Two days later a gig from Crossmichael deposited Frank Innes at the doors
of Hermiston. Once in a way, during the past winter, Archie, in some
acute phase of boredom, had written him a letter. It had contained
something in the nature of an invitation or a reference to an
invitation—precisely what, neither of them now remembered. When Innes
had received it, there had been nothing further from his mind than to
bury himself in the moors with Archie; but not even the most acute
political heads are guided through the steps of life with unerring
directness. That would require a gift of prophecy which has been denied
to man. For instance, who could have imagined that, not a month after he
had received the letter, and turned it into mockery, and put off
answering it, and in the end lost it, misfortunes of a gloomy cast should
begin to thicken over Frank’s career? His case may be briefly stated.
His father, a small Morayshire laird with a large family, became
recalcitrant and cut off the supplies; he had fitted himself out with the
beginnings of quite a good law library, which, upon some sudden losses on
the turf, he had been obliged to sell before they were paid for; and his
bookseller, hearing some rumour of the event, took out a warrant for his
arrest. Innes had early word of it, and was able to take precautions.
In this immediate welter of his affairs, with an unpleasant charge
hanging over him, he had judged it the part of prudence to be off
instantly, had written a fervid letter to his father at Inverauld, and
put himself in the coach for Crossmichael. Any port in a storm! He was
manfully turning his back on the Parliament House and its gay babble, on
porter and oysters, the race-course and the ring; and manfully prepared,
until these clouds should have blown by, to share a living grave with
Archie Weir at Hermiston.
To do him justice, he was no less surprised to be going than Archie was
to see him come; and he carried off his wonder with an infinitely better
grace.
“Well, here I am!” said he, as he alighted. “Pylades has come to Orestes
at last. By the way, did you get my answer? No? How very provoking!
Well, here I am to answer for myself, and that’s better still.”
“I am very glad to see you, of course,” said Archie. “I make you
heartily welcome, of course. But you surely have not come to stay, with
the Courts still sitting; is that not most unwise?”
“Damn the Courts!” says Frank. “What are the Courts to friendship and a
little fishing?”
And so it was agreed that he was to stay, with no term to the visit but
the term which he had privily set to it himself—the day, namely, when his
father should have come down with the dust, and he should be able to
pacify the bookseller. On such vague conditions there began for these
two young men (who were not even friends) a life of great familiarity
and, as the days drew on, less and less intimacy. They were together at
meal times, together o’ nights when the hour had come for whisky-toddy;
but it might have been noticed (had there been any one to pay heed) that
they were rarely so much together by day. Archie had Hermiston to attend
to, multifarious activities in the hills, in which he did not require,
and had even refused, Frank’s escort. He would be off sometimes in the
morning and leave only a note on the breakfast table to announce the
fact; and sometimes, with no notice at all, he would not return for
dinner until the hour was long past. Innes groaned under these
desertions; it required all his philosophy to sit down to a solitary
breakfast with composure, and all his unaffected good-nature to be able
to greet Archie with friendliness on the more rare occasions when he came
home late for dinner.
“I wonder what on earth he finds to do, Mrs. Elliott?” said he one
morning, after he had just read the hasty billet and sat down to table.
“I suppose it will be business, sir,” replied the housekeeper drily,
measuring his distance off to him by an indicated curtsy.
“But I can’t imagine what business!” he reiterated.
“I suppose it will be _his_ business,” retorted the austere Kirstie.
He turned to her with that happy brightness that made the charm of his
disposition, and broke into a peal of healthy and natural laughter.
“Well played, Mrs. Elliott!” he cried; and the housekeeper’s face relaxed
into the shadow of an iron smile. “Well played indeed!” said he. “But
you must not be making a stranger of me like that. Why, Archie and I
were at the High School together, and we’ve been to college together, and
we were going to the Bar together, when—you know! Dear, dear me! what a
pity that was! A life spoiled, a fine young fellow as good as buried
here in the wilderness with rustics; and all for what? A frolic, silly,
if you like, but no more. God, how good your scones are, Mrs. Elliott!”
“They’re no mines, it was the lassie made them,” said Kirstie; “and,
saving your presence, there’s little sense in taking the Lord’s name in
vain about idle vivers that you fill your kyte wi’.”
“I daresay you’re perfectly right, ma’am,” quoth the imperturbable Frank.
“But as I was saying, this is a pitiable business, this about poor
Archie; and you and I might do worse than put our heads together, like a
couple of sensible people, and bring it to an end. Let me tell you,
ma’am, that Archie is really quite a promising young man, and in my
opinion he would do well at the Bar. As for his father, no one can deny
his ability, and I don’t fancy any one would care to deny that he has the
deil’s own temper—”
“If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Innes, I think the lass is crying on me,” said
Kirstie, and flounced from the room.
“The damned, cross-grained, old broomstick!” ejaculated Innes.
In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped into the kitchen, and before her
vassal gave vent to her feelings.
“Here, ettercap! Ye’ll have to wait on yon Innes! I canna haud myself
in. ‘Puir Erchie!’ I’d ‘puir Erchie’ him, if I had my way! And
Hermiston with the deil’s ain temper! God, let him take Hermiston’s
scones out of his mouth first. There’s no a hair on ayther o’ the Weirs
that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he has in his hale
dwaibly body! Settin’ up his snash to me! Let him gang to the black
toon where he’s mebbe wantit—birling in a curricle—wi’ pimatum on his
heid—making a mess o’ himsel’ wi’ nesty hizzies—a fair disgrace!” It was
impossible to hear without admiration Kirstie’s graduated disgust, as she
brought forth, one after another, these somewhat baseless charges. Then
she remembered her immediate purpose, and turned again on her fascinated
auditor. “Do ye no hear me, tawpie? Do ye no hear what I’m tellin’ ye?
Will I have to shoo ye in to him? If I come to attend to ye, mistress!”
And the maid fled the kitchen, which had become practically dangerous, to
attend on Innes’ wants in the front parlour.
_Tantaene irae_? Has the reader perceived the reason? Since Frank’s
coming there were no more hours of gossip over the supper tray! All his
blandishments were in vain; he had started handicapped on the race for
Mrs. Elliott’s favour.
But it was a strange thing how misfortune dogged him in his efforts to be
genial. I must guard the reader against accepting Kirstie’s epithets as
evidence; she was more concerned for their vigour than for their
accuracy. Dwaibly, for instance; nothing could be more calumnious.
Frank was the very picture of good looks, good humour, and manly youth.
He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, a
charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the
look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed to please at first
sight and to improve the impression. And with all these advantages, he
failed with every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with the
obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the ploughman, with the
gardener and the gardener’s sister—a pious, down-hearted woman with a
shawl over her ears—he failed equally and flatly. They did not like him,
and they showed it. The little maid, indeed, was an exception; she
admired him devoutly, probably dreamed of him in her private hours; but
she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor to Kirstie’s
tirades and silent recipient of Kirstie’s buffets, and she had learned
not only to be a very capable girl of her years, but a very secret and
prudent one besides. Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and
sympathiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour that
surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he
had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure little
maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and tripped
on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably
unconversational. For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond
endurance. Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic
barbarians. But perhaps the cause of his ill-success lay in one trait
which was habitual and unconscious with him, yet diagnostic of the man.
It was his practice to approach any one person at the expense of some one
else. He offered you an alliance against the some one else; he flattered
you by slighting him; you were drawn into a small intrigue against him
before you knew how. Wonderful are the virtues of this process
generally; but Frank’s mistake was in the choice of the some one else.
He was not politic in that; he listened to the voice of irritation.
Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt to be rather a dry
reception, had offended him since by his frequent absences. He was
besides the one figure continually present in Frank’s eye; and it was to
his immediate dependants that Frank could offer the snare of his
sympathy. Now the truth is that the Weirs, father and son, were
surrounded by a posse of strenuous loyalists. Of my lord they were
vastly proud. It was a distinction in itself to be one of the vassals of
the “Hanging Judge,” and his gross, formidable joviality was far from
unpopular in the neighbourhood of his home. For Archie they had, one and
all, a sensitive affection and respect which recoiled from a word of
belittlement.
Nor was Frank more successful when he went farther afield. To the Four
Black Brothers, for instance, he was antipathetic in the highest degree.
Hob thought him too light, Gib too profane. Clem, who saw him but for a
day or two before he went to Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule’s
business was, and whether he meant to stay here all session time! “Yon’s
a drone,” he pronounced. As for Dand, it will be enough to describe
their first meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and the rustic
celebrity chanced to come along the path.
“I’m told you’re quite a poet,” Frank had said.
“Wha tell’t ye that, mannie?” had been the unconciliating answer.
“O, everybody!” says Frank.
“God! Here’s fame!” said the sardonic poet, and he had passed on his
way.
Come to think of it, we have here perhaps a truer explanation of Frank’s
failures. Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater
compliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making.
Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even
while he tried to flatter. Condescension is an excellent thing, but it
is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing
among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an
empty basket by evening.
In proof of this theory Frank made a great success of it at the
Crossmichael Club, to which Archie took him immediately on his arrival;
his own last appearance on that scene of gaiety. Frank was made welcome
there at once, continued to go regularly, and had attended a meeting (as
the members ever after loved to tell) on the evening before his death.
Young Hay and young Pringle appeared again. There was another supper at
Windiclaws, another dinner at Driffel; and it resulted in Frank being
taken to the bosom of the county people as unreservedly as he had been
repudiated by the country folk. He occupied Hermiston after the manner
of an invader in a conquered capital. He was perpetually issuing from
it, as from a base, to toddy parties, fishing parties, and dinner
parties, to which Archie was not invited, or to which Archie would not
go. It was now that the name of The Recluse became general for the young
man. Some say that Innes invented it; Innes, at least, spread it abroad.
“How’s all with your Recluse to-day?” people would ask.
“O, reclusing away!” Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying
something witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he
had provoked much more by his air than his words, “Mind you, it’s all
very well laughing, but I’m not very well pleased. Poor Archie is a good
fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked. I think it small
of him to take his little disgrace so hard, and shut himself up. ‘Grant
that it is a ridiculous story, painfully ridiculous,’ I keep telling him.
‘Be a man! Live it down, man!’ But not he. Of course, it’s just
solitude, and shame, and all that. But I confess I’m beginning to fear
the result. It would be all the pities in the world if a really
promising fellow like Weir was to end ill. I’m seriously tempted to
write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him.”
“I would if I were you,” some of his auditors would say, shaking the
head, sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of the matter, so
deftly indicated by a single word. “A capital idea!” they would add, and
wonder at the _aplomb_ and position of this young man, who talked as a
matter of course of writing to Hermiston and correcting him upon his
private affairs.
And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential: “I’ll give you an idea,
now. He’s actually sore about the way that I’m received and he’s left
out in the county—actually jealous and sore. I’ve rallied him and I’ve
reasoned with him, told him that every one was most kindly inclined
towards him, told him even that I was received merely because I was his
guest. But it’s no use. He will neither accept the invitations he gets,
nor stop brooding about the ones where he’s left out. What I’m afraid of
is that the wound’s ulcerating. He had always one of those dark, secret,
angry natures—a little underhand and plenty of bile—you know the sort.
He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a
worthy family of weavers somewhere; what’s the cant phrase?—sedentary
occupation. It’s precisely the kind of character to go wrong in a false
position like what his father’s made for him, or he’s making for himself,
whichever you like to call it. And for my part, I think it a disgrace,”
Frank would say generously.
Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this disinterested friend took shape.
He began in private, in conversations of two, to talk vaguely of bad
habits and low habits. “I must say I’m afraid he’s going wrong
altogether,” he would say. “I’ll tell you plainly, and between
ourselves, I scarcely like to stay there any longer; only, man, I’m
positively afraid to leave him alone. You’ll see, I shall be blamed for
it later on. I’m staying at a great sacrifice. I’m hindering my chances
at the Bar, and I can’t blind my eyes to it. And what I’m afraid of is
that I’m going to get kicked for it all round before all’s done. You
see, nobody believes in friendship nowadays.”
“Well, Innes,” his interlocutor would reply, “it’s very good of you, I
must say that. If there’s any blame going, you’ll always be sure of _my_
good word, for one thing.”
“Well,” Frank would continue, “candidly, I don’t say it’s pleasant. He
has a very rough way with him; his father’s son, you know. I don’t say
he’s rude—of course, I couldn’t be expected to stand that—but he steers
very near the wind. No, it’s not pleasant; but I tell ye, man, in
conscience I don’t think it would be fair to leave him. Mind you, I
don’t say there’s anything actually wrong. What I say is that I don’t
like the looks of it, man!” and he would press the arm of his momentary
confidant.
In the early stages I am persuaded there was no malice. He talked but
for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes
the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the
mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no
particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to
flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by
thus milling air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a
presentation of Archie which was known and talked of in all corners of
the county. Wherever there was a residential house and a walled garden,
wherever there was a dwarfish castle and a park, wherever a quadruple
cottage by the ruins of a peel-tower showed an old family going down, and
wherever a handsome villa with a carriage approach and a shrubbery marked
the coming up of a new one—probably on the wheels of machinery—Archie
began to be regarded in the light of a dark, perhaps a vicious mystery,
and the future developments of his career to be looked for with
uneasiness and confidential whispering. He had done something
disgraceful, my dear. What, was not precisely known, and that good kind
young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to make light of it. But there it
was. And Mr. Innes was very anxious about him now; he was really uneasy,
my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects because he dared
not leave him alone. How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single
prater, not needfully with any malign purpose! And if a man but talks of
himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by the way,
and never applies to them the name of virtue, how easily his evidence is
accepted in the court of public opinion!
All this while, however, there was a more poisonous ferment at work
between the two lads, which came late indeed to the surface, but had
modified and magnified their dissensions from the first. To an idle,
shallow, easy-going customer like Frank, the smell of a mystery was
attractive. It gave his mind something to play with, like a new toy to a
child; and it took him on the weak side, for like many young men coming
to the Bar, and before they had been tried and found wanting, he
flattered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness and penetration.
They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those days, but there was a good
deal said of Talleyrand. And if you could have caught Frank off his
guard, he would have confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled any
one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord. It was on the occasion
of Archie’s first absence that this interest took root. It was vastly
deepened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast, and that same
afternoon there occurred another scene which clinched the business. He
was fishing Swingleburn, Archie accompanying him, when the latter looked
at his watch.
“Well, good-bye,” said he. “I have something to do. See you at dinner.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry,” cries Frank. “Hold on till I get my rod up.
I’ll go with you; I’m sick of flogging this ditch.”
And he began to reel up his line.
Archie stood speechless. He took a long while to recover his wits under
this direct attack; but by the time he was ready with his answer, and the
angle was almost packed up, he had become completely Weir, and the
hanging face gloomed on his young shoulders. He spoke with a laboured
composure, a laboured kindness even; but a child could see that his mind
was made up.
“I beg your pardon, Innes; I don’t want to be disagreeable, but let us
understand one another from the beginning. When I want your company,
I’ll let you know.”
“O!” cries Frank, “you don’t want my company, don’t you?”
“Apparently not just now,” replied Archie. “I even indicated to you when
I did, if you’ll remember—and that was at dinner. If we two fellows are
to live together pleasantly—and I see no reason why we should not—it can
only be by respecting each other’s privacy. If we begin intruding—”
“O, come! I’ll take this at no man’s hands. Is this the way you treat a
guest and an old friend?” cried Innes.
“Just go home and think over what I said by yourself,” continued Archie,
“whether it’s reasonable, or whether it’s really offensive or not; and
let’s meet at dinner as though nothing had happened, I’ll put it this
way, if you like—that I know my own character, that I’m looking forward
(with great pleasure, I assure you) to a long visit from you, and that
I’m taking precautions at the first. I see the thing that we—that I, if
you like—might fall out upon, and I step in and _obsto principiis_. I
wager you five pounds you’ll end by seeing that I mean friendliness, and
I assure you, Francie, I do,” he added, relenting.
Bursting with anger, but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod,
made a gesture of farewell, and strode off down the burn-side. Archie
watched him go without moving. He was sorry, but quite unashamed. He
hated to be inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father’s son. He
had a strong sense that his house was his own and no man else’s; and to
lie at a guest’s mercy was what he refused. He hated to seem harsh. But
that was Frank’s lookout. If Frank had been commonly discreet, he would
have been decently courteous. And there was another consideration. The
secret he was protecting was not his own merely; it was hers: it belonged
to that inexpressible she who was fast taking possession of his soul, and
whom he would soon have defended at the cost of burning cities. By the
time he had watched Frank as far as the Swingleburn-foot, appearing and
disappearing in the tarnished heather, still stalking at a fierce gait
but already dwindled in the distance into less than the smallness of
Lilliput, he could afford to smile at the occurrence. Either Frank would
go, and that would be a relief—or he would continue to stay, and his host
must continue to endure him. And Archie was now free—by devious paths,
behind hillocks and in the hollow of burns—to make for the trysting-place
where Kirstie, cried about by the curlew and the plover, waited and
burned for his coming by the Covenanter’s stone.
Innes went off down-hill in a passion of resentment, easy to be
understood, but which yielded progressively to the needs of his
situation. He cursed Archie for a cold-hearted, unfriendly, rude, rude
dog; and himself still more passionately for a fool in having come to
Hermiston when he might have sought refuge in almost any other house in
Scotland. But the step once taken, was practically irretrievable. He
had no more ready money to go anywhere else; he would have to borrow from
Archie the next club-night; and ill as he thought of his host’s manners,
he was sure of his practical generosity. Frank’s resemblance to
Talleyrand strikes me as imaginary; but at least not Talleyrand himself
could have more obediently taken his lesson from the facts. He met
Archie at dinner without resentment, almost with cordiality. You must
take your friends as you find them, he would have said. Archie couldn’t
help being his father’s son, or his grandfather’s, the hypothetical
weaver’s, grandson. The son of a hunks, he was still a hunks at heart,
incapable of true generosity and consideration; but he had other
qualities with which Frank could divert himself in the meanwhile, and to
enjoy which it was necessary that Frank should keep his temper.
So excellently was it controlled that he awoke next morning with his head
full of a different, though a cognate subject. What was Archie’s little
game? Why did he shun Frank’s company? What was he keeping secret? Was
he keeping tryst with somebody, and was it a woman? It would be a good
joke and a fair revenge to discover. To that task he set himself with a
great deal of patience, which might have surprised his friends, for he
had been always credited not with patience so much as brilliancy; and
little by little, from one point to another, he at last succeeded in
piecing out the situation. First he remarked that, although Archie set
out in all the directions of the compass, he always came home again from
some point between the south and west. From the study of a map, and in
consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that
direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his finger on
Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring farms, Kingsmuirs and
Polintarf. But it was difficult to advance farther. With his rod for a
pretext, he vainly visited each of them in turn; nothing was to be seen
suspicious about this trinity of moorland settlements. He would have
tried to follow Archie, had it been the least possible, but the nature of
the land precluded the idea. He did the next best, ensconced himself in
a quiet corner, and pursued his movements with a telescope. It was
equally in vain, and he soon wearied of his futile vigilance, left the
telescope at home, and had almost given the matter up in despair, when,
on the twenty-seventh day of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with
the person whom he sought. The first Sunday Kirstie had managed to stay
away from kirk on some pretext of indisposition, which was more truly
modesty; the pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too vivid
for that public place. On the two following, Frank had himself been
absent on some of his excursions among the neighbouring families. It was
not until the fourth, accordingly, that Frank had occasion to set eyes on
the enchantress. With the first look, all hesitation was over. She came
with the Cauldstaneslap party; then she lived at Cauldstaneslap. Here
was Archie’s secret, here was the woman, and more than that—though I have
need here of every manageable attenuation of language—with the first
look, he had already entered himself as rival. It was a good deal in
pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration: the
devil may decide the proportions! I cannot, and it is very likely that
Frank could not.
“Mighty attractive milkmaid,” he observed, on the way home.
“Who?” said Archie.
“O, the girl you’re looking at—aren’t you? Forward there on the road.
She came attended by the rustic bard; presumably, therefore, belongs to
his exalted family. The single objection! for the four black brothers
are awkward customers. If anything were to go wrong, Gib would gibber,
and Clem would prove inclement; and Dand fly in danders, and Hob blow up
in gobbets. It would be a Helliott of a business!”
“Very humorous, I am sure,” said Archie.
“Well, I am trying to be so,” said Frank. “It’s none too easy in this
place, and with your solemn society, my dear fellow. But confess that
the milkmaid has found favour in your eyes, or resign all claim to be a
man of taste.”
“It is no matter,” returned Archie.
But the other continued to look at him, steadily and quizzically, and his
colour slowly rose and deepened under the glance, until not impudence
itself could have denied that he was blushing. And at this Archie lost
some of his control. He changed his stick from one hand to the other,
and—“O, for God’s sake, don’t be an ass!” he cried.
“Ass? That’s the retort delicate without doubt,” says Frank. “Beware of
the homespun brothers, dear. If they come into the dance, you’ll see
who’s an ass. Think now, if they only applied (say) a quarter as much
talent as I have applied to the question of what Mr. Archie does with his
evening hours, and why he is so unaffectedly nasty when the subject’s
touched on—”
“You are touching on it now,” interrupted Archie with a wince.
“Thank you. That was all I wanted, an articulate confession,” said
Frank.
“I beg to remind you—” began Archie.
But he was interrupted in turn. “My dear fellow, don’t. It’s quite
needless. The subject’s dead and buried.”
And Frank began to talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was
an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But
although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on,
he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner,
he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking “Cauldstaneslap
ways.” Frank took his first glass of port out after dinner to the toast
of Kirstie, and later in the evening he returned to the charge again.
“I say, Weir, you’ll excuse me for returning again to this affair. I’ve
been thinking it over, and I wish to beg you very seriously to be more
careful. It’s not a safe business. Not safe, my boy,” said he.
“What?” said Archie.
“Well, it’s your own fault if I must put a name on the thing; but really,
as a friend, I cannot stand by and see you rushing head down into these
dangers. My dear boy,” said he, holding up a warning cigar, “consider!
What is to be the end of it?”
“The end of what?”—Archie, helpless with irritation, persisted in this
dangerous and ungracious guard.
“Well, the end of the milkmaid; or, to speak more by the card, the end of
Miss Christina Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap.”
“I assure you,” Archie broke out, “this is all a figment of your
imagination. There is nothing to be said against that young lady; you
have no right to introduce her name into the conversation.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” said Frank. “She shall henceforth be nameless,
nameless, nameless, Grigalach! I make a note besides of your valuable
testimony to her character. I only want to look at this thing as a man
of the world. Admitted she’s an angel—but, my good fellow, is she a
lady?”
This was torture to Archie. “I beg your pardon,” he said, struggling to
be composed, “but because you have wormed yourself into my confidence—”
“O, come!” cried Frank. “Your confidence? It was rosy but unconsenting.
Your confidence, indeed? Now, look! This is what I must say, Weir, for
it concerns your safety and good character, and therefore my honour as
your friend. You say I wormed myself into your confidence. Wormed is
good. But what have I done? I have put two and two together, just as
the parish will be doing tomorrow, and the whole of Tweeddale in two
weeks, and the black brothers—well, I won’t put a date on that; it will
be a dark and stormy morning! Your secret, in other words, is poor
Poll’s. And I want to ask of you as a friend whether you like the
prospect? There are two horns to your dilemma, and I must say for myself
I should look mighty ruefully on either. Do you see yourself explaining
to the four Black Brothers? or do you see yourself presenting the
milkmaid to papa as the future lady of Hermiston? Do you? I tell you
plainly, I don’t!”
Archie rose. “I will hear no more of this,” he said, in a trembling
voice.
But Frank again held up his cigar. “Tell me one thing first. Tell me if
this is not a friend’s part that I am playing?”
“I believe you think it so,” replied Archle. “I can go as far as that.
I can do so much justice to your motives. But I will hear no more of it.
I am going to bed.”
“That’s right, Weir,” said Frank heartily. “Go to bed and think over it;
and I say, man, don’t forget your prayers! I don’t often do the
moral—don’t go in for that sort of thing—but when I do there’s one thing
sure, that I mean it.”
So Archie marched off to bed, and Frank sat alone by the table for
another hour or so, smiling to himself richly. There was nothing
vindictive in his nature; but, if revenge came in his way, it might as
well be good, and the thought of Archie’s pillow reflections that night
was indescribably sweet to him. He felt a pleasant sense of power. He
looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled—as
on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence,
and whom he might ride to glory or the grave at pleasure. Which was it
to be? He lingered long, relishing the details of schemes that he was
too idle to pursue. Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted that night the
sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity over the strands of that
intrigue which was to shatter him before the summer waned.