CHAPTER XXVIIILOVE AND THE LOGICIAN
I knew that the Yule Fair was going on down in the village, and that on account of it all Eden Valley was in an uproar. The clamour was deafening at the lower end of the “clachan,” where most of the show folk congregated. The rooks were cawing belatedly in the tall ashes round the big square—into which, in the old times of the Annandale thieves, the country folk used to drive the cattle to be out of the way of Johnstones and Jardines.
I skirted the town, therefore, so as not to meet with the full blast of the riot. With such an unruly gang about, I kept Charlotte Anderson well in sight till I saw her safe into Miss Seraphina’s. Of course, nobody who knew her for a daughter of Fighting Rob of Birkenbog would have laid hand upon her, but at such a time there might be some who did not know the repute of her father.
The great gong in front of the “Funny Folks” booth went “Bang! bang!” Opposite, the fife and drum spoke for the temple of the legitimate drama. At the selling-stalls importunate vendors of tin-ware rattled their stock-in-trade and roared at the world in general, as if buyers could be forced to attend to the most noisy—which, indeed, they mostly did.
From the dusky kennels in which the gipsies told fortunes and mended the rush-bottomed chairs of the Valley goodwives came over the wall a faint odour of mouldy hay, which lingered for weeks about every apartment to which any of their goods were admitted.
As for me, I had had enough of girls for one day, and I was wondering how best to cut across the fields, take a turn about the town, and so get home to my father’s by the wood of pines behind the school, when suddenly a voice dropped upon me that fairly stunned me, so unexpected it was.
“Mr. Duncan MacAlpine,” it said, “I congratulate you on your choice of a father-in-law. You could not have done better!”
It was Miss Irma herself, taking a walk in a place where at such a time she had no business to be—on the little farm path that skirts the woods above the town. Louis was with her, but I thought that in the far distance I could discern the lounging shadow of the faithful Eben.
I stood speechless straight before her, but she passed on, lightly switching the crisped brown stalks of last year’s thistles with a little wand she had brought. I saw that she did not mean to speak to me, and I turned desperately to accompany her.
“I will thank you to pass your way,” she said sharply. “I am glad you are to have such a wife and such a dowry. Also a father-in-law who will be at the kind trouble of paying your college fees till you are quite ready to marry his daughter. It is a thing not much practised among gentlefolk, but, what with being so much with your mantua-makers, you will doubtless not know any better!”
“Irma—Irma,” I cried, not caring any more for Eben, now in the nearer distance, “it is all a mistake—indeed, a mistake from the beginning!”
“Very possibly,” she returned, with an airy haughtiness; “at any rate, it is no mistake of mine!”
And there, indeed, she had me. I had perforce to shift my ground.
“I am not going to marry Charlotte Anderson,” I said.
“Then the more shame of you to deceive her after all!” she cried. “It seems that you make a habit of it! Surely I am the last person to whom you ought to boast of that!”
“On the contrary, you are the first!”
But she passed on her way, her head high, an invincible lightness in the spring of every footstep, a splash of scarlet berries making a star among her dark hair, and humming the graceless lilt which told how—
“Willie’s ga’en to Melville Castle,Boots an’ spurs an’ a’—!”
As for me, I was ready to sink deep into the ground with despondency, wishful to rise never more. But I stopped, and though Uncle Eben was almost opposite to me, and within thirty yards, I called after her, “The day will come, Irma Maitland, when you will be sorry for the injustice you are doing!”
For I thought of how she would feel when Charlotte told about her cousin Tam Gallaberry and all that I had done for them—though, indeed, it was mostly by accident. Only I could trust Charlotte to keep her thumb upon that part of it.
I did not know what she felt then, nor, perhaps, do I quite know yet; but she caught a tangle of wild cut-leafed ivy from a tree on which I had long watched it grow, and with a spray of small green leaves she crowned herself, and so departed as she had come, singing as if she had not a care in the world, or as if I, Duncan MacAlpine, were the last and least of all.
And yet I judged that there might be a message for me in that very act. She had escaped me, and yet there was something warm in her heart in spite of all. Perhaps, who knows, an angel had gone down andtroubled the waters; nor did I think, somehow, that any other would step in there before me.
After that I went down to see Fred Esquillant, who listened with sad yet brilliant eyes to my tangled tale.
“You are the lucky one,” I said, “to have nothing to do with the lasses. See what trouble they lead you into.”
He broke out suddenly.
“Be honest, Duncan,” he said, “if you must boast! If you are bound to lie, let it not be to me. You would not have it otherwise. You would not be as I am, not for all the gold of earth. No”—he held his breath a long while—“no, and I, if I had the choice, would I not give all that I have, or am ever likely to have, for—but no, I’m a silent Scot, and I canna speak the word——”
“I’m the other sort of Scot,” I cried, “and I’ll speak it for you. Man, it’s the first decent human thing I have ever heard come out o’ your mouth. You would give all for LOVE!”
“Oh, man,” he cried, snatching his fingers to his ears as if I blasphemed, “are ye not feared?”
“No, I’m not,” I declared, truly enough; “what for should I be feared? Of a lassie? Tell a lassie—that ye—that ye——”
“No, no,” cried Fred Esquillant, “not again!”
“Well, then, that ye ‘like’ her—we will let it go at that. She will want ye to say the other, but at least that will do to begin on. And come, tell me now, what’s to hinder ye, Fred?”
“Oh, everything,” he said; “it’s just fair shameless the way folk can bring themselves to speak openly of suchlike things!”
“And where would you have been, my lad, if once on a day your faither had not telled your mither that she was bonny?”
“I don’t know, and as little do I care,” he cried.
“Well, then,” said I, “there’s Amaryllis—what about her?”
“That’s Latin,” said Fred, waving his arm.
“And there’s Ruth, and the lass in the Song of Solomon!”
“That’s in the Bible,” he murmured, as if he thought no better of the Sacred Word for giving a place to such frivolities.
“Fred,” I said, “tell me what you would be at? Would you have all women slain like the babes of Bethlehem, or must we have you made into a monk and locked in a cell with only a book and an inkhorn and a quill?”
“Neither,” he said; “but—oh, man, there is something awesome, coarse-grained and common in the way the like o’ you speak about women.”
“Aye, do ye tell me that?” I said to try him; “coarse, maybe, as our father Adam, when he tilled his garden, and common as the poor humanity that is yet of his flesh and blood.”
“There ye go!” he cried; “I knew well that my words were thrown away.”
“Speak up, Mr. Lily Fingers,” I answered; “letushear what sort of a world you would have without love—and men and women to make it.”
“It would be like that in which dwell the angels of heaven—where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage!”
“Well,” said I, “speaking for myself and most lads like me, we will mend our ways before we get a chance of trying that far country! And in the meantime here we are—our feet in the mire, and our heads not so very near the sky. Talk of angels—where are we to get their society? And the likest to them that I have ever heard tell of are just women—good women,innocent lasses, beginning to feel the stir of their own power—and all the better and the stronger are they for that! Oh, Fred, I saw an angel within the last half-hour! There she stood, her eyes shooting witcheries, poised for flight like a butterfly, the dimples playing hide-and-seek on her face, and her whole soul and body saying to the sons of men, ‘Come, seek me on your knees—you know you can’t help loving me! It is very good for you to worship me!”
“And you are not ashamed, Duncan MacAlpine, to speak such words?”
“Oh, ye Lallan Scot!” I cried; “ye Westland stot! Is there no hot blood of the Celt in you? What broughtyouto Galloway, where the Celt sits on every hill-top, names every farm and lea-rig, and lights his Baal-fires about the standing stones on St. John’s Eve?”
“Man,” said Fred, shaking his head, “I aye thought ye were a barbarian. Now I know it. If you had your way, you would raid your neighbours’ womenfolk and bring them in by the hair of their heads, trailing them two at a time. For me, I worship them like stars, standing afar off.”
“Aye,” said I, “that would be a heap of use to the next generation, and the lasses themselves would like it weel!”
But what Freddy Esquillant said about the next generation was unworthy of him, and certainly shall not sully this philosophic page. Besides, he spake in his haste.
All the same, I noticed that, if ever any of the stars came near to his earth, it would be a certain very moderately brilliant planet, bearing the name of Agnes Anne or, more scientifically, MacAlpine Minima, which would attract Master Fred’s reluctant worship.
CHAPTER XXIXTHE AVALANCHE
And now there was a second and longer probation in that gaunt town of Edinburgh, without any miniature to lie beside me on my work-table like a tickless watch, and help along the weary hours. And though the session before I had thought but little of the letters (and indeed there was nothing in them), yet this time there were none at all, which suited me far worse. For, as it seemed, the mere sight of the hand-of-write would have cheered me.
Henceforward I could only learn, as it were, by ricochet what was going on. My grandmother never set pen to paper. Her tongue to guide was trouble enough to her without setting down words on paper to rise up in judgment against her. True, my father wrote regularly to inquire if my professor had any new light on the high things of Plato, the Iberian flavour in Martial’s Epigrams, and such like subjects which were better fitted to interest a learned dominie who had lost the scholar of his choice than to comfort a young fellow who has only lost his sweetheart.
For her part Agnes Anne wrote me reams about Charlotte, but never mentioned a word as to the Maitlands, though she did say that Charlotte was a good deal at Heathknowes, and (a trifle spitefully, perhaps) that she did not know what took her there unless it were to see Uncle Rob! This poor Uncle Rob of ours—his reputation was in everybody’s mouth, certainly. He had been, so they said, a runagate, anight-raker, and in the days of his youth a trifle wild. But now with the shadows of forty deepening upon him, it was not fair that all the hot blood of his teens and twenties should rise up in judgment against him. Still so it was. And the reason of it was, he had not, as he ought, married and settled. For which sin of omission, as the gossips of Eden Valley said, “there was bound to be a reason!”
Charlotte herself did not send a line, excepting always the letters I was to forward to Tom Gallaberry at his farm of Ewebuchts on the Water of Ae. This at the time I judged unkind, but afterwards I found that Cousin Tom had insisted upon it, on the threat of going to her father and telling him the whole affair. For, in spite of all, Cousin Thomas was jealous—as most country lads are of college-bred youths, and he pinned Charlotte carefully down in her correspondence. However, I made him pay his own postages, which was a comfort, and as Agnes Anne and often my father would slip their letters into the same packet, after all I had only the extra weight to pay.
Still, I did think that some of them might have told me something of Irma. But none did, till one great day I got a letter—from whom think you? I give you fifty guesses—well, from my Aunt Jen. And it contained more than all the rest put together, though all unconsciously, and telling me things that I might have gone a long time ignorant of—if she had suspected for a moment I was keen about them.
Heathknowes, this the thirteenth Aprile.“Dear Nephew Duncan,“Doubtless you will be having so many letters that you will not be caring for one from a cross auldmaid, who is for ever finding fault with you when ye are at home. But who, for all that, does not forget to bear ye up in the arms of her petitions before the Throne—no, night and morning both.“This is writ to tell you that I have sent ye, by the wish of my mither, one cheese of seven pounds weight good, as we are hearing that you are thinking to try and find something to do in Edinburgh during the summer time. Which will be an advisable thing, if it be the Lord’s will—for faint-a-hait do ye do here except play ill pranks and run the country.“However, what comes o’t we shall see. Also there is a pig of butter. It may be the better of a trifle more salt, that is, if the weather is onyway warm. So I have put in a little piece of board and ye can work the salt in yourself. Be a good lad, and mind there are those here that are praying for ye to be guided aright. Big towns are awful places for temptation by what they say, and that ye are about the easiest specimen to be tempted, that I have yet seen with these eyes. Howsomever, maybe ye will have gotten grace, or if not that, at least a pickle common-sense, whilk often does as well—or better.“It’s a Guid’s blessing that ye have been led to stop where ye are. For that lassie Charlotte Anderson is going on a shame to be seen. Actually she is never off our doorstep—fleeing and rinning all hours of the day. At first I thought to mysel’, it was to hear news of you. But she kens as weel as us when the posts come in, besides the letters she gets from Agnes Anne—some that cost as muckle as sevenpence—a ruination and a disgrace!” [Tom Gallaberry must have been prolix that week.] “Then I thought it was maybe some of the lads—for, like it or no, ye had better ken soon as syne, that maiden’s e’e is filledwith vanity and the gauds o’ grandeur, disdaining the true onputting of a meek and quiet spirit!“But, for your comfort, if ye are so far left to yourself as to take comfort in the like—and the bigger fool you—it is no the lads after all. It’s just Irma Maitland!“I declare they two are never sindry. They will be out talk-talking, yatter-yattering when the kye are being milked in the morning. Irma makes her carry the water, that’s one comfort. But I wonder at that silly auld clocking hen, Seraphina Huntingdon. It’s a deal of work she will be getting, but I suppose the premium pays for all, and she will not care a farthing now that Charlotte’s market is made. Not that I would trust you (or any student lad) the length of my stirabout potstick—or indeed (not to shame my own father) anything that wears hose and knee-breeches. And maybe that’s the reason every silly birkie thinks he has the right to cast up to me that I am an auld maid. Faith, there’s few that wear the wedding ring with whom I would change places. But what of that?“The folk are all well here, both bairns and grown folk, and we will be blithe to hear from you, and if you have the time to send a scraps of your pen to your auld maiden aunt, that mony a time (though Lord knows not half often enough) has garred your lugs ring for your misdeeds—she will be pleased to hear if the butter and cheese were some kitchen to your tasteless town’s bread.“Your obdt. servt. and affectionate aunt,”Janet Lyon.“
Heathknowes, this the thirteenth Aprile.
“Dear Nephew Duncan,
“Doubtless you will be having so many letters that you will not be caring for one from a cross auldmaid, who is for ever finding fault with you when ye are at home. But who, for all that, does not forget to bear ye up in the arms of her petitions before the Throne—no, night and morning both.
“This is writ to tell you that I have sent ye, by the wish of my mither, one cheese of seven pounds weight good, as we are hearing that you are thinking to try and find something to do in Edinburgh during the summer time. Which will be an advisable thing, if it be the Lord’s will—for faint-a-hait do ye do here except play ill pranks and run the country.
“However, what comes o’t we shall see. Also there is a pig of butter. It may be the better of a trifle more salt, that is, if the weather is onyway warm. So I have put in a little piece of board and ye can work the salt in yourself. Be a good lad, and mind there are those here that are praying for ye to be guided aright. Big towns are awful places for temptation by what they say, and that ye are about the easiest specimen to be tempted, that I have yet seen with these eyes. Howsomever, maybe ye will have gotten grace, or if not that, at least a pickle common-sense, whilk often does as well—or better.
“It’s a Guid’s blessing that ye have been led to stop where ye are. For that lassie Charlotte Anderson is going on a shame to be seen. Actually she is never off our doorstep—fleeing and rinning all hours of the day. At first I thought to mysel’, it was to hear news of you. But she kens as weel as us when the posts come in, besides the letters she gets from Agnes Anne—some that cost as muckle as sevenpence—a ruination and a disgrace!” [Tom Gallaberry must have been prolix that week.] “Then I thought it was maybe some of the lads—for, like it or no, ye had better ken soon as syne, that maiden’s e’e is filledwith vanity and the gauds o’ grandeur, disdaining the true onputting of a meek and quiet spirit!
“But, for your comfort, if ye are so far left to yourself as to take comfort in the like—and the bigger fool you—it is no the lads after all. It’s just Irma Maitland!
“I declare they two are never sindry. They will be out talk-talking, yatter-yattering when the kye are being milked in the morning. Irma makes her carry the water, that’s one comfort. But I wonder at that silly auld clocking hen, Seraphina Huntingdon. It’s a deal of work she will be getting, but I suppose the premium pays for all, and she will not care a farthing now that Charlotte’s market is made. Not that I would trust you (or any student lad) the length of my stirabout potstick—or indeed (not to shame my own father) anything that wears hose and knee-breeches. And maybe that’s the reason every silly birkie thinks he has the right to cast up to me that I am an auld maid. Faith, there’s few that wear the wedding ring with whom I would change places. But what of that?
“The folk are all well here, both bairns and grown folk, and we will be blithe to hear from you, and if you have the time to send a scraps of your pen to your auld maiden aunt, that mony a time (though Lord knows not half often enough) has garred your lugs ring for your misdeeds—she will be pleased to hear if the butter and cheese were some kitchen to your tasteless town’s bread.
“Your obdt. servt. and affectionate aunt,”Janet Lyon.“
From this information I hoped great things—at least a letter demanding pardon from Irma, or an account of how she had confessed all from thatgraceless and thankless forgetful besom Charlotte. But I heard nothing further till, one day going past after another, about a twelvemonth after amazing word came. It was when I was busy with some literary work I had gotten from one of the printers in the town—correcting proofs and looking out for misspellings in the compositions of an eminent hand. I will be plain—it was poor work, and as poorly paid. But I could live on it, and in any case it was better than slaving at tutoring. That is, as tutoring was at that time in Edinburgh—a dull boy whom none could make anything of, insolent servants, sneering elder sisters and a guinea a month to pay for all. However, I tried it and made some of them stop sneering—at least the sisters.
I was, I say, in the Rankeillor Street lodgings and Amelia was going out at the door with my tea-things—as usual calling me names for “idling within doors” when Fred was out at his classes. Freddie had private permission from one of the professors to read in his library, so often did not come home till late. But I stuck to my arm-chair and my printer’s slips like a burr to homespun. Suddenly there was a great noise on the stairs. “There,” cries Amelia, “that’s one of your countrymen, or I’m no judge of the Galloway bray!”
For, as I have indicated before, Amelia was far from imitating her mother’s English politeness.
The next moment the front door was driven in with a mighty brange against the wall (for Amelia had been out the moment before on the landing to throw some turnip-tops on the ash “backet”). A huge man in many swathes of riding-coat dashed in and caught me by the throat. Amelia had the two-pronged carving fork in her hand, and seeing her mother’s lodger (as she thought) in danger of being choked todeath, without having regulated his week’s bill, she threw herself upon my assailant and struck vehemently with the fork.
The huge man in the many capes doubtless suffered no grievous harm. It had hardly been possible for a pistol-ball to penetrate such an armature, but still the sudden assault from behind, and perhaps some subtle feminine quality in Amelia’s screams, made him turn about to see what was happening.
The man was Fighting Anderson of Birkenbog himself, and he kept crying, “Where have you hidden her, rascal, thief? I will kill you, villain of a scribbler! It was because you were plotting this that you dare not show your face in the country!”
But every time he threw himself upon me, Amelia, who did not want for spunk, dug at him with the two-pronged fork, and stuck it through so many plies of his mantle till he was obliged to cry out, “Here, lassie, lay down that leister, or ye will hae me like miller Tamson’s riddle, that the cat can jump through back-foremost.”
After adjusting his coat collar he turned to me and demanded, in a more sensible and quiet way, what had become of his daughter.
At the question, Amelia went into one of her foolish fits of laughter and cried out, “What, anither of them?”
Whereupon to prevent misunderstandings, I explained that the young lady was my landlady’s daughter, and a friend of Freddy Esquillant’s.
“Oh, you students,” he said, and sat down to wipe his brow, having seen from the most cursory examination of our abode, wholly open to the view, and exiguous at the best, that certainly Charlotte was not hidden there.
“She left home three days syne as if to go to Miss Huntingdon’s,” he said, “and ever since her mother has gone from one hysteric to another. So, knowing nothing better to do, and maybe judging you by myself in my own young days (for which I am sure I ask your pardon) I started out to make sure that everything had been done decently and in order. Though as sure as my name is Robert Anderson, I cannot think why you did not come and wed the lass decently at home——”
We were at this point in our explanation, Amelia’s ear was (doubtless) close to the back of the door, and Birkenbog was relapsing into his first belief, when I heard the key in the lock and the light foot of Freddy in the passage.
It came as a huge relief, for here was my witness.
He entered, and, seeing the visitor, bowed and deposited his books in the corner. He was for going out again, doubtless thinking that Charlotte’s father and I were at business together. So, indeed, we were—but not such as I wished to keep anyways private between us. I could not, with any self-respect, go on depending any longer on Amelia’s two-pronged fork.
So I said, “Freddy, bear me witness that I have not been out of the house this week, except to go to the printer’s with my work——”
“Fegs,” cried a voice through the jar of the door, “there is no need for Freddy to bear ye out in that. You have only to look at the carpet under the legs of your chair. It has gotten a tairgin’, as if all the hosts of King Pharaoh had trampled over it down to the Red Sea!”
But I would not keep the old man any longer in suspense.
“I fear, Birkenbog,” I said, “that you have givenyourself a bootless journey. From what I suspect, your flown bird will be nested nearer home.”
“Where?” he cried; “tell me the scoundrel’s name.”
“Fairly and soothly, Birkenbog,” said I, “peace is best among near friends—not to speak of kinsfolk!”
“Aye,” said he, “fairly and soothly be it! But I have to ken first that it is fairly and soothly. Who is the man?”
“I do not know for certain,” I said, “but I have every reason to believe that your daughter is at this moment Mistress Thomas Gallaberry of Ewebuchts, on the Water of Ae!”
“Oh, the limmer,” he cried, and started up as if to fly at me again. His face was indeed a study. First there appeared the usual hot wrath, overlapping in ruddy fold on fold, and revealing the owner’s full-fed intent to punish. This gradually gave way to a look of humorous appreciation, and then all of a sudden, he slapped his thigh in an agony of joyous appreciation.
“Oh, the limmer,” he cried, “only a week since my kinsman Tam Gallaberry asks me brave and canny for the lend of five hundred to stock his Back Hill. He offered decent enough security, and as usual I took Charlotte’s opinion on the business. For it’s her that has the great head for the siller. Oh yes, she has that. And as soon as they gat the tocher, he’s off wi’ the lassie. Certes, but he is the cool hand.”
“If you allow me to judge, I should say the cool hand was Charlotte!” I ventured.
“Right, man,” he cried, “little do I doubt it! Tam Gallaberry has led a grey mare to his stable that willprove the better horse, and that he will ken before he is a fortnight older.”
Then he turned upon me, short and sharp.
“You have kenned this some while, I’m jaloosin’?”
“Yes,” said I, for I felt that he might have me awkwardly trapped if he went on, “that is one of the reasons why I did not come home. I knew that Charlotte had made up her mind never to marry me——”
“And ye took it like that?” he cried; “man, ye havena muckle spunk!”
“It was not generally so thought at the time of the assault on the great house of Marnhoul,” I answered; “and indeed I remember one old gentleman about your figure, with a white crape over his nose, that shook me by the hand and took my name down in his book——”
“Wheesht—wheesht,” he said, looking about uneasily, “siccan things are better never minted so close to the Parliament House where bide the Red Fifteen!”
“Well,” said I, “that’s as may be, but I cannot have it said by you or any man that I lack spunk!”
“Oh,” said he, “though I never was troubled that gate mysel’—there’s mony a bold man has turned hen-hearted when it came to a question of the lasses. There’s Freddy here, one wad never think it of him, but there has he gotten yon lass that nearly did for me with her twa-pronged fork. She’s a smart hizzy, and will make a lively wife to some man. But I maun e’en be riding back to put a question or so to the man that has stown awa’ my bit ewe-lamb and put her in fold by the Water of Ae.”
At that moment Amelia came in with a triumphantsmile. “It’s a laddie from the post, and he winna gie up the letter unless you pay him sevenpence for postage dues and a penny for himself!”
“There’s the sevenpence, and clash the door in his face!” I cried. For I was bravely well acquainted with the exigencies of these post-office “keelies.”
But Birkenbog, who was in good humour at the way he had been done by his daughter, threw a handful of copper “bodles” across the table to Amelia.
“There’s for the messenger!” he said. And I could see that he looked at the letter when it came with some anxiety.
As I supposed, it was from Charlotte, and the thinnest and least bulky of her billets that had ever come up these stairs. I handed it across to him, where he sat newly glooming at me.
“Open it!” I said.
“Since when has Robert Anderson of Birkenbog taken to opening letters addressed to other men?”
“Never heed—not till this very minute, maybe. Open that one, at any rate!” And I ran my finger along the sealed edge.
This was Charlotte’s letter to me.
From our home at Ewebuchts, Tuesday.“Dear Duncan,“How can we ever make it up to you? We were married yesterday by Mr. Torrance, the minister at Quarrelwood, and came home here in time for the milking of the cows. My father has kindly given my Thomas five hundred on account of my marriage portion, but he does not know it yet. I left all well. Thomas joins in kind messages to allinquiring friends. He is looking over my shoulder now, as perhaps you may be already aware from the style of composition.“Yours truly,”Charlotte Gallaberry.“P.S.—Oh, I forget to tell you, it will be as well to barricade your door. For I left word with one of the servant lasses that I was off to Edinburgh. Father will likely call to see you, and he is sure to have with him the whip wherewith he downed the highwayman. But I know well your bravery, and do sincerely thank you for all you may have to undergo for me.“Charlotte.”
From our home at Ewebuchts, Tuesday.
“Dear Duncan,
“How can we ever make it up to you? We were married yesterday by Mr. Torrance, the minister at Quarrelwood, and came home here in time for the milking of the cows. My father has kindly given my Thomas five hundred on account of my marriage portion, but he does not know it yet. I left all well. Thomas joins in kind messages to allinquiring friends. He is looking over my shoulder now, as perhaps you may be already aware from the style of composition.
“Yours truly,”Charlotte Gallaberry.
“P.S.—Oh, I forget to tell you, it will be as well to barricade your door. For I left word with one of the servant lasses that I was off to Edinburgh. Father will likely call to see you, and he is sure to have with him the whip wherewith he downed the highwayman. But I know well your bravery, and do sincerely thank you for all you may have to undergo for me.
“Charlotte.”
“Humph,” said her father, as he flung it across the table to me, “in my opinion ye are well shut of her! She will twist that Tam Gallaberry round her finger and then—whizz—she will make him spin like a peerie!”
He rose, and without any adieus stamped his way down the stairs, sniffing as he went at every landing. We stood at the window watching his progress along the street—capes swaying, broad bonnet of blue cocked at an angle on top, red double-chinned face looking straight ahead. Amelia came over to my shoulder and looked too.
But all she said was, “And now, when it’s past and gone, will ye tell me ifYonis what you learned folk caa’ an avalanche?”
CHAPTER XXXTHE VANISHING LADY
During the next three years (and that is a long driech time) I made many excuses for not going down to Eden Valley. I cannot say whether I managed to get myself believed or not. But the fact of the matter is, that, as things were, I could not bring myself to face Irma again and so bring back the pain. My father had come up to see me twice. Once he had brought my mother, of whom Mrs. Craven had made much, recognizing a kindred refinement of spirit. But Amelia and my Aunt Jen (who came at the time of the General Assembly) learned to respect one another—all the more that they had been highly prejudiced before meeting.
“She seems a weel-doing lass, wi’ no feery-faries aboot her!” declared my aunt, speaking of Amelia Craven. While that young woman, delivering her mind after the departure of Miss Janet Lyon, declared that she was a “wiselike woman and very civil—but I’ll wager she came here thinking that I was wanting ye. Faith, no, I wadna marry any student that ever stepped in leather—I ken ower muckle aboot them!”
“There’s Freddie!” I suggested.
“Oh,” said Amelia shortly, “he’s different, I allow. But then, there’s a medium. One doesna want a man with his nose aye in a book. But one that, when ye spit at him, will spit back!”
“Try me!” I said, daring her in conscious security.
“Goliah of Gath,” cried she, “but I wad be sair left to mysel’!”
We continued, however, to be pretty good friends always, and in a general way she knew about Irma. She had seen the oval miniature lying on the table. She had also closely interrogated Freddy, and lastly she had charged me with the fact, which I did not deny.
Freddy was now assistant to the professor of Humanity, which is to say of the Latin language, while besides my literary work on theUniversal ReviewI was interim additional Under-secretary to the University Court. In both which positions, literary and secretarial, I did the work for which another man pocketed the pay.
But after all I was not ill-off. One way and another I was making near on to a hundred pounds a year, which was a great deal for the country and time, and more than most ministers got in country parts. I wrote a great many very learned articles, though I signed none. I even directed foreign affairs in theReview, and wrote the most damaging indictments against “the traditional policy of the house of Austria.”
Then the other man, the great one in the public eye, he who paid me—put in this and that sonorous phrase, full of echoing emptiness, launched an antithesis which had done good service a time or two on the hustings or in the House of Commons, and—signed the article. Well, I do not object. That was what I was there for, and after all I made myself necessary to theUniversal Review. It would never have appeared in time but for me. I verified quotations, continued articles that were too short by half-a-dozen pages, found statistics where there were blanks in themanuscript, invented them if I could not find them, generally bullied the printers and proof-readers, saw to the cover, and never let go till the “Purple-and-Green,” as we were called, was for sale on all the counters and speeding over Britain in every postboy’s leathers.
Now one of my employers (the best) lived away among the woods above Corstorphine and another out at the Sciennes—so between them I had pretty long tramps—not much in the summer time when nights hardly existed, but the mischief and all when for weeks the sun was an unrealized dream, and even the daylight only peered in for a morning call and then disappeared.
But at the time of which I write the days were lengthening rapidly. I was deep in our spring number of theUniversal. Only the medical students were staying on at the University, and the Secretary’s spacious office could safely be littered with all sort of printingdébris. My good time was beginning.
Well, in one of my walks out to Corstorphine, I was aware, not for the first time, of the figure of a girl, carefully veiled, that at my approach—we were always meeting one another—slipped aside into a close. I thought nothing of this for the first two or three times. But the fourth, I conceived there was something more in it than met the eye. So I made a detour, and, near by the end of George Street—unfinished at that time like all the other streets in that new neighbourhood—I met my vanishing lady face to face as she emerged upon the Queensferry Road. She had lifted her veil a little in order the better to pick her way among the building and other materials scattered there.
It was Irma—Irma Maitland herself, grown into awoman, her eyes brighter, her cheeks paler, the same Irma though different—with a little startled look certainly, but now not proud any more, and—looking every day of her twenty-two years.
“Irma!” I gasped, barring the way.
She stopped dead. Then she clutched at her skirt, and said feverishly, “Let me pass, sir, or I shall call for help!”
“Call away,” I answered cheerfully. “I will only say that you have run off from the home which has sheltered you for many years, and that your friends are very anxious about you. Where are you staying?”
I glanced at her black dress. It was not mourning exactly, but then Irma never did anything like any one else. A fear took me that it might be little Louis who was dead, and yet for the life of me I dared not ask, knowing how she loved the child.
When I asked where she was staying, she plucked again at her skirt, lifting it a little as when she was being challenged to run a race. But seeing no way clear, she answered as it were under compulsion, “With my Aunt Kirkpatrick at the Nun’s House!”
At first I had the fear that this might prove to be some Catholic place like the convent to which she had been sent in Paris. But it turned out to be only a fine old mansion, standing by itself in a garden with a small grey lodge to it, far out on the road to the Dean.
“Take me there!” I said, “for I must tell my grandmother what I have seen of you, or she will be up here by the coach red and angry enough to dry up the Nor’ Loch!”
Irma walked by my side quite silent for a while, and I led her cunningly so as not to get too soon to our destination. I knew better than to ask why shehad left Heathknowes. If I let her alone, she would soon enough begin to defend herself. And so it was.
“The lawyers took Louis away to put him to a school here,” she said. “It was time. I knew it, but I could not rest down there without him. So I came also. I left them all last Wednesday. Your grandmother came herself with me to Dumfries, and there we saw the lawyers. They had not much to say to your grandmother, while she——”
“I understand,” said I; “she had a great deal to say to them!”
Irma nodded, and for the first time faintly smiled.
“Yes,” she answered, “the little old man in the flannel dressing-gown, of whom you used to tell us, forgot to poke the fire for a long time!”
“So you left them all in good heart about your coming away?” I said.
“Oh, the good souls,” she cried, weeping a little at the remembrance, “never will I see the like till I am back there again. I think they all loved me—even your Aunt Jen. She gave me her own work-basket and a psalm book bound in black leather when I came away.”
And at the remembrance she wept afresh.
“I must stop this,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a very early-April smile, “my Aunt Kirkpatrick will think it is because of meeting you. She is always free with her imagination, my Lady Kirkpatrick—a clever woman for all that—only, what is it that you say, ‘hard and fyky!’ She has seen many great people and kings, and was long counted a great beauty without anything much coming of it.”
I thought I would risk changing the subject to what was really uppermost in my mind.
“And Charlotte?” I ventured, as blandly as I could muster.
“I wonder you are not shamed!” she said, with a glint in her eye that hardly yet expressed complete forgiveness. “I know all about that. And if you think you can come to me bleating like a sore wronged and innocent lamb, you are far mistaken!”
So this was the reason of her long silence. Charlotte had babbled. I might have known. Still, I could not charge my conscience with anything very grave. After all, the intention on both sides—Charlotte’s as well as mine,—had been of the best. She wanted to marry her Tam of the Ewebuchts, which she had managed—I, to wed Irma, from which I was yet as far off as ever.
So I made no remark, but only walked along in a grieved silence. It was not very long till Irma remarked, a little viciously, but with the old involuntary toss of her head which sent all her foam-light curls dipping and swerving into new effects and combinations—so that I could hardly take my eyes off her—“Would you like to hear more about Charlotte?”
“Yes!” said I boldly. For I knew the counter for her moods, which was to be of the same, only stronger.
“Well, she has two children, and when the second, a boy, was born, she claimed another five hundred pounds from her father to stock a farm for him—the old man called it ‘a bonny bairn-clout’ for our Lottie’s Duncan!”
“What did you say the bairn’s name was?”
“Duncan—after you!” This with an air of triumph, very pretty to see.
“And the elder, the girl?” I asked—though, indeed,that I knew—from the old letters of my Aunt Jen.
“Irma!” she answered, some little crestfallen.
“After you?”
She had barely time to nod when we passed in at the lodge gate of the Nun’s House. The old porter came to the gate to make his reverence, and no doubt to wonder who the young lady, his mistress’s kinswoman, had gotten home with her.
I found the Lady Kirkpatrick—Lady by courtesy, but only known thus by all her circle—to be a little vivid spark of a white-haired woman, sitting on a sofa dressed in the French fashion of forty years ago, and with a small plume of feathers in a jewelled turban that glittered as she moved. At first she was kind enough to me.
“Hey, Master-of-Arts Duncan MacAlpine, this is a bonny downcome for your grandfather’s son, and you come of decent blood up in Glen Strae—to be great with the Advocate, and scribbling his blethers! A sword by your side would have suited ye better, I’m thinking!”
“Doubtless, my lady,” I answered, “if such had been my state and fortune. Nevertheless, I can take a turn at that too, if need be.”
“Aha, ye have not lost the Highland conceit, in drawing water from the wells of Whiggery!”
“If I mistake not,” I replied, “your ladyship did not care to bide always about a king’s court when she had the chance.”
For I knew her history, as did everybody in Edinburgh—a little gossiping town at that time—now, they say, purged of scandal—which is a Heaven’s miracle if ever there was one.
“Och, hear him!” she cried, throwing up her fanwith a jerk to the end of its tether with a curious flouting disdain, “politics are very well when it is ‘Have at them, my merry men a’!’ But after, when all is done and laid on the shelf like broken bairns’-plaiks, better be a Whig in the West Bow than a Jesuit in a king’s palace abroad!”
And, like enough (so at least it was whispered), the choice had been offered her.
Then all in a moment she turned to me with a twinkle in her eye that was hardly less than impish. Indeed, I may say that she flew at me much like an angry wasp when a chance of your walking-stick stirs its nest.
“It’s prophesied,” she said, “that some day a Kirkpatrick of Closeburn will be greater than a queen. For me it was, ‘Thank you kindly! I would rather dwell in the Nun’s House of the Dean than possess the treasures of Egypt!’ But this lass is a Kirkpatrick too, though only through her grandmother, and I troth it may be her that’s to wear the crown. At any rate, mind you, no dominie’s son with his fingers deep in printer’s ink, and in the confidence of our little Advocate that rideth on the white horse—only it’s a powny—must venture any pretensions——”
“You mistake me,” said I, suddenly very dignified, “my family——”
“Fiddlesticks,” cried the old lady; “there’s Bellman Jock wha’s faither was a prince o’ the bluid. But what the better is he o’ that? Na, na, there’s to be no trokin’, nor eyesdropping, nor yet slipping of notes into itching palms, nor seeing one another to doors!—Och, aye, I ken the gait o’t fine. Mony is the time I have seen it travelled. This young leddy is for your betters, sirrah, and being but the son of a village dominie, and working for your bread amongLeein’ Johnny’s hundred black men in Parliament Close, ye may—an it please ye, andifye please, gie this door a wide gae-by. For if ye come a second time, Samuel Whan, the porter, will have his orders to steek the yett in your face!”
“Madame,” said I, very fine, “it shall not be done twice!”
I stole a glance at Irma, who was standing with her face white and her lips trembling.
“No,” said she, “nor yet once. I came here at your request, Aunt Kirkpatrick. For years and years my brother and I have sorned on the family of this gentleman—you yourself grant he is that——”
“No such thing!” snapped my lady Kirkpatrick, “gentleman indeed—a newsmonger’s apprentice! That’s your gentrice!”
“We dwelt there, my brother and I,” Irma went on, “none of my family troubling their heads or their purses about us, yet without a plack we were treated as brother and sister by all the family.”
“Be off, then, with your brother, since you are so fond of him!” cried the fiery old lady, rising with a long black cane in her hand, a terrier yelping and snapping at her heels. “I am for London next week, and I cannot be at the chairge of a daft hempie, especially one of such low, common tastes.”
At these words, so unexpected and uncalled for, Irma put out her hand and took mine. She spoke very gently.
“Duncan,” she said, “we are not wanted here. Let us be going!”
“But—Irma——!” I gasped, for even then I would take no advantage. “Whither shall I conduct you? Have you other friends in Edinburgh?”
“Before a minister!” she said. “That will be best. I have no friends but you!”
“Aye, there ye are!” cried the old lady, “I was sure there was something at the back of this sudden flight to Edinburgh. The dear little brother—oh, but we were that fond of him—the poor, poor innocent bairn. Such a comfort for him to know his sister near at hand! Yet, though I have done with you, Mistress Irma Sobieski, I may say that I wish you no ill. Make a better use of your youth than maybe I have done. If ye need a helping hand, there’s my sister Frances out at the Sciennes. She’s fair crammed like a Strasburg goose wi’ thebelles-lettres. She will maybe never let ye within the door, but a shilling a week of outdoor relief ye are sure of—for she sets up for being full of the milk of human kindness. She set her cap at John Home when he came home from London. She would never even allow that Davie Hume was an atheist, whilk was as clear as that I hae a nose to my face!—— Off with you to Fanny’s at the Sciennes. And a long guid day to the pair of ye—ye are a disobedient regardless lassock, and ye are heapin’ up wrath again the day of wrath, but for all that I’m no sayin’ that I’ll forget you in my will! There are others I like waur nor you, when all’s said and done!”
“I would not take a penny of yours if I were starving on the street!” cried Irma.
“Save us!” said the old lady, lifting up her black wand, “ye will maybe think different when ye are real hungrysome. The streets are nae better than they are caa’ed. But off wi’ ye, and get honestly tied up! Bid Samuel Whan shut the yett after ye!”