CHAPTER XI.
Open the lattice; let the fresh, soft air Bear in sweet Nature’s psalm; Draw the dim curtain quick--the sun is there, Holy and bright and calm-- And here a heart trembles for very gladness, Which yesternight fainted twixt hope and sadness.
When Lilias awoke next morning, her heavy black dress was nowhere to be found. It had been put away out of sight, and a light muslin one was laid in its place. The Lily of Mossgray put on the happier garment with reverence, murmuring to herself psalms of thanksgiving. She had wakened so often to the blank of hopeless grief, that she felt now a solemn gravity in this new beginning of life; it seemed to her like the visible interposition of the Divine Hand--a miracle of joy.
The blinds had been drawn up, and the morning sun looked brightly into the room. These little imaginative attentions could be rendered only by Helen, but Helen had left the room before Lilias awoke from the long, happy sleep of her new peace.
In a room below Helen stood beside the old housekeeper. A great pile of white linen lay on the table before them, and Mrs Mense was exhausting herself in its praise.
“Na, if ye had Mossgray’s ain muckle spyglass that sits up the stair at the study window, ye could scarce count the threads,” said the old woman, triumphantly; “it’s that fine; and ye see, Miss Buchanan, Mr Halbert’s no’ what ye could ca’ weel supplied, coming out from amang fremd folk, ye ken. I’ve been wanting to see about getting them made this lang time, only I didna like to fash the young lady; but Mossgray says I may speak to her noo. Do ye think I may speak to Miss Lilias noo, and no fash her, Miss Buchanan?”
“What is it, Mrs Mense?” said Lilias, coming forward with a peaceful light upon her face which could not be misapprehended. The old woman glanced at her changed dress and brightened.
“Ye see, Miss Lillie, it’s just the new linen. I dinna think ye ever lookit at it before; is’t no’ beautiful? And I was just thinking we should hae it made. Ye see, Mr Halbert he hasna ower mony, and to be ploutering and washing ance in a fortnight like common folk disna do for the like o’ us; and ye micht get some yoursel’, Miss Lillie; some o’ the new-fashioned kind wi’ the frills, for it’s a muckle web, and it wad be a guid turn to somebody, the making o’ them.”
Helen was twisting a corner of the linen nervously in her fingers.
“I think I could get some one to do it for you, Lilias, if you could trust me,” she said.
“And you’re just the best to ken, Miss Buchanan,” said Mrs Mense, “for ye see Miss Lillie has nae friend to speak o’ but yoursel’, and it’s no like she could ken wha sewed weel, and wha didna; but I’m just as blythe as I can be, Miss Lillie, to see you wi’ your light gown and your smile again, and so is Mossgray; and now I’ll gang my ways, and see that Jen’s minding the breakfast.”
“Lilias,” said Helen, when the old woman was out of hearing, “I don’t need to have any foolish pride with you. _I_ will make these things for you if you will take me for your sempstress.”
“_You_, Helen,” said Lilias, “you don’t need--you don’t wish--I mean--”
“I mean that we have never been rich, Lilias,” said Helen, with her shifting blush, “and that now there is occasion for a little more work than usual--that is all; and you need not look so grave, unless you think I shall not make these new-fashioned things well enough to please Mrs Mense; but I am not afraid, Lilias--I think you may trust me.”
“But, Helen, you have too much to do already; you cannot work always,” said Lilias. “Let me speak to Mossgray--let me--”
“Hush, hush,” said Helen, “you forget that we have some pride still. I have not too much to do, Lilias; people seldom have, I think, and it is no great matter when one can get through one’s troubles by a little additional labour. It is no hardship; this is my kind of fighting, you know, and I can do it very well. I think you will give me your work, Lilias, and a great deal of praise when it is done. I shall please Mrs Mense. I will invent frills. I think you must trust me.”
It was a slight trial to the sensitive, proud Helen; her cheek was flushed a little, and the smile trembled on her lip, but she talked the uncomfortable feeling away, and got it over, with less pain than she could have thought. The great web of linen was committed to her hands, and while Lilias entered into her revival of happy life, calm, peaceful, and at rest, Helen went away home to the little, quiet, dull house, and to her labour, the long, hard toil to which her heart rose, as to the strenuous oar which might keep the little ship afloat.
The autumn days flushed to their brightest and began to wane. It was a gay autumn to the Fendies, and to the other youthful people of the neighbourhood through them; Halbert Graeme had quite forgiven Menie Monikie. The saucy Menie sent him cards and gloves when she became Mrs Keith, and a barbarous lump of bride-cake; but the gift, cruel as it was, did by no means disturb the equanimity of Halbert. The broken gold coin lay snug in a corner of his dressing-case; he laughed merrily to himself sometimes when his eye fell upon it, and thought with a great deal of good-humour, and scarcely any pique, how simple and foolish the boy and girl were who broke that coin in the pleasant twilight of the Aberdeenshire glen. Halbert had got over his first romance very comfortably; the youthful epidemic fell lightly on the heir of Mossgray.
He was much “out.” Alick Fendie and the redoubtable Captain Hyde engrossed a great deal of Halbert’s time, and his hands were full of flirtations now when he had no restraint upon him. But Halbert was not like his father; the flirtations were honest, unsophisticated amusements, and did little harm. He was born to be popular with all, but he killed nobody.
And left thus to themselves in the quiet house of Mossgray, it was a pleasant time to Lilias and her guardian. She had learned to prize the sunshine more from its temporary withdrawal, and the old man spoke to her of the wanderer far away as of an absent son. “When he comes home.” Lilias remembered how that word rung in her own ear when she first saw Mossgray; she remembered how, after the lifetime of wandering, the blessedness of those who dwell among their own people fell upon her; and _he_ too was to come “home.”
Another letter came from him in those clear September days; it was brief, like the other. He had much to tell her, he said, but was still feeble, and must defer it until he spoke to her, face to face; and in another month he would reach Mossgray.
The news brought a strange thrill over the calm Lily. It was years now since he went to India. Their engagement had been formed when they were both very young, and she was now matured into grave womanhood. She began to fancy that she was changed; she began to wonder whether he too had grown old as she had done; and while she smiled at herself for these fancies, they sometimes agitated her a little--a very little--only just enough to keep the balance even, and prevent an overpoise of joy.
And Helen Buchanan now could only snatch a momentary glance, from the little wicket gate, of the evening sun, as he went down beyond the hill, and could not linger to watch the golden mist fade into graver purple before the breath of night. She had no leisure now for sunset walks, no time to glean and gather in to her heart the glories of the grand sky and the dimmer tints of earth, and, eating angel’s bread, grow strong. Long labour through the whole bright day, labour at the sunsetting, labour in the fair, dim hours beyond; it was a hard life.
“I have seen the boatmen cross the Firth, when the tawny waves were coming in like lions,” said Helen, as she bent over those weary breadths of linen, “and the wind was so high that the boat could bear no sail, and the current so strong that they could scarcely row; but there was something in their work--- I fancy I must call it excitement--which made it quite a different thing from safe, monotonous labour. I mind how it moved me--the dipping of the oars, which scarcely could enter the great, buoyant swell of water, the forcing forward of the boat, which did not seem to be _in_ the stream at all, but _on_ it; it makes one’s heart beat. I thought I should rather have been with Willie Thomson then, than when the Firth was as smooth as the wan water.”
“You are not so brave as you think, Helen,” said her mother, smiling. “Willie Thomson would have found you a very timid passenger.”
“Perhaps--if he was prosaic and understood me literally,” said Helen, “but I mean one’s heart rises: and in our poor little concerns, mother, I think we are in the boat, and the Firth is wild with his lion’s mane, and we are at the oars. Never mind the wind--I like it now, when I am used to the rocking--and those great, surly, bellowing waves--let us tame them, mother, it is what they were made for; and yonder is the shore!”
Mrs Buchanan shook her head. This hand-to-hand struggle with the meagre strength of poverty was new to Helen. At their best time they had very little--so little that it was almost a marvel how the good, careful mother kept the boat afloat; but then their wants bore proportion to their means, and they were as much content with their spare living as if it had been the richest;--solitary women always have inexpensive households--and never before had there been such urgent need as now. It was well and happy that the young heart rose to meet it; the elder one had old experiences--memories of being worsted in the battle--of failing heart and sinking courage, and the armed man, Want, victorious over all. She sighed and was silent when her daughter spoke; but the storm roused the strength of Helen. It was the trumpet of her natural warfare, and she bent to her oar with a stout heart; the end was attainable--they saw the shore.
“Father,” said Hope Oswald on one of those mellow September days, “Saunders Delvie is not well--will you come and see him?”
Mr Oswald hesitated a good deal; he had not much power of expression, and though he might show his sympathy practically if it was much excited, he could not manage to speak about it. In his capacity as elder, he could administer reproof with very becoming solemnity, and overawe the scorner with the grave dignity of his office; but to encourage, to soothe, to console--these were out of Mr Oswald’s way--he was shy of adventuring upon them.
“Father,” said Hope, “when Saunders heard that Peter was dead he came to you--he wanted _you_ to advise him and not Mossgray; and now when there is no good word about poor Peter, will you not come and see Saunders, father? for they say he will break his heart and die.”
“People do not die of broken hearts,” said Mr Oswald, hastily.
“But I think Saunders has broken his heart even if he does not die,” said Hope, with reverence, “and I think that is harder than if God had taken him away like Peter; but, father, Robbie Caryl says that he heard Saunders at his worship on Saturday night, and he _minded_ Peter. Father, Saunders minded Peter in his prayer as if he were not dead.”
Mr Oswald shook his head.
“I am afraid there is very little chance of that, Hope.”
But Hope reiterated her prayer.
“Will you come with me to see Saunders, father?”
“Wait till the evening, Hope,” said the banker: “I will go then.”
And Hope, when the evening came, would suffer no evasion of the promise. Mr Oswald permitted himself to be led away somewhat reluctantly, for he felt the duty a very difficult and painful one.
The door of Saunders Delvie’s cottage was closed when they came up, and from it issued the voice of psalms. It was earlier than the usual carefully-observed hour of worship, but Saunders and his wife were both weary and sick at heart, and they were glad to shut out the world and its gay daylight, and to seek the merciful oblivion of rest as soon as they could.
The cottage was dimly lighted by the fire, and through the window the quick eyes of Hope discerned the two well-known figures seated on either side, and mingling their old cracked, trembling voices in the psalm. It was strange music--the wife’s low, murmuring, crooning tones, and the deeper voice of the old man with that shrill break in it--more pathetic than any sweeter woe of music. Old, poor, bereaved, and solitary, they omitted no night their usual “exercise”--they never forgot, with these sinking, wearied hearts and broken tones of theirs, to praise the God who chastised them.
The banker and his daughter stood without, waiting till their worship ended; the low, grave murmur of Saunders’ voice as he read the chosen chapter came to them indistinctly through the gloom, and then Hope saw the two old solitary people kneel down to prayer.
They could hear what he said then--all the familiar petitions--the daily prayers in which the godly peasant, ever since he first knelt down at his own fire-side, had remembered before God his church, his country, and the authorities ordained in each--had their place first in the old man’s evening supplications; and last of all, with his voice then shriller and more broken than ever, and his hard, withered, toil-worn hands convulsively strained together, there came the soul and essence of the old man’s prayer,--“If he is yet within the land of the living, and the place of hope; if he is still on praying ground;” terrible anguish of entreaty over which that “if” threw its doubt and gloom.
Mr Oswald turned away his face from the quick scrutiny of Hope; the one vehement strong man understood the other, but the banker felt himself abashed and humiliated before the intenser, sublimer, and less selfish spirit: “People do not die of broken hearts.” The young ladies and the young gentlemen rarely do; but George Oswald discovered, in the stillness of his own awed soul that night, how solemn a thing a broken heart is, and how the strongest might die of that rending, or more terrible, might live.
By and by they entered. The old man was sitting in a homely elbow chair covered with blue and white checked linen. The bed which occupied one end of the room was decently curtained with the same material. The house was only a but and a ben; an outer and an inner apartment, but everything in it was very neatly arranged and clean. Poor Mrs Delvie’s “redding up” was done very mechanically now; her hands went about it, while her mind was far otherwise occupied, but still the kitchen was “redd up.”
She sat in another elbow chair opposite her husband. She was a sensible, kindly, good house-mother, and would have been noticeable in any other connection, but the fervent, strong, passionate old man threw his gentler wife into the shade; and even her sufferings for the lost son, whose name through all these weary months she could mention under her own roof only in her prayers, were dimmed in presence of the intense and terrible love of the father. She looked very old and tremulous as she sat there shaking in her chair, and wiping her withered cheek with her apron. Saunders also had some heavy moisture veiling the almost fierce light that burned in his eye, and the old man trembled too with the wild earnestness of his passionate appeal to God.
Mr Oswald entered with a shy inquiry after Saunders’ health.
“Weel eneuch, weel eneuch--better than I deserve,” said Saunders, rising with a haste which showed still more visibly how his gaunt sinewy frame shook with his emotion. The visit was greatly esteemed and felt an honour, though Saunders scarcely thought it right after concluding the day in his Master’s presence, as he had just done, to enter again into intercourse with men; they shut out the outer world when they closed their cottage door reverently upon the waning daylight, and laid the Book upon the table; but the old man rose to offer the banker his chair.
Mr Oswald sat down upon a high stool near the table, and Hope got a low one, and drew it in to the hearth, where she could look up with those young fearless eyes, whose boldness was not intrusion, to the old man’s face. The banker was embarrassed; he desired to sympathize, but felt himself an intruder.
“I hear you have been ill, Saunders,” he said.
“Na, no to ca’ ill,” said Saunders, clearing his voice with an effort, “I’m an auld man, and I get frail; but I hae muckle mair than I deserve; a hantle mair than I deserve--mair than I wad hae gien to ony ane that did evil in _my_ sight.”
“Oh, Saunders, man!” It was the only remonstrance his wife ever made.
“And I’m no ill,” continued Saunders, with the spasmodic shrillness in his voice. “I’m strong in my bodily health, Mr Oswald, it’s no that: I gaed to ye ance when my heart was turning--ye ken it’s no that.”
To no other man would Saunders have said so much, but he thought better of the rigid banker than he deserved. He thought him possessed of his own stern unselfish nature, without his miseries to bring out its harsher points.
“Oh, Maister Oswald,” said the wife, “say something till him! speak to the auld man; bid him no be sae hard on himsel.”
“Whisht, Marget,” said the old man, labouring to steady himself, “haud your peace--it’s you that disna ken. What would it become me to be but hard on mysel? wasna I hard on ane--ane--” the spasm returned, the voice became hoarse and thick, and then broke out peremptorily shrill and high, “ane that canna ken now how I hae warstled for him, yearned for him--oh, woman, ye dinna ken!”
And the mother drew back into the darkness and hid her face; she too had yearned and travailed--but before this agony she was still.
“And gin we win up yonder where we hae nae right to win,” continued the unsteady, broken, excited voice, “and seek for him amang the blessed, and find him never--will ye say I hae nae wyte o’t? Me that avenged his sin upon him, and shut him out o’ my heart wi’ a vow? The Lord mightna have saved him; it might have pleased the Lord no to have saved him; wha can faddom the Almighty? but _I_ banished him away, I pat him out of sound and sight o’ the word that saves, and isna the burden mine? Marget, I bid ye haud your peace--ye hae nae guilt o’ his bluid--but for me--”
The old man’s head shook with a palsied vehement motion, the wild fire shot out in gleams from under his heavy eyebrows; the hard hand with its knotted sinews distinct upon it was clenched in bitter pain.
The banker sat beside him, awed, embarrassed, incapable; the small motives--the little endeavours of his own worldly existence, shrank away ashamed and convicted of meanness in this presence. He could not act as comforter--he felt a moral inability to speak at all--to presume to intrude his own indifferent feelings, before this stern avenging wrath of Love.
And Hope sat looking up with her fearless, reverent, youthful eyes into the old man’s harshly-agitated face. She laid her soft girlish hand upon those swollen veins of his.
“Saunders, I think he is not dead.”
The young face was quite clear, brave, undoubting--the girl’s heart, in which the first breath of the rising woman and the sympathies of childhood still met and blended, could tread in awe, but without fear, where the worldly man dared not enter. Peter Delvie’s mother threw her apron over her head and wept aloud; and after a convulsive struggle to restrain them, one or two heavy tears ran down the cheek of Saunders.
“Na, na, ye dinna ken--ye’re but a bairn--he’s mine, and I canna hope.”
Oh, secret, hoarded, precious hope, to which the wrung heart clung with such passionate tenacity! He could not bear that a stranger’s eye should glance upon it. He whispered it never in any ear but God’s. His wife, the mother of the lost, knew it not except as she heard it in his daily prayer; and he denied it. Jealous of this spark of light which still was in his heart, he denied it rather than make its presence known; and yet--the light leaped up in its socket--the precious germ quickened and moved within him. He could not resist the quivering thrill, almost of expectation, with which he heard those words--the softening tears that followed them.
“Saunders, God let the prodigal come back that his father might forgive him. I think He will let Peter come back to hear that you will be friends with him now. There was a gentleman--Miss Maxwell knows him at Mossgray--and they sent home word that he was dead; but he was not dead--he is coming home--and I think, Saunders, that Peter did not die.”
“Is’t true--bairn, bairn, are ye sure it’s true?” cried Peter Delvie’s mother, “is he coming hame--is he living that was ca’ed dead? Wha telled ye it was true? If it happened wi’ ane it micht happen wi’ twa--and my laddie! my ain bairn!”
“It is quite true, for Helen Buchanan told me,” said Hope.
The old man trembled strangely. He held his head supported in his hands, and was silent. It was the mother who spoke now; the secret treasure of hope in the old man’s vehement breast would not bear the light.
“And she’s true and aefauld, but she’s wiser than the like o’ you,” said the mother through her tears, “I see what she meant now; but she wadna tell me this, for fear I did hope, and my hope was vain. Oh, wha kens--wha kens but the Lord? but if it happened to ane, it might happen to twa, and His mercy has nae measure. It wadna be merciful to send him to his grave wi’ his faither’s wrath upon him.”
The old man’s harsh, stern voice was broken at every word, by the convulsive sob which he could not restrain.
“Haud your peace, Marget; say ony ill o’ me; but if He slew your dearest ten times ower, dinna daur to malign the Lord.”
When they left these old, agitated, sorrowful people alone with their grief and their hope, the banker did not venture to reprove his child for her want of wisdom. His own mind was full. This youthful faith and boldness--this clear uplooking to the heavens--rash as it might be, and inconsistent with worldly prudence, was a higher wisdom than his. He felt that the girl at his side had met in her simplicity, difficulties with which he dared not measure his strength--that the grand, sublime, original emotions were fitter for the handling of the child than for the man. It made him humble and it made him proud; for the fearless girl’s voice of Hope speaking to the desolate had touched him to the heart.
“Should I not have said it, father?” said Hope, after a considerable silence. “Do you think it was wrong?”
“I cannot tell, Hope,” said the subdued strong man, “it may turn out the best and wisest thing. It may--I cannot tell, Hope--you have got beyond the regions of expediency.”
He was not able to cope with these things--he confessed it involuntarily.
“Because Helen did not tell them, father,” said Hope. “If Helen had thought it was right, she would have told them.”
“Does Helen visit them, Hope?”
Hope had forgotten for the moment the antagonism of Helen and her father.
“She goes sometimes--sometimes since poor Peter went away.”
“And what does Helen say about Saunders, Hope?”
“I don’t know, father, except that she is sorry; but I mind once what Mossgray said. Mossgray said it was a good thing that folk were able to change, and that it was very miserable that Saunders did not change till it was too late--very miserable--that was what Mossgray said; but Mossgray should have told Saunders, father, about the gentleman.”
“Mossgray is wise; we are all wiser than you are, Hope,” said the banker; “even your Helen. And that was what Mossgray said? too late--he did not change till it was too late?”
Too late--too late to keep the due honour of a wise father, too late gracefully to approve and sanction the righteous purposes of a good son. Too late! The words rang into his ear as the musical air of night swept by in its waving circles, and the moon rose in a haze mild and silvery. The gentle warmth of change was loosing the chains about his heart.