CHAPTER XVIIIBALNILLO FINDS PERFECTIONASCONCEof candles beside a window-recess shed a collective illumination from the wall, and Christian Flemington stood full in their light, contemplating the company with superb detachment, and pervaded by that air, which never left her, of facing the world, unaided and unabashed, with such advantages as God had given her. Her neck, still white and firm, was bare, for she wore no jewels but the ruby earrings which shot blood-red sparks around her when she moved. Long necks were in fashion in those days, and hers was rather short, but the carriage of her head added enough to its length to do more than equalize the difference. Her hair was like massed silver, and her flesh—of which a good deal could be seen—rose like ivory above the wine-colour of her silk gown, which flowed in spreading folds from her waist to the ground. A Spanish fan with carved tortoiseshell sticks, a thing of mellow browns and golds, was half closed between her fingers. When she opened it, it displayed the picture of a bull-fight.“That is Mrs. Flemington—Madam Flemington,as I am told many people call her—I presume, because she came to Scotland from France. You should know her, my lord,” she added, addressing Balnillo; “you are from Angus.”But Balnillo was speechless.Grange, who was transferring a pinch of snuff from his box to his nose, paused, his hand midway way between the two.“Is she the widow of Andrew Flemington, who was in France with King James?”“The same,” replied Mrs. Cockburn, tossing her head.She had small sympathy with the Stuarts.“I had not expected to see the lady here. Not that I know aught about her views. We have a bare acquaintance, and she is like yourself, Lord Balnillo—just arrived in Edinburgh when our young hero has left Holyrood.”“She has been a fine woman,” said Lord Grange, his eye kindling.“You may use the present tense, my lord,” said Mrs. Cockburn.“Aha!” sniggered Grange, who adhered to the time-honoured beliefs of his sex, “you dare to show yourself generous!”“I dare to show myself what I am, and that is more than all the world can do,” said she, looking at him very hard.He shifted from foot to foot. At this moment the gallows, to which he had condemned a few people in his time, struck him as a personal inconvenience.“Ma’am,” said he, swallowing his rage, “you must present Davie, or he will lose what senses he has.”“Come, then, my lord, I will befriend you,” said she, glad of the chance to be rid of Grange.Balnillo followed her, unable to escape had he wished to do so.Christian was a woman who stood very still. She turned her head without turning her body as Mrs. Cockburn approached with her request, and Balnillo saw her calm acquiescence.His breath had been almost taken away as he learned the identity of the stranger. Here was the woman who knew everything about that astounding young man, his late guest, whose alarming illness had recalled him, who had lived at St. Germain with the exiled queen, yet who was the grandmother of a most audacious Whig spy! There was no trace of recent ill-health here. He had pictured some faint, feeble shred of old womanhood, not the commanding creature whose grey eyes were considering him as he advanced under cover of her leisurely consent. She seemed to measure him carelessly as he stood before her. He was torn asunder in mind, awestruck, dragged this way by his surprised admiration, that way by his intense desire to wring from her something about Flemington. Here was a chance, indeed! But Balnillo felt his courage drown in the rising fear of being unable to profit by that chance. Admiring bewilderment overcame every other feeling. He no longerregretted the price he had paid for the lace on his cravat.His name had roused Madam Flemington, though she gave no sign of the thrill that went through her as it fell from Mrs. Cockburn’s lips. As David stood before her in the correct yet sober foppery of his primrose and mouse-colour, she regretted that she was quite ignorant of the pretext on which Archie had left his picture unfinished, nor upon what terms he had parted with the judge. She had no reason for supposing Balnillo to be aware of the young man’s real character. He had been fighting with James Logie, according to Skirling Wattie, yet there seemed to be no enmity in the business, for here was his brother, Lord Balnillo, assiduous in getting himself presented to her. Mrs. Cockburn had put her request with a smiling hint at the effect she had produced on his lordship. Christian glanced at David’s meticulous person and smiled, arrogantly civil, secretly anxious, and remained silent, ready to follow his lead with caution.The shrewd side of Balnillo was uppermost to-night, stimulated perhaps by the sight of society and by the exhilarating sound of its voice. He recovered his momentarily scattered wits and determined to approach his new acquaintance with such direct and simple questions as might seem to her to be the natural inquiries of a man interested in Flemington, and innocent of any mystery concerning him. It was quite possible—so he reasoned—that she was unaware of thedetails of what had happened on Inchbrayock Island. Archie had fled, and the search for him had produced no result; he was unlikely to have made for his own home if he did not wish to be found, and he and Madam Flemington might not have met since the affair of theVenture. It should be his—Balnillo’s—task to convince her of his ignorance.His intense curiosity about Archie was almost stronger than his wrath against him. Unlike James, whose bitterness was too deep for words, whose soul was driven before the fury of his own feelings like a restless ghost, David still looked back with a certain pleasant excitement to Flemington’s meteoric flash through the even atmosphere of his daily life. He would dearly have liked to bring him to justice, but he was anxious to hear a little more of him first.He had a curious mixture of feelings about him. There was no vainer man in Scotland than Balnillo, and if the mental half of his vanity had suffered from the deception practised on it, the physical half was yet preening itself in the sunny remembrance of the portrait at home—the portrait of David Balnillo as he would fain have had the world see him—the portrait, alas and alas! unfinished. He could not feel quite as James felt, who had opened his purse, and, more—far more than that—had laid open the most sacred page of his life before Flemington. He had placed his personal safety in his hands, too, though he counted that as a matter of less moment.“Madam,” said Balnillo, “to see you is to rejoice that you have recovered from your serious illness.”“You are very obliging, my lord. I am quite well,” replied Christian, concealing a slight surprise at this remark.“I am most happy in being presented to you,” he continued. “What news have you of my charming friend Mr. Flemington, may I ask?”“When I heard your name, my lord, I determined to be acquainted with you, if only to thank you for your kindness to my boy. He could not say enough of yourself and your brother. I hope Captain Logie is well. Is he with you this evening?”The mention of James acted on David as he had designed that the mention of Archie should act on Madam Flemington. These two people who were playing at innocence were using the names of their relations to scare the enemy as savage tribes use the terrific faces painted on their shields. Balnillo, in beginning the attack, had forgotten his own weak point, and he remembered that he could give no satisfactory account of his brother at the present moment. But his cunning was always at hand.“I had half expected to see him here,” said he, peering round the room; “there was some talk of his coming. I arrived somewhat late, and I have hardly spoken to anyone but my Lord Grange and Mrs. Cockburn. The sight of yourself, ma’am, put other matters out of my head.”“Ah, sir,” exclaimed Christian, “I fear that your ardour was all on behalf of Archie! But I am accustomed to that.”She cast a look of indolent raillery at him, drawing back her head and veiling her eyes, fiery and seductive still, with the momentary sweep of their thick lashes.Balnillo threw out his chest like a pouter pigeon. He had not been so happy for a long time. As he did so, she remembered Archie’s account of his silk legs, and his description of him as being “silly, virtuous, and cunning all at once.” Silly she could well believe him to be; virtuous he might be; whether he was cunning or not, time would show her. She did not mean to let him go until she had at least attempted to hear more about James Logie.“Madam,” said he, “since seeing you I have forgotten Mr. Flemington. Can I say more?”So far she was completely puzzled as to how much he knew about Archie, but it was beginning to enter her mind that her own illness, of which she had just learned from him, had been the young man’s pretext for leaving his work when it was only begun. Why else had the judge mentioned it? And who but Flemington could have put the idea into his head?She determined to make a bold attack on possibilities.“Archie was distracted by my illness, poor boy, and I fear that your lordship’s portrait suffered. But you will understand his anxietywhen I tell you that I am the only living relation that he has, and that his devotion to me——”“He needs no excuse!” cried David fervently.She laid her hand upon his arm.“I am still hardly myself,” she said. “I cannot stand long. Fetch me a chair, my lord.”He skipped across the floor and laid hold upon one just in time, for a gentleman was on the point of claiming it. He carried it back with the air of a conqueror.“Apart—by the curtain, if you please,” said Christian, waving her hand. “We can speak more comfortably on the fringe of this rout of chattering people.”He set the chair down in a quiet place by the wall, and she settled herself upon it, leaning back, her shoulder turned from the company. Balnillo’s delight deepened.“And the portrait, my lord. He did not tell me what arrangement had been made for finishing it,” said Christian, looking up at him as he stood beside her.She seemed to be completely unconcerned, and she spoke with a leisurely dignity and ease that turned his ideas upside down. He could make nothing of it. She appeared to court the subject of Archie and the picture. He could only guess her to be innocent, and his warm admiration helped his belief. At no moment since he knew the truth from his brother’s lips had Archie’s character seemed so black as it did now. David’sindignation waxed as he grew more certain that Flemington had deceived the noble woman to whom he owed so much, even as he had deceived him. He was becoming so sure of it that he had no desire to enlighten her. He longed to ask plainly where Archie was, but he hesitated. Even the all-wise Mrs. Cockburn was ignorant of this lady’s political sympathies, and knew her only as the widow of a loyal exile. What might—what would be her feelings if she were to see her grandson in his real character?Righteous anger smouldered under Balnillo’s primrose waistcoat, and his spasmodic shrewdness began to doze in the increasing warmth of his chivalrous pity for this new and interesting victim of the engaging rogue.“Mr. Flemington’s concern was so great when he left my house that no arrangement was made,” said he. “I had not the heart to trouble him with my unimportant affairs when so much was at stake.”Of the two cautious people who were feeling their way in the dark, it was the judge who was the more mystified, for he had laid hold of a definite idea, and it was the wrong one. Christian was merely putting a bold face on a hazardous matter, and hoping to hear something of Logie. She had not sought the introduction. David would have been the butt of her amused scorn had she been free enough from anxiety to be entertained. But she could not imagine on what footing matters really stood, and she was becominginclined to suspect the beggar’s statement that Flemington had been fighting with James. Her longing to see Archie was great.She loved him in her own way, though she had driven him from her in her mortification and her furious pride. She had not believed that he would really go there and then; that he, who had served her purposes so gallantly all his life, would take her at her word. What was he doing? Why had he gone to Edinburgh? Her own reason for coming had been the hope of seeing him. She had been four days in the town now, and she dared not make open inquiries for him, not knowing how far his defection had gone. She had accused him of turning to the Stuarts, and he had denied the accusation, not angrily, but with quiet firmness. Two horrible possibilities had occurred to her: one, that he was with the Prince, and might be already known to the Government as a rebel; the other, that he had never reached Edinburgh—that his hurt had been worse than the beggar supposed, and that he might be ill or dying, perhaps dead. But it was only when she lay awake at night that she imagined these things. In saner moments and by daylight she put them from her. She was so well accustomed to being parted from him, and to the knowledge that he was on risky business, that she would not allow herself to be really disturbed. She assured herself that she must wait and watch; and now she was glad to find herself acquainted with Balnillo, who seemed to be theonly clue in her hand. Mercifully, he had all the appearance of being an old fool.“I see that you are too modest to tell me anything of the picture,” she began. “I hope it promised well. You should make a fine portrait, and I believe that Archie could do you justice. He is at his best with high types. Describe it to me.”David espied a vacant chair, and, drawing it towards him, sat down to the subject with the same gusto that most men bring to their dinners. He cleared his throat.“I should have wished it to be full length,” said he, “but Mr. Flemington had no suitable canvas with him. I wore my robes, and he was good enough to say that the crimson was appropriate and becoming to me. Personally, I favour quiet colours, as you see, ma’am.”“I see that you have excellent taste.”He bowed, delighted.“I remarked you as you came in,” continued she, “and I asked myself why these gentlemen looked so garish. Observe that one beside the door of the card-room, my lord. I am sure that he chose his finery with some care, yet he reminds me of a clown at a merrymaking.”“True, true—excellently true!”“In my youth it was the man of the world who set the fashions; now it is the tailor and the young sir fresh from his studies. What should these persons know of the subject?”Balnillo was in heaven; from force of habit heran his hand down the leg crossed upon his knee. The familiar inward curve of the slim silk ankle between his fingers was like the touch of a tried and creditable friend; it might almost be said that he turned to it for sympathy. He would have liked to tell his ankle that to-night he had found a perfection almost as great as its own.Lord Grange, who had taken leave of his hostess and was departing, paused to look at him.“See,” said he, taking an acquaintance by the elbow, “look yonder at that doited Davie Balnillo.”“He is telling her about his riding of the circuit,” said the other, grinning.“The circuit never made him smile like that,” replied Grange sardonically.An hour later Christian Flemington stood at the top of the circular staircase. Below it, Balnillo was at the entrance-door, sending everyone within reach of his voice in search of her sedan chair. When it was discovered, he escorted her down and handed her into it, then, according to the custom of the time, he prepared to attend its progress to her lodgings in Hyndford’s Close. The streets were even dirtier and damper than before, but he was as anxious to walk from Lady Anne’s party as he had been determined to be carried to it. He stepped along at the side of the chair, turning, when they passed a light, to see the dignified silhouette of Madam Flemington’s head as it appeared in shadow against the farther window.Speech was impossible as they went, for avoidance of the kennel and the worse obstacles that strewed the city at that hour, before the scavengers had gone their rounds, kept David busy. The only profit that a man got by seeing his admired one home in Edinburgh in 1745 was the honour and glory of it.When she emerged from the chair in Hyndford’s Close he insisted upon mounting the staircase with her, though its narrowness compelled them to go in single file; and when they stopped halfway up at the door in the towering ‘land,’ he bade her good-night and descended again, consoled for the parting by her permission that he should wait upon her on the following day.Christian was admitted and sailed into her little room. A light was in it and Archie was standing at the foot of the bed.Surprises had been rolling up round Madam Flemington all the evening; surprise at meeting Balnillo, surprise at his attitude; and this crowning surprise of all. She was bewildered, but the blessing of unexpected relief fell on her. She went towards him, her hands outstretched, and Flemington, who was looking at her with a wistfulness she had never seen in him before, took them and held them fast.“Oh, Archie!” she exclaimed.She could say no more.They sat down at the wide hearth together, the shadow of the great carved bed sprawling over the crowded space between the walls and overChristian’s swelling silks. Then he told her the history of the time since they parted in Ardguys garden; of his boarding of theVenture; of the fight with the rebels at Inchbrayock; of his meeting with Wattie; of how he had reached Aberbrothock half dead, and had lain sick for two days in an obscure tavern by the shore; how he had finally sailed for Leith and had reached Edinburgh.Christian heard him, her gaze fixed upon the fire. She had elicited nothing about James Logie from Balnillo, and there was no word of him in Archie’s story. She longed to speak of him, but would not; she longed to know if the beggar had told the truth in saying that the two men had actually fought, but she asked nothing, for she knew that her wisest part was to accept the essentials, considering them as the whole. She would ask no questions.Archie had come back. She had forbidden Ardguys to him and he had evaded her ban by coming here. Yet he came, having proved himself loyal, and she would ignore the rest.
ASCONCEof candles beside a window-recess shed a collective illumination from the wall, and Christian Flemington stood full in their light, contemplating the company with superb detachment, and pervaded by that air, which never left her, of facing the world, unaided and unabashed, with such advantages as God had given her. Her neck, still white and firm, was bare, for she wore no jewels but the ruby earrings which shot blood-red sparks around her when she moved. Long necks were in fashion in those days, and hers was rather short, but the carriage of her head added enough to its length to do more than equalize the difference. Her hair was like massed silver, and her flesh—of which a good deal could be seen—rose like ivory above the wine-colour of her silk gown, which flowed in spreading folds from her waist to the ground. A Spanish fan with carved tortoiseshell sticks, a thing of mellow browns and golds, was half closed between her fingers. When she opened it, it displayed the picture of a bull-fight.
“That is Mrs. Flemington—Madam Flemington,as I am told many people call her—I presume, because she came to Scotland from France. You should know her, my lord,” she added, addressing Balnillo; “you are from Angus.”
But Balnillo was speechless.
Grange, who was transferring a pinch of snuff from his box to his nose, paused, his hand midway way between the two.
“Is she the widow of Andrew Flemington, who was in France with King James?”
“The same,” replied Mrs. Cockburn, tossing her head.
She had small sympathy with the Stuarts.
“I had not expected to see the lady here. Not that I know aught about her views. We have a bare acquaintance, and she is like yourself, Lord Balnillo—just arrived in Edinburgh when our young hero has left Holyrood.”
“She has been a fine woman,” said Lord Grange, his eye kindling.
“You may use the present tense, my lord,” said Mrs. Cockburn.
“Aha!” sniggered Grange, who adhered to the time-honoured beliefs of his sex, “you dare to show yourself generous!”
“I dare to show myself what I am, and that is more than all the world can do,” said she, looking at him very hard.
He shifted from foot to foot. At this moment the gallows, to which he had condemned a few people in his time, struck him as a personal inconvenience.
“Ma’am,” said he, swallowing his rage, “you must present Davie, or he will lose what senses he has.”
“Come, then, my lord, I will befriend you,” said she, glad of the chance to be rid of Grange.
Balnillo followed her, unable to escape had he wished to do so.
Christian was a woman who stood very still. She turned her head without turning her body as Mrs. Cockburn approached with her request, and Balnillo saw her calm acquiescence.
His breath had been almost taken away as he learned the identity of the stranger. Here was the woman who knew everything about that astounding young man, his late guest, whose alarming illness had recalled him, who had lived at St. Germain with the exiled queen, yet who was the grandmother of a most audacious Whig spy! There was no trace of recent ill-health here. He had pictured some faint, feeble shred of old womanhood, not the commanding creature whose grey eyes were considering him as he advanced under cover of her leisurely consent. She seemed to measure him carelessly as he stood before her. He was torn asunder in mind, awestruck, dragged this way by his surprised admiration, that way by his intense desire to wring from her something about Flemington. Here was a chance, indeed! But Balnillo felt his courage drown in the rising fear of being unable to profit by that chance. Admiring bewilderment overcame every other feeling. He no longerregretted the price he had paid for the lace on his cravat.
His name had roused Madam Flemington, though she gave no sign of the thrill that went through her as it fell from Mrs. Cockburn’s lips. As David stood before her in the correct yet sober foppery of his primrose and mouse-colour, she regretted that she was quite ignorant of the pretext on which Archie had left his picture unfinished, nor upon what terms he had parted with the judge. She had no reason for supposing Balnillo to be aware of the young man’s real character. He had been fighting with James Logie, according to Skirling Wattie, yet there seemed to be no enmity in the business, for here was his brother, Lord Balnillo, assiduous in getting himself presented to her. Mrs. Cockburn had put her request with a smiling hint at the effect she had produced on his lordship. Christian glanced at David’s meticulous person and smiled, arrogantly civil, secretly anxious, and remained silent, ready to follow his lead with caution.
The shrewd side of Balnillo was uppermost to-night, stimulated perhaps by the sight of society and by the exhilarating sound of its voice. He recovered his momentarily scattered wits and determined to approach his new acquaintance with such direct and simple questions as might seem to her to be the natural inquiries of a man interested in Flemington, and innocent of any mystery concerning him. It was quite possible—so he reasoned—that she was unaware of thedetails of what had happened on Inchbrayock Island. Archie had fled, and the search for him had produced no result; he was unlikely to have made for his own home if he did not wish to be found, and he and Madam Flemington might not have met since the affair of theVenture. It should be his—Balnillo’s—task to convince her of his ignorance.
His intense curiosity about Archie was almost stronger than his wrath against him. Unlike James, whose bitterness was too deep for words, whose soul was driven before the fury of his own feelings like a restless ghost, David still looked back with a certain pleasant excitement to Flemington’s meteoric flash through the even atmosphere of his daily life. He would dearly have liked to bring him to justice, but he was anxious to hear a little more of him first.
He had a curious mixture of feelings about him. There was no vainer man in Scotland than Balnillo, and if the mental half of his vanity had suffered from the deception practised on it, the physical half was yet preening itself in the sunny remembrance of the portrait at home—the portrait of David Balnillo as he would fain have had the world see him—the portrait, alas and alas! unfinished. He could not feel quite as James felt, who had opened his purse, and, more—far more than that—had laid open the most sacred page of his life before Flemington. He had placed his personal safety in his hands, too, though he counted that as a matter of less moment.
“Madam,” said Balnillo, “to see you is to rejoice that you have recovered from your serious illness.”
“You are very obliging, my lord. I am quite well,” replied Christian, concealing a slight surprise at this remark.
“I am most happy in being presented to you,” he continued. “What news have you of my charming friend Mr. Flemington, may I ask?”
“When I heard your name, my lord, I determined to be acquainted with you, if only to thank you for your kindness to my boy. He could not say enough of yourself and your brother. I hope Captain Logie is well. Is he with you this evening?”
The mention of James acted on David as he had designed that the mention of Archie should act on Madam Flemington. These two people who were playing at innocence were using the names of their relations to scare the enemy as savage tribes use the terrific faces painted on their shields. Balnillo, in beginning the attack, had forgotten his own weak point, and he remembered that he could give no satisfactory account of his brother at the present moment. But his cunning was always at hand.
“I had half expected to see him here,” said he, peering round the room; “there was some talk of his coming. I arrived somewhat late, and I have hardly spoken to anyone but my Lord Grange and Mrs. Cockburn. The sight of yourself, ma’am, put other matters out of my head.”
“Ah, sir,” exclaimed Christian, “I fear that your ardour was all on behalf of Archie! But I am accustomed to that.”
She cast a look of indolent raillery at him, drawing back her head and veiling her eyes, fiery and seductive still, with the momentary sweep of their thick lashes.
Balnillo threw out his chest like a pouter pigeon. He had not been so happy for a long time. As he did so, she remembered Archie’s account of his silk legs, and his description of him as being “silly, virtuous, and cunning all at once.” Silly she could well believe him to be; virtuous he might be; whether he was cunning or not, time would show her. She did not mean to let him go until she had at least attempted to hear more about James Logie.
“Madam,” said he, “since seeing you I have forgotten Mr. Flemington. Can I say more?”
So far she was completely puzzled as to how much he knew about Archie, but it was beginning to enter her mind that her own illness, of which she had just learned from him, had been the young man’s pretext for leaving his work when it was only begun. Why else had the judge mentioned it? And who but Flemington could have put the idea into his head?
She determined to make a bold attack on possibilities.
“Archie was distracted by my illness, poor boy, and I fear that your lordship’s portrait suffered. But you will understand his anxietywhen I tell you that I am the only living relation that he has, and that his devotion to me——”
“He needs no excuse!” cried David fervently.
She laid her hand upon his arm.
“I am still hardly myself,” she said. “I cannot stand long. Fetch me a chair, my lord.”
He skipped across the floor and laid hold upon one just in time, for a gentleman was on the point of claiming it. He carried it back with the air of a conqueror.
“Apart—by the curtain, if you please,” said Christian, waving her hand. “We can speak more comfortably on the fringe of this rout of chattering people.”
He set the chair down in a quiet place by the wall, and she settled herself upon it, leaning back, her shoulder turned from the company. Balnillo’s delight deepened.
“And the portrait, my lord. He did not tell me what arrangement had been made for finishing it,” said Christian, looking up at him as he stood beside her.
She seemed to be completely unconcerned, and she spoke with a leisurely dignity and ease that turned his ideas upside down. He could make nothing of it. She appeared to court the subject of Archie and the picture. He could only guess her to be innocent, and his warm admiration helped his belief. At no moment since he knew the truth from his brother’s lips had Archie’s character seemed so black as it did now. David’sindignation waxed as he grew more certain that Flemington had deceived the noble woman to whom he owed so much, even as he had deceived him. He was becoming so sure of it that he had no desire to enlighten her. He longed to ask plainly where Archie was, but he hesitated. Even the all-wise Mrs. Cockburn was ignorant of this lady’s political sympathies, and knew her only as the widow of a loyal exile. What might—what would be her feelings if she were to see her grandson in his real character?
Righteous anger smouldered under Balnillo’s primrose waistcoat, and his spasmodic shrewdness began to doze in the increasing warmth of his chivalrous pity for this new and interesting victim of the engaging rogue.
“Mr. Flemington’s concern was so great when he left my house that no arrangement was made,” said he. “I had not the heart to trouble him with my unimportant affairs when so much was at stake.”
Of the two cautious people who were feeling their way in the dark, it was the judge who was the more mystified, for he had laid hold of a definite idea, and it was the wrong one. Christian was merely putting a bold face on a hazardous matter, and hoping to hear something of Logie. She had not sought the introduction. David would have been the butt of her amused scorn had she been free enough from anxiety to be entertained. But she could not imagine on what footing matters really stood, and she was becominginclined to suspect the beggar’s statement that Flemington had been fighting with James. Her longing to see Archie was great.
She loved him in her own way, though she had driven him from her in her mortification and her furious pride. She had not believed that he would really go there and then; that he, who had served her purposes so gallantly all his life, would take her at her word. What was he doing? Why had he gone to Edinburgh? Her own reason for coming had been the hope of seeing him. She had been four days in the town now, and she dared not make open inquiries for him, not knowing how far his defection had gone. She had accused him of turning to the Stuarts, and he had denied the accusation, not angrily, but with quiet firmness. Two horrible possibilities had occurred to her: one, that he was with the Prince, and might be already known to the Government as a rebel; the other, that he had never reached Edinburgh—that his hurt had been worse than the beggar supposed, and that he might be ill or dying, perhaps dead. But it was only when she lay awake at night that she imagined these things. In saner moments and by daylight she put them from her. She was so well accustomed to being parted from him, and to the knowledge that he was on risky business, that she would not allow herself to be really disturbed. She assured herself that she must wait and watch; and now she was glad to find herself acquainted with Balnillo, who seemed to be theonly clue in her hand. Mercifully, he had all the appearance of being an old fool.
“I see that you are too modest to tell me anything of the picture,” she began. “I hope it promised well. You should make a fine portrait, and I believe that Archie could do you justice. He is at his best with high types. Describe it to me.”
David espied a vacant chair, and, drawing it towards him, sat down to the subject with the same gusto that most men bring to their dinners. He cleared his throat.
“I should have wished it to be full length,” said he, “but Mr. Flemington had no suitable canvas with him. I wore my robes, and he was good enough to say that the crimson was appropriate and becoming to me. Personally, I favour quiet colours, as you see, ma’am.”
“I see that you have excellent taste.”
He bowed, delighted.
“I remarked you as you came in,” continued she, “and I asked myself why these gentlemen looked so garish. Observe that one beside the door of the card-room, my lord. I am sure that he chose his finery with some care, yet he reminds me of a clown at a merrymaking.”
“True, true—excellently true!”
“In my youth it was the man of the world who set the fashions; now it is the tailor and the young sir fresh from his studies. What should these persons know of the subject?”
Balnillo was in heaven; from force of habit heran his hand down the leg crossed upon his knee. The familiar inward curve of the slim silk ankle between his fingers was like the touch of a tried and creditable friend; it might almost be said that he turned to it for sympathy. He would have liked to tell his ankle that to-night he had found a perfection almost as great as its own.
Lord Grange, who had taken leave of his hostess and was departing, paused to look at him.
“See,” said he, taking an acquaintance by the elbow, “look yonder at that doited Davie Balnillo.”
“He is telling her about his riding of the circuit,” said the other, grinning.
“The circuit never made him smile like that,” replied Grange sardonically.
An hour later Christian Flemington stood at the top of the circular staircase. Below it, Balnillo was at the entrance-door, sending everyone within reach of his voice in search of her sedan chair. When it was discovered, he escorted her down and handed her into it, then, according to the custom of the time, he prepared to attend its progress to her lodgings in Hyndford’s Close. The streets were even dirtier and damper than before, but he was as anxious to walk from Lady Anne’s party as he had been determined to be carried to it. He stepped along at the side of the chair, turning, when they passed a light, to see the dignified silhouette of Madam Flemington’s head as it appeared in shadow against the farther window.
Speech was impossible as they went, for avoidance of the kennel and the worse obstacles that strewed the city at that hour, before the scavengers had gone their rounds, kept David busy. The only profit that a man got by seeing his admired one home in Edinburgh in 1745 was the honour and glory of it.
When she emerged from the chair in Hyndford’s Close he insisted upon mounting the staircase with her, though its narrowness compelled them to go in single file; and when they stopped halfway up at the door in the towering ‘land,’ he bade her good-night and descended again, consoled for the parting by her permission that he should wait upon her on the following day.
Christian was admitted and sailed into her little room. A light was in it and Archie was standing at the foot of the bed.
Surprises had been rolling up round Madam Flemington all the evening; surprise at meeting Balnillo, surprise at his attitude; and this crowning surprise of all. She was bewildered, but the blessing of unexpected relief fell on her. She went towards him, her hands outstretched, and Flemington, who was looking at her with a wistfulness she had never seen in him before, took them and held them fast.
“Oh, Archie!” she exclaimed.
She could say no more.
They sat down at the wide hearth together, the shadow of the great carved bed sprawling over the crowded space between the walls and overChristian’s swelling silks. Then he told her the history of the time since they parted in Ardguys garden; of his boarding of theVenture; of the fight with the rebels at Inchbrayock; of his meeting with Wattie; of how he had reached Aberbrothock half dead, and had lain sick for two days in an obscure tavern by the shore; how he had finally sailed for Leith and had reached Edinburgh.
Christian heard him, her gaze fixed upon the fire. She had elicited nothing about James Logie from Balnillo, and there was no word of him in Archie’s story. She longed to speak of him, but would not; she longed to know if the beggar had told the truth in saying that the two men had actually fought, but she asked nothing, for she knew that her wisest part was to accept the essentials, considering them as the whole. She would ask no questions.
Archie had come back. She had forbidden Ardguys to him and he had evaded her ban by coming here. Yet he came, having proved himself loyal, and she would ignore the rest.