Harry Muir

AS YOU LIKE IT.

“Cuthbert,” said Richard Buchanan, “do, like a good fellow, go and tell his wife.”

“Do you not see, man, that a stranger would alarm her more? Why make me the messenger? You say she knows you, Dick.”

“Ay, she knows him,” said the second brother, “but she does not know him for any good. You see, Cuthbert, Dick’s always enticing poor Muir away—as he did to-night—and the wife wouldn’t flatter him if he went up now.”

“I don’t care a straw for the wife,” said Richard angrily. “It’s yon grim sister Martha, and that white-faced monkey of a girl. I say, Cuthbert—you needn’t go in, and they don’t know you—do go before and tell them he’s coming. I’ll come up with him myself in the noddy—just to oblige me, Cuthbert, will you go?”

“He lives in Port Dundas-road, it’s not very far. John will show you where it is,” urged Alick.

Cuthbert consented to go; and the obstreperous John was very much subdued, and very ready to accompany his cousin to poor Muir’s house. It was now nearly ten o’clock. The young men were all greatly concerned, and in an inner room poor Harry was getting his leg examined, and looking so deadly sick and pale as to alarm both surgeon and friends. It was his temperament, so finely organized, as to feel either pain or pleasure far more exquisitely than is the common lot.

“What will you say to them? Man, Cuthbert, are you not feared?” asked John.

“Why should I be feared? I am very sorry for her, poor woman—but is she such a fury, this wife?”

“It’s not the wife, it’s his eldest sister. Dick went home with Muir one night when he was’nt quite able to take care of himself, and I can tell you Dick was feared.”

“Dick was to blame—I do not feel that I am,” said Charteris; “but why was he afraid?—did she say so much to him?”

“She did’nt say anything to him; but you know they say she’s awful passionate, and she’s a great deal older than Harry; and she’s just been like his mother. They’re always so strict, these old maids—and Miss Muir’s an old maid.”

“Wait, then, till I see, John,” said Cuthbert; “don’t try to intimidate me.”

“Yonder’s the house,” said John.

They had just passed a great quarry, across which the dome of some large building loomed dark against the sky. Then there was a field raised high above the road, with green grass waving over the copestone of a high wall, and at the end of the field stood a solitary house. A house of some pretension, for it boasted its street-door, and was “self-contained;” and albeit the ground-floor on either side was occupied by two not very ambitious shops, the upper flat looked substantial and respectable, although decayed.

They were on the opposite side—the street was very quiet, and their steps and voices echoed through it, so clearly that the loud John sank into whispering and felt himself guilty. The light of a very pale moon was shining into one of the windows. Looking up, Cuthbert saw some one watching them—eagerly pressing against the dark dull panes; as they crossed the street, the face suddenly disappeared.

“That’s one of them,” whispered John. “Isn’t it awful that a poor fellow can’t be out a little late, but these women are watching for him that way?”

Cuthbert did not answer. He was thinking of “these women,” and of their watching, rather than of the poor fellow who was the object of it.

They had not time to knock, when the door was opened wide to them, and a pale girl’s face looked out eagerly. She shrank back at once with a look of blank disappointment which touched Cuthbert’s heart, “I—I beg your pardon—I thought it was my brother.”

“Your brother will be here very soon. He has done a very brave thing to-night, and has had a slight accident in consequence. I beg you will not be alarmed,” said Cuthbert hastily.

“Oh! come in, sir, come in,” said the young sister. “A very brave thing.” She repeated it again and again, under her breath.

“There’s the noddy,” whispered John, as he lingered behind. “I’ll wait and help him in.”

The door admitted into a long paved passage, terminating in a little damp “green.” John Buchanan remained at the door, while Cuthbert followed the steps of his eager conductor, through the passage, and up an “outside stair,” into the house. She seemed very eager, and only looking round to see that he followed her, ran into a little parlour.

“Harry is coming. He has been helping somebody, and has hurt himself, Martha; the gentleman will tell you,” exclaimed poor Harry’s anxious advocate, placing herself beside the chair where sat a tall faded woman, sternly composed and quiet.

“Is Harry hurt?” cried another younger and prettier person, who occupied the seat of honour by the fireside.

“He has done a very brave thing;” Cuthbert heard it whispered earnestly, into the elder sister’s ear.

He told them the story. The little wife was excited and nervous—she began to cry. The sister Martha sat firmly in her chair, her stern face moved and melting. The younger girl stood behind, with her arm round her sister, and her bright tearful face turned towards Charteris. “Our Harry—our poor Harry! it was this that kept him, Martha—and he saved the child.”

“What shall we do? Will he be lame?” sobbed the little wife.

The grave Martha suddenly rose from her chair as the faint sound of wheels reached them. “He is here. Rose, make the room ready for him, poor fellow. Do not let him see you crying, Agnes. Come to the door, and meet him.”

They went away hastily, leaving Charteris still in the room. Rose vanished by another door into an inner apartment. They were overmuch excited and anxious to remember the courtesy due to a stranger; and the stranger, for his part, was too much interested to leave them until he had seen how the sufferer bore his removal.

“Rose,” said a very small voice, “has Harry come home?—Rose!” Charteris looked round him a good deal puzzled, for there was no visible owner of the little voice. There certainly was a cradle in a corner, but nothing able to speak could inhabit that.

“Rose!”

There was no answer. Then there followed a faint rustling, and then a third door opened, and a little head in a white nightcap, looked out with a pair of bewildered dark eyes, and suddenly shrank in again, when it found the room in possession of a stranger. The stranger smiled at his own somewhat strange position, and began to move towards the door—but suddenly the cradle gave sound of life, and a lusty baby voice began to cry. They were carrying the baby’s father then, into the house. The good-humoured Cuthbert rocked the cradle.

Poor Harry was still very pale, though the surgeon who accompanied him was as tender of him as the most delicate nurse, and the strong young arms of the Buchanans carried the patient like a child. They made their escape immediately, however,—but divided between sympathy for the family, and a consciousness of his own somewhat ridiculous position, Cuthbert stood at his post, rocking the refractory cradle. They all passed into the inner apartment. He was alone again.

It was a very plain parlour, and various articles of feminine work were scattered about the room; some small garment for the sleeping baby lay on the ground, where it had fallen from the young mother’s hand; on the table, where Martha had been sitting, was a piece of fine embroidery, stretched on two small hoops which fitted closely into each other. She had been engaged in filling up the buds and blossoms of those embroidered flowers with a species of fine needlework, peculiar to Glasgow and its dependent provinces. Another hoop, and another piece of delicate work, remained where Rose had left it. The sisters of the poor clerk maintained themselves so.

The baby voice had ceased. Groans of low pain were coming from the inner room. Cuthbert felt that he did wrong to wait, and turned again towards the door—but just then Miss Muir entered the parlour.

“The doctor thinks he will do well,” said Martha. “To-night I can hardly thank you. But he is everything to us all—poor Harry!—and to-night you will excuse us. We can think of nothing but himself. Come again, and let us thank you?”

“I will come in the morning,” said Cuthbert, “not to be thanked, but to hear how he is. Good night.”

She went with him to the door, gravely and calmly: when she had shut it upon him, she stood still, alone in the dark, to press her hands against her heart. Again—again!—so long she had hoped that this facile temper would be steadied, that this poor brilliant wandering star would be fixed in his proper orbit. So often, so drearily, as her hopes had sunk into that blank of pain. Poor Harry! it was all they could say of him. When others praised the gay wit, the happy temper, the quick intelligence, those to whom he was dearest, could only say, poor Harry! for the good and pleasant gifts he had, made the bitterness of their grief only the deeper. Their pride in him aggravated their shame. Darkest and saddest of all domestic calamities these women, to whom he was so very dear, could not trust the man in whom all their hopes and wishes centred. He had not lost their affection—it seemed only the more surely to yearn over and cling to him, for his faults—but he had lost their confidence.

They could not believe him: they could not rely upon word or resolution of his. When Harry was an hour later than his usual time of home-coming, Martha grew rigid in her chair, her strong heart beating so loud that almost she could not hear those footsteps in the street for which she watched with silent eagerness; and the work fell from the hands of the young wife, and Rose stole away, pale and agitated, into the inner room, to watch at the window in the darkness; and even the little sister—the child—was moved with the indefinite dread and melancholy which is the grief of childhood. There were many grave people who would have smiled at poor Harry’s sins, and counted them light and venial, but so did not these.

To lose confidence in those who are most dear to us, to be able no longer to trust word or vow—it is the climax of womanish misery,—a calamity terrible to bear!

And Martha Muir, under this discipline, was growing old. Morning after morning there had been a rebound of eager hope, only to be utterly cast down when the night fell. She had had something of the mother’s pride in him—had transferred to Harry the natural ambition, the eager hopes and wishes, which for herself had all faded with her fading prime—and now, she who had so strong a will, so resolute a mind, to see this man with all his gifts, and the free scope he had to exercise them, sinking, falling, tarnishing with mean sins, the lustre and glory of his youth. Poor Harry! his stern sad sister said nothing more of blame—but as she turned again along the damp passage, and up the stairs, the heart within her sank into the depths. She pressed her hands upon it. Strange sympathy between the frame and the spirit, which makes it no image to say that there is a weight upon the heart!

“Martha, has Harry come home,” said the little sister, standing in her white night-dress at the door of the small bed-closet which opened from their parlour. The child’s eyes were bright and wide open, as if, in her compulsory solitude in the closet, she had been steadily fixing them to keep herself awake. “When I looked out I saw a gentleman. And where’s Rose and Agnes, Martha. Is Harry no weel?”

“You must go to bed, Violet,” said Martha. “Poor Harry has got a broken leg. He was in the Trongate to-night with the Buchanans, and saved a child’s life—but you cannot see him to-night—the doctor is with him just now, poor fellow; go to bed—you shall see him to-morrow.”

Little Violet began to cry, and the dark bewildered wide open eyes looked up inquiringly into Martha’s face. Violet knew that Harry did not need to be in the Trongate with the Buchanans, and that they all waited for him very long before they would take their humble cup of tea.

“He will not be able to go out for a long time, Violet—and he saved the bairn’s life,” said Martha, as she put her little sister into the dark closet bed, which she herself and Rose shared, “and you must not cry—rather be thankful that the little boy’s mother has not lost him, Lettie, and ask God to bless poor Harry—poor Harry! do you know you should always think of him, Violet, when you pray?”

“And so I do, Martha,” said little Violet, looking up through her tears as she clung to her elder sister, the only mother she had ever known.

“Then you must let me go to him now, poor fellow,” said Martha. “Hush! he will hear you crying—lie still, Lettie, and fall asleep.”

One of Violet’s tears rested on Martha’s faded cheek—other tears came as she wiped it away. “Poor bairn—poor bairn,” said the elder sister, “I might be her mother—and so I am.”

When she entered the sick-room, the surgeon was just preparing to leave it. He had set the broken bone, and done all that could be done to give his patient ease. Harry, greatly exhausted, and deadly pale, was lying quiet, not strong enough to express even his suffering by more than a faint groan—and his wife and Rose watched anxiously beside him. But Harry’s mind was very much at ease, and tranquil. His accident covered triumphantly any error he had committed, and his anxious attendants were tranquil and satisfied too—for who could think of Harry’s fault or weakness, when Harry’s generous bravery had brought him so much pain. They were content to believe—and they did believe, poor eager loving hearts! that no one else could have been so daring—no one else had so little thought of personal safety—and were saying, with tears in their eyes, what a providence it was for the child and its mother, that “our Harry,” and no other, was there to rescue it.

“I am to sit up with him, Martha,” said the little wife.

“But there is the baby, Agnes,” said Rose; “you must let me sit up with Harry.”

“You must go away, both of you, and sleep,” said Martha. “Hush, speak low! I cannot trust any of you, bairns—I must watch him myself. No, little matron, not you. I must take care of my boy myself—my poor Harry!”

These words so often said—expressing so much love, so much grief—they were echoed in the hearts of all.

Poor Harry! but his conscience did not smite him to-night: only his heart melted into tenderness for those who were so very tender of him, and involuntarily there came into his mind, gentle thoughts of all he would do for them, when he was well again; for Harry never feared for himself.

They left his wife with him for a short time, and returned to the fireside of the little parlour—it was Saturday night, and some of their delicate work had to be finished, if possible, before the twelve o’clock bell should begin the Sabbath-day.

They were but lodgers in this house. The mistress of it, a decayed widow—strong, in her ancient gentility—had three daughters, who maintained themselves and an idle brother by the same work which occupied the Muirs. The collars and cuffs and handkerchiefs of richer women, embroidered by other workers, principally in Ayr and Ayrshire, were given out at warehouses in Glasgow, to the Muirs and Rodgers, and multitudes of other such, to be “opened,” as they called it—which “opening” meant filling up the centre of the embroidered flowers with delicate open-work in a variety of “stitches” innumerable. Very expert, and very industrious workers at this, could, in busy times, earn as much as ten weekly shillings—and thus it was that Martha and Rose Muir supported themselves and their little sister, and were no burden on the scanty means of Harry.

“Well, Martha?” said Rose, breathlessly, as the door of the inner room closed upon the little wife.

Martha could not lift up her eyes to meet her sister’s. “Well, my dear?”

“I am sure,” said Rose, “I am sure, you are quite satisfied to-night.”

“Surely, surely,” said the less hopeful sister—a sigh bursting, in spite of her, out of her heavy heart.

“Surely, surely—what do you mean, Martha?” said the dissatisfied Rose. “Poor Harry! you are surely pleased with him to-night.”

“I said so, Rose,” said Martha. “Poor Harry!”

The younger sister did not speak for a moment—then she put her work away and covered her face with her hands.

“You will never trust him—you will never trust Harry, Martha!”

Martha sighed. “I will trust God, Rose.”

Rose Muir dried her eyes, and took up her work again—there was nothing to be said after that.

Martha was rocking the cradle softly with her foot; and Martha, mother-like, was fain to divert the younger heart, and make it lighter than her own. “Our poor wee Harry,” she said with a smile. “Did you see what a strange nurse he had to-night?”

“Was it the gentleman?” said Rose; “did you say anything to him, Martha—he would think us very ungrateful.”

“I can trust the person who rocks our cradle,” said Martha. “He is coming back to-morrow to be thanked.”

“On Sabbath-day!”

“It is charity to come to Harry,” said Martha. “Poor Harry, how every one likes him!”

Their eyes were becoming wet again—it was a relief to hear a quiet knock at the parlour door.

The visitor was the younger Miss Rodger—a large, soft, clumsy, good-humoured girl, with a pleasant comely face. She wore a broken-down faded gown, which had once been very gay, and a little woollen shawl, put on unevenly, over her plump shoulders, and her hair in its enclosure of curl-papers for the night; ends of thread were clinging to the fringes of the shawl, and the young lady was tugging it over her shoulders, conscious of deficiencies below; but the good-humoured offer to “take the wean,” or do anything that might be needed, covered the eccentricities of Miss Aggie’s general house dress and appearance. The precious child was not entrusted to her, but the hoyden’s visit enlivened the sisters, and immediately after, they finished their work, and Martha saw Rose and Agnes prepare for rest, and then took her own place noiselessly by her brother’s bedside.