In the morning it was still more evident that Andrew had thrown himself on God, and—unperplext seeking, had found him. But Janet wondered a little that he did not more demonstratively seek the comfort of The Book. It was her way in sorrow to appeal immediately to its known passages of promise and comfort, and she laid it open in his way with the remark:
“There is the Bible. Andrew; it will have a word, no doubt, for you.”
“And there is the something beyond the Bible, Mother, if you will be seeking it. When the Lord God speaks to a man, he has the perfection of counsel, and he will not be requiring the word of a prophet or an apostle. From the heart of The Unseen a voice calls to him, and gives him patience under suffering. I know, for I have heard and answered it.” Then he walked to the door, and opening it, he stood there repeating to himself, as he looked over the waters which had been the field of his conflict and his victory:—
It was a verse that meant more to Andrew than he would have been able to explain. He only knew that it led him somehow through those dim, obscure pathways of spiritual life, on which the light of common day does not shine. And as he stood there, his mother and sister felt vaguely that they knew what “moral beauty” meant, and were the better for the knowledge.
He did not try to forget Sophy; he only placed her beyond his own horizon; and whereas he had once thought of her with personal hope and desire, he now remembered her only with a prayer for her happiness, or if by chance his tongue spoke her name, he added a blessing with it. Never did he make a complaint of her desertion, but he wept inwardly; and it was easy to see that he spent many of those hours that make the heart grey, though they leave the hair untouched. And it was at this time he contracted the habit of frequently looking up, finding in the very act that sense of strength and help and adoration which is inseparable to it. And thus, day by day, he overcame the aching sorrow of his heart, for no man is ever crushed from without; if he is abased to despair, his ruin has come from within.
About three weeks after Sophy’s marriage, Christina was standing one evening at the gloaming, looking over the immense, cheerless waste of waters. Mists, vague and troublous as the background of dreams, were on the horizon, and there Was a feeling of melancholy in the air. But she liked the damp, fresh wind, with its taste of brine, and she drew her plaid round her, and breathed it with a sense of enjoyment. Very soon Andrew came up the cliff, and he stood at her side, and they spoke of Jamie and wondered at his whereabouts, and after a little pause, Andrew added:—
“Christina, I got a very important letter to-day, and I am going to-morrow about the business I told you of. I want to start early in the morning, so put up what I need in my little bag. And I wish you to say nothing to mother until all things are settled.”
“She will maybe ask me the question, Andrew.”
“I told her I was going about a new boat, and she took me at my word without this or that to it. She is a blithe creature, one of the Lord’s most contented bairns. I wish we were both more like her.”
“I wish we were, Andrew. If we could just do as mother does! for she leaves yesterday where it fell, and trusts to-morrow with God, and so catches every blink of happiness that passes by her.”
“God forever bless her! There is no mother like the mother that bore us; we must aye remember that, Christina. But it is a dour, storm-like sky yon,” he continued, pointing eastward. “We shall have a snoring breeze before midnight.”
Then Christina thought of her lover again, and as they turned in to the fireside, she began to tell her brother her hopes and fears about Jamie, and to read him portions of a letter received that day from America. While Andrew’s trouble had been fresh and heavy on him, Christina had refrained herself from all speech about her lover; she felt instinctively that it would not be welcome and perhaps hardly kind. But this night it fell out naturally, and Andrew listened kindly and made his sister very happy by his interest in all that related to Jamie’s future. Then he ate some bread and cheese with the women, and after the exercise went to his room, for he had many things to prepare for his journey on the following day.
Janet continued the conversation. It related to her daughter’s marriage and settlement in Glasgow, and of this subject she never wearied.
The storm Andrew had foreseen was by this time raging round the cottage, the Clustering waves making strange noises on the sands and falling on the rocks with a keen, lashing sound It affected them gradually; their hearts became troubled, and they spoke low and with sad inflections, for both were thinking of the sailor-men and fishermen peopling the lonely waters.
“I wouldn’t put out to sea this night,” said Janet. “No, not for a capful of sovereigns.”
“Yet there will be plenty of boats, hammering through the big waves all night long, till the dawn shows in the east; and it is very like that Jamie is now on the Atlantic—a stormy place, God knows!”
“A good passage, if it so pleases God!” said Janet, lifting her eyes to heaven, and Christina looked kindly at her mother for the wish. But talking was fast becoming difficult, for the wind had suddenly veered more northerly, and, sleet-laden, it howled and shrieked down the wide chimney. In one of the pauses forced on them by this blatant intruder, they were startled by a human cry, loud and piercing, and quite distinct from the turbulent roar of winds and waves.
Both women were on their feet on the instant Both had received the same swift, positive impression, that it came from Andrew’s room, and they were at his door in a moment. It was locked. They called him, and he made no answer. Again and again, with ever increasing terror, they entreated him to open to them; for the door was solid and heavy, and the lock large and strong, and no power they possessed could avail to force an entrance. He heeded none of, their passionate prayers until Janet began to cry bitterly. Then he turned the key and they entered.
Andrew looked at them with anger; his countenance was pale and distraught, and a quiet fury burned in his eyes. He could not speak, and the women regarded him with fear and wonder. Presently he managed to articulate with a thick difficulty:—
“My money! My money! It is all gone!”
“Gone!” shrieked Christina, “that is just impossible.”
“It is all gone!” Then he gripped her cruelly by the shoulder, and asked in a fierce whisper:
“What did you do with it?”
“Me? Andrew!”
“Ay, you! You wicked lass, you!”
“I never put finger on it”
“Christina! Christina! To think that I trusted you for this! Go out of my sight, will you! I’m not able to bear the face of you!”
“Andrew! Andrew! Surely, you are not calling me a ‘thief’?”
“Who, then?” he cried, with gathering rage, “unless it be Jamie Logan?”
“Don’t be so wicked as to wrong innocent folk such a way; Jamie never saw, never heard tell of your money. The unborn babe is not more guiltless than Jamie Logan.”
“How do you know that? How do I know that? The very night I told you of the money—that very night I showed you where I kept it—that night Jamie ought to have been in the boats, and he was not in them. What do you make of that?”
“Nothing. He is as innocent as I am.”
“And he was drinking with some strange man at the public. What were they up to? Tell me that. And then he comes whistling up the road, and says he missed his boat. A made up story! and after it he goes off to America! Oh. woman! woman! If you can’t put facts together. I can.”
“Jamie never touched a bawbee of your money. I’ll ware my life on that. For I never let on to any mortal creature that you had a penny of silent money. God Almighty knows I am speaking the truth.”
“You won’t dare to bring God Almighty’s name into such a black business. Are you not feared to take it into your mouth?”
Then Janet laid her hand heavily on his shoulder. He had sat down on his bed, and was leaning heavily against one of the posts, and the very fashion of his countenance was changed; his hair stood upright, and he continually smote his large, nervous hands together.
“Andrew,” said his mother, angrily, “you are just giving yourself up to Satan. Your passion is beyond seeing, or hearing tell of. And think shame of yourself for calling your sister a ‘thief and a ‘liar’ and what not. I wonder what’s come over you! Step ben the house, and talk reasonable to us.”
“Leave me to myself! Leave me to myself! I tell you both to go away. Will you go? both of you?”
“I’m your mother, Andrew.”
“Then for God’s sake have pity on me, and leave me alone with my sorrow! Go! Go! I’m not a responsible creature just now—” and his passion was so stern and terrific that neither of them dared to face any increase of it.
So they left him alone and went back to the sputtering fireside—for the rain was now beating down the chimney—and in awe-struck whispers Christina told her mother of the money which Andrew had hoarded through long laborious years, and of the plans which the loss of it would break to pieces.
“There would be a thousand pounds, or near by it. Mother, I’m thinking,” said Christina. “You know well how scrimping with himself he has been. Good fishing or bad fishing, he never had a shilling to spend on any one. He bought nothing other boys bought; when he was a laddie, and when he grew to the boats, you may mind that he put all he made away somewhere. And he made a deal more than folks thought. He had a bit venture here, and a bit there, and they must have prospered finely.”
“Not they!” said Janet angrily. “What good has come of them? What good could come of money, hid away from everybody but himself? Why didn’t he tell his mother? If her thoughts had been round about his siller, it would not have gone an ill road. A man who hides away his money is just a miracle of stupidity, for the devil knows where it is if no decent human soul does.”
It was a mighty sorrow to bear, even for the two women, and Janet wept like a child over the hopes blasted before she knew of them. “He should have told us both long since,” she sobbed. “I would have been praying for the bonnie ship building for him, every plank would have been laid with a blessing. And as I sat quiet in my house, I would have been thinking of my son Captain Binnie, and many a day would have been a bright day, that has been but a middling one. So selfish as the lad has been!”
“Maybe it wasn’t pure selfishness, Mother. He was saving for a good end.”
“It was pure selfishness! He was that way even about Sophy. Nobody but himself must have word or look from her, and the lassie just wearied of him. Why wouldn’t she? He put himself and her in a circle, and then made a wilderness all round about it. And Sophy wanted company, for when a girl says ‘a man is all the world to her,’ she doesn’t mean that nobody else is to come into her world. She would be a wicked lass if she did.”
“Well, Mother, he lost her, and he bore his loss like a man.”
“Ay, men often bear the loss of love easier than the loss of money. I’ve seen far more fuss made over the loss of a set of fishing-nets, than over the brave fellows that handled them. And to think of our Andrew hiding away his gold all these years for his own hoping and pleasuring! A perfectly selfish pleasuring! The gold might well take wings to itself and fly away. He should have clipped the wings of it with giving a piece to the kirk now and then, and a piece to his mother and sister at odd times, and the flying wouldn’t have been so easy. Now he has lost the whole, and he well deserves it I’m thinking his Maker is dourly angry with him for such ways, and I am angry myself.”
“Ah well, Mother, there is no use in our anger; the lad is suffering enough, and for the rest we must just leave him to the general mercy of God.”
“‘General mercy of God.’ Don’t let me hear you use the like of such words, Christina. The minister would tell you it is a very loose expression and a very dangerous doctrine. He was reproving Elder McInnes for them very words, and any good minister will be keeping his thumb on such a wide outgate. Andrew knows well that he has to have the particular and elected grace of God to keep him where he ought to be. This hid-away money has given him a sore tumble, and I will tell him so very plainly.”
“Don’t trouble him, Mother. He will not bear words on it, even from you.”
“He will have to bear them. I am not feared for Andrew Binnie, and he shall not be left in ignorance of his sin. Whether he knows it or not, he has done a deed that would make a very poor kind of a Christian ashamed to look the devil in the face; and I be to let him know it.”
But in the morning Andrew looked so utterly wretched, that Janet could only pity him. “I’ll not be the one to break the bruised reed,” she said to Christina, for the miserable man sat silent with dropped eyes the whole day long, eating nothing, seeing nothing, and apparently lost to all interests outside his own bewildering, utterly hopeless speculations. It was not until another letter came about the ship he was to command, that he roused himself sufficiently to write and cancel the whole transaction. He could not keep his promises financially, and though he was urged to make some other offer, he would have nothing from The Fleet on any humbler basis than his first proposition. With a foolish pride, born of his great disappointment and anger, he turned his back on his broken hopes, and went sullen and sorrowful back to his fishing-boat.
He had never been even in his family a very social man. Jokes and songs and daffing of all kinds were alien to his nature. Yet his grave and pleasant smile had been a familiar thing, and gentle words had always hitherto come readily to his lips. But after his ruinous loss, he seldom spoke unless it was to his mother. Christina he noticed not, either by word or look, and the poor girl was broken-hearted under this silent accusation. For she felt that Andrew doubted both her and Jamie, and though she was indignant at the suspicion, it eat its way into her heart and tortured her.
For put the thought away as she would, the fact of Jamie’s dereliction that unfortunate night would return and return, and always with a more suspicious aspect. Who was the man he was drinking with? Nobody in the village but Jamie, knew him. He had come and gone in a night. It was possible that, having missed the boat, Jamie had brought his friend up the cliff to call on her; that, seeing the light in Andrew’s room, they had looked in at the window, and so might have seen Andrew and herself standing over the money, and then watched until it was returned to its hiding-place. Jamie had come whistling in a very pronounced manner up to the house—that might have been because he had been drinking, and then again, it might not—and then there was his quarrel with Andrew! Was that a planned affair, in order to give the other man time to carry off the box? She could not remember whether the curtain had been drawn across the window or not; and when she dared to name this doubt to Andrew, he only answered—
“What for are you asking after spilled milk?”
The whole circumstance was so mysterious that it stupified her. And yet she felt that it contained all the elements of sorrow and separation between Jamie and herself. However, she kept assuring her heart that Jamie would be in Glasgow the following week; and she wrote a letter to meet him, expressing a strong desire that he would “be sure to come to Pittendurie, as there was most important business.” But she did not like to tell him what the business was, and Jamie did not answer the request. In fact, the lad could not, without resigning his position entirely. The ship had been delayed thirty hours by storms, and there was nearly double tides of work for every man on her in order that she might be able to keep her next sailing day. Jamie was therefore so certain that a request to go on shore about his own concerns would be denied, that he did not even ask the favour.
But he wrote to Christina, and explained to her in the most loving manner the impossibility of his leaving his duties. He said “that for her sake, as well as his own, he was obligated to remain at his post,” and he assured her that this obligation was “a reasonable one.” Christina believed him fully, and was satisfied, her mother only smiled with shut lips and remained silent; but Andrew spoke with a bitterness it was hard to forgive; still harder was it to escape from the wretched inferences his words implied.
“No wonder he keeps away from Pittendurie!” he said with a scornful laugh. “He’ll come here no more—unless he is made to come, and if it was not for mother’s sake, and for your good name, Christina, I would send the constables to the ship to bring him here this very day.”
And Christina could make no answer, save that of passionate weeping. For it shocked her to see, that her mother did not stand up for Jamie, but went silently about her house duties, with a face as inscrutable as the figure-head of Andrew’s boat.
Thus backward, every way flew the wheels of life in the Binnie cottage. Andrew took a grim pleasure in accepting his poverty before his mother and sister. In the home he made them feel that everything but the barest necessities were impossible wants. His newspaper was resigned, his pipe also, after a little struggle He took his tea without sugar, he put the butter and marmalade aside, as if they were sinful luxuries, and in fact reduced his life to the most essential and primitive conditions it was possible to live it on. And as Janet and Christina were not the bread winners, and did not know the exact state of the Binnie finances, they felt obliged to follow Andrew’s example. Of course, all Christina’s little extravagances of wedding preparations were peremptorily stopped. There would be no silk wedding gown now. It began to look, as if there would be no wedding at all.
For Andrew’s continual suspicions, spoken and unspoken, insensibly affected her, and that in spite of her angry denials of them. She fought against their influence, but often in vain, for Jamie did not come to Pittendurie either after the second or the third voyage. He was not to blame; it was the winter season, and delays were constant, and there were other circumstances—with which he had nothing whatever to do—that still put him in such a position that to ask for leave of absence meant asking for his dismissal. And then there would be no prospect at all of his marriage with Christina.
But the fisher folk, who had their time very much at their own command and who were nursed in a sense of every individual’s independence, did not realise Jamie’s dilemma. It could not be made intelligent to them, and they began to wonder, and to ask embarrassing questions. Very soon there was a shake of the head and a sigh of pity whenever “poor Christina Binnie” was mentioned.
So four wretched months went by, and then one moonlight night in February, Christina heard the quick footstep and the joyous whistle she knew so well. She stood up trembling with pleasure; and as Jamie flung wide the door, she flew to his arms with an irrepressible cry. For some minutes he saw nothing and cared for nothing but the girl clasped to his breast; but as she began to sob, he looked at Janet—who had purposely gone to the china rack that she might have her back to him—and then at Andrew who stood white and stern, with both hands in his pockets, regarding him.
The young man was confounded by this reception, he released himself from Christina’s embrace, and stepping forward, asked anxiously “What ever is the matter with you, Andrew? You aren’t like yourself at all. Why, you are ill, man! Oh, but I’m vexed to see you so changed.”
“Where is my money, James Logan? Where is the gold and the bank-notes you took from me?—the savings of all my lifetime.”
“Your money, Andrew? Your gold and bank-notes? Me take your money! Why, man, you are either mad or joking—and I’m not liking such jokes either.” Then he turned to Christina and asked, “What does he mean, my dearie?”
“I mean this,” cried Andrew with gathering passion, “I mean that I had nearly a thousand pounds taken out of my room yon night that you should have gone to the boats—and that you did not go.”
“Do you intend to say that I took your thousand pounds? Mind your words, Andrew Binnie!” and as he spoke, he put Christina behind him and stood squarely before Andrew. And his face was a flame of passion.
“I am most sure you took it. Prove to me that you did not.”
Before the words were finished, they were answered with a blow, the blow was promptly returned; and then the two men closed in a deadly struggle. Christina was white and sick with terror, but withal glad that Andrew had found himself so promptly answered. Janet turned sharply at the first blow, and threw herself between the men. All the old prowess of the fish-wife was roused in her.
“How dare you?” she cried in a temper quite equal to their own. “I’ll have no cursing and fighting in my house,” and with a twist of her hand in her son’s collar, she threw him back in his chair. Then she turned to Jamie and cried angrily—
“Jamie Logan, my bonnie lad, if you have got nothing to say for yourself, you’ll do well to take your way down the cliff.”
“I have been called a ‘thief’ in this house,” he answered; and wounded feeling and a bitter sense of wrong made his voice tremble. “I came here to kiss my bride; and I know nothing at all of what Andrew means. I will swear it. Give me the Bible.”
“Let my Bible alone,” shouted Andrew. “I’ll have no man swear to a lie on my Bible. Get out of my house, James Logan, and be thankful that I don’t call the officers to take care of you.”
“There is a mad man inside of you, Andrew Binnie, or a devil of some kind, and you are not fit to be in the same house with good women. Come with me, Christina. I’ll marry you tonight at the Largo minister’s house. Come my dear lassie. Never mind aught you have, but your plaidie.”
Christina rose and put out her hand. Andrew leaped to his feet and strode between them.
“I will strike you to the ground, if you dare to touch my sister again,” he shouted, and if Janet had not taken both his hands in her own strong grip, Andrew would have kept his threat. Then Janet’s anger turned most unreasonably upon Christina—
“Go ben the house,” she screamed. “Go ben the house, you worrying, whimpering lassie. You will be having the whole village fighting about you the next thing.”
“I am going with Jamie, Mother.”
“I will take very good care, you do not go with Jamie. There is not a soul, but Jamie Logan, will leave this house tonight. I would just like to see any other man or woman try it,” and she looked defiantly both at Andrew and Christina.
“I ran the risk of losing my berth to come here,” said Jamie. “More fool, I. I have been called ‘thief’ and ‘loon’ for doing it. I came for your sake, Christina, and now you must go with me for my sake. Come away, my dearie, and there is none that shall part us more.”
Again Christina rose, and again her mother interfered. “You will go out of this house alone, Jamie Logan. I don’t know whether you are right or wrong. I know nothing about that weary siller. But I do know there has been nothing but trouble to my boy since he saved you from the sea. I am not saying it is your fault; but the sea has been against him ever since, and now you will go away, and you will stay away.”
“Christina, am I to go?”
“Go, Jamie, but I will come to you, and there is none that shall keep me from you.”
Then Jamie went, and far down on the sands Christina heard him call, “Good-bye, Christina! Good-bye!” And she would have answered him, but Janet had locked the door, and the key was in her pocket. Then for hours the domestic storm raged, Andrew growing more and more positive and passionate, until even Janet was alarmed, and with tears and coaxing persuaded him to go to bed. Still in this hurly burly of temper, Christina kept her purpose intact. She was determined to go to Glasgow as soon as she could get outside. If she was in time for a marriage with Jamie, she would be his wife at once. If Jamie had gone, then she would hire herself out until the return of his ship.
This was the purpose she intended to carry out in the morning, but before the dawn her mother awakened her out of a deep sleep. She was in a sweat of terror.
“Run up the cliff for Thomas Roy,” she cried, “and then send Sandy for the doctor.”
“What is the matter, Mother.”
“Your brother Andrew is raving, and clean beyond himself, and I’m feared for him, and for us all. Quick Christina! There is not a moment to lose!”
On this same night the Mistress of Braelands sat musing by the glowing bit of fire in her bedroom, while her maid, Allister, was folding away her silk dinner-gown, and making the preparations for the night’s toilet. She was a stately, stern-looking woman, with that air of authority which comes from long and recognised position. Her dressing-gown of pale blue flannel fell amply around her tall form; her white hair was still coiled and puffed in an elaborate fashion, and there was at the wrist-bands of her sleeves a fall of lace which half covered her long, shapely white hands. She was pinching its plaits mechanically, and watching the effect as she idly turned them in the firelight to catch the gleam of opal and amethyst rings. But this accompaniment to her thoughts was hardly a conscious one; she had admired her hands for so many years that she was very apt to give to their beauty this homage of involuntary observation, even when her thoughts were fixed on subjects far-off and alien to them.
“Allister,” she said, suddenly, “I wonder where Mr. Archibald will be this night.”
“The Lord knows, Madame, and it is well he does; for it is little we know of ourselves and the ways we walk in.”
“The Lord looks after his own, Allister, and Mr. Archibald was given to him by kirk and parents before he was a month old. But if a man marries such a woman as you know nothing about, and then goes her ways, what will you say then?”
“It is not as bad as that, Madame. Mrs. Archibald is of well-known people, though poor.”
“Though low-born, Allister. Poverty can be tholed, and even respected; but for low birth there is no remedy but being born over again.”
“Well, Madame, she is Braelands now, and that is a cloak to cover all defects; and if I was you I would just see that it did so.”
“She is my son’s wife, and must be held as such, both by gentle and simple.”
“And there is few ills that have not a good side to them, Madame. If Mr. Archibald had married Miss Roberta Elgin, as you once feared he would do, there would have been a flitting for you and for me, Madame. Miss Roberta would have had the whole of Braelands House to herself, and the twenty-two rooms of it wouldn’t have been enough for her. And she would have taken the Braelands’s honour and glory on her own shoulders. It would have been ‘Mrs. Archibald Braelands’ here and there and everywhere, and you would have been pushed out of sight and hearing, and passed by altogether, like as not; for if youth and beauty and wealth and good blood set themselves to have things their own way, which way at all will age that is not rich keep for itself? Sure as death, Madame, you would have had to go to the Dower House, which is but a mean little place, though big enough, no doubt, for all the friends and acquaintances that would have troubled themselves to know you there.”
“You are not complimentary, Allister. I think I have few friends who would not have followed me to the Dower House.”
“Surely, Madame, you may as well think so. But carriages aye stop at big houses; indeed, the very coachmen and footmen and horses are dead set against calling at cottages. There is many a lady who would be feared to ask her coachman to call at the Dower House. But what for am I talking? There is no occasion to think that Mrs. Archibald will ever dream of sending you out of his house.”
“I came here a bride, nearly forty years ago, Allister,” she said, with a touch of sentimental pity for herself in the remembrance.
“So you have had a long lease, Madame, and one like to be longer; for never a better son than your son; and I do think for sure that the lady he has married will be as biddable as a very child with you.”
“I hope so. For she will have everything to learn about society, and who can teach her better than I can, Allister?”
“No one, Madame; and Mrs. Archibald was ever good at the uptake. I am very sure if you will show her this and that, and give her the word here and there yourself, Madame, there will be no finer lady in Fife before the year has come and gone. And she cannot be travelling with Mr. Archibald without learning many a thing all the winter long.”
“Yes, they will not be home before the spring, I hear.”
“And oh, Madame, by that date you will have forgot that all was not as you wanted it! And no doubt you will give the young things the loving welcome they are certain to be longing for.”
“I do not know, Allister. The marriage was a great sorrow, and shame, and disappointment to me. I am not sure that I have forgiven it.”
“Lady Beith was saying you never would forgive it. She was saying that you could never forgive any one’s faults but your own.”
“Lady Beith is very impertinent. And pray what faults has Lady Beith ever seen in me?”
“It was her general way of speaking, Madame. She has that way.”
“Then you might tell Lady Beith’s woman, that such general ways of speaking are extremely vulgar. When her ladyship speaks of the Mistress of Braelands again, I will ask her to refer to me, particularly. I have my own virtues as well as my own faults, and my own position, and my own influence, and I do not go into the generalities of life. I am the Mistress of Braelands yet, I hope.”
“I hope so, Madame. As I was saying, Mrs. Archibald is biddable as a child; but then again, she is quite capable of taking the rudder into her own hands, and driving in the teeth of the wind. You can’t ever be sure of fisher blood. It is like the ocean, whiles calm as a sleeping baby, whiles lashing itself into a very fury. There is both this and that in the Traills, and Mrs. Archibald is one of them.”
“Any way and every way, this marriage is a great sorrow to me.”
“I am not disputing that, Madame; but I am sure you remember what the minister was saying to you at his last visitation—that every sorrow you got the mastery over was a benefactor.”
“The minister is not always orthodox, Allister.”
“He is a very good man; every one is saying that.”
“No doubt, no doubt, but he deviates.”
“Well then, Madame, even if the marriage be as bad as you fancy it, bad things as well as good ones come to an end, and life, after all, is like a bit of poetry I picked up somewhere, which says:
And it’s the turn now for the young people to be happy. Cold and bleak it is here on the Fife coast, but they are among roses and sunshine and so God bless them, I say, and keep us and every one from cutting short their turn of happiness. You had your bride time, Madame, and when Angus McAllister first took me to his cottage in Strathmoyer, I thought I was on a visit to Paradise.”
“Give me my glass of negus, and then I will go to bed. Everybody has taken to preaching and advising lately, and that is not the kind of fore-talk that spares after-talk—not it, Allister.”
She sunk then into unapproachable silence, and Allister knew that she needed not try to move her further that night in any direction. Her eyes were fixed upon the red coals, but she was really thinking of the roses and sunshine of the South, and picturing to herself her son and his bride, wandering happily amid the warmth and beauty.
In reality, they were crossing the Braelands’s moor at that very moment The rain was beating against the closed windows of their coach, and the horses floundering heavily along the boggy road. Sophy’s head rested on her husband’s shoulder, but they were not talking, nor had they spoken for some time. Both indeed were tired and depressed, and Archie at least was unpleasantly conscious of the wonderment their unexpected return would cause.
The end of April or the beginning of May had been the time appointed, and yet here they were, at the threshold of their home, in the middle of the winter. Sophy’s frail health had been Archie’s excuse for a season in the South with her; and she was coming back to Scotland when the weather was at its very bleakest and coldest. One excuse after another formed itself in Archie’s mind, only to be peremptorily dismissed. “It is no one’s business but our own,” he kept assuring himself, “and I will give neither reason nor apology but my wife’s desire.” and yet he knew that reasons and apologies would be asked, and he was fretting inwardly at their necessity, and wondering vaguely if women ever did know what they really wanted.
For to go to France and Germany and Italy, had seemed to Sophy the very essence of every joy in life. Before her marriage, she had sat by Archie’s side hour after hour, listening to his descriptions of foreign lands, and dreaming of all the delights that were to meet her in them. She had started on this bridal trip with all her senses set to an unnatural key of expectation, and she had, of course, suffered continual disappointments and disillusions. The small frets and sicknesses of travel, the loneliness of being in places where she could not speak even to her servants, or go shopping without an attendant, the continual presence of what was strange—of what wounded her prejudices and very often her conscience,—and the constant absence of all that was familiar and approved, were in themselves no slight cause of unhappiness.
Yet it had been a very gradual disillusion, and one mitigated by many experiences that had fully justified even Sophy’s extravagant anticipations. The trouble, in the main, was one common to a great majority of travellers for pleasure—a mind totally unprepared for the experience.
She grew weary of great cities which had no individual character or history in her mind; weary of fine hotels in which she was of no special importance; weary of art which had no meaning for her. Her child-like enthusiasms, which at first both delighted and embarrassed her husband, faded gradually away; the present not only lost its charm, but she began to look backward to the homely airs and scenes of Fife, and to suffer from a nostalgia that grew worse continually.
However, Archie bore her unreasonable depression with great consideration. She was but a frail child after all, and she was in a condition of health demanding the most affectionate patience and tenderness he could give her. Besides, it was no great sin in his eyes to be sick with longing for dear old Scotland. He loved his native land; and his little mountain blue-bell, trembling in every breeze, and drooping in every hour of heat and sunshine, appealed to the very best instincts of his nature. And when Sophy began to voice her longing, to cry a little in his arms, and to say she was wearying for a sight of the great grey sea round her Fife home, Archie vowed he was homesick as a man could be, and asked, “why they should stop away from their own dear land any longer?”
“People will wonder and talk so, Archie They will say unkind things—they will maybe say we are not happy together.”
“Let them talk. What care we? And we are happy together. Do you want to go back to Scotland tomorrow? today—this very hour?”
“Aye. I do, Archie. And I am that weak and poorly, if I don’t go soon, maybe I will have to wait a long time, and then you know.”
“Yes, I know. And that would never, never do. Braelands of Fife cannot run the risk of having his heir born in a foreign country. Why, it would be thrown up to the child, lad and man, as long as he lived! So call your maid, my bonnie Sophy, and set her to packing all your braws and pretty things, and we will turn our faces to Scotland’s hills and braes tomorrow morning.”
Thus it happened that on that bleak night in February, Archie Braelands and his wife came suddenly to their home amid the stormy winds and rains of a stormy night. Madame heard the wheels of their carriage as she sat sipping her negus, and thinking over her conversation with Allister and her alert soul instantly divined who the late comers were.
“Give me my silk morning gown and my brocade petticoat, Allister,” she cried, as she rose up hastily and set down her glass. “Mr. Archibald has come home; his carriage is at the door—haste ye, woman!”
“Will you be heeding your silks to-night, Madame?”
“Get them at once. Quick! Do you think I will meet the bride in a flannel dressing-gown? No, no! I am not going to lose ground the first hour.”
With nervous haste the richer garments were donned, and just as the final gold brooch was clasped, Archie knocked at his mother’s door. She opened to him with her own hands, and took him to her heart with an effusive affection she rarely permitted herself to exhibit.
“I am so glad that you are dressed, Mother,” he said. “Sophy must not miss your welcome, and the poor little woman is just weary to death.” Then he whispered some words to her, which brought a flush of pride and joy to his own face, but no such answering response to Madame’s.
“Indeed,” she replied, “I am sorry she is so tired. It seems to me, that the women of this generation are but weak creatures.”
Then she took her son’s arm, and went down to the parlour, where servants were re-kindling the fire, and setting a table with refreshments for the unexpected guests. Sophy was resting on a sofa drawn towards the hearth. Archie had thrown his travelling cloak of black fox over her, and her white, flower-like face, surrounded by the black fur, had a singularly pathetic beauty. She opened her large blue eyes as Madame approached and looked at her with wistful entreaty; and Madame, in spite of all her pre-arrangements of conduct, was unable at that hour not to answer the appeal for affection she saw in them. She stooped and kissed the childlike little woman, and Archie watched this token of reconciliation and promise with eyes wet with happiness.
When supper was served, Madame took her usual place at the head of the table, and Archie noticed the circumstance, though it did not seem a proper time to make any remark about it. For Sophy was not able to eat, and did not rise from her couch; and Madame seemed to fall so properly into her character of hostess, that it would have been churlish to have made the slightest dissent. Yet it was a false kindness to both; for in the morning Madame took the same position, and Archie felt less able than on the previous night to make any opposition, though he had told himself continually on his homeward journey that he would not suffer Sophy to be imposed upon, and would demand for her the utmost title of her rights as his wife.
In this resolve, however, he had forgot to take into account his mother’s long and absolute influence over him. When she was absent, it was comparatively easy to relegate her to the position she ought to occupy; when she was present, he found it impossible to say or do anything which made her less than Mistress of Braelands. And during the first few weeks after her return, Sophy helped her mother-in-law considerably against herself. She was so anxious to please, so anxious to be loved, so afraid of making trouble for Archie, that she submitted without protest to one infringement after another on her rights as the wife of the Master of Braelands. All the same she was dumbly conscious of the wrong being done to her; and like a child, she nursed her sense of the injustice until it showed itself in a continual mood of sullen, silent protest.
After the lapse of a month or more, she became aware that even her ill health was used as a weapon against her, and she suddenly resolved to throw off her lassitude, and assert her right to go out and call upon her friends. But she was petulant and foolish in the carrying out of the measure. She had made up her mind to visit her aunt on the following day, and though the weather was bitterly cold and damp, she adhered to her resolution. Madame, at first politely, finally with provoking positiveness, told her “she would not permit her to risk her life, and a life still more precious, for any such folly.”
Then Sophy rose, with a sudden excitement of manner, and rang the bell. When the servant appeared, she ordered the carriage to be ready for her in half an hour. Madame waited until they were alone, and then said:
“Sophy, go to your room and lie down. You are not fit to go out. I shall counter-order the carriage in your name.”
“You will not,” cried the trembling, passionate girl. “You have ordered and counter-ordered in my name too much. You will, in the future, mind your own affairs, and leave me to attend to mine.”
“When Archie comes back”
“You will tell him all kinds of lies. I know that.”
“I do not lie.”
“Perhaps not; but you misrepresent things so, that you make it impossible for Archie to get at the truth. I want to see my aunt. You have kept me from her, and kept her from me, until I am sick for a sight of those who really love me. I am going to Aunt Kilgour’s this very morning, whether you like it or not.”
“You shall not leave this house until Archie comes back from Largo. I will not take the responsibility.”
“We shall see. I will take the responsibility myself. I am mistress of Braelands. You will please remember that fact. And I know my rights, though I have allowed you to take them from me.”
“Sophy, listen to me.”
“I am going to Aunt Kilgour’s.”
“Archie will be very angry.”
“Not if you will let him judge for himself. Anyway, I don’t care. I am going to see my aunt! You expect Archie to be always thinking of feelings, and your likes and dislikes. I have just as good a right to care about my aunt’s feelings. She was all the same as mother to me. I have been a wicked lassie not to have gone to her lang syne.”
“Wicked lassie! Lang syne! I wish you would at least try to speak like a lady.”
“I am not a lady. I am just one of God’s fisher folk. I want to see my own kith and kin. I am going to do so.”
“You are not—until your husband gives you permission.”
“Permission! do you say? I will go on my own permission, Sophy Braelands’s permission.”
“It is a shame to take the horses out in such weather—and poor old Thomas.”
“Shame or not, I shall take them out.”
“Indeed, no! I cannot permit you to make a fool and a laughing-stock of yourself.” She rang the bell sharply and sent for the coachman When he appeared, she said:
“Thomas, I think the horses had better not go out this morning. It is bitterly cold, and there is a storm coming from the northeast. Do you not think so?”
“It is a bad day, Madame, and like to be worse.”
“Then we will not go out.”
As Madame uttered the words, Sophy walked rapidly forward. All the passion of her Viking ancestors was in her face, which had undergone a sort of transfiguration. Her eyes flashed, her soft curly yellow hair seemed instinct with a strange life and brilliancy, and she said with an authority that struck Madame with amazement and fear:
“Thomas, you will have the carriage at the door in fifteen minutes, exactly,” and she drew out her little jewelled watch, and gave him the time with a smiling, invincible calmness.
Thomas looked from one woman to the other, and said, fretfully, “A man canna tak’ twa contrary orders at the same minute o’ time. What will I do in the case?”
“You will do as I tell you, Thomas,” said Madame. “You have done so for twenty years. Have you come to any scath or wrong by it?”
“If the carriage is not at the door in fifteen minutes, you will leave Braelands this night, Thomas,” said Sophy. “Listen! I give you fifteen minutes; after that I shall walk into Largo, and you can answer to your master for it. I am Mistress of Braelands. Don’t forget that fact if you want to keep your place, Thomas.”
She turned passionately away with the words, and left the room. In fifteen minutes she went to the front door in her cloak and hood, and the carriage was waiting there. “You will drive me to my aunt Kilgour’s shop,” she said with an air of reckless pride and defiance. It pleased her at that hour to humble herself to her low estate. And it pleased Thomas also that she had done so. His sympathy was with the fisher girl. He was delighted that she had at last found courage to assert herself, for Sophy’s wrongs had been the staple talk of the kitchen-table and fireside.
“No born lady I ever saw,” he said afterwards to the cook, “could have held her own better. It will be an even fight between them two now, and I will bet my shilling on fisherman Traill’s girl.”
“Madame has more wit, and more hold out” answered the cook. “Mrs. Archibald is good for a spurt, but I’ll be bound she cried her eyes red at Griselda Kilgour’s, and was as weak as a baby.”
This opinion was a perfectly correct one. Once in her aunt’s little back parlour, Sophy gave full sway to her childlike temper. She told all her wrongs, and was comforted by her kinswoman’s interest and pity, and strengthened in her resolution to resist Madame’s interference with her life. And then the small black teapot was warmed and filled, and Sophy begged for a herring and a bit of oatcake; and the two women sat close to one another, and Miss Kilgour told Sophy all the gossip and clash of gossip there had been about Christina Binnie and her lover, and how the marriage had been broken off, no one knowing just why, but many thinking that since Jamie Logan had got a place on “The Line,” he was set on bettering himself with a girl something above the like of Christina Binnie.
And as they talked Helen Marr came into the shop for a yard of ribbon, and said it was the rumour all through Pittendurie, that Andrew Binnie was all but dead, and folks were laying all the blame upon the Mistress of Braelands, for that every one knew that Andrew had never held up his head an hour since her marriage. And though Miss Kilgour did not encourage this phase of gossip, yet the woman would persist in describing his sufferings, and the poverty that had come to the Binnies with the loss of their only bread-winner, and the doctors to pay, and the medicine folks said they had not the money to buy, and much more of the same sort, which Sophy heard every word of, knowing also that Helen Marr must have seen her carriage at the door, and so, knowing of her presence, had determined that she should hear it.
Certainly if Helen had wished to wound her to the very heart, she succeeded. When Miss Kilgour got rid of her customer, and came back to Sophy, she found her with her face in the pillow, sobbing passionately about the trouble of her old friends. She did not name Andrew, but the thought of his love and suffering hurt her sorely, and she could not endure to think of Janet’s and Christina’s long hardships and sorrow. For she knew well how much they would blame her, and the thought of their anger, and of her own apparent ingratitude, made her sick with shame and grief. And as they talked of this new trouble, and Sophy sent messages of love and pity to Janet and Christina, the shop-bell rung violently, and Sophy heard her husband’s step, and in another moment he was at her side, and quite inclined to be very angry with her for venturing out in such miserable weather.
Then Sophy seized her opportunity, and Miss Kilgour left them alone for the explanation that was better to be made there than at Braelands. And for once Archie took his wife’s part without reservation. He was not indeed ill-pleased that she had assumed her proper position, and when he slipped a crown into Thomas’s hand, the man also knew that he had done wisely. Indeed there was something in the coachman’s face and air which affected Madame unpleasantly, before she noticed that Sophy had returned in her husband’s company, and that they were evidently on the most affectionate terms.
“I have lost this battle,” she said to herself, and she wisely retreated to her own room, and had a nominal headache, and a very genuine heartache about the loss.
All day long Sophy was at an unnatural pitch, all day long she exerted herself, as she had not done for weeks and months, to entertain and keep her husband at her side, and all day long her pretty wifely triumph was bright and unbroken. The very servants took a delight in ministering to it, and Madame was not missed in a single item of the household routine. But about midnight there was a great and sudden change. Bells were frantically rung, lights flew about the house, and there was saddling of horses and riding in hot haste into Largo for any or all the doctors that could be found.
Then Madame came quietly from her seclusion, and resumed her place as head of the household, for the little mistress of one day lay in her chamber quite unconscious of her lost authority. Some twelve hours later, the hoped-for heir of Braelands was born, and died, and Sophy, on the very outermost shoal of life, felt the wash and murmur of that dark river which flows to the Eternal Sea.
It was no time to reproach the poor little wife, and yet Madame did not scruple to do so. “She had warned Sophy,—she had begged her not to go out—she had been insulted for endeavouring to prevent what had come to pass just as she had predicted.” And in spite of Archie’s love and pity, her continual regrets did finally influence him. He began to think he had been badly used, and to agree with Madame in her assertions that Sophy must be put under some restrictions, and subjected to some social instruction.
“The idea of the Braelands’s carriage standing two hours at Griselda Kilgour’s shop door! All the town talking about it! Every one wondering what had happened at Braelands, to drive your wife out of doors in such weather. All sorts of rumours about you and Sophy, and Griselda shaking her head and sighing and looking unspeakable things, just to keep the curiosity alive; and the crowds of gossiping women coming and going to her shop. Many a cap and bonnet has been sold to your name, Archie, no doubt, and I can tell you my own cheeks are kept burning with the shame of the whole affair! And then this morning, the first thing she said to me was, that she wanted to see her cousins Isobel and Christina.”
“She asked me also about them, Mother, and really, I think she had better be humoured in this matter. Our friends are not her friends.”
“They ought to be.”
“Let us be just. When has she had any opportunity to make them so? She has seen no one yet,—her health has been so bad—and it did often look. Mother, as if you encouraged her not to see callers.”
“Perhaps I did, Archie. You cannot blame me. Her manners are so crude, so exigent, so effusive. She is so much pleased, or so indifferent about people; so glad to see them, or else so careless as to how she treats them. You have no idea what I suffered when Lady Blair called, and insisted on meeting your wife. Of course she pretended to fall in love with her, and kissed, and petted, and flattered Sophy, until the girl hardly knew what she was doing or saying. And as for ‘saying,’ she fell into broad Scotch, as she always does when she is pleased or excited, and Lady Blair professed herself charmed, and talked broad Scotch back to her. And I? I sat tingling with shame and annoyance, for I knew right well what mockeries and laughter Sophy was supplying Annette Blair with for her future visitors.”
“I think you are wrong. Lady Blair is not at all ill-natured. She was herself a poor minister’s daughter, and accustomed to go in and out of the fishers’ cottages. I can imagine that she would really be charmed with Sophy.”
“You can ‘imagine’ what you like; that will not alter the real state of the case; and if Sophy is ever to take her position as your wife, she must be prepared for it. Besides which, it will be a good thing to give her some new interests in life, for she must drop the old ones. About that there cannot be two opinions.”
“What then do you propose, Mother?”
“I should get proper teachers for her. Her English education has been frightfully neglected; and she ought to learn music and French.”
“She speaks French pretty well. I never saw any one pick up a language as cleverly as she did the few weeks we were in Paris.”
“O, she is clever enough if she wants to be! There is a French woman teaching at Miss Linley’s Seminary. She will perfect her. And I have heard she also plays well. It would be a good thing to engage her for Sophy, two or three hours a day. A teacher for grammar, history, writing, etc., is easily found. I myself will give her lessons in social etiquette, and in all things pertaining to the dignity and decorum which your wife ought to exhibit. Depend upon it, Archie, this routine is absolutely necessary. It will interest and occupy her idle hours, of which she has far too many; and it will wean her better than any other thing from her low, uncultivated relations.”
“The poor little woman says she wants to be loved; that she is lonely when I am away; that no one but the servants care for her; that therefore she wants to see her cousins and kinsfolk.”
“She does me a great injustice. I would love her if she would be reasonable—if she would only trust me. But idle hearts are lonely hearts, Archie. Tell her you wish her to study, and fit herself for the position you have raised her to. Surely the desire to please you ought to be enough. Do you know who this Christina Binnie is that she talks so continually about?”
“Her fourth or fifth cousin, I believe.”
“She is the sister of the man you won Sophy from—the man whom you struck across the cheek with your whip. Now do you wish her to see Christina Binnie!”
“Yes, I do! Do you think I am jealous or fearful of my wife? No, by Heaven! No! Sophy may be unlearned and unfashionable, but she is loyal and true, and if she wants to see her old lover and his sister, she has my full permission. As for the fisherman, he behaved very nobly. And I did not intend to strike him. It was an accident, and I shall apologise for it the first opportunity I have to do so.”
“You are a fool, Archie Braelands.”
“I am a husband, who knows his wife’s heart and who trusts in it. And though I think you are quite right in your ideas about Sophy’s education, I do not think you are right in objecting to her seeing her old friends. Every one in this bound of Fife knows that I married a fisher-girl. I never intend to be ashamed of the fact. If our social world will accept her as the representative of my honour and my family, I shall be obliged to the world. If it will not, I can live without its approval—having Sophy to love me and live with me. I counted all this cost before I married; you may be sure of that, Mother.”
“You forgot, however, to take my honour and feelings into your consideration.”
“I knew, Mother, that you were well able to protect your own honour and feelings.”
This conversation but indicates the tone of many others which occupied the hours mother and son passed together during Sophy’s convalescence. And the son, being the weaker character of the two, was insensibly moved and moulded to all Madame’s opinions. Indeed, before Sophy was well enough to begin the course of study marked out for her, Archie had become thoroughly convinced that it was his first duty to his wife and himself to insist upon it.
The weak, loving woman made no objections. Indeed, Archie’s evident enthusiasm sensibly affected her own desires. She listened with pleasure to the plans for her education, and promised “as soon as she was able, to do her very best.”
And there was a strange pathos in the few words “as soon as I am able,” which Archie remembered years afterwards, when it was far too late. At the moment, they touched him but lightly, but Oh, afterwards! Oh, afterwards! when memory brought back the vision of the small white face on the white pillow, and the faint golden light of the golden curls shadowing the large blue eyes that even then had in them that wide gaze and wistfulness that marks those predestined for sorrow or early death. Alas! Alas! We see too late, we hear too late, when it is the dead who open the eyes and the ears of the living!