Wee Wifie Part 55

"Yes, I have brought her. I asked her to drive with me, and she never guessed the reason; I could not have persuaded her to come if she had.

Dear Erle, I know your sense of honor, and that you would never free yourself; but now I give you back this"--drawing the diamond ring from her finger; "it is Miss Trafford's, not mine. I can not keep another woman's property."

"Eva," he remonstrated, following her to the door, for she seemed about to leave them; "I will not accept this sacrifice; I refuse to be set free," but she only smiled at him.

"Go to her, Erle," she whispered, "she is worthy even of you; I would not marry you now even if she refused you, but"--with a look of irrepressible tenderness--"she will not refuse you;" and before he could answer her she was gone.

And Fern, looking at them through a sudden mist, tried to follow Evelyn, but either she stumbled or her strength forsook her. But all at once she found herself in Erle's arms, and pressed closely to him.

"Did you hear her, my darling?" he said, as the fair head drooped on his shoulder; "she has given us to each other--she has set me free to love you. Oh, Fern, I tried so hard to do my duty to her; she was good and true, and I was fond of her--I think she is the n.o.blest woman on G.o.d's earth--but it was you I loved, and she found out I was miserable, and now she refuses to marry me; and--and--will you not say one word to me, my dearest?"

How was she to speak to him when her heart was breaking with happiness--when her tears were falling so fast that Erle had to kiss them away. Could it be true that he was really beside her; that out of the mist and gloom her prince had come to her; that the words she had pined to hear from his lips were now caressing her ear.

But Evelyn went up to her room.

It is not ordained in this life that saints and martyrs should walk the earth with a visible halo round their heads; yet, when such women as Margaret Ferrers and Evelyn Selby go on their weary way silently and uncomplaining, surely their guardian angel carries an unseen nimbus with which to crown them in another world.

CHAPTER XL.

AUNT JEANIE'S GUEST.

The cooing babe a veil supplied, And if she listened none might know, Or if she sighed; Or if forecasting grief and care, Unconscious solace then she drew, And lulled her babe, and unaware Lulled sorrow too.

JEAN INGELOW.

All the winter Fay remained quietly at the old Manse, tenderly watched over by her kind old friend and faithful Jean.

For many weeks, indeed months, her want of strength and weary listlessness caused Mrs. Duncan great anxiety. She used to shake her head and talk vaguely to Jean of young folk who had gone into a waste with naught but fretting, and had been in their graves before their friends realized that they were ill; to which Jean would reply, "'Deed and it is the truth, mistress; and I am thinking it is time that Mrs.

St. Clair had her few 'broth.'" For all Jean's sympathy found expression in deeds, not words.

Jean seldom dealt largely in soft words; she was somewhat brisk and sharp of tongue--a bit biting, like her moorland breezes in winter time. In spite of her reverential tenderness for Fay, she would chide her quite roughly for what she called her fretting ways. She almost s.n.a.t.c.hed the baby away from her one day when Fay was crying over him.

"Ah, my bonny man," she said, indignantly, "would your mither rain tears down on your sweet face, and make you sair-hearted before your time? Whisht, then, my bairn, and Jean will catch the sunshine for you;" and Jean danced him vigorously before the window, while Fay penitently dried her eyes.

"Oh, Jean, give him back to me. I did not mean to make him cry; the tears will come sometimes, and I can not keep them back. I will try to be good--I will, indeed."

But baby Hugh had no wish to go back to his mother; he was crowing and pulling Jean's flaxen hair, and would not heed Fay's sad little blandishments.

"The bairns are like auld folks," remarked Jean, triumphant at her success, and eager to point a moral; "they can not bide what is not bright. There is a time for everything, as Solomon says, 'a time to mourn and a time to dance;' but there is never a time for a bairn to be sair-hearted; neither nature nor Solomon would hold with that, as Master Fergus would say. Ech, sirs! but he is a fine preacher, is Master Fergus."

Fay took Jean's reproof very humbly. She shed no more tears when her baby was in her arms. It was touching to see how she strove to banish her grief, that the baby smiles might not be dimmed. Jean would nod her head with grim approval over her pile of finely ironed things as she heard Fay singing in a low sweet voice, and the baby's delighted coos answering her. A lump used to come in Jean's throat, and a suspicious moisture to her keen blue eyes, as she would open the door in the twilight and see the child-mother kneeling down beside the old-fashioned cradle, singing him to sleep. "He likes the songs about the angels best," Fay would say, looking up wistfully in Jean's face.

"I sing him all my pretty songs, only not the sad ones. I am sure he loves me to do it."

"May be the bairn does not know his mither apart from the women angels," muttered Jean, in a gruff aside, as she laid down her pile of dainty linen. Jean knew more than any one else; she could have told her mistress, if she chose, that it was odd that all Mrs. St. Clair's linen was marked "F. Redmond." But she kept her own counsel.

Jean would not have lifted a finger to restore Fay to her husband. The blunt Scotch handmaiden could not abide men--"a puir-hearted, f.e.c.kless lot," as she was wont to say. Of course the old master and Mr. Fergus were exceptions to this. Jean worshiped her master; and though she held the doctrine of original sin, would never have owned that Mr.

Fergus had a fault. But to the rest of mankind she was suspiciously uncharitable. "To think he drove her from him--the puir bit lammie,"

she would say; "and yet the law can't have the hanging of him.

Redmond, indeed! but he won't own to any such name. It is lucky the old mistress is not ower sharp-sighted--but there, such an idea would never get into her head."

Fay's secret was quite safe with Jean, and, as the weeks and months went on, a feeling of utter security came over her. She hardly knew how time pa.s.sed. There were hours when she did not always feel unhappy. The truth was, she was for a long time utterly benumbed by pain; a total collapse of mind and body had ensued on her flight from her home. She had suffered too much for her age and strength. Sir Hugh's alarming illness, and her suspense and terror, had been followed by the shock of hearing from his own lips of his love and engagement to Margaret; and, before she could rally her forces to bear this new blow, her baby had been born.

Fay used to wonder sometimes at her own languid indifference. "Am I really able to live without Hugh?" she would say to herself. "I thought it must have killed me long ago, knowing that he does not love me; but somehow I do not feel able to think of it all; and when I go to bed I fall asleep."

Fay was mercifully unconscious of her own heart-break, though the look in her eyes often made Mrs. Duncan weep. When she grew a little stronger her old restlessness returned, and she went beyond the garden and the orchard. She never wandered about the village, people seemed to stare at her so; but her favorite haunt was the falls. There was a steep little path by a wicket-gate that led to a covered rustic bench, where Fay could see the falls above her shooting down like a silver streak from under the single graceful arch of the road-way; not falling sheer down, but broken by many a ledge and bowlder of black rock, where in summer-time the spray beat on the long delicate fronds of ferns.

Fay remembered how she used to stroll through the under-wood and gather the slender blue and white harebells that came peeping out of the green moss, or hunted for the waxy blossoms of the bell-heather; how lovely the place had looked then, with the rowans or witchens, as they called them--the mountain ash of the south, drooping over the water, laden heavily with cl.u.s.ters of coral-like berries, sometimes tinging the snowy foam with a faint rose-tint, and fringed in the background with larch and silver birch; the whole ma.s.s of luxuriant foliage nearly shutting out the little strip of sky which gleamed pearly blue through a delicate network of leaves.

It was an enchanting spot in summer or autumn, but even in winter Fay loved it; its solitude and peacefulness fascinated her. But one day she found its solitude invaded. She had been some months at the Manse, but she had not once spoken to the young minister during his brief visits. She had kept to her room with a nervous shrinking from strangers; but she had watched him sometimes, between the services, pacing up and down the garden as though he were thinking deeply.

He was a tall, broad-shouldered young man, with a plain, strong-featured face as rugged as his own mountains; but his keen gray eyes could look soft enough at times, as pretty Lilian Graham knew well; for the willful little beauty had been unable to say no to him as she did her other lovers. It was not easy to bid Fergus Duncan go about his business when he had made up his mind to bide, and as the young minister had decidedly made up his mind that Lilian Graham should be his promised wife, he got his way in that; and Lilian grew so proud and fond of him that she never found out how completely he ruled her, and how seldom she had her own will.

Fay heard with some dismay that Mr. Fergus was coming to live at the Manse after Christmas; she would have to see him at meals, and in the evening, and would have no excuse for retiring into her room. Now, if any visitor came to the Manse, Lilian Graham, or one of her sisters--for there were seven strapping la.s.ses at the farm, and not one of them wed yet, as Mrs. Duncan would say--Fay would take refuge in the kitchen, or sit in the minister's room--anything to avoid the curious eyes and questioning that would have awaited her in the parlor; but now if Mr. Fergus lived there, Lilian Graham would be always there too.

Mr. Fergus was rather curious about Aunt Jeanie's mysterious guest. He had caught sight of Mrs. St. Clair once or twice at the window, and had been much struck with her appearance of youth; and his remark, after first seeing her in the little kirk, had been, "Why, Aunt Jeanie, Mrs. St. Clair looks quite a child; how could any one calling himself a man ill-use a little creature like that;" for Mrs. Duncan had carefully infused into her nephew's ear a little fabled account of Fay's escape from her husband, to which he listened with Scotch caution and a good deal of incredulity. "Depend upon it, there are faults on both sides," he returned, obstinately. "We do not deal in villains now-a-days. You are so soft, Aunt Jeanie; you always believe what people tell you. I should like to have a talk with Mrs. St.

Clair; indeed, I think it my duty as a minister to remonstrate with a young wife when she has left her husband."

"Oh, you will frighten the bit la.s.sie, Fergus, if you speak and look so stern," replied his aunt in an alarmed voice. "You see you are only a lad yourself, and may be Lilian wouldn't care to have you so ready with your havers with a pretty young thing like Mrs. St. Clair. Better leave her to Jean and me." But she might as well have spoken to the wind, for the young minister had made up his mind that it was his duty to shepherd this stray lamb.

He had already spoken out his mind to Lilian; the poor little girl had been much overpowered by the sight of Fay in the kirk. Fay's beauty had made a deep impression on her; and the knowledge that her betrothed would be in daily contact with this dainty piece of loveliness was decidedly unpalatable to her feelings.

Lilian was quite aware of her own charms; her dimples and sweet youthful bloom had already brought many a lover to her feet; but she was a sensible little creature in spite of her vanity, and she knew that she could not compare with Mrs. St. Clair any more than painted delf could compare with porcelain.

So first she pouted and gave herself airs when her lover came to the farm, and then, when he coaxed her, she burst into a flood of honest tears, and bewailed herself because Fergus was to live up at the Manse, when no one knew who Mrs. St. Clair might be, for all she had a face like a picture.

"Oh, oh, I see now," returned Fergus, with just the gleam of a smile lighting up his rugged face; "it is just a piece of jealousy, Lilian, because Mrs. St. Clair--to whom I have never spoken, mind you--happens to be a prettier girl than yourself"--which was wicked and impolitic of Fergus.

"But you will be speaking to her, and at every meal-time too, and all the evenings when Mrs. Duncan is up in the minister's room; and it is not what I call fair, Fergus, with me down at the farm, and you always up in arms if I venture to give more than a good-day to the lads."

"Well, you see you belong to me, Lilian, and I am a careful man and look after my belongings. Mrs. St. Clair is one of my flock now, and I must take her in hand. Whisht, la.s.sie," as Lilian averted her face and would not look at him, "have you such a mean opinion of me that you think I am not to be trusted to look at any woman but yourself, and I a minister with a cure of souls; that is a poor look-out for our wedded life." And here Fergus whispered something that brought the dimples into play again; and after a little more judicious coaxing, Lilian was made to understand that ministers were not just like other men, and must be suffered to go their "ain gait."

And the upshot of this conversation was that Fay found herself confronted at the wooden gate one day by a tall, broad-shouldered young man, who she knew was the young minister. Of course he was going to see the falls, and she was about to pa.s.s him with a slight bow, when he stopped her and offered his hand. "I think we know each other, Mrs. St. Clair, without any introduction. I am Fergus Duncan, and I have long wanted to be acquainted with Aunt Jeanie's guest;" and then he held open the gate and escorted her back to the Manse.

Fay could not find fault with the young man's bluntness; she had no right to hold herself aloof from Mrs. Duncan's nephew. He must know how she had avoided him all these months, but he seemed too good-humored to resent it. He talked to her very pleasantly about the weather and the falls and his uncle's health, and Fay answered him with her usual gentleness.

They parted in the porch mutually pleased with each other; but the young man drew a long breath when he found himself alone.

"Ech, sirs! as Jean says, but this is the bonniest la.s.s I have ever set eyes on. Poor little Lilian! no wonder she felt herself a bit upset. Come, I must get to the bottom of this; Aunt Jeanie is too soft for anything. Why, the sables she wore were worth a fortune; and when she took off her gloves her diamond and emerald rings fairly blinded one."

Fergus arrived at the Manse with all his traps about a fortnight after this; and when the first few days were over, Fay discovered that she had no reason to dislike Mr. Fergus's company.

He was always kind and good-natured, and took a great deal of notice of the baby. Indeed, he never seemed more content than when baby Hugh was on his knee, pulling his coa.r.s.e reddish hair, and gurgling gleefully over this new game. Fay began to like him very much when she had seen him with her boy; and after that he found little trouble in drawing her into conversation.

His first victory was inducing her to make friends with Lilian. Fay, who shrunk painfully from strangers, acceded very nervously to this request. But when Lilian came, her shy, pretty manners won Fay's heart, and the two became very fond of each other.

Fergus used to have long puzzled talks with Aunt Jeanie about her protege. "What is to be done about Mrs. St. Clair when Lilian and I are married?" he would ask; "the Manse can not hold us all."