‘HUNTINGTOWER.’
Primrose Ramsay bore a Christian name which was not altogether uncommon
among the Scotch-women of her era. It was also the surname of the
excellent vicar of Wakefield and of a noble Scotch family, and the
ordinary title of the sweetest and most welcome of spring flowers. She
was, as Jenny Hedderwick had reported, on a friendly visit to young
Mrs. Forsyth, the doctor’s wife in Craigie. Primrose was not like her
namesake and emblem, strictly fair to see, but she was cheery as ever
was pinched daisy in February, promising to close the gloomy winter and
herald the glad summer. She was a little, pale, somewhat meagre girl,
whom a passer-by might have stigmatised as insignificant-looking. Her
spirit, sense, and kindness, and not her face, constituted her fortune,
and it was only when mind and heart took possession of her slight,
though wiry, frame, coloured her ordinarily colourless cheeks, and
kindled up her grey eyes that they looked handsome. Primrose Ramsay was
valued even in the matter of personal appearance exactly in proportion
as she was known. Slight acquaintances thought little of her, intimate
friends agreed to admire her very defects, and the old relation who had
brought up the orphan girl, and with whom she usually resided, set such
store upon her that Mrs. Purvis grudged Primrose out of her sight, and
confidently believed her the attraction of all eyes and hearts, the
greatest beauty, and the most virtuous, charming young woman in the
world.
Withal, there was something about Primrose Ramsay--unprotected, poor,
unassuming, and kindly as she was--which prevented anyone from taking
liberties with her; something which daunted the coarse and shallow, and
rendered her, on occasions, as formidable as her aunt, the old Lady
of Drumsheugh, could prove. Primrose won respect in her youth, and
exercised influence wherever she went.
Primrose heard from Mrs. Forsyth, with a mixture of interest,
amusement, and pain, all the nonsensical stories, loud ridicule, and
blame, and increasingly rampant scandal afloat with regard to young
Mrs. Ramsay. Primrose could not help feeling diverted, in spite of her
goodness; for she was a girl in whom the sense of humour abounded in
exceptional strength, keeping pace with that ‘weeping-blood in woman’s
breast,’ which made her sorry too; because it went to her heart not
to be able to go over to Drumsheugh where she had spent some of her
happiest youthful holidays, or to hold out her hand to Jamie Ramsay’s
wife, when Jamie was Primrose’s nearest male relative, and he and she
had been fast boy and girl friends. And she was sure Jamie was not half
a bad fellow, though he had made a low marriage.
Primrose entertained a shrewd suspicion that the day had been when her
aunt, Mrs. Ramsay, had experienced a dread lest Jamie should throw his
handkerchief at her (Primrose); and so, just when the girl was growing
up, had managed to put a stop to her annual visits to Drumsheugh. But
in place of bearing malice or enjoying her revenge, Primrose proved,
among other things, how perfectly disengaged her own juvenile feelings
had been, by only laughing and shaking her head, ever so little, over
the _mal à propos_ recollection, and perhaps cherishing a livelier
grain of curiosity respecting that bonnie Peggy who had figured as
Primrose’s unconscious rival.
Primrose’s sole chance of catching a glimpse of her cousin’s wife,
whom she did not remember having seen as the cotter lass, Peggy
Hedderwick, was at Craigture Kirk, to which the Forsyths went
one afternoon on purpose to furnish their guest with the desired
opportunity. Primrose felt puzzled and disappointed by the glimpse
she got. Yes, young Mrs. Ramsay was very bonnie so far as features,
skin, and what colour remained to her, went. But could this shabby,
dowdy, almost slatternly ‘disjasket’ (out of joint from some depressing
cause)--young woman be the lass who had caught bauld Jamie Ramsay’s
fancy? Primrose, notwithstanding her fine eye for beauty, had some
difficulty in believing it. Poor, low-born lass! bonnie Peggy’s
exaltation seemed likely to end in her destruction. Poor Jamie! whose
single-heartedness and recklessness had brought Drumsheugh to such
a pass. But there was nothing to be done: Peggy Ramsay, according
to all accounts, was developing into a woman with whom no lady, no
respectable person, would care to hold intercourse.
Primrose Ramsay improved her visit in other ways. She and Mrs. Forsyth
occupied and amused themselves after the most approved standards of
their class and generation. Mrs. Forsyth had put herself slightly out
of the upper circles by marrying a country-town doctor. Still the
simple, stay-at-home gentry were not over-particular, else they must
have narrowed their set to a nearly stifling extent; and there was a
nice enough lower stratum of professional men, bankers, clergy and
half-pay officers with their families in Craigie, to which the Forsyths
could justly consider themselves as belonging, that at many points
touched upon and merged into the lairds and their ladies’ sphere.
Young Mrs. Forsyth had committed no heinous solecism in marrying her
doctor, and she was not punished for the small offence. She did not
feel ashamed to invite Primrose Ramsay to become the Forsyths’ first
guest in fulfilment of an old school-girl promise. Primrose could
accept the invitation and be happy in the visit, without any further
_arrière-pensée_ than belonged to her stifled regret that she was
thenceforth banished from Drumsheugh, which had become a prohibited
place to her.
Mrs. Forsyth had acted differently from Jamie Ramsay, and the result
was much more satisfactory. The single light in which the two affairs
might be said to act and react on each other was that though the laird
was Dr. Forsyth’s patient, as Jenny Hedderwick had remarked, none
looked on the unfortunate match with more disfavour, or inveighed
against Peggy’s delinquencies with greater contempt, than did Mrs.
Forsyth. It was as if she felt bound to exonerate herself from the most
distant suspicion of such gross imprudence by exaggerating the public
sentiment where Drumsheugh and ‘Lady Peggy’ were concerned.
Mrs. Forsyth was a tall, blooming, consequential bride, to whom, at the
first glance, her friend served as a foil. Dr. Forsyth was a brisk,
busy, aspiring young man, well pleased with the attainment of some of
his aspirations. The couple did the honours of their new home, where
everything was fresh, bright, and hopeful, pleasantly to the young
lady visitor Primrose. She entered with heart and soul into all their
sanguine plans and projects, and so relished them in turn with her
wholesome young appetite. She had her share of the marriage-parties,
the teas and suppers, which were not yet over for the pair. She drove,
bodkin-fashion, between the two, in the doctor’s gig, without any
loss to their gentility, far and near to these blithe, yet decorous,
merry-makings. She could not execute half so well as the bride could a
lesson in classic music on any spinnet which presented itself handily,
but Primrose beat her friend hollow in playing without a music-book
tunes to which feet could keep time in carpet dances. She had her own
song, which she was always asked to give after supper, and which never
failed to elicit well-merited applause, for she had a sweet, tolerably
trained voice, and sang with feeling and taste. Strange to say, her
song was the old ballad ‘Huntingtower,’ and its echoes used to wake in
the singer dim, contradictory associations with Jamie Ramsay and his
miserable _mésalliance_.
Did the other ‘Jamie’ of the song go away lightly after all, and
leave the peasant bride to whom, in the first brush of the affair,
he gave Blair-in-Athole, Little Dunkel’, St. Johnstown’s Bower, and
Huntingtower, and all that was his so freely, to bear the brunt of
their foolish wedlock? Did the ‘Jeannie’ who refused so decisively the
braw new gown ‘wi’ Valenciennes trimmed roun’, lassie,’ that subtle
allurement to a woman’s heart, and claimed only the heart which was
hers already, who with unwavering voice, though her heart-strings were
cracking, bade her cruelly jesting, unfairly suspicious lover, ‘gae
hame’ to the wife and the bairnies three he invented to torture and
try her, pass in the sequel and in the natural order of things into
such a wasteful, reckless, low-lifed woman as Peggy Ramsay was turning
out? Had true love no real foundation? Was there a canker at its core,
sure to come to light in the end, even when it seemed most genuine and
generous?
Primrose and Mrs. Forsyth worked and read, walked and talked together,
so as to have little time to weary, even when the doctor was too much
engaged to attend to them, or was sent for to some distant patient.
The ladies drew, and embroidered ruffles, caps, and aprons for
themselves--the favourite fancy-work of the day after work of necessity
in steady, solid gown and shirt making was disposed of.
Primrose had been so far reared in intellectual circles that she
possessed something like a large portable library of her own, which
she generally carried about with her at the foot of her father’s great
hair trunk; for, apart from the Bible in which she read as regularly as
Peggy read in hers, it was to these other books Primrose had recourse
to draw fresh springs of wisdom and happiness. She had not only ‘Hannah
More’s Essays’ and ‘Dr. Gregory’s Advice to his Daughter,’ she had sets
of ‘Sir Charles Grandison’ and ‘Evelina.’ The two novels represented
all fiction to the girl, and she read in them with as inexhaustible
sympathy and delight as her grandmother had found for the interminable
adventures of the grand Cyrus.
During Primrose’s stay in Craigie she found less need for her books
than she was wont to do on a rainy day, not only because Mrs.
Forsyth was no reader, but because Dr. Forsyth, being something of a
naturalist, had indulged himself in buying copies of ‘Bewick’s British
Birds’ and ‘White’s Natural History of Selborne.’ These offered new
treasures to Primrose Ramsay’s quickness of observation and fondness
for nature.
‘Bewick’s Birds’ bore a practical result to both Mrs. Forsyth and
Primrose, and had a strange collateral bearing--presumably not
intended by the author--on certain future events in more than one
human history. The ladies were stimulated by the inspection of the
life-like engravings to a fresh enterprise for their ingenious brains
and fingers--not that the device was altogether original. Feather
tippets had become almost as much the fashion as muslin ruffles. But
Mrs. Forsyth and Primrose would make themselves such tippets as had
seldom been seen even in the wardrobes of the Duchess of Portland and
Mrs. Delany. The whole country-side was to be ransacked for a variety
of feathers. The doctor’s gig was to be put in requisition to carry
the collectors to different poultry yards, from which they were to beg,
borrow, and, it is to be feared, when temptation waxed too strong,
steal, their spoil. Mrs. Forsyth and Primrose’s minds became as stuffed
with feathers as if the minds had been so many beds and pillows for
mortal aches and bruises. The girls, even the doctor, who did not often
consent to lose sight of the superior enlightenment and dignity of
his college, medical school, and learned profession, with the burden
of responsibility involved in a promising practice, grew zealously
engrossed and affected, as only young, eager, care-free natures could
be usurped and excited by such a trifle.
‘There is Balcairnie,’ said Mrs. Forsyth one day, when the two women
were earnestly speculating on the places they ought to visit in their
search. ‘We have not been to Balcairnie yet. I am told that Balcairnie,
in addition to his peacock and a most splendid bubbly-jock, has got
a pair of guinea-fowls. We have not a single guinea-fowl’s feather,
and we ought to have a whole row of them. What a good thing for us,
Primrose, that Balcairnie has set up a pair of guinea-fowls. We must go
a-begging to Balcairnie.’
‘He is my cousin’s great friend,’ said Primrose meditatively. ‘I
remember him as a long-legged laddie running about with Jamie; but I
had not much to do with him.’
‘Of course not,’ said Mrs. Forsyth emphatically, ‘your aunt would take
care of that. Your poor cousin had too much to do with his tenant--not
that Balcairnie was so far beneath Drumsheugh. Balcairnie is a good
farm, and they say its tenant has grown rich in these war times,
though he is well liked, and has not a lowe raised among his stacks
for keeping up famine prices, like some other farmers. But it was he
who took about Drumsheugh to maidens and country ploys, where he fell
in with “Lady Peggy.” Had it not been for her there would have been no
great harm done, since young men will have their heads out and know
for themselves what a splore means. Why, even Davie, though he was
coming out for a doctor, which is the next thing to being a minister
so far as douceness is wanted, went his round of first-footings, and
feet-washings, and dergies, before he had me to take care of him,’ the
young wife ended, with a fine show of power and sedateness. ‘But as
they tell,’ she began again, ‘Balcairnie had gone too far himself in
daundering and sitting among the stooks, and dancing with the barn-door
beauty, who was as cunning as Sawtan himself in her schemes. He might
have given her his promise--who knows?--in their trysts and convoys and
caperings, for a wily fool never loses sight of her own interest. At
last, he pushed the laird into the breach, and escaped by causing the
officer to cover the soldier, instead of the soldier the officer.’
‘What a shame!’ cried Primrose; and then her natural candour and
sagacity came to her aid in disentangling the perversion of the story.
‘If Jamie did not put Balcairnie out,’ she suggested; ‘that was more
likely than that Drumsheugh should serve as a cat’s paw to another lad.’
‘Any way, Balcairnie acted as blackfoot to the laird and played him an
ill turn,’ maintained Mrs. Forsyth, who in the midst of her youth and
happiness was not disposed to take a charitable view of human nature.
Kirsty Forsyth showed herself a trifle hardened at that stage of her
history.
But so blinding is covetousness--granted the object coveted is no
heavier than a feather--that Balcairnie’s evil deeds did not hinder
Mrs. Forsyth from instigating her husband to invite the yeoman to
dinner on the market-day.
This invitation was with the sole purpose of the two fair traffickers
in feathers getting round the simple farmer and inducing him to have
every ‘pen’ which fell from the guinea-fowls carefully picked up and
stored on the ladies’ behalf--if the greed did not prompt them to
lead or drive their victim to the barbarous extremity of slaying the
birds that they might then be plucked for the benefit of the tippet
manufacturers. The still greater wantonness of torture by which birds
have been plucked alive to serve the vanity of women had not so much as
entered the heads of a more primitive generation.
Mrs. Forsyth’s single scruple was on the score of comparative
gentility. ‘Jock Home is only the farmer of Balcairnie,’ she said
anxiously to her husband; and ‘though Drumsheugh has thought fit to run
and ride the country with him, they were two young men after their own
pursuits. I do not know, Davie, if it is right for us to have him at
our table otherwise than as your patient, to bid him to meet Primrose
Ramsay as though he were young Pittentullo’, or Captain Don, or any
other gentleman of our set.’
‘Hout, Kirsty,’ said the more liberal doctor, ‘you have not stuck so
fast to your set. Balcairnie is a fine enough fellow who would pass
muster anywhere. He is well to do; I should not wonder though he were
to buy his farm, if Drumsheugh let it get into the market, and come out
as a laird among the best of them some day.’
So Mrs. Forsyth swallowed her misgivings and Balcairnie furnished a
stalwart figure to the two o’clock dinner-table in the flat above the
apothecary’s shop, which also belonged to Dr. Forsyth, and was a source
of considerable profit to him. Such a house was thought then quite
good enough for the best doctor in Craigie, even though he had mated
with a sprig of the gentry. Their olfactory nerves were not supposed
sufficiently sensitive to feel mortally offended by the occasionally
pungent smell of those drugs which helped to butter the couple’s bread.
Balcairnie and Primrose regarded each other in side glances, under
their eyelashes, with some interest. He had heard in the inveterate
distortion of facts which is a prominent feature in gossip, that the
Lady had intended her niece for her son. Primrose had just been told
that Balcairnie had contrived to shift his folly and its consequences
to Drumsheugh’s broad shoulders, though her mother-wit had cancelled
the error, and laid hold of the greater probability of the yeoman’s
having been jilted for the laird.
The estimate which the two formed of each other at first sight differed
comically and unfairly.
‘A shilpet sparroy of a lass like that!’ Balcairnie reflected
disdainfully, ‘was she to stand in Bonnie Peggy’s licht? Drumsheugh
would not have had an ee in his head or a mind of his ain, if he had
preferred this leddy to yon kimmer.’
‘Jamie’s a well-favoured, manly chield, with a good heart, though he
may have a thick head,’ considered Primrose, not without reluctance;
‘but I doubt his Peggy stood in her own light for all that. If I am not
mistaken, the yeoman is worth double the laird.’ Her penetration saw at
once, against her will, that Balcairnie was the bigger, better man of
the two.
But by the time the party had repaired to the drawing-room, and the
ladies were exerting themselves with their interested object in helping
to entertain Balcairnie, a remarkable reversal of his opinion took
place, while her verdict remained unchanged.
As the conversation was craftily turned to ornithology generally, he
became deeply impressed by Primrose’s lively intelligence in expounding
these plates in the bird-book, which so delighted him, and by her
wonderful acquaintance with the looks and habits of those fowls of the
air with which he himself was most familiar.
‘The leddy-lass kens as muckle about craws and doos and laverocks as
I do, though I have followed the ploo, and set girns for them, when I
should have thocht she would have been sitting with her feet on the
fender, or at a window fanning herself, ganting over a nouvelle and
holding a yapping lap-dog on her knee.’
Mrs. Forsyth made a dead set at him with the feather tippets. He looked
at them, laughed with surprised pleasure, and ventured to touch them
shyly with his great brown hand in a sort of marvelling, fearful,
wholly large-hearted admiration. He glanced round at the tambour
frames, the open spinnet, the books which might be nouvelles, but which
must be so much better reading than he had imagined when they did not
incapacitate the readers for all this ability and industry, and for
a practical appreciation of the bird-book. It is to be doubted that
Balcairnie applied to Primrose and Mrs. Forsyth a homely, if emphatic,
classification and commendation, which at the same time meant a great
deal from his mouth and that of Robbie Burns--‘clever hizzies!’ he
said to himself. Balcairnie remembered Peggy with a rueful sense of
contrast. Poor lass! she could not be half so useful now at Drumsheugh.
She could not divert herself in all these charming fashions. Poor
Drumsheugh had, indeed, thrown himself away. How could he have been so
blind and besotted? It made au odds when a man kenned little better.
Of course, Balcairnie would be right glad to be allowed to be of any
use to the ladies. The guinea-fowls were at their service, living or
dead, and he thought he could put them in the way of some moor-hens and
wild ducks. If Mrs. Forsyth and her friend would not object to honour
his bachelor-house by their presence, if they could put up with the
poor accommodation of a farm-house, perhaps the doctor would bring them
out to see what they could find at Balcairnie, where the cherries were
nearly ripe and curds and cream were always to be had for the taking.
The ladies were correspondingly gratified, not only with the success
of their design, but in addition with Balcairnie’s somewhat quaint and
naïve but altogether becoming deference and gallantry. An engagement to
visit him was entered into on the spot.
All this agreeable social intercourse had nothing whatever to do with
old friendship and its obligations--on the contrary. Balcairnie, as
he looked and listened, more and more enchanted by the bright face
and womanly eloquence of Primrose Ramsay, in the revulsion of his
feelings, was conscious of an increasing temptation to undervalue and
decry Peggy’s charms and Drumsheugh’s taste, which the fickle man had
been applauding to the skies hardly three hours before. Balcairnie no
longer called Primrose ‘a shilpet sparroy.’ Where had his eyes or his
ears been when he made that invidious comparison? She was like the lady
wren in her dainty proportions as she flitted here and there with such
light grace, and such deftness of hand in everything she did, whether
she helped Mrs. Forsyth to dispense the dishes of tea, or showed Dr.
Forsyth the impressions of seals the ladies had taken in his absence,
or arranged the counters on the card-table. She was like his mother’s
favourite white hen, which always looked so dainty and spotless beside
the other hens, that discriminating people grew disgusted with their
flaunting yellow or red necks relieved against their brown or black
backs. She was like the white calf, which his father had held to be
so lucky. No pet lamb could have been so canty as this orphan lassie
showed herself. She was an orphan lassie, though she was also a lady
who had danced at the hunt balls into which Balcairnie might not
intrude.
But when Primrose was farther called upon to lend her aid to the
hilarity of the evening by singing for Balcairnie’s benefit, and when
she sang her romantic ditty of ‘Huntingtower,’ Balcairnie, struck
by the unintentional coincidence, swayed by more than one powerful
influence, and penetrated to his melted heart, took a swift and bold
resolution which was neither time-serving nor personal.