St Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson (page 5)

own postillions, was only to be explained on the double hypothesis, that he was a fool and no gentleman.

I have said they were man and woman. I should have said man and child. She was certainly not more than seventeen, pretty as an angel, just plump enough to damn a saint, and dressed in various shades of blue, from her stockings to her saucy cap, in a kind of taking gamut, the top note of which she flung me in a beam from her too appreciative eye. There was no doubt about the case: I saw it all. From a boarding-school, a black-board, a piano, and Clementi’s Sonatinas, the child had made a rash adventure upon life in the company of a half-bred hawbuck; and she was already not only regretting it, but expressing her regret with point and pungency.

As I alighted they both paused with that unmistakable air of being interrupted in a scene. I uncovered to the lady and placed my services at their disposal.

It was the man who answered. ‘There’s no use in shamming, sir,’ said he. ‘This lady and I have run away, and her father’s after us: road to Gretna, sir. And here have these nincompoops spilt us in the ditch and smashed the chaise!’

‘Very provoking,’ said I.

‘I don’t know when I’ve been so provoked!’ cried he, with a glance down the road, of mortal terror.

‘The father is no doubt very much incensed?’ I pursued civilly.

‘O God!’ cried the hawbuck. ‘In short, you see, we must get out of this. And I’ll tell you what–it may seem cool, but necessity has no law–if you would lend us your chaise to the next post-house, it would be the very thing, sir.’

‘I confess it seems cool,’ I replied.

‘What’s that you say, sir?’ he snapped.

‘I was agreeing with you,’ said I. ‘Yes, it does seem cool; and what is more to the point, it seems unnecessary. This thing can be arranged in a more satisfactory manner otherwise, I think. You can doubtless ride?’

This opened a door on the matter of their previous dispute, and the fellow appeared life-sized in his true colours. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling her: that, damn her! she must ride!’ he broke out. ‘And if the gentleman’s of the same mind, why, damme, you shall!’

As he said so, he made a snatch at her wrist, which she evaded with horror.

I stepped between them.

‘No, sir,’ said I; ‘the lady shall not.’

He turned on me raging. ‘And who are you to interfere?’ he roared.

‘There is here no question of who I am,’ I replied. ‘I may be the devil or the Archbishop of Canterbury for what you know, or need know. The point is that I can help you–it appears that nobody else can; and I will tell you how I propose to do it. I will give the lady a seat in my chaise, if you will return the compliment by allowing my servant to ride one of your horses.’

I thought he would have sprung at my throat.

‘You have always the alternative before you: to wait here for the arrival of papa,’ I added.

And that settled him. He cast another haggard look down the road, and capitulated.

‘I am sure, sir, the lady is very much obliged to you,’ he said, with an ill grace.

I gave her my hand; she mounted like a bird into the chaise; Rowley, grinning from ear to ear, closed the door behind us; the two impudent rascals of post-boys cheered and laughed aloud as we drove off; and my own postillion urged his horses at once into a rattling trot. It was plain I was supposed by all to have done a very dashing act, and ravished the bride from the ravisher.

In the meantime I stole a look at the little lady. She was in a state of pitiable discomposure, and her arms shook on her lap in her black lace mittens.

‘Madam–‘ I began.

And she, in the same moment, finding her voice: ‘O, what you must think of me!’

‘Madam,’ said I, ‘what must any gentleman think when he sees youth, beauty and innocence in distress? I wish I could tell you that I was old enough to be your father; I think we must give that up,’ I continued, with a smile. ‘But I will tell you something about myself which ought to do as well, and to set that little heart at rest in my society. I am a lover. May I say it of myself–for I am not quite used to all the niceties of English–that I am a true lover? There is one whom I admire, adore, obey; she is no less good than she is beautiful; if she were here, she would take you to her arms: conceive that she has sent me–that she has said to me, “Go, be her knight!”‘

‘O, I know she must be sweet, I know she must be worthy of you!’ cried the little lady. ‘She would never forget female decorum–nor make the terrible erratum I’ve done!’

And at this she lifted up her voice and wept.

This did not forward matters: it was in vain that I begged her to be more composed and to tell me a plain, consecutive tale of her misadventures; but she continued instead to pour forth the most extraordinary mixture of the correct school miss and the poor untutored little piece of womanhood in a false position–of engrafted pedantry and incoherent nature.

‘I am certain it must have been judicial blindness,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t think how I didn’t see it, but I didn’t; and he isn’t, is he? And then a curtain rose . . . O, what a moment was that! But I knew at once that YOU WERE; you had but to appear from your carriage, and I knew it, O, she must be a fortunate young lady! And I have no fear with you, none–a perfect confidence.’

‘Madam,’ said I, ‘a gentleman.’

‘That’s what I mean–a gentleman,’ she exclaimed. ‘And he–and that–HE isn’t. O, how shall I dare meet father!’ And disclosing to me her tear-stained face, and opening her arms with a tragic gesture: ‘And I am quite disgraced before all the young ladies, my school-companions!’ she added.

‘O, not so bad as that!’ I cried. ‘Come, come, you exaggerate, my dear Miss–? Excuse me if I am too familiar: I have not yet heard your name.’

‘My name is Dorothy Greensleeves, sir: why should I conceal it? I fear it will only serve to point an adage to future generations, and I had meant so differently! There was no young female in the county more emulous to be thought well of than I. And what a fall was there! O, dear me, what a wicked, piggish donkey of a girl I have made of myself, to be sure! And there is no hope! O, Mr.–‘

And at that she paused and asked my name.

I am not writing my eulogium for the Academy; I will admit it was unpardonably imbecile, but I told it her. If you had been there– and seen her, ravishingly pretty and little, a baby in years and mind–and heard her talking like a book, with so much of schoolroom propriety in her manner, with such an innocent despair in the matter–you would probably have told her yours. She repeated it after me.

‘I shall pray for you all my life,’ she said. ‘Every night, when I retire to rest, the last thing I shall do is to remember you by name.’

Presently I succeeded in winning from her her tale, which was much what I had anticipated: a tale of a schoolhouse, a walled garden, a fruit-tree that concealed a bench, an impudent raff posturing in church, an exchange of flowers and vows over the garden wall, a silly schoolmate for a confidante, a chaise and four, and the most immediate and perfect disenchantment on the part of the little lady. ‘And there is nothing to be done!’ she wailed in conclusion. ‘My error is irretrievable, I am quite forced to that conclusion. O, Monsieur de Saint-Yves! who would have thought that I could have been such a blind, wicked donkey!’

I should have said before–only that I really do not know when it came in–that we had been overtaken by the two post-boys, Rowley and Mr. Bellamy, which was the hawbuck’s name, bestriding the four post-horses; and that these formed a sort of cavalry escort, riding now before, now behind the chaise, and Bellamy occasionally posturing at the window and obliging us with some of his conversation. He was so ill-received that I declare I was tempted to pity him, remembering from what a height he had fallen, and how few hours ago it was since the lady had herself fled to his arms, all blushes and ardour. Well, these great strokes of fortune usually befall the unworthy, and Bellamy was now the legitimate object of my commiseration and the ridicule of his own post-boys!

‘Miss Dorothy,’ said I, ‘you wish to be delivered from this man?’

‘O, if it were possible!’ she cried. ‘But not by violence.’

‘Not in the least, ma’am,’ I replied. ‘The simplest thing in life. We are in a civilised country; the man’s a malefactor–‘

‘O, never!’ she cried. ‘Do not even dream it! With all his faults, I know he is not THAT.’

‘Anyway, he’s in the wrong in this affair–on the wrong side of the law, call it what you please,’ said I; and with that, our four horsemen having for the moment headed us by a considerable interval, I hailed my post-boy and inquired who was the nearest magistrate and where he lived. Archdeacon Clitheroe, he told me, a prodigious dignitary, and one who lived but a lane or two back, and at the distance of only a mile or two out of the direct road. I showed him the king’s medallion.

‘Take the lady there, and at full gallop,’ I cried.

‘Right, sir! Mind yourself,’ says the postillion.

And before I could have thought it possible, he had turned the carriage to the rightabout and we were galloping south.

Our outriders were quick to remark and imitate the manoeuvre, and came flying after us with a vast deal of indiscriminate shouting; so that the fine, sober picture of a carriage and escort, that we had presented but a moment back, was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into the image of a noisy fox-chase. The two postillions and my own saucy rogue were, of course, disinterested actors in the comedy; they rode for the mere sport, keeping in a body, their mouths full of laughter, waving their hats as they came on, and crying (as the fancy struck them) Tally-ho!’ ‘Stop, thief!’ ‘A highwayman! A highwayman!’ It was otherguess work with Bellamy. That gentleman no sooner observed our change of direction than he turned his horse with so much violence that the poor animal was almost cast upon its side, and launched her in immediate and desperate pursuit. As he approached I saw that his face was deadly white and that he carried a drawn pistol in his hand. I turned at once to the poor little bride that was to have been, and now was not to be; she, upon her side, deserting the other window, turned as if to meet me.

‘O, O, don’t let him kill me!’ she screamed.

‘Never fear,’ I replied.

Her face was distorted with terror. Her hands took hold upon me with the instinctive clutch of an infant. The chaise gave a flying lurch, which took the feet from under me and tumbled us anyhow upon the seat. And almost in the same moment the head of Bellamy appeared in the window which Missy had left free for him.

Conceive the situation! The little lady and I were falling–or had just fallen–backward on the seat, and offered to the eye a somewhat ambiguous picture. The chaise was speeding at a furious pace, and with the most violent leaps and lurches, along the highway. Into this bounding receptacle Bellamy interjected his head, his pistol arm, and his pistol; and since his own horse was travelling still faster than the chaise, he must withdraw all of them again in the inside of the fraction of a minute. He did so, but he left the charge of the pistol behind him–whether by design or accident I shall never know, and I dare say he has forgotten! Probably he had only meant to threaten, in hopes of causing us to arrest our flight. In the same moment came the explosion and a pitiful cry from Missy; and my gentleman, making certain he had struck her, went down the road pursued by the furies, turned at the first corner, took a flying leap over the thorn hedge, and disappeared across country in the least possible time.

Rowley was ready and eager to pursue; but I withheld him, thinking we were excellently quit of Mr. Bellamy, at no more cost than a scratch on the forearm and a bullet-hole in the left-hand claret- coloured panel. And accordingly, but now at a more decent pace, we proceeded on our way to Archdeacon Clitheroe’s, Missy’s gratitude and admiration were aroused to a high pitch by this dramatic scene, and what she was pleased to call my wound. She must dress it for me with her handkerchief, a service which she rendered me even with tears. I could well have spared them, not loving on the whole to be made ridiculous, and the injury being in the nature of a cat’s scratch. Indeed, I would have suggested for her kind care rather the cure of my coat-sleeve, which had suffered worse in the encounter; but I was too wise to risk the anti-climax. That she had been rescued by a hero, that the hero should have been wounded in the affray, and his wound bandaged with her handkerchief (which it could not even bloody), ministered incredibly to the recovery of her self-respect; and I could hear her relate the incident to ‘the young ladies, my school-companions,’ in the most approved manner of Mrs. Radcliffe! To have insisted on the torn coat-sleeve would have been unmannerly, if not inhuman.

Presently the residence of the archdeacon began to heave in sight. A chaise and four smoking horses stood by the steps, and made way for us on our approach; and even as we alighted there appeared from the interior of the house a tall ecclesiastic, and beside him a little, headstrong, ruddy man, in a towering passion, and brandishing over his head a roll of paper. At sight of him Miss Dorothy flung herself on her knees with the most moving adjurations, calling him father, assuring him she was wholly cured and entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great severity from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond, loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears.

To give myself a countenance, as well as to have all ready for the road when I should find occasion, I turned to quit scores with Bellamy’s two postillions. They had not the least claim on me, but one of which they were quite ignorant–that I was a fugitive. It is the worst feature of that false position that every gratuity becomes a case of conscience. You must not leave behind you any one discontented nor any one grateful. But the whole business had been such a ‘hurrah-boys’ from the beginning, and had gone off in the fifth act so like a melodrama, in explosions, reconciliations, and the rape of a post-horse, that it was plainly impossible to keep it covered. It was plain it would have to be talked over in all the inn-kitchens for thirty miles about, and likely for six months to come. It only remained for me, therefore, to settle on that gratuity which should be least conspicuous–so large that nobody could grumble, so small that nobody would be tempted to boast. My decision was hastily and nor wisely taken. The one fellow spat on his tip (so he called it) for luck; the other developing a sudden streak of piety, prayed God bless me with fervour. It seemed a demonstration was brewing, and I determined to be off at once. Bidding my own post-boy and Rowley be in readiness for an immediate start, I reascended the terrace and presented myself, hat in hand, before Mr. Greensleeves and the archdeacon.

‘You will excuse me, I trust,’ said I. ‘I think shame to interrupt this agreeable scene of family effusion, which I have been privileged in some small degree to bring about.’

And at these words the storm broke.

‘Small degree! small degree, sir!’ cries the father; ‘that shall not pass, Mr. St. Eaves! If I’ve got my darling back, and none the worse for that vagabone rascal, I know whom I have to thank. Shake hands with me–up to the elbows, sir! A Frenchman you may be, but you’re one of the right breed, by God! And, by God, sir, you may have anything you care to ask of me, down to Dolly’s hand, by God!’

All this he roared out in a voice surprisingly powerful from so small a person. Every word was thus audible to the servants, who had followed them out of the house and now congregated about us on the terrace, as well as to Rowley and the five postillions on the gravel sweep below. The sentiments expressed were popular; some ass, whom the devil moved to be my enemy, proposed three cheers, and they were given with a will. To hear my own name resounding amid acclamations in the hills of Westmorland was flattering, perhaps; but it was inconvenient at a moment when (as I was morally persuaded) police handbills were already speeding after me at the rate of a hundred miles a day.

Nor was that the end of it. The archdeacon must present his compliments, and pressed upon me some of his West India sherry, and I was carried into a vastly fine library, where I was presented to his lady wife. While we were at sherry in the library, ale was handed round upon the terrace. Speeches were made, hands were shaken, Missy (at her father’s request) kissed me farewell, and the whole party reaccompanied me to the terrace, where they stood waving hats and handkerchiefs, and crying farewells to all the echoes of the mountains until the chaise had disappeared.

The echoes of the mountains were engaged in saying to me privately: ‘You fool, you have done it now!’

‘They do seem to have got ‘old of your name, Mr. Anne,’ said Rowley. ‘It weren’t my fault this time.’

‘It was one of those accidents that can never be foreseen,’ said I, affecting a dignity that I was far from feeling. ‘Some one recognised me.’

‘Which on ’em, Mr. Anne?’ said the rascal.

‘That is a senseless question; it can make no difference who it was,’ I returned.

‘No, nor that it can’t!’ cried Rowley. ‘I say, Mr. Anne, sir, it’s what you would call a jolly mess, ain’t it? looks like “clean bowled-out in the middle stump,” don’t it?’

‘I fail to understand you, Rowley.’

‘Well, what I mean is, what are we to do about this one?’ pointing to the postillion in front of us, as he alternately hid and revealed his patched breeches to the trot of his horse. ‘He see you get in this morning under Mr. Ramornie–I was very piticular to Mr. Ramornie you, if you remember, sir–and he see you get in again under Mr. Saint Eaves, and whatever’s he going to see you get out under? that’s what worries me, sir. It don’t seem to me like as if the position was what you call stratetegic!’

‘Parrrbleu! will you let me be!’ I cried. ‘I have to think; you cannot imagine how your constant idiotic prattle annoys me.’

‘Beg pardon, Mr. Anne,’ said he; and the next moment, ‘You wouldn’t like for us to do our French now, would you, Mr. Anne?’

‘Certainly not,’ said I. ‘Play upon your flageolet.’

The which he did with what seemed to me to be irony.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all! I was so downcast by my pitiful mismanagement of the morning’s business that I shrank from the eye of my own hired infant, and read offensive meanings into his idle tootling.

I took off my coat, and set to mending it, soldier-fashion, with a needle and thread. There is nothing more conducive to thought, above all in arduous circumstances; and as I sewed, I gradually gained a clearness upon my affairs. I must be done with the claret-coloured chaise at once. It should be sold at the next stage for what it would bring. Rowley and I must take back to the road on our four feet, and after a decent interval of trudging, get places on some coach for Edinburgh again under new names! So much trouble and toil, so much extra risk and expense and loss of time, and all for a slip of the tongue to a little lady in blue!

CHAPTER XXIV–THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE

I had hitherto conceived and partly carried out an ideal that was dear to my heart. Rowley and I descended from our claret-coloured chaise, a couple of correctly dressed, brisk, bright-eyed young fellows, like a pair of aristocratic mice; attending singly to our own affairs, communicating solely with each other, and that with the niceties and civilities of drill. We would pass through the little crowd before the door with high-bred preoccupation, inoffensively haughty, after the best English pattern; and disappear within, followed by the envy and admiration of the bystanders, a model master and servant, point-device in every part. It was a heavy thought to me, as we drew up before the inn at Kirkby-Lonsdale, that this scene was now to be enacted for the last time. Alas! and had I known it, it was to go of with so inferior a grace!

I had been injudiciously liberal to the post-boys of the chaise and four. My own post-boy, he of the patched breeches, now stood before me, his eyes glittering with greed, his hand advanced. It was plain he anticipated something extraordinary by way of a pourboire; and considering the marches and counter-marches by which I had extended the stage, the military character of our affairs with Mr. Bellamy, and the bad example I had set before him at the archdeacon’s, something exceptional was certainly to be done. But these are always nice questions, to a foreigner above all: a shade too little will suggest niggardliness, a shilling too much smells of hush-money. Fresh from the scene at the archdeacon’s, and flushed by the idea that I was now nearly done with the responsibilities of the claret-coloured chaise, I put into his hands five guineas; and the amount served only to waken his cupidity.

‘O, come, sir, you ain’t going to fob me of with this? Why, I seen fire at your side!’ he cried.

It would never do to give him more; I felt I should become the fable of Kirkby-Lonsdale if I did; and I looked him in the face, sternly but still smiling, and addressed him with a voice of uncompromising firmness.

‘If you do not like it, give it back,’ said I.

He pocketed the guineas with the quickness of a conjurer, and, like a base-born cockney as he was, fell instantly to casting dirt.

”Ave your own way of it, Mr. Ramornie–leastways Mr. St. Eaves, or whatever your blessed name may be. Look ‘ere’–turning for sympathy to the stable-boys–‘this is a blessed business. Blessed ‘ard, I calls it. ‘Ere I takes up a blessed son of a pop-gun what calls hisself anything you care to mention, and turns out to be a blessed mounseer at the end of it! ‘Ere ‘ave I been drivin’ of him up and down all day, a-carrying off of gals, a-shootin’ of pistyils, and a-drinkin’ of sherry and hale; and wot does he up and give me but a blank, blank, blanketing blank!’

The fellow’s language had become too powerful for reproduction, and I passed it by.

Meanwhile I observed Rowley fretting visibly at the bit; another moment, and he would have added a last touch of the ridiculous to our arrival by coming to his hands with the postillion.

‘Rowley!’ cried I reprovingly.

Strictly it should have been Gammon; but in the hurry of the moment, my fault (I can only hope) passed unperceived. At the same time I caught the eye of the postmaster. He was long and lean, and brown and bilious; he had the drooping nose of the humourist, and the quick attention of a man of parts. He read my embarrassment in a glance, stepped instantly forward, sent the post-boy to the rightabout with half a word, and was back next moment at my side.

‘Dinner in a private room, sir? Very well. John, No. 4! What wine would you care to mention? Very well, sir. Will you please to order fresh horses? Not, sir? Very well.’

Each of these expressions was accompanied by something in the nature of a bow, and all were prefaced by something in the nature of a smile, which I could very well have done without. The man’s politeness was from the teeth outwards; behind and within, I was conscious of a perpetual scrutiny: the scene at his doorstep, the random confidences of the post-boy, had not been thrown away on this observer; and it was under a strong fear of coming trouble that I was shown at last into my private room. I was in half a mind to have put off the whole business. But the truth is, now my name had got abroad, my fear of the mail that was coming, and the handbills it should contain, had waxed inordinately, and I felt I could never eat a meal in peace till I had severed my connection with the claret-coloured chaise.

Accordingly, as soon as I had done with dinner, I sent my compliments to the landlord and requested he should take a glass of wine with me. He came; we exchanged the necessary civilities, and presently I approached my business.

‘By the bye,’ said I, ‘we had a brush down the road to-day. I dare say you may have heard of it?’

He nodded.

‘And I was so unlucky as to get a pistol ball in the panel of my chaise,’ I continued, ‘which makes it simply useless to me. Do you know any one likely to buy?’

‘I can well understand that,’ said the landlord, ‘I was looking at it just now; it’s as good as ruined, is that chaise. General rule, people don’t like chaises with bullet-holes.’

‘Too much Romance of the Forest?’ I suggested, recalling my little friend of the morning, and what I was sure had been her favourite reading–Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels.

‘Just so,’ said he. ‘They may be right, they may be wrong; I’m not the judge. But I suppose it’s natural, after all, for respectable people to like things respectable about them; not bullet-holes, nor puddles of blood, nor men with aliases.’

I took a glass of wine and held it up to the light to show that my hand was steady.

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I suppose so.’

‘You have papers, of course, showing you are the proper owner?’ he inquired.

‘There is the bill, stamped and receipted,’ said I, tossing it across to him.

He looked at it.

‘This all you have?’ he asked.

‘It is enough, at least,’ said I. ‘It shows you where I bought and what I paid for it.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You want some paper of identification.’

‘To identify the chaise?’ I inquired.

‘Not at all: to identify YOU,’ said he.

‘My good sir, remember yourself!’ said I. ‘The title-deeds of my estate are in that despatch-box; but you do not seriously suppose that I should allow you to examine them?’

‘Well, you see, this paper proves that some Mr. Ramornie paid seventy guineas for a chaise,’ said the fellow. ‘That’s all well and good; but who’s to prove to me that you are Mr. Ramornie?’

‘Fellow!’ cried I.

‘O, fellow as much as you please!’ said he. ‘Fellow, with all my heart! That changes nothing. I am fellow, of course–obtrusive fellow, impudent fellow, if you like–but who are you? I hear of you with two names; I hear of you running away with young ladies, and getting cheered for a Frenchman, which seems odd; and one thing I will go bail for, that you were in a blue fright when the post- boy began to tell tales at my door. In short, sir, you may be a very good gentleman; but I don’t know enough about you, and I’ll trouble you for your papers, or to go before a magistrate. Take your choice; if I’m not fine enough, I hope the magistrates are.’

‘My good man,’ I stammered, for though I had found my voice, I could scarce be said to have recovered my wits, ‘this is most unusual, most rude. Is it the custom in Westmorland that gentlemen should be insulted?’

‘That depends,’ said he. ‘When it’s suspected that gentlemen are spies it IS the custom; and a good custom, too. No no,’ he broke out, perceiving me to make a movement. ‘Both hands upon the table, my gentleman! I want no pistol balls in my chaise panels.’

‘Surely, sir, you do me strange injustice!’ said I, now the master of myself. ‘You see me sitting here, a monument of tranquillity: pray may I help myself to wine without umbraging you?’

I took this attitude in sheer despair. I had no plan, no hope. The best I could imagine was to spin the business out some minutes longer, then capitulate. At least, I would not capituatle one moment too soon.

‘Am I to take that for NO?’ he asked.

‘Referring to your former obliging proposal?’ said I. ‘My good sir, you are to take it, as you say, for “No.” Certainly I will not show you my deeds; certainly I will not rise from table and trundle out to see your magistrates. I have too much respect for my digestion, and too little curiosity in justices of the peace.’

He leaned forward, looked me nearly in the face, and reached out one hand to the bell-rope. ‘See here, my fine fellow!’ said he. ‘Do you see that bell-rope? Let me tell you, there’s a boy waiting below: one jingle, and he goes to fetch the constable.’

‘Do you tell me so?’ said I. ‘Well, there’s no accounting for tastes! I have a prejudice against the society of constables, but if it is your fancy to have one in for the dessert–‘ I shrugged my shoulders lightly. ‘Really, you know,’ I added, ‘this is vastly entertaining. I assure you, I am looking on, with all the interest of a man of the world, at the development of your highly original character.’

He continued to study my face without speech, his hand still on the button of the bell-rope, his eyes in mine; this was the decisive heat. My face seemed to myself to dislimn under his gaze, my expression to change, the smile (with which I had began) to degenerate into the grin of the man upon the rack. I was besides harassed with doubts. An innocent man, I argued, would have resented the fellow’s impudence an hour ago; and by my continued endurance of the ordeal, I was simply signing and sealing my confession; in short, I had reached the end of my powers.

‘Have you any objection to my putting my hands in my breeches pockets?’ I inquired. ‘Excuse me mentioning it, but you showed yourself so extremely nervous a moment back.’ My voice was not all I could have wished, but it sufficed. I could hear it tremble, but the landlord apparently could not. He turned away and drew a long breath, and you may be sure I was quick to follow his example.

‘You’re a cool hand at least, and that’s the sort I like,’ said he. ‘Be you what you please, I’ll deal square. I’ll take the chaise for a hundred pound down, and throw the dinner in.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ I cried, wholly mystified by this form of words.

‘You pay me a hundred down,’ he repeated, ‘and I’ll take the chaise. It’s very little more than it cost,’ he added, with a grin, ‘and you know you must get it off your hands somehow.’

I do not know when I have been better entertained than by this impudent proposal. It was broadly funny, and I suppose the least tempting offer in the world. For all that, it came very welcome, for it gave me the occasion to laugh. This I did with the most complete abandonment, till the tears ran down my cheeks; and ever and again, as the fit abated, I would get another view of the landlord’s face, and go off into another paroxysm.

‘You droll creature, you will be the death of me yet!’ I cried, drying my eyes.

My friend was now wholly disconcerted; he knew not where to look, nor yet what to say; and began for the first time to conceive it possible he was mistaken.

‘You seem rather to enjoy a laugh, sir,’ said he.

‘O, yes! I am quite an original,’ I replied, and laughed again.

Presently, in a changed voice, he offered me twenty pounds for the chaise; I ran him up to twenty-five, and closed with the offer: indeed, I was glad to get anything; and if I haggled, it was not in the desire of gain, but with the view at any price of securing a safe retreat. For although hostilities were suspended, he was yet far from satisfied; and I could read his continued suspicions in the cloudy eye that still hovered about my face. At last they took shape in words.

‘This is all very well,’ says he: ‘you carry it off well; but for all that, I must do my duty.’

I had my strong effect in reserve; it was to burn my ships with a vengeance! I rose. ‘Leave the room,’ said I. ‘This is insuperable. Is the man mad?’ And then, as if already half- ashamed of my passion: ‘I can take a joke as well as any one,’ I added; ‘but this passes measure. Send my servant and the bill.’

When he had left me alone, I considered my own valour with amazement. I had insulted him; I had sent him away alone; now, if ever, he would take what was the only sensible resource, and fetch the constable. But there was something instinctively treacherous about the man which shrank from plain courses. And, with all his cleverness, he missed the occasion of fame. Rowley and I were suffered to walk out of his door, with all our baggage, on foot, with no destination named, except in the vague statement that we were come ‘to view the lakes’; and my friend only watched our departure with his chin in his hand, still moodily irresolute.

I think this one of my great successes. I was exposed, unmasked, summoned to do a perfectly natural act, which must prove my doom and which I had not the slightest pretext for refusing. I kept my head, stuck to my guns, and, against all likelihood, here I was once more at liberty and in the king’s highway. This was a strong lesson never to despair; and, at the same time, how many hints to be cautious! and what a perplexed and dubious business the whole question of my escape now appeared! That I should have risked perishing upon a trumpery question of a pourboire, depicted in lively colours the perils that perpetually surrounded us. Though, to be sure, the initial mistake had been committed before that; and if I had not suffered myself to be drawn a little deep in confidences to the innocent Dolly, there need have been no tumble at the inn of Kirkby-Lonsdale. I took the lesson to heart, and promised myself in the future to be more reserved. It was none of my business to attend to broken chaises or shipwrecked travellers. I had my hands full of my own affairs; and my best defence would be a little more natural selfishness and a trifle less imbecile good- nature.

CHAPTER XXV–I MEET A CHEERFUL EXTRAVAGANT

I pass over the next fifty or sixty leagues of our journey without comment. The reader must be growing weary of scenes of travel; and for my own part I have no cause to recall these particular miles with any pleasure. We were mainly occupied with attempts to obliterate our trail, which (as the result showed) were far from successful; for, on my cousin following, he was able to run me home with the least possible loss of time, following the claret-coloured chaise to Kirkby-Lonsdale, where I think the landlord must have wept to learn what he had missed, and tracing us thereafter to the doors of the coach-office in Edinburgh without a single check. Fortune did not favour me, and why should I recapitulate the details of futile precautions which deceived nobody, and wearisome arts which proved to be artless?

The day was drawing to an end when Mr. Rowley and I bowled into Edinburgh to the stirring sound of the guard’s bugle and the clattering team. I was here upon my field of battle; on the scene of my former captivity, escape and exploits; and in the same city with my love. My heart expanded; I have rarely felt more of a hero. All down the Bridges I sat by the driver with my arms folded and my face set, unflinchingly meeting every eye, and prepared every moment for a cry of recognition. Hundreds of the population were in the habit of visiting the Castle, where it was my practice (before the days of Flora) to make myself conspicuous among the prisoners; and I think it an extraordinary thing that I should have encountered so few to recognise me. But doubtless a clean chin is a disguise in itself; and the change is great from a suit of sulphur-yellow to fine linen, a well-fitting mouse-coloured great- coat furred in black, a pair of tight trousers of fashionable cut, and a hat of inimitable curl. After all, it was more likely that I should have recognised our visitors, than that they should have identified the modish gentleman with the miserable prisoner in the Castle.

I was glad to set foot on the flagstones, and to escape from the crowd that had assembled to receive the mail. Here we were, with but little daylight before us, and that on Saturday afternoon, the eve of the famous Scottish Sabbath, adrift in the New Town of Edinburgh, and overladen with baggage. We carried it ourselves. I would not take a cab, nor so much as hire a porter, who might afterwards serve as a link between my lodgings and the mail, and connect me again with the claret-coloured chaise and Aylesbury. For I was resolved to break the chain of evidence for good, and to begin life afresh (so far as regards caution) with a new character. The first step was to find lodgings, and to find them quickly. This was the more needful as Mr. Rowley and I, in our smart clothes and with our cumbrous burthen, made a noticeable appearance in the streets at that time of the day and in that quarter of the town, which was largely given up to fine folk, bucks and dandies and young ladies, or respectable professional men on their way home to dinner.

On the north side of St. James’ Square I was so happy as to spy a bill in a third-floor window. I was equally indifferent to cost and convenience in my choice of a lodging–‘any port in a storm’ was the principle on which I was prepared to act; and Rowley and I made at once for the common entrance and sealed the stair.

We were admitted by a very sour-looking female in bombazine. I gathered she had all her life been depressed by a series of bereavements, the last of which might very well have befallen her the day before; and I instinctively lowered my voice when I addressed her. She admitted she had rooms to let–even showed them to us–a sitting-room and bedroom in a suite, commanding a fine prospect to the Firth and Fifeshire, and in themselves well proportioned and comfortably furnished, with pictures on the wall, shells on the mantelpiece, and several books upon the table which I found afterwards to be all of a devotional character, and all presentation copies, ‘to my Christian friend,’ or ‘to my devout acquaintance in the Lord, Bethiah McRankine.’ Beyond this my ‘Christian friend’ could not be made to advance: no, not even to do that which seemed the most natural and pleasing thing in the world–I mean to name her price–but stood before us shaking her head, and at times mourning like the dove, the picture of depression and defence. She had a voice the most querulous I have ever heard, and with this she produced a whole regiment of difficulties and criticisms.

She could not promise an attendance.

‘Well, madam,’ said I, ‘and what is my servant for?’

‘Him?’ she asked. ‘Be gude to us! Is HE your servant?’

‘I am sorry, ma’am, he meets with your disapproval.’

‘Na, I never said that. But he’s young. He’ll be a great breaker, I’m thinkin’. Ay! he’ll be a great responsibeelity to ye, like. Does he attend to his releegion?’

‘Yes, m’m,’ returned Rowley, with admirable promptitude, and, immediately closing his eyes, as if from habit, repeated the following distich with more celerity than fervour:-

‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Bless the bed that I lie on!’

‘Nhm!’ said the lady, and maintained an awful silence.

‘Well, ma’am,’ said I, ‘it seems we are never to hear the beginning of your terms, let alone the end of them. Come–a good movement! and let us be either off or on.’

She opened her lips slowly. ‘Ony raferences?’ she inquired, in a voice like a bell.

I opened my pocket-book and showed her a handful of bank bills. ‘I think, madam, that these are unexceptionable,’ said I.

‘Ye’ll be wantin’ breakfast late?’ was her reply.

‘Madam, we want breakfast at whatever hour it suits you to give it, from four in the morning till four in the afternoon!’ I cried. ‘Only tell us your figure, if your mouth be large enough to let it out!’

‘I couldnae give ye supper the nicht,’ came the echo.

‘We shall go out to supper, you incorrigible female!’ I vowed, between laughter and tears. ‘Here–this is going to end! I want you for a landlady–let me tell you that!–and I am going to have my way. You won’t tell me what you charge? Very well; I will do without! I can trust you! You don’t seem to know when you have a good lodger; but I know perfectly when I have an honest landlady! Rowley, unstrap the valises!’

Will it be credited? The monomaniac fell to rating me for my indiscretion! But the battle was over; these were her last guns, and more in the nature of a salute than of renewed hostilities. And presently she condescended on very moderate terms, and Rowley and I were able to escape in quest of supper. Much time had, however, been lost; the sun was long down, the lamps glimmered along the streets, and the voice of a watchman already resounded in the neighbouring Leith Road. On our first arrival I had observed a place of entertainment not far off, in a street behind the Register House. Thither we found our way, and sat down to a late dinner alone. But we had scarce given our orders before the door opened, and a tall young fellow entered with something of a lurch, looked about him, and approached the same table.

‘Give you good evening, most grave and reverend seniors!’ said he. ‘Will you permit a wanderer, a pilgrim–the pilgrim of love, in short–to come to temporary anchor under your lee? I care not who knows it, but I have a passionate aversion from the bestial practice of solitary feeding!’

‘You are welcome, sir,’ said I, ‘if I may take upon me so far to play the host in a public place.’

He looked startled, and fixed a hazy eye on me, as he sat down.

‘Sir,’ said he, ‘you are a man not without some tincture of letters, I perceive! What shall we drink, sir?’

I mentioned I had already called for a pot of porter.

‘A modest pot–the seasonable quencher?’ said he. ‘Well, I do not know but what I could look at a modest pot myself! I am, for the moment, in precarious health. Much study hath heated my brain, much walking wearied my–well, it seems to be more my eyes!’

‘You have walked far, I dare say?’ I suggested.

‘Not so much far as often,’ he replied. ‘There is in this city–to which, I think, you are a stranger? Sir, to your very good health and our better acquaintance!–there is, in this city of Dunedin, a certain implication of streets which reflects the utmost credit on the designer and the publicans–at every hundred yards is seated the Judicious Tavern, so that persons of contemplative mind are secure, at moderate distances, of refreshment. I have been doing a trot in that favoured quarter, favoured by art and nature. A few chosen comrades–enemies of publicity and friends to wit and wine– obliged me with their society. “Along the cool, sequestered vale of Register Street we kept the uneven tenor of our way,” sir.’

‘It struck me, as you came in–‘ I began.

‘O, don’t make any bones about it!’ he interrupted. ‘Of course it struck you! and let me tell you I was devilish lucky not to strike myself. When I entered this apartment I shone “with all the pomp and prodigality of brandy and water,” as the poet Gray has in another place expressed it. Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminy- piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle–not a man, sir, not a man! Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the devil have I done with my fork? Thank you, I am sure. Temulentia, quoad me ipsum, brevis colligo est. I sit and eat, sir, in a London fog. I should bring a link-boy to table with me; and I would too, if the little brutes were only washed! I intend to found a Philanthropical Society for Washing the Deserving Poor and Shaving Soldiers. I am pleased to observe that, although not of an unmilitary bearing, you are apparently shaved. In my calendar of the virtues shaving comes next to drinking. A gentleman may be a low-minded ruffian without sixpence, but he will always be close shaved. See me, with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the morning, say about a quarter to twelve, noon–see me awake! First thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid soda- water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed to skate upon the margin of eternity. Stimulating thought! I bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds. The stubble reaped, I pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant. To employ a hackneyed phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington my uncle! I, too, have dared, perhaps bled, before the imminent deadly shaving-table.’

In this manner the bombastic fellow continued to entertain me all through dinner, and by a common error of drunkards, because he had been extremely talkative himself, leaped to the conclusion that he had chanced on very genial company. He told me his name, his address; he begged we should meet again; finally he proposed that I should dine with him in the country at an early date.

‘The dinner is official,’ he explained. ‘The office-bearers and Senatus of the University of Cramond–an educational institution in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense–meet to do honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established howff, Cramond Bridge. One place is vacant, fascinating stranger,–I offer it to you!’

‘And who is your friend Icarus?’ I asked,

‘The aspiring son of Daedalus!’ said he. ‘Is it possible that you have never heard the name of Byfield?’

‘Possible and true,’ said I.

‘And is fame so small a thing?’ cried he. ‘Byfield, sir, is an aeronaut. He apes the fame of a Lunardi, and is on the point of offering to the inhabitants–I beg your pardon, to the nobility and gentry of our neighbourhood–the spectacle of an ascension. As one of the gentry concerned I may be permitted to remark that I am unmoved. I care not a Tinker’s Damn for his ascension. No more–I breathe it in your ear–does anybody else. The business is stale, sir, stale. Lunardi did it, and overdid it. A whimsical, fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts–for I was at that time rocking in my cradle. But once was enough. If Lunardi went up and came down, there was the matter settled. We prefer to grant the point. We do not want to see the experiment repeated ad nauseam by Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley. Ah! if they would go up and NOT come down again! But this is by the question. The University of Cramond delights to honour merit in the man, sir, rather than utility in the profession; and Byfield, though an ignorant dog, is a sound reliable drinker, and really not amiss over his cups. Under the radiance of the kindly jar partiality might even credit him with wit.’

It will be seen afterwards that this was more my business than I thought it at the time. Indeed, I was impatient to be gone. Even as my friend maundered ahead a squall burst, the jaws of the rain were opened against the coffee-house windows, and at that inclement signal I remembered I was due elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXVI–THE COTTAGE AT NIGHT

At the door I was nearly blown back by the unbridled violence of the squall, and Rowley and I must shout our parting words. All the way along Princes Street (whither my way led) the wind hunted me behind and screamed in my ears. The city was flushed with bucketfuls of rain that tasted salt from the neighbouring ocean. It seemed to darken and lighten again in the vicissitudes of the gusts. Now you would say the lamps had been blown out from end to end of the long thoroughfare; now, in a lull, they would revive, re-multiply, shine again on the wet pavements, and make darkness sparingly visible.

By the time I had got to the corner of the Lothian Road there was a distinct improvement. For one thing, I had now my shoulder to the wind; for a second, I came in the lee of my old prison-house, the Castle; and, at any rate, the excessive fury of the blast was itself moderating. The thought of what errand I was on re-awoke within me, and I seemed to breast the rough weather with increasing ease. With such a destination, what mattered a little buffeting of wind or a sprinkle of cold water? I recalled Flora’s image, I took her in fancy to my arms, and my heart throbbed. And the next moment I had recognised the inanity of that fool’s paradise. If I could spy her taper as she went to bed, I might count myself lucky.

I had about two leagues before me of a road mostly uphill, and now deep in mire. So soon as I was clear of the last street lamp, darkness received me–a darkness only pointed by the lights of occasional rustic farms, where the dogs howled with uplifted heads as I went by. The wind continued to decline: it had been but a squall, not a tempest. The rain, on the other hand, settled into a steady deluge, which had soon drenched me thoroughly. I continued to tramp forward in the night, contending with gloomy thoughts and accompanied by the dismal ululation of the dogs. What ailed them that they should have been thus wakeful, and perceived the small sound of my steps amid the general reverberation of the rain, was more than I could fancy. I remembered tales with which I had been entertained in childhood. I told myself some murderer was going by, and the brutes perceived upon him the faint smell of blood; and the next moment, with a physical shock, I had applied the words to my own case!

Here was a dismal disposition for a lover. ‘Was ever lady in this humour wooed?’ I asked myself, and came near turning back. It is never wise to risk a critical interview when your spirits are depressed, your clothes muddy, and your hands wet! But the boisterous night was in itself favourable to my enterprise: now, or perhaps never, I might find some way to have an interview with Flora; and if I had one interview (wet clothes, low spirits and all), I told myself there would certainly be another.

Arrived in the cottage-garden I found the circumstances mighty inclement. From the round holes in the shutters of the parlour, shafts of candle-light streamed forth; elsewhere the darkness was complete. The trees, the thickets, were saturated; the lower parts of the garden turned into a morass. At intervals, when the wind broke forth again, there passed overhead a wild coil of clashing branches; and between whiles the whole enclosure continuously and stridently resounded with the rain. I advanced close to the window and contrived to read the face of my watch. It was half-past seven; they would not retire before ten, they might not before midnight, and the prospect was unpleasant. In a lull of the wind I could hear from the inside the voice of Flora reading aloud; the words of course inaudible–only a flow of undecipherable speech, quiet, cordial, colourless, more intimate and winning, more eloquent of her personality, but not less beautiful than song. And the next moment the clamour of a fresh squall broke out about the cottage; the voice was drowned in its bellowing, and I was glad to retreat from my dangerous post.

For three egregious hours I must now suffer the elements to do their worst upon me, and continue to hold my ground in patience. I recalled the least fortunate of my services in the field: being out-sentry of the pickets in weather no less vile, sometimes unsuppered and with nothing to look forward to by way of breakfast but musket-balls; and they seemed light in comparison. So strangely are we built: so much more strong is the love of woman than the mere love of life.

At last my patience was rewarded. The light disappeared from the parlour and reappeared a moment after in the room above. I was pretty well informed for the enterprise that lay before me. I knew the lair of the dragon–that which was just illuminated. I knew the bower of my Rosamond, and how excellently it was placed on the ground-level, round the flank of the cottage and out of earshot of her formidable aunt. Nothing was left but to apply my knowledge. I was then at the bottom of the garden, whether I had gone (Heaven save the mark!) for warmth, that I might walk to and fro unheard and keep myself from perishing. The night had fallen still, the wind ceased; the noise of the rain had much lightened, if it had not stopped, and was succeeded by the dripping of the garden trees. In the midst of this lull, and as I was already drawing near to the cottage, I was startled by the sound of a window-sash screaming in its channels; and a step or two beyond I became aware of a gush of light upon the darkness. It fell from Flora’s window, which she had flung open on the night, and where she now sat, roseate and pensive, in the shine of two candles falling from behind, her tresses deeply embowering and shading her; the suspended comb still in one hand, the other idly clinging to the iron stanchions with which the window was barred.

Keeping to the turf, and favoured by the darkness of the night and the patter of the rain which was now returning, though without wind, I approached until I could almost have touched her. It seemed a grossness of which I was incapable to break up her reverie by speech. I stood and drank her in with my eyes; how the light made a glory in her hair, and (what I have always thought the most ravishing thing in nature) how the planes ran into each other, and were distinguished, and how the hues blended and varied, and were shaded off, between the cheek and neck. At first I was abashed: she wore her beauty like an immediate halo of refinement; she discouraged me like an angel, or what I suspect to be the next most discouraging, a modern lady. But as I continued to gaze, hope and life returned to me; I forgot my timidity, I forgot the sickening pack of wet clothes with which I stood burdened, I tingled with new blood.

Still unconscious of my presence, still gazing before her upon the illuminated image of the window, the straight shadows of the bars, the glinting of pebbles on the path, and the impenetrable night on the garden and the hills beyond it, she heaved a deep breath that struck upon my heart like an appeal.

‘Why does Miss Gilchrist sigh?’ I whispered. ‘Does she recall absent friends?’

She turned her head swiftly in my direction; it was the only sign of surprise she deigned to make. At the same time I stepped into the light and bowed profoundly.

‘You!’ she said. ‘Here?’

‘Yes, I am here,’ I replied. ‘I have come very far, it may be a hundred and fifty leagues, to see you. I have waited all this night in your garden. Will Miss Gilchrist not offer her hand–to a friend in trouble?’

She extended it between the bars, and I dropped upon one knee on the wet path and kissed it twice. At the second it was withdrawn suddenly, methought with more of a start than she had hitherto displayed. I regained my former attitude, and we were both silent awhile. My timidity returned on me tenfold. I looked in her face for any signals of anger, and seeing her eyes to waver and fall aside from mine, augured that all was well.

‘You must have been mad to come here!’ she broke out. ‘Of all places under heaven this is no place for you to come. And I was just thinking you were safe in France!’

‘You were thinking of me!’ I cried.

‘Mr. St. Ives, you cannot understand your danger,’ she replied. ‘I am sure of it, and yet I cannot find it in my heart to tell you. O, be persuaded, and go!’

‘I believe I know the worst. But I was never one to set an undue value on life, the life that we share with beasts. My university has been in the wars, not a famous place of education, but one where a man learns to carry his life in his hand as lightly as a glove, and for his lady or his honour to lay it as lightly down. You appeal to my fears, and you do wrong. I have come to Scotland with my eyes quite open to see you and to speak with you–it may be for the last time. With my eyes quite open, I say; and if I did not hesitate at the beginning do you think that I would draw back now?’

‘You do not know!’ she cried, with rising agitation. ‘This country, even this garden, is death to you. They all believe it; I am the only one that does not. If they hear you now, if they heard a whisper–I dread to think of it. O, go, go this instant. It is my prayer.’

‘Dear lady, do not refuse me what I have come so far to seek; and remember that out of all the millions in England there is no other but yourself in whom I can dare confide. I have all the world against me; you are my only ally; and as I have to speak, you have to listen. All is true that they say of me, and all of it false at the same time. I did kill this man Goguelat–it was that you meant?’

She mutely signed to me that it was; she had become deadly pale.

‘But I killed him in fair fight. Till then, I had never taken a life unless in battle, which is my trade. But I was grateful, I was on fire with gratitude, to one who had been good to me, who had been better to me than I could have dreamed of an angel, who had come into the darkness of my prison like sunrise. The man Goguelat insulted her. O, he had insulted me often, it was his favourite pastime, and he might insult me as he pleased–for who was I? But with that lady it was different. I could never forgive myself if I had let it pass. And we fought, and he fell, and I have no remorse.’

I waited anxiously for some reply. The worst was now out, and I knew that she had heard of it before; but it was impossible for me to go on with my narrative without some shadow of encouragement.

‘You blame me?’

‘No, not at all. It is a point I cannot speak on–I am only a girl. I am sure you were in the right: I have always said so–to Ronald. Not, of course, to my aunt. I am afraid I let her speak as she will. You must not think me a disloyal friend; and even with the Major–I did not tell you he had become quite a friend of ours–Major Chevenix, I mean–he has taken such a fancy to Ronald! It was he that brought the news to us of that hateful Clausel being captured, and all that he was saying. I was indignant with him. I said–I dare say I said too much–and I must say he was very good- natured. He said, “You and I, who are his friends, KNOW that Champdivers is innocent. But what is the use of saying it?” All this was in the corner of the room in what they call an aside. And then he said, “Give me a chance to speak to you in private, I have much to tell you.” And he did. And told me just what you did– that it was an affair of honour, and no blame attached to you. O, I must say I like that Major Chevenix!’

At this I was seized with a great pang of jealousy. I remembered the first time that he had seen her, the interest that he seemed immediately to conceive; and I could not but admire the dog for the use he had been ingenious enough to make of our acquaintance in order to supplant me. All is fair in love and war. For all that, I was now no less anxious to do the speaking myself than I had been before to hear Flora. At least, I could keep clear of the hateful image of Major Chevenix. Accordingly I burst at once on the narrative of my adventures. It was the same as you have read, but briefer, and told with a very different purpose. Now every incident had a particular bearing, every by-way branched off to Rome–and that was Flora.

When I had begun to speak I had kneeled upon the gravel withoutside the low window, rested my arms upon the sill, and lowered my voice to the most confidential whisper. Flora herself must kneel upon the other side, and this brought our heads upon a level with only the bars between us. So placed, so separated, it seemed that our proximity, and the continuous and low sounds of my pleading voice, worked progressively and powerfully on her heart, and perhaps not less so on my own. For these spells are double-edged. The silly birds may be charmed with the pipe of the fowler, which is but a tube of reeds. Not so with a bird of our own feather! As I went on, and my resolve strengthened, and my voice found new modulations, and our faces were drawn closer to the bars and to each other, not only she, but I, succumbed to the fascination, and were kindled by the charm. We make love, and thereby ourselves fall the deeper in it. It is with the heart only that one captures a heart.

‘And now,’ I continued, ‘I will tell you what you can still do for me. I run a little risk just now, and you see for yourself how unavoidable it is for any man of honour. But if–but in case of the worst I do not choose to enrich either my enemies or the Prince Regent. I have here the bulk of what my uncle gave me. Eight thousand odd pounds. Will you take care of it for me? Do not think of it merely as money; take and keep it as a relic of your friend or some precious piece of him. I may have bitter need of it ere long. Do you know the old country story of the giant who gave his heart to his wife to keep for him, thinking it safer to repose on her loyalty than his own strength? Flora, I am the giant–a very little one: will you be the keeper of my life? It is my heart I offer you in this symbol. In the sight of God, if you will have it, I give you my name, I endow you with my money. If the worst come, if I may never hope to call you wife, let me at least think that you will use my uncle’s legacy as my widow.’

‘No, not that,’ she said. ‘Never that.’

‘What then?’ I said. ‘What else, my angel? What are words to me? There is but one name that I care to know you by. Flora, my love!’

‘Anne!’ she said.

What sound is so full of music as one’s own name uttered for the first time in the voice of her we love!

‘My darling!’ said I.

The jealous bars, set at the top and bottom in stone and lime, obstructed the rapture of the moment; but I took her to myself as wholly as they allowed. She did not shun my lips. My arms were wound round her body, which yielded itself generously to my embrace. As we so remained, entwined and yet severed, bruising our faces unconsciously on the cold bars, the irony of the universe–or as I prefer to say, envy of some of the gods–again stirred up the elements of that stormy night. The wind blew again in the tree- tops; a volley of cold sea-rain deluged the garden, and, as the deuce would have it, a gutter which had been hitherto choked up began suddenly to play upon my head and shoulders with the vivacity of a fountain. We parted with a shock; I sprang to my feet, and she to hers, as though we had been discovered. A moment after, but now both standing, we had again approached the window on either side.

‘Flora,’ I said, ‘this is but a poor offer I can make you.’

She took my hand in hers and clasped it to her bosom.

‘Rich enough for a queen!’ she said, with a lift in her breathing that was more eloquent than words. ‘Anne, my brave Anne! I would be glad to be your maidservant; I could envy that boy Rowley. But, no!’ she broke off, ‘I envy no one–I need not–I am yours.’

‘Mine,’ said I, ‘for ever! By this and this, mine!’

‘All of me,’ she repeated. ‘Altogether and forever!’

And if the god were envious, he must have seen with mortification how little he could do to mar the happiness of mortals. I stood in a mere waterspout; she herself was wet, not from my embrace only, but from the splashing of the storm. The candles had guttered out; we were in darkness. I could scarce see anything but the shining of her eyes in the dark room. To her I must have appeared as a silhouette, haloed by rain and the spouting of the ancient Gothic gutter above my head.

Presently we became more calm and confidential; and when that squall, which proved to be the last of the storm, had blown by, fell into a talk of ways and means. It seemed she knew Mr. Robbie, to whom I had been so slenderly accredited by Romaine–was even invited to his house for the evening of Monday, and gave me a sketch of the old gentleman’s character which implied a great deal of penetration in herself, and proved of great use to me in the immediate sequel. It seemed he was an enthusiastic antiquary, and in particular a fanatic of heraldry. I heard it with delight, for I was myself, thanks to M. de Culemberg, fairly grounded in that science, and acquainted with the blazons of most families of note in Europe. And I had made up my mind–even as she spoke, it was my fixed determination, though I was a hundred miles from saying it– to meet Flora on Monday night as a fellow-guest in Mr. Robbie’s house.

I gave her my money–it was, of course, only paper I had brought. I gave it her, to be her marriage-portion, I declared.

‘Not so bad a marriage-portion for a private soldier,’ I told her, laughing, as I passed it through the bars.

‘O, Anne, and where am I to keep it?’ she cried. ‘If my aunt should find it! What would I say!’

‘Next your heart,’ I suggested.

‘Then you will always be near your treasure,’ she cried, ‘for you are always there!’

We were interrupted by a sudden clearness that fell upon the night. The clouds dispersed; the stars shone in every part of the heavens; and, consulting my watch, I was startled to find it already hard on five in the morning.

CHAPTER XXVII–THE SABBATH DAY

It was indeed high time I should be gone from Swanston; but what I was to do in the meanwhile was another question. Rowley had received his orders last night: he was to say that I had met a friend, and Mrs. McRankine was not to expect me before morning. A good enough tale in itself; but the dreadful pickle I was in made it out of the question. I could not go home till I had found harbourage, a fire to dry my clothes at, and a bed where I might lie till they were ready.

Fortune favoured me again. I had scarce got to the top of the first hill when I spied a light on my left, about a furlong away. It might be a case of sickness; what else it was likely to be–in so rustic a neighbourhood, and at such an ungodly time of the morning–was beyond my fancy. A faint sound of singing became audible, and gradually swelled as I drew near, until at last I could make out the words, which were singularly appropriate both to the hour and to the condition of the singers. ‘The cock may craw, the day may daw,’ they sang; and sang it with such laxity both in time and tune, and such sentimental complaisance in the expression, as assured me they had got far into the third bottle at least.

I found a plain rustic cottage by the wayside, of the sort called double, with a signboard over the door; and, the lights within streaming forth and somewhat mitigating the darkness of the morning, I was enabled to decipher the inscription: ‘The Hunters’ Tryst, by Alexander Hendry. Porter Ales, and British Spirits. Beds.’

My first knock put a period to the music, and a voice challenged tipsily from within.

‘Who goes there?’ it said; and I replied, ‘A lawful traveller.’

Immediately after, the door was unbarred by a company of the tallest lads my eyes had ever rested on, all astonishingly drunk and very decently dressed, and one (who was perhaps the drunkest of the lot) carrying a tallow candle, from which he impartially bedewed the clothes of the whole company. As soon as I saw them I could not help smiling to myself to remember the anxiety with which I had approached. They received me and my hastily-concocted story, that I had been walking from Peebles and had lost my way, with incoherent benignity; jostled me among them into the room where they had been sitting, a plain hedgerow alehouse parlour, with a roaring fire in the chimney and a prodigious number of empty bottles on the floor; and informed me that I was made, by this reception, a temporary member of the Six-Feet-High Club, an athletic society of young men in a good station, who made of the Hunters’ Tryst a frequent resort. They told me I had intruded on an ‘all-night sitting,’ following upon an ‘all-day Saturday tramp’ of forty miles; and that the members would all be up and ‘as right as ninepence’ for the noonday service at some neighbouring church– Collingwood, if memory serves me right. At this I could have laughed, but the moment seemed ill-chosen. For, though six feet was their standard, they all exceeded that measurement considerably; and I tasted again some of the sensations of childhood, as I looked up to all these lads from a lower plane, and wondered what they would do next. But the Six-Footers, if they were very drunk, proved no less kind. The landlord and servants of the Hunters’ Tryst were in bed and asleep long ago. Whether by natural gift or acquired habit they could suffer pandemonium to reign all over the house, and yet lie ranked in the kitchen like Egyptian mummies, only that the sound of their snoring rose and fell ceaselessly like the drone of a bagpipe. Here the Six-Footers invaded them–in their citadel, so to speak; counted the bunks and the sleepers; proposed to put me in bed to one of the lasses, proposed to have one of the lasses out to make room for me, fell over chairs, and made noise enough to waken the dead: the whole illuminated by the same young torch-bearer, but now with two candles, and rapidly beginning to look like a man in a snowstorm. At last a bed was found for me, my clothes were hung out to dry before the parlour fire, and I was mercifully left to my repose.

I awoke about nine with the sun shining in my eyes. The landlord came at my summons, brought me my clothes dried and decently brushed, and gave me the good news that the Six-Feet-High Club were all abed and sleeping off their excesses. Where they were bestowed was a puzzle to me until (as I was strolling about the garden patch waiting for breakfast) I came on a barn door, and, looking in, saw all the red face mixed in the straw like plums in a cake. Quoth the stalwart maid who brought me my porridge and bade me ‘eat them while they were hot,’ ‘Ay, they were a’ on the ran-dan last nicht! Hout! they’re fine lads, and they’ll be nane the waur of it. Forby Farbes’s coat. I dinna see wha’s to get the creish off that!’ she added, with a sigh; in which, identifying Forbes as the torch- bearer, I mentally joined.

It was a brave morning when I took the road; the sun shone, spring seemed in the air, it smelt like April or May, and some over- venturous birds sang in the coppices as I went by. I had plenty to think of, plenty to be grateful for, that gallant morning; and yet I had a twitter at my heart. To enter the city by daylight might be compared to marching on a battery; every face that I confronted would threaten me like the muzzle of a gun; and it came into my head suddenly with how much better a countenance I should be able to do it if I could but improvise a companion. Hard by Merchiston I was so fortunate as to observe a bulky gentleman in broadcloth and gaiters, stooping with his head almost between his knees, before a stone wall. Seizing occasion by the forelock, I drew up as I came alongside and inquired what he had found to interest him.

He turned upon me a countenance not much less broad than his back.

‘Why, sir,’ he replied, ‘I was even marvelling at my own indefeasible stupeedity: that I should walk this way every week of my life, weather permitting, and should never before have NOTTICED that stone,’ touching it at the same time with a goodly oak staff.

I followed the indication. The stone, which had been built sideways into the wall, offered traces of heraldic sculpture. At once there came a wild idea into my mind: his appearance tallied with Flora’s description of Mr. Robbie; a knowledge of heraldry would go far to clinch the proof; and what could be more desirable than to scrape an informal acquaintance with the man whom I must approach next day with my tale of the drovers, and whom I yet wished to please? I stooped in turn.

‘A chevron,’ I said; ‘on a chief three mullets? Looks like Douglas, does it not?’

‘Yes, sir, it does; you are right,’ said he: ‘it DOES look like Douglas; though, without the tinctures, and the whole thing being so battered and broken up, who shall venture an opinion? But allow me to be more personal, sir. In these degenerate days I am astonished you should display so much proficiency.’

‘O, I was well grounded in my youth by an old gentleman, a friend of my family, and I may say my guardian,’ said I; ‘but I have forgotten it since. God forbid I should delude you into thinking me a herald, sir! I am only an ungrammatical amateur.’

‘And a little modesty does no harm even in a herald,’ says my new acquaintance graciously.

In short, we fell together on our onward way, and maintained very amicable discourse along what remained of the country road, past the suburbs, and on into the streets of the New Town, which was as deserted and silent as a city of the dead. The shops were closed, no vehicle ran, cats sported in the midst of the sunny causeway; and our steps and voices re-echoed from the quiet houses. It was the high-water, full and strange, of that weekly trance to which the city of Edinburgh is subjected: the apotheosis of the Sawbath; and I confess the spectacle wanted not grandeur, however much it may have lacked cheerfulness. There are few religious ceremonies more imposing. As we thus walked and talked in a public seclusion the bells broke out ringing through all the bounds of the city, and the streets began immediately to be thronged with decent church- goers.

‘Ah!’ said my companion, ‘there are the bells! Now, sir, as you are a stranger I must offer you the hospitality of my pew. I do not know whether you are at all used with our Scottish form; but in case you are not I will find your places for you; and Dr. Henry Gray, of St. Mary’s (under whom I sit), is as good a preacher as we have to show you.’

This put me in a quandary. It was a degree of risk I was scarce prepared for. Dozens of people, who might pass me by in the street with no more than a second look, would go on from the second to the third, and from that to a final recognition, if I were set before them, immobilised in a pew, during the whole time of service. An unlucky turn of the head would suffice to arrest their attention. ‘Who is that?’ they would think: ‘surely I should know him!’ and, a church being the place in all the world where one has least to think of, it was ten to one they would end by remembering me before the benediction. However, my mind was made up: I thanked my obliging friend, and placed myself at his disposal.

Our way now led us into the north-east quarter of the town, among pleasant new faubourgs, to a decent new church of a good size, where I was soon seated by the side of my good Samaritan, and looked upon by a whole congregation of menacing faces. At first the possibility of danger kept me awake; but by the time I had assured myself there was none to be apprehended, and the service was not in the least likely to be enlivened by the arrest of a French spy, I had to resign myself to the task of listening to Dr. Henry Gray.

As we moved out, after this ordeal was over, my friend was at once surrounded and claimed by his acquaintances of the congregation; and I was rejoiced to hear him addressed by the expected name of Robbie.

So soon as we were clear of the crowd–‘Mr. Robbie?’ said I, bowing.

‘The very same, sir,’ said he.

‘If I mistake not, a lawyer?’

‘A writer to His Majesty’s Signet, at your service.’

‘It seems we were predestined to be acquaintances!’ I exclaimed. ‘I have here a card in my pocket intended for you. It is from my family lawyer. It was his last word, as I was leaving, to ask to be remembered kindly, and to trust you would pass over so informal an introduction.’

And I offered him the card.

‘Ay, ay, my old friend Daniel!’ says he, looking on the card. ‘And how does my old friend Daniel?’

I gave a favourable view of Mr. Romaine’s health.

‘Well, this is certainly a whimsical incident,’ he continued. ‘And since we are thus met already–and so much to my advantage!–the simplest thing will be to prosecute the acquaintance instantly. Let me propose a snack between sermons, a bottle of my particular green seal–and when nobody is looking we can talk blazons, Mr. Ducie!’–which was the name I then used and had already incidentally mentioned, in the vain hope of provoking a return in kind.

‘I beg your pardon, sir: do I understand you to invite me to your house?’ said I.

‘That was the idea I was trying to convey,’ said he. ‘We have the name of hospitable people up here, and I would like you to try mine.’

‘Mr. Robbie, I shall hope to try it some day, but not yet,’ I replied. ‘I hope you will not misunderstand me. My business, which brings me to your city, is of a peculiar kind. Till you shall have heard it, and, indeed, till its issue is known, I should feel as if I had stolen your invitation.’

‘Well, well,’ said he, a little sobered, ‘it must be as you wish, though you would hardly speak otherwise if you had committed homicide! Mine is the loss. I must eat alone; a very pernicious thing for a person of my habit of body, content myself with a pint of skinking claret, and meditate the discourse. But about this business of yours: if it is so particular as all that, it will doubtless admit of no delay.’

‘I must confess, sir, it presses,’ I acknowledged.

‘Then, let us say to-morrow at half-past eight in the morning,’ said he; ‘and I hope, when your mind is at rest (and it does you much honour to take it as you do), that you will sit down with me to the postponed meal, not forgetting the bottle. You have my address?’ he added, and gave it me–which was the only thing I wanted.

At last, at the level of York Place, we parted with mutual civilities, and I was free to pursue my way, through the mobs of people returning from church, to my lodgings in St. James’ Square.

Almost at the house door whom should I overtake but my landlady in a dress of gorgeous severity, and dragging a prize in her wake: no less than Rowley, with the cockade in his hat, and a smart pair of tops to his boots! When I said he was in the lady’s wake I spoke but in metaphor. As a matter of fact he was squiring her, with the utmost dignity, on his arm; and I followed them up the stairs, smiling to myself.

Both were quick to salute me as soon as I was perceived, and Mrs. McRankine inquired where I had been. I told her boastfully, giving her the name of the church and the divine, and ignorantly supposing I should have gained caste. But she soon opened my eyes. In the roots of the Scottish character there are knots and contortions that not only no stranger can understand, but no stranger can follow; he walks among explosives; and his best course is to throw himself upon their mercy–‘Just as I am, without one plea,’ a citation from one of the lady’s favourite hymns.

The sound she made was unmistakable in meaning, though it was impossible to be written down; and I at once executed the manoeuvre I have recommended.

‘You must remember I am a perfect stranger in your city,’ said I. ‘If I have done wrong, it was in mere ignorance, my dear lady; and this afternoon, if you will be so good as to take me, I shall accompany YOU.’

But she was not to be pacified at the moment, and departed to her own quarters murmuring.

‘Well, Rowley,’ said I; ‘and have you been to church?’

‘If you please, sir,’ he said.

‘Well, you have not been any less unlucky than I have,’ I returned. ‘And how did you get on with the Scottish form?’

‘Well, sir, it was pretty ‘ard, the form was, and reether narrow,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know w’y it is, but it seems to me like as if things were a good bit changed since William Wallace! That was a main queer church she took me to, Mr. Anne! I don’t know as I could have sat it out, if she ‘adn’t ‘a’ give me peppermints. She ain’t a bad one at bottom, the old girl; she do pounce a bit, and she do worry, but, law bless you, Mr. Anne, it ain’t nothink really–she don’t MEAN it. W’y, she was down on me like a ‘undredweight of bricks this morning. You see, last night she ‘ad me in to supper, and, I beg your pardon, sir, but I took the freedom of playing her a chune or two. She didn’t mind a bit; so this morning I began to play to myself, and she flounced in, and flew up, and carried on no end about Sunday!’

‘You see, Rowley,’ said I, ‘they’re all mad up here, and you have to humour them. See and don’t quarrel with Mrs. McRankine; and, above all, don’t argue with her, or you’ll get the worst of it. Whatever she says, touch your forelock and say, “If you please!” or “I beg pardon, ma’am.” And let me tell you one thing: I am sorry, but you have to go to church with her again this afternoon. That’s duty, my boy!’

As I had foreseen, the bells had scarce begun before Mrs. McRankine presented herself to be our escort, upon which I sprang up with readiness and offered her my arm. Rowley followed behind. I was beginning to grow accustomed to the risks of my stay in Edinburgh, and it even amused me to confront a new churchful. I confess the amusement did not last until the end; for if Dr. Gray were long, Mr. McCraw was not only longer, but more incoherent, and the matter of his sermon (which was a direct attack, apparently, on all the Churches of the world, my own among the number), where it had not the tonic quality of personal insult, rather inclined me to slumber. But I braced myself for my life, kept up Rowley with the end of a pin, and came through it awake, but no more.

Bethiah was quite conquered by this ‘mark of grace,’ though, I am afraid, she was also moved by more worldly considerations. The first is, the lady had not the least objection to go to church on the arm of an elegantly dressed young gentleman, and be followed by a spruce servant with a cockade in his hat. I could see it by the way she took possession of us, found us the places in the Bible, whispered to me the name of the minister, passed us lozenges, which I (for my part) handed on to Rowley, and at each fresh attention stole a little glance about the church to make sure she was observed. Rowley was a pretty boy; you will pardon me if I also remembered that I was a favourable-looking young man. When we grow elderly, how the room brightens, and begins to look as it ought to look, on the entrance of youth, grace, health, and comeliness! You do not want them for yourself, perhaps not even for your son, but you look on smiling; and when you recall their images–again, it is with a smile. I defy you to see or think of them and not smile with an infinite and intimate, but quite impersonal, pleasure. Well, either I know nothing of women, or that was the case with Bethiah McRankine. She had been to church with a cockade behind her, on the one hand; on the other, her house was brightened by the presence of a pair of good-looking young fellows of the other sex, who were always pleased and deferential in her society and accepted her views as final.

These were sentiments to be encouraged; and, on the way home from church–if church it could be called–I adopted a most insidious device to magnify her interest. I took her into the confidence, that is, of my love affair, and I had no sooner mentioned a young lady with whom my affections were engaged than she turned upon me a face of awful gravity.

‘Is she bonny?’ she inquired.

I gave her full assurances upon that.

‘To what denoamination does she beloang?’ came next, and was so unexpected as almost to deprive me of breath.

‘Upon my word, ma’am, I have never inquired,’ cried I; ‘I only know that she is a heartfelt Christian, and that is enough.’

‘Ay!’ she sighed, ‘if she has the root of the maitter! There’s a remnant practically in most of the denoaminations. There’s some in the McGlashanites, and some in the Glassites, and mony in the McMillanites, and there’s a leeven even in the Estayblishment.’

‘I have known some very good Papists even, if you go to that,’ said I.

‘Mr. Ducie, think shame to yoursel’!’ she cried.

‘Why, my dear madam! I only–‘ I began.

‘You shouldnae jest in sairious maitters,’ she interrupted.

On the whole, she entered into what I chose to tell her of our idyll with avidity, like a cat licking her whiskers over a dish of cream; and, strange to say–and so expansive a passion is that of love!–that I derived a perhaps equal satisfaction from confiding in that breast of iron. It made an immediate bond: from that hour we seemed to be welded into a family-party; and I had little difficulty in persuading her to join us and to preside over our tea-table. Surely there was never so ill-matched a trio as Rowley, Mrs. McRankine, and the Viscount Anne! But I am of the Apostle’s way, with a difference: all things to all women! When I cannot please a woman, hang me in my cravat!

CHAPTER XXVIII–EVENTS OF MONDAY: THE LAWYER’S PARTY

By half-past eight o’clock on the next morning, I was ringing the bell of the lawyer’s office in Castle Street, where I found him ensconced at a business table, in a room surrounded by several tiers of green tin cases. He greeted me like an old friend.

‘Come away, sir, come away!’ said he. ‘Here is the dentist ready for you, and I think I can promise you that the operation will be practically painless.’

‘I am not so sure of that, Mr. Robbie,’ I replied, as I shook hands with him. ‘But at least there shall be no time lost with me.’

I had to confess to having gone a-roving with a pair of drovers and their cattle, to having used a false name, to having murdered or half-murdered a fellow-creature in a scuffle on the moors, and to having suffered a couple of quite innocent men to lie some time in prison on a charge from which I could have immediately freed them. All this I gave him first of all, to be done with the worst of it; and all this he took with gravity, but without the least appearance of surprise.

‘Now, sir,’ I continued, ‘I expect to have to pay for my unhappy frolic, but I would like very well if it could be managed without my personal appearance or even the mention of my real name. I had so much wisdom as to sail under false colours in this foolish jaunt of mine; my family would be extremely concerned if they had wind of it; but at the same time, if the case of this Faa has terminated fatally, and there are proceedings against Todd and Candlish, I am not going to stand by and see them vexed, far less punished; and I authorise you to give me up for trial if you think that best–or, if you think it unnecessary, in the meanwhile to make preparations for their defence. I hope, sir, that I am as little anxious to be Quixotic, as I am determined to be just.’

‘Very fairly spoken,’ said Mr. Robbie. ‘It is not much in my line, as doubtless your friend, Mr. Romaine, will have told you. I rarely mix myself up with anything on the criminal side, or approaching it. However, for a young gentleman like you, I may stretch a point, and I dare say I may be able to accomplish more than perhaps another. I will go at once to the Procurator Fiscal’s office and inquire.’

‘Wait a moment, Mr. Robbie,’ said I. ‘You forget the chapter of expenses. I had thought, for a beginning, of placing a thousand pounds in your hands.’

‘My dear sir, you will kindly wait until I render you my bill,’ said Mr. Robbie severely.’

‘It seemed to me,’ I protested, ‘that coming to you almost as a stranger, and placing in your hands a piece of business so contrary to your habits, some substantial guarantee of my good faith–‘

‘Not the way that we do business in Scotland, sir,’ he interrupted, with an air of closing the dispute.

‘And yet, Mr. Robbie,’ I continued, ‘I must ask you to allow me to proceed. I do not merely refer to the expenses of the case. I have my eye besides on Todd and Candlish. They are thoroughly deserving fellows; they have been subjected through me to a considerable term of imprisonment; and I suggest, sir, that you should not spare money for their indemnification. This will explain,’ I added smiling, ‘my offer of the thousand pounds. It was in the nature of a measure by which you should judge the scale on which I can afford to have this business carried through.’

‘I take you perfectly, Mr. Ducie,’ said he. ‘But the sooner I am off, the better this affair is like to be guided. My clerk will show you into the waiting-room and give you the day’s Caledonian Mercury and the last Register to amuse yourself with in the interval.’

I believe Mr. Robbie was at least three hours gone. I saw him descend from a cab at the door, and almost immediately after I was shown again into his study, where the solemnity of his manner led me to augur the worst. For some time he had the inhumanity to read me a lecture as to the incredible silliness, ‘not to say immorality,’ of my behaviour. ‘I have the satisfaction in telling you my opinion, because it appears that you are going to get off scot free,’ he continued, where, indeed, I thought he might have begun.

‘The man, Faa, has been discharged cured; and the two men, Todd and Candlish, would have been leeberated lone ago if it had not been for their extraordinary loyalty to yourself, Mr. Ducie–or Mr. St. Ivey, as I believe I should now call you. Never a word would either of the two old fools volunteer that in any manner pointed at the existence of such a person; and when they were confronted with Faa’s version of the affair, they gave accounts so entirely discrepant with their own former declarations, as well as with each other, that the Fiscal was quite nonplussed, and imaigined there was something behind it. You may believe I soon laughed him out of that! And I had the satisfaction of seeing your two friends set free, and very glad to be on the causeway again.’

‘Oh, sir,’ I cried, ‘you should have brought them here.’

‘No instructions, Mr. Ducie!’ said he. ‘How did I know you wished to renew an acquaintance which you had just terminated so fortunately? And, indeed, to be frank with you, I should have set my face against it, if you had! Let them go! They are paid and contented, and have the highest possible opinion of Mr. St. Ivey! When I gave them fifty pounds apiece–which was rather more than enough, Mr. Ducie, whatever you may think–the man Todd, who has the only tongue of the party, struck his staff on the ground. “Weel,” says he, “I aye said he was a gentleman!” “Man, Todd,” said I, “that was just what Mr St. Ivey said of yourself!”‘

‘So it was a case of “Compliments fly when gentlefolk meet.”‘

‘No, no, Mr. Ducie, man Todd and man Candlish are gone out of your life, and a good riddance! They are fine fellows in their way, but no proper associates for the like of yourself; and do you finally agree to be done with all eccentricity–take up with no more drovers, or tinkers, but enjoy the naitural pleesures for which your age, your wealth, your intelligence, and (if I may be allowed to say it) your appearance so completely fit you. And the first of these,’ quoth he, looking at his watch, ‘will be to step through to my dining-room and share a bachelor’s luncheon.’

Over the meal, which was good, Mr. Robbie continued to develop the same theme. ‘You’re, no doubt, what they call a dancing-man?’ said he. ‘Well, on Thursday night there is the Assembly Ball. You must certainly go there, and you must permit me besides to do the honours of the ceety and send you a ticket. I am a thorough believer in a young man being a young man–but no more drovers or rovers, if you love me! Talking of which puts me in mind that you may be short of partners at the Assembly–oh, I have been young myself!–and if ye care to come to anything so portentiously tedious as a tea-party at the house of a bachelor lawyer, consisting mainly of his nieces and nephews, and his grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and his wards, and generally the whole clan of the descendants of his clients, you might drop in to-night towards seven o’clock. I think I can show you one or two that are worth looking at, and you can dance with them later on at the Assembly.’

He proceeded to give me a sketch of one or two eligible young ladies’ whom I might expect to meet. ‘And then there’s my parteecular friend, Miss Flora,’ said he. ‘But I’ll make no attempt of a description. You shall see her for yourself.’

It will be readily supposed that I accepted his invitation; and returned home to make a toilette worthy of her I was to meet and the good news of which I was the bearer. The toilette, I have reason to believe, was a success. Mr. Rowley dismissed me with a farewell: ‘Crikey! Mr. Anne, but you do look prime!’ Even the stony Bethiah was–how shall I say?–dazzled, but scandalised, by my appearance; and while, of course, she deplored the vanity that led to it, she could not wholly prevent herself from admiring the result.

‘Ay, Mr. Ducie, this is a poor employment for a wayfaring Christian man!’ she said. ‘Wi’ Christ despised and rejectit in all pairts of the world and the flag of the Covenant flung doon, you will be muckle better on your knees! However, I’ll have to confess that it sets you weel. And if it’s the lassie ye’re gaun to see the nicht, I suppose I’ll just have to excuse ye! Bairns maun be bairns!’ she said, with a sigh. ‘I mind when Mr. McRankine came courtin’, and that’s lang by-gane–I mind I had a green gown, passementit, that was thocht to become me to admiration. I was nae just exactly what ye would ca’ bonny; but I was pale, penetratin’, and interestin’.’ And she leaned over the stair-rail with a candle to watch my descent as long as it should be possible.

It was but a little party at Mr. Robbie’s–by which, I do not so much mean that there were few people, for the rooms were crowded, as that there was very little attempted to entertain them. In one apartment there were tables set out, where the elders were solemnly engaged upon whist; in the other and larger one, a great number of youth of both sexes entertained themselves languidly, the ladies sitting upon chairs to be courted, the gentlemen standing about in various attitudes of insinuation or indifference. Conversation appeared the sole resource, except in so far as it was modified by a number of keepsakes and annuals which lay dispersed upon the tables, and of which the young beaux displayed the illustrations to the ladies. Mr. Robbie himself was customarily in the card-room; only now and again, when he cut out, he made an incursion among the young folks, and rolled about jovially from one to another, the very picture of the general uncle.

It chanced that Flora had met Mr. Robbie in the course of the afternoon. ‘Now, Miss Flora,’ he had said, ‘come early, for I have a Phoenix to show you–one Mr. Ducie, a new client of mine that, I vow, I have fallen in love with’; and he was so good as to add a word or two on my appearance, from which Flora conceived a suspicion of the truth. She had come to the party, in consequence, on the knife-edge of anticipation and alarm; had chosen a place by the door, where I found her, on my arrival, surrounded by a posse of vapid youths; and, when I drew near, sprang up to meet me in the most natural manner in the world, and, obviously, with a prepared form of words.

‘How do you do, Mr. Ducie?’ she said. ‘It is quite an age since I have seen you!’

‘I have much to tell you, Miss Gilchrist,’ I replied. ‘May I sit down?’

For the artful girl, by sitting near the door, and the judicious use of her shawl, had contrived to keep a chair empty by her side.

She made room for me, as a matter of course, and the youths had the discretion to melt before us. As soon as I was once seated her fan flew out, and she whispered behind it:

‘Are you mad?’

‘Madly in love,’ I replied; ‘but in no other sense.’

‘I have no patience! You cannot understand what I am suffering!’ she said. ‘What are you to say to Ronald, to Major Chevenix, to my aunt?’

Your aunt?’ I cried, with a start. ‘Peccavi! is she here?’

‘She is in the card-room at whist,’ said Flora.

‘Where she will probably stay all the evening?’ I suggested.

‘She may,’ she admitted; ‘she generally does!’

‘Well, then, I must avoid the card-room,’ said I, ‘which is very much what I had counted upon doing. I did not come here to play cards, but to contemplate a certain young lady to my heart’s content–if it can ever be contented!–and to tell her some good news.’

‘But there are still Ronald and the Major!’ she persisted. ‘They are not card-room fixtures! Ronald will be coming and going. And as for Mr. Chevenix, he–‘

‘Always sits with Miss Flora?’ I interrupted. ‘And they talk of poor St. Ives? I had gathered as much, my dear; and Mr. Ducie has come to prevent it! But pray dismiss these fears! I mind no one but your aunt.’

‘Why my aunt?’

‘Because your aunt is a lady, my dear, and a very clever lady, and, like all clever ladies, a very rash lady,’ said I. ‘You can never count upon them, unless you are sure of getting them in a corner, as I have got you, and talking them over rationally, as I am just engaged on with yourself! It would be quite the same to your aunt to make the worst kind of a scandal, with an equal indifference to my danger and to the feelings of our good host!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘and what of Ronald, then? Do you think HE is above making a scandal? You must know him very little!’

‘On the other hand, it is my pretension that I know him very well!’ I replied. ‘I must speak to Ronald first–not Ronald to me–that is all!’

‘Then, please, go and speak to him at once!’ she pleaded. He is there–do you see?–at the upper end of the room, talking to that girl in pink.’

‘And so lose this seat before I have told you my good news?’ I exclaimed. ‘Catch me! And, besides, my dear one, think a little of me and my good news! I thought the bearer of good news was always welcome! I hoped he might be a little welcome for himself! Consider! I have but one friend; and let me stay by her! And there is only one thing I care to hear; and let me hear it!’

‘Oh, Anne,’ she sighed, ‘if I did not love you, why should I be so uneasy? I am turned into a coward, dear! Think, if it were the other way round–if you were quite safe and I was in, oh, such danger!’

She had no sooner said it than I was convicted of being a dullard. ‘God forgive me, dear!’ I made haste to reply. ‘I never saw before that there were two sides to this!’ And I told her my tale as briefly as I could, and rose to seek Ronald. ‘You see, my dear, you are obeyed,’ I said.

She gave me a look that was a reward in itself; and as I turned away from her, with a strong sense of turning away from the sun, I carried that look in my bosom like a caress. The girl in pink was an arch, ogling person, with a good deal of eyes and teeth, and a great play of shoulders and rattle of conversation. There could be no doubt, from Mr. Ronald’s attitude, that he worshipped the very chair she sat on. But I was quite ruthless. I laid my hand on his shoulder, as he was stooping over her like a hen over a chicken.

‘Excuse me for one moment, Mr. Gilchrist!’ said I.