Heriot's Choice: A Tale. Rosa Nouchette Carey
gates were wide open, and two black figures were shading their eyes in the porch. But Richard, instead of driving in at the gate, reined in his horses so suddenly that he nearly brought them on their haunches, and leaning backward over the box, pointed with his whip across the road.
'There is my father taking his usual evening stroll—never mind the girls, Aunt Milly. I dare say you would rather meet him alone.'
Mildred stood up and steadied herself by laying a hand on Richard's shoulder. The sun was setting, and the gray old church stood out in fine relief in the warm evening light, blue breadths of sky behind it, and shifting golden lines of sunny clouds in the distance; while down the quiet paths, bareheaded and with hands folded behind his back, was a tall stooping figure, with scanty gray hair falling low on his neck, walking to and fro, with measured, uneven tread.
The hand on Richard's shoulder shook visibly; Mildred was trembling all over.
'Arnold! Oh, how old he looks! How thin and bowed! Oh, my poor brother.'
'You must make allowance for the shock he has had—that we have all had,' returned Richard in a soothing tone. 'He always walks like this, and at the same time. Go to him, Aunt Milly, it does him good to be roused.'
Mildred obeyed, though her limbs moved stiffly; the little gate swung behind her; a tame goat browsing among the tombs bleated and strained at its tether as she passed; but the figure she followed still continued its slow, monotonous walk.
Mildred shrunk back for a moment into the deep church porch to pause and recover herself. At the end of the path there were steps and an unused gate leading to the market; he must turn then.
How quiet and peaceful it all looked! The dark range of school buildings buried in shadow, the sombre line of houses closing in two sides of the churchyard. Behind the vicarage the purple-rimmed hills just fading into indistinctness. Up and down the stone alley some children were playing, one wee toddling mite was peeping through the railings at Mildred. The goat still bleated in the distance; a large blue-black terrier swept in hot pursuit of his master.
'Ah, Pupsie, have you found me? The evenings are chilly still; so, so, old dog, we will go in.'
Mildred waited for a moment and then glided out from the porch—he turned, saw her, and held out his arms without a word.
Mr. Lambert was the first to recover himself; for Mildred's tears, always long in coming, were now falling like rain.
'A sad welcome, my dear; but there, she would not have us grieving like this.'
'Oh, Arnold, how you have suffered! I never realised how much, till Richard stopped the horses, and then I saw you walking alone in the churchyard. The dews are falling, and you are bareheaded. You should take better care of yourself, for the children's sake.'
'Ay, ay; just what she said; but it has grown into a sort of habit with me. Cardie comes and fetches me in, night after night; the lad is a good lad; his mother was right after all.'
'Dear Betha; but you have not laid her here, Arnold?'
He shook his head.
'I could not, Mildred, though she wished it as much as I did. She often said she would like to lie within sight of the home where she had been so happy, and under the shadow of the church porch. She liked the thought of her children's feet passing so near her on their way to church, but I had no power to carry out her wish.'
'You mean the churchyard is closed?'
'Yes, owing to the increase of population, the influx of railway labourers, and the union workhouse, deaths in the parish became so numerous that there was danger of overcrowding. She lies in the cemetery.'
'Ah! I remember.'
'I do not think her funeral will ever be forgotten; people came for miles round to pay their last homage to my darling. One old woman over eighty came all the way from Castlesteads to see her last of "the gradely leddy," as she called her. You should have seen it, to know how she was loved.'
'She made you very happy while she lived, Arnold!'
'Too happy!—look at me now. I have the children, of course, poor things; but in losing her, I feel I have lost the best of everything, and must walk for ever in the shadow.'
He spoke in the vague musing tone that had grown on him of late, and which was new to Mildred—the worn, set features and gray hair contrasted strangely with the vivid brightness of his eyes, at once keen and youthful; he had been a man in the prime of life, vigorous and strong, when Mildred had seen him last; but a long illness and deadly sorrow had wasted his energy, and bowed his upright figure, as though the weight were physical as well as mental.
'But this is a poor welcome, Milly; and you must be tired and starved after your day's journey. You are not looking robust either, my dear—not a trace of the old blooming Milly' (touching her thin cheek sorrowfully). 'Well, well, the children must take care of you, and we'll get Dr. Heriot to prescribe. Has the child come with you after all?'
Mildred signified assent.
'I am glad of it. Thank you heartily for your ready help, Milly; we would do anything for Heriot; the boys treat him as a sort of elder brother, and the girls are fond of him, though they lead him a life sometimes. He is very grateful to you, and says you have lifted a mountain off him. Is the girl a nice girl, eh?'
'I must leave you to judge of that. She has interested me, at any rate; she is thoroughly loveable.'
'She will shake down among the others, and become one of us, I hope. Ah! well, that will be your department, Mildred.
I am not much to be depended on for anything but parish matters. When a man loses hope and energy it is all up with him.'
The little gate swung after them as he spoke; the flower-bordered courtyard before the vicarage seemed half full of moving figures as they crossed the road; and in another moment Mildred was greeting her nieces, and introducing Polly to her brother.
'I cannot be expected to remember you both,' she said, as Olive timidly, and Christine rather coldly, returned her kiss. 'You were such little girls when I last saw you.'
But with Mildred's tone of benevolence there mingled a little dismay. Betha's girls were decidedly odd.
Olive, who was a year older than Polly, and who was quite a head taller, had just gained the thin ungainly age, when to the eyes of anxious guardians the extremities appear in the light of afflictive dispensations; and premature old age is symbolised by the rounded and stooping shoulders, and sunken chest; the age of trodden-down heels and ragged finger-ends, when the glory of the woman, as St. Paul calls it, instead of being coiled into smooth knots, or swept round in faultless plaits, of coroneted beauty, presents a vista of frayed ends and multitudinous hair-pins. Olive's loosely-dropping hair and dark cloudy face gave Mildred a shock; the girl was plain too, though the irregular features beamed at times with a look of intelligence. Christine, who was two years younger, and much better-looking, in spite of a rough, yellowish mane, had an odd, original face, a pert nose, argumentative chin, and restless dark eyes, which already looked critically at persons and things. 'Contradiction Chriss,' as the boys called her, was certainly a character in her way.
'Are you tired, aunt? Will you come in?' asked Olive, in a low voice, turning a dull sort of red as she spoke. 'Cardie thinks you are, and supper is ready, and——'
'I am very tired, dear, and so is Polly,' answered Mildred, cheerfully, as she followed Olive across the dimly-lighted hall, with its old-fashioned fireplace and settles; its tables piled up with coats and hats, which had found their way to the harmonium too.
They went up the low, broad staircase Mildred remembered so well, with its carved balustrades and pretty red and white drugget, and the great blue China jars in the window recesses.
The study door stood open, and Mildred had a glimpse of the high-backed chair, and table littered over with papers, before she began ascending again, and came out into the low-ceiled passage, with deep-set lattice windows looking on the court