L I E> RARY OF THL UN IVLRSITY Of ILLINOIS . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/may01olip V. \ J(- J ^t^O^ f^ >- o ■re: CO TO in CD "" THE HOXOUEABLE CAPTAIN CO > O Z MEMBEBS OF THE EOTAL AND }CsCTrS1 GOLF CLUB OF ST. A>'I)EEW; (Especially to those among that noble Company whom the Author r * rentiu-es to call Friends) THIS BOOK IS i KETEEEyTlALLT, A^D ADilTEIXGLY IXSCEIBED. MAY. CHAPTER I. The house of Hay-Heriot had been estab- lished at Pitcomlie for more centuries than couhl easily be reckoned. It was neither very rich nor very great, but it was well connected, and had held itself sturdily above the waves of fote like one of the rocks along its wild coast line, often threatened by rising tides, but never submerged. There had never been any great personages in the family to raise it above its natural level, but neither had there been any distinguished pro- fligates or spendthrifts to pull it down. Most of the lairds had been respectable, and those who were not had never been more than moderatel}' VOL. I. B 'I MAY. wicked, keeping clear of ruinous vices. The history of the house had been very monotonous, without ups or downs to speak of. In the vicis- situdes of the rebellions they had kept clear, being too far south to be seriously compromised; and though a younger son was out in the '45, that did not affect either the character or the circumstances of the family. In short, this was the Hay-Heriot way of sowing its wild oats. Its younger sons were its safet^^-valve ; all that was eccentric in the race ran into those stray branches, leaving the elder son always steady and respectable, a most wise arrangement of nature. Thus the house itself derived even profit and glory from the adventurous irregularity of its younger members, while its stability was un- injured. Indian curiosities of all kinds, warlike trophies, and the splendid fruit of those pilferings which are not supposed to be picking and stealing when they are the accompaniments of war, decorated the old mansion on every side. A curiously decorated scimitar, which had been taken fromTippoo Saib, hung over the mantelpiece in the M A Y. o library along with a French sabre from Waterloo, and the shield of a Red Indian barbarically gay with beads and fringes. These were all contri- butions from the heroic ne'er-do-weels who linked the staidest of households to the tumult and commotion of distant worlds. Sometimes the ne'er-do-weels would cost the head of the house some money, but on the whole the balance was kept tolerably even, and the younger Hay-Heriots conscientiously forbore from leaving orphan children, or other incumbrances, to burden the old house— a considerateness quite unlike the habit of younger sons, which was applauded and envied by many femilies in the country who had no such exemption. The present family differed, however, in many respects from the traditions of the race. Thomas Hay-Heriot of Pitcomlie Avas indeed all that his ancestors had been, an excellent country gentleman, homely in his manners and thrifty in his habits, but hospitable, charitable, and not ungenerous— a man of blameless life and lii^h character. His brother Charles, however, who, according to all the family rules ought to have B 2 4 MA Y. been ti scapegrace, was not so in the smallest degree, but, on the contrary, as respectable as his elder brother ; a man who had never been further than Paris in his life, a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh ; a man of method and order, who had done exactl}^ the same thing at the same hour every day for thirty years, and who was as good as a clock to his servants and neighbours. This is not in general an attractive description of a man, but there was a great deal to be said in Uncle Charles' favour, as the reader who has patience to follow out this history will learn. The fact that he was Uncle Charles will at once reveal one important part of his life. He had never married, he had always been more or less a member of his brother's household, and now, when age began to creep upon both, lived almost continually in the home of his youth. It was he who sat in tlie triangular corner of a settee by the fire with a newspaper in his hand, which he was not reading, in the Pitcomlie drawing-room, pn a bright March day not very many years ago, in the half hour which preceded luncheon in that M A Y. O orderly house. We are aware that we ought to have afforded a gUmpse of Pitcomlie House, before thus dragging the reader head and shoulders into its domestic centre — but after all it is the interior which is the most important, and this is how it looked. A long room with three large windows opening upon a lawn, beyond which surged and swelled an often angr}^ and boisterous sea. The fireplace was opposite the central window, and the room had been handsomel}^ furnished forty years before, and bore that air of continuance and use which in itself gives a charm to all human habi- tations. It had, however, as all such rooms have, various points of contact with the immediate present, in the shape of low chintz-covered eas3'-chairs and other modern vanities. Uncle Charles' chimney- corner was formed by placing an arm across the long settee fitted to the wall, thus leaving him a roomy triangular seat at the end, where his lean limbs got all the benefit of the warmth. He was a man of nearly sixty, with scanty fair hair, scarcely touched with grey, a forehead Avhich b MAY. wrinkled up in folds or smoothed itself miracu- lously out according to his moods as he talked, and a pair of light yellowish grey eyes with scanty eyelashes, also light in colour, over which he puckered his brows continually, being short- sighted. He was one of the thinnest of men, as light and agile as many a boy, and sat with his long legs crossed in the acutest of angles. His brother stood with his back to the fire, older by two years, and heavier by at least six stone. He was dressed in grey morning clothes, with boots and leather gaiters, and an atmosphere of the fields and free air about him. Indeed, he had just come in from his home-farm, which he managed very carefully, and by which he proudly declared he had never lost a penny. There was no one else in the room. The walls were painted gray-green and hung with family portraits. The round table at the east end — for in this part of Scotland everything is spoken of geographically — w^as laden with books ; and in the west end the room blossomed out into a deeply recessed bay window, half veiled with lace curtains, within MAY. 7 v^'hicli stood one easy-chair and small table. This recess, and indeed the air of the place generally, betrayed the habitation of a woman, and one whose tastes and "ways" were very influential — but no woman was present. The aspect of the room was south and west, so that the sharp east wind then blowing outside did not affect so much as might have been feared the temperature within. An east wind in Fife is not always the grey and withering misery it is in other places ; under some peculiar modifications of the atmosphere it makes the sea blue and the sky clear, and such was the effect on this par- ticular morning. This it may be imagined was an effect most deeply to be desired at Pitcomlie, which so far, at least, as the drawing-room was concerned, was like a ship at sea, seeing little besides the water ; but as the Haj^-Heriots had all been, so to speak, born and bred in an east wind, they were more indifferent than most people to its penetrating power. "I have another letter from Tom," said Mr. Heriot, sighing and raising his arms with his coat tails under them. 5 MAY. "Always wanting something?" said Uncle Charles, with a shrng. " Well, when all's done and said, he is the first to be considered," said the laird, with a faint glimmer as of incipient resentment. *'It is to him that ever3^thing must come; he must carry on the name like his fathers before him. Being a younger son yourself, Charlie, you have your prejudices, as is but natural. Your word is always for the others — never for Tom." Uncle Charles gave another shrug of his lean shoulders. " Tom cares little for my good word," he said, " and has little need of it. You're quite capable of spoiling your son yourself, so far as I can see, without me to help. The girls are my thought; young men can shift for themselves, and it was always the way of our family to let them ; but the girls, Thomas — there's two of them. There's my niece Marjory, as fine a young woman as any in the county — " " Oh, ay, May ; she's the first in your thoughts. But girls are neither here nor there," said Mr. Heriot, *'they have their pickle money, more or less, and there's an end of them. What's M A Y. 9 Marjory to do with money ? What can she do at her age — " "Marr}', I suppose, like the rest,'' said Uncle Charles. " Marry !" said the father. " I don't see any necessity for my part ; she's a great deal better as she is, with you and me." " That may be or may'nt be," said Uncle Charles ; " but at least you are not the man to say so ; you married twice yourself." "And a great deal I have made by it," said Mr. Heriot, with a mixture of complaint and discontent. " My first wife was an excellent creature, an excellent creature, as you know ; but she was taken away from me just when I and the bairns wanted her most. Providence is very queer in some things. Just when May was a growing girl, and Tom at the age when a woman is of use, their mother was taken away. It is not for us to complain, but it's a strange way of acting, a very strange way of acting. I could not take the responsibility of guiding my hinds in such a manner. Well, and then I married poor Jeanie, hoping she would keep 10 M A Y. everything in order, and set the house to rights — and what does she do but slip away too, poor thing, leaving me with a helpless bit baby on my hands ? A great deal I have made by it that you should quote my example. What would Marjory do to marry ? She is far better as she is, mistress and more of this house, petted as no husband would ever pet her, getting her own way in everything. Bless my soul, man, what would you like for her more ?" "Well, a house of her own," said Uncle Charles, no way daunted, " and a good man. I have not your experience, Thomas, but I sup- pose that's the best for a woman. She is more of your way of thinking than mine, but it's our duty to think for her, you know. We're old now, and Tom's extravagant— and she's not precisely growing younger herself." " Toots, she's young enough," said the laird ; and then he began to walk up and down the room, still with his coat-tails under his arms. " To tell the truth," he said, " Marjory's marriage would be the worst thing that could happen for us. I would not stand in her way if it was MAT. 11 for her good. When there's a family of daugh- ters, of course it becomes of consequence ; what else can they do, poor things ? but Marjory is in a very different position. Poor little Milly is not ten, and what would you and I do, left in a house like this, with a bit creature of ten years old ? Her sister is her natural guardian ; and what can be more natural than that May should take care of her father's house and keep every- thing going ? What can a woman want more ? A house of her own I isn't this house her own? and as nice a house as any in Fife ; and as for a man — if she knew as much about men as I do, Charlie, or 3'ou either for that matter — " Uncle Charles gave a half-stifled, chuckling laugh. The humour of this remonstrance over- came his graver sense; and that Marjory's mar- riage would have been as great a drawback — perhaps a greater misfortune — to himself than even to her father there could be no doubt. " I don't say but what that's an indisputable argument," he replied ; " she might get a bonny bargain, and repent it all her days. But there's 12 M A Y. the luncheon bell, and where is she? I don't think I ever knew her to be late before." "Are you not going to wait?" said the laird. Mr. Charles had hoisted himself up at the sound of the bell ; he had folded his newspaper and laid it down upon his seat. He had picked up his short-sighted spectacles, which lay as they always did, when he was reading, on the edge of the wainscot, which was high and served him as a stand ; and he had lifted the poker to administer, as he invariably did at this hour, a farewell poke to the fire before leaving it. He turned round upon his brother, looking at him over his shoulder with the poker in his hand. " Wait !" he said. It was altogether a new idea. Marjory was punctuality itself, trained to it from her earliest years, and time was inexor- able at Pitcomlie, waiting for no man or woman either. " Wait ?" he repeated, laying down the poker. " Thomas, my man, you're not well." "Bah!" said the laird, taking up the poker ■which his brother had dropped, and applying such a blow to the coal as sent blazing sparks all over the hearth-rug. It was exactly what might MAY. 13 have been expected, but his brother stood help- lessl}^ and looked at him, feeling that chaos itself had come, until the smell of the burning wool startled them both. Mr. Heriot stooped down, which did not agree with him, to pick up the smouldering sparks with his hands, out of which the morsels of fire tumbled again, sprinkling little pin-points of destruction all over the Turkey rug. Mr. Charles ran and opened the windoAv, which let in a steady strong blast from the Firth, enough to wither up the very soul of any man not to the manner born. " Bless my soul I" they both said, between the fire and the cold, in confusion and discouragement. It was entirely Marjory's fault. Why was not Marjory at home ? What did she mean by staying out at an hour when she was so much wanted ? Mr. Heriot spoke quite sharply when old Fleming, the butler, came to answer the bell. " Where is Miss Marjory ?" he said. " Come and pick up these cinders, and don't stand and stare at me. Where is Miss Marjory, I ask you? What do you mean by ringing the bell when she's not here?" *' Lord bless us, Sir," said old Fleming, gazing 14 MAY. at his master with a consternation beyond words. "What for should I no ring the bell? I've rung it night and morning, midday and dinner-time, in a' times and seasons, even when there was death in the house ; and what for should we hold our peace now ? " " Confound you !" said the laird, and then he recollected himself, and put on that peculiar po- liteness which is with some men a symptom of wrath. "Be so good as to leave the room at once, and bring me word if Miss Marjory has come in," he said. Mr. Charles by this time had closed the window, subdued by his brother's unusual fractiousness. " Tom's letter must have been more trying than ordinary," he said to himself, and then in the curious pause that followed he looked at his watch. A quarter to two o'clock ! In the memory of man it had not been known that the Pitcomlie household should be later than half-past one, in sitting doAvn to its luncheon. Mr. Charles did not know what to do with himself. In his scheme of existence this half hour, and no other, was filled with lunch. He had other duties for all MAY. 15 the other half hours, and every one of them must be pushed out of its proper phice by May's singular error. This fretted him more than he could say. He walked about the room with his hands in his pockets and in much bewilderment of soul. " If you will not come, I will go by myself," he said at length to his brother, " I can't afford to lose all ni}" afternoon. May must have stayed in Comlie with old Aunt Jean for lunch." " Lose your afternoon !" said Mr. Heriot. "Bless my soul, what's your afternoon, an idle man ! If it had been me that had complained " — "There's Scotch collops," said old Fleming, suddenly appearing at the door, "and chicken with cucumber. They'll both spoil if they're no eaten; and Miss Marjory's not to be seen, no even from the towerhead where I sent little James to look. You'll do her little good waiting, if I may make so bold to say so, and the good meat will be spoiled." " I told you so," said Mr. Charles, who profited by this interruption to march briskly past Flem- ing and hasten to the dining-room. Mr. Heriot ibllowed him with a less satisfied air ; and the 16 MAY. two gentlemen placed themselves at table, and being hungry eat a hearty meal and said no more about Marjory. Her absence indeed was nothing to be anxious about, and the chicken and cu- cumber was very good, as were also the Scotch collops, a dish for which Mrs. Simpson, the cook, was famous. Mrs. Simpson, indeed, was famous for a great many things; she was partly the creation and partly the instructress of Mr. Charles Hay-Heriot himself, to whom she had been solemnly bequeathed by one of his old friends in Edinburgh, who had bragged of her greatl}^ in his lifetime, and had meant to survive her, and publish her lore in a book. But it was she who had survived instead, and Mr. Charles was of opinion that he himself had immensely improved her. She was supposed to be the last depository of many old Scotch recipes, the only person who knew how to send up Friar's chickefn, and a howtowdie with drappit eggs. The Scotch col- lops were brown and fragrant, sending a delicious flavour through all the house, and the little momentary annoyance of the past half hour sank into insignificance before them. The two gen- MAY. 17 tlemen made a hearty meal, both of them havinj^ had fresh air enough to make it acceptable, and talked of other things. With Fleming behind his master's chair, even Tom's letter became no matter for discussion, and though the table with its two vacant places looked somewhat dreary, there was no further remark made on that sub- ject. " They are dining with old Aunt Jean,*' Mr. Charles said to himself; and as for his brother he was a little ashamed of the fuss he had made. That fuss had not been, as he very well knew, for Marjory's absence, but because Tom's letter was such a one as irritates a parent ; and Mr. Charles' readiness to side against Tom in all domestic controversies irritated the father still further, who did not choose that any one but himself should blame his heir. Indeed one of Mr. Heriot's chief grievances against his eldest son was tais way he had of laying himself open to animadversion. He felt it was against the dignity of all eldest sons and heads of houses that this should be possible. The Charlies of life, the younger sons, the girls, were open to reason- able discussion ; but when the heir thus exposed VOL. I. C 18 MAY. himself, all family discipline and subordination was in danger. It was almost as bad as if he himself, Thomas Hay-Heriot of Pitcomlie, had been openly criticised by his family. And Tom was a young man who continually laid himself open to animadversion. Even Fleming had been known to have his fling at him, and the only one of Marjory's revolutionary qualities which really annoyed her father, was her want of proper re- spect for her brother's position. He had been the eldest son himself, and had always been treated with the highest consideration ; and the head of the house entertained very strongly this es2?rit de corps. He made no further allusion therefore to the subject which really engrossed all his thoughts. 19 CHAPTER II. While her father aud uncle were thus fuming over her absence, Marjory Haj'-Heriot, with her little sister, had been making her way quietly about the little town of Comlie, whither they had ridden down in the morning, tempted by the sunshine, after some days of rainy weather. Comlie was a little old clean and quaint place, an old-fashioned Fife borough, devoted to fishing in its lower parts, but possessing such a High Street as not one of all its sister-towns possessed. This High Street had a wide causeway, clean and straight, and a broad footpath into which many old- fashioned large houses stepped forward with their white gables, in a true picturesque old Scotch way, telling of better times and character- c 2 20 MAY. istics more decided than our own. A quaint little semi-metropolitan air was about this silent street, through which the broad sunshine fell with few shadows to obstruct it. A little town- hall with a quaint ancient steeple stood in the middle of the street, with one square unglazed Avindow protected b}^ iron rails, the window of the town Bridewell, raised just above the heads of the passers by, and looking as like the little town prison of an Italian mountain village as two similar things could look in places so unlike. At the west end was an old inn, a little hostel which, no doubt, was doing a good trade in the days when queens and courts w^ere at Falkland Palace, and archbishops reigned in St. Andrews. The houses on the south side of the street with their projecting gables, whitewashed and many- windowed, looked out upon the sea to the back, over the fringe of fisher cottages which lay lower, close to the beach. At the east end of the town stood the church, an old church cobbled into mediocrity, but still displaying to instructed eyes the lines of its original structure, and tempting archa3ologists with hopes of restoration. It was MAY. 21 surrounded by a churchyard full of monuments of the sixteenth century, with skulls and cross- bones and urns and puffing cherubs. It is aston- ishing how many dead people belonging to that century could afford to leave behind them those cumbrous masses of stone. The Manse, a solid, and in its way, spacious square stone house, stood at a little distance overlooking the sea ; and outside the church gates, where the broad street had widened into a kind of triangular place^ there were several " genteel " houses— one decorated Avith iron gates and trees in front, but the rest old, of characteristic Fife architecture, each with its white gable. The sea is the background to everything in this country, and to-day it was blue, a keen and chill, but brilliant tone of colour, throwing up the whitewashed houses and light grey stone with a brightness almost worthy of Italy ; though no Italian wind, unless, indeed, a Tramontana fresh from the snowy hills, ever penetrated human bones like that steady blast from the east, which came natural to the people of Comlie. Marjory had left her horse and little Milly her 22 M A Y. tiny pony at John Horsbiirgh's inn, and they were now going up and down the silent street in the sunshine about their various businesses, hold- ing up their riding-skirts, the little girl keeping very close by her sister's side like a little shadow, and communicating with the outer world almost exclusively by means of a large pair of limpid blue eyes, clear as heaven, and wide open, which said almost all that Milly had to say, and learned a great deal more than Milly ever betrayed. Wherever Marjory went, this little shade went with her, sometimes holding by her dress, always treading in her very footsteps, a creature with no independent existence of her own, any more than if she had been part of Marjory's gown, or an ornament she wore. As for Marjory herself, she went along the street of Comlie with the free yet measured step of a princess, aware that every eye in the place (there were not many visible)? was turned to her; but so used to that homage that it gave her only a fine backing of moral strength and support, and made her neither vain nor proud. Vain ! why should Marjory Hay- Heriot be vain? She knew her position exactly M A Y. 23 and accepted it, and was aware of all its duties, and considered it natural. She was like a prin- cess in Comlie ; she would have told you so simply without more ado, as calm in the con- sciousness as any young grand-duchess in her hereditar}^ dominions. She had been going over her kingdom that morning, and had found a great many things to do. At this moment when, if the reader pleases, we shall join ourselves like little Milly to her train, she was coming up from "the shore" as it was called, the fisher-region, where she had been paying a sorrowful visit. One of the boats had gone down in the last gale, a too frequent acci- dent, and a young Avidow with a three months old bab}^ a poor young creature who not two years before had left Pitcomlie House to marry her Jamie, was sitting rocking herself and her child in the first stupor of grief, and replying by monosyllables to all the kindly attempts to con- sole her. '' Oh ay. Miss Marjory," " I ken that," " Yes, Mem, its a' true," poor Jean had said, with the weary assent which means so little. Marjory 24 M X Y. came back to the High Street with a grave face, and her own mind full of the dreariness of that inevitable assent. What could any woman answer more to the kind voices that bid her bear her trial and have patience, and remember that it is God's will ? " Its a' true." May was not of a melancholy mind; but that pitiful assent to everything she had said went to her heart. She walked on with her light step that did no more than effleurer the ground, stop- ping sometimes to nod and smile to some woman at her door. *' All well to-day, Mary ? " " Oh, ay, Miss Marjory, just about our ordi- nar}^, nae mair to complain o' than maist puir folk ; if thae weary cauld winds would bide away that gie us a' our death." " This is the first east wind we've had for a fortnight," said Marjory. " I think we have very little reason to complain." " Ye see I'm frae the south," said the woman ; " and my man has a hoast that drives ye wild to hear; and when we havena the east wind in Comlie we have the rain, and the bairns canna MAY. 25. gang to the school, and there's naething but dirt and wet, and miseiy and quarrelling. Its a weary world, as our grannie says. Whatever the Al- mighty sends, there's aye something folk would like better." "But perhaps that might be the folk's fault, and not the Alujighty's," suggested Marjory. " Maybe ; Fm no saying," answered Mary Bax- ter, cautiously. " I hope's a' weel at Pitcomlie, and good news o' the young gentlemen. They tell me Mr. Charles's wife out in India yonder, has another son. Bless us I and I mind himself so well, a curly-headed laddie I It would have been mair like the thing if Mr. Tammas would settle down, and bring hame some bonnie young leddy and gie Mr. Heriot childhers' childher, as it's in the Bible. But there's nae word o' that that I can hear?" " Xo, there is no word of that. I hope Xancy is doing well in her new place," said Miss Heriot, changing the subject with the same unconscious artifice which had prompted her humble inter- locutor to carry the war into the enemy's country by introducing Charles's marriage and Tom's 26 MAY. baclierlorhood. These two subjects were not pleasing to the house of Heriot; for Tom, the heir, unfortuiiatel^y, showed no inclination to marr}^ at all, and Charlie in India had become a husband and a father much too soon, contrary to all traditions. Marjor}^ passed on when she had been satisfied on the subject of Nancy, but was stopped a few steps further on by a bare- headed girl in a pretty pink short-gown, the costume of the country, who ran after her with her fair locks falling loose in the wind. "Eh, Miss Marjory, would you come in and speak to my mither?" cried this new applicant. This was Jenny Patterson, who lived up a stair just behind the Tolbooth, and a little out of Miss Heriot's way. How Jenny admired the young lady as she gathered up her heavy cloth skirts, and with a smile and a nod went on to the well- known door ! If Jenny had ever heard of god- desses, just so would she have impersonified a feminine divinity ; that mixture of splendid supe- riority and familiar kindness being of all things the most captivating to the unsophisticated soul- Jenny's brother, who was a v/atchmaker in Dun- MAY. 27 dee, and held veiy advanced political opinions, considered her devotion servile, but blushed to feel that he himself shared it whenever he was brought under the same influence. " But it's no the leddy, it's the woman I think of," Radical Jock explained to himself— an explanation as false as most such explanations are. *' Jenny says you want me, Mrs. Patterson," said Marjory, sitting down on the chair which Jenny carefully dusted and placed in front of the fire. It was a small room, with but a little space between the bed and the fire, and with one window veiled b}' an immense geranium stretched upon a fan-like frame, which was the pride of its mistress's heart, consumed half the air and light in the little place, and curiously enough condescended to grow with splendid luxu- riance. Jenny's mother was an invalid, but a good needlewoman, who got through a great deal of " white-seam" in her chair by the fire, and lived, she, her daughter, and her geranium on the earn- ings thus acquired, supplemented by help from her sons. Jenny stood by smiling and open- mouthed, twisting up the hair which invariably 28 MAY. came down when she flew out into the street on any errand ; and little Milly, familiar to the place, actually took the independent step of going to the window, and chirruping to the canary which hung above that geranium forest, and was the best singer in all Comlie, not even excepting the Minister's bullfinch, a strange and foreign bird. "Dinna think I'm wanting anything from you, Miss Marjory. The w^orst o' puir folk is that they're aye wanting. Na, na, it was only for a sight o' your face, which does a poor body good, and to read ye my Willie's letter. Jenn}^, ye taupie, bring me Willie's letter. I can maistly say it ofi" by heart, but Miss Heriot will like to see it, and I might forget something. Eh, I'm a happy w^oman ! The captain o' the ' William and Mary's' dead out yonder (pointing her thumb over her shoulder, which was the way or indicating distance in Comlie), and Willie's to bring the boat home. It's as good as a ship to him, for ance a captain aye a captain, and his owners are no the men to put him back in a mate's place." MAY. 29 " I am very glad to hear of Willie's promo- tion," said Marjory ; " was the captain a Comlie man ?"' " Eh, you'll think me awfu' hard-hearted," said Mrs. Patterson, struck with compimction, and pausing Avith her large horn spectacles in her hand ; " but you canna suppose I would have spoke as free and been as thankfu' if he had been a Comlie man. Xa, na, if another house in the town had been mourning I would have held my peace. I've had trouble enough myself to have mair feeling; but he's no frae Comlie nor nearhand. He's a Dundee man, and I ken naething about him. His name was Brown, like mony mair, and he's no even married that I ever heard tell of, and it's to be hoped he's in a better place." With this the new captain's mother dismissed the old one, and put on her big spectacles. "It's dated Eiga, the fourteenth Februar}', for that's the port where they were bound. 'My dear mother, I hope you and Jenny's in good health as this leaves me. Many and many a time I think of you and the cosy little room, and the 30 MA Y. flower, and the canary-bird—' Bless the hiddie," said Mrs. Patterson, stopping abruptly, " he had aye the kindest heart !" The reader probably, however, will not be so much interested in this letter as Marjory was, who listened and made her comments with thorough sympathy, feeling quite relieved, as was Willie's mother, by the fact that the dead captain was not a Comlie man. Dundee was large and vague, and far away, and was able enough to mourn her own dead. But as they went down the stairs after their visit was over, Marjory said to her little sister, " We shall be too late for Imicheon at home ; are you hungry, dear ? I think we might go and dine with Aunt Jean." " I am. Ti little hungry," Milly confessed, not without a blush. " Then run and tell Betty we are coming, and I will go on to the Manse ; you can come after me or stay at Aunt Jean's, as you like." " Walk slow, May, and I will make up to you," cried little Milly, who ran off instantly like a gleam of sunshine, her long fair hair fluttering in the breeze, anxious to be absent as short a MAY. 31- time as possible from her sister's side. Marjory went on slowly making her royal progress through her dominions, casting a smile now and then through the low windows on the ground floor, stopping to nod and say a passing word to some one on an outside stair. The doctor, setting out in his gig on some distant visit, jumped down and crossed the street to speak to her, to ask for Mr. Heriot and Mr. Charles, and tell her how his patients were, of many of whom she had a secondary charge, if not as consulting phy- sician, yet Avith a responsibility almost as great. "James Tod, poor lad, would be the better of some books," the doctor said, "and you're a better deceiver than I am. Miss Heriot ; you might per- suade old Mrs. Little that your father has some rare wine in his cellar, wine she could not get to buy." "You pay me a charming compliment," said Marjory. " Could you not cheat her yourself with all your powers ?" *' She laughed in my face," said the doctor, who was young, and not very rich, " and asked me how I could get finer wines than other folk ? 32 M A Y. She was sure I might spend my siller better. And poor little Agnes d^ing before my eyes !" "Will she die?" "Don't ask me," said the too tender-hearted doctor, springing into his gig again. He was too sensitive to be a doctor, his wife said. As the gig drove away, some one else came np taking off his hat with profound respect. This was young Mr. Hepburn who lived in the house with the iron gates, and was the only unemployed person in Comlie. He was a yonng man toler- ably w^ell off, and more than tolerably good- looking, who had been brought up in a desultory w^ay, was more accomplished than any other individual within twenty miles, did not in the least know wdiat to do with himself, and was treated by Marjory with mingled kindness and condescension, as a clever schoolboy is sometimes treated by a young lad}^ For his part, Hepburn admired Marjory as he had never admired any- one else in his life. He was three or four years her junior, and he thought he was in love with, nay, adored her. The sight of her he said was as sunshine in the dreary silent place ; and he had M A Y. 33 said this so often that it had come to Marjory's ears. It was not very original, and she had thought it impertinent, and treated him with more lofty condescension than ever. " Oh, Mr. Hepburn," she said holding out her hand to him ; " I did not know you were here. Some one told me you had gone abroad. I should have asked you to come to us sometimes at Pit- comlie, and bring your music, had I known. Xot that we are very lively — " " Pitcomlie is a great deal better than lively," said the young man. " I am not of such a frivo- lous mind as to be always looking for amusement. You know, Miss Heriot, how glad I am always to be there." " But amusement is a very good thing," said Marjory. '* Indeed, it is bad for young people to be without it. When Milly is a little older, I intend to make papa give balls and be very lively. I have always thought it a most essential part of training. I hope you go on with your music, and practice as much as you used to do ?" " I don't practice at all in the ordinary sense of the word," said young Hepburn, with an annoy- YOL. I. D 34 M A Y. ance he could not conceal. Marjory had Scotch prejudices and many old-fashioned notions, and it was her conviction that a man with an im- mortal soul who " practised" three or four hours a day was a phenomenon to be looked on with something like contempt. Girls did it, poor things ! not being able to help themselves— but a man ! This young woman, though she thought herself enlightened, was a tissue of prejudices, and Ave do not in the least defend her old world ways of thinking. She sang very sweetly herself, with a voice which was very flexible and true, but only moderately cultivated ; and she thought of music as a pleasant thing to fill up stray corners, but not as an inspiration or occupation of life. And when she kindly asked Mr. Hepburn to come and bring his music, what she meant was undoubtedly contempt. " I don't mean to use any word I ought not to use," said Marjory, with her gracious smile, " but I hope you keep it up, that and your drawing. It is good to have such resources when one has only a quiet life to look forward to. Of course a gen- tleman has many ways of occupying himself; but M A Y. 35 I am so soiT}^ my education has been neglected. When I am dull, there is scarcely anything I can do but read." " I should not think you were ever dull," said Hepburn, with adoring looks. "Not very often, just now ; but some time pro- bably I shall be, and then I shall envy you your resources. AVill you dine with us at Pitcomlie to-morrow, Mr. Hepburn? I fear we shall be quite alone ; but if you will take the trouble to come — and bring your — " *' I will come with the greatest pleasure," said the young man, precipitately, drowning that last objectionable request. He would take no music, he vowed, for any inducement which might be offered him. His right hand would make an effort to forget its cunning. He would give him- self up to riding and shooting, and trudge about the ploughed fields in leather gaiters, like her father, and make a boor of himself, by way of proving to her that he was not a schoolboy nor a dilettante. This he vowed to himself as she went on smiling, and little Milly passed him like a gleam of light, rushing after her sister. How D 2 36 MAY. unlike these two were to anything else far or near ! Marjory, with her little sister, was like a deep- hearted rose, not full blown, yet perfect— one of those roses which you can look down into, as into a lovely nest of colour and fragrance — with a tiny little bud just showing the pink on the same stem. Young Hepburn had a great deal of super- ficial poetry about him, and this was the image which came into his mind. Not full blown — keeping the form of a bud, deep, many-folded, odorous as the very soul of Summer. That was the similitude which best expressed Marjory Heriot to his mind. And she, laughing softly at him, wondering to herself what God could mean by making such men, deciding within herself that he would have made a nice sort of girl, pleasant and rather loveable, went on to the Manse, which indeed had been her destination all along. 37 CHAPTER III. The minister of Comlie was an old man who had held that appointment for a gi-eat many years. In many respects he was like a traditional Scotch minister, but in others he did not come up to that ideal. He had baptized the entire body of his parishioners, and married a great many of them, but he was not the genial, kindly old soul who is ordinarily conceived of as filling that position. When he walked through the town the children did not run after him, nor seek sweet- meats in his pockets. Any boy or girl in Comlie who had entertained that fond delusion would have been fixed to the earth by the Doctor's frown, and repented, all his or her life after, the profane thought and word. Dr. Murray was a 38 MAY. man addicted to literature, full of Biblical criticism, great in exegesis — a man who Jiad been Moderator of the Assembly, and thus reached the highest honour of which the incumbent of a Scottish parish is capable. After this a great calm in respect to distinctions and worldly advan- tages had been visible in him — he had contemned tliem gently with a benevolent superiority. His spirit had been, as indeed it ought to have been, in a professional point of view, rather that of Solomon than of Alexander ; no new world to conquer had occupied his thoughts, but only a sense of that completion and fulness which must always be more or less sad. The thing that hath been is that which shall be, he said. He had everything the world could give him, and now there was no more to wish for. But this sense of having attained the highest honour that earth could afford, if somewhat depressing, had also a great deal of satisfaction in it. No doubt his career was over, and all its splendour and majesties were among the things that had been ; but yet he had the profound and tranquillizing con- viction that he had not lived in vain. Not in any MAT. 39 way had he lived in vain. He had written the article on Hj^ssopinthe Encyclopasdia Britannica, and he had had a large share in the Popular Commentary on the Bible, which was considered the very best authority upon Eastern customs and geography, and the local peculiarities which throw light upon the sacred text. His name was one of those which had been connected from the very first with the ' Christian Herald,' and it was he who wrote all the articles, signed Alpha, in that well-conducted magazine. Therefore it will be at once perceived that his life had been well worth living, that he was not in an}^ respect an unsuccessful man, and that the evening of his days might well breathe forth a certain gentle satisfaction. Comlie was very proud of the doctor, and even Fife was proud of him. When he heard that Marjory was in the drawing-room, he laid down the book he was reading and put a marker in it, and after five minutes or so had elapsed— for it did not suit his dignity to make any hasty movements — he left his library to see the young lady whom he felt a great interest in, as he always said. " She has too much imagination 40 M A Y. and ahast}^ mind that runs away with her some- times ; but she has fine instincts," he would say. Tlie Manse stood on a knoll, and the drawing- room faced the sea. It was an old-fashioned room, with small windows set in the deep walls, and furniture which was somewhat dark and solemn. " You'll stay and take a bit of dinner with us, May, now you're here," Mrs. Murray was saying as the doctor came in. " It's no often we get a sight of you, and there's nobody the Minister likes so well to see. Milly, my dear, take off your hat, and tell Margaret, the table-maid, to get out some of the apple-puffs you're aye so fond of. Marjory likes them too." "But, dear Mrs. Murray, we are going to Aunt Jean," said Marjory. " I will come back another day. Now the weather is mending, I shall be often in Comlie. We are all very well, Doctor, thank you, but wondering not to see you. Uncle Charles has some great argument, which, he says, he keeps in his pocket ready for you. I don't know what it is about. I thought perhaps you would come up quietly to dinner to-morrow, and then you could have it out ?" M A y. 41 "We'll do that, m}^ dear," said Mrs. Murray briskly ; but the doctor was more formal in his ways. " Mr. Charles is no contemptible antagonist," he said ; " it will be our old question about morti- fications. I know I am on the unpopular side, but a man who has convictions must make up his mind to that sometimes. Did you say to-morrow? I do not remember what engagements I have, but if Mrs. ^lurray says so " " Hoots, doctor, you've no engagements," said lively little Mrs. Murray ; " you forget you're at home in Comlie, and no in Edinburgh, where, to my tribulation, we go out to our dinner every night. You may laugh, but it's no laughing matter, May, my dear, and a destruction to my best gown — no to say to all my habits. You may wear point lace when it's dirty, but point lace is too good for a poor Minister's wife, and my suit of Mechlin is as black as if I had swept the chimney in it ; and as for working a stocking, or doing any rational thing after one of their late dinners ! But we'll come to you, my dear." " I am afraid we are going to have a storm," 42 M A Y. said the doctor ; *' the wind is blowing strong up the Firth, and I doubt we'll have a dirty night. Nothing will teach these fishers to be careful when they're getting what they think a good haul. I have a great mind, when I see the glass falling and the wind rising, to send old Tamraas to ring the church bells and warn their boats." "And why not do it?" said Marjory, with a slight start which was peculiar to her when she heard anything that roused her interest. " There could not be a better use for church bells. Do it, doctor ! If the men knew, it might save some of these poor fellows. Poor Jamie Horsburgh, for instance ; I saw Jean to-day, and it almost broke my heart." "Her that was laundry-maid at Pitcomlie?" said Mrs. Murray. " Ah, poor thing ! and what she is to do to gain her bread with that bit infant of hers ? But I do not advise you, doctor, to set any new-fangled plan agoing for ringing the bells. Nobody would pay any attention. They would say : ' What does the minister know about the weather ? Let him bide at his books, and leave the winds to us.' That's what they would say. MAY. 43 And if YOU take my opinion, I cannot but think they would have justice on their side." " I will not risk it, my dear,"' said the doctor ; " they are a pig-headed race, like all the partially educated. I wish there was a higher standard of education in our schools. Reading and writing are very well, but a little attention to the common phenomena of the elements would be a great matter — as I said to Mr. Tom the last time he was here — " " Speaking of your brother Tom," said Mrs. Murray briskly; "what is this I hear about Charlie ? A second boy, and him not above two years and a-half married ! My certy, but they're losing no time ; and I hope both doing well ?" " Oh yes," said Marjory, with a shade of indif- ference stealing over her face ; " people always do well in those circumstances, don't they ? Fancy our Charlie with a family of children about him ! I think it spoils a young man. It makes them grandfatherly — not to say grandmotherly — and knowing about domestic matters. Charlie, of all people in the world I but it cannot be helped, or put a stop to, I suppose ?" 44 MAY. "Whisht, my dear, whisht; that's a strange thing for a woman to say." "Is itf said Marjory, with a sudden blush. " What I meant was that the thought of Charlie turned into an old wife— Charlie knowing all about nurseries, and what to give a baby when it has a cold— is so very queer. I don't like it; Charlie was always my pet brother. Poor fellow ! and he so far away !" " I have no doubt he's very happy— as he ought to be with a nice wife and two bonnie bairns," said Mrs. Murray, a little annoyed at Marjory's anti-matrimonial views ; but this remark passed unnoticed in the doctor's question about what she was reading, which changed the character of the conversation. Mrs. Murray was not booky, as she herself said; she was too old for anything but novels ; and though she had great enjoyment of these on a wet afternoon, by the fireside, or when the doctor was busy with his sermon, she did not sa}^ much about them, and kept them in the back- ground with a certain sense of weakness. Marjory, on the contrary, discussed her reading with some eagerness, while the old lady and little Milly M A Y. 45 cooed and whispered to each other in the back- ground ; the child's fair hair pressed lovingly against the net border— white and softly plaited — of Mrs. Murray's cap. And so long was the dis- cussion carried on that Marjory at last sprang up suddenly and held out her hand in alarm to take leave, when the bell rang for the early dinner, which reminded her how time was massing. " Aunt Jean will be waiting for us," she cried, with a compunction which was quickened by the well-known tradition of punctuality which dis- tinguished the Ha^'-Heriots. " Well, well, my dear, it will do her no harm for once," said Mrs. Murray, going to the door with the visitors, and opening it for them with her own hands. She came out to the step to see them on their way, while her husband stood be- hind. " Be sure you don't sit too long with Miss Jean — for there's a storm coming up, as the doctor says ; and come soon back again," said the old lady, smiling and waving her hand, while her cap-strings wantoned in front of her in the rising wind. " That lassie has strange notions," she said, as she came in and shut the door. " I 46 MAY. wish I saw her with a good man and bairns of her own." "She's a fine girl," said the doctor, turning along the passage to his dressing-room, to wash his hands before dinner. These words did not at all resemble in sense the other expression of applause, '' a fine woman " — which they resemble in sound. Dr. Murray did not mean to imply that he found May " fine " in physical develop- ment — belle femme^ as the French say, with a similar signification. He meant that she was delightful, charming, the best specimen he knew of everything a young woman should be. We are obliged to confess, however, that it was with a somewhat undignified precipitation that the two sisters crossed the wide street to the dwelling-place of their old aunt. Miss S^ean Hay- Heriot was grand-aunt to the younger generation. Her f{:^ther, the Laird of Pitcomlie, was grand- father of the present Laird : but as she had been the youngest of her family, she -was scarcely ten years older than her nephew. She had lived in this gabled house for five and forty years, since the time when, still a young woman, she had M A Y. 47 given up the world in disgust, after five or six years of wanderinof in places where lone ladies resort to— Bath, and Cheltenham, and Harrow- gate— for in those days it had not become the custom to go abroad. Five and forty years ! What a waste of time to look back upon, and what a monotonous, unfeatured expanse, May thought, who sometimes pondered over her old aunt's fate as one chapter among many of the phenomena of feminine existence. But to Miss Jean this waste of years was not so unfeatured as to her young relative. There seemed no reason why she should not go on for ever in the same active yet tranquil way. From her window in the gable she superintended all that Comlie did, every stranger who came into it (they were not many), all the mild visiting that took place among the higher classes, and the family move- ments of the lower, quarrels, flirtations, mar- riages, catastrophes of all kinds. She was seated ii'i tliis same window, when I\Iarjory, a little flushed with haste, hurriedly gathering up her riding- habit, and finding it much in the way, became visible running over from the Manse, Millv close 48 M A Y. behind, with her long hair streaming. Miss Jean quietly smiled to herself, and prepared for tem- pest. It roused her np sometimes, and gave her a pleasant exhilaration, to get an opportunity of setting " that girl of Thomas's " right. " Quick, quick, Miss Marjory," said Betty, at the door. The door was in the gable, and opened into a square hall, which was underneath the drawing-room. " Quick, like good bairns, and dinna keep your aunty waiting. The broth's ready to come up, and Jessie making a terrible fyke in the kitchen — and Miss Jeans no pleased." She threw open the door of a little bedroom at the end of the passage as she spoke — it was thought convenient in that region to have sleep- ing rooms on the ground-floor — and began in- stantly to take off Mill^^'s outer jacket, which was worn over her long riding-skirt. May smoothed her own hair with a trepidation which was quite unusual to her. It was bright brown hair, not so blond as Milly's, but still full of soft colour, though not red, nor even golden. Her eyes were brown too, large and serious, but capable of light- MAY. 49 ing up with searching golden gleams. She was softly coloured in ever}^ way, with an evanescent bloom that came and went, and the most change- able of faces. Sometimes strangers thought her almost plain, when her upper lip fixed on her lower with the resolute look she sometimes had, and her eyes looked straight before her full of silent thought. But most people who knew Marjory held it impossible that she could ever be plain. She smoothed her hair as best she could, in her hurry, for those were the days when young ladies were expected to have smooth and shining hair — and put her tall hat and her riding gloves on the table, and pulled out her handkerchief from her bodice. " Am I tidy, Betty ; shall I do ? " asked, with tremulous accents, the young woman who half an hour before had felt herself princess of Comlie. All these pleasant pretensions failed before the tribunal of Miss Jean. " Oh, ay, Miss Marjor}^ you'll do," cried anxious Betty ; and attended as ever closely by her little sister, Marjory ran upstairs. Miss Jean sat in the end window, her favourite seat of inspection— and all her " borders," which were of blonde, not so VOL. I. E 50 M A Y. closely put together as those of Mrs. Murray, were quivering round her old face. " So you've come at last, Miss May," she said. " It's a great honour to my humble house, and folk that are gratified with the visits of their betters must be content to wait." " Oh, Aunt Jean, I am very sorry ! We ought to have come here at once, instead of going to the Manse—" " Far be it from me to say what a young lad}" like you should do. I'm nothing but an old- fashioned person myself. In my days the young were brought up to obedience and consideration of other folks' wa^^s. But I'm not a learned man like the doctor, nor a whillie-wha like the doctor's wife. I'm of the old Hay-Heriot stock, that always spoke their mind. Betty, bring ben the broth — if our young ladies can sup broth. They tell me my nephew Charlie has brought a grand cook to the house, far above our old-fashioned Scots dishes." *' Indeed, Aunt Jean, it is the old dishes she is famous for,^' said May, very conciliatory. '' She says she knows nothing about kickshaws, and on© M A Y. 51 of the things I specially wanted was to ask you for the old family receipt for shortbread, which you always promised me, and your particular fish ifcttd sauce, which Uncle Charles says is the best he ever tasted." " I suppose you think you can win me over with your nonsense about fish and sauce," said Miss Jean. " Set Charlie up with his cooks and his newfangled ways ! In my days a man ate what was set before him, and said his grace, and was thankful. The mistress of a house, with all her family to provide for, might be excused for giving her mind to it : but, ugh ! a man studying what he's to put into his vde stomach ! If there's a thins: I cannot abide— Dinner's ready ! You need not tell me that ; it's been ready any time this twenty minutes. You may say to Jess I'm truly sorry for her, but it's 0!u- young ladies' way. Go first, bairn, and go quick, for I'll not wait another moment, if it was for the Queen herself." Thus adjured, ^lilly ran doAvnstairs, followed by her sister. The old lady brought up the rear, with her big cane. She was a little old woman over E 2 U. OF ILL LIB. 52 MAY. seventy, in a large cap with many ribbons and borders of broad blonde, which waved about her withered face as she moved. It was a small face, much shrivelled up, but lighted ^ with two blazing sparks of light, deeply sunk within the eaves and folds of her eyelids— eyes which could see w^hat happened a mile off, and burn through and through any unfortunate Avho was subjected to their gaze. She wore a red China crape shawd, very old, but once very richly embroidered and handsome, on her thin shoulders, and her short footstep and the tap of her cane rang through the house as she moved. Everybody within her range increased their exertions, and moved with doubled activity wdien the tap of Miss Jean's cane became audible. As for Milly, running on before, her aunt was to her as the exacting, but, on the whole, benevolent fairy who appears in all the tales, who scolded Cinderella, yet gave her the pumpkin coach, and who had drawers upon drawers full of shreds and patches, strings of beads, bright bits of silk everything that was necessary for the dressing of dolls and making of needlebooks. The pat-pat of the cane seemed part of the old lady to Milly' s M A Y. 53 ear, and she was by no means sure that the cane was not a third leg upon which Aunt Jean moved as ordinary mortals did on the more usual complement. Xo one except !Miss Jean said a word as they sat down to table, and Betty, with a speed and noiselessness, which were born at once of terror and of long practice, served the broth. Milly said they were very good, and asked for a little more of them, without any perception that she was ungrammatical, and as they were hot and savoury Miss Jean mollified by degrees. " There's one good thing," she said, " that you cannot spoil broth by waiting. That and porridge should always be well boiled. I hope your grand cook knows that among her other accomplish- ments. But, maybe Milly is above porridge, though her father was brought up upon them, and his father before him, and -all the best Scots gentry from the days of Robert Bruce." " I have a few porridge in a saucer every morn- ing," said Milly, proudly, " and May gives me the rest of the cream after papa's last cup of tea." " A few in a saucer!" Miss Jean retorted, with renewed vehemence. (X.B. The Scotch reader 54 M A Y. docs not need to be informed that porridge is plural as avcU as broth.) " I hope, Marjory Hay- Heriot, that you may never have to give a severe account of the way you've brought up that motherless bairn." " Cream is not immoral, I hope, aunty f said Marjory, with rising spirit. " Immoral ! Luxury's iuimoral, indulgence is immoral, and they're immoral that say a word to the contrary," cried the old lady. " Will you tell me that to bring up a fellow-creature to self-in- dulgence is no a sinful act? But I never under- stood the ways of tins generation, nor do I want to understand them. You're all alike — all alike ! from Tom's horse-racing to Milly's saucer of par- ritch— it is the same thing over again. What you please ! and not what's your duty, and the best thing for you In this world and the next. Betty, the boiled beef is too plain for these young ladies. Bring it to me, and put the chicken before Miss Marjory. A queen may eat a bit of chicken, but the boiled beef's aye good enough for me." The fact was that the chicken had been M A Y. 00 added to the meal, expressly for the benefit of Marjory and Milly. *' Bairns are brought up different to what they were in my time," Miss Jean had said to her cook, benevolently, an hour before. " That chucky's young and tender, and they'll like it better than the beef." But all this kindness had been turned to gall by the unfortunate delay. Milly took this as a simple necessity of nature — rustled a little in her chair, and ate her chicken ; but Marjory resented the ungracious reception. " I am sorry we have come to trouble you, aunt," she said. " I would rather not have an}'- thing, thank you ; I'm not hungry. The wind is cold, and it has given me a headache. If I might go and sit quiet in the drawing-room, while you finish your dinner, I should get well again." " The thing for a headache is to eat a meal," said Miss Jean, alarmed. " Bring me the chicken, Betty, till I cut Miss Marjory a bit of the breast. You cannot carve; that's why you want to go away. In my day, carving was part of a lady's 5() MAY. education— and cooking too, for that matter. My own mother, as good a woman as ever stepped, took lessons from Mrs. Glass in Edinburgh. I bad not that advantage myself, but I know how to divide a chicken. And, Betty, bring in the apple-tart. AVe'll all go up to the drawing-room by-and-bye, and before ye go ye shall have a cup of tea." Thus the storm fell a little, but still continued to growl at intervals ; however, when the dinner Avas over, and May took her place in the square gable, her headache — if she had one— had dis- appeared. Miss Jean's drawing-room was a curious room, stretching the whole width of the house, and wider at the back than at the other end. The narrower part was the gable. It had an end window looking out upon the street, and one on the east side, from which you could see the line of reddish rocks rounding off towards the point on which stood Pitcomlie; the white mansion- house of the present day shining in the sunshine; the old house, with its high, peaked roof and half-ruined tourelles standing up on the top of the cliff hard by, and the sea breaking in a white MAY. 57 line underneath upon the rocks. Though she professed no sentiment, that window which commanded Pitcomlie was dear to Miss Jean's heart. On the south side of the room was another window, looking straight out upon the sea, from which you coukl see far off the dhu lion couchant of Arthur's Seat, and sometimes a ghostly vision of the Cttlton Hill, with its pillars, and all kinds of cloudy pageants and phantasmagoria of the elements. It was a grand view. Miss Jean allowed; but she preferred the gable window looking down upon the High Street of Comlie ; and here, too, Marjory betook herself instinctively. The Firth, with its splendours, was at her com- mand any day, but so was not this little centre of humanity. That curiosity about her neigh- bours and their doings, which was sharp and bitter in Miss Jean, had a warmer development in Marjory, who was young, and thought well of humanity in general ; but probably it was the same sentiment. She placed herself on the old- fashioned W'indow-seat, and looked out while she answered all the old lady's questions. 58 M A Y. Comlie Higli Street was very quiet, especially at this tranquil after-dinner hour, when the little world rested after its meal. The children had re- turned to the school, and such men as had any business to do had gone back to it till the evening. Marjory watched young Hepburn walking up and down slowly, something between a spy and a sentinel, keeping watch, as she very well knew, for her own re-appearance. She smiled with a certain gentle contempt as she watched him, moving slowly across the unbroken light in the still street. AVhat odd fancies boys take into their heads ! What good could it do him to wait for her ? When Hepburn disappeared, another figure be- came visible coming the other wa}^ — a man with a clump of his own shadow about his feet, which gradually disengaged itself as he "came east," and stalked along by his side in a portentous lengthened line. The changes of this shadow diverted her as she sat talking to Aunt Jean. " Yes, there had been another letter about Charlie's second baby— a note from Mrs. Charles herself— well, no, not a very nice letter— a con- M A T. 59 sequential little personage, I think, aunty ; as proud of her baby as if it ^vas any virtue of hers." And here Marjory gave a little laugh, not at Mrs. Charles, but at the dark shadow of the man approaching, which lay along the causeway, and moved so, as if it pushed itself along, lying on its side. After she had laughed, Marjor}^, half ashamed of herself, looked at the man, and saw he was one of the porters from the nearest railway station, and then that he was approaching the house. She raised herself up with a little thrill of— something — yes, surprise, and more than surprise — though probably it was only some parcel for Aunt Jean arrived by the railway, which was ten miles off. By the time he had reached the door, and had kn(jcked heavily with his hand, May was sure that it was a parcel for her aunt, but nevertheless was aware of a little fluttering at her heart. "Do you often get things by the railway, aunty ?" she asked. " Me get things by the railway ? You forget I'm a lone old woman, and no acquainted with all your new-fangled ways. Not me. AY hen I want 60 MA Y. anything not to Leliad in Comlie, which is not often, it comes in the boat to Anstruther, as was always our way, and then ty the road, or private hand when there's an opportunity. Railway ! said she? —What's a' this, Betty ? ~ what's a' this? A letter ? Give it to me, you taupie, and make no fuss. Oh ! for Miss Marjory ! My certy ! Miss Marjory's in great request when her letters come following her here." " Eh, Miss Jean ! it's what they call a tele- graph — it's come from the railway at Kinnucher, wi' a man and horse. Eh, I'm awfu' feared it's ill news !" A telegram is always alarming to those who are unfamiliar with such startling messages; and even in these accustomed days there are few women who open one without a tremor. But at the time of which we write, they were unusual and inevitably meant something tragical. Betty stood gaping with excitement and terror, looking on, and Miss Jean let her knitting drop on her knee, and turned her sharp eyes towards her niece, while little Milly, pressing close to her sister, interposed her blond head almost between MAY. 61 Marjory and the brief, fated letter. Somehow, as she read it, she felt in the suddenness of the shock a conviction that she had known it all along, mingled with a curious confused self-reproach for the levity of her thoughts about that man's shadow. She read it, and her head seemed to buzz and shoot as if a hundred wheels had started into motion, and then stood still. She looked round at her aunt, as if across a sudden distance at once of time and of space ; all the colour fled from her cheeks, and her voice changed like her feelings. " Tom has had a bad acci- dent," she said. " God bless us ! Marjory, you're trying to break it to me quietly ; the boy's dead." "Xo!" said Marjor\% with a slight shiver. " xA. bad accident ; read it, aunty. And, Milly, run quick and get on your things." Miss Jean, sobered too in a moment, took the terrible missive, which, to her ignorant eyes, looked something diabolical. It was from some- body in England she made out, and was worded with what she felt to be cruel conciseness. "Tom has had a bad accident ; thrown from his horse. 62 M A Y. symptoms dangerous. He wishes you to tell his father ; and to come to him at once." " It may be a lie," said Miss Jean in a low voice, and trembling ; " very likely it's a lie. There's no beginning and no ending; and the man, if it is a man, has not signed his name." " Oh, I know his name ; he is one of Tom's friends. It is no lie !" said Marjory. And then she iadded, trembling too : " Aunt Jean, don't you feel, like me, that you always knew this would be the end ?" "The end! Who's speaking of the end f ' cried Miss Jean impatiently ; and then, all at once, she fell crying and sobbing. '' Oh, poor Thomas, poor Thomas ; that was so very proud of his boy ! Who's to tell him f ' "Will I run for the Minister?" said Bettj^ who had come back with Marjory's hat in her hand, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and all the excitement of a great family event in her mind. " The Minister is the right person to tell the father such ill news," said Miss Jean ; " and it's best to have him at hand, whatever happens. Betty, you can run — " MAY. 63 Marjory put up her haud to stop tlie eager mes- senger. Ill spite of herself, even at that moment of excitement, a vision of Dr. Murray clearing his throat, and preparing his way by a little speech about the vicissitudes of life gleamed before her. She could see him hemming and taking out his handkerchief with a look as tragically im- portant as if he were the chief actor in the scene. < "No!" she said: "not the Minister; send down to John Horsburgh's to get out our horses, Betty. I will tell him myself." " You're not equal to it, my poor bairn." " He will take it best from me ; and it's Tom's wish," said Marjory, putting on her hat. She felt the tears rising to her eyes ; but this was not a moment to let them fall. " I doubt if Thomas will take it as he ought to take it," said Miss Jean ; " he's a good man, but he's always had his own way. Perhaps, as you sa}^ Marjory, it is best to keep it all in the family, for a man's apt to say what he should not say in a sudden trouble. And I'm sorry I was so ill to you about keeping me waiting; what was ten 64 M A Y. minutes, here or there? Oh May, my bonnie himb ! the ekiest son !" And with this Miss Jean, melted by the bad news into nse of the pet name which had scarcely passed her lips since Marjory was a child, gave her niece a sudden embrace, by putting her thin hands on ]\Iay's two arms, and touching her chin with her own withered cheek. Very seldom was she moved to such an outburst of affection. The wave of her blonde borders across Marjory's face was the most passionate demonstration she was capable of; but when her nieces had gone, Miss Jean sat down at the window which looked to Pit- comlie, with a genuine ache in her old heart. " Eh, the bonnie laddie he was !" she said to herself; "eh, the stout and strong young man ! There never was an heir cut off that I mind of in our family before. But Thomas was aye foolish, ver}' foolish; and many a time I've told him what indulgence would come to. Lord help us all, both living and dying ! It's aye a special blessing of Providence, whatever happens, that Marjory's a courageous creature ; and that Charlie's babies are both sons." M A Y. 65 Thus the old woman comforted herself, who was near the ending of all mortal yicissitude ; and Pitcomlie lay fair and calm in the sun, greatly indifferent who might come or go — one or another, what did it matter to the old house, which had outlasted so 'many generations? what did it matter to the calm world, which takes all individual sorrows so easily ? But to some atoms of humanity what a difference it made I How dark the heavens had grown all at once, and how clouded the sun ! Marjory said not a word all the way home, as she rode with her little sister by her side. How they had chattered as they came: and how Milly had called " May I May I" a dozen times in a minute ; the prelude of ever}^ sentence. Milly kept as close to her sister now as she could, and some- times stroked her skirt with her little hand and the whip in it, in token of silent sympathy. There was urgent need to reach home ; but Marjory did not go fast. It was no easy task she had before her. Her father was fond of her she knew : perhaps more fond than of either ©f his sons ; but his heir, with all his extravagances, with all his YOL. I. F Oi) MAY. folly and wildiiess, had been his delight and pride. There are some women who are saved from all the shocks and pains of life ; everyone around them instinctively standing forth to pro- tect them, and shield off the blow ; but there are some, on the other hand, to whom it comes natural to receive the sharpest and first thrusts of adversity, and blunt the spear in their own bosoms before it penetrates any other. Marjory was one of this class, — a class instantly recognized and put to use by the instinct of humanity. It had seemed natural to Tom to put this duty upon her ; natural to Tom's friend to communi- cate it to her, without any attempt at breaking the news. And she herself accepted her office, simply, feeling it natural too. 67 CHAPTER IV. The house of Pitcomlie lay very still and quiet in the fitful sunshine, when the daughters of the family reached its open door. The door stood always open, unsuspicious, disclosing the way into its most private corners to any comers. It had nothing to conceal. At this hour in the afternoon, it was exceptionally still. The gen- tlemen were out, the servants all absorbed into their own part of the house, and not a stir nor sound announced the presence of a large house- hold. The brightness of the day was clouded, but yet held its own by moments, the sun coming out now and then with double brilliancy from the edge of the clouds which were driven over its face one by one. As Marjory and her little sist