PHEMY’S CHAMPION
When she had told all, Kirsty rose, and laying aside the stocking,
said,
‘I maun awa to Weelset, mother. I promised the bairn I would lat
Francie ken whaur she was, and gie him the chance o’ sayin his say til
her.’
‘Verra weel, lassie! ye ken what ye’re aboot, and I s’ no interfere wi’
ye. But, eh, ye’ll be tired afore ye win to yer bed!’
‘I’ll no tramp it, mother; I’ll tak the gray mear.’
‘She’s gey and fresh, lassie; ye maun be on yer guaird.’
‘A’ the better!’ returned Kirsty. ‘To hear ye, mother, a body wud think
I cudna ride!’
‘Forbid it, bairn! Yer father says, man or wuman, there’s no ane i’ the
countryside like ye upo’ beast-back.’
‘They tak to me, the craturs! It was themsels learnt me to ride!’
answered Kirsty, as she took a riding whip from the wall, and went out
of the kitchen.
The mare looked round when she entered the stable, and whinnied. Kirsty
petted and stroked her, gave her two or three handfuls of oats, and
while she was eating strapped a cloth on her back: there was no
side-saddle about the farm. Kirsty could ride well enough sideways on a
man’s, but she liked the way her father had taught her far better.
Utterly fearless, she had, in his training from childhood until he
could do no more for her, grown a horsewoman such as few.
The moment the mare had finished her oats, she bridled her, led her out,
and sprang on her back; where sitting as on a pillion, she rode quietly
out of the farm-close. The moment she was beyond the gate, she leaned
back, and, throwing her right foot over the mare’s crest, rode like an
Amazon, at ease, and with mastery. The same moment the mare was away,
up hill and down dale, almost at racing speed. Had the coming moon been
above the horizon, the Amazon farm-girl would have been worth meeting!
So perfectly did she yield her lithe, strong body to every motion of
the mare, abrupt or undulant, that neither ever felt a jar, and their
movements seemed the outcome of a vital force common to the two. Kirsty
never thought whether she was riding well or ill, gracefully or
otherwise, but the mare knew that all was right between them. Kirsty
never touched the bridle except to moderate the mare’s pace when she
was too much excited to heed what she said to her.
Doubtless, to many eyes, she would have looked better in a riding
habit, but she would have felt like an eagle in a nightgown. She wore a
full winsey petticoat, which she managed perfectly, and stockings of
the same colour. On her head she had nothing but the silk net at that
time and in that quarter much worn by young unmarried women. In the rush
of the gallop it slipped, and its content escaped: she put the net in
her pocket, and cast a knot upon her long hair as if it had been a rope.
This she did without even slackening her speed, transferring from her
hand to her teeth the whip she carried. It was one colonel Gordon had
given her father in remembrance of a little adventure they had together,
in which a lash from it in the dark night was mistaken for a sword-cut,
and did them no small service.
By the time they reached the castle, the moon was above the horizon.
Kirsty brought the mare to a walk, and resuming her pillion-seat,
remanded her hair to its cage, and readjusted her skirt; then, setting
herself as in a side-saddle, she rode gently up to the castle-door.
A manservant, happening to see her from the hall-window, saved her
having to ring the bell, and greeted her respectfully, for everybody
knew Corbyknowe’s Kirsty. She said she wanted to see Mr. Gordon, and
suggested that perhaps he would be kind enough to speak to her at the
door. The man went to find his master, and in a minute or two brought
the message that Mr. Gordon would be with her presently. Kirsty drew
her mare back into the shadow which, the moon being yet low, a great
rock on the crest of a neighbouring hill cast upon the approach, and
waited.
It was three minutes before Francis came sauntering bare-headed round
the corner of the house, his hands in his pockets, and a cigar in his
mouth. He gave a glance round, not seeing his visitor at once, and then
with a nod, came toward her, still smoking. His nonchalance, I believe,
was forced and meant to cover uneasiness. For all that had passed to
make him forget Kirsty, he yet remembered her uncomfortably, and at the
present moment could not help regarding her as an angelic _bête noir_,
of whom he was more afraid than of any other human being. He approached
her in a sort of sidling stroll, as if he had no actual business with
her, but thought of just asking whether she would sell her horse. He
did not speak, and Kirsty sat motionless until he was near enough for a
low-voiced conference.
‘What are ye aboot wi’ Phemy Craig, Francie?’ she began, without a word
of greeting.
Kirsty was one of the few who practically deny time; with whom what
was, is; what is, will be. She spoke to the tall handsome man in the
same tone and with the same forms as when they were boy and girl
together.
He had meant their conversation to be at arm’s length, so to say, but
his intention broke down at once, and he answered her in the same
style.
‘I ken naething aboot her. What for sud I?’ he answered.
‘I ken ye dinna ken whaur she is, for I div,’ returned Kirsty. ‘Ye
answer a queston I never speired! What are ye aboot wi’ Phemy, I
challenge ye again! Puir lassie, she has nae brither to say the word!’
‘That’s a’ verra weel; but ye see, Kirsty,’ he began--then stopped, and
having stared at her a moment in silence, exclaimed, ‘Lord, what a
splendid woman you’ve grown!’--He had probably been drinking with his
mother.
Kirsty sat speechless, motionless, changeless as a soldier on guard.
Gordon had to resume and finish his sentence.
‘As I was going to say, _you_ can’t take the place of a brother to her,
Kirsty, else I should know how to answer you!--It’s awkward when a lady
takes you to task,’ he added with a drawl.
‘Dinna trouble yer heid aboot that, Francie: hert ye hae little to
trouble aboot onything!’ rejoined Kirsty. Then changing to English as
he had done, she went on: ‘I claim no consideration on that score.’
Francis Gordon felt very uncomfortable. It was deuced hard to be
bullied by a woman!
He stood silent, because he had nothing to say.
‘Do you mean to marry my Phemy?’ asked Kirsty.
‘Really, Miss Barclay,’ Francis began, but Kirsty interrupted him.
‘Mr. Gordon,’ she said sternly, ‘be a man, and answer me. If you mean
to marry her, say so, and go and tell her father--or my father, if you
prefer. She is at the Knowe, miserable, poor child! that she did not
meet you to-night. That was my doing; she could not help herself.’
Gordon broke into a strained laugh.
‘Well, you’ve got her, and you can keep her!’ he said.
‘You have not answered my question!’
‘Really, Miss Barclay, you must not be too hard on a man! Is a fellow
not to speak to a woman but he must say at once whether or not he
intends to marry her?’
‘Answer my question.’
‘It is a ridiculous one!’
‘You have been trystin’ with her almost every night for something like
a month!’ rejoined Kirsty, ‘and the question is not at all ridiculous.’
‘Let it be granted then, and let the proper person ask me the question,
and I will answer it. You, pardon me, have nothing to do with the
matter in hand.’
‘That is the answer of a coward,’ returned Kirsty, her cheek flaming at
last. ‘You know the guileless nature of your old schoolmaster, and take
advantage of it! You know that the poor girl has not a man to look to,
and you will not have a woman befriend her! It is cowardly, ungrateful,
mean, treacherous. You are a bad man, Francie! You always were a fool,
but now you are a wicked fool! If I were her brother--if I were a man,
I would thrash you!’
‘It’s a good thing you’re not able, Kirsty! I should be frightened!’
said Gordon, with a laugh and a shrug, thinking to throw the thing
aside as done with.
‘I said, if I was a man!’ returned Kirsty. ‘I did not say, if I was
able. I _am_ able.
‘I don’t see why a woman should leave to any man what she’s able to do
for herself!’ said Kirsty, as if communing with her own thoughts.--
‘Francie, you’re no gentleman; you are a scoundrel and a coward!’ she
immediately added aloud.
‘Very well,’ returned Francis angrily; ‘since you choose to be treated
as a man, and tell me I am no gentleman, I tell you I wouldn’t marry
the girl if the two of you went on your knees to me!--A common, silly,
country-bred flirt!--ready for anything a man----’
Kirsty’s whip descended upon him with a merciless lash. The hiss of
it, as it cut the air with all the force of her strong arm, startled
her mare, and she sprang aside, so that Kirsty, who, leaning forward,
had thrown the strength of her whole body into the blow, could not but
lose her seat. But it was only to stand upright on her feet, fronting
her--call him enemy, antagonist, victim, what you will. Gordon was
grasping his head: the blow had for a moment blinded him. She gave him
another stinging cut across the hands.
‘That’s frae yer father! The whup was his, and his swoord never did
fairer wark!’ she said. ‘--I hae dune for him what I cud!’ she added in
a low sorrowful voice, and stepped back, as having fulfilled her
mission.
He rushed at her with a sudden torrent of evil words. But he was no
match for her in agility as, I am almost certain, he would have proved
none in strength had she allowed him to close with her: she avoided him
as she had more than once _jinkit_ a charging bull, every now and then
dealing him another sharp blow from his father’s whip. The treatment
began to bring him to his senses.
‘For God’s sake, Kirsty,’ he cried, ceasing his attempts to lay hold of
her, ‘behaud, or we’ll hae the haill hoose oot, and what’ll come o’ me
than I daurna think! I doobt I’ll never hear the last o’ ’t as ’tis!’
‘Am I to trust ye, Francie?’
‘I winna lay a finger upo’ ye, damn ye!’ he said in mingled wrath and
humiliation.
Throughout, Kirsty had held her mare by the bridle, and she, although
behaving as well as she could, had, in the fright the laird’s rushes
and the sounds of the whip caused her, added not a little to her
mistress’s difficulties. Just as she sprang on her back, the door
opened, and faces looked peering out; whereupon with a cut or two she
encouraged a few wild gambols, so that all the trouble seemed to have
been with the mare. Then she rode quietly through the gate.
Gordon stood in a motionless fury until he heard the soft thunder of
the mare’s hoofs on the turf as Kirsty rode home at a fierce gallop;
then he turned and went into the house, not to communicate what had
taken place, but to lie about it as like truth as he might find
possible.
About half-way home, on the side of a hill, across which a low wind,
the long death-moan of autumn, blew with a hopeless, undulant, but not
intermittent wail among the heather, Kirsty broke into a passionate fit
of weeping, but ere she reached home all traces of her tears had
vanished.
Gordon did not go the next day, nor the day after, but he never saw
Phemy again. It was a week before he showed himself, and then he was
not a beautiful sight. He attributed the one visible wale on his cheek
and temple to a blow from a twig as he ran in the dusk through the
shrubbery after a strange dog. Even at the castle they did not know
exactly when he left it. His luggage was sent after him.
The domestics at least were perplexed as to the wale on his face, until
the man to whom Kirsty had spoken at the door hazarded a conjecture or
two, which being not far from the truth, and as such accepted, the
general admiration and respect which already haloed Corbyknowe’s
Kirsty, were thenceforward mingled with a little wholesome fear.
When Kirsty told her father and mother what she had done at castle
Weelset, neither said a word. Her mother turned her head away, but the
light in her father’s eyes, had she had any doubt as to how they would
take it, would have put her quite at her ease.