Mungo stood in the dark till the last beat of the horse-hoofs could be
heard, and then went in disconsolate and perplexed. He drew the bars as
it were upon a dear friend out in the night, and felt as there had gone
the final hope for Doom and its inhabitants.
“An auld done rickle o' a place!” he soliloquised, lifting a candle high
that it might show the shame of the denuded and crumbling walls. “An
auld done rickle: I've seen a better barn i' the Lothians, and fancy me
tryin' to let on that it's a kind o' Edinbro'! Sirs! sirs! 'If ye canna
hae the puddin' be contented wi' the bree,' Annapla's aye sayin', but
here there's neither bree nor puddin'. To think that a' my traison
against the master i' the interest o' his dochter and himsel' should
come to naethin', and that Sim MacTaggart should be sent awa' wi' a flea
in his lug, a' for the tirravee o' a lassie that canna' value a
guid chance when it offers! I wonder what ails her, if it's no' that
mon-sher's ta'en her fancy! Women are a' like weans; they never see the
crack in an auld toy till some ane shows them a new ane. Weel! as sure
as death I wash my haun's o' the hale affair. She's daft; clean daft,
puir dear! If she kent whit I ken, she micht hae some excuse, but I took
guid care o' that. I doot yon's the end o' a very promisin' match, and
the man, though he mayna' think it, has his merchin' orders.”
The brief bow-legged figure rolled along the lobby, pshawing with
vexation, and in a little, Doom, to all appearance, was a castle dark
and desolate.
Yet not wholly asleep, however dark and silent; for Olivia, too, had
heard the last of the thundering hoofs, had suffered the agony that
comes from the wrench of a false ideal from the place of its long
cherishing.
She came down in the morning a mere wraith of beauty, as it seemed to
the little servitor, shutting her lips hard, but ready to burst into a
shower.
“Guid Lord!” thought Mungo, setting the scanty table. “It's clear she
hasna steeked an e'e a' nicht, and me sleepin' like a peerie. That's ane
o' the advantages o' being ower the uneasy age o' love--and still I'm
no' that auld. I wonder if she's rued it the day already.”
She smiled upon him bravely, but woe-begone, and could not check
a quivering lip, and then she essayed at a song hummed with no bad
pretence as she cast from the window a glance along the wintry coast,
that never changed its aspect though hearts broke. But, as ill-luck had
it, the air was the unfinished melody of Sim's bewitching flageolet.
She stopped it ere she had gone farther than a bar or two, and turned to
find Mungo irresolute and disturbed.
“He ga'ed awa'--” began the little man, with the whisper of the
conspirator.
“Mungo!” she cried, “you will not say a word of it. It is all bye with
me, and what for not with you? I command you to say no more about it, do
you hear?” And her foot beat with an imperiousness almost comical from
one with such a broken countenance.
“It's a gey droll thing--”
“It's a gey hard thing, that is what it is,” she interrupted him, “that
you will not do what I tell you, and say nothing of what I have no
relish to hear, and must have black shame to think of. Must I go over
all that I have said to you already? It is finished, Mungo; are you
listening? Did he--did he--looked vexed? But it does not matter, it is
finished, and I have been a very foolish girl.”
“But that needna' prevent me tellin' ye that the puir man's awa' clean
gyte.”
She smiled just the ghost of a smile at that, then put her hands upon
her ears.
“Oh!” she cried despairingly, “have I not a friend left?”
Mungo sighed and said no more then, but went to Annapla and sought
relief for his feelings in bilingual wrangling with that dark abigail.
At low tide beggars from Glen Croe came to his door with yawning pokes
and all their old effrontery: he astounded them by the fiercest of
receptions, condemned them all eternally for limmers and sorners, lusty
rogues and vagabonds.
“Awa'! awa'!” he cried, an implacable face against their whining
protestations--“Awa', or I'll gie ye the gairde! If I was my uncle
Erchie, I wad pit an end to your argy-bargying wi' hail frae a gun!” But
to Annapla it was, “Puir deevils, it's gey hard to gie them the back o'
the haun' and them sae used to rougher times in Doom. What'll they think
o' us? It's sic a doon-come, but we maun be hainin' seein' Leevie's lost
her jo, and no ither way clear oot o' the bit. I'm seein' a toom girnel
and done beef here lang afore next Martinmas.”
These plaints were to a woman blissfully beyond comprehending the full
import of them, for so much was Annapla taken up with her Gift, so misty
and remote the realms of Gaelic dream wherein she moved, that the little
Lowland oddity's perturbation was beneath her serious attention.
Olivia had that day perhaps the bitterest of her life. With love
outside--calling in the evening and fluting in the bower, and ever (as
she thought) occupied with her image even when farther apart--she had
little fault to find with the shabby interior of her home. Now that love
was lost, she sat with her father, oppressed and cold as it had been a
vault. Even in his preoccupation he could not fail to see how ill she
seemed that morning: it appeared to him that she had the look of a
mountain birch stricken by the first of wintry weather.
“My dear,” he said, with a tenderness that had been some time absent
from their relations, “you must be taking a change of air. I'm a poor
parent not to have seen before how much you need it.” He hastened to
correct what he fancied from her face was a misapprehension. “I am
speaking for your red cheeks, my dear, believe me; I'm wae to see you
like that.”
“I will do whatever you wish, father,” said Olivia in much agitation.
Coerced she was iron, coaxed she was clay. “I have not been a very good
daughter to you, father; after this I will be trying to be better.”
His face reddened; his heart beat at this capitulation of his rebel: he
rose from his chair and took her into his arms--an odd display for a man
so long stone-cold but to his dreams.
“My dear, my dear!” said he, “but in one detail that need never again be
named between us two, you have been the best of girls, and, God knows, I
am not the pattern parent!”
Her arm went round his neck, and she wept on his breast.
“Sour and dour--” said he.
“No, no!” she cried.
“And poor to penury.”
“All the more need for a loving child. There are only the two of us.”
He held her at arm's-length and looked at her wistfully in the wet wan
face and saw his wife Christina there. “By heaven!” he thought, “it is
no wonder that this man should hunt her.”
“You have made me happy this day, Olivia,” said he; “at least half
happy. I dare not mention what more was needed to make me quite
content.”
“You need not,” said she. “I know, and that--and that--is over too. I am
just your own Olivia.”
“What!” he cried elate; “no more?”
“No more at all.”
“Now praise God!” said he. “I have been robbed of Credit and estate, and
even of my name; I have seen king and country foully done by, and black
affront brought on our people, and still there's something left to live
for.”