Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876», sayfa 7

V

A year sped round again, and they heard of Mr. Eildon being in Scotland at the shooting, and as he was not very far off, they expected to see him any time. But it was getting to the end of September, and he had paid no visit, when one day, as the ladies were sitting at luncheon, he came in, looking very white and agitated. They were all startled: Miss Garscube grew white also, and felt herself trembling. Lady Arthur rose hurriedly and said, "What is it, George? what's the matter?"

"A strange thing has happened," he said. "I only heard of it a few minutes ago: a man rode after me with the telegram. My cousin George—Lord Eildon—has fallen down a crevasse in the Alps and been killed. Only a week ago I parted with him full of life and spirit, and I loved him as if he had been my brother;" and he bent his head to hide tears.

They were all silent for some moments: then in a low voice Lady Arthur said, "I am sorry for his father."

"I am sorry for them all," George said. "It is terrible;" then after a little he said, "You'll excuse my leaving you: I am going to Eildon at once: I may be of some service to them. I don't know how Frank will be able to bear this."

After he had gone away Alice felt how thoroughly she was nothing to him now: there had been no sign in his manner that he had ever thought of her at all, more than of any other ordinary acquaintance. If he had only looked to her for the least sympathy! But he had not. "If he only knew how well I understand him now!" she thought.

"It is a dreadful accident," said Lady Arthur, "and I am sorry for the duke and duchess." She said this in a calm way. It had always been her opinion that Lord Arthur's relations had never seen the magnitude of her loss, and this feeling lowered the temperature of her sympathy, as a wind blowing over ice cools the atmosphere. "I think George's grief very genuine," she continued: "at the same time he can't but see that there is only that delicate lad's life, that has been hanging so long by a hair, between him and the title."

"Lady Arthur!" exclaimed Alice in warm tones.

"I know, my dear, you are thinking me very unfeeling, but I am not: I am only a good deal older than you. George's position to-day is very different from what it was a year ago. If he were to write to you again, I would advise another kind of answer."

"He'll never write again," said Alice in a tone which struck the ear of Lady Arthur, so that when the young girl left the room she turned to Miss Adamson and said, "Do you think she really cares about him?"

"She has not made me her confidante," that lady answered, "but my own opinion is that she does care a good deal for Mr. Eildon."

"Do you really think so?" exclaimed Lady Arthur. "She said she did not at the time, and I thought then, and think still, that it would not signify much to George whom he married; and you know he would be so much the better for money. But if he is to be his uncle's successor, that alters the case entirely. I'll go to Eildon myself, and bring him back with me."

Lady Arthur went to Eildon and mingled her tears with those of the stricken parents, whose grief might have moved a very much harder heart than hers. But they did not see the state of their only remaining son as Lady Arthur and others saw it; for, while it was commonly thought that he would hardly reach maturity, they were sanguine enough to believe that he was outgrowing the delicacy of his childhood.

Lady Arthur asked George to return with her to Garscube Hall, but he said he could not possibly do so. Then she said she had told Miss Adamson and Alice that she would bring him with her, and they would be disappointed.

"Tell them," he said, "that I have very little time to spare, and I must spend it with Frank, when I am sure they will excuse me."

They excused him, but they were not the less disappointed, all the three ladies; indeed, they were so much disappointed that they did not speak of the thing to each other, as people chatter over and thereby evaporate a trifling defeat of hopes.

Mr. Eildon left his cousin only to visit his mother and sisters for a day, and then returned to London; from which it appeared that he was not excessively anxious to visit Garscube Hall.

But everything there went on as usual. The ladies painted, they went excursions, they wrote ballads; still, there was a sense of something being amiss—the heart of their lives seemed dull in its beat.

The more Lady Arthur thought of having sent away such a matrimonial prize from her house, the more she was chagrined; the more Miss Garscube tried not to think of Mr. Eildon, the more her thoughts would run upon him; and even Miss Adamson, who had nothing to regret or reproach herself with, could not help being influenced by the change of atmosphere.

Lady Arthur's thoughts issued in the resolution to re-enter society once more; which resolution she imparted to Miss Adamson in the first instance by saying that she meant to go to London next season.

"Then our plan of life here will be quite broken up," said Miss A.

"Yes, for a time."

"I thought you disliked society?"

"I don't much like it: it is on account of Alice I am going. I may just as well tell you: I want to bring her and George together again if possible."

"Will she go if she knows that is your end?"

"She need not know."

"It is not a very dignified course," Miss Adamson said.

"No, and if it were an ordinary case I should not think of it."

"But you think him a very ordinary man?"

"A duke is different. Consider what an amount of influence Alice would have, and how well she would use it; and he may marry a vain, frivolous, senseless woman, incapable of a good action. Indeed, most likely, for such people are sure to hunt him."

"I would not join in the hunt," said Miss Adamson. "If he is the man you suppose him to be, the wound his self-love got will have killed his love; and if he is the man I think, no hunters will make him their prey. A small man would know instantly why you went to London, and enjoy his triumph."

"I don't think George would: he is too simple; but if I did not think it a positive duty, I would not go. However, we shall see: I don't think of going before the middle of January."

Positive duties can be like the animals that change color with what they feed on.

VI

When the middle of January came, Lady Arthur, who had never had an illness in her life, was measuring her strength in a hand-to-hand struggle with fever. The water was blamed, the drainage was blamed, various things were blamed. Whether it came in the water or out of the drains, gastric fever had arrived at Garscube Hall: the gardener took it, his daughter took it, also Thomas the footman, and others of the inhabitants, as well as Lady Arthur. The doctor of the place came and lived In the house; besides that, two of the chief medical men from town paid almost daily visits. Bottles of the water supplied to the hall were sent to eminent chemists for analysis: the drainage was thoroughly examined, and men were set to make it as perfect and innocuous as it is in the nature of drainage to be.

Lady Arthur wished Miss Adamson and Alice to leave the place for a time, but they would not do so: neither of them was afraid, and they stayed and nursed her ladyship well, relieving each other as it was necessary.

At one point of her illness Lady Arthur said to Miss Adamson, who was alone with her, "Well, I never counted on this. Our family have all had a trick of living to extreme old age, never dying till they could not help it; but it will be grand to get away so soon."

Miss Adamson looked at her. "Yes," she said, "it's a poor thing, life, after the glory of it is gone, and I have always had an intense curiosity to see what is beyond. I never could see the sense of making a great ado to keep people alive after they are fifty. Don't look surprised. How are the rest of the people that are ill?" She often asked for them, and expressed great satisfaction when told they were recovering. "It will be all right," she said, "if I am the only death in the place; but there is one thing I want you to do. Send off a telegram to George Eildon and tell him I want to see him immediately: a dying person can say what a living one can't, and I'll make it all right between Alice and him before I go."

Miss Adamson despatched the telegram to Mr. Eildon, knowing that she could not refuse to do Lady Arthur's bidding at such a time, although her feeling was against it. The answer came: Mr. Eildon had just sailed for Australia.

When Lady Arthur heard this she said, "I'll write to him." When she had finished writing she said, "You'll send this to him whenever you get his address. I wish we could have sent it off at once, for it will be provoking if I don't die, after all; and I positively begin to feel as if that were not going to be my luck at this time."

Although she spoke in this way, Miss Adamson knew it was not from foolish irreverence. She recovered, and all who had had the fever recovered, which was remarkable, for in other places it had been very fatal.

With Lady Arthur's returning strength things at the hall wore into their old channels again. When it was considered safe many visits of congratulation were paid, and among others who came were George Eildon's mother and some of his sisters. They were constantly having letters from George: he had gone off very suddenly, and it was not certain when he might return.

Alice heard of George Eildon with interest, but not with the vital interest she had felt in him for a time: that had worn away. She had done her best to this end by keeping herself always occupied, and many things had happened in the interval; besides, she had grown a woman, with all the good sense and right feeling belonging to womanhood, and she would have been ashamed to cherish a love for one who had entirely forgotten her. She dismissed her childish letter, which had given her so much vexation, from her memory, feeling sure that George Eildon had also forgotten it long ago. She did not know of the letter Lady Arthur had written when she believed herself to be dying, and it was well she did not.

VII

Every one who watched the sun rise on New Year's morning, 1875, will bear witness to the beauty of the sight. Snow had been lying all over the country for some time, and a fortnight of frost had made it hard and dry and crisp. The streams must have felt very queer when they were dropping off into the mesmeric trance, and found themselves stopped in the very act of running, their supple limbs growing stiff and heavy and their voices dying in their throats, till they were thrown into a deep sleep, and a strange white, still, glassy beauty stole over them by the magic power of frost. The sun got up rather late, no doubt—between eight and nine o'clock—probably saying to himself, "These people think I have lost my power—that the Ice King has it all his own way. I'll let them see: I'll make his glory pale before mine."

Lady Arthur was standing at her window when she saw him look over the shoulder of a hill and throw a brilliant deep gold light all over the land covered with snow as with a garment, and every minute crystal glittered as if multitudes of little eyes had suddenly opened and were gleaming and winking under his gaze. To say that the bosom of Mother Earth was crusted with diamonds is to give the impression of dullness unless each diamond could be endowed with life and emotion. Then he threw out shaft after shaft of color—scarlet and crimson and blue and amber and green—which gleamed along the heavens, kindling the cold white snow below them into a passion of beauty: the colors floated and changed form, and mingled and died away. Then the sun drew his thick winter clouds about him, disappeared, and was no more seen that day. He had vindicated his majesty.

Lady Arthur thought it was going to be a bright winter day, and at breakfast she proposed a drive to Cockhoolet Castle, an old place within driving distance to which she paid periodical visits: they would take luncheon on the battlements and see all over the country, which must be looking grand in its bridal attire.

John was called in and asked if he did not think it was going to be a fine day. He glanced through the windows at the dark, suspicious-looking clouds and said, "Weel, my leddy, I'll no uphaud it." This was the answer of a courtier and an oracle, not to mention a Scotchman. It did not contradict Lady Arthur, it did not commit himself, and it was cautious.

"I think it will be a fine day of its kind," said the lady, "and we'll drive to Cockhoolet. Have the carriage ready at ten."

"If we dinna wun a' the gate, we can but turn again," John thought as he retired to execute his orders.

"It is not looking so well as it did in the morning," said Miss Adamson as they entered the carriage, "but if we have an adventure we shall be the better for it."

"We shall have no such luck," said Lady Arthur: "what ever happens out of the usual way now? There used to be glorious snowstorms long ago, but the winters have lost their rigor, and there are no such long summer days now as there were when I was young. Neither persons nor things have that spirit in them they used to have;" and she smiled, catching in thought the fact that to the young the world is still as fresh and fair as it has appeared to all the successive generations it has carried on its surface.

"This is a wiselike expedition," said Thomas to John.

"Ay," said John, "I'm mista'en if this is no a day that'll be heard tell o' yet;" and they mounted to their respective places and started.

The sky was very grim and the wind had been gradually rising. The three ladies sat each in her corner, saying little, and feeling that this drive was certainly a means to an end, and not an end in itself. Their pace had not been very quick from the first, but it became gradually slower, and the hard dry snow was drifting past the windows in clouds. At last they came to a stand altogether, and John appeared at the window like a white column and said, "My leddy, we'll hae to stop here."

"Stop! why?"

"Because it's impossible to wun ony farrer."

"Nonsense! There's no such word as impossible."

"The beasts might maybe get through, but they wad leave the carriage ahint them."

"Let me out to look about," said Lady Arthur.

"Ye had better bide where ye are," said John: "there's naething to be seen, and ye wad but get yersel' a' snaw. We might try to gang back the road we cam."

"Decidedly not," said Lady Arthur, whose spirits were rising to the occasion: "we can't be far from Cockhoolet here?"

"Between twa and three mile," said John dryly.

"We'll get out and walk," said her ladyship, looking at the other ladies.

"Wi' the wind in yer teeth, and sinking up to yer cuits at every step? Ye wad either be blawn ower the muir like a feather, or planted amang the snaw like Lot's wife. I might maybe force my way through, but I canna leave the horses," said John.

Lady Arthur was fully more concerned for her horses than herself: she said, "Take out the horses and go to Cockhoolet: leave them to rest and feed, and tell Mr. Ormiston to send for us. We'll sit here very comfortably till you come back: it won't take you long. Thomas will go too, but give us in the luncheon-basket first."

The men, being refreshed from the basket, set off with the horses, leaving the ladies getting rapidly snowed up in the carriage. As the wind rose almost to a gale, Lady Arthur remarked "that it was at least better to be stuck firm among the snow than to be blown away."

It is a grand thing to suffer in a great cause, but if you suffer merely because you have done a "daftlike" thing, the satisfaction is not the same.

The snow sifted into the carriage at the minutest crevice like fine dust, and, melting, became cold, clammy and uncomfortable. To be set down in a glass case on a moor without shelter in the height of a snowstorm has only one recommendation: it is an uncommon situation, a novel experience. The ladies—at least Lady Arthur—must, one would think, have felt foolish, but it is a chief qualification in a leader that he never acknowledges that he is in the wrong: if he once does that, his prestige is gone.

The first hour of isolation wore away pretty well, owing to the novelty of the the position; the second also, being devoted to luncheon; the third dragged a good deal; but when it came to the fourth; with light beginning to fail and no word of rescue, matters looked serious. The cold was becoming intense—a chill, damp cold that struck every living thing through and through. What could be keeping the men? Had they lost their way, or what could possibly have happened?

"This is something like an adventure," said Lady Arthur cheerily.

"It might pass for one," said Miss Adamson, "if we could see our way out of it. I wonder if we shall have to sit here all night?"

"If we do," said Lady Arthur, "we can have no hope of wild beasts scenting us out or of being attacked by banditti."

"Nor of any enamored gentleman coming to the rescue," said Miss Adamson: "it will end tamely enough. I remember reading a story of travel among savages, in which at the close of the monthly instalment the travelers were left buried alive except their heads, which were above ground, but set on fire. That was a very striking situation, yet it all came right; so there is hope for us, I think."

"Oh, don't make me laugh," said Alice: "I really can't laugh, I am so stiff with cold."

"It's a fine discipline to our patience to sit here," said Lady Arthur. "If I had thought we should have to wait so long, I would have tried what I could do while it was light."

VIII

At length they heard a movement among the snow, and voices, and immediately a light appeared at the window, shining through the snow-blind, which was swept down by an arm and the carriage-door opened.

"Are you all safe?" were the first words they heard.

"In the name of wonder, George, how are you here? Where are John and Thomas?" cried Lady Arthur.

"I'll tell you all about it after," said George Eildon: "the thing is to get you out of this scrape. I have a farm-cart and pair, and two men to help me: you must just put up with roughing it a little."

"Oh, I am so thankful!" said Alice.

The ladies were assisted out of the carriage into the cart, and settled among plenty of straw and rugs and shawls, with their backs to the blast. Mr. Eildon shut the door of the carriage, which was left to its fate, and then got in and sat at the feet of the ladies. Mr. Ormiston's servant mounted the trace-horse and Thomas sat on the front of the cart, and the cavalcade started to toil through the snow.

"Do tell us, George, how you are here. I thought it was only heroes of romance that turned up when their services were desperately needed."

"There have been a good many heroes of romance to-day," said Mr. Eildon. "The railways have been blocked in all directions; three trains with about six hundred passengers have been brought to a stand at the Drumhead Station near this; many of the people have been half frozen and sick and fainting. I was in the train going south, and very anxious to get on, but it was impossible. I got to Cockhoolet with a number of exhausted travelers just as your man arrived, and we came off as soon as we could to look for you. You have stood the thing much better than many of my fellow-travelers."

"Indeed!" said Lady Arthur, "and have all the poor people got housed?"

"Most of them are at the station-house and various farm-houses. Mr. Forester, Mr. Ormiston's son-in-law, started to bring up the last of them just as I started for you."

"Well, I must say I have enjoyed it," Lady Arthur said, "but how are we to get home to-night?"

"You'll not get home to-night: you'll have to stay at Cockhoolet, and be glad if you can get home to-morrow."

"And where have you come from, and where are you going to?" she asked.

"I came from London—I have only been a week home from Australia—and I am on my way to Eildon. But here we are."

And the hospitable doors of Cockhoolet were thrown wide, sending out a glow of light to welcome the belated travelers.

Mrs. Ormiston and her daughter, Mrs. Forester—who with her husband was on a visit at Cockhoolet—received them and took them to rooms where fires made what seemed tropical heat compared with the atmosphere in the glass case on the moor.

Miss Garscube was able for nothing but to go to bed, and Miss Adamson stayed with her in the room called Queen Mary's, being the room that unfortunate lady occupied when she visited Cockhoolet.

On this night the castle must have thought old times had come back again, there was such a large and miscellaneous company beneath its roof. But where were the knights in armor, the courtiers in velvet and satin, the boars' heads, the venison pasties, the wassail-bowls? Where were the stately dames in stiff brocade, the shaven priests, the fool in motley, the vassals, the yeomen in hodden gray and broad blue bonnet? Not there, certainly.

No doubt, Lady Arthur Eildon was a direct descendant of one of "the queen's Maries," but in her rusty black gown, her old black bonnet set awry on her head, her red face, her stout figure, made stouter by a sealskin jacket, you could not at a glance see the connection. The house of Eildon was pretty closely connected with the house of Stuart, but George Eildon in his tweed suit, waterproof and wideawake looked neither royal nor romantic. We may be almost sure that there was a fool or fools in the company, but they did not wear motley. In short, as yet it is difficult to connect the idea of romance with railway rugs, waterproofs, India-rubbers and wide-awakes and the steam of tea and coffee: three hundred years hence perhaps it may be possible. Who knows? But for all that, romances go on, we may be sure, whether people are clad in velvet or hodden gray.

Lady Arthur was framing a romance—a romance which had as much of the purely worldly in it as a romance can hold. She found that George was on his way to see his cousin, Lord Eildon, who within two days had had a severe access of illness. It seemed to her a matter of certainty that George would be duke of Eildon some day. If she had only had the capacity to have despatched that letter she had written when she believed she was dying, after him to Australia! Could she send it to him yet? She hesitated: she could hardly bring herself to compromise the dignity of Alice, and her own. She had a short talk with him before they separated for the night.

"I think you should go home by railway to-morrow," he said. "It is blowing fresh now, and the trains will all be running to-morrow. I am sorry I have to go by the first in the morning, so I shall probably not see you then,"

"I don't know," she said: "it is a question if Alice will be able to travel at all to-morrow."

"She is not ill, is she?" he said. "It is only a little fatigue from exposure that ails her, isn't it?"

"But it may have bad consequences," said Lady Arthur: "one never can tell;" and she spoke in an injured way, for George's tones were not encouraging. "And John, my coachman—I haven't seen him—he ought to have been at hand at least: if I could depend on any one, I thought it was him."

"Why, he was overcome in the drift to-day: your other man had to leave him behind and ride forward for help. It was digging him out of the snow that kept us so long in getting to you. He has been in bed ever since, but he is getting round quite well."

"I ought to have known that sooner," she said.

"I did not want to alarm you unnecessarily."

"I must go and see him;" and she held out her hand to say good-night. "But you'll come to Garscube Hall soon: I shall be anxious to hear what you think of Frank. When will you come?"

"I'll write," he said.

Lady Arthur felt that opportunity was slipping from her, and she grew desperate. "Speaking of writing," she said, "I wrote to you when I had the fever last year and thought I was dying: would you like to see that letter?"

"No," he said: "I prefer you living."

"Have you no curiosity? People can say things dying that they couldn't say living, perhaps."

"Well, they have no business to do so," he said. "It is taking an unfair advantage, which a generous nature never does; besides, it is more solemn to live than die."

"Then you don't want the letter?"

"Oh yes, if you like."

"Very well: I'll think of it. Can you show me the way to John's place of refuge?"

They found John sitting up in bed, and Mrs, Ormiston ministering to him: the remains of a fowl were on a plate beside him, and he was lifting a glass of something comfortable to his lips.

"I never knew of this, John," said his mistress, "till just a few minutes ago. This is sad."

"Weel, it doesna look very sad," said John, eying the plate and the glass. "Yer leddyship and me hae gang mony a daftlike road, but I think we fairly catched it the day."

"I don't know how we can be grateful enough to you, Mrs. Ormiston," said Lady Arthur, turning to their hostess.

"Well, you know we could hardly be so churlish as to shut our doors on storm-stayed travelers: we are very glad that we had it in our power to help them a little."

"It's by ordinar' gude quarters," said John: "I've railly enjoyed that hen. Is 't no time yer leddyship was in yer bed, after siccan a day's wark?"

"We'll take the hint, John," said Lady Arthur; and in a little while longer most of Mr. Ormiston's unexpected guests had lost sight of the day's adventure in sleep.