Part 7 (1/2)
Was it a spirit?
If so, it was a very beautiful one. The face was very white in the moonbeams, the eyes very sad and dark, and darker still the wealth of waving hair that floated over the shoulders.
”Jack!”
Jack started now, and looked quickly round. Then a happy smile spread over his face as he arose and led his sister to a seat by his side.
”So like old, old times, Flora,” he said.
”So like old, old times, Jack,” said she.
He wrapped her knees in a great old Grant-tartan plaid.
”I knew you were still up, and that you were not happy, so I came to you. But, Jack--”
”Yes, dear.”
”Smoke.”
”May I?”
”You must.”
”Still more like olden times, Flora.”
Jack lit up his pipe, and then he took his sister's hand.
”I'm glad,” he said, ”that I never had a brother.”
”And I,” she said, ”am happy I never had a sister.”
”We are all in all to each other, are we not, Flo?”
”All in all, Jack; especially _now_.”
”Ah yes; now that I have lost Gerty. Ah, siss! you nor any one else in the wide world can ever tell how dearly I loved, and still love, that faithless girl.”
”And she, Jack, will break her heart that she cannot marry you. That is what I came to tell you, Hush, Jack, hus.h.!.+ I know all you would say; but you do not understand women, and least of all do you understand Gerty. _I_ do, Jack; yes, I do.”
”Sissy,” said the young man earnestly, ”the cruellest thing mortals can be guilty of is to arouse the dying to feeling again, when the bitterness of death is almost past. _You_ would not be so unkind. You did not come here to raise hopes in my heart that would be as certainly doomed to disappointment as that blooming flowers shall fade.”
”No, Jack, no. I only came because I wanted to pour balm, not hope, into your bleeding heart. I came to tell you all Gerty Keane's story, that you may not think the very, very worst of her. Listen, Jack.”
The young man sat in silence for quite a long time after his sister had finished the story of Gerty Keane, and of her fondness for her lonesome, friendless, and unlovable father; sat gazing out upon the moonlit landscape, but seeing nothing; sat while the nightingale's lilt, plaintive and low or mournfully sweet, bubbled tremulously from the grove, but hearing nothing. And in the shadow of the old-fas.h.i.+oned arm-chair snuggled Flora, her eyes resting lovingly, wistfully on her brother's sad but handsome face.
At last he sighed and turned towards her. ”Flora,” he said, ”I'm going to try to forgive Gerty. I'm going to live in hope I one day may be able to forgive. Just tell her from me I wish her that happiness with another which fate has decreed it shall never be my joy to impart. Tell her--but there! no more, Flora, no more.”
”Spoken like my own brother; spoken like a true and brave Mackenzie.