Jamie MacLeod

by Michael Phillips

  The thought made her sick at heart. She would not only have failed poor Andrew, but also Dora and Emily, and even Robbie Taggart who had pulled her half-dead from the snow, and had promised to be her friend at a time when she knew not a single soul on the face of the earth. In that sense she owed Robbie as much as she owed Emily Gilchrist. But she quickly shook thoughts of Robbie from her mind. It would not do to think of him just now, for that stirred another set of confusing emotions within her!

  Instead, she opened her door and marched down the hall. It was well into the morning and the laird was certain to be about his day’s business. She went to the dining room, but he was not breakfasting. She climbed to the second floor and sought out the library. But he was not there either.

  The thought of the little sitting room where she had broken the figurine came to her. It was the last place she wanted to see again, but perhaps it was worth a try. He had obviously been attached to the place.

  When his voice answered her tentative knock five minutes later, it sounded hollow and drained, as if he had not slept all night.

  “Who is it?” he said.

  “Miss MacLeod, your Lordship,” Jamie began. “I know I don’t deserve it, but I would like, if I might, to have a word with you.”

  There was a long pause, as if her statement had prompted a lengthy debate inside the room. At last his sullen voice replied, “Come in.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. He was standing with his back to her, looking out the French doors into the courtyard. He did not turn to face her, but she could feel his icy gaze, and the tension in his body was palpable.

  Her mouth suddenly went dry and the rehearsed words left her mind the moment she had stepped across the threshold into the room. But she breathed a hasty prayer and began.

  “Your Lordship,” she said.

  “Don’t call me that!” he snapped.

  “I’m sorry, uh, sir,” Jamie tried to go on, ruffled by his unexpected response. “Before I go, I wanted to apologize for my words last night. I was frightened for the child, and I hardly knew what I was saying—”

  She stopped. “No,” she went on. “I did know what I was saying, but I didn’t mean it to sound as it did. I had had a terrifying dream and woke suddenly and heard sounds in Andrew’s room. I was afraid. You see—sir—I’ve grown very fond of Andrew. It has been difficult—”

  She paused again, trying both to say what was in her heart, but to keep from offending again. Doggedly she began once more.

  “I’m an orphan, sir. I never knew my mother, and my father died when I was still very young. I can barely remember him. Sometimes I miss them so. It makes me weep to think that I have no parents. No one to go to. No one to hold me when I’m lonely or afraid. I’ve got no one, sir. Sometimes I even get a little angry that my own father and mother went off and left me so alone—even though I know they couldn’t help it, and even though I know they loved me. But when I was little I couldn’t help thinking sometimes that it was because of me they left. And I still have to remind myself that I had nothing to do with it, and that they couldn’t help their dying. It comforts me some to remember that they loved me. But it doesn’t take the place of having them.”

  She stopped and took a deep breath. Still the laird said nothing, staring off toward the mountain in the distance.

  “And maybe it’s that, I’m thinking, that helps me to understand little Andrew more than most,” she continued. “I just can’t bear the thought of him growing up and having to feel like I sometimes feel, wondering if anyone loves him. He has no mother. And as for his father, he hardly knows him, and what is he going to think but what all children think, that somehow it’s because of him that his father doesn’t love him? And he can’t even comfort himself that he’s an orphan. It just hurts me to think—”

  “Are you saying he’s no better off than an orphan?” asked Graystone, his eyes still boring their way through the glass.

  “Maybe, sir,” replied Jamie earnestly. “No—not really. I don’t know. Unless he’s loved, what is the difference? Why should he grow up hating himself for something that wasn’t his fault, like his mother’s death? He’s such a sweet bairn and deserves so much better. He deserves your love, sir. How can you go on blaming him?”

  “Blaming him!” said Edward, as if the idea had struck him for the first time and he found the notion hideous.

  “Aye, sir. Blaming him for his mother’s death.”

  “Blame him!” he repeated. “So that’s what you think! But then I suppose I’ve let everyone think that.”

  He let out a dry laugh. “You were right before—last night. You said it yourself. I’m nothing but a coward! I blame but one person for that crime—myself!”

  Suddenly he swung around.

  Jamie gasped at what she saw. His face was white, his eyes sunken and hollow. Yet there remained a smoldering spark in them. For the first time she was not frightened to look at him, for she now realized the resentment in his eyes was not directed at her, or anyone, but at himself.

  “Myself, do you hear!” he shouted. “And for that I deserve to be hanged, not blessed with a beautiful son!”

  “So you punish yourself by denying your son?” asked Jamie softly, with tears rising to her eyes. “But don’t you see, it’s only the boy that suffers?”

  “Oh, dear Lord!” he moaned. “There’s no escape. I don’t deserve him.”

  “We—none of us—deserve God’s good gifts,” Jamie replied, hardly knowing where the words to reply were coming from. “We can only accept them and thank Him, and then try to do good by them.”

  “If only it were that simple!” he said in agony, not looking at Jamie, but pacing about the room.

  “I can see you’ve known pain,” said Jamie, weeping now. “Perhaps it isn’t simple. But the pain has to stop somewhere—the griefs, the hurts. They can’t be passed on from generation to generation, like land and titles and money and possessions. Love has to be passed on, not pain. No matter whose fault it is—Andrew should not have to suffer for it.”

  “Do you think—” he said, but his voice caught and he turned once more away from her so she would not see the tears filling the eyes of such an important man. “Do you think I want him to suffer!”

  His voice trembled over the words like a dam about to burst. But he could not continue, and his shoulders shook with the weeping he would fain keep inside.

  “Leave me alone!” he cried with such finality that Jamie knew she must leave him to suffer through his agony by himself.

  She turned quickly, still weeping herself, and ran from the room.

  28

  Father and Son

  Jamie went directly to her room and began packing her belongings.

  How she longed to tell little Andrew that his father loved him! But he could never understand. He would not even know yet that he had been hurt. The pain would not solidify for several more years, and by then it would be too late to turn back the tide of his father’s rejection.

  Neither could she face the thought of seeing Andrew for the last time. The very idea brought fresh tears to her eyes as one by one she placed her things in her carpetbag.

  At last, however, she could no longer forestall the inevitable and went to the nursery door and entered.

  “Jamie!” exclaimed Bea, “ye look awful! Are ye ill?”

  “No, Bea. I’m—I’ll be leaving Aviemere.”

  “Leavin’?”

  “Yes. I came to say goodbye to Andrew.”

  “Ye don’t mean t’ say the laird’s been at it again! Ye were good fer the bairn.”

  “Don’t blame him, Bea. It wasn’t the laird’s fault. It’s just that I—”

  Her voice caught, and though she swallowed several times, she could not continue.

  Bea placed a sympathetic arm around Jamie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, lass. Would ye like t’ be alone with him?”

  Jamie nodded, and Bea left.

  Now she had to face And
rew, who in his innocence could understand nothing of the emotions which were swirling about with him at their very center. He looked up, smiled sweetly, and said, “Up, Mamie!”

  She stooped down, picked him up, and held him close. But she could say little to him, least of all goodbye.

  Thirty minutes later the two were seated on the floor rolling a ball back and forth across the floor. Jamie’s tears had subsided, although the mood in the room was still somewhat somber.

  When she heard the door open, she rose reluctantly, expecting news that the arrangements had been made and that the wagon was ready to take her into the village. But as she turned, Edward Graystone’s once-ominous form filled the doorway.

  In an instant Jamie knew the granite facade had crumbled. The hollowness of his bearing brought a fresh ache to Jamie’s heart and she lamented the part she had played in bringing it about. She could not make herself look up at him.

  “I—I’ve come to see Andrew,” he said in a halting voice.

  With a silent prayer of thanksgiving in her heart, Jamie went over and took Andrew’s hand. She then led him over to the feet of this man who had been little more than a stranger to him.

  Slowly Graystone dropped to his knees, and with trembling arms clutched the boy to his breast, weeping as Jamie had never seen a man weep before. She turned and made her way back to her own room, closing the door softly behind her, where she sat down on the bed to await whatever summons would follow.

  Some thirty minutes later she heard a soft knock on her door. She rose to answer it.

  There stood Graystone, composed again, but obviously with his former strength of presence altogether shattered.

  “I would like to—” he began, “—that is—may I speak with you for a moment?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “I feel I owe you an explanation.”

  “You owe me nothing,” said Jamie. “Don’t feel you must—”

  “Please,” interrupted Graystone, “I want to tell you . . . for Andrew’s sake. And perhaps for mine. I want to make a clean breast of it. And you’re as good a place to start as anywhere. You have been kind . . . to us both.”

  “Oh, no! I spoke too hastily to you. I had no right.”

  “Perhaps not. But that hardly matters. Love has its own rights. And you spoke because you loved Andrew—loved him possibly more than I.”

  “Oh no, sir, I know you care. You just didn’t know how to show it.”

  “Never mind, Miss—Miss MacLeod. That’s all behind us now. I simply want you to have the whole truth. I feel you deserve it.”

  With her heart in her throat, Jamie said nothing, and Graystone went on.

  “I am not the laird of Aviemere,” he began, turning back into the nursery and pacing the small room slowly, pausing in front of the window. “But I have done nothing to dispel the illusion. My brother is the true Lord Graystone, Laird of Aviemere. I am nothing but a paid servant. I have loved Aviemere since my earliest boyhood, perhaps more than is decent, and would have done anything to possess it. Yet all my life I knew it would never be mine.

  “Perhaps I wanted a child as much as does any man, but I had no need of an heir, so I was able to accept my wife’s inability. After two miscarriages she was told she could bear no children except at the peril of her life. We were in love and would have been able to live with that. We could have had a happy life without children.”

  He paused, obviously struggling with rising emotion at the thought of his dead wife. He drew in a deep breath then went on.

  “Then came a letter that my brother had been killed in the Transvaal. And suddenly, just like that—in an instant!—it was all mine! The thing I had dreamed of all my life was mine—the land, the estate, the mountain—everything! I cared nothing for the wealth, or even the title. But the land! It was the land I coveted—because I knew my brother cared nothing for it or its people and would be, if not a cruel laird, at least an uncompassionate one. But even with the news, which brought both joy and sorrow, Olivia could see even before I that one thing was missing. I lacked an heir to pass on my beloved Aviemere to.

  “She came to me one day, with a smile on her lips, and announced that the doctor had rescinded his previous diagnosis and had given her his consent to bear another child. My Olivia, who was the essence of virtue, never having told a lie in her life, was willing to so degrade herself—for my selfish desires!”

  In anguish Graystone wiped his eyes and drew in a deep breath, struggling with each word he uttered, yet compelled to continue, compelled at last to unburden his heart, even if to a servant, a mere child of eighteen.

  “And I believed her!”

  “But, sir,” said Jamie, seeking any way she might to speak out for this wretched man’s defense, “why should you not have believed her? You can hardly blame yourself.”

  “I believed her only because I wanted to believe her! Just as I believed Derek was dead because I wanted to believe it. I could have seen through the lies if I had chosen to, if I had let myself. Especially Olivia’s! But my head was full of greed and selfish lust for the position which had all my life been denied me by my cold but powerful father. I could see nothing else! Then—but not until it was too late and Olivia was already pregnant with Andrew—came the letter with the news that my brother lived. How I despised him for that! But it was too late! And Olivia—! But I was the only one responsible—”

  He stopped again, unable to continue for a moment. Then turning his hollow eyes full on Jamie, he said, “Perhaps it is out of place for me to burden you with all this, but I feel you ought to know.”

  “I don’t need to know, unless it helps you to tell me. It only matters to me that you and Andrew are together.”

  “Ah yes, Andrew!” he replied.

  He returned to the crib and lifted the boy into his arms.

  “I want you to know,” he said. “You have cared deeply for Andrew. You have given much to him. I have watched you—though I have made certain I was never seen—you have been . . . like a mother to him.”

  “Please,” said Jamie, tears standing in her eyes, “I have not done nearly—”

  “No! You have loved him, and that’s what matters most. He needs you, and it was foolish of me to dismiss you. I behaved very unkindly to you.”

  “I was too forward! I had no right—”

  “Nevertheless, I have not been pleasant to you since you first came. I want the chance to make it up to you. I’m asking you, please—won’t you stay?”

  “If I can be of any help—”

  “You already have been, probably more than either of us can know. You’ll stay on then, at Aviemere?”

  “If you want me.”

  “Thank you, Miss MacLeod! Though words are hardly enough.”

  Graystone knelt down with one knee on the floor and set the boy on his other. He brushed the yellow locks of hair from the boy’s eyes, and stared into his face for a long while, seeming to behold him for the first time. What was passing through his mind he did not reveal. Andrew also scrutinized his father, touched his face, and spoke several unintelligible words to him. Then he scurried down from the knee, scampered into the adjoining room and returned a moment later with his toy. He held it out for his father to see.

  “Baba,” said Andrew by way of introduction.

  Graystone laughed, and Jamie took the moment of levity to wipe the tears of joy from her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “I know!” replied Graystone. “It was I who brought your Baba home for you, even before you were born!” His voice was husky with renewed emotion.

  He rose, took Andrew by the hand, and said, “Thank you again, Miss MacLeod. And now, if you will excuse us, I think my son and I will go outside for a short walk.”

  29

  The First Flowers of Spring

  Throughout the coming days and weeks of autumn, Edward Graystone made attempts to see little Andrew every day. The effort was new to him and not altogether easy. Memories continued to be roused which were not pleasant
to face, and he discovered getting to know a child of two more difficult than he might have imagined.

  He persisted, however, and if he was not immediately a transformed man, at least he was a growing one, and the renewed atmosphere of hopeful spirits around Aviemere was something all the staff who cared about the man rejoiced quietly in.

  As for Jamie, she found she had more time on her hands than before, due to Andrew’s daily visits by his father. She was eventually permitted use of the library, and gradually made many new discoveries in the world of literature which only a year before were closed to her. Almost before she realized it, winter had come to Aviemere with its first snows. But the long periods indoors did not necessarily mean dull, dreary hours. Andrew’s energy was just as content expending itself in the long halls and spacious rooms of the mansions as it had been on the grassy lawns outside. Before winter was over, however, Jamie found it difficult to keep up with enough games invented for his entertainment.

  Jamie’s faith continued to deepen slowly, as the maturity of womanhood continued to ripen upon her countenance. Those principles she had been taught in Aberdeen imperceptibly penetrated deeper and deeper into her heart as a result of her own obedience to them, and by degrees her character came to reflect something of that same distinctiveness which had first so drawn her to Emily Gilchrist—the uniqueness of a Christlike love for all God’s creatures. Jamie herself was not aware of these changes. Neither could those around her have put their finger on what was different. But in subtle ways they found themselves following her out of the room with their eyes, wondering if this was the same raw, untamed, inexperienced girl who had come to them only months before. Her speech continued to refine itself; there were fewer lapses into the vernacular of her upbringing. A certain lithe gracefulness now accompanied her movements, and she had put on several inches during the course of the winter. The color in her cheeks took on more subtle hues, the luster in her long hair shone, and the green of her eyes deepened.