Part 55 (1/2)

”Yes, I have brought her. I asked her to drive with me, and she never guessed the reason; I could not have persuaded her to come if she had.

Dear Erle, I know your sense of honor, and that you would never free yourself; but now I give you back this”--drawing the diamond ring from her finger; ”it is Miss Trafford's, not mine. I can not keep another woman's property.”

”Eva,” he remonstrated, following her to the door, for she seemed about to leave them; ”I will not accept this sacrifice; I refuse to be set free,” but she only smiled at him.

”Go to her, Erle,” she whispered, ”she is worthy even of you; I would not marry you now even if she refused you, but”--with a look of irrepressible tenderness--”she will not refuse you;” and before he could answer her she was gone.

And Fern, looking at them through a sudden mist, tried to follow Evelyn, but either she stumbled or her strength forsook her. But all at once she found herself in Erle's arms, and pressed closely to him.

”Did you hear her, my darling?” he said, as the fair head drooped on his shoulder; ”she has given us to each other--she has set me free to love you. Oh, Fern, I tried so hard to do my duty to her; she was good and true, and I was fond of her--I think she is the n.o.blest woman on G.o.d's earth--but it was you I loved, and she found out I was miserable, and now she refuses to marry me; and--and--will you not say one word to me, my dearest?”

How was she to speak to him when her heart was breaking with happiness--when her tears were falling so fast that Erle had to kiss them away. Could it be true that he was really beside her; that out of the mist and gloom her prince had come to her; that the words she had pined to hear from his lips were now caressing her ear.

But Evelyn went up to her room.

It is not ordained in this life that saints and martyrs should walk the earth with a visible halo round their heads; yet, when such women as Margaret Ferrers and Evelyn Selby go on their weary way silently and uncomplaining, surely their guardian angel carries an unseen nimbus with which to crown them in another world.

CHAPTER XL.

AUNT JEANIE'S GUEST.

The cooing babe a veil supplied, And if she listened none might know, Or if she sighed; Or if forecasting grief and care, Unconscious solace then she drew, And lulled her babe, and unaware Lulled sorrow too.

JEAN INGELOW.

All the winter Fay remained quietly at the old Manse, tenderly watched over by her kind old friend and faithful Jean.

For many weeks, indeed months, her want of strength and weary listlessness caused Mrs. Duncan great anxiety. She used to shake her head and talk vaguely to Jean of young folk who had gone into a waste with naught but fretting, and had been in their graves before their friends realized that they were ill; to which Jean would reply, ”'Deed and it is the truth, mistress; and I am thinking it is time that Mrs.

St. Clair had her few 'broth.'” For all Jean's sympathy found expression in deeds, not words.

Jean seldom dealt largely in soft words; she was somewhat brisk and sharp of tongue--a bit biting, like her moorland breezes in winter time. In spite of her reverential tenderness for Fay, she would chide her quite roughly for what she called her fretting ways. She almost s.n.a.t.c.hed the baby away from her one day when Fay was crying over him.

”Ah, my bonny man,” she said, indignantly, ”would your mither rain tears down on your sweet face, and make you sair-hearted before your time? Whisht, then, my bairn, and Jean will catch the suns.h.i.+ne for you;” and Jean danced him vigorously before the window, while Fay penitently dried her eyes.

”Oh, Jean, give him back to me. I did not mean to make him cry; the tears will come sometimes, and I can not keep them back. I will try to be good--I will, indeed.”

But baby Hugh had no wish to go back to his mother; he was crowing and pulling Jean's flaxen hair, and would not heed Fay's sad little blandishments.

”The bairns are like auld folks,” remarked Jean, triumphant at her success, and eager to point a moral; ”they can not bide what is not bright. There is a time for everything, as Solomon says, 'a time to mourn and a time to dance;' but there is never a time for a bairn to be sair-hearted; neither nature nor Solomon would hold with that, as Master Fergus would say. Ech, sirs! but he is a fine preacher, is Master Fergus.”

Fay took Jean's reproof very humbly. She shed no more tears when her baby was in her arms. It was touching to see how she strove to banish her grief, that the baby smiles might not be dimmed. Jean would nod her head with grim approval over her pile of finely ironed things as she heard Fay singing in a low sweet voice, and the baby's delighted coos answering her. A lump used to come in Jean's throat, and a suspicious moisture to her keen blue eyes, as she would open the door in the twilight and see the child-mother kneeling down beside the old-fas.h.i.+oned cradle, singing him to sleep. ”He likes the songs about the angels best,” Fay would say, looking up wistfully in Jean's face.

”I sing him all my pretty songs, only not the sad ones. I am sure he loves me to do it.”

”May be the bairn does not know his mither apart from the women angels,” muttered Jean, in a gruff aside, as she laid down her pile of dainty linen. Jean knew more than any one else; she could have told her mistress, if she chose, that it was odd that all Mrs. St. Clair's linen was marked ”F. Redmond.” But she kept her own counsel.

Jean would not have lifted a finger to restore Fay to her husband. The blunt Scotch handmaiden could not abide men--”a puir-hearted, f.e.c.kless lot,” as she was wont to say. Of course the old master and Mr. Fergus were exceptions to this. Jean wors.h.i.+ped her master; and though she held the doctrine of original sin, would never have owned that Mr.

Fergus had a fault. But to the rest of mankind she was suspiciously uncharitable. ”To think he drove her from him--the puir bit lammie,”

she would say; ”and yet the law can't have the hanging of him.