The Twa Miss Dawsons Part 42

Maggie, red and angry, looked from one to the other as if she would have liked to say more. Her mother laughed. She knew Maggie's admiration for young Miss Jean of old, but Mrs Cairnie said sourly,--

"It's weel seen that ye belong to the rising generation. In my day la.s.sies werena in the way o' takin' the words out o' their mother's mouth, to say naething o' folk four times their age. As for young Miss Jean, she's liker ither folk than ye think."

"Whisht, mother. See yonder is Miss Dawson coming down the street."

"Ay, she'll be on her way to the house in the High-street, though why I should be bidden whisht at the sight o' her, I dinna ken. And there's one thing sure. Naebody has seen auld George on his way to the house yet. That doesna look as gin he were weel pleased."

"Eh, woman! Ha'e ye forgotten? It was there he took Mary Keith a bride. Let him be ever so weel pleased, it will give him a sair heart to go there again."

There was a slight pause in preparation for Miss Dawson's greeting, but before she came near them, she was joined by her father and both pa.s.sed on with only a word.

"He's hame again. And I canna say I think he looks ower weel pleased,"

said Mrs Cairnie.

"It is of Mary Keith he is thinking," said her friend. "He has a feelin' heart for a' sae down as he looks. I doubt he has an ill half hour before him."

In the mean time Jean and her father had reached the gate which opened into the garden of the High-street house. It was a large and well-built house, higher and with wider windows than most of the houses in Portie, and on the whole it was a suitable place of abode for a young man of George's means and station. There was only a strip of green between it and the street, but behind it was a large walled garden into which Mr Dawson had never been since he left it for Saughleas long ago. Indeed he had hardly seen the house since the death of his wife. He never came to the town over the fields as the young people were in the way of doing, and he always turned into the High-street from the turnpike road at a lower point than this.

"Papa," said Jean, arresting her hand which held the old-fashioned knocker of the door, "well go home to-night and come over in the morning. You are tired."

"No, no. We'll get it ower to-night," said her father in a voice which he made gruff in trying to make it steady.

Jean followed the servant into the kitchen and lingered there a while, and Mr Dawson went alone into the once familiar rooms, and not a word of sorrow or sympathy was spoken between them, though the daughter's heart ached for the pain which she knew was throbbing at the heart of her father. He was looking from the window over the garden to the sea, and he did not turn as Jean came in, so she did not speak, but went here and there giving a touch to the things over the arrangement of which she had spent time and taken pleasure during the last few weeks.

"You must have made yourself busy this while, Jean," said her father coming forward at last. "And I must say you have done well. It is all that can be desired, I would think. There are some things coming from London, however."

"Does it not look nice? George had his say about it all. I only helped. I think Marion will be pleased."

"But they should have been guided by me, and come straight to Saughleas.

That would have been the best way."

"I'm no' so sure. I think it was natural and right that George should wish to be the head of his own house. No, papa. You are master at Saughleas and ought to be, and I am mistress. Oh! yes, we would both have given up willingly enough, but then neither George nor Marion would have willingly taken our places. But never mind, papa. It will all come in time, and sooner than you think. And I like to think of George bringing his bride to the very house where you brought mamma."

It was a rare thing for Jean to speak her mother's name to her father.

It came now with a smile, but with a rush of tears also, which surprised herself quite as much as they surprised her father, and she turned away to hide them. It was her father's loss she was thinking of rather than her own.

"Ay, my la.s.sie! May they be as blessed here as we were," said her father.

And so the first look of his once happy home was gotten over with no more tender words between them, and they went slowly home together, through the fields this time.

Many things had wrought toward the change which Mrs Cairnie and other folk as well saw in Mr Dawson about this time. The new life which George was making honourable among his fellow townsmen, the firm stand he took on the side of right in all matters where his influence could be brought to bear, the light hold that wealth, or the winning of it for its own sake, had ever had upon him, had all by slow degrees told on the old man's opinions and feelings. But as to his wish for his son's marriage with Marion Calderwood, it was Marion herself who had brought that about.

He had noticed her, and had liked her frank, fearless ways before she left Portie, and the sight-seeing together in London, and more still, the few quiet days which she had spent with Miss Jean at Saughleas, won him quite. It was going beyond the truth, as Mrs Saugster had said, to declare that the old man had made the marriage, though it is doubtful whether it would have come about so soon, or whether it would have come about at all, if it had not been for a question or two that he had put to his sister as he sat once in the gloaming in her house.

Then there was a softly spoken word or two between Miss Jean and her nephew, and then George went straight to his father.

"Father, I am going to ask Marion Calderwood to be my wife, if you will give your consent."

It would not have been like Mr Dawson if he had shown at the first word the pleasure with which he heard it.

"You are of age now, George, and your ain man. I have no right to hinder you."

"Father," said George, after a moment's silence, "I shall think you have not forgiven the past, if you say the like of that."

The old man's hand was raised to shade his eyes; he could not quite trust his face to hide his feelings now, but he said in a voice which he tried to make indifferent,--

"I suppose it is to be her or n.o.body. Is that what you would say to me?"

George made no answer to this.

"I shall never ask her without your full and free consent."

Mr Dawson's hand fell and he turned sharply upon him. "And what about her feelings, if that is to be the way?"

"I have never given her a word or a look that a brother might not give to a sister. But I cannot but hope--" added George with a sudden light in his eye, and a rush of boyish colour to his face. "And I thought you liked Marion, father?"

"Like her?" said his father rising. "George, man, go in G.o.d's name and bring her home. She shall be to me like my own daughter. And the sooner the better."

So George went to London and won his bride--"too easily," her mother said. Indeed George had more trouble to win the mother than the daughter. It was to the mother he went first.

As for her, unless she could blot out altogether the remembrance of the sorrow and the hard thoughts of all the past, how could she consent to give her child to him?

"And would it not be well to blot them out?" said George.

"Ay, if it could be done. But as for me--I canna forget my Elsie--"

"And do I forget Elsie? when Marion looks at me with Elsie's eyes and speaks to me with her voice, and--"

"And will that content my Marion, think ye? George, Marion is not just what her sister was. She is of a deeper nature, and is a stronger woman in every way. She is worthy of being loved for her own sake, and nothing less would content her, though she might think it for a while.

And oh! George, I cannot bear the thought of having her free heart and her happy life disturbed. To think that she must go through all that!"

said the widow with a sigh.

"Dear mother," said George--it was not the first time he had called her so--and he took her unwilling hand between his own as he spoke, "she shall not be disturbed, unless you give me leave to speak; I will go away again without a word. I will not even see her for a while. I cannot promise to give up the thought of her altogether, but I will go away now."

But Mrs Calderwood said,--

"No, George. You must see her since you are here, though you must not speak to her of this. She is no longer a child, and I fear I did an unwise thing in trying to keep you out of her sight so long. It kept you in her mind all the more--not you, but a lad of her own fancy with your name. Miss Jean ay said it would be far better to let things take their course, and so it might have been."

"And do you mean that you kept us from meeting of your own will?"

"Dinna look at me in that way, George. What could I do? You were both young, and she ay made a hero of you. And there was your father. And I wouldna have my bairn's heart troubled. Not that I mean that she cares for you, as she ought not--"

"Dear mother, let me ask her."

Mrs Calderwood made a sudden impatient movement. She loved the young man dearly. And her own son, who to her proud thought was "a man among men," was scarcely dearer. He was a son in all but the name. She loved him, and she believed in him; and even to herself, as she looked at his face, it seemed a foolish and a wrong thing to send him away.

But then it had always been in her thought that these two must never come together in this way, because of her dead Elsie, and because of the hard old man's angry scorn, which, though she had forgiven him, she could not forget. She could not change easily. It was not her nature.

And she could not bear that her Marion's heart should be disturbed from its maiden peace. She moved about the room uncertain what she ought to say or do, and utterly impatient of her own hesitation. When she sat down again George came and stood before her.