Mrs. Dorriman Volume Iii Part 14

"Most extraordinary!"

Both she and Jean were tired enough when they reached Perth. Margaret, indeed, had a certain mental excitement which prevented her sleeping.

With the tenderness of conscience, which amounted to something akin to morbidness, she accused herself of having forgotten because she had allowed herself to be happy.

"Alas!" she thought, "is it possible that I am the same miserable broken woman who cared not even for the light of day a few weeks ago? And now a change of scene, meeting with an old friend, has sent courage through my veins, and made life seem sweet to me again."

But there was no use lamenting over feelings which had gone, and she was too honest with herself to blind herself to the fact of being different.

Her grief for her child was there sharp and painful, for a mother cannot forget. But the crus.h.i.+ng sense of having done something unworthy had been lifted from her. The tone of gentle respect and sympathy shown her by Sir Albert had swept false theories upon one side. She still said to herself, "I have sinned!" but she no longer said, "Heaven can forgive, but man never can!" and the sharpest sting was gone.

Jean was in a state of wild excitement as they drew near the old haunts. Her head was turning in rapid succession from side to side as she recognised the various landmarks.

"Eh!" she exclaimed aloud, greatly to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the other pa.s.sengers, "there is the old kirk and the hill behind it, just as I left them."

"You did not expect them to run away, did you?" said an elderly man, watching her keenly.

"I do not know what I expected," she answered, in an abstracted manner, "but they are there--and that is a very great deal to me."

Margaret had no a.s.sociations, but she also looked eagerly at a place of which she had heard so much.

The great brown hills were sleeping in the suns.h.i.+ne, their beautiful outlines sharp and clear against a pale sky, on which floated a few golden clouds. Between some fir-trees she at length saw the sea.

But it seemed to her that never had she appreciated it so fully before.

The purple shadows sweeping over it made the bright radiance of the sun's last rays exquisitely beautiful, and the crest of each restless wave seemed a moving ma.s.s of gold. As the train drew up, her eyes were still dazzled by the brilliancy of the picture.

Mrs. Dorriman, inclined to be tearful, and quite resolved not to give way, made singular faces, as she held that forlorn figure to her kindly heart.

"Do not cry, my dear," she said, in a low voice, as she watched Margaret's calm face, expecting every moment to see her break down, and quite astonished at her calmness and self-command.

Margaret was not inclined to cry. The source of her tears lay far too deep. She had wept for her child for months, and still there came that painful spasm if something brought it suddenly before her; but Mrs.

Dorriman had no a.s.sociation in connection with it. She reminded her of her girlhood, of Lornbay, of all that happened there, and any emotion she felt was softened to her now by the soothing influence of Sir Albert Gerald's kindness and sympathy.

"It is like coming home," she said to Mrs. Dorriman.

"My poor child!"

"It is pleasant to feel so at home. I seem to know that bent fir-tree and the look of the hills--and oh! how perfect the air is here!"

"Yes, it is fine," said Mrs. Dorriman, putting her sentiment and tears upon one side as she saw that Margaret needed neither.

"What a delicious scent! What is it?" exclaimed Margaret, as the famous pony-carriage bowled along towards Inchbrae.

"The gorse in full bloom. There is nothing like it," answered the little lady, full of happiness now she had some one who could appreciate all these things at her side. "My own idea is that the breath of the sea and the scent of the gorse-flower and heather would make any one well; and I am so glad, dear--so glad you are here."

"I am glad to be here," said Margaret, thoughtfully; "it is like a beautiful awakening in another and a fairer world after a bad dream."

"And Margaret, love, I do so want to ask you something."

"Ask me anything you like."

"We are not exactly 'kin,' as Jean would say, but would you give me a name? I am too old to be called Anne, but will you not call me something else?"

"I always do. I always think of you as if you were my own, my very own, relation, and do call you 'Auntie.' Will that do?" and Margaret bent and kissed her.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Dorriman with a sigh, "you do not know how sweet it is to have some one to love you. I have had so little affection all my life, and sometimes it makes me feel a little forlorn. I think having a sister must be such an enormous comfort."

"Sometimes," said Margaret, "and sometimes a great anxiety; of course, few ties can come up to it," she added, hastily, afraid of allowing even Mrs. Dorriman to know the intense and bitter disappointment Grace was to her.

They arrived at Inchbrae, and, if Margaret had admired it at all before, she could not help being still more enthusiastic about all now. Can anything in nature excel the charm of a well-kept flower-garden with its gay flower-beds and velvet lawn, and a background of pines with their red stems glowing in the sunset, and a magnificent range of rocks behind it; while through the delicate and graceful birch-trees glimpses of the sea in all its changing beauty and capricious moods is there to give that sense of the Infinite which raises our thoughts above and beyond it all?

Margaret's eyes filled with sudden tears. The loveliness of it all touched and soothed her, and yet she was nearly weeping. She seemed all at once to see that she had hitherto missed something in her life which was now given her. She put up her hand as Mrs. Dorriman was going to speak, and asked, in the lowered tone of one who is conscious of being moved and charmed beyond expression, what the noise was near them?

"It sounds like a river; it is distinct from the solemn thud of the sea I hear breaking on the rocks."

"It is the river; that is the sound I missed so much when I went to Renton," answered Mrs. Dorriman, full of the delight of having Margaret's sympathy.

"It has a rus.h.i.+ng mighty sound like the wings of a relentless fate,"

said Margaret, dreamily; "I never was so near a river before."

"Do you like being so near it? Some people think it disturbs them; that louder noise through all is the waterfall. Come and have some tea now, and, when you are rested, we will go by the river-walk."

"Everything is so lovely," she exclaimed, as she followed Mrs. Dorriman into the bright little drawing-room, and noticed the pretty freshness of everything.

She was delighted with her own room, which was looking towards the sea.

"How you must have felt leaving all this!" she exclaimed as she looked out upon it all.

"I did feel it then, but you soon became my great comfort and pleasure.

I am glad I went, for many reasons, but one chief reason is that I learnt to know you there."

Margaret had but one vision of the sea in her memory. She had thought the grand sweep of the bay and the mouth of the Clyde heavenly, and it lingered in her memory as she had watched it with Grace that first night, and had been so entranced with its smooth beauty, upon which the moonlight had thrown such a lovely and silvery veil.

But with all the a.s.sociations of that place and the vivid remembrance of Sir Albert Gerald's yacht gliding into the bright moonlit streak, like a bird ready to fold her wings and rest,--she felt that there could be no comparison.

No sea, rippling in smoothly, far away from the turbulence and strife, sheltered in the great arms of a bay nearly surrounding it, smiling there even when fierce and angry beyond the shelter, can possibly equal in grandeur the same sea cras.h.i.+ng in against perpendicular rocks, das.h.i.+ng itself with terrific strength against an iron-bound coast, as though scorning the obstacles in front of it; and Margaret, her whole heart tender and sensitive to impressions of natural beauty, was carried out of herself by this new scene, so suddenly presented to her.

How small, how little, seemed the former ideas she had had of the place.

She was too full of thought to speak much, and her silence suited Mrs.

Dorriman, who, while striving to keep every word she said away from subjects likely to touch upon poor Margaret's loss, betrayed by the very pains she took, by her sudden pauses and the hesitation of her manner, that there was an expectation on her side of some emotion she did not wish to arouse.

This would not do.

There were some things in Margaret's life that she could never touch upon with any one. Her husband's madness had been very terrible, so terrible that she never willingly allowed it to remain in her mind, and she never mentioned him.

It was a frightful and crus.h.i.+ng trial out of which she had come into the light. Her wings had been scorched and broken in the conflict, but they had not been injured for all time. The stain was not permanent, and she had pa.s.sed through it all without understanding it, except so far as this, that she believed to every woman an instinct is given as a help.

She had wilfully erred against hers, and she had suffered cruelly.

But of her child ... yes, of her child she was longing to speak! the want of sympathy in Grace had sent back all the touching records, so dear to a mother's heart, and she knew that Mrs. Dorriman would give sympathy.