MEDIATION.
At length it was clear to Lady Florimel that if her father had not
forgotten her undertaking, but was, as she believed, expecting from
her some able stroke of diplomacy, it was high time that something
should be done to save her credit. Nor did she forget that the
unpiped silence of the royal burgh was the memento of a practical
joke of her father, so cruel that a piper would not accept the
handsome propitiation offered on its account by a marquis.
On a lovely evening, therefore, the sunlight lying slant on waters
that heaved and sunk in a flowing tide, now catching the gold on
lifted crests, now losing it in purple hollows, Lady Florimel found
herself for the first time, walking from the lower gate towards
the Seaton. Rounding the west end of the village, she came to the
sea front, where, encountering a group of children, she requested
to be shown the blind piper’s cottage. Ten of them started at once
to lead the way, and she was presently knocking at the half-open
door, through which she could not help seeing the two at their
supper of dry oat-cake and still drier skim-milk cheese, with a
jug of cold water to wash it down. Neither, having just left the
gentlemen at their wine, could she help feeling the contrast between
the dinner just over at the House and the meal she now beheld.
At the sound of her knock, Malcolm, who was seated with his back
to the door, rose to answer the appeal;--the moment he saw her,
the blood rose from his heart to his cheek in similar response.
He opened the door wide, and in low, something tremulous tones,
invited her to enter; then caught up a chair, dusted it with his
bonnet, and placed it for her by the window, where a red ray of
the setting sun fell on a huge-flowered hydrangea. Her quick eye
caught sight of his bound-up hand.
“How have you hurt your hand?” she asked kindly.
Malcolm made signs that prayed for silence, and pointed to his
grandfather. But it was too late.
“Hurt your hand, Malcolm, my son,” cried Duncan, with surprise
and anxiety mingled. “How will you pe toing tat?”
“Here’s a bonny yoong leddy come to see ye, daddy,” said Malcolm,
seeking to turn the question aside.
“She’ll pe fery clad to see ta ponny young laty, and she’s creatly
obleeched for ta honour: put if ta ponny young laty will pe excusing
her--what’ll pe hurting your hand, Malcolm?”
“I’ll tell ye efterhin, daddy. This is my Leddy Florimel, frae the
Hoose.”
“Hm!” said Duncan, the pain of his insult keenly renewed by the
mere mention of the scene of it. “Put,” he went on, continuing
aloud the reflections of a moment of silence, “she’ll pe a laty,
and it’s not to pe laid to her charch. Sit town, my laty. Ta poor
place is your own.”
But Lady Florimel was already seated, and busy in her mind as
to how she could best enter on the object of her visit. The piper
sat silent, revolving a painful suspicion with regard to Malcolm’s
hurt.
“So you won’t forgive my father, Mr MacPhail?” said Lady Florimel.
“She would forgife any man put two men,” he answered, “--Clenlyon,
and ta man, whoefer he might pe, who would put upon her ta tiscrace
of trinking in his company.”
“But you’re quite mistaken,” said Lady Florimel, in a pleading
tone. “I don’t believe my father knows the gentleman you speak of.”
“Chentleman!” echoed Duncan. “He is a tog!--No, he is no tog:
togs is coot. He is a mongrel of a fox and a volf!”
“There was no Campbell at our table that evening,” persisted Lady
Florimel.
“Ten who tolt Tuncan MacPhail a lie?”
“It was nothing but a joke--indeed!” said the girl, beginning to
feel humiliated.
“It wass a paad choke, and might have peen ta hanging of poor
Tuncan,” said the piper.
Now Lady Florimel had heard a rumour of some one having been hurt
in the affair of the joke, and her quick wits instantly brought
that and Malcolm’s hand together.
“It might have been,” she said, risking a miss for the advantage.
“It _was_ well that you hurt nobody but your own grandson.”
“Oh, my leddy!” cried Malcolm with despairing remonstrance; “--an’
me haudin’ ’t frae him a’ this time! Ye sud ha’ considert an auld
man’s feelin’s! He’s as blin’ ’s a mole, my leddy!”
“His feelings!” retorted the girl angrily. “He ought to know the
mischief he does in his foolish rages.”
Duncan had risen, and was now feeling his way across the room.
Having reached his grandson, he laid hold of his head and pressed
it to his bosom.
“Malcolm!” he said, in a broken and hollow voice, not to be recognized
as his, “Malcolm, my eagle of the crag! my hart of the heather!
was it yourself she stapped with her efil hand, my son? Tid she’ll
pe hurting her own poy!--She’ll nefer wear turk more. Och hone!
Och hone!”
He turned, and, with bowed head seeking his chair, seated himself
and wept.
Lady Florimel’s anger vanished. She was by his side in a moment,
with her lovely young hand on the bony expanse of his, as it covered
his face. On the other side, Malcolm laid his lips to his ear, and
whispered with soothing expostulation,--
“It’s maist as weel ’s ever daddy. It’s nane the waur. It was but
a bit o’ a scart. It’s nae worth twise thinkin’ o’.”
“Ta turk went trough it, Malcolm! It went into ta table! She knows
now! O Malcolm! Malcolm! would to Cod she had killed herself pefore
she hurted her poy!”
He made Malcolm sit down beside him, and taking the wounded hand
in both of his, sunk into a deep silence, utterly forgetful of the
presence of Lady Florimel, who retired to her chair, kept silence
also, and waited.
“It was not a coot choke,” he murmured at length, “upon an honest
man, and might pe calling herself a chentleman. A rache is not a
choke. To put her in a rache was not coot. See to it. And it was
a ferry paad choke, too, to make a pig hole in her poor pag! Och
hone! och hone!--Put I’m clad Clenlyon was not there, for she
was too plind to kill him.”
“But you will surely forgive my father, when he wants to make it
up! Those pipes have been in the family for hundreds of years,”
said Florimel.
“Her own pipes has peen in her own family for five or six chenerations
at least,” said Duncan. “--And she was wondering why her poy tidn’t
pe mending her pag! My poor poy! Och hone! Och hone!”
“We’ll get a new bag, daddy,” said Malcolm. “It’s been lang past
men’in’ wi’ auld age.”
“And then you will be able to play together,” urged Lady Florimel.
Duncan’s resolution was visibly shaken by the suggestion. He pondered
for a while. At last he opened his mouth solemnly, and said, with
the air of one who had found a way out of a hitherto impassable
jungle of difficulty:
“If her lord marquis will come to Tuncan’s house, and say to Tuncan
it was put a choke and he is sorry for it, then Tuncan will shake
hands with ta marquis, and take ta pipes.”
A smile of pleasure lighted up Malcolm’s face at the proud proposal.
Lady Florimel smiled also, but with amusement.
“Will my laty take Tuncan’s message to my lord, ta marquis?” asked
the old man.
Now Lady Florimel had inherited her father’s joy in teasing; and the
thought of carrying him such an overture was irresistibly delightful.
“I will take it,” she said. “But what if he should be angry?”
“If her lord pe angry, Tuncan is angry too,” answered the piper.
Malcolm followed Lady Florimel to the door.
“Put it as saft as ye can, my leddy,” he whispered. “I canna bide
to anger fowk mair than maun be.”
“I shall give the message precisely as your grandfather gave it to
me,” said Florimel, and walked away.
While they sat at dinner the next evening, she told her father
from the head of the table, all about her visit to the piper, and
ended with the announcement of the condition--word for word--
on which the old man would consent to a reconciliation.
Could such a proposal have come from an equal whom he had insulted,
the marquis would hardly have waited for a challenge: to have done
a wrong was nothing; to confess it would be disgrace. But here the
offended party was of such ludicrously low condition, and the proposal
therefore so ridiculous, that it struck the marquis merely as a
yet more amusing prolongation of the joke. Hence his reception of
it was with uproarious laughter, in which all his visitors joined.
“Damn the old wind-bag!” said the marquis.
“Damn the knife that made the mischief,” said Lady Florimel.
When the merriment had somewhat subsided, Lord Meikleham, the youth
of soldierly aspect, would have proposed whipping the highland
beggar, he said, were it not for the probability the old clothes-horse
would fall to pieces; whereupon Lady Florimel recommended him
to try it on the young fisherman, who might possibly hold together;
whereat the young lord looked both mortified and spiteful.
I believe some compunction, perhaps even admiration, mingled itself,
in this case, with Lord Lossie’s relish of an odd and amusing
situation, and that he was inclined to compliance with the conditions
of atonement, partly for the sake of mollifying the wounded spirit
of the highlander. He turned to his daughter and said,--
“Did you fix an hour, Flory, for your poor father to make _amende
honorable_?”
“No, papa; I did not go so far as that.”
The marquis kept a few moments’ grave silence.
“Your lordship is surely not meditating such a solecism?” said Mr
Morrison, the justice-laird.
“Indeed I am,” said the marquis.
“It would be too great a condescension,” said Mr Cavins; “and your
lordship will permit me to doubt the wisdom of it. These fishermen
form a class by themselves; they are a rough set of men, and only
too ready to despise authority. You will not only injure the prestige
of your rank, my lord, but expose yourself to endless imposition.”
“The spirit moves me, and we are commanded not to quench the
spirit,” rejoined the marquis with a merry laugh, little thinking
that he was actually describing what was going on in him--that the
spirit of good concerning which he jested, was indeed not working
in him, but gaining on him, in his resolution of that moment.
“Come, Flory,” said the marquis, to whom it gave a distinct pleasure
to fly in the face of advice, “we’ll go at once, and have it over.”
So they set out together for the Seaton, followed by the bagpipes,
carried by the same servant as before, and were received by the
overjoyed Malcolm, and ushered into his grandfather’s presence.
Whatever may have been the projected attitude of the marquis, the
moment he stood on the piper’s floor, the _generosus_, that is the
gentleman, in him, got the upper hand, and his behaviour to the
old man was not polite merely, but respectful. At no period in the
last twenty years had he been so nigh the kingdom of heaven as he
was now when making his peace with the blind piper.
When Duncan heard his voice, he rose with dignity and made a
stride or two towards the door, stretching forth his long arm to
its full length, and spreading wide his great hand with the brown
palm upwards:
“Her nainsel will pe proud to see my lord ta marquis under her
roof,” he said.
The visit itself had already sufficed to banish all resentment from
his soul.
The marquis took the proffered hand kindly:
“I have come to apologise,” he said.
“Not one vord more, my lort, I peg,” interrupted Duncan. “My lort
is come, out of his cootness, to pring her a creat kift; for he’ll
pe hearing of ta sad accident which pefell her poor pipes one
efening lately. Tey was ferry old, my lort, and easily hurt.”
“I am sorry--” said the marquis--but again Duncan interrupted
him.
“I am clad, my lort,” he said, “for it prings me ta creat choy.
If my lady and your lordship will honour her poor house py sitting
town, she will haf ta pleasure of pe offering tem a little music.”
His hospitality would give them of the best he had; but ere the
entertainment was over, the marquis judged himself more than fairly
punished by the pipes for all the wrong he had done the piper.
They sat down, and, at a sign from his lordship, the servant placed
his charge in Duncan’s hands, and retired. The piper received the
instrument with a proud gesture of gratification, felt it all over,
screwed at this and that for a moment, then filled the great bag
gloriously full. The next instant a scream invaded the astonished air
fit to rival the skirl produced by the towzie tyke of Kirk-Alloway;
another instant, and the piper was on his legs, as full of pleasure and
pride as his bag of wind, strutting up and down the narrow chamber like
a turkey-cock before his hens, and turning ever, after precisely so
many strides, with a grand gesture and mighty sweep, as if he too had a
glorious tail to mind, and was bound to keep it ceaselessly quivering
to the tremor of the reed in the throat of his chanter.
Malcolm, erect behind their visitors, gazed with admiring eyes
at every motion of his grandfather. To one who had from earliest
infancy looked up to him with reverence, there was nothing
ridiculous in the display, in the strut, in all that to other eyes
too evidently revealed the vanity of the piper: Malcolm regarded
it all only as making up the orthodox mode of playing the pipes.
It was indeed well that he could not see the expression upon the
faces of those behind whose chairs he stood, while for moments that
must have seemed minutes, they succumbed to the wild uproar which
issued from those splendid pipes. On an opposite hill-side, with a
valley between, it would have sounded poetic; in a charging regiment,
none could have wished for more inspiriting battle-strains; even in
a great hall, inspiring and guiding the merry reel, it might have
been in place and welcome; but in a room of ten feet by twelve,
with a wooden ceiling, acting like a drum-head, at the height of
seven feet and a half!--It was little below torture to the marquis
and Lady Florimel. Simultaneously they rose to make their escape.
“My lord an’ my leddy maun be gauin’, daddy,” cried Malcolm.
Absorbed in the sound which his lungs created and his fingers
modulated, the piper had forgotten all about his visitors; but the
moment his grandson’s voice reached him, the tumult ceased; he took
the port vent from his lips, and with sightless eyes turned full
on Lord Lossie, said in a low earnest voice,--
“My lort, she’ll pe ta craandest staand o’ pipes she efer blew,
and proud and thankful she’ll pe to her lort marquis, and to ta Lort
of lorts, for ta kift. Ta pipes shall co town from cheneration to
cheneration to ta ent of time; yes, my lort, until ta loud cry of
tem pe trownt in ta roar of ta trump of ta creat archanchel, when
he’ll pe setting one foot on ta laand and ta other foot upon ta
sea, and Clenlyon shall pe cast into ta lake of fire.”
He ended with a low bow. They shook hands with him, thanked him for
his music, wished him good-night, and, with a kind nod to Malcolm,
left the cottage.
Duncan resumed his playing the moment they were out of the house,
and Malcolm, satisfied of his well-being for a couple of hours at
least--he had been music-starved so long, went also out, in quest
of a little solitude.