ideas derogatory to a dear friend, and felt myself redden with shame. She connect her lovely being with tricks of this kind! I was angry with myself, as if I had allowed it to be suggested that Charlotte would do so. My heart grew full as I pursued these thoughts. Was it possible that some mysterious bond of a kind beyond our knowledge connected her with this beloved soil? I was overawed by the thought of what she might suffer, going upon her solitary watch, to see the house filled with an alien family—yet, perhaps, by-and-by, taking them into amity, watching over them as she had done over her own, in that sweetness of self-restraint and tender love of humankind which is the atmosphere of the blessed. All through this spiritual being was to me a beatified shadow of Charlotte. You will say all this was very fantastic, and I do not deny that the sentence is just.
Next day passed in something the same way. Charlotte was very anxious. She had wished the removal to take place that afternoon, but when the moment came she postponed it. She said 'To-morrow,' with a shiver. 'I don't know what I am afraid of,' she said, 'but my heart fails me—my heart fails me.' I had to telegraph to Charley that it was deferred: and another long day went by. It rained, and that was an obstacle. 'I cannot take him away in bad weather,' she said. She came downstairs to me a dozen times a day, wringing her hands. 'I have no resolution,' she cried. 'I cannot—I cannot make up my mind to it. I feel that something dreadful is going to happen.' I could only take her trembling hand and try to comfort her. I made her come out with me to get a little air in the afternoon. 'You are killing yourself,' I said. 'It is this that makes you so nervous and unlike yourself.' She consented, though it was against her will. A woman who had been all her life in their service, who was to go with them, whom Charlotte treated, as she said, 'like one of ourselves,' had charge of Mr. Campbell in the meantime. And I think Charlotte got a little pleasure from this unusual freedom. She was very tremulous, as if she had almost forgotten how to walk, and leant upon my arm in a way which was very sweet to me. No word of love had ever passed between us; and she did not love me, save as she loved Charley and Harry, and the rest. I think I had a place among them, at the end of the brothers. But yet she had an instinctive knowledge of my heart; and she knew that to lean upon me, to show that she needed me, was the way to please me most. We wandered about there for a time in a sort of forlorn happiness; then, with a mutual impulse, took our way to the Lady's Walk. We stood there together, listening to the steps. 'Do you hear them?' said Charlotte, her face lighting up with a smile. 'Dear lady! that has always been here since ever I mind!' She spoke as the children spoke in the utter abandonment of her being, as if returning for refreshment to the full simplicity of accent and idiom, the soft native speech to which she was born. 'Will she stay after us, do ye think?' Charlotte said; and then, with a little start, clinging to my arm, 'Was that a sound—was that a cry?'
Not a cry, but a sigh. It seemed to wander over all the woods and thrill among the trees. You will say it was only the wind. I cannot tell. To me it was a sigh, personal, heart-rending. And you may suppose what it was to her. The tears dropped from her full eyes. She said, speaking to the air, 'We are parting, you and me. Oh, go you back to Heaven, and let us trouble you no more. Oh, go back to your home, my bonnie lady, and let us trouble you no more!'
'Charlotte!' I cried, drawing her arm more closely through mine. She cast me a glance, a smile, like one who could not even in the midst of the highest thoughts neglect or be unkind, but drew her hand away and clasped it in the other. 'We are of one stock,' she said, the tears always falling; 'and the same heart. We are too anxious, but God is above us all. Go back to your pleasant place, and say to my mother that I will never leave them. Go away, my bonnie lady, go away! You and me, we must learn to trust them to God.'
We waited, and I think she almost expected some reply. But there was none. I took her arm within mine again, and led her away trembling. The moment, the excitement had been too much for me also. I said, 'You tell her to go, that she is too anxious, that she must trust you to God—and in the same breath you pledge yourself never to leave them. Do you think if God does not want her, He wants you to stand between Him and them?' I grasped her arm so closely and held it so to my side in my passion that I think I almost hurt her. She gave me a startled look, and put up her hand to dry her wet eyes.
'It is very different,' she said; 'I am living and can work for them. It has come to me all in a moment to see that She is just like me after all. Perhaps to die does not make a woman wise any more than life does. And it may be that nobody has had the thought to tell her. She will have imagined that she could stop any harm that was coming, being here; but if it was not God's pleasure to stop it, how could she? You know she tried,' said Charlotte, looking at me wistfully; 'she tried—God bless her for that! Oh, you know how anxious she was; but neither she nor I could do it—neither she nor I!'
At this moment we were interrupted by some one flying towards us from the house, calling, 'Miss Charlotte, Miss Charlotte! you are wanted,' in a wild and agitated tone. It was the woman who had been left in charge of Mr. Campbell, and Charlotte started at the sight of her. She drew her hand from my arm, and flew along the path. 'Oh, Marg'ret, why did you leave him?' she said.
'It was no blame of mine,' said the woman, turning, following her mistress. I hurried on, too, after them, and the explanation was addressed to both of us. 'He would come down to the library: nothing would stop him. I tried all I could; but what could I do? And there is nothing to be frighted for, Miss Charlotte. Ah! I've nae breath to tell it. He is just real like himself!'
Charlotte flew along the path like a creature flying for life. She paused an instant at the door of the house to beckon me to follow her. The library, the room where her father had gone, was one of those which had been partially dismantled. The pictures had been taken down from the walls, a number of books which she meant to take with her collected on the tables. Mr. Campbell had displaced some of the books in order to seat himself in his favourite seat. He looked at her curiously, almost with severity, as she came in anxious and breathless. He was greatly changed. He had been robust and hale, like a tower, when I first entered Ellermore, not yet six months since. Now he had shrunken away into half his size. The coat which he had not worn for months hung loosely upon him; his white hair was long, and he wore a beard which changed his appearance greatly. All this change had come since the time I parted with him in London, when he told me he was going to join his son Colin; but there was another change more remarkable, which I with awe, and Charlotte with terror, recognised at a glance—the prostration of his mind was gone. He looked his daughter in the face with intelligent, almost sternly intelligent eyes.
'Oh, father, you have wanted me!' Charlotte cried. 'I went out for a mouthful of air—I went out—for a few minutes'
'Why should you not have gone out, Chatty?' he said. 'And why was Marg'ret left in charge of me? I have been ill, I make no doubt; but why should I be watched and spied about my own house?'
She gave me a glance of dismay, and then she faltered, 'Oh, not that, father—not that!'
'But I tell you it was that. She would have hindered my coming downstairs, that woman'—he gave a little laugh, which was terrible to us in the state of our feelings—'and here are you rushing in out of breath, as if there was some cause of fear. Who is that behind ye? Is it one of your brothers—or'
'It is Mr. Temple, father,' she said, with a new alarm.
'Mr. Temple,' he said, with a shade of displeasure passing over his face. Then he recovered himself, and his old-world politeness. 'I am glad to see ye,' he said. 'So far as I can remember, the house was much disorganised when you were here before, Mr. Temple. You will think we are always out of order; but I've been ill, and everything has fallen out of gear. This is not a place,' he added, turning to Charlotte, 'to receive a stranger in. What is all this for?' he added, in a sharp tone, waving his hand towards the books, of which some were heaped at his feet on the floor.
Once more she made a pause of dismay. 'They are some books to take with us,' she said; 'you remember, father, we are going away.'
'Going away!' he cried, irritably. 'Where are my letters? Where are your brothers? What are you doing with a gentleman visitor (I beg ye a thousand pardons, Mr. Temple!) and the place in such a state? It is my opinion that there is something wrong. Where are my letters? It is not in reason that there should be no letters. After being laid aside from business for a time, to have your letters kept back from you, you will allow, Mr. Temple,' he said, turning to me with an explanatory air, 'is irritating. It is perhaps done with a mistaken notion that I am not equal to them; but if you think I will allow myself to be treated as a child'
He stammered a little now and then, in his anger, but made a great effort to control himself. And then he looked up at us, once more a little severely, and brought confusion to all our hopes with one simple question. 'Where is Colin?' he said.
What could be more natural? Charlotte gave me one look, and stood, white as death, motionless, her fingers twisting together. How truly she had said that falsehood was its own punishment, even such falsehood as this! She had answered him with ambiguous words when he was in the state of feebleness from which he had thus awoke, and he had been easily satisfied and diverted from too close inquiry. But now she was confounded by the sudden question. She could not confront with a subterfuge her father's serious eyes; her head drooped, her hands caught at each other with a pitiful clasp, while he sat looking at her with an authoritative, but as yet unalarmed, look. All this time the door had been left ajar, and Marg'ret stood waiting outside, listening to all that went on, too much interested and anxious to feel herself out of place. But when she heard this demand the woman was struck with horror. She made a step within the door. 'Oh, Ellermore!' she cried. 'Oh! my auld maister, dinna break her heart and mine! To hear ye asking for Colin! and Colin in his grave this four long months, poor lad, poor lad!' She threw her apron over her head as she spoke, and burst forth into loud sobs and tears, Charlotte had put out a hand to stop the revelation, but dropped it again, and stood by speechless, her head bent, and wringing her hands, a silent image of grief and guilt, as if it had been her from whom the blow came.
The old man sat and listened with a countenance growing ashy pale, and with intent eyes, that seemed to flicker as if beyond his control. He tried to speak, but in the trembling of his lips could articulate nothing. Then he slowly raised himself up and stood pallid and dizzy, like a man on the edge of a precipice.
'My son is dead, and I knew it not,' he said slowly, pausing between the words. He stood with his trembling Ups falling apart, his countenance all moving and twitching, transfixed, it seemed, by a sort of woeful amaze, wondering at himself. Then he turned upon Charlotte, with a piteous appeal. 'Was I told, and have I forgotten?' he asked. The humiliation of that thought overpowered his re-awakened soul.
She came to him quickly and put her arm round him. 'Father, dear, you were so ill, they would not let us tell you. Oh, I have known, I have known it would be so much the worse when it came!'
He put her away from him, and sat down again feebly in his chair. In that dreadful moment he wanted no one. The horror of the individual humiliation, the idea that he could have heard and forgotten, was more terrible even than the dreadful news which thus burst upon him. 'I'm glad,' he said, 'I'm glad,' babbling with his loose lips. I shrank away, feeling it a profanation to be here, a spectator of the last mystery of nature; but Charlotte made a faint motion that kept me from, withdrawing altogether. For the first time she was afraid; her heart had failed her.
For some minutes her father continued silent in his chair. The sunset had faded away, the misty twilight was falling. Marg'ret, guilty and miserable, but still unable altogether to subdue her sobs, throwing her white apron from her head, and looking round with a deprecating, apologetic glance, had withdrawn to the other side of the room. All was silence after that broken interchange of words. He lay back, clasping and unclasping his hands, his lips and features all moving, whether with a wish to speak or with the mere workings of emotions unspeakable, I cannot tell. When suddenly, all at once, with the voice of a strong man loud and full, he broke out into the cry which has sounded through all the world—the utterance of every father's anguish, 'Oh, Absalom, my son, my son! Would God that I had died for thee, my son, my son'
We both rushed towards him simultaneously. He did not remark me, fortunately; but again he put Charlotte away. 'What are you afraid for?' he said, almost sternly; 'that I will fall back and be ill again? That is not possible. Ye think sorrow kills; but no, it stings ye back to life: it stings ye back to life,' he repeated, raising himself in his chair. Then he looked round him solemnly. 'Marg'ret, my woman, come here, and give me your hand. We're partners in trouble, you and me, and never shall we part. As long as this is my house there is a place in it for you. Afterwards, when it goes toah! when it goes to Charley,' he cried, with a sudden burst of unforeseen sobs.
Charlotte looked at me again. Her face was white with despair. How was this last news to be broken to him?
'Father,' she said, standing behind him, 'you are sorely tried. Will you not come back to your room and rest till to-morrow, and then you will hear all? Then we will tell you—about all that has happened'
Her voice shook like a leaf in the wind, but she managed to show no other sign of her terror and despair. There was a long pause after this, and we stood waiting, not knowing how the moment would terminate. I believe it was the sight of me that decided it after all. A quick movement of irritation passed over his face.
'I think you are right, Chatty,' he said; 'I think you are right. I am not fit, in my shattered state, and with the information I have just received, to pay the attention I would like to pay' He paused, and looked at me fixedly. 'It is a great trouble to me that we have never been able to show you proper attention, Mr. Temple. You see, my son was detained; and now he is dead—and I've never known it till this moment. You will excuse a reception which is not the kind of reception I would like to give you.' He waved his hand. 'You were my Colin's friend. You will know how to make allowances. Yes, my dear, I am best in my own chamber. I will just go, with Mr. Temple's permission—go—to my bed.'
A faint groan burst from him as he said these words; a kind of dreary smile flickered on his lips. 'To my bed,' he repeated 'that is all we can do, we old folk, when we are stricken by God's hand. Lie down, and turn our faces to the wall—our faces to the wall.' He rose up, and took his daughter's arm, and made a few steps towards the door, which I was holding open for him. Then he turned and looked round with the air of one who has a favour to bestow. 'You may come too, Marg'ret,' he said. 'You can come and help me to my bed.'
This strange interruption of all plans, which it was evident filled Charlotte with despair, gave me much to think of, as I stayed behind in the slowly-darkening room. It was evident that now nothing could be concealed from him; and who was there so bold as to tell the bereaved father, in his first grief for his first-born, what horrors had accompanied Colin's death, and what a penalty the family had to pay? It seemed to me that the premonition of some fresh calamity was in the air; and when Charlotte came down about half an hour later, like a ghost through the dim-coming shadows, I almost expected to hear that it had already occurred. But even in these depths of distress it was a happiness to me to feel that she came to me for relief. She told me that he had gone to bed without asking any further questions, and that Margaret, who had been Colin's nurse, seemed almost more agreeable to him than herself. He had turned his face to the wall as he had said, and nothing but a long-drawn, occasional sigh told that he was awake. 'I think he is not worse—in body,' she said. 'He has borne it far better than we could have thought possible. But how am I to tell him the way it happened, and how am I to tell him about Ellermore?' She wept with a prostration and self-abandonment which alarmed me; but she stopped my remonstrances and entreaties with a motion of her hand. 'Oh, let me cry! It is the only ease I have,' she said.
When she had gone away from me, restless, anxious, afraid to be out of hearing, I went out, myself, as restless, as incapable of banishing all these anxieties from my mind as she. The night was almost dark, soft and mild. It was one of those nights when the moon, without being visible, softens and ameliorates the gloom, and makes of night a sort of twilight. While I went pacing softly about, to occupy myself a soft small rain began to fall; but this did not affect me in any way. It was rather soothing than disagreeable. I went down to the side of the loch, where the pale light on the water was touched by innumerable dimplings of the rain, then up again, round and round the house, not caring where I went. At this hour I had always avoided the Lady's Walk, I can scarcely tell why. To-night, in my strange familiarity with everything, and carelessness of all but one subject, I suddenly turned into it with a caprice I could not account for, perhaps with an unexpressed wish for company, for somebody who might understand my thoughts. The mystic footsteps gave me a sort of pleasure. Whether it was habit or some new sense of human fellowship which Charlotte's impassioned words had caused, I can scarcely tell; but the excitement with which I had always hitherto regarded the mysterious watcher here was altogether gone out of my mind. I felt a profound and tender pity for her rising in me instead. Was it possible that a spirit could be 'over-anxious,' as Charlotte said, endeavouring vainly, and yet not undutifully, to take God's supreme guardianship out of His hands? The thought was new to me. To think that a good and blessed creature could so err, could mistake so humanly and persevere so patiently, though never able to remedy the evils, seemed somehow more possible than that a guardian from Heaven could watch and watch for generations with so little result. This gave me a great compassion for the lonely watcher thus rebelling in a heavenly way of love against the law of nature that separated her from visible life. My old idea, that it might be Charlotte herself in an unconscious shadow-shape, whose protecting motherly love made these efforts unawares, glided gratefully into the feeling hat it was an earlier Charlotte, her very kin and prototype, who could not even now let God manage her race without her aid. While I was thus thinking, I was startled once more by the same sigh which I had heard with Charlotte. Yes, yes, it might be the wind. I had no time to bandy explanations with myself. It was a soft long sigh, such as draws the very breath out of an over-laden bosom. I turned half round, it was so near to me; and there, by my side, so close that I could have touched her, stood the Lady whom I had seen so often—the same figure which I had met in the London streets and in the woods of Ellermore. I suppose I stepped back, with a little thrill of the old sensations, for she seemed to put out a hand in the pale gloom, and began to speak softly, quickly, as if there was scarcely time enough for what she had to say.
'I am going away like the rest,' she said. 'None of them have ever bid me go before; but it is true—it is true what she says. I have never done any good—just frightened them, or pleased them. It is in better hands—it is in better hands.'
With this there came the familiar movement, the wringing of the hands, which was like Charlotte, and she seemed to weep; but before I could say anything (and what could I have said?) she cried with eagerness, 'I came to you because you loved her, but you were too late—and now again, again! you may help if you will. It will be set before you to help, if you will.'
'How can I help? ' I cried. 'Tell me, Lady, whoever you are; I will do it. I will do it!—but how can I do it? Tell me'
I put out my hand to touch her dress, but it melted out of my hold. She withdrew with a swift, shy movement. 'It will be set before you,' she said, with a breathless faintness as if of haste; and already her voice was further off breathing away. 'It will be set before you—I must not say more. One can never say more.'
'What can I do?' I cried; so much had I forgot the old terror that I put myself in her path, stopping the way. 'Tell me how, how! Tell me, for God's sake, and because of Charlotte!'
The shadowy figure retreated before me. It seemed to fade, then reappeared, then dissolved altogether into the white dimness, while the voice floated away, still saying, as in a sigh, 'You may help, you may help, you may save' I could hear no more. I went after this sighing voice to the end of the Walk; it seemed to me that I was pursuing, determined to hear her message, and that she softly fled, the hurrying footsteps becoming almost inaudible as they flew before me. I went on hotly, not knowing what I did, determined only to know what it was; to get an explanation, by what means I did not care. Suddenly, before I knew, I found my steps stumbling down the slope at the further end, and the pale water alive with all the dimplings of the rain appearing at my very feet. The steps sank upon the loch-side, and ceased with a thrill like the acutest sound. A silence more absolute than any I have heard in nature ensued. I stood gasping, with my foot touching the edge of the water; it was all I could do to arrest myself there.
I hurried back to the house in a state of agitation, which I cannot describe. It was partly nervous dread. I do not disguise this; but partly it was a bewildered anxiety and eagerness to know what the chance was which was to be set before me. That I had the most absolute faith in it I need hardly say. 'You may help them if you will! You may help them if you will!' I said it over and over to myself a thousand times with a feverish hurry and eagerness. Indeed, I did nothing but repeat it. When Charlotte came down late to tell me her father was asleep, that the doctor who had been sent for had pronounced his recovery real, I was walking up and down the half-lighted drawing-room, saying these words over and over to myself.
'He says it is wonderful, but it may be complete recovery,' Charlotte said; 'only to tell him nothing we can help, to keep all the circumstances from him; especially, if it is possible, about Ellermore. But how is it possible? how can I do it? "Help it you will?" Mr. Temple, what are you saying?'
'It is nothing,' I said; 'some old rhyme that has got possession of me.'
She looked very anxiously into my face. 'Something else has happened? You have seen or heard' Her mind was so alive to every tone and glance that it was scarcely possible to conceal a thought from her.
'I have been in the Walk,' I said, 'and being excited and restless, it was more than my nerves could bear.'
She looked at me again wistfully. 'You would not deceive me, Mr. Temple,' she said; then returned to her original subject. The doctor was anxious, above all things, that Mr. Campbell should leave Ellermore to-morrow, that he should go early, and above all that he should not suspect the reason why. She had the same dread of the removal as ever, but there was no alternative, and not even a day's delay was to be thought of, for every day, every hour, made the chances of discovery more.
'But you cannot keep up the delusion for ever,' I said, 'and when it is found out?'
Again she wrung her hands. 'It is against my judgment; but what can I do?' She paused a moment, and then said, with a melancholy dignity, 'It can but kill him, soon or syne. I would not myself have my life saved by a lie; but I am weak where my father is concerned, and God understands all. Oh, I am beginning to feel that so, Mr. Temple! We search and search, and think what is best, and we make a hundred mistakes, but God sees the why and the wherefore. Whoever misunderstands, He never misunderstands.'
She went away from me in the calm of this thought, the secret of all calm. It seemed to me that I, in my blind anxiety guessing at the enigma that had been given to me, and my poor Lady vagrant from the skies, still trying to be the providence of this house, were left alike behind.
Next morning Charlotte came down to breakfast with me, which she had not done before. She told me that her father had passed a good night, that he had shed tears on awaking, and began to talk tenderly and calmly of Colin, and that everything seemed to promise that the softening and mournful pre-occupation of grief, distracting his mind from other matters, would be an advantage to him. He was pleased to be left with Margaret, who had adored her nursling, and who had been fully warned of the necessity of keeping silence as to the circumstances of Colin's death. The post-bag came in while we were talking. It lay on the table for a few minutes untouched, for neither of us were anxious for our correspondence. We were alone at table, and Charlotte had rested, though I had not, and was almost cheerful now that the moment had arrived for the final severance. The necessity of doing inspired her; and perhaps, though I scarcely dared to think so, this tranquil table at which we sat alone, which might have been our table, in our home, in a new life full of peace and sober happiness, soothed her. The suggestion it conveyed made the blood dance in my veins. For the moment it seemed as if the hope I dared not even entertain, for one calm hour of blessedness and repose, had come true.
At last she gave me the key, and asked me to open the bag. 'I have been loth to disturb this peaceful moment,' she said, with a smile which was full of sweetness and confidence, 'and nothing outside seems of much consequence just now; but the boys may have something to tell, and there will be your letters—will you open it, Mr. Temple?' I, too, was loth, more loth than she, to disturb the calm, and the outside world was nothing to me, while I sat here with her, and could fancy her my own. But I did what she told me. Letters are like fate, they must be encountered with all that is good and evil in them. I gave her hers, and laid out some, probably as important to them, though they seemed to me so trifling and unnecessary, that were for the servants. Then I turned to my own share. I had two letters, one with a broad black border, which had been forwarded from one place to another in search of me, and was nearly ten days old; for, like most people, I examined the outside first; the other a large, substantial blue letter, which meant business. I can remember now the indifference with which I opened them, the mourning envelope first. There were so many postmarks on it, that that of its origin, which would have enlightened me at once, never struck me at all.
Heaven above! what was this that met my eyes? An announcement, full of the periphrasis of formal regret, of the death of my old cousin Jocelyn ten days before. I gave a sort of fierce cry—I can hear it now—and tore open the second, the official letter. Of course I knew what it was; of course I was aware that nothing could interfere; and yet the opportuneness of the announcement was such, that human nature, accustomed to be balked, would not allow me to believe in the possibility. Then I sprang from my seat. 'I must go,' I cried; 'there is not a moment to lose. Stop all proceedings—do nothing about the going, for God's sake, till I come back.'
'Mr. Temple, what has happened? Charley,' cried Charlotte, blanched with terror. She thought some other catastrophe had happened, some still more fatal news that I would not tell her. But I was too much absorbed in my own excitement to think of this.
'Do nothing,' I said; 'I will meet Charley on the way, and tell him. All will be right, all will be right, only wait till I come back.' I rushed to the door in my haste, then came back again, not knowing what I did, and had caught her in my arms before I was aware—not in my arms, but with my hands on her shoulders, holding her for one wild moment. I could hardly see her for the water in my eyes. 'Wait,' I said, 'wait till I come back! Now I can do what she said! Now my time is come; do nothing till I come back.' I let my hands drop down to hers, and caught them]and kissed them in a wild tremor, beyond explanation. Then I rushed away. It was a mile or more to the little quay where the morning boat carried communications back to the world. I seemed to be there as on wings, and scarcely came to myself till I descended into the noise, the haze, the roar of the damp streets, the crowds and traffic of Glasgow. Next moment (for time flew and I with it, so that I took no note of its progress or my own) I was in the clamour of the 'Works,' making my way through the grime and mud of a great courtyard, with machinery clanging round me on every side, from the big skeleton houses with their open windows—into the office, where Charley, in close converse with a stranger, jumped up with terror at the sight of me. 'What has happened?' he cried; 'my father?' I had scarcely breath enough to say what I had to say. 'Your father,' I cried, 'has come to himself. You can make no sale without him—every arrangement must be stopped at once.' All that I was capable of knowing was with a certainty, beyond all proof, that the man with whom Charley was talking, a sportsman in every line of his countenance and clothes, was the intending purchaser of Ellermore.
I remember little of the conversation that followed. It was stormy and excited, for neither would Charley be convinced nor would the other consent to be off his bargain. But I made my point clear. Mr. Campbell having recovered his faculties, it was clear that no treaty could be concluded without his consent. (It could not have been legal in any case, but I suppose they had in some way got over this.) I remember Charley turning upon me with a passionate remonstrance, when, almost by violence and pertinacity, I had driven his Cockney sportsman away. 'I cannot conceive what is your object, Temple,' he said. 'Are you mad? my father must give his consent; there is no possibility of a question about it. Ellermore must be sold—and as well to him as to another,' he said, with a sigh. I took out my blue letter, which I had huddled into my pocket, and laid it before him. 'It is to me that Ellermore must be sold,'—I said.
My inheritance had come there was nothing wonderful about it—it was my right; but never did inheritance come at a more suitable moment. Charley went back with me that afternoon, after a hurried conference with his young brothers, who came round me, shaking my arms nearly off, and calling to each other in their soft young basses, like rolls of mild thunder, that, whatever happened, I was a good fellow, a true friend. If they had not been so bashful they would have embraced me, less I verily believe from the sense of escape from a great misery which they had scarcely realised, than from generous pleasure in what they thought a sort of noble generosity: that was their view of it. Charley perhaps was more enlightened. He was very silent during the journey, but at one point of it burst out suddenly upon me. 'You are doing this for Chatty, Temple. If you take her away, it will be as bad as losing Ellermore.' I shook my head. Then, if never before, I felt the hopelessness of the position. 'There is but one thing you can do for me: say not a word of that to her,' I said.
And I believe he kept counsel. It was of her own accord that Charlotte came up to me after the hurried interview in which Charley laid my proposal before her. She was very grave, though the sweetness of her look drew the heart out of my breast. She held out her hands to me, but her eyes took all warm significance out of this gesture. 'Mr. Temple,' she said, 'you may think me bold to say it, but we are friends that can say anything to one another. If in your great generosity there may yet be a thought—a thought that a woman might recompense what was done for her and hers' Her beautiful countenance, beautiful in its love and tenderness and noble dignity, but so pale, was suddenly suffused with colour. She took her hands out of mine, and folded them together—'That is out of my power—that is out of my power!' she said.
'I like it better so,' I cried. God help me! it was a lie, and so she knew. 'I want no recompense. It will be recompense enough to know you are here.'
And so it has remained ever since, and may, perhaps, for ever—I cannot tell. We are dear friends. When anything happens in the family I am sent for, and all is told to me. And so do I with her. We know all each other's secrets—those secrets which are not of fortune or incident, but of the soul. Is there anything better in marriage than this? And yet there is a longing which is human for something more.
That evening I went back to the Lady's Walk, with a sort of fanciful desire to tell her, the other, that I had done her bidding, that she had been a true guardian of her race to the last. I paced up and down through the dim hour when the sun ought to have been setting, and later, long into the twilight. The rain fell softly, pattering upon the dark glistening leaves of the ever greens, falling straight through the bare branches. But no soft step of a living soul was on the well-worn track. I called to her, but there was no answer, not even the answer of a sigh. Had she gone back heartsick to her home in Heaven, acknowledging at last that it was not hers to guard her race? It made my heart ache for her to think so; but yet it must have been a sweet grief and easily healed to know that those she loved were most safe in God's only care when hers failed—as everything else must fail.
THE END.
- ↑ Used in Scotland in the sense of weakness of body-invalidism.'