A Dark and Distant Shore (42 page)

Vilia and Charlotte waited outside while the doctor examined him, Charlotte dull-eyed and resentful, and Vilia as insensate as a sleep-walker, moving or standing still as occasion required, aware, somewhere deep down, that the moment of waking must come.

At one stage, Grace came tiptoeing downstairs, her neat little features determined. ‘Mama,’ she whispered. ‘You will make yourself ill again. I’ve been watching you from the schoolroom landing. You must sit down, and I’ll ask Mrs Lamont to bring you some tea.’

Charlotte’s expression under the frilled muslin cap, with its improbable skittish bows, softened a little. ‘How like you to think of it, my dear. But, no. I don’t require any tea. Go back to the schoolroom, please.’

But the child turned to Vilia. Hospitality had its rules, however unwelcome the guest, and she said, ‘Perhaps you would care for some refreshment, Mrs Lauriston?’ She didn’t seem to hear at first so, obstinately, Grace repeated the question. This time, she received the ghost of a smile and a nod of refusal. Worriedly, she made her way upstairs again, where Georgiana said with a kind of morbid satisfaction, ‘I told you so.’

The door of Mungo’s room opened at last, and Dr Gordon came out, rolling down his sleeves. He wasn’t a very good doctor, and Vilia suspected that he drank more than was good for him, but he was the only medical man in the district, and he had a kind heart.

He shook his head when Charlotte started forward and asked, ‘How is he?’

‘He’s an old man, Mistress Randall, and he’s had a full life. It’s coming to its end now, so you’d better prepare yourself.’ Again, he shook his head. ‘No, dinna fret about him. He’s ready enough. He knows all he has to do is put up wi’ a few more hours of it, and then he’ll have peace.’

It was the wrong thing to say to Charlotte, for whom there were conventions in death as in life. Stoicism, she thought, was something that grew out of long, lingering illnesses. Her father’s dying would be short and she couldn’t believe that he was prepared. She worried about it. ‘If only the minister would come.’

Vilia looked at her curiously. But she supposed that people who found comfort in religion were bound to assume that others did, too. She herself had never been much impressed by the narrow-minded and not very intelligent men whose mission it was to trot out panaceas dreamed up two thousand years before to meet the needs of an illiterate tribal people. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in God, just that she didn’t think much of His earthly spokesmen. Mungo was a wise man, and a good man, who didn’t need any minister. What he needed were love and understanding and friendship to bolster his own strength during the last ordeal.

Charlotte said, ‘I must go in,’ but the doctor stopped her.

‘Not now. He wants to see Mistress Cameron.’

‘No!’ The reaction was crude and unequivocal. ‘I’m his daughter. It’s my right!’

The doctor looked at her. ‘I can’t stop ye, of course. But will ye not respect his wishes?’ Then, more soothingly, he went on, ‘Calm yourself, Mistress Randall. He’s got a few hours to go yet. Come on, sit ye down. Ye’re not well yourself yet, after that illness. I’ll come and keep you company, and maybe that housekeeper of yours will bring us a drop of tea. I’m fair parched. Then, when your father’s had his word with Mistress Cameron, ye can go in yourself. But only if you promise to sit quiet, though. No tears and no laments.’ He turned to Vilia. ‘And that means you, too, Mistress Cameron.’

She didn’t need the warning, and he knew it. He had said it only for Charlotte’s sake. She nodded her head, twice, and then set her hand to the doorknob.

It was not a large room, and the bed seemed to fill it, heavily curtained in a cloth that had probably once been red but now, after many washes, had faded to an uneven pink. The walls were darkly panelled and hung with a few old-fashioned prints in dull gold frames. Outside the small, deeply embrasured windows, the sky was dark, and there was a faint soughing of wind in the trees. The doctor had pulled an embroidered fire screen alongside the bed to shield Mungo’s eyes from the candles. A peat fire burned slowly in the grate, but the room smelled cool and damp. Vilia shivered a little.

He was propped up on the pillows, his eyes sunk in deep pits of shadow, and his face, under the broken veins that patched the cheekbones, wearing the cold, waxen look that Vilia had seen only once in her life before, when her own father had lain on his death-bed. But that had been different. He had resented the pain, and the fear, and the knowledge of dying. Mungo didn’t.

There was a glimmer of something that might have been a smile round his mouth, and he had just enough strength to turn his hand, palm upwards, on the counterpane. She went to him, treading lightly on the worn carpet, and knelt beside the bed in a soft rustle of skirts.

She had thought all her faculties were in suspension, and that she could manage. But his first words, slurred and yet vehement as he launched them separately on each outgoing breath, nearly broke her.

‘I’m – loathe – to go. You – need me. Too late for me to – ask you – what’s wrong.’

She made as if to speak, but he shook his head a little. ‘No. Let
me.
My investment in the foundry – that’s yours. And a – bit more. Magnus won’t miss it.’ The shadow of a frown constricted his brow. ‘Wish I – could have left you – Kinveil – too.’

She dropped her forehead on their clasped hands, unable to look at him.

‘If I’d been able – to see ahead – when I – bought it... If! If! But it’s a – funny thing – life.’

His hand moved in hers, and she raised her head again.

‘The boys are – all you have now.
You need them.
Remember that.’

There was a long, long pause, then his eyes flickered away from hers. ‘I’ve aye wondered... You and Perry Randall – at that ball – years ago.’

The breath fled from her lungs.

‘I thought – made for each other. But Charlotte’s my child.’ His voice was almost pleading. The next intake of breath racked him, and she held his hand tightly until the gasping subsided.

Then he whispered, ‘Oh, lassie! It’s worried me for so long. Do you love him?’

He trusted her not to lie to him, and because he had said, ‘Do you?’ and not ‘Did you?’ she was able to cling to her newborn illusions. She said, ‘No.’

After a while, he said, ‘I’m glad. I know where he is – where he’s been – all these years. I could have told you – but I didn’t – because of Charlotte. It was a question of – who would be hurt – you see? But if you don’t – love him – then it didn’t matter after all – did it?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It didn’t matter.’

‘Och, I’m glad. I’ll go to the Lord with a – clear conscience about – that, anyway.’ He turned his head so that his darkening eyes looked deep into hers, and the words came out in a rush. ‘But you were – made for each other, just the same.’ After another long pause, he added, ‘It’s as well, though. Unless he’s changed – you’re – too strong – for him.’

The effort was intense, now. His tongue came out, agonizingly slowly, to moisten dry lips. ‘You’ll have to be strong for – yourself. But lassie, not too strong, not hard. Drat it!’ There was a weak, frustrated rage in the whisper that was all he could manage. ‘If I could only – give you back – Kinveil. Then everything would be – all right. But it has to go to Magnus. You see that?’

She raised his hand, cold and heavy, to her lips. ‘I see that, Mungo, have you said what you want to say?’

His hand tightened a little in her grasp.

‘It’s my turn, then. You have been dearer to me than anyone I’ve ever known. No faults. No demands. No – betrayals. Only kindness and support such as I wouldn’t have believed could exist. There have been times when, if it hadn’t been for you, I couldn’t have gone on. No, don’t frown, my dear. Let me finish. I’ll mourn you for the rest of my life. I’ll weep for you, out of love and out of selfishness.’ Her voice faltered. ‘If I could come with you, I would.’

In her desolation and loneliness, she meant it. With Mungo’s death, a part of her – another part of her – would die, and she didn’t think she could afford it. It was as if, one by one, the chambers of her heart were being sealed off, each a separate coffin with its plaque commemorating warmth, happiness, kindness, love. Coffins never to be opened again, no prey for the resurrection men.

She was becoming morbid, or maudlin, she didn’t know which. Gathering her voice together again, she went on, ‘But since I can’t come with you, I will go on, and I promise you I’ll try to be strong, and try, if I can, not to be hard. Though that won’t be easy, Mungo dear, without you. But I promise you,
I will try.’

His smile was almost successful, and she smiled back through the tears standing in her eyes.

They were still sitting motionless, in a silence punctuated only by Mungo’s gasping breath, when the door opened and the doctor’s head appeared. With a single glance he took in Mungo’s closed eyes and the shallow movement of his chest. ‘I think Mistress Randall should see him now,’ he said.

After a moment, she replied, ‘Yes,’ and, rising, bent over Mungo and dropped a light, evanescent kiss on his forehead. His lashes fluttered, but his eyes remained closed. Gently, she laid his hand on the coverlet, and murmured in a voice she hoped he was still able to hear, ‘Good-bye, Mungo, my dear. Go in peace, and with love.’

Late the following afternoon, riding carefully because his head was still splitting and his stomach queasy from the forty-three toasts he had drunk at Fort William the evening before, Luke Telfer arrived at Glenbraddan and was lethargically puzzled to see that every door and window in the house was wide open to the grey drizzle outside. Not until he stepped inside the unattended front door, shaking off his dripping greatcoat and sodden beaver, and noticed that the mirror was covered with a cloth and that the clock had been stopped, did he realize that there had been a death in the house and that the windows were open to let the departing spirit fly free. When the butler made a belated appearance, all Luke said was, ‘Who?’ He felt cold all the way through, remembering that eerie little scene at Kinveil on Tuesday evening. If that had meant anything, it could only be one of two people.

Edward took him to see his grandfather, already laid out in the bed-chamber, clothed in a ruffled shirt, and with his hands crossed over his breast. A white sheet covered him, and there were white napkins pinned over the chair cushions, the chest of drawers, and the pictures on the wall. Aunt Charlotte sat near the bedhead, watching over him, and there were two little tables, one set with wine and seedcake, the other with bread, cheese and whisky, to be offered to visitors according to their station in life. It all looked as a decent Highland death chamber was supposed to look, but almost at once Luke discovered that the peace was deceptive.

Aunt Charlotte, it seemed, was determined that her father should be laid to rest in the little cemetery near Glenbraddan, but Vilia, shocked out of what Luke realized must have been a deliberate self-effacement, had said that Kinveil was where he belonged. As far as Luke could discover, they had only been waiting for him to arrive to settle the matter, because in the absence of his father he was head of the family. He wouldn’t have been equipped for it even if his mind had been in a fit state, and his precarious maturity slipped badly, especially during the course of a highly charged interview with Aunt Charlotte. When he went into the drawing-room to face Vilia, he was white and shaking. He was grateful when she said that Mungo’s man of business, Norman Cooper, had already been summoned from Inverness, and that they would probably find Mungo had left instructions in his Will.

‘Oh, God, Vilia! Do you think so? Aunt Charlotte always reduces me to a jelly. And it’s damned unfair. I was fond of the old man, too, you know!’

‘Yes. But you must make allowances for her, Luke. It’s partly my fault. I should have held my tongue. In a way, I suppose we were both trying to take our minds off what has happened. But he’s gone, and his spirit with him. I doubt whether it really matters very much where his body is laid to rest.’

Norman Cooper arrived not long afterwards, short, fat, red-haired, and wilfully quaint. But Mungo would not have employed him if he hadn’t been very capable indeed, and Luke didn’t know what he would have done without him in the days that followed. He suspected his father would have relied on the man as heavily as he did, if he had been there, but there was no possibility of Magnus reaching Kinveil until long after the funeral.

After the ceremony of the
kistan
– laying the body in an open coffin – Mungo was taken quietly home to Kinveil in a carriage, without any of the antique ostentation Charlotte’s soul craved; if it had been left to her, there would have been a long, slow march, with bearers numbered in the hundreds. But once back at Kinveil, tradition could not be ignored. It was necessary for the coffin to lie in the Great Hall for at least two days and nights, so that friends, neighbours and tenants could pay their last respects. Luke was astonished to discover how many people there were in the district who came to do just that, many of them walking twenty miles or more, dressed in their Sunday best, to doff their bonnets to the man they referred to as Himself. He lost count of the number of times he heard them murmur ‘a fine man’, ‘a good man’, ‘a kind-hearted gentleman’. And through it all, wake had to be held. Edward Blair, Norman Cooper, Luke himself, and Sorley McClure took it in turns, and there were always half a dozen men from among the servants and tenants to keep them company. Luke didn’t think it proper that Sorley should be involved, but Mungo, it seemed, had made a point of it.

Privately, Mr Cooper told Vilia that ‘the late Mr Telfer’, knowing that it would not be possible for Mistress Cameron to take part in the ceremonies, had expressed a wish to have Sorley represent her. ‘And, indeed, it iss a blessing that you were both here, Mistress Cameron, for Mr Telfer said more than once that you were like a daughter to him, and he would go more peacefully if he had you beside him at the last.’ He looked at the young lady’s averted head, and added, a little clumsily, ‘There now! There now, Mistress. It comes to us all, and to die quickly iss what most of us would want. It iss chust a bit hard for those who iss left behind.’