Weir of Hermiston | Page 9

the spirit of choice extinct in her
bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she
had remembered, or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned
with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining-room, where Kirstie was
at the cleaning, like one charged with an important errand.
"Kirstie!" she began, and paused; and then with conviction, "Mr. Weir
isna speeritually minded, but he has been a good man to me."
It was perhaps the first time since her husband's elevation that she had
forgotten the handle to his name, of which the tender, inconsistent
woman was not a little proud. And when Kirstie looked up at the
speaker's face, she was aware of a change.
"Godsake, what's the maitter wi' ye, mem?" cried the housekeeper,
starting from the rug.
"I do not ken," answered her mistress, shaking her head. "But he is not
speeritually minded, my dear."
"Here, sit down with ye! Godsake, what ails the wife?" cried Kirstie,
and helped and forced her into my lord's own chair by the cheek of the
hearth.
"Keep me, what's this?" she gasped. "Kirstie, what's this? I'm
frich'ened."
They were her last words.
It was the lowering nightfall when my lord returned. He had the sunset
in his back, all clouds and glory; and before him, by the wayside, spied
Kirstie Elliott waiting. She was dissolved in tears, and addressed him in
the high, false note of barbarous mourning, such as still lingers
modified among Scots heather.
"The Lord peety ye, Hermiston! the Lord prepare ye!" she keened out.
"Weary upon me, that I should have to tell it!"
He reined in his horse and looked upon her with the hanging face.
"Has the French landit?" cried he.
"Man, man," she said, "is that a' ye can think of? The Lord prepare ye:
the Lord comfort and support ye!"

"Is onybody deid?" said his lordship. "It's no Erchie?"
"Bethankit, no!" exclaimed the woman, startled into a more natural
tone. "Na, na, it's no sae bad as that. It's the mistress, my lord; she just
fair flittit before my e'en. She just gi'ed a sab and was by wi' it. Eh, my
bonny Miss Jeannie, that I mind sae weel!" And forth again upon that
pouring tide of lamentation in which women of her class excel and
over-abound.
Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle beholding her. Then he seemed to
recover command upon himself.
"Well, it's something of the suddenest," said he. "But she was a dwaibly
body from the first."
And he rode home at a precipitate amble with Kirstie at his horse's
heels.
Dressed as she was for her last walk, they had laid the dead lady on her
bed. She was never interesting in life; in death she was not impressive;
and as her husband stood before her, with his hands crossed behind his
powerful back, that which he looked upon was the very image of the
insignificant.
"Her and me were never cut out for one another," he remarked at last.
"It was a daft-like marriage." And then, with a most unusual gentleness
of tone, "Puir bitch," said he, "puir bitch!" Then suddenly: "Where's
Erchie?"
Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and given him "a jeely-piece."
"Ye have some kind of gumption, too," observed the judge, and
considered his housekeeper grimly. "When all's said," he added, "I
micht have done waur - I micht have been marriet upon a skirting
Jezebel like you!"
"There's naebody thinking of you, Hermiston!" cried the offended
woman. "We think of her that's out of her sorrows. And could SHE
have done waur? Tell me that, Hermiston - tell me that before her
clay-cauld corp!"
"Weel, there's some of them gey an' ill to please," observed his
lordship.

CHAPTER II
- FATHER AND SON

MY Lord Justice-Clerk was known to many; the man Adam Weir
perhaps to none. He had nothing to explain or to conceal; he sufficed
wholly and silently to himself; and that part of our nature which goes
out (too often with false coin) to acquire glory or love, seemed in him
to be omitted. He did not try to be loved, he did not care to be; it is
probable the very thought of it was a stranger to his mind. He was an
admired lawyer, a highly unpopular judge; and he looked down upon
those who were his inferiors in either distinction, who were lawyers of
less grasp or judges not so much detested. In all the rest of his days and
doings, not one trace of vanity appeared; and he went on through life
with a mechanical movement, as of the unconscious; that was almost
august.
He saw little of his son. In the childish maladies with which the boy
was troubled, he would