"I do not want to look upon them--they are here!" He touched his
forehead. "And one of them is here!" He laid his hand on his heart
with that freedom of gesture which often comes to the dying, especially
to those who have repressed themselves all their lives.
I looked down at the miniature and saw the picture of a girl, very
pretty, beautiful indeed, but with that width between the eyes which, in
fair women, gives a double look.
"Ailie, my brother's wife!" he said, in answer to my glance. "These are
her letters. Open them one by one and burn them."
I did as he bade me, throwing my eyes out of focus so that I might not
read a word. But out of one fluttered a pressed flower. It was fixed
on a card with a little lock of yellow hair arranged about it for a
frame, fresh and crisp. And as I picked it up I could not help catching
the prettily printed words:
"TO DARLING ROGER, FROM HIS OWN AILIE."
There was also a date.
"Let me look at that!" he said quickly. I gave it to him. He looked at
the flower--a quick painful glance, but as he handed me back the card he
laughed a little.
"It is a 'Forget-me-not,'" he said. Then in a musing tone he added:
"_Well, Ailie, I never have!_"
So one by one the letters were burnt up, till only a black pile of ashes
remained, in ludicrous contrast to the closely packed bundle I had taken
from the drawer.
"Now burn the ribbon that kept them together, and look at the other
paper."
I unfolded it. It was a will in holograph, the characters clear and
strong, signed by Archibald Ruthven Campbell, of Inchtaggart,
Argyleshire, devising all his estate and property to his son Roger, with
only a bequest in money to his elder son!
I was dazed as I looked through it, and my lips framed a question. The
young man smiled.
"My father's last will," he said, "dated a month before his death. She
never knew it." (Again he indicated the upper room where his mother's
body lay.) "_They_ never knew it." (He looked at the girl's picture as
it smiled up from the table where I had laid it.) "My brother Archie
succeeded on a will older by twenty years. But when I lost Ailie, I
lost all. Why should she marry a failure? Besides, I truly believe
that she loves my brother, at least as well as ever she loved me. It is
her nature. That she is infinitely happier with him, I know."
"Then you were the heir all the time and never told it--not to any one!"
I cried, getting up on my feet. He motioned me towards the grate again.
"Burn it," he said, "I have had a moment of weakness. It is over. I
ought to have been consistent and not told even you. No, let the
picture lie. I think it does me good. God bless you, Alec! Now,
good-night; go home to your Nance."
* * * * *
He died the next forenoon while I was still on my rounds. And when I
went in to look at him, the picture had disappeared. I questioned the
old crone who had watched his last moments and afterwards prepared him
for burial.
"He had something in his hand," she answered, "but I couldna steer it.
His fingers grippit it like a smith's vice."
I looked, and there from between the clenched fingers of the dead right
hand the eyes of Ailie Campbell smiled out at me--blue and false as her
own Forget-me-not.
*LOWE'S SEAT*
Elspeth did not mean to go to Lowe's Seat. She had indeed no business
there. For she was the minister's daughter, and at this time of the day
ought to have been visiting the old wives in the white-washed "Clachan"
on the other side of the river, showing them how to render their
patchwork quilts less hideous, compassionating them on their sons'
ungrateful silence (letters arrive so seldom from the "States"). Yet
here was Elspeth Stuart under the waving boughs, seated upon the soft
grassy turf, and employed in nothing more utilitarian than picking a
gowan asunder petal by petal. It was the middle of an August afternoon,
and as hot as it ever is in Scotland.
Why then had Elspeth gone to Lowe's Seat? It seemed a mystery. It was
to the full as pleasant on the side of the river where dwelt her father,
where complained her maiden aunt, and where after their kind racketed
and stormed her roving vagabond bird-nesting brothers. On the Picts'
Mound beside the kirk (an ancient Moothill, so they say, upon which
justice of the rudest and readiest was of old dispensed) there were
trees and green depths of shade. She might have stayed and read
there--the "Antiquary" perhaps, or "Joseph Andrews," or her first
favourite "Emma," all through the long sweet drowsing summer's
afternoon. But somehow up at Lowe's Seat, the leaves of the wood
laughed to a different tune and the Airds woods were dearer than all
sweet Kenside.
So in spite of all Elspeth Stuart had crossed in her father's own skiff,
which he used for his longer ministerial excursions "up the water," and
her brothers Frank and Sandy for perch-fishing and laying their "ged"
lines. There was indeed a certain puddock in a high state of
decomposition in a locker which sadly troubled Elspeth as she bent to
the oars. And now she was at Lowe's Seat.
It is strange to what the love of poetry will drive a girl. Elspeth
tossed back the fair curls which a light wind persisted in flicking
ticklingly over her brow. With a coquettish, blushful, half-indignant
gesture she thrust them back with her hand, as if they ought to have
known better than to intrude upon a purpose so serious as hers in coming
to Lowe's Seat.
"Here was the place," she murmured to herself, explanatorily, "where the
poor boy hid himself to write his poem--a hundred years ago! Was it
really a hundred years ago?"
She looked about her, and the wind whispered and rustled and laughed a
little down among the elms and the hazels, while out towards the river
and on a level with her face the silver birches shook their plumes
daintily as a pretty girl her wandering tresses, bending saucily toward
the water as they did so. Then Elspeth said the first two verses of
"Mary's Dream" over to herself. The poem was a favourite with her
father, a hard stern man with a sentimental base, as is indeed very
common in Scotland.
"The moon had climbed the highest hill
That rises o'er the source of Dee,
And from the eastern summit shed
Her silver light on tower and tree.
When Mary laid her down to sleep,
Her thoughts on Sandy far at sea,
There soft and low a voice was heard,
Saying, 'Mary, weep no more for me!'"
Elspeth was young and she was not critical. Lowe's simple and to the
modern mind somewhat obvious verse, seemed to her to contain the essence
of truth and feeling. But on the other hand she looked adorable as she
said them. For, strangely enough, a woman's critical judgment is
generally in inverse ratio to her personal attractions--though doubtless
there are exceptions to the rule.
As has been said, she did not go to Lowe's Seat for any particular
purpose. She said so to herself as many as ten times while she was
crossing in the skiff, and at least as often when she was pulling
herself up the steep braeface by the supple hazels and more stubborn
young oaks.
So Elspeth Stuart continued to hum a vagrant tune, more than half of the
bars wholly silent, and the rest sometimes loud and sometimes soft, as
she glanced downwards out of her green garret high among the leaves.
More than once she grew restive and pattered impatiently with her
fingers on her lap as if expecting some one who did not come. Only
occasionally she looked down towards the river. Indeed, she permitted
her eyes to rove in every direction except immediately beneath her,
where through a mist of leaves she could see the Dee kissing murmuringly
the rushes on its marge.
A pretty girl--yes, surely. More than that, one winsome with the wilful
brightness which takes men more than beauty. And being withal only
twenty years of her age, it may well be believed that Elspeth Stuart,
the only daughter of the parish minister of Dullarg, did not move far
without drawing the glances of men after her as a magnet attracts steel
filings.
Yet a second marvel appeared beneath. There was a young man moving
along by the water's edge and he did not look up. To all appearance
Lowe's Seat might just as well not have existed for him, and its pretty
occupant might have been reading Miss Austen under the pines of the Kirk
Knowe on the opposite side of Dee Water.
Elspeth also appeared equally unconscious. Of course, how otherwise?
She had plucked a spray of bracken and was peeling away the fronds,
unravelling the tough fibres of the root and rubbing off the underleaf
seeds, so that they showed red on her fingers like iron rust. Wondrous
busy had our maid become all suddenly. But though she had not smiled
when the youth came in sight, she pouted when he made as if he would
pass by without seeing her. Which is a strange thing when you come to
think of it, considering that she herself had apparently not observed
him.
Suddenly, however, she sang out loudly, a strong ringing stave like a
blackbird from the copse as the sun rises above the hills. Whereat the
young man started as if he had been shot. Hitherto he had held a
fishing-rod in his hand and seemed intent only on the stream. But at
the sound of Elspeth's voice he whirled about, and catching a glimpse of
bright apparel through the green leaves, he came straight up through the
tangle with the rod in his hand. Even at that moment it did not escape
Elspeth's eye that he held it awkwardly, like one little used to
Galloway burn-sides. She meant to show him better by-and-by.
Having arrived, the surprise and mutual courtesies were simply
overpowering. Elspeth had not dreamed--the merest impulse had led
her--she had been reading Lowe's poem the night before. It was really
the only completely sheltered place for miles, where one could muse in
peace. He knew it was, did he not?
But we must introduce this young man. If he had possessed a card it
would have said: "The Rev. Allan Syme, B.A."
He was the new minister of the Cameronian Kirk at Cairn Edward. He has
just been "called," chiefly because the other two on the short leet had
not been considered sufficiently "firm" in their views concerning an
"Erastian Establishment," as at the Kirk on the Hill they called the
Church of Scotland nationally provided for by the Revolution Settlement.
In his trial discourses, however, Mr. Syme had proved categorically that
no good had ever come out of any state-supported Church, that the
ministers of the present establishment were little better than priests
of the Scarlet Woman who sitteth on the Seven Hills, and that all those
who trusted in them were even as the moles and the bats, children of
darkness and travellers on the smoothly macadamised highway to
destruction.
Nevertheless, at that free stave of Elspeth's carol Allan Syme went up
hill as fast as if he had never preached a sermon on the text, "And
Elijah girded up his loins and ran before Ahab unto the entering in of
Jezreel."
At half-past eleven by the clock the minister of the Cameronian Kirk sat
down beside this daughter of an Erastian Establishment.
Have you heard the leaves of beech and birch laugh as they clash and
rustle? That is how the wicked summer woods of Airds laughed that day
about Lowe's Seat.
* * * * *
Half a mile down the river there is a ferry boat which at infrequent
intervals pushes a flat duck's bill across Dee Water. It is wide enough
to take a loaded cart of hay, and long enough to accommodate two young
horses tail to tail and yet leave room for the statutory flourishing of
heels.
Bess MacTaggart could take it across with any load upon it you pleased,
pushing easily upon an iron lever. They use a wheel now, but it was
much prettier in the old days when all for a penny you could watch Bess
lift the toothed lever with a sharp movement of her shapely arm, wet and
dripping from the chain, as it slowly dredged itself up from the river
bed.
It was half-past four when, in reply to repeated hails, the boat left
the Dullarg shore with a company of three men on board, and in addition
the sort of person who is called a "single lady."
Two of the men stood together at one end of the ferry-boat, and after
Bess had bidden one of them sharply to "get out of her road," she called
him "Drows" to make it up, and asked him if he were going over to the
lamb sale at Nether Airds.
"If it's the Lord's wull!" Drows replied, with solemnity.
Both he and his companion had commodious, clean-shaven "horse" faces,
with an abundance of gray hair standing out in a straggling
semi-circular aureole underneath the chin. Cameronian was stamped upon
their faces with broad strong simplicity. The blue bonnet, already
looking old-world among the universal "felts" common to most adult
manhood--the deep serious eyes, as it were withdrawn under the penthouse
of bushy brows, and looking upon all things (even lamb sales) as
fleeting and transitory--the long upper lip and the mouth tightly
compressed--these marked out John Allanson of Drows and Matthew Carment
of Craigs as pillars of that Kirk which alone of all the fragments of
Presbytery is senior to the Established Church of Scotland.
On the other side of the boat and somewhat apart stood Dr. Hector
Stuart, gazing gloomily at the black water as it rippled and clappered
under the broad lip of the ferry-boat. A proud man, a Highland
gentleman of old family, was the minister of Dullarg. He kept his head
erect, and for any notice he had taken of the Cameronian elders, they
might just as well not have been on the boat at all. And in their turn
the elders of the Cameronian Kirk compressed their lips more firmly and
their eyes seemed deeper set in their heads when their glances fell on
this pillar of Erastianism. For nowhere is the racial antipathy of
north and south so strong as in Galloway. There, and there alone, the
memory of the Highland Host has never died out, and every autumn when
the hills glow red with heather from horizon to horizon verge, the story
is told to Galloway childhood of how Lag and Clavers wasted the heritage
of the Lord, and how from Ailsa to Solway all the west of Scotland is
"flowered with the blood of the Martyrs."
The thin nervous woman kept close to the minister's elbow.
"I tell you I saw her cross the water, Hector," she was saying as Dr.
Stuart looked ahead, scanning keenly the low sandy shores they were
nearing.
"The boat is gone and she has not returned. It is a thing not proper for
a young lady and a minister's daughter to be so long absent from home!"
"My daughter has been too well brought up to do aught that is improper!"
said Dr. Stuart, with grave sententious dignity. "You need not pursue
the subject, Mary!"
There was just enough likeness between them to stamp the pair as brother
and sister. As the boat touched the edge of the sharply sloping shingle
bank, the hinged gang-plank tilted itself up at a new angle. The
passengers paid their pennies to Bess MacTaggart and stepped sedately on
shore. The boat-house stands in a water-girt peninsula, the Ken being
on one side broad and quiet, the Black Water on the other, sulky and
turbulent. So that for half a mile there was but one road for this
curiously assorted pair of pairs.
And as they approached them the woods of Airds laughed even more
mockingly, with a ripple of tossing birch plumes like a woman when she
is merry in the night and dares not laugh aloud. And the beeches
responded with a dryish cackle that had something of irony in it.
Listen and you will hear how it was the next time a beech-tree shakes
out his leaves to dry the dew off them.
The two elders came to a quick turn of the road. There was a stile just
beyond. A moment before a young man had overleaped it, and now he was
holding up his hands encouragingly to a girl who smiled down upon him
from above. It was a difficult stile. The dyke top was shaky. Two of
the bottom steps; were missing altogether. All who have once been young
know the kind of stile--verily, a place of infinite danger to the
unwary.
So at least thought Elspeth Stuart, as for a long moment she stood
daintying her skirts about her ankles on the perilous copestone, and
drawing her breath a little short at the sight of the steep descent into
the road.
The elders also stood still, and behind them the other pair came slowly
up. And surely some wicked tricksome Puck laughed unseen among the
beech leaves.
Elspeth Stuart had taken the young man's hand now. He was lifting her
down. There--it was done. And--yes, you are right--something else
happened--just what would have happened to you and me, twenty, thirty,
or is it forty years ago?
Then with a clash and a rustle the beeches told the tale to the birches
over all the wooded slopes of the hill of Airds.
* * * * *
"Elspeth!"
"Elspeth Stuart!"
"_Maister Syme!_"
The names came from four pairs of horrified lips as the parties to the
above mentioned transaction fell swiftly asunder, with sudden stricken
horror on their faces. The first cry came shrill and keen, and was
accompanied by an out-throwing of feminine hands. The second fell
sternly from the mouth of one who was at once a parent and a minister of
the Establishment outraged in his tenderest feelings. But indubitably
the elders had it. For one thing, they were two to one, and as they
said for the second time with yet deeper gravity "_Maister Syme!_" it
appeared at once that they, and only they, were able adequately to deal
with the unprecedented situation. But the others did what they could.
Mistress Mary Stuart, the minister's maiden sister, flew forward with an
eager cry, the "scraich" of a desperate hen when she is on the wrong
side of the fence and sees the "daich" disappearing down a hundred
hungry throats.
She clutched her niece by the arm.
"Come away this moment!" she cried, "do you know who this young man is?"
But Elspeth did not answer. She was looking at her father, Dr. Stuart,
whose eyes were bent upon the young man. Very stern they were, the
fierce sudden darkness of Celtic anger in them. But the young
Cameronian minister knew that he had far worse to face than that, and
met the frown of paternal severity with shame indeed mantling on his
cheek and neck, but yet with a certain quiet of determination firming
his heart within him.
"Sir," he said, "that of which you have been witness was no more than an
accident--the fault of impulse and young blood. But I own I was carried
away. I ask the young lady's pardon and yours. I should have spoken to
you first, but now I will delay no longer. Sir, I love your daughter!"
Then came for the first time a slight smile upon the pale face of his
fellow-culprit. She said in her heart, "Ah, Allan, if ye had spoken
first to my father, feint a kiss would ye ever have gotten from Elspeth
Stuart!"
But at the manful words of the young Cameronian the face of her father
grew only the more stern, the two elders watching and biding their time
by the roadside.
They knew that it would come before long.
At last after a long silence Dr. Stuart spoke.
"Sir," he said grimly, "I do not bandy words with a stranger upon the
public highway. I myself have nothing to say to you. I forbid you ever
again to speak to my daughter. Elspeth, follow me!"
And with no more than this he turned and stalked away. But his daughter
also had the high Highland blood in her veins. She shook off with one
large motion of her arm the stringy clutch of her aunt's fingers.
"Heed you not, Allan," she said, speaking very clearly, so that all
might hear, "when ye want her, Elspeth Stuart will come the long road
and the straight road to speak a word with you."
It was a bold avowal to make, and a moment before the girl had not meant
to say anything of the kind. But they had taken the wrong way with her.
"Oh, unmaidenly--most unmaidenly!" cried her aunt, "come away--ye are
mad this day, Elspeth Stuart--he has but a hunder a year of stipend, and
may lose that ony day!"
But Elspeth did not answer. She was holding out her hand to Allan Syme.
He bent quickly and kissed it. This young man had had a mother who
taught him gracious ways, not at all in keeping with the staid manners
of a son of the covenants.
* * * * *
"And now, sir," said John Allanson of Drows, turning grimly upon his
minister, who stood watching Elspeth's girlish figure disappear round
the curve of the green-edged track, "what have you to say to us?"
Then Allan Syme's pulses leaped quick and light, for he knew that of a
surety the time of his visitation was at hand. Yet his heart did not
fail within him. At the last it was glad and high. "For after all" (he
smiled as he thought it), "after all--well, they cannot _take_ that from
me."
"Sir," said Matthew Carment, in a louder tone, "heard ye the quastion
that your ruling elder hath pitten till ye?"
"John and Matthew," said the young man, gently, "ye are my elders, and I
will not answer you as I did Dr. Stuart."
"The priest of Midian!" said Matthew Carment.
"The forswearer of covenants!" said John Allanson.
"But I will speak with you as those who have been unto me as Aaron and
Hur for the upholding of mine hands----"
"Say, rather," said John Allanson, sternly, "as Phineas the son of
Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest who thrust through the Midianitish
woman in sight of all the congregation of Israel, as they stood weeping
before the door of the tabernacle!"
"So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel," quoted Matthew
Carment, gravely, finishing his friend's sentence.
Allan Syme winced. The words had been his Sunday's text.
"I tell you, gentlemen," he said quickly, "since God gave Eve to Adam
there has not been on earth a sweeter, truer maid than this. You have
heard me declare my love for her. Well, I love her more than I dare
trust my tongue to utter!"
"And how about your love for the Covenants? And for the Faithful Remnant
of the persecuted Kirk of the Martyrs?" said Drows, with a certain
dreary persistence that wore on Allan Syme like prolonged toothache.
Then Matthew Carment, who, though slower than the ruling elder, but was
not less sure, gave in his contribution.
"'Like unto Eve,' said ye? A true word--verily, a most true word! For
did not we with our own eyes see ye with her partake of the forbidden
fruit? But there is a difference--_your_ eyes, young man, have not yet
been opened!"
Allan Syme began to grow angry.
"I am a free agent," he said fiercely. "I am not a child under bonds.
You are not my tutors and governors by any law, human or divine. Nor am
I answerable to you whom I shall woo, or whom I shall wed!"
"Ye are answerable to God and the Kirk!" cried the two with one voice.
And to this Matthew Carment again added his say. The three were now
walking slowly in the direction of the lamb sale.
"Sir, I mind how ye well described the so-called ministers of the
establishment--'locusts on the face of our land,' these were your words,
'instruments of inefficiency, the plague spot upon the nation, the very
scorn of Reformation, and a scandal to Religion!' Ye said well,
minister; and the spawn of Belial is like unto Belial!"
Allan Syme was now angry exceedingly.
"God be my judge," he cried, "she whom I love is more Christian than the
whole pack of you. Never has she spoken an ill word of any, ever since
I have known her!"
"And wherefore should she?" said John Allanson of Drows, as
dispassionately as a clerk reading an indictment. "Hath she not been
clothed in fine linen and fared sumptuously every day? Hath she not
eaten of the fine flour and the honey and the oil? Hath she not been
adorned with broidered work and shod with badger skin, and, even as her
sisters Aholah and Aholibah of old, hath not power been given unto her
to lead even the hearts of the elect captive?"
Then Allan Syme broke forth furiously.
"Your tongues are evil!" he said, "ye are not fit to take her name on
your lips. She is to me as the mother of our Lord--yes, as Mary, the
wife of Joseph, the carpenter!"
"And indeed I never thocht sae muckle o' that yin either," said Matthew
of Craigs, "the Papishes make ower great a to-do about her for my
liking!"
"Matthew Carment and John Allanson, I bid you hearken to me," cried the
young minister.
"Aye, Allan Syme, we will hearken!" they answered, fronting him eye to
eye.
"God judge between you and me," he said. "He hath said that for this
cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife.
Now, I know well that if ye like, you two can take from me my kirk and
all my living. But I have spoken, and I will adhere. I have promised,
and I will keep. Take this my parting message. Do your duty as it is
revealed to you. I will go forth freely and willingly. Naked I came
among you--naked will I go. The hearts of my people are dearer to me
than life. Ye can twine them from me if you will. Ye can out me from
my kirk, send me forth of my manse--cast me upon the world as a man
disgraced. But, as I am a sinner answerable to God, there are two
things you cannot do, ye cannot make me break my plighted word nor make
me other than proud of the love I have won from God's fairest creature
upon earth."
And with these words he turned on his heel and strode straight uphill
away from them in the direction of his distant home.
The two men stood looking after him. Drows stroked his shaggy fringe of
beard. Matthew Carment put his hand to his eyes and gazed under it as
if he had been looking into the sunset. There was a long silence. At
last the two turned and looked at each other.
"Weel, what think ye?" said Drows, ruling elder and natural leader in
debate.
There was a still longer pause, for Matthew Carment was a man slow by
nature and slower by habit.
"He's a fine lad!" he said at last.
Drows broke a twig elaborately from the hedge and chewed the ends.
"So I was thinkin'!" he answered.
"I had it in my mind at the time he was speakin'," began Matthew, and
then hesitated.
"Aye, what was in your mind?"
"I was thinkin' on the days when I courted Jean!"
"Aye, man!"
There was another long silence.
It was Draws who broke it this time, and he said, "I--I was thinkin'
too, Mathy! Aye, man, I was thinkin'!"
"Aboot Marget?" queried Matthew Carment.
"_Na, no aboot Marget!_"
They were silent again. The ruling elder settled to another green sprig
of hedge-thorn. It seemed palatable. He got on well with it.
"Man," he said at last, "do ye ken, Mathy--when he turned on us like
yon, I was kind o' prood o' him. My heart burned within me. It was
maybe no verra like a minister o' the Kirk. But, oh man, it was awesome
human!"
"Then I judge we'll say nae mair aboot it!" said Matthew Carment,
turning towards the farm where the lamb sale was by this time well under
weigh. "Hoo mony are ye thinkin' o' biddin' for the day, Drows?"
*THE SUIT OF BOTTLE GREEN*
At the Manse of Dullarg things did not go over well. Dr. Stuart, being
by nature a quick, passionate, and imperious Celt, had first of all
ordered his daughter to promise never again to hold any communication
with the young Cameronian minister of Cairn Edward. It was thus that he
himself had been taught to understand family discipline. He was the
head of the clan, as his father had been before him. He claimed to be
Providence to all within his gates. His hand of correction was not
withheld from his boys, Frank and Sandy, until the day they ran away
from home to escape him. He could not well adopt this plan to the
present case, but when Elspeth refused point blank to give any promise,
her father promptly convoyed his daughter to her own room and locked her
up there. She would stay where she was till she changed her mind. Her
aunt would take up her meals, and he himself would undertake to inform
her as to her duties and responsibilities at suitable intervals. There
was not the least doubt in the mind of Dr. Stuart as to the result of
such a course of treatment. Had he not willed it? That was surely
enough.
But his sister was not so sure, though she did not dare to say so to the
Doctor more than once.
"She is a very headstrong girl, Murdo," she said, tremulously, as she
gathered Elspeth's scanty breakfast on a tray next morning, "it might
drive her to some rash act!"
"Nonsense," retorted her brother, sharply, "did not our father do
exactly the same to you, to keep you from marrying young Campbell of
Luib?"
Mary Stuart's wintry-apple face twitched and flushed.
"Yes--yes," she fluttered, with a quaver in her voice, as if deprecating
further allusion to herself, "but Elspeth is not like me, Murdo. She
has more of your spirit."
"Let me hear no more of the matter," said her brother, turning away,
"_I_ wish it, and besides, I have my sermon to write."
But when the maiden aunt knocked at the door and entered with Elspeth's
breakfast, she was astonished to find the girl sitting by the window
dressed exactly as she had been on the previous evening. Her face was
very pale, but her lips were compressed and her eyes dry.
"Elspeth," she said uncertainly, her woman's intuition in a moment
detecting that which a man might not have discovered at all, "you have
not had off your clothes all night. You have never been to bed!"
"No, Aunt Mary!"
"But what will the Doctor say--think of your father----"
"I do not care what he will say. Let him come and compel me if he can.
He can thrash me as he does Frank."
"But--oh, Elspeth--Elspeth, dear," the old lady trembled so much that
she just managed to lay the tray down on the untouched bed opposite the
window, "what will God say?"
"'Like as a father pitieth his children,' isn't that what it says?" The
words came out of the depths of the bitterness of that young heart,
"well, if that be true, God will say nothing; for if He is like my
father, He will not care!"
The old lady sat down on an old rocking-chair which Elspeth liked to
keep in the window to sit in and read, half because it had been her
mother's, and half (for Elspeth was not usually a sentimental young
woman) because it was comfortable.
She put her hands to her face and sobbed into them. Then for the first
time Elspeth looked at her. Hitherto she had been staring straight out
at the window. So she had seen the day pass and the night come. So she
had seen and not seen, heard and not heard the shadow of night sweep
across the broad river, the stars come out, the cue owls mew as they
flashed past silent as insects on the wing, and last of all, the rooks
clamour upwards from the tall trees at break of day.
Now, however, she watched her aunt weeping with that curious sense of
detachment which comes to the young along with a first great sorrow.
"Why should _she_ weep?" Elspeth was asking herself, "she had nothing to
cry for. There can be no sorrow in the world like my sorrow and
shame--and _his_, that is, if he really cares. Perhaps he does not
care. They say in books that men often pretend. But no--he at least
never could do that. He is too true, too simple, too direct--and he
loves me!"
So she watched her aunt rock to and fro and sob without any pity in her
heart, but only with a growing wonderment--much as a condemned man might
look at a companion who was complaining of toothache. The long vigil of
the night had made the girl's heart numb and dead within her. At twenty
sorrow and joy alike arrive in superlatives.
Then quite suddenly a spasm of pity of a curious sort came to Elspeth
Stuart. After all, it was worth while to love. _He_ was suffering too.
Aunt Mary had no one to love her--to suffer with her. Poor Aunt Mary!
So she went quickly across and laid her hand on the thin shoulder. It
felt angular even through the dress. The sobs shook it.
"Do not cry, auntie," she said, softly and kindly. "I am sorry I vexed
you. I did not know."
The old lady looked up at her niece. Elspeth started at the sight of a
tear stealing down a wrinkle. Tears on young faces are in place. They
can be kissed away, but this seemed wrong somehow.
She patted the thin cheek which had already begun to take on the dry
satiny feel of age, which is so different from the roseleaf bloom of
youth.
"Then you will obey your father?"
The words came tremulously. The pale lips "wickered." The tear had
trickled thus far now, but Aunt Mary did not know it. It is only youth
that tastes its own tears. And generally rather likes the flavour.
Elspeth did not stop petting her aunt. She stroked the soft hair,
thinning now and silvering. Then she smiled a little.
"No," she said, "I will _not_ obey my father, Aunt Mary. I am no child
to be put in the corner. I am a woman, and know what I want."
Yet it was only during the past night watches that she had known it for
certain. But yesterday her desire to see Allan Syme had been no more
than a little ache deep down in her heart. Now it had become all her
life. So fertile a soil wherein to grow love is injudicious opposition.
"But at any rate you will take your breakfast?"
"To please you I will try, aunt!"
Aunt Mary plucked up heart at once. This was better. She had made a
beginning. The rest would follow.
When she went downstairs her brother came out of his study to get the
key of his daughter's room. She told him how that Elspeth had never gone
to bed, and had barely picked at her breakfast.
Dr. Stuart made no remark. He turned and went into his study again to
work at his sermon. He too thought that all went well. He held that
belief which causes so much misery in the world, that woman's will must
always bend before man's.
So it does--provided the man is the right man.
* * * * *
On the third day of her confinement Elspeth Stuart wrote a letter. It
began without ceremony, and ended without signature:
"You told me that you loved me. Tell it me again--on paper. I am very
unhappy. My father keeps me locked up to make me promise never to speak
to you or write to you. I do not mind this, except that I cannot go to
Lowe's Seat. But I must be assured that you continue to love me. I know
you do, but all the same I want to be told it. If you address, 'Care of
the Widow Barr, at the Village of Crosspatrick,' Frank will bring it
safely."
It was a simple epistle, without lofty aspirations or wise words. But
it was a loving letter, and admirably adapted to prove satisfactory to
its recipient. And had Allan Syme known what was on its way to him he
would have lifted up his heart. He was completing his pastoral
visitation, and with a sort of fixed despair awaiting the next meeting
of Session. For neither his ruling elder nor yet that slow-spoken
veteran, Matthew Carment, had passed a word more to him concerning the
vision they had seen upon the fringes of the Airds woods, on the day
that had proved such a day of doom to his sweetheart and himself.
* * * * *
Frank Stuart, keenly sympathetic with Elspeth's sufferings though
notably contemptuous of their cause, willingly performed what was
required of him. Being as yet untouched by love, he thought Elspeth
extremely silly. He had no interest ministers. If Elspeth had fallen
in love with a soldier now--he meant to be a sailor himself, but a
soldier was at least somebody in the scheme of things. Of course, his
father was a minister--but then people must have fathers. This was
different. However, it was not his business: girls were all silly.
And on this broad principle Master Frank took his stand. With equal
breadth of view he conveyed the letter to the "Weedow's" at
Crosspatrick, en route for the Cameronian manse at Cairn Edward.
But before he set out, he must have his grumble. He was beneath the
window of his sister's room at the time. His father had been under
observation all the morning, and was now safely off on his visitations.
By arrangement with Aunt Mary, Elspeth was allowed the run of the whole
upper story of the Dullarg Manse during Dr. Stuart's daily absences.
So, on parole, she came to this little window in the gable end, where
Frank and she could commune without fear of foreign observation.
"What for could ye no have promised my father onything--and then no done
it!"
The suggestion betrayed Master Frank's own plan of campaign, and renders
more excusable the Doctor's frequent appeal to the argument of the
hazel.
* * * * *
After this there ensued for Elspeth a long and weary time. Every day
Frank, detaching himself from the untrustworthy Sandy, slid off down the
waterside to Crosspatrick. Every day he returned empty-handed and
contemptuous.
This it was to love a minister, and one who was not even a "regular."
Why had not Elspeth, if she must fall in love, chosen a sailor?
In those days there was no regular postal delivery on the remoter
country districts. The mails came in an amateurish sort of way by coach
to Cairn Edward, and thereafter distributed themselves, as it were,
automatically. When the postage was paid, the authorities had no more
care in the matter. Yet there was a kind of system in the thing, too.
It was understood that any one being in Cairn Edward on business should
"give a look in" at the Post Office, and if there were any letters for
his neighbourhood, and he happened to have in his pocket the necessary
spare "siller" at the moment, he would pay the postage and bring them to
the "Weedow Barr's" shop in the village of Crosspatrick.
It may be observed that there were elements of uncertainty inseparable
from such an arrangement. And these told hard on our poor prisoner of
fate during these great endless midsummer days. She pined and grew
pale, like a woodland bird shut suddenly in a close cage at that season
when mate begins to call to mate through all the copses of birch and
alder.
"He does not love me--oh, he cannot love me!" she moaned. But again, as
she thought of the stile on the way to Lowe's Seat--"But he does love
me!" she said.
Then, sudden as a falling star, Fear fell on that green summer world.
There came a weird sough through all the valley, a crying of folk to
each other across level holms, shrill answerings of herd to herd on the
utmost hills. The scourge of God had come again! The Cholera--the
Cholera! Dread word, which we in these times have almost forgot the
thrill of in our flesh. Mysteriously and inevitably the curse swept on.
It was at Leith at Glasgow--at Dumfries--at Cairn Edward. It was
coming! coming! coming! Nearer, nearer ever nearer!
And men at the long scythe, sweeping the lush meadow hay aside with that
most prideful of all rustic gestures, fell suddenly chill and shuddered
to their marrows. The sweat of endeavour dried on them, and left them
chill, as if the night wind had stricken them. Women with child swarfed
with fear at their own door cheeks, and there was a crying within long
ere the posset-cup could be made ready. Neighbour looked with sudden
suspicion at neighbour, and men at friendly talk upon the leas
manoeuvred to get to windward of each other.
Death was coming--had come! And in his study, grim and unmoved, Dr.
Murdo Stuart sat preparing his Sabbath's sermon on the text, "Therefore
... because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O
Israel!"
But in the shut chamber above Elspeth waited and watched, the hope that
is deferred making her young heart sicker and ever sicker. Still she
had not heard. No answering word had reached her, and it was now the
second week. He did not love her--he could not.
_But still!_
They had told her nothing, and, indeed, during that first time of fear
and uncertainty, they knew nothing for certain, away up by themselves in
the wide wild moor parish of Dullarg. There were no market days in
Cairn Edward any more. So much the farmers knew. The men of the
landward parishes set guards with loaded guns upon every outgoing road.
There was no local authority in those days, and men in such cases had to
look to themselves. The infected place, be it city, town, or village,
farm-steading or cottage, was completely and bitterly isolated. None
might come out or go in. Provisions, indeed, were left in a convenient
spot; but secretly and by night. And the bearer shot away again, bent
half to the ground with eagerness, fear, and speed, a cloth to his
mouth, for the very wind that passed over him was Death. It was not so
much a disease as a certain Fate. Whoso was smitten was taken. In
fact, to all that rustic world it was the Visitation of Very God.
In the main street of Cairn Edward grass grew; yet the place was not
unpopulous. With the revival of trade and industry during the later
years of the great war a cotton mill had been erected in a side street.
The houses of the work folk were strung out from it. Then parallel with
this there was a more ancient main street of low beetle-browed houses,
many of them entering by a step down off the uneven causeway. At the
upper end, near the Cross, were some better-class houses, some of them
of two stories, a change-house or two, and down on the damp marshy land
towards the loch, the cluster of huts which had formed the original
nucleus of the village--now fallen into disrepute and disrepair, and
nominated, from the nationality of many of its inhabitants, "Little
Dublin."
In ten days a third of the inhabitants of this suburb had died. There
was but one minister within the strait bounds of the straggling village.
The parish church and manse lay two miles away out on a braeface
overlooking yellowing widths of corn-land. And the minister thereof
abode in his breaches, every day giving God thank that he was not shut
up within those distant white streets, from which, day by day, the
housewifely reek rose in fewer and fewer columns.
But Allan Syme was within, and could not pause to marry or to give in
marriage, to preach or to pray, so full of his Master's business was he.
For he must nurse and succour by day and bury by night, week day and
Holy Day. He it was who upheld the dying head. He swathed the corpse
while it was yet warm. He tolled the death-bell in the steeple. He
harnessed the horse to the rude farm-cart. Sometimes all alone he dug
the grave in the soft marshy flow, and laid the dead in the brown
peat-mould. For it was no time to stand upon trifles this second time
that the Scourge of God had come to Cairn Edward.
To the outer limit of the cordon of watchers came the carriers and the
farmers, the country lairds' servants, and less frequently the bien
well-stomached meal millers. In silence they deposited their goods, for
the most part with no niggard hand. In silence they took the fumigated
pound notes, smelling of sulphur, or the silver coin of the realm, with
the crumbles of quick-lime still sticking to the milling of the edges.
So across a kind of neutral zone, fearful country and infected town
stood glowering at each other like embattled enemies, musket laid ready
in the crook of elbow.
And when one mad with the Fear tried to cross, he was hunted like a wild
beast, or shot at like a rabbit running for its burrow. And the
townsmen did in like manner. For ill as it might fare with them, there
was deadlier yet to fear. In Cairn Edward they had the White Cholera,
as it was called. The Black was at Dumfries--so, at least, the tale
ran.
And as he went about his work, Allan Syme called upon his God, and
thought of Elspeth. But her letter never reached him, and he knew
nothing of her vigils. The day before he might have known the Fear
fell, and the door was shut.
* * * * *
It was on Saturday afternoon that the tidings came to Elspeth Stuart,
lonely watcher and loving heart. It was her brother Sandy who brought
them. He knew nothing of Elspeth's matters, being young and by nature
unworthy of trust. He had been down to Crosspatrick on some errand, and
now, having arrived back within hailing distance, he was retailing his
experiences to his brother Frank.
"I got yon letter back frae the Weedow--an', as I wasna gangin' hame, I
gied it to my faither."
"_What letter?_"
Elspeth could hear the sudden angry alarm in Frank's voice; but she
herself had no premonition of danger.
"The letter ye took doon to Crosspatrick for Elspeth ten days syne.
Ye'll catch it, my man!"
The girl's heart sank, and then leapt again within her.
Her father had her letter--he would read it. It was plainly addressed in
her handwriting to Allan Syme. What should she do?
But wait--there was something else. With a quick back-spang came the
countering joy.
"But then he has never got my letter. He knows nothing of my
unhappiness. He has not forgotten me. He loves me still. What care I
for aught else but that?"
There came up from the courtyard a sound of blows, and then Sandy's
wail.
"I'll tell my faither on ye, that I will. How was I to ken aboot
Elspeth's letter? And they say the minister-man it was wrote to is
dead, at ony rate!"
Elspeth heard unbelievingly. Dead--Allan dead! And she not know.
Absurd! It was only one of Sandy's lies to irritate his brother because
he had been thrashed. She knew Sandy. Nevertheless she threw up the
window. Sandy was again at his parable.
"They buried twenty-five yesterday in the moss. The minister was there
wi' the last coffin, and fell senseless across it. He never spoke
again. He is to be buried the morn if they can get the coffin made!"
Then, so soon as she was convinced that Sandy was not inventing, and
that he had only repeated the gossip of the village, a kind of cold
calmness took hold of Elspeth. She called Frank in to her, and when he
came, lo! his face was far whiter than hers.
She made him tell her all they had kept from her--of the dread plague
that had fallen so sudden and swift upon the townlet to which Allan had
carried her heart. Then she thought awhile fiercely, not wavering in
her purpose, but only trying this way and that, like one who thrusts
with his staff for the safest passage over a dangerous bog. Frank
watched her keenly, but could make nothing of her intent. At last she
spoke:
"Go and get me the key of your box."
"What do ye want with the key of my box?" queried her brother,
astonished.
"Never heed that," said Elspeth, clipping her words imperiously, as, in
seasons of stress, she had a way of doing; "do as I bid you!"
And being accustomed to such obediences, and albeit sorry for her, Frank
went out, only remarking ominously that he would have a job, for that
Aunt Mary carried it on her bunch.
He came back in exactly ten minutes, and threw the key on the floor.
"Easier than I expected," he said, triumphantly; "the old buzzer was
asleep!"
"Give me the key," said Elspeth, still in a brown study by the window.
But this was too much for Frank.
"Pick it up for yourself, Els," he said, "and mind you are to swear you
found it on the floor!"
Frank knew very well that if one is going to lie back and forth (as he
intended to do when questioned), it is well to be prepared with
occasional little scraps of truth. They cheer one up so.
Elspeth took the key, and hid it in her pocket.
"Now you can go," she said, and sat down on the bed, staring out at the
broad river quietly slipping by.
"Well, you might at least have said 'thank you----'" began Frank. But
catching the expression of her face, he suddenly desisted, and went out
without another word.
* * * * *
No, Allan Syme was not dead. But he staggered home that night certainly
more dead than alive. All day long he had moved in an atmosphere of the
most appalling pestilence. The reek of mortality seemed to solidify in
his nostrils, and his heart for the first time fainted within him.
He knew that there would be no welcome for him in the dark and lonely
manse; no meal, no comfort, no living voice; not so much as a dog to
lick his hand. His housekeeper, a mere hireling, had fled at the first
alarm.
It was dusk as he thrust the key into the latch, as he did so staggering
against the lintel from sheer weariness. He stood a little while in the
passage, shuddering with the oncomings of mortal sickness. Then with
flint, steel, and laborious tinder box he coaxed a light for the
solitary taper on the hall table. This done, he turned aside into the
little sitting-room on the right hand, where he kept his divinity books.
A slight figure came forward to meet him, with upturned face and clasped
petitionary hands. The action was a girl's, but the dress and figure
were those of a boy. Upon the threshold the minister stopped dead. He
thought that this was the first symptom of delirium--he had seen it in
so many, and had watched for it in himself.
But the lad still came forward, and laid a hand on his arm. He wore a
suit of bottle green with silver buttons, a world too wide for his slim
form. Knee breeches and buckled shoes completed his attire. Allan Syme
stared wide-eyed, uncomprehending, his hand pressed to his aching brow
in the effort to see truly.
"You are not dead. Thank God!" said the boy, in a voice that took him
by the throat.
"Who--who are you?" The words came dry and gasping from the minister's
parched lips.
"_I am Elspeth--do you not know me?_"
"Elspeth--Elspeth--why did you come here--and thus?"
"They told me you were dead--and my father locked me up! And--what
chance had a girl to pass the guards? They fired at me--see!"
And lifting a wet curl from her brow, she showed a wound.
"Elspeth--Elspeth--what is all this? What have they done to you?"
"Nothing--nothing--it is but a scratch. The man almost missed me
altogether."
"Beloved, what have you done with your hair?"
"I cut it off, that I might the better deceive them!"
"Elspeth--you must go back! This is no place for you!"
"I will not go back home. I will die first!"
"But, Elspeth, think if any one saw you--what would they say?"
"That I came to help you--to nurse you! I do not care what they would
say."
"My dear--my dear, you cannot bide here. I would to God you could; but
you cannot. I must think how to get you away. I must think--I must
think!"
The minister, sick unto death, stood with his hand still pressed to his
brow. At sight of him, and because, after all she had gone through for
him, he had given her neither welcome nor kiss, a swift spasm of anger
flashed up into Elspeth's eyes.
"You are ashamed of me, Allan Syme--let me go. I will never see you
more. You do not love me! I will not trouble you. Open the door!"
"God knows I love you better than my soul!" said Allan; "but let me
think. Father in heaven--I cannot think! My brain runs round."
He gave a slight lurch like a felled ox, and swayed forward.
Instantly, as a lamp that the wind blows out, all the anger went out of
Elspeth Stuart's eyes. She caught Allan in her strong young arms and
laid him on the worn couch, displacing with a sweep of her hand a whole
score of volumes as she laid him down.
He lay a moment stiff and still. Then a spasm of pain contorted his
features. He opened his eyes, and looked into his sweetheart's eyes.
Then, with the swift astonishing clearness of the mortally stricken, he
saw what must be done.
"Allan, Allan, what is the matter--what shall I do for you?" she mourned
over him.
"Do this," answered the minister. "Take the cloak out of that cupboard
there. I have never worn it. Go straight to John Allanson. He is my
Ruling Elder. He bides at his daughter's house close by the cotton
mill. Tell him all, and bid him come to me."
"The dreadful man who was so angry--that day at Lowe's Seat!" she
objected, not fearing for herself, but for him.
"He is not a dreadful man. Do as I bid you, childie; I am sick, but I
judge not unto death!"
"But you may die before I return!"
"Do as I bid you, Elspeth," said the minister, waving her away; "not a
hundred choleras can deprive me of one minute God has appointed mine!"
She bent over quickly, and kissed him on lips and brow.
"There--and there! Now if you die, I will die too. Remember that! And
I do not care now. I will go!"
Saying this, she rushed from the room.
* * * * *
It was a strange visitor who came to the house of the Elder's daughter
that evening, as the gloaming fell darker, her feet making no sound on
the deserted and grass-grown streets.
"A young laddie wants to see you, father," said John Allanson's married
daughter, with whom he had been lodging for a night when the plague
came, in a single hour putting a great gulf between town and country.
Then, finding his minister alone, he was not the man to leave him to
fight the battle single-handed.
Shamefacedly Elspeth crept in. The old man and his daughter were by
themselves, the husband not yet home from the joiner's shop, where the
hammers went _tap-tap_ at the plain deal coffins all day and all night.
"The minister is dying--come and help him or he will die!" she cried, as
they sat looking curiously at her in the clear, leaping red of the
firelight.
"Who are you, laddie?" said the elder.
"I am no laddie," said Elspeth, redder than the peat ashes. "Oh, I am
shamed--I am shamed! But I could not help it. And I am not sorry! They
told me he was dead. I am Elspeth Stuart, of the Dullarg Manse."
The elder sat gazing at her, open-mouthed, leaning forward, his hands on
his knees. But his daughter, with the quick sympathy of woman, held out
her arms.
"My puir lassie!" she said. She had once lost a bairn, her only one.
And Elspeth wept on her bosom.
The daughter waved her father to the door with one hand.
"She will tell me easier!" she said.
And straightway the old man went out into the dark.
* * * * *
It did not take long to tell, with Allan Syme lying so near to the gates
of death. Almost in less time than it needs to write it, Elspeth was
arrayed, so far at least as outer seeming went, in the garments of her
sex. A basket was filled with the necessities which were kept ready for
such an emergency in every house.
"Come, father," the loving wife cried at the door; "I will tell you as
we gang!"
And before she had won third way through her story, John Allanson had
taken Elspeth's hand in his.
"My bairn! my bairn!" he said.
In this manner Elspeth came the second time to the Manse of Allan Syme.
* * * * *
But the third time was as the mistress thereof. For she and the elder's
daughter nursed Allan Syme through into safety. For the very day that
Allan was stricken, a great rain fell and a great wind blew. The birds
came back to the gardens of Cairn Edward, and the plague lifted. In
time, too, Dr. Stuart submitted with severe grace to that which he could
not help.
"Indeed, it was all my fault, father," Elspeth said; "I made Allan come
back by the stile. I had made up my mind that he should. I knew he
would kiss me there!"
"Then I can only hope," answered her father, severely, lifting up his
gold-knobbed cane and shaking it at her to emphasise his point, "that by
this time your husband has learned the secret of making you obey him.
It is more than ever your father did!"
*A SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM*
(_Being some Hitherto Unobserved Phenomena of Feminine Psychology from
the notebook of A. McQuhirr, M.D. Edin._)
These papers of mine have been getting out of hand of late. I am
informed from various quarters that they are becoming so exceedingly
popular and discursive in their character, that they are enough to ruin
the reputation of any professing man of science. I will therefore be
severe with myself (and, incidentally, with my readers), and occupy one
or two papers with a consideration of some of the minor characteristics
common to the female sex. Indeed, upon a future occasion I may even
devote an entire work to this subject.
I have mentioned before that my wife's younger sister was called the
"Hempie,"[#] which, being interpreted, signifies a wild girl. This had
certainly been her character at one time; and though she deserves the
name less now than of yore, all her actions are still marked by
conspicuous decision and independence.
[#] Some of the earlier and less reputable of the "Hempie's" adventures
may be found in a certain unscientific work entitled "Lad's Love."
For instance, the year after Nance and I were married, the Hempie
abruptly claimed her share of her mother's money, and departed to
Edinburgh "to get learning."
Now it was a common thing enough in our part of the country for boys to
go out on such a quest. It was unheard of in a girl. And the parish
would have been shocked if the emigrant had been any other than the
Hempie. But Miss Elizabeth Chrystie, daughter of Peter of Nether Neuk,
was a young woman not accustomed to be bound by ordinary rules. In
person she had grown up handsome rather than pretty, and was so athletic
that she stood in small need of the ordinary courtesies which girls
love--hands over stiles, and so forth. Eyes and hair of glossy jet, the
latter crisping naturally close to her head, a healthy colour in her
cheeks, an ironic curl to her firm fine lips,--that is how our Hempie
came back to us.
Of her career in the metropolis, of the boarding-school dames,
strait-laced and awful, whom she scandalised, the shut ways of learning
which somehow were opened before her, I have no room here to tell. It
is sufficient to say that out of all this the Hempie came home to Nether
Neuk, and at once established herself as the wonder of the
neighbourhood.
Nance was gone, Grace going; Clemmy Kilpatrick, the unobtrusive little
woman whom Peter Chrystie had married as a kind of foot-warmer, had been
laid aside for six weeks with an "income" on her knee. The maidservants
naturally took advantage. Every individual pot and pan in the house
cumbered the back kitchen unwashed and begrimed. In the byres you did
not walk--you waded. The ploughmen hung about the house half the
morning, gossiping with the half-idle maidens. The very herds on the
hill eluded Peter's feeble judicature, and lay asleep behind dyke-backs,
while the week-weaned lambs, with many tail-wagglings, rejoined their
mothers on the pastures far below.
Upon this confusion enter the New Hempie. And with her gown pinned up
and a white apron on that met behind her shapely figure, she set to and
helped the servants.
In six days she had the farm town of Nether Neuk in such a state of
perfection as it had not known since my own Nance left it. For Grace,
though a good girl enough, cared not a jot for house work. Her sphere
was the dairy and cheese-room, where in an atmosphere of simmering curds
and bandaged cheddars she reigned supreme.
So much to indicate to those who are not acquainted with Miss Elizabeth
Chrystie the kind of girl she was.
For the rest, she despised love and held wooers in contempt, as much as
she had done in the old days when she ascended the roofs of the
pigstyes, and climbed into the beech-tree tops in the courtyard of
Nether Neuk, rather than meet me face to face as I went to pay my court
to her eldest sister.
"Love----" she said, scornfully, when I questioned her on the subject
the first time she came to see us at Cairn Edward, "_love_--have Nance
and you no got ower sic nonsense yet? _Love_----" (still more
scornfully); "as if I hadna seen as much of that as will serve me for my
lifetime, wi' twa sisters like Grace and Nance there!"
It did not take us much by surprise, therefore, when one morning, while
we sat at breakfast, the Hempie dropped in with the announcement that
she could not stand her father any longer, and that she had engaged
herself to be governess in the house of a certain Major Randolph Fergus
of Craignesslin.
To a young lady so determined there was no more to be said. Besides
which, the Hempie was of full age, perfectly independent as far as money
went, and more than independent in character.
"Now," she said, "I have just fifteen minutes to catch my train: how am
I to get my bag up to the station?"
"If you wait," I said, "the gig will be round at the door in seven
minutes. I have a case, or I should go up with you myself."
"Who is driving the gig?"
"Tad Anderson," said I.
The Hempie picked up a pair of tan gloves and straightened her tall
lithe figure.
"Good-morning," she said; "give me a lift with my box and wraps to the
door. I would not trust Tad Anderson to get to the station in time if
he had seven hours to do it in!"
At the door a boy was passing with a grocer's barrow. The Hempie swung
her box upon it with a deft strong movement.
"Take that to the station, boy," she commanded, "and tell Muckle Aleck
that Elizabeth Chrystie of the Nether Neuk will be up in ten minutes."
"But--but," stammered the boy, astonished, "I hae thae parcels to
deliver."
"Then deliver them on your road down!" said the Hempie. And her right
hand touched the boy's left for an instant.
"A' richt, mem!" he nodded, and was off.
"Don't trouble, Alec. Nance, bide where you are--I have three calls to
make on the way up. Good-morning!"
And the Hempie was off. We watched her through the little oriel window,
Nance nestling against my coat sleeve pleasantly, and, in the shadow of
the red stuff curtain, even surreptitiously kissing my shoulder--a thing
I had often warned her against doing in public. So I reproved her.
"Nance, mind what you are about, for heaven's sake! Suppose anyone were
to see you. It is enough to ruin my professional reputation to have you
do that on a market day in your own front window."
"Well, please may I hold your hand?" (Then, piteously, and, if I might
call it so, "Nancefully") "You know I shall not see you all day."
"The Hempie would not do a thing like that!" I answer, severely.
Nance watches the supple swing of her sister's figure, from the
stout-soled practical boots to the small erect head, with its short
black curls and smart brown felt hat with the silver buckle at the side.
"No," she said, "she wouldn't." Then, after a sigh, she added, "Poor
Hempie!"
That was the last we saw of our sister for more than a year. Elizabeth
Chrystie did not come back even for Grace's marriage to the laird of
Butterhole.
"I am of more use where I am," she wrote. "Tell Grace I am sending her
an alarm clock!"
Whether this was sarcasm on the Hempie's part, I am not in a position to
say. Grace had always been the sleepy-head of the family. If, however,
it was meant ironically, the sarcasm was wasted, for Grace was delighted
with the present.
"It is so useful, you know," the Mistress of Butterhole told Nance. "I
set it every morning for four o'clock. It is so nice to turn over and
know that you do not need to get up till eight!"
* * * * *
As suddenly as she had gone away, so suddenly the Hempie returned,
giving reasons to no man. I am obliged to say that even I would never
have known the true story of the adventures which follows had I not
shamefully played the eavesdropper.
It happened this way.
My study, where I try upon occasion to do a little original work and
keep myself from dropping into the rut of the pill-and-potion
practitioner so common in rural districts, is next the little room where
Nance sits reading, or sewing at the garmentry, white and mysterious,
which some women seem never to be able to let out of their reach. Here I
have a small wall-press, in which I keep my microscopes and
preparations. It is divided by a single board from a similar one
belonging to Nance on the other side. When both doors are open you can
hear as well in one room as in the other. I often converse with Nance
without rising, chiefly as to how long it will be till dinner-time,
together with similar important and soul-elevating subjects. But it
never seems to strike her that I can hear as easily what is said in her
room when I am not expected to hear.
Now, if you are an observant man, you have noticed, I daresay, that so
soon as women are alone together, they begin to talk quite differently
from what they have done when they had reason to know of your masculine
presence. Yes, it is true--especially true of your nearest and dearest.
Men do something of the same kind when women go out after dinner. But
quite otherwise. A man becomes at once broader and louder, more
unrestrained in quotation, allusion, illustration, more direct in
application. His vocabulary expands. In anecdote he is more abounding
and in voice altogether more natural. But with women it is not so.
They do not look blankly at the tablecloth or toy with the stem of a
wineglass, as men do when the other sex vanishes. They glance at each
other. A gentle smile glimmers from face to face, in which is a world
of irony and comprehension. It says, "They are gone--the poor
creatures. We can't quite do without them; but oh, are they not funny
things?" Then they exchange sighs equally gentle. If you listen
closely you can hear a little subdued rustle. That is the chairs being
moved gently forward nearer each other--not dragged, mark you, as a man
would do. A man has no proper respect for a carpet.
"Well, dear----?"
"Well?"
And then they begin really to talk. They have only "conversed" so far.
How do I know all this? Well, that's telling. As I say, I eavesdropped
part of it--in the interests of science. But the facts are true, in
every case.
The Hempie came in one Saturday morning. It was in August, and a
glorious day. There was nothing pressing. I had been out early at the
only case which needed to be seen to till I went on my afternoon round.
Nance was upstairs giving a wholly supererogatory attention to a certain
young gentleman who had already one statutory slave to anticipate his
wants. He was getting ready to be carried into the garden. I could
detect signs from the basement that cook also was tending nursery-wards.
The shrine would have its full complement of devout worshippers shortly.
It was thus that I came to be the first to welcome the Hempie upon her
return. She opened the glass door and walked in without ceremony,
putting her umbrella in the rack and hanging her hat on a peg like a
man, not bringing them in to cumber a bedroom as a woman does. These
minor differences of habit in the sexes have never been properly
collated and worked out. As I said before, I think I must write a book
on the subject.
At any rate, the Hempie's action was the exception which proved the
rule.
Then she strolled nonchalantly into my study and flung herself into a
chair without shaking hands. I leaped to my feet.
"Hempie," I cried, "I am dreadfully glad to see you." And I stooped to
kiss her.
To my utter astonishment she took the salute as a matter of course, a
thing she had never done before. Yes, somehow the Hempie was startlingly
different.
"What," she said, "are you as glad as all that? What a loving brother!"
But I think she was pleased all the same.
"Where's Nance?" The question was shot out rather than asked.
I indicated the upper regions of the house with my thumb, and inclined
my ear to direct her attention.
A high voice of wonderful tone and compass (if a little thin) was lifted
up in a decimating howl. Ensued a gentle confused murmur: "_Didums,
then? Was it, then?_" together with various lucid observations of that
kind.
A change passed over the Hempie's face.
"Now we are in for it," I thought. "She will leave the house and never
enter it again. The Hempie hates babies. She has always been
particularly clear on that point."
"_Why_ did you never tell me, Alec?"
"Because--because--we thought you would not care to hear. I understood
you didn't like----"
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
"Boy."
There was a sudden uprising from the depths of the easy-chair, a rustle
of skirts, the clang of a door, hasty footsteps on the stairs, a clamour
of voices from which, after a kind of confused climax as the hope of the
house blared his woes like a young bull of Bashan, there finally emerged
the following remarkable sentiments:--
"Oh, the darling! Isn't he a _pet_? Give him to me. Was they bad to
him? Then--well then! They shan't--no, indeed they shan't! Now, then!
Didums, then!"
And _da capo_.
I could not believe my ears. The words were the words of Nance, but the
voice was undoubtedly the voice of the Hempie. It was half an hour and
more before they descended the stairs, the Hempie still carrying young
"Bull of Bashan," now pacifically sucking his thumb and gazing serenely
through and behind his nurse in the disconcerting way which is common to
infants of the human species--and cats.
The Hempie passed out across the little strip of garden we had at the
back. The sunlight checkered the grass, and the new nurse carried her
charge as if she had never done anything else all her life. Every
moment she would stop to coo at him. Then she would duck her head like
a turtle-dove bowing to his mate; and finally, as if taken by some
strange contortive disease, she would bend her neck suddenly and nuzzle
her whole face into the child's, as a pet pony does into your hand--a
hot, fatiguing, and wholly unscientific proceeding on an August day.