The next morning the fog had given way to a palpable, horizontally
driving rain, which wet the inside as well as the outside of umbrellas,
and caused them to be presented at every conceivable angle as they
drifted past the windows of the consulate. There was a tap at the door,
and a clerk entered.
“Ye will be in to Sir James MacFen?”
The consul nodded, and added, “Show him in here.”
It was the magnate to whom he had sent the note the previous day, a man
of large yet slow and cautious nature, learned and even pedantic, yet
far-sighted and practical; very human and hearty in social intercourse,
which, however, left him as it found him,--with no sentimental or
unbusiness-like entanglements. The consul had known him sensible and
sturdy at board meetings and executive councils; logical and convincing
at political gatherings; decorous and grave in the kirk; and humorous
and jovial at festivities, where perhaps later in the evening, in
company with others, hands were clasped over a libation lyrically
defined as a “right guid williewaught.” On one of these occasions they
had walked home together, not without some ostentation of steadiness;
yet when MacFen's eminently respectable front door had closed upon
him, the consul was perfectly satisfied that a distinctly proper and
unswerving man of business would issue from it the next morning.
“Ay, but it's a soft day,” said Sir James, removing his gloves. “Ye'll
not be gadding about in this weather.”
“You got my note of introduction, I suppose?” said the consul, when the
momentous topic of the weather was exhausted.
“Oh, ay.”
“And you saw the gentlemen?”
“Ay.”
“And what's your opinion of--his claims?”
“He's a fine lad--that Malcolm--a fine type of a lad,” said Sir
James, with an almost too effusive confidence. “Ye'll be thinking so
yourself--no doubt? Ay, it's wonderful to consider the preservation of
type so long after its dispersal in other lands. And it's a strange
and wonderful country that of yours, with its plantations--as one might
say--of homogeneity unimpaired for so many years, and keeping the old
faith too--and all its strange survivals. Ay, and that Kentucky,
where his land is--it will be a rich State! It's very instructing and
interesting to hear his account of that remarkable region they call 'the
blue grass country,' and the stock they raise there. I'm obliged to ye,
my friend, for a most edifying and improving evening.”
“But his claim--did he not speak of that?”
“Oh, ay. And that Mr. Custer--he's a grand man, and an amusing one.
Ye'll be great comrades, you and he! Man! it was delightful to hear him
tell of the rare doings and the bit fun ye two had in the old times.
Eh, sir, but who'd think that of the proper American consul at St.
Kentigern!” And Sir James leaned back in his chair, and bestowed an
admiring smile on that official.
The consul thought he began to understand this evasion. “Then you don't
think much of Mr. McHulish's claim?” he said.
“I'm not saying that.”
“But do you really think a claim based upon a family Bible and a family
likeness a subject for serious consideration?”
“I'm not saying THAT either, laddie.”
“Perhaps he has confided to you more fully than he has to me, or
possibly you yourself knew something in corroboration of his facts.”
His companion had evidently no desire to be communicative. But the
consul had heard enough to feel that he was justified in leaving the
matter in his hands. He had given him fair warning. Yet, nevertheless,
he would be even more explicit.
“I do not know,” he began, “whether this young McHulish confided to you
his great reliance upon some peculiar effect of his presence among the
tenants, and of establishing his claim to the property by exciting the
enthusiasm of the clan. It certainly struck me that he had some rather
exaggerated ideas, borrowed, perhaps, from romances he'd read, like Don
Quixote his books of chivalry. He seems to believe in the existence of a
clan loyalty, and the actual survival of old feudal instincts and of old
feudal methods in the Highlands. He appears to look upon himself as a
kind of local Prince Charlie, and, by Jove! I've an idea he's almost as
crazy.”
“And why should he na believe in his own kith and kin?” said Sir James,
quickly, with a sudden ring in his voice, and a dialectical freedom
quite distinct from his former deliberate and cautious utterance. “The
McHulishes were chieftains before America was discovered, and many's the
time they overran the border before they went as far as that. If there's
anything in blood and loyalty, it would be strange if they did na
respond. And I can tell ye, ma frien', there's more in the Hielands than
any 'romancer,' as ye call them,--ay, even Scott hissel', and he was but
an Edinboro' man,--ever dreamed of. Don't fash yoursel' about that. And
you and me'll not agree about Prince Charlie. Some day I'll tell ye,
ma frien', mair aboot that bonnie laddie than ye'll gather from your
partisan historians. Until then ye'll be wise when ye'll be talking to
Scotchmen not to be expressing your Southern prejudices.”
Intensely surprised and amused at this sudden outbreak of enthusiasm on
the part of the usually cautious lawyer, the consul could not refrain
from accenting it by a marked return to practical business.
“I shall be delighted to learn more about Prince Charlie,” he said,
smiling, “but just now his prototype--if you'll allow me to call him
so--is a nearer topic, and for the present, at least until he assume his
new titles and dignities, has a right to claim my protection, and I
am responsible for him as an American citizen. Now, my dear friend, is
there really any property, land, or title of any importance involved in
his claim, and what and where, in Heaven's name, is it? For I assure you
I know nothing practical about it, and cannot make head or tail of it.”
Sir James resumed his slow serenity, and gathered up his gloves. “Ay,
there's a great deer-forest in Ballochbrinkie, and there's part of
Loch Phillibeg in Cairngormshire, and there's Kelpie Island off
Moreovershire. Ay, there's enough land when the crofters are cleared
off, and the small sheep-tenants evicted. It will be a grand property
then.”
The consul stared. “The crofters and tenants evicted!” he repeated. “Are
they not part of the clan, and loyal to the McHulish?”
“The McHulish,” said Sir James with great deliberation, “hasn't set foot
there for years. They'd be burning him in effigy.”
“But,” said the astonished consul, “that's rather bad for the expectant
heir--and the magic of the McHulish presence.”
“I'm not saying that,” returned Sir James cautiously. “Ye see he can be
making better arrangements with the family on account of it.”
“With the family?” repeated the consul. “Then does he talk of
compromising?”
“I mean they would be more likely to sell for a fair consideration, and
he'd be better paying money to them than the lawyers. The syndicate
will be rich, eh? And I'm not saying the McHulish wouldn't take Kentucky
lands in exchange. It's a fine country, that blue grass district.”
The consul stared at Sir James so long that a faint smile came into the
latter's shrewd eyes; at which the consul smiled, too. A vague air of
relief and understanding seemed to fill the apartment.
“Oh, ay,” continued Sir James, drawing on his gloves with easy
deliberation, “he's a fine lad that Malcolm, and it's a praiseworthy
instinct in him to wish to return to the land of his forebears, and take
his place again among them. And I'm noticing, Mr. Consul, that a great
many of your countrymen are doing the same. Eh, yours is a gran' country
of progress and ceevel and religious liberty, but for a' that, as Burns
says, it's in your blood to turn to the auld home again. And it's a fine
thing to have the money to do it--and, I'm thinking, money well spent
all around. Good-morning. Eh, but I'm forgetting that I wanted to ask
you to dine with me and Malcolm, and your Mr. Custer, and Mr. Watson,
who will be one of your syndicate, and whom I once met abroad. But ye'll
get a bit note of invitation, with the day, from me later.”
The consul remembered that Custer had said that one of the “Eagle boys”
had known Sir James. This was evidently Watson. He smiled again, but
this time Sir James responded only in a general sort of way, as he
genially bowed himself out of the room.
The consul watched his solid and eminently respectable figure as it
passed the window, and then returned to his desk, still smiling. First
of all he was relieved. What had seemed to him a wild and reckless
enterprise, with possibly some grim international complications on the
part of his compatriots, had simply resolved itself into an ordinary
business speculation--the ethics of which they had pretty equally
divided with the local operators. If anything, it seemed that the
Scotchman would get the best of the bargain, and that, for once at
least, his countrymen were deficient in foresight. But that was a matter
between the parties, and Custer himself would probably be the first to
resent any suggestion of the kind from the consul. The vision of the
McHulish burned in effigy by his devoted tenants and retainers, and the
thought that the prosaic dollars of his countrymen would be substituted
for the potent presence of the heir, tickled, it is to be feared, the
saturnine humor of the consul. He had taken an invincible dislike to
the callow representative of the McHulish, who he felt had in some
extraordinary way imposed upon Custer's credulity. But then he had
apparently imposed equally upon the practical Sir James. The thought of
this sham ideal of feudal and privileged incompetency being elevated
to actual position by the combined efforts of American republicans and
hard-headed Scotch dissenters, on whom the soft Scotch mists fell from
above with equal impartiality, struck him as being very amusing, and
for some time thereafter lightened the respectable gloom of his office.
Other engagements prevented his attendance at Sir James's dinner,
although he was informed afterward that it had passed off with great
eclat, the later singing of “Auld lang Syne,” and the drinking of the
health of Custer and Malcolm with “Hieland honors.” He learned also that
Sir James had invited Custer and Malcolm to his lacustrine country-seat
in the early spring. But he learned nothing more of the progress of
Malcolm's claim, its details, or the manner in which it was prosecuted.
No one else seemed to know anything about it; it found no echo in the
gossip of the clubs, or in the newspapers of St. Kentigern. In the
absence of the parties connected with it, it began to assume to him the
aspect of a half-humorous romance. He often found himself wondering if
there had been any other purpose in this quest or speculation than what
had appeared on the surface, it seemed so inadequate in result. It would
have been so perfectly easy for a wealthy syndicate to buy up a much
more valuable estate. He disbelieved utterly in the sincerity of
Malcolm's sentimental attitude. There must be some other reason--perhaps
not known even to the syndicate.
One day he thought that he had found it. He had received a note
addressed from one of the principal hotels, but bearing a large
personal crest on paper and envelope. A Miss Kirkby, passing through St.
Kentigern on her way to Edinburgh, desired to see the consul the next
day, if he would appoint an hour at the consulate; or, as her time was
limited, she would take it as a great favor if he would call at her
hotel. Although a countrywoman, her name might not be so well known to
him as those of her “old friends” Harry Custer, Esq., and Sir
Malcolm McHulish. The consul was a little surprised; the use of the
title--unless it referred to some other McHulish--would seem to indicate
that Malcolm's claim was successful. He had, however, no previous
knowledge of the title of “Sir” in connection with the estate, and
it was probable that his fair correspondent--like most of her
countrywomen--was more appreciative than correct in her bestowal of
dignities. He determined to waive his ordinary business rules, and
to call upon her at once, accepting, as became his patriotism, that
charming tyranny which the American woman usually reserves exclusively
for her devoted countrymen.
She received him with an affectation of patronage, as if she had
lately become uneasily conscious of being in a country where there were
distinctions of class. She was young, pretty, and tastefully dressed;
the national feminine adaptability had not, however, extended to her
voice and accent. Both were strongly Southwestern, and as she began to
speak she seemed to lose her momentary affectation.
“It was mighty good of you to come and see me, for the fact is, I didn't
admire going to your consulate--not one bit. You see, I'm a Southern
girl, and never was 'reconstructed' either. I don't hanker after your
Gov'ment. I haven't recognized it, and don't want to. I reckon I ain't
been under the flag since the wah. So you see, I haven't any papers to
get authenticated, nor any certificates to ask for, and ain't wanting
any advice or protection. I thought I'd be fair and square with you from
the word 'go.'”
Nothing could be more fascinating and infectious than the mirthful
ingenuousness which accompanied and seemed to mitigate this ungracious
speech, and the consul was greatly amused, albeit conscious that it was
only an attitude, and perhaps somewhat worn in sentiment. He knew that
during the war of the rebellion, and directly after it, Great Britain
was the resort of certain Americans from the West as well as from
the South who sought social distinction by the affectation of
dissatisfaction with their own government or the ostentatious simulation
of enforced exile; but he was quite unprepared for this senseless
protraction of dead and gone issues. He ventured to point out with
good-humored practicality that several years had elapsed since the war,
that the South and North were honorably reconciled, and that he was
legally supposed to represent Kentucky as well as New York. “Your
friends,” he added smilingly, “Mr. Custer and Mr. McHulish, seemed to
accept the fact without any posthumous sentiment.”
“I don't go much on that,” she said with a laugh. “I've been living
in Paris till maw--who's lying down upstairs--came over and brought me
across to England for a look around. And I reckon Malcolm's got to keep
touch with you on account of his property.”
The consul smiled. “Ah, then, I hope you can tell me something about
THAT, for I really don't know whether he has established his claim or
not.”
“Why,” returned the girl with naive astonishment, “that was just what I
was going to ask YOU. He reckoned you'd know all about it.”
“I haven't heard anything of the claim for two months,” said the
consul; “but from your reference to him as 'Sir Malcolm,' I presumed you
considered it settled. Though, of course, even then he wouldn't be 'Sir
Malcolm,' and you might have meant somebody else.”
“Well, then, Lord Malcolm--I can't get the hang of those titles yet.”
“Neither 'Lord' nor 'Sir'; you know the estate carries no title whatever
with it,” said the consul smilingly.
“But wouldn't he be the laird of something or other, you know?”
“Yes; but that is only a Scotch description, not a title. It's not the
same as Lord.”
The young girl looked at him with undisguised astonishment. A half laugh
twitched the corners of her mouth. “Are you sure?” she said.
“Perfectly,” returned the consul, a little impatiently; “but do I
understand that you really know nothing more of the progress of the
claim?”
Miss Kirkby, still abstracted by some humorous astonishment, said
quickly: “Wait a minute. I'll just run up and see if maw's coming down.
She'd admire to see you.” Then she stopped, hesitated, and as she rose
added, “Then a laird's wife wouldn't be Lady anything, anyway, would
she?”
“She certainly would acquire no title merely through her marriage.”
The young girl laughed again, nodded, and disappeared. The consul,
amused yet somewhat perplexed over the naive brusqueness of the
interview, waited patiently. Presently she returned, a little out of
breath, but apparently still enjoying some facetious retrospect, and
said, “Maw will be down soon.” After a pause, fixing her bright eyes
mischievously on the consul, she continued:--
“Did you see much of Malcolm?”
“I saw him only once.”
“What did you think of him?”
The consul in so brief a period had been unable to judge.
“You wouldn't think I was half engaged to him, would you?”
The consul was obliged again to protest that in so short an interview he
had been unable to conceive of Malcolm's good fortune.
“I know what you mean,” said the girl lightly. “You think he's a crank.
But it's all over now; the engagement's off.”
“I trust that this does not mean that you doubt his success?”
The lady shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. “That's all right enough,
I reckon. There's a hundred thousand dollars in the syndicate. Maw put
in twenty thousand, and Custer's bound to make it go--particularly as
there's some talk of a compromise. But Malcolm's a crank, and I reckon
if it wasn't for the compromise the syndicate wouldn't have much show.
Why, he didn't even know that the McHulishes had no title.”
“Do you think he has been suffering under a delusion in regard to his
relationship?”
“No; he was only a fool in the way he wanted to prove it. He actually
got these boys to think it could be filibustered into his possession.
Had a sort of idea of 'a rising in the Highlands,' you know, like that
poem or picture--which is it? And those fool boys, and Custer among
them, thought it would be great fun and a great spree. Luckily, maw had
the gumption to get Watson to write over about it to one of his friends,
a Mr.--Mr.--MacFen, a very prominent man.”
“Perhaps you mean Sir James MacFen,” suggested the consul. “He's a
knight. And what did HE say?” he added eagerly.
“Oh, he wrote a most sensible letter,” returned the lady, apparently
mollified by the title of Watson's adviser, “saying that there was
little doubt, if any, that if the American McHulishes wanted the old
estate they could get it by the expenditure of a little capital. He
offered to make the trial; that was the compromise they're talking
about. But he didn't say anything about there being no 'Lord' McHulish.”
“Perhaps he thought, as you were Americans, you didn't care for THAT,”
said the consul dryly.
“That's no reason why we shouldn't have it if it belonged to us, or we
chose to pay for it,” said the lady pertly.
“Then your changed personal relations with Mr. McHulish is the reason
why you hear so little of his progress or his expectations?”
“Yes; but he don't know that they are changed, for we haven't seen him
since we've been here, although they say he's here, and hiding somewhere
about.”
“Why should he be hiding?”
The young girl lifted her pretty brows. “Maybe he thinks it's
mysterious. Didn't I tell you he was a crank?” Yet she laughed so
naively, and with such sublime unconsciousness of any reflection on
herself, that the consul was obliged to smile too.
“You certainly do not seem to be breaking your heart as well as your
engagement,” he said.
“Not much--but here comes maw. Look here,” she said, turning suddenly
and coaxingly upon him, “if she asks you to come along with us up north,
you'll come, won't you? Do! It will be such fun!”
“Up north?” repeated the consul interrogatively.
“Yes; to see the property. Here's maw.”
A more languid but equally well-appointed woman had entered the room.
When the ceremony of introduction was over, she turned to her daughter
and said, “Run away, dear, while I talk business with--er--this
gentleman,” and, as the girl withdrew laughingly, she half stifled a
reminiscent yawn, and raised her heavy lids to the consul.
“You've had a talk with my Elsie?”
The consul confessed to having had that pleasure.
“She speaks her mind,” said Mrs. Kirkby wearily, “but she means well,
and for all her flightiness her head's level. And since her father died
she runs me,” she continued with a slight laugh. After a pause, she
added abstractedly, “I suppose she told you of her engagement to young
McHulish?”
“Yes; but she said she had broken it.”
Mrs. Kirkby lifted her eyebrows with an expression of relief. “It was a
piece of girl and boy foolishness, anyway,” she said. “Elsie and he were
children together at MacCorkleville,--second cousins, in fact,--and I
reckon he got her fancy excited over his nobility, and his being the
chief of the McHulishes. Of course Custer will manage to get something
for the shareholders out of it,--I never knew him to fail in a money
speculation yet,--but I think that's about all. I had an idea of going
up with Elsie to take a look at the property, and I thought of asking
you to join us. Did Elsie tell you? I know she'd like it--and so would
I.”
For all her indolent, purposeless manner, there was enough latent
sincerity and earnestness in her request to interest the consul.
Besides, his own curiosity in regard to this singularly supported claim
was excited, and here seemed to be an opportunity of satisfying it. He
was not quite sure, either, that his previous antagonism to his fair
countrywoman's apparent selfishness and snobbery was entirely just. He
had been absent from America a long time; perhaps it was he himself
who had changed, and lost touch with his compatriots. And yet the
demonstrative independence and recklessness of men like Custer were less
objectionable to, and less inconsistent with, his American ideas than
the snobbishness and almost servile adaptability of the women. Or was
it possible that it was only a weakness of the sex, which no republican
nativity or education could eliminate? Nevertheless he looked up
smilingly.
“But the property is, I understand, scattered about in various places,”
he said.
“Oh, but we mean to go only to Kelpie Island, where there is the ruin of
an old castle. Elsie must see that.”
The consul thought it might be amusing. “By all means let us see that. I
shall be delighted to go with you.”
His ready and unqualified assent appeared to relieve and dissipate the
lady's abstraction. She became more natural and confiding; spoke freely
of Malcolm's mania, which she seemed to accept as a hallucination or a
conviction with equal cheerfulness, and, in brief, convinced the
consul that her connection with the scheme was only the caprice of
inexperienced and unaccustomed idleness. He left her, promising to
return the next day and arrange for their early departure.
His way home lay through one of the public squares of St. Kentigern, at
an hour of the afternoon when it was crossed by working men and women
returning to their quarters from the docks and factories. Never in any
light a picturesque or even cheery procession, there were days when
its unwholesome, monotonous poverty and dull hopelessness of prospect
impressed him more forcibly. He remembered how at first the spectacle
of barefooted girls and women slipping through fog and mist across the
greasy pavement had offended his fresh New World conception of a more
tenderly nurtured sex, until his susceptibilities seemed to have grown
as callous and hardened as the flesh he looked upon, and he had begun to
regard them from the easy local standpoint of a distinct and differently
equipped class.
It chanced, also, that this afternoon some of the male workers had added
to their usual solidity a singular trance-like intoxication. It had
often struck him before as a form of drunkenness peculiar to the St.
Kentigern laborers. Men passed him singly and silently, as if following
some vague alcoholic dream, or moving through some Scotch mist of
whiskey and water. Others clung unsteadily but as silently together,
with no trace of convivial fellowship or hilarity in their dull fixed
features and mechanically moving limbs. There was something weird in
this mirthless companionship, and the appalling loneliness of those
fixed or abstracted eyes. Suddenly he was aware of two men who were
reeling toward him under the influence of this drug-like intoxication,
and he was startled by a likeness which one of them bore to some one
he had seen; but where, and under what circumstances, he could not
determine. The fatuous eye, the features of complacent vanity and
self-satisfied reverie were there, either intensified by drink, or
perhaps suggesting it through some other equally hopeless form of
hallucination. He turned and followed the man, trying to identify
him through his companion, who appeared to be a petty tradesman of a
shrewder, more material type. But in vain, and as the pair turned into
a side street the consul slowly retraced his steps. But he had not
proceeded far before the recollection that had escaped him returned, and
he knew that the likeness suggested by the face he had seen was that of
Malcolm McHulish.