CHAPTER V.
We must at first endure The simple woe of knowing they are dead-- A soul-sick woe in which no comfort is-- And wish we were beside them in the dust! That anguish dire cannot sustain itself, But settles down into a grief that loves, And finds relief in unreproved tears. Then cometh sorrow, like a Sabbath! Heaven Sends resignation down and faith; and last Of all there falls a kind oblivion Over the going out of that sweet light In which we had our being.--PROFESSOR WILSON.
In the waning afternoon of another dim spring day the Laird of Mossgray entered the Cumberland valley, to which the letter of Lilias had directed him.
He had traversed the fair country beyond Carlisle, with its sloping glades, and belts of rich woodland, and now had reached a chiller and more hilly region, whose bleak inhospitable fells, still scarcely touched by the breath of spring, did yet reveal home-like glimpses, here and there, of sheltered glens and quiet houses, dwelling alone among the hills. He had to pass several of the pleasant towns of Cumberland before he reached the sequestered hamlet in which the last days of Lilias had been spent. It lay in a nook by itself, a scanty congregation of gray roofs, with the church “a gracious lady,” as was the poet’s church among the hills, serenely overlooking all, reigning over the living and the dead. From the end of the little glen you commanded the long range of a wider and more important valley, at the further end of which lay one of the most picturesque of those northern towns, its gray limestone buildings making a sheen in the distance, and a delicate cloud of smoke hovering about the points of its white spires, like something spiritual, marking where household hearths were gathered together in social amity. Not far away lay the consecrated country of the lakes: and everywhere around, bare, brown, scathed hill-tops stood out against the sky.
Mossgray proceeded to the churchyard first of all; all things beside were strange to him in the unknown village, but here he had a friend. After long search among the gray memorials of the forefathers of the hamlet, he came upon a green mound marked by no name, where the soft, green turf was faintly specked with the fragile blue of the forget-me-not; in the village churchyard this alone and the daisy found a place--occupants more fit than the garish flowers with which modern taste has peopled the cities of the dead. The Laird of Mossgray turned aside to ask the name of the occupant of this grave. It was a Scottish widow--said the sexton--lately dead, whose name was Maxwell. The inquirer returned again, and seating himself on a hillock, covered his face with his hands. The old man never knew how long he lingered there. He was not an old man then; the fervid affection of his youth--the burning grief of his early trial, were in his heart passionate and strong as when they thrilled it first; and it was not until the night fell and the dew dropped gently on him, that the sacred sorrow which belongs to the dead, came down to still the stronger throbs of his solitary heart. When he looked up, the stars were shining again in the dim and dewy sky--the hills stood up, like watching Titans, clothed in the shadowy unformed garments of the early earth, and ghost-like in the darkness rose ancient tombstones, gray with years, and the green mounds of yesterday. The great, silent, conscious world, tingling with the spiritual presence which over-brimmed its mighty precincts--and the dead--the solemn sleepers who have lived, and do but wait to live again.
But there were the faint village lights close at hand, and the orphan to be sought for there, who was committed to his care. So the old man withdrew from the grave of Lilias, to seek her child.
The bearing of the Laird of Mossgray had in it so much of the graceful olden courtesy of the gentleman born, that it never failed to bring deference and attention. The very little inn which stood in the centre of the hamlet was not much frequented by strangers. Wandering pedestrian tourists of the student or artist class, to whom its humbleness was a recommendation, did sometimes refresh themselves in its well-sanded kitchen; but the ruddy landlady had scarcely ever welcomed such a guest as Mossgray under her homely roof. So she ushered him into a little boarded room, of dignity superior to the kitchen, though communicating with it, and dusted a huge old-fashioned chair with her apron, and stood curtseying before him, waiting for his orders, and secretly cogitating whether there would be time to dress a fowl for supper, or if the universal ham and eggs would do.
But Mossgray was by no means concerned about supper. He was silent for a few moments, during which the comfortable hostess stood before him marvelling, and when he did address her, it was to ask whether she knew a young Scottish lady, a Miss Maxwell, who, he believed, lived in the village.
The good landlady was a little shocked. What had the like of him to do with young ladies? but his grave face reassured her.
“And that will be the poor young creature that lost her mother, a fortnight come Friday, it’s like?”
“Yes,” said Mossgray, slowly, to steady his voice, “yes, she is an orphan--her mother is dead.”
“Ay, sure; and I wouldn’t wonder a bit,” said the stout hostess, smoothing down her ample skirts, “if she didn’t bide long behind her; for a thin long slip of a thing she is, and no more red on her cheek than the very snow, and I’ve heard say that such like troubles run in the blood. There’s the Squire’s family down in the dale--you’ll know them sure, better than the likes of me--they’ve all followed one another, for all the world like a march of folk at a funeral going to the grave.”
“And is Lilias--is the young lady affected with this disease?” exclaimed Mossgray.
“The young lady did you say, Sir? Why, the poor girl had her bread to work for, like the rest on us--and a weakly white thing she was if there were ne’er another; but she thought herself a young lady sure enow, and what mun she do but go and be a governess, as they ca’ it. Her mother was a prideful body, to have nothing, and so was Miss; but I say, I’d sooner have my girl a dairy-maid any day, if Susan needed to go out of her father’s house for a living, which she doesn’t, thank Providence.”
“But, my good woman,” said Mossgray mildly, “Miss Maxwell has no intention of being a governess, I trust, as she has no need. You will oblige me if you can tell me where I shall find her.”
“Well, and that’s just more than I can tell you, Sir; for the Rector’s gone from home, and they say Miss went with them;--but if it’s your pleasure to stay--”
“I will stay this night, if you can accommodate me,” was the answer.
The landlady curtsied.
“I’ll send up Susan to the Rectory for Mary, and mayhap she can tell.”
In half an hour Susan was despatched, her mother in the mean time taking upon herself to prepare the unbidden supper; and in about an hour and a half after, Susan returned alone. The Rectory Mary had deserted her post, and was now half a dozen miles away over the fell, visiting her mother, and the girl left in charge had been fain to keep Susan for an hour’s gossip to cheer her loneliness. She knew only that the Rector and her mistress had gone to Scotland; but as Scotland, in the reckoning of Susan of the inn and Sally at the Rectory was a word of quite indefinite signification, meaning sometimes a village like their own, and sometimes enlarging into the dimensions of a dale, or of a great town like the picturesque one near them, which filled up to overbrimming their idea of “the world,” the information thus obtained was anything but satisfactory. So Mossgray endeavoured to ascertain something further from the landlady.
“They came here eighteen months past, come Whitsuntide. I mind it particular, because my Susan and more o’ the young folks were up at the confirmation the Bishop had up yonder, in the town, the end of that summer; and it would have done any one’s heart good to have seen my girl in her white muslin, and her cap, and all of them trooping down the dale in the fine morning. But the Scotch lady wouldn’t have her daughter go, though the Rector took the trouble to talk to her himself. I donna understand such things, but mayhap, Sir, the like of you do that are learned, why the young Miss shouldn’t have gone with the rest, like any other Christian. But they were quiet, peaceable folks, no one can say again that; and except it were wandering about the dale, the old lady leaning heavy on Miss, and looking as faint when she came back as if she had done a day’s work, I know no pleasure they ever took, young or old of them; and they cared about nought but books and the post. I have seen them sit on the brow yonder in the summer time reading for hours; and in the winter time I’ve looked in at the window passing by--not that I’m a prying body, or care about my neighbour’s business, but only, there was nought like their ways in the whole dale--and there they would be, with a turf fire you could ’most have held in your two hands, one of them doing fine work, and the other reading; and beautiful Miss can work, Mary at the Rectory says, and it was all for some rich friends that sent them money now and again--though sure it wasn’t much--but it’s like you’ll know, Sir?”
A painful colour was on the face of Adam Graeme: “Poor, and in trouble, and ye visited me not.” He felt every word an accusation, and could scarcely answer “No.”
“And every month or two--I donna know but what it was every month--Miss went by herself into the town to get letters: and I’ve heard say she’d pay more for them than would have put a bit of something comfortable on their table many a day. They were from some far away part, and they came as regular as Sunday comes: but no one could tell who sent them, for she had ne’er a brother, and her father was dead. The Rector’s lady took a deal of notice of Miss and her mother; not that she is one of that kind herself, for she’s just a good easy creature, that doesn’t trouble her head about learning; but she came from Scotland herself you know. I’ve heard Mary at the Rectory say that the old lady had been in such a many places--never biding long in one, I reckon; and you know the old word, Sir, about the rolling stone. Well, they had been in this way more than a year--a good fourteen months it would be, for it was past Midsummer--when the old lady fell ill; and she kept on getting better and worse, better and worse, till a fortnight come next Friday when she died--and a week past on Monday they buried her. At the burial, I know for certain, Miss was like nought but a shadow, and just yesterday the Rector and his lady went off to Scotland and took her with them. I’ve heard Mary at the Rectory say she was gone to be governess to the Rector’s lady’s sisters; but I donna know what’s their name, nor where they live; and please, Sir, that’s all I can tell you.”
The talkative landlady recollected other scraps of gossip however, before she suffered so good a listener to escape her. The subdued and quiet life of the mother and daughter--the proud poverty that made no sign--the privations which were guessed at--which perhaps were magnified--the mysterious letters--the little incidental and unconscious touches which revealed through a mist of verbiage something of the second Lilias, in the fresh youth which knew no cares but those of poverty, and in the first paralysis and stupor of her heavy grief. But the other figure--the sad Naomi leaning on the girl’s arm, and sinking, amid hardship and the chill pains of penury, into a stranger’s grave--every new touch did but deepen the sad cold colours of the picture, and this was the lofty Lily of the old man’s dream--the sunny and joyous daughter of Greenshaw.
The next morning Mossgray left the Cumberland glen, resolving, if his search did not prosper in Scotland, to return when the reverend ruler of the little dale should have returned to his flock and his dominions. He remembered however with annoyance, when he had reached Carlisle on his way home, that he had not ascertained the Rector’s name. It had not been mentioned by his primitive parishioners, to whom “the Rector” was the title of titles; but Mossgray resolved to make immediate inquiry of Mrs Fendie, whose eldest daughter had married an English clergyman somewhere in this same district. He would write also to Walter Johnstone; he would advertise if other means failed, calling on the second Lilias to honour the bequest her mother had made to him. The trust was more sacred now than ever; it was enough that one had gone down uncomforted to the grave.