Harry Muir

“Seventy pounds a-year,” repeated Harry Muir, as his sisters and his wife sat round him, all of them now busy with the “opening,” while Violet kept the baby; “and my uncle might be security, say for three hundred pounds. It’s a mere matter of form, you know. Perhaps they would take him for three hundred instead of five; and Rowan and Thomson is a very good house. I think I might go down to-morrow and inquire.”

“It would not do—you must not think of it,” said Martha quickly.

“Why must I not think of it? I don’t believe John Buchanan is right, Martha, about his father quarrelling with Dick for sending me away. And, besides, how could I return there, where they all know I was dismissed—dismissed, Martha; besides Dick’s own abuse. I could not do it. I would rather do anything than go back;—and seventy pounds a-year!”

“Harry, let us rather labour for you night and day.”

His face grew red and angry. “Why, Martha? I am not a child surely that I cannot be trusted. What do you mean?”

“No,” said Martha bitterly, “you are not a child; you are a full-grown man, with all the endowments a man needs to do something in the world. You can constrain the will of these poor girls, who think of you every hour they live; and you can assert your independence, and be proud, and refuse to bear the reproof you have justly earned. God forgive me if I am too hard; but you wear me out, Harry. When I say you must not seek for a fatal occupation like this, have I not cause? Do I need to descend to particulars? Would you have me enter into detail?”

“Martha! Martha!” The trembling hand of Rose was on her arm, anxiously restraining her; and Agnes looked up into the sullen cloud on Harry’s face, whispering, “Do not be angry; she does not mean it, Harry.”

“Is it because I am in your power that you taunt me, Martha?” he said, fiercely.

Martha compressed her lips till they grew white; she did not answer. After the first outburst, not even the cruel injustice of this received a reply. She had herself to subdue before she could again approach him.

And the two peacemakers, hovering between them, endeavoured, with anxious pains, to heal the breach again. The young wife whispered deprecatory words in Harry’s ear, while she laid her hand on Martha: but pitiful looks were all the artillery of Rose; they softened both the belligerents.

“I don’t care what happens to us out of the house, Martha,” said Rose at last; “but surely we may be at peace within. There are not so many of us in the world; we should be always friends.”

And Martha’s anger was shortlived. “I spoke rashly,” she said, with strange humility; “let us say no more of this now.”

And there was little more said that night.

But Harry would not go to the office again to see Mr. Buchanan; and, poor as they were, none of them desired to subject him to this humiliation. So he went out instead the next morning to make bootless inquiries and write bootless letters—exertions in which there was no hope and little spirit; went out gloomily, and in gloom returned, seeking comfort which they had not to bestow.

But while poor Harry was idle perforce, a spasmodic industry had fallen upon the rest. They scarcely paused to take the simple meals of necessary life; and the pleasant hour of family talk at tea was abridged to-night to ten minutes, sadly grudged by the eager labourers, on whose toil alone depended now the maintenance of the family. Little Violet stood by the table with a clean towel in her hand, preparing, with some importance, to wash the cups and saucers when they had finished. But Harry lingered over the table, leaning his head on his hand, and trifling with something which lay by him. Violet, in housewifely impatience, moved about among the cups, and rung them against each other to rouse his attention, and let him see he retarded her; but Harry’s mind was too much occupied to notice that.

“Harry,” cried Agnes, rather tremulously from the inner room, “I see Mr. Gilchrist on the road. He is coming here. What can it be?”

Harry started and put away his cup. They all became anxious and nervous; and Agnes hastily drew her seat close to the door of the room, that she might hear what the visitor said, though her baby, half dressed, lay on her knee, very sleepy and impatient, and she could not make her appearance till she had laid him in his little crib for the night.

Thus announced, Mr. Gilchrist entered the room. He was a massy large man, with grizzled hair, which had been reddish in his younger days, and kindly grey eyes gleaming out from under shaggy eyebrows. His linen was spotless; but his dress, though quite appropriate and respectable, was not very trim; little layers of snuff encumbered the folds of his black waistcoat; and from a steel chain of many complicated links, attached to the large round silver watch in his fob, hung two massy gold seals, one of them engraven with an emphatic “J. G.” of his own, the other an inheritance from his father. There was no mistaking the character and standing of this good and honourable man; his father before him had been head clerk in an extensive mercantile house in Glasgow; his sons after him might be that, or greater than that. With his two hundred pounds a-year, he was bringing up such a family as should hereafter do honour and service to their country and community; and for himself, no better citizen did his endeavour for the prosperity of the town, or prayed with a warmer heart, “Let Glasgow flourish.”

“Harry, my man,” said Mr. Gilchrist, as he held Harry’s hand in his own, and shook it slowly, “I am very sorry about this.”

“Well, it cannot be helped,” said Harry with a little assumed carelessness, “we must make the best we can of it now.”

“Ay, no doubt,” said the Cashier, as he turned to shake hands with Rose and Martha, “to sit down and brood over a misfortune, is not the way to mend it; but it may not be so bad as you think. Angry folk will cool down, Harry, if ye leave them to themselves a little.”

Harry’s heart began to beat high with anxiety—and Rose cast furtive glances at Mr. Gilchrist, as she went on nervously with her work, almost resenting Martha’s calmness. But Agnes had entered just then from the inner room, and the kindly greeting, which the visitor gave her, occupied another moment, during which the excitable Harry sat on thorns, and little Violet, holding the last cup which she had washed in her hands, polished it round and round with her towel, turning solemn wide open eyes all the time upon this messenger of fate.

“I have a letter from Mr. Buchanan,” said Mr. Gilchrist, drawing slowly from his pocket a note written on the blue office paper. Harry took it with eager fingers. Agnes came to the back of his chair, and looked over his shoulder. Rose, trying to be very quiet, bent her head over her work with a visible tremor, and Martha suffered the piece of muslin she had been working at, to fall on her knee, and looked with grave anxiety at Harry.

Round and round went the glancing tea-cup in the snowy folds of the towel which covered Lettie’s little hands—for she too forgot what she was doing in curious interest about this; a slight impatient exclamation concluded the interval of breathless silence. “No, I cannot take it—it is very kind, I daresay, of Mr. Buchanan; but I cannot accept this,” exclaimed Harry as he handed the letter across the table to Martha.

But the visitor saw, that in spite of Harry’s quick decision, he looked at his sister almost as if he wished her opinion to be different. Agnes too changed her position, and came to Martha’s side. The letter was very short.

“I cannot take it—I do not see how I can take it,” said Harry, irresolutely, as he sought Martha’s eye.

“It’s nonsense, that,” said Mr. Gilchrist, taking out a large silver snuff-box and tapping slowly on its lid, with his great forefinger, “you must look at the thing coolly, Harry, my man. It’s no fault of yours that you lost the money; no sensible person would blame you for that—a thing which has happened to many a one before. I mind very well being once robbed myself. I was a lad then, about your years, and the sum was thirty pounds; but by good fortune twenty of it was in an English note, and not being very sure whether it was canny or not, I had taken its number—so off I set to all the banks and stopped it. It was a July day, and I was new married, and had no superabundance of notes, let alone twenty-pounders—such a race I had,” said Mr. Gilchrist with a smile, raising his red and brown handkerchief to his brow in sympathetic recollection, “I believe I was a stone lighter that night. I succeeded, however, and got back my English note very soon; but Mr. Buchanan would not hear of deducting the other ten from my salary; and he’s better able to stand the loss of a few pounds now than he was then. Think better of it, Harry.”

“I think Mr. Gilchrist is right,” said Martha, “no one could possibly blame you for such a misfortune, Harry—and Mr. Buchanan is very good—you have no right to reject his kindness; it is as ungenerous to turn away from a favour frankly offered, as it is to withhold more than is meet.”

“It is very well said, Miss Muir,” said Mr. Gilchrist, contemplating the long inscription upon the heavy chased lid of his snuff-box, with quiet satisfaction. “I really think it would be an unkindly thing to throw back this, which was meant for a kindness, into the hands that offer it. He is not an ill man, George Buchanan; ’for one ye’ll get better, there’s waur ye’ll get ten,’ as the song says; and besides, Harry, I was young once myself, and so was my wife. I mind when our James was in his cradle like that youngster there, we had just little enough to come and go on; and for any pride of your own, you must see and not scrimp your wife. Touts man, you are not going to take ill what I say. Do you think, if I lost a quarter’s salary just now, it would not scrimp my wife? and I think no shame of it.”

“Neither do I think shame—certainly not,” said Harry, “we have only what we work for. But I have actually lost Mr. Buchanan’s money—I don’t see—”

“Harry,” interrupted Mr. Gilchrist, “never mind telling me what you don’t see—come down to the office to-morrow, and hear what Mr. Buchanan sees—he has older eyes than you, and knows the world better, and there’s no saying what may come of it; for you see, Mrs. Muir,” continued the Cashier, casting down his kindly eyes again upon the grandiloquent inscription which testified that his snuff-box had been presented to him by young men trained in the office under his auspices, as a token of esteem and respect, “it is wonderful what a kindness everybody has for this lad. I myself have been missing his laugh this whole day, and scarcely knowing what ailed me—so maybe something better may turn up if he comes down to-morrow.”

“And Martha thinks you should go—and mind all that we have to do, Harry,” whispered Agnes.

A glow of pleasure was on Harry’s face—he liked to be praised, and felt in it an innocent kindly satisfaction—but still he hesitated. To go back again among those who knew that he had been dismissed and disgraced—to humiliate himself so far as again to recognise Dick Buchanan as his superior—to present himself humbly before Dick Buchanan’s father, and propitiate his favour. It was very unpalatable to Harry, who after his own fashion had no lack of pride.

“I will see about it. I will think it over,” said Harry doubtfully.

“I think I must send our Tom to you in his red gown,” said Mr. Gilchrist; “where he got it, I cannot say, but they tell me the lad is a metaphysical man—if he ever gets the length to be a preacher, we will have to send him East, I’m thinking, for metaphysics seldom flourish here away; but now my wife will be redding me up for being so late. Mind, Harry, I will expect to see you at the office to-morrow.”

The good man rose to go away. “By-the-bye,” he added as he shook hands with Rose—and Rose felt herself look guilty under his smiling glance. “I saw a friend of yours coming off the Ayr coach as I came up—the advocate lad, Mr. Buchanan’s nephew. You are sure of his good word, Harry, or else I am much mistaken.”

“Mr. Charteris!—he has come back very soon. Good night Mr. Gilchrist, I will think about it,” said Harry, as he went to the door with his sister.

Mr. Gilchrist left some excitement behind him. Agnes had risen into tremulous high spirits. Rose was touched with some tremor of anticipation, and Martha, watchful and jealous, looked at her sister now and then with scrutinising looks; for Mr. Gilchrist’s last words had awakened Martha’s fears for another of her children; while in the meantime little Violet had polished all the cups and saucers, and was now putting them with much care away.

“Harry will go—do you not think he must go, Martha?” said Agnes. “Mr. Gilchrist says they miss him in the office. I don’t wonder at that. He will go back again, Martha?”

“I think he should—I think he will,” said Martha with a slight sigh. “There might have been something better in a change—one has always fantastic foolish hopes from a change—but I believe this is best.”

Agnes was a little damped; for she saw nothing but the highest good fortune in this unlooked-for overture of Mr. Buchanan.

Harry lingered at the outer door in a very different mood. He, too, had been indulging in some indefinite hope from change. He could not see that the former evils lay in himself—poor Harry! He thought if the circumstances were altered, that happier results might follow—and while he was not unwilling to return to his former situation, and had even a certain pleasure in the thought that it was open to him, the submission which it would be necessary to make, galled him beyond measure. He stood there at the door, moody and uneasy; not weighing his own feelings against the well-being of the family, certainly, for Harry was not given to any such process of deliberation—but conscious that the two were antagonistic, and moodily letting his own painful share in the matter bulk largest in his mind.

Just then a hackney coach drew up at a little distance from the door, and Cuthbert Charteris leaped out. He was a good deal heated, as Harry thought, and looked as if he had taken little time to rest, or put his dress in order since he finished his journey—but he carried nothing except a little paper parcel. He came up at once to Harry and shook hands with him cordially—they went upstairs together.

“I have just come from Ayr,” said Cuthbert with some embarrassment, as he took his old place at the window—“you must pardon my traveller’s costume, Mrs. Muir, for it is not half an hour since I arrived.”

“You have had little time to see the town,” said Harry. “Did you find my uncle? Has he sent any message with you, Mr. Charteris?”

“I have a message,” said Cuthbert, clearing his throat, and becoming flushed, “but before I deliver it, Mr. Muir, you must hear a long preface.”

“Is my uncle ill?” exclaimed Martha. “Has anything happened?”

“Nothing has happened. He is quite well,” said Cuthbert, “only I have been making some enquiries about your family concerns, for which I need to excuse myself by a long story.”

Harry was still standing. He drew himself up with great hauteur, and coldly said, “Indeed!”

Rose lifted her head for a moment with timid anxiety; the light was beginning to fail, but Rose still sat in her corner holding the work which at present made little progress. Martha had laid down hers. Agnes had withdrawn to the sofa with her baby, who, already asleep, would very soon be disposed of in the cradle; while Harry, with unusual stateliness, leaned against the table, looking towards Cuthbert.

“I think I mentioned before I went away,” said Charteris, “that my errand to Ayr was connected with one of those stories of family pride and romance and misfortune which sometimes lighten our legal labours. This story you must let me tell you, before I can explain how my motives for searching out these, were neither curiosity nor impertinence.”

As Cuthbert spoke, he opened his parcel, placed the old Bible on the table, and handed to Harry a little roll of papers. They were formal extracts from the registers of the old church at Ayr, attested by the session clerk, proving the marriage of Rose Allenders with John Calder, and of Violet Calder with James Muir, together with the register of Harry’s own birth.

Harry was quite bewildered; he turned over the papers, half curious, half angry, and tried to look cool and haughty; but wonder and interest defeated his pride, and impatiently calling for the candle, which Violet, with much care, was just then bringing into the room, Harry threw himself into the arm chair, and resting his elbows on the table, leaned his head upon both his hands, and fixed his eyes, with a half defiance in them, full upon Cuthbert.

The others drew near the light with interest and curiosity as great as his; but though they held their breath while they listened, they did not restrain their fingers—the necessity of work was too great to be conquered by a passing wonder.

“Not much short of a century since,” said Cuthbert, becoming excited in spite of himself, “a family in the neighbourhood of Stirling had their composure disturbed by what seemed to them the very foolish marriage of one of their sons. There were six sons in the family: this one was the fourth, and at that time had very little visible prospect of ever being heir. They were but small gentry, and I do not very well know why they were so jealous of their gentility; but however that might be, this marriage was followed by effects as tragic as if the offender had been a prince’s son instead of a country laird’s.

His father disinherited and disowned him; he was cut off from all intercourse with his family; but in his own affairs he seems to have been prosperous enough until his wife died. That event closed the brighter side of life for this melancholy man. He had two daughters, then children, and with them he left Stirling.”

A slight start moved the somewhat stiff figure of Martha; Rose unconsciously let her work fall and turned her head towards Cuthbert; Harry remained in the same position, fixedly gazing at him; while Agnes, rocking the cradle gently with her foot, looked on a little amused, a little interested, and not a little curious, wondering what the story could mean.

“After this,” continued Cuthbert, “my hero, we suppose went to London (another strange start as if of one half asleep, testified some recognition, on Martha’s part, of the story), but there I lose trace of him. It is only for a short time, however, for immediately afterwards I find him at Ayr.”

“At Ayr?” Harry too, started now, and again turned over the papers, which he still held in his hand, as if looking for a clue.

“In the meantime,” said Cuthbert, “all the other members of the family are dead; there is no one remaining of the blood but this man—the children of this man.”

“And his name?” said Martha, with a slight hoarseness in her voice.

“His name,” said Cuthbert, drawing a long breath of relief, as his story ended, “was John Allenders.”

There was a momentary silence. They looked at each other with bewildered faces. “What does it mean?” said Harry, becoming very red and hot as the papers fell from his shaking fingers; “I cannot see—it is so great a surprise—tell us what it means.”

“It means,” said Cuthbert, quickly, “that you are the heir of John Allenders of Allenders, and of an estate which has been in the family for centuries, worth more than four hundred pounds a year.”

Harry looked round for a moment almost unmeaningly—he was stupified; but Agnes stole, as she always did in every emergency, to the back of his chair, and laid her hand softly on his shoulder. It seemed to awake him as from a dream. With one hand he grasped hers, with the other he snatched the work from Martha’s fingers and tossed it to the other end of the room. “Agnes! Martha!”

Poor Harry! A sob came between the two names, and his eyes were swimming in sudden tears. He did not know what to say in the joyful shock of this unlooked-for fortune; he could only grasp their hands and repeat their names again.

Cuthbert rose to withdraw, feeling himself a restraint on their joy, but Martha disengaged herself from the grasp of Harry, and would not suffer him to move.

“No, no; share with us the pleasure you bring. You have seen us in trouble, stay with us now.”

“Is it true, Mr. Charteris, is it true?” said Agnes, while Harry, still perfectly tremulous and unsteady, threw Rose’s work after Martha’s, and shaded his eyes with his hands, lest they should see how near weeping he was—“Tell us if it is true.”

Harry started to his feet. “True! do you think he would tell us anything that was not true? Mr. Charteris, if they were not all better than me, I would think it was a delusion—that neither such an inheritance nor such a friend could come to my lot. But it’s for them—it’s for them! and a new beginning, a new life—Martha, we shall not be worsted this time—it is God has sent us this other battle-field.”

And Harry, with irrestrainable emotion, lifted up his voice and wept. His little wife clung to his shoulder, his stern sister bent over him with such an unspeakable tenderness and yearning hope in her face, that it became glorified with sudden beauty—and Cuthbert remembered uncle Sandy’s thanksgiving, and himself could have wept in sympathy for the solemn trembling of this joy; for not the sudden wealth and ease, but the prospect of a new life it was which called forth those tears.

“And what did my uncle say, Mr. Charteris,” said Rose, when the tumult had in some degree subsided. No one but Rose remembered that Cuthbert had spoken of a message from uncle Sandy.

“He bade me repeat to you a homely proverb,” said Cuthbert, who was quite as unsteady as the rest, and had been a good deal at a loss how to get rid of some strange drops which moistened his eyelashes. “It takes a strong hand to hold a full cup steady; that is the philosophy I brought from your uncle.”

“No fear,” said Harry, looking up once more with the bright clear loveable face, which no one could frown upon. “No fear—what could I do with my arms bound? What could I do in yon office? but now, Martha, now!”

And Martha once more believed and hoped, ascending out of the depths of her dreary quietness into a very heaven. Few have ever felt, and few could understand this glorious revulsion. With an impatient bound she sprang out of the abyss, and scorned it with her buoyant foot. It might not last—perhaps it could not last—but one hour of such exulting certain hope, almost worth a lifetime’s trial.

“And I will get a little room all to mysel, and Katie Calder will come and sleep with me,” said Violet.

They all laughed unsteadily. It brought them down to an easier level.

“I think, Mr. Muir you should come at once with me to Edinburgh,” said Cuthbert, “and see your lawyer, who has been hunting for you for some time, and get the proof and your claim established. I begin to think it was very fortunate he broke his leg, Miss Muir—for otherwise I might never have seen you.”

“And what made you think of us? how did you guess?” said Harry.

“Rose and Violet,” said Cuthbert, with a little shyness. “It was a happy chance which gave these names.”

Rose drew back a little. There was something unusual, it seemed, in Cuthbert’s pronunciation of her pretty name, for it made her blush; and by a strange sympathy Mr. Charteris blushed too.

“When shall we start? for I suppose you will go with me to Edinburgh,” continued Charteris.

Harry hesitated a moment. “I must go down to the office to-morrow,” he said, with his joyous face unclouded. “Your cousin Dick and I had something which I thought a quarrel. It was nothing but a few angry words after all. I will go down to-morrow.”

Harry had entirely forgotten how angry he was—entirely forgotten the insulting things Dick Buchanan said, and what a humiliation he had felt it would be, to enter that office again. Poor Harry was humble now. He had such a happy ease of forgetting, that he did not feel it necessary to forgive. Bright, sanguine, overflowing with generous emotions, Harry in his new wealth and happiness that night could not remember that there was any one in the world other than a friend.

END OF VOL. I.

LONDON:
Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.

FOOTNOTE: