Chapter VIII: Miss West's Christmas Adventure, 337 (8)

Leslie played sad pranks in the early season of her disenthralment. She wandered far and near, and soiled her white gowns, to the despair of the Otter servant who did up the master's shirts and managed the mistress's clear-starching, but who never dreamt, in those days of frills, robes, and flounces, of styling herself a laundress. Leslie filled her apron with mosses and lichens: she stole out after the reapers had left the patch of oats which was not within sight of the house, and gathered among the sheaves like a Ruth. She grew stout and hardy, and, in spite of her gipsy bonnet, as brown as a berry under this out-of-door life, until no one would have known the waxen-faced city girl; and many a time when Hector Garret left his study in the dusk and found his way to the drawing-room, he discovered her asleep from very weariness, with her head laid down on her spindle-legged work-table, and the white moonbeams trying to steal under her long eyelashes. He would tread softly, and stand, and gaze, but he never stooped and kissed her cheek in merry frolic, never in yearning tenderness.

Such was Leslie's holiday; let her have it--it ended, certainly. The black October winds began to whistle in the chimneys and lash the Otter sea into foam; the morning mists were white and dense on the hills, and sometimes the curtain never rose the whole day; the burns were hoarse and muddy, the sheep in fold, the little birds silent. Leslie loved the prospect still, even the wild grey clouds rent and whirled across the sky, the watery sun, and the ragged, wan, dripping verdure; but it made her shiver too, and turn to her fireside, where she would doze and yawn, work and get weary in her long solitary hours. Hector Garret was patient and good-humoured; he took the trouble to teach her any knowledge to which she aspired; but he was so far beyond her, so hopelessly superior, that she was vexed and ashamed to confess to him her ignorance, and it was clear that when he came up to her domain in the evening he liked best to rest himself, or to play with her in a fondling, toying way. After the first interminable rainy day which she had spent by herself at Otter, when he entered and proceeded in his cool, rather lazy fashion to tap her under the chin, to inquire if she had been counting the rain drops, to bid her try his cigar, she felt something swelling in her throat, and answered him shortly and crossly; but when she found that he treated her offended air as the whim of a spoilt child, and was rather the more amused by it, she determined that he should not be entertained by her humours. Perilous entertainment as it was, Leslie could not have afforded it; her wilderness tamed her so that she welcomed Hector Garret eagerly, submitted to be treated as a child, exerted herself to prattle away gaily and foolishly when her heart was a little heavy and her spirits languid.

Leslie saw so little of her husband--perhaps it was the case with all wives; her father and mother were as much apart--but Leslie did not understand the necessity. She did not like her life to be selfish, smooth, and aimless, except for her own fancies, as it had been from the first. She wanted to share Hector Garret's cares and his work which he transacted so faithfully. She wished he thought her half as worth consulting as his steward. She had faith in woman's wit. She had a notion that she herself was quick and could become painstaking. She tried entering his room once or twice uninvited, but he always looked so discontented, and when she withdrew so relieved, that she could not persevere in the attempt.

When Hector Garret went shooting or fishing, Leslie would have accompanied him gladly, would have delighted in his trophies, and carried his bag or his basket, like any gillie or callant of the Highlands or Lowlands, if he would have allowed it; but his excursions were too remote and fatiguing, and beyond the strength that was supposed consistent with her sex and nurture.

Little fool! to assail another's responsibilities and avocations when her own were embarrassing her sufficiently. Her household web had got warped and entangled in her careless, inexperienced hands, and vexed and mortified her with a sense of incapacity and failure--an oppression which she could not own to Hector Garret, because there was no common ground, and no mutual understanding between them. When Leslie came to Otter she found the housekeeping in the hands of an Irish follower of the Garrets--themselves of Irish origin; and Hector Garret presented Bridget Kennedy to his wife as his faithful and honoured servant, whom he recommended to a high place in her regard. Bridget Kennedy displayed more marked traces of race than her master, but it was the Celtic nature under its least attractive aspect to strangers, proud, passionate, fanciful, and vindictive. She was devoted to her master, and capable of consideration for Leslie on his account--though jealous of her entrance upon the stage of Otter; but she evinced this reflected interest by encroachments and tyranny, a general determination to adhere doggedly to her own ways, and to impose them upon her mistress.

Leslie began by admiring Bridget, as she did everything else at Otter. Leslie would have propitiated the mayor of the palace with kind words and attentions, but when she was snapped up in her efforts, she drew back with a girl's aptness to be affronted and repelled. Next Leslie began to angrily resist Bridget's unbecoming interference with her movements, and design of exercising authority and control over the child whom the master had chosen to set over his house; but her fitful impulses were met and overruled by stubborn and slenderly veiled fierceness. Leslie was not weak, but she was undisciplined; and she who had been the young Hotspur of the most orderly and pacific of families, learnt to tremble at the sound of Bridget's crutch in the lobbies, and her shrill voice rating the servants who flew to do her bidding.

In proportion as Leslie cowered at her subordinate, the subordinate was tempted to despise her and lord it over her.

Hector Garret was blind to this contention. For his own part, he humoured Bridget or smiled at her asperities, as suited him; and it is probable that if he had been appealed to, he would have adopted his old favourite's side, and censured Leslie as touchy, inconsiderate, perhaps a little spiteful. But he never was made umpire, for Leslie had all the disadvantage of a noble temper in an unseemly struggle. Bridget plagued Leslie, but Leslie would not injure Bridget,--no, not for the world. The imperious old woman was Hector Garret's friend; he had said that he had known no firmer friend than Bridget Kennedy. She had closed his father's eyes, she had stood by himself in sickness and sorrow (for all his strength and self-command, Hector had known sickness and sorrow--that was a marvel to Leslie)--Bridget might clutch her rights to the end, what did it signify? only a little pique and bitterness to an interloper.

Leslie had ceased to credit that she would ever become the wise, helpful woman that she had once warmly desired to see herself. Her own defects were now familiar and sorely disheartening to her, and she had grown aware that she could not by inspiration set and preserve in smooth, swift motion the various wheels of Otter, not even if--unlooked for and undesired sequel!--she received express permission to dance upon the head of old Bridget.

Leslie had fancied once, when Hector Garret told her how few neighbours lived within visiting distance, that she should not want society: but the solitude was matter of regret, especially when it proved that of the few families who exchanged rare intercourse, some of better birth than breeding scarcely held the daughter of the disinherited laird and Glasgow scholar as their equal in social rank, or a spouse worthy of the master of Otter, or indeed entitled to their special esteem.

The only house without any pretension within sight of Otter was situated at the other extremity of the bay, on a peninsula projecting far into the sea. It had been built in the days when each mansion was a fortalice, and when safety from enemies was of more moment than the convenience of friends.

This Earlscraig was now little more than a grim, grey turret, seldom occupied; the companion body of the building had been destroyed nearly a score of years before by a fire--the tragedy of the country-side, as it consummated the ruin of an old family--and in its horrors a lady of the house perished miserably. So the sight of its cold cluster of chimneys, wind-rocked walls, and scorched and crumbling vestiges of sudden destruction, far from adding to the cheerfulness of the landscape, was a blot on its rural prosperity.

The homes of humbler friends were foreign thresholds to Leslie; the reserved, engrossed, dignified master of Otter crossed them with a freer step. Leslie could but address her servants, and venture to intermeddle bashfully with their most obvious concerns. She had neither tongue nor eye for more distant and difficult dependants.

But Leslie was not dying of ennui or spleen, or miserable and with a nameless fathomless misery. She was only disenchanted--conscious of feeling a great deal older than she had done six months since. How could she have been so credulous, so vain! Verily, every path of roses has its panoply of thorns.

IV.--THE PAGES OF THE PAST.

One winter night Leslie, in her deep chair, observed Hector Garret turning over the leaves of an old pocket-book. Hector; catching her eye, offered it to her with a "See, Leslie, how my father chronicled the fashions"--he never did suppose her susceptible of very grave interests.

In the dearth of other amusements Leslie pored over the ancient diary, and found more suggestive paragraphs than the entry indicated: "Abel Furness has sent me a waistcoat an inch and a half shorter, and a pair of clouded silk hose for the black ditto, ordered." There were--"Three pounds English to my boy Hector, to keep his pocket during his stay at Ardhope." "A crown to Hector as fee for fishing out the black stot that broke its neck over the rocks." "A letter from Utrecht from my son Hector; a fair hand and a sensible diction." "Forty pounds over and above paid to please Hector on the bond over the flax-fields of Ferndean." "A small stipend secured to my thriftless kinsman, Willie Hamilton, by the advice and with the aid of my son Hector." "To Earlscraig with Hector:" this notice was repeated many times, until the record closed abruptly with the tremulous thanksgiving--"My dear son and heir, Hector, recovered of his malady by the blessing of God."

Very plainly lay the life-clue of that silent heart, traced in the faded ink of those yellowing pages. How old men cherished their offspring! What did Hector Garret think of those mute but potent witnesses of a regard that he could know no more on earth? She knew he prized the book, for she had seen it carefully deposited in one of the private drawers in his study. She opened it at the beginning, and slipping her fingers into its gilded pockets, discovered a folded paper. It contained merely a sprig of heather, and written on the enclosure--"From my dear wife, Isobel; her first gift." Two dates were subjoined, with thirty years' interval--that of the receipt of the token, and that of the inscription of the memorandum.

With flushing cheeks Leslie sat, and spread out the crushed, brittle spikes, so fondly won, so dearly held. She was sure Hector had not one leaf, riband, or ring which she had given him. Once when he was gayer than his wont, and plagued her with his jesting petting, she took up the scissors and cut off a lock of his hair. He did not notice the theft till it was accomplished, and then he stood half-thoughtful, half-contemptuous. He had not a hair of hers, but of course the whole head was his; his father had judged otherwise.

This earlier Hector Garret--she had heard Bridget enlarge upon his merits. "A fine man, like the master, but frank and light of heart until he lost the lady--ay, a real lady! grand and gladsome--the old lady of Otter." Leslie longed for a vision of those old occupants of her place and her husband's; to have a vivid experience of how they looked, spoke, and lived; to see them in spirit--in their morning good wishes, their noonday cares, their evening cheer, their nightly prayers? Was their union only apparent? were they severed by a dim, shapeless, insurmountable barrier, for ever together, yet for ever apart?

These shades lingered and abode with Leslie in her lonely vigils, ere she distinguished whether their language was that of warning or reproach. She studied their material likenesses--the last save one in the picture-gallery--honest faces, bright with wholesome vigour; their son Hector's was a finer physiognomy, but the light had left lip and eye, and Leslie missed it as she gazed wistfully at these shadows, and compared them with their living representative.

A stranger came to Otter: that was an unfrequent event, even when the spring was advancing, and the boats which had been drawn up for the winter were again launched in the cove, and the brown nets hung anew to dry on the budding whins and gowans--the April gowans converting the haugh into a "lily lea." Their nearest neighbour, only an occasional resident among them, lounged over with his whip, dog-call, and dogs, and entered the drawing-room at Otter, to be introduced for the first time to its mistress. Leslie's instincts were hospitable, and they were by no means strained by exercise; but she did not like this guest; she felt an involuntary repugnance to him, although he was very courteous to her--with an elaborate, ostentatious homage that astonished and confused her. He was a man of Hector Garret's age, but, even in his rough coat, with marked remains of youthful foppishness and pretension. He was a tall man, with beard and moustache slightly silvered; his aquiline features were sharpened and drawn; his bold searching eyes sunken. He was a gentleman, even an accomplished and refined gentleman in manner and accent--and yet there was about him a nameless coarseness, the brutishness of self-indulgence and low aims and ends, which no polish could efface or conceal.

Leslie, notwithstanding her slight knowledge of life, apprehended this, and shrank from the man; but he addressed Hector Garret with the ease of an intimate associate--and Hector Garret, with his pride and scrupulousness, suffered the near approach, and only winced when the stranger accosted Leslie, complimented Leslie, put himself coolly on the footing of future friendship with the lady of the house.

The day wore on, and still the visitor remained, entertaining himself, and discoursing widely, but for the most part on practices and motives strange at Otter.

"So you've married, after all, Hector," he said, suddenly, as they sat together in the twilight: "well, I excuse you," with a laugh and a touch on the shoulder.

The words were simple enough, but they tingled in Leslie's ears like insolence, and Hector Garret, so hard to rouse, bit his lips while he answered indifferently--"And when does your time come, Nigel? Are the shadows not declining with you?"

"Faith, they're so low, that there's not light left for the experiment; besides, French life spoils one for matrimony here, at least so poor Alice used to say--'no galling bonds on this side of the Channel'--the peaceful _couvent grille_, or a light _mariage de convenance_ among the pleasant southerns;--not that they are so pleasant as they were formerly either."

Hector Garret got up and walked to one of the window recesses, his brow knit, his teeth set.

Leslie rose to steal from the room.

"Nay, stay, madam," urged the bland, brazen intruder; "don't rob us so soon of a fair, living apology for _fades souvenirs_."

But "Go, Leslie, we will not detain you," Hector Garret exclaimed, impatiently; and Leslie hurried to her own chamber in a tumult of surprise and indignation, and vexed suspicion. Mysteries had not ceased; and what was this mystery to which Hector Garret deigned to lend himself in disparaging company with a sorry fine gentleman?

Bridget Kennedy was there before her, making a pretence of fumbling in the wardrobe, her head shaking, her lips working, her eyes blazing with repressed rage and malice.

"Is he there, madam, still?" she demanded, impetuously. "Is he torturing and maddening Master Hector with his tones and gestures? He!--he that ought to crouch among the bent grass and fern sooner than pass the other on the high road. Borrowing and begging, to lavish on his evil courses: he who could not pay us--not in red gold, but with his heart's blood--the woe he wrought. They had guileful, stony hearts, the Boswells, before they ever took to foreign lightness and wickedness: and evil to him who trafficked with them in life or death."

"Who is he, Bridget? I do not know him; I cannot understand," gasped Leslie.

"Don't ask me, madam--you, least of all."

"Tell me, Bridget, tell me," implored the girl, frightened, yet exasperated, catching the old woman's withered hands, and holding them fast.

"Don't ask me, madam," reiterated Bridget, sternly. "Better not."

"I will know; what do you mean? Oh, you hurt me, you hurt me! I will ask Hector Garret himself. I cannot bear this suspense!"

"Child, do you choose what you can bear? Beware!" menaced the nurse; then, as Leslie would have broken from her--

"Have it, then! He is the brother of that Alice Boswell who perished in the burning of Earlscraig nigh twenty years ago."

"Poor lady, Bridget," Leslie said, with a bewildered, excited sob. "Poor unhappy lady; but what has that to do with him, with me? I understand no better. Help me, Bridget Kennedy--a woman, like myself. I will not let you go."

"Madam, what good will it serve? It is small matter now:" then half reluctantly, half with that possession with which truth fills its keeper, slowly and sadly she unfolded the closed story. "What had Master Hector to do with Alice Boswell? He had to do with her as a man has to do with his heart's desire, his snare, his pitfall."

"He loved her, Bridget; he would have wedded her. I might never have been his--that is all."

"Love, marriage!" scornfully; "I know not that he spoke the words, but he lay at her feet. Proud as Master Hector was, she might have trodden on his neck; cool as Master Hector seems to others, he was fire to her. I have seen him come in from watching her shadow, long hours below her window, in the wind and rain, and salt spray. I have known him when he valued her glove in his bosom more than a king's crown--blest, blest if he had but a word or a glance. But it is long gone by, madam. Master Hector has gained wisdom and gravity, and is the head of the house; and for fair Miss Alice, she has gone to her place. Yes, she was a beauty, Miss Alice; she could play on stringed instruments like the heavenly harpers, and speak many tongues, and work till the flowers grew beneath her fingers. She learnt to wile men's souls from their bodies, if nothing more, in the outlandish parts where she was bred."

"So fair, so gifted--did she care for him in return, Bridget? Did she love him as he loved her?" asked a faint voice.

"What need you mind, madam?" sharply. "It is ill speaking harsh words of the dead. Did I not say she had gone to her place? God defend you from such a passage. Let her rest. Sure she cared for him, as she cared for aught else save herself. She scattered smiles and favours on scores. He knew at last what she took, and what she gave, if he did not guess it always."

"Why did he not save her, Bridget? die with her!"

"Madam," bitterly, "he did what man could do. They say he was more like a spirit than a mortal; but if he was to lose his love, how could even Master Hector fight against his Maker? He was fain to follow her; he dallied with death for weeks and months. Those were fell days at Otter, but the Lord restored him, and now he is himself again, and no woman will ever move Master Hector more."

There was silence in the room for a space. At last Bridget broke it: "Do you want anything more with me, madam, or shall I go?"

Haughty as Bridget Kennedy was, she spoke hesitatingly, almost pitifully. She had stabbed that young thing, sitting pale and cold before her; and no sooner was the deed done than her strong, deep nature yearned over her victim as it had never done to Hector Garret's girl wife, in the first rosy flush of her thoughtless gladness.

"Nothing more." The words were low and heavy, and when Bridget left her, Leslie raised her hands and linked them together, and stretched them out in impotence of relief.

What was this news that had come to her as from a far country?--this blinding light, this burst of knowledge that had to do with the very springs of a man's nature, this fountain so full to some, so empty to others? She had been deceived, robbed. Hector Garret was Alice Boswell's--in life and death, Alice Boswell's.

This love, which she had known so slightly, measured so carelessly--oh, light, shallow heart!--had been rooted in his very vitals, had constrained him as a conqueror his captive, had been the very essence of the man until it spent itself on Alice Boswell's wild grave. He had come to her with a lie in his right hand, for he was bound and fettered in heart, or else but the blue, stiff corpse of a man dead within; he had betrayed her woman's right, her best, dearest, truest right, her call to love and be loved. Another might have wooed her as he had wooed Alice Boswell; to another she might have been the first, the only one! she knew now why she was no helpmeet, no friend for him; why his hand did not raise her to his eminence, his soul's breath did not blow upon hers, and create vigour, goodness, and grace to match his own. Deep had not cried unto deep: heart had not spoken to heart: the dry bones, the vacant form, the empty craving, were her portion; and out of such unnatural hollowness have arisen, once and again, deadly lust and sin.

Why had none stepped in between her and this cruel mockery and temptation? "Mother, mother, how could you be false to your trust? Were you, too, cheated and bereft of your due? left a cold, shrinking woman, withering, not suddenly, but for a whole lifetime?"

Leslie sat long weighing her burden, until a tap at the door and Bridget Kennedy's voice disturbed her. "Earlscraig is gone, madam; Master Hector is sitting alone with his thoughts in your room. May be, he is missing his cup of tea, or, if you please, madam, his lady's company that he is used to at this hour."

Leslie rose mechanically, walked out, and entered her drawing-room. What did he there, his eyes fixed on the broken turret of Earlscraig, defined clearly on the limited horizon, his memory hovering over the fate of fair Alice Boswell?

Was it horrible to be jealous of a dead woman? to wish herself in that ever-present grave, sacred to him as the holiest, though no priest blessed it, no house of God threw over it the shadow of the finger pointed to heaven--the cross that bore a world's Saviour? But that swift and glowing passage from life and light and love, such as his to darkness, forgetfulness--eternity. How could she have faced it? Bridget, her old enemy, had prayed she might be delivered from it, whatever her trials.

"Nigel Boswell is gone at last; he was an old playfellow, and fortune and he have been playing a losing game ever since," he said, in unsuspecting explanation, as he joined her where she sat in her favourite window.

She did not answer him; she was stunned, and sat gazing abstractedly on the wallflowers rendering golden the mossy court wall, or far away on the misty Otter sea. She thought he had relapsed into his reveries, was with the past, the spring-tide of his life, the passion of his early manhood, while she was a little school-girl tripping demurely and safely along the crowded Glasgow streets. If she had looked up at him she would have seen that he was observing her curiously--wondering where his young wife had acquired that serious brow, those fixed eyes.

"What are you thinking of, Leslie?"

"Nothing; I cannot tell," hastily and resolutely.

"That sounds suspicious." He put his hand on her head, as he had a habit of doing, but she recoiled from him.

"A shy little brain that dreads a finger of mine on its soft covering must discover its secrets. Are they treasures, Leslie?"

Oh, blind, absent, reckless man, what treasure-keeper kept such ward!

Lightly won, was lightly held.

Leslie struggled with her oppression for several dull feverish days; then, driven by her own goading thoughts, her sense of injury, her thirst for justice and revenge, she left the house and wandered out on the beach to breathe free air, to forget herself in exertion, fatigue, stupor. It was evening, dark with vapour--gloomy, with a rising gale, and the sea was beginning to mutter and growl. Leslie sat shivering by the water's edge, fascinated by the sympathy of nature with her bitter hopelessness. A voice on the banks and meadows, even in the chill night air, whispered of spring advancing rapidly, with buds and flowers, with sap, fragrance, and warmth, and the tender grace of its flood of green; but here, by the waves, a passing thunder-cloud, a stealthy mist, a whistling breeze, darkened the scene, and restored barren, dismal winter in a single hour. The night drooped down without moon or star, and still Leslie sat listless, drowsy with sorrow, until as she rose she sank back sick and giddy; and then the idea of premature death, of passing away without a sign, of hiding her pain under the silent earth that has covered so many sins and sorrows, first laid hold of her.

The notion was not fairly welcome: she was young; her heart had been recently wrung; she had been listless and disappointed--but she had loved her few isolated engagements, her country life, her household dignity, the protection of her husband. She could not divest herself of these feelings at once. She feared the great unknown into which she should enter; but still death did not appal her as it might have done: it was something to be scanned, waited for, and submitted to, as a true sovereign.

The cold wind pierced her through and through; the rain fell; she could not drag herself from the shelving rock, though the tide was rising. She felt frozen, her limbs were like lead, and her mind was wandering, or lapsing into unconsciousness.

She did not hear a call, an approaching foot; but her sinking pulses leapt up with sudden power and passion when Hector Garret stooped over her, and endeavoured to raise her.

"Here, Bridget, she is found! Leslie, why have you remained out so late? You have been sleeping; you have made yourself ill. How can you be so rash, so imprudent? It is childish--wrong. You have made us anxious--distressed us. Poor old Bridget has stumbled further in search of you, this squally night, than she has ventured on the sunniest morning for many a year."

He was excited, aggrieved; he upbraided her. He had sympathy for old Bridget's infirmities; he knew nothing of his wife's misery.

Leslie resisted him as she had done since that day, slipped from his clasp, strove to steady herself, and to walk alone in her weakness. Bridget put her feeble arm around her.

"Lean on me, madam, and I will lean on you, for I am frail, and the road is rough, and the wind is blowing fresh, besides the darkness." "I knew that would quiet her," she muttered. "Poor old Bridget indeed! said Master Hector. Poor colleen! misled, misguided. Cruel makes cruel. St. Patrick could not save himself from the hard necessity."

Hector Garret was content since he saw Leslie safe; he accused her of captiousness and nervousness, but it was the waywardness and perversity of illness. He had tried her simple nature with too much alienation from her kind; she had grown morbid on the baneful diet, tutored though she had been to self-dependence. He had been to blame; but her merry temper would come back, and the rose to her cheek, and the spring to her foot, with other ties, other occupations--dearer, more sufficient.

V.--THE MOTHER AND CHILD.

"How is the poor child, Bridget Kennedy? Does she fare as she should do?"

"The child is as fine a child, Master Hector, as if she had been a boy, and a Garret, on both sides of the house, and will thrive if her mother will let her. There are mothers that would hinder their bairns in the death-rattle, and there are others that so watch their little ones that the angels of God are displaced from their cradles; and the weary human care haunts and harasses the infant, and stops its growth."

"I am not learned in these matters, Bridget. You brought me up; I trust you to rear my children."

"None shall rear them but their mother, Master Hector; none shall come between her and them. I have ruled long at Otter, but I dare not dispute with her there."

"Settle it as you like. I did not mean them--I was not thinking of them at all. I asked for their mother. You have experience. Is she well--happy as she should be?"

"I wish you would not provoke such mistakes, Master Hector," said Bridget, pettishly; "I wish you would find some other name for your wife. You should know best, but is it suitable to term the nursling and the parent by the same title? I am a foolish old woman, but it seems strange to me. Your father did not confound them."

"Ah! I dare say not. We will find a Christian name for the new comer, and end the Comedy of Errors, since you dislike it, and Leslie too, doubtless; for women are nice on these points."

* * * * *

"Leslie, what shall we call the baby?" inquired Hector Garret the next time he stood by his wife's side, wishing to divert her by a pleasant difficulty, and to vary the expression of those large eyes--larger now than ever--which, he knew not why, fascinated him by the intensity of their gaze. "I cause Bridget to blunder oddly between you two; so set her at rest by fixing as soon as you can the momentous question."

"I have fixed," answered Leslie, quietly.

"I commend your foresight; a man, now, would have left the alternative open to the last."

"Mrs. Garret's first daughter must be named after Mrs. Garret's mother," declared Bridget, authoritatively.

"No," said Leslie, hastily; "I have named her after myself--if you do not object," she added, with a flush, half shame, half pride.

"I? Oh, no; do as you will. It will not solve Bridget's puzzle; but I am content. Leslie is a bonnie name."

Leslie compressed her lip.

"My mother's name is bonnier," she said, abruptly; "my mother's name is Alice."

He started, and gazed at her keenly while she continued, falteringly, but with a stubborn will in her speech:--

"I wish my baby to be mine in everything, particularly as she is a girl. I am neither wise nor clever, nor strong now. I fear I am often peevish; but you will excuse me, because I am a weak, ignorant woman. Such defects are not fatal in a mother; hundreds have overcome them for their children. I trust that I will be, if not what a better woman might have been, at least more to my child than any other can be. Her mother!--so holy a tie must confer some peculiar fitness. Yes; my baby is mine, and must lie on my knees, and learn to laugh in my poor face. And so I wish her to have my name also, that there may be a complete union between us."

Hector Garret knew now what intelligence had reached his wife, and while the old wound burnt afresh, the shyness of his still but sensitive nature, the pride of the grave strong man, were offended and injured. But with regard to his wife he was only conscious of the petulant, unreasonable, unkind surface; he did not sound her deep resentment and jealousy; he did not dream of the anguish of the secret cry whose outward expression struck upon his vexed ears; he did not hear her inner protest: "I will not have my baby bear his love's name, recall her to him, be a memorial of her--be addressed with fondness as much for the sake of old times as for her own, the innocent!--be brought up to resemble Alice, trained to follow in her footsteps, until, if I died, my child would be more Alice Boswell's than mine. Never, never!"

Hector Garret little knew Leslie Bower; slowly he arrived at the discovery. First a troubled suspicion, then a dire certainty. Not the transparent, light-hearted, humble girl, whom a safe, prosperous country home, an honourable position, a kindly regard, left more than satisfied--happy: but the visionary, enthusiastic woman, confiding, but claiming confidence for confidence; tender and true, but demanding like sincerity, constancy, purity, and power of devotion. Had he but known her the first! But a man's fate lies in one woman. Had he but left her in her girlish sweetness and gaiety; had he never approached her with his cold overtures--his barren, artificial expediency and benevolence! She erred in ignorance and inexperience; but he against the bitter fruit of knowledge, in wilful tampering with truth--reluctantly, misgivingly--selfishly cozening his conscience, hardening himself in unbelief, applying salve to the old vital stab to his independence. He had erred with an egotistical and presumptuous conceit of protecting and defending the young full life which would have found for itself an outlet, and flown on rapid, free, and rejoicing, had he only refrained from diverting its current into a dull, dark, long-drained channel, where it was dammed up, or oozed out sluggishly, gloomily, despairingly--without natural spring-time, sunshine, abundance, gladness, until lost in the great sea.

He had viewed but the soft silken bud, whose deep cup was drunk with dew,--its subtle, spicy fragrance pervading, lingering after the leaves were drooping and the bloom fled, but its rich, royal hues were yet to come. In his blind coarse blundering, he had mistaken the bud for the flower, the portal for the church; he had entered with heedless, profane foot, and blighted the blossom and rifled the altar. For the leaves had been unclosed, the gates unbarred under his neglect; and Leslie, with a noble woman's frankness, generosity, and meekness--that true meekness which oftenest cleaves and melts the ringing metal of a high spirit--Leslie had begun to love him, to fix her heart upon him, to grow to him--stolid, sardonic statue that he was!--until that shock exposed his flaws and wrenched her from her hold. Better to be thus rudely dissevered, perhaps, than to waste her womanliness, puny and pale from its vague bald nourishment, on a fraud and a farce.

Hector Garret awoke from his delusion, from his scholarly reveries, his active enterprise. "He that provideth not for his own house is worse than an infidel." So he watched Leslie: he saw her rise up with her thoughtful face, very individual it appeared now, and go up and down carrying her baby. He was aware that she was appropriating it as her treasure; that she was saying to herself some such words--"Silver and gold have I none, but this is my pearl beyond price; she will be enough for me; she must be so; I will make her so. She and I will waste no more silly tears on hard, changeable men. They are not like us, little daughter; they pass us by, or they love us once with fierce desire; and when satiated or balked, they turn to us again to please their eye, flatter their ear, vary their leisure; to anatomize and torture like other favourites of an hour. We will have none of them, save to do our duty. We will live for each other."

Not that she deprived him of his rights as a father; she was too magnanimous to be unjust, and she would not have balked that puppet, to whose service she consecrated herself, of one privilege which any pangs of hers could purchase.

She presented their child to him with a serious stateliness, as if it was so very solemn a ceremony that its performance emancipated her from ordinary emotion; she came and consulted him on the small questions that concerned its welfare with the same absorbing care. If he came near her when she bore the child in her arms, she offered it to him immediately: she was righteous as well as valiant--yes, very valiant. He contemplated her stedfastness with wonder. After the blow which overcame her, when a compensation was given her--a blessing to atone for the gall in her cup, she accepted it and cherished it, and set herself to be grateful for it and worthy of it immediately. The fortitude which, after the involuntary, inevitable rebellion, would permit no more idle repining, the decent pride that hid its own disease and bore it bravely, even the sternness that set its teeth against reaction--he recognised them all; it was studying the reflection of his own lofty features in the fragile, quivering flesh of a girl.

What is often proposed, rarely practised, Leslie did. She changed her ways: with what travail of spirit, what heart-sickness she alone could tell. It is no common slight or safe influence that causes a revulsion in the whole bodily system; it is no skin-deep puncture that bleeds inwardly; it is no easy lesson that the disciple lays to heart; but Leslie surmounted and survived it. She had escaped her responsibilities, and slumbered at her post. She would do so no longer. She belonged now, after little Leslie, to her household, and its members might yet be the better for her, and Hector Garret should respect--not pity her. She vindicated her matronhood suddenly and straightforwardly, but with a sedateness and firmness that was conclusive of her future power; she had much to acquire, but she would gain something every day and every hour, until Otter should own no abler mistress. Then for her child, she would teach herself that she might instruct her daughter, so that if she proved inquiring and meditative like her father, she need not soon weary of her simple mother, and turn altogether to a more enlightened and profound instructor. Surely there was some knowledge that a woman could best store up and dispense, some gift wherein the vigorous and well-trained man did not bear the universal palm? Leslie strove to cultivate her talents; for these, in her position, there was scarcely a choice of fields, but she had eminently the power of observation, and her sharpened motives supplied the defects of her early education. Leslie became a naturalist--the most original and untrammelled of naturalists, for she proceeded upon that foundation of anecdotal and experimental acquaintance with herb and tree, insect, bird, and beast, and even atmospheric phenomena, whose unalloyed riches are peculiar to rustic and isolated genius.

Hector Garret observed this growing taste, and appreciated it. Leslie had ceased to apologize for her stupidity, and to be shy of his scrutiny. When he found her procuring and preserving this or that specimen, or noting down a primitive fact, if he asked an explanation he had one directly.

"This pale flower, and that with the green flowers and the great leaves, are lady's-smock and lady's-mantle; they say they are named after the Virgin, but I think Adam must have named them in the Garden.--Bridget tells me that the Irish believe the fairies sleep in these bells.--This is the plant of whose root cats are so fond that they burrow about it and nibble it, and as it does not hurt them, I have dug up a bit for our puss--little Leslie looks after her already.--I have been writing down the day when the swallows twittered at the window, to compare with their arrival next summer. Peggy Barbour saw a double nest with one hole last year; it must have been an old pair and a young maintaining a joint roof-tree.--Yes, of course, these are jay's feathers."

Another resource which Leslie found within Hector Garret's perception was that of music. She had been endowed with a flexible, melodious voice, and as soon as she had use for them, she gathered by magic a host of ditties, blithe or sad, stirring or soothing, from the romantic fervour of 'Charlie, he's my darling,' to the pathos of 'Drummossie Moor,' or the homely, biting humour of 'Tibbie Fowler,' to carol to the accompaniment of the ancient spinet, in order to cheer or lull the child.

Hector Garret would move to his study-window, and open it softly, in the gloaming hour when the purple sunset was on the sea, and the bats abroad from the old chimneys, to listen to his wife in the room above singing to her child. He did not hear her music otherwise: if he had solicited it, she would have complied, with a little surprise, but he did not seek the indulgence.

The alteration in Leslie which matured her unexpectedly from a girl to a woman affected powerfully both the arbiters of her destiny. Bridget Kennedy, from a tyrant, was fairly transformed into her warmest and most faithful adherent. There was something high and great in the wild old woman, that could thus at once confess her error, admit greatness in any form in another, and succumb to it reverently. Truly, Bridget Kennedy was like fire to the weak and foolish, a scourge and a grizzly phantom; to the brave and capable, a minister fearless, fond, and untiring to her last breath.

It was very strange to Hector Garret to be sensible of Bridget's lapse from his side,--to hear the present mistress, the subdued diligent woman, canonized to the level of the grand, glad lady of Otter to whom Bridget had been so long fanatically loyal. He said to himself that the child had helped to effect it, the precious descendant, the doted-on third generation; but he was uncertain. He himself was so impressed with the patient woman he had formed out of the lively girl, so tortured by a conviction that he had gagged and fettered her--that her limbs were cramped and benumbed, her atmosphere oppressive, her life self-denying--that he could bear it no longer.

"God forgive me, Leslie, for the wrong I have done you!" he confessed one night with a haggard, remorseful face, when she stood, constrained and pensive, on his joyless hearth.

She looked up quickly, and laughed a dry laugh. "You are dreaming," she replied. "How much larger Otter is than the Glasgow house! it was a mere cupboard in comparison. How much pleasanter the fields and hills and sands than the grimy, noisy streets where my head ached and my eyes were weary. And little Leslie is a thousand times dearer than my own people, or any companions that I ever possessed. Hush! hush! I hear her cry; don't detain me, unless for anything I can do for you--because nothing keeps me from Leslie."

The coals of fire were heaped upon his head: there could be no reparation.

Why was Hector Garret not resigned? It was a cruel mistake, but it might have been worse, for hearts are deceitful, and what is false and baneful is apt to prove an edge-tool. Here was permanent estrangement, comfortless formality, cold, compulsory esteem; but there was no treachery in the household, no malignant hate, no base revenge.

But Hector Garret would not rest: he had far less or far more energy than his wife; he walked his lands a moody, harassed man. The turmoil and distraction of his youth seemed recalled; he lost his equanimity; his regular habits faded from him. Leslie could no longer count on his prolonged absence, his short stated visits; he would be with her at any time within doors or without--to exchange a word or look, and go as he came, to return as unaccountably and inconsistently. It vexed Leslie; she tried not to see it; it made her curious, anxious; and what had she to do with Hector Garret's flushed cheek and shining eye? Some anniversary, some combination of present associations and past recollections--a tendency to fly from himself, besetting at times the most self-controlled--might have caused this change in his appearance. Ah! better twist and untwist the rings of little Leslie's fair hair, and dress and undress her as she had done her doll; better examine the shell cracked by the yellow-hammer, and count the spots on the broad, brown leaf of the plane, than perplex herself with so uncongenial a difficulty. But the difficulty pursued her nevertheless, and baffled and bewitched her as it has done wiser people.

The master and mistress of Otter were spectators of the harvest home, the plentiful feast, the merry dance in the spacious barn where their share of the fruits of the earth was about to be garnered. Leslie stood in her complimentary, gay gala ribbons, with her fingers meeting upon her wedding-ring, looking composedly and with interest on the buxom women and stalwart men, the loving lads and lasses, the cordial husbands and wives. Hector Garret, however, scarcely tarried to reply to his health and prosperity drunk in a flowing bumper, but broke from the scene as if its good was his evil, its blessing his curse.

In the parish church where Leslie had exhibited her bridal finery she now listened to the clergyman, and bent her head in penitence and worship, and was disturbed by Hector Garret's gesture of restlessness and attitude of care.

When the new moon was rising in the sky, Leslie would bid the little one look up and clap her hands, while Hector paced up and down unquiet and dissatisfied. Then she would carry the child off to her cradle pillow, and coming back would stand and look at the moon, while he was close to her, murmuring "Leslie! Leslie!" But she would turn upon him pale and cold as the moon above her, and would address him, "See, yonder is a ship doubling Earlscraig point and steering into the Otter sea."

VI.--THE STORM.

The October winds, tossing the late oats and the frosted heather, were lashing the Otter sea into heaving waves and flakes of foam. That western sea has its annals and its trophies, as well as den and moor. Edward Bruce crossed it to give to Ireland as dauntless a king as he whom a woman crowned, and who found a nameless grave; and there, in the glassy calm of a summer night, the vessel, with its passengers lulled in fatal security and slumber, sank like lead, fathoms beyond the aid of modern science with its myriads of inventions and its hardy self-confidence.

The few fishers of Otter were exposed to the swell rolling from New England and Labrador to Galloway and Argyle; many a lamp stood day and night in cottage windows, many an anxious woman forsook her brood, and under her sheltering plaid ran here and there, dizzy and desperate, to beg for counsel, and for tidings of the husband and father whose boat was due, and who was still exposed to the pitiless fury of the tempest.

Hector Garret was early summoned to marshal his men in order to succour those who were within his reach; to think, plan, and act to the last for those who were amissing, but might yet be rescued. He had been upon the beach all day; he had been handling rope and line; he had been ready at any moment to launch his own boat among the breakers.

Leslie, too, had been abroad. She had been in several houses, especially in those whose young children were of the same age as Leslie. In all she met the same abandonment; whether the heads of the families chanced to be young or old, worthy or unworthy, mattered not; they were now the sole thought, the object of racking anxiety, lamented over beforehand with sore lamentation. If they were safe, all was well; if they were lost, these wives and mothers were bereaved indeed. The Sabine women did not cling to their rough masters with more touching fidelity. The men were in trouble--their imprudence, their intemperance, their violence were blotted out.

Leslie went home in disturbance and pain. She, too, placed a light in her window; she, too, left her infant untended, and strained her eyes to pierce the storm. Hector Garret must have descried her figure as he approached the house, for he came straight to her room, and stood a moment with his dripping clothes and a glow on his face.

"Don't go, Leslie; I'll be back presently."

She put a restraint upon herself, and became busied with the refreshments laid out for him. He came in immediately, and advanced towards her with the same eager phrase, "Don't go, Leslie," and he grasped her gown lightly. She sat down while he ate and drank.

"I'll have a cup of tea, Leslie; pour me out my tea as you used to do." She had always poured out tea for him, but not always with him close by, and his detaining hand upon her dress.

"This is like old times. They were very foolish--those old times, but they have their sweetness to look back upon them."

She interrupted him--"They are all safe, are they not?"

"Every man of them, thank God."

He was spent with his exertions; he was fevered and incoherent; she let him speak on, detailing the minutest particulars. She even said with animation, and the tears in her eyes--

"Their protector and deliverer! God will bless you for this, Hector Garret."

He bent his head, but he held out his arms: "Will you bless me, Leslie?"

His voice was thick and hoarse; it petrified her, so still was she--so dumb; and at that moment the knocker sounded, and importunate voices were demanding the Laird of Otter.

He obeyed the summons, spoke with his servants a little time, and returned to find Leslie in the same arrested posture, with the same blanched face. He had resumed his seaman's coat, and carried his cap in his hand. He was calm now, and smiling, but with a face wan and shadowed with an inexpressible cloud.

"It may not be, Leslie," he said, soft and low; "Nigel Boswell's boat is in sight, struggling to make Earlscraig; he was always rash and unskilled, though seaward born and bred. If he is not forestalled, his boat will be bottom upmost, or crushed like glass within the hour. I trust I will save him; but if there be peril and death in my path, then listen to what I say, and remember it. Whatever has gone before, at this moment I am yours; you may doubt it, deny it--I swear it, Leslie. Despise me, reject me if you will; I cannot perish misinterpreted and misjudged. I loved Alice Boswell. My love is ashes with its object. I did not love you once; I love you now. I love a living woman truer, higher, holier than the dead; and for my love's sake, not for my vows--the first for love, if it be the last."

He had her in his arms; his lingering kisses were on her eyes, her hair, her hands. He was gone, and still she remained rooted to the ground. Was it amazement, anger, terror?--or was it a wild throb of exultation for that, the real moment of their union? or because she had won him, and was his who had slighted her, sinned against her--but who was still Hector Garret, manly, wise, and noble--the hero of her girlhood.

She was roused reluctantly by the entrance of Bridget Kennedy, shaking in every limb.

"Madam, why did you let Master Hector go?--he has had the look of a doomed man this many a day. It is thus that men are called, as plain as when the Banshee cries. Madam, say your prayers for Master Hector while he is still in life."

"I must go to him, Bridget; I must follow him. Don't try to keep me. He is my husband, too. The poor women were crowding on the beach this morning. Let me go!"