When the Court rose that year and the family returned to Hermiston, it was a common remark in all the country that the lady was sore failed. She seemed to loose and seize again her touch with life, now sitting inert in a sort of durable bewilderment, anon waking to feverish and weak activity. She dawdled about the lasses at their work, looking stupidly on; she fell to rummaging in old cabinets and presses, and desisted when half through; she would begin remarks with an air of animation and drop them without a struggle. Her common appearance was of one who has forgotten something and is trying to remember; and when she overhauled, one after another, the worthless and touching mementoes of her youth, she might have been seeking the clue to that lost thought. During this period, she gave many gifts to the neighbours and house lasses, giving them with a manner of regret that embarrassed the recipients.
The last night of all she was busy on some female work, and toiled upon it with so manifest and painful a devotion that my lord (who was not often curious) inquired as to its nature.
She blushed to the eyes. O, Edom, its for you! she said. Its slippers. I I hae never made ye any.
Ye daft auld wife! returned his lordship. A bonny figure I would be, palmering about in bauchles!
The next day, at the hour of her walk, Kirstie interfered. Kirstie took this decay of her mistress very hard; bore her a grudge, quarrelled with and railed upon her, the anxiety of a genuine love wearing the disguise of temper. This day of all days she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at home. But, No, no, she said, its my lords orders, and set forth as usual. Archie was visible in the acre bog, engaged upon some childish enterprise, the instrument of which was mire; and she stood and looked at him a while like one about to call; then thought otherwise, sighed, and shook her head, and proceeded on her rounds alone. The house lasses were at the burnside washing, and saw her pass with her loose, weary, dowdy gait.
Shes a terrible feckless wife, the mistress! said the one.
Tut, said the other, the wummans seeck.
Weel, I canna see nae differ in her, returned the first. A fushionless quean, a feckless carline.
The poor creature thus discussed rambled a while in the grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and carried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a path, paused, returned, and tried another; questing, forgetting her quest; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she had remembered, or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining-room, where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one charged with an important errand.
Kirstie! she began, and paused; and then with conviction, Mr. Weir isna speeritually minded, but he has been a good man to me.
It was perhaps the first time since her husbands elevation that she had forgotten the handle to his name, of which the tender, inconsistent woman was not a little proud. And when Kirstie looked up at the speakers face, she was aware of a change.
Godsake, whats the maitter wi ye, mem? cried the housekeeper, starting from the rug.
I do not ken, answered her mistress, shaking her head. But he is not speeritually minded, my dear.
Here, sit down with ye! Godsake, what ails the wife? cried Kirstie, and helped and forced her into my lords own chair by the cheek of the hearth.
Keep me, whats this? she gasped. Kirstie, whats this? Im frichened.
They were her last words.
It was the lowering nightfall when my lord returned. He had the sunset in his back, all clouds and glory; and before him, by the wayside, spied Kirstie Elliott waiting. She was dissolved in tears, and addressed him in the high, false note of barbarous mourning, such as still lingers modified among Scots heather.
The Lord peety ye, Hermiston! the Lord prepare ye! she keened out. Weary upon me, that I should have to tell it!
He reined in his horse and looked upon her with the hanging face.
Has the French landit? cried he.
Man, man, she said, is that a ye can think of? The Lord prepare ye: the Lord comfort and support ye!
Is onybody deid? said his lordship. Its no Erchie?
Bethankit, no! exclaimed the woman, startled into a more natural tone. Na, na, its no sae bad as that. Its the mistress, my lord; she just fair flittit before my een. She just gied a sab and was by wi it. Eh, my bonny Miss Jeannie, that I mind sae weel! And forth again upon that pouring tide of lamentation in which women of her class excel and over-abound.
Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle beholding her. Then he seemed to recover command upon himself.
Well, its something of the suddenest, said he. But she was a dwaibly body from the first.
And he rode home at a precipitate amble with Kirstie at his horses heels.
Dressed as she was for her last walk, they had laid the dead lady on her bed. She was never interesting in life; in death she was not impressive; and as her husband stood before her, with his hands crossed behind his powerful back, that which he looked upon was the very image of the insignificant.
Her and me were never cut out for one another, he remarked at last. It was a daft-like marriage. And then, with a most unusual gentleness of tone, Puir bitch, said he, puir bitch! Then suddenly: Wheres Erchie?
Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and given him a jeely-piece.
Ye have some kind of gumption, too, observed the judge, and considered his housekeeper grimly. When alls said, he added, I micht have done waur I micht have been marriet upon a skirting Jezebel like you!
Theres naebody thinking of you, Hermiston! cried the offended woman. We think of her thats out of her sorrows. And could she have done waur? Tell me that, Hermiston tell me that before her clay-cauld corp!
Weel, theres some of them gey an ill to please, observed his lordship.
CHAPTER II FATHER AND SON
My Lord Justice-Clerk was known to many; the man Adam Weir perhaps to none. He had nothing to explain or to conceal; he sufficed wholly and silently to himself; and that part of our nature which goes out (too often with false coin) to acquire glory or love, seemed in him to be omitted. He did not try to be loved, he did not care to be; it is probable the very thought of it was a stranger to his mind. He was an admired lawyer, a highly unpopular judge; and he looked down upon those who were his inferiors in either distinction, who were lawyers of less grasp or judges not so much detested. In all the rest of his days and doings, not one trace of vanity appeared; and he went on through life with a mechanical movement, as of the unconscious; that was almost august.
He saw little of his son. In the childish maladies with which the boy was troubled, he would make daily inquiries and daily pay him a visit, entering the sick-room with a facetious and appalling countenance, letting off a few perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to the patients relief. Once, a court holiday falling opportunely, my lord had his carriage, and drove the child himself to Hermiston, the customary place of convalescence. It is conceivable he had been more than usually anxious, for that journey always remained in Archies memory as a thing apart, his father having related to him from beginning to end, and with much detail, three authentic murder cases. Archie went the usual round of other Edinburgh boys, the high school and the college; and Hermiston looked on, or rather looked away, with scarce an affectation of interest in his progress. Daily, indeed, upon a signal after dinner, he was brought in, given nuts and a glass of port, regarded sardonically, sarcastically questioned. Well, sir, and what have you donn with your book to-day? my lord might begin, and set him posers in law Latin. To a child just stumbling into Corderius, Papinian and Paul proved quite invincible. But papa had memory of no other. He was not harsh to the little scholar, having a vast fund of patience learned upon the bench, and was at no pains whether to conceal or to express his disappointment. Well, ye have a long jaunt before ye yet! he might observe, yawning, and fall back on his own thoughts (as like as not) until the time came for separation, and my lord would take the decanter and the glass, and be off to the back chamber looking on the Meadows, where he toiled on his cases till the hours were small. There was no fuller man on the bench; his memory was marvellous, though wholly legal; if he had to advise extempore, none did it better; yet there was none who more earnestly prepared. As he thus watched in the night, or sat at table and forgot the presence of his son, no doubt but he tasted deeply of recondite pleasures. To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life; and perhaps only in law and the higher mathematics may this devotion be maintained, suffice to itself without reaction, and find continual rewards without excitement. This atmosphere of his fathers sterling industry was the best of Archies education. Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly it rather rebutted and depressed. Yet it was still present, unobserved like the ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant in the boys life.