Girlhood and Womanhood<br />The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes by Sarah Tytler (snow like ashes series TXT) 📕

Swinton was in her kitchen, burnishing her superannuated treasures, and crooning to herself as she worked; Nelly, in her solitary, shadowy room, lay plaiting and pinching the cambric and muslin gear whose manufacture was her daily occupation, with her child's clumsy cradle drawn within reach of her hand. Through the dim light, she distinguished a man's figure at the door. Nelly knew full well those lineaments, with their mingled fire and gloom. [Page 195]They did not exasperate her as they had once done; they appalled her with great shuddering; and sinking back, Nelly gasped—

"Are you dead and gone, Staneholme? Do you walk to seek my love that ye prigget for, but which canna gladden you now? Gae back to the bottom of the sea, or the bloody battle-field, and in the Lord's name rest there."

The figure stepped nearer; and Nelly, even in her blinding terror, distinguished that it was no shadowy apparition, but mortal like herself. The curdling blood rushed back to Nelly's face, flooding the colourless cheek, and firing her with a new impulse. She snatched her child from its slumber, and clasped it to her breast with her thin transparent hands.

"Have you come back to claim your son, Adam Home? But you'll have to tear him from me with your man's strength, for he's mine as well as yours; and he's my last, my only jewel."

And Nelly sat bolt upright, her rosy burden contrasting with her young, faded face, and her large eyes beginning to flame like those of a wild beast about to be robbed of its young.

"Oh no, Nelly, no," groaned Staneholme, covering his face; "I heard of your distress, and I came but to speer of your welfare." And he made a motion to withdraw.

But Nelly's heart smote her for the wrong her rash words had done him—a wayworn, conscience-smitten man—and she recalled him relentingly.

"Ye may have meant well. I bear you no ill-will; I [Page 196]am stricken myself. Take a look at your laddie, Adam Home, before ye gang."

He advanced when she bade him, and received the child from her arms; but with such pause and hesitation that it might have seemed he thought more of his hands again meeting poor Nelly Carnegie's, and of her breath fanning his cheek, than of the precious load she magnanimously intrusted to him. He did look at the infant in his awkward grasp, but it was with a stifled sigh of disappointment.

"He may be a braw bairn, Nelly—I know not—but he has no look of yours."

"Na, he's a Home every inch of him, my bonny boy!" Nelly assented, eagerly. After a moment she turned her head, and added peevishly, "I'm a sick woman, and ye needna mind what I say; I'm no fit for company. Good day; but mind, I've forgotten and forgiven, and wish my bairn's father well."

"Nanny Swinton," called Nelly to her faithful nurse, as she lay awake on her bed, deep in the sober dimness of the summer night, "think you that Staneholme will be booted and spurred with the sun, riding through the Loudons to Lauderdale?"

"It's like, Lady Staneholme," answered Nanny, drowsily. "The keep o' man and beast is heavy in the town, and he'll be tain to look on his ain house, and greet the folk at home after these mony months beyond the seas. Preserve him and ilka kindly Scot from fell Popish notions rife yonder!"

"A miserable comforter are you, Nanny Swinton," [Page 197]muttered her mistress, as she hushed her child, and pressed her fevered lips to each tiny feature.

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VIII.—THE RECONCILIATION AND RETURN TO STANEHOLME.

But Staneholme came again in broad light, the next day—the next—and the next, with half excuses and vague talk of business. Lady Carnegie did not interdict his visits, or blame his weakness and inconsistency, for they were seemly in the eyes of the world—which she honoured, after herself, although she washed her hands of the further concerns of these fools.

And Nelly talked to him with a grave friendliness, like one restored from madness or risen from another world. "Staneholme, you've never kissed the wean, and it's an ill omen," she said, suddenly, watching him intently as he dandled the child; and as if jealous of any omission regarding it, she appeared satisfied when he complied with her fancy.

"The curtain is drawn, and the shadow is on you; but is that a scar on your brow, Staneholme, and where did you get it?"

"A clour from a French pistol;" it was but skin deep—he was off his camp-bed in a few days.

He stooped forward, as he spoke slightingly, and pushed back the hair that half obscured the faint blue seam.

"Whisht!" said Nelly, reprovingly, "dinna scorn sickness; that bit stroke might have cost Lady Staneholme her son and my bairn his father;" and she bent towards [Page 198]him in her turn, and passed her fingers curiously and pityingly over the healed wound, ignorant how it burned and throbbed under her touch. "When the bairn is grown, and can rin his lane, Staneholme," Nelly informed him in her new-found freedom of speech, "I will send him for a summer to Staneholme; I'll be lonesome without him, but Michael Armstrong will teach him to ride, and he'll stand by Lady Staneholme's knee." Staneholme expressed no gratitude for the offer, he was fastening the buckle of his beaver. The next time he came he twisted a rose in his hand, and Nelly felt that it must indeed be Beltane: she looked at the flower wistfully, and wondered "would the breezes be shaking the bear and the briar roses on the sea-braes at Staneholme, or were the grapes of southern vines bonnier than they?" He flung down the flower, and strode to her side.

"Come hame, Nelly," he prayed passionately; "byganes may be byganes now. I've deserted the campaign, I've left its honours and its dangers—and I could have liked them well—to free men, and am here to take you hame."

Nelly was thunderstruck. "Hame!" she said, at last, slowly, "where you compelled me to travel, where I gloomed on you day and night, as I vowed; I, who would not be a charge and an oppression to the farthest-off cousin that bears your name. Are you demented?"

"And this is the end," groaned Staneholme, in bitterness; "I dreamt that I would win at last. I did not love you for your health and strength, or your youth and beauty. I declare to you, Nelly Carnegie, your face is fairer to me, [Page 199]lying lily white on your pillow there, than when it was fresh like that rose; and when others deserted you and left you forlorn, I thought I might try again, and wha kent but the ill would be blotted out for the very sake of the strong love that wrought it?"

A dimness came across Nelly's eyes, and a faintness over her choking heart; but she pressed her hands upon her breast, and strove against it for the sake of her womanhood.

"And I dreamed," she answered slowly and tremulously, "that it bude to be true, true love, however it had sinned, that neither slight nor hate, nor absence nor fell decay could uproot; and that could tempt me to break my plighted word, and lay my infirmity on the man that bargained for me like gear, and that I swore—Heaven absolve me!—I would gar rue his success till his deein' day. Adam Home, what are you seekin' at my hands?"

"Nae mair than you'll grant, Nelly Carnegie—pardon and peace, and my young gudewife, the desire o' my eyes. I'll be feet to you, Nelly, as long's I'm to the fore."

"Big tramping feet, Staneholme," said Nelly, trying to jest, and pushing him back; "dinna promise ower fair. Na, Adam Home, you'll wauken the bairn!"

So Staneholme bought the grand new family coach of which the Homes had talked for the last generation; and Lady Carnegie curtsied her supercilious adieus, and hoped her son and daughter would be better keepers at home for the future. And Nanny Swinton wore her new gown and cockernonie, and blessed her bairn and her bairn's bairn, through tears that were now no more than a sunny shower, the silver mist of the past storm.

[Page 200]There was brooding heat on the moors and a glory on the sea when Staneholme rode by his lady's coach, within sight of home.

"There will be no great gathering to-night, Staneholme; no shots or cheers; no lunt in the blue sky; only doubt and amaze about an old man and wife: but there will be two happy hearts that were heavy as stane before. Well-a-day! to think I should be fain to return this way!"

Staneholme laughed, and retorted something perhaps neither quite modest nor wise; but the ready tongue that had learnt so speedily to pour itself out to his greedy ears did not now scold and contradict him, but sighed—

"Ah, Adam Home, you do not have the best of it; it is sweet to be beat; I didna ken—I never guessed that."

Gladly astounded were the retainers of Staneholme at their young laird's unannounced return, safe and sound, from the wars; but greater and more agreeable was their friendly surprise to find that his sick wife, who came back with him unstrengthened in body, was healed and hearty in spirit. Well might good old Lady Staneholme rejoice, and hush her bold grandson, for the change was not evanescent or its effects uncertain. As Staneholme drove out his ailing wife, or constructed a seat for her on the fresh moor, or looked at her stitching his frilled shirts as intently as the child's falling collars, and talked to her of his duties and his sports, his wildness was controlled and dignified. And when he sat, the head and protector of his deaf old mother, and his little frolicsome, fearless child, and his [Page 201]Nelly Carnegie, whose spirit had come again, but whose body remained but a sear relic of her blooming youth, his fitful melancholy melted into the sober tenderness of a penitent, believing man, who dares not complain, but who must praise God and be thankful, so long as life's greatest boons are spared to him.

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[Page 202]

HECTOR GARRET OF OTTER. I.—THE FIRE.

A CALM, pure summer moonlight fell upon the Ayrshire mosses and deans, but did not silver, as far as we are concerned, the Carrick Castle of Bruce, nor Cameron's lair amidst the heather, nor landward Tintock, nor even seagirt Ailsa Craig, but only the rolling waves of the Atlantic and a grey turreted mansion-house built on a promontory running abruptly into the water. The dim ivory light illuminated a gay company met in the dwelling with little thought of stillness or solemnity, but with their own sense of effect, grouped carelessly, yet not ungracefully, in an old-fashioned, though not unsuitable drawing-room.

They needed relief, these brilliant supple figures; they demanded the background of grey hangings, scant carpet, spindle-legged chairs, and hard sombre prints. To these very cultivated, very artificial and picturesque personages, a family sitting-room was but a stage, where lively, capricious, yet calculating actors were engaged in playing their parts.

The party were mostly French, from the mass of gallant, [Page 203]dauntless emigrants, many of whom were thus entertained with grateful, commiserating hospitality in households whose members had but lately basked in the sparkling geniality of the southern atmosphere, now lurid and surcharged with thunder.

There was a Marquise, worldly, light, and vain, whom adversity had not broken, and could not sour; an Abbé, bland and double, but gentle and kindly in his way; a soldier, volatile, hot-headed, brave as a lion, simple as a child; an older man, sad, sneering, indifferent to this world and the next, but with the wrecks of a noble head, and, God help him, a noble heart.

Of the three individuals present of a different nation and creed, two closely resembled the others with only that vague, impalpable, but perceptible distinction of those whose rearing affords a superficial growth which overspreads but does not annihilate the original plant. The one was a young man, buoyant, flippant, and reckless as the French soldier, but with a bold defiance in his tone which was all his own; the other a young girl, coquettish and vivacious as the Marquise, but with a deep consciousness under her feigning, an undercurrent of watchful pride and passion, of which her model was destitute. The last of the circle was a fair-haired, broad-shouldered lad, who stood apart from the others, big, shy, silent:—but he was earnest amid their shallowness, noble amid their hollowness, and devoted amid their fickleness. How he gazed on the arch, haughty girl, with her lilies and roses, her pencilled brows, her magnificent hair magnificently arranged, with her rich silk and airy lace,