Mrs Stewart was sitting in her drawing room alone: she seldom had visitors at Kirkbyres—not that she liked being alone, or indeed being there at all, for she would have lived on the Continent, but that her son's trustees, partly to indulge their own aversion to her, taking upon them a larger discretionary power than rightly belonged to them, kept her too straitened, which no doubt in the recoil had its share in poor Stephen's misery. It was only after scraping for a whole year that she could escape to Paris or Hamburg, where she was at home. There her sojourn was determined by her good or ill fortune at faro.
What she meditated over her knitting by the firelight,—she had put out her candles,—it would be hard to say, perhaps unwholesome to think:—there are souls to look into which is, to our dim eyes, like gazing down from the verge of one of the Swedenborgian pits.
But much of the evil done by human beings is as the evil of evil beasts: they know not what they do—an excuse which, except in regard of the past, no man can make for himself, seeing the very making of it must testify its falsehood.
She looked up, gave a cry, and started to her feet: Stephen stood before her, halfway between her and the door. Revealed in a flicker of flame from the fire, he vanished in the following shade, and for a moment she stood in doubt of her seeing sense. But when the coal flashed again, there was her son, regarding her out of great eyes that looked as if they had seen death. A ghastly air hung about him as if he had just come back from Hades, but in his silent bearing there was a sanity, even dignity, which strangely impressed her. He came forward a pace or two, stopped, and said—
"Dinna be frichtit, mem. come. Sen' the lassie hame, an' du wi' me as ye like. I canna haud aff o' me. But I think deein', an ye needna misguide me."
His voice, although it trembled a little, was clear and unimpeded, and though weak, in its modulation manly.
Something in the woman's heart responded. Was it motherhood— or the deeper godhead? Was it pity for the dignity housed in the crumbling clay, or repentance for the son of her womb? Or was it that sickness gave hope, and she could afford to be kind?
"I don't know what you mean, Stephen," she said, more gently than he had ever heard her speak.
Was it an agony of mind or of body, or was it but a flickering of the shadows upon his face? A moment, and he gave a half choked shriek, and fell on the floor. His mother turned from him with disgust, and rang the bell.
"Send Tom here," she said.
An elderly, hard featured man came.
"Stephen is in one of his fits," she said.
The man looked about him: he could see no one in the room but his mistress.
"There he is," she continued, pointing to the floor. "Take him away. Get him up to the loft and lay him in the hay."
The man lifted his master like an unwieldy log, and carried him convulsed from the room.
Stephen's mother sat down again by the fire, and resumed her knitting.
CHAPTER LXV: THE LAIRD'S VISION
Malcolm had just seen his master set out for his solitary ride, when one of the maids informed him that a man from Kirkbyres wanted him. Hiding his reluctance, he went with her and found Tom, who was Mrs Stewart's grieve, and had been about the place all his days.
"Mr Stephen's come hame, sir," he said, touching his bonnet, a civility for which Malcolm was not grateful.
"It's no possible!" returned Malcolm. "I saw him last nicht."
"He cam about ten o'clock, sir, an' hed a turn o' the fa'in' sickness o' the spot. He 's verra ill the noo, an' the mistress sent me ower to speir gien ye wad obleege her by gaein' to see him."
"Has he ta'en till 's bed?" asked Malcolm.
"We pat him till 't, sir. He 's ravin' mad, an' thinkin' he 's no far frae his hin'er en'."
"I 'll gang wi' ye direckly," said Malcolm.
In a few minutes they were riding fast along the road to Kirkbyres, neither with much to say to the other, for Malcolm distrusted every one about the place, and Tom was by nature taciturn.
"What garred them sen' for me—div ye ken?" asked Malcolm at length, when they had gone about halfway.
"He cried oot upo' ye i' the nicht," answered Tom.
When they arrived, Malcolm was shown into the drawing room, where Mrs Stewart met him with red eyes.
"Will you come and see my poor boy?" she said.
"I wull du that, mem. Is he verra ill?"
"Very. afraid he is in a bad way."
She led him to a dark old fashioned chamber, rich and gloomy. There, sunk in the down of a huge bed with carved ebony posts, lay the laird, far too ill to be incommoded by the luxury to which he was unaccustomed. His head kept tossing from side to side, and his eyes seemed searching in vacancy.
"Has the doctor been to see 'im, mem?" asked Malcolm.
"Yes; but he says he can't do anything for him."
"Wha waits upon 'im, mem?"
"One of the maids and myself."
I 'll jist bide wi' 'im."
"That will be very kind of you."
"I s' bide wi' 'im till I see 'im oot o' this, ae w'y or ither," added Malcolm, and sat down by the bedside of his poor distrustful friend. There Mrs Stewart left him.
The laird was wandering in the thorny thickets and slimy marshes which, haunted by the thousand misshapen honors of delirium, beset the gates of life. That one so near the light, and slowly drifting into it, should lie tossing in hopeless darkness! Is it that the delirium falls, a veil of love, to hide other and more real terrors?
His eyes would now and then meet those of Malcolm, as they gazed tenderly upon him, but the living thing that looked out of the windows was darkened, and saw him not. Occasionally a word would fall from him, or a murmur of half articulation float up, like the sound of a river of souls; but whether Malcolm heard, or only seemed to hear, something like this, he could not tell, for he could not be certain that he had not himself shaped the words by receiving the babble into the moulds of the laird's customary thought and speech.
"I dinna ken whaur I cam frae!—I kenna whaur gaein' till.—Eh, gien he wad but come oot an' shaw himsel'!—O Lord! tak the deevil aff o' my puir back.—O Father o' lichts! gar him tak the hump wi' him. I hae nae fawvour for 't, though it 's been my constant companion this mony a lang."
But in general, he only moaned, and after the words thus heard or fashioned by Malcolm, lay silent and nearly still for an hour.
All the waning afternoon Malcolm sat by his side, and neither mother, maid, nor doctor came near them.
"Dark wa's an' no a breath!" he murmured or seemed to murmur again. "Nae gerse, nor flooers, nor bees!—I hae na room for my hump, an' I canna lie upo' 't, for that wad kill me!—Wull I ever ken whaur I cam frae?—The wine 's unco guid. Gie me a drap mair, gien ye please, Lady Horn.—I thought the grave was a better place. I hae lain safter afore I dee'd!—Phemy! Phemy! Rin, Phemy, rin! I s' bide wi' them this time. Ye rin, Phemy!"