The Twa Miss Dawsons Part 33

Mrs Calderwood looked at her a moment as though she did not understand what she was saying. Then she laughed and kissed her.

"Nonsense! dear. You are a sensible la.s.sie and discreet. I would be sorry to disappoint Miss Jean, though she has friends enough in Portie one would think. But it is the first favour she has ever asked of me, and many a one she has done me."

"But, mother, I think this is a favour to us--to me at least. Oh! it seems too good to be true."

"Well, we will think about it."

"And, mother, if I should go, I would like--wouldn't you? rather to go with Mr Dawson than with James Petrie."

Her mother's face clouded again.

"What ails you at young Mr Petrie?"

Marion shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh! nothing. Only I like Mr Dawson better--better than I could have believed possible. He has been very good to me. I haven't told you yet. Mother, I think he must have grown a better man since George came home."

Her mother said nothing. She did not think well of Mr Dawson. She did not wish to think well of him. When she had heard from Marion that he had come to his daughter's house, her first impulse was to recall her at once. The impossibility of leaving her old friend, or of permitting Marion to travel alone, prevented her from acting on her first impulse, and when she had time to consider the matter, she saw that it would be better for her to remain. It was not likely that Mr Dawson would see much of her, and whatever he might feel, he would not do otherwise than treat politely his daughter's guest.

That he should "begood to her," that he should put himself about, as she knew he must have done, to give her pleasure surprised her, but it did not please her. She had forgiven him, she told herself. At least she bore him no ill-will for the share he and his had had in the trouble of her life, but she wished to have nothing at all to do with him, either as friend or foe.

But Miss Jean's friends.h.i.+p was quite apart from all this. It had been a refuge to her in times of trouble long before she lost her Elsie, and this invitation was but another proof of her friends.h.i.+p, and she would let her daughter go.

As for her escort--Mrs Calderwood was as averse to accepting James Petrie as such, as her daughter was, though from a different reason.

But she was equally averse to any appearance of presuming on the kindness of Mr Dawson. Fortunately the matter was taken out of her hands.

Mrs Manners came the next day empowered to plead that Miss Jean's invitation should be accepted, and when she found that this was not necessary, she found courage to propose that instead of waiting for any one, Marion should hasten her preparations and go on at once with her father.

Trouble! What possible trouble could it be for her father to sit in the same railway carriage with the child? As for Jamie Petrie--it was easy seen what he was after. But it would be quite too great a grace to grant him at this early stage of--of his plans and projects. Oh! yes.

Of course it was all nonsense, but then--

But the nonsense helped to bring Mrs Calderwood to consent that Marion should go at once. And so it was arranged.

It would have pleased Mr Dawson to take Marion with him to Saughleas, but this she modestly but firmly declined, because her mother expected her to go at once to Miss Jean's house by the sea, and there she was kindly welcomed.

It was like getting home again, she said. The sound of the sea soothed her to sleep, and it woke her in the morning with a voice as familiar as if she had never been away. She was out, and away over the sands to the Tangle Stanes, and had renewed acquaintance with half the bairns in Portie, before Miss Jean was ready for her breakfast.

The bairns had all grown big, and the streets and lanes, the houses and shops, had all grown narrow and small, she thought. But the sea had not changed, nor the sands, nor the far-away hills, nor the sky--which was, oh! so different from the sky in London. Marion had not changed much, her friends thought. Some of them said she was bigger and bonnier, but she was blithe and friendly and "a'e fauld" still--and London hadna spoiled her as it might very easily have done. At any rate she meant to enjoy every hour of her stay, and that was the way she began.

She did not miss Jean either, for George had been called away on business for a few days and when he returned they were to set out on their travels. During these few days Marion saw much of her friend.

Jean was graver than she used to be, Marion thought; but she was kind and friendly, and could be merry too, on occasion. They had much to say to one another, and they spent hours together in the old familiar places, in the wood and on the rocks by the sea, and heard one another's "secrets," which were only secrets in the sense that neither of them would have been likely to tell them to any one else.

Marion told her friend all that she had been seeing and doing and reading, and some things that she had been hoping, since she went away, and Jean did little more. She told what her brother was doing and the help she tried to give him, and she told of the life that seemed to be opening before them.

Not such a life as they used to plan and dream about for themselves, when they were young; a quiet, uneventful, busy-life, just like the lives of other people. Judging from the look on Jean's face it did not seem a very joyful life to look forward to. Marion regarded her friend with wistful eyes.

"No. It will never be that, I am sure--just like the lives of other people, I mean."

"And why not? Well, perhaps not altogether. It will be an easier life than the lives of most people, I suppose. It will not just be a struggle for bread, as it is for so many. And we can do something for others who need help, and we need not be tied to one place every day of the year, as most folk are. And by and by we will be 'looked up to,'

and our advice will be asked, and folk will say of us, as they say of my father, that 'they are much respeckit in the countryside.' And by that time I shall be 'auld Miss Jean,' and near done with it all. But it is a long look till then."

"But it may be all quite different from that. Many a thing may happen to change it all."

"Oh! many things will happen, as you say. May and her bairns will be coming and going, and the bairns will fit into the places that the years will leave empty, and George will need a staff like my father, and I will grow 'frail' like Auntie Jean, and sit waiting and looking at the sea. And ye needna sit lookin' at me with such pitiful e'en, for who is waiting so happily as she? And yet who will be so glad to go when her time shall come?"

Marion said nothing, but turned her eyes seaward with a grave face.

Jean went on.

"Yes, many things will happen, but it will be just the same thing over again. The s.h.i.+ps will sail away, and there will be long waiting, and some of them will come home, and some will never come, and the pain will be as hard to bear as if it had never come to many a sore heart before.

And some folk will be glad, and some will be at least content, and some will make mistakes and spoil their lives and then just wait on to the end. Marion, what are you thinking about?"

"I'm wondering if it is really you who are saying all that. And I am thinking that is not the way Miss Jean would speak."

"Oh! Miss Jean! No, she has won safely past all that. But once, long ago, before she had learned the secret of peaceful and patient waiting, she might have been afraid of the days. Come, it is growing cold. Let us go on."

They rose from the Tangle Stanes where they had been sitting and moved away, and Jean said,--

"And as for you--Are you sure it is to be the grand school after all?

Well, you will come back when the heat and burden of the day is over to take your rest in Portie. And you will be a stately old lady, a little worn and sharp perhaps, as is the fate of schoolmistresses; but with fine manners, and wisdom enough for us all. And the new generation of Petries will admire you and make much of you--not quite as the Petries of the present day would like to do," said Jean laughing. "And behold!

there is Master Jamie coming on at a great pace. Shall we let him overtake us? Or shall we go in and see poor old Tibbie and let him pa.s.s by?"

They were on their way to Saughleas, where Marion was to pay her first visit. Miss Jean had gone on already in the pony carriage, but the girls were walking round by the sh.o.r.e. There was no reason why Marion should wish to avoid Mr James Petrie, except that she wished no one's company when she had Jean's, but she was quite willing to go into Mrs Cairnie's house where she had been several times already. It was a different looking place from the house to which Miss Jean had taken Mrs Eastwood long ago. Mrs Cairnie's daughter Annie had returned and was going to remain, and the place was "weel redd up," and indeed as pleasant a dwelling, of its kind, as one would wish to see. Poor old Tibbie had lately met with a sad mishap, which threatened to put an end to her wanderings, and keep her a prisoner at home for some time to come. Annie had come home to care for her, with the design of earning the bread of both, by making gowns and bonnets for such of the sailors'

wives and fisher folk, as were not equal to the making their Sunday best for themselves.

But a different lot awaited her. She had gone away with the English lady "to better herself," it was said; but that was only half the reason of her going. She went because she feared to be beguiled into marrying a man whom she loved, but whom she could not respect, because of his enslavement to one besetting sin.

The love of strong drink had brought misery to her home, since ever she could remember. It had driven her brothers away from it and had caused her father's death and her mother's widowhood, and she shrank with terror from the thought of living such a life as her mother had lived.

When her lover entreated her, saying, that being his wife she might save him from his sin, she did not believe it; but she knew that in her love and her weakness she might yield her will to his, and lose herself without saving him. So she went away with a sore heart, and when her mother's accident had made it necessary for her to come home again, she hardly could tell whether she was glad or sorry to come.

And the first "kenned face" she saw as she drew near home was the face of her lover. He did not see her. He had stepped from another carriage of the train, into the little station a few miles from Portie. Young George Dawson's hand rested on his shoulder, for the single minute that he stood there, a very different looking person from the wild lad she had left years ago.

"Yon's young Saughleas," she heard one fellow-traveller say to another.

"And yon's Tam Saugster. He's hame again, it seems."

"I ha'e heard that he has gathered himsel' up wonderfu' this while back.

He is a fine sailor-like lad."

"Ay. He's his ain man now. And he'll be skipper o' the 'John Seaton'

before she sails again if young George Dawson gets his way, and they say he gets it in most things with his father."

Then Annie saw the sailor spring back into the carriage again as the signal was given, and she got a glimpse of George Dawson's kindly face as they pa.s.sed, and then she saw nothing for a while for the rush of tears which she had much ado to hide.

"The skipper o' the 'John Seaton'! Ah! weel, he has forgotten me lang syne, but that is little matter since he has found himsel'."

But Tam had not forgotten her, and whatever he might have done at the time, he did not now resent her refusal to take as her master one who could not master himself. That very night as she sat in the gloaming listening to her mother's fretful complaints, and taking counsel with herself as to how they were to live in the coming days, a familiar step came to the door, and Tam lifted the latch and came in without waiting to be bidden.

All the rest was natural enough and easy. The next time Tam sailed he was to sail as master of the "John Seaton," and he was to sail a married man, he said firmly, and what could Annie do but yield and begin her preparations forthwith. The cottage in which Mrs Cairnie had hitherto had but a room, was taken, and Tam set himself to making it worthy to be the home of the woman he loved.