Harry Muir

OLD PLAY.

“They must not bid me; I cannot sell the land,” said Martha, firmly.

Young Mr. Dunlop, deputed by his father to offer any “reasonable” assistance in arranging her affairs, or any quantity of advice reasonable or otherwise, sat opposite her in the library; Cuthbert Charteris waited rather impatiently. They had been engaged in an important consultation when Mr. Dunlop entered, and Cuthbert was turning over some papers restlessly, and looking round now and then, as if about to speak; but young Mr. Dunlop still roused anything but peaceable feelings in Cuthbert’s mind, and he remained silent.

“Of course, Miss Allenders, my father would never dream of forcing his advice upon you. All I have to say is, that in case you are disposed to sell the land, as we heard you were, Sir John would be glad to make you an offer for part of it—that is all.”

“I am much obliged to Sir John Dunlop,” said Martha, “but we have no intention—I cannot see we have any right—to dispose of any part of Allenders. Thanks, many thanks; but we must try to increase, not to alienate.”

After some time, Mr. Dunlop went away. He did not understand the quiet gravity with which he was received, and carried home such an account of Martha’s callousness, that his sister laughed scornfully, and said Miss Allenders had provided for herself, and would soon recover of her grief. Good Lady Dunlop only shook her head, and secretly resolved to call at Allenders, and see about this for herself; she could not believe that Harry’s trusted sister was callous to his loss, when she herself, Lady Dunlop, who never had known death, except twenty years ago, when she lost a very little lisping child—a meeting with the adversary which she never could forget—always lifted her handkerchief to her eyes, and gave a sigh to poor Allenders when his name was mentioned. She could not believe in Martha’s hardness of heart.

“It must be attended with very considerable expense,” said Charteris. “You must either part with Allenders, or double its value—there is no alternative. And I do not see at present where this necessary seed of capital is to be procured. But, we must try. You will come to Edinburgh then, on Monday, and see the creditor?”

“That is four thousand pounds, and Miss Jean one; and I have heard there were other bills,” said Martha. “Yes, I will go on Monday. Can we pay all this, do you think, in one lifetime? And then there is the present money to be thought of; another thousand they say would do. We could manage to pay the interest of all that.”

“But not to live besides,” said Cuthbert, hastily.

Martha’s head rose with a slight proud motion. “I have provided for that,” she said, with haughtiness; but immediately softening, added so frankly that Cuthbert was touched almost to tears: “I mean we are all ready to work, and very willing. We are now as we were before we came to Allenders; one is not—but what remains to do is for him; and we, all of us, sisters, and dearest to each other, are as we were.”

As she concluded, her tears fell silently upon the desk before her. “God is visiting my heart with the dews of youth,” said Martha, looking up with a sad smile of surprise. “I can cry now, whenever I would, like a bairn.”

And Cuthbert, who was a man, and a strong one, felt his heart swell; and with a strong impulse of help, bethought himself what he could do for those sisters, to aid them in their work.

“The houses at Maidlin must stand for a time,” said Martha. “You will think me weak, Mr. Charteris, but I cannot abandon even them; and we must try to find a place for John, and to sell the carriage and the horses. We will keep the gig which the old Laird of Allenders left, and Mysie—”

Martha stopped, with white lips and a strong shiver. She was about to say, that Mysie, like many other country girls, could drive; but just then there occurred to her the time when Mysie made trial of her skill, through the darkness of that Hallowe’en night, and for a moment she was silent.

“It will do for Agnes; all the rest of us are strong,” resumed Martha, with a voice that sounded harshly. “I think I can undertake that the house itself will cost the land nothing; and Armstrong is good and honest, and only wants some one to bid him do what he knows is necessary to be done; I can undertake that, too, I think. He was here yesterday. See what our calculations were, Mr. Charteris.”

Charteris took the paper and read. Though not in the ordinary business form, it was a statement of expenses for a year, including the interest to Miss Jean, and Harry’s other creditor. He asked to keep it, and she permitted him. Cuthbert began to be very sanguine; he thought he saw now where to find the money to complete poor Harry’s experiment with the land.

Then he rose to take his leave.

“Can you not stay to-night? They will be disappointed,” said Martha. “We have seen very little of you, Mr. Charteris, since—since we came here; but pray stay to-night, and cheer these poor girls. I am perhaps too much occupied for them, poor things! and they are going with my uncle to Ayr. Stay and see them to-night, or you will disappoint them.”

“Disappoint them? should I?” said Cuthbert, smiling faintly. “I stayed away because I thought myself very magnanimous and self-denying—perhaps it was only because my pride was wounded; but to disappoint them, or think I did, would be too great a pleasure—I must see them, to convince myself that I have not so much cause for pride.”

And Cuthbert, in a little flush of growing hope and gladness, looked up into Martha’s face—Martha’s face, calm and unchangeable, full of the great still sorrow, for which half an hour ago he had himself wept, struck him like an accusation. He cast down his eyes in silence, and stood before her almost like a culprit; for the warm hopes and joys of the future looked selfish and small in the presence of this absorbed and quiet grief.

Just then Mysie entered, and gave Martha a letter. As she opened it, a piece of paper fell to the ground. Cuthbert lifted it up; it was a note for fifty pounds.

Martha ran over the note quickly, yet with perfectly collected attention; then, after a moment’s hesitation, she handed it to Cuthbert, and sat down at her desk to write. The letter was from Gilbert Allenders.

Cuthbert unconsciously crushed the letter in his hand. Inconsiderable as his rival was, he was a rival still.

Martha’s answer was very brief.

It was the first time she had signed her name so; and Martha placed the fifty-pound note within her letter, when she had shown it to Cuthbert, who looked on with some astonishment. Collected and self-possessed as she was, Martha could not, without strong emotion, either write or speak poor Harry’s name, and her whole frame quivered with nervous excitement as she closed her letter. Cuthbert was much surprised; he thought this a piece of quite unnecessary generosity.

“Is it foolish?” said Martha, answering his look. “Well, be it so; but no one shall say that he gave this to a careless companion, and that it was exacted back again. I tell you, the meanest gift he ever gave, were it for his own destruction, is sacred to me—never to be reclaimed. It was his own. I will not hear a word of blame.”

And this irritation and defiance was the weakness of Martha’s grief.

To subdue it, she rose abruptly, and went up-stairs to the drawing-room, where Agnes now sat by the fire, watching the wintry sunshine steal in at the window. Over the bright hair, which never before had been covered with a matron’s hood, Agnes wore the close, sombre cap of a widow. They had tried to persuade her that this was unnecessary; but poor little invalid, heart-broken Agnes had a little petulance too, and insisted. Wrapped in a heavy black shawl, and with everything about her of the deepest mourning, her face, closely surrounded by those folds of muslin, looked very thin and pale; but the faint colour of reviving health began to rise in her cheek, and Agnes sometimes, in the impatience of early sorrow, wept that she could not die.

Uncle Sandy sat beside her, and a faint attempt at conversation had been going on; but it failed often, and had long breaks of listless silence; and Cuthbert fancied the patient, uncomplaining sorrow of the old man—the weakness which seemed to have fallen over him, the trembling hand, and husky voice, were almost the most moving of all.

Rose sat by the table, working; Lettie and Katie Calder were at the window; but you scarcely needed to look at their black dresses, to know that those strange words, “It is all over,” with their solemn mystery of significance, had been lately spoken here. All was over—everything—life, death, anxiety, excitement. Their heads were dizzy, and their minds reeled under the recent blow; yet nothing was visible but langour, and a dim exhausted calm.

And this evening passed, as every other evening seemed to pass, like some strange vacant space, blank and still; yet Rose, when Cuthbert sat beside her, felt a grateful ease at her heart. It seemed as if some one had lifted from her, for a moment, her individual burden; and sad though the family was, and languid and melancholy the afflicted house, Cuthbert remembered this evening with a thrill of subdued and half-guilty delight, and again his heart longed, and his arms expanded, to carry away into the sunshine his drooping Rose.