“Come along, Johnson,” said Eddy; “don’t be shy. The nature of great
scholars, Rankin, is that they’re dreadfully shy, don’t you know. A man
that you couldn’t put out by the heaviest argument will give in at the
sight of a young lady. That’s like our friend here: he thinks every
woman he sees is going to bite him, or--marry him, perhaps, out of hand,
as you do in Scotland, don’t you know.”
“There is a great deal o’ nonsense prevalent about Scotch marriages,”
said Rankin. “It’s nothing of the kind. Come away ben, Mr. Johnson, I’m
real glad to see you. Dod! he’s no so lo’esome in his ain person that he
should be frichtened for the leddies; but study’s mair embellishin’ for
the mind than the body. Come in by, sir, and gi’e me a shake o’ your
hand. You and me’s had mony a controversy, but nane sae bitter but that
we may meet as friends.”
“Eh! what’s the man saying? What have I got to do with him?” cried
Johnson, stumbling in, with eyes as yet unaccustomed to the light.
“I tell you,” said Eddy, “of course you never expected to find here the
great Ros-beg, your opponent on the question of--What question was it,
Rankin? Don’t attempt to hide your honours, Johnson, my boy. Everybody
here knows you’re Johnson of St. Chad’s. You have only got to behave
yourself as such, and recognise the power of learning wherever you see
it. This, I tell you, is Ros-beg, your adversary on----”
“I say, Eddy, none of your humbug! I’ve got to talk to you on serious
business, and here you are agoing on with your pranks to drive a man out
of his senses.”
“I have nothing to do with it,” said Eddy. “This gentleman here in the
bed, though you mightn’t think it, is a great scholar, Johnson. He’s
driven you into a corner and holds you there. We know what you mean when
you pretend ignorance. It’s because you’re shut up. You might find an
argument if you were in your own study among all your books at St.
Chad’s; but here, face to face with the great Ros-beg, you’ve not got a
word to say.”
“Be canny with him, be canny with him, sir,” said Rankin, a glow of
complacency on his face. “A man’s no to be expected to be ready wi’ his
weepons just at a moment’s notice. Coming into a Highland cottage, how
was he to think he was to be confronted by an adversary? Na, na; great
allowances must be made. Sit down, sir, and tak’ time and come to
yourself.”
“By Jove!” said Johnson, with most un-don-like force, “I think you mean
to drive me mad, Eddy Saumarez! One day it’s with your ladies, and
another day it’s with this old----”
“Let him get it oot, let him get it oot,” cried Rankin. “Oh, ay! it’s
easier to abuse your opponent than to answer him; that’s a trick weel
kent in controversy. An auld--what, sir?--get it oot; it will ease your
mind, and it will do me nae hairm.”
“Johnson, you fool, can’t you see that you’ve got a character to keep
up,” cried Eddy, half-choking with laughter. The youth was full of
mischievous delight in his mystification, but he was not without a
meaning behind it, which was the thing most interesting to his present
victim.
“I see your game, Mr. Eddy,” said Johnson: “but you aint going to get
the better of me. Be done with that stuff, and come out and let us have
a bit of serious talk. You know as well as I do what’s hanging over your
head. If you can’t bring him something to stop his mouth, that old cove
will---- or give him security as you’re to be married before a certain
day. I don’t mind who I speak before. If you’ll not listen to me one
time, you’ll have to listen another!” cried Johnson, working himself up
into energy. Eddy stood facing the light with the ruddy glow of the
flames playing over him, his somewhat worn and pale young face broadened
with laughter. The effect of his youth, and perhaps a special impishness
of nature, gave him a delight in mischief which the most serious
emergency could not destroy.
“I told you,” he said, “this man’s always got his thoughts filled with
marrying--especially in Scotland, where you can always do it at a
moment’s notice. When he’s not in terror for himself he’s in terror for
me.”
“Ye may deliver your soul o’ a’ such terrors,” said Rankin angrily.
“There’s naebody will marry ye here but the minister, and him no afore
a’ inquiry’s made. There’s an awfu’ deal o’ nonsense prevalent about
Scotch marriages. It’s a question I would have no objection to argue oot
with ye, if ye prefer that to a mair learned subject,” said the
gamekeeper with a disdainful wave of his hand.
“I argue!” cried Johnson; “I’ll not argue; it aint my line. I’m not a
parson, nor I aint a lawyer; I’m a plain man, by Jove! I’ve got my own
business, and I know how to do it; and this I tell you, Master Eddy, if
you aint ready with that cash, and before the month’s out, come by it as
ye will----”
“Can’t you hold your d----d tongue! Can’t you see what’s expected of
you!” said Eddy in a rapid whisper.--“Rankin,” he said, raising his
voice, “I’m ashamed of my man. He hasn’t pluck enough to come up to the
scratch. The sight of you has routed him hand and foot. There’s no
spirit left in him at all.”
“He never said a truer word,” said Rankin, “than when he said he couldna
argue. I’m glad he has that much knowledge o’ himsel’. It was aye a
wonder to me that the editor let him in wi’ his _disjectae membrae_ and
hotchpotch o’ reasoning. I’m no surprised, for my pairt; but after this
exheebition, I’m thinking it would be just as weel to tak’ the cratur
away. It’s a’e thing to ha’e the gift o’ sound argument, which is no
given to everybody, and it’s anither thing to be ceevil to a man in his
ain house. Maybe, however, he thinks because I’m here in a cottage and
no able for any exertion, that it’s no me. But I can gi’e him evidence
that it’s me.” Rankin put up his hand to a box of papers fastened
within his reach by the wall, and dived into it, much as, on the other
hand, he dived into the nest of his dogs. “There’s the editor’s ain hand
of write addressed to John Rankin, Esquire, which will maybe convince
him. No that it matters a brass bodle to me, if a man, when he’s worsted
in arguments, forgets his mainners. It’s just of as little consequence
as the yelping of thae beasties of dogues.” Rankin took the puppies, who
had been stumbling, with little whines and sniffs, over the heights and
hollows of his own person, and dropped them one after another into what
seemed some invisible pocket, their disappearance acting as a sort of
energetic punctuation to his words. The letter, which he had flung
towards the stranger, was indeed directed as he had said, and disclosed
as it fell on the bed a number of proof-sheets or cuttings, very
conclusive to the instructed eye. But Mr. Johnson did not look at them
at all. He said, “What have I to do with the old--gentleman’s letters,”
substituting that word for “fool,” which he had intended to use, on the
compulsion of Eddy’s eye.
“Then, good-bye, Rankin, I’ll soon come back,” said Eddy, shaking the
old gamekeeper’s hand; “but, look here, I’ll bring no more of my grand
friends to see you from the Universities, if you are going to crumple
them up like this.”
Rankin laughed the satisfied laugh of the controversialist who has
demolished his adversary. “He hadna a word to say for himself, no’ a
word. It’s one thing compiling nonsense out o’ books in a library, and
meeting a man face to face. Ye just saw for yoursel’ that the beggar
hadna a word to say.”
“Eh me,” said Janet, who had gone out to the door to see the visitors
fairly off, “that was an awfu’ like man to be one of your great
scholars, as ye call them. I’ve seen the college gentlemen in my young
days, and fine lads some o’ them were. I wadna have believed that was a
college gentleman if it had been tell’t to me.”
“And what do you know about it?” said Rankin, scornfully. “There’s the
evidence that he just would not face me, the moment he heard who I was.
I never thought he had the root of the maitter in him. Just a blethering
retailer o’ other men’s opinions, no fit to haud his ain in any real
controversy. I’m a wee disappointed, for it would have been a grand
sensation to have it oot with ane of those Oxford ignoramuses in my ain
house; but ye see he could not put out a finger without his authorities
at his back.--I think I’ll maybe take a pickle mair broth.”
“If yon’s a college man and a gentleman,” said Janet, “I’ll just allow
that I never was mair deceivit in my life.”
Eddy took his friend’s arm as they issued out from the shadow of the
cottage. “Why didn’t you show fight?” he said, “you fool! You can act
well enough when you like. Why didn’t you be civil and draw him out?
He’d have done all the talk himself, and you’d have saved your character
as a college fellow and a don.”
“There’s been enough of this nonsense,” said Johnson. “I tried it on
with the lady the other day, and I put my foot into it. She didn’t
believe I was a don, as you call it, any more--than any other person
would. What was I to say to that old fool? I didn’t know what he was
talking about. Look here, we must have some talk serious, none of your
humbug. I have my orders as clear as daylight. If he can’t pay up--”
“I know,” said Eddy, impatiently, “I know! I’ve heard all that before.”
“You’ll not hear it again, my fine fellow, or else it’ll be before the
judge for something that is more ticklish than debt. Don’t you know
there’s that little bit of paper as was refused at the bank. No assets,
just your luck to keep you from the Old Bailey. But he’s got it all the
time. If you’re safe to marry the railway man’s daughter, perhaps I
might get him persuaded to wait. For I’m your friend, Eddy Saumarez, you
know as I always stand your friend when you don’t play any of your
tricks. I can’t go bail for him that he’ll do that; for what with
putting him off, and never answering his letters, and letting things
swing, he’s in the temper of the very----; but if it’s certain and
settled, and the figure of her fortune known, and all that--”
“You saw for yourself how things were going,” said Eddy, not without a
faint blush of shame, “the other day on the hill.”
“Oh, I saw you, fast enough--carrying on. But when I said to the lady,
‘That’s a case if ever there was one,’ she looked at me as if she could
have knocked me down. ‘If you mean it’s an engagement,’ she says, as
sharp as anything, ‘you’re mistaken, and it wouldn’t be allowed for a
minute on either side.’”
“You put that into her head, you everlasting fool!” cried Eddy. And then
with an effort of self-control, or rather with the natural facility of
his easy temper, he added, bursting into a laugh, “She’s the stepmother,
and they hate her all round. The more she opposes it the more it’s sure
to be, so you see there’s more things in heaven and earth, Johnson, than
are in your philosophy. What she says is just the thing that will never
come to pass. I say, if you’ll behave a little decent, and get up the
character, I’ll make her send you an invitation to the big ball!”
“The ball!”
“I know you’re fond of high life, and seeing smart people: and you can
act when you like. Now look here, put a good face upon it and let’s have
a little more time. Write to him that you’ve got a promise of having
everything settled if you wait till after the 30th, and that you’re
going to a ball at Rowland’s house under my wing; and then you’ll wire
about the engagement and all that as soon as ever it comes off. You’ll
never have such a chance again,” said Eddy; “_crême de la crême_, my
boy, and all that sort of thing.”
“People of the place,” said Johnson, with a sneer.
“People of the place! Well I hope when it’s Clydesdale and his lot,
that’s good enough for you. And perhaps you call the Duke of Arran one
of the people of the place. So he is, for it all belongs to him: and the
Huntingshaws and the Herons, who, I rather think, have been heard of
even in London town.”
“Oh, well,” said Johnson, with half eager, half reluctant acquiescence;
“but if that lady is the one to give the invitations, you will never get
her to ask me.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Eddy, complacently, “I think I know what
I’m about.”
“You know a deal too well what you’re about. For a fellow of your age,
you are the oldest fellow and the most artful I ever knew. I do believe
it’s only to gain time, and that there’s nothing in it. Carrying on with
a girl is nothing to you; you can get ‘em to believe you when another
fellow hasn’t even the chance to have a hearing. There’s that tall one,
your sister, looks at me as if I was the dirt under her feet. I’ll tell
you what, if you’ll make her give me a dance at this thundering ball of
yours, I’ll do it--whatever the Governor may say.”
“Well you can ask her,” said Eddy, in lightness of heart, “like any
other gentleman. You don’t want an introduction, because you’ve met her
before. A woman can’t refuse without being ill-bred, and nobody could
ever say of the Saumarez that they were ill-bred. Of course she’ll dance
with you--if you ask her,” he said, with a laugh.
“What’s that laugh for?” said Johnson, suspiciously.
“Oh come, if a man isn’t allowed to laugh! It’s for the fun of the
thing. I’ve seen you in a good many queer circumstances, but I never saw
you at a society ball dancing with girls--of that sort, don’t you know.
I’ll get you an introduction to the Duchess,” cried Eddy, “and you can
ask her to dance. By Jove what fun it will be! I shouldn’t wonder if you
had what they call a great success. But mind, whatever you do, you must
learn up the part.”
“Where shall I get it?” said Johnson. The idea of success in the world
which was “smart” turned his head. The thought went through his mind
that it might be but the beginning of triumph. The Duchess, if she found
his dancing to her mind, might invite him during the season. She might
ask him to the Cumbraes, that princely mansion. The light swam in
Johnson’s eyes. He felt as if he were on the verge of a new world. He
could learn a part with any man, and mind his cues and enter into his
_rôle_. Where could he get it? He ran over all the plays he knew, which
was saying a good deal, but he could not remember the part of a don.
“Hang it all,” he said, “I wish you had introduced me as a plunger or a
Guardsman, or something of that sort. I could have got ‘em as easy as
look at ‘em; but I don’t remember no don.”
“There are plenty in novels,” said Eddy.
“Oh, novels!--I don’t read any except the yellow kind. I say how d’ye
dress the part? Is it a long coat and a white tie? or what is it? I
don’t know nothing about it,” said Johnson, falling in his anxiety into
the dialect of his kind.
“In the evening,” said Eddy, “all gentlemen dress alike, except when
they’re parsons. Johnson of St. Chad’s is not a parson. Probably in the
day time he wears an easy coat, and smokes a pipe. But we’d better leave
that. You only want your evening things--I suppose they’re decently
cut--and a flower in your coat; but mind you have not a bouquet like a
coachman at a drawing-room.”
“I think I know enough for that,” said the novice; “but you’d better get
me one of those dashed novels if I’m to learn up the part.”
They walked on in silence for a few minutes towards the moor; great
visions filled the mind of Johnson. “I say,” he resumed after a while,
“couldn’t you get me asked for the shooting one day? The young fellow
aint much of a swell, whatever the rest of them may be; and I should
like to shoulder a gun on a real moor, just for once in a way. It’s a
thing to have done. The Governor would like it too. ‘My son’s up
shooting in Scotland,’ he’d tell everybody, ‘with some of his smart
friends.’”
“He can say it all the same, whether or not,” said Eddy.
“That’s true; but it feels much nicer when there’s something in it. I
say--I don’t mind standing a sovereign to the gamekeeper, if you’ll
manage that. I’d give a sovereign any day to have some birds to send up
to town with that heather stuff round ‘em, and a label, ‘From A.
Johnson, Esquire.’”
“You had better give the sovereign to me,” said Eddy, “if I am to take
the trouble of it. Well, I’ll try--and you’ll have to get up that part
too, Johnson, the don on the moors.”
“Oh, I aint frightened for that. Do they ask you to shoot at the
Cumbraes--that’s the Duke’s place?” said Johnson, with greater and
greater visions of delight rising before his eyes.
“They don’t ask me, but they might ask you,” cried Eddy, with a peal of
laughter. “‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ When once you get to know a
Duke, all the rest follows like clockwork.”
“That was what I thought,” Johnson said modestly. He marched on by
Eddy’s side for some time over the heather. Then he paused, and looked
his companion in the face. “Mind,” he said, “I don’t say as I shan’t
like all this very much, and if I get on, I shall never forget as it was
you as launched me, Master Eddy. But that’s not to interfere with
business: you’ll have to keep to your day and square your account, or
else the Governor will be down upon you, and there’s not a little thing
in the whole affair as won’t be brought to the light of day.”
“And who will that harm most?” said Eddy. “I’ll pay up, of course; but
who do you think would suffer most--I, only a boy when you got me into
your accursed hands, or _him_, an old bloated, money-lending, sixty per
cent., blood-sucking----”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head. Do you think he’ll mind what the
papers may say? Look here, Eddy Saumarez, why don’t you go to your
Governor and make a clean breast of it, and settle it up so as nothing
should ever be brought against you again? You’ve got a lot of relations
that wouldn’t like to be dragged through the mud.”
“Do you think they mind what the papers may say?” said Eddy,
sardonically; “when that’s the case on both sides, there can’t be much
to be done either way.”
“Well, smart people don’t, somehow,” said Johnson, “no more than we
do--they’re so used to it. It aint my business to dictate how you’re to
do it, but somehow you’ll have to do it. You may get the money how you
please, but you must get it, and not a moment later than the 31st. Now
that’s settled, I can give my thoughts to getting up the part.”
When he was left by his companion, Eddy went up by himself upon the
moors, which was a kind of excursion he did not usually enjoy. He went
up breasting the hill like a deer or a mountaineer, nor caring where he
went, through ling and bracken, among the prickly whins, and over the
treacherous quagmires of moss and bog. Something was in his mind which
made him indifferent to all the accidents of the way. When he had
reached the very top of the ridge he threw himself down upon the dark
heather with his face upon the ground, falling as if he had been shot,
and lay there for a few moments motionless as if he had died. Nature
accommodates herself very easily to any vagary of rest. The dark figure
seemed for a moment to disturb and break the line of vegetation, but had
not been there a moment before the grasses and the ling seemed to take a
new beginning, starting up from under him, the long myrtles rustling
their heads, the Grass of Parnassus waving its white stars. So they
would have done had he been dead, covering him over, hiding him in the
bosom of the soil. He lay for a little while thus, harmonised and
composed into quiet under the still touch of the hill, so that when he
got up again he seemed to leave a broad and angry void where he had
been. What passed in his mind while he buried his face in the coolness
of the earth, and hid himself from the eye of day, it would be hard to
tell--perhaps only the working of his quick brain as to what he could do
in the emergency in which he found himself, perhaps compunction,
miserable thoughts of the past, more miserable reflections on the
future. But nothing of this was visible when he raised himself from that
momentary collapse. He sat down upon the heather with his face towards
the lake, and pondered, clutching at his hair with both his hands,
setting his elbows on his knees. What was it he was thinking of out
there upon the lonely moor, not a living creature near him except the
wild creatures on the hills, the insects in the moorland vegetation. His
short-sighted eyes roamed vaguely over the heather, pausing upon here
and there a gleam of water in a hollow, turning instinctively, like a
child toward a light, to the deep loch lying far below. But he saw
little or nothing with these wandering eyes. They were bent upon
visionary objects, seeing scenes and visions which had nothing to do
with the moor or the loch of Rosmore.
Presently Eddy took something from his pocket, a piece of paper with a
few words upon it, which he studied intently. His eyes came back from
their roaming to fix themselves intently, with the contraction of the
eyebrows which marked their defect, upon the paper. They were sharp eyes
though they were short-sighted, seeing everything within their limited
range with a keenness and mastery of every detail quite unusual, a
power of observation which was more precious than the longest sight.
What was it he was trying to master? A few uninteresting words, nothing
of the slightest importance. Then he took out a pencil and wrote
something, repeating the same characters again and again. What was it?
He kept the paper so cautiously in his hand that had he been startled by
any intruder he could have doubled it up in a moment, and hidden it in
his hollowed palm. It was somewhat strange to see such a precaution
taken on the wide stretch of moor, which was as desolate as a moor could
be, some part of it dark with the blistered stems of heather which had
been burned, the rest dewy and glistening with the moisture with which a
few days of rain had soaked the country. The very insects were hushed by
the cold of the October afternoon. A few desolate cheepings low among
the heather betrayed a lowly nest here and there. In the distance a road
came like a black ribbon over a corner of the slope. Eddy sent another
anxious look round him, and returned to his paper, writing the same
letters over and over again. Was it the name of his love? What was it?
He held it so carefully under the shadow of his hand that even had some
one risen silently from the heather, and looked over his shoulder, it
would have been difficult to see.
This was not exactly what happened. What happened was that--coming along
the dark road in the distance, Eddy spied a figure, which made him start
to his feet and hastily return to his pocket the little document. He
sat down again, but with his face that way, watching who it was who was
approaching. There was something in the outline and the gait, those
points which are all the short-sighted have to go upon, which seemed to
indicate a person he knew. It was not the moment which Eddy would have
chosen to encounter Archie Rowland, but there was something in his own
occupation just suspended, and in the curious fancy which had brought
him here, the object which he only knew, which made him eager to disarm
any possible suspicion on the part of his hosts at Rosmore--which
impelled him at least not to avoid the meeting. Suddenly he got up and
began waving his arms about to attract the attention of the passer-by,
who, pausing and standing still a moment to consider who called him, at
length decided to change his course and came towards the figure thus
signalling to him across the summit of the hill.