Читать книгу Gathered In - Catherine Helen Spence - Страница 6

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As Norman McDiarmid made his way homeward with the unopened packet of letters in his breastpocket which he kept for the quiet and seclusion of his study at home, he had more bitter grief in his heart than Marion Oswald could have believed in. He looked in at his father-in-law's house in Edinburgh to enquire how all were there, he called on Mr. Shiel to give instructions to continue his payments to John Oswald for Kenneth's behoof, and to forward any letters which Kenneth might address to his care, and then took the train for his northern castle with a mixture of listlessness and impatience to be at the end of it all. When his wife and his sons and daughters greeted him affectionately after his temporary absence, did he see in his mind's eye that low cottage, and his firstborn holding his horse for him to mount, while a still white form lay hushed and unresponsive to even the touch of his lips? When Norman rushed into his father's arms and asked what he had brought him from Edinburgh, was there an additional caress, or the contrary, on account of those which he was not permitted to bestow on that dark-eyed sunburnt boy?

When Mrs. McDiarmid asked about his father and mother and enquired particularly about the health of the former, did the vision of John Oswald leaning on his stick, and Marion knitting over her open Bible, trouble his recollections of the details she wished for? And when little Malcolm said Mama must not go to Edinburgh to see grandpapa, for he could not do without her, did not the thought of the boy by the burn side hiding his tears on collie's neck bring back a painful tightness in the throat and oppression on the breast?

The subject of his sorrow had never been spoken of to his wife. She knew nothing at all about it, and now there was no need to open it up. But she was a woman of good sense and kind feeling--she saw that her husband was depressed. If he volunteered his confidence, well and good; but she would not force it. When the children went to bed, she sat quietly sewing for a while, and then, saying she felt sleepy, she left the room. She had scarcely gone when Mr. McDiarmid went into his own sanctum, and, carefully shutting the door, took out his packet. First came the little box containing the brooch, with his only sister Flora's hair at the back of it. How well he recollected ordering it to be made as a memento of one whom Isabel had watched over and tended for so many months. How well he recollected giving it to her and asking leave to fix with it the ribbon she wore. In his mind's eye he saw again the slender throat, the exquisite round of the cheek, the parted lips, the surprised pleasure in the eyes, and the first kiss of love, broken in upon by an indignant and harsh-judging mistress; the dismissal with undeserved reproach, and his own eager offers of service and protection, alas! how futile and how injurious. Slowly he replaced the little relic in the box, and proceeded to untie the packet of letters. There were a few of his own, written in the first glow of love; two, the only two, after they had finally parted. There were several letters in a hand which he did not at firs recognize, but which appeared of no consequence to him until he had read the long farewell epistle which Isabel had penned by little snatches as her strength and time had served her, in the conviction that she would never see him alive. She had thought it best not to see him at all, but when the end drew very near, the craving to see his face once more became irresistible, as well as the wish that Kenneth should be seen by his father, and she had written the summons which had so much disconcerted her mother.

It was with feelings of the most mixed emotions--shame, grief, gratitude, admiration, even awe--that he read the words she had meant to be her last. He saw there the origin of the other letters, and felt how loyal and unselfish had been the mother of the bright honest boy whom he would have liked so much to claim as his own.

The letter read as follows:--

My Dearest Norman--

I must call you by that name now for the last time, for I must write to you, and send to your ownself all the letters I ever got from you, and some that I got from your unfriend Hugh Carmichael, because it may come to pass that what he says he can do, may be the thing you would like to see done. He could not get me to make a stir in the matter, for what has been done cannot be undone, and I had just to bear the blame and the scorn as I best could, and as maybe, I deserved. But it was not so hard to bear as it would have been if I had thought you the scoundrel he wanted to make you out to be, and it would never lighten my load to bring misery and shame on others more blameless than me. I knew your heart better than he could do, and the position, such as it was, was of my own choosing. But, maybe, if your boy, that he says is sickly, and your only one, was taken, you might be glad if you could prove my Kenneth your heir, as there's no one to heir the estate but a far-away cousin, so I send you all Carmichael's letters, and there you can see that he has another witness still in life, Phemie Sinclair, to bear out his words, whatever they may be worth. I never thought what your angry words to him that day might be made to prove--and you were married, and I hoped were happy, with a good woman of your own station, long ere I heard what mischief he was brewing for you out of them. But without my consent, Carmichael was powerless, and though he wrote again and again, he never could get me to feel that I had any rights as against your wife and children. He spoke of acknowledgement before witnesses as a binding marriage by the Scottish law; but whatever he might say, or the law might prove, if I had myself believed those words made a binding marriage, your mother and grandfather could never have parted us, and I never could have let any other woman be called your wife. I knew in my soul that I was only yours for life; but I never thought but that you might leave me at any time if you saw fit.

I was glad that Carmichael only wrote to me, and did not disturb my mother or my father with his wild tales, for my mother especially would go through fire and water to have me put straight as she calls it. She would fain have had me married to a decent man of my own station, but that I could not do even to please her.

It might have been better for Kenneth in some ways; but I held fast to the thought that in God's eyes I was your wife. It was the only thing I could comfort myself with when I felt that you had slipped out of my life when every thing was too strong against us. I was not worthy of you, I aye knew that. I had not the schooling or the upbringing to make me a mate for such as you, though when I was beside your sister, our Flora, (as we used to call her that year among the Highland hills,) and she depended on me for everything, and you looked to me for sympathy, you forgot all about the drawing-room ladies you were used to, and fancied that I might do for your turn, obey your behests, and follow wheresoever you would lead; but it would have been different if we had had to face the world together. Everyway I would have hurt you--it was far better to slip away, and let another sort of happiness come with some one else. But if you should ever think of claiming Kenneth, as Carmichael says you can, at least I have not harmed his chances by making any other vows than those I made to you in my inmost soul.

It is hard to say good-bye for ever, and that only by the pen, that is so slow and so clumsy, but I could not trust myself to see you, I could not trust myself that I would not be overheard by my mother, or worse still, by my son. You must not think that I have been altogether unhappy, as I hope you have not grieved over-much about me. With such a bairn as Kenneth, how could I be without much comfort and much hope? The disgrace was hard to bear, but I think it made him only the dearer, and it has worn out in great measure, and folks judge me by what I am now, and not by what is long past. The bitterness of the home-coming you can guess--to see my father's altered face--to hear my mother's changed voice--and to feel that I had taken Kenneth for ever away from his father's love to such a cold welcome. I had committed the unpardonable sin in all good women's eyes, and I myself despised them who thought lightly of it. But I found peace with God by my prayers and tears of repentance, and as my boy won on his grandparents and on the other folk, I was comforted. I've helped my father and mother, and I'm sorely grieved to part with them; but to leave Kenneth is hardest of all. The worst of it is that he must go one way in the world and you must go another. There is no help for it. You can, and I doubt not will, send him money, and see that he does not want for schooling and such like; but you cannot give him care, you cannot give him love. And he'll miss it, and as he grows older, he'll feel more the wrong we did him. He never felt it so long as he had me. And though I had not the privilege of a widow to speak about you to your son, I could tell him the things that you had told to me, read him the books you liked, try to build him up in some ways as you would have done had things been different. But that is over now, and I must not grieve you by speaking of what cannot be helped.

If he had been ugly, or stubborn, or coldhearted, I might have thought God had not forgiven us, but every loving word and every kindly act he said or did makes me feel that the past is wiped out, and that this sinner who loved much had been pardoned and accepted.

When I made the great wrench of parting with you for ever, for what I thought was your good, I did all I could to show my repentance. For, Oh! it was love that made me leave you, love as great, aye, even greater, than what brought us together.

If I could only trust Kenneth to God's care on earth with as much faith as I can trust my own soul to my Saviour--but my faith sorely fails me when I see what I leave.

And now, my only love, you can whiles think upon me now, as I have for ever thought of you. There can be no wrong to your wife if you now and then go back to that time in the Highland hills when you and me first looked on Kenneth's face together. And, Oh! pray God with me that he may grow up so good and so noble that we may acknowledge him for our own in that better place where there is no marrying or giving in marriage; but where all are as the angels in heaven.

There, I'm thinking I'll be waiting long, long, ere you and Kenneth come. What can the Almighty give me to do to keep me from wearying till you meet me face to face? So many years--ten years, and never a sight of you. Mind, I count on meeting you in heaven. The world is not to spoil you, nor its cares to cark you. In the flesh or in the spirit, I am, always, Your own Isabel.

It showed what deep and tender memories were awakened by the perusal of this letter that Norman McDiarmid sat long brooding over it, and read it again and again, before he thought of opening those of Hugh Carmichael referred to in it. Nay, it was not so much the boy that he thought of at this time. It was Isabel herself who returned to his memory, who filled all his heart and mind to the exclusion of all other considerations, now as she had done in those glorified months in the midst of the Highland hills.

At last with a mighty effort he roused himself, and opened the letters of his old College toady, Hugh Carmichael. And here sure enough was evidence that would have overturned his formal marriage, and make his son and heir, and the rest of his children illegitimate, if Isabel had been inclined to press it. The fatal facilities given by the Scottish law, combined with Isabel's enduring conviction that she was bound by the love-troth she had exchanged, and that in God's eyes she was Norman McDiarmid's wife, might have enabled Carmichael to trade upon her ambition for herself and for her son, if she had been less firm; and now that she was dead, he had no doubt that he would enlist the parents in an endeavour to prove the marriage. Where was Carmichael now? These letters were dated years back, and had evidently been repulsed bravely by his staunch Isabel. It could be gathered from his rejoinders that she had explained away her own words and his, and had utterly refused to yield to his suggestions in the smallest degree; that his pleadings for Kenneth's rights had been scouted, and that she had carefully kept his overtures from her parents. With regard to young Norman's sickly health, on which Carmichael dwelt much, that was a thing of the past, and he was now as likely to live as Kenneth himself. And besides there was another boy born since the date of these letters. No--Norman McDiarmid smiled bitterly as he thought how very remote was the chance that he should ever have any desire to prove Isabel's son his heir. But still more bitterly, he thought of the loss the boy had had, and how infinitesimally little was all he could do to make up for it.

But again he thought--where was Carmichael? He would, no doubt, if he heard of the death of such an obscure individual as Isabel Oswald, apply to her parents, who would have no scruples about disturbing his peace, and who would only be too delighted to make a stand for what he would represent as Kenneth's rights. One of the greatest evils of the Scottish marriage law is the curious moral obliquity which makes people think it right to move heaven and earth to prove an old irregular bond, which will snap through new and more sacred relations.

"More sacred!" he paused as he thought of it. He took up again Isabel's letter, and kissed it with passionate remorseful tears. He placed it with Carmichael's letters and his own in a secret drawer, of which no one but himself knew the trick, and which already contained a ribbon, some letters, one lock of dark and a tuft of fair hair, the counterpart of the earliest of Isabel's treasured locks; and then he sat down to think of the best course to pursue. Carmichael might be dead. He was a man who had lived hard and fast, and had no regular means of support. He had been brought up to the Established Church, but was altogether too lax in doctrine and in life for such a career. He had been a private tutor to Edinburgh students when Mr. McDiarmid knew him. His letters to Isabel were dated simply "Edinburgh", but the answers were to be addressed to a lodging-house in a poor neighbourhood. He might be dead, or he might have left the country. Isabel's death might never reach his ears, and in that case there need be no dread of his disturbing Kenneth or his grandparents, and making them think more meanly of him than they did.

Still the thought of Marion Oswald's face, as she might confront him with Kenneth in her hand, and with Hugh Carmichael to back her, was not agreeable, and his disturbed slumbers were haunted with all sorts of contradictory and alarming threats and visions. When he took up the Scotsman at the breakfast table, he was surprised how often his eyes were arrested by the not uncommon name of Carmichael. One John Carmichael had money to lend on heritable bonds; another Andrew Carmichael was inducted into a Church; another Robert Carmichael advertised the newest things in fancy goods--but no mention of Hugh Carmichael, not even in the obituary notices, where, to tell the truth, the greatest relief would have been found.

Mrs. McDiarmid was full of little household cares, and she liked to talk over such matters at the breakfast table, but she could not command her husband's usual attention. He was quite absorbed in the newspaper that morning. Even when he had apparently finished reading the newspaper, he did not give his wife the undivided interest she expected. He had got out the Edinburgh Directory, and could not find the name of the man he wanted, but in one of five years back he did find it. He planned his operations carefully, and during the next few days he gathered that Hugh Carmichael had disappeared from Edinburgh shortly after the date of his last letter to Isabel Oswald, that no one knew whether he was dead or alive. He had been very hard up for years, and after his disappearance not a syllable had been heard about him in his old haunts. Norman McDiarmid felt relieved; he breathed more freely, and appeared to his wife and children more like himself than he had been since his journey to the South.