The Twa Miss Dawsons Part 4

He looked at her a moment as if in doubt, and then he said shortly, "I want nothing," and Jean went away to let herself think over it all.

"No answer!" said she as she took the note from her pocket again. A leaf torn from an account-book it seemed to be. She spread it before her on the table; there were only a few words written on it.

"Miss Dawson,--

"If it is possible, come to the pier head before the 'John Seaton'

sails. Maybe the sight of you will do what no persuasion of mine can do. But no ill shall come to Geordie that I can keep from him. Come at all risks.

"Your humble servant,--

"W.C."

"And I might have been there, if I had but known. What will he think of me? And can it be that Geordie has sailed on the 'John Seaton'? No wonder that my heart grew sick as the s.h.i.+p went out of sight. And oh how can I ever tell my father?"

CHAPTER FOUR.

SAUGHLEAS.

Saughleas with the June suns.h.i.+ne felling on it was a very different place from Saughleas under the "drip, drip" of winter rain and sleet, with the wind moaning or roaring through the bare boughs of its sheltering beeches.

The house was plain and heavy looking. It stood too near the road for so large a house, it was said, and it was so high that it made all the trees--except the few great beeches--look smaller than they would have looked elsewhere. But it was built of the cheerful looking reddish granite of the neighbourhood, and with its green adornment of honeysuckle and climbing roses and its low French windows opening on the little terrace above the lawn, it looked in summer-time a handsome and homelike dwelling.

There were many trees about it--fruit trees, elms, and poplars, Norway spruces, and Scotch firs; but most of them had been planted within the last fifteen years, and trees on this east coast--like the children in the song--"take long to grow." The beeches, seven in number, were both old and beautiful--so beautiful and so stately amid the dwarfs around them that they, and not the wavering line of Saughs or willows that followed the margin of the burn running through the long low fields, it was sometimes said, should have given a name to the place.

There was a narrow belt of wood behind the house which had been planted long ago, and even in it the trees were not very large. But it was a very pretty spot, a real wood, where up through the undisturbed dead leaves of autumn came snowdrops and violets and primroses in the spring.

Between this wood and the house was a field of gra.s.s, which was not cut smoothly every day or two like the lawn in front, but was allowed to grow tall and strong till the right time came to cut it down for hay.

Through this field a gravelled walk led down to "The Well"; a clear, unfailing spring at the edge of the wood, and to a moss-covered stone seat beside it.

Beyond this a narrower path led through the gra.s.s and the last year's dead leaves into the heart of the wood, where, in a circular s.p.a.ce, large enough to let the sunlight in though the trees had been higher, lay "Mary Keith, beloved and honoured wife of George Dawson," with her little children at her side. Here the turf was soft and green, but there was no adornment of shrub or flower on the grave or near it, only a simple headstone of grey granite and near it a turf seat, over which the slender boughs of a "weeping birch" hung sadly down.

Beyond the wood were the low fields through which the Saugh burn ran.

Parks they were called, but they were just long gra.s.sy fields, with rough stone walls round them, and cows and sheep feeding in them. There was no "Park," in the grand sense of the term, about Saughleas as yet.

There was no s.p.a.ce for one without appropriating some of the best fields from the leased farms, and if things had gone right with him, that might have been done in time, Mr Dawson sometimes said to himself with a sigh.

But things had not gone right with him of late. Any thing but that--if one might judge from the look of care and pain, that had become almost habitual to him now.

"George, man, is it worth your while to wear your life away gathering gear that ye dinna need, when ye might be enjoying what ye have in this bonny place?"

"It _is_ a bonny place," was all he said in reply.

They were sitting, not on the lawn, but on the other side of the drive, where the suns.h.i.+ne was softened by the fluttering beech leaves overhead.

At least, Miss Jean was sitting there. Her brother was "daundering" up and down the walk with his hands clasped behind him, as his way was, lingering a little, now at the gate and now at his sister's side. He had forgotten her for the moment, as he stood looking out toward the distant sea, and the look which his daughter had come to know well, but which his sister was seldom suffered to see, came to his face and rested on it still when he turned along the walk again. And so he spoke.

"It _is_ a bonny place," he answered, and then he walked away. But though he let his eyes wander over the gardens and the wood, and the fields beyond, there came to his face no glad look of possession or self-gratulation, and his head drooped lower and his step lagged as he drew near her again. He stood silent at her side, as though he expected her to say more, but she said nothing.

"It _is_ a bonny place," said he again, "though it has given me but little pleasure as yet, and whiles I think that I am near done with it-- and--there's none to come after me."

"George, man! that's an ill thing to say."

"But it's true for a' that G.o.d knows I was thinking little of myself when I put the winnings of my whole life into the land. And what is likely to come of it? Ye might weel say, Jean, that G.o.d's blessing hasna been upon it."

"No, I would never say that."

He took his way down the walk again, and went quite round the broad lawn, and she had time for a good many troubled thoughts before he came back.

"I doubt ye're overworking yourself, George," said she. She put out her hand to draw forward a garden chair that stood beyond her, and he did not refuse it, as she was afraid he might, but sat down beside her.

"Where are the girls?" asked he. "They are busy up the stair--about May's dress, I think. But there is nothing to hinder them coming, if ye're wanting them."

"No. I'm no' wanting them. I have something to say to you, and I shall find no better time. I am going to make a new will."

"Well?"

"I have waited long, but if any thing were to happen to me, there would be endless trouble--if--unless--" He paused a moment and then added, "I know not well what to do."

"Need ye do any thing at once?"

"I think I should. Life is uncertain, though mine may be no more so than that of other men. But no man should put off settling his affairs, for the sake of those that are to come after him. I wish to do justly, but I will not divide the land, and I will not burden it."

"No, it wouldna be weel to divide the land nor to burden it," said Miss Jean.

There was a long silence and then Mr Dawson said gravely, felling into the Scottish tongue as he and the rest of them were apt to do when much moved.

"Gin ony stranger were to go through Portie the day and speir at ane and anither up and doon the street, as to who had been the successful man o'

these pairts for the last five and twenty years or mair, there's little doubt whose name would be given them. And yet--my life looks and feels to me the day--awfully like a failure."

The shock which his unexpected words gave his sister was not all pain.

She had thought him only too well content with his life and with what he had done in it. He was going down the hill now. It was well that he should acknowledge--that he should even be made sharply to feel, that all that he had--though it were ten times more--was not enough for a portion. But the bitter sadness of his look smote her painfully.

"G.o.d help him!" she said in her heart, but to him she said nothing. He did not take her silence for want of sympathy. He was too well acquainted with her ways for that, and in a little he added,--

"Like other folk I have heard o', I have gotten my wish, but all that made it worth the having has been taken from me. Gin she had lived--"

His sister did not speak. She just laid her hand on his for a moment, and looked at him with grave, wet eyes.

"If she had lived," he went on, not yielding to the weakness that had come upon, him, "if she had lived, the rest might have been hindered."

"G.o.d knows," said Miss Jean softly, taking up her knitting again.

"Ay, He knows, but I dinna seem to be able to tak' the good o' that that some folk do. But good or no good, I man submit--like the lave."

"Here are the bairns," said Miss Jean softly as the two sisters came through one of the open windows to the terrace about the lawn--"a sight worth seeing" the father in the midst of his painful thoughts acknowledged. They lingered a moment in the terrace raised a little above the lawn, the one stooping over a bonny bush of wee Scotch roses at her feet, the other standing on tiptoe trying to entangle a wandering spray of honeysuckle that it might find support. The eyes of father and aunt could not but rest on them with pleasure.

"I wonder that I ever could have thought them so much alike," said their father, in a little.

"They're like and they're no' like," said Miss Jean.

They were even less alike than they had been that day when they had startled her coming in on her out of the storm. Their dress had something to do with it doubtless. May wore something white and fluffy, with frills and flounces and blue ribbons, and her brown curls were bound back by a snood of blue. She was in her simple finery as fair and sweet a picture of a young maiden as one could wish to see.