Red Rowans Part 36

"No, thanks. I shall stay here."

Never in their lives before had they come so near a quarrel, and, even though Mrs. Vane was wise enough to see the provocation which her own loss of temper had given him, the fact decided her. The change of slippers included other alterations in her toilette, and five minutes afterwards she was following Dr. Kennedy to Peggy Duncan's cottage.

The walk was nothing on that warm September night, and the excuse of a desire to help sufficiently reasonable, her kindness in such ways being proverbial. Many a deathbed had been cheered by her cheerful aid, and yet, nerved as she was by experience, she shrank back at the sight which met her eyes as she lifted the latch of the cottage and entered. For the deep box bed, whereon old Peggy had pa.s.sed so many years, had been inconvenient, and Dr. Kennedy had lifted her to the table, where she lay unconscious, looking like death itself, in the limp, powerless sinking into the pillow of her grey head. The old woman's dreary prophecy came back to Mrs. Vane, though this was not certain death, as yet; since, with his back towards her, his warm hands clasping those cold ones, his face bent on the watch for some sign of life, stood Dr. Kennedy, trying the last resource of artificial respiration. There is nothing in the whole range of experience more absorbing, more pathetic than this struggle of the living for the dying, whether it be for the new-born babe doubtful of existence, or, as here, for an old worn-out heart. And if it is so, even among a crowd of eager helpers, what was it here in the little circle of dim light hedged in by darkness? Those two alone, so strangely contrasted. It had been a sharp, fierce transition, even to his experience, from, the ball-room full of lights and laughter; for Tom Kennedy was not of those whom use hardens. He was one of those to whom ever-widening vision discloses no clear horizon of dogmatic belief or unbelief, but a further distance fading away into the great, inconceivable, infinite mystery between which and him lay Life--Life, whose champion he was, whose colours he wore unflinchingly, counting neither its evil or its good. Life--nothing else. It is a queer mistress, taken so, but an absorbing one, and he scarcely slackened the rhythmic sweep of his arms even in his surprise at the figure which, after a moment's pause, stepped forward.

"You ought not to have come--it's no place for you; you had better go back and send me help; though I fear it is no use," he said authoritatively. For answer she slid her hands under the blanket he had thrown over the old woman's limbs, and began to rub them with a regularity matching his own.

"They would not help so well as I."

"You have done it before then?"

"Often--once all night long in cholera--a great friend--he died at dawn." Yet the memory which had brought tears many a time failed to touch her now, for her mind was intent on something else.

"Was she unconscious when you came?" she asked.

"Not quite. There were some letters on her mind, and after she had given them to me she went off--one often finds it so."

Then they were given! and she was too late! Yet stay! where could they be--in his coat, of course, which he had taken off and thrown aside on a chair for the sake of greater ease. Doubtless in the coat, for he must have had it on at first, when the old woman was still conscious.

"Perhaps hot water," she suggested, looking towards the kettle swinging over the dying embers, but he shook his head, and she stayed where she was. Ah! that was surely a change--a greyer tinge on the worn, wrinkled old face, the faintest suspicion of a greater rest in the slack limbs.

Dr. Kennedy paused, still holding the hands in his, and bent closer.

In the great silence, Mrs. Vane seemed to hear her heart beating at the thought--not of rest, but unrest; for something would have to be done soon, if done at all. Nay! done now, for with a half-impatient sigh the doctor gave up the struggle, folded the old hands upon the old breast, and walked away to stand for a moment or two looking moodily into the dull fire.

"It is always a disappointment," he said, turning to her again, and mechanically going over to the dresser, where in the interval, calculating on habit, she had set a bowl of water and a towel. And she calculated rightly. As with his back towards her he washed his hands, hers were in the pocket of his coat, and two packets of letters lay on the floor behind the chair, as if they had slipped out, before she went forward, coat in hand.

"Thanks!" he said, still in the meshes of habit; but then he paused, and for an instant her heart was in her mouth, even though she had her excuse ready should he discover the absence of the letters. It was only, however, a remembrance of her which came to him.

"I must call someone," he said; "and you should go home at once. It was good of you to come."

"Yes! you had better call someone. I will stay till you return--I would rather."

"You are not afraid?--Ah! I forgot you had lived your life in India. I shall not be more than ten minutes if I go up the hill to the shepherd's; that will be the quickest."

"Do not hurry on my account," she replied, quietly beginning to pile some fresh peats on the fire. The doctor, as he turned for a last look, his hand on the latch, told himself she was a plucky little soul indeed; and yet, had he known it, her heart was melting within her at the deed she was about to do, and her only strength lay in the thought that it was for Paul's sake; for herself she would scorn such meanness.

The candle flickering to an end gave her little time, however, for consideration, and almost as the door closed the letters were in her hands. One long, blue, red-sealed, intact, as she remembered it, the other an open envelope yellow with age, tied round with thread, and containing several papers. Her wits were quick, and even as she looked, the certainty came to her that if the blue letter asked questions the other might answer them; besides there was no necessity for breaking a seal; she shrank from that as yet. Even now her hand shook, so that as she drew out the contents of the smaller envelope, something fell from it to the ground. She stooped to pick it up just as the candle flared up in the socket, and by the sudden blaze of light she saw on the fallen paper a signature, and a line or two of print.

Great heavens! a marriage certificate--Ronald Alister Macleod! Who was he?--Paul's brother, of course.

These thoughts flas.h.i.+ng through her brain did not prevent her starting, as the flickering light seemed to give a semblance of movement to Peggy's folded hands. The next instant she was in darkness, still holding the letters, and she knelt hastily to coax a flame from the peats, for time was pa.s.sing, and she must know--must read. Then, in swift suggestion, came the thought of subst.i.tuting another packet; Dr. Kennedy would be none the wiser, and that would give her time. There must be other letters or papers at hand if she could find them. Oh for a light!--and yet people deemed such deeds to be deeds of darkness!----

As if in answer to her thought, a tongue of bluish flame leapt through the warmed peats, and by its light she found herself fumbling at the old bureau. For it was, as it always is at such times, as if fate were driving her against her will. Even as she acted, she felt that she had not meant to act thus--to search and pry! The old woman's cherished shroud, folded and frilled, made her shut one drawer hastily. And that was a step--a step surely, and yet not an atom of paper was to be seen anywhere! Ah! there was an old Bible on the shelf with blank pages.

She had torn some out, and slipped them into the envelope none too soon, for Dr. Kennedy was at the door, breathless with running.

"I hurried all I could," he said; "for I felt I ought not to have left you--it was not fair. But they are coming, and then I will take you home." The words seemed to bring a remembrance, for he paused and began to feel in his pocket.

"What is it?" she asked, with a catch in her voice.

"The letters. I had them, certainly----"

"Perhaps they dropped--ah! here they are on the floor."

"Thanks." Then he paused, looking curiously at them. "I wonder why I fancied this one was tied with thread?"

Even in her anxiety she could not resist a smile at the keenness of the man; and how dull _she_ had been, for there on the dresser stood two candles in bra.s.s candlesticks. If she had only noticed them she would have had time--would not, perhaps, have had this terror at her heart.

"It may have been tied," she said coolly; "and something may have dropped out when it fell. I'll light the candles and see." Then as she came forward with them in her hand, the deadly anxiety in her would brook no delay, and she asked, "Do you miss anything?"

"I do not know--I have not the least notion what it was supposed to contain; but this seems only to be an entry of births, marriages----Great heavens! are you ill?" For Mrs. Vane, who had stooped down on pretence of searching the floor, but in reality to hide her intense relief, was standing as if petrified, her face white as death.

"Nothing," she gasped, with an attempt at composure--"the strain, I suppose--it is foolish."

More than foolish, she told herself. It was perfectly insensate of her not to have remembered the custom of entering such items in the family Bible; and now she might unwittingly have given away the information she was attempting to conceal. If so, it would be better for her to know at once.

"Such registers contain many secrets," she began, when a look of curiosity in Dr. Kennedy's eyes made her pause.

"Secrets," he echoed; "why should there be any? though there is one in a way," he added, holding out the paper to her. It was the last entry to which he pointed, and it ran thus: "Jeanie Duncan, born 17th April, 18--; married----; died 20th August, 18--." "A sad blank that," he continued, adding, after a pause: "Perhaps the other letter may be more important."

Perhaps it might be, and Mrs. Vane, as she waited, felt her breath coming fast and short. It seemed an eternity of time until once more he held something out for her to read, and turning silently to where the dead woman lay, drew the sheet tenderly over the worn face. "The irony of fate, indeed," he murmured as she read:--

"Dear Madam,--We have to advise you of the death of our esteemed client, Mr. John Duncan, of Melbourne, Australia, and to inform you that under his will you, as his widow, come into property amounting to close on 100,000."

Mrs. Vane's hand holding the letter fell to her side, and Dr.

Kennedy's voice said gravely:

"Strange, isn't it, that the letter was never opened? All that money, and a pauper's death----"

The voice was his, but it might have been the accusing angel's for the effect it had on Violet Vane. She gave one step forward, her arms outstretched as if for pity, and with a little cry sank to her knees.

Her head was pillowed on the old woman's breast when Dr. Kennedy, catching her as she fell, found that she had fainted, and anathematised himself as a consummate a.s.s for taking her at her own estimation. Plucky as she was, the contrast had been too sharp. Life and Death--Poverty and Riches. The whole gamut of harmonies and discords lay in these words.

CHAPTER XIX.

Mrs. Vane being one of those heaven-sent pivots or jewels, without which the wheels of society are apt to come to a standstill, it was only natural that her sudden collapse, joined to the general depression which invariably follows on a country house entertainment, should have reduced the inmates of Gleneira to a condition of blank discontent. To tell truth, a large proportion of them had reasonable cause for a vague uneasiness, if not for actual discomfort, though Lady George wrinkled her high, white forehead in tragic perplexity over some of the resulting phenomena.

"Of course," she said at lunch, "I was quite prepared that the cook should give warning. They always do when they have worked hard, and, really, the supper left nothing to be desired; besides, it is an empty form when we are all going away next week. But why the housemaid should want a new set of brushes _to-day_, when she knows I have to send to Glasgow for them; and why Ean, the boy--such a good-looking boy, too--who cleans the boots, should demand an immediate rise in wages, I cannot think."

"What's enough for one ain't enough for two," broke in Eve from her sago pudding, with an indescribable tw.a.n.g and a semi-sentimental air.

"Mary's going to marry him; he asked her in the boot hole when the piper was playing the 'Blue Bells of Scotland' in the kitching. The thought of her 'ighland laddie bein' gone was too much for her feelinks, so she accepted him, and he gave her a kiss."

"Eve!" cried her mother, in horrified accents, "don't say such things."

"But it's true, ducksie mummie," retorted the young lady, unabashed.