'Hoots!' said Hector, peevishly, for he wanted to go to sleep again, 'gang and mak luve till her.Nae lass 'll think o' meat as lang 's ye do that.That 'll haud her ohn hungert.'
The words were like blasphemy in Robert's ear.He make love to Miss St.John! He turned from the coach-door in disgust.But there was no place he knew of where anything could be had, and he must return empty-handed.
The light of the fire shone through a little hole in the boards that closed the window.His lamp had gone out, but, guided by that, he found the road again, and felt his way up the stairs.When he entered the room he saw Miss St.John sitting on the floor, for there was nowhere else to sit, with the guard's coat under her.She had taken off her bonnet.Her back leaned against the side of the chimney, and her eyes were bent thoughtfully on the ground.In their shine Robert read instinctively that Ericson had said something that had set her thinking.He lay on the floor at some distance, leaning on his elbow, and his eye had the flash in it that indicates one who has just ceased speaking.They had not found his absence awkward at least.
'I hae been efter something to eat,' said Robert; 'but I canna fa'
in wi' onything.We maun jist tell stories or sing sangs, as fowk do in buiks, or else Miss St.John 'ill think lang.'
They did sing songs, and they did tell stories.I will not trouble my reader with more than the sketch of one which Robert told--the story of the old house wherein they sat--a house without a history, save the story of its no history.It had been built for the jointure-house of a young countess, whose husband was an old man.Alover to whom she had turned a deaf ear had left the country, begging ere he went her acceptance of a lovely Italian grayhound.
She was weak enough to receive the animal.Her husband died the same year, and before the end of it the dog went mad, and bit her.
According to the awful custom of the time they smothered her between two feather-beds, just as the house of Bogbonnie was ready to receive her furniture, and become her future dwelling.No one had ever occupied it.
If Miss St.John listened to story and song without as much show of feeling as Mysie Lindsay would have manifested, it was not that she entered into them less deeply.It was that she was more, not felt less.
Listening at her window once with Robert, Eric Ericson had heard Mary St.John play: this was their first meeting.Full as his mind was of Mysie, he could not fail to feel the charm of a noble, stately womanhood that could give support, instead of rousing sympathy for helplessness.There was in the dignified simplicity of Mary St.John that which made every good man remember his mother;and a good man will think this grand praise, though a fast girl will take it for a doubtful compliment.
Seeing her begin to look weary, the young men spread a couch for her as best they could, made up the fire, and telling her they would be in the hall below, retired, kindled another fire, and sat down to wait for the morning.They held a long talk.At length Robert fell asleep on the floor.
Ericson rose.One of his fits of impatient doubt was upon him.In the dying embers of the fire he strode up and down the waste hall, with the storm raving around it.He was destined to an early death;he would leave no one of his kin to mourn for him; the girl whose fair face had possessed his imagination, would not give one sigh to his memory, wandering on through the regions of fancy all the same;and the death-struggle over, he might awake in a godless void, where, having no creative power in himself, he must be tossed about, a conscious yet helpless atom, to eternity.It was not annihilation he feared, although he did shrink from the thought of unconsciousness; it was life without law that he dreaded, existence without the bonds of a holy necessity, thought without faith, being without God.
For all her fatigue Miss St.John could not sleep.The house quivered in the wind which howled more and more madly through its long passages and empty rooms; and she thought she heard cries in the midst of the howling.In vain she reasoned with herself: she could not rest.She rose and opened the door of her room, with a vague notion of being nearer to the young men.