Heather and Snow

At length, dizzy and despairing, her head in torture, and her heart sick, she managed to get out of bed, and, unable to walk, literally crawled to the cupboard in which she had put away the precious bottle:—joy! there was yet a glass in it! With the mouth of it to her lips, she was tilting it up to drain the last drop, when the voice of her son came cheerily from the drive, on which her window looked down:

'See what I've brought you, mother!' he called.

Fear came upon her; she took the bottle from her mouth, put it again in the cupboard, and crept back to her bed, her brain like a hive buzzing with devils.

When Francis entered the house, he was not surprised to learn that she had not left her room. He did not try to see her.

The next morning she felt a little better, and had some tea. Still she did not care to get up. She shrank from meeting her son, and the abler she grew to think, the more unwilling she was to see him. He came to her room, but she heard him coming, turned her head the other way, and pretended to be asleep. Again and again, almost involuntarily, she half rose, remembering the last of the whisky, but as often lay down again, loathing the cause of her headache.

Stronger and stronger grew her unwillingness to face her son: she had so thoroughly proved herself unfit to be trusted! She began to feel towards him as she had sometimes felt toward her mother when she had been naughty. She began to see that she could make her peace, with him or with herself, only by acknowledging her weakness. Aided by her misery, she had begun to perceive that she could not trust herself, and ought to submit to be treated as the poor creature she was. She had resented the idea that she could not keep herself from drink if she pleased, for she knew she could; but she had not pleased! How could she ever ask him to trust her again!

What further passed in her, I cannot tell. It is an unfailing surprise when anyone, more especially anyone who has hitherto seemed without strength of character, turns round and changes. The only thing Mrs. Gordon then knew as helping her, was the strong hand of her son upon her, and the consciousness that, had her husband lived, she could never have given way as she had. But there was another help which is never wanting where it can find an entrance; and now first she began to pray, 'Lead me not into temptation.'

There was one excuse which David alone knew to make for her—that her father was a hard drinker, and his father before him.

Doubtless, during all the period of her excesses, the soul of the woman in her better moments had been ashamed to know her the thing she was. It could not, when she was at her worst, comport with her idea of a lady, poor as that idea was, to drink whisky till she did not know what she did next. And when the sleeping woman God made, wakes up to see in what a house she lives, she will soon grasp at besom and bucket, nor cease her cleansing while spot is left on wall or ceiling or floor.

How the waking comes, who can tell! God knows what he wants us to do, and what we can do, and how to help us. What I have to tell is that, the next morning, Mrs. Gordon came down to breakfast, and finding her son already seated at the table, came up behind him, without a word set the bottle with the last glass of whisky in it before him, went to her place at the table, gave him one sorrowful look, and sat down.

His heart understood, and answered with a throb of joy so great that he knew it first as pain.

Neither spoke until breakfast was almost over. Then Francis said,

'You've grown so much younger, mother, it is quite time you took to riding again! I've been buying a horse for you. Remembering the sort of pony you bought for me, I thought I should like to try whether I could not please you with a horse of my buying.'

'Silly boy!' she returned, with a rather pitiful laugh, 'do you suppose at my age I'm going to make a fool of myself on horseback? You forget I'm an old woman!'

'Not a bit of it, mother! If ever you rode as David Barclay says you did, I don't see why you shouldn't ride still. He's a splendid creature! David told me you liked a big fellow. Just put on your habit, mammy, and we'll take a gallop across, and astonish the old man a bit.'

'My dear boy, I have no nerve! I'm not the woman I was! It's my own fault, I know, and I'm both sorry and ashamed.'

'We are both going to try to be good, mother dear!' faltered Francis.

The poor woman pressed her handkerchief with both hands to her face, and wept for a few moments in silence, then rose and left the room. In an hour she was ready, and out looking for Francis. Her habit was a little too tight for her, but wearable enough. The horses were sent for, and they mounted.

CHAPTER XLI

TWO HORSEWOMEN

There was at Corbyknowe a young, well-bred horse which David had himself reared: Kirsty had been teaching him to carry a lady. For her hostess in Edinburgh, discovering that she was fond of riding and that she had no saddle, had made her a present of her own: she had not used it for many years, but it was in very good condition, and none the worse for being a little old-fashioned. That same morning Kirsty had put on a blue riding-habit, which also lady Macintosh had given her, and was out on the highest slope of the farm, hoping to catch a sight of the two on horseback together, and so learn that her scheme was a success. She had been on the outlook for about an hour, when she saw them coming along between the castle and Corbyknowe, and went straight for a certain point in the road so as to reach it simultaneously with them. For she had just spied a chance of giving Gordon the opportunity which her father had told her he was longing for, of saying something about her to his mother.

'Who can that be?' said Mrs. Gordon as they trotted gently along, when she spied the lady on horseback. 'She rides well! But she seems to be alone! Is there really nobody with her?'

As she spoke, the young horse came over a dry-stane-dyke in fine style.

'Why, she's an accomplished horsewoman!' exclaimed Mrs. Gordon. 'She must be a stranger! There's not a lady within thirty miles of Weelset can ride like that!'

'No such stranger as you think, mother!' rejoined Francis. 'That's Kirsty Barclay of Corbyknowe.'

'Never, Francis! The girl rides like a lady!'

Francis smiled, perhaps a little triumphantly. Something like what lay in the smile the mother read in it, for it roused at once both her jealousy and her pride. Her son to fall in love with a girl that was not even a lady! A Gordon of Weelset to marry a tenant's daughter! Impossible!

Kirsty was now in the road before them, riding slowly in the same direction. It was the progress, however, not the horse that was slow: his frolics, especially when the other horses drew near, kept his rider sufficiently occupied.

Mrs. Gordon quickened her pace, and passed without turning her head or looking at her, but so close, and with so sudden a rush that Kirsty's horse half wheeled, and bounded over the dyke by the roadside. Her rudeness annoyed her son, and he jumped his horse into the field and joined Kirsty, letting his mother ride on, and contenting himself with keeping her in sight. After a few moments' talk, however, he proposed that they should overtake her, and cutting off a great loop of the road, they passed her at speed, and turned and met her. She had by this time got a little over her temper, and was prepared to behave with propriety, which meant—the dignity becoming her.

'What a lovely horse you have, Miss Barclay!' she said, without other greeting. 'How much do you want for him?'

'He is but half-broken,' answered Kirsty, 'or I would offer to change with you. I almost wonder you look at him from the back of your own!'

'He is a beauty—is he not? This is my first trial of him. The laird gave me him only this morning. He is as quiet as a lamb.'

'There, Donal,' said Kirsty to her horse, 'tak example by yer betters! Jist luik hoo he stan's!—The laird has a true eye for a horse, ma'am,' she went on, 'but he always says you gave it him.'

'Always! hm!' said Mrs. Gordon to herself, but she looked kindly at her son.

'How did you learn to ride so well, Kirsty?' she asked.

'I suppose I got it from my father, ma'am! I began with the cows.'

'Ah, how is old David?' returned Mrs. Gordon. 'I have seen him once or twice about the castle of late, but have not spoken to him.'

'He is very well, thank you.—Will you not come up to the Knowe and rest a moment? My mother will be very glad to see you.'

'Not to-day, Kirsty. I haven't been on horseback for years, and am already tired. We shall turn here. Good-morning!'

'Good-morning, ma'am! Good-bye, Mr. Gordon!' said Kirsty cheerfully, as she wheeled her horse to set him straight at a steep grassy brae.

CHAPTER XLII

THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER

The laird and his mother sat and looked at Kirsty as her horse tore up the brae.

'She can ride—can't she, mother?' said Francis.

'Well enough for a hoiden,' answered Mrs. Gordon.

'She rides to please her horse now, but she'll have him as quiet as yours before long,' rejoined her son, both a little angry and a little amused at her being called a hoiden who was to him like an angel grown young with aeonian life.

'Yes,' resumed his mother, as if she would be fair, 'she does ride well! If only she were a lady, that I might ask her to ride with me! After all it's none of my business what she is—so long as you don't want to marry her!' She concluded, with an attempt at a laugh.

'But I do want to marry her, mother!' rejoined Francis.

A short year before, his mother would have said what was in her heart, and it would not have been pleasant to hear; but now she was afraid of her son, and was silent. But it added to her torture that she must be silent. To be dethroned in castle Weelset by the daughter of one of her own tenants, for as such she thought of them, was indeed galling. 'The impudent quean!' she said to herself, 'she's ridden on her horse into the heart of the laird!' But for the wholesome consciousness of her own shame, which she felt that her son was always sparing, she would have raged like a fury.

'You that might have had any lady in the land!' she said at length.