The sound of some one coming down the hill, wading among the great bushes of the ling, and over the withered bracken scarcely aroused her; for what did it matter to Kirsteen who came that way? She was still sitting on the rock when a man appeared round the turning of the path; she paid no attention to him till he was quite near. Then her heart suddenly leapt up to her throat; she started, rising from her seat. He on his side recognized her too. He stopped with a low whistle of dismay, then took off his Highland bonnet, less with an air of courtesy than with that of not daring to omit the forms of respect.
“So it is you, Miss Kirsteen?” he said.
“It is me—at my father’s door. It’s more wonderful to see that it’s you, my Lord John.”
“Not so very wonderful either,” he said, “for I may say I am at my father’s door too.”
“You are on the lands of Drumcarro—the Douglas lands, that never belonged to one of your name.”
“You don’t expect me to enter into old feuds,” he said with a laugh; “would you like to have me seized by your men-at-arms, Miss Kirsteen, and plunged into the dungeon below the castle moat?” He paused and looked down at the grey, penurious house standing bare in the wilds. “Unhappily there is neither moat nor castle,” he said again with a laugh.
“There’s more,” said Kirsteen proudly, “for there’s honour and peace, and he that disturbs either will not pass without his reward. Lord John, I would like to know what you are wanting here?”
“You have always treated me in a very lordly way, Miss Kirsteen,” he said. “What if I were to doubt your right to make any such inquiry. I am wanting, as you say, to pay my respects to my kinswoman of Glendochart, and ask for the family, who I hear have been in trouble.”
Kirsteen paused with a look at him to which he answered with a smile and bow. What could she say? To let him know that he was a danger to Jeanie was but to stimulate him in his pursuit, and she could not herself believe it even now.
“Lord John,” she said, “I met you once upon another hillside; you had done me a great service but you did not know who I was—a gentlewoman as good as yourself. But when I bid you as a gentleman to stand by and let me pass, ye did so. You could not stand against me when I said that. I ask you now again, but I ask more. As ye are a gentleman, Lord John, go away from here.”
He shook his head. “The argument served its turn once,” he said; “you must not scorn my intellect so much as to try it again.”
“Go,” she said, putting herself in his way, “those that are dwelling down there are too high for one thing and not high enough for another. Go away, Lord John, if you’re what a gentleman should be. If ye do not, I’ll promise you this that you will repent it all your days.”
He stepped past her amid the heather bushes and short brushwood. “Not even an angel with a flaming sword could bar the road,” he said waving his hand, “on a hillside like this. Farewell, Miss Kirsteen, I’m going about my own affairs and doing no harm to you.”
In a moment he had passed, finding another path for himself among the windings of the heather and bracken. He took off his bonnet again with a mocking salutation as he disappeared down the hill. And Kirsteen felt herself left behind with a sense of mortification and helplessness intolerable to her high and proud spirit. How could she have hoped to stop him? What power had she? But this did not make her feel her failure less. “You will repent it all your days,” she called after him, raising her voice in the vexation of her soul. He turned and lifted his bonnet again with a mocking salutation. That was all. She might have known, she said to herself with angry tears of humiliation in her eyes.
But when Kirsteen came down the hill there was no trace of Lord John. Mary and Jeanie were in the parlour waiting for her to say good-bye. And there was an air of agitation about her younger sister, which Kirsteen in her troubled mind set down to the visit for which no doubt Jeanie had been called from her room. But nothing was said. They accompanied her to the door where the gig was now standing with Miss Macnab already mounted into her seat. There was no time or opportunity for further leave-taking; Jeanie gave her cheek to be kissed with averted eyes; and not even with Marg’ret could Kirsteen speak another word in private. In a few minutes more she had turned her back upon Drumcarro; was it for ever? To her wounded and impatient heart, impatient above all of the sense of utter futility and failure, this seemed the thing most probable. Why should she ever come again, the stand-by of the family? Perhaps if they should want money, and she should have it—but in no other way.
She was roused by the mild voice of the country artist at her elbow. “You will find a great change in everything, Miss Kirsteen, coming back from London?” she said.
Kirsteen did not immediately reply. “I find more change in myself than in anything else,” she said at last, bringing herself back with difficulty from more urgent thoughts.
“That was partly what I was meaning. Ye’ll find a great interest in life in yon muckle London, where there must always be the bonniest new things to see.”
“When your heart’s away,” said Kirsteen, yielding in spite of herself to the natural desire of unburdening her mind a little, “it does not matter much what bonny things there may be to see.”
“That’s true too,” said the dressmaker; “but my experience has aye been, that where we canna have what we want, and eh, how few of us have that advantage! it’s just a great thing to please your e’e, and fill your mind with what e’e can see, and the best ye can see. There’s even pleasure in a new fashion book when ye have little else. And with all the bonny leddies and their court dresses, and just to dress them like a picture.”
Kirsteen looked at this humble artist with a sigh. “Perhaps you were not always so resigned,” she said.
“I’m not saying that I’m resigned. I would just like to see the Queen’s court, and the princesses in their plumes and trains, before everything in the world, but it’s a comfort,” said the mild philosopher, “when ye can make it up to yourself with a bonny person like Miss Jeanie, just to make the line of her gown perfitt, if ainything can ever be called perfitt,” she added piously, “in this imperfitt world.”
There came a great sense of desolation and misery into the heart of Jeanie after she had witnessed, with eyes averted and without a sign of affection, wrapped up in offence and estrangement, the departure of her sister. She was angry with Kirsteen and deeply disappointed, and incapable of comprehending that it must be so, and that she, Jeanie, was to be crossed at last and after all, her plaint disregarded, her prayer refused. It had been her lot hitherto to get all her little requirements in the end, however her mother or Marg’ret might at first stand out. And the boys had been much ruled by Jeanie’s will, and had yielded to her as big brothers often fail to do. She had never been crossed, in the end. Opposition had been made to her, difficulties insisted upon, but in the end they had always given way. Only once before had Jeanie come face to face with a disappointment, which could not by anything she could do be changed into happiness and content. It was the central incident in her life, but it had been up to this moment the exception, the one adverse event she had ever known. And it had been so great, so startling and astonishing that the girl’s pride and all her strength had been roused to conceal and surmount it, so that no one should ever suspect that to her, Jeanie, any slight had ever come. To nobody but to Kirsteen, and to her only when taken utterly by surprise, had this secret ever been betrayed. Young Gordon had visited Glendochart from time to time during the last years. He had come in the intervals of his service while Jeanie grew and blossomed into womanhood. While she was still half child, half woman, he had awakened in her heart that first delicious and strange sense of power which is so great a revelation to a girl. His eyes had said a thousand indistinct sweetnesses to her, which his lips had not ventured to confess. He had been reverent of her extreme youth. He had been kept back by his own uncertain prospects, by his want of money and unsettled life, a soldier seeking advancement wherever it was to be found. But none of these honourable reasons had been taken into account by the girl who, convinced as she had been of his love, had seen him go away with an amazement and shock of feeling scarcely comprehensible out of the first absolutism and certainty of youth. He had gone away, saying never a word. That he was overwhelmed with agitation and distress when the summons to join his regiment (for which he professed to be looking eagerly) came; that he had spoken of returning, of hopes that were involved in his return, with allusions and suggestions that the poor fellow thought plain enough, had all been invisible to Jeanie, or disdained by her, as so many evidences of falsehood. Her little imperious soul had been shaken as by a tempest. She to be forsaken, wooed and abandoned, she before whom every one bowed, the flower of the Highlands, as they called her!
And now Kirsteen had done the same. Once again, till the last moment Jeanie had believed that her sister would yield, and she would have her way. Just as she had expected that word which never came from Lewis Gordon, she had expected from Kirsteen if it were but a word, a whisper of consent at the last. Even while she held her cheek to be kissed, turning away her eyes which were sullen with anger yet expectation, the girl expected that Kirsteen might still whisper—“Come.” She had contrived all in her own mind ready for that last moment—Kirsteen would say, “Come, I’ll wait for you at the clachan,”—and all unsuspected, the stranger having visibly departed, Jeanie would steal out, nobody taking any notice, and fly along the road, and spring up light as a feather beside Miss Macnab. What would it matter to her that there was no room? She had planned it all. At the very last, as her mother used to do, as Marg’ret did, compunction at the sight of Jeanie’s averted face would seize upon Kirsteen. None of them could bear to see her vexed—and at the last that feeling would be stronger than prudence or any wise sentiment. Jeanie within herself had been sure of this; but she had been deceived. And after she had watched with incredulous angry eyes full of a mist of bitterness—for tears she would not shed to acknowledge herself defeated—the actual going away without a word of her sister, she had fled to her room and flung herself upon her bed, even now not without an ear intent on any sound that might indicate Kirsteen’s return, to say yet the tardy “Come,” to her little sister. But the wintry afternoon closed down, the light faded away, and stillness fell upon the house. There was nothing to be heard but the echo of the linn which always mingled with everything, and Merran’s heavy footstep and Marg’ret’s distant voice in the kitchen. Kirsteen was gone. It was impossible to believe it, but it was true. She was gone like him—him for whom she had spoken, who was her friend, for like draws to like, Jeanie cried furiously to herself, in the silence. They had gone away—both of them!—the man who loved her, and the sister who was evidently born for no such important end as to save and succour Jeanie—both! They had gone away, and she was left alone—to meet her fate.
Jeanie was not of the simple fibre of her family. Perhaps her condition of spoiled child had done something towards the development of a different character, but that character was there in the first place to be developed. Her impatient determination to have what she wanted, to be happy, to get such amusements, privileges, and advantages as were comprehensible to her, without consideration as to whether they were possible or not, or what the result of her satisfaction would be—was very different both from the steadfastness of Kirsteen, and the calm self-seeking of Mary. Jeanie had a passion in her which would not be gainsaid. She did not understand obstacles except as things to be eluded, pushed aside, thrust out of the way, arbitrarily, imperiously, whether they were just or even necessary or not. She could not understand that she had been born for anything but to be paramount, to be loved and admired, and happy. Her lover and heaven itself had wronged her by holding back that happiness that was her due. And when there seemed a prospect that it was to come back to her, Jeanie’s heart rushed at the hope with a fervour which was largely made up of fury and indignation. The thought of a future more brilliant than any she could have had with Gordon filled her with fierce delight, principally from the hope that he would hear of it, perhaps see it and recognize her superior bliss and his loss. This, more than a girl’s natural vanity in being followed by one so much above her in rank, and far more than any feeling for Lord John, had made his attentions delightful to her. Jeanie had been taken like her sisters before her to the ball at the Castle; but hers were not merely the good looks of Kirsteen or the comeliness of Mary. It had not been possible to keep the little beauty in the background. Even the noble party of visitors and relations who were usually so little interested by the lairds and their belongings were moved by Jeanie. She was introduced among them, danced with, talked to, while the others of her class looked on grim or smiling as their case might be. That Jeanie had been excited and delighted by her triumph it is needless to say; what was much more extraordinary was that her father, though he said nothing, felt for the first time the true sensation of that superiority which he had believed in and asserted all his life. The beauty and brightness which dazzled everybody were but the natural emanation of her blood, to Drumcarro. “Oh, ay, she’s of the real auld Douglas kind,” he said with proud carelessness when compliments were paid him. That the Douglases should gain a triumph through a lassie was a thing that he had scarcely been able to bring himself to believe; but when this triumph was accomplished for him, his pride accepted it as a thing to be looked for. Was not she a Douglas? That explained all.
And when Lord John appeared “incognity” as Marg’ret said, in the little shooting lodge on the hill, both father and daughter had responded after their kind. Drumcarro had felt the suggestion of an alliance with the other noble house which had outstripped his in honours, but never to his consciousness excelled or even equalled it in antiquity and nobility, to be a gratifying circumstance and high testimonial to his superiority to everything around, but he had not contemplated it with any surprise. To get a Douglas as his wife was honour enough for any duke’s son; but the thought of being so closely allied to the Duke gave him on his side a proud satisfaction. It was a great thing for a daughter to do who was only a daughter, and of no account whatever. Jeanie too felt a subtle elation in her veins, a sense of high promotion, but not in so simple a way. When he heard of it what would he think? was the burden of her thoughts. He would see that Jeanie Douglas was not one to be deserted, left or taken up again at his pleasure. She pictured to herself meeting him in some vague grandeur of a party in London, and a hundred times in her heart rehearsed the bow she would give him, the sweeping curtsey, the fine progress past him which she would make on her husband’s arm. The husband himself had a very secondary place—but that did not occur to Jeanie. He was understood as the occasion of all that grandeur, the sharer of it no doubt; but the exquisite revenge of such an encounter was what in her first vague sense of triumph, Jeanie chiefly pictured to herself.
The girl was not, however, herself enlightened by this curious evidence of the state of her mind. She had not begun to think about her thoughts; all was straightforward and simple with her, as with a young savage. On the other side Lord John did not leave her in any doubt as to his feelings. His declaration of love was not delayed by any scruples—but neither was it followed by any of those practical steps which even in Jeanie’s limited experience were usual in the circumstances. It is true that Jeanie herself was coy, and held off from the warm love-making of her suitor, keeping him at arm’s length; but no reference to her father, none of the suggestions and arrangements into which happy lovers rush ever came from Lord John’s lips. He spoke indeed of the time when they should be always together, but said not a word as to when or how that should be. It was less difficult to Jeanie to keep such a secret than it would have been for most girls. Her mother was ill, her father, as she supposed, utterly indifferent, no sister near to whom her heart could be opened. And to be secret in love was one of the traditions of the time and country. But still after a time she began to feel that there was something, she could not tell what, unexpected, undesirable, in her lover. When he spoke of marriage it was with a scoff and jeer. Even, however, when the moment came in which he told her that marriage in the ordinary way, with all the publicity usually surrounding that event, was impossible to him, Jeanie was not suspicious enough to be defiant. “You’ll have to steal out some night, and trust yourself to me and let me carry you away,” he said, “that’s what we’ll have to do. My bonny Jeanie will trust herself to me.”
“That is what Anne did,” cried Jeanie, startled. “My father would not give his consent; and he has never seen her again. We dare not say her name. But maybe,” she added after a pause, “it would be different with you.”
“I think it would be different with me,” he said, with a laugh that somehow offended Jeanie, she could not tell how. But then he began to lavish sweet words and praises upon her, so that the girl’s vanity was soothed and her imagination excited. He told her where he would take her—to London, and then abroad, which was a word of no tangible import to her ignorance, but meant only everything that was brilliant and splendid—and of all the beautiful places she should see, and the beautiful things she should have.
“I suppose,” said Jeanie, “we would go to see the king?”
“There is no king, in that way,” he said, with a laugh.
“But there is a court, for we see it in the paper,” said Jeanie. “If it is the prince, it would just be the same.”
“We’ll not go to the court this time,” he said, with another of those laughs which wounded Jeanie, she could not tell how.
“I thought it was the right way,” said Jeanie, thoughtfully. What she was thinking was, that in that case she would not meet him, and that the heart of her triumph would be lost.
“In some cases,” he said, still laughing, “but not in ours, my lovely dear. We will never think of the world, we’ll think only of love. Whatever’s pleasantest my Jeanie shall see, but nothing so bonny as herself.”
“There will be many things in London besides the court—there is my sister Kirsteen,” said Jeanie, still musing. “Oh, I will be glad to see Kirsteen.”
“It’s clear I am not enough for my Jeanie, though my Jeanie is enough for me!”
“Oh, it is not that,” said Jeanie, vaguely. In her heart, however, there was no doubt a sensation that to dazzle him with her grandeur, and to make her sister a spectator of her new and exalted life, were the things to which she looked forward most.
“I’ll not promise to take you to Kirsteen, any more than to take you to court,” he said. “I’ll promise nothing that takes your mind off me. To think of having you all to myself is enough for me. I mean to carry you off to some Italian bower, where there will be nothing to do but love, and love, and——”
“Till you are tired of love, as you call it, and me too,” said Jeanie, with a little disdain.
He gave her a curious look, wondering if at last the little simplicity had fathomed what he really meant. But Jeanie’s eyes were all untroubled, and her brow serene. She was disappointed and dissatisfied with his way; but only because it was not her way, and contrary to her expectations, not that she had divined the shame that was in his heart.
But one day a gleam of strange light burst upon the girl. He had been telling her of one of his friends, who had gone to those Italian bowers, and of the life he led; the lake, the moonlight, the myrtles and roses in the middle of winter, till Jeanie’s eyes grew bright. “We will get him to look for a place for us, on the water’s edge,” Lord John said. No thought of suspicion, or of finding her lover out, was in Jeanie’s mind. She asked, as a girl does, eager to hear of others in the same circumstances as herself, “And is he married, too?”
For the moment she could not comprehend the hurried demonstration, the embarrassment of Lord John among his caresses, the laugh, always so distasteful to her. “They don’t think of that out there,” he said, “they don’t put you in chains out there, they trust everything to love—as my Jeanie is going to do.”
What did it mean? She was always shy of these vehement caresses—she freed herself, with a strange chill upon her, and said that she must go. They had been wandering by the side of the linn, under the bare, over-arching trees; and Jeanie would not listen to the explanations which he was anxious to make, and which she understood no more than the offence. She was sure of nothing but that she must get away.
Jeanie fled to her own room, and all that had been said went vaguely rolling and sweeping through her mind like clouds blowing up for a storm. A hundred things he had said came drifting up—singly they had no meaning, and without something in her own soul to interpret them they would have conveyed no enlightenment to the uninstructed Highland girl. Even now, though aroused and frightened, it was very hard for Jeanie to put in shape or to explain to herself, what were the suspicions and the uneasiness she felt,—“they don’t think of that out there, they don’t put you in chains out there,”—what did it mean? Jeanie knew that there was a kind of persiflage—though she did not know the word nor yet what it meant—in which marriage was spoken of as bondage, and it was said of a man that he was going up for execution on his marriage day. That was said “in fun” she knew. Was Lord John in fun? Was it a jest, and no more? But there was something uncertain, something dissatisfied in Jeanie’s heart which would not be calmed down by any such explanation. What, oh, what did he mean? She was not to be taken to court, nor even to see Kirsteen. She was to go to that Italian bower where all was trusted to love. An Italian bower sounded like Paradise to Jeanie. She had not the most remote idea what it was. She was prepared to believe anything, to allow of any difference between the conditions of life there and those she knew. That might be quite right in an Italian bower which was not right in a Highland glen. She was bewildered in her innocence and simplicity; and yet that very simplicity gave her the sensation that all was not well.
After this there was a long interval in her intercourse with Lord John. He wandered about the glen and the hillside, but she took care never to fall in his way, the excitement of eluding him making a kind of counterpoise for the absence of the excitement there used to be in meeting him. And then he began to make frequent calls, to endure interviews with Drumcarro and inquire into Mrs. Douglas’s ailments in order to see Jeanie, to whom he directed the most appealing looks. And the impression and suspicion gradually died away from her mind. When she met him by accident after this interval out of doors, and he was free to demand explanations, Jeanie hung her head and said nothing. How could she explain? She had nothing to explain. And once more, though with self-reproach, the daily walks and talks were resumed. In her dull life it was the only relief. Her mother was growing more and more helpless and wanted more and more attention. And when Jeanie stole out from her long nursing for a breath of air no doubt it pleased and exhilarated her to see him waiting, to receive his welcome and all the tender words he could think of. Drumcarro himself saw them together, and made no remark. Marg’ret saw them together and was glad and proud to see the favourite of the house courted by the Duke’s son. Thus no one helped Jeanie, but everything persuaded her against her own perception that all was not well.
That perception, however, grew stronger and stronger, but with it a longing of Jeanie’s forlorn youth for the only pleasure that remained in her life. He flattered her so, he conveyed to her in every word and look such evidence of her own delightfulness, of her power over him, and his devotion to her! And all the rest of life was so overcast to Jeanie, so dull and grey, so destitute of pleasure. It was like a momentary escape into that Italian bower of which he spoke, to go out to him, to see his eyes glowing with admiration, to hear of all the delightsome things which were waiting for her. Day by day it became more clear to Jeanie that Lord John’s love was not like that of those downright wooers at whom she had once scoffed, who would have her answer yes or no, and left nothing vague in respect to their wishes. It occurred to her too, though she would not permit it to put itself into words, even in her mind, that his love was not like that which she had been so sure of in Lewis Gordon’s eyes, but which had never been spoken. Lord John was bold, there was no timidity nor reverence in his look, he was confident, excited, sure that he had her in his toils. All these the girl saw with the perspicacity of despair—yet could not free herself or break away. With him she divined there might be shame lying in wait for her, but with him, too, was all that was brilliant and fair in life. A time of splendour, of pleasure, of joy, if after that despair—while within her own possibilities there was nothing but the given routine, the dull existence in which nothing ever stirred, in which no pleasure was. Oh, if only something would come, she cared not what. Death or a saviour—what did it matter?—to carry Jeanie away.
And now Kirsteen had come and gone. Kirsteen who was her natural saviour, the only one who could have done it. Kirsteen who knew him, and said that he was true. The wail, “Take me with you!” had come from Jeanie’s very heart. But Kirsteen had gone away, and every hope had failed. And as for the party at home they were all elated by the visits of Lord John, all expectant of a grand marriage, which would bring back something of the old prestige to Drumcarro. “When ye are so near the head, Jeanie, I hope you’ll be mindful of the branches,” said Mary. “It’s not just an invitation to the ball which everybody is asked to that will satisfy me then.” No thought of possible wrong was in the innocent fancies of all these people. They ought to have known, but they did not. They ought to have taken fright, but no alarm came to them. The man who would try to wrong a Douglas, Mary thought, could never be born.
There had been again a pause during the time when the atmosphere of death had surrounded the house. Jeanie had seen him pass from a window. She had heard his voice at the door inquiring for the family. He had sent some flowers, an unusual and unexpected compliment, to decorate the death-chamber, for to put flowers on a coffin or a grave was not then the habit in England and still less in Scotland. All these attentions had added to the elation and pleasure of the others, but had not silenced the terror in Jeanie’s heart. And now all was over, the pause for her mother’s death, the visit of Kirsteen, the hope she had of something or of some one, who would interfere to save her. Even to hear of Lewis Gordon had added to the fire in Jeanie’s veins. She would not have him come to find her at his disposal, to know how she had suffered in the thought of his desertion. No! he should find that there was some one else who did not hold back, some one who would not let her go, some one—oh, hapless Jeanie!—whom she could no longer escape, towards whom she was drifting without any power to stop herself though it should be towards tears and shame. Better even that, Jeanie said to herself, than to wait upon the leisure of a man who thought he could let her drop and take her up again at his pleasure. Her mind was disturbed beyond description, confused and miserable. She was afloat upon a dreadful current which carried her away, from which some one outside could save her, but not herself, against which she seemed now to have no force to struggle more.
Jeanie made still another stand, lashing herself, as it were, against the violence of that tide to the companions whom for the moment she had in the house with her, even to Mary by whom she could hold, a little in want of other help. Mary was not a very enlivening companion for the girl—all she could talk about was her children, and the vicissitudes of her household, and the wit and wisdom of little Colin. But Mary was not exigeant as to her listeners. So long as she was allowed to go on in her monologue her companion was called upon for no reply. And thus Jeanie’s thoughts had full scope, and increased instead of softened the tension of being in which she was; she seemed unable to escape that current which drew her unwilling feet.
She met him again on the last day of the Glendocharts’ stay. Though Mary gave her so little help, Jeanie regarded with terror the time of her sister’s departure. She felt as if then her last hope would fail her. There would be no longer anything to which to cling, any counterpoise to the influence which was hurrying her to her destruction. She had gone out in the afternoon with a bad headache, and a still worse tremor and throbbing in her heart, feeling that need for the fresh air and the stillness outside, and a moment’s exemption from the voices and the questions within, which people in agitation and trouble so often feel. She had not thought of Lord John at all, or of meeting him. She felt only that she must breathe the outer air and be alone for a moment, or else die.
She sat down upon the same fallen tree on which she had sat with Kirsteen. The voice of the linn was softer than ever, stilled by the frost into a soothing murmur. The bare trees stirred their many branches over her head, as if to shield her from any penetrating look, whether from earth or sky. “Oh, what am I to do?” she said to herself. How often these words are said by people in mortal perplexity, in difficulty and trouble. What to do, when you have no alternative but one, no temptation but one? But everything was against Jeanie, and all, who ought to have protected her, fought against her, and made it more and more difficult to resist. She bent down her face into her hands, and repeated to herself that question, “What am I to do?—What am I to do?” Jeanie did not know how long she had been there, or how much time had elapsed before with a start, and a sense of horror, her heart struggling to her throat, she felt a pair of arms encircle her, and a voice in her ear: “Crying, Jeanie! Why should you cry—you who should never have a care? You would never have a care if you would trust yourself, as I am imploring you to do, to me.”
Poor Jeanie’s heart was sick with conflicting emotions, with the temptation and the strong recoil from it. She could make no reply, could not lift her head, or escape from his arms, or control the sudden access of sobbing that had come upon her. Her sobbing became audible in the stillness of the wintry scene, through the sound of the linn and the faint rustling of the trees. “Oh, go away and leave me! Oh, let me be!” Jeanie said among her sobs. Perhaps she did not altogether mean it, neither the one thing nor the other—neither that he should go nor stay.
He stayed, however, and talked more earnestly than he had ever done before. Not of the Italian bower, but of the two living together, sharing everything, never apart. He had the house all ready to which he would take her, he said; a house fit for her, waiting for its mistress—everything was ready but Jeanie. And why should she hold back? Did she not know he loved her? Had she any doubt? She could not have any doubt; all his study would be to make her happy. She knew that he had no other thought. “Jeanie, Jeanie, only say yes; only yield that pride of yours; you know you have yielded in your heart.”
“No,” cried Jeanie, sitting upright, drawing herself from him. “No, I have not yielded. There is but one way. Go and ask my father, and then I will go with you. I will go with you,” she repeated, one belated sob coming in breaking her voice, “wherever you want me to go.”
“Speak to your father? But you know that is what I cannot do. I have told you already I would have to speak to my father, too. And he—would put me into a madhouse or a prison. You know, my sweet love, for I have told you—but must we be parted by two old fathers with no feeling left in them? Jeanie, if you will be ready by ten o’clock, or any hour you please, I will have a postchaise waiting. Oh, Jeanie, come! Just a little boldness, just one bold step, and then nothing can harm us more; for we’ll be together—for ever!” said the young man in his fervour. She had risen up, putting him away from her, but he pressed to her side again. “You have gone too far to go back now,” he said. “Jeanie, I’ll take no denial. To-night, to-night, my lovely dear.”
“No,” she said, her heart throbbing as if it would break, putting one hand against his shoulder to push him away from her. “Oh, no, no!” but her eyes met the glowing gaze of his, and the current was seizing her feet.
“That means yes, yes—for two no’s make a consent,” cried Lord John, seizing her again in his arms.
Drumcarro had scoffed at Kirsteen and her warning, but like many another suspicious man, he had remembered the warning he scorned. He had kept an eye upon all Jeanie’s movements since that day. On this afternoon he had seen her steal out, and had cautiously followed her. It was not difficult on the soft grass, doubly soft with the penetrating moisture like a bank of green mossy sponge, to steal along without making any noise; and the trees were thick enough to permit a wayfarer to steal from trunk to trunk undiscovered, especially when those who were watched were so altogether unafraid. Thus Drumcarro, his tall shadow mingled with the trees, had come close to the log on which they sat, and had heard everything. No scruple about listening moved his mind. With his hand grasping a young birch, as if it were a staff, he stood grim and fierce, and heard the lovers talk. His eyes gave forth a gleam that might have set the wood on fire when he heard of the postchaise, and the young tree shivered in his hand. Jeanie was at the end of her powers. She put up her hand to her face to cover it from the storm of her lover’s kisses. His passion carried her away. She murmured, No, no! still, but it was in gasps, with her failing breath.
“You’ll come, you’re coming—to-night—and hurrah for love and freedom,” cried Lord John.
At this moment he was seized from behind by the collar of his coat—a furious hand full of force and passion caught him with sudden, wild, overpowering strength—Lord John was young but not strong, his slim form writhed in the sudden grasp. There was a moment’s struggle, yet scarcely a struggle, as Drumcarro assumed his choking hold. And then something dashed through the air with the speed and the force of a thunderbolt—flung by sheer force of passion. A gasping cry, and an answering roar of the linn as if to swallow down in its caves the object tossed and spinning down—a flash far below. And in another moment all was still.
What was it that had been done? Jeanie looking up to see her father’s transformed and impassioned face, and finding herself free, had fled in the first impulse of terror. And on the log where the lovers had been seated, the old man sat down quivering with the strain he had made, wiping the drops of moisture from his forehead. He was old, but not beyond the strength of his prime; the unaccustomed effort had brought out the muscles on his hands, the veins upon his forehead. The blood was purple in his face. His capacious chest and shoulders heaved; he put his hand, the hand that had done it, to his mouth, to blow upon it, to relieve the strain. He sat down to recover his breath.
How still everything was!—as it is after a rock has fallen, after a tree has been torn up, the silence arching over the void before any whispering voice gets up to say where is it. The waters and the sighing branches both seemed still—with horror. And Drumcarro blew upon his hand which he had strained, and wiped the perspiration from his face.
After a while he rose, still panting a little, his feet sinking into the spongy grass, and went homeward. He met nobody on the way, but seeing Duncan in the yard where he was attending to the cattle, beckoned to him with his hand. Duncan came at the master’s call, but not too quickly. “Ye were wanting me, sir,” he said. “No—I was not wanting you.” “Ye cried upon me, maister.” “No, I did not cry upon you—is it me that knows best or you? Go back to your beasts.” Drumcarro stood for a moment and watched the man turn back reluctantly, then he raised his voice: “Hey, Duncan—go down yonder,” pointing his thumb over his shoulder—“and see if anything’s happened. I’m thinking there’s a man—tummult over the linn.” Having said this the master went quietly to his own room and shut himself up there.
Duncan gave a great start at this strange intimation—“Tummult over the linn!” That was not an accident to be spoken of in such an easy way. He put down the noisy pail he had been carrying in his hand. “Lord!” he said to himself; but he was a man slow to move. Nevertheless after two or three goings back upon himself, and thoughts that “the maister must have gone gyte,” Duncan set himself slowly in motion. “A man tummult o’er the linn—that’s a very sarious thing,” he said to himself. It was a great ease to his mind to see Glendochart coming down the path from the hill, and he stopped until they met. “Sir,” said Duncan, “have ye noticed anything strange about the maister?” “Strange about Drumcarro? I have noticed nothing beyond the ordinary,” was the reply. “What has he been doing, Duncan?” “He has been doing naething, Glendochart. But he just came upon me when I was doing my wark in the yaird. And I says, ‘Are ye wanting me, maister?’ And he says, ‘Me wanting ye? No, I’m no wanting ye.’ But afore I can get back to my wark I hear him again, ‘Duncan!’ ‘What is it, maister?’ says I. And says he, ‘I think there’s a man tummult over the linn. Ye can go and see.’”
“Tumbled over the linn!” cried Glendochart “Good Lord! and did ye go and see?”
“I’m on the road now,” said Duncan; “a man cannot do everything at once.”
“The man may be drowned,” cried Glendochart, turning round quickly. “Run on, Duncan, for the Lord’s sake. I’m not so surefooted as the like of you, but I’ll follow ye by the road, as fast as I can. A man over the linn! Dear me, but that may be a very serious matter.”
“I was just saying that,” said Duncan plunging down upon the spongy grass. He slid and stumbled, tearing long strips of moss off the roots of the trees with which he came in heavy contact, striding over the fallen trunk which had played so great a part in the drama of that afternoon. There were signs of footsteps there, and Duncan slid on the slippery and trampled soil and came down on his back, but got up again at once and took no notice. This accident perhaps delayed him for a moment, and the need of precaution as he descended after such a warning. At all events Glendochart coming quickly by the roundabout of the road arrived only a moment after, and found Duncan dragging out upon the bank an inanimate figure which had apparently been lying half in half out of the stream. Duncan’s ruddy face had grown suddenly pale. “Lord keep us! Do ye think he’s dead, sir?”
“I hope not, Duncan,” said Glendochart, kneeling down by the body; but after a few minutes, both men scared and horror-stricken bending over the figure on the grass, “God preserve us,” he said, “I fear it is so. Do you know who it is?”—then a hoarse exclamation burst from them both. “It’s the young lord from the lodge on the hill—It’s Lord John! God preserve us!” cried Glendochart again. “What can this mean? But a man that’s drowned may be brought to life again,” he added. “How are we to get him home?”
Duncan, roused by the wonderful event which had thus come in a moment into the tranquil ordinary of his life, rushed along the road calling with a roar for help, which it was not easy to find in that lonely place. However there proved to be one or two people within call—the gamekeeper who lived at the lodge inhabited by Lord John, and the blacksmith from the clachan, who had been carrying some implement home to a distant mountain farm. They managed to tie some branches roughly together to make a sort of litter and thus carried the dead man to Drumcarro, which was the nearest house. The sound of the men’s feet and Glendochart’s call at the door, brought out every member of the household except the laird, who remained in his room with the door closed and took no notice. Glendochart and the gamekeeper had both some rude notion of what to do, and they acted upon their knowledge, roughly it is true, but with all the care they were capable of. Duncan on horseback, and less apt to spare his horse’s legs than his own, thundered off for a doctor. But the doctor was not easily found, and long before his arrival the rough methods of restoring animation had all been given up. Lord John lay on the mistress’s unoccupied bed to which he had been carried, like a marble image, with all the lines that a careless life had made showing still upon the whiteness of death, the darkness under the eyes, the curves about the mouth. His wet clothes, which had been cut from the limbs to which they clung, lay in a muddy heap smoking before the now blazing fire. They had piled blankets over him and done everything they knew to restore the vital heat—but without avail.
“How did it happen?” the doctor said—but this no man could tell. They gathered together in an excited yet awestricken group to consult together, to put their different guesses together, to collect what indications might be found. Duncan thought that the collar of the coat was torn as if some one had grasped the poor young man “by the scruff of the neck.” There was a bruise on his throat which might have come from the hand thus inserted—but his face had several bruises upon it from contact with the rocks, and his clothes had been so torn and cut up that they afforded little assistance in solving the problem. To send for some member of his family, and to make the sheriff aware of all the circumstances was evidently the only thing to do.
Jeanie had fled without a word, without a look behind her, when her lover’s arm loosened from her waist, and her father’s hoarse and angry voice broke in upon the scene. No thought of any tragedy to follow was in Jeanie’s mind. She had never seen her father take any violent action; his voice, his frowns, had always been enough, there had been no need for more. She thought of an angry altercation, a command to come near the house no more, so far as she thought at all. But she scarcely did think at all. She fled, afraid of her lover, afraid of her father, not sure, to tell the truth, which she feared most—glad that the situation was over, that she could escape by any means. She sped up the wooded bank, out of the shadow of the bare trees about the linn, like a frightened bird—flying, never looking behind. Pausing a moment to take breath before she ran round to the house door, she was thankful to hear no voices in anger, but all fallen into quiet again, nothing but the sound of the linn, louder she thought for the cessation of other sounds; and concluding rapidly in her mind that her father had reserved his anger for her, and let Lord John go—not a just, but according even to Jeanie’s small experience, a sufficiently usual turn of affairs—she went on more quietly to the house, that no hasty rush on her part, or self-disclosure of agitation, might call forth Mary’s remarks or the questions of Marg’ret. But the agitation of the moment was not over for Jeanie. She saw some one approaching the door from the road as she came within sight. It was too late to escape, and she instinctively put up her hand to smooth her hair, and drew a few long breaths to overcome altogether the panting of her heart, that the stranger, whoever he might be, might not perceive how disturbed she was. But when Jeanie had taken a step or two further, her heart suddenly made a leap again, which swept all her precautions away. “Oh!” she cried, with almost a shriek of agitated recognition, “now of all moments in the world—— That he should come now!”
“I am afraid,” he said, “I cannot think that cry means any pleasure to see me, though I am so glad to be here.”
Oh, to think he should be able to speak, to use common words, as if they had parted yesterday—as if nothing had happened since then!
“Oh, Captain Gordon,” she said, breathless; then added, not knowing what she said, “You’ve been long away.”
“Not with my will. I’ve nothing but my profession, and I was forced to do all I could in that. If it had been my will—”
“Oh,” said Jeanie, “I cannot talk; my sister is here, you will want to see her—but for me, I cannot talk. I am—not well. I am in—grief and trouble. Don’t stop me now, but let me go.”
He stood aside, without a word, his hat in his hand, looking at her wistfully. His look dwelt in her mind as she hurried up stairs. It was not like the look of Lord John—the look that terrified, yet excited her. He had come for her, for her and no one else; but he would not stop her, nor trouble her. It was of her he thought, not of himself. Jeanie’s heart came back like an unbent bow. This was the man that she loved. She fled from him, not daring to meet his eyes—but she felt as if some chain had been broken, some bond cut. Lord John! What was Lord John? She was afraid of him no more.
Major Gordon did not know what to do. He lingered a little, unable with the excitement in his veins of having seen his love again, to knock presently at the door and ask for the lady of Glendochart. After a time the sound of a heavy step caught his ear, and the loud interchange of words between Duncan and his master. Then the heavy steps came on towards the door. It must be Drumcarro himself who was coming. Major Gordon drew aside to await the coming of Jeanie’s father. Mr. Douglas came round the side of the house, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his shoulders up to his ears. He was staring before him with a fierce intensity, the kind of look which sees nothing. Gordon made a step forward, and said some common words of greeting, at which Drumcarro lifted his puckered eyelids for a moment, said “Eh?” with a sort of hasty interrogation, and then turning his back went in and closed the door behind him, leaving the stranger astonished. What did it mean? Gordon thought at first a studied slight to him, but farther thought showed him that this was absurd, and with some surprise he set it down to its true cause—some secret trouble in Drumcarro’s mind, some thought which absorbed him. After a moment’s astonished pause he turned back upon the road, concluding that whatever this excitement was, by and by it would die away. He walked, perhaps a mile, occupied by his own thoughts, by Jeanie, who was more lovely, he thought, than ever, and by eager speculations what she would say to him; whether perhaps after all she might not be glad to see him when she had got over the first surprise; whether it was merely haste and that great surprise that made her turn away. Gordon had occupation enough for his thoughts had he walked on the whole afternoon; but presently he turned back, remembering what Jeanie had said, that her sister was at Drumcarro, and glad to think of so reasonable a way of getting admittance. He had just come up to the house again, and was approaching the door, when he was met by the group of men coming down from their hopeless attempts to resuscitate the dead. He was much surprised to see this party come to the door, and stepped out of the way with vexation and annoyance, feeling himself and his urgent affairs thrust as it were into a secondary place by this evidence of something going on at Drumcarro. The men, of whom at first he recognized none, were exchanging grave observations, shaking their heads, with puzzled and troubled looks. At the sight of him there was a visible stir among them. One of them stepped forward hastily, and caught him by the arm, “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”
“Glendochart, you seem to have forgotten me. I am Lewis Gordon, whom you were once very kind to.”
“Captain Gordon!”
“Major, at your service; I got my step in India.”
“Gordon!” repeated Glendochart. It was natural enough that every new idea should chime in with the terrible one that now possessed his mind. He remembered in a moment who the young man was, and all that had been said and thought of him. He had been Jeanie’s lover. It seemed to throw a sudden gleam of illumination on the mystery. “Step in, step in here, and come you with me,” he said, laying his hand on the doctor’s arm. With a slight summons at the door, but without waiting for any reply he led them into his father-in-law’s room. Drumcarro was sitting at his usual table with his head leant upon his hands. He turned half round but did not otherwise change his attitude, as these newcomers entered, darkening the little room.
“I beg your pardon, Drumcarro,” said Glendochart, “but it’s urgent. I must ask this gentleman a few questions in the presence of some responsible person—Captain Gordon, or Major if ye are Major, answer me for the love of God. Ye may do a hasty act, but you’re not one that will shrink from the consequence, or I’m far mistaken in you. When did you come here?”
“This is a strange way of receiving a friend,” said Gordon with surprise. “I came here about half an hour ago.”
“But you did not come in?”
“No—I saw—one of the family.”
“And then? Still you did not come in?”
“No, I walked back a mile or so to wait—and then hearing that you were here, and Mrs. Campbell—I returned.”
“Why did you not come in?”
“I really cannot tell you the reason,” said Gordon, a little irritated. “There was no particular reason.”
Said the doctor, perceiving where Glendochart’s questions were tending: “It will be far better for you to tell the truth. It might be an accident, but denial will do no good.”
“Am I accused of anything?” said the stranger in great surprise.
“A stranger about the place at such a time is very suspicious,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “The best thing you could do, Glendochart, would be to detain him till the sheriff comes.”
Drumcarro raised his head from his supporting hands. His habitual redness had changed to grey. He spoke with some difficulty moistening his lips. He said, “Whatever ye may be thinking of, this lad’s tale’s true. I saw him come, and I saw him go. If there’s any man to blame it’s not him.”
They all turned round to where Mr. Douglas sat; the afternoon light was by this time waning, and they had difficulty in seeing each other’s faces. Drumcarro after a moment resumed again. The want of light and the deep sound of his voice, and the scene from which they had just come, made a strange horror of impression upon the men. He asked, “Is he dead?”
“Yes, he is dead. And that minds me it was you that gave the alarm. What did you see, Drumcarro?”
“I heard a rumbling as if the linn rose up to meet him, like hell in the Scriptures to meet that king—and a thud here and there upon the rocks—that’s all I heard.”
Nobody made any reply. No suspicion of the truth had occurred to any mind, but something in the voice, and the language not familiar to the man gave a vague sensation of solemnity and horror. The darkness seemed to deepen round them, while this pause lasted. And Drumcarro said no more, but leant his head upon his hands again. The silence was broken by the doctor who said in a subdued tone: “We’ll better leave Mr. Douglas quiet. It is a time of trouble—and the shock of this accident on the top of all the rest—”
Drumcarro did not move, but he said between the two hands that supported his head, “That man has nothing to do with it. I saw him come. And now ye can let him go his way.”
They filed out of the room in silence with a vague dread upon them all. Something strange was in the air. The dark figure by the table never moved, his head on his hands, his big frame looking colossal in the quivering twilight. The fire in the grate behind burned up suddenly and threw a little flickering flame into the gloom relieving still more that, motionless shadow. “It has been too much for the old gentleman,” the doctor said in a whisper, as he closed the door.
“He’s none so old,” said Glendochart with a little irritation, mindful of the fact that he was not himself much younger, and feeling the thrill of nervous discomfort and alarm.
“I doubt if he’ll live to be much older. I do not like the looks of him,” the doctor said.
It seemed to have become almost night when they came out into the hall. The blacksmith and the gamekeeper and Duncan were standing in a group about the door, the sky full of a twilight clearness behind them, and one star in it, like a messenger sent out to see what dreadful thing had happened. The air blew cold through the house from the open door, and Mary crying and nervous stood at the door of the parlour behind. The mother’s death which she had taken with such calm propriety was in the course of nature, but the dreadful suddenness of this, the mystery about it affected even her calm nerves. A second death in the house, and the Duke’s son! It comforted Mary when Gordon left the group of men whose meaning he did not even yet comprehend and joined her, to hear the whole story, and yet not all.
The other men still stood consulting when the Glendochart carriage arrived at the door; everybody had forgotten that the departure of the visitors had been settled for that afternoon, Glendochart seized the opportunity at once. “I will send the ladies away; this is no place for them with all these new troubles,” he said, “and the express to the Duke can travel so far with them.” It had occurred to Glendochart that the less that could be made of Lord John’s intercourse with the family at Drumcarro the better. He had not discouraged it himself; had it come to a marriage which would have allied himself and his children so much more nearly with the ducal family, it would have been no bad thing; but now that there could be no marriage it was clear that it was neither for Jeanie’s advantage, nor indeed for his own, to give any more publicity than was necessary to the cause of Lord John’s presence here. And thus it was that Jeanie without knowing why, yet willing enough to be carried off at such a crisis even to Glendochart, found herself within half an hour seated by her sister’s side driving off, with the darkness of night behind her, and the clearness in the west reflected in her startled eyes. Jeanie neither knew nor suspected that anything dreadful had happened; but to escape her father’s eye and his questions after the discovery he had made was relief enough to make her forget the bustle and haste with which she was carried away. They were to give Major Gordon “a lift as far as the town,” but Jeanie did not know this until he followed her into the carriage, and then her heart so jumped up and choked her with its beating that she thought no more of Drumcarro’s wrath, nor of the deliverance from Lord John which she knew her father’s interposition would make final.
And so Drumcarro House was once more, but with a deepened mystery and terror, left with its dead. Mr. Douglas did not leave his room all the evening. The call to supper made first by Marg’ret, then by Glendochart knocking cautiously at his door, produced only the response of a growl from within. No light was visible from under the door. No sound was heard in the room. To all appearance he remained without moving or even lighting his candle, until late at night his heavy step was heard going up stairs to bed. Without a light, that was the strangest thing of all to the keen but silent observers. There could be nothing on the master’s mind or he could never have sat all the evening through knowing what it was that lay in his wife’s room up stairs, without a light. They could not imagine indeed how in any circumstances Drumcarro, an old man, could have had anything to do with the death of Lord John, a young one, nor what reason there could be for seeking his death, yet an uneasy fear was in the air, and there was no one else who could be thought of. But that circumstance cleared him. Without a light no man could sit who had been instrumental in causing a man’s death, while that man lay dead in the same house. Glendochart, whose mind was disturbed by many miserable surmises, was comforted by this thought, though almost unconsciously to himself.
And nobody knew what thoughts were going on in the dark in that closed room. They were not thoughts specially about Lord John. They were the bewildering circling of a mind suddenly driven into tragic self-consciousness, about the entire chapter of his life now perhaps about to be brought to an end. The sudden pang of the moment, his clutch upon his victim (his hand hurt him still from the strain, and still now and then he raised it to his mouth, to blow his hot breath upon it), the whirl of that figure through the air, came back at intervals like a picture placed before his eyes. But between those intervals there surged up all manner of things. Old scenes far off and gone, incidents that had taken place in the jungle and swamp, cries and sounds of the lash, and pistol shots all long over and forgotten. One face, not white like Lord John’s, but grey in its blackness, like ashes, came and wavered in the darkness before him more distinct than the others. No ghost, he had no faith in ghosts, nothing outside of him. Something within from which even if they should hang him he knew he would not get free. Lord John,—he thought very little of Lord John! And yet his hand hurt him, the picture would come back, and the scene re-enact itself before his eyes. Sometimes he dozed with his head in his hands. The chief thing was that he should not be disturbed, that no one should come in to question him, to interfere with his liberty, that night at least. That he should be quiet that night if nevermore.
The Duke arrived with his eldest son as soon as post-horses could bring him. He had been in the north, not very far away, so that the interval, though it represented much more difficult travelling than the journey from one end to the other of Great Britain nowadays, was not very long. Lord John had been a trouble to his family all his life. He had followed none of the traditions of prudence and good sense which had made his race what they were. The scrapes in which he had been were innumerable, and all his family were aware that nothing but embarrassment and trouble was likely to come to them from his hand. Sometimes this state of affairs may exist without any breach of the bonds of natural affection; but perhaps when a man is a duke and accustomed to have many things bow to his will, the things and persons that cannot be made to do so become more obnoxious to him than to a common man. No doubt a shock of natural distress convulsed the father’s mind at the first news of what had happened, but after a while there came, horrible as it seems to say it, a certain relief into the august mind of the Duke. At least here was an end of it; there could be no more to follow, no new disgraces or inconveniences to be encountered. Scarcely a year had come or gone for many years past without some fresh development of John’s powers of mischief. Now, poor fellow! all was over; he could do no more harm, make no more demands on a revenue which was not able to bear such claims, endanger no more a name which indeed had borne a great deal in its day without much permanent disadvantage. On the whole there was thus something to set against the terrible shock of a son’s sudden death by accident. A few questions thrown into the air as it were, a general demand upon somebody for information burst from the Duke during that long drive. “Where is this linn, do you know? What could he have wanted there? On the land of that old ruffian, Drumcarro? And what did he want there?” But to the last question at least no one could make any reply. Even to speak of Drumcarro’s lovely daughter as an inducement would have been a jarring note when the poor fellow was so recently dead. And the Duke could answer his own question well enough; any petty intrigue would be reason enough for John, the worse the better. His only fear was that some dark story of seduction and revenge might unfold itself when he got there.
It was Glendochart who received his chief when he reached his journey’s end, and told him the little there was to tell. It was supposed that Lord John had somehow missed his footing when at the head of the linn. Some one had heard the sound of a fall, and the body had been found below at the foot of the waterfall. This was all that could be discovered at the end of two or three days which had elapsed. The Duke saw, with a natural pang, his dead son laid out upon the mistress’s bed, and then he visited the scene of the tragedy. He inspected everything with a clouded countenance, asking brief, sharp questions from time to time. To Glendochart he seemed suspicious of violence and foul play, a suspicion which was lurking in Glendochart’s own mind, with strange surmises which he could not put into words, but which his mind was on the alert to find some clue to. This, however, was scarcely the Duke’s frame of mind. After he had visited the spot where the body had been found, and looked up the foaming fall of the linn, and heard everything that could be told him, he put a sudden question which dismayed Glendochart. “Have you any suspicions?” he said. “Has there been any suggestion—of violence?”
“The idea has no doubt been suggested,” Mr. Campbell replied, “but I can find nothing to give it any countenance. There were signs as of stamping of feet at one place near the fallen tree, but the man who found the body accounted for that as having slipped and fallen there.”
“It has been suggested then?” said the Duke, with another cloud coming over his face. “Glendochart, I may speak freely to you that would bring no discredit on the name. Was there any story, any reason for his staying here?”
Glendochart felt his countenance redden, though it was of that well-worn colour which shows little. He suddenly realised, with a sense of relief unspeakable, what it would have been had Lord John lived and thriven, to have intimated to the chief that his son had married Drumcarro’s daughter. Glendochart had himself been flattered by the idea. He saw the reverse of the medal now.
“I know of none,” he said, “my Lord Duke. He was more at this house than at any other house round about.”
“And there was no story—no lass, disappointed perhaps—or angry father? You know what I mean, Glendochart. One of my own name, and not so far from me in blood, I know that I can trust you. You know, too—what my poor boy was.”
“I understand what your Grace means,” said Glendochart. “I have heard of nothing of the kind.”
“And who was it that heard the fall?”
“It was my father-in-law, Drumcarro himself. He was taking his usual walk. I don’t imagine he ever thought it was so serious. He called to the man in the byre to see to it, that he thought he had heard a fall.”
“I will see Drumcarro. I suppose——”
“If it will satisfy your Grace better—but he is an old man, and much shaken with his wife’s death which took place only a fortnight ago.”
The Duke gave his clansman what looked like a suspicious glance. But he only said, “It will be better not to disturb him. I would have thought,” he added, “that old Drumcarro was tough enough to stand the loss of his wife or anything else.”
“We sometimes do men injustice,” said Glendochart, a little stiffly; “and the shock of having another death, so to speak, in the house, has had a great effect upon his mind—or I should perhaps say his nerves.”
“Well, well, I will not disturb him,” said the Duke. He said no more until they reached again the head of the linn. Then he stood for a few minutes amid the spray, looking down as he had looked up the boiling foam of waters. The cloud had gone off his face. He turned to his son, by his side, who had said little all this time. “I think we may satisfy ourselves that it was pure accident,” he said.
“I think so,” said the taintless heir, with a solemn nod of his head.
The Duke stood there for a moment more, and then he took off his hat and said, “Thank God.” With all his heart, Glendochart echoed the surprising words. He thought that he indeed had cause for thankfulness—that he should never have had the occasion to approach his chief with news of an alliance that would have been so little to his mind; that Jeanie’s name should have been kept out of the matter altogether, and no questions put to the old man whose nerves had been so strangely shaken. He had indeed cause for thankfulness; but the Duke, why? Glendochart came to understand later why the Duke should have been glad that no new scandal was to be associated with the end of his son’s life.
And so Lord John was carried in great state to the burial place of his fathers, and was rehabilitated with his family, and mourned by his mother and sisters, like other men. And whatever the tragedy was that attended his last hours it was buried with him, and never told to man. There is no coroner in Scotland; and in those remote regions, and at that period, the Duke’s satisfaction that his son’s death was caused by accident was enough for all.
Drumcarro scarcely left his room while that solemn visitor was in the house. He appeared after, a singularly changed and broken man, and fell into something like the habits of his old life. There had been no secret in his strange retirement, but there was no doubt left in the mind of any who surrounded him, that something had happened which was not in the peaceful routine of existence. They formed their own impressions at their leisure; it was nothing to the laird what they thought. He had deceived no man, neither had he confided in any man. When Glendochart left the house, taking charge of the mournful conveyance which carried Lord John home, life at Drumcarro would, in any circumstances, have been a wonderfully changed and shrunken life. It was the first time that the diminished family had been left alone since the death of the mistress. At the family table, once so well surrounded, Drumcarro sat down with his one remaining son, and the vast expanse of the wide table-cloth vacant save in that corner. It did not occur to any one to substitute a smaller table for the long-stretching board where there had been room for all. Jamie, who was never seen without a book, compensated himself for the silence and anxiety of this tête-à-tête by reading furtively, while his father sat with his shoulders up to his ears, and his eyes, almost lost in his shaggy eyebrows, glaring out now and then with a glance of gloomy fire. It was rarely that he addressed the boy, and the boy escaped from him into his book. The mother was gone, Jeanie was gone, every one who could make that empty board a little brighter. The father and son swallowed their meal side by side, but did not prolong it any more than was possible. The sight of them affected Merran’s nerves when she served them, though that ruddy lass might well have been supposed to have no such things in her possession. “There’s the laird just glowering frae him as if he saw something no canny, and Jamie with his book. And me that minds all that fine family!” cried Merran. “Ye must just go ben yourself, Marg’ret, for I canna do it.” And there is no doubt that it was a piteous sight.