By half-past eight o’clock on the next morning, I was ringing the bell of
the lawyer’s office in Castle Street, where I found him ensconced at a
business table, in a room surrounded by several tiers of green tin cases.
He greeted me like an old friend.
‘Come away, sir, come away!’ said he. ‘Here is the dentist ready for
you, and I think I can promise you that the operation will be practically
painless.’
‘I am not so sure of that, Mr. Robbie,’ I replied, as I shook hands with
him. ‘But at least there shall be no time lost with me.’
I had to confess to having gone a-roving with a pair of drovers and their
cattle, to having used a false name, to having murdered or half-murdered
a fellow-creature in a scuffle on the moors, and to having suffered a
couple of quite innocent men to lie some time in prison on a charge from
which I could have immediately freed them. All this I gave him first of
all, to be done with the worst of it; and all this he took with gravity,
but without the least appearance of surprise.
‘Now, sir,’ I continued, ‘I expect to have to pay for my unhappy frolic,
but I would like very well if it could be managed without my personal
appearance or even the mention of my real name. I had so much wisdom as
to sail under false colours in this foolish jaunt of mine; my family
would be extremely concerned if they had wind of it; but at the same
time, if the case of this Faa has terminated fatally, and there are
proceedings against Todd and Candlish, I am not going to stand by and see
them vexed, far less punished; and I authorise you to give me up for
trial if you think that best—or, if you think it unnecessary, in the
meanwhile to make preparations for their defence. I hope, sir, that I am
as little anxious to be Quixotic, as I am determined to be just.’
‘Very fairly spoken,’ said Mr. Robbie. ‘It is not much in my line, as
doubtless your friend, Mr. Romaine, will have told you. I rarely mix
myself up with anything on the criminal side, or approaching it.
However, for a young gentleman like you, I may stretch a point, and I
dare say I may be able to accomplish more than perhaps another. I will
go at once to the Procurator Fiscal’s office and inquire.’
‘Wait a moment, Mr. Robbie,’ said I. ‘You forget the chapter of
expenses. I had thought, for a beginning, of placing a thousand pounds
in your hands.’
‘My dear sir, you will kindly wait until I render you my bill,’ said Mr.
Robbie severely.’
‘It seemed to me,’ I protested, ‘that coming to you almost as a stranger,
and placing in your hands a piece of business so contrary to your habits,
some substantial guarantee of my good faith—’
‘Not the way that we do business in Scotland, sir,’ he interrupted, with
an air of closing the dispute.
‘And yet, Mr. Robbie,’ I continued, ‘I must ask you to allow me to
proceed. I do not merely refer to the expenses of the case. I have my
eye besides on Todd and Candlish. They are thoroughly deserving fellows;
they have been subjected through me to a considerable term of
imprisonment; and I suggest, sir, that you should not spare money for
their indemnification. This will explain,’ I added smiling, ‘my offer of
the thousand pounds. It was in the nature of a measure by which you
should judge the scale on which I can afford to have this business
carried through.’
‘I take you perfectly, Mr. Ducie,’ said he. ‘But the sooner I am off,
the better this affair is like to be guided. My clerk will show you into
the waiting-room and give you the day’s _Caledonian Mercury_ and the last
_Register_ to amuse yourself with in the interval.’
I believe Mr. Robbie was at least three hours gone. I saw him descend
from a cab at the door, and almost immediately after I was shown again
into his study, where the solemnity of his manner led me to augur the
worst. For some time he had the inhumanity to read me a lecture as to
the incredible silliness, ‘not to say immorality,’ of my behaviour. ‘I
have the satisfaction in telling you my opinion, because it appears that
you are going to get off scot free,’ he continued, where, indeed, I
thought he might have begun.
‘The man, Faa, has been discharged cured; and the two men, Todd and
Candlish, would have been leeberated lone ago if it had not been for
their extraordinary loyalty to yourself, Mr. Ducie—or Mr. St. Ivey, as I
believe I should now call you. Never a word would either of the two old
fools volunteer that in any manner pointed at the existence of such a
person; and when they were confronted with Faa’s version of the affair,
they gave accounts so entirely discrepant with their own former
declarations, as well as with each other, that the Fiscal was quite
nonplussed, and imaigined there was something behind it. You may believe
I soon laughed him out of that! And I had the satisfaction of seeing
your two friends set free, and very glad to be on the causeway again.’
‘Oh, sir,’ I cried, ‘you should have brought them here.’
‘No instructions, Mr. Ducie!’ said he. ‘How did I know you wished to
renew an acquaintance which you had just terminated so fortunately? And,
indeed, to be frank with you, I should have set my face against it, if
you had! Let them go! They are paid and contented, and have the highest
possible opinion of Mr. St. Ivey! When I gave them fifty pounds
apiece—which was rather more than enough, Mr. Ducie, whatever you may
think—the man Todd, who has the only tongue of the party, struck his
staff on the ground. “Weel,” says he, “I aye said he was a gentleman!”
“Man, Todd,” said I, “that was just what Mr St. Ivey said of yourself!”’
‘So it was a case of “Compliments fly when gentlefolk meet.”’
‘No, no, Mr. Ducie, man Todd and man Candlish are gone out of your life,
and a good riddance! They are fine fellows in their way, but no proper
associates for the like of yourself; and do you finally agree to be done
with all eccentricity—take up with no more drovers, or tinkers, but enjoy
the naitural pleesures for which your age, your wealth, your
intelligence, and (if I may be allowed to say it) your appearance so
completely fit you. And the first of these,’ quoth he, looking at his
watch, ‘will be to step through to my dining-room and share a bachelor’s
luncheon.’
Over the meal, which was good, Mr. Robbie continued to develop the same
theme. ‘You’re, no doubt, what they call a dancing-man?’ said he.
‘Well, on Thursday night there is the Assembly Ball. You must certainly
go there, and you must permit me besides to do the honours of the ceety
and send you a ticket. I am a thorough believer in a young man being a
young man—but no more drovers or rovers, if you love me! Talking of
which puts me in mind that you may be short of partners at the
Assembly—oh, I have been young myself!—and if ye care to come to anything
so portentiously tedious as a tea-party at the house of a bachelor
lawyer, consisting mainly of his nieces and nephews, and his grand-nieces
and grand-nephews, and his wards, and generally the whole clan of the
descendants of his clients, you might drop in to-night towards seven
o’clock. I think I can show you one or two that are worth looking at,
and you can dance with them later on at the Assembly.’
He proceeded to give me a sketch of one or two eligible young ladies’
whom I might expect to meet. ‘And then there’s my parteecular friend,
Miss Flora,’ said he. ‘But I’ll make no attempt of a description. You
shall see her for yourself.’
It will be readily supposed that I accepted his invitation; and returned
home to make a toilette worthy of her I was to meet and the good news of
which I was the bearer. The toilette, I have reason to believe, was a
success. Mr. Rowley dismissed me with a farewell: ‘Crikey! Mr. Anne,
but you do look prime!’ Even the stony Bethiah was—how shall I
say?—dazzled, but scandalised, by my appearance; and while, of course,
she deplored the vanity that led to it, she could not wholly prevent
herself from admiring the result.
‘Ay, Mr. Ducie, this is a poor employment for a wayfaring Christian man!’
she said. ‘Wi’ Christ despised and rejectit in all pairts of the world
and the flag of the Covenant flung doon, you will be muckle better on
your knees! However, I’ll have to confess that it sets you weel. And if
it’s the lassie ye’re gaun to see the nicht, I suppose I’ll just have to
excuse ye! Bairns maun be bairns!’ she said, with a sigh. ‘I mind when
Mr. McRankine came courtin’, and that’s lang by-gane—I mind I had a green
gown, passementit, that was thocht to become me to admiration. I was nae
just exactly what ye would ca’ bonny; but I was pale, penetratin’, and
interestin’.’ And she leaned over the stair-rail with a candle to watch
my descent as long as it should be possible.
It was but a little party at Mr. Robbie’s—by which, I do not so much mean
that there were few people, for the rooms were crowded, as that there was
very little attempted to entertain them. In one apartment there were
tables set out, where the elders were solemnly engaged upon whist; in the
other and larger one, a great number of youth of both sexes entertained
themselves languidly, the ladies sitting upon chairs to be courted, the
gentlemen standing about in various attitudes of insinuation or
indifference. Conversation appeared the sole resource, except in so far
as it was modified by a number of keepsakes and annuals which lay
dispersed upon the tables, and of which the young beaux displayed the
illustrations to the ladies. Mr. Robbie himself was customarily in the
card-room; only now and again, when he cut out, he made an incursion
among the young folks, and rolled about jovially from one to another, the
very picture of the general uncle.
It chanced that Flora had met Mr. Robbie in the course of the afternoon.
‘Now, Miss Flora,’ he had said, ‘come early, for I have a Phoenix to show
you—one Mr. Ducie, a new client of mine that, I vow, I have fallen in
love with’; and he was so good as to add a word or two on my appearance,
from which Flora conceived a suspicion of the truth. She had come to the
party, in consequence, on the knife-edge of anticipation and alarm; had
chosen a place by the door, where I found her, on my arrival, surrounded
by a posse of vapid youths; and, when I drew near, sprang up to meet me
in the most natural manner in the world, and, obviously, with a prepared
form of words.
‘How do you do, Mr. Ducie?’ she said. ‘It is quite an age since I have
seen you!’
‘I have much to tell you, Miss Gilchrist,’ I replied. ‘May I sit down?’
For the artful girl, by sitting near the door, and the judicious use of
her shawl, had contrived to keep a chair empty by her side.
She made room for me, as a matter of course, and the youths had the
discretion to melt before us. As soon as I was once seated her fan flew
out, and she whispered behind it:
‘Are you mad?’
‘Madly in love,’ I replied; ‘but in no other sense.’
‘I have no patience! You cannot understand what I am suffering!’ she
said. ‘What are you to say to Ronald, to Major Chevenix, to my aunt?’
Your aunt?’ I cried, with a start. ‘_Peccavi_! is she here?’
‘She is in the card-room at whist,’ said Flora.
‘Where she will probably stay all the evening?’ I suggested.
‘She may,’ she admitted; ‘she generally does!’
‘Well, then, I must avoid the card-room,’ said I, ‘which is very much
what I had counted upon doing. I did not come here to play cards, but to
contemplate a certain young lady to my heart’s content—if it can ever be
contented!—and to tell her some good news.’
‘But there are still Ronald and the Major!’ she persisted. ‘They are not
card-room fixtures! Ronald will be coming and going. And as for Mr.
Chevenix, he—’
‘Always sits with Miss Flora?’ I interrupted. ‘And they talk of poor St.
Ives? I had gathered as much, my dear; and Mr. Ducie has come to prevent
it! But pray dismiss these fears! I mind no one but your aunt.’
‘Why my aunt?’
‘Because your aunt is a lady, my dear, and a very clever lady, and, like
all clever ladies, a very rash lady,’ said I. ‘You can never count upon
them, unless you are sure of getting them in a corner, as I have got you,
and talking them over rationally, as I am just engaged on with yourself!
It would be quite the same to your aunt to make the worst kind of a
scandal, with an equal indifference to my danger and to the feelings of
our good host!’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘and what of Ronald, then? Do you think _he_ is above
making a scandal? You must know him very little!’
‘On the other hand, it is my pretension that I know him very well!’ I
replied. ‘I must speak to Ronald first—not Ronald to me—that is all!’
‘Then, please, go and speak to him at once!’ she pleaded. He is there—do
you see?—at the upper end of the room, talking to that girl in pink.’
‘And so lose this seat before I have told you my good news?’ I exclaimed.
‘Catch me! And, besides, my dear one, think a little of me and my good
news! I thought the bearer of good news was always welcome! I hoped he
might be a little welcome for himself! Consider! I have but one friend;
and let me stay by her! And there is only one thing I care to hear; and
let me hear it!’
‘Oh, Anne,’ she sighed, ‘if I did not love you, why should I be so
uneasy? I am turned into a coward, dear! Think, if it were the other
way round—if you were quite safe and I was in, oh, such danger!’
She had no sooner said it than I was convicted of being a dullard. ‘God
forgive me, dear!’ I made haste to reply. ‘I never saw before that
there were two sides to this!’ And I told her my tale as briefly as I
could, and rose to seek Ronald. ‘You see, my dear, you are obeyed,’ I
said.
She gave me a look that was a reward in itself; and as I turned away from
her, with a strong sense of turning away from the sun, I carried that
look in my bosom like a caress. The girl in pink was an arch, ogling
person, with a good deal of eyes and teeth, and a great play of shoulders
and rattle of conversation. There could be no doubt, from Mr. Ronald’s
attitude, that he worshipped the very chair she sat on. But I was quite
ruthless. I laid my hand on his shoulder, as he was stooping over her
like a hen over a chicken.
‘Excuse me for one moment, Mr. Gilchrist!’ said I.
He started and span about in answer to my touch, and exhibited a face of
inarticulate wonder.
‘Yes!’ I continued, ‘it is even myself! Pardon me for interrupting so
agreeable a _tête-à-tête_, but you know, my good fellow, we owe a first
duty to Mr. Robbie. It would never do to risk making a scene in the
man’s drawing-room; so the first thing I had to attend to was to have you
warned. The name I go by is Ducie, too, in case of accidents.’
‘I—I say, you know!’ cried Ronald. ‘Deuce take it, what are you doing
here?’
‘Hush, hush!’ said I. ‘Not the place, my dear fellow—not the place.
Come to my rooms, if you like, to-night after the party, or to-morrow in
the morning, and we can talk it out over a segar. But here, you know, it
really won’t do at all.’
Before he could collect his mind for an answer, I had given him my
address in St. James Square, and had again mingled with the crowd. Alas!
I was not fated to get back to Flora so easily! Mr. Robbie was in the
path: he was insatiably loquacious; and as he continued to palaver I
watched the insipid youths gather again about my idol, and cursed my fate
and my host. He remembered suddenly that I was to attend the Assembly
Ball on Thursday, and had only attended to-night by way of a preparative.
This put it into his head to present me to another young lady; but I
managed this interview with so much art that, while I was scrupulously
polite and even cordial to the fair one, I contrived to keep Robbie
beside me all the time and to leave along with him when the ordeal was
over. We were just walking away arm in arm, when I spied my friend the
Major approaching, stiff as a ramrod and, as usual, obtrusively clean.
‘Oh! there’s a man I want to know,’ said I, taking the bull by the horns.
‘Won’t you introduce me to Major Chevenix?’
‘At a word, my dear fellow,’ said Robbie; and ‘Major!’ he cried, ‘come
here and let me present to you my friend Mr. Ducie, who desires the
honour of your acquaintance.’
The Major flushed visibly, but otherwise preserved his composure. He
bowed very low. ‘I’m not very sure,’ he said: ‘I have an idea we have
met before?’
‘Informally,’ I said, returning his bow; ‘and I have long looked forward
to the pleasure of regularising our acquaintance.’
‘You are very good, Mr. Ducie,’ he returned. ‘Perhaps you could aid my
memory a little? Where was it that I had the pleasure?’
‘Oh, that would be telling tales out of school,’ said I, with a laugh,
‘and before my lawyer, too!’
‘I’ll wager,’ broke in Mr. Robbie, ‘that, when you knew my client,
Chevenix—the past of our friend Mr. Ducie is an obscure chapter full of
horrid secrets—I’ll wager, now, you knew him as St. Ivey,’ says he,
nudging me violently.
‘I think not, sir,’ said the Major, with pinched lips.
‘Well, I wish he may prove all right!’ continued the lawyer, with
certainly the worst-inspired jocularity in the world. ‘I know nothing by
him! He may be a swell mobsman for me with his aliases. You must put
your memory on the rack, Major, and when ye’ve remembered when and where
ye met him, be sure ye tell me.’
‘I will not fail, sir,’ said Chevenix.
‘Seek to him!’ cried Robbie, waving his hand as he departed.
The Major, as soon as we were alone, turned upon me his impassive
countenance.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you have courage.’
‘It is undoubted as your honour, sir,’ I returned, bowing.
‘Did you expect to meet me, may I ask?’ said he.
‘You saw, at least, that I courted the presentation,’ said I.
‘And you were not afraid?’ said Chevenix.
‘I was perfectly at ease. I knew I was dealing with a gentleman. Be
that your epitaph.’
‘Well, there are some other people looking for you,’ he said, ‘who will
make no bones about the point of honour. The police, my dear sir, are
simply agog about you.’
‘And I think that that was coarse,’ said I.
‘You have seen Miss Gilchrist?’ he inquired, changing the subject.
‘With whom, I am led to understand, we are on a footing of rivalry?’ I
asked. ‘Yes, I have seen her.’
‘And I was just seeking her,’ he replied.
I was conscious of a certain thrill of temper; so, I suppose, was he. We
looked each other up and down.
‘The situation is original,’ he resumed.
‘Quite,’ said I. ‘But let me tell you frankly you are blowing a cold
coal. I owe you so much for your kindness to the prisoner Champdivers.’
‘Meaning that the lady’s affections are more advantageously disposed of?’
he asked, with a sneer. ‘Thank you, I am sure. And, since you have
given me a lead, just hear a word of good advice in your turn. Is it
fair, is it delicate, is it like a gentleman, to compromise the young
lady by attentions which (as you know very well) can come to nothing?’
I was utterly unable to find words in answer.
‘Excuse me if I cut this interview short,’ he went on. ‘It seems to me
doomed to come to nothing, and there is more attractive metal.’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘as you say, it cannot amount to much. You are
impotent, bound hand and foot in honour. You know me to be a man falsely
accused, and even if you did not know it, from your position as my rival
you have only the choice to stand quite still or to be infamous.’
‘I would not say that,’ he returned, with another change of colour. ‘I
may hear it once too often.’
With which he moved off straight for where Flora was sitting amidst her
court of vapid youths, and I had no choice but to follow him, a bad
second, and reading myself, as I went, a sharp lesson on the command of
temper.
It is a strange thing how young men in their teens go down at the mere
wind of the coming of men of twenty-five and upwards! The vapid ones
fled without thought of resistance before the Major and me; a few dallied
awhile in the neighbourhood—so to speak, with their fingers in their
mouths—but presently these also followed the rout, and we remained face
to face before Flora. There was a draught in that corner by the door;
she had thrown her pelisse over her bare arms and neck, and the dark fur
of the trimming set them off. She shone by contrast; the light played on
her smooth skin to admiration, and the colour changed in her excited
face. For the least fraction of a second she looked from one to the
other of her pair of rival swains, and seemed to hesitate. Then she
addressed Chevenix:—
‘You are coming to the Assembly, of course, Major Chevenix?’ said she.
‘I fear not; I fear I shall be otherwise engaged,’ he replied. ‘Even the
pleasure of dancing with you, Miss Flora, must give way to duty.’
For awhile the talk ran harmlessly on the weather, and then branched off
towards the war. It seemed to be by no one’s fault; it was in the air,
and had to come.
‘Good news from the scene of operations,’ said the Major.
‘Good news while it lasts,’ I said. ‘But will Miss Gilchrist tell us her
private thought upon the war? In her admiration for the victors, does
not there mingle some pity for the vanquished?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ she said, with animation, ‘only too much of it! War is a
subject that I do not think should be talked of to a girl. I am, I have
to be—what do you call it?—a non-combatant? And to remind me of what
others have to do and suffer: no, it is not fair!’
‘Miss Gilchrist has the tender female heart,’ said Chevenix.
‘Do not be too sure of that!’ she cried. ‘I would love to be allowed to
fight myself!’
‘On which side?’ I asked.
‘Can you ask?’ she exclaimed. ‘I am a Scottish girl!’
‘She is a Scottish girl!’ repeated the Major, looking at me. ‘And no one
grudges you her pity!’
‘And I glory in every grain of it she has to spare,’ said I. ‘Pity is
akin to love.’
‘Well, and let us put that question to Miss Gilchrist. It is for her to
decide, and for us to bow to the decision. Is pity, Miss Flora, or is
admiration, nearest love?’
‘Oh come,’ said I, ‘let us be more concrete. Lay before the lady a
complete case: describe your man, then I’ll describe _mine_, and Miss
Flora shall decide.’
‘I think I see your meaning,’ said he, ‘and I’ll try. You think that
pity—and the kindred sentiments—have the greatest power upon the heart.
I think more nobly of women. To my view, the man they love will first of
all command their respect; he will be steadfast—proud, if you please;
dry, possibly—but of all things steadfast. They will look at him in
doubt; at last they will see that stern face which he presents to all the
rest of the world soften to them alone. First, trust, I say. It is so
that a woman loves who is worthy of heroes.’
‘Your man is very ambitious, sir,’ said I, ‘and very much of a hero!
Mine is a humbler, and, I would fain think, a more human dog. He is one
with no particular trust in himself, with no superior steadfastness to be
admired for, who sees a lady’s face, who hears her voice, and, without
any phrase about the matter, falls in love. What does he ask for, then,
but pity?—pity for his weakness, pity for his love, which is his life.
You would make women always the inferiors, gaping up at your imaginary
lover; he, like a marble statue, with his nose in the air! But God has
been wiser than you; and the most steadfast of your heroes may prove
human, after all. We appeal to the queen for judgment,’ I added, turning
and bowing before Flora.
‘And how shall the queen judge?’ she asked. ‘I must give you an answer
that is no answer at all. “The wind bloweth where it listeth”: she goes
where her heart goes.’
Her face flushed as she said it; mine also, for I read in it a
declaration, and my heart swelled for joy. But Chevenix grew pale.
‘You make of life a very dreadful kind of lottery, ma’am,’ said he. ‘But
I will not despair. Honest and unornamental is still my choice.’
And I must say he looked extremely handsome and very amusingly like the
marble statue with its nose in the air to which I had compared him.
‘I cannot imagine how we got upon this subject,’ said Flora.
‘Madame, it was through the war,’ replied Chevenix.
‘All roads lead to Rome,’ I commented. ‘What else would you expect Mr.
Chevenix and myself to talk of?’
About this time I was conscious of a certain bustle and movement in the
room behind me, but did not pay to it that degree of attention which
perhaps would have been wise. There came a certain change in Flora’s
face; she signalled repeatedly with her fan; her eyes appealed to me
obsequiously; there could be no doubt that she wanted something—as well
as I could make out, that I should go away and leave the field clear for
my rival, which I had not the least idea of doing. At last she rose from
her chair with impatience.
‘I think it time you were saying good-night, Mr Ducie!’ she said.
I could not in the least see why, and said so.
Whereupon she gave me this appalling answer, ‘My aunt is coming out of
the card-room.’
In less time than it takes to tell, I had made my bow and my escape.
Looking back from the doorway, I was privileged to see, for a moment, the
august profile and gold eyeglasses of Miss Gilchrist issuing from the
card-room; and the sight lent me wings. I stood not on the order of my
going; and a moment after, I was on the pavement of Castle Street, and
the lighted windows shone down on me, and were crossed by ironical
shadows of those who had remained behind.