The Twa Miss Dawsons Part 12

"Sorry! That says little. My heart is like to break for him whiles-- and it might have been so different!" said Jean sadly.

"If he were living, we should have heard from him before this time."

"Who can say? Oh! he is living! I canna think he is dead. Poor papa, he must have a sore heart often."

"Jean," said her sister after a long silence, "do you think he would do it all over again? I mean--do you think he would be as hard on--you or me?"

"Do you mean--Willie?" asked Jean at last. "Well--Willie or another.

It is not easy for my father to change."

"No, it is not. But, May, have patience. Things often come round in strange ways when we least expect it. If George would only come again!

How long is it since the 'John Seaton' sailed?"

"A good while since."

Jean could have told her sister the days and even the hours that had pa.s.sed since then, but she did not. When she asked the question, it was her brother she was thinking of; but May, who could not know that, believed that she was thinking of Willie Calderwood.

"He may be captain next voyage," said May. "But I wish he could leave the sea altogether. My father could open the way for that, if he chose."

"Leave the sea? Is it Willie you are speaking about? He would never do it. May, you must not ask it of him. It would be putting him in a false position altogether. He is a true sailor."

"Oh! I shall not ask him. It would do little good. But I wonder at you all the same. You have no ambition. He can never be more than just a sea captain--and always away."

"A sea captain!" repeated Jean. "A sailor!--And what would you have?

Would you put him behind the counter in a shop? or set him to casting up figures or counting money in a bank? Would you even old Mr Petrie or James or any of them with the like of him?"

May laughed. "Oh! well, a sailor let him be. But ye needna flee at me as though I had said something horrible. And we needna vex ourselves.

That will do no good."

"It must be late," said Jean rising. "She takes it quietly enough, and it is well she does. It would wear her out to be ay thinking and fearing and longing for his coming home, as I long for poor George's.

She is ay light-hearted, dear child. G.o.d bless her," added Jean with a sigh.

The rest of the summer pa.s.sed quietly away. The little Corbetts went home strong and brown and with a wonderful knowledge of and delight in their father's mother tongue, rejoicing over the invitation for another visit the next summer, if all should be well.

They were much missed in Saughleas, and so was Miss Jean, who, though she enjoyed a visit to her brother and her nieces now and then, liked best the quiet of her own house, and the silent secret doing of the work which she had chosen among the sinful and suffering poor creatures of which, especially in winter-time, Portie had its share. Her stay at Saughleas had done her good. She left her crutch behind her there, and she was able now to go with her staff in one hand and "help and comfort"

in the other, to those who in the back sheets and lanes of the town needed her help most. At Saughleas they missed her greatly, for various reasons, and chiefly for this, that at meal times, and at other times also, Mr Dawson was ready to fall into his old habit of silence and reserve, when left alone with his daughters. This silence was good neither for them nor for himself.

"And I am going to try and have it otherwise," said Jean to herself, as she sat behind the urn, waiting for his coming the first morning they were alone.

He came in as usual with a bundle of papers in his hand, letters that had been received last night, and that must be answered this morning as soon as he reached the bank, and in the mean time he meant to look them over while he drank his coffee.

"I think," said his daughter looking straight into his face as he adjusted his spectacles, so that he might not let her remark fall as though it had been made to her sister, "I think Aunt Jean is the woman the most to be envied among all the women I know."

"Ay! Think ye that? And what new light ha'e ye gotten about her to-day?" said her father, arrested by her look rather than her words.

"No new light. Only I have been thinking about her last night and to-day. She is the best woman I know, and the happiest; and I envy her."

"Ye have but to follow in her steps, and ye'll be as good as she is,--in time," said her father dryly. "As to her happiness--I should say she perhaps makes the most of the means of happiness given to her, but otherwise I see little cause that you have to envy her. She is reasonable, and doesna let her wishes and her fancies get the better of her good sense, and so she is content."

"And if I were reasonable, would I be content, I wonder? As to being as good--that must come of higher teaching and peculiar discipline, and I doubt I shall never be good in her way."

"And what for no? Your aunt would be the first to tell you that you can get the higher teaching for the asking. And as for discipline--the chances are ye'll get your share as well as the rest of us."

"But not just in the same way. A long, patient, laborious, self-forgetting life hers has been--has it not? She is strong and she has been successful; yet she is not hard. She is good, but she is not down on wrong-doers in the way that some good folk are. If I had my choice, I think I would choose to have just such a life as she has had-- if it would make me like her."

Mr Dawson looked at his daughter in some surprise. Jean was not looking at him, but over his head far away to the sea, bright for the moment, under a gleam of sunshine.

"Would that be your choice? A life of labour, and then the life of a solitary single woman! I think I see you!" said her father with something like indignation in his tones.

May laughed. Jean's eyes came back from the sea with a vague, wistful look in them that startled her father.

"I think, Jean, ye hardly ken what ye're speaking about."

"Yes. About Aunt Jean. 'A solitary single woman?' No. Not solitary.

That has such a sorrowful sound. Oh! she is not solitary in an unhappy sense; even when she is quite alone in her own house by the sea."

"What I mean is, that she has neither husband nor child. She is alone in that sense. And if ye think that she hasna whiles felt--weel--as if she had missed something in life--that's no' my thought."

"Yes--and that is part of the discipline, I suppose. Missed something-- yes. But then, having had these things she might have missed that which makes her different from, and better than, any one else. I ken no one like my Aunt Jean."

"Weel--ye're no' far wrong there. And if ye had kenned her in her youth, you would have said the same. There were none like her then more than now. But she's growing unco frail-like now, poor body?" added Mr Dawson with a sigh.

And then there was more said. Mr Dawson went on to tell many stories of his sister's youth, all going to prove that there were few like her for sense and goodness even then. Most of these his daughters had heard before, but they liked to listen all the same. And Mr Dawson forgot his letters, and Jean forgot that it was only to keep his eyes away from them, that she had begun to speak about her aunt, and she took courage because of her success.

CHAPTER NINE.

AN INVITATION.

She was not always so successful; still she was successful to a degree that surprised herself, in withdrawing her father from the silent and sombre musings which of late had become habitual to him. This was the work which she set herself. Her time, while he was in the house, or near it, was given to him. She disturbed him doubtless now and then when he would have been better pleased to be left to himself; but upon the whole he responded to her advances, and by and by showed in many ways that he counted upon her interest in whatever he might be doing, and on such help as she could give.

In all matters connected with the management of the estate he took especial pains to claim her attention and interest. She tramped with him over the wet autumn fields in all weathers, and listened to his plans for the improvement of the place in the way of dikes and ditches and drains, and to plans that went further than these--plans which it would take years to carry out well and wisely. Her interest was real for the moment, and soon it became eager and intelligent as well. She not only listened to him, but she discussed, and suggested, and even differed from him in various matters, and held to her own opinions in a way that certainly did not displease him.

She tired of it all sometimes, however, and though she permitted no sign of it to appear to her father, she could not always hide it from her sister.

"And what is the good of it all? You cannot surely be vain enough to think that you are doing any good, or that papa cares to have you tramping about in the wet and the wind."

"Oh, I like it! And I may as well do it as any thing else. As to papa--yes, I think he likes it. I am better than no one to speak to, and--oh yes, I like it!"

"It is all nonsense!" said May with a shrug. "As for papa, he might enjoy it, if it were Peter Stark, or John Stott, or any one that could understand him, or give him a sensible answer;--but you!--What is the use of it?--and just look at your shoes and stockings!"

Jean looked down, as she was bidden, at her feet, and her soiled petticoats.

"They _are_ wet," said she, "and dirty."

"And tell me if you can, what is the good of it all?"

"It has made me hungry, and it will make me sleep, perhaps. And the best reason for it is, that I like it--as well as any thing."