CHAPTER XXIVTHE COLLEGE OF KING JAMES
I arrived at Edinburgh with the most astonishing ache in my heart (or, at least, in the parts adjoining), and had I met with the least pitifulness I think I should have broken down entirely. But I found a very necessary stimulus in the details of the examination for the bursary. I had no doubt as to being nominated, but when the results were posted I felt shame to be whole three places in front of Freddie Esquillant, my master in all real scholarship, almost as much as my father was—but who, on the day of trial, had spent his time in answering thoroughly half-a-dozen questions without attempting the others.
At any rate it was none such bad news to send by the carrier, who put up at the Black Bull in the Grassmarket, down to my mother and grandmother in Eden Valley. I wrote to them separately, but to my father first, because he understood such things and I knew that his heart was set on Freddie and myself, though he thought (and rightly) that I was a mere clodhopper at my books compared to Fred. As far as the classics went, my father was in the right of it. But then Freddie could not write English, except in a kind of long-winded, elaborate way, as if he were translating from Cicero, which very likely was the case.
Well, the need of keeping my head for the examiners’ questions, the mending of my pens, the big barren room with the books about and the other fellows scribbling away for dear life, the landladies in this close and that square, with faces hardened andtempers sharpened by generations of needy students, out of whom they must nevertheless make their scanty livings, the penetrating Edinburgh airs, the thinness of my cloak and the clumsiness of my countrified rig—these all kept me singularly aware of myself, and prevented any yielding to the folly of homesickness, or, as in my case, “Irma-sickness,” to give the trouble its proper name.
After long search I took up my lodging in a new house at the end of Rankeillor Street, in a place where there was the greenness of fields every way about, except behind in the direction of the college. It was the very last house, and from my garret window I could see the top of Arthur’s Seat and the little breakneck path feeling its way round the foot of the Salisbury Crags, afterwards to be widened into the “Radicals’ Road.” Southward all was green and whaup-haunted to the grey hip of Pentland, and we saw the spread of the countryside when we—that is, Freddie and I—went down the Dalkeith Road to the red-roofed hamlet of Echobank. Here, four times a week we bought a canful of milk that had to do us two days. For there was something about the taste of the town milk that scunnered us—Freddie especially being more delicately stomached than I.
Here, too, was a red-cheeked serving maid who provoked us—but more especially poor Fred, who asked nothing better than that the wench should let him alone. But I cared not so greatly—though, of course, she was nothing to me. How could she be with the gage of Miss Irma hard under my armpit, just where the Eden Valley tailor had placed my inside pocket?
Which reminds me that Fred, fluttering the leaves of his lexicon, or mooning over his beloved Greek verses (which the professor discouraged because hecould not make as good himself), would sigh a little ghost of a sigh as often as he saw me take it out and lay it on the table beside me like a watch. For long I thought it was because he feared it would make me neglect my work, but now, looking back, I can see with great clearness that it was because he felt that love and suchlike were ruled out of his life. It was quite a year before I first mentioned Irma to him by name. Yet he never asked, nor showed that he noticed at all, save for that quick, gentle sigh.
As portrayed in the miniature, Irma’s mother was a gentle fair-haired woman, with a face like a flower sheltered under a broad-brimmed white beaver hat, the very mate and marrow of those I have since seen in the pictures by the great Sir Joshua. She had a dimpled chin that nested in a fluffy blurr of lace. She was as unlike as possible to my dear brave Irma, with her curls like shining jet, and the clean-cut, decisive profile. But I saw at once from whom Baby Louis had gotten his fair soft curls, his blue eyes, and the wistful appeal of his smile. They were always before me as I sat with my elbows on the ink-splattered table, and I did all my work conscious of the rebellious twist of raven curl that was on the other side. I did not open this often, only when by myself, and then with extreme care, for the glass, being old, was a little loose, and it seemed as if the vivid life in the swirl of hair actually moved it out of its place. For even so much of Irma as a curl of her locks perforce retained something of her extraordinary vitality.
It often used to come to me that Irma must be like her father over again, only with all his faults turned to good, strengthened by the determination he lacked. She had his restlessness, his brilliancy, his power over men and women. Only along with these she hadstrength to guide herself (which he, poor man, never had), and enough over for me also. And I have my father’s word and my own consciousness that I needed that guidance.
College life is strange and solitary at these northern universities—especially at those in the two great cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The lad comes up knowing perhaps one other of his age and standing. If he has a family one or two elder students will be ordered by their people to look him up. Seldom do they repeat the visit. Their circle is formed. They want no “yellow nebs.”
For the rest he is alone, protected from the devil and the young lusts of the flesh by the memory of his mother, perhaps by the remembrance that about that time his father is striving hard to pinch to pay his fees, but lastly, chiefly and most practically by those empty pockets.
If he have a family in the town, he is hardly a student like the others. He has his comrades within cry, his houses of call, girls here and there whom he has met at dances in friendly houses, sisters and cousins of his own or of his friends—in short, all the machinery of social life to carry him on.
But for the great majority life is other and sterner. As Milton lamenting his blindness, the stranger student mourns wisdom and life “at one entrance quite shut out.” The influence of women, sweeter than that of the Pleiades, is absent, save in the shape of seamy-faced grim-mouthed landladies, or, in a favourable case, which was ours (or might have been), our red-cheeked, frank-tongued, oncoming wench in the milk-house at Echobank, and the baker’s daughter across the way.
The first result of this is a great outbreak of sentimentality among the callowlings. They have pictures(oh, such caricatures!) to carry in breast-pockets—or locks of hair, like mine. Their hearts are inflammable as those of the flaxen-haired youths I met afterwards in the universities of Germany, only living on oatmeal, without sausages, and less florid with beer. Yet on the whole, the aforesaid empty purse aiding, we were filled with not dishonest sentiment, keen as sleuth-hounds on the track of knowledge, and disputatious as only lads of Calvinistic training can be.
Our landladies were much alike, our rooms furnished with the same Spartan plainness. Only in Mistress Craven I happened on a good one, and abode with her all the days of my stay at College, till the way opened out for me to wider horizons and a humaner life.
But I can see the room yet, and the narrow passage which led to it. Here, close to the door, was a clock with a striking apparatus of surprising shrillness to warn us of the flight of the half-hours. “Ting!” another gone! Then, as the hour drew near, this academic clock cleared its decks for real action—almost it might be said that it cleared its throat, such a roopy gasping crow did it emit. This was technically called “the warning.”
And three times a day at the sound of it we rose, gathered our books and fled fleetfoot for the college. The clock at Mistress Craven’s was set ten minutes fast, so as to leave us time to flee down the Pleasance, dodge through a side alley, cut Simon’s Square diagonally, debouch upon Drummond Street (shunning Rutherford’s change-house, with its “kittle” step down into the cellar), and lo! there, big, barren, grey, grave, cauldrife as a Scots winter, was the College of King James—with the bell, unheard in the side-streets, fairly “gollying” at us—an appalling volume of sound—yet one which, on the whole, we minded lessthan the skirl and rasp of Mistress Craven’s family clock.
I have been speaking for myself. Fred Esquillant was always in time, easy, quiet, letting nothing interfere with his duty. But for me I was not built so. I watched for adventure and followed it. The dog I had met yesterday looked not in vain for a pat. A girl waved a kerchief to the student passing with the books under his arm. She did not know me, nor I her. But in the general interests of my class I had to wave back—without prejudice, be it said, to the black lock behind the miniature in my pocket.
We came back, as we had occasion, from our classes to the crowded stair of our “land”—with its greasy handrail, and the faint whiff of humanity clinging about the numbered doorways. Our key grated in the lock. Mrs. Craven opened the kitchen door with a cry that our dinners would be ready in a jiffey. We were done with the world for the day. Henceforth four walls contained us. Many books lay tumbled about, or had to be heaped on the floor whenever the half of the table was laid for a meal.
I sat farthest from the fire, but facing it. Above and directly before my eyes was a full-rigged ship, sailing among furious painted billows directly against the lofty cliffs of a lea-shore, the captain on the bridge regarding this manœuvre with the utmost complaisance. Beneath was a china shepherdess without the head—opposite a parrot with a bunch of waxen cherries in its beak.
When we took the room, the backs of the chairs had been covered with newly-washed embroidery in raspy woollens and starched linen thread. There had also been a tablecloth, and upon it (neatly arranged by Mrs. Craven’s daughter Amelia) a selection of the family “good books”—to wit, the Holy Biblecontaining entries of the Craven family, with the dates of birth altered or erased, Josephus with steel pictures, theSaint’s Restand some others. These had at once been removed, according to agreement made before taking possession, and now, wrapped in the tablecloth, reposed in a cupboard.
OnlyThe Cloud of Witnessesand Fox’sMartyrswere spared at my special request. As for Freddie, he needed no other literature than his text-books, and set himself to win medals like one who had been fitted by machinery for that purpose.
Mrs. Craven was an Englishwoman who had brought herself to this by marrying a carter from Gilmerton. So she retained a pleasant habit of curtseying which her daughter, born in Edinburgh and given to snuffing up the east wind, did not in the least strive to imitate, so far at least as we were concerned.
But on the whole those rooms in Rankeillor Street were pleasant and even model lodgings. Many a fine gentleman settled in the new town fared worse, even artistically. We had on the wall in little black frames many browned prints by a man of whom we had never heard, one Hogarth by name, some of the details of which made Freddie blush and me laugh aloud. But these doubtful subjects were counterbalanced by an equal number illustrative of the Pilgrim’s Progress, beginning at the sofa-back with the Slough of Despond, going through the Wicket Gate, past fierce Giant Pope and up craggy Hills of Difficulty to a flaming Celestial City apparently being destroyed by fire with extreme rapidity.
In a glass-fronted corner cupboard were memorials of the late Mr. Craven. To wit, a large punch-bowl, remarkable for having melted down a flourishing business in the “carrying” way, four pair of horses withwagons to match, a yard and suitable stabling, and, finally, Mr. Craven, late of Gilmerton, himself.
On the top shelf was all that remained of the tea-service he had presented to his “intended” when he was still at the head of the Gilmerton “yard”—she being at the time lady’s-maid at Dalkeith Palace and high in favour with “her Grace.” Much art was needed in dusting these and arranging them to make cups and saucers stand so that their chipped sides would not show.
I was strictly forbidden ever to dance, flap my long arms, or otherwise disport myself near this sacred enclosure, as I sometimes did when the blood ran high or the temperature low. As for Freddie, he could do no wrong. At least, he never did. I was in despair about him, and foresaw trouble.
As to situation, we had the Meadows behind us, and (except the Sciennes and Merchiston), all was free and open as far as Bruntsfield and the Borough Muir. But towards Holyrood and the College, what a warren! You entered by deep archways into secluded yards. Here was a darksome passage where murder might be (and no doubt had been) done. Here was an echoing gateway to a coaching inn, with a watchman ready to hit evil boys over the head with his clapper if they tried to ring his bell, the bell that announced the arrival of the Dumfries coach “Gladiator” after thirty hours’ detention at the Beeftub in Moffatdale, or the shorter breathed “four” from Selkirk and Peebles that had changed horses last at Cockmuir Inn at the back of Kingside.
All this I describe so minutely, once for all, because there is more to come of it, and these precincts on the southern border of Edinburgh, where Cromwell had once encamped, were mightily familiar to me before all was done.
CHAPTER XXVSATAN FINDS
Of course Christmas time soon came, when we collegers had our first vacation, and Fred and I footed it down to Eden Valley. They had been preparing for us, and the puddings, white and black, hung in rows along the high cross-bars in the kitchen.
Everybody was glad to see us, except, as it appeared at first, Miss Irma. I called her Irma when I thought of the round locket with the hair and her mother’s picture in it, also the letters she had sent me—though these were but few, and, for all that was in them, might have been written to the Doctor. But when I returned and met her full in the doorway of my grandmother’s house, she gave me her hand as calmly as if she had clean forgotten all that had ever been between us.
For me, I was all shaken and blushing—a sight to be seen. So much so that Aunt Jen, coming in with the milk for the evening’s porridge, cocked an eye at me curiously. But if Irma felt anything, I am very sure that it did not show on her face. And that is one of the greatest advantages girls have—care or not care, they can always hide it.
My mother shed tears over me. My father took stock of my progress, and asked me for new light on certain passages we had been reading, but soon deserted me with the familiar contemptuous toss of the head, which meant that he must wait for Fred Esquillant. He might have learned by this time. At anything practical I was miles ahead of Freddie, who had no world outside of his classical books. But then my father was of the same type, with, in addition,the power of imparting and enthusing strong in him—hispractical side, which Freddie did not possess—indeed, never felt the lack of, much less the ambition to possess. He was content to know. He had no desire to impart his knowledge.
I spent six mornings and five evenings out of my scanty twenty days at the little thicket by the well. But the lilac was leafless now, and the path which led back to the house of Heathknowes empty and deserted.
Once while I was in hiding my Uncle Rob came and stood so long by his water-pails, looking across the hills in the direction of the Craig Farm, that I made sure he had found me out, or was trying for a talk with Miss Irma on his own account.
But Rob, as I might have known, was far too inconstant. As the saying went, “He had a lass for ilka day in the week and twa for the Sabbath.” It is more than likely that his long rumination at the well was the result of uncertainty as to whether it was the turn of Jeannie at the Craig or Bell down by at Parkhill.
At any rate, it had no connection with me, for he went off home with his burden, where presently I could hear him arranging with Eben as to the foddering of the “beasts” and the “bedding” of the horses. For my three uncles kept accounts as to exchanges of work, and were very careful as to balancing them, too—though Rob occasionally “took the loan” of good-tempered Eben without repayment of any sort.
After my fifth solitary vigil among the rustling of the frozen stems and the dank desolation of the icebound copse on the edge of the marsh, I began to go about with a huge affectation of gloom on my face. It was clear that I was being played with. For this I had scorned the red-cheeked dairy-lass at Echobank, and the waved kerchiefs of the baker’s daughter opposite. And the more unhappy and miserable I looked,the closer I drew my inky cloak about me, the gayer, the more light-hearted became Miss Irma.
I plotted deep, dark, terrible deeds. She urged me to yet another help of dumpling. She had made the jam herself, she said. Or the shortbread—now therewassomething like shortbread, made after a recipe learned in Brabant! (I wondered the word did not choke her, thinking of Lalor—but, perhaps, who knew? she would not after all be so unwilling!) I had shed my blood for naught—not that I had really shed any, but it felt like that. I had gone forth to conquer the world for the sake of a faithless girl—though, again, I had not even done quite that, seeing that Freddy Esquillant bade fair to beat me in all the classes—except, perhaps, in the Mathematic, for which he had no taste. But the principle was the same. I was deserted, and my whole aspect became so dejected that my mother spoke to my father about my killing myself in Edinburgh with study, which caused that good (and instructed) man to exclaim, “Fiddlesticks!” Then she went to my grandmother, who prescribed senna tea, which she brewed and stood by till I had drunk. I resolved to wear my heart a little less on my sleeve, and always after that assured my grandmother that I was feeling very well indeed. Also I made shift to eat a little, even in public, contriving it so, however, that the effort to appear brave and gay ought to have been evident even to Miss Irma.
Every day Louis and she went to the Academy, and I went with them, one of the uncles—generally Eben, the universally disposable—following to the village with a loaded pistol in his tail-coat pocket.
For though there had been, as yet, no more than the ordinary winter traffic by the well-recognized Free Traders of the Solway board, no man could tell when the lugger from the Texel, or even theGoldenHindherself might try again the fortune of our coasts. The latter vessel had been growing famous, multiplying her captures and cruelties; indeed, behaving little otherwise than if she carried the black flag with the skull and cross-bones. And though a large part of his Majesty’s navy had been trying to catch her, hardly a monthly number of theScots Magazinecame to my father without some new exploit being deplored in the monthly chronicle over near the end.
Nearer home, Messrs. Smart and Smart had offered by post to occupy themselves with the future of the young baronet Sir Louis, on condition that he should be given up to them to be sent to school, but in their communication nothing was said about Miss Irma. So my grandfather sent word that, subject to the law of the land, he would continue to protect both the children whom Providence had placed in his care. And this was doubtless what the Dumfries lawyers expected. The care and culture of the estate during a long minority was what they thought about as being most to their advantage, and it was quite evident that little Louis, for the present, could hardly be better situated than at Heathknowes. Messrs. Smart and Smart sent a man down to spy out the land, on pretext of offering compensation, but his report must have been favourable both as to the security of the farm-town and as to my grandfather’s repute for generosity and open-handedness. For he did not return, and as to payment, nothing more was ever heard at Heathknowes about the matter.
The young people were now quite fixtures there, and though they were spoken of as Miss Irma and Master Louis, Irma had carried her main point, which was that they should be treated in all respects as of the family. The sole difference made was that now the farm lads and lasses, and the two men from thepirn-mill (whom my grandfather’s increasing trade with the English weavers had compelled him to take on), had their meals at a second table, placed crosswise to that at which the family dined and supped. But this was chiefly to prevent little Louis from occupying himself with watching to see when they would swallow their knives, and nudging his neighbours Irma and Aunt Jen to “look out,” at any particular dangerous and intricate feat of conjuring.
As for me, I could not at all understand why Irma cold-shouldered me during these first Christmas vacations, and indeed I had secretly resolved to return no more to the house of Heathknowes till I had made sure of a better reception. I began to count it a certainty that Irma, feeling that she had gone too far and too fast with me before I went off, was now getting out of the difficulty by a régime of extraordinary coldness and severity. And if that were the case, I was not the man to baulk her.
For about this time a man I began to count myself.
Worst of all, going home to the school-house there came into my head one of the most stupid ideas that had ever got lodging there—though, according to my grandmother, I am rather a don at harbouring suchlike.
It occurred to me that a plan I had read of in some book or other might suit my case. If I could only make Irma jealous, the tables might be turned, and she become as anxious and desirous of making up as I was.
It seemed to me a marvellously original idea. Irma had cared enough to give me her mother’s miniature. She had cut off a lock of her hair, which she had not done for all the world of her admirers—else she would long have gone bald.
Now it happened that though there were a goodmany dressmakers in Eden Valley, including some that worked out for so much a day, there was only one Ladies’ Milliner and Mantua-maker. This was the sister of our infant-mistress, Miss Huntingdon. Her establishment was in itself a kind of select academy. She had an irreproachable connection, and though she worked much and well with her nimble fingers, she got most of her labour free by an ingenious method.
She initiated into her mysteries none of the poorer girls of the place, who might in time be tempted to “set up for themselves,” and so spoil their employer’s market. She received only, as temporary boarders, daughters of good houses, generally pretty girls looking forward with some confidence to managing houses of their own. At that time every girl who set up to be anything in our part of the country aspired to make her own dresses and build the imposing fabric of her own bonnets.
So Miss Huntingdon had a full house of pretty maidens who came as “approvers”—a fanciful variation of “improvers” invented by Miss Huntingdon herself, and used whenever she spoke of “My young ladies,” which she did all day long—or at least as often as she was called into the “down-stairs parlour,” where (as in a nunnery) ordinary business was transacted.
A good many of the elder girls whom I had known at the Academy had migrated there at the close of their period of education—several who, though great maidens of seventeen or eighteen, had hardly appeared upon my father’s purely classical horizon—seen by him only at the Friday’s general review of English and history, and taught for the rest of the week by little Mr. Stephen, by myself—and in sewing, fancy-work, and the despised samplers by Miss Huntingdon,the ever diligent, who, to say the truth, acted in this matter as jackal to her elder sister’s lion.
In return she got a chamber, a seat at the table with the young ladies, and a home. Nor will I say that Miss Seraphina, Ladies’ Milliner and Mantua-maker, was not a good and kind sister to Miss Rebecca, the little teacher at thirty pounds a year in the Infant Department at the Academy of Eden Valley.
But my mother in her time—Aunt Janet, even—had passed that way, though Miss Huntingdon considered Jen one of her failures because she had not “married from her house.” Most of the well-to-do farmers within ten miles sent their daughters to complete their education at Miss Huntingdon’s academy of the needle and the heavy blocking-iron. My father, when he passed, did not know them, so great in his eyes was their fall. Yet by quiet persistence, of which she had the secret, my mother wore him down to winking at her sending Agnes Anne there for three hours a day.
“I’m sure,” she said, “I used to watch foryouevery time you went by to school, and one day the frill of your shirt sleeve was hanging down, torn on a nail. I was sorry, and wished that I could have run out and mended it for you!”
What this reminiscence had to do with Agnes Anne’s being allowed to go to Miss Huntingdon’s I do not quite see. But learned men are much like others, and somehow the little speech softened my father. So Agnes Anne went, as, indeed, my mother had resolved from the beginning that she should. And it was through Agnes Anne that my temptation came.
She made a friend there. Agnes Anne always must have one bosom friend of her own sex. For this Irma was too old, as well as too brilliant, toofitful, fairylike, changeful in her mood to serve long. Besides, she awed Agnes Anne too much to allow her to confide in her properly. And without hour-long confessions all about nothing, Agnes Anne had no use for any girl friend. There was an unwritten convention that one should listen sympathetically to the other’s tale of secrets, no matter how long and involved, always on the supposition that the service should be mutual.
Charlotte Anderson was the name of Agnes Anne’s friend. In a week’s time these two were seldom separate, and wandered about our garden, and under the tall pine umbrellas with bent heads and arms lovingly interlaced. Charlotte was a pretty girl, blooming, fresh, rosy, with a pair of bold black eyes which at once denied and defied, and then, as it were, suddenly drooped yieldingly. I was a fool. I might have known—only I did not.
Now my idea was to make just as much love to Charlotte as would warn Miss Irma that she was in danger of losing me and to assist me in this (though I did not reveal my intention of merely baiting my trap with her) who more willing than Charlotte Anderson!
But I had counted without two somewhat important factors—Miss Irma, and Miss Seraphina Huntingdon. I was utterly deceived about the character of Irma, and I had no idea of the extreme notions of rigid propriety upon which Miss Seraphina conducted her business, nor of the explanation of the large proportion of successful weddings in which the lady mantua-maker had played the part of subordinate providence.
Indeed, certain of the light-minded youth of Eden Valley called the parlour with the faded red velvet chairs by the name of “Little Heaven”—because so many marriages had been made there.
CHAPTER XXVIPERFIDY, THY NAME IS WOMAN!
Old Robert Anderson of Birkenbog was known to me by sight—a huge, jovial, two-ply man, chin and waistcoat alike testifying to good cheer. He wore a large horse-shoe pin in his unstiffened stock. A watch that needed an inch-thick chain to haul up its sturdy Nuremburg-egg build, strained the fob on his right side, as if he carried a mince-pie concealed there. His laugh dominated the market-place, and when he stood with his legs wide apart pouring a sample of oats slowly from one hand into the palm of the other, his red face with the cunning quirks in it had always a little gathering of admirers, eager for the next high-spiced tale. He had originally come from the English border, and in his “burr” and accent still bore token of that nationality.
Nevertheless, he had his admirers, some of them fervent as well as constant.
Cochrane of the Holm would be there, his hand on the shoulder of Blethering Johnny from the Dinnance. These two always laughed before a word was uttered. They thought Birkenbog so funny that everything he said was side-splitting even before he had said it.
I remember being a great deal impressed myself by Old Birkenbog. He was a wonderful horseman as a boy, and when he came to the market alone he rode a big black horse of which even the head ostler stood in awe in the yard of the King’s Arms. Once he had thrashed a robber who had assailed him onhis way to pay his rent, and had brought him into town trotting cross-handed at his horse’s tail, the captive of his loaded whip and stout right arm. It is doubtful if this draggled Dick Turpin, lying in Bridewell, appreciated Birkenbog’s humour quite so much as did Cochrane and Blethering Jock when he told them the story afterwards.
If I had any common-sense I might have seen that Birkenbog was not a safe man to trouble in the matter of an only daughter, without the most serious intentions in the world. But, truth to tell, I never thought of him knowing, which was in itself a thing quite superfluous and altogether out of my calculations. I had had some small experience of girls even before Miss Irma came to change everything. And the fruit of my observations had been that, though girls tell each other’s secrets freely enough, they keep a middling tight grip on their own. Nay, they can even be trusted with yours, in so far as these concern themselves—until, of course, you quarrel with them—and then—well, then look out!
Certainly I found lots of chances to talk to Charlotte. In fact Agnes Anne made them for me, and coached me on what to say out of books. Also she cross-examined Charlotte afterwards upon my performances, and supplemented what I had omitted by delivering the passage in full. My poor version, however, pleased Charlotte just as much, for merely being “walked out” gave her a standing among Miss Seraphina’s young ladies, who asked her what it felt like to be engaged.
All had to be gone about in so ceremonious a manner, too, at least at first—when I made my formal call on Miss Huntingdon, who received me in her parlour with prim civility, as if I had come to order a leghorn hat of the best.
“My mother’s compliments, and might Miss Charlotte Anderson be allowed to accompany Agnes Anne to tea at four hours that day? I would be responsible—yes, I knew Miss Huntingdon to be most particular upon this point—for the convoy of the young ladies to the school-house, and would see Miss Anderson safe home again.”
My mother winked at these promenades, because in her heart of hearts she was more than a little jealous of Irma. Charlotte Anderson she could understand. She was of her own far-off kin, but Irma and her brother had descended upon us, as it were, from another world.
Why Agnes Anne meddled I cannot so well make out, unless it were the mania which at a certain age attacks most nice girls—that of distributing their brothers among their dearest friends—as far, that is, as they will go round.
So Charlotte and I walked under the tall firs of the Academy wood in the hope that Irma might be passing that way. I escorted her home in full sight of all Eden Valley—that was always on the look-out for whatever might happen in the way of courtship about the shop of the famous mantua-maker.
And yet (I know people will think I am lying) never, I say, did I find Miss Irma so desirable in my eyes as when I saw her at Heathknowes during these days of folly. It was not that she was kinder to me. She appeared not to think of me either one way or the other. She curtsied to me, like a bird, flirting the train of her gown like a wagtail on a stone by the running stream. One forenoon she met us, strolling with little Louis by the hand, her black hair crowned with scarlet hips—those berries of the wild dog-rose which grow so great in our country lanes. She waved us a joyous little salute from the top ofa stile, on which she perched as lightly as if joyful graces were fluttering about her, and she herself ready to take wing.
But she never so much as looked wistful, but let me go my way with a single flirt of a kerchief she was adjusting about her brother’s neck. As for me I was ready to hang myself in self-contempt and hatred of poor innocent Charlotte Anderson, who smiled and imagined, doubtless, that she was fulfilling the end for which she had come to Miss Huntingdon’s.
After we had separated I went to thinking sadly on the stupidity of my performances. This field of thought was a large one and the consideration of it, patch by patch, took some time. It was market day. The bleating of flocks was about me, a pleasant smell of wool and tar and heather—and of bullocks blowing clouds of perfumed breath that condensed upon the frosty air. I was leaning my arms upon the stone dyke of the Market Hill and thinking of Irma, now by my own act rendered more inaccessible than ever—when a hand, heavy as a ham falling from a high ceiling, descended upon my shoulder. A voice of incomparable richness, a little husky perhaps with the morning’s moistening at the King’s Arms, cried out, “So ho, lad! thou dost not want assurance! Thinking on the lasses at thy age! You’re the chap, they tell me, that’s been walkin’ out my daughter in broad daylight! Well, well, cannot find it in my heart to be too hard—did the like mysel’ thirty years ago, and never regretted it. School-master’s son, aren’t ye? Thought I kenned ye by sight! Student lad at the College of Edinburgh? Yes, yes—knew thy father any time ever since he came from the North. No man has anything to say again thyfather! Except that he does not lay on the young rascals’ backs half heavily enough! I dare say thou would be noways the worse of a dressing down thysel’!”
All this time he was thumping me on my back, and I was standing before him with such a red face, and (I doubt not) such a compound of idiocy and black despair upon it, that I might have been listening to my doom being pronounced by the mouth of some full-blooded, jovial red judge, with a bunch of seals the size of your fist dangling from his fob and the loaded whip with which he had brought down the highwayman, under his arm.
“Come thou up to the King’s Arms!” he cried; “don’t stand there looking like a dummy. Let’s have the matter out! Thour’t noan shamed, surely! There’s no reason for why. At thy age, laddie—hout-hout—there’s no wrong as young folks go. Come thy ways, lad!”
Obediently I followed in his wake as he elbowed a way through the crowd, salutations pouring in upon him on every side.
“Ah, Birkenbog, what’s brought you into the market this day—sellin’ lambs?”
“That’s as may be—buyin’ calves more belike!”
This was for my benefit, and the old brute, tasting his sorry jest, turned and slapped me again, winking all the time with his formidable brows in a spasmodic and horrible manner, that was like a threat.
Now, I did not mind Lalor Maitland or Galligaskins when my blood was up. But now it was down—far down—indeed in my very boots.
All the time and every step of the way, I was trying in a void and empty brain to evolve plans of escape. I could only hear the rich port-wine chuckleof that great voice, and watch the gleam of those huge silver spurs.
And so presently we came to the King’s Arms. Never was bold wooer in a more hopeless position. Whichever way I turned the case was desperate—if I resisted, I could not expect to fare better than Tam Haggart, whom that whip shank had beaten to the ground on the Corse o’ Slakes. If I let myself drift, then farewell all hope of Irma Maitland.
I hesitated and was lost. But who in my place could have bettered it—save by not being such a portentous fool to begin with? But when that is in a man, it will out.
I entered the King’s Arms meekly, and before I knew what I was doing I had been presented to three or four solid-thighed, thick-headed, stout-legginged farmers as “Our Lottie’s intended.” They laughed, and came near to shaking my hand off. I felt that if I backed out after that, I never could show my face in Eden Valley again.
Then we proceeded to business. I had not been accustomed to drink anything stronger than water, and I was not going to begin now—so much of sense I had left in me. So as often as the mighty farmer of Birkenbog had his tankard pointed at the cornice of the commercial room of the King’s Arms, I poured the contents of mine carefully among the sawdust on the floor.
And then my formidable “future” father-in-law got to the root of the matter.
“Father know about this?” He shot out the question as from a catapult.
“No, sir,” said I, “I did not think of troubling him just yet—till——”
“Till what?”
“Till things were a bit more settled,” I faltered. He put his loosely clenched fist on my knee. It appeared as large as the flat part of a pair of smith’s bellows.
“Well, that’s what we are here now for, eh?” he said. “I doan’t blame ye, you young dog. Now I like a fine up-standing wench myself, well filled out, none o’ your flails done up in a bean-sack, nor yet a tea-pot little body that makes the folk laugh as they see her trotting alongside a personable man like me. Lottie will do ye fine. She’s none great at the books—takes after her mother in that, but she’s a good girl, and I’ll warrant ye, she will keep up her end of an argument well enough after a year or two’s practice. But, mind you, lad, there’s to be nothing come of this till I see you safe through college as a doctor. Fees? Nonsense! Go to the hospitals, man, I’ll pay for that part. It can come off what I have put aside to give the man that took Lottie off my hands! A doctor—yes, that’s the business, and one sore needed here in this very Eden Valley!Whisht—there—who think ye bought old Andrew Leith’s practice and house? Who keeps the lads from the college there and sends them packing at the end of every six months? Why, me—Anderson of Birkenbog. So haste ye fast, and when ye are ready, the house is ready, and the practice and the tocher—and as for the lass ye have made it up with her yourself, as I understand.”
Never was there a poorer-spirited wooer! No, never one. The very pour of words stunned me. Had it not been for the coming and going of Dutch-girthed brother-farmers, dumping bags of “samples” on the table, and hauling at purses tied with leathern strings out of tight breeches pockets, the “What’syour will, sir?” of Tom the drawer, and the clink of cannikins, I must have been found out even then.
But the part of the trouble which was to be mine personally was coming to an end. After all, his daughter’s future was only an item in Birkenbog’s programme of the day.
“Well, then, lad”—he clapped me again on the shoulder (I sitting there with the soul of an oyster)—“we have arranged everything comfortable—eh? Now you can go and tell Lottie. Aye, and ye can say to Miss—what’s her name—Thimbolina, the old dowager with the corkscrews—with my compliments, that there’s a sweet-milk cheese ripening on the dairy shelves for her at Birkenbog. Hear ye that, lad?”
I took my leave as best I could. I felt I had hopelessly committed myself. For though I had not said a word, I had not dared to reveal to this fierce father, that being in love with another, I had been using his daughter as a stalking horse.
“And, look here, Duncan lad,” he said, “I’ll just step up and have a word with your father. The clearer understanding there is between families on such like arrangements, the less trouble there will be in the future!”
And he strode away out into the yard, halting, however, at the door to call out in a voice that could be heard all over the neighbourhood, “Come thy ways up to Birkenbog on Sunday and take a bit o’ dinner wi’ us! Then thou canst see our Lottie and tell her how many times sweeter she is than a sugar-plum! Ho, ho!”
He was gone at last and I fairly blushed myself down the street, pushing my way between the ranks of the market stalls and the elbowing farmers.
“Are ye blind or only daft?” one apple wife calledout, as I shook her rickety erection of trestles and boards. She was as red in the face as Birkenbog himself, for a cur with a kettle tied to its tail had taken refuge under her stall, and she had been serving a writ of ejectment with the same old umbrella with which she whacked thievish boys and sheltered her goods on rainy days.
But I heeded not. I was seeking solitude. I felt that I wanted nothing from the entire clan of human beings. I had lost all that I should ever really love. Irma—Irma! And here was I, settled for life with one for whom I cared not a penny!
By the time I had reached this stage, I had come out upon the bare woods that mount the path by the riverside. I came to the great holly, a cave of green shade in summer, and now a warm shelter in these tall solitudes of wattled branches standing purple and black against the winter sky.
Ah, there was some one there already. I stepped out again quickly, but not too fast to see that it was Charlotte Anderson herself I had stumbled upon—and that she was crying!
CHAPTER XXVII“THEN, HEIGH-HO, THE MOLLY!”
“Charlotte!” said I, taking in a sudden pity a step nearer and holding out my hand; but she only snatched her arm away fretfully and cried the more bitterly.
“Has your father been speaking unkindly to you?” I asked her, being much surprised.
She shook her head, and a wet handkerchief plashed on my hand like a sob as she shook it out.
“What is it, then?” I asked, more and more amazed at the turn things were taking. Never had I thought for a moment that Charlotte would not be as pleased and happy to have me as I was the reverse.
“Oh,” she burst out at last, sobbing between each hurried phrase, “I don’t blame you, Duncan. It’s all that horrid old cat, Miss Seraphina—Diabolina, the girls call her—she writes everything we do to our people at home. She’s always writing, and she spies on us, too, and listens—opens our letters! She has brought all this on me——”
“Brought what on you?” I inquired blankly.
“Having to marry you and all!” she said, and had recourse to her wet handkerchief again. But that being altogether too sodden to afford her any relief, she signalled to me, as if I had been Agnes Anne or another girl, to pass her mine. Fortunately for once I could do so without shame. For Miss Irma had been teaching me things—or at least the desire to appear well in her eyes.
Charlotte Anderson did not appear to notice, but went on crying.
“And don’t you want to marry me, Lottie?” I saidsoftly, taking her hand. She let me now, perhaps considered as the proprietor of the handkerchief.
“Of course I don’t,” said she. “Oh, how could I?”
Now this, considered apart, was certainly hurtful to my pride. For, having frequently considered my person, as revealed in my mother’s big Sunday mirror, I thought that she could very well. On my side there was certainly nothing to render the matter impossible. Moreover, how about our walks and talks! She had, then, merely been playing with me. Oh, Perfidy, thy name is Woman!
I was silent and paused for an explanation. I soon got it, considered as before, as the sympathetic owner of the handkerchief.
“It’s Tam Galaberry,” she said, “my cousin, you know, Duncan. He used to come to see me ... before ... before you! But his sister went to Dumfries to learn the high-class millinery, and since then Miss Seraphina cannot thole him. As if he had anything to do with that. And she wrote home, and my father threatened Tam to shoot him with the gun if he came after me—all because we were cousins—and only seconds at any rate. Oh-h-h-h! WhatshallI do?”
I had to support Charlotte here—though merely as handkerchief-holder and in the purest interests of the absent Mr. Thomas Gallaberry.
But the relief to my own mind, in spite of the hurt to my pride, was immediate and enormous. But a thought leaped up in my heart which cooled me considerably.
“Oh, Lottie,” I said, as sadly as I could, “you have been false and deceitful. You have come near to breaking my heart——”
“I ken I have—I ken I have!” she cried. “Oh, can you ever forgive me?”
“Only, Charlotte,” I answered nobly, “because I care for your happiness more than for my own!”
“Oh, Duncan, but you are good!” She threw herself into my arms. I really think she mistook me for Agnes Anne for the moment. But any consolations I applied were, as before, in the interests of Tam Gallaberry.
“I knew I was wicked and wrong all the time,” she said, “but when we walked out, you remember the dyke we used to lean against” (she glanced up at me with simple child-like eyes, tear-stained), “you must remember? Well, one of the stones was loose. And Tam used to put one letter there, and I took it out and slid it in my pocket, and put mine back the same! Agnes Anne was looking the other way, of course, and you—you——”
“Was otherwise employed than thinking of such deceit!” I said grandly.
“You were kissing me! And I let you—for Tam’s sake,” Charlotte murmured, smiling. “Otherwise the poor fellow would have had five miles to come that next day, and I could not bear that he should not find his letter!”
“No!” I answered dryly, “it would certainly have been a pity.”
She looked at me curiously.
“Do you know,” she said, “I always thought thatyouwere playing, too!”
“Playing!” I exclaimed tragically. “Is it possible? Oh, Lottie!”
“Oh, I just thought it,” she said remorsefully. “I am sorry if it was true—if you do really care about me so much—as all that!”
I was still thinking of Tam Gallaberry. So apparently was she.
Virtue is its own reward, and so is mutualconsolation. It is very consoling. Half the happy love stories in the world begin that way—just with telling about the unhappy ones that went before. You take my word for it—I, Duncan MacAlpine, know what I am talking about. Charlotte Anderson too.
So finally, after a while, I became very noble and said what a fine thing it was to give up something very precious for others. And I asked her if she could think of anything much nobler than willingly to give up as fine a girl as herself—Charlotte Anderson—for the sake of Tam Gallaberry? She thought awhile and said she could not.
So I told her we must keep up appearances for a time, till we had made our arrangements what to do. Charlotte said that she had no objections as long as Tam Gallaberry did not know. So I said that she could write a long letter that very night, and give it to Agnes Anne in the morning, and I would go out to the stone, and put it underneath.
Then she cried, “Oh, will you?” And thanked me ever so sweetly, asking if, when I was about it, would I bring back the one I found there and send it to her by my sister, in another envelope—“just over the top, you know, without breaking the seal. Because such letters were sacred.”
I said she need not trouble herself. I was only doing all this for her sake. I did not want to see what another man had to say to her!
And, if you will believe me, she was delighted, and said, “Now I know that you were not all pretending, but do care for me a little wee bit!”
Indeed, Charlotte was so delighted that it was perhaps as well for the smooth flowing of their love story that Tam Gallaberry was at that moment investigating their joint post office. For Lottie was a generous girl when her heart was moved, and though she kept thegrand issues clear, she often confused details—as, for instance, whether the handkerchief was mine or my sister’s, and whether I was myself or Tam Gallaberry.
But I considered such slips as these pardonable at twenty. At that age forgetfulness is easy. Afterwards the prison doors close, and now I am not mistaken for Tam Gallaberry any more—and what is more, I don’t want to be. However, after a while I brought Charlotte to earth again, out of the exaltation of our mutual self-sacrifice, by the reminder that at that moment our fathers would be arranging as to our joint future—and that without the least regard for our present noble sentiments, or those of the happily absent Mr. Thomas Gallaberry.
She got down and looked at me, affrighted, her lips apart, and all panting like a bird newly ta’en in the hand.
“Oh, Duncan,” she cried, “you will help me, won’t you? You see how fond I am of you!”
I saw, exactly, but refrained from telling her that she had a strange way of showing it.
“I would do anything in the world for you,” she added,—“only I want to marry Tom. Ye see? I have always meant to marry Tom! So I can’t help it, can I?”
Her logic had holes in it, but her meaning was starry clear. I thanked her, and said that the best thing we could do was to take counsel together. Which we did there under the shelter of the great holly-bush. So much so that any one passing that way might have taken us for foolish lovers, instead of two people plotting how to get rid the one of the other.
What helped the illusion greatly was that it was a cold day, with every now and then a few driving flecks of snow. I had on a great rough Inverness cloak of my father’s, far too large for me. I askedCharlotte if she were warm. She said she was, but did not persist too much in the statement. So we left Tom Gallaberry out of the question, and set ourselves to arrange what we were to say to our two fathers.
“It will be terrible hard to pretend!” I said, shaking my head.
“It will be a sin—at least, for long!” she answered.
I exposed the situation. There was to be no immediate talk of marriage. Even her father had allowed that I must get through college first. He was to pay my fees as a doctor. I did not want to be a doctor. Besides, I could not take her father’s money——
Here Charlotte turned with so quick a flounce that she nearly landed herself in the little gutter which I had made with my stick to carry off the drainage of the slope behind.
“Not take the money? Nonsense!” she cried. “Father has more than he knows what to do with!”
She paused a while, finger on lip, meditating, the double ply of calculation, stamped on her father’s brow, very strongly marked on hers.
“Look here, Duncan,” she said caressingly, like a grown woman wooing to get her own way, so deep her voice was, “daddy is giving you that money because you are going to marry me, isn’t he?”
I signed, as well as I could, that Mr. Robert Anderson of Birkenbog considered himself as so doing.
She clapped her hands and cried out, as if she had stumbled on the solution of some exceedingly difficult problem, “Why, then, take the money and give it to Tom! He needs it for his farm—oh, just dreadful. He says the hill is not half stocked, and that a hundred or two more ewes would just be the saving of him!”
“But,” said I, “I shall be entering into an agreement with your father, and shall have to give him receipts!”
“Well,” she continued boldly, “Thomas will enter into an agreement with you, if he doesn’t marry me—that is, if I am left on your hands—he will pay you the money back—or else give you the sheep!”
It will hardly be believed the difficulty I had to make Charlotte see the impossibility—nay, the dishonesty of an arrangement which appeared so simple to her. She thought for a while that I was just doing it out of jealousy, and she sulked.
I reasoned with her, but I might as well have tried logic on the Gallaberry black-faced ewes. She continued to revolve the project in her own mind.
“Whatever you—I meanwe—can get out of father is to the good,” she said. “He will never miss it. If you don’t, I will ask him for the money for your fees myself and give it to Tom——”
“If you do!” I cried in horror,—“oh—you don’t know what you are talking about, girl!”
“You don’t love me a bit,” she said. “What would it matter to you? Besides, if it comes to giving a receipt, I can imitate your signature to a nicety. Agnes Anne says so.”
“But, Charlotte, it would be forgery,” I gasped. “They hang people for forgery.”
“No, they don’t—at least, not for that sort,” she argued, her eyes very bright with the working of her inward idea. “For how can it be forgery when it isyourname I write, and I’ve told you of it beforehand? It’s my father’s money, isn’t it, and he gives it to you for marrying me? Very well, then, it’s yours—no, I mean it’s Tom’s because he means to marry me. At least I mean to marry him. Anyway, the money is not my father’s, because he gives it freely to you (or Tom) for a certain purpose. Well, Tom is going to be the one who will carry out that purpose.So the money is his. Therefore it’s honest and no forgery!”
These arguments were so strong and convincing to Charlotte that I did not attempt to discuss them further, salving my conscience by the thought that there remained his Majesty’s post, and that a letter addressed to her father at the Farmers’ Ordinary Room, in care of the King’s Arms, would clear me of all financial responsibility. But this I took care not to mention to Lottie, because it might have savoured of treachery and disturbed her.
On the other hand, I began urging her to find another confidant than Agnes Anne. She would do well enough for ordinary letters which I was to send on to Cousin Tom. But she must not know they were not for me. She must think that all was going on well between us. This, I showed her, was a necessity. Charlotte felt the need also, and suggested this girl and that at Miss Seraphina Huntingdon’s. But I objected to all. I had to think quick, for some were very nice girls, and at most times would have served their country quite well. But I stuck to it that they were too near head-quarters. They would be sure to get found out by Miss Huntingdon.
“It is true,” she meditated, “sheisa prying old cat.”
“I don’t see anybody for it but Miss Irma, over at my grandmother’s!” I said, boldly striking the blow to which I had been so long leading up.
Charlotte gazed at me so long and so intently that I was sure she smelt a rat. But the pure innocence of my gaze, and the frank readiness with which I gave my reasons, disarmed her.
“You see,” I said, “she is the only girl quite out of the common run to whom you have access. You can go to Heathknowes as often as you like with AgnesAnne. Nobody will say a word. They will think it quite natural—to hear the latest about me, you know. Then when you are alone with Miss Irma, you can burst into tears and tell her our secret——”
“All——?” she questioned, with strong emphasis.
“Well,” I hastened to reply, “all that is strictly necessary for a stranger to know—as, for instance, thatyoudon’t want to marry me, and thatInever wanted to marry you——”
“Oh,” she cried, moving in a shocked, uneasy manner, “but I thoughtyoudid!”
“Well, but—,” I stammered, for I was momentarily unhinged, “you see you must put things that way to get Miss Irma to help us. She can do anything with my father, and I believe she could with yours too if she got a chance.”
“Oh, no, she couldn’t!”
“Well, anyway, she would serve us faithfully, so long as we couldn’t trust Agnes Anne. And you know we agreed upon that. If you can think of anything better, of course I leave it to you!”
She sat a long while making up her mind, with a woman’s intuition that all the cards were not on the table. But in the long run she could make no better of it.
“Well, I will,” she said; “I always liked her face, and I don’t believe she is nearly so haughty as people make out.”
“Not a bit, she isn’t——” I was beginning joyously, when I caught Lottie’s eye; “I mean—” I added lamely, “a girl always understands another girl’s affairs, and will help if she can—unless she has herself some stake in the game!”
And in saying this, I believe that for once in a way I hit upon a great and nearly universal truth.