Chapter XIV: Athole Murray Comes to the Rescue

Dr. Peter, in the middle of his work, responded readily to the call. It proved that he had not only known the Mackinnons in his youth; he had always kept up some intercourse with them, and Athole had been in the habit of calling in St. Mungo’s Square occasionally. He looked grave and resolute when he saw Tarn Drysdale by appointment afterwards. Yes, the poor old ladies were at the wall, sure enough; and even viewing the matter in a professional light alone, something must be done immediately, or there would be more than one death to answer for. But he had his proposal ready. Athole must take up her abode in St. Mungo’s Square for a week or two, till Miss Bethia was able to be removed for change of air to Barley Riggs. Only a woman could cope with the circumstances where women were concerned, and he had paved the way for his daughter’s arrival. He had told Miss Janet that he wanted a little change for Athole, asked if she--Miss Janet--would take in the girl for a while, and hinted at a board. The old lady, with her instincts of hospitality, her necessities, and her pride, had been too bewildered to make any decided opposition. Now he would not stand on further ceremony; he would act as if he took Miss Janet’s and her sister’s consent for granted, despatch Athole the next morning, and when she was once in the house, it would be hard for the Miss Mackinnons to turn her out. Athole would bring the sinews of war, and would propose to undertake the housekeeping on the plea of relieving the sister-nurses, who were too weak and worn out to make any effectual resistance.

Auld Tam as he listened, stared fixedly at Dr. Peter.

‘But, man, she’s your dochter, your last-hame lassie, the very apple of your eye,’ he remonstrated, with wonder and rising vehemence. ‘I ken what Tam and little Eppie and Clary are to me, and I have their mither--that I sometimes say is worth them all--while you have only this lassie left at hame; and you are sending her where the fever has just been, and where a great burden of responsibility, work, and fatigue will fall upon her young shoulders.’

‘I know,’ said Dr. Peter, bowing his head as if sealing a bargain. ‘But did you never think, Tam, that the way to keep a thing you prized was to give it freely in the name of God and your neighbour? I never would shut Athole out of the way of the fever, when she could be of use. She had no fear, and I believed I could take care that she ran little more risk than if she had stayed locked up in the parlour at Barley Riggs. I was right, and you’ll see I’ll be right again. You may trust me to take care of Athie,’ he ended, with a smile.

‘But what if you should be mistaken, Peter?’ Tam felt bound to press the point. ‘If an accident were to happen, if you were to lose your lassie by her foolhardy exposure?’

‘There is no foolhardiness, and there is very little exposure,’ maintained Dr. Peter unflinchingly; ‘not more than happens to every doctor and nurse--indeed less, for I shall be always in the background, ready to step in at the first note of warning. And if it were to come to the worst, Tam,’ he said slowly, with a peculiar light coming into his eyes, ‘what then? It would be the will of God. It is given to every man and woman once to die; nothing--not all the love and care in the world--can prevent the execution of that sentence. And can death come better to any man or woman than in the way of duty? I know what is in your mind--it is not of the one to be taken, but of the one left behind, you are thinking. Well, what is to come of somebody’s journey might be shorter, as the road would be darker--that is all--not so very much when the day is far spent and its work three-fourths done.’

‘Peter Murray, I honour you with all my heart,’ said auld Tam warmly; ‘but I could not do it, man--I could--not--do it. It is with no will of mine that young Tam is in the thick of this fray; but he’s man-grown, with a mind of his own. I’ll not say that it has been all loss that I’ve seen a bit of the lad’s mind lately, and we’ve focht together against the fivver--young Tam and me; only the price might have been ower heavy, God help me! and I could not have sent him into the battle, or even given my consent to his entering the ranks, if he had condescended to ask it. Na, not though it is the first time since I was a wean that I’ve had a glimmering that the auld Bible story of Aubraham’s offering up his son, his only son Isaac, is more than an allegory or a prophecy, and holds a lesson for men and faithers,’

Auld Tam continued sorely exercised in his mind about the Miss Mackinnons, with Dr. Peter’s lassie Athole in the midst of them. To him she was a slip of a young lady whom he knew best as a clever pattern-designer, a bit gentlewoman, with her inalienable rights as such, though neither bonnie nor braw, only as bright as a mavis thrush, as quick as a needle, the charm of whose womanly blitheness and lively wit Tam himself had felt, while he was well aware she was the light of Barley Riggs, the delight of her father’s heart. In spite of what Dr. Peter had said, was this a creature to put in the breach, to send to share the privations she was seeking to lighten, and to brave the hardly overcome fever?

Tam was so troubled in his mind that he forgot to watch the effect of the news on his son. He neither saw how young Tam set his teeth, nor how he reared his head, and his loss of colour was succeeded by a warm glow.

Sure enough, if any harm happened to Athole Murray, it might be laid at the door of the two Tam Drysdales. Who was it that had summoned her father on the scene, and offered a temptation to Dr. Peter’s Quixotic philanthropy?

Both auld and young Tam took it upon them to go as far as Eneas Mackinnon had gone--indeed, to go farther, to enter the hall of the house in St. Mungo’s Square, and solicit speech with Miss Murray, to hear how her father’s scheme was prospering.

The first time that Athole came down to the two men, who were together, as she spoke to them the tears ran down her cheeks without her knowing it, and she was half laughing, half crying, though she was not naturally hysterical.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I could not have imagined anything like it. If I had guessed a hundredth part of it, I must have got the better of Miss Janet’s scruples long ago, though I had let meat and drink down the chimney, as the barber and his wife disposed of the body of the Caliph’s favourite in the “Arabian Nights;” I would have come after it was dark, rung the bell, pushed in the basket, and run away. Maybe Miss Janet would have thought the angels or Elijah’s ravens had come to her aid. If the Miss Mackinnons had advertised for the owner of that basket they would have been clever if they had found her. Now, we are all right, thank you--at least, we are fast getting right. I open the door, for of course I am the youngest, and the stairs try me least, and I take in all the parcels. If there is anything very suspicious, even for my extensive requirements, I carry it to my room, and Miss Janet is too much of a lady to meddle with what I do there. My father fills the pockets of his overcoat, and has always to speak to me, in private. I can’t tell if Miss Janet suspects--I think she must--but her endurance had been stretched to the last thread, and now she submits and ignores my manœuvres. She is so tired that when she has once given in she can’t rally her forces for some time. Indeed, my father feared she would either have a bad illness or sink from sheer exhaustion for the first ten days after I came. Oh yes, she’s a great deal better, and Miss Mackinnon is pretty well--I am sure Miss Janet must have managed to give her the larger share of the little that was going--and Miss Bethia is progressing favourably. She is by far the most manageable. She and I have quite little feasts in her room.’

‘I am most happy to hear it,’ said auld Tam, with enthusiasm.

‘But, oh! the gaunt emptiness, the gnawing want, the fainting hopelessness that must have been in this house!’ cried Athole passionately. ‘The mice had deserted it months before, Miss Bethia told me. But Miss Janet and I never speak of it. We winked at it even when I was labouring, like a well-disposed brownie, to fill the cupboards as if they had never been bare, without anybody witnessing the performance, and to make a great display of my accomplishments in cooking--the fruits of my last lessons at the cooking school. But I never saw anything at all like what I beheld first, in the most miserable cottage at Drysdale Haugh.’

‘I sincerely trust you have not suffered yourself, Miss Murray, mem, from your great pity and kindness,’ said auld Tam, standing with his hat in his hand before her.

‘I!’ she cried incredulously; ‘how should I suffer? It was a bit of an adventure for me, and I had “a piece in my pocket” all the time. You know, Mr. Drysdale, the task was to get older people, more in need of it, to halve my piece with me.’

Athole had recovered her composure by the time the next visit of inquiry was made, and her accounts grew always cheerier and cheerier, till she began to laugh quite naturally at young Tam coming alone to ask for the three Miss Mackinnons, and to affront him by making game of his odd contributions to the larder in St. Mungo’s Square, on the whole rather more unsuitable than the Lieutenant’s gifts to his aunts. ‘It is not the same as a picnic, Mr. Tom,’ she was at the trouble of explaining to him.

At last she nearly quarrelled with him by flatly refusing to take it upon her to have anything to do with scalloped oysters and preserved ginger. The Miss Mackinnons were pretty sure to disapprove of both them and their donor, and she must also decline wasting another fraction of her valuable time in telling him that Miss Bethia’s convalescence was an established fact, and that there was nothing the matter with any other person in the house, while it was too absurd that he should constitute himself a purveyor for their wants. He had better go and shop with his sisters. Oh! _she_ did not despise shopping--she was quite fond of it, when she had plenty of time and money, and nothing better to do. If he did not attend the Nasmyths’ ball--the first ball of the season--the more fool he; the loss would be his, for she could not flatter him that one gentleman would be missed, and balls were excellent things to those who were not above dancing and making themselves agreeable and useful.

‘That is all she thinks me fit for,’ he told himself in a rage; ‘she regards me as a perfect humbug. When she is so grossly unfair I wonder I trouble myself what she thinks: though there is nobody like her that I know, nobody so good to everybody except me, so brave and bright--but I will let her alone in future.’

Miss Bethia was not hard to persuade to try a change of air at Barley Riggs, and her sisters were induced to accompany her. During their absence as much of the old furniture of the house in St. Mungo’s Square as could be hunted up was restored to it, without a word said on either side, until its absence appeared to have been part of an uncomfortable dream.

The next step was to make Miss Janet let her name, and the names of her sisters, be put, in strictest privacy, on the list of impoverished better-class families helped by a certain fund. She was led to do so by being shown the signature of her grandfather among those of the early subscribers to the fund, and by the facts being impressed upon her that she was only taking back what he had given. Miss Bethia was, as Athole Murray had found, by far the most pliable of the sisters, and she lent herself half willingly, half with fear and trembling for what Miss Janet would say if she ever found out the unbecoming traffic, to sundry wiles and devices of Athole’s, as the instrument appointed by her father and Tam Drysdale for lending the Miss Mackinnons substantial assistance. At the same time Miss Bethia had never received so many or such well-paid orders for work; altogether, there was hope of the Miss Mackinnons keeping soul and body together till a share of Strathdivie fell to their lot.