Mrs. Dorriman Volume Iii Part 35

"A further injury, Margaret! What further injury can be left? I have suffered surely enough at his hands?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Margaret, pa.s.sionately. "Do you not see--can you not feel--that if you allow this to rankle in your mind; if you allow the sweetness of your nature to be turned to gall; if your soul suffers, and that you say it is not possible to forgive--there will be a deeper injury?"

She stopped and left her, and poor Mrs. Dorriman stood looking after her, as though expecting her to return.

Once before she had had a bitter struggle, and she had forgiven. She went to her room, where all was ready for her departure, and she shut herself in....

Blank and desolate was Mr. Sandford's room. He allowed no one to come near him. He sent away Margaret, though she had insisted on bringing him food, and had tried to talk to him.

He sat long hours suffering acutely both physically and mentally. He seemed only now more fully to realise what a crime his was. His sister's character, in his eyes so feeble, was, he had conceived, unfitted for the position she should have held; and this was his own excuse to himself when conscience a.s.serted itself, or rather tried to do so.

They had all left him, he thought. There had been a bustle and a movement in the hall, and he had heard wheels.

The light was waning fast over the room, by the shadow of twilight, in which his face looked wan and white.

He knew that his hours were numbered, and he wished to pray; but he had no habit of prayer; he had always been afraid....

How he was suffering! His heart beat as though each stroke would burst it.

The door opened very slowly, and he started up. Who was the intruder?

Who was it that came to mock his sufferings?

Then a gentle voice spoke out of the dim and fading light--"Brother!"

and Mrs. Dorriman came up and knelt down by his side.

"I have been wrong," she said. "I thought only of myself, and I did not realise your wrongs. Once again I come to say forgive, as I hope for forgiveness myself."

Her voice died away. She heard him say fervently, in a very low voice, "Thank G.o.d!" and she went on--

"But while I do wish you to know this--to try and forget the wrong done to me--there is another to turn to, to ask for forgiveness from."

She felt his hand clasp hers; and as in a dream came from his lips that first prayer of childhood--"Our Father!"

She left him after a while; but she did not go away that night.

Next day his servant, who slept in the little ante-room, saw that he had been busy writing, and then laid down and was now sleeping.

The doctor came and saw him, and directed that some one should stay beside him.

The hours went on, but Christie sitting there saw no change, only a greater stillness seemed to fill the room.

Then suddenly she saw that the sleep was the eternal sleep which knows no waking here.

Mrs. Dorriman at Inchbrae once more suffered long from the effects of all the agitation she had gone through. The last night of Mr. Sandford's life was spent in writing to her, but even to Mr. Stevens she said nothing of the contents of his letter, only comforted by the whispered prayer which was her last remembrance of him. One point she was anxious upon: the recovery of the old place, and whether there was any necessity for letting the world know this painful chapter in the family history.

Mr. Stevens arranged both matters for her. Mr. Sandford, having by will left everything to his sister, she paid the legacy duty for the money, which was found to have acc.u.mulated enormously.

Sandford was bought back and refurnished, and, under Mrs. Macfarlane's wing, Mrs. Dorriman again changed her name, and Mr. and Mrs. Stevens Sandford went to the old house. By her express wish there were no great rejoicings--in her heart would remain for a long time that sense of a terrible past, which time only could soften and heal.

But, as a tree nipped and blighted under cruel exposure and an unfavourable soil revives and blossoms when transplanted into genial air, so Mrs. Dorriman's character (we must still call her Dorriman) grew firmer and stronger.

She had much to forget, but love is a great factor, and, as the subject was one which, after the first, Mr. Stevens Sandford would not allow her to dwell upon or talk about, it pa.s.sed out of her mind by degrees.

She had now a fuller life, sons and daughters cl.u.s.tered round her, and gave her the love she had craved for.

Margaret and her husband were content to live a quiet useful happy life.

Her other children did not banish the first from her memory, and her spirits were never high. But she was happy and cheerful. The one constant ruffle on the surface of her smoother sea was her sister.

Grace was always the same Grace--at one moment pa.s.sionately fond of her husband and lavis.h.i.+ng affection and endearment upon him, and the next quarrelling violently with him, and accusing him of almost every sin mentioned in the Decalogue.

Still she kept his affection! She was one of the provoking, irritating, and yet charming people that could sway the pa.s.sion of a man at will, and she had that strongest claim on the forbearance of a generous man--ill health.

She was a perpetual astonishment to her sister, and often a terrible anxiety.

Margaret's poems were no longer pa.s.sionate, or even powerful. It has been said, and with a good deal of truth, that the grandest poem, like the sublimest music, springs from human wretchedness, but this applies to poetry set in a minor key.

Margaret's husband gives another reason for her silence. The constant care and thought lavished upon every creature within her radius--she is one of the women who finds her truest happiness in giving it to others.

Christie did not live long; she saw her beloved mistress installed in her old home, and died soon afterwards, happy now right was done.

And Jean? Jean took every one by surprise, and married a hard-working, steady good mechanic at Renton.

They all exclaimed when she announced her marriage, and Mrs. Dorriman said:

"And you, Jean, who think it so dreadful to live near all that smoke, and found it so different to what you had been used to?"

"Eh, ma'am," answered Jean, grinning from ear to ear, "it's no the place, it's the man!"

THE END.