Читать книгу Gathered In - Catherine Helen Spence - Страница 3

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"You've come owre late to see Isabel in life, Mr. McDiarmid," said old Marion Oswald; "It's of no avail to seek to see the dead."

"I have lost no time--I started immediately on receiving the news of her dangerous state. I did not even know of her illness till yesterday," said Norman McDiarmid, a tall distinguished-looking man, in the very prime of life, who seemed strongly agitated, and spoke with difficulty.

"There's been little passing between you and her in the way of letters, and now it is all at an end. Isabel passed away at midnight."

"Was there any message for me beyond this?" and he held in his hand a letter.

"She died at peace wi' a' men, an' nae doubt wi' you, and I hope and trust at peace wi' her God."

"But was there no particular message for me, Mrs. Oswald?"

"What for should there be? She forgave you, as she forgave a' that had dune her ill, as free as she hoped to be forgi'en hersel' for all that lay on her conscience."

"There was no trouble, there, Mrs. Oswald? Kenneth saw no trouble?"

"Only about leavin' him; and that was sair. But, no; she ne'er said word to him that I could come at that her soul was in deep waters. The minister saw her as often as three times in the week, and he was satisfied; aye, on the whole he was satisfied. She had a vision of the glory that was to follow, and rested on her Redeemer with full trust for hersel'; but her soul was grieving about the laddie. God is the father of the fatherless, the minister kept saying, but woe me! she said she kent that weel, but how was he to be mother to the motherless?"

"The boy was much with her, I hope?"

"All but schule time; he was maistly at the bedside, and I maun say, very handy for a laddie. A' that the minister dooted about Isabel's frame of mind in the face o' the great change, was that she had na faith to leave the bairn in God's hands, and that she had na just the full sense of sin that such worms o' the dust as we are suld have, especially with the reproach on her that she had."

"Then her mind was at peace in itself," said Mr. McDiarmid.

"She said she was sure her sins were forgiven, and lost in the ocean o' Divine Love, and said she could na just be troubled with bringing up old stories, and wi' the laddie hanging owre her, little could be said. Isabel was never the lass to put blame off hersel' on to ony other body, or she might have made her case clearer to the minister and to me; but Kenneth will never be told by me, good or bad, on the matter."

"I must see Isabel, Mrs. Oswald."

"What's the good? What's the use? Ten years have never looked near her living, and now you would fain lay a balm to your conscience by looking on her face, which is now as the face of an angel in heaven, and you will think that she hadna sae muckle to dree or she wan there. It will be harder for you, I'm thinking."

"You speak truly, Mrs. Oswald, but Isabel wrote to me that, living or dead, I was to see her, and alone. It is the last wish of one very dear to you. You must respect it."

The old woman reluctantly rose from the chair, where, with her open Bible beside her, and her knitting in her hands, she had kept her place during the stranger's visit. There was no trace of tears on the resolute face; all the emotion had been repressed, but the feelings were probably the deeper for that. She opened a door which led out of the living-room of the cottage, so low that Norman McDiarmid had to stoop to enter, admitted him, and closed the door again softly, and sat down to her knitting, taking every stitch as if it caught at her heart.

It was a poor little room in a poor cottage, but beautifully clean; and there on the bed lay in her graveclothes a dead woman, apparently about thirty, with a face so heavenly in its expression of perfect repose that no one could imagine that a breath of slander or a glance of scorn could ever have come near her. For a few moments he gazed on the still face and motionless form, to which not even his sudden appearance could give the faintest impulse, in reverent awe, and then laying his lips to the cold lips of the dead, he shook and trembled with passionate, uncontrollable anguish and regret. Even the dull ears of the mother could hear the sobs of the strong man, who thus met after many years the object of so much young love. Tender memories, bitter regrets, and equally futile wishes chased each other through his mind, while he stood for a period that appeared to the mother interminable. "And this is all I can do. I cannot lay her dear head in the grave, and see the last of my poor Isabel. Only I must see the boy."

He opened the door, and Marion Oswald suddenly laid down her knitting.

"Well, are you satisfied?" she asked.

"I am very grateful to you for your kindness in letting me see her."

"Not her," said the mother; "She's far enough off from you now."

"Did she suffer much, bodily I mean; was she ill long?"

"Off and on, about six months; but no sair stressed till the last month or thereby."

"Could nothing further have been done? No better advice? Why did not you write to me? Could we have not saved her for the boy?"

"Only for the boy," said Marion Oswald bitterly. "Do you no think that it's an empty house now for her father and me. Whatever else she did or did not do, she was a good and dutiful bairn to us; and the laddie will get owre it lang or we will. But there was nae saving her life for ane or for the ither--she behoved to die--the heart would do its work nae langer."

"Do not suppose I do not feel for your heavy share in the bereavement. It may be that you will feel the loss more than the boy, but he really loses more. Just ten the 15th day of March. I must see him. Where is Kenneth?"

"Oh! the laddie's out bye, but ye canna see him."

"But she says I must see him; she cared more for that than that I should see herself."

"Some other time; no now. Now that she is taken, it's hard for me to see you enter the house you have never darkened before wi' your bodily presence, though you have darkened it sairly otherways. But wi' the tears in your eyes, and the sob in your voice, I canna let you see Kenneth. He'll guess what has been kept frae him. He belangs noo to his grandfather and to me. He is an orphan, and I'd fain have him ken no other than that. And since you were owre hard to do Isabel the justice she should have had, and she was owre soft to make you, I'd have you and Kenneth kept apart for good and a'."

"But here is Isabel's letter. There is no question that her last wish was that I should see the boy."

"Aye," said the mother, taking a little time to read the few lines of the letter. "Isabel had little notion of what was really best for Kenneth. But as she would have it so, she maun be obeyed, I doot."

"And you will still receive from me what I have sent you hitherto," said Mr. McDiarmid eagerly.

"Aye, aye. I doot I maun take it, for the guidman gets mair feeble; though I'm a thocht aulder than him, I'm stouter every way. My son George, in Australia, sends us help nows and thens, God bless him, but it's no to be depended on to the day, like what you see fit to try to make some amends with."

"It would please you better to refuse me that poor satisfaction."

"Deed, it would, I'll tell you nae lee about it; and it would please me better that you should not cross eyes with Kenneth, so that you might be strangers to each other; but we're forced to put up with muckle in this world that we dinna like. You'll find the laddie down by the burn. He is there with his dog. Be careful of what you say."

Norman McDiarmid walked slowly from the cottage towards the burn, which wimpled and flashed as merrily in the sunlight as if there was no sorrow or perplexity in the world, and then he saw a dark-eyed, lithe--limbed, sunburnt boy on the bank, trying, not without success, to extract some companionship and sympathy from a little collie dog.

"So you are Kenneth Oswald," said the stranger, extending a shapely hand to the boy, and commanding his voice to something like indifference.

"And you are Mr. McDiarmid, and you've come owre late," and the dark eyes filled with tears. "Have you been there? have you seen?" and he looked towards the cottage.

"Yes, my boy," and the tone and expression showed such deep feeling that the boy's natural shyness was dispelled, and he opened his heart a little.

"Would you have kenned her, Sir?"

"Yes; anywhere."

"It's her, and it's no her."

"Transfigured!" said Mr. McDiarmid.

"Ready, all but the wings, for Heaven, but nothing now for me," and the boy turned to the collie, and hid his face in his shaggy coat.

"You addressed this letter to me," said Mr. McDiarmid after a pause.

"Aye, mother said her hand shook, and she couldna write it plain enough. And she told me forbye, to be sure to give you some letters and a wee box into your ain hand, and to naebody else--rather to burn them than let any other creature have them, but she was sure you would come, and so you have, as fast as the train could fetch you." And Kenneth drew from his pocket a small packet of letters wrapped up in paper, tied round with twine, and sealed up, and a small jeweller's box, also tied and sealed.

"She said there was your sister's hair in the box, and that you should have it in memory of her; but you'll mind about it, Sir."

Mr. McDiarmid took the letters and the little box, and held them in his hand for a few minutes without speaking, while the boy looked on wonderingly at first, and then turned to his dog.

"And what are you going to be, Kenneth?" he said, commanding his voice with a strong effort.

"Granny wants me to be a minister, but I'd rather learn a trade."

"And you are doing well at school?"

"Mother thought so--but I canna just say I've been doing so well when she was needing me. The master says I should go into Latin next quarter. Granny's keen for the Latin."

"But are you keen for it yourself, Kenneth?" asked the stranger.

"Sandy Tamson and Robbie Marr and Jamie Dalglish are going in, and I'd no like to be left ahint them; that's mair than being keen for the Latin itsell, I'm thinking, Sir."

"Well, Kenneth, whatever is the motive, whatever you want to learn you shall learn, and whatever books you need you must get. Your mother"--and here he made a pause--"was a most faithful and tender nurse to my dear sister during her illness until her death, and I was glad to hear from your grandmother that your kindness and attention to--to--her that is gone was somewhat like hers. The least I can do for you, for her sake, is to give you every facility for getting on in life."

Kenneth looked up at the strange gentleman with astonishment and grateful eyes.

"I have no doubt you will do your best to deserve all I can do for you," continued this new friend.

Kenneth hung his head a little for a moment, and then looked up.

"I'll try, Sir."

"And you will write to me from time to time to this address--care of Wm. Shiel, Esq., W.S., Edinburgh--if you need anything, or if anything happens of importance. Your grandparents are old. Was there no member of the family near?"

"No, only--only my mother to bide with them. There's Uncle George, he's been in Australia seventeen years; there's Uncle Sandy, he's been in America more than twenty years; there was Uncle James, he was drowned at sea; and Uncle Patrick died in Russia; and some that died young. So there was only Mother left, and now there's naebody."

"Only you, Kenneth."

"Oh, I'm naebody. What good is a laddie in a house?"

"Great good, Kenneth. Surely you were a great comfort to your mother, she says so in this letter."

"Aye, to mother, for it was nae matter what I cared about, she cared about it too. Collie and me will miss her. But I can do nane o' the things she did for the old folks."

"But your well-doing will be their pride and their pleasure; your coming in and your going out will interest them. A good boy can be an unspeakable comfort."

"But--but--" and the boy's eyes turned entreatingly to the strange gentleman, with whom he felt more confidential than he could have been with any older acquaintance, partly because he was quite detached from every petty circumstance of his life, and associated merely with the one great sorrow which overpowered him; but mainly because the sympathy which his voice and manner expressed, seemed deep and genuine, and he spoke to Kenneth, not as if he were a mere child to be coaxed, but as if he were a thoughtful earnest boy to be supported and strengthened, "but--who is to comfort me? If you kenned my mother weel, if you saw her wi' somebody that you cared about--you maun be sure that--that it's no sae easy for me to think on what I'm to do for them that they should na miss her. I want her mysel' far mair nor they can."

The stranger took the boy's brown hand in both of his, and drew the curly head close to him. There were tears in his eyes as they tried to meet the pleading look, and it was some time before he found words to answer.

"My dear boy, you will find the greatest comfort of all in doing what God has given you to do--in so far as you can, filling her place with her good parents--in growing to be a good, useful, and brave man, doing honest and honourable work in this world, and so making yourself more fit for the better world to which she has gone before."

"But it's so far off, and so long to wait. It's easier for granny and grandfather; they canna live lang after her. But will I see you whiles, Sir. I'd find it easier if I could get speech of you now and then."

"I hope so, Kenneth."

"For mother said you were a friend, a dear friend, and she had na many friends. And if I want to be an engineer, or a wright, and not a minister, will you help me, for granny's hard to turn when she is set on a thing."

"Nobody shall make a minister of you against your will if I can have any voice in the matter. That's a calling that needs the heart to go with it."

"So I'm thinking, Sir."

"Is that your grandfather I see in the distance?" asked Mr. McDiarmid, after they slowly walked towards the cottage.

"Yes, he has just been walking up and down ever since, for all he has the pains in his legs; but granny she sits still, and reads her Bible, and knits her stockings."

"He does walk lame," said Mr. McDiarmid.

"It's no so bad just now, but whiles the rheumatics is very bad. He gets along with his stick though."

"He will lean on you, Kenneth, when you get taller."

"If I dinna gang off to Australia or America like my uncles, and that's likely eneuch. Is that your horse, Sir? He's a bonny beast." And Kenneth seemed to take in the good points of the horse.

"Can you ride him to the water, while I talk for a few minutes to your grandfather? You can ride I hope," said Mr. McDiarmid.

"I'll take him to the burn, and you'll see if I canna ride." And Kenneth jumped onto the horse's back, and followed by the exultant collie, went to the burn, where he saw the animal satisfied, and then rode slowly round the plantation so as not to disturb his grandfather's conversation with the stranger.

John Oswald's attitude towards Mr. McDiarmid was not so defiant and mistrustful as that of his wife. He saw the deep and genuine grief which Norman McDiarmid felt and he respected it. He saw also the desire on his part to make things as easy for the old people and as good for the boy as possible, and he was willing to accept the assistance.

While Kenneth still kept on the horse's back, Mr. McDiarmid went to say farewell to Mrs. Oswald. She had evidently given up her knitting, and appeared more discomposed than before. She had been in the chamber of death and might have given way to her feelings there, but her farewell to the man whom she looked on as her enemy was even more discourteous than her greeting. She wanted to say something, but failed in voice or in courage. She saw him ride away after a goodbye to Kenneth, which she thought imprudently affectionate, and saw the boy follow with eager eyes the dazzling apparition of his mother's friend, who had, as it were, won his heart by a few fair words. An unwonted harshness was in her voice and her manner as she hastily called to her husband and grandson to "come in oot o' the cauld."

She had spent the interval of Mr. McDiarmid's absence in looking carefully through the wooden box or chest which had contained all Isabel's earthly possessions from the time when she first left her father's house at sixteen years old. In the shuttle of this chest had lain the ribbons, the bits of lace, the choice treasures, and all the letters which she had received in her life, and Kenneth had taken from it by his mother's desire the packet which he had just delivered into the hands of Mr. McDiarmid. There were some letters left, a few from her parents when she had been absent in Edinburgh, two or three of old date from a brother in Australia, a packet with little snips of Kenneth's hair at different stages of darkness, and specimens of his handwriting cut out of his copybooks; but what the old woman wanted was not to be found.

"You havena been meddling wi' your mother's kist, Kenneth, sin' she was taken?" she asked sharply.

"No, granny, ye ken ye have had the key yoursel'."

"Deed have I, but it passes me to find out what has come o' rhae letters an' the little brooch. Your mother burnt naething that day ye were sae lang thegether by yoursels that ye ken o'."

"Na, she burnt naething; we had nae fire."

"Weel, I'm sure it's past my comprehension, I ken she aye keepit them safe."

"But, granny," said the boy, "though you dinna ask me, it's only fair to tell you that she bade me give them to the gentleman that was here the day, and he's got them away wi' him."

"You've gi'en them to the gentleman; gi'en them to Mr. McDiarmid. Had she lost her wits a'thegether? And you too, there was a bonny pair o' ye," said the grandmother indignantly.

"And you've just thrown away what was of the most consequence to yoursel', and a' for nought."

"Na, for he'll be a guid friend to me all my days if I deserve it," said Kenneth. "Will he no, grandfather?"

"He speaks very kind and very fair, guid wife," said John Oswald.

"Oh, aye, very fair promising, nae doot. He got what he wanted and and what he came for. I ne'er thought o' that trick being played on me," said Mrs. Oswald.

"But my mother said I was to do it," said Kenneth. "It was the last thing she asked o' me."

"Mair last things! Nae end o'last things! And every ane more bitter to swallow than the last. What's dune canna be undone I doot, but if ye had had the wit to have tell'd me about it I'd hae had my say in the matter."

"But grannie," said the boy, coaxingly, "there were mair last things she said. That I was to be a guid laddie to grandfather and to you. And I'll may be have more chance through this friend o' hers."

"Aye, aye," said the grandmother a little mollified. "They're a' for doing great things when they're young--but when they grow up off they go, hither and thither, to find their own fortunes. A woman wi' mony sons is like a hen wi' a clecking o' dewkes, they a' tak to the water someway in spite o' her flapping and fluttering. And the mair ye do for them, the mair eager they are to gang off. The guid man an' me stinted an' spared to gie our bairns a better chance nor oursels, and here we are, high and dry, wi' but a bairn like you to stand by us. And you'll do the same when your time comes. I'm no saying anything against George, for he minds us through it a', but it's hard that there's only you John, and the laddie to lay Isabel's head in the grave, and a' the goodly lads we brought into the world are dead or out o' reach. What wi' many births an' many deaths, and other trouble, we've been sair hauden down, and latterly we've had mair comfort in Isabel than in ony o' them and then she's ta'en, just as we'd grown mair content to put up wi' what had come and gane. But we've been far owre muckle for this world, Kenneth, my man, and it would pleasure me mair to see you wag your head in a poopit in this precious land o' gospel, licht an' liberty, than engineering in America or Australia, or among the Russians, like your uncle Patie that perished in the snaw, and us never seeing and scarce hearing tell o' ye. Oh! my bonny man, and when death has just put his fit into the house, and laid hands on the bonniest and maybe the best, it behoves both young an' auld to mind upon their latter end, that when their times comes they may be found ready."

"I hope I may, grannie, whether I put my head in a poopit or a stoker's engine," said Kenneth. "If I doo the stoking better nor the preaching, there will be a better chance."

"Oh! laddie, wi' sic a gift o' the gab as you've got, it wad be a clean throwin' awa' o' you to mak you a smutty engineer."

"There's nae fear o' Kenneth," said John Oswald, "he'll fa' on his feet, I'll warrant. An' noo, my laddie, gang and fetch in the coo for your granny to milk, while she reds up here and puts back the bits o' things into the kist."

Kenneth obeyed at once, and Marion Oswald followed him out with her eyes with curious feelings of pride and humiliation. In the set of his head and the turn of his limbs, he excelled greatly any of her own goodly sons. He had the gait and bearing of a gentleman's son, and it was very questionable if Norman McDiarmid had at home any boy to be compared with this unowned and nameless firstborn. Her search had been in vain, she felt baffled by the abstraction of letters which she was convinced were of the greatest importance. While her daughter lived it had been impossible to claim any rights for Kenneth upon his father but through her, and Isabel had resolutely refused to move in the matter. What these letters, which had been so carefully guarded during life, and now delivered up to the very person against whom they might have been used, might have contained, Mrs. Oswald could only guess. She knew the facility of the Scottish marriage law, by which any written admission or verbal acknowledgement of being married, is as binding in law as a solemn religious ceremony, and she also thought too well of her daughter to believe that she could have lived for a year with Norman McDiarmid without believing that some such bond subsisted between them.

In her heart Marion Oswald believed that Kenneth was the rightful heir to one of the oldest families in Scotland, and that the old property and fine castle in the North where his father now lived, ought to come to him at his death. The very name which had been given to him--that of his grandfather, and the favourite family name for generations back--showed that some such idea had been in his father's mind at his birth. Although Norman McDiarmid's grandfather had interfered, had driven Isabel home to her parents, and induced his heir to marry the daughter of a prosperous Edinburgh merchant, and had broken off all apparent ties between Kenneth's parents, the older woman felt certain that there were good grounds for her conviction of Isabel's legal rights.

Whatever might have been claimed, however, it was now out of the grandmother's power to move a step in the matter. The betrayer had received from his son's innocent hands the evidence that might have disturbed his tranquillity, and he could henceforth feel at ease at his own luxurious fireside, and rest assured that his little Norman's rights were unassailable. He might have suffered a little; she hoped that he had suffered a good deal, at the sight of the dead Isabel and of the living Kenneth, whose dark eyes and mobile mouth were all his mother's, whatever of the general build was derived from the McDiarmids; but on the whole he had had the best of it. He had come out the winner, as wealth and position always do when pitted against poverty and obscurity, and as the old woman resolutely knitted that long evening, visions of Kenneth, as the most powerful preacher in Scotland, holding forth in a great city church to a crowded congregation, amongst which would be Mr. McDiarmid, of Castle Diarmid, with his wife and family, attracted by his renown; and expounding with unconscious eloquence and insight of genius such a text as "Thou art the man!" from still higher than that of wealth or aristocracy, seemed to her the only thing that could satisfy her cravings for justice, and for the reversal of the hard fate pressed upon her.