Mrs. Dorriman Volume I Part 6

"You may on the contrary find out much that puzzled people at the time of his death. No one understands how he managed to lose all his money;"

and then being a discreet woman she stopped short--she must not say a word to set Mrs. Dorriman against her brother.

"Do you think it might do good?" the poor woman said, with a flash in her eyes--a ray of hope--that gleamed there for a moment and faded again. "No!" she repeated, "I cannot do it now. I cannot risk it."

Mrs. Macfarlane felt she had no right to urge her to pursue any course of action, when she was ignorant of the real history of her past, and could not foresee the consequences; but she went to summon her husband.

Mr. Macfarlane was not quite so willing as his wife to throw himself into the situation. Her warm heart often led her to take responsibilities his caution would rather have done without.

As usual, his reluctance did away with any doubts still lingering in Mrs. Dorriman's mind; the moment a thing is difficult or unattainable it becomes desirable.

He accepted the trust, however, and then suddenly said, "Are your marriage settlements in your brother's hands?"

"My marriage settlements? I never had any that I know of," she answered, helplessly.

"Never had any marriage settlements?" He could hardly believe her.

"No, at least I never knew of any. I suppose I should know all about anything affecting me in that way."

"I suppose so." He mused for a moment. The same thought that had occurred to his wife came to him in a still stronger shape. He must say nothing that would raise her suspicions about her brother, or that in any way would make her going to his house more painful than it evidently was.

"I strongly advise you, Mrs. Dorriman, to read through those papers.

They may throw a great deal of light upon your position. You may be in a better, a far better position, than you think."

"I cannot," she said, in a low voice. "I am afraid. I may some day bring myself to do so, but I cannot do it now. Will you keep them for me? Oh, do! and never let _any_ one, never let my brother know you have them.

Some day if I am in great difficulty, and cannot see my way, I will ask you to read them."

She stopped for a moment, and then, turning towards them with a pa.s.sion they had hardly credited her with, she said, with tears rolling over her face, "You do not know, how can you! But I was so hard. I could not forgive my husband for his want of success. He loved me dearly, and I--I had no love to give him. Then when he died I forgave him, and he knew it; but I never thought of this, that I was to be dependent again and lose my home and all.... I am beginning to think hardly of him again. I am afraid of seeing something in those papers ... something that may make me hate...."

She paused, broken down by the overpowering emotion that had taken possession of her, and Mr. Macfarlane was moved, and went over to her and took her hand. "Forgive me," he said, "I will urge you no more; but before taking this with me," he added, laying his hand upon the box, "we will seal it up together." He got some packing-paper and some rope, and he made her seal it up with her own seal. She obeyed him quietly; her sudden and unwonted burst of emotion having left her calmer, quieter, and paler than usual.

When she had parted from these real friends she felt as though she was losing all she cared for; in her repressed life so little affection had ever come to her, save and except that her husband had given her.

The papers were safe and out of her hands. This was a fact she dwelt on with great satisfaction when the last sound of the carriage broke through the quiet. Mrs. Dorriman went out. She was going up the hills to say farewell to the old people to whom her going was a real grief, and before going went to give Jean orders to prepare something against her return, and something for the following day.

Jean was looking full of importance, and her mistress, well accustomed to her ways, knew that she had something to tell, had something to reveal, and that she intended to be questioned. "What are you going to do, my poor Jean, when we part to-morrow? You have not yet told me."

"We are not going to part here," said Jean, a look of triumph on her face.

"No," said Mrs. Dorriman, who felt this coming parting sorely. "I supposed you would go to the station and see me off. I am glad of that."

"Further than that," said Jean, emphatically.

Mrs. Dorriman looked up at her. What did she mean?

"I am going all the way to Renton itself," said Jean, in a tone of determination.

"But my dear Jean--my brother...."

"Your brother's not mine, and I have nothing to do with him, nor he with me. I'm going to the town of Renton, and I've got a situation there; do you suppose I would let you go where I could never see you--or you me?

No! no! I settled it first in my own mind and then I arranged it with other people, and the same train that takes you takes me, and my kist's just away with your things, in the same cart."

Mrs. Dorriman could not speak, but the forlorn woman kissed the ruddy face before her--half her trouble seemed lightened--and Jean, touched and awkward under so strange a demonstration, patted her back with a hard and hearty hand and disappeared from her mistress's eyes.

Mrs. Dorriman walked up the river-side with a happier heart than she had had lately. With one friend near her in the shape of Jean she felt as though nothing mattered quite so much; she needed some comfort. With all the enthusiastic love for the beauty of the home she was leaving for ever, she was also leaving the little self-made duties that had become pleasant to her. She had to face the sorrow of those who had become her friends; she could promise them nothing from a distance--she had nothing of her own; she did not suppose her brother would continue to give her an income; she must guard against making promises she could not fulfil.

The same words met her all round, "What a pity you're going! It's we that will miss you, my dear. Oh, what is it for? Is it for company's sake?"

They could not get over it, her hands were shaken till they tingled again. When she was going home one of the eldest of the old women stood out from her doorway like an old prophetess. Her grey hair was smoothed back under her _mutch_, her black eyes sparkled, and her wrinkled face showed up white in the gloaming.

She was the daughter of a man famous in his day, a man who had had the gift of second sight, and though she had not inherited his gift she was looked up to, she had so many of her father's sayings at her fingers'

ends, and she had much of his manner.

"Come here," she said, "and set ye down." Mrs. Dorriman could not do this, but she asked her to go towards home with her. It was getting late, and the light was fading fast. Christie was attached to Mrs.

Dorriman especially because she and her forbears had lived near the old home on old Mr. Sandford's property, and she had a great deal to say about the way the sale of the place had been predicted and foreseen long years before by her father.

This evening, not unnaturally, she was full of it all. "I mind weel,"

she began in the solemn tone appropriate to the subject, "hearing my father tell what he saw, and he knew he had seen what meant evil to the place and to the Laird, and he grieved about it, indeed he did."

"Was that when he saw a light?" asked Mrs. Dorriman.

"It was a light and it was not a light, my dear, it was something of fire."

"Tell me about it again, Christie. I get confused about it sometimes."

"You see, my dear, the common folks, some of them have ghosts and see spirits, and so on, but the gentry, the real old gentry, they have a different kind of ghost, there are _things that happen_--you'll understand."

At all events, Mrs. Dorriman understood what Christie meant to express, and even at that moment and time of unhappiness the idea presented to her of the superior ghosts bestowed upon the gentry made her smile.

"Well, Christie, it may be so," she said, "but the idea is new to me."

"It is not new to us, and it was not new to my father. I do not mean that spirits are different, though we all know that spirits take different shapes; but when the head of a house goes, or any misfortune comes nigh him, there will be strange things seen. My father saw these things--it has not been given to me to see them--perhaps so is best. My father had many dark hours, those that have these gifts must go through great anguish. I have seen him sitting up at night and looking wild--wild. I have heard him say strange things. It was awful...."

"And about this fire?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, a little anxious to get home now the darkness was making the footpath difficult to see.

"Ah," said Christie, "many and many a time I have heard that story. He was in his house, the house high up the hill under the wood, and was restless; the hour was coming upon him, and he could not breathe. He threw open the door and stepped out in the darkness. You'll mind the steep hill that went up to the house, and how the old house itself stood up away from everything?"

Mrs. Dorriman made a gesture of a.s.sent. The recollection of her old home, and the way in which it had been sold to the first bidder, was inexpressibly bitter to her. She was depressed and sad, and felt as though she had small need of other and painful memories, on this, her last evening here.

"From the east and the west, from the north and the south, gathered darkness--so black was the night that not a thing was to be seen--the hill where your father's house stood was but a shadow, and the lights in the windows shone out with a wonderful power.

"The heavens were in gloom from a gathering storm, and the wind was howling up and down, and up and down--none but my father, who understood things, would have stood as he stood and faced it. Then the clouds opened, and a great ball of fire came down; it broke over the house, my dear, over the house, and divided itself into three pieces--only three; and a piece went on the east corner, and one flame touched the south and one the north, and only the one corner, the one from the west, was left untouched, and that meant a great deal, and then the fire met and fell on the house itself." Christie's voice was so impressive, her manner so solemn, that Mrs. Dorriman, though the story was one she had often heard before, felt as though she was hearing it for the first time.

"What did it mean?" she asked breathlessly.

"It meant, my dear, what happened. Your father lost the lady (she came from the south), and that was one misfortune, and a very great one; then he lost his suit--the law-suit about some land in the North. Then he died himself, poor man, and that was the third thing--and the house was sold."

"So the misfortunes were complete?" and Mrs. Dorriman pressed forward a little and shivered. It was impossible not to be uncomfortably impressed by Christie--her tall figure and commanding gestures looming large beside her in the ever-increasing darkness.

"Not complete, my dear--not ended. No, that was what my father always said, he talked often and often about it, that is why it is written upon my brain. All he said came true, and why should this not come true? He saw it all to the end and he read it, and he was meant to read it." She dropped her voice in saying this, and once more was silent.