Chapter IX · THE SHADOWY HAND AT LONEWOODLEE.

During all this time that the summer had been verging towards autumn, and the corn yellowing on lea and upland, Mary Lennox had been unremitting as usual, in the lonely task of tending her father's sick-bed.

She had only heard incidentally of Cyril's departure for the seat of war—that he had gone without a word of kindness or farewell to her who loved him as her own soul and more; and for a time, that soul had seemed to die within her.

Her betrothal ring was a fond link—a species of sentimental fetter—from which she had no wish to free herself, otherwise she might have drawn it from her finger and cast it in the fire!

The first time that Cyril had called her Mary—her Christian name—still dwelt in her memory with exquisite tenderness, from the very novelty of the circumstance. The last time he had called her Mary, dwelt in her memory too; but with anguish, for then it had been uttered in a tone of wrath, of sorrow and upbraiding.

Music was the great solace of old Oliver Lennox's lonely days. He loved to hear the rich and glorious voice of his daughter, and thus, for many an hour she played and sung to him, while her heart was full, nigh unto bursting, with thoughts that would not be repressed.

Like an angel of mercy had poor Mary hovered about that sick-bed, where her only tie to earth was about to be severed; for at last there came a day, she was never to forget, when the doctor assured her that all his skill could "protract life no longer, and that ere nightfall, too probably, all would be over;" and Mary heard him without tears, for now they would not flow; but the old anxious and clamorous sensation about her heart, became replaced by a gnawing concentrated agony too keen for description; and as she listened to the fatal words of Doctor Squills, felt the kind pressure of his hand and heard his steps die away as he left the house, she gazed in a kind of stupor across the landscape, where the setting sun shone so warmly, and, it seemed, so mockingly, in his summer splendour, on the green pasture lands, and on the trees where the birds were singing so merrily, while through the open windows the hum of the mountain bee, and sweet perfume of the honeysuckle came together.

"Must it be—must it be—at last—at last!" she murmured through her clenched teeth; and creeping once more to his side, she kissed her father's brow and caressed his silvery locks, that were now as thin and fine as floss silk; and as she did so, there flashed on her memory the old tradition that "a grey head was ne'er kamit" (i.e., combed) by a Lennox of Lonewoodlee, for in domestic brawls or foreign wars, they all perished early; but the manners were changed for the better now.

For a time he seemed unconscious of her presence, and spoke only of her dead brother.

"Oh, my Harry," he murmured, "your mother was in her grave, and never knew how gallantly you led your squadron on that terrible day against the Sikhs."

"Mamma is in Heaven, and oh, papa, may know it all!" whispered Mary.

Then suddenly a light seemed to penetrate the darkness of his mind; he recognised her, and drew her close to his breast in a tremulous embrace.

"Mary, my own little Mary," said he in low and laboured accents, "the bitterness of death is not in dying, but in leaving you without a home—without a friend—for all passes away with me."

"God will guard and guide me, papa!"

"Our past, with all its traditions and history, has been an honourable past; yet we Lennoxes have been going down in the world—down so surely as I shall go to my grave—my poor child!"

After a long pause he spoke again; but more feebly.

"Play me something, Mary, while I can yet listen; for the music soothes me into dreams and fills me with prayerful thoughts; play to me once again, Mary," he added with a smile that made her heart sicken, for it was the last flash up of the dying light, ere that light went out for ever!

Mary seated herself at the piano in the adjoining room, and while tears streamed over her face, and her tremulous hands could barely touch the keys in accompaniment, she slowly sung two verses of a hymn:

For a time the old man had beat feebly with his fingers on the coverlet; then all motion ceased, and when Mary stole in, a cry escaped her, and she sank on her knees, burying her face in the bedclothes.

The day had indeed faded into gloom; the old man had passed away to the foot of the Great White Throne; and, a terrible reality, the unseen, yet shadowy hand was resting on Lonewoodlee.

* * * * * *

There were now silence and utter desolation in that sequestered tower among the moorlands. The blinds were drawn down; old and dingy blinds they were, making the deeply set windows look more gloomy in the walls which were of such strength and thickness.

Alison Home, after the first noisy explosion of her grief, when she uttered spasmodic sobs and rocked herself to and fro before the kitchen fire, moved about stealthily and softly in list shoes, as if fearing still to disturb the old Laird, who died where so many of his forefathers had lain, and where many of their brides had slept.

The stillness, the solemn hush of death were over all, and nowhere more than in the desolate heart of Mary. Everything connected with such an event in Scotland is so grim, so stern, so funereal, and utterly without aught to alleviate the mind of the survivor, that it becomes harrowing in the extreme. There are no prayers for the dead; no pretty offices, such as the decoration of the body with flowers: no service of any kind is performed beside it, so that the living may linger near in a labour of love to the last. A white sheet is simply spread over to hide it, and then the body is left to stiffen into ghastly rigidity of outline.

And this death had not come unaccompanied by omens; the watch-dog had moaned painfully all the preceding night; and Alison Home, and the other domestic, had of course heard the dead-bells tinkling in their ears, according to the peasant superstition in the old ballad:

Though in days and months past, Mary had often, in anticipating the present terrible contingency, thought of her own future, she forgot all about it now. She had even ceased to think of Cyril Wedderburn till his mother's card came, and a bitter smile crossed the girl's pale face as she placed it on the table, where lay an open letter from Messrs. Grub and Wylie, the solicitors, "threatening legal proceedings anent the bill handed to us by our client Captain Chesters of Chesterhaugh."

It might safely lie on the table unheeded now!

Mary Lennox was indeed alone! Sorrow-stricken as she was, there was not on all the earth a being who could share her terrible emotion of grief. She had no friend nigh to soothe her awful loneliness by a single word that was not so conventional as to be repellant. She had no home, no house, no shelter now from the too probable want that must soon overtake her!

Dark and cheerless indeed was the prospect of the bereaved girl; there were affliction and agony for the present, with vague terror of the future. No hand was near to caress, and no voice to soothe her, as she lay weeping on her bed, sleepless and without rest, though prostrate from over-wrought emotion. There was something terrible in the desolation of that young heart, thrust back upon itself, even in its craving for sympathy. She had not even that relief afforded to sorrow by having around her friends to whom she might speak of the dead, and hear his real or imagined virtues extolled, remembered, and descanted on.

The two old female servants sat cowering by the kitchen fire, talking in low whispers of the Shadowy Hand on the wall, and wondering if it was visible now; but then there was no moon. According to an old custom, or superstition, they had covered up with white every piece of furniture the chamber of death contained, and then the door thereof was carefully closed, for in rural districts the people fear the dead may speak if it is left ajar, though the whistle of the locomotive is fast banishing all such foolish fancies.

The minister of Willowdean, a cold and somewhat pompous personage, came on the morrow, and his extempore prayer—one stereotyped in his mind, having been delivered on a thousand similar occasions—though hard and unsympathetic, and most jarringly intoned, soothed her a little, because his meaning was good, and he wished to be kind apparently.

The Reverend Gideon M'Guffog was a burly, hard-featured, and sandy-whiskered Galwegian, who seemed more like something between a bluff grazier and a sleek attorney, than a clergyman. At the close of his prayer, which he delivered with his eyes shut, he glanced with surprise at the open piano, on which the music Mary had last used was yet remaining neglected or forgotten.

"Music?" said he, in a tone of reprehensive inquiry, while glancing at Mary, under, over, and finally through his spectacles.

"It is the hymn I sang to my darling papa last night; he loved it so, next to Adeste fideles, indeed; and it was while I was singing it, he passed away from me," said Mary in a choking voice.

The measure of the Reverend Gideon's reprehension became full when he read over the hymn in question.

"It is ritualistic, even popish in spirit, Miss Lennox, and I deplore that the last sounds heard on earth by the ears of your esteemed father, were such as these. But oh, let not me bruise the bruised! My poor young lady, this sort of thing comes of your being so sadly left to yourself."

He retired, promising to call again. But nothing that he could say had the effect of crushing Mary's spirit lower, though she felt that in life or in death she had nothing to reproach herself with as a daughter.

As he was in haste to address a meeting of the Sabbatarians and self-righteous folks of Willowdean, who were getting up a petition to the Home Office to prevent the working-men of Edinburgh from entering the Botanical Gardens of that city "on the Lord's Day," and indulging in the desecration of it by enjoying flowers and sunshine, he hurried away; but permitted his wife, who had latterly ignored Mary's existence (at least since the Chesterhaugh story), to remain with her, till the funeral matters were arranged. This was but an act of Christian charity; and when it became known in the neighbourhood, that the impoverished Laird of Lonewoodlee was dead, many shook their heads regretfully, when remembering, like honest Sir John Wedderburn, his stately manners, his steady seat in the hunting field, his convivial qualities, his dignified, old-fashioned courtesy, his queer feudal notions; and all agreed that a link with the past was broken.

A few others speculated on what would become of his beautiful orphan daughter.

The funeral day came at last, the great and final wrench to poor Mary, who was secluded in her own room, as men alone are present when "the Prayer" is given in Scotland; but she heard that Sir John Wedderburn and his youngest son were present in deep mourning, and she sobbed more heavily at the intelligence.

Cyril's father! Cyril's brother!

"Dead!—dead!" she would whisper in her heart. "How shall I struggle through the world alone? Who will love me now that my dearest papa is dead?"

So Oliver Lennox was buried in the Lennox aisle of Willowdean Kirk, where are lying the tombs of his race for three hundred years, back even to Oliver who built the Tower, as the legend above its door records. And with a face of due solemnity, specially got up for the occasion, his solicitor from Edinburgh acted as chief mourner; for neither kith nor kin had Oliver left to stand by his grave on that solemn day when the turf fell like a green curtain over the last scene of his history.

"Better in his narrow home than in the Tolbooth of Willowdean or Greenlaw; for it was coming to that, sir!" whispered his solicitor in the ear of Sir John Wedderburn, to whom, as a Baronet and man of property, he had stuck like a barnacle during the whole of the melancholy ceremony.