Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by
Google Books (University of California)
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=RWkpAQAAIAAJ
(University of California)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
Marmaduke
Marmaduke
By
Flora Annie Steel
Author of
"On the Face of the Waters," "A Sovereign Remedy,"
"King-Errant," etc.
New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Publishers
1917
_Printed in Great Britain_
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I
"Hello, Davie! Is that you, Davie Sim?" cried a joyous young voice;
then it changed suddenly, with a verve which showed pure delight in
the unfamiliar yet familiar dialect, from correct English to the
broadest Aberdeenshire accent. "Eh, mon, ye're joost the same ow'd tod
o' a pease-bogle wi' yer bonnet ajee, an' a crookit mou'; yen hauf
given tae psaulm singin' and tither tae pipe-blawing!" The voice
paused a bit breathlessly as if it had exhausted itself over the
unwonted exercise, then went on in slightly less aggressive Doric.
"Well, I'm blythe to see you lookin' sae weel. An' is that tall lass
Marrion?"
An easy gallantry came to his tones as the speaker, a fine young
fellow of obviously military bearing, turned to a girl who stood very
still by the window.
"By gad," the young man went on with the same easy condescension, "you
have grown into a pretty girl! Give us a kiss, my dear; you know you
used to be fond of 'Mr. Duke' in the----"
Then suddenly silence fell between the two young people. Something in
the tall still figure by the window seemed to abash the tall figure
making its way easily towards it, and left them looking at each other
critically.
They were as fine a couple physically as God ever made to come
together as man and woman. They were almost alike in stature and
strength--she slightly the smaller--and both seemed equal in abounding
health, though he was florid and she somewhat pale with the pallor of
the thick creamy skin that goes with red-bronze hair.
She spoke at last, the thin curves of her mouth clipping her words
sharply.
"There's mony to tell me yon and crave kisses since you an' me was
hafflins together, Mr. Duke," she said coolly. "I beg yer pardon,
Captain Marmaduke!"
The Honourable Captain Marmaduke Muir, second son of the sixteenth
Baron Drummuir of Drummuir, home on leave after an absence of ten
years on foreign service, looked at the grand-daughter of his father's
head piper and general majordomo as if considering anger. He was too
good looking to be accustomed to such rebuffs from pretty girls,
especially when they were manifestly beneath him in station. Then
suddenly he laughed. The years had fled, and he was a boy again in
fast fellowship with a small hoyden of a girl; a girl four years his
junior, but infinitely his superior in common sense; a girl who had
kept him out of many a scrape and who hadn't scrupled on occasion to
box his ears, young master though he was. With a sudden flash of
memory the occasion came back to him, and he saw himself, a strong lad
of fourteen, wading a swollen stream with the ten-year-old girlie on
his back, a string of handsome trouties he had been catching hanging
like a tail from his hands clasped behind his burden. He heard the
agonised cry in mid-stream, "They're slippin', Maister Duke, they're
slippin'! Let me down till I hoosen them up!" He heard the stiff
reply: "Let 'em slip; I'll no let ye down tae soak ye through!" And
then the woeful battle of wills that ensued, while the trouties
slipped from the string one by one. A battle which ended in a sobbing
girlie ankle deep in water, an empty string, and a defiant lad with
young crimson ears. He felt his mature ones tingle with amusement at
the recollection, and at the recognition that the girlie was as ready
of resentment as ever.
"Ods bobs, Marmie!" he cried, his face full of mischief. "It seems
you've no forgotten the whaur-aboots of my lugs," and his hands went
up to his face as if to protect them.
The girl crimsoned.
"I begged your pardon then, Captain Marmaduke, and I beg it again if
I've offended----" she began defiantly.
He interrupted her with an absolutely charming smile, a deference that
was unanswerable.
"And I beg yours for remembering what I should have forgotten. So we
are quits and can surely shake hands on it like the good friends we
always were, and"--here his voice took on additional charm--"always
will be. Of that I am sure."
His bold blue eyes were on hers frankly, and she gave him back his
look steadily. So they stood, shapely hand in shapely hand, for a
second. Then his left fingers caught at hers and felt the first one
inquisitively.
"Hullo, seamstress, that's new?" he queried, evidently pleased with
his own cleverness in detection.
Marrion Paul drew her hand away sharply.
"I've been at the dressmaking in Edinbro' these six years since
grandfather married," she replied coldly.
Marmaduke looked at Davie Sim incredulously.
"What, Davie! You old reprobate, who the deuce did you get to marry
you?"
There was no answer. Possibly Davie did not hear, for he was rootling
round the kitchen fire with the poker--a most unnecessary task that
sweltering June day. Perhaps, also, it was flame-reflection which made
his face show red under the wide Tam o' Shanter bonnet he invariably
wore in his own house; why it would be difficult to say, except that
outside the precincts of home he was for ever doffing it before
somebody or another. For Davie Sims had been born hereditary servitor
to the Drummuir family, and had every intention of dying in the same
position.
"He married Penelope from the castle," came Marrion's voice
relentlessly, "and his lordship gave her away."
"The devil he did," remarked the young man helplessly to both pieces
of information, after a moment's pause due evidently to mingled
outrage and amusement. "Well," he added, in male defiance of the
woman's point of view, "I expect she makes him an excellent wife."
"Most excellent!" assented Marrion, with a curl of her lip. "So, as
she happens to be gone on a visit, I have come back to stay a while--a
little while--with grandfather."
Her diction, bar the one slight slip, was as free from provincialism
as his own, and Marmaduke Muir looked at her appreciatively. She was
different from the hoyden he had left. Perhaps in Edinburgh she had
gone in for classes. And she was better looking too, though much too
tall for a woman. Then her mouth, though passable in its thin decided
curves, was far too wide for beauty.
Still, she was altogether sufficiently pleasant to look upon for
Marmaduke to feel it necessary for him to charm. Not that either by
nature or art he was a lady-killer. To do him justice, he would have
felt just the same had the attraction been male or neuter. Simply he
always desired to please what was pleasant to himself, and his tastes
were catholic.
So he said almost sentimentally:
"Well, I am very glad you're here. We shall be able to spend our
birthdays together as we used to in the old times. Eighteenth of June!
Waterloo day! Good heavens, I can scarcely believe that I shall be
thirty tomorrow, and you?" He positively blushed, for in the year 1848
it was almost indecent for an unmarried woman to be six-and-twenty.
Marrion, however, had no such qualms.
"Twenty-six," she said calmly; perhaps she knew she did not look it.
"Anyhow," he went on hastily, as if to escape from an unwelcome fact,
"I have brought you a present from foreign parts." He had not even
thought of one; in fact, he had only given his old playmate a passing
remembrance, wondering whom she had married; but he knew his boxes
contained enough trifles for the home folk to enable him to spare one,
and he could no more help trying to charm than he could help
breathing. "And now," he added, "I must be off. Tell me, Davie, like a
good soul, where I am likely to find his lordship this time of day.
I'm cursed early," he continued a bit ruefully, "but that's the worst
of me. I'm always in such a devil of a hurry."
"You came across the ferry?" asked Marrion sympathetically.
He turned to her at once.
"Yes. It was the first coach. I wouldn't wait for the later one. And
then when I got to the Cross Keys and saw the old place over the
water, I wouldn't wait to go round by the bridges. So Andrew--you
remember Andrew Fraser, of course?--'pon my soul, he's been a
first-class orderly ever since he joined, and I don't know what I
should have done without him; nursed me like a mother when I'd fever
and all that sort of thing--a real honest good chap. Well, he got out
the valise and carried it down the ferry road. I didn't know, you see,
that the ferry was disused; but we luckily found someone's boat--and
here I am--too soon!"
"I'm thinkin'," said Davie Sim, with caution, "that his lordship at
this hour will, mayhap, be inspec'in' the pigstyes."
"Pigstyes!" echoed Marmaduke theatrically. "Say not so! Dash it all, I
can't do prodigal in a pigstye! I demand a byre and a fatted calf.
Well, I suppose I had better ring at the front door and ask the butler
if my Lord Drummuir is at home like any orra' stranger. So--ta, ta,
for the present!"
He waved an easy hand to Marrion as he passed out. She hesitated a
second, then followed him into the sunlit courtyard and called--
"Captain Duke!"
He turned, looking so handsome and debonnaire that her purpose almost
wavered. Why should she pour gall and wormwood into his cup of life
before circumstances made the bitter inevitable? Still, since it had
to come, and that shortly, it was as well he should be prepared for
it. So much depended on the relations between him and his father that
it was better he should not be taken unawares.
"If you are wanting to see his lordship the now," she said, her
phrasing astray once more under pressure of other thoughts, "you wad
find him in the south avenue. He was there when I came frae the town
the now, cutting away at yen of the big beech trees."
"Cutting at a big beech tree! What the deuce do you mean?" queried
Marmaduke incredulously.
She replied calmly, conclusively.
"Just that he must hae gotten a letter from your brother the Master.
It aye angers him so that he orders out the men with the hatchets.
It's as well you should know."
He stood staring at her. It was no news to him, of course, even though
mails had been infrequent during those ten years, that there was an
open breach between his father and the heir, nor was he unaware of his
father's savage temper; that, and the impossibility of getting a
decent allowance to enable him to live in England being responsible
for those same ten years of foreign service. But distance softens
shadows; besides, the very idea that a man could go and cut down
historical trees just to spite another man was foreign to Marmaduke's
nature.
"Oh, curse the whole lot!" he broke out at last. "Upon my soul I'll go
back to the East--it isn't half a bad place--or wouldn't be if one
only had a little tin--besides, I must get the money for my majority."
His words, following his impulsive thoughts, made Marrion smile
indulgently.
"I wouldn't if I was you, Mr.--I mean Captain Duke," she remarked,
with a twinkle in her eye. "Mayhap, my lord will bury the hatchet now
you're home, if ye don't anger him." She looked pretty with that
half-mischievous smile, and the sight cheered Marmaduke instantly.
"What a wise lassie you always were, Marmie," he said, with wilful
charm, "and what a lot of scrapes you've gotten me out of, and what a
lot you'd get me out of, if you were only bound up with me like the
Shorter Catechism was by mistake with Tristram Shandy--d'you remember?
Good lord, I've forgotten my duty to my neighbour! However, here goes,
and I'll do my best not to anger the baron! You see, I must get the
money for my majority," he added, half to himself, as he spun round on
his heel rather dramatically.
In fact, there was no denying it, the Honourable Marmaduke Muir was a
trifle flamboyant as he swaggered across the courtyard which led from
the old keep of Drummuir Castle to the southern and modern portion of
the building. Marrion Paul watched the figure with a certain distaste.
Perhaps, she thought, it was only the ultrafashionable dress, the all
too palpable fit-out of a smart military tailor, eager for a bill,
that clashed with the grim old walls. Inside he had seemed much the
same as she remembered him. Kindly, affectionate, not over wise, but
charming, absolutely charming. And, after all, who was she to judge a
gentleman born? That question was a hard one to answer. Her mother had
undoubtedly been Maggie Sim, old Sim's daughter, who had been maid to
the first Lady Drummuir. But her father had been Paul, the foreign
valet, whom Lord Drummuir's younger brother had brought over with him
when he was invalided from the diplomatic service. A very decent,
respectable sort of chap, as old Sim admitted even while he objected
strongly to his daughter's marriage. Not without reason it turned out,
since Paul, after tending his sick master with unremitting care and
resource until his death, disappeared the day of the funeral, leaving
his young wife expecting her first child. And he had never been heard
of since. That Mrs. Paul should pine away and die early was, the folk
about said, only to be expected, for Paul, despite his foreign birth,
had been a man to be regretted--a man who had a way with him which his
daughter had inherited. She, however, would never hear a word in his
favour, and nothing made her more angry than to find in herself little
traits of character unaccountable to her sturdy Scots upbringing.
So she told herself that she was no judge of what a gentleman's dress
or deportment should be, and turned at the sound of a footstep coming
through the archway of the keep behind her to greet the newcomer with
a more effusive welcome than she would otherwise have given the young
man who came towards her carrying a valise on his shoulder. He set
down his burden and grasped her outstretched hand in a sort of
transport.
"Ah, Marrion--Marrion, my lass!" he cried. "God, but it's gude to see
you once mair!"
The words summed him up from the crown of his head to the tips of his
toes. You might have spent long hours in analysing Andrew Fraser's
mind and body at that particular moment, and you would have got no
nearer the mark, since for the time being existence was sheer gladness
because of the sight of a woman.
"And I've brocht him safe home as ye bade me when I joined. Ye'll have
seen him yerself. He's fine, isn't he?"
There was a world of pride in his tone; the pride of the
soldier-servant who is responsible for the smartness of his master's
outturn.
"Aye!" assented Marrion, grimly recognising that the figure before her
was more to her mind in some ways than the other which had gone
swaggering through the quadrangle. This one was broader in the chest,
simpler in its ugly angular face and small pathetic-looking blue eyes,
and simple--oh, so irritatingly simple!--in the devotion writ large in
its every look, its every intonation.
"Well, I'm glad you're both home safe," she said, putting the barrier
of refined speech between them. Then a resentment, of which she was
innately ashamed even while she yielded to it, made her add: "And I
suppose you've brought home a wife on the strength of the regiment?"
Andrew Fraser stared for a second, then shouldered his valise again
deftly--
"Ye ken fine, Marrion Paul," he said sternly, as he went on, "that
there never was but ae woman in the wurrld for me, an' never will be."
And so he left her feeling small and mean.
She watched him across the courtyard following on his master's steps.
A fine figure of a man. No swagger there, nothing to clash with the
grey old walls.
But that made no difference, no difference at all. That was the worst
of it.