A DAUGHTER OF HETH
BY
WILLIAM BLACK
"If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which
are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?"
_NEW AND REVISED EDITION_
NEW YORK: HARPER AND BROTHERS
1892
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED;
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
_PREFATORY NOTE._
_I have long wished to place before the public an edition of these
novels of mine which should have at least the mechanical merit of
uniformity. Also I had in contemplation, especially with regard to
the earlier volumes, a large measure of re-shaping and re-writing; so
that books composed amid stress and turmoil might gain something from
the comparative leisure of later years. But this wider project I
found impracticable. For one thing, it would have taken a few
lifetimes to accomplish; then again, it was just possible that a
certain freshness and rudeness of touch might have been ill replaced
by a nicer precision. Nevertheless in many minor ways these pages
have now been thoroughly revised; verbal and other inaccuracies have
been corrected; crooked places have been made straight; conversations
condensed; while a considerable number of those little playfulnesses
which the printer somehow mysteriously manages, when one is not
watching, to introduce into the text, have been removed. It only
remains for me, in submitting this new series to the reading public,
to express my deep sense of gratitude for the constant favour and
kindness I have already and for so long a time experienced at their
hands._
_W. B._
_London, January, 1892._
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I.--Coquette's Arrival
II.--Coquette's Religion
III.--A Penitent
IV.--An unexpected Visitor
V.--Coquette's Music
VI.--Earlshope
VII.--The Crucifix
VIII.--Saltcoats
IX.--Coquette's Promise
X.--The Schoolmaster
XI.--A Meeting on the Moor
XII.--Coquette's Conquests
XIII.--A Horoscope
XIV.--Sir Peter and Lady Drum
XV.--A dangerous Adventure
XVI.--Coquette leaves Airlie
XVII.--Lochfyne
XVIII.--Coquette sails to the North
XIX.--Coquette discourses
XX.--Letters from Airlie
XXI.--Coquette is troubled
XXII.--On the Seashore
XXIII.--Coquette begins to fear
XXIV.--Touching certain Problems
XXV.--Coquette's Presentiments
XXVI.--Confession at last
XXVII.--Loin de France
XXVIII.--After many Days
XXIV.--Coquette's Dreams
XXX.--On the Way
XXXI.--An awful Visitor
XXXII.--In the Springtime
XXXIII.--Over the Moor
XXXIV.--Lord Earlshope's Cave
XXXV.--The Nemesis of Love
XXXVI.--The Last Day At Airlie
XXXVII.--Coquette in Town
XXXVIII.--All about Kelvin-side
XXXIX.--Lady Drum's Dinner-party
XL.--The Rosebud
XLI.--The Whaup becomes anxious
XLII.--At the Theatre
XLIII.--Coquette is told
XLIV.--Coquette's Forebodings
XLV.--A Legend of Earlshope
XLVI.--The Minister's Publisher
XLVII.--An Apparition
XLVIII.--Earlshope is Invaded
XLIX.--Coquette's Song
L.--Coquette forsakes her Friends
LI.--A Secret of the Sea
LII.--Consent
LIII.--The Pale Bride
LIV.--Husband and Wife
LV.--The Churchyard on the Moor
A DAUGHTER OF HETH
CHAPTER I.
COQUETTE'S ARRIVAL.
The tide of battle had flowed onward from the village to the Manse.
The retreating party, consisting of the Minister's five sons, were
driven back by force of numbers, contesting every inch of the ground.
Hope had deserted them; and there now remained to them but the one
chance--to reach the fortress of the Manse in safety, and seek the
shelter of its great stone wall.
The enemy numbered over a dozen; and the clangour and clamour of the
pursuit waxed stronger as they pressed on the small and compact body
of five. The weapons on both sides were stones picked up from the
moorland road; and the terrible aim of the Whaup--the eldest of the
Minister's boys--had disfigured more than one mother's son of the
turbulent crowd that pursued. He alone--a long-legged Herculean lad
of eighteen--kept in front of his retreating brothers, facing the foe
boldly, and directing his swift, successive discharges with a deadly
accuracy of curve upon the noses of the foremost. But his valour was
of no avail. All seemed over. Their courage began to partake of the
recklessness of despair. Nature seemed to sympathise with this
disastrous fate; and to the excited eyes of the fugitives it appeared
that the sun was overcast--that the moor around was blacker and more
silent than ever--and that the far stretch of the sea, with the
gloomy hills of Arran, had grown dark as if with a coming storm.
Thus does the human mind confer an anthropomorphic sentiment on all
things, animate and inanimate: a profound observation which occurred
to Mr. Gillespie, the Schoolmaster, who, being on one occasion in the
town of Ayr, when horse-racing or some such godless diversion was
going forward, and having, in a very small and crowded hostelry,
meekly enquired for some boiled eggs, was thus indignantly
remonstrated with by the young woman in charge: "Losh bless me! Do
ye think the hens can remember to lay eggs in all this bustle and
hurry!"
Finally, the retreating party turned and ran--ignominiously,
pell-mell--until they had gained the high stone wall surrounding the
Manse. They darted into the garden, slammed the door to, and
barricaded it; the Whaup sending up a peal of defiant laughter that
made the solemn echoes of the old-fashioned house ring again.
Outside this shriek of joy was taken as a challenge; and the party on
the other side of the wall returned a roar of mingled mockery and
anger which was not pleasant to hear. It meant a blockade and
bombardment; with perhaps a fierce assault when the patience of the
besiegers should give way. But the Whaup was not of a kind to
indulge in indolent security when his enemies were murmuring hard by.
In an incredibly short space of time he and his brothers had wheeled
up to the wall a couple of empty barrels, and across these was
hurriedly thrown a broad plank. The Whaup filled his hands with the
gravel of the garden walk, and jumped up on the board. The instant
that his head appeared above the wall, there was a yell of
execration. He had just time to discharge his two handfuls of gravel
upon the besiegers, when a shower of stones was directed at him, and
he ducked his head.
"This is famous!" he cried. "This is grand! It beats Josephus!
Mair gravel, Jock--mair gravel, Jock!"
Now, in the Manse of Airlie, there was an edition of Josephus' works,
in several volumes, which was the only profane reading allowed to the
boys on Sunday. Consequently it was much studied--especially the
plates of it; and one of these plates represented the siege of
Jerusalem, with the Romans being killed by stones thrown from the
wall. No sooner, therefore, had the Whaup mounted on the empty
barrels, than his brothers recognised the position. They were called
upon to engage in a species of warfare familiar to them. They formed
themselves into line, and handed up to the Whaup successive supplies
of stones and gravel, with a precision they could not have exceeded
had they actually served in one of the legions of Titus.
The Whaup, however, dared not discharge his ammunition with
regularity. He had to descend to feints; for he was in a most
perilous position, and might at any moment have had his head rendered
amorphous. He therefore from time to time showed his hand over the
wall; the expected volley of stones followed; and then he sprang up
to return the compliment with all his might. Howls of rage greeted
each of his efforts; and, indeed, the turmoil rose to an
extraordinary pitch. The besiegers were furious. They were in an
open position, while their foe was well intrenched; and no man can
get a handful of gravel pitched into his face, and also preserve his
temper. Revenge was out of the question. The sagacious Whaup never
appeared when they expected him; and when he did appear, it was an
instantaneous up and down, giving them no chance at all of doing him
an injury. They raved and stormed; and the more bitterly they
shouted names at him, and the more fiercely they heaped insults upon
him, the more joyously he laughed. The noise, without and within,
was appalling; never, in the memory of man, had such an uproar
resounded around the quiet Manse of Airlie.
Suddenly there was a scared silence within the walls, and a rapid
disappearance of the younger of the besieged.
"Oh, Tam, here's faither!" cried one.
But Tam--elsewhere named the Whaup--was too excited to hear. He was
shouting and laughing, hurling gravel and stones at his enemies,
when----
When a tall, stern-faced, gray-haired man, who wore a rusty black
coat and a white neckcloth, and who bore in his hand, ominously, a
horsewhip, walked firmly and sedately across the garden. The hero of
the day was still on the barrels, taunting his foes, and helping
himself to the store of ammunition which his colleagues had piled
upon the plank.
"Who's lang-leggit now? Where are the Minister's chickens now? Why
dinna you go and wash your noses in the burn?"
The next moment the Whaup uttered what can only be described as a
squeal. He had not been expecting an attack from the rear; and there
was fright as well as pain in the yell which followed the startling
cut across the legs which brought him down. In fact, the lithe curl
of the whip round his calves was at once a mystery and a horror; and
he tumbled rather than jumped from the plank, only to find himself
confronted by his father, whose threatening eye and terrible voice
soon explained the mystery.
"How daur ye, sir," exclaimed Mr. Cassilis, "how daur ye, sir,
transform my house into a Bedlam! For shame, sir, that your years
have brought ye no more sense than to caper wi' a lot of schoolboys.
Have ye no more respect for yourself--have ye no more respect for the
college you have come home from--than to behave yourself like a
farm-callant, and make yourself the byword of the neighbourhood? You
are worse than the youngest in the house----"
"I didn't know you were in the Manse," said the Whaup, wondering
whither his brothers had run.
"So much the worse--so much the worse," said the Minister, severely,
"that ye have no better guide to your conduct than the fear o' being
caught. Why, sir, when I was your age, I was busier with my Greek
Testament than with flinging names at a wheen laddies!"
"It was mair than names, as ye might hae seen," remarked the Whaup,
confidently.
Indeed, he was incorrigible, and the Minister turned away. His
eldest son had plenty of brains, plenty of courage, and an excellent
physique; but he could not be brought to acquire a sense of the
proper gravity or duties of manhood, nor yet could he be prevailed on
to lay aside the mischievous tricks of his youth. He was the terror
of the parish. It was hoped that a winter at Glasgow University
would tame down the Whaup; but he returned to Airlie worse than ever,
and formed his innocent brothers into a regular band of marauders, of
whom all honest people were afraid. The long-legged daredevil of the
Manse, with his boldness, his cunning, and his agility, left neither
garden, nor farmyard, nor kitchen alone. Worthy villagers were
tripped up by bits of invisible twine. Mysterious knocks on the
window woke them at the dead of night. When they were surprised that
the patience of their sitting hen did not meet with its usual reward,
they found that chalk eggs had been substituted for the natural ones.
Their cats came home with walnut-shells on their feet. Stable doors
were unaccountably opened. Furious bulls were found lassoed, so that
no man dare approach them. The work of the Whaup was everywhere
evident--it was always the Whaup. And then that young gentleman
would come quietly into the villagers' houses, and chat pleasantly
with them, and confide to them his great grief that his younger
brother, Wattie--notwithstanding that people thought him a quiet,
harmless, pious, and rather sneaking boy--was such a desperate hand
for mischief. Some believed him; others reproached him for his
wickedness in blaming his own sins upon the only one of the
Minister's family who had an appearance of Christian humility and
grace.
When the Minister had gone into the house, the Whaup--in nowise
downcast by his recent misfortune, although he still was aware of an
odd sensation about the legs--mounted once more upon the barrels to
reconnoitre the enemy. He had no wish to renew the fight; for
Saturday was his father's day for study and meditation; no stir or
sound was allowed in the place from morning till night; and
certainly, had the young gentlemen of the Manse known that their
father was indoors, they would have let the village boys rave outside
in safety. Cool and confident as he was, the Whaup did not care to
bring his father out a second time; and so he got up on the
barricades merely for the sake of information.
The turmoil had evidently quieted down, partly through the
ignominious silence of the besieged, and partly through the
appearance of a new object of public attention. The heads of the
dozen lads outside were now turned towards the village, whence there
was seen coming along the road the Minister's dog-cart, driven by his
ancient henchman, Andrew Bogue. Beside the driver sat some fair
creature in fluttering white and yellow--an apparition that seldom
met the vision of the inhabitants of Airlie. The Whaup knew that
this young lady was his cousin from France, who was now, being an
orphan, and having completed her education, coming to live at the
Manse. But who was the gentleman behind, who sat with his arm flung
carelessly over the bar, while he smiled and chatted to the girl, who
had half turned round to listen to him?
"Why, it is Lord Earlshope," said the Whaup, with his handsome face
suddenly assuming a frown. "What business has Earlshope to talk to
my cousin?"
Presently the gentleman let himself down from the dog-cart, took off
his hat to her who had been his companion, and turned and went along
the road again. The dog-cart drove up to the door. The Whaup,
daring his enemies to touch him, went out boldly, and proceeded to
welcome the new-comer to Airlie.
"I suppose you are my cousin," he said.
"I suppose I am," said the young girl, speaking with an accent so
markedly French that he looked at her in astonishment. But then she,
in turn, regarded him for a moment with a pair of soft dark eyes, and
he forgot her accent. He vaguely knew that she had smiled to him;
and that the effect of the smile was rather bewildering--as he
assisted her down from the dog-cart, and begged her to come in
through the garden.