THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION OF THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON WEIR OF HERMISTON HE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON THE STORY OF A LIE THE BODY-SNATCHER THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION OF STEVENSON'S WORKS NOVELS AND ROMANCES TREASURE ISLAND PRINCE OTTO KIDNAPPED THE BLACK ARROW THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE THE WRONG BOX THE WRECKER DAVID BALFOUR THE EBB-TIDE WEIR OF HERMISTON ST. IVES SHORTER STORIES NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS THE DYNAMITER THE MERRY MEN, containing DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS ESSA YS, TRA VELS & SKETCHES AN INLAND VOYAGE TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY VIRGINIfcuS PUERISQUE FAMILIAR STUDIES THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT, containing THK SILVERADO SQUATTERS MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS IN THE SOUTH SEAS ACROSS THE PLAINS ESSAYS OF TRAVEL AND IN THE ART OF WRITING LAY MORALS AND OTHER PAPERS POEMS COMPLETE POEMS THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 4 wis. THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ByGraham Balfour. Abridged Edition in ^e rel m* Thirty-one volumes. Sold singly or in sets Charles Scribner's Sons, New York BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION WEIR OF HERMISTON THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON THE STORY OF A LIE THE BODY-SNATCHER BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1920 Copyright, 1896 By Stone & Kimball Copyright, 1896 By Charles Scribner's Son? "ENGLISH \ hi* TO MY WIFE I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again In my precipitous city beaten bells Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar, Intent on my own race and place, I wrote. Take thou the writing : thine it is. For who Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, Held still the target higher, chary of praise And prodigal of counsel who but thou ? So now, in the end, if this the least be good, If any deed be done, if any fire Burn in the imperfect page, the praise be thine. 445183 INTRODUCTORY In the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight of any house, there stands a cairn among the heather, and a little by east of it, in the going down of the braeside, a monu- ment with some verses half defaced. It was here that Claver- house shot with his own hand the Praying Weaver of Balweary, and the chisel of Old Mortality has clinked on that lonely gravestone. Public and domestic history have thus marked with a bloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since the Cameronian gave his life there, two hundred years ago, in a glorious folly, and without comprehension or regret, the silence of the moss has been broken once again by the report of firearms and the cry of the dying. The Deil's Hags was the old name. But the place is now called Francie's Cairn. For a while it was told that Francie \valked. Aggie Hogg met him in the gloaming by the cairnside, and he spoke to her, with chattering teeth, so that his words were lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if anyone could have be- lieved Robbie) for the space of half a mile with pitiful en treaties. But the age is one of incredulity ; these superstitious decorations speedily fell off; and the facts of the story itself, like the bones of a giant buried there and half dug up, sur- vived, naked and imperfect, in the memory of the scattered neighbours. To this day, of winter nights, when the sleet is on the window and the cattle are quiet in the byre, there will be told again, amid the silence of the young and the additions and corrections of the old, the tale of the Justice-Clerk and of his son, young Hermiston, that vanished from men's knowl- edge; of the two Kirsties and the Four Black Brothers of the Cauldstaneslap; and of Frank Innes, "the young fool advocate," that came into these moorland parts to find his destiny. CONTENTS Page Weir of Hermiston i Chapter I Life and Death of Mrs. Weir ..... 3 II Father and Son 22 III In the Matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp 30 IV Opinion of the Bench 50 V Winter on the Moors : I At Hermiston . 62 II Kirstie 67 III A Border Family 71 VI A Leaf from Christina's Psalm-Book ... 93 VII Enter Mephistopheles 127 VIII A Nocturnal Visit 150 IX At the Weaver's Stone 160 Editorial Note 169 Glossary of Scottish Words 181 The Misadventures of John Nicholson. . . . 185 Chapter I In which John sows the Wind 187 II In which John reaps the Whirlwind . . 195 III In which John enjoys the Harvest Home 202 IV The Second Sowing 210 V The Prodigal's Return 217 VI The House at Murrayfield 226 x CONTENTS Chapter Page VII A Tragi-Comedy in a Cab 242 VIII Singular Instance of the Utility of Pass- Keys 255 IX In which Mr. Nicholson accepts the Prin- ciple of an Allowance ...... 270 The Story of a Lie 281 Chapter I Introduces the Admiral 283 II A Letter to the Papers 291 III In the Admiral's Name 298 IV Esther on the Filial Relation .... 308 V The Prodigal Father makes his Debut at Home 313 VI The Prodigal Father goes on from Strength to Strength 322 VII The Elopement 336 VIII Battle Royal 349 IX In which the Liberal Editor appears as "Deus ex Machina" 361 The Body-Snatcher 367 WEIR OF HERMISTON WEIR OF HERMISTON CHAPTER I LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR THE Lord Justice-Clerk was a stranger in that part of the country; but his lady wife was known there from a child, as her race had been before her. The old " riding Rutherfords of Hermiston," of whom she was the last descendant, had been famous men of yore, ill neighbours, ill subjects, and ill husbands to their wives though not their properties. Tales of them were rife for twenty miles about; and their name was even printed in the page of our Scots histories, not always to their credit. One bit the dust at Flodden ; one was hanged at his peel door by James the Fifth; another fell dead in a ca- rouse with Tom Dalzell; while a fourth (and that was Jean's own father) died presiding at a Hell- Fire Club, of which he was the founder. There were many heads shaken in Crossmichael at that judgment; the more so as the man had a villainous reputation among high and low, and both with the godly and the worldly. At that very hour of his demise, he had ten going pleas before the session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom 4, WEIR OF HERMISTON extended even to his agents; his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left-hand business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peat-hag on the Kye skairs ; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons) surviving him not long, and dying on a sudden in a bloody flux. In all these generations, while a male Rutherford was in the saddle with his lads, or brawling in a change-house, there would be always a white- faced wife immured at home in the old peel or the later mansion-house. It seemed this succession of martyrs bided long, but took their vengeance in the end, and that was in the person of the last descend- ant, Jean. She bore the name of the Rutherfords, but she was the daughter of their trembling wives. At the first she was not wholly with- out charm. Neighbours recalled in her, as a child, a strain of elfin wilfulness, gentle little mutinies, sad little gaieties, even a morning gleam of beauty that was not to be fulfilled. She withered in the growing, and (whether it was the sins of her sires or the sorrows of her mothers) came to her maturity depressed, and, as it were, defaced; no blood of life in her, no grasp or gaiety; pious, anxious, tender, tearful, and incompetent. It was a wonder to many that she had married seeming so wholly of the stuff that makes old maids. But chance cast her in the path of Adam Weir, then the new Lord-Advocate, a recognised, risen man, the conqueror of many obstacles, and thus late in the day beginning to think upon a wife. He was one who looked rather to obedience WEIR OF HERMISTON 5 than beauty, yet it would seem he was struck with her at the first look. " Wha 's she?" he said, turning to his host; and, when he had been told, " Ay," says he, " she looks menseful. She minds me "; and then, after a pause (which some have been daring enough to set down to sentimen- tal recollections), "Is she releegious?" he asked, and was shortly after, at his own request, presented. The acquaintance, which it seems profane to call a courtship, was pursued with Mr. Weir's accus- tomed industry, and was long a legend, or rather a source of legends, in the Parliament House. He was described coming, rosy with much port, into the* drawing-room, walking direct up to the lady, and assailing her with pleasantries, to which the embarrassed fair one responded, in what seemed a kind of agony, " Eh, Mr. Weir! " or " O, Mr. Weir ! " or " Keep me, Mr. Weir! " On the very eve of their engagement it was related that one had drawn near to the tender couple, and had overheard the lady cry out, with the tones of one who talked for the sake of talking, " Keep me, Mr. Weir, and what became of him ? " and the pro- found accents of the suitor's reply, " Haangit, mem, haangit." The motives upon either side were much debated. Mr. Weir must have sup- posed his bride to be somehow suitable; perhaps he belonged to that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of women an opinion inva- riably punished in this life. Her descent and her estate were beyond question. Her wayfaring an- cestors and her litigious father had done well by 6 WEIR OF HERMISTON Jean. There was ready money and there were broad acres, ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should be called upon the Bench. On the side of Jean there was perhaps some fasci- nation of curiosity as to this unknown male animal that approached her with the roughness of a ploughman and the aplomb of an advocate. Being so trenchantly opposed to all she knew, loved, or understood, he may well have seemed to her the extreme, if scarcely the ideal, of his sex. And be- sides, he was an ill man to refuse. A little over forty at the period of his marriage, he looked already older, and to the force of manhood added the senatorial dignity of years; it was, perhaps, with an unreverend awe, but he was awful. The Bench, the Bar, and the most experienced and reluctant witness, bowed to his authority and why not Jeannie Rutherford? The heresy about foolish women is always pun- ished, I have said, and Lord Hermiston began to pay the penalty at once. His house in George Square was wretchedly ill-guided; nothing an- swerable to the expense of maintenance but the cellar, which was his own private care. When things went wrong at dinner, as they continually did, my lord would look up the table at his wife: " I think these broth would be better to swim in than to sup." Or else to the butler : " Here, M'Killop, awa' wi' this Raadical gigot tak' it to the French, man, and bring me some puddocks! It seems rather a sore kind of a business that I WEIR OF HERMISTON 7 should be all day in Court haanging Raadicals, and get nawthing to my denner." Of course this was but a manner of speaking, and he had never hanged a man for being a Radical in his life; the law, of which he was the faithful minister, direct- ing otherwise. And of course these growls were in the nature of pleasantry, but it was of a recon- dite sort ; and uttered as they were in his resound- ing voice, and commented on by that expression which they called in the Parliament House " Her- miston's hanging face" they struck mere dis- may into the wife. She sat before him speechless and fluttering; at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her eye hovered toward my lord's countenance and fell again; if he but ate in silence, unspeak- able relief was her portion; if there were com- plaint, the world was darkened. She would seek out the cook, who was always her sister in the Lord. " O, my dear, this is the most dreidful thing that my lord can never be contented in his own house ! " she would begin ; and weep and pray with the cook ; and then the cook would pray with Mrs. Weir; and the next day's meal would never be a penny the better and the next cook (when she came) would be worse, if anything, but just as pious. It was often wondered that Lord Hermis- ton bore it as he did; indeed he was a stoical old voluptuary, contented with sound wine and plenty of it. But there were moments when he over- flowed. Perhaps half-a-dozen times in the history of his married life " Here ! tak' it awa', and bring me a piece bread and kebbuck ! " he had 8 WEIR OF HERMISTON exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his voice and rare gestures. None thought to dispute or to make excuses; the service was arrested; Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table whimpering with- out disguise; and his lordship opposite munched his bread and cheese in ostentatious disregard. Once only, Mrs. Weir had ventured to appeal. He was passing her chair on his way into the study. " O, Edom ! " she wailed, in a voice tragic with tears, and reaching out to him both hands, in one of which she held a sopping pocket-handkerchief. He paused and looked upon her with a face of wrath, into which there stole, as he looked, a twinkle of humour. " Noansense ! " he said. " You and your noan- sense! What do I want with a Christian faim'ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can plain boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets." And with these words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had passed on to his study and shut the door behind him. Such was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston, where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a neighbouring bonnet-laird, and an eighteenth cousin of the lady's, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand, clean, capable, notable; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a blood horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and colour, she ran the house with her whole intemperate soul, in a bustle, WEIR OF HERMISTON 9 not without buffets. Scarce more pious than de- cency in those days required, she was the cause of many an anxious thought and many a tearful prayer to Mrs. Weir. Housekeeper and mistress renewed the parts of Martha and Mary; and though with a pricking conscience, Mary reposed on Martha's strength as on a rock. Even Lord Hermiston held Kirstie in a particular regard. There were few with whom he unbent so gladly, few whom he favoured with so many pleasantries. " Kirstie and me maun have our joke," he would declare, in high good-humour, as he buttered Kir- stie's scones and she waited at table. A man who had no need either of love or of popularity, a keen reader of men and of events, there was perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared : he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, handy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would sometimes itch for my lord's ears. Thus, at least, when the family were at Hermis- ton, not only my lord, but Mrs. Weir too, enjoyed a holiday. Free from the dreadful looking-for of the miscarried dinner, she would mind her seam, read her piety books, and take her walk (which was my lord's orders), sometimes by herself, sometimes with Archie, the only child of that scarce natural union. The child was her next bond to life. Her io WEIR OF HERMISTON frosted sentiment bloomed again, she breathed deep of life, she let loose her heart, in that society. The miracle of her motherhood was ever new to her. The sight of the little man at her skirt intoxi- cated her with the sense of power, and froze her with the consciousness of her responsibility. She looked forward, and, seeing him in fancy grow up and play his diverse part on the world's theatre, caught in her breath and lifted up her courage with a lively effort. It was only with the child that she forgot herself and was at moments natural; yet it was only with the child that she had conceived and managed to pursue a scheme of conduct. Archie was to be a great man and a good; a minister if possible, a saint for certain. She tried to engage his mind upon her favour- ite books, Rutherford's Letters, Scougal's Grace Abounding, and the like. It was a common prac- tice of hers (and strange to remember now) that she would carry the child to the Deil's Hags, sit with him on the Praying Weaver's stone and talk of the Covenanters till their tears ran down. Her view of history was wholly artless, a design in snow and ink; upon the one side, tender inno- cents with psalms upon their lips; upon the other, the persecutors, booted, bloody-minded, flushed with wine; a suffering Christ, a raging Beelze- bub. Persecutor was a word that knocked upon the woman's heart; it was her highest thought of wickedness, and the mark of it was on her house. Her great-great-grandfather had drawn the sword against the Lord's anointed on the field of Rullion WEIR OF HERMISTON u Green, and breathed his last (tradition said) in the arms of the detestable Dalzell. Nor could she blind herself to this, that had they lived in these old days, Hermiston himself would have been numbered alongside of Bloody MacKenzie and the politic Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of God's im- mediate enemies. The sense of this moved her to the more fervour ; she had a voice for that name of persecutor that thrilled in the child's marrow; and when one day the mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord's travelling-carriage, and cried, " Down with the persecutor ! down with Hanging Hermiston ! " and mamma covered her eyes and wept, and papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bit- ter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence, Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised demanding an explanation; why had they called papa a persecutor? " Keep me, my precious ! " she exclaimed. " Keep me, my dear ! this is poleetical. Ye must never ask me anything poleetical, Erchie. Your faither is a great man, my dear, and it 's no for me or you to be judging him. It would be telling us all if we behaved ourselves in our several sta- tions the way your faither does in his high office; and let me hear no more of any such disrespectful and undutiful questions ! No that you meant to be undutiful, my lamb ; your mother kens that she kens it well, dearie ! " and so slid off to safer topics, 12 WEIR OF HERMISTON and left on the mind of the child an obscure but ineradicable sense of something wrong. Mrs. Weir's philosophy of life was summed in one expression tenderness. In her view of the universe, which was all lighted up with a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind of ecstasy of tenderness. The beasts and plants had no souls; they were here but for a day, and let their day pass gently! And as for the immortal men, on what black, downward path were many of them wending, and to what a horror of an immortality ! " Are not two sparrows," " Whosoever shall smite thee," " God sendeth His rain," " Judge not that ye be not judged " these texts made her body of divinity; she put them on in the morning with her clothes and lay down to sleep with them at night; they haunted her like a favourite air, they clung about her like a favourite perfume. Their minister was a marrowy ex- pounder of the law, and my lord sat under him with relish ; but Mrs. Weir respected him from far off; heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts ; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden, which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her her colour raised, her hands clasped or quivering glow with gentle ardour. WEIR OF HERMISTON 13 There is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, where you come suddenly in view of the summit of Black Fell, sometimes like the mere grass top of a hill, sometimes (and this is her own expression) like a precious jewel in the heavens. On such days, upon the sudden view of it, her hand would tighten on the child's fingers, her voice rise like a song. "I to the hills!" she would repeat. "And O, Erchie, are nae these like the hills of Naphtali ? " and her easy tears would flow. Upon an impressionable child the effect of this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The woman's quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pug- nacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potter- row once struck him in the mouth ; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane to- wards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always greeted him. The Judge was that day in an observant mood, and remarked upon the absent teeth. " I am afraid Erchie will have been fechting with some of they blagyard lads," said Mrs. Weir. My lord's voice rang out as it did seldom in the i 4 WEIR OF HERMISTON privacy of his own house. " I '11 have norm of that, sir ! " he cried. " Do you hear- me ? nonn of that ! No son of mine shall be speldering in the glaur with any dirty raibble." The anxious mother was grateful for so much support; she had even feared the contrary. And that night when she put the child to bed " Now, my dear, ye see ! " she said, " I told you what your faither would think of it, if he heard ye had fallen into this dreidful sin; and let you and me pray to God that ye may be keepit from the like tempta- tion or stren'thened to resist it ! " The womanly falsity of this was thrown away. Ice and iron cannot be welded; and the points of view of the Justice-Clerk and Mrs. Weir were not less unassimilable. The character and position of his father had long been a stumbling-block to Archie, and with every year of his age the diffi- culty grew more instant. The man was mostly silent; when he spoke at all, it was to speak of the things of the world, always in a worldly spirit, often in language that the child had been schooled to think coarse, and sometimes with words that he knew to be sins in themselves. Tenderness was the first duty, and my lord was invariably harsh. God was love; the name of my lord (to all who knew him) was fear. In the world, as schematised for Archie by his mother, the place was marked for such a creature. There were some whom it was good to pity and well (though very likely useless) to pray for; they were named reprobates, goats, God's enemies, brands for the burning ; and Archie WEIR OF HERMISTON 15 tallied every mark of identification, and drew the inevitable private inference that the Lord Justice- Clerk was the chief of sinners. The mother's honesty was scarce complete. There was one influence she feared for the child and still secretly combated; that was my lord's; and half unconsciously, half in a wilful blindness, she continued to undermine her husband with his son. As long as Archie remained silent, she did so ruthlessly, with a single eye to heaven and the child's salvation; but the day came when Archie spoke. It was 1801, and Archie was seven, and beyond his years for curiosity and logic, when he brought the case up openly. If judging were sin- ful and forbidden, how came papa to be a judge? to have that sin for a trade ? to bear the name of it for a distinction? " I can't see it," said the little Rabbi, and wagged his head. Mrs. Weir abounded in commonplace replies. " No, I cannae see it," reiterated Archie. " And I '11 tell you what, mamma, I don't think you and me 's justifeed in staying with him." The woman awoke to remorse; she saw herself disloyal to her man, her sovereign and bread-winner, in whom (with what she had of worldliness) she took a certain subdued pride. She expatiated in reply on my lord's honour and greatness ; his use- ful services in this world of sorrow and wrong, and the place in which he stood, far above where babes and innocents could hope to see or criticise. But she had builded too well Archie had his 16 WEIR OF HERMISTON answers pat: Were not babes and innocents the type of the kingdom of heaven ? Were not honour and greatness the badges of the world? And at any rate, how about the mob that had once seethed about the carriage? " It 's all very fine," he concluded, " but in my opinion, papa has no right to be it. And it seems that 's not the worst yet of it. It seems he 's called the Hanging Judge ' it seems he 's crooool. I '11 tell you what it is, mamma, there 's a tex' borne in upon me: it were better for that man if a milestone were bound upon his back and him flung into the deepestmost pairts of the sea." " O, my lamb, ye must never say the like of that ! " she cried. " Ye 're to honour faither and mother, dear, that your days may be long in the land. It 's Atheists that cry out against him French Atheists, Erchie! Ye would never surely even yourself down to be saying the same thing as French Atheists? It would break my heart to think that of you. And O, Erchie, here arena you setting up to judge? And have ye no forgot God's plain command the First with Promise, dear? Mind you upon the beam and the mote!" Having thus carried the war into the enemy's camp, the terrified lady breathed again. And no doubt it is easy thus to circumvent a child with catchwords, but it may be questioned how far it is effectual. An instinct in his breast detects the quibble, and a voice condemns it. He will instantly WEIR OF HERMISTON 17 submit, privately hold the same opinion. For even in this simple and antique relation of the mother and the child, hypocrisies are multiplied. When the Court rose that year and the family returned to Hermiston, it was a common remark in all the country that the lady was sore failed. She seemed to loose and seize again her touch with life, now sitting inert in a sort of durable bewilder- ment, anon waking to feverish and weak activity. She dawdled about the lassies at their work, looking stupidly on ; she fell to rummaging in old cabinets and presses, and desisted when half through; she would begin remarks with an air of animation and drop them without a struggle. Her common ap- pearance was of one who has forgotten something and is trying to remember; and when she over- hauled, one after another, the worthless and touch- ing mementoes of her youth, she might have been seeking the clue to that lost thought. During this period she gave many gifts to the neighbours and house lassies, giving them with a manner of regret that embarrassed the recipients. The last night of all she was busy on some female work, and toiled upon it with so manifest and painful a devotion that my lord (who was not often curious) inquired as to its nature. She blushed to the eyes. " O, Edom, it 's for you ! " she said. " It 's slippers. I I hae never made ye any." " Ye daft auld wife ! " returned his lordship. ", A bonny figure I would be, palmering about in bauchles ! " 18 WEIR OF HERMISTON The next day, at the hour of her walk, Kirstie interfered. Kirstie took this decay of her mistress very hard ; bore her a grudge, quarrelled with and railed upon her, the anxiety of a genuine love wear- ing the disguise of temper. This day of all days she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at home. But, " No, no," she said, " it 's my lord's orders," and set forth as usual. Archie was visible in the acre bog, engaged upon some childish enterprise, the instrument of which was mire; and she stood and looked at him awhile like one about to call ; then thought other- wise, sighed, and shook her head, and proceeded on her rounds alone. The house lassies were at the burnside washing, and saw her pass with her loose, weary, dowdy gait. " She 's a terrible feckless wife, the mistress ! " said the one. " Tut," said the other, " the wumman 's seeck." " Weel, I canna see nae differ in her," returned the first. " A fushionless quean, a feckless carline." The poor creature thus discussed rambled awhile in the grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and carried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a path, paused, re- turned, and. tried another ; questing, forgetting her quest ; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she had remembered, or had formed a reso- lution, wheeled about, returned with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining-room, where Kirstie WEIR OF HERMISTON 19 was at the cleaning, like one charged with an important errand. " Kirstie ! " she began, and paused ; and then with conviction, " Mr. Weir isna speeritually minded, but he has been a good man to me." It was perhaps the first time since her husband's elevation that she had forgotten the handle to his name, of which the tender, inconsistent woman was not a little proud. And when Kirstie looked up at the speaker's face she was aware of a change. " Godsake, what 's the maitter wi' ye, mem ? " cried the housekeeper, starting from the rug. " I do not ken," answered her mistress, shak- ing her head. " But he is not speeritually minded, my dear." " Here, sit down with ye ! Godsake, what ails the wife ? " cried Kirstie, and helped and forced her into my lord's own chair by the cheek of the hearth. "Keep me, what's this?" she gasped. "Kir- stie, what's this? I'm frich'ened." They were her last words. It was the lowering nightfall when my lord returned. He had the sunset in his back, all clouds and glory; and before him, by the wayside, spied Kirstie Elliott waiting. She was dissolved in tears, and addressed him in the high, false note of bar- barous mourning, such as still lingers modified among Scots heather. " The Lord peety ye, Hermiston ! the Lord pre- pare ye! " she keened out. " Weary upon me, that I should have to tell it ! " 20 WEIR OF HERMISTON He reined in his horse and looked upon her with the hanging face. " Has the French landit? " cried he. " Man, man," she said, " is that a' ye can think of? The Lord prepare ye, the Lord comfort and support ye ! " " Is onybody deid ? " says his lordship. " It 's no Erchie ? " " Bethankit, no ! " exclaimed the woman, startled into a more natural tone. " Na, na, it 's no sae bad as that. It 's the mistress, my lord ; she just fair flittit before my e'en. She just gi'ed a sab and was by with it. Eh, my bonny Miss Jeannie, that I mind sae weel ! " And forth again upon that pouring tide of lamentation in which women of her class excel and overabound. Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle beholding her. Then he seemed to recover command upon himself. " Weel, it 's something of the suddenest," said he. / " But she was a dwaibly body from the first." And he rode home at a precipitate amble with Kirstie at his horse's heels. Dressed as she was for her last walk, they had laid the dead lady on her bed. She was never inter- esting in life; in death she was not impressive; and as her husband stood before her, with his hands crossed behind his powerful back, that which he looked upon was the very image of the insignificant. " Her and me were never cut out for one another," he remarked at last. " It was a daft-like WEIR OF HERMISTON 21 marriage." And then, with a most unusual gen- tleness of tone, " Puir bitch," said he, " puir bitch ! " Then suddenly: " Where 's Erchie? " Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and given him " a jeely-piece." " Ye have some kind of gumption, too," ob- served the Judge, and considered his housekeeper grimly. " When all 's said," he added, " I micht have done waur I micht have been marriet upon a skirling Jezebel like you ! " " There 's naebody thinking* of you, Hermis- ton ! " cried the offended woman. " We think of her that 's out of her sorrows. And could she have done waur? Tell me that, Hermiston tell me that before her clay-cauld corp ! " "Weel, there's some of them gey an' ill to please," observed his lordship. CHAPTER II FATHER AND SON MY Lord Justice-Clerk was known to many ; the man Adam Weir perhaps to none. He had nothing to explain or to conceal ; he sufficed wholly and silently to him- self ; and that part of our nature which goes out (too often with false coin) to acquire glory or love, seemed in him to be omitted. He did not try to be loved, he did not care to be; it is probable the very thought of it was a stranger to his mind. He was an admired lawyer, a highly unpopular judge; and he looked down upon those who were his in- feriors in either distinction, who were lawyers of less grasp or judges not so much detested. In all the rest of his days and doings, not one trace of vanity appeared ; and he went on through life with a mechanical movement, as of the unconscious, that was almost august. He saw little of his son. In the childish mala- dies with which the boy was troubled, he would make daily inquiries and daily pay him a visit, entering the sick-room with a facetious and appal- ling countenance, letting off a few perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to the patient's relief. Once, a court holiday falling opportunely, WEIR OF HERMISTON 23 my lord had his carriage, and drove the child him- self to Hermiston, the customary place of conva- lescence. It is conceivable he had been more than usually anxious, for that journey always remained in Archie's memory as a thing apart, his father having related to him from beginning to end, and with much detail, three authentic murder cases. Archie went the usual round of other Edinburgh boys, the high school and the college ; and Hermis- ton looked on, or rather looked away, with scarce an affectation of interest in his progress. Daily, indeed, upon a signal after dinner, he was brought in, given nuts and a glass of port, regarded sardoni- cally, sarcastically questioned. " Well, sir, and what have you donn with your book to-day ? " my lord might begin, and set him posers in law Latin. To a child just stumbling into Corderius, Papinian and Paul proved quite invincible. But papa had memory of no other. He was not harsh to the little scholar, having a vast fund of patience learned upon the Bench, and was at no pains whether to conceal or to express his disappoint- ment. " Well, ye have a long jaunt before ye yet ! " he might observe, yawning, and fall back on his own thoughts (as like as not) until the time came for separation, and my lord would take the decanter and the glass, and be off to the back chamber looking on the Meadows, where he toiled on his cases till the hours were small. There was no " fuller man " on the Bench ; his memory was marvellous, though wholly legal; if he had to " advise " extempore, none did it better ; yet there a 4 WEIR OF HERMISTON was none who more earnestly prepared. As he thus watched in the night, or sat at table and forgot the presence of his son, no doubt but he tasted deeply of recondite pleasures. To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life ; and perhaps only in law and the higher mathematics may this devotion be main- tained, suffice to itself without reaction, and find continual rewards without excitement. This at- mosphere of his father's sterling industry was the best of Archie's education. Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly it rather rebutted and de- pressed. Yet it was still present, unobserved like the ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant in the boy's life. But Hermiston was not all of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper ; he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the table to the Bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the ple- beian in a larger print; the low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less formidable, and infinitely more dis- gusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with potential violence. In the playing-fields, and amongst his own companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow ; at his father's table (when the time came for him to join these revels) he turned pale and sickened in silence. Of all the guests whom he there encountered, he had tolera- tion for only one: David Keith Carnegie, Lord WEIR OF HERMISTON 25 Glenalmond. Lord Glenalmond was tall and ema- ciated, with long features and long delicate hands. He was often compared with the statue of Forbes of Culloden in the Parliament House; and his blue eye, at more than sixty, preserved some of the fire of youth. His exquisite disparity with any of his fellow guests, his appearance as of an art- ist and an aristocrat stranded in rude company, riveted the boy's attention; and as curiosity and interest are the things in the world that are the most immediately and certainly rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was attracted to the boy. "And so this is your son, Hermiston?" he asked, laying his hand on Archie's shoulder. "He's getting a big lad." " Hout ! " said the gracious father, " just his mother over again daurna say boo to a goose ! " But the stranger retained the boy, talked to him, drew him out, found in him a taste for letters, and a fine, ardent, modest, youthful soul; and encour- aged him to be a visitor on Sunday evenings in his bare, cold, lonely dining-room, where he sat and read in the isolation of a bachelor grown old in refinement. The beautiful gentleness and grace of the old Judge, and the delicacy of his person, thoughts, and language, spoke to Archie's heart in its own tongue. He conceived the ambition to be such another ; and, when the day came for him to choose a profession, it was in emulation of Lord Glenalmond, not of Lord Hermiston, that he chose the Bar. Hermiston looked on at this friendship with some secret pride, but openly with the intoler- 26 WEIR OF HERMISTON ance of scorn. He scarce lost an opportunity to put them down with a rough jape ; and, to say truth, it was not difficult, for they were neither of them quick. He had a word of contempt for the whole crowd of poets, painters, fiddlers, and their admir- ers, the bastard race of amateurs, which was con- tinually on his lips. " Signor Feedle-eerie 1 " he would say. " Oh, for Goad's sake, no more of the signor ! " " You and my father are great friends, are you not ? " asked Archie once. " There is no man that I more respect, Archie," replied Lord Glenalmond. " He is two things of price. He is a great lawyer, and he is upright as the day." " You and he are so different," said the boy, his eyes dwelling on those of his old friend, like a lover's on his mistress's. "Indeed so," replied the Judge; "very differ- ent. And so I fear are you and he. Yet I would like it very ill if my young friend were to mis- judge his father. He has all the Roman virtues: Cato and Brutus were such ; I think a son's heart might well be proud of such an ancestry of one." " And I would sooner he were a plaided herd," cried Archie, with sudden bitterness. " And that is neither very wise, nor I believe en- tirely true," returned Glenalmond. " Before you are done you will find some of these expressions rise on you like a remorse. They are merely liter- ary and decorative ; they do not aptly express your thought, nor is your thought clearly apprehended, WEIR OF HERMISTON 27 and no doubt your father (if he were here) would say ' Signor Feedle-eerie ! ' " With the infinitely delicate sense of youth, Archie avoided the subject from that hour. It was perhaps a pity. Had he but talked talked freely let himself gush out in words (the way youth loves to do and should), there might have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a threat of ridicule sufficed; in the slight tartness of these words he read a pro- hibition; and it is likely that Glenalmond meant it so. Besides the veteran, the boy was without con- fidant or friend. Serious and eager, he came through school and college, and moved among a crowd of the indifferent, in the seclusion of his shy- ness. He grew up handsome, with an open, speak- ing countenance, with graceful, youthful ways; he was clever, he took prizes, he shone in the Specu- lative Society. 1 It should seem he must become the centre of a crowd of friends; but something that was in part the delicacy of his mother, in part the austerity of his father, held him aloof from all. It is a fact, and a strange one, that among his contemporaries Hermiston's son was thought to be a chip of the old block. " You 're a friend of Archie Weir's ? " said one to Frank Innes ; and Innes replied, with his usual flippancy and more than his usual insight : " I know Weir, but I never met Archie." No one had met Archie, a malady 1 A famous debating society of the students of Edinburgh University. 28 WEIR OF HERMISTON most incident to only sons. He flew his private signal, and none heeded it; it seemed he was abroad in a world from which the very hope of intimacy was banished ; and he looked round about him on the concourse of his fellow-students, and forward to the trivial days and acquaintances that were to come, without hope or interest. As time went on, the tough and rough old sin- ner felt himself drawn to the son of his loins and sole continuator of his new family, with softnesses of sentiment that he could hardly credit and was wholly impotent to express. With a face, voice, and manner trained through forty years to terrify and repel, Rhadamanthus may be great, but he will scarce be engaging. It is a fact that he tried to propitiate Archie, but a fact that cannot be too lightly taken; the attempt was so unconspicu- ously made, the failure so stoically supported. Sympathy is not due to the steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain his son's friendship, or even his son's toleration, on he went up the great, bare staircase of his duty, uncheered and undepressed. There might have been more pleasure in his rela- tions with Archie, so much he may have recog- nised at moments ; . but pleasure was a by-product of the singular chemistry of life, which only fools expected. An idea of Archie's attitude, since we are all grown up and have forgotten the days of our youth, it is more difficult to convey. He made no attempt whatsoever to understand the man with whom he dined and breakfasted. Parsimony of WEIR OF HERMISTON 29 pain, glut of pleasure, these are the two alternating ends of youth ; and Archie was of the parsimo- nious. The wind blew cold out of a certain quarter he turned his back upon it ; stayed as little as was possible in his father's presence; and when there, averted his eyes as much as was decent from his father's face. The lamp shone for many hundred days upon these two at table my lord ruddy, gloomy, and unreverent; Archie with a potential brightness that was always dimmed and veiled in that society; and there were not, perhaps, in Christendom two men more radically strangers. The father, with a grand simplicity, either spoke of what interested himself, or maintained an unaf- fected silence. The son turned in his head for some topic that should be quite safe, that would spare him fresh evidences either of my lord's inherent grossness or of the innocence of his inhumanity; treading gingerly the ways of intercourse, like a lady gathering up her skirts in a by-path. If he made a mistake, and my lord began to abound in matter of offence, Archie drew himself up, his brow grew dark, his share of the talk expired; but my lord would faithfully and cheerfully continue to pour out the worst of himself before his silent and offended son. " Well, it 's a poor hert that never rejoices," he would say, at the conclusion of such a nightmare interview. " But I must get to my plew-stilts." And he would seclude himself as usual in the back room, and Archie go forth into the night and the city quivering with animosity and scorn. CHAPTER III IN THE MATTER OF THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP IT chanced in the year 1813 that Archie strayed one day into the Judiciary Court. The macer made room for the son of the presiding judge. In the dock, the centre of men's eyes, there stood a whey-coloured, misbegotten caitiff, Duncan Jopp, on trial for his life. His story, as it was raked out before him in that public scene, was one of dis- grace and vice and cowardice, the very nakedness of crime; and the creature heard and it seemed at times as though he understood as if at times he forgot the horror of the place he stood in, and remembered the shame of what had brought him there. He kept his head bowed and his hands clutched upon the rail; his hair dropped in his eyes and at times he flung it back; and now he glanced about the audience in a sudden fellness of terror, and now looked in the face of his judge and gulped. There was pinned about his throat a piece of dingy flannel; and this it was perhaps that turned the scale in Archie's mind between dis- gust and pity. The creature stood in a vanishing point; yet a little while, and he was still a man, and had eyes and apprehension ; yet a little longer, WEIR OF HERMISTON 31 I and with a last sordid piece of pageantry, ne would cease to be. And here, in the meantime, with a trait of human nature that caught at the be- holder's breath, he was tending a sore throat. Over against him, my Lord Hermiston occupied the Bench in the red robes of criminal jurisdiction, his face framed in the white wig. Honest all through, he did not affect the virtue of impartiality ; this was no case for refinement; there was a man to be hanged, he would have said, and he was hang- ing him. Nor was it possible to see his lordship, and acquit him of gusto in the task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained facul- ties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished jibes with which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place with some of the freedom of the tavern ; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted gallowsward with jeers. Duncan had a mistress, scarce less forlorn and greatly older than himself, who came up, whim- pering and curtseying, to add the weight of her betrayal. My lord gave her the oath in his most roaring voice and added an intolerant warning. "Mind what ye say now, Janet, ,, said he. "I have an e'e upon ye ; I 'm ill to jest with. ,, Presently, after she was tremblingly embarked on her story, " And what made ye do this, ye auld runt?" the Court interposed. "Do ye mean to tell me ye was the pannel's mistress ? " " If you please, ma loard," whined the female. 32 WEIR OF HERMISTON " Godsake ! ye made a bonny couple," observed his lordship; and there was something so formid- able and ferocious in his scorn that not even the galleries thought to laugh. The summing up contained some jewels. " These two peetiable creatures seem to have made up thegither, it 's not for us to explain why." " The pannel, who (whatever else he may be) appears to be equally ill set out in mind and boady." " Neither the pannel nor yet the old wife appears to have had so much common-sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary." And in the course of sentencing, my lord had this obiter dictum: " I have been the means, under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit ras- cal as yourself." The words were strong in them- selves; the light and heat and detonation of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of the speaker in his task, made them tingle in the ears. When all was over, Archie came forth again into a changed world. Had there been the least redeeming greatness in the crime, any obscurity, any dubiety, perhaps he might have understood. But the culprit stood, with his sore throat, in the sweat of his mortal agony, without defense or excuse ; a thing to cover up with blushes ; a being so much sunk beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might seem harmless. [_And the Judge had / pursued him with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, I horrible to be conceived, a trait for nightmares. I It is one thing to spear a tiger, another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the slaughter- WEIR OF HERMISTON 33 house; and the loathsomeness of Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected the image of his judge. Archie passed by his friends in the High Street with incoherent words and gestures. He saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance of its romance awoke in him and faded ; he had a vision of the old radiant stories, of Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, of the hooded stag, of the splendour and crime, the velvet and bright iron of the past; and dismissed them with a cry of pain. He lay and moaned in the Hunter's Bog, and the heavens were dark above him and the grass of the field an offence. " This is my father," he said. " I draw my life from him; the flesh upon my bones is his, the bread I am fed with is the wages of these horrors." He recalled his mother, and ground his forehead in the earth. He thought of flight, and where was he to flee to ? of other lives, but was there any life worth living in this den of savage and jeering animals ? The interval before the execution was like a violent dream. He met his father; he would not look at him, he could not speak to him. It seemed there was no living creature but must have been swift to recognise that imminent animosity, but the hide of the Lord Justice-Clerk remained im- penetrable. Had my lord been talkative, the truce could never have subsisted ; but he was by fortune in one of his humours of sour silence; and under the very guns of his broadside Archie nursed the enthusiasm of rebellion. It seemed to him, from the top of his nineteen years' experience, as if he were marked at birth to be the perpetrator of some signal 3 '' 34 WEIR OF HERMISTON action, to set back fallen Mercy, to overthrow the usurping devil that sat, horned and hoofed, on her throne. Seductive Jacobin figments, which he had often refuted at the Speculative, swam up in his mind and startled him as with voices; and he seemed to himself to walk accompanied by an almost tangible presence of new beliefs and duties. On the named morning he was at the place of execution. He saw the fleering rabble, the flinch- ing wretch produced. He looked on for awhile at a certain parody of devotion, which seemed to strip the wretch of his last claim to manhood. Then followed the brutal instant of extinction, and the paltry dangling of the remains like a broken jumping- jack. He had been prepared for some- thing terrible, not for this tragic meanness. He stood a moment silent, and then "I denounce this God-defying murder," he shouted; and his father, if he must have disclaimed the sentiment; might have owned the stentorian voice with whicfi it was uttered. Frank Innes dragged him from the spot. The two handsome lads followed the same course of study and recreation, and felt a certain mutual at- traction, founded mainly on good looks. It had never gone deep; Frank was by nature a thin, jeering creature, not truly susceptible whether of feeling or inspiring friendship; and the relation between the pair was altogether on the outside, a thing of common knowledge and the pleasantries that spring from a common acquaintance. The more credit to Frank that he was appalled by WEIR OF HERMISTON 35 Archie's outburst, and at least conceived the design of keeping him in sight, and, if possible, in hand, for the day. But Archie, who had just defied was it God or Satan? would not listen to the word of a college companion.. " I will not go with you," he said. " I do not desire your company, sir ; I would be alone." "Here, Weir, man, don't be absurd," said Innes, keeping a tight hold upon his sleeve. "I will not let you go until I know what you mean to do with yourself; it's no use brandishing that staff." For indeed at that moment Archie had made a sudden perhaps a warlike movement. " This has been the most insane affair ; you know it has. You know very well that I 'm playing the good Samaritan. All I wish is to keep you quiet." "If quietness is what you wish, Mr. Innes," said Archie, " and you will promise to leave me entirely to myself, I will tell you so much, that I am going to walk in the country and admire the beauties of nature." " Honour bright ? " asked Frank. " I am not in the habit of lying, Mr. Innes," re- torted Archie. " I have the honour of wishing you good-day." " You won't forget the Spec. ? " asked Innes. " The Spec? " said Archie. " Oh, no, I won't forget the Spec." And the one young man carried his tortured spirit forth of the city and all the day long, by one road and another, in an endless pilgrimage of misery ; while the other hastened smilingly to 36 WEIR OF HERMISTON spread the news of Weir's access of insanity, and to drum up for that night a full attendance at the Speculative, where farther eccentric developments might certainly be looked for. I doubt if Innes had the least belief in his prediction; I think it flowed rather from a wish to make the story as good and the scandal as great as possible; not from any ill-will to Archie from the mere pleasure of beholding interested faces. But for all that his words were prophetic. Archie did not for- get the Spec; he put in an appearance there at the due time, and, before the evening was over, had dealt a memorable shock to his companions. It chanced he was the president of the night. He sat in the same room where the society still meets only the portraits were not there; the men who afterwards sat for them were then but beginning their career. The same lustre of many tapers shed its light over the meeting; the same chair, perhaps, supported him that so many of us have sat in since. At times he seemed to forget the business of the evening, but even in these peri- ods he sat with a great air of energy and determina- tion. At times he meddled bitterly and launched with defiance those fines which are the precious and rarely used artillery of the president. He little thought, as he did so, how he resembled his father, but his friends remarked upon it, chuckling. So far, in his high place above his fellow-students, he seemed set beyond the possibility of any scandal; but his mind was made up he was determined to fulfil the sphere of his offence. He signed to Innes WEIR OF HERMISTON 37 (whom he had just fined, and who just impeached his ruling) to succeed him in the chair, stepped down from the platform, and took his place by the chimney-piece, the shine of many wax tapers from above illuminating his pale face, the glow of the great red fire relieving from behind his slim figure. He had to propose, as an amendment to the next subject in the case book, " Whether capital pun- ishment be consistent with God's will or man's policy? " A breath of embarrassment, of something like alarm, passed round the room, so daring did these words appear upon the lips of Hermiston's only son. But the amendment was not seconded; the previous question was promptly moved and unani- mously voted, and the momentary scandal smug- gled by. Innes triumphed in the fulfilment of his prophecy. He and Archie were now become the heroes of the night; but whereas every one crowded about Innes, when the meeting broke up, but one of all his companions came to speak to Archie. " Weir, man ! that was an extraordinary raid of yours ! " observed this courageous member, taking him confidentially by the arm as they went out. " I don't think it a raid," said Archie grimly. " More like a war. I saw that poor brute hanged this morning, and my gorge rises at it yet." " Hut-tut ! " returned his companion, and, drop- ping his arm like something hot, he sought the less tense society of others. Archie found himself alone. The last of the 38 WEIR OF HERMISTON faithful or was it only the boldest of the curious ? had fled, [fie watched the black huddle of his fellow-students draw off down and up the street, in whispering or boisterous gangs. And the iso- lation of the moment weighed upon him like an omen and an emblem of his destiny in lifey* Bred up in unbroken fear himself, among trembling servants, and in a house which (at the least ruffle in the master's voice) shuddered into silence, he saw himself on the brink of the red valley of war, and measured the danger and length of it with awe. He made a detour in the glimmer and shadow of the streets, came into the back stable lane, and watched for a long while the light burn steady in the Judge's room. The longer he gazed upon that illuminated window-blind, the more blank became the picture of the man who sat behind it, endlessly turning over sheets of process, paus- ing to sip a glass of port, or rising and passing heavily about his book-lined walls to verify some reference. He could not combine the brutal judge and the industrious, dispassionate student; the connecting link escaped him; from such a dual nature, it was impossible he should predict be- haviour; and he asked himself if he had done well to plunge into a business of which the end could not be foreseen; and presently after, with a sickening decline of confidence, if he had done loyally to strike his father. For he had struck him de- fied him twice over and before a cloud of witnesses struck him a public buffet before crowds. Who had called him to judge his father in these WEIR OF HERMISTON 39 precarious and high questions? The office was usurped. It might have become a stranger; in a son there was no blinking it in a son, it was disloyal. And now, between these two natures so antipathetic, so hateful to each other, there was depending an unpardonable affront : and the provi- dence of God alone might foresee the manner in which it would be resented by Lord Hermiston. These misgivings tortured him all night and arose with him in the winter's morning; they followed him from class to class, they made him shrinkingly sensitive to every shade of manner in his companions, they sounded in his ears through the current voice of the professor ; and he brought them home with him at night unabated and indeed increased. The cause of this increase lay in a chance encounter with the celebrated Dr. Gregory. Archie stood looking vaguely in the lighted win- dow of a book shop, trying to nerve himself for the approaching ordeal. My lord and he had met and parted in the morning as they had now done for long, with scarcely the ordinary civilities of life; and it was plain to the son that nothing had yet reached the father's ears. Indeed, when he recalled the awful countenance of my lord, a timid hope sprang up in him that perhaps there would be found no one bold enough to carry tales. If this were so, he asked himself, would he begin again? and he found no answer. It was at this moment that a hand was laid upon his arm, and a voice said in his ear, " My dear Mr. Archie, you had better come and see me." 4 o WEIR OF HERMISTON He started, turned around, and found himself face to face with Dr. Gregory. " And why should I come to see you ? " he asked, with the defiance of the miserable. " Because you are looking exceedingly ill," said the doctor, " and you very evidently want looking after, my young friend. Good folk are scarce, you know ; and it is not every one that would be quite so much missed as yourself. It is not every one that Hermiston would miss." And with a nod and smile, the doctor passed on. A moment after, Archie was in pursuit, and had in turn, but more roughly, seized him by the arm. " What do you mean ? what did you mean by saying that? What makes you think that Her- mis my father would have missed me? " The doctor turned about and looked him all over with a clinical eye. A far more stupid man than Dr. Gregory might have guessed the truth; but ninety-nine out of a hundred, even if they had been equally inclined to kindness, would have blundered by some touch of charitable exaggera- tion. The doctor was better inspired. He knew the father well; in that white face of intelligence and suffering, he divined something of the son; and he told, without apology or adornment, the plain truth. " When you had the measles, Mr. Archibald, you had them gey and ill ; and I thought you were going to slip between my fingers," he said. " Well, your father was anxious. How did I know it? WEIR OF HERMISTON 41 says you. Simply because I am a trained observer. The sign that I saw him make, ten thousand would would have missed ; and perhaps perhaps, I say, because he 's a hard man to judge of but per- haps he never made another. A strange thing to consider! It was this. One day I came to him: ' Hermiston/ said I, * there 's a change/ He never said a word, just glowered at me (if ye '11 pardon the phrase) like a wild beast. * A change for the better/ said I. And I distinctly heard him take his breath." The doctor left no opportunity for anti-climax; nodding his cocked hat (a piece of antiquity to which he clung) and repeating " Distinctly " with raised eyebrows, he took his departure, and left Archie speechless in the street. The anecdote might be called infinitely little, and yet its meaning for Archie was immense. " I did not know the old man had so much blood in him." He had never dreamed this sire of his, this aborigi- nal antique, this adamantine Adam, had even so much of a heart as to be moved in the least degree for another and that other himself, who had in- sulted him ! With the generosity of youth, Archie was instantly under arms upon the other side : had instantly created a new image of Lord Hermiston, that of a man who was all iron without and all sen- sibility within. The mind of the vile jester, the tongue that had pursued Duncan Jopp with un- manly insults, the unbeloved countenance that he had known and feared for so long, were all for- gotten ; and he hastened home, impatient to confess 42 WEIR OF HERMISTON his misdeeds, impatient to throw himself on the mercy of this imaginary character. He was not to be long without a rude awaken- ing. \J& was in the gloaming when he drew near the doorstep of the lighted house, and was aware of the figure of his father approaching from the opposite side. Little daylight lingered; but on the door being opened, the strong yellow shine of the lamp gushed out upon the landing and shone full on Archie, as he stood, in the old-fashioned observance of respect, to yield precedenceT] The Judge came without haste, stepping stately and firm; his chin raised, his face (as he entered the lamplight) strongly illumined, his mouth set hard. There was never a wink of change in his expres- sion; without looking to the right or left, he mounted the stair, passed close to Archie, and en- tered the house. Instinctively, the boy, upon his first coming, had made a movement to meet him; instinctively, he recoiled against the railing, as the old man swept by him in a pomp of indignation. Words were needless ; he knew all perhaps more than all and the hour of judgment was at hand. It is possible that, in this sudden revulsion of hope and before these symptoms of impending danger, Archie might have fled. But not even that was left to him. My lord, after hanging up his cloak and hat, turned round in the lighted entry, and made him an imperative and silent gesture with his thumb, and with the strange instinct of obedience, Archie followed him into the house. All dinner time there reigned over the Judge** WEIR OF HERMISTON 43 table a palpable silence, and as soon as the solids were despatched he rose to his feet. " M'Killop, tak' the wine into my room/' said he ; and then to his son : " Archie, you and me has to have a talk." It was at this sickening moment that Archie's courage, for the first and last time, entirely de- serted him. " I have an appointment," said he. " It '11 have to be broken, then," said Hermiston, and led the way into his study. The lamp was shaded, the fire trimmed to a nicety, the table covered deep with orderly docu- ments, the backs of law books made a frame upon all sides that was only broken by the window and the doors. For a moment Hermiston warmed his hands at the fire, presenting his back to Archie; then sud- denly disclosed on him the terrors of the Hanging Face. " What 's this I hear of ye! " he asked. There was no answer possible to Archie. " I '11 have to tell ye, then," pursued Hermiston. " It seems ye 've been skirling against the father that begot ye, and one of His Maijesty's Judges in this land; and that in the public street, and while an order of the Court was being executit. Forbye which, it would appear that ye 've been airing your opeenions in a Coallege Debatin' Society," he paused a moment: and, then, with extraordinary bitterness, added : " Ye damned eediot." " I had meant to tell you," stammered Archie. " I see you are well informed." 44 WEIR OF HERMISTON " Muckle obleeged to ye," said his lordship, and took his usual seat. " And so you disapprove of caapital punishment ? " he added. " I am sorry, sir, I do," said Archie. " I am sorry, too," said his lordship. " And now, if you please, we shall approach this business with a little more parteecularity. I hear that at the hanging of Duncan Jopp and, man ! ye had a fine client there in the middle of all the riff- raff of the ceety, ye thought fit to cry out, ' This is a damned murder, and my gorge rises at the man that haangit him/ " " No, sir, these were not my words," cried Archie. " What were ye'r words, then ? " asked the Judge. " I believe I said, ' I denounce it as a murder ! ' " said the son, " I beg your pardon a God-defy- ing murder. I have no wish to conceal the truth," he added, and looked his father for a moment in the face. " God, it would only need that of it next ! " cried Hermiston. " There was nothing about your gorge rising, then ? " " That was afterwards, my lord, as I was leaving the Speculative. I said I had been to see the miser- able creature hanged, and my gorge rose at it." " Did ye, though ? " said Hermiston. " And I suppose ye knew who haangit him? " " I was present at the trial, I ought to tell you that, I ought to explain. I ask your pardon before- hand for any expression that may seem undutiful. WEIR OF HERMISTON 45 The position in which I stand is wretched," said the unhappy hero, now fairly face to face with the business he had chosen. " I have been reading some of your cases. I was present while Jopp was tried. It was a hideous business. Father, it was a hideous thing! Grant he was vile, why should you hunt him with a vileness equal to his own ? It was done with glee that is the word you did it with glee; and I looked on, God help me ! with horror." " You 're a young gentleman that doesna ap- prove of caapital punishment," said Hermiston. " Weel, I 'm an auld man that does. I was glad to get Jopp haangit, and what for would I pretend I wasna ? You 're all for honesty, it seems ; you could n't even steik your mouth on the public street. What for should I steik mines upon the Bench, the King's officer, bearing the sword, a dreid to evil-doers, as I was from the beginning, and as I will be to the end ! Mair than enough of it ! Heedious ! I never gave twa thoughts to hee- diousness, I have no call to be bonny. I 'm a man that gets through with my day's business, and let that suffice." The ring of sarcasm had died out of his voice as he went on; the plain words became invested with some of the dignity of the justice-seat. " It would be telling you if you could say as much," the speaker resumed. " But ye cannot. Ye Ve been reading some of my cases, ye say. But it was not for the law in them, it was to spy out your faither's nakedness, a fine employment 46 WEIR OF HERMISTON in a son. You 're splairging ; you 're running at lairge in life like a wild nowt. It 's impossible you should think any longer of coming to the Bar. You 're not fit for it ; no splairger is. And another thing : son of mines or no son of mines, you have flung fylement in public on one of the Senators of the Coallege of Justice, and I would make it my business to see that ye were never admitted there yourself. There is a kind of a decency to be ob- servit. Then comes the next of it what am I to do with ye next ? Ye '11 have to find some kind of a trade, for I '11 never support ye in idleset. What do ye fancy ye '11 be fit for ? The pulpit ? Na, they could never get diveenity into that bloack- head. Him that the law of man whammles is no likely to do muckle better by the law of God . What would ye make of hell ? Wouldna your gorge rise at that ? Na, there 's no room for splairgers under the fower quarters of John Calvin. What else is there? Speak up. Have ye got nothing of your own ? " " Father, let me go to the Peninsula," said Archie. " That 's all I 'm fit for to fight." "All? quo' he!" returned the Judge. "And it would be enough too, if I thought it. But I '11 never trust ye so near the French, you that 's so Frenchifeed." " You do me injustice there, sir," said Archie. " I am loyal ; I will not boast ; but any interest I may have ever felt in the French " " Have ye been so loyal to me? " interrupted his father. WEIR OF HERMISTON 47 There came no reply. " I think not," continued Hermiston. " And I would send no man to be a servant to the King, God bless him! that has proved such a shauchling son to his own faither. You can splairge here on Edinburgh street, and where 's the hairm ? It doesna play buff on me! And if there were twenty thousand eediots like yourself, sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the fewer. But there 's no splairging possible in a camp ; and if you were to go to it, you would find out for yourself whether Lord Well'n'ton approves of caapital punishment or not. You a sodger ! " he cried, with a sudden burst of scorn. " Ye auld wife, the sodgers would bray at ye like cuddies ! " As at the drawing of a curtain, Archie was aware of some illogicality in his position, and stood abashed. He had a strong impression, besides, of the essential valour of the old gentleman before him, how conveyed it would be hard to say. " Well, have ye no other proposeetion ? " said my lord again. " You have taken this so calmly, sir, that I can- not but stand ashamed," began Archie. " I 'm nearer voamiting, though, than you would fancy," said my lord. The blood rose to Archie's brow. " I De g your pardon, I should have said that you had accepted my affront. ... I admit it was an affront ; I did not think to apologise, but I do, I ask your pardon ; it will not be so again, I pass you my word of honour. ... I should have said 48 WEIR OF HERMISTON that I admired your magnanimity with this offender," Archie concluded with a gulp. " I have no other son, ye see," said Hermiston. " A bonny one I have gotten ! But I must just do the best I can wi' him, and what am I to do ? If ye had been younger, I would have wheepit ye for this rideeculous exhibeetion. The way it is, I have just to grin and bear. But one thing is to be clearly understood. As a faither, I must grin and bear it ; but if I had been the Lord Advocate instead of the Lord Justice-Clerk, son or no son, Mr. Erchi- bald Weir would have been in a jyle the night." Archie was now dominated. Lord Hermiston was coarse and cruel ; and yet the son was aware of a bloomless nobility, an ungracious abnegation of the man's self in the man's office. / At every word, this sense of the greatness of Lord Hermis- ton's spirit struck more home; and along with it that of his own impotence, who had struck and perhaps basely struck at his own father, and not reached so far as to have even nettled him. " I place myself in your hands without reserve," he said. " That 's the first sensible word I 've had of ye the night," said Hermiston. " I can tell ye, that would have been the end of it, the one way or the other ; but it 's better ye should come there your- self, than what I would have had to hirstle ye. Weel, by my way of it and my way is the best there 's just the one thing it 's possible that ye might be with decency, and that 's a laird. Ye '11 be out of hairm's way at the least of it. If ye have to rowt, WEIR OF HERMISTON 49 ye can rowt amang the kye; and the maist feck of the caapital punishment ye 're like to come across '11 be guddling trouts. Now, I 'm for no I idle lairdies ; every man has to work, if it 's only j at peddling ballants ; to work, or to be wheeped, or to be haangit. If I set ye down at Hermiston, I '11 have to see you work that place the way it has never been workit yet; ye must ken about the sheep like a herd ; ye must be my grieve there, and I '11 see that I gain by ye. Is that understood ? " " I will do my best," said Archie. " Well, then, I '11 send Kirstie word the morn, and ye can go yourself the day after," said Hermis- ton. " And just try to be less of an eediot ! " he concluded, with a freezing smile, and turned im- mediately to the papers on his desk. CHAPTER IV OPINION OF THE BENCH LATE the same night, after a disordered walk, Archie was admitted into Lord Glenal- -J mond's dining-room where he sat, with a book upon his knee, beside three frugal coals of fire. In his robes upon the Bench, Glenalmond had a certain air of burliness: plucked of these, it was a may-pole of a man that rose unsteadily from his chair to give his visitor welcome. Archie had suffered much in the last days, he had suf- fered again that evening; his face was white and drawn, his eyes wild and dark. But Lord Glen- almond greeted him without the least mark of surprise or curiosity. " Come in, come in," said he. " Come in and take a seat. Carstairs " (to his servant), "make up the fire, and then you can bring a bit of supper," and again to Archie, with a very trivial accent : " I was half expecting you," he added. " No supper," said Archie. " It is impossible that I should eat." " Not impossible," said the tall old man, laying his hand upon his shoulder, " and, if you will be- lieve me, necessary." WEIR OF HERM1STON 51 "You know what brings me?" said Archie, as soon as the servant had left the room. " I have a guess, I have a guess," replied Glen- almond. " We will talk of it presently when Carstairs has come and gone, and you have had a piece of my good Cheddar cheese and a pull at the porter tankard : not before." " It is impossible I should eat," repeated Archie. "Tut, tut!" said Lord Glenalmond. "You have eaten nothing to-day, and, I venture to add, nothing yesterday. There is no case that may not be made worse; this may be a very disagree- able business, but if you were to fall sick and die, it would be still more so, and for all concerned for all concerned." " I see you must know all," said Archie. " Where did you hear it? " " In the mart of scandal, in the Parliament House," said Glenalmond. " It runs riot below among the Bar and the public, but it sifts up to us upon the Bench, and rumour has some of her voices even in the divisions." Carstairs returned at this moment, and rapidly laid out a little supper ; during which Lord Glenal- mond spoke at large and a little vaguely on in- different subjects, so that it might be rather said of him that he made a cheerful noise, than that he contributed to human conversation; and Archie sat upon the other side, not heeding him, brooding over his wrongs and errors. But so soon as the servant was gone, he broke 52 WEIR OF HERMISTON forth again at once. " Who told my father ? Who dared to tell him ? Could it have been you ? " " No, it was not me," said the Judge ; " although to be quite frank with you, and after I had seen and warned you it might have been me. I believe it was Glenkindie." " That shrimp ! " cried Archie. " As you say, that shrimp," returned my lord ; " although really it is scarce a fitting mode of ex- pression for one of the Senators of the College of Justice. We were hearing the parties in a long, crucial case, before the fifteen; Creech was mov- ing at some length for an infeftment; when I saw Glenkindie lean forward to Hermiston with his hand over his mouth and make him a secret communication. No one could have guessed its nature from your father; from Glenkindie, yes, his malice sparkled out of him a little grossly. But your father, no. A man of granite. The next moment he pounced upon Creech. ' Mr Creech/ says he, ' I '11 take a look of that sasine,' and for thirty minutes after," said Glenalmond, with a smile, " Messrs. Creech and Co. were fighting a pretty up-hill battle, which resulted, I need hardly add, in their total rout. The case was dismissed. No, I doubt if ever I heard Hermiston better in- spired. He was literally rejoicing in apicibus juris" Archie was able to endure no longer. He thrust his plate away and interrupted the deliberate and insignificant stream of talk. " Here," he said, " I have made a fool of myself, if I have not made WEIR OF HERMISTON 53 something worse. Do you judge between us judge between a father and a son. I can speak to you; it is not like ... I will tell you what I feel and what I mean to do; and you shall be the judge," he repeated. " I decline jurisdiction," said Glenalmond with extreme seriousness. " But, my dear boy, if it will do you any good to talk, and if it will interest you at all to hear what I may choose to say when I have heard you, I am quite at your command. Let an old man say it, for once, and not need to blush 1 I love you like a son." There came a sudden sharp sound in Archie's throat. " Ay," he cried, " and there it is ! Love ! Like a son! And how do you think I love my father?" " Quietly, quietly," says my lord. " I will be very quiet," replied Archie. " And I will be baldly frank. I do not love my father ; I wonder sometimes if I do not hate him. There 's my shame; perhaps my sin; at least, and in the sight of God, not my fault. How was I to love him? He has never spoken to me, never smiled upon me; I do not think he ever touched me. You know the way he talks? You do not talk so, yet you can sit and hear him without shudder- ing, and I cannot. My soul is sick when he begins with it; I could smite him in the mouth. And all that $ nothing. I was at the trial of this Jopp. You were not there, but you must have heard him often ; the man 's notorious for it, for being look at my position! he's my father and this is 54 WEIR OF HERMISTON how I have to speak of him notorious for being a brute and cruel and a coward. Lord Glenal- mond, I give you my word, when I came out of that Court, I longed to die the shame of it was be- yond my strength : but I I " he rose from his seat and began to pace the room in a disorder. " Well, who am I ? A boy, who have never been tried, have never done anything except this two- penny impotent folly with my father. But I tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at least that kind of a man or that kind of a boy, if you pre- fer it that I could die in torments rather than that any one should suffer as that scoundrel suf- fered. Well, and what have I done ? I see it now. I have made a fool of myself, as I said in the begin- ning ; and I have gone back, and asked my father's pardon, and placed myself wholly in his hands and he has sent me to Hermiston," with a wretched smile, " for life, I suppose and what can I say? he strikes me as having done quite right, and let me off better than I had deserved." " My poor, dear boy ! " observed Glenalmond. " My poor dear and, if you will allow me to say so, very foolish boy! You are only discovering where you are ; to one of your temperament, or of mine, a painful discovery. The world was not made for us ; it was made for ten hundred millions of men, all different from each other and from us ; there 's no royal road there, we just have to sclamber and tumble. Don't think that I am at all disposed to be surprised; don't suppose that I ever think of blaming you ; indeed I rather admire ! But there WEIR OF HERMISTON 55 fall to be offered one or two observations on the case which occur to me and which (if you will listen to them dispassionately) may be the means of inducing you to view the matter more calmly. First of all, I cannot acquit you of a good deal of what is called intolerance. You seem to have been very much offended because your father talks a little sculduddery after dinner, which it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although I am not very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely an affair of taste. Your father, I scarcely like to re- mind you, since it is so trite a commonplace, is older than yourself. At least, he is major and sui juris, and may please himself in the matter of his conversation. And, do you know, I wonder if he might not have as good an answer against you and me? We say we sometimes find him coarse, but I suspect he might retort that he finds us always dull. Perhaps a relevant exception.'* He beamed on Archie, but no smile could be elicited. " And now," proceeded the Judge, " for ' Ar- chibald on Capital Punishment.' This is a very plausible academic opinion ; of course I do not and I cannot hold it ; but that 's not to say that many able and excellent persons have not done so in the past. Possibly, in the past also, I may have a little dipped myself in the same heresy. My third client, or possibly my fourth, was the means of a return in my opinions. I never saw the man I more believed in; I would have put my hand in the fire, I would have gone to the cross for him; and when 56 WEIR OF HERMISTON it came to trial he was gradually pictured before me, by undeniable probation, in the light of so gross, so cold-blooded, and so black-hearted a vil- lain, that I had a mind to have cast my brief upon the table. I was then boiling against the man with even. a more tropical temperature than I had been boiling for him. But I said to myself : ' No, you have taken up his case; and because you have changed your mind it must not be suffered to let drop. All that rich tide of eloquence that you pre- pared last night with so much enthusiasm is out of place, and yet you must not desert him, you must say something.' So I said something, and I got him off. It made my reputation. But an ex- perience of that kind is formative. A man must not bring his passions to the Bar or to the Bench." This story had slightly rekindled Archie's in- terest. " I could never deny," he began "I mean I can conceive that some men would be bet- ter dead. But who are we to know all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures? Who are we to trust ourselves where it seems that God himself must think twice before He treads, and to do it with delight? Yes, with delight. Tigris ut aspera" " Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle," said Glen- almond. " And yet, do you know, I think some- how a great one." " I 've had a long talk with him to-night," said Archie. " I was supposing so," said Glenalmond. WEIR OF HERMISTON 57 " And he struck me I cannot deny that he struck me as something very big," pursued the son. " Yes, he is big. He never spoke about him- self; only about me. I suppose I admired him. The dreadful part " " Suppose we did not talk about that," inter- rupted Glenalmond. " You know it very well, it cannot in any way help that you should brood upon it, and I sometimes wonder whether you and I who are a pair of sentimentalists are quite good judges of plain men." " How do you mean ? " asked Archie. "Fair judges, I mean," replied Glenalmond. "Can we be just to them? Do we not ask too much ? There was a word of yours just now that impressed me a little when you asked me who we were to know all the springs of God's unfortunate creatures. You applied that, as I understood, to capital cases only. But does it I ask myself does it not apply all through? Is it any less diffi- cult to judge of a good man or of a half-good man, than of the worst criminal at the Bar? And may not each have relevant excuses ? " " Ah, but we do not talk of punishing the good," cried Archie. " No, we do not talk of it," said Glenalmond. " But I think we do it. Your father, for instance." " You think I have punished him ? " cried Archie. Lord Glenalmond bowed his head. "I think I have," said Archie. "And the 58 WEIR OF HERMISTON worst is, I think he feels it! How much, who can tell, with such a being? But I think he does." " And I am sure of it," said Glenalmond. " Has he spoken to you, then? " cried Archie. " Oh, no," replied the Judge. " I tell you honestly," said Archie, " I want to make it up to him. I will go, I have already pledged myself to go, to Hermiston. That was to him. And now I pledge myself to you, in the sight of God, that I will close my mouth on capital punishment and all other subjects where our views may clash, for how long shall I say ? when shall I have sense enough ? ten years. Is that well ? " " It is well," said my lord. " As far as it goes," said Archie. " It is enough as regards myself, it is to lay down enough of my conceit. But as regards him, whom I have publicly insulted ? What am I to do to him ? How do you pay attentions to a an Alp like that ? " * Only in one way," replied Glenalmond. " Only by obedience, punctual, prompt, and scrupulous." " And I promise that he shall have it," answered Archie. " I offer you my hand in pledge of it." " And I take your hand as a solemnity," re- plied the Judge. " God bless you, my dear, and enable you to keep your promise. God guide you in the true way, and spare your days, and preserve to you your honest heart." At that, he kissed the young man upon the forehead in a gracious, distant, antiquated way; and instantly launched, with a marked change of voice, into another WEIR OF HERMISTON 59 subject. " And now, let us replenish the tankard ; and I believe, if you will try my Cheddar again, you would find you had a better appetite. The Court has spoken, and the case is dismissed." " No, there is one thing I must say," cried Archie. " I must say it in justice to himself. I know I believe faithfully, slavishly, after our talk he will never ask me anything unjust. I am proud to feel it, that we have that much in common, I am proud to say it to you." The Judge, with shining eyes, raised his tank- ard. " And I think perhaps that we might permit ourselves a toast," said he. " I should like to pro- pose the health of a man very different from me and very much my superior a man from whom I have often differed, who has often (in the trivial expression) rubbed me the wrong way, but whom I have never ceased to respect and, I may add, to be not a little afraid of. Shall I give you his name? " " The Lord Justice-Clerk, Lord Hermiston," said Archie, almost with gaiety; and the pair drank the toast deeply. It was not precisely easy to re-establish, after these emotional passages, the natural flow of con- versation. But the Judge eked out what was want- ing with kind looks, produced his snuff-box (which was very rarely seen) to fill in a pause, and at last, despairing of any further social success, was upon the point of getting down a book to read a favour- ite passage, when there came a rather startling summons at the front door, and Carstairs ushered in my Lord Glenkindie, hot from a midnight So WEIR OF HERMISTON supper. I am not aware that Glenkindie was ever a beautiful object, being short, and gross- bodied, and with an expression of sensuality com- parable to a bear's. At that moment, coming in hissing from many potations, with a flushed coun- tenance and blurred eyes, he was strikingly contrasted with the tall, pale, kingly figure of Glen- almond. A rush of confused thought came over Archie of shame that this was one of his father's elect friends; of pride, that at the least of it Hermiston could carry his liquor ; and last of all, of rage, that he should have here under his eye the man that had betrayed him. And then that too passed away; and he sat quiet, biding his opportunity. The tipsy Senator plunged at once into an expla- nation with Glenalmond. There was a point re- served yesterday, he had been able to make neither head nor tail of it, and seeing lights in the house, he had just dropped in for a glass of porter and at this point he became aware of the third person. Archie saw the cod's mouth and the blunt lips of Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and the recognition twinkle in his eyes. " Who 's this? " said he. " What? is this pos- sibly you, Don Quickshot? And how are ye? And how 's your father ? And what 's all this we hear of you ? It seems you 're a most extraordi- nary leveller, by all tales. No king, no parliaments, and your gorge rises at the macers, worthy men! Hoot, too! Dear, dear me! Your father's son too! Most rideekulous ! " WEIR OF HERMISTON 61 Archie was on his feet, flushing a little at the reappearance of his unhappy figure of speech, but perfectly self-possessed. " My lord and you, Lord Glenalmond, my dear friend," he began, " this is a happy chance for me, that I can make my confession and offer my apologies to two of you at once. ,, " Ah, but I don't know about that. Confession ? It '11 be judeecial, my young friend," cried the jocular Glenkindie. " And I 'm afraid to listen to ye. Think if ye were to make me a coanvert ! " " If you would allow me, my lord," returned Archie, " what I have to say is very serious to me ; and be pleased to be humourous after I am gone." " Remember, I '11 hear nothing against the macers ! " put in the incorrigible Glenkindie. But Archie continued as though he had not spoken. " I have played, both yesterday and to- day, a part for which I can only offer the excuse of youth. I was so unwise as to go to an execution; it seems, I made a scene at the gallows; not con- tent with which, I spoke the same night in a college society against capital punishment. This is the extent of what I have done, and in case you hear more alleged against me, I protest my innocence. I have expressed my regret already to my father, who is so good as to pass my conduct over in a degree, and upon the condition that I am to leave my law studies." . . . CHAPTER V WINTER ON THE MOORS I. AT HERMISTON r "^HE road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of a stream, JL a favourite with anglers and with midges, full of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch. Here and there, but at great distances, a by-way branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse may be descried above in a fold of the hill ; but the more part of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habita- tion. Hermiston parish is one of the least popu- lous in Scotland; and, by the time you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at the inimi- table smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated for fifty, and standing in a green by the burnside among twoscore gravestones. The manse close by, although no more than a cottage, is surrounded by the brightness of a flower-garden and the straw roofs of bees; and the whole col- ony, kirk and manse, garden and graveyard, finds harbourage in a grove of rowans, and is all the year round in a great silence broken only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn, and the bell WEIR OF HERMISTON 63 on Sundays. A mile beyond the kirk the road leaves the valley by a precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to the place of Hermiston, where it conies to an end in the back-yard before the coach-house. All beyond and about is the great field of the hills; the plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows in a ship's rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hilltops huddle one behind another like a herd of cattle into the sunset*-* The house was sixty years old, unsightly, com- fortable; a farmyard and a kitchen garden on the left, with a fruit wall where little hard green pears came to their maturity about the end of October. The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent, but very ill reclaimed ; heather and moorfowl had crossed the boundary wall and spread and roosted within; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener to say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began. My lord had been led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of planting ; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop to the moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed by showers, drenched by continu- ous rains that made the gutters to spout, beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven ; and the prospect would be often black with tempest, 64 WEIR OF HERMISTON and often white with the snows of winter. But the house was wind and weather proof, the hearths were kept bright, and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie might sit of an evening and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland, and watch the fire prosper in the earthy fuel, and the smoke winding up the chimney, and drink deep of the pleasures of shelter. Solitary as the place was, Archie did not want neighbours. Every night, if he chose, he might go down to the manse and share a " brewst " of toddy with the minister a hare-brained ancient gentle- man, long and light and still active, though his knees were loosened with age, and his voice broke continually in childish trebles and his lady wife, a heavy, comely dame, without a word to say for herself beyond good-even and good-day. Harum- scarum, clodpole young lairds of the neighbour- hood paid him the compliment of a visit. Young Hay of Romanes rode down to call, on his crop- eared pony ; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony grey. Hay remained on the hospi- table field, and must be carried to bed ; Pringle got somehow to his saddle about 3 a. m., and (as Archie stood with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless view halloa, and van- ished out of the small circle of illumination like a wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the clat- ter of his break-neck flight was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the hill ; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom horse-hoofs, far in the valley of the WEIR OF HERMISTON 65 Hermiston, showed that the horse at least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way. There was a Tuesday club at the " Crosskeys " in Crossmichael, where the young bloods of the country-side congregated and drank deep on a per- centage of the expense, so that he was left gainer who should have drunk the most. Archie had no great mind to this diversion, but he took it like a duty laid upon him, went with a decent regularity, did his manfullest with the liquor, held up his head in the local jests, and got home again and was able to put up his horse, to the admiration of Kirstie and the lass that helped her. He dined at Driffel, supped at Windielaws. He went to the new year's ball at Huntsfield and was made welcome, and thereafter rode to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon whose name, as that of a legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a work so full of Lords of Session, my pen should pause reverently. Yet the same fate attended him here as in Edinburgh. The habit of solitude tends to perpetuate itself, and an aus- terity of which he was quite unconscious, and a pride which seemed arrogance, and perhaps was chiefly shyness, discouraged and offended his new companions. Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things what he had had the name of almost from the first the Recluse of Hermis- ton. High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about 5 66 WEIR OF HERMISTON him the day after the ball he was none the wiser, he could not suppose himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the ball itself my Lord Muirfell's daughter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and the second time with a touch of appeal, so that her colour rose and her voice trembled a little in his ear, like a passing grace in music. He stepped back with a heart on fire, coldly and not ungracefully excused himself, and a little after watched her dancing with young Drumanno of the empty laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to himself that this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please, and to himself only to stand aside and envy. He seemed excluded, as of right, from the favour of such society seemed to extinguish mirth wherever he came, and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, and retire into solitude. If he had but understood the figure he presented, and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts; if he had but guessed that the Recluse of Hermiston, young, graceful, well spoken, but always cold, stirred the maidens of the county with the charm of Byronism when Byronism was new, it may be questioned whether his destiny might not even yet have been modified. It may be questioned, and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope to be parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to the avoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of duty, an in- stinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of Adam Weir and Jean Rutherford. WEIR OF HER MIS TON 67 II. KIRSTIE Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have sat to a sculptor. Long of limb and still light of foot, deep-breasted, robust-loined, her golden hair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had but caressed and embellished her. By the lines of a rich and vigorous maternity, she seemed destined to be the bride of heroes and the mother of their children; and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passed through her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a childless woman. The tender ambitions that she had received at birth had been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren zeal of industry and fury of interfer- ence. She carried her thwarted ardours into house- work, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she could not win the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her temper. Hasty, wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most of her neighbours, and with the others not much more than armed neutrality. The grieve's wife had been " sneisty " ; the sister of the gardener, who kept house for him, had shown herself " up- sitten " ; and she wrote to Lord Hermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the offenders, and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail. For it must not be supposed that the quarrel rested with the wife and did not take in the husband also or with the gardener's sister, and did not speedily include the gardener himself. 68 WEIR OF HERMISTON As the upshot of all this petty quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practically excluded (like a lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; except with her own in- door drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of " the mistress's " moods without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according to the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this equivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in the cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young gentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaint- ance. He was " Young Hermiston," " the laird himsel' " ; he had an air of distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake. And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the everlasting fountains of interest. Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clans- woman, the hero-worship of a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have WEIR OF HERMISTON 69 done it and joyed to do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots or wait on him at dinner when he returned. A young man who should have so doted on the idea, moral and physical, of any woman, might be properly described as being in love, head and heels, and would have behaved himself accordingly. But Kirstie though her heart leaped at his coming footsteps though, when he patted her shoulder, her face brightened for the day had not a hope or thought beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the end of time. Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered, but still continue delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say twice in the month) with a clap on the shoulder. I have said her heart leaped it is the accepted phrase. But rather, when she was alone in any chamber of the house, and heard his foot passing on the corridors, something in her bosom rose slowly until her breath was suspended, and as slowly fell again with a deep sigh, when the steps had passed and she was disappointed of her eyes' desire. This perpetual hunger and thirst of his presence kept her all day on the alert. When he went forth at morning, she would stand and follow him with admiring looks. As it grew late and drew to the time of his return, she would steal forth to a corner of the policy wall and be seen standing there sometimes by the hour together, 7 o WEIR OF HERMISTON gazing with shaded eyes, waiting the exquisite and barren pleasure of his view a mile off on the moun- tains. When at night she had trimmed and gathered the fire, turned down his bed, and laid out his night-gear when there was no more to be done for the king's pleasure, but to remember him fervently in her usually very tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding upon his perfections, his future career, and what she should give him the next day for dinner there still remained before her one more opportunity ; she was still to take in the tray and say good-night. Sometimes Archie would glance up from his book with a preoccupied nod and a perfunctory salutation which was in truth a dismissal; sometimes and by degrees more often the volume would be laid aside, he would meet her coming with a look of relief ; and the con- versation would be engaged, last out the supper, and be prolonged till the small hours by the waning fire. It was no wonder that Archie was fond of company after his solitary days ; and Kirstie, upon her side, exerted all the arts of her vigorous nature to ensnare his attention. She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the lever de rideau of the evening's enter- tainment. Once he had heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject to another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a hint of separa- tion. Like so many people of her class, she was a WEIR OF HERMISTON 71 brave narrator; her place was on the hearth-rug and she made it a rostrum, miming her stories as she told them, fitting them with vital detail, spin- ning them out with endless " quo' he's " and " quo' she's," her voice sinking into a whisper over the supernatural or the horrific; until she would suddenly spring up in affected surprise, and point- ing to the clock, " Mercy, Mr. Archie ! " she would say, " Whatten a time o' night is this of it ! God forgive me for a daft wife!" So it befell, by good management, that she was not only the first to begin these nocturnal conversations, but inva- riably the first to break them off; so she managed to retire and not to be dismissed. III. A BORDER FAMILY Such an unequal intimacy has never been un- common in Scotland, where the clan spirit sur- vives; where the servant tends to spend her life in the same service, a helpmeet at first, then a tyrant, and at last a pensioner ; where, besides, she is not necessarily destitute of the pride of birth, but is, perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection of her mas- ter's, and at least knows the legend of her own family, and may count kinship with some illus- trious dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remem- bers and cherishes the memory of his forbears, good or bad ; and there burns alive in him a sense 72 WEIR OF HERMISTON of identity with the dead even to the twentieth gen- eration. No more characteristic instance could be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, and Kirstie the first of all, ready and eager to pour forth the particulars of their genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handed down or fancy fabricated; and, behold! from every ramification of that tree there dangled a halter. The Elliotts themselves have had a chequered history; but these Elliotts deduced, be- sides, from three of the most unfortunate of the border clans the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. One ancestor after another might be seen appearing a moment out of the rain and the hill mist upon his furtive business, speeding home, per- haps, with a paltry booty of lame horses and lean kine, or squealing and dealing death in some moor- land feud of the ferrets and the wildcats. One after another closed his obscure adventures in mid-air, triced up to the arm of the royal gibbet or the Baron's dule-tree. For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots criminal justice, which usually hurts nobody but jurymen, became a weapon of precision for the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. The ex- hilaration of their exploits seemed to haunt the memories of their descendants alone, and the shame to be forgotten. Pride glowed in their bosoms to publish their relationship to " Andrew Ellwald of the Laverockstanes, called - Unchancy Dand,' who was justifeed wi' seeven mair of the same name at Jeddart in the days of King James the Sax." In all this tissue of crime and misfortune, the Elliotts WEIR OF HERMISTON 73 of Cauldstaneslap had one boast which must appear legitimate: the males were gallows-birds, born outlaws, petty thieves, and deadly brawlers; but according to the same tradition, the females were all chaste and faithful. The power of ancestry on the character is not limited to the inheritance of cells. If I buy ancestors by the gross from the benevolence of Lion King at Arms, my grandson (if he is Scottish) will feel a quickening emulation of their deeds. The men of the Elliotts were proud, lawless, violent as of right, cherishing and pro- longing a tradition. In like manner with the women. And the woman, essentially passionate and reckless, who crouched on the rug, in the shine of the peat fire, telling these tales, had cherished through life a wild integrity of virtue. Her father Gilbert had been deeply pious, a savage disciplinarian in the antique style, and withal a notorious smuggler. " I mind when I was a bairn getting mony a skelp and being shoo'd to bed like pou'try," she would say. " That would be when the lads and their bit kegs were on the road. We Ve had the riffraff of two-three counties in our kitchen, mony's the time, betwix' the twelve and the three; and their lanterns would be standing in the forecourt, ay, a score o' them at once. But there was nae ungodly talk permitted at Cauld- staneslap; my faither was a consistent man in walk and conversation; just let slip an aith, and there was the door to ye ! He had that zeal for the Lord, it was a fair wonder to hear him pray, but the faimily has aye had a gift that way." This 74 WEIR OF HERMISTON father was twice married, once to a dark woman of the old Ellwald stock, by whom he had Gilbert, presently of Cauldstaneslap ; and, secondly, to the mother of Kirstie. " He was an auld man when he married her, a fell auld man wi' a muckle voice you could hear him rowting from the top o' the kye-stairs," she said ; " but for her, it appears, she was a perfit wonder. It was gentle blood she had, Mr. Archie, for it was your ain. The country-side gaed gyte about her and her gowden hair. Mines is no to be mentioned wi' it, and there 's few weemen has mair hair than what I have, or yet a bonnier colour. Often would I tell my dear Miss Jeannie that was your mother, dear, she was cruel ta'en up about her hair, it was unco tender, ye see * Houts, Miss Jeannie/ I would say, ' just fling your washes and your French dentifrishes in the back o' the fire, for that 's the place for them ; and awa' down to a burnside, and wash yersel in cauld hill water, and dry your bonny hair in the caller wind o' the muirs, the way that my mother aye washed hers, and that I have aye made it a practice to have washen mines just you do what I tell ye, my dear, and ye '11 give me news of it ! Ye '11 have hair, and routh of hair, a pigtail as thick 's my arm/ I said, ' and the bonniest colour like the clear gowden guineas, so as the lads in kirk '11 no can keep their eyes off it ! ' Weel, it lasted out her time, puir thing! I cuttit a lock of it upon her corp that was lying there sae cauld. I '11 show it ye some of thir days if ye 're good. But, as I was sayin', my mither " WEIR OF HERMISTON 75 On the death of the father there remained golden-haired Kirstie, who took service with her distant kinsfolk, the Rutherfords, and black-a-vised Gilbert, twenty years older, who farmed the Cauld- staneslap, married, and begot four sons between 1773 and 1784, and a daughter, like a postscript, in '97, the year of Camperdown and Cape St. Vin- cent. It seemed it was a tradition of the family to wind up with a belated girl. In 1804, at the age of sixty, Gilbert met an end that might be called heroic. He was due home from market any time from eight at night till five in the morning, and in any condition from the quarrelsome to the speech- less, for he maintained to that age the goodly cus- toms of the Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had a good bit of money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely. The laird had shown his guineas, and if anybody had but noticed it, there was an ill-looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out of the market long ere it was dusk and took the hill-road by Hermiston, where it was not to be believed that they had lawful business. One of the country-side, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their guide, and dear he paid for it ! Of a sudden, in the ford of the Broken Dykes, this vermin clan fell on the laird, six to one, and him three parts asleep, having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott. For awhile, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambus- 76 WEIR OF HERMISTON cade was burst, and he rode for home with a pistol- ball in him, three knife-wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode! In the mirk night, with his broken bridle and his head swimming, he dug his spurs to the rowels in the horse's side, and the horse, that was even worse off than himself, the poor creature! screamed out loud like a person as he went, so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks at Cauld- staneslap got to their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him he gave the bag of money. " Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves had seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the hallu- cination left him he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade and the thirst of vengeance seized on his dying mind. Raising himself and pointing with an imperious finger into the black night from which he had come, he uttered the single command, " Brocken Dykes," and fainted. He had never been loved, but he had been feared in honour. At that sight, at that word, gasped out at them from a toothless and bleeding mouth, the old Elliott spirit awoke with a shout in the four sons. " Wanting the hat," continues my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, " wanting guns, for there wasnae twa grains o' pouder in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than their sticks into their hands, WEIR OF HERMISTON 77 the fower o' them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest, hunkered at the door-sill where the blood had rin, fyled his hand wi' it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o' the auld Border aith. * Hell shall have her ain again this nicht ! ' he raired, and rode forth upon his errand.' ' It was three miles to Broken Dykes, down-hill, and a sore road. Kirstie has seen men from Edinburgh dismounting there in plain day to lead their horses. But the four brothers rode it as if Auld Hornie were behind and Heaven in front. Come to the ford, and there was Dickieson. By all tales, he was not dead, but breathed and reared upon his elbow, and cried out to them for help. It was at a grace- less face that he asked mercy. As soon as Hob saw, by the glint of the lantern, the eyes shining and the whiteness of the teeth in the man's face, " Damn you ! " says he ; " ye hae your teeth, hae ye ? " and rode his horse to and fro upon that human remnant. Beyond that, Dandie must dis- mount with the lantern to be their guide; he was the youngest son, scarce twenty at the time. " A' nicht long they gaed in the wet heath and jenni- pers, and whaur they gaed they neither knew nor cared, but just followed the bluidstains and the footprints o' their faither's murderers. And a' nicht Dandie had his nose to the grund like a tyke, and the ithers followed and spak' naething, neither black nor white. There was nae noise to be heard, but just the sough of the swalled burns, and Hob, the dour yin, risping his teeth as he gaed." With the first glint of the morning they 78 WEIR OF HERMISTON saw they were on the drove road, and at that the four stopped and had a dram to their breakfasts, for they knew that Dand must have guided them right, and the rogues could be but little ahead, hot foot for Edinburgh by the way of the Pentland Hills. By eight o'clock they had word of them a shepherd had seen four men " uncoly mis- handled " go by in the last hour. " That 's yin a piece," says Clem, and swung his cudgel. " Five o' them ! " says Hob. " God's death, but the faither was a man ! And him drunk ! " And then there befell them what my author termed " a sair misbegowk," for they were overtaken by a posse of mounted neighbours come to aid in the pursuit. Four sour faces looked on the reinforcement. " The deil 's broughten you ! " said Clem, and they rode thenceforward in the rear of the party with hanging heads. Before ten they had found and secured the rogues, and by three of the afternoon, as they rode up the Vennel with their prisoners, they were aware of a concourse of people bearing in their midst something that dripped. " For the boady of the saxt," pursued Kirstie, " wi' his head smashed like a hazelnit, had been a' that nicht in the chairge o' Hermiston Water, and it dunting it on the stanes, and grunding it on the shallows, and flinging the deid thing heels-ower-hurdie at the Fa's o' Spango; and in the first o' the day Tweed had got a hold o' him and carried him off like a wind, for it was uncoly swalled and raced wi' him, bobbing under braesides, and was long playing with the creature in the drumlie lynns WEIR OF HERMISTON 79 under the castle, and at the hinder end of all cuist him up on the starling of Crossmichael brig. Sae there they were a' thegither at last (for Dickieson had been brought in on a cart long syne), and folk could see what mainner o' man my brither had been that had held his head again sax and saved the siller, and him drunk ! " Thus died of hon- ourable injuries and in the savour of fame Gilbert Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap ; but his sons had scarce less glory out of the business. Their savage haste, the skill with which Dand had found and followed the trail, the barbarity to the wounded Dickieson (which was like an open secret in the county) and the doom which it was currently supposed they had intended for the others, struck and stirred popular imagination. Some century earlier the last of the minstrels might have fash- ioned the last of the ballads out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spirit was dead, or had been reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and the degenerate moorsmen must be content to tell the tale in prose and to make of the " Four Black Brothers " a unit after the fashion of the " Twelve Apostles " or the " Three Musketeers." Robert, Gilbert, Clement, and Andrew in the proper Border diminutive, Hob, Gib, Clem, and Dand Elliott these ballad heroes had much in common; in particular, their high sense of the family and the family honour; but they went diverse ways, and prospered and failed in different businesses. According to Kirstie, " they had a* bees in their bonnets but Hob." Hob the laird was, 80 WEIR OF HERMISTON indeed, essentially a decent man. An elder of the Kirk, nobody had heard an oath upon his lips, save, perhaps, thrice or so at the sheep-washing, since the chase of his father's murderers. The figure he had shown on that eventful night disappeared as if swallowed by a trap. He who had ecstati- cally dipped his hand in the red blood, he who had ridden down Dickieson, became, from that moment on, a stiff and rather graceless model of the rustic proprieties; cannily profiting by the high war prices, and yearly stowing away a little nest-egg in the bank against calamity; approved of and sometimes consulted by the greater lairds for the massive and placid sense of what he said, when he could be induced to say anything; and particu- larly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a righthand man in the parish, and a model* to parents. The transfiguration had been for the moment only; some Barbarossa, some old Adam of our ancestors, sleeps in all of us till the fit cir- cumstance shall call it into action ; and for as sober as he now seemed, Hob had given once for all the measure of the devil that haunted him. He was married, and, by reason of the effulgence of that legendary night, was adored by his wife. He had a mob of little lusty, barefoot children who marched in a caravan the long miles to school, the stages of whose pilgrimage were marked by acts of spoliation and mischief, and who were qualified in the country-side as " fair pests." But in the house, if " faither was in," they were quiet as mice. In short, Hob moved through life in a great peace WEIR OF HERMISTON 81 the reward of any one who shall have killed his man, with any formidable and figurative circum- stance, in the midst of a country gagged and swaddled with civilisation. It was a current remark that the Elliotts were " guid and bad, like sanguishes " ; and certainly there was a curious distinction, the men of business coming alternately with the dreamers. The second brother, Gib, was a weaver by trade, had gone out early into the world to Edinburgh, and come home again with his wings singed. There was an exalta- tion in his nature which had led him to embrace with enthusiasm the principles of the French Revo- lution, and had ended by bringing him under the hawse of my Lord Hermiston in that furious on- slaught of his upon the Liberals, which sent Muir and Palmer into exile and dashed the party into chaff. It was whispered that my lord, in his great scorn for the movement, and prevailed upon a little by a sense of neighbourliness, had given Gib a hint. Meeting him one day in the Potterrow, my lord had stopped in front of him. " Gib, ye eediot," he had said, " what 's this I hear of you ? Poali- tics, poalitics, poalitics weaver's poalitics, is the way of it, I hear. If ye are nae a' thegether dozened with eediocy, ye '11 gang your ways back to Cauldstaneslap, and ca' your loom, and ca' your loom, man ! " And Gilbert had taken him at the word and returned, with an expedition almost to be called flight, to the house of his father. The clearest of his inheritance was that family gift of prayer of which Kirstie had boasted; and the 6 82 WEIR OF HERMISTON baffled politician now turned his attention to re- ligious matters or, as others said, to heresy and schism. Every Sunday morning he was in Cross- michael, where he had gathered together, one by one, a sect of about a dozen persons, who called themselves " God's Remnant of the True Faith- ful/' or, for short, "God's Remnant." To the profane, they were known as " Gib's Deils." Baillie Sweedie, a noted humourist in the town, vowed that the proceedings always opened to the tune of " The Deil Fly Away with the Excise- man," and that the sacrament was dispensed in the form of hot whisky toddy; both wicked hits at the evangelist, who had been suspected of smug- gling in his youth, and had been overtaken (as the phrase went) on the streets of Crossmichael one Fair day. It was known that every Sunday they prayed for a blessing on the arms of Bona- parte. For this, " God's Remnant," as they were " skailing " from the cottage that did duty for a temple, had been repeatedly stoned by the bairns, and Gib himself hooted by a squadron of Border volunteers in which his own brother, Dand, rode in a uniform and with a drawn sword. The " Remnant " were believed, besides, to be " antinomian in principle," which might other- wise have been a serious charge, but the way public opinion then blew it was quite swallowed up and forgotten in the scandal about Bonaparte. For the rest, Gilbert had set up his loom in an outhouse at Cauldstaneslap, where he laboured assiduously six days of the week. His brothers, WEIR OF HERMISTON 83 appalled by his political opinions and willing to avoid dissension in the household, spoke but little to him; he less to them, remaining absorbed in the study of the Bible and almost constant prayer. The gaunt weaver was dry-nurse at Cauldstaneslap, and the bairns loved him dearly. Except when he was carrying an infant in his arms, he was rarely seen to smile as, indeed, there were few smilers in that family. When his sister-in-law rallied him, and proposed that he should get a wife and bairns of his own, since he was so fond of them, " I have no clearness of mind upon that point," he would reply. If nobody called him in to dinner, he stayed out. Mrs. Hob, a hard, unsym- pathetic woman, once tried the experiment. He went without food all day, but at dusk, as the light began to fail him, he came into the house of his own accord, looking puzzled. " I Ve had a great gale of prayer upon my speerit," said he. " I canna mind sae muckle 's what I had for denner." The creed of God's Remnant was justified in the life of its founder. "And yet I dinna ken," said Kirstie. " He *$ maybe no more stockfish than his neeghbours! He rode wi' the rest o' them, and had a good stamach to the work, by a' that I hear ! God's Remnant ! The deil's clavers ! There wasna muckle Christianity in the way Hob guided Johnny Dickieson, at the least of it; but Guid kens! Is he a Christian even? He might be a Mahommedan or a Deevil or a Fireworshiper, for what I ken." The third brother had his name on a door-plate, 8 4 WEIR OF HERMISTON no less, in the city of Glasgow. " Mr. Clement Elliott," as long as your arm. In his case, that spirit of innovation which had shown itself timidly in the case of Hob by the admission of new ma- nures, and which had run to waste with Gilbert in subversive politics and heretical religions, bore useful fruit in many ingenious mechanical im- provements. In boyhood, from his addiction to strange devices of sticks and string, he had been counted the most eccentric of the family. But that was all by now, and he was a partner of his firm, and looked to die a baillie. He too had mar- ried, and was rearing a plentiful family in the smoke and din of Glasgow; he was wealthy, and could have bought out his brother, the cock-laird, six times over, it was whispered; and when he slipped away to Cauldstaneslap for a well-earned holiday, which he did as often as he was able, he astonished the neighbours with his broadcloth, his beaver hat, and the ample plies of his neck-cloth. Though an eminently solid man at bottom, after the pattern of Hob, he had contracted a certain Glasgow briskness and aplomb which set him off. All the other Elliotts were as lean as a rake, but Clement was laying on fat, and he panted sorely when he must get into his boots. Dand said, chuckling : " Ay, Clem has the elements of a cor- poration." " A provost and corporation," returned Clem. And his readiness was much admired. The fourth brother, Dand, was a shepherd to his trade, and by starts, when he could bring his mind to it, excelled in the business. Nobody could WEIR OF HERMISTON 85 train a dog like Dandie ; nobody, through the peril of great storms in the winter time, could do more gallantly. But if his dexterity were exquisite, his diligence was but fitful ; and he served his brother for bed and board, and a trifle of pocket-money when he asked for it. He loved money well enough, knew very well how to spend it, and could make a shrewd bargain when he liked. But he preferred a vague knowledge that he was well to windward to any counted coins in the pocket; he felt himself richer so. Hob would expostulate: " I 'm an amateur herd," Dand would reply : " I '11 keep your sheep to you when I 'm so minded, but I '11 keep my liberty too. Thir 's no man can coan- descend on what I 'm worth." Clem would ex- pound to him the miraculous results of compound interest, and recommend investments. "Ay, man?" Dand would say, " and do you think, if I took Hob's siller, that I wouldna drink it or wear it on the lassies? And, anyway, my kingdom is no of this world. Either I 'm a poet or else I 'm noth- ing." Clem would remind him of old age. " I '11 die young, like Robbie Burns," he would say stoutly. No question but he had a certain accom- plishment in minor verse. His " Hermiston Burn," with its pretty refrain I love to gang thinking whaur ye gang linking, Hermiston burn, in the howe ; his "Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts of auld," and his really fascinating piece about the Praying Weaver's Stone, had 86 WEIR OF HERMISTON gained him in the neighbourhood the reputation, still possible in Scotland, of a local bard; and, though not printed himself, he was recognised by others who were and who had become famous. Walter Scott owed to Dandie the text of the " Raid of Wearie " in the Minstrelsy and made him wel- come at his house, and appreciated his talents, such as they were, with all his usual generosity. The Ettrick Shepherd was his sworn crony ; they would meet, drink to excess, roar out their lyrics in each other's faces, and quarrel and make it up again till bedtime. And besides these recognitions, al- most to be called official, Dandie was made wel- come for the sake of his gift through the farmhouses of several contiguous dales, and was thus exposed to manifold temptations which he rather sought than fled. He had figured on the stool of repentance, for once fulfilling to the letter the tradition of his hero and model. His hu- mourous verses to Mr. Torrance on that occasion " Kenspeckle here my lane I stand " unfor- tunately too indelicate for further citation, ran through the country like a fiery cross; they were recited, quoted, paraphrased, and laughed over as far away as Dumfries on the one hand and Dun- bar on the other. These four brothers were united by a close bond, the bond of that mutual admiration or rather mutual hero-worship which is so strong among the members of secluded families who have much ability and little culture. Even the extremes ad- mired each other. Hob, who had as much poetry WEIR OF HERMISTON 87 as the tongs, professed to find pleasure in Dand's verses; Clem, who had no more religion than Claverhouse, nourished a heartfelt, at least an open-mouthed, admiration of Gib's prayers; and Dandie followed with relish the rise of Clem's fortunes. Indulgence followed hard on the heels of admiration. The laird, Clem, and Dand, who were Tories and patriots of the hottest quality, ex- cused to themselves, with a certain bash fulness, the radical and revolutionary heresies of Gid. By another division of the family, the laird, Clem, and Gib, who were men exactly virtuous, swal- lowed the dose of Dand's irregularities as a kind of clog or drawback in the mysterious providence of God affixed to bards, and distinctly probative of poetical genius. To appreciate the simplicity of their mutual admiration, it was necessary to hear Clem, arrived upon one of his visits, and deal- ing in a spirit of continuous irony with the affairs and personalities of that great city of Glasgow where he lived and transacted business. The vari- ous personages, ministers of the church, muni- cipal officers, mercantile big-wigs, whom he had occasion to introduce, were all alike denigrated, all served but as reflectors to cast back a flattering side-light on the house of Cauldstaneslap. The Provost, for whom Clem by exception entertained a measure of respect, he would liken to Hob. " He minds me o' the laird there," he would say. " He has some of Hob's grand, whun-stane sense, and the same way with him of steiking his mouth when he 's no very pleased." And Hob, all unconscious, 88 WEIR OF HERMISTON would draw down his upper lip and produce, as if for comparison, the formidable grimace referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St. Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed : " If he had but twa fingers o' Gib's he would waken them up." And Gib, honest man! would look down and secretly smile. Clem was a spy whom they had sent out into the world of men. He had come back with the good news that there was nobody to compare with the Four Black Brothers, no posi- tion that they would not adorn, no official that it would not be well they should replace, no in- terest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediately bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two words : scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peas- antry. The measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity were kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestral prac- tice. To the world their serious faces were never deformed by the suspicion of any simper of self- contentment. Yet it was known. " They hae a guid pride o' themsel's ! " was the word in the country-side. Lastly, in a Border story, there should be added their " two-names." Hob was The Laird. " Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne " ; he was the laird of Cauldstaneslap say fifty acres ipsissimus. Clement was Mr. Elliott, as upon his door-plate, the earlier Dafty having been discarded as no longer applicable, and indeed only a reminder of misjudgment and the imbecility of the public ; and WEIR OF HERMISTON 89 the youngest, in honour of his perpetual wander- ings, was known by the sobriquet of Randy Dand. It will be understood that not all this informa- tion was communicated by the aunt, who had too much of the family failing herself to appreciate it thoroughly in others. But as time went on, Archie began to observe an omission in the family chronicle. " Is there not a girl too? " he asked. " Ay. Kirstie. She was named from me, or my grandmother at least it 's the same thing," re- turned the aunt, and went on again about Dand, whom she secretly preferred by reason of his gallantries. " But what is your niece like ? " said Archie at the next opportunity. " Her ? As black 's your hat ! But I dinna sup- pose she would maybe be what you would ca' ill-looked a' thegither. Na, she 's a kind of a hand- some jaud a kind o' gipsy," said the aunt, who had two sets of scales for men and women or perhaps it would be more fair to say that she had three, and the third and the most loaded was for girls. " How comes it that I never see her in church? " said Archie. " 'Deed, and I believe she 's in Glesgie with Clem and his wife. A heap good she's like to get of it! I dinna say for men folk, but where weemen folk are born, there let them bide. Glory to God, I was never far'er from here than Crossmichael." 9 o WEIR OF HERMISTON In the meantime it began to strike Archie as strange, that while she thus sang the praises of her kinsfolk, and manifestly relished their virtues and (I may say) their vices like a thing creditable to herself, there should appear not the least sign of cordiality between the house of Hermiston and that of Cauldstaneslap. Going to church of a Sunday, as the lady housekeeper stepped with her skirts kilted, three tucks of her white petticoat showing below, and her best India shawl upon her back (if the day were fine) in a pattern of radiant dyes, she would sometimes overtake her relatives preceding her more leisurely in the same direction. Gib of course was absent: by skriegh of day he had been gone to Crossmichael and his fellow heretics; but the rest of the family would be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand, stiff- necked, straight-backed six-footers, with severe dark faces, and their plaids about their shoulders; the convoy of children scattering ( in a state of high polish) on the wayside, and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother ; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a deli- cate living pink. " A braw day to ye, Mistress Elliott," said she, WEIR OF HERMISTON 91 and hostility, and gentility were nicely mingled in her tones. " A fine day, mem," the laird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while her plumage setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to the mere man, the pattern of her India shawl. Behind her, the whole Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with an indescribable air of being in the presence of the foe ; and while Dandie saluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well in court, Hob marched on in awful im- mobility. There appeared upon the face of this attitude in the family the consequences of some dreadful feud. Presumably the two women had been principals in the original encounter, and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, too late to be included in the present skin- deep reconciliation. " Kirstie," said Archie one day, " what is this you have against your family?" " I dinna complean," said Kirstie, with a flush. " I say naething." "I see you do not not even good-day to your own nephew," said he. " I hae naething to be ashaimed of," said she. " I can say the Lord's prayer with a good grace. If Hob was ill, or in preeson or poverty, I would see to him blithely. But for curtchy- ing and complimenting and colloguing, thank ye kindly!" Archie had a bit of a smile: he leaned back in his chair. " I think you and Mrs. Robert are not 92 WEIR OF HERMISTON very good friends," says he slyly, " when you have your India shawls on ? " She looked upon him in silence, with a sparkling eye but an indecipherable expression ; and that was all that Archie was ever destined to learn of the battle of the India shawls. " Do none of them ever come here to see you ? " he inquired. " Mr. Archie," said she, " I hope that I ken my place better. It would be a queer thing, I think, if I was to clamjamfry up your faither's house . . . that I should say it ! wi' a dirty, black-a-vised clan, no ane o' them it was worth while to mar soap upon but just mysel* ! Na, they 're all damnifeed wi' the black Ellwalds. I have nae patience wi' black folk." Then, with a sudden consciousness of the case of Archie, " No that it maitters for men sae muckle," she made haste to add, " but there 's naebody can deny that it 's unwomanly. Long hair is the orna- ment o' woman ony way ; we 've good warrandise for that it 's in the Bible and wha can doubt that the Apostle had some gowden-haired lassie in his mind Apostle and all, for what was he but just a man like yersel' ? " CHAPTER VI A LEAF FROM CHRISTINAS PSALM-BOOK ARCHIE was sedulous at church. Sunday /\ after Sunday he sat down and stood up JL JL with that small company, heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping like an ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much bigger than a footstool. There sat Archie an apparent prince, the only undeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish, taking his ease in the only pew, for no other in the kirk had doors. Thence he might command an undisturbed view of that congregation of solid plaided men, strapping wives and daughters, op- pressed children, and uneasy sheep-dogs. It was strange how Archie missed the look of race; ex- cept the dogs, with their refined foxy faces and inimitably curling tails, there was no one present with the least claim to gentility. The Cauldstane- slap party was scarcely an exception ; Dandie per- haps, as he amused himself making verses through 94 W&IR OF HERMISTON the interminable burthen of the service, stood out a little by the glow in his eye and a certain superior animation of face and alertness of body ; but even Dandie slouched like a rustic. The rest of the congregation, like so many sheep, oppressed him with a sense of hob-nailed routine, day following day of physical labour in the open air, oatmeal porridge, peas bannock, the somnolent fireside in the evening, and the night-long nasal slumbers in a box-bed. Yet he knew many of them to be shrewd and humourous, men of character, notable women, making a bustle in the world and radiating an in- fluence from their low-browed doors. He knew besides they were like other men; below the crust of custom, rapture found a way; he had heard them beat the timbrel before Bacchus had heard them shout and carouse over their whisky toddy; and not the most Dutch-bottomed and severe faces among them all, not even the solemn elders them- selves, but were capable of singular gambols at the voice of love. Men drawing near to an end of life's adventurous journey maids thrilling with fear and curiosity on the threshold of entrance women who had borne and perhaps buried chil- dren, who could remember the clinging of the small dead hands and the patter of the little feet now silent he marvelled that among all those faces there should be no face of expectation, none that was mobile, none into which the rhythm and poetry of life had entered. " O for a live face," he thought; and at times he had a memory of Lady Flora; and at times he would study the WEIR OF HERMISTON 95 living gallery before him with despair, and would see himself go on to waste his days in that joyless, pastoral place, and death come to him, and his grave be dug under the rowans, and the Spirit of the Earth laugh out in a thunder-peal at the huge fiasco. On this particular Sunday, there was no doubt but that the spring had come at last. It was warm, with a latent shiver in the air that made the warmth only the more welcome. The shallows of the stream glittered and tinkled among bunches of primrose. Vagrant scents of the earth arrested Archie by the way with moments of ethereal in- toxication. The grey, Quakerish dale was still only awakened in places and patches from the sobriety of its wintry colouring; and he wondered at its beauty; an essential beauty of the old earth it seemed to him, not resident in particulars but breathing to him from the whole. He surprised himself by a sudden impulse to write poetry he did so sometimes, loose, galloping octosyllabics in the vein of Scott and when he had taken his place on a boulder, near some fairy falls and shaded by a whip of a tree that was already radiant with new leaves, it still more surprised him that he should find nothing to write. His heart perhaps beat in time to some vast indwelling rhythm of the universe. By the time he came to a corner of the valley and could see the kirk, he had so lingered by the way that the first psalm was finish- ing. The nasal psalmody, full of turns and trills and graceless graces, seemed the essential voice of 96 WEIR OF HERMISTON the kirk itself upraised in thanksgiving. " Every- thing 's alive," he said; and again cries it aloud, " Thank God, everything 's alive ! " He lingered yet awhile in the kirk-yard. A tuft of primroses was blooming hard by the leg of an old, black table tombstone, and he stopped to contemplate the ran- dom apologue. They stood forth on the cold earth with a trenchancy of contrast; and he was struck with a sense of incompleteness in the day, the sea- son, and the beauty that surrounded him the chill there was in the warmth, the gross black clods about the opening primroses, the damp earthy smell that was everywhere intermingled with the scents. The voice of the aged Torrance within rose in an ecstasy. And he wondered if Torrance also felt in his old bones the joyous influence of the spring morning; Torrance, or the shadow of what once was Torrance, that must come so soon to lie out- side here in the sun and rain with all his rheuma- tisms, while a new minister stood in his room and thundered from his own familiar pulpit ? The pity of it, and something of the chill of the grave, shook him for a moment as he made haste to enter. He went up the aisle reverently and took his place in the pew with lowered eyes, for he feared he had already offended the kind old gentleman in the pulpit, and was sedulous to offend no farther. He could not follow the prayer, not even the heads of it. Brightnesses of azure, clouds of fragrance, a tinkle of falling water and singing birds, rose like exhalations from some deeper, aboriginal memory, that was not his, but belonged to the WEIR OF HERMISTON 97 flesh on his bones. His body remembered; and it seemed to him that his body was in no way gross, but ethereal and perishable like a strain of music; and he felt for it an exquisite tenderness as for a child, an innocent, full of beautiful instincts and destined to an early death. And he felt for old Torrance of the many supplications, of the few days a pity that was near to tears. The prayer ended. Right over him was a tablet in the wall, the only ornament in the roughly masoned chapel for it was no more ; the tablet commemorated, I was about to say the virtues, but rather the ex- istence of a former Rutherford of Hermiston ; and Archie, under that trophy of his long descent and local greatness, leaned back in the pew and con- templated vacancy with the shadow of a smile be- tween playful and sad, that became him strangely. Dandie's sister, sitting by the side of Clem in her new Glasgow finery, chose that moment to observe the young laird. Aware of the stir of his en- trance, the little formalist had kept her eyes fast- ened and her face prettily composed during the prayer. It was not hypocrisy, there was no one farther from a hypocrite. The girl had been taught to behave: to look up, to look down, to look unconscious, to look seriously impressed in church, and in every conjuncture to look her best. That was the game of female life, and she played it frankly. Archie was the one person in church who was of interest, who was somebody new, reputed eccentric, known to be young, and a laird, and still unseen by Christina. Small wonder that, 7 98 WEIR OF HERMISTON as she stood there in her attitude of pretty decency, her mind should run upon him! If he spared a glance in her direction, he should know she was a well-behaved young lady who had been to Glas- gow. In reason he must admire her clothes, and it was possible that he should think her pretty. At that her heart beat the least thing in the world; and she proceeded, by way of a corrective, to call up and dismiss a series of fancied pictures of the young man who should now, by rights, be looking at her. She settled on the plainest of them, a pink short young man with a dish face and no figure, at whose admiration she could afford to smile; but for all that, the consciousness of his gaze (which was really fixed on Torrance and his mittens) kept her in something of a flutter till the word Amen. Even then, she was far too well- bred to gratify her curiosity with any impatience. She resumed her seat languidly this was a Glas- gow touch she composed her dress, rearranged her nosegay of primroses, looked first in front, then behind upon the other side, and at last al- lowed her eyes to move, without hurry, in the direction of the Hermiston pew. For a moment, they were riveted. Next she had plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated flight. Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy; the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutable half-smile, attracted and re- pelled her like a chasm. " I wonder, will I have met my fate? " she thought, and her heart swelled. WEIR OF HER MI ST ON 99 Torrance was got some way into his first ex- position, positing a deep layer of texts as he went along, laying the foundations of his discourse, which was to deal with a nice point in divinity, before Archie suffered his eyes to wander. They fell first of all on Clem, looking insupportably prosperous and patronising Torrance with the favour of a modified attention, as of one who was used to better things in Glasgow. Though he had never before set eyes on him, Archie had no diffi- culty in identifying him, and no hesitation in pro- nouncing him vulgar, the worst of the family. Clem was leaning lazily forward when Archie first saw him. Presently he leaned nonchalantly back; and that deadly instrument, the maiden, was sud- denly unmasked in profile. Though not quite in the front of the fashion (had anybody cared!), certain artful Glasgow mantua-makers, and her own inherent taste, had arrayed her to great ad- vantage. Her accoutrement was, indeed, a cause of heart-burning, and almost of scandal, in that infinitesimal kirk company. Mrs. Hob had said her say at Cauldstaneslap. " Daft-like ! " she had pronounced it. "A jaiket that '11 no meet ! Whaur 's the sense of a jaiket that '11 no button upon you, if it should come to be weet? What do ye ca' thir things ? Demmy brokens, d' ye say ? They '11 be brokens wi' a vengeance or ye can win back! Weel, I have naething to do wP it it 's no good taste." Clem, whose purse had thus metamorphosed his sister, and who was not in- sensible to the advertisement, had come to the ioo WEIR OF HERMISTON rescue with a " Hoot, woman ! What do you ken of good taste that has never been to the ceety?" And Hob, looking on the girl with pleased smiles, as she timidly displayed her finery in the midst of the dark kitchen, had thus ended the dispute: " The cutty looks weel," he had said, " and it 's no very like rain. Wear them the day, hizzie; but it 's no a thing to make a practice o\" In the breasts of her rivals, coming to the kirk very con- scious of white under-linen, and their faces splen- did with much soap, the sight of the toilet had raised a storm of varying emotion, from the mere unenvious admiration that was expressed in the long-drawn "Eh!" to the angrier feeling that found vent in an emphatic " Set her up ! " Her frock was of straw-coloured jaconet muslin, cut low at the bosom and short at the ankle, so as to display her demi-bro quins of Regency violet, cross- ing with many straps upon a yellow cobweb stock- ing. According to the pretty fashion in which our grandmothers did not hesitate to appear, and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both breasts, and in the nook between a cairngorm brooch maintained it. Here, too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay of prim- roses. She wore on her shoulders or rather, on her back and not her shoulders, which it scarcely passed a French coat of sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces, and of the same colour with her violet shoes. About her face clustered a dis- WEIR OF HERMISTO.N 101 order of dark ringlets, a little garland of yellow French roses surmounted her brow, and the whole was crowned by a village hat of chipped straw. Amongst all the rosy and all the weathered faces that surrounded her in church, she glowed like an open flower girl and raiment, and the cairn- gorm that caught the daylight and returned it in a fiery flash, and the threads of bronze and gold that played in her hair. Archie was attracted by the bright thing like a child. He looked at her again and yet again, and their looks crossed. The lip was lifted from her little teeth. He saw the red blood work vividly under her tawny skin. Her eye, which was great as a stag's, struck and held his gaze. He knew who she must be Kirstie, she of the harsh diminu- tive, his housekeeper's niece, the sister of the rustic prophet, Gib and he found in her the answer to his wishes. Christina felt the shock of their encountering glances, and seemed to rise, clothed in smiles, into a region of the vague and bright. But the grati- fication was not more exquisite than it was brief. She looked away abruptly, and immediately began to blame herself for that abruptness. She knew what she should have done, too late turned slowly with her nose in the air. And meantime his look was not removed, but continued to play upon her like a battery of cannon constantly aimed, and now seemed to isolate her alone with him, and now seemed to uplift her, as on a pillory, before the congregation. For Archie continued to drink 102 WEIR OF HERMISTON her in with his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes tc a well-head on a mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable. In the cleft of her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale florets of primrose fascinated him. He saw the breasts heave, and the flowers shake with the heaving, and marvelled what should so much discompose the girl. And Christina was conscious of his gaze saw it, perhaps, with the dainty plaything of an ear that peeped, among her ringlets; she was conscious of changing colour, conscious of her unsteady breath. Like a creature tracked, run down, surrounded, she sought in a dozen ways to give herself a countenance. She used her handkerchief it was a really fine one then she desisted in a panic : " He would only think I was too warm." She took to reading in the metrical psalms, and then remembered it was sermon-time. Last she put a " sugar-bool " in her mouth, and the next moment repented of the step. It was such a homely-like thing ! Mr. Archie would never be eating sweeties in kirk; and, with a palpable effort, she swallowed it whole, and her colour flamed high. At this signal of distress Archie awoke to a sense of his ill-behaviour. What had he been doing? He had been exqui- sitely rude in church to the niece of his house- keeper ; he had stared like a lackey and a libertine at a beautiful and modest girl. It was possible, it was even likely, he would be presented to her after service in the kirk-yard, and then how was he to look ? And there was no excuse. He had marked WEIR OF HERMISTON 103 the tokens of her shame, of her increasing in- dignation, and he was such a fool that he had not understood them. Shame bowed him down, and he looked resolutely at Mr. Torrance; who little supposed, good, worthy man, as he continued to expound justification by faith, what was his true business: to play the part of derivative to a pair of children at the old game of falling in love. Christina was greatly relieved at first. It seemed to her that she was clothed again. She looked back on what had passed. All would have been right if she had not blushed, a silly fool! There was nothing to blush at, if she had taken a sugar- bool. Mrs. MacTaggart, the elder's wife in St. Enoch's, took them often. And if he had looked at her, what was more natural than that a young gentleman should look at the best-dressed girl in church? And at the same time, she knew far otherwise, she knew there was nothing casual or ordinary in the look, and valued herself on its memory like a decoration. Well, it was a blessing he had found something else to look at! And presently she began to have other thoughts. It was necessary, she fancied, that she should put herself right by a repetition of the incident, better managed. If the wish was father to the thought, she did not know or she would not recognise it. It was simply as a manoeuvre of propriety, as something called for to lessen the significance of what had gone before, that she should a second time meet his eyes, and this time without blushing. io 4 WEIR OF HERMISTON And at the memory of the blush, she blushed again, and became one general blush burning from head to foot. Was ever anything so indelicate, so for- ward, done by a girl before? And here she was, making an exhibition of herself before the congre- gation about nothing! She stole a glance upon her neighbours, and behold! they were steadily indifferent, and Clem had gone to sleep. And still the one idea was becoming more and more potent with her, that in common prudence she must look again before the service ended. Something of the same sort was going forward in the mind of Archie, as he struggled with the load of penitence. So it chanced that, in the flutter of the moment when the last psalm was given out, and Torrance was reading the verse, and the leaves of every psalm-book in church were rustling under busy ringers, two stealthy glances were sent out like antennae among the pews and on the indifferent and absorbed occupants, and drew timidly nearer to the straight line between Archie and Christina. They met, they lingered together for the least fraction of time, and that was enough. A charge as of electricity passed through Christina, and be- hold ! the leaf of her psalm-book was torn across. Archie was outside by the gate of the grave- yard, conversing with Hob and the minister and shaking hands all round with the scattering con- gregation, when Clem and Christina were brought up to be presented. The laird took off his hat and bowed to her with grace and respect. Christina made her Glasgow curtsey to the laird, and went WEIR OF HERMISTON 105 on again up the road for Hermiston and Cauld- staneslap, walking fast, breathing hurriedly with a heightened colour, and in this strange frame of mind, that when she was alone she seemed in high happiness, and when any one addressed her she resented it like a contradiction. A part of the way she had the company of some neighbour girls and a loutish young man; never had they seemed so insipid, never had she made herself so disagree- able. But these struck aside to their various des- tinations or were out-walked and left behind ; and when she had driven off with sharp words the proffered convoy of some of her nephews and nieces, she was free to go on alone up Hermiston brae, walking on air, dwelling intoxicated among clouds of happiness. Near to the summit she heard steps behind her, a man's steps, light and very rapid. She knew the foot at once and walked the faster. " If it 's me he 's wanting he can run for it," she thought, smiling. Archie overtook her like a man whose mind was made up. " Miss Kirstie," he began. " Miss Christina, if you please, Mr. Weir," she interrupted. " I canna bear the contraction." " You forget it has a friendly sound for me. Your aunt is an old friend of mine and a very good one. I hope we shall see much of you at Hermiston ? " " My aunt and my sister-in-law doesna agree very well. Not that I have much ado with it. But still when I 'm stopping in the house, if I 106 WEIR OF HERMISTON was to be visiting my aunt, it would not look considerate-like." " I am sorry," said Archie. " I thank you kindly, Mr. Weir," she said. " I whiles think myself it 's a great peety." " Ah, I am sure your voice would always be for peace ! " he cried. " I wouldna be too sure of that," she said. " I have my days like other folk, I suppose." " Do you know, in our old kirk, among our good old grey dames, you made an effect like sunshine." " Ah, but that would be my Glasgow clothes ! " " I did not think I was so much under the in- fluence of pretty frocks." She smiled with a half look at him. " There 's more than you ! " she said. " But you see I 'm only Cinderella. I '11 have to put all these things by in my trunk ; next Sunday I '11 be as grey as the rest. They 're Glasgow clothes, you see, and it would never do to make a practice of it. It would seem terrible conspicuous." By that they were come to the place where their ways severed. The old grey moors were all about them; in the midst a few sheep wandered; and they could see on the one hand the straggling caravan scaling the braes in front of them for Cauldstaneslap, and on the other, the contingent from Hermiston bending off and beginning to disappear by detachments into the policy gate. It was in these circumstances that they turned to say farewell, and deliberately exchanged a glance WEIR OF HERMISTON 107 as they shook hands. All passed as it should, genteelly ; and in Christina's mind, as she mounted the first steep ascent for Cauldstaneslap, a gratify- ing sense of triumph prevailed over the recollec- tion of minor lapses and mistakes. She had kilted her gown, as she did usually at that rugged pass; but when she spied Archie still standing and gaz- ing after her, the skirts came down again as if by enchantment. Here was a piece of nicety for that upland parish, where the matrons marched with their coats kilted in the rain, and the lasses walked barefoot to kirk through the dust of summer, and went bravely down by the burnside, and sat on stones to make a public toilet before entering! It was perhaps an air wafted from Glasgow ; or per- haps it marked a stage of that dizziness of grati- fied vanity, in which the instinctive act passed unperceived. He was looking after ! She un- loaded her bosom of a prodigious sigh that was all pleasure, and betook herself to run. When she had overtaken the stragglers of her family, she caught up the niece whom she had so recently repulsed, and kissed and slapped her, and drove her away again, and ran after her with pretty cries and laughter. Perhaps she thought the laird might still be looking! But it chanced the little scene came under the view of eyes less favourable; for she overtook Mrs. Hob marching with Clem and Dand. " You 're shurely fey, 1 lass ! " quoth Dandie. 1 Unlike yourself, strange, as persons are observed to be in the hour of approaching death or calamity. 108 WEIR OF HERMISTON " Think shame to yersel', miss ! " said the stri- dent Mrs. Hob. " Is this the gait to guide yersel' on the way hame frae kirk ? You 're shiirely no sponsible the day. And anyway I would mind my guid claes." " Hoot ! " said Christina, and went on before them head in air, treading the rough track with the tread of a wild doe. She was in love with herself, her destiny, the air of the hills, the benediction of the sun. All the way home, she continued under the intoxica- tion of these sky-scraping spirits. At table she could talk freely of young Hermiston; gave her opinion of him off-hand and with a loud voice, that he was a handsome young gentleman, real well-mannered and sensible-like, but it was a pity he looked doleful. Only the moment after a memory of his eyes in church embarrassed her. But for this inconsiderable check, all through meal- time she had a good appetite, and she kept them laughing at table, until Gib (who had returned before them from Crossmichael and his separative worship) reproved the whole of them for their levity. Singing " in to herself " as she went, her mind still in the turmoil of glad confusion, she rose and tripped up-stairs to a little loft, lighted by four panes in the gable, where she slept with one of her nieces. The niece, who followed her, presum- ing on " Auntie's " high spirits, was flounced out of the apartment with small ceremony, and retired, smarting and half tearful, to bury her woes in the WEIR OF HERMISTON 109 byre among the hay. Still humming, Christina divested herself of her finery, and put her treas- ures one by one in her great green trunk. The last of these was the psalm-book; it was a fine piece, the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinct old- faced type, on paper that had begun to grow foxy in the warehouse not by service and she was used to wrap it in a handkerchief every Sunday after its period of service was over, and bury it end-wise at the head of her trunk. As she now took it in hand the book fell open where the leaf was torn, and she stood and gazed upon that evidence of her by-gone discomposure. There returned again the vision of the two brown eyes staring at her, intent and bright, out of that dark cor- ner of the kirk. The whole appearance and atti- tude, the smile, the suggested gesture of young Hermiston came before her in a flash at the sight of the torn page. " I was surely fey ! " she said, echoing the words of Dandie, and at the suggested doom her high spirits deserted her. She flung her- self prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm-book in her hands for hours, for the more part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure and unreasoning fear. The fear was superstitious; there came up again and again in her memory Dandie's ill-omened words, and a hundred grisly and black tales out of the immediate neighbourhood read her a commentary on their force. The pleas- ure was never realised. You might say the joints of her body thought and remembered, and were gladdened, but her essential self, in the immediate no WEIR OF HERMISTON theatre of consciousness, talked feverishly of some- thing else, like a nervous person at a fire. The image that she most complacently dwelt on was that of Miss Christina in her character of the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before her in the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb stockings. Archie's image, on the other hand, when it presented itself was never wel- comed far less welcomed with any ardour, and it was exposed at times to merciless criticism. In the long, vague dialogues she held in her mind, often with imaginary, often with unrealised inter- locutors, Archie, if he were referred to at all, came in for savage handling. He was described as " looking like a stork," " staring like a caulf," " a face like a ghaist's." " Do you call that manners ? " she said ; or, " I soon put him in his place." "'Miss Christina, if you please, Mr. Weir!' says I, and just flyped up my skirt tails." With gabble like 'this she would entertain herself long whiles together, and then her eye would perhaps fall on the torn leaf, and the eyes of Archie would appear again from the darkness of the wall, and the vol- uble words deserted her, and she would lie still and stupid, and think upon nothing with devotion, and be sometimes raised by a quiet sigh. Had a doctor of medicine come into that loft, he would have diagnosed a healthy, well-developed, emi- nently vivacious lass lying on her face in a fit of the sulks ; not one who had just contracted, or was just contracting, a mortal sickness of the mind which should yet carry her towards death and despair. WEIR OF HERMISTON in Had it been a doctor of psychology, he might have been pardoned for divining in the girl a passion of childish vanity, self-love in excelsis, and no more. It is to be understood that I have been paint- ing chaos and describing the inarticulate. Every lineament that appears is too precise, almost every word used too strong. Take a finger-post in the mountains on a day of rolling mists; I have but copied the names that appear upon the pointers, the names of definite and famous cities far distant, and now perhaps basking in sunshine; but Chris- tina remained all these hours, as it were, at the foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in mutable and blinding wreaths of haze. The day was growing late and the sunbeams long and level, when she sat suddenly up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and put by that psalm-book which had already played a part so decisive in the first chapter of her love-story. In the absence of the mesmerist's eye, we are told nowadays that the head of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be stead- fastly regarded. So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might else have been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominous words of Dandie heard, not heeded, and still remembered had lent to her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that idea of Fate a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Chris- tian deity, obscure, lawless, and august moving indissuadably in the affairs of Christian men. Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rare and seems so simple and vio- ii2 WEIR OF HERMISTON lent, like a disruption of life's tissue, may be de- composed into a sequence of accidents happily concurring. She put on a grey frock and a pink kerchief, looked at herself a moment with approval in the small square of glass that served her for a toilet mirror, and went softly down-stairs through the sleeping house that resounded with the sound of afternoon snoring. Just outside the door Dandie was sitting with a book in his hand, not read- ing, only honouring the Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind. She came near him and stood still. " I 'm for off up the muirs, Dandie," she said. There was something unusually soft in her tones that made him look up. She was pale, her eyes dark and bright; no trace remained of the levity of the morning. " Ay, lass ? Ye '11 have ye're ups and downs like me, I 'm thinkin'," he observed. " What for do ye say that ? " she asked. " O, for naething," says Dand. " Only I think ye 're mair like me than the lave of them. Ye Ve mair of the poetic temper, tho' Guid kens little enough of the poetic taalent. It 's an ill gift at the best. Look at yoursel'. At denner you were all sunshine and flowers and laughter, and now you 're like the star of evening on a lake." She drank in this hackneyed compliment like wine, and it glowed in her veins. " But I 'm saying, Dand " she came nearer him " I 'm for the muirs. I must have a braith WEIR OF HERMISTON 113 of air. If Clem was to be speiring for me, try and quaiet him, will ye no? " " What way? " said Dandie. " I ken but the ae way, and that 's leein'. I '11 say ye had a sair heed, if ye like" " But I havena," she objected. " I daur say not," he returned. " I said I would say ye had ; and if ye like to nay-say me when ye come back, it '11 no mateerially maitter, for my chara'ter 's clean gane a'ready past reca\" " O, Dand, are ye a leear ? " she asked, lingering. " Folks say sae," replied the bard. " Wha says sae? " she pursued. " Them that should ken the best," he responded. " The lassies, for ane." " But, Dand, you would never lee to me? ? she asked. " I '11 leave that for your pairt of it, ye girzie," said he. " Ye '11 lee to me fast eneuch, when ye hae gotten a jo. I 'm tellin' ye and it 's true ; when you have a jo, Miss Kirstie, it '11 be for guid and ill. I ken: I was made that way mysel', but the deil was in my luck! Here, gang awa wi' ye to your muirs, and let me be ; I 'm in an hour of inspirau- tion, ye upsetting tawpie ! " But she clung to her brother's neighbourhood, she knew not why. " Will ye no gie 's a kiss, Dand ? " she said. " I aye likit ye fine." He kissed her and considered her a moment ; he found something strange in her. But he was a libertine through and through, nourished equal 8 ii 4 WEIR OF HERMISTON contempt and suspicion of all womankind, and paid his way among them habitually with idle compliments. " Gae wa' wi' ye ! " said he. " Ye 're a dentie baby, and be content wi' that ! " That was Dandie's way; a kiss and a comfit to Jenny a bawbee and my blessing to Jill and good-night to the whole clan of ye, my dears! When anything approached the serious, it became a matter for men, he both thought and said. Wo- men, when they did not absorb, were only children to be shoo'd away. Merely in his character of con- noisseur, however, Dandie glanced carelessly after his sister, as she crossed the meadow. " The brat 's no that bad ! " he thought with surprise, for though he had just been paying her compliments, he had not really looked at her. "Hey! what's yon ? " For the grey dress was cut with short sleeves and skirts, and displayed her trim strong legs clad in pink stockings of the same shade as the kerchief she wore round her shoulders, and that shimmered as she went. This was not her way in undress; he knew her ways and the ways of the whole sex in the country-side, no one better ; when they did not go barefoot, they wore stout " rig and furrow " woollen hose of an invisible blue mostly, when they were not black outright; and Dandie, at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a silk handkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they matched then the whole outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly present, and not something to be worn through WEIR OF HERMISTON 115 bog and brier, or on a late afternoon of Sunday. He whistled. " My denty May, either your heid 's fair turned, or there 's some on-goings ! " he ob- served, and dismissed the subject. She went slowly at first, but ever straighter and faster for the Cauldstaneslap, a pass among the hills to which the farm owed its name. The Slap opened like a doorway between two rounded hil- locks; and through this ran the short cut to Her- miston. Immediately on the other side it went down through the Deil's Hags, a considerable marshy hollow of the hilltops, full of springs, and crouching junipers, and pools where the black peat-water slumbered. There was no view from here. A man might have sat upon the Praying Weaver's Stone a half-century, and seen none but the Cauldstaneslap children twice in the twenty- four hours on their way to the school and back again, an occasional shepherd, the irruption of a clan of sheep, or the birds who haunted about the springs, drinking and shrilly piping. So, when she had once passed the Slap, Kirstie was received into seclusion. She looked back a last time at the farm. It still lay deserted except for the figure of Dandie, who was now seen to be scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration having come to him at last. Thence she passed rapidly through the morass, and came to the further end of it, where a sluggish burn discharges, and the path for Her- miston accompanies it on the beginning of its down- ward path. From this corner a wide view was opened to her of the whole stretch of braes upon n6 WEIR OF HERM1STON the other side, still sallow and in places rusty with the winter, with the path marked boldly, here and there by the burnside a tuft of birches, and three miles off as the crow flies from its enclosures and young plantations, the windows of Hermiston glittering in the western sun. Here she sat down and waited, and looked for a long time at these far-away bright panes of glass. It amused her to have so extended a view, she thought. It amused her to see the house of Her- miston to see " folk " ; and there was an indis- tinguishable human unit, perhaps the gardener, visibly sauntering on the gravel paths. By the time the sun was down and all the easterly braes lay plunged in clear shadow, she was aware of another figure coming up the path at a most unequal rate of approach, now half running, now pausing and seeming to hesitate. She watched him at first with a total suspension of thought. She held her thought as a person holds his breath- ing. Then she consented to recognise him. " He '11 no be coming here, he canna be ; it 's no possible." And there began to grow upon her a subdued choking suspense. He was coming; his hesitations had quite ceased, his step grew firm and swift; no doubt remained; and the question loomed up before her instant: what was she to do? It was all very well to say that her brother was a laird himself; it was all very well to speak of casual intermarriages and to count cousinship, like Auntie Kirstie. The difference in their social station was trenchant ; propriety, prudence, all that WEIR OF HERMISTON 117 she had ever learned, all that she knew, bade her flee. But on the other hand the cup of life now offered to her was too enchanting. For one mo- ment, she saw the question clearly, and definitely made her choice. She stood up and showed herself an instant in the gap relieved upon the sky line; and the next, fled trembling and sat down glowing with excitement on the Weaver's Stone. She shut her eyes, seeking, praying for composure. Her hand shook in her lap, and her mind was full of incongruous and futile speeches. What was there to make a work about ? She could take care of her- self, she supposed! There was no harm in seeing the laird. It was the best thing that could happen. She would mark a proper distance to him once and for all. Gradually the wheels of her nature ceased to go round so madly, and she sat in passive expec- tation, a quiet, solitary figure in the midst of the grey moss. I have said she was no hypocrite, but here I am at fault. She never admitted to herself that she had come up the hill to look for Archie. And perhaps after all she did not know, perhaps came as a stone falls. For the steps of love in the young, and especially in girls, are instinctive and unconscious. In the meantime Archie was drawing rapidly near, and he at least was consciously seeking her neighbourhood. The afternoon had turned to ashes in his mouth; the memory of the girl had kept him from reading and drawn him as with cords ; and at last, as the cool of the evening began to come on, he had taken his hat and set forth, u8 WEIR OF HERMISTON with a smothered ejaculation, by the moor path to Cauldstaneslap. He had no hope to find her; he took the off chance without expectation of result and to relieve his uneasiness. The greater was his surprise, as he surmounted the slope and came into the hollow of the Deil's Hags, to see there, like an answer to his wishes, the little womanly figure in the grey dress and the pink kerchief sitting little, and low, and lost, and acutely solitary, in these desolate surroundings and on the weather-beaten stone of the dead weaver. Those things that still smacked of winter were all rusty about her, and those things that already relished of the spring had put forth the tender and lively colours of the season. Even in the unchanging face of the death-stone changes were to be remarked; and in the chan- nelled-lettering, the moss began to renew itself in jewels of green. By an after-thought that was a stroke of art, she had turned up over her head the back of the kerchief ; so that it now framed becom- ingly her vivacious and yet pensive face. Her feet were gathered under her on the one side, and she leaned on her bare arm, which showed out strong and round, tapered to a slim wrist, and shimmered in the fading light. \ Young Hermiston was struck with a certain chill. He was reminded that he now dealt in seri- ous matters of life and death. This was a grown woman he was approaching, endowed with her mysterious potencies and attractions, the treasury of the continued race, and he was neither better nor worse than the average of his sex and age. He WEIR OF HERMISTON 119 had a certain delicacy which had preserved him hitherto unspotted, and which (had either of them guessed it) made him a more dangerous companion when his heart should be really stirred. His throat was dry as he came near ; but the appealing sweet- ness of her smile stood between them like a guar- dian angel. For she turned to him and smiled, though with- out rising. There was a shade in this cavalier greeting that neither of them perceived: neither he, who simply thought it gracious and charming as herself; nor yet she, who did not observe (quick as she was) the difference between rising to meet the laird and remaining seated to receive the expected admirer. " Are ye stepping west, Hermiston ? " said she, giving him his territorial name after the fashion of the country-side. " I was," said he a little hoarsely, " but I think I will be about the end of my stroll now. Are you like me, Miss Christina ? the house would not hold me. I came here seeking air." He took his seat at the other end of the tomb- stone and studied her, wondering what was she. There was infinite import in the question alike for her and him. " Ay," she said. " I couldna bear the roof either. It 's a habit of mine to come up here about the gloaming when it 's quaiet and caller." " It was a habit of my mother's also," he said gravely. The recollection half startled him as he expressed it. He looked around. " I have scarce 120 WEIR OF HERMISTON been here since. It 's peaceful," he said, with a long breath. " It 's no like Glasgow," she replied. " A weary place, yon Glasgow! But what a day have I had for my hame-coming, and what a bonny evening ! " " Indeed, it was a wonderful day," said Archie. " I think I will remember it years and years until I come to die. On days like this I do not know if you feel as I do but everything appears so brief, and fragile, and exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life. We are here for so short a time; and all the old people before us Rutherfords of Hermiston, Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap that were here but awhile since, riding about and keeping up a great noise in this quiet corner making love too, and marrying why, where are they now ? It 's deadly commonplace, but after all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths." He was sounding her, semi-consciously, to see if she could understand him; to learn if she were only an animal the colour of flowers, or had a soul in her to keep her sweet. She, on her part, her means well in hand, watched, womanlike, for any opportunity to shine, to abound in his humour, whatever that might be. The dramatic artist, that lies dormant or only half awake in most human beings, had in her sprung to his feet in a divine fury, and chance had served her well. She looked upon him with a subdued twilight look that be- came the hour of the day and the train of thought ; WEIR OF HERMISTON 121 earnestness shone through her like stars in the purple west; and from the great but controlled upheaval of her whole nature there passed into her voice, and rang in her lightest words, a thrill of emotion. "Have you mind of Dand's song?" she an- swered. " I think he '11 have been trying to say what you have been thinking." " No, I never heard it," he said. " Repeat it to me, can you ? " " It 's nothing wanting the tune," said Kirstie. " Then sing it me," said he. " On the Lord's Day ? That would never do, Mr. Weir!" "I am afraid I am not so strict a keeper of the Sabbath, and there is no one in this place to hear us, unless the poor old ancient under the stone." " No that I 'm thinking that really," she said. " By my way of thinking, it 's just as serious as a psalm. Will I sooth it to ye, then? " " If you please," said he, and, drawing near to her on the tombstone, prepared to listen. She sat up as if to sing. " I '11 only can sooth it to ye," she explained. " I wouldna like to sing out loud on the Sabbath. I think the birds would carry news of it to Gilbert," and she smiled. " It 's about the Elliotts," she continued, " and I think there 's few bonnier bits in the book-poets, though Dand has never got printed yet." And she began, in the low, clear tones of her half-voice, now sinking almost to a whisper, now 122 WEIR OF HERMISTON rising to a particular note which was her best, and which Archie learned to wait for with growing emotion : O they rade in the rain, in the days that are gane, In the rain and the wind and the lave, They shoutit in the ha' and they routit on the hill, But they 're a' quaitit noo in the grave. Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts of auld! All the time she sang she looked steadfastly before her, her knees straight, her hands upon her knee, her head cast back and up. The expression was admirable throughout, for had she not learned it from the lips and under the criticism of the author? When it was done, she turned upon Archie a face softly bright, and eyes gently suf- fused and shining in the twilight, and his heart rose and went out to her with boundless pity and sympathy. His question was answered. She was a human being tuned to a sense of the tragedy of life ; there were pathos and music and a great heart in the girl. He arose instinctively, she also; for she saw she had gained a point, and scored the impression deeper, and she had wit enough left to flee upon a victory. They were but commonplaces that remained to be exchanged, but the low, moved voices in which they passed made them sacred in the memory. In the falling greyness of the even- ing he watched her figure winding through the morass, saw it turn a last time and wave a hand, and then pass through the Slap ; and it seemed to WEIR OF HERMISTON 123 him as if something went along with her out of the deepest of his heart. And something surely had come, and come to dwell there. He had retained from childhood a picture, now half obliter- ated by the passage of time and the multitude of fresh impressions, of his mother telling him, with the fluttered earnestness of her voice, and often with dropping tears, the tale of the " Praying Weaver," on the very scene of his brief tragedy and long repose. And now there was a companion piece; and he beheld, and he should behold for ever, Christina perched on the same tomb, in the grey colours of the evening, gracious, dainty, per- fect as a flower, and she also singing Of old, unhappy far-off things, And battles long ago, of their common ancestors now dead, of their rude wars composed, their weapons buried with them, and of these strange changelings, their de- scendants, who lingered a little in their places, and would soon be gone also, and perhaps sung of by others at the gloaming hour. By one of the uncon- scious arts of tenderness the two women were en- shrined together in his memory. Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into his eyes indifferently at the thought of either, and the girl, from being something merely bright and shapely, was caught up into the zone of things serious as life and death and his dead mother. So that in all ways and on either side, Fate played his game artfully with this poor pair of children. The generations were i2 4 WEIR OF HERMISTON prepared, the pangs were made ready, before the curtain rose on the dark drama. In the same moment of time that she disappeared from Archie there opened before Kirstie's eyes the cup-like hollow in which the farm lay. She saw, some five hundred feet below her, the house making itself bright with candles, and this was a broad hint to her to hurry. For they were only kindled on a Sabbath night with a view to that family worship which rounded in the incomparable tedium of the day and brought on the relaxation of supper. Already she knew that Robert must be within-sides at the head of the table, " waling the portions " ; for it was Robert in his quality of family priest and judge, not the gifted Gilbert, who officiated. She made good time accordingly down the steep ascent, and came up to the door panting as the three younger brothers, all roused at last from slumber, stood together in the cool and the dark of the evening with a fry of nephews and nieces about them, chatting and awaiting the expected signal. She stood back; she had no mind to direct attention to her late arrival or to her labouring breath. " Kirstie, ye have shaved it this time, my lass,"' said Clem. " Whaur were ye? " " O, just taking a dander by myser," said Kirstie. And the talk continued on the subject of the American war, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and the sense of guilt. WEIR OF HERMISTON 125 The signal was given, and the brothers began to go in one after another, amid the jostle and throng of Hob's children. Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught Kirstie by the arm. "When did ye begin to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott? " he whispered slyly. She looked down ; she was one blush. " I maun have forgotten to change them/' said she; and went in to prayers in her turn with a troubled mind, between anxiety as to whether Dand should have observed her yellow stockings at church, and should thus detect her in a palpable falsehood, and shame that she had already made good his prophecy. She remembered the words of it, how it was to be when she had gotten a jo, and that that would be for good and evil. " Will I have gotten my jo now ? " she thought with a secret rapture. And all through prayers, where it was her prin- cipal business to conceal the pink stockings from the eyes of the indifferent Mrs. Hob and all through supper, as she made a feint of eating, and sat at the table radiant and constrained and again when she had left them and come into her chamber, and was alone with her sleeping niece, and could at last lay aside the armour of society the same words sounded within her, the same profound note of happiness, of a world all changed and renewed, of a day that had been passed in Paradise, and of a night that was to be heaven opened. All night she seemed to be con- veyed smoothly upon a shallow stream of sleep 126 WEIR OF HERMISTON and waking, and through the bowers of Beulah; all night she cherished to her heart that exquisite hope; and if, towards morning, she forgot it awhile in a more profound unconsciousness, it was to catch again the rainbow thought with her first moment of awaking. CHAPTER VII ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES TWO days later a gig from Crossmichael deposited Frank Innes at the doors of Hermiston. Once in a way, during the past winter, Archie, in some acute phase of bore- dom, had written him a letter. It had contained something in the nature of an invitation, or a refer- ence to an invitation precisely what, neither of them now remembered. When Innes had received it, there had been nothing further from his mind than to bury himself in the moors with Archie; but not even the most acute political heads are guided through the steps of life with unerring directness. That would require a gift of prophecy which has been denied to man. For instance, who could have imagined that, not a month after he had received the letter, and turned it into mockery, and put off answering it, and in the end lost it, misfortunes of a gloomy cast should begin to thicken over Frank's career? His case may be briefly stated. His father, a small Morayshire laird with a large family, became recalcitrant and cut off the supplies ; he had fitted himself out with the beginnings of quite a good law library, which, upon some sudden losses on the turf, he had been 128 WEIR OF HERMISTON obliged to sell before they were paid for; and his bookseller, hearing some rumour of the event, took out a warrant for his arrest. Innes had early word of it, and was able to take precautions. In this immediate welter of his affairs, with an unpleasant charge hanging over him, he had judged it the part of prudence to be off instantly, had written a fer- vid letter to his father at Inverauld, and put him- self in the coach for Crossmichael. Any port in a storm ! He was manfully turning his back on the Parliament House and its gay babble, on porter and oysters, the racecourse and the ring ; and man- fully prepared, until these clouds should have blown by, to share a living grave with Archie Weir at Hermiston. To do him justice, he was no less surprised to be going than Archie was to see him come; and he carried off his wonder with an infinitely better grace. " Well, here lam!" said he, as he alighted. " Py lades has come to Orestes at last. By the way, did you get my answer? No? How very pro- voking! Well, here I am to answer for myself, and that 's better still.'* " I am very glad to see you, of course," said Archie. " I make you heartily welcome, of course. But you surely have not come to stay, with the courts still sitting ; is that not most unwise ? " " Damn the courts ! " says Frank. " What are the courts to friendship and a little fishing ? " And so it was agreed that he was to stay, with no term to the visit but the term which he had WEIR OF HERMISTON 129 privily set to it himself the day, namely, when his father should have come down with the dust, and he should be able to pacify the bookseller. On such vague conditions there began for these two young men (who were not even friends) a life of great familiarity and, as the days grew on, less and less intimacy. They were together at meal times, together o' nights when the hour had come for whisky toddy; but it might have been noticed (had there been any one to pay heed) that they were rarely so much together by day. Archie had Hermiston to attend to, multifarious activities in the hills, in which he did not require, and had even refused, Frank's escort. He would be off some- times in the morning and leave only a note on the breakfast table to announce the fact; and some- times, with no notice at all, he would not return for dinner until the hour was long past. Innes groaned under these desertions; it required all his philosophy to sit down to a solitary breakfast with composure, and all his unaffected good-nature to be able to greet Archie with friendliness on the more rare occasions when he came home late for dinner. " I wonder what on earth he finds to do, Mrs. Elliott ?" said he one morning, after he had just read the hasty billet and sat down to table. 1? I suppose it will be business, sir," replied the housekeeper drily, measuring his distance off to him by an indicated curtsey. " But I can't imagine what business ! V he reiterated. 130 WEIR OF HERMIS10N " I suppose it will be his business," retorted the austere Kirstie. He turned to her with that happy brightness that made the charm of his disposition, and broke into a peal of healthy and natural laughter. "Well played, Mrs. Elliott ! " he cried, and the housekeeper's face relaxed into the shadow of an iron smile. " Well played indeed ! " said he. " But you must not be making a stranger of me like that. Why, Archie and I were at the High School to- gether, and we 've been to college together, and we were going to the Bar together, when you know ! Dear, dear me ! what a pity that was ! A life spoiled, a fine young fellow as good as buried here in the wilderness with rustics; and all for what? A frolic, silly, if you like, but no more. God, how good your scones are, Mrs. Elliott ! " " They 're no mines, it was the lassie made them," said Kirstie ; " and, saving your presence, there 's little sense in taking the Lord's name in vain about idle vivers that you fill your kyte wi\" " I dare say you 're perfectly right, ma'am," quoth the imperturbable Frank. " But, as I was saying, this is a pitiable business, this about poor Archie ; and you and I might do worse than put our heads together, like a couple of sensible people, and bring it to an end. Let me tell you, ma'am, that Archie is really quite a promising young man, and in my opinion he would do well at the Bar. As for his father, no one can deny his ability, and I don't fancy any one would care to deny that he has the deil's own temper " WEIR OF HERMISTON 131 " If you '11 excuse me, Mr. Innes, I think the lass is crying on me," said Kirstie, and flounced from the room. " The damned, cross-grained, old broom-stick ! " ejaculated Innes. In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped into the kitchen, and before her vassal gave vent to her feelings. " Here, ettercap ! Ye '11 have to wait on yon Innes ! I canna haud myself in. * Puir Erchie ' ! I 'd ( puir Erchie ' him, if I had my way ! And Hermiston with the deil's ain temper! God, let him take Hermiston's scones out of his mouth first. There 's no a hair on ayther o' the Weirs that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he has in his hale dwaibly body! Settin' up his snash to me ! Let him gang to the black toon where he's mebbe wantit birling in a curricle wi' pimatum on his heid making a mess o' himseF wi' nesty hizzies a fair disgrace ! " It was impossible to hear without admiration Kirstie's graduated disgust, as she brought forth, one after another, these somewhat baseless charges. Then she remembered her immediate purpose, and turned again on her fascinated auditor. " Do ye no hear me, tawpie? Do ye no hear what I 'm tellin' ye? Will I have to shoo ye in to him? If I come to attend to ye, mistress ! " And the maid fled the kitchen, which had become practically dangerous, to attend on Innes' wants in the front parlour. Tantane ircef Has the reader perceived the reason ? Since Frank's coming there were no more 132 WEIR OF HERMISTON hours of gossip over the supper tray ! All his blan- dishments were in vain; he had started handi- capped on the race for Mrs. Elliott's favour. But it was a strange thing how misfortune dogged him in his efforts to be genial. I must guard the reader against accepting Kirstie's epi- thets as evidence ; she was more concerned for their vigour than for their accuracy. Dwaibly, for in- stance ; nothing could be more calumnious. Frank was the very picture of good looks, good-humour, and manly youth. He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, a charm- ing smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed to please at first sight and to im- prove the impression. And with all these advan- tages, he failed with every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with the obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the plough- man, with the gardener and the gardener's sister a pious, down-hearted woman with a shawl over her ears he failed equally and flatly. They did not like him, and they showed it. The little maid, indeed, was an exception; she admired him de- voutly, probably dreamed of him in her private hours ; but she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor to Kirstie's tirades and silent recipi- ent of Kirstie's buffets, and she had learned not Oiily to be a very capable girl of her years, but a very secret and prudent one besides. Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and sympa- thiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour. WEIR OF HERMISTON 133 that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston ; but he had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably unconversa- tional. For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond endurance. Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians. But per- haps the cause of his ill-success lay in one trait which was habitual and unconscious with him, yet diagnostic of the man. It was his practice to ap- proach any one person at the expense of some one else. He offered you an alliance against the some one else; he flattered you by slighting him; you were drawn into a small intrigue against him before you knew how. Wonderful are the virtues of this process generally ; but Frank's mistake was in the choice of the some one else. He was not politic in that ; he listened to the voice of irritation. Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt to be rather a dry reception; had offended him since by his frequent absences. He was besides the one figure continually present in Frank's eye; and it was to his immediate dependents that Frank could offer the snare of his sympathy. Now the truth is that the Weirs, father and son, were surrounded by a posse of strenuous loyalists. Of my lord they were vastly proud. It was a distinc- tion in itself to be one of the vassals of the " Hang- ing Judge," and his gross, formidable joviality was far from unpopular in the neighbourhood of his 134 WEIR OF HERMISTON home. For Archie they had, one and all, a sensi- tive affection and respect which recoiled from a word of belittlement. Nor was Frank more successful when he went farther afield. To the Four Black Brothers, for instance, he was antipathetic in the highest degree. Hob thought him too light, Gib too profane. Clem, who saw him but for a day or two before he went to Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule's business was, and whether he meant to stay here all session time ! " Yon 's a drone," he pronounced. As for Dand, it will be enough to describe their first meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and the rustic celebrity chanced to come along the path. " I 'm told you are quite a poet," Frank had said. "Wha teirt ye that, mannie?" had been the unconciliating answer. " O, everybody," says Frank. " God! Here 'a fame! " said the sardonic poet, and he had passed on his way. Come to think of it, we have here perhaps a truer explanation of Frank's failures. Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater com- pliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making. Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried to flatter. ^^Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an empty basket by evening?7 WEIR OF HERMISTON 135 In proof of this theory Frank made a great suc- cess of it at the Crossmichael Club, to which Archie took him immediately on his arrival; his own last appearance on that scene of gaiety. Frank was made welcome there at once, continued to go reg- ularly, and had attended a meeting (as the mem- bers ever after loved to tell) on the evening before his death. Young Hay and young Pringle appeared again. There was another supper at Windielaws, another dinner at Driffel ; and it resulted in Frank being taken to the bosom of the county people as unreservedly as he had been repudiated by the country folk. He occupied Hermiston after the manner of an invader in a conquered capital. He was perpetually issuing from it, as from a base, to toddy parties, fishing parties, and dinner parties, to which Archie was not invited, or to which Archie would not go. It was now that the name of The Recluse became general for the young man. Some say that Innes invented it; Innes, at least, spread it abroad. " How 's all with your Recluse to-day ? " people would ask. " O, reclusing away ! " Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying something witty ; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he had provoked much more by his air than his words, " Mind you, it 's all very well laughing, but I 'm not very well pleased. Poor Archie is a good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked. I think it small of him to take his little disgrace so hard and shut himself up. ' Grant that it is a ridicu- 136 WEIR OF HERMISTON lous story, painfully ridiculous,' I keep telling him. ' Be a man ! Live it down, man ! > But not he. Of course it's just solitude, and shame, and all that. But I confess I 'm beginning to fear the result. It would be all the pities in the world if a really promising fellow like Weir was to end ill. I 'm seriously tempted to write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him." " I would if I were you," some of his auditors would say, shaking the head, sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of the matter, so deftly indicated by a single word. " A capital idea ! " they would add, and wonder at the aplomb and position of this young man, who talked as a matter of course of writing to Hermiston and correcting him upon his private affairs. And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential : " I '11 give you an idea, now. He 's actually sore about the way that I 'm received and he 's left out in the county actually jealous and sore. I've rallied him and I 've reasoned with him, told him that every one was most kindly inclined towards him, told him even that I was received merely because I was his guest. But it 's no use. He will neither accept the invitations he gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where he 's left out. What I 'm afraid of is that the wound 's ulcerating. He had always one of those dark, secret, angry natures a little underhand and plenty of bile you know the sort. He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere ; what 's the cant WEIR OF HERMISTON 137 phrase ? sedentary occupation. It 's precisely the kind of character to go wrong in a false posi- tion like what his father 's made for him, or he 's making for himself, whichever you like to call it. And for my part, I think it a disgrace," Frank would say generously. Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this disin- terested friend took shape. He began in private, in conversations of two, to talk vaguely of bad habits and low habits. " I must say I 'm afraid he 's going wrong altogether," he would say. " I '11 tell you plainly, and between ourselves, I scarcely like to stay there any longer ; only, man, I 'm positively afraid to leave him alone. You '11 see, I shall be blamed for it later on. I 'm staying at a great sacrifice. I 'm hindering my chances at the Bar, and I can't blind my eyes to it. And what I 'm afraid of is that I 'm going to get kicked for it all round before all 's done. You see, nobody believes in friendship nowadays." " Well, Innes," his interlocutor would reply, " it 's very good of you, I must say that. If there 's any blame going you '11 always be sure of my good word, for one thing." " Well," Frank would continue, " candidly, I don't say it 's pleasant. He has a very rough way with him; his father's son, you know. I don't say he 's rude of course, I could n't be expected to stand that but he steers very near the wind. No, it 's not pleasant ; but I tell ye, man, in con- science I don't think it would be fair to leave him. Mind you, I don't say there's anything actually 138 WEIR OF HERMISTON wrong. What I say is that I don't like the looks of it, man ! " and he would press the arm of his momentary confidant. In the early stages I am persuaded there was no malice. He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass ; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and univer- sal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a presentation of Archie which was known and talked of in all corners of the county. Wherever there was a resi- dential house and a walled garden, wherever there was a dwarfish castle and a park, wherever a quad- ruple cottage by the ruins of a peel-tower showed an old family going down, and wherever a hand- some villa with a carriage approach and a shrubbery marked the coming up of a new one probably on the wheels of machinery Archie began to be regarded in the light of a dark, perhaps a vicious mystery, and the future developments of his career to be looked for with uneasiness and confi- dential whispering. He had done something dis- graceful, my dear. What, was not precisely known, and that good kind young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to make light of it. But there it was. And Mr. Innes was very anxious about him now; he was really uneasy, my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects because he WEIR OF HERMISTON 139 dared not leave him alone. How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully with any malign purpose! And if a man but talks of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by the way, and never applies to them the name of virtue, how easily his evidence is accepted in the court of public opinion ! All this while, however, there was a more poi- sonous ferment at work between the two lads, which came late indeed to the surface, but had modified and magnified their dissensions from the first. To an idle, shallow, easy-going customer like Frank, the smell of a mystery was attractive. It gave his mind something to play with, like a new toy to a child; and it took him on the weak side, for like many young men coming to the Bar, and before they have been tried and found wanting, he flat- tered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness and penetration. They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in these days, but there was a good deal said of Talleyrand. And if you could have caught Frank off his guard, he would have confessed with a smirk, that, if he resembled any one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord. It was on the occasion of Archie's first absence that this interest took root. It was vastly deepened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast, and that same afternoon there occurred another scene which clinched the business. He was fishing Swingle- burn, Archie accompanying him, when the latter looked at his watch. i 4 o WEIR OF HERMISTON " Well, good-bye/' said he. " I have something to do. See you at dinner." " Don't be in such a hurry," cries Frank. " Hold on till I get my rod up. I '11 go with you ; I 'm sick of flogging this ditch." And he began to reel up his line. Archie stood speechless. He took a long while to recover his wits under this direct attack; but by the time he was ready with his answer, and the angle was almost packed up, he had become com- pletely Weir, and the hanging face gloomed on his young shoulders. He spoke with a laboured com- posure, a laboured kindness even ; but a child could see that his mind was made up. " I beg your pardon, Innes ; I don't want to be disagreeable, but let us understand one another from the beginning. When I want your company, I'll let you know." " Oh ! " cries Frank, " you don't want my com- pany, don't you ? " " Apparently not just now," replied Archie. " I even indicated to you when I did, if you '11 remem- ber and that was at dinner. If we two fel- lows are to live together pleasantly and I see no reason why we should not it can only be by respecting each other's privacy. If we begin intruding " " Oh, come ! I '11 take this at no man's hands. Is this the way you treat a guest and an old friend ? " cried Innes. "Just go home and think over what I said by yourself," continued Archie, " whether it 's reason- WEIR OF HERMISTON 141 able, or whether it 's really offensive or not ; and let 's meet at dinner as though nothing had hap- pened. I '11 put it this way, if you like that I know my own character, that I 'm looking for- ward (with great pleasure, I assure you) to a long visit from you, and that I 'm taking precautions at the first. I see the thing that we that I, if you like might fall out upon, and I step in and obsto principiis. I wager you five pounds you '11 end by seeing that I mean friendliness, and I assure you, Francie, I do," he added, relenting. Bursting with anger, but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a gesture of fare- well, and strode off down the burnside. Archie watched him go without moving. He was sorry, but quite unashamed. He hated to be inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father's son. He had a strong sense that his house was his own and no man else's; and to lie at a guest's mercy was what he refused. He hated to seem harsh. But that was Frank's look-out. If Frank had been commonly discreet, he would have been decently courteous. And there was another consideration. The secret he was protecting was not his own merely ; it was hers ; it belonged to that inexpres- sible she who was fast taking possession of his soul, and whom he would soon have defended at the cost of burning cities. By the time he had watched Frank as far as the Swingleburnfoot, appearing and disappearing in the tarnished heather, still stalking at a fierce gait but already dwindled in the distance into less than the smallness of Lilliput, he 14* WEIR OF HERMISTON could afford to smile at the occurrence. Either Frank would go, and that would be a relief or he would continue to stay, and his host must con- tinue to endure him. And Archie was now free by devious paths, behind hillocks and in the hollow of burns to make for the trysting-place where Kirstie, cried about by the curlew and the plover, waited and burned for his coming by the Covenanter's stone. Innes went off down-hill in a passion of resent- ment, easy to be understood, but which yielded pro- gressively to the needs of his situation. He cursed Archie for a cold-hearted, unfriendly, rude dog ; and himself still more passionately for a fool in hav- ing come to Hermiston when he might have sought refuge in almost any other house in Scotland, but the step once taken was practically irretriev- able. He had no more ready money to go any- where else; he would have to borrow from Archie the next club-night; and ill as he thought of his host's manners, he was sure of his practical gener- osity. Frank's resemblance to Talleyrand strikes me as imaginary ; but at least not Talleyrand him- self could have more obediently taken his lesson from the facts. He met Archie at dinner without resentment, almost with cordiality. You must take your friends as you find them, he would have said. Archie could n't help being his father's son, or his grandfather's, the hypothetical weaver's, grandson. The son of a hunks, he was still a hunks at heart, incapable of true generosity and consideration ; but he had other qualities with which Frank could WEIR OF HERMISTON 143 divert himself in the meanwhile, and to enjoy which it was necessary that Frank should keep his temper. So excellently was it controlled that he awoke next morning with his head full of a different, though a cognate subject. What was Archie's little game? Why did he shun Frank's company? What was he keeping secret? Was he keeping tryst with somebody, and was it a woman? It would be a good joke and a fair revenge to dis- cover. To that task he set himself with a great deal of patience, which might have surprised his friends, for he had been always credited not with patience so much as brilliancy; and little by little, from one point to another, he at last succeeded in piecing out the situation. First he remarked that, although Archie set out in all the directions of the compass, he always came home again from some point between the south and west. From the study of a map, and in consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his fin- ger on Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbour- ing farms, Kingsmuirs and Polintarf. But it was difficult to advance farther. With his rod for a pretext, he vainly visited each of them in turn; nothing was to be seen suspicious about this trinity of moorland settlements. He would have tried to follow Archie, had it been the least possible, but the nature of the land precluded the idea. He did the next best, ensconced himself in a quiet corner, and pursued his movements with a telescope. It i 4 4 WEIR OF HERMISTON was equally in vain, and he soon wearied of his futile vigilance, left the telescope at home, and had almost given the matter up in despair, when, on the twenty-seventh day of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with the person whom he sought. The first Sunday Kirstie had managed to stay away from kirk on some pretext of indisposition, which was more truly modesty ; the pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too vivid for that public place. On the two following Frank had himself been absent on some of his excursions among the neighbouring families. It was not until the fourth, accordingly, that Frank had occasion to set eyes on the enchantress. With the first look, all hesitation was over. She came with the Cauldstaneslap party ; then she lived at Cauldstaneslap. Here was Archie's secret, here was the woman, and more than that though I have need here of every manageable attenuation of language with the first look, he had already entered himself as rival. It was a good deal in pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration : the devil may decide the proportions; I cannot, and it is very likely that Frank could not. " Mighty attractive milkmaid," he observed, on the way home. "Who?" said Archie. " O, the girl you 're looking at are n't you ? Forward there on the road. She came attended by the rustic bard ; presumably, therefore, belongs to his exalted family. The single objection! for the Four Black Brothers are awkward customers. If WEIR OF HERMISTON 145 anything were to go wrong, Gib would gibber, and Clem would prove inclement; and Dand fly in danders, and Hob blow up in gobbets. It would be a Helliott of a business ! " " Very humourous, I am sure," said Archie. " Well, I am trying to be so," said Frank. " It 's none too easy in this place, and with your solemn society, my dear fellow. But confess that the milkmaid has found favour in your eyes or resign all claim to be a man of taste." " It is no matter," returned Archie. But the other continued to look at him, steadily and quizzically, and his colour slowly rose and deepened under the glance, until not impudence itself could have denied that he was blushing. And at this Archie lost some of his control. He changed his stick from one hand to the other, and " O, for God's sake, don't be an ass ! " he cried. "Ass? That's the retort delicate without doubt," says Frank. " Beware of the homespun brothers, dear. If they come into the dance, you '11 see who 's an ass. Think now, if they only applied (say) a quarter as much talent as I have applied to the question of what Mr. Archie does with his evening hours, and why he is so unaffectedly nasty when the subject 's touched on " " You are touching on it now," interrupted Archie with a wince. " Thank you. That was all I wanted, an articu- late confession," said Frank. " I beg to remind you " began Archie. 10 146 WEIR OF HERMISTON But he was interrupted in turn. " My dear fel- low, don't. It 's quite needless. The subject 's dead and buried.' ' And Frank began to talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were look- ing " Cauldstaneslap ways." Frank took his first glass of port out after dinner to the toast of Kirstie, and later in the evening he returned to the charge again. " I say, Weir, you '11 excuse me for returning again to this affair. I 've been thinking it over, and I wish to beg you very seriously to be more careful. It 's not a safe business. Not safe, my boy," said he. "What?" said Archie. " Well, it 's your own fault if I must put a name on the thing ; but really, as a friend, I cannot stand by and see you rushing head down into these dangers. My dear boy," said he, holding up a warning cigar, " consider what is to be the end of it?" " The end of what ? " Archie, helpless with irritation, persisted in this dangerous and ungra- cious guard. " Well, the end of the milkmaid ; or, to speak more by the card, the end of Miss Christina Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap ? " WEIR OF HERMISTON i 4 7 " I assure you," Archie broke out, " this is all a figment of your imagination. There is nothing to be said against that young lady ; you have no right to introduce her name into the conversation." " I '11 make a note of it," said Frank. " She shall henceforth be nameless, nameless, nameless, Grigalach ! I make a note besides of your valuable testimony to her character. I only want to look at this thing as a man of the world. Admitted she 's an angel but, my good fellow, is she a lady?" This was torture to Archie. " I beg your par- don," he said, struggling to be composed, " but because you have wormed yourself into my confidence " " O, come!" cried Frank. "Your confidence? It was rosy but unconsenting. Your confidence, indeed? Now, look! This is what I must say, Weir, for it concerns your safety and good char- acter, and therefore my honour as your friend. You say I wormed myself into your confidence. Wormed is good. But what have I done? I have put two and two together, just as the parish will be doing to-morrow, and the whole of Tweed- dale in two weeks, and the Black Brothers well, I won't put a date on that ; it will be a dark and stormy morning. Your secret, in other words, is poor Poll's. And I want to ask of you as a friend whether you like the prospect? There are two horns to your dilemma, and I must say for myself I should look mighty ruefully on either. Do you see yourself explaining to the Four 148 WEIR OF HERMISTON Black Brothers? or do you see yourself present- ing the milkmaid to papa as the future lady of Hermiston? Do you? I tell you plainly, I don't." Archie rose. " I will hear no more of this," he said in a trembling voice. But Frank again held up his cigar. " Tell me one thing first. Tell me if this is not a friend's part that I am playing ? " " I believe you think it so," replied Archie. " I can go as far as that. I can do so much justice to your motives. But I will hear no more of it. I am going to bed." " That 's right, Weir," said Frank, heartily. " Go to bed and think over it ; and, I say, man, don't forget your prayers! I don't often do the moral don't go in for that sort of thing but when I do there 's one thing sure, that I mean it." So Archie marched off to bed, and Frank sat alone by the table for another hour or so, smiling to himself richly. There was nothing vindictive in his nature; but, if revenge came in his way, it might as well be good, and the thought of Archie's pillow reflections that night was inde- scribably sweet to him. He felt a pleasant sense of power. He looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled as on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence, and whom he might ride to glory or the grave at pleasure. Which was it to be ? He lingered along, relishing the details of schemes that WEIR OF HERMISTON 149 he was too idle to pursue. / Poor cork upon a tor- rent, he tasted that night the^sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity over the strands of that intrigue which was to shatter him before the summer waned. CHAPTER VIII A NOCTURNAL VISIT KIRSTIE had many causes of distress. More and more as we grow old and yet more and more as we grow old and are women, frozen by the fear of age we come to rely on the voice as the single outlet of the soul. Only thus, in the curtailment of our means, can we relieve the straitened cry of the passion within us; only thus, in the bitter and sensitive shyness of advancing years, can we maintain rela- tions with those vivacious figures of the young that still show before us, and tend daily to become no more than the moving wall-paper of life. Talk is the last link, the last relation. But with the end of the conversation, when the voice stops and the bright face of the listener is turned away, solitude falls again on the bruised heart. Kirstie had lost her " cannie hour at e'en " ; she could no more wander with Archie, a ghost, if you will, but a happy ghost, in fields Elysian. And to her it was as if the whole world had fallen silent; to him, but an unremarkable change of amusements. And she raged to know it. The effervescency of her passionate and irritable nature rose within her at times to bursting point. WEIR OF HERMISTGN 151 This is the price paid by age for unseasonable ardours of feeling. It must have been so for Kir- stie at any time when the occasion chanced; but it so fell out that she was deprived of this delight in the hour when she had most need of it, when she had most to say, most to ask, and when she trembled to recognise her sovereignty not merely in abeyance but annulled. For, with the clairvoy- ance of a genuine love, she had pierced the mys- tery that had so long embarrassed Frank. She was conscious, even before it was carried out, even on that Sunday night when it began, of an invasion of her rights; and a voice told her the invader's name. Since then, by arts, by accident, by small things observed, and by the general drift of Archie's humour, she had passed beyond all pos- sibility of doubt. With a sense of justice that Lord Hermiston might have envied, she had that day in church considered and admitted the attrac- tions of the younger Kirstie; and with the pro- found humanity and sentimentality of her nature, she had recognised the coming of fate. Not thus would she have chosen. She had seen, in imagi- nation, Archie wedded to some tall, powerful, and rosy heroine of the golden locks, made in her own image, for whom she would have strewed the bride-bed with delight; and now she could have wept to see the ambition falsified. But the gods had pronounced, and her doom was otherwise. She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged with feverish thoughts. There were dangerous matters 152 WEIR OF HERMISTON pending, a battle was toward, over the fate of which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and disloyalty to either side. Now she was re-incarnated in her niece, and now in Archie. Now she saw, through the girl's eyes, the youth on his knees to her, heard his persuasive instances with a deadly weakness, and received his overmastering caresses. Anon, with a revulsion, her temper raged to see such utmost favours of fortune and love squandered on a brat of a girl, one of her own house, using her own name a deadly ingredient and that " didnae ken her ain mind an' was as black 's your hat." Now she trembled lest her deity should plead in vain, loving the idea of success for him like a triumph of nature; anon, with returning loyalty to her own family and sex, she trembled for Kirstie and the credit of the Elliotts. And again she had a vision of herself, the day over for her old-world tales and local gossip, bidding farewell to her last link with life and brightness and love; and behind and beyond, she saw but the blank butt-end where she must crawl to die. Had she then come to the lees? she, so great, so beautiful, with a heart as fresh as a girl's and strong as womanhood? It could not be, and yet it was so; and for a moment her bed was hor- rible to her as the sides of the grave. And she looked forward over a waste of hours, and saw herself go on to rage, and tremble, and be softened, and rage again, until the day came and the labours of the day must be renewed. Suddenly she heard feet on the stairs his feet, WEIR OF HERMISTON 153 and soon after the sound of a window-sash flung open. She sat up with her heart beating. He had gone to his room alone, and he had not gone to bed. She might again have one of her night cracks; and at the entrancing prospect, a change came over her mind; with the approach of this hope of pleasure, all the baser metal became imme- diately obliterated from her thoughts. She rose, all woman, and all the best of woman, tender, piti- ful, hating the wrong, loyal to her own sex and all the weakest of that dear miscellany, nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly flattering, hopes that she would have died sooner than have acknowledged. She tore off her nightcap, and her hair fell about her shoulders in profusion. Undy- ing coquetry awoke. By the faint light of her nocturnal rush, she stood before the looking-glass, carried her shapely arms above her head, and gathered up the treasures of her tresses. She was never backward to admire herself; that kind of modesty was a stranger to her nature; and she paused, struck with a pleased wonder at the sight. " Ye daft auld wife ! " she said, answering a thought that was not; and she blushed with the innocent consciousness of a child. Hastily she did up the massive and shining coils, hastily donned a wrapper, and with the rush-light in her hand, stole into the hall. Below stairs she heard the clock ticking the deliberate seconds, and Frank jingling with the decanters in the dining-room. Aversion rose in her, bitter and momentary. "Nesty, tippling puggy!" she thought; and the iS4 WEIR OF HERMISTON next moment she had knocked guardedly at Archie's door and was bidden enter. Archie had been looking out into the ancient blackness, pierced here and there with a rayless star; taking the sweet air of the moors and the night into his bosom deeply ; seeking, perhaps find- ing, peace after the manner of the unhappy. He turned round as she came in, and showed her a pale face against the window-frame. " Is that you, Kirstie? " he asked. " Come in ! " " It $ unco late, my dear," said Kirstie, affect- ing unwillingness. " No, no," he answered, " not at all. Come in, if you want a crack. I am not sleepy, God knows." She advanced, took a chair by the toilet table and the candle, and set the rush-light at her foot. Something it might be in the comparative dis- order of her dress, it might be the emotion that now welled in her bosom had touched her with a wand of transformation, and she seemed young with the youth of goddesses. " Mr. Erchie," she began, " what 's this that 's come to ye? " " I am not aware of anything that has come^" said Archie, and blushed and repented bitterly that he had let her in. "Oh, my dear, that'll no dae!" said Kirstie. " It 's ill to blind the eyes of love. Oh, Mr. Erchie, tak' a thocht ere it 's ower late. Ye shouldnae be impatient o' the braws o' life, they'll a' come in their saison, like the sun and the rain. Ye 're WEIR OF HERMISTON 155 young yet ; ye 've mony cantie years afore ye. S^e and dinnae wreck yersel at the outset like sae mony ithers! Hae patience they telled me aye that was the owercome o' life hae patience, there 's a braw day coming yet. Gude kens it never cam to me; and here I am wi' nayther man nor bairn to ca' my ain, wearying a' folks wi' my ill tongue, and you just the first, Mr. Erchie?" " I have a difficulty in knowing what you mean," said Archie. " Weel, and I '11 tell ye," she said. " It 's just this, that I'm feared. I'm feared for ye, my dear. Remember, your faither is a hard man, reaping where he hasnae sowed and gaithering where he hasnae strawed. It 's easy speakin', but mind ! Ye '11 have to look in the gurly face o'm, where it 's ill to look, and vain to look for mercy. Ye mind me o' a bonny ship pitten oot into the black and gowsty seas ye 're a' safe still sittin' quait and crackin' wi' Kirstie in your lown chalmer ; but whaur will ye be the morn, and in whatten horror o' the fearsome tempest, cryin' on the hills to cover ye ? " " Why, Kirstie, you 're very enigmatical to- night and very eloquent," Archie put in. " And, my dear Mr. Erchie," she continued, with a change of voice, " ye mauna think that I canna sympathise wi' ye. Ye mauna think that I havena been young mysel'. Langsyne, when I was a bit lassie, no twenty yet " She paused and sighed. " Clean and caller, wi' a fit like the hinney bee," she continued. " I was aye big and buirdly, ye 156 WEIR OF HERMISTON maun understand; a bonny figure o' a woman, though I say it that suldna built to rear bairns braw bairns they suld hae been, and grand I would hae likit it! But I was young, dear, wi' the bonny glint o' youth in my e'en, and little I dreamed I 'd ever be tellin' ye this, an auld, lanely, rudas wife! Weel, Mr. Erchie, there was a lad cam' courtin' me, as was but naetural. Mony had come before, and I would nane o' them. But this yin had a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and the bees frae the fox-glove bells. Deary me, but it 's lang syne. Folk have deed sinsyne and been buried, and are forgotten, and bairns been born and got merrit and got bairns o' their ain. Sinsyne woods have been plantit, and have grawn up and are bonny trees, and the joes sit in their shadow, and sinsyne auld estates have changed hands, and there have been wars and rumours of wars on the face of the earth. And here I 'm still like an auld droopit craw lookin' on and craikin'? But, Mr. Erchie, do ye no think that I have mind o' it a' still ? I was dwalling then in my faither's house ; and it 's a curious thing that we were whiles trysted in the Deil's Hags. And do ye no think that I have mind of the bonny simmer days, the lang miles, o' the bluid-red heather, the cryin' o' the whaups, and the lad and the lassie that was trysted? Do ye no think that I mind how the hilly sweetness ran about my hairt ? Ay, Mr. Erchie, I ken the way o' it fine do I ken the way how the grace o' God takes them like Paul of Tarsus, when they think o' it least, WEIR OF HERMISTON 157 and drives the pair o' them into a land which is like a dream, and the world and the folks in 't are nae mair than clouds to the puir lassie, and Heeven nae mair than windle-straes, if she can but plees- ure him ! Until Tarn deed that was my story," she broke off to say, " he deed, and I wasna at the buryin'. But while he was here, I could take care o' mysel'. And can yon puir lassie?" Kirstie, her eyes shining with unshed tears, stretched out her hand towards him appealingly; the bright and the dull gold of her hair flashed and smouldered in the coils behind her comely head, like the rays of an eternal youth; the pure colour had risen in her face; and Archie was abashed alike by her beauty and her story. He came towards her slowly from the window, took up her hand in his and kissed it. " Kirstie," he said hoarsely, " you have mis- judged me sorely. I have always thought of her, I wouldna harm her for the universe, my woman." " Eh, lad, and that 's easy sayin'," cried Kirstie, " but it 's nane sae easy doin' ! Man, do ye no comprehend that it 's God's wull we should be blendit and glamoured, and have nae command over our ain members at a time like that? My bairn," she cried, still holding his hand, " think o' the puir lass! have pity upon her, Erchie! and O, be wise for twa! Think o' the risk she rins! I have seen ye, and what 's to prevent ithers ? I saw ye once in the Hags, in my ain howl, and I was wae to see ye there in pairt for the omen, for I think there 's a weird on the place and in 158 WEIR OF HERMISTON pairt for puir nakit envy and bitterness o' hairt. It 's strange ye should forgather there tae ! God ! but yon puir, thrawn, auld Covenanter 's seen a heap o' human natur since he lookit his last on the musket barrels, if he never saw nane afore," she added with a kind of wonder in her eyes. " I swear by my honour I have done her no wrong," said Archie. " I swear by my honour and the redemption of my soul that there shall none be done her. I have heard of this before. I have been foolish, Kirstie, not unkind and, above all, not base." " There 's my bairn ! " said Kirstie, rising. " I '11 can trust ye noo, I '11 can gang to my bed wi' an easy hairt." And then she saw in a flash how barren had been her triumph. Archie had prom- ised to spare the girl, and he would keep it; but who had promised to spare Archie? What was to be the end of it? Over a maze of difficulties she glanced, and saw, at the end of every passage, the flinty countenance of Hermiston. And a kind of horror fell upon her at what she had done. She wore a tragic mask. " Erchie, the Lord peety you, dear, and peety me! I have buildit on this foun- dation," laying her hand heavily on his shoulder " and buildit hie, and pit my hairt in the buildin' of it. If the hale hypothec were to fa', I think, laddie, I would dee! Excuse a daft wife that loves ye, and that kenned your mither. And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae inordinate de- sires ; haud your heart in baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh ; dinna send it up like a bairn's WEIR OF HERMISTON 159 kite into the collieshangie o' the wunds? Mind, Maister Erchie dear, that this life's a disappoint- ment, and a mouth fu' o' mools is the appointed end." " Ay, but, Kirstie, my woman, you 're asking me ower much at last," said Archie, profoundly moved, and lapsing into the broad Scots. " Ye 're asking what nae man can grant ye, what only the Lord of heaven can grant ye if He see fit. Ay! And can even he? I can promise ye what I shall do, and you can depend on that. But how I shall feel my woman, that is long past thinking of ! " They were both standing by now opposite each other. The face of Archie wore the wretched semblance of a smile; hers was convulsed for a moment. " Promise me ae thing," she cried, in a sharp voice. " Promise me ye '11 never do naething with- out telling me." " No, Kirstie, I canna promise ye that," he re- plied. " I have promised enough, God kens ! " " May the blessing of God lift and rest upon ye, dear ! " she said. " God bless ye, my old friend," said he. CHAPTER IX AT THE WEAVER'S STONE IT was late in the afternoon when Archie drew near by the hill path to the Praying Weaver's Stone. The Hags were in shadow. But still, through the gate of the Slap, the sun shot a last arrow, which spread far and straight across the surface of the moss, here and there touching and shining on a tussock, and lighted at length on the gravestone and the small figure awaiting him there. /The emptiness and solitude of the great moors seemed to be concentred there, and Kirstie pointed out by that figure of sunshine for the only inhab- itant. His first sight of her was thus excruciat- ingly sad, like a glimpse of a world from which all light, comfort, and society were on the point of vanishing./ And the next moment, when she had turned d\er face to him and the quick smile had enlightened it, the whole face of nature smiled upon him in her smile of welcome. Archie's slow pace was quickened ; his legs hasted to her though his heart was hanging back. The girl, upon her side, drew herself together slowly and stood up, ex- pectant; she was all languor, her face was gone white; her arms ached for him, her soul was on WEIR OF HERMISTON 161 tiptoes. But he deceived her, pausing a few steps away, not less white than herself, and holding up his hand with a gesture of denial. " No, Christina, not to-day," he said. " To-day I have to talk to you seriously. Sit ye down, please, there where you were. Please ! " he repeated. The revulsion of feeling in Christina's heart was violent. To have longed and waited these weary hours for him, rehearsing her endearments to have seen him at last come to have been ready there, breathless, wholly passive, his to do what he would with and suddenly to have found herself confronted with a grey-faced, harsh school- master it was too rude a shock. She could have wept, but pride withheld her. She sat down on the stone, from which she had arisen, part with the instinct of obedience, part as though she had been thrust there. What was this? Why was she re- jected? Had she ceased to please ? She stood here offering her wares, and he would none of them! And yet they were all his ! His to take and keep, not his to refuse though! In her quick petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted love and wounded vanity wrought. The school- master that there is in all men, to the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in possession of Archie. He had passed a night of sermons ; a day of reflection ; he had come wound up to do his duty ; and the set mouth, which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed the expression of an averted heart. It was the same with his constrained voice and embarrassed 162 WEIR OF HERMISTON utterance ; and if so if it was all over the pang of the thought took away from her the power of thinking. He stood before her some way off. " Kirstie, there *s been too much of this. We 've seen too much of each other." She looked up quickly and her eyes contracted. " There 's no good ever comes of these secret meetings. They 're not frank, not honest truly, and I ought to have seen it. People have begun to talk ; and it 's not right of me. Do you see?" " I see somebody will have been talking to ye," she said sullenly. " They have, more than one of them," replied Archie. " And whae were they ? " she cried. " And what kind o' love do ye ca' that, that 's ready to gang round like a whirligig at folk talking? Do ye think they havena talked to me ? " " Have they indeed ? " said Archie, with a quick breath. " That is what I feared. Who were they? Who has dared " Archie was on the point of losing his temper. As a matter of fact, not any one had talked to Christina on the matter; and she strenuously re- peated her own first question in a panic of self- defence. " Ah, well ! what does it matter ? " he said. " They were good folk that wished well to us, and the great affair is that there are people talking. My dear girl, we have to be wise. We must not wreck our lives at the outset. They may be long WEIR OF HERMISTON 163 and happy yet, and we must see to it, Kirstie, like God's rational creatures and not like fool children. There is one thing we must see to before all. You 're worth waiting for, Kirstie ! worth waiting for a generation ; it would be enough reward." And here he remembered the schoolmaster again, and very unwisely took to following wisdom. " The first thing that we must see to, is that there shall be no scandal about for my father's sake. That would ruin all; do ye no see that?" Kirstie was a little pleased, there had been some show of warmth of sentiment in what Archie had said last. But the dull irritation still persisted in her bosom; with the aboriginal instinct, having suffered herself, she wished to make Archie suffer. And besides, there had come out the word she had always feared to hear from his lips, the name of his father. It is not to be supposed that, during so many days with a love avowed between them, some reference had not been made to their con- joint future. It had in fact been often touched upon, and from the first had been the sore point. Kirstie had wilfully closed the eye of thought; she would not argue even with herself; gallant, desperate little heart, she had accepted the com- mand of that supreme attraction like the call of fate and marched blindfold on her doom. But Archie, with his masculine sense of responsibility, must reason ; he must dwell on some future good, when the present good was all in all to Kirstie; he must talk and talk lamely, as necessity drove him of what was to be. Again and again he 164 WEIR OF HERMISTON had touched on marriage; again and again been driven back into indistinctness by a memory of Lord Hermiston. And Kirstie had been swift to understand and quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recog- nise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. She was raised up and dashed down again bleeding. The recurrence of the subject forced her, for however short a time, to open her eyes on what she did not wish to see; and it had invariably ended in another disappoint- ment. So now again, at the mere wind of its com- ing, at the mere mention of his father's name who might seem indeed to have accompanied them in their whole moorland courtship, an awful figure in a wig with an ironical and bitter smile, present to guilty consciousness she fled from it head down. " Ye havena told me yet," she said, " who was it spoke ? " " Your aunt for one," said Archie. " Auntie Kirstie ? " she cried. " And what do I care for my auntie Kirstie ? " WEIR OF HERMISTON 165 " She cares a great deal for her niece," replied Archie, in kind reproof. " Troth, and it 's the first I Ve heard of it," re- torted the girl. " The question here is not who it is, but what they say, what they have noticed," pursued the lucid schoolmaster. " That is what we have to think of in self-defence." " Auntie Kirstie, indeed ! A bitter, thrawn auld maid that >s fomented trouble in the country be- fore I was born, and will be doing it still, I daur say, when I 'm deid ! It 's in her nature ; it 's as natural for her as it 's for a sheep to eat." " Pardon me, Kirstie, she was not the only one," interposed Archie. " I had two warnings, two sermons, last night, both most kind and considerate. Had you been there, I promise you you would have grat, my dear ! And they opened my eyes. I saw we were going a wrong way." " Who was the other one? " Kirstie demanded. By this time Archie was in the condition of a hunted beast. He had come, braced and reso- lute ; he was to trace out a line of conduct for the pair of them in a few cold, convincing sentences; he had now been there some time, and he was still staggering round the outworks and undergoing what he felt to be a savage cross-examination. "Mr. Frank!" she cried. " What nex', I would like to ken?" " He spoke most kindly and truly." "What like did he say?" " I am not going to tell you ; you have nothing 166 WEIR OF HERMISTON to do with that," cried Archie, startled to find he had admitted so much. " O, I have naething to do with it ! " she re- peated, springing to her feet. " A'body at Hermis- ton 's free to pass their opinions upon me, but I have naething to do wi' it! Was this at prayers like? Did ye ca' the grieve into the consultation? Little wonder if a'body 's talking, when ye make a'body ye're confidants! But as you say, Mr. Weir, most kindly, most considerately, most truly, I 'm sure, I have naething to do with it. And I think I '11 better be going. I '11 be wishing you good-evening, Mr. Weir." And she made him a stately curtsey, shaking as she did so from head to foot, with the barren ecstasy of temper. Poor Archie stood dumfounded. She had moved some steps away from him before he re- covered the gift of articulate speech. " Kirstie! " he cried. " O, Kirstie woman! " There was in his voice a ring of appeal, a clang of mere astonishment that showed the schoolmaster was vanquished. She turned round on him. " What do ye Kirstie me for? " she retorted. " What have ye to do wi' me? Gang to your ain freends and deave them! " He could only repeat the appealing " Kirstie! " " Kirstie, indeed ! " cried the girl, her eyes blaz- ing in her white face. " My name is Miss Christina Elliott, I would have ye to ken, and I daur ye to ca' me out of it. If I canna get love, I '11 have respect, Mr. Weir. I 'm come of decent people, and I '11 have respect. What have I done that ye WEIR OF HERMISTON 167 should lightly me? What have I done? What have I done? O, what have I done?" and her voice rose upon the third repetition. " I thocht I thocht I thocht I was sae happy ! " and the first sob broke from her like the paroxysm of some mortal sickness. j? Archie ran to her. He took the poor child in his arms, and she nestled to his breast as to a mother's, and clasped him in hands that were strong like vices. He felt her whole body shaken by the throes of distress, and had pity upon her beyond speech. Pity, and at the same time a be- wildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There arose from before him the curtains of boyhood, and he saw for the first time the ambiguous face of woman as she is. In vain he looked back over the interview ; he saw not where he had offended. It seemed unprovoked, a v/ilful convulsion of brute nature. . . . EDITORIAL NOTE With the words last printed, " a wilful convulsion of brute nature," the romance of Weir of Hermiston breaks off. They were dictated, I believe, on the very morning of the writer's sudden seizure and death. Weir of Hermiston thus remains in the work of Stevenson what Edwin Drood is in the work of Dickens or Denis Duval in that of Thackeray : or rather it remains relatively more, for if each of those fragments holds an honourable place among its author's writings, among Stevenson's the fragment of Weir holds certainly the highest. Readers may be divided in opinion on the question whether they would or they would not wish to hear more of the in- tended course of the story and destinies of the characters. To some, silence may seem best, and that the mind should be left to its own conjectures as to the sequel, with the help of such indications as the text affords. I confess that this is the view which has my sympathy. But since others, and those almost certainly a majority, are anxious to be told all they can, and since editors and publishers join in the request, I can scarce do otherwise than comply. The intended argu- ment, then, so far as it was known at the time of the writer's death to his step-daughter and devoted amanuensis, Mrs. Strong, was nearly as follows : Archie persists in his good resolution of avoiding further conduct compromising to young Kirstie's good name. Taking advantage of the situation thus created, and of the girl's un- happiness and wounded vanity, Frank Innes pursues his pur- pose of seduction ; and Kirstie, though still caring for Archie in her heart, allows herself to become Frank's victim. Old Kirstie is the first to perceive something amiss with her, and believing Archie to be the culprit, accuses him, thus making him aware for the first time that mischief has happened. He does not at once deny the charge, but seeks out and questions 170 WEIR OF HER MIST ON young Kirstie, who confesses the truth to him ; and he, still loving her, promises to protect and defend her in her trouble. He then has an interview with Frank Innes on the moor, which ends in a quarrel, and in Archie killing Frank beside the Weaver's Stone. Meanwhile the Four Black Brothers, having become aware of their sister's betrayal, are bent on vengeance against Archie as her supposed seducer. They are about to close in upon him with this purpose, when he is arrested by the officers of the law for the murder of Frank. He is tried before his own father, the Lord Justice-Clerk, found guilty, and condemned to death. Meanwhile the elder Kirstie, having discovered from the girl how matters really stand, informs her nephews of the truth : and they, in a great revulsion of feeling in Archie's favour, determine on an action after the ancient manner of their house. They gather a fol- lowing, and after a great fight break the prison where Archie lies confined, and rescue him. He and young Kirstie there- after escape to America. But the ordeal of taking part in the trial of his own son has been too much for the Lord Justice- Clerk, who dies of the shock. " I do not know," adds the amanuensis, " what becomes of old Kirstie, but that character grew and strengthened so in the writing that I am sure he had some dramatic destiny for her." The plan of every imaginative work is subject, of course, to change under the artist's hand as he carries it out ; and not merely the character of the elder Kirstie, but other elements of the design no less, might well have deviated from the lines originally traced. It seems certain, however, that the next stage in the relations of Archie and the younger Kirstie would have been as above foreshadowed; this conception of the lover's unconventional chivalry and unshaken devo- tion to his mistress after her fault is very characteristic of the author's mind. The vengeance to be taken on the seducer beside the Weaver's Stone is prepared for in the first words of the Introduction : while the situation and fate of the judge, confronting like a Brutus, but unable to survive, the duty of sending his own son to the gallows, seems clearly to have been destined to furnish the climax and essential tragedy of the tale. How this circumstance was to have been brought EDITORIAL NOTE 171 about within the limits of legal usage and social possibility, seems hard to conjecture; but it was a point to which the author had evidently given careful consideration. Mrs. Strong says simply that the Lord Justice-Clerk, like an old Roman, condemns his son to death ; but I am assured, on the best legal authority of Scotland, that no judge, however powerful either by character or office, could have insisted on presiding at the trial of a near kinsman of his own. The Lord Justice- Clerk was head of the criminal justiciary of the country ; he might have insisted on his right of being present on the bench when his son was tried ; but he would never have been allowed to preside or to pass sentence. Now in a letter of Stevenson's to Mr. Baxter, of October 1892, I find him asking for materials in terms which seem to indicate that he knew this quite well : "I wish Pitcairn's * Criminal Trials,' quam primum. Also an absolutely correct text of the Scots judiciary oath. Also, in case Pitcairn does not come down late enough, I wish as full a report as possible of a Scots murder trial between 1 790-1820. Understand, the fullest possible. Is there any book which would guide me to the following facts ? The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on circuit. Certain evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to the Justice- Clerk's own son. Of course in the next trial the Justice-Clerk is excluded, and the case is called before the Lord Justice- General. Where would this trial have to be? I fear in Edinburgh, which would not suit my view. Could it be again at the circuit town?" The point was referred to a quondam fellow-member with Stevenson of the Edinburgh Speculative Society, Mr. Graham Murray, the present Solicitor- General for Scotland ; whose reply was to the effect that there would be no difficulty in making the new trial take place at the circuit town: that it would have to be held there in spring or autumn, before two Lords of Justiciary; and that the Lord Justice-General would have nothing to do with it, this title being at the date in question only a nominal one held by a layman (which is no longer the case). On this Stevenson writes, " Graham Murray's note re the venue was highly satisfactory, and did me all the good in the world." The terms of his inquiry seem to imply that he intended other persons, before Archie, to have fallen first under suspicion of 172 WEIR OF HERMISTON the murder ; and also doubtless in order to make the rescue by the Black Brothers possible that he wanted Archie to be imprisoned not in Edinburgh but in the circuit town. But they do not show how he meant to get over the main diffi- culty, which at the same time he fully recognises. Can it have been that Lord Hermiston's part was to have been limited to presiding at thejirst trial, where the evidence incriminating Archie was unexpectedly brought forward, and to directing that the law should take its course? Whether the final escape and union of Archie and Christina would have proved equally essential to the plot may perhaps to some readers seem questionable. They may rather feel that a tragic destiny is foreshadowed from the beginning for all concerned, and is inherent in the very conditions of the tale. But on this point, and other matters of general criti- cism connected with it, I find an interesting discussion by the author himself in his correspondence. Writing to Mr. J. M. Barrie, under date November i, 1892, and criticising that author's famous story, of The Little Minister, Stevenson says : " Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are frightfully unconscientious. . . . The Little Minister ought to have ended badly ; we all know it did, and we are infinitely grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with which you have lied about it. If you had told the truth, I for one could never have forgiven you. As you had conceived and written the earlier parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably true to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a dis- cord in art. If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning. Now, your book began to end well. You let yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets. Once you had done that, your honour was committed at the cost of truth to life you were bound to save them. It is the blot on Richard Feverel, for instance, that it begins to end well ; and then tricks you and ends ill. But in this case, there is worse behind, for the ill ending does not inherently issue from the plot the story had, in fact, ended well after the great last interview between Richard and Lucy, and the blind, illogical bullet which smashes all has no more to do between the boards than a fly EDITORIAL NOTE 173 has to do with a room into whose open window it comes buzzing. It might have so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we have no right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield only his name is Hermiston has a son who is condemned to death ; plainly there is a fine tempting fitness about this and I meant he was to hang. But on considering my minor characters, I saw there were five people who would in a sense, who must break prison and attempt his rescue. They are capable hardy folks too, who might very well succeed. Why should they not then ? Why should not young Hermiston escape clear out of the country ? and be happy, if he could, with his but soft! I will not betray my secret nor my heroine. ..." To pass, now, from the question how the story would have ended to the question how it originated and grew in the writer's mind. The character of the hero, Weir of Hermis- ton, is avowedly suggested by the historical personality of Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield. This famous judge has been for generations the subject of a hundred Edinburgh tales and anecdotes. Readers of Stevenson's essay on the Rae- burn exhibition in Virginibus Puerisque, will remember how he is fascinated by Raeburn's portrait of Braxfield, even as Lockhart had been fascinated by a different portrait of the same worthy sixty years before (see Peter's Letters to His Kinsfolk) ; nor did his interest in the character diminish in later life. Again, the case of a judge involved by the exigencies of his office in a strong conflict between public duty and private interest or affection, was one which had always attracted and exercised Stevenson's imagination. In the days when he and Mr. Henley were collaborating with a view to the stage, Mr. Henley once proposed a plot founded on the story of Mr. Justice Harbottle in Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly, in which the wicked judge goes headlong per fas et nefas to his object of getting the husband of his mistress hanged. Some time later Stevenson and his wife together wrote a play called The Hanging Judge. In this, the title character is tempted for the first time in his life to tamper with the course of justice, in order to shield his wife from persecution by a 174 WEIR OF HERMISTON former husband who reappears after being supposed dead. Bulwer's novel of Paul Clifford, with its final situation of the worldly-minded judge, Sir William Brandon, learning that the highwayman whom he is in the act of sentencing is his own son, and dying of the knowledge, was also well known to Stevenson, and no doubt counted for something in the sugges- tion of the present story. Once more, the difficulties often attending the relation of father and son in actual life had pressed heavily on Stevenson's mind and conscience from the days of his youth, when in obey- ing the law of his own nature he had been constrained to dis- appoint, distress, and for a time to be much misunderstood by, a father whom he justly loved and admired with all his heart. Difficulties of this kind he had already handled in a lighter vein once or twice in fiction as for instance in the Story of a Lie and in The Wrecker before he grappled with them in the acute and tragic phase in which they occur in the present story. These three elements, then, the interest of the historical personality of Lord Braxfield, the problems and emotions arising from a violent conflict between duty and nature in a judge, and the difficulties due to incompatibility and misunder- standing between father and son, lie at the foundations of the present story. To touch on minor matters, it is perhaps worth notice, as Mr. Henley reminds me, that the name of Weir had from of old a special significance for Stevenson's imagination, from the traditional fame in Edinburgh of Major Weir, burned as a warlock, together with his sister, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. Another name, that of the episodical per- sonage of Mr. Torrance the minister, is borrowed direct from life, as indeed are the whole figure and its surroundings kirkyard, kirk, and manse down even to the black thread mittens: witness the following passage from a letter of the early seventies : * I've been to church and am not depressed a great step. It was at that beautiful church [of Glencorse in the Pentlands, three miles from his father's country home at Swanston]. It is a little cruciform place, with a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of old gravestones; one of a Frenchman from Dunkerque, I suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by. And one, the most pathetic EDITORIAL NOTE 175 memorial I ever saw : a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the father's own hand. In church, old Mr. Torrance preached, over eighty and a relic of times forgotten, with his black thread gloves and mild old face." A side hint for a particular trait in the character of Mrs. Weir we can trace in some family traditions concerning the writer's own grandmother, who is reported to have valued piety much more than efficiency in her domestic servants. The other women characters seem, so far as his friends know, to have been pure creation, and especially that new and admirable incarnation of the eternal feminine in the elder Kirstie. The little that he says about her himself is in a letter written a few days before his death to Mr. Gosse. The allusions are to the various moods and attitudes of people in regard to middle age, and are suggested by Mr. Gosse's volume of poems, In Russet and Silver. " It seems rather funny," he writes, " that this matter should come up just now, as I am at present engaged in treating a severe case of middle age in one of my stories, The Justice-Clerk. The case is that of a woman, and I think I am doing her justice. You will be interested, I believe, to see the difference in our treatments. Secreta Vitae [the title of one of Mr. Gosse's poems] comes nearer to the case of my poor Kirstie." From the wonderful midnight scene between her and Archie, we may judge what we have lost in those later scenes where she was to have taxed him with the fault that was not his to have presently learned his innocence from the lips of his supposed victim to have then vindicated him to her kinsmen and fired them to the action of his rescue. The scene of the prison-breaking here planned by Stevenson would have gained interest (as will already have occurred to readers) from comparison with the two famous precedents in Scott, the Porteous mob, and the breaking of Portanferry Jail. The best account of Stevenson's methods of imaginative work is in the following sentences from a letter of his own to Mr. W. Craibe Angus of Glasgow: "I am still a 'slow study,' and sit for a long while silent on my eggs. Uncon- scious thought, there is the only method : macerate your sub- ject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and look in and there your stuff is good or bad." The several elements 176 WEIR OF HERMISTON above noted having been left to work for many years in his mind, it was in the autumn of 1892 that he was moved to " take the lid off and look in," under the influence, it would seem, of a special and overmastering wave of that feeling for the romance of Scottish scenery and character which was at all times so strong in him, and which his exile did so much to intensify. I quote again from his letter to Mr. Barrie on November 1 in that year: "It is a singular thing that I should live here in the South Seas under conditions so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit the cold old huddle of grey hills from which we come. I have finished David Balfour, I have another book on the stocks, The Young Chevalier, which is to be part in France and part in Scotland, and to deal with Prince Charlie about the year 1749; an d now what have I done but begun a third, which is to be all moorland together, and is to have for a centre- piece a figure that I think you will appreciate that of the immortal Braxfield. Braxfield himself is my grand premier or since you are so much involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead." Writing to me at the same date he makes the same an- nouncement more briefly, with a list of the characters and an indication of the scene and date of the story. To Mr. Baxter he writes a month later, " I have a novel on the stocks to be called The Justice- Clerk. It is pretty Scotch ; the grand pre- mier is taken from Braxfield (O, by the bye, send me Cock- burn's Memorials), and some of the story is, well, queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, and finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . . . Mind you, I expect The Justice-Clerk to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has gone far my best character." From the last extract it appears that he had already at this date drafted some of the earlier chapters of the book. He also about the same time composed the dedication to his wife, who found it pinned to her bed-curtains one morning on awaking. It was always his habit to keep several books in progress at the same time, turning from one to another as the fancy took him, and find- ing rest in the change of labour ; and for many months after the date of this letter, first illness, then a voyage to Auck- EDITORIAL NOTE 177 land, then work on the Ebb-Tide, on a new tale called St. Ives, which was begun during an attack of influenza, and on his projected book of family history, prevented his making any continuous progress with Weir. In August 1893 he says he has been recasting the beginning. A year later, still only the first four or five chapters had been drafted. Then, in the last weeks of his life, he attacked the task again, in a sudden heat of inspiration, and worked at it ardently and without inter- ruption until the end came. No wonder if during those weeks he was sometimes aware of a tension of the spirit difficult to sustain. "How can I keep this pitch?" he is reported to have said after finishing one of the chapters. To keep the pitch proved indeed beyond his strength ; and that frail organ- ism, taxed so long and so unsparingly in obedience to his indomitable will, at last betrayed him in mid effort. There remains one more point to be mentioned, as to the speech and manners of the Hanging Judge himself. That these are not a whit exaggerated, in comparison with what is recorded of his historic prototype, Lord Braxfield, is certain. The locus classicus in regard to this personage is in Lord Cockburn's Me?norials of his Time. " Strong built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and dialect were exaggerated Scotch ; his language, like his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive. Illiterate and without any taste for any refined enjoyment, strength of under- standing which gave him power without cultivation, only encouraged him to a more contemptuous disdain of all natures less coarse than his own. It may be doubted if he was ever so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows with an insulting jest. Yet this was not from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, but from cherished coarseness." Readers, nevertheless, who are at all acquainted with the social history of Scotland will hardly fail to have made the observation that Braxfield's is an extreme case of eighteenth century manners, as he himself was an eighteenth-century personage (he died in 1799 in his seventy-eighth year); and that for the date in which the story is cast (18 14) such manners are somewhat of an 178 WEIR OF HERMISTON anachronism. During the generation contemporary with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, or to put it another way, the generation that elapsed between the days when Scott roamed the country as a High School and Univer- sity student and those when he settled in the fulness of fame and prosperity at Abbotsford, or again (the allusions will appeal to readers of the admirable Gait) during the intervals between the first and the last provostry of Bailie Pawkie in the borough of Gudetown, or between the earlier and the final ministrations of Mr. Balwhidder in the parish of Dalmailing, during this period a great softening had taken place in Scottish manners generally, and in those of the Bar and Bench not least. " Since the death of Lord Justice-Clerk Macqueen of Braxfield," says Lockhart, writing about 1817, "the whole exterior of judicial deportment has been quite altered." A similar criticism may probably hold good on the picture of border life contained in the chapter concerning the Four Black Brothers of Cauldstaneslap, viz., that it rather suggests the ways of an earlier generation ; nor have I any clew to the reasons which led Stevenson to choose this particular date, in the year preceding Waterloo, for a story which, in regard to some of its features at least, might seem more naturally placed some twenty-five or thirty years before. If the reader seeks, farther, to know whether the scenery of Hermiston can be identified with any one special place familiar to the writer's early experience, the answer, I think, must be in the negative. Rather it is distilled from a number of different haunts and associations among the moorlands of southern Scotland. In the dedication and in a letter to me he indicates the Lammermuirs as the scene of his tragedy, and Mrs. Stevenson (his mother) tells me that she thinks he was inspired by recollections of a visit paid in boyhood to an uncle living at a remote farmhouse in that district called Over- shiels, in the parish of Stow. But although he may have thought of the Lammermuirs in the first instance, we have already found him drawing his description of the kirk and manse from another haunt of his youth, namely, Glencorse in the Pentlands. And passages in chapters v. and viii. point explicitly to a third district, that is, the country bordering upon Upper Tweeddale and the headwaters of the Clyde. EDITORIAL NOTE 179 With this country also holiday rides and excursions from Peebles had made him familiar as a boy : and this seems cer- tainly the most natural scene of the story, if only from its proximity to the proper home of the Elliotts, which of course is in the heart of the Border, especially Teviotdale and Ettrick. Some of the geographical names mentioned are clearly not meant to furnish literal indications. The Spango, for instance, is a water running, I believe, not into the Tweed, but into the Nith, and Crossmichael as the name of a town is borrowed from Galloway. But it is with the general and essential that the artist deals, and questions of strict historical perspective or local definition are beside the mark in considering his work. Nor will any reader expect, or be grateful for, comment in this place on matters which are more properly to the point on the seizing and penetrating power of the author's ripened art as exhibited in the foregoing pages, the wide range of character and emo- tion over which he sweeps with so assured a hand, his vital poetry of vision and magic of presentment. Surely no son of Scotland has died leaving with his last breath a worthier tribute to the land he loved. Sidney Colvin. GLOSSARY ae, one. antinomian, one of a sect which holds that under the Gospel dispensation the moral law is not obligatory. Auld Hornie, the Devil. ballant, ballad. bauchles, brogues, old shoes. bees in their bonnet, fads. birling, whirling. black-a-vised, dark-complex- ioned. bonnet-laird, small landed pro- prietor. bool, ball. brae, rising ground. butt end, end of a cottage. byre, cow-house. ca', drive. caller, fresh. canna, cannot. canny, careful, shrewd. cantie, cheerful. carline, an old woman. chalmer, chamber. claes, clothes. clamjamfry, crowd. clavers, idle talk. cock-laird, a yeoman. collieshangie, turmoil. crack, to converse. cuddy, donkey. cuist, cast. cutty, slut. daft, mad, frolicsome. dander, to saunter. danders, cinders. daurna, dare not. deave, to deafen. demmy brokens, demi-broquins. dirdum, vigour. disjaskit, worn out, disreputable- looking. doer, law agent. dour, hard. drumlie, dark. dule-tree, the tree of lamenta- tion, the hanging tree: dule is also Scots for boundary, and it may mean the boundary tree, the tree on which the baron hung interlopers. dunting, knocking. dwaibly, infirm, rickety, earrand, errattd. ettercap, vixen. fechting, fighting. feck, quantity, portion. feckless, feeble, powerless. fell, strong and fiery. fey, unlike yourself, strange, as persons are observed to be in the hour of approaching death or disaster. fit, foot. flyped, turned up, turned inside out. forgather, to fall in with. i\ile,fool. i82 WEIR OF HERMISTON f ushionless, pithless ; weak. fyle, to soil, to defile. fyleinent, obloquy, defilement. gaed, went. gey an', very. gigot, leg of mutton. girzie, lit. diminutive of Grizel, here a playful nickname. glaur, mud. glint, glance, sparkle. gloaming, twilight. glower, to scowl. gobbets, small lumps. gowden, golden. gowsty, gusty. grat, wept. grieve, land steward. guddle, to catch fish with the hands by groping under the stones or banks. guid, good. gumption, common sense, judg- ment. gurley, stormy, surly. gyte, beside itself. haddit, held. hae, have, take. hale, whole. heels-ower-hurdie, heels ever head. hinney, honey. hirstle, to bustle. hizzie, wench. howl, hovel. hunkered, crouched. hypothec, lit. a term in Scots law meaning the security given by a tenant to a landlord, as furni- ture, produce, etc. ; by metonymy and colloquially, "the whole structure? "the whole af- fair'* idleset, idleness. infeftment, a term in Scots law originally synonymous with in- vestiture. jeely-piece, a slice of bread and . jelly. jennipers, juniper. jo, sweetheart. justifeed, executed, made the vic- tim of justice, jyle, jail. kebbuck, cheese. ken, to know. kenspeckle, conspicuous. kilted, tucked up. kyte, belly. laigh, low. laird, landed proprietor. lane, alone. lave, rest, remainder. lown, lonely, still. lynn, cataract. macers, officers of the court [c Guy Mannering, last chapter], maun, must. menseful, of good manners. mirk, dark. misbegowk, deception, disap- pointment. mools, mould, earth. muckle, much, great, big. . my lane, by myself. nowt, black cattle. palmering, walking infirmly. panel, in Scots law, the accused person in a criminal action, the prisoner. GLOSSARY '83 peel, a fortified watch-tower. plew-stilts, plough-handles. policy, ornamental grounds of a country mansion. puddock,/hjf. quean, wench. riffraff, rabble. risping, grating. rowt, to roar, to rant. rowth, abundance. rudas, haggard old woman. runt, an old cow past breeding; opprobriously, an old woman. sab, sob. sanguishes, sandwiches. sasine, in Scots law, the act of giving legal possession of feudal property, or, colloquially, the deed by which that possession is proved. sclamber, to scramble. sculduddery, impropriety, gross- ness. session, the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland. shauchling, shuffling. shoo, to chase gently. siller, money. sinsyne, since then. skailing, dispersing. skelp, slap. skirling, screaming. skreigh-o'-day, daybreak. snash, abuse. sneisty, supercilious. sooth, to hum. speir, to ask. speldering, sprawling. splairge, to splash. spunk, spirit, fire. steik, to shut. sugar-bool, sugar-plum. tawpie, a slow, foolish slut. telling you, a good thing for you. thir, these. thrawn, cross-grained. toon, town. two-names, local sobriquets in addition to patronymic. tyke, dog. unchancy, unlucky. unco, strange, extraordinary ', very. upsitten, impertinent. vivers, victuals. waling, choosing. warrandise, warranty. waur, worse. weird, destiny. whammle, to upset. whaup, curlew. windlestrae, crested dog's-tail grass. yin, one. THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON CHAPTER I IN WHICH JOHN SOWS THE WIND JOHN VAREY NICHOLSON was stupid; yet, stupider men than he are now sprawling in Parliament, and lauding themselves as the authors of their own distinction. He was of a fat habit, even from boyhood, and inclined to a cheerful and cursory reading of the face of life; and possibly this attitude of mind was the original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond this hint philoso- phy is silent on his career, and superstition steps in with the more ready explanation that he was detested of the gods. His father that iron gentleman had long ago enthroned himself on the heights of the Dis- ruption Principles. What these are (and in spite of their grim name they are quite innocent) no array of terms would render thinkable to the merely English intelligence; but to the Scot they often prove unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nicholson found in them the milk of lions. About the period when the churches convene at Edinburgh in their i88 THE MISADVENTURES annual assemblies, he was to be seen descending the mound in the company of divers red-headed clergymen: these voluble, he only contributing oracular nods, brief negatives, and the austere spectacle of his stretched upper lip. The names of Candlish and Begg were frequent in these inter- views, and occasionally the talk ran on the Residu- ary Establishment and the doings of one Lee. A stranger to the tight little theological kingdom of Scotland might have listened and gathered liter- ally nothing. And Mr. Nicholson (who was not a dull man) knew this, and raged at it. He knew there was a vast world outside, to whom Disrup- tion Principles were as the chatter of tree-top apes ; the paper brought him chill whiffs from it; he had met Englishmen who had asked lightly if he did not belong to the Church of Scotland, and then had failed to be much interested by his elu- cidation of that nice point; it was an evil, wild, rebellious world, lying sunk in dozenedness, for nothing short of a Scot's word will paint this Scotsman's feelings. And when he entered into his own house in Randolph Crescent (south side), and shut the door behind him, his heart swelled with security. Here, at least, was a citadel im- pregnable by right-hand defections or left-hand ex- tremes. Here was a family where prayers came at the same hour, where the Sabbath literature was unimpeachably selected, where the guest who should have leaned to any false opinion was in- stantly set down, and over which there reigned all week, and grew denser on Sundays, a silence that OF JOHN NICHOLSON 189 was agreeable to his ear, and a gloom that he found comfortable. Mrs. Nicholson had died about thirty, and left him with three children: a daughter two years, and a son about eight years younger than John; and John himself, the unlucky bearer of a name infamous in English history. The daughter, Maria, was a good girl dutiful, pious, dull, but so easily startled that to speak to her was quite a perilous enterprise. " I don't think I care to talk about that, if you please/' she would say, and strike the boldest speechless by her unmistakable pain; this upon all topics dress, pleasure, morality, politics, in which the formula was changed to " my papa thinks otherwise," and even religion, unless it was approached with a particular whining tone of voice. Alexander, the younger brother, was sickly, clever, fond of books and drawing, and full of satirical remarks. In the midst of these, imagine that natural, clumsy, unintelligent, and mirthful animal, John; mighty well-behaved in comparison with other lads, although not up to the mark of the house in Randolph Crescent; full of a sort of blundering affection, full of caresses which were never very warmly received; full of sudden and loud laughter which rang out in that still house like curses. Mr. Nicholson himself had a great fund of humour, of the Scots order intellectual, turning on the observation of men ; his own char- acter, for instance if he could have seen it in another would have been a rare feast to him; but his son's empty guffaws over a broken plate, 190 THE MISADVENTURES and empty, almost light-hearted remarks, struck him with pain as the indices of a weak mind. Outside the family John had early attached him- self (much as a dog may follow a marquis) to the steps of Alan Houston, a lad about a year older than himself, idle, a trifle wild, the heir to a good estate which was still in the hands of a rigorous trustee, and so royally content with himself that he took John's devotion as a thing of course. The intimacy was gall to Mr. Nicholson; it took his son from the house, and he was a jealous parent ; it kept him from the office, and he was a martinet ; lastly, Mr. Nicholson was ambitious for his family (in which, and the Disruption Principles, he en- tirely lived), and he hated to see a son of his play second fiddle to an idler. After some hesi- tation, he ordered that the friendship should cease an unfair command, though seemingly inspired by the spirit of prophecy; and John, saying noth- ing, continued to disobey the order under the rose. John was nearly nineteen when he was one day dismissed rather earlier than usual from his father's office, where he was studying the practice of the law. It was Saturday; and except that he had a matter of four hundred pounds in his pocket which it was his duty to hand over to the British Linen Company's Bank, he had the whole afternoon at his disposal. He went by Prince's Street enjoying the mild sunshine, and the little thrill of easterly wind that tossed the flags along that terrace of palaces, and tumbled the green trees in the garden. The band was playing down in the valley under OF JOHN NICHOLSON 191 the castle; and when it came to the turn of the pipers, he heard their wild sounds with a stirring of the blood. Something distantly martial woke in him; and he thought of Miss Mackenzie, whom he was to meet that day at dinner. Now, it is undeniable that he should have gone directly to the bank, but right in the way stood the billiard-room of the hotel where Alan was almost certain to be found; and the temptation proved too strong. He entered the billiard-room, and was instantly greeted by his friend, cue in hand. " Nicholson," said he, " I want you to lend me a pound or two till Monday." " You Ve come to the right shop, have n't you ? " returned John. " I have twopence." " Nonsense," said Alan. " You can get some. Go and borrow at your tailor's; they all do it. Or I '11 tell you what : pop your watch." " Oh, yes, I dare say," said John. " And how about my father ? " " How is he to know ? He does n't wind it up for you at night, does he? " inquired Alan, at which John guffawed. "No, seriously; I am in a fix," continued the tempter. " I have lost some money to a man here. I '11 give it you to-night, and you can get the heirloom out again on Monday. Come ; it 's a small service, after all. I would do a good deal more for you." Whereupon John went forth, and pawned his gold watch under the assumed name of John Froggs, 85 Pleasance. But the nervousness that 192 THE MISADVENTURES assailed him at the door of that inglorious haunt a pawnshop and the effort necessary to in- vent the pseudonym (which, somehow, seemed to him a necessary part of the procedure), had taken more time than he imagined; and when he re- turned to the billiard-room with the spoils, the bank had already closed its doors. This was a shrewd knock. " A piece of business had been neglected." He heard these words in his father's trenchant voice, and trembled, and then dodged the thought. After all, who was to know ? He must carry four hundred pounds about with him till Monday, when the neglect could be sur- reptitiously repaired; and meanwhile, he was free to pass the afternoon on the encircling divan of the billiard-room, smoking his pipe, sipping a pint of ale, and enjoying to the mast-head the modest pleasures of admiration. None can admire like a young man. Of all youth's passions and pleasures, this is the most common and least alloyed; and every flash of Alan's black eyes ; every aspect of his curly head ; every graceful reach, every easy, stand-off attitude of waiting; ay, and down to his shirt-sleeves and wrist-links, were seen by John through a luxurious glory. He valued himself by the possession of that royal friend, hugged himself upon the thought, and swam in warm azure; his own defects, like vanquished difficulties, becoming things on which to plume himself. Only when he thought of Miss Mackenzie there fell upon his mind a shadow of regret; that young lady was worthy of better OF JOHN 'NICHOLSON 193 things than plain John Nicholson, still known among schoolmates by the- derisive name of " Fatty " ; and he felt, if he could chalk a cue, or stand at ease, with such a careless grace as Alan, he could approach the object of his sentiments with a less crushing sense of inferiority. Before they parted, Alan made a proposal that was startling in the extreme. He would be at Colette's that night about twelve, he said. Why should not John come there and get the money? To go to Colette's was to see life, indeed; it was wrong; it was against the laws; it partook, in a very dingy manner, of adventure. Were it known, it was the sort of exploit that disconsidered a young man for good with the more serious classes, but gave him a standing with the riotous. And yet Colette's was not a hell; it could not come, with- out vaulting hyperbole, under the rubric of a gilded saloon; and, if it was a sin to go there, the sin was merely local and municipal. Colette (whose name I do not know how to spell, for I was never in epistolary communication with that hospitable outlaw) was simply an unlicensed publican, who gave suppers after eleven at night, the Edinburgh hour of closing. If you belonged to a club, you could get a much better supper at the same hour, and lose not a jot in public esteem. But if you lacked that qualification, and were an hungered, or inclined toward conviviality at unlawful hours, Colette's was your only port. You were very ill- supplied. The company was not recruited from the Senate or the Church, though the Bar was 13 i 9 4 JOHN NICHOLSON very well represented on the only occasion on which I flew in the face of my country's laws, and, taking my reputation in my hand, penetrated into that grim supper-house. And Colette's fre- quenters, thrillingly conscious of wrong-doing and " that two-handed engine (the policeman) at the door," were perhaps inclined to somewhat feverish excess. But the place was in no sense a very bad one; and it is somewhat strange to me, at this distance of time, how it had acquired its dangerous repute. In precisely the same spirit as a man may debate a project to ascend the Matterhorn or to cross Africa, John considered Alan's proposal, and, greatly daring, accepted it. As he walked home, the thoughts of this excursion out of the safe places of life into the wild and arduous, stirred and struggled in his imagination with the image of Miss Mackenzie incongruous and yet kin- dred thoughts, for did not each imply unusual tightening of the pegs of resolution ? did not each woo him forth and warn him back again into himself? Between there two considerations, at least, he was more than usually moved; and when he got to Randolph Crescent, he quite forgot the four hundred pounds in the inner pocket of his great- coat, hung up the coat, with its rich freight, upon his particular pin of the hat-stand; and in the very action sealed his doom. CHAPTER II IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRLWIND ABOUT half-past ten it was John's brave L\ good-fortune to offer his arm to Miss X JL Mackenzie, and escort her home. The night was chill and starry; all the way eastward the trees of the different gardens rustled and looked black. Up the stone gully of Leith Walk, when they came to cross it, the breeze made a rush and set the flames of the street-lamps quavering; and when at last they had mounted to the Royal Ter- race, where Captain Mackenzie lived, a great salt freshness came in their faces from the sea. These phases of the walk remained written on John's memory, each emphasised by the touch of that light hand on his arm ; and behind all these aspects of the nocturnal city he saw, in his mind's eye, a picture of the lighted drawing-room at home where he had sat talking with Flora ; and his father, from the other end, had looked on with a kind and iron- ical smile. John had read the significance of that smile, which might have escaped a stranger. Mr. Nicholson had remarked his son's entanglement with satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it still was a thought contemptuous, had implied consent. 196 THE MISADVENTURES At the captain's door the girl held out her hand, with a certain emphasis ; and John took it and kept it a little longer, and said, " Good-night, Flora, dear," and was instantly thrown into much fear by his presumption. But she only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the bell; and while she was waiting for the door to open, kept close in the porch, and talked to him from that point as out of a forti- fication. She had a knitted shawl over her head; her blue Highland eyes took the light from the neighbouring street-lamp and sparkled; and when the door opened and closed upon her, John felt cruelly alone. He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow; and when he came to Greenside Church, he halted in a doubtful mind. Over the crown of the Calton Hill, to his left, lay the way to Colette's, where Alan would soon be looking for his arrival, and where he would now have no more consented to go than he would have wilfully wallowed in a bog; the touch of the girl's hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in his father's eyes, both loudly forbidding. But right before him was the way home, which pointed only to bed, a place of little ease for one whose fancy was strung to the lyrical pitch, and whose not very ardent heart was just then tumultuously moved. The hilltop, the cool air of the night, the company of the great monuments, the sight of the city under his feet, with its hills and valleys and crossing files of lamps, drew him by all he had of the poetic, and he turned that way; and by that quite innocent OF JOHN NICHOLSON 197 deflection, ripened the crop of his venial errors for the sickle of destiny. On a seat on the hill above Greenside he sat for perhaps half an hour, looking down upon the lamps of Edinburgh, and up at the lamps of heaven. Wonderful were the resolves he formed; beauti- ful and kindly were the vistas of future life that sped before him. He uttered to himself the name of Flora in so many touching and dramatic keys, that he became at length fairly melted with tender- ness, and could have sung aloud. At that juncture a certain creasing in his great-coat caught his ear. He put his hand into his pocket, pulled forth the envelope that held the money, and sat stupefied. The Calton Hill, about this period, had an ill name of nights; and to be sitting there with four hun- dred pounds that did not belong to him was hardly wise. He looked up. There was a man in a very bad hat a little on one side of him, apparently look- ing at the scenery; from a little on the other a second night-walker was drawing very quietly near. Up jumped John. The envelope fell from his hands; he stooped to get it, and at the same mo- ment both men ran in and closed with him. A little after, he got to his feet very sore and shaken, the poorer by a purse which contained exactly one penny postage-stamp, by a cambric handkerchief, and by the all-important envelope. Here was a young man on whom, at the highest point of loverly exaltation, there had fallen a blow too sharp to be supported alone; and not many hundred yards away his greatest friend was sitting 198 THE MISADVENTURES at supper ay, and even expecting him. Was it not in the nature of man that he should run there ? He went in quest of sympathy in quest of that droll article that we all suppose ourselves to want when in a strait, and have agreed to call advice; and he went, besides, with vague but rather splen- did expectations of relief. Alan was rich, or would be so when he came of age. By a stroke of the pen he might remedy this misfortune, and avert that dreaded interview with Mr. Nicholson, from which John now shrunk in imagination as the hand draws back from fire. Close under the Calton Hill there runs a certain narrow avenue, part street, part by-road. The head of it faces the doors of the prison; its tail de- scends into the sunless slums of the Low Calton. On one hand it is overhung by the crags of the hill, on the other by an old graveyard. Between these two the road- way runs in a trench, sparsely lighted at night, sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, when it has cleared the place of tombs, by dingy and ambiguous houses. One of these was the house of Colette ; and at his door our ill-starred John was presently beating for admittance. In an evil hour he satisfied the jealous inquiries of the contraband hotel-keeper ; in an evil hour he penetrated into the somewhat unsavoury interior. Alan, to be sure, was there, seated in a room lighted by noisy gas- jets, beside a dirty table-cloth, engaged on a coarse meal, and in the company of several tipsy members of the junior Bar. But Alan was not sober; he had lost a thousand pounds upon a horse-race, OF JOHN NICHOLSON 199 had received the news at dinner-time, and was now, in default of any possible means of extrica- tion, drowning the memory of his predicament. He to help John! The thing was impossible; he could n't help himself. " If you have a beast of a father/' said he, " I can tell you I have a brute of a trustee." " I 'm not going to hear my father called a beast," said John, with a beating heart, feeling that he risked the last sound rivet of the chain that bound him to life. But Alan was quite good-natured. " All right, old fellow," said he. " Mos' respec- 'able man your father." And he introduced his friend to his companions as " old Nicholson the what-d'ye-call-um's son." John sat in dumb agony. Colette's foul walls and maculate table-linen, and even down to Co- lette's villainous casters, seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just then there came a knock and a scurrying ; the police, so lamentably absent from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken flagrante delicto, with their glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched up to the police office, and all duly summoned to appear as wit- nesses in the consequent case against that arch- she-beener, Colette. It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered com- pany that came forth again. The vague terror of public opinion weighed generally on them all; but there were private and particular horrors on the minds of individuals. Alan stood in dread of 2oo THE MISADVENTURES his trustee, already sorely tried. One of the group was the son of a country minister, another of a judge; John, the unhappiest of all, had David Nicholson to father, the idea of facing whom on such a scandalous subject was physically sickening. They stood awhile consulting under the buttresses of St. Giles; thence they adjourned to the lodg- ings of one of the number in North Castle Street, where (for that matter) they might have had quite as good a supper, and far better drink, than in the dangerous paradise from which they had been routed. There, over an almost tearful glass, they debated their position. Each explained he had the world to lose if the affair went on, and he appeared as a witness. It was remarkable what bright prospects were just then in the very act of opening before each of that little company of youths, and what pious consideration for the feel- ings of their families began now to well from them. Each, moreover, was in an odd state of destitution. Not one could bear his share of the fine; not one but evinced a wonderful twinkle of hope that each of the others (in succession) was the very man who could step in to make good the deficit. One took a high hand ; he could not pay his share ; if it went to a trial, he should bolt ; he had always felt the English Bar to be his true sphere. Another branched out into touching details about his family, and was not listened to. John, in the midst of this disorderly competition of poverty and mean- ness, sat stunned, contemplating the mountain bulk of his misfortunes. OF JOHN NICHOLSON 201 At last, upon a pledge that each should apply to his family with a common frankness, this conven- tion of unhappy young asses broke up, went down the common stair, and in the grey of the spring morning, with the streets lying dead empty all about them, the lamps burning on into the daylight in diminished lustre, and the birds beginning to sound premonitory notes from the groves of the town gardens, went each his own way with bowed head and echoing footfall. The rooks were awake in Randolph Crescent; but the windows looked down, discreetly blinded, on the return of the prodigal. John's pass-key was a recent privilege; this was the first time it had been used; and, oh! with what a sickening sense of his unworthiness he now inserted it into the well-oiled lock and entered that citadel of the proprieties ! All slept ; the gas in the hall had been left faintly burning to light his return; a dread- ful stillness reigned, broken by the deep ticking of the eight-day clock. He put the gas out, and sat on a chair in the hall, waiting and counting the minutes, longing for any human countenance. But when at last he heard the alarm spring its rattle in the lower story, and the servants begin to be about, he instantly lost heart, and fled to his own room, where he threw himself upon the bed. CHAPTER III IN WHICH JOHN ENJOYS THE HARVEST HOME SHORTLY after breakfast, at which he as- sisted with a highly tragical countenance, John sought his father where he sat, presum- ably in religious meditation, on the Sabbath morn- ings. The old gentleman looked up with that sour, inquisitive expression that came so near to smil- ing and was so different in effect. " This is a time when I do not like to be dis- turbed/' he said. " I know that," returned John ; " but I have I want I 've made a dreadful mess of it," he broke out, and turned to the window. Mr. Nicholson sat silent for an appreciable time, while his unhappy son surveyed the poles in the back green, and a certain yellow cat that was perched upon the wall. Despair sat upon John as he gazed; and he raged to think of the dreadful series of his misdeeds, and the essential innocence that lay behind them. " Well," said the father, with an obvious effort, but in very quiet tones, " what is it ? " " Maclean gave me four hundred pounds to put JOHN NICHOLSON 203 in the bank, sir," began John ; " and I 'm sorry to say that I Ve been robbed of it ! " "Robbed of it?" cried Mr. Nicholson, with a strong rising inflection. " Robbed ? Be careful what you say, John ! " " I can't say anything else, sir ; I was just robbed of it," said John, in desperation, sullenly. " And where and when did this extraordinary event take place ? " inquired the father. " On the Calton Hill about twelve last night." "The Calton Hill?" repeated Mr. Nicholson. " And what were you doing there at such a time of the night?" " Nothing, sir," says John. Mr. Nicholson drew in his breath. " And how came the money in your hands at twelve last night ? " he asked, sharply. " I neglected that piece of business," said John, anticipating comment; and then in his own dia- lect : " I clean forgot all about it." " Well," said his father, " it 's a most extraor- dinary story. Have you communicated with the police?" " I have," answered poor John, the blood leap- ing to his face. " They think they know the men that did it. I dare say the money will be recov- ered, if that was all," said he, with a desperate indifference, which his father set down to levity; but which sprung from the consciousness of worse behind. "Your mother's watch, too?" asked Mr. Nicholson. 20 4 THE MISADVENTURES " Oh, the watch is all right! " cried John. " At least, I mean I was coming to the watch the fact is, I am ashamed to say, I I had pawned the watch before. Here is the ticket ; they did n't find that ; the watch can be redeemed ; they don't sell pledges." The lad panted out these phrases, one after another, like minute guns; but at the last word, which rang in that stately chamber like an oath, his heart failed him utterly; and the dreaded silence settled on father and son. It was broken by Mr. Nicholson picking up the pawn-ticket : " John Froggs, 85 Pleasance," he read; and then turning upon John, with a brief flash of passion and disgust, " Who is John Froggs ? " he cried. " Nobody," said John. " It was just a name." " An alias/' his father commented. " Oh ! I think scarcely quite that," said the culprit ; " it 's a form, they all do it, the man seemed to understand, we had a great deal of fun over the name " He paused at that, for he saw his father wince at the picture like a man physically struck; and again there was silence. " I do not think," said Mr. Nicholson, at last, " that I am an ungenerous father. I have never grudged you money within reason, for any avow- able purpose; you had just to come to me and speak. And now I find that you have forgotten all decency and all natural feeling, and actually pawned pawned your mother's watch. You must have had some temptation; I will do you OF JOHN NICHOLSON 205 the justice to suppose it was a strong one. What did you want with this money?" " I would rather not tell you, sir," said John. " It will only make you angry." " I will not be fenced with," cried his father. " There must be an end of disingenuous answers. What did you want with this money ? " " To lend it to Houston, sir," says John. " I thought I had forbidden you to speak to that young man?" asked the father. " Yes, sir," said John ; " but I only met him." "Where?" came the deadly question. And " In a billiard-room " was the damning answer. Thus, had John's single departure from the truth brought instant punishment. For no other purpose but to see Alan would he have entered a billiard-room; but he had desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now it appeared that he frequented these disreputable haunts upon his own account. Once more Mr. Nicholson digested the vile tidings in silence; and when John stole a glance at his father's countenance, he was abashed to see the marks of suffering. "Well," said the old gentleman, at last, "I cannot pretend not to be simply bowed down. I rose this morning what the world calls a happy man happy, at least, in a son of whom I thought I could be reasonably proud " But it was beyond human nature to endure this longer, and John interrupted almost with a scream. " Oh, wheest ! " he cried, " that 's not all, that 's 206 THE MISADVENTURES not the worst of it it 's nothing ! How could I tell you were proud of me? Oh! I wish, I wish that I had known; but you always said I was such a disgrace! And the dreadful thing is this: we were all taken up last night, and we have to pay Colette's fine among the six, or we '11 be had up for evidence shebeening it is. They made me swear to tell you; but for my part," he cried, bursting into tears, " I just wish that I was dead ! " And he fell on his knees before, a chair and hid his face. Whether his father spoke, or whether he re- mained long in the room or at once departed, are points lost to history. A horrid turmoil of mind and body ; bursting sobs ; broken, vanishing thoughts, now of indignation, now of remorse; broken elementary whirls of consciousness, of the smell of the horse-hair on the chair bottom, of the jangling of church bells that now began to make day horrible throughout the confines of the city, of the hard floor that bruised his knees, of the taste of tears that found their way into his mouth : for a period of time, the duration of which I cannot guess, while I refuse to dwell longer on its agony, these were the whole of God's world for John Nicholson. When at last, as by the touching of a spring, he returned again to clearness of consciousness and even a measure of composure, the bells had but just done ringing, and the Sabbath silence was still marred by the patter of belated feet. By the clock above the fire, as well as by these more OF JOHN NICHOLSON 207 speaking signs, the service had not long begun ; and the unhappy sinner, if his father had really gone to church, might count on near two hours of only comparative unhappiness. With his father, the superlative degree returned infallibly. He knew it by every shrinking fibre in his body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain, at the mere thought of that calamity. An hour and a half, perhaps an hour and three quarters, if the doctor was long-winded, and then would begin again that active agony from which, even in the dull ache of the present, he shrunk as from the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the family pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalm- books, Maria with her smelling-salts, his father sitting spectacled and critical ; and at once he was struck with indignation, not unjustly. It was in- human to go off to church, and leave a sinner in suspense, unpunished, unforgiven. And at the very touch of criticism, the paternal sanctity was lessened; yet the paternal terror only grew; and the two strands of feeling pushed him in the same direction. And suddenly there came upon him a mad fear lest his father should have locked him in. The notion had no ground in sense; it was probably no more than a reminiscence of similar calamities in childhood, for his father's room had always been the chamber of inquisition and the scene of punish- ment; but it stuck so rigorously in his mind that he must instantly approach the door and prove its untruth. As he went, he struck upon a drawer 208 THE MISADVENTURES left open in the business table. It was the money- drawer, a measure of his father's disarray: the money-drawer perhaps a pointing providence! Who is to decide, when even divines differ between a providence and a temptation? or who, sitting calmly under his own vine, is to pass a judgment on the doings of a poor, hunted dog, slavishly afraid, slavishly rebellious, like John Nicholson on that particular Sunday? His hand was in the drawer, almost before his mind had conceived the hope; and rising to his new situation, he wrote, sitting in his father's chair and using his father's blotting-pad, his pitiful apology and farewell: " My dear Father, I have taken the money, but I will pay it back as soon as I am able. You will never hear of me again. I did not mean any harm by anything, so I hope you will try and forgive me. I wish you would say good-bye to Alexander and Maria, but not if you don't want to. I could not wait to see you, really. Please try to forgive me. Your affectionate son, "John Nicholson." The coins abstracted and the missive written, he could not be gone too soon from the scene of these transgressions; and remembering how his father had once returned from church, on some slight illness, in the middle of the second psalm, he durst not even make a packet of a change of clothes. Attired as he was, he slipped from the paternal doors, and found himself in the cool spring air, the thin spring sunshine, and the great Sabbath quiet of the city, which was now only pointed by the cawing of the rooks. There was not a soul in OF JOHN NICHOLSON 209 Randolph Crescent, nor a soul in Queensferry Street; in this out-door privacy and the sense of escape, John took heart again ; and with a pathetic sense of leave-taking, he even ventured up the lane and stood awhile, a strange peri at the gates of a quaint paradise, by the west end of St. George's Church. They were singing within; and by a strange chance, the tune was " St. George's, Edin- burgh," which bears the name, and was first sung in the choir of that church. " Who is this King of Glory ? " went the voices from within ; and, to John, this was like the end of all Christian observances, for he was now to be a wild man like Ishmael, and his life was to be cast in homeless places and with godless people. It was thus, with no rising sense of the adven- turous, but in mere desolation and despair, that he turned his back on his native city, and set out on foot for California, with a more immediate eye to Glasgow. CHAPTER IV THE SECOND SOWING IT is no part of mine to narrate the adventures of John Nicholson, which were many, but simply his more momentous misadventures, which were more than he desired, and, by human standards, more than he deserved ; how he reached California, how he was rooked, and robbed, and beaten, and starved; how he was at last taken up by charitable folk, restored to some degree of self- complacency, and installed as a clerk in a bank in San Francisco, it would take too long to tell ; nor in these episodes were there any marks of the pe- culiar Nicholsonic destiny, for they were just such matters as befell some thousands of other young adventurers in the same days and places. But once posted in the bank, he fell for a time into a high degree of good fortune, which, as it was only a longer way about to fresh disaster, it behooves me to explain. It was his luck to meet a young man in what is technically called a "dive," and, thanks to his monthly wages, to extricate this new acquaintance from a position of present disgrace and possible danger in the future. This young man was the nephew of one of the Nob Hill magnates, who run JOHN NICHOLSON 211 the San Francisco Stock Exchange, much as more humble adventurers, in the corner of some public park at home, may be seen to perform the simple artifice of pea and thimble: for their own profit, that is to say, and the discouragement of public gambling. It was thus in his power and, as he was of grateful temper, it was among the things that he desired to put John in the way of grow- ing rich; and thus, without thought or industry, or so much as even understanding the game at which he played, but by simply buying and selling what he was told to buy and sell, that plaything of fortune was presently at the head of between eleven and twelve thousand pounds, or, as he reck- oned it, of upward of sixty thousand dollars. How he had come to deserve this wealth, any more than how he had formerly earned disgrace at home, was a problem beyond the reach of his philosophy. It was true that he had been indus- trious at the bank, but no more so than the cashier, who had seven small children and was visibly sinking in decline. Nor was the step which had determined his advance a visit to a dive with a month's wages in his pocket an act of such transcendent virtue, or even wisdom, as to seem to merit the favour of the gods. From some sense of this, and of the dizzy see-saw heaven-high, hell- deep on which men sit clutching; or perhaps fearing that the sources of his fortune might be insidiously traced to some root in the field of petty cash ; he stuck to his work, said not a word of his new circumstances, and kept his account with a 212 THE MISADVENTURES bank in a different quarter of the town. The con- cealment, innocent as it seems, was the first step in the second tragi-comedy of John's existence. Meanwhile, he had never written home. Whether from diffidence or shame, or a touch of anger, or mere procrastination, or because (as we have seen) he had no skill in literary arts, or because (as I am sometimes tempted to suppose) there is a law in human nature that prevents young men not otherwise beasts from the performance of this simple act of piety months and years had gone by, and John had never written. The habit of not writing, indeed, was already fixed before he had begun to come into his fortune; and it was only the difficulty of breaking this long silence that with- held him from an instant restitution of the money he had stolen or (as he preferred to call it) bor- rowed. In vain he sat before paper, attending on inspiration ; that heavenly nymph, beyond suggest- ing the words " my dear father/' remained obsti- nately silent; and presently John would crumple up the sheet and decide, as soon as he had " a good chance," to carry the money home in person. And this delay, which is indefensible, was his second step into the snares of fortune. Ten years had passed, and John was drawing near to thirty. He had kept the promise of his boyhood, and was now of a lusty frame, verging toward corpulence; good features, good eyes, a genial manner, a ready laugh, a long pair of sandy whiskers, a dash of an American accent, a close familiarity with the great American joke, and a OF JOHN NICHOLSON 213 certain likeness to a R-y-1 P-rs-a-ge, who shall re- main nameless for me, made up the man's externals as he could be viewed in society. Inwardly, in spite of his gross body and highly masculine whis- kers, he was more like a maiden lady than a man of twenty-nine. It chanced one day, as he was strolling down Market Street on the eve of his fortnight's holi- day, that his eye was caught by certain railway bills, and in very idleness of mind he calculated that he might be home for Christmas if he started on the morrow. The fancy thrilled him with de- sire, and in one moment he decided he would go. There was much to be done: his portmanteau to be packed, a credit to be got from the bank where he was a wealthy customer, and certain offices to be transacted for that other bank in which he was an humble clerk ; and it chanced, in conformity with human nature, that out of all this business it was the last that came to be neglected. Night found him, not only equipped with money of his own, but once more (as on that former occa- sion) saddled with a considerable sum of other people's. Now it chanced there lived in the same boarding- house a fellow-clerk of his, an honest fellow, with what is called a weakness for drink though it might, in this case, have been called a strength, for the victim had been drunk for weeks together without the briefest intermission. To this unfortu- nate John intrusted a letter with an inclosure of bonds, addressed to the bank manager. Even as 2i 4 THE MISADVENTURES he did so he thought he perceived a certain haziness of eye and speech in his trustee ; but he was too hopeful to be stayed, silenced the voice of warning in his bosom, and with one and the same gesture committed the money to the clerk, and himself into the hands of destiny. I dwell, even at the risk of tedium, on John's minutest errors, his case being so perplexing to the moralist ; but we have done with them now, the roll is closed, the reader has the worst of our poor hero, and I leave him to judge for himself whether he or John has been the less deserving. Hence- forth we have to follow the spectacle of a man who was a mere whip-top for calamity; on whose un- merited misadventures not even the humourist can look without pity, and not even the philosopher without alarm. That same night the clerk entered upon a bout of drunkenness so consistent as to surprise even his intimate acquaintance. He was speedily ejected from the boarding-house; deposited his portmanteau with a perfect stranger, who did not even catch his name; wandered he knew not where, and was at last hove-to, all standing, in a hospital at Sacramento. There, under the im- penetrable alias of the number of his bed, the crapu- lous being lay for some more days unconscious of all things, and of one thing in particular: that the police were after him. Two months had come and gone before the convalescent in the Sacra- mento hospital was identified with Kirkman, the absconding San Francisco clerk; even then, there OF JOHN NICHOLSON 215 must elapse nearly a fortnight more till the perfect stranger could be hunted up, the portmanteau recovered, and John's letter carried at length to its destination, the seal still unbroken, the inclosure still intact. Meanwhile, John had gone upon his holidays without a word, which was irregular; and there had disappeared with him a certain sum of money, which was out of all bounds of palliation. But he was known to be careless, and believed to be hon- est; the manager besides had a regard for him; and little was said, although something was no doubt thought, until the fortnight was finally at an end, and the time had come for John to reap- pear. Then, indeed, the affair began to look black ; and when inquiries were made, and the penniless clerk was found to have amassed thousands of dol- lars, and kept them secretly in a rival establishment, the stoutest of his friends abandoned him, the books were overhauled for traces of ancient and artful fraud, and though none were found, there still prevailed a general impression of loss. The telegraph was set in motion; and the correspond- ent of the bank in Edinburgh, for which place it was understood that John had armed himself with extensive credits, was warned to communicate with the police. Now this correspondent was a friend of Mr. Nicholson's; he was well acquainted with the tale of John's calamitous disappearance from Edin- burgh ; and putting one thing with another, hasted with the first word of this scandal, not to the police, 2i6 JOHN NICHOLSON but to his friend. The old gentleman had long regarded his son as one dead; John's place had been taken, the memory of his faults had already fallen to be one of those old aches, which awaken again indeed upon occasion, but which we can always vanquish by an effort of the will; and to have the long lost resuscitated in a fresh disgrace was doubly bitter. " Macewen," said the old man, " this must be hushed up, if possible. If I give you a check for this sum, about which they are certain, could you take it on yourself to let the matter rest ? " " I will," said Macewen. " I will take the risk of it." " You understand," resumed Mr. Nicholson, speaking precisely, but with ashen lips, " I do this for my family, not for that unhappy young man. If it should turn out that these suspicions are cor- rect, and he has embezzled large sums, he must lie on his bed as he has made it." And then look- ing up at Macewen with a nod, and one of his strange smiles : " Good-bye," said he ; and Mac- ewen, perceiving the case to be too grave for con- solation, took himself off, and blessed God on his way home that he was childless. CHAPTER V THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN BY a little after noon on the eve of Christ- k mas, John had left his portmanteau in the " cloak-room, and stepped forth into Prince's Street with a wonderful expansion of the soul, such as men enjoy on the completion of long- nourished schemes. He was at home again, in- cognito and rich; presently he could enter his father's house by means of the pass-key, which he had piously preserved through all his wander- ings ; he would throw down the borrowed money ; there would be a reconciliation, the details of which he frequently arranged; and he saw him- self, during the next month, made welcome in many stately houses at many frigid dinner-parties, taking his share in the conversation with the free- dom of the man and the traveller, and laying down the law upon finance with the authority of the successful investor. But this programme was not to be begun before evening not till just before dinner, indeed, at which meal the reassembled family were to sit roseate, and the best wine, the modern fatted calf, should flow for the prodigal's return. 218 THE MISADVENTURES v/ Meanwhile he walked familiar streets, merry reminiscences crowding round him, sad ones also, both with the same surprising pathos. The keen frosty air; the low, rosy, wintery sun; the castle, hailing him like an old acquaintance; the names of friends on door-plates; the sight of friends whom he seemed to recognise, and whom he eagerly avoided, in the streets; the pleasant chant of the north country accent; the dome of St. George's reminding him of his last penitential moments in the lane, and of that King of Glory whose name had echoed ever since in the saddest corner of his memory; and the gutters where he had learned to slide, and the shop where he had bought his skates, and the stones on which he had trod, and the railings in which he had rattled his clachan as he went to school; and all those thousand and one nameless particulars, which the eye sees without noting, which the memory keeps indeed yet without knowing, and which, taken one with another, build up for us the aspect of the place that we call home: all these besieged him, as he went, with both delight and sadness. His first visit was for Houston, who had a house on Regent's Terrace, kept for him in old days by an aunt. The door was opened (to his surprise) upon the chain, and a voice asked him from within what he wanted. " I want Mr. Houston Mr. Alan Houston," said he. And who are ye ? " said the voice. OF JOHN NICHOLSON 219 "This is most extraordinary," thought John; and then aloud he told his name. " No young Mr. John ? " cried the voice, with a sudden increase of Scotch accent, testifying to a friendlier feeling. " The very same," said John. And the old butler removed his defences, re- marking only, " I thocht ye were that man." But his master was not there; he was staying, it ap- peared, at the house in Murrayfield; and though the butler would have been glad enough to have taken his place and given all the news of the family, John, struck with a little chill, was eager to be gone. Only, the door was scarce closed again, before he regretted that he had not asked about 44 that man." He was to pay no more visits till he had seen his father and made all well at home; Alan had been the only possible exception, and John had not time to go as far as Murrayfield. But here he was on Regent's Terrace; there was nothing to prevent him going round the end of the hill, and looking from without on the Mackenzies' house. As he went, he reflected that Flora must now be a woman of near his own age, and it was within the bounds of possibility that she was married ; but this dishonourable doubt he dammed down. There was the house, sure enough ; but the door was of another colour, and what was this two door plates? He drew nearer; the top one bore, with dignified simplicity, the words, " Mr. Proud- 220 THE MISADVENTURES foot " ; the lower one was more explicit, and in- formed the passer-by that here was likewise the abode of " Mr. J. A. Dunlop Proudfoot, Advocate." The Proudfoots must be rich, for no advocate could look to have much business in so remote a quarter; and John hated them for their wealth and for their name, and for the sake of the house they desecrated with their presence. He remem- bered a Proudfoot he had seen at school, not known : a little, whey-faced urchin, the despicable member of some lower class. Could it be this abortion that had climbed to be an advocate, and now lived in the birthplace of Flora and the home of John's tenderest memories ? The chill that had first seized upon him when he heard of Houston's absence deepened and struck inward. For a mo- ment, as he stood under the doors of that estranged house, and looked east and west along the solitary pavement of the Royal Terrace, where not a cat was stirring, the sense of solitude and desolation took him by the throat, and he wished himself in San Francisco. And then the figure he made, with his decent portliness, his whiskers, the money in his purse, the excellent cigar that he now lighted, recurred to his mind in consolatory comparison with that of a certain maddened lad who, on a certain Spring Sunday ten years before, and in the hour of church- time silence, had stolen from that city by the Glas- gow road. In the face of these changes, it were impious to doubt fortune's kindness. All would be well yet; the Mackenzies would be found. Flora, OF JOHN NICHOLSON 221 younger and lovelier and kinder than before ; Alan would be found, and would have so nicely dis- criminated his behaviour as to have grown, on the one hand, into a valued friend of Mr. Nicholson's, and to have remained, upon the other, of that exact shade of joviality which John desired in his com- panions. And so, once more, John fell to work discounting the delightful future: his first appear- ance in the family pew ; his first visit to his uncle Greig, who thought himself so great a financier, and on whose purblind Edinburgh eyes John was to let in the dazzling daylight of the West; and the details in general of that unrivalled transforma- tion scene, in which he was to display to all Edin- burgh a portly and successful gentleman in the shoes of the derided fugitive. The time began to draw near when his father would have returned from the office, and it would be the prodigal's cue to enter. He strolled west- ward by Albany Street, facing the sunset embers, pleased, he knew not why, to move in that cold air and indigo twilight, starred with street-lamps. But there was one more disenchantment waiting him by the way. At the corner of Pitt Street he paused to light a fresh cigar; the vesta threw, as he did so, a strong light upon his features, and a man of about his own age stopped at sight of it. " I think your name must be Nicholson," said the stranger. It was too late to avoid recognition ; and besides, as John was now actually on the way home, it 222 THE MISADVENTURES hardly mattered, and he gave way to the impulse of his nature. "Great Scott!" he cried, "Beatson!" and shook hands with warmth. It scarce seemed he was repaid in kind. " So you 're home again ? " said Beatson. "Where have you been all this long time?" " In the States," said John " California. I 've made my pile though; and it suddenly struck me it would be a noble scheme to come home for Christmas." "I see," said Beatson. "Well, I hope we'll see something of you now you 're here." " Oh, I guess so," said John, a little frozen. " Well, ta-ta," concluded Beatson, and he shook hands again and went. This was a cruel first experience. It was idle to blink facts: here was John home again, and Beatson Old Beatson did not care a rush. He recalled Old Beatson in the past that merry and affectionate lad and their joint adventures and mishaps, the window they had broken with a catapult in India Place, the escalade of the castle rock, and many another inestimable bond of friendship; and his hurt surprise grew deeper. Well, after all, it was only on a man's own family that he could count ; blood was thicker than water, he remembered; and the net result of this en- counter was to bring him to the doorstep of his father's house, with tenderer and softer feelings. J The night had come ; the fanlight over the door shone bright; the two windows of the dining- OF JOHN NICHOLSON 223 room where the cloth was being laid, and the three windows of the drawing-room where Maria would be waiting dinner, glowed softlier through yellow blinds. It was like a vision of the past. All this time of his absence, life had gone forward with an equal foot, and the fires and the gas had been lighted, and the meals spread, at the accustomed hours. At the accustomed hour, too, the bell had sounded thrice to call the family to worship. And at the thought, a pang of regret for his demerit seized him; he remembered the things that were good and that he had neglected, and the things that were evil and that he had loved; and it was with a prayer upon his lips that he mounted the steps and thrust the key into the key-hole. He stepped into the lighted hall, shut the door softly behind him, and stood there fixed in wonder. No surprise of strangeness could equal the surprise of that complete familiarity. There was the bust of Chalmers near the stair-railings, there was the clothes-brush in the accustomed place; and there, on the hat-stand, hung hats and coats that must surely be the same as he remembered. Ten years dropped from his life, as a pin may slip between the fingers ; and the ocean and the mountains, and the mines, and crowded marts and mingled races of San Francisco, and his own fortune and his own disgrace, became, for that one moment, the figures of a dream that was over. He took off his hat, and moved mechanically toward the stand; and there he found a small change that was a great one to him. The pin that 224 THE MISADVENTURES had been his from boyhood, where he had flung his balmoral when he loitered home from the acad- emy, and his first hat when he came briskly back from college or the office his pin was occupied. " They might have at least respected my pin ! " he thought, and he was moved as by a slight, and began at once to recollect that he was here an in- terloper, in a strange house, which he had entered almost by a burglary, and where at any moment he might be scandalously challenged. He moved at once, his hat still in his hand, to the door of his father's room, opened it, and entered. Mr. Nicholson sat in the same place and posture as on that last Sunday morning; only he was older, and greyer, and sterner; and as he now glanced up and caught the eye of his son, a strange commotion and a dark flush sprung into his face. " Father," said John, steadily, and even cheer- fully, for this was a moment against which he was long ago prepared, " father, here I am, and here is the money that I took from you. I have come back to ask your forgiveness, and to stay Christ- mas with you and the children/' " Keep your money," said the father, " and go ! " "Father!" cried John; "for God's sake don't receive me this way. I 've come for " "Understand me," interrupted Mr. Nicholson; " you are no son of mine ; and in the sight of God, I wash my hands of you. One last thing I will tell you; one warning I will give you; all is discov- ered, and you are being hunted for your crimes; if you are still at large it is thanks to me; but I OF JOHN NICHOLSON 225 have done all that I mean to do; and from this time forth I would not raise one finger not one finger to save you from the gallows! And now," with a low voice of absolute authority, and a single weighty gesture of the finger, " and now go I" CHAPTER VI THE HOUSE AT MURRAYFIELD HOW John passed the evening, in what windy confusion of mind, in what squalls of anger and lulls of sick collapse, in what pacing of streets and plunging into public-houses, it would profit little to relate. His misery, if it were not progressive, yet tended in no way to diminish; for in proportion as grief and indigna- tion abated, fear began o take their place. At first, his father's menacing words lay by in some safe drawer of memory, biding their hour. At first, John was all thwarted affection and blighted hope; next bludgeoned vanity raised its head again, with twenty mortal gashes : and the father was disowned even as he had disowned the son. What was this regular course of life, that John should have admired it? What were these clock- work virtues, from which love was absent? Kind- ness was the test, kindness the aim and soul ; and judged by such a standard, the discarded prodi- gal now rapidly drowning his sorrows and his reason in successive drams was a creature of a lovelier morality than his self-righteous father. Yes, he was the better man ; he felt it, glowed with the consciousness, and entering a public-house at JOHN NICHOLSON 227 the corner of Howard Place (whither he had some- how wandered) he pledged his own virtues in a glass perhaps the fourth since his dismissal. Of that he knew nothing, keeping no account of what he did or where he went ; and in the general crashing hurry of his nerves, unconscious of the approach of intoxication. Indeed, it is a question whether he were really growing intoxicated, or whether at first the spirits did not even sober him. For it was even as he drained this last glass that his father's ambiguous and menacing words pop- ping from their hiding-place in memory startled him like a hand laid upon his shoulder. " Crimes, hunted, the gallows." They were ugly words ; in the ears of an innocent man, perhaps all the uglier ; for if some judicial error were in act against him, who should set a limit to its grossness or to how far it might be pushed ? Not John, indeed ; he was no believer in the powers of innocence, his cursed experience pointing in quite other ways; and his fears, once wakened, grew with every hour and hunted him about the city streets. It was, perhaps, nearly nine at night; he had eaten nothing since lunch, he had drunk a good deal, and he was exhausted by emotion, when the thought of Houston came into his head. He turned, not merely to the man as a friend, but to his house as a place of refuge. The danger that threatened him was still so vague that he knew neither what to fear nor where he might expect it ; but this much at least seemed undeniable, that a private house was safer than a public inn. 228 THE MISADVENTURES Moved by these counsels, he turned at once to the Caledonian Station, passed (not without alarm) into the bright lights of the approach, redeemed his portmanteau from the cloak-room, and was soon whirling in a cab along the Glasgow road. The change of movement and position, the sight of the lamps twinkling to the rear, and the smell of damp and mould and rotten straw- which clung about the vehicle, wrought in him strange alterna- tions of lucidity and mortal giddiness. " I have been drinking," he discovered ; " I must go straight to bed, and sleep." And he thanked Heaven for the drowsiness that came upon his mind in waves. From one of these spIls he was wakened by the stoppage of the cab ; and, getting down, found himself in quite a country road, the last lamp of the suburb shining some way below, and the high walls of a garden rising before him in the dark. The Lodge (as the place was named) stood, in- deed, very solitary. To the south it adjoined an- other house, but standing in so large a garden as to be well out of cry ; on all other sides, open fields stretched upward to the woods of Corstorphine Hill, or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or downward toward the valley of the Leith. The effect of seclusion was aided by the great height of the garden walls, which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested in former days, defied the climbing school-boy. The lamp of the cab threw a gleam upon the door and the not brilliant handle of the bell. OF JOHN NICHOLSON 229 "Shall I ring for ye?" said the cabman, who had descended from his perch and was slapping his chest, for the night was bitter. " I wish you would," said John, putting his hand to his brow in one of his accesses of giddiness. The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the bell replied from further in the garden; twice and thrice he did it, with sufficient intervals ; in the great, frosty silence of the night, the sounds fell sharp and small. "Does he expect ye?" asked the driver, with that manner of familiar interest that well became his port-wine face; and when John had told him no, " Well, then," said the cabman, " if ye '11 tak' my advice of it, we '11 just gang back. And that 's disinterested, mind ye, for my stables are in the Glesgie road." " The servants must hear," said John. " Hout ! " said the driver. " He keeps no ser- vants here, man. They 're 2! in the town house ; I drive him often ; it 's just a kind of a hermitage, this." " Give me the bell," said John ; and he plucked at it like a man desperate. The clamour had not yet subsided before they heard steps upon the gravel, and a voice of sin- gular nervous irritability cried to them through the door, " Who are you, and what do you want?" "Alan," said John, "it's me it's Fatty John, you know. I 'm just come home, and I Ve come to stay with you." 230 THE MISADVENTURES There was no reply for a moment, and then the door was opened. " Get the portmanteau down," said John to the driver. " Do nothing of the kind," said Alan ; and then to John, " Come in here a moment. I want to speak to you." y John entered the garden, and the door was closed behind him. A candle stood on the gravel walk, winking a little in the draughts; it threw incon- stant sparkles on the clumped holly, struck the light and darkness to and fro like a veil on Alan's features, and sent his shadow hovering behind him. All beyond was inscrutable; and John's dizzy brain rocked with the shadow. Yet even so, it struck him that Alan was pale> and his voice, when he spoke, unnatural. " What brings you here to-night ? " he began. " I don't want, God knows, to seem unfriendly ; but I cannot take you in, Nicholson; I cannot do it." "Alan," said John, "you've just got to! You don't know the mess I 'm in ; the governor 's turned me out, and I dare n't show my face in an inn, because they 're down on me for murder or some- thing!" " For what ? " cried Alan, starting. " Murder, I believe," says John. " Murder ! " repeated Alan, and passed his hand over his eyes. " What was that you were saying? " he asked again. " That they were down on me," said John. OF JOHN NICHOLSON 231 " I 'm accused of murder, by what I can make out ; and I 've really had a dreadful day of it, Alan, and I can't sleep on the roadside on a night like this at least not with a portmanteau," he pleaded. " Hush! " said Alan, with his head on one side; and then, " Did you hear nothing? " he asked. " No," said John, thrilling, he knew not why, with communicated terror. " No, I heard noth- ing; why?" And then, as there was no answer, he reverted to his pleading : " But I say, Alan, you Ve just got to take me in. I '11 go right away to bed if you have anything to do. I seem to have been drinking; I was that knocked over. I would n't turn you away, Alan, if you were down on your luck." " No ? " returned Alan. " Neither will I you, then. Come and let 's get your portmanteau." The cabman was paid, and drove off down the long, lamp-lighted hill, and the two friends stood on the sidewalk beside the portmanteau till the last rumble of the wheels had died in silence. It seemed to John as though Alan attached impor- tance to this departure of the cab ; and John, who was in no state to criticise, shared profoundly in the feeling. When the stillness was once more perfect, Alan shouldered the portmanteau, carried it in, and shut and locked the garden door ; and then, once more, abstraction seemed to fall upon him, and he stood with his hand on the key, until the cold began to nibble at John's ringers. " Why are we standing here ? " asked John. 232 THE MISADVENTURES "Eh?" said Alan, blankly. " Why, man, you don't seem yourself," said the other. " No, I 'm not myself," said Alan ; and he sat down on the portmanteau and put his face in his hands. John stood beside him swaying a little, and look- ing about him at the swaying shadows, the flitting sparkles, and the steady stars overhead, until the windless cold began to touch him through his clothes on the bare skin. Even in his bemused intelligence, wonder began to awake. " I say, let 's come on to the house," he said at last. " Yes, let 's come on to the house," repeated Alan. And he rose at once, reshouldered the portman- teau, and taking the candle in his other hand, moved forward to the Lodge. This was a long, low building, smothered in creepers; and now, except for some chinks of light between the dining- room shutters, it was plunged in darkness and silence. In the hall Alan lighted another candle, gave it to John, and opened the door of a bedroom. " Here," said he; " go to bed. Don't mind me, John. You '11 be sorry for me when you know." " Wait a bit," returned John ; " I 've got so cold with all that standing about. Let 's go into the dining-room a minute. Just one glass to warm me, Alan." On the table in the hall stood a glass, and a OF JOHN NICHOLSON 233 bottle with a whisky label on a tray. It was plain the bottle had been just opened, for the cork and corkscrew lay beside it. "Take that," said Alan, passing John the whisky, and then with a certain roughness pushed his friend into the bedroom, and closed the door behind him. John stood amazed; then he shook the bottle, and, to his further wonder, found it partly empty. Three or four glasses were gone. Alan must have uncorked a bottle of whisky and drank three or four glasses one after the other, without sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in his own cold lobby on this freezing night! It fully ex- plained his eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a grog. Poor Alan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful thing was drink, and what a slave to it poor Alan was, to drink in this unsociable, uncomfortable fashion! The man who would drink alone, except for health's sake as John was now doing was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, and felt hazier, but warmer. It was hard work opening the port- manteau and finding his night things ; and before he was undressed, the cold had struck home to him once more. " Well," said he ; " just a drop more. There 's no sense in getting ill with all this other trouble." And presently dreamless slumber buried him. When John awoke it was day. The low winter sun was already in the heavens, but his watch had stopped, and it was impossible to tell the hour 234 THE MISADVENTURES exactly. Ten, he guessed it, and made haste to dress, dismal reflections crowding on his mind. But it was less from terror than from regret that he now suffered; and with his regret there were mingled cutting pangs of penitence. There had fallen upon him a blow, cruel, indeed, but yet only the punishment of old misdoing; and he had re- belled and plunged into fresh sin. The rod had been used to chasten, and he had bit the chastening fingers. His father was right ; John had justified him ; John was no guest for decent people's houses, and no fit associate for decent people's children. And had a broader hint been needed, there was the case of his old friend. John was no drunkard, though he could at times exceed; and the picture of Houston drinking neat spirits at his hall-table struck him with something like disgust. He hung back from meeting his old friend. He could have wished he had not come to him ; and yet, even now, where else was he to turn ? These musings occupied him while he dressed, and accompanied him into the lobby of the house. The door stood open on the garden; doubtless, Alan had stepped forth; and John did as he sup- posed his friend had done. The ground was hard as iron, the frost still rigorous; as he brushed among the hollies, icicles jingled and glittered in their fall ; and wherever he went, a volley of eager sparrows followed him. Here were Christmas weather and Christmas morning duly met, to the delight of children. This was the day of reunited families, the day to which he had so long looked OF JOHN NICHOLSON 235 forward, thinking to awake in his own bed in Randolph Crescent, reconciled with all men and repeating the foot-prints of his youth; and here he was alone, pacing the alleys of a wintery garden and filled with penitential thoughts. And that reminded him : why was he alone ? and where was Alan ? The thought of the festal morn- ing and the due salutations reawakened his desire for his friend, and he began to call for him by name. As the sound of his voice died away, he was aware of the greatness of the silence that environed him. But for the twittering of the sparrows and the crunching of his own feet upon the frozen snow, the whole windless world of air hung over him entranced, and the stillness weighed upon his mind with a horror of solitude. Still calling at intervals, but now with a moder- ated voice, he made the hasty circuit of the garden, and finding neither man nor trace of man in all its evergreen coverts, turned at last to the house. About the house the silence seemed to deepen strangely. The door, indeed, stood open as before ; but the windows were still shuttered, the chimneys breathed no stain into the bright air, there sounded abroad none of that low stir (perhaps audible rather to the ear of the spirit than to the ear of the flesh) by which a house announces and betrays its human lodgers. And yet Alan must be there Alan locked in drunken slumbers, forgetful of the re- turn of day, of the holy season, and of the friend whom he had so coldly received and was now so churlishly neglecting. John's disgust redoubled 236 THE MISADVENTURES at the thought ; but hunger was beginning to grow stronger than repulsion, and as a step to break- fast, if nothing else, he must find and arouse this sleeper. He made the circuit of the bedroom quarters. All, until he came to Alan's chamber, were locked from without, and bore the marks of a prolonged disuse. But Alan's was a room in commission, filled with clothes, knickknacks, letters, books, and the conveniences of a solitary man. The fire had been lighted ; but it had long ago burned out, and the ashes were stone cold. The bed had been made, but it had not been slept in. Worse and worse, then ; Alan must have fallen where he sat, and now sprawled brutishly, no doubt, upon the dining-room floor. The dining-room was a very long apartment, and was reached through a passage ; so that John, upon his entrance, brought but little light with him, and must move toward the windows with spread arms, groping and knocking on the furni- ture. Suddenly he tripped and fell his length over a prostrate body. It was what he had looked for, yet it shocked him ; and he marvelled that so rough an impact should not have kicked a groan out of the drunkard. Men had killed themselves ere now in such excesses, a dreary and degraded end that made John shudder. What if Alan were dead? There would be a Christmas-day! By this, John had his hand upon the shutters, and flinging them back, beheld once again the blessed face of the day. Even by that light the OF JOHN NICHOLSON 237 room had a discomfortable air. The chairs were scattered, and one had been overthrown ; the table- cloth, laid as if for dinner, was twitched upon one side, and some of the dishes had fallen to the floor. Behind the table lay the drunkard, still unaroused, only one foot visible to John. But now that light was in the room, the worst seemed over; it was a disgusting business, but not more than disgusting; and it was with no great apprehension that John proceeded to make the circuit of the table: his last comparatively tranquil moment for that day. No sooner had he turned the corner, no sooner had his eyes alighted on the body, than he gave a smothered, breathless cry, and fled out of the room and out of the house. It was not Alan who lay there, but a man well up in years, of stern countenance and iron-grey locks; and it was no drunkard, for the body lay in a black pool of blood, and the open eyes stared upon the ceiling. To and fro walked John before the door. The extreme sharpness of the air acted on his nerves like an astringent, and braced them swiftly. Pres- ently, he not relaxing in his disordered walk, the images began to come clearer and stay longer in his fancy; and next the power of thought came back to him, and the horror and danger of his situation rooted him to the ground. He grasped his forehead, and staring on one spot of gravel, pieced together what he knew and what he suspected. Alan had murdered some one : possibly " that man " against whom the butler 238 THE MISADVENTURES chained the door in Regent's Terrace; possibly another; some one at least: a human soul, whom it was death to slay and whose blood lay spilled upon the floor. This was the reason of the whisky drinking in the passage, of his unwillingness to welcome John, of his strange behaviour and be- wildered words; this was why he had started at and harped upon the name of murder; this was why he had stood and hearkened, or sat and cov- ered his eyes, in the black night. And now he was gone, now he had basely fled; and to all his per- plexities and dangers John stood heir. " Let me think let me think," he said, aloud, impatiently, even pleadingly, as if to some merci- less interrupter. In the turmoil of his wits, a thousand hints and hopes and threats and terrors dinning continuously in his ears, he was like one plunged in the hubbub of a crowd. How was he to remember he, who had not a thought to spare that he was himself the author, as well as the theatre, of so much confusion? But in hours of trial the junto of man's nature is dissolved, and anarchy succeeds. It was plain he must stay no longer where he was, for here was a new Judicial Error in the very making. It was not so plain where he must go, for the old Judicial Error, vague as a cloud, ap- peared to fill the habitable world; whatever it might be, it watched for him, full grown, in Edin- burgh; it must have had its birth in San Fran- cisco; it stood guard no doubt, like a dragon, at the bank where he should cash his credit; and OF JOHN NICHOLSON 239 though there were doubtless many other places, who should say in which of them it was not am- bushed ? No, he could not tell where he was to go ; he must not lose time on these insolubilities. Let him go back to the beginning. It was plain he must stay no longer where he was. It was plain, too, that he must not flee as he was, for he could not carry his portmanteau, and to flee and leave it, was to plunge deeper in the mire. He must go, leave the house unguarded, find a cab, and return return after an absence? Had he courage for that? And just then he spied a stain about a hand's breadth on his trouser-leg, and reached his finger down to touch it. The finger was stained red; it was blood; he stared upon it with disgust, and awe, and terror, and in the sharpness of the new sensation, fell instantly to act. He cleansed his finger in the snow, returned into the house, drew near with hushed footsteps to the dining-room door, and shut and locked it. Then he breathed a little freer, for here at least was an oaken barrier between himself and what he feared. Next, he hastened to his room, tore off the spotted trousers which seemed in his eyes a link to bind him to the gallows, flung them in a corner, donned another pair, breathlessly crammed his night things into his portmanteau, locked it, swung it with an effort from the ground, and with a rush of relief, came forth again under the open heavens. The portmanteau, being of occidental build, was no feather-weight; it had distressed the powerful 2 4 o THE MISADVENTURES Alan; and as for John, he was crushed under its bulk, and the sweat broke upon him thickly. Twice he must set it down to rest before he reached the gate; and when he had come so far, he must do as Alan did, and take his seat upon one corner. Here, then, he sat awhile and panted ; but now his thoughts were sensibly lightened; now, with the trunk standing just inside the door, some part of his dissociation from the house of crime had been effected, and the cabman need not pass the garden wall. It was wonderful how that relieved him ; for the house, in his eyes, was a place to strike the most cursory beholder with suspicion, as though the very windows had cried murder. But there was to be no remission of the strokes of fate. As he thus sat, taking breath in the shadow of the wall and hopped about by sparrows, it chanced that his eye roved to the fastening of the door; and what he saw plucked him to his feet. The thing locked with a spring ; once the door was closed, the bolt shut of itself; and without a key, there was no means of entering from without. He saw himself obliged to one of two distaste- ful and perilous alternatives; either to shut the door altogether and set his portmanteau out upon the wayside, a wonder to all beholders ; or to leave the door ajar, so that any thievish tramp or holiday school-boy might stray in and stumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least desperate, his mind inclined; but he must first insure himself that he was unobserved. He peered out, and down the long road: it lay dead empty. He went to the OF JOHN NICHOLSON 241 corner of the by-road that comes by way of Dean ; there also not a passenger was stirring. Plainly it was, now or never, the high tide of his affairs ; and he drew the door as close as he durst, slipped a pebble in the chink, and made off down-hill to find a cab. Half-way down a gate opened, and a troop of Christmas children sallied forth in the most cheer- ful humour, followed more soberly by a smiling mother. " And this is Christmas-day ! " thought John ; and could have laughed aloud in tragic bitterness of heart. CHAPTER VII A TRAGI-COMEDY IN A CAB IN front of Donaldson's Hospital John counted it good fortune to perceive a cab a great way off, and by much shouting and waving of his arm to catch the notice of the driver. He counted it good fortune, for the time was long to him till he should have done for ever with the Lodge ; and the further he must go to find a cab, the greater the chance that the inevitable discovery had taken place, and that he should return to find the garden full of angry neighbours. Yet when the vehicle drew up he was sensibly chagrined to recognise the port-wine cabman of the night before. " Here," he could not but reflect, " here is another link in the Judicial Error." The driver, on the other hand, was pleased to drop again upon so liberal a fare ; and as he was a man the reader must already have perceived of easy, not to say familiar, manners, he dropped at once into a vein of friendly talk, commenting on the weather, on the sacred season, which struck him chiefly in the light of a day of liberal gratui- ties, on the chance which had reunited him to a pleasing customer, and on the fact that John had JOHN NICHOLSON 243 been (as he was pleased to call it) visibly " on the randan " the night before. " And ye look dreidful bad the-day, sir, I must say that," he continued. " There 's nothing like a dram for ye if ye '11 take my advice of it ; and bein' as it 's Christmas, I 'm no saying," he added, with a fatherly smile, " but what I would join ye mysel'." John had listened with a sick heart. " I '11 give you a dram when we 've got through," said he, affecting a sprightliness which sat on him most unhandsomely, " and not a drop till then. Business first, and pleasure afterward." With this promise the jarvey was prevailed upon to clamber to his place and drive, with hideous deliberation, to the door of the Lodge. There were no signs as yet of any public emotion; only, two men stood not far off in talk, and their presence, seen from afar, set John's pulses buzzing. He might have spared himself his fright, for the pair were lost in some dispute of a theological complex- ion, and with lengthened upper lip and enumerat- ing fingers, pursued the matter of their difference, and paid no heed to John. But the cabman proved a thorn in the flesh. Nothing would keep him on his perch; he must clamber down, comment upon the pebble in the door (which he regarded as an ingenious but un- safe device), help John with the portmanteau, and enliven matters with a flow of speech, and espe- cially of questions, which I thus condense: "He'll no be here himser, will he? No? 244 THE MISADVENTURES Well, he 's an eccentric man a fair oddity if ye ken the expression. Great trouble with his tenants, they tell me. I ve driven the fam'ly for years. I drove a cab at his father's waddin'. What '11 your name be ? I should ken your face. Baigrey, ye say? There were Baigreys about Gil- merton; ye '11 be one of that lot? Then this '11 be a friend's portmantie, like ? Why ? Because the name upon it 's Nucholson ! Oh, if ye 're in a hurry, that's another job. Waverley Brig'? Are ye for away ? " So the friendly toper prated and questioned and kept John's heart in a flutter. But to this also, as to other evils under the sun, there came a period ; and the victim of circumstances began at last to rumble toward the railway terminus at Waverley Bridge. During the transit, he sat with raised glasses in the frosty chill and mouldy fetor of his chariot, and glanced out sidelong on the holiday face of things, the shuttered shops, and the crowds along the pavement, much as the rider in the Ty- burn cart may have observed the concourse gather- ing to his execution. At the station his spirits rose again; another stage of his escape was fortunately ended he began to spy blue water. He called a railway porter, and bade him carry the portmanteau to the cloak-room : not that he had any notion of delay j flight, instant flight was his design, no matter whither ; but he had determined to dismiss the cab- man ere he named, or even chose, his destination, thus possibly balking the Judicial Error of another OF JOHN NICHOLSON 245 link. This was his cunning aim, and now with one foot on the road-way, and one still on the coach-step, he made haste to put the thing in prac- tice, and plunged his hand into his trousers pocket. There was nothing there! Oh, yes ; this time he was to blame. He should have remembered, and when he deserted his blood- stained pantaloons, he should not have deserted along with them his purse. Make the most of his error, and then compare it with the punishment ! Conceive his new position, for I lack words to picture it; conceive him condemned to return to that house, from the very thought of which his soul revolted, and once more to expose himself to capture on the very scene of the misdeed : conceive him linked to the mouldy cab and the familiar cab- man. John cursed the cabman silently, and then it occurred to him that he must stop the incarcera- tion of his portmanteau; that, at least, he must keep close at hand, and he turned to recall the porter. But his reflections, brief as they had ap- peared, must have occupied him longer than he supposed, and there was the man already return- ing with the receipt. Well, that was settled ; he had lost his portman- teau also ; for the sixpence with which he had paid the Murrayfield Toll was one that had strayed alone into his waistcoat pocket, and unless he once more successfully achieved the adventure of the house of crime, his portmanteau lay in the cloak- room in eternal pawn, for lack of a penny fee. And then he remembered the porter, who stood 246 THE MISADVENTURES suggestively attentive, words of gratitude hanging on his lips. John hunted right and left ; he found a coin prayed God that it was a sovereign drew it out, beheld a halfpenny, and offered it to the porter. The man's jaw dropped. " It 's only a halfpenny ! " he said, startled out of railway decency. " I know that," said John, piteously. And here the porter recovered the dignity of man. " Thank you, sir," said he, and would have re- turned the base gratuity. But John, too, would none of it; and as they struggled, who must join in but the cabman? " Hoots, Mr. Baigrey," said he, " you surely forget what day it is ! " " I tell you I have no change ! " cried John. "Well," said the driver, "and what then? I would rather give a man a shillin' on a day like this than put him off with a derision like a baw- bee. I 'm surprised at the like of you, Mr. Baigrey ! " " My name is not Baigrey ! " broke out John, in mere childish temper and distress. " Ye told me it was yoursel'," said the cabman. " I know I did ; and what the devil right had you to ask ? " cried the unhappy one. " Oh, very well," said the driver. " I know my place, if you know yours if you know yours!" he repeated, as one who should imply grave doubt; and muttered inarticulate thunders, OF JOHN NICHOLSON 2 4 y in which the grand old name of gentleman was taken seemingly in vain. j Oh, to have been able to discharge this monster, ^ whom John now perceived, with tardy clear- sightedness, to have begun betimes the festivities of Christmas ! But far from any such ray of con- solation visiting the lost, he stood bare of help and helpers, his portmanteau sequestered in one place, his money deserted in another and guarded by a corpse; himself, so sedulous of privacy, the cyno- sure of all men's eyes about the station; and, as if these were not enough mischances, he was now fallen in ill-blood with the beast to whom his poverty had linked him! In ill-blood, as he re- flected dismally, with the witness who perhaps might hang or save him ! There was no time to be lost; he durst not linger any longer in that public spot; and whether he had recourse to dignity or conciliation, the remedy must be applied at once. Some happily surviving element of manhood moved him to the former. " Let us have no more of this," said he, his foot once more upon the step. " Go back to where we came from." He had avoided the name of any destination, for there was now quite a little band of railway folk about the cab, and he still kept an eye upon the court of justice, and laboured to avoid concentric evidence. But here again the fatal jarvey out- manoeuvred him. " Back to the Ludge? " cried he, in shrill tones of protest. 248 THE MISADVENTURES " Drive on at once ! " roared John, and slammed the door behind him, so that the crazy chariot rocked and jingled. Forth trundled the cab into the Christmas streets, the fare within plunged in the blackness of a despair that neighboured on unconsciousness, the driver on the box digesting his rebuke and his cus- tomer's duplicity. I would not be thought to put the pair in competition ; John's case was out of all parallel. But the cabman, too, is worth the sym- pathy of the judicious; for he was a fellow of genuine kindliness and a high sense of personal dignity incensed by drink; and his advances had been cruelly and publicly rebuffed. As he drove, therefore, he counted his wrongs, and thirsted for sympathy and drink. Now, it chanced he had a friend, a publican, in Queensferry Street, from whom, in view of the sacredness of the occasion, he thought he might extract a dram. Queens- ferry Street lies something off the direct road to Murrayfield. But then there is the hilly cross- road that passes by the valley of the Leith and the Dean Cemetery; and Queensferry Street is on the way to that. What was to hinder the cabman, since his horse was dumb, from choosing the cross- road, and calling on his friend in passing? So it was decided; and the charioteer, already some- what mollified, turned aside his horse to the right. John, meanwhile, sat collapsed, his chin sunk upon his chest, his mind in abeyance. The smell pf the cab was still faintly present to his senses, and a certain leaden chill about his feet; all else OF JOHN NICHOLSON a 49 had disappeared in one vast oppression of calamity and physical faintness. It was drawing on to noon two-and-twenty hours since he had broken bread; in the interval, he had suffered tortures of sorrow and alarm, and been partly tipsy; and though it was impossible to say he slept, yet when the cab stopped and the cabman thrust his head into the window, his attention had to be recalled from depths of vacancy. " If you '11 no' stand me a dram/' said the driver, with a well-merited severity of tone and manner, " I dare say ye '11 have no objection to my taking one mysel' ? " "Yes no do what you like," returned John; and then, as he watched his tormentor- mount the stairs and enter the whisky-shop, there floated into his mind a sense as of something long ago familiar. At that he started fully awake, and stared at the shop-fronts. Yes, he knew them; but when ? and how ? Long since, he thought ; and then, casting his eye through the front glass, which had been recently occluded by the figure of the jarvey, he beheld the tree-tops of the rookery in Randolph Crescent. He was close to home home, where he had thought, at that hour, to be sitting in the well-remembered drawing-room in friendly converse ; and, instead ! It was his first impulse to drop into the bottom of the cab; his next, to cover his face with his hands. So he sat, while the cabman toasted the publican, and the publican toasted the cabman, and both reviewed the affairs of the nation ; so he still 250 THE MISADVENTURES sat, when his master condescended to return, and drive off at last down-hill, along the curve of Lyne- doch Place; but even so sitting, as he passed the end of his father's street, he took one glance from between shielding ringers, and beheld a doctor's carriage at the door. "Well, just so," thought he; "I'll have killed my father ! And this is Christmas-day ! " If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this same road he must journey to the grave; and down this road, on the same errand, his wife had preceded him years before ; and many other leading citizens, with the proper trappings and attendance of the end. And now, in that frosty, ill-smelling, straw- carpeted, and ragged-cushioned cab, with his breath congealing on the glasses, where else was John him- self advancing to ? The thought stirred his imagination, which began to manufacture many thousand pictures, bright and fleeting, like the shapes in a kaleido- scope; and now he saw himself, ruddy and com- fortered, sliding in the gutter; and, again, a little woe-begone, bored urchin tricked forth in crape and weepers, descending this same hill at the foot's- pace of mourning coaches, his mother's body just preceding him; and yet again, his fancy, running far in front, showed him his destination now standing solitary in the low sunshine, with the sparrows hopping on the threshold and the dead man within staring at the roof and now, with a sudden change, thronged about with white-faced, hand-uplifting neighbours, and doctor bursting OF JOHN NICHOLSON 251 through their midst and fixing his stethoscope as he went, the policeman shaking a sagacious head beside the body. It was to this he feared that he was driving; in the midst of this he saw himself arrive, heard himself stammer faint explanations, and felt the hand of the constable upon his shoulder. Heavens! how he wished he had played the man- lier part; how he despised himself that he had fled that fatal neighbourhood when all was quiet, and should now be tamely travelling back when it was thronging with avengers! Any strong degree of passion lends, even to the dullest, the forces of the imagination. And so now as he dwelt on what was probably awaiting him at the end of this distressful drive John, who saw things little, remembered them less, and could not have described them at all, beheld in his mind's eye the garden of the Lodge, detailed as in a map ; he went to and fro in it, feeding his terrors; he saw the hollies, the snowy borders, the paths where he had sought Alan, the high conventual walls, the shut door what ! was the door shut ? Ay, truly, he had shut it shut in his money, his escape, his future life shut it with these hands, and none could now open it! He heard the snap of the spring-lock like something bursting in his brain, and sat astonied. And then he woke again, terror jarring through his vitals. This was no time to be idle; he must be up and doing, he must think. Once at the end of this ridiculous cruise, once at the Lodge door, there would be nothing for it but to turn the cab and i$i THE MISADVENTURES trundle back again. Why, then, go so far? why add another feature of suspicion to a case already so suggestive ? why not turn at once ? It was easy to say, turn ; but whither ? He had nowhere now to go to ; he could never he saw it in letters of blood he could never pay that cab; he was saddled with that cab for ever. Oh, that cab ! his soul yearned and burned, and his bowels sounded to be rid of it. He forgot all other cares. He must first quit himself of this ill-smelling vehicle and of the human beast that guided it first do that; do that, at least; do that at once. And just then the cab suddenly stopped, and there was his persecutor rapping on the front glass. John let it down, and beheld the port-wine coun- tenance inflamed with intellectual triumph. " I ken wha ye are ! " cried the husky voice. " I mind ye now. Ye 're a Nucholson. I drove ye to Hermiston to a Christmas party, and ye came back on the box, and I let ye drive." It is a fact. John knew the man ; they had been even friends. His enemy, he now remembered, was a fellow of great good-nature endless good- nature with a boy ; why not with a man ? Why not appeal to his better side? He grasped at the new hope. " Great Scott ! and so you did," he cried, as if in a transport of delight, his voice sounding false in his own ears. " Well, if that 's so, I Ve some- thing to say to you. I '11 just get out, I guess. Where are we, any way? " The driver had fluttered his ticket in the eyes of OF JOHN NICHOLSON 253 the branch-toll keeper, and they were now brought to on the highest and most solitary part of the by- road. On the left, a row of fieldside trees beshaded it ; on the right, it was bordered by naked fallows, undulating down-hill to the Queensferry Road ; in front, Corstorphine Hill raised its snow-bedabbled, darkling woods against the sky. John looked all about him, drinking the clear air like wine; then his eyes returned to the cabman's face as he sat, not ungleefully, awaiting John's communication, with the air of one looking to be tipped. The features of that face were hard to read, drink had so swollen them, drink had so painted them, in tints that varied from brick red to mul- berry. The small grey eyes blinked, the lips moved, with greed ; greed was the ruling passion ; and though there was some good-nature, some genuine kindliness, a true human touch, in the old toper, his greed was now so set afire by hope, that all other traits of character lay dormant. He sat there a monument of gluttonous desire. John's heart slowly fell. He had opened his lips, but he stood there and uttered naught. He sounded the well of his courage, and it was dry. He groped in his treasury of words, and it was vacant. A devil of dumbness had him by the throat ; the devil of terror babbled in his ears ; and suddenly, with- out a word uttered, with no conscious purpose formed in his will, John whipped about, tumbled over the roadside wall, and began running for his life across the fallows. He had not gone far, he was not past the midst 254 JOHN NICHOLSON of the first field, when his whole brain thundered within him, " Fool ! You have your watch ! " The shock stopped him, and he faced once more toward the cab. The driver was leaning over the wall, brandishing his whip, his face empurpled, roaring like a bull. And John saw (or thought) that he had lost the chance. No watch would pacify the man's resentment now; he would cry for ven- geance also. John would be had under the eye of the police; his tale would be unfolded, his secret plumbed, his destiny would close on him at last, and for ever. He uttered a deep sigh ; and just as the cabman, taking heart of grace, was beginning at last to scale the wall, his defaulting customer fell again to run- ning, and disappeared into the further fields. CHAPTER VIII SINGULAR INSTANCE OF THE UTILITY OF PASS-KEYS WHERE he ran at first, John never very clearly knew ; nor yet how long a time elapsed ere he found himself in the by- road near the lodge of Ravelston, propped against the wall, his lungs heaving like bellows, his legs leaden-heavy, his mind possessed by one sole desire to lie down and be unseen. He remembered the thick coverts round the quarry-hole pond, an un- trodden corner of the world where he might surely find concealment till the night should fall. Thither he passed down the lane ; and when he came there, behold! he had forgotten the frost, and the pond was alive with young people skating, and the pond- side coverts were thick with lookers-on. He looked on awhile himself. There was one tall, graceful maiden, skating hand in hand with a youth, on whom she bestowed her bright eyes perhaps too patently ; and it was strange with what anger John beheld her. He could have broken forth in curses ; he could have stood there, like a mortified tramp, and shaken his fist and vented his gall upon her by the hour or so he thought ; and the next mo- ment his heart bled for the girl. " Poor creature, 256 THE MISADVENTURES it 's little she knows ! " he sighed. " Let her en- joy herself while she can ! " But was it possible, when Flora used to smile at him on the Braid ponds, she could have looked so fulsome to a sick- hearted bystander? The thought of one quarry, in his frozen wits, suggested another; and he plodded off toward Craig Leith. A wind had sprung up out of the north-west; it was cruel keen, it dried him like a fire, and racked his finger- joints. It brought clouds, too; pale, swift, hurrying clouds, that blotted heaven and shed gloom upon the earth. He scrambled up among the hazelled rubbish heaps that surround the caldron of the quarry, and lay flat upon the stones. The wind searched close along the earth, the stones were cutting and icy, the bare hazels wailed about him; and soon the air of the afternoon began to be vocal with those strange and dismal harpings that herald snow. Pain and misery turned in John's limbs to a harrowing impatience and blind desire of change; now he would roll in his harsh lair, and when the flints abraded him, was almost pleased; now he would crawl to the edge of the huge pit and look dizzily down. He saw the spiral of the descending roadway, the steep crags, the clinging bushes, the peppering of snow- wreaths, and far down in the bottom, the dimin- ished crane. Here, no doubt, was a way to end it. But it somehow did not take his fancy. And suddenly he was aware that he was hungry ; ay, even through the tortures of the cold, even through the frosts of despair, a gross, desperate OF JOHN NICHOLSON 257 longing after food, no matter what, no matter how, began to wake and spur him. Suppose he pawned his watch ? But no, on Christmas-day this was Christmas-day ! the pawn-shop would be closed. Suppose he went to the public-house close by at Blackhall, and offered the watch, which was worth ten pounds, in payment for a meal of bread and cheese ? The incongruity was too remarkable ; the good folks would either put him to the door, or only let him in to send for the police. He turned his pockets out one after another ; some San Fran- cisco tram-car checks, one cigar, no lights, the pass-key to his father's house, a pocket-handker- chief, with just a touch of scent : no, money could be raised on none of these. There was nothing for it but to starve; and after all, what mattered it? That also was a door of exit. He crept close among the bushes, the wind play- ing round him like a lash ; his clothes seemed thin as paper, his joints burned, his skin curdled on his bones. He had a vision of a high-lying cattle-drive in California, and the bed of a dried stream with one muddy pool, by which the vaqueros had en- camped : splendid sun over all, the big bonfire blaz- ing, the strips of cow browning and smoking on a skewer of wood ; how warm it was, how savoury the steam of scorching meat! And then again he remembered his manifold calamities, and burrowed and wallowed in the sense of his disgrace and shame. And next he was entering Frank's res- taurant in Montgomery Street, San Francisco; he had ordered a pan-stew and venison chops, of 258 THE MISADVENTURES which he was immoderately fond, and as he sat waiting, Munroe, the good attendant, brought him a whisky punch; he saw the strawberries float on the delectable cup, he heard the ice chink about the straws. And then he woke again to his de- tested fate, and found himself sitting, humped together, in a windy combe of quarry refuse darkness thick about him, thin flakes of snow flying here and there like rags of paper, and the strong shuddering of his body clashing his teeth like a hiccup. We have seen John in nothing but the stormiest condition; we have seen him reckless, desperate, tried beyond his moderate powers; of his daily self, cheerful, regular, not unthrifty, we have seen nothing ; and it may thus be a surprise to the reader, to learn that he was studiously careful of his health. This favourite preoccupation now awoke. If he were to sit there and die of cold, there would be mighty little gained ; better the police cell and the chances of a jury trial, than the miserable certainty of death at a dike-side before the next winter's dawn, or death a little later in the gas-lighted wards of an infirmary. He rose on aching legs, and stumbled here and there among the rubbish heaps, still circumvented by the yawning crater of the quarry; or perhaps he only thought so, for the darkness was already dense, the snow was growing thicker, and he moved like a blind man, and with a blind man's terrors. At last he climbed a fence, thinking to drop into the road, and found himself staggering, instead, OF JOHN NICHOLSON 259 among the iron furrows of a ploughland, endless, it seemed, as a whole county. And next he was in a wood, beating among young trees; and then he was aware of a house with many lighted win- dows, Christmas carriages waiting at the doors, and Christmas drivers (for Christmas has a double edge) becoming swiftly hooded with snow. From this glimpse of human cheerfulness, he fled like Cain ; wandered in the night, unpiloted, careless of whither he went; fell, and lay, and then rose again and wandered further; and at last, like a transformation scene, behold him in the lighted jaws of the city, staring at a lamp which had already donned the tilted night-cap of the snow. It came thickly now, a " Feeding Storm " ; and while he yet stood blinking at the lamp, his feet were buried. He remembered something like it in the past, a street-lamp crowned and caked upon the windward side with snow, the wind uttering its mournful hoot, himself looking on, even as now; but the cold had struck too sharply on his wits, and memory failed him as to the date and sequel of the reminiscence. His next conscious moment was on the Dean Bridge; but whether he was John Nicholson of a bank in a California street, or some former John, a clerk in his father's office, he had now clean for- gotten. Another blank, and he was thrusting his pass-key into the door-lock of his father's house. Hours must have passed. Whether crouched on the cold stones or wandering in the fields among 260 THE MISADVENTURES the snow, was more than he could tell ; but hours had passed. The finger of the hall clock was close on twelve; a narrow peep of gas in the hall-lamp shed shadows ; and the door of the back room his father's room was open and emitted a warm light. At so late an hour, all this was strange ; the lights should have been out, the doors locked, the good folk safe in bed. He marvelled at the irregu- larity, leaning on the hall-table; and marvelled to himself there; and thawed and grew once more hungry, in the warmer air of the house. The clock uttered its premonitory catch ; in five minutes Christmas-day would be among the days of the past Christmas! what a Christmas! Well, there was no use waiting; he had come into that house, he scarce knew how ; if they were to thrust him forth again, it had best be done at once; and he moved to the door of the back room and entered. Oh, well, then he was insane, as he had long believed. - There, in his father's room, at midnight, the fire was roaring and the gas blazing; the papers, the sacred papers to lay a hand on which was crim- inal had all been taken off and piled along the floor ; a cloth was spread, and a supper laid, upon the business table; and in his father's chair a woman, habited like a nun, sat eating. As he appeared in the doorway, the nun rose, gave a low cry, and stood staring. She was a large woman, strong, calm, a little masculine, her fea- tures marked with courage and good sense; and OF JOHN NICHOLSON 261 as John blinked back at her, a faint resemblance dodged about his memory, as when a tune haunts us, and yet will not be recalled. " Why, it 's John ! " cried the nun. " I dare say I 'm mad," said John, unconsciously following King Lear ; " but, upon my word, I do believe you 're Flora." " Of course I am," replied she. And yet it is not Flora at all, thought John; Flora was slender, and timid, and of changing colour, and dewy-eyed; and had Flora such an Edinburgh accent? But he said none of these things, which was perhaps as well. What he said was, " Then why are you a nun ? " " Such nonsense ! " said Flora. " I 'm a, sick- nurse; and I am here nursing your sister, with whom, between you and me, there is precious little the matter. But that is not the question. The point is: How do you come here? and are you not ashamed to show yourself? " " Flora," said John, sepulchrally, " I have n't eaten anything for three days. Or, at least, I don't know what day it is ; but I guess I 'm starving." " You unhappy man ! " she cried. " Here, sit down and eat my supper ; and I '11 just run up-stairs and see my patient, not but what I doubt she 's fast asleep ; for Maria is a malade imaginaire" With this specimen of the French, not of Strat- ford-atte-Bowe, but of a finishing establishment in Moray Place, she left John alone in his father's 262 THE MISADVENTURES sanctum. He fell at once upon the food; and it is to be supposed that Flora had found her patient wakeful, and been detained with some details of nursing, for he had time to make a full end of all there was to eat, and not only to empty the teapot, but to fill it again from a kettle that was fitfully singing on his father's fire. Then he sat torpid, and pleased, and bewildered; his misfor- tunes were then half forgotten; his mind con- sidering, not without regret, this unsentimental return to his old love. He was thus engaged, when that bustling woman noiselessly re-entered. " Have you eaten ? " said she. " Then tell me all about it." It was a long and (as the reader knows) a piti- ful story ; but Flora heard it with compressed lips. She was lost in none of those questionings of human destiny that have, from time to time, ar- rested the flight of my own pen ; for women, such as she, are no philosophers, and behold the concrete only. And women, such as she, are very hard on the imperfect man. " Very well," said she, when he had done ; " then down upon your knees at once, and beg God's forgiveness." And the great baby plumped upon his knees, and did as he was bid; and none the worse for that! But while he was heartily enough request- ing forgiveness on general principles, the rational side of him distinguished, and wondered if, per- haps, the apology were not due upon the other OF JOHN NICHOLSON 263 part. And when he rose again from that becom- ing exercise, he first eyed the face of his old love doubtfully, and then, taking heart, uttered his protest. " I must say, Flora," said he, " in all this busi- ness, I can see very little fault of mine." " If you had written home," replied the lady, " there would have been none of it. If you had even gone to Murrayfield reasonably sober, you would never have slept there, and the worst would not have happened. Besides, the whole thing be- gan years ago. You got into trouble, and when your father, honest man, was disappointed, you took the pet, or got afraid, and ran away from punishment. Well, you Ve had your own way of it, John, and I don't suppose you like it." " I sometimes fancy I 'm not much better than a fool," sighed John. " My dear John," said she, " not much! " He looked at her, and his eye fell. A certain anger rose within him; here was a Flora he dis- owned; she was hard; she was of a set colour; a settled, mature, undecorative manner; plain of speech, plain of habit he had come near saying, plain of face. And this changeling called herself by the same name as the many-coloured, clinging maid of yore; she of the frequent laughter, and the many sighs, and the kind, stolen glances. And to make all worse, she took the upper hand with him, which (as John well knew) was not the true relation of the sexes. He steeled his heart against this sick-nurse. 264 THE MISADVENTURES " And how do you come to be here ? " he asked. She told him how she had nursed her father in his long illness, and when he died, and she was left alone, had taken to nurse others, partly from habit, partly to be of some service in the world; partly, it might be, for amusement. " There 's no accounting for taste," said she. And she told him how she went largely to the houses of old friends, as the need arose; and how she was thus doubly welcome, as an old friend first, and then as an experienced nurse, to whom doctors would confide the gravest cases. " And, indeed, it 's a mere farce my being here for poor Maria," she continued ; " but your father takes her ailments to heart, and I cannot always be refusing him. We are great friends, your father and I; he was very kind to me long ago ten years ago." A strange stir came in John's heart. All this while had he been thinking only of himself? All this while, why had he not written to Flora? In penitential tenderness, he took her hand, and, to his awe and trouble, it remained in his, com- pliant. A voice told him this was Flora, after all told him so quietly, yet with a thrill of singing. " And you never married ? " said he. " No, John ; I never married," she replied. The hall clock striking two recalled them to the sense of time. " And now," said she, " you have been fed and OF JOHN NICHOLSON 265 warmed, and I have heard your story, and now it 's high time to call your brother." " Oh ! " cried John, chap-fallen ; " do you think that absolutely necessary?" " / can't keep you here ; I am a stranger," said she. " Do you want to run away again ? I thought you had enough of that." He bowed his head under the reproof. She despised him, he reflected, as he sat once more alone; a monstrous thing for a woman to despise a man; and strangest of all, she seemed to like him. Would his brother despise him, too? And would his brother like him? And presently the brother appeared, under Flora's escort; and, standing afar off beside the doorway, eyed the hero of this tale. " So this is you ? " he said, at length. " Yes, Alick, it 's me it 's John," replied the elder brother, feebly. " And how did you get in here ? " inquired the younger. " Oh, I had my pass-key," says John. " The deuce you had ! " said Alexander. " Ah, you lived in a better world! There are no pass- keys going now." " Well, father was always averse to them," sighed John. And the conversation then broke down, and the brothers looked askance at one another in silence. " Well, and what the devil are we to do ? " said Alexander. " I suppose if the authorities got wind of you, you would be taken up ? " 266 THE MISADVENTURES " It depends on whether they 've found the body or not," returned John. " And then there 's that cabman, to be sure ! " "Oh, bother the body!" said Alexander. "I mean about the other thing. That 's serious." "Is that what my father spoke about?" asked John. " I don't even know what it is." " About your robbing your bank in California, of course," replied Alexander. It was plain, from Flora's face, that this was the first she had heard of it; it was plainer still, from John's, that he was innocent. " I ! " he exclaimed. " I rob my bank ! My God! Flora, this is too much; even you must allow that." " Meaning you did n't? " asked Alexander. " I never robbed a soul in all my days," cried John : " except my father, if you call that robbery; and I brought him back the money in this room, and he would n't even take it ! " " Look here, John," said his brother ; " let us have no misunderstanding upon this. Macewen saw my father ; he told him a bank you had worked for in San Francisco was wiring over the habitable globe to have you collared that it was supposed you had nailed thousands ; and it was dead certain you had nailed three hundred. So Macewen said, and I wish you would be careful how you answer. I may tell you also, that your father paid the three hundred on the spot." " Three hundred ?" repeated John. "Three hun- dred pounds, you mean ? That 's fifteen hundred OF JOHN NICHOLSON 267 dollars. Why, then, it 's Kirkman ! " he broke out. " Thank Heaven ! I can explain all that. I gave them to Kirkman to pay for me the night before I left fifteen hundred dollars, and a letter to the manager. What do they suppose I would steal fifteen hundred dollars for? I 'm rich; I struck it rich in stocks. It 's the silliest stuff I ever heard of. All that 's needful is to cable to the manager : Kirkman has the fifteen hundred find Kirkman. He was a fellow-clerk of mine, and a hard case ; but to do him justice, I did n't think he was as hard as this." " And what do you say to that, Alick ? " asked Flora. " I say the cablegram shall go to-night ! " cried Alexander, with energy. " Answer prepaid, too. If this can be cleared away and upon my word I do believe it can we shall all be able to hold up our heads again. Here, you John, you stick down the address of your bank manager. You, Flora, you can pack John into my bed, for which I have no further use to-night. As for me, I am off to the post-office, and thence to the High Street about the dead body. The police ought to know, you see, and they ought to know through John; and I can tell them some rigmarole about my brother being a man of highly nervous organisation, and the rest of it. And then, I '11 tell you what, John did you notice the name upon the cab ? " John gave the name of the driver, which, as I have not been able to command the vehicle, I here suppress. 268 THE MISADVENTURES "Well," resumed Alexander, "I'll call round at their place before I come back, and pay your shot for you. In that way, before breakfast-time, you '11 be as good as new." John murmured inarticulate thanks. To see his brother thus energetic in his service moved him beyond expression; if he could not utter what he felt, he showed it legibly in his face ; and Alexander read it there, and liked it the better in that dumb delivery. " But there 's one thing," said the latter, " cable- grams are dear; and I dare say you remember enough of the governor to guess the state of my finances." " The trouble is," said John, " that all my stamps are in that beastly house." " All your what ? " asked Alexander. " Stamps money," explained John. " It *s an American expression ; I 'm afraid I contracted one or two." " I have some," said Flora. " I have a pound note up-stairs." " My dear Flora," returned Alexander, " a pound note won't see us very far; and besides, this is my father's business, and I shall be very much sur- prised if it is n't my father who pays for it." " I would not apply to him yet ; I do not think that can be wise," objected Flora. " You have a very imperfect idea of my re- sources, and none at all of my effrontery," replied Alexander. " Please observe." He put John from his way, chose a stout knife OF JOHN NICHOLSON 269 among the supper things, and with surprising quick- ness broke into his father's drawer. " There 's nothing easier when you come to try," he observed, pocketing the money. " I wish you had not done that," said Flora. u You will never hear the last of it." " Oh, I don't know," returned the young man ; " the governor is human after all. And now, John, let me see your famous pass-key. Get into bed, and don't move for any one till I come back. They won't mind you not answering when they knock; I generally don't myself." CHAPTER IX IN WHICH MR. NICHOLSON ACCEPTS THE PRINCIPLE OF AN ALLOWANCE IN spite of the horrors of the day and the tea- drinking of the night, John slept the sleep of infancy. He was awakened by the maid, as it might have been ten years ago, tapping at the door. The winter sunrise was painting the east; and as the window was to the back of the house, it shone into the room with many strange colours of refracted light. Without, the houses were all cleanly roofed with snow; the garden walls were coped with it a foot in height ; the greens lay glit- tering. Yet strange as snow had grown to John during his years upon the Bay of San Francisco, it was what he saw within that most affected him. For it was to his own room that Alexander had been promoted; there was the old paper with the device of flowers, in which a cunning fancy might yet detect the face of Skinny Jim, of the Academy, John's former dominie ; there was the old chest of drawers; there were the chairs one, two, three three as before. Only the carpet was new, and the litter of Alexander's clothes and books and drawing materials, and a pencil-drawing on the JOHN NICHOLSON 271 wall, which (in John's eyes) appeared a marvel of proficiency. He was thus lying, and looking, and dreaming, hanging, as it were, between two epochs of his life, when Alexander came to the door, and made his presence- known in a loud whisper. John let him in, and jumped back into the warm bed. " Well, John," said Alexander, " the cablegram is sent in your name, and twenty words of answer paid. I have been to the cab office and paid your cab, even saw the old gentleman himself, and prop- erly apologised. He was mighty placable, and in- dicated his belief you had been drinking. Then I knocked up old Macewen out of bed, and explained affairs to him as he sat and shivered in a dressing- gown. And before that I had been to the High Street, where they have heard nothing of your dead body, so that I inclined to the idea that you dreamed it." " Catch me! " said John. " Well, the police never do know anything," assented Alexander ; " and at any rate, they have despatched a man to inquire and to recover your trousers and your money, so that really your bill is now fairly clean ; and I see but one lion in your path the governor." " I '11 be turned out again, you '11 see," said John, dismally. " I don't imagine so," returned the other; "not if you do what Flora and I have arranged; and your business now is to dress, and lose no time about it. Is your watch right ? Well, you have a 272 THE MISADVENTURES quarter of an hour. By five minutes before the half hour you must be at table, in your old seat, under Uncle Duthie's picture. Flora will be there to keep you countenance; and we shall see what we shall see." " Would n't it be wiser for me to stay in bed ? " said John. "If you mean to manage your own concerns, you can do precisely what you like," replied Alex- ander ; " but if you are not in your place five minutes before the half hour I wash my hands of you, for one." And thereupon he departed. He had spoken warmly, but the truth is, his heart was somewhat troubled. And as he hung over the balusters, watching for his father to appear, he had hard ado to keep himself braced for the encounter that must follow. " If he takes it well, I shall be lucky," he re- flected. " If he takes it ill, why, it '11 be a herring across John's tracks, and perhaps all for the best. He 's a confounded muff, this brother of mine, but he seems a decent soul." At that stage a door opened below with a certain emphasis, and Mr. Nicholson was seen solemnly to descend the stairs, and pass into his own apart- ment. Alexander followed, quaking inwardly, but with a steady face. He knocked, was bidden to enter, and found his father standing in front of the forced drawer, to which he pointed as he spoke. " This is a most extraordinary thing," said he ; " I have been robbed ! " OF JOHN NICHOLSON 273 " I was afraid you would notice it," observed his son ; " it made such a beastly hash of the table." " You were afraid I would notice it ? " repeated Mr. Nicholson. "And, pray, what may that mean ? " " That I was a thief, sir," returned Alexander. " I took all the money in case the servants should get hold of it; and here is the change, and a note of my expenditure. You were gone to bed, you see, and I did not feel at liberty to knock you up; but I think when you have heard the circumstances, you will do me justice. The fact is, I have reason to believe there has been ' some dreadful error about my brother John; the sooner it can be cleared up the better for all parties ; it was a piece of business, sir and so I took it, and decided, on my own responsibility, to send a telegram to San Francisco. Thanks to my quickness we may hear to-night. There appears to be no doubt, sir, that John has been abominably used." " When did this take place? " asked the father. " Last night, sir, after you were asleep," was the reply. " It 's most extraordinary," said Mr. Nicholson. " Do you mean to say you have been out all night?" " All night, as you say, sir. I have been to the telegraph and the police office, and Mr. Macewen's. Oh, I had my hands full," said Alexander. " Very irregular," said the father. " You think of no one but yourself." " I do not see that I have much to gain in bring- 18 274 THE MISADVENTURES ing back my elder brother," returned Alexander, shrewdly. The answer pleased the old man; he smiled. " Well, well, I will go into this after breakfast," said he. " I 'm sorry about the table," said the son. " The table is a small matter ; I think nothing of that," said the father. " It 's another example," continued the son, " of the awkwardness of a man having no money of his own. If I had a proper allowance, like other fellows of my age, this would have been quite unnecessary." " A proper allowance ! " repeated his father, in tones of blighting sarcasm, for the expression was not new to him. " I have never grudged you money for any proper purpose." " No doubt, no doubt," said Alexander, " but then you see you ar'n't always on the spot to have the thing explained to you. Last night for instance " " You could have wakened me last night," in- terrupted his father. " Was it not some similar affair that first got John into a mess ? " asked the son, skilfully evading the point. But the father was not less adroit. " And pray, sir, how did you come and go out of the house? " he asked. " I forgot to lock the door, it seems," replied Alexander. " I have had cause to complain of that too often," OF JOHN NICHOLSON 275 said Mr. Nicholson. " But still I do not under- stand. Did you keep the servants up ? " " I propose to go into all that at length after breakfast," returned Alexander. " There is the half hour going; we must not keep Miss Mackenzie waiting." And greatly daring, he opened the door. Even Alexander, who, it must have been per- ceived, was on terms of comparative freedom with his parents; even Alexander had never before dared to cut short an interview in this high-handed fashion. But the truth is the very mass of his son's delinquencies daunted the old gentleman. He was like the man with the cart of apples this was beyond him! That Alexander should have spoiled his table, taken his money, stayed out all night, and then coolly acknowledged all, was something undreamed of in the Nicholsonian philosophy, and transcended comment. The return of the change, which the old gentleman still carried in his hand, had been a feature of imposing impudence ; it had dealt him a staggering blow. Then there was the reference to John's original flight a subject which he always kept resolutely curtained in his own mind; for he was a man who loved to have made no mistakes, and when he feared he might have made one kept the papers sealed. In view of all these surprises and reminders, and of his son's composed and masterful demeanour, there began to creep on Mr. Nicholson a sickly misgiv- ing. He seemed beyond his depth; if he did or said anything, he might come to regret it. The 276 THE MISADVENTURES young man, besides, as he had pointed out himself, was playing a generous part. And if wrong had been done and done to one who was, after, and in spite of, all, a Nicholson it should certainly be righted. All things considered, monstrous as it was to be cut short in his inquiries, the old gentleman submitted, pocketed the change, and followed his son into the dining-room. During these few steps he once more mentally revolted, and once more, and this time finally, laid down his arms: a still, small voice in his bosom having informed him authentically of a piece of news ; that he was afraid of Alexander. The strange thing was that he was pleased to be afraid of him. He was proud of his son; he might be proud of him; the boy had character and grit, and knew what he was doing. These were his reflections as he turned the corner of the dining-room door. Miss Mackenzie was in the place of honour, conjuring with a tea- pot and a cozy; and, behold! there was another person present, a large, portly, whiskered man of a very comfortable and respectable air, who now rose from his seat and came forward, holding out his hand. " Good-morning, father," said he. Of the contention of feeling that ran high in Mr. Nicholson's starched bosom, no outward sign was visible; nor did he delay long to make a choice of conduct. Yet in that interval he had reviewed a great field of possibilities both past and future; OF JOHN NICHOLSON 277 whether it was possible he had not been perfectly- wise in his treatment of John; whether it was possible that John was innocent; whether, if he turned John out a second time, as his outraged authority suggested, it was possible to avoid a scandal; and whether, if he went to that ex- tremity, it was possible that Alexander might rebel. " Hum ! " said Mr. Nicholson, and put his hand, limp and dead, into John's. And then, in an embarrassed silence, all took their places ; and even the paper from which it was the old gentleman's habit to suck mortifica- tion daily, as he marked the decline of our in- stitutions even the paper lay furled by his side. But presently Flora came to the rescue. She slid into the silence with a technicality, asking if John still took his old inordinate amount of sugar. Thence it was but a step to the burning question of the day; and in tones a little shaken, she com- mented on the interval since she had last made tea for the prodigal, and congratulated him on his return. And then addressing Mr. Nicholson, she congratulated him also in a manner that defied his ill-humour; and from that launched into the tale of John's misadventures, not without some suitable suppressions. Gradually Alexander joined; between them, whether he would or no, they forced a word or two from John ; and these fell so tremulously, and spoke so eloquently of a mind oppressed with 278 THE MISADVENTURES dread, that Mr. Nicholson relented. At length even he contributed a question: and before the meal was at an end all four were talking even freely. Prayers followed, with the servants gaping at this new-comer whom no one had admitted; and after prayers there came that moment on the clock which was the signal for Mr. Nicholson's departure. " John," said he, " of course you will stay here. Be very careful not to excite Maria, if Miss Mac- kenzie thinks it desirable that you should see her. Alexander, I wish to speak with you alone." And then, when they were both in the back room : " You need not come to the office to-day," said he; " you can stay and amuse your brother, and I think it would be respectful to call on Uncle Greig. And by the bye " (this spoken with a certain dare we say? bashfulness), "I agree to concede the principle of an allowance ; and I will consult with Dr. Durie, who is quite a man of the world and has sons of his own, as to the amount. And, my fine fellow, you may consider yourself in luck ! " he added, with a smile. " Thank you," said Alexander. Before noon a detective had restored to John his money, and brought news, sad enough in truth, but perhaps the least sad possible. Alan had been found in his own house in Regent's Terrace, under care of the terrified butler. He was quite mad, and instead of going to prison, had gone to Morn- ingside Asylum. The murdered man, it appeared, OF JOHN NICHOLSON 279 was an evicted tenant who had for nearly a year pursued his late landlord with threats and insults; and beyond this, the cause and details of the tragedy were lost. When Mr. Nicholson returned from dinner they were able to put a despatch into his hands : " John V. Nicholson, Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh. Kirkham has disappeared ; police looking for him. All understood. Keep mind quite easy. Austin." Having had this explained to him, the old gentle- man took down the cellar key and departed for two bottles of the 1820 port. Uncle Greig dined there that day, and Cousin Robina, and, by an odd chance, Mr. Macewen; and the presence of these strangers relieved what might have been otherwise a somewhat strained relation. Ere they departed, the family was welded once more into a fair sem- blance of unity. In the end of April John led Flora or, as more descriptive, Flora led John to the altar, if altar that may be called which was indeed the drawing-room mantel-piece in Mr. Nicholson's house, with the Reverend Dr. Durie posted on the hearth-rug in the guise of Hymen's priest. The last I saw of them, on a recent visit to the north, was at a dinner-party in the house of my old friend Gellatly Macbride; and after we had, in classic phrase, " rejoined the ladies," I had an opportunity to overhear Flora conversing with another married woman on the much canvassed matter of a husband's tobacco. " Oh, yes! " said she; " I only allow Mr. Nichol- 280 JOHN NICHOLSON son four cigars a day. Three he smokes at fixed times after a meal, you know, my dear; and the fourth he can take when he likes with any friend." " Bravo ! " thought I to myself ; " this is the wife for my friend John ! " THE STORY OF A LIE THE STORY OF A LIE CHAPTER I INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL WHEN Dick Naseby was in Paris he made some odd acquaintances, for he was one of those who have ears to hear, and can use their eyes no less than their intelligence. He made as many thoughts as Stuart Mill ; but his philosophy concerned flesh and blood, and was experimental as to its method. He was a type-hunter among mankind. ^He despised small game and insignificant personalities, whether in the shape of dukes or bagmen, letting them go by like seaweed; but show him a refined or powerful face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice, fish for him with a living look in some one's eye, a passionate gesture, a meaning or ambiguous smile, and his mind was instantaneously awakened. " There was a man, there was a woman," he seemed to say, and he stood up to the task of compre- hension with the delight of an artist in his art. And indeed, rightly considered, this interest of his was an artistic interest. There is no science in the personal study of human nature. All com- prehension is creation; the woman I love is some- 284 THE STORY OF A LIE what of my handiwork; and the great lover, like the great painter, is he that can so embellish his subject as to make her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning art he has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that the woman can go on being a true woman, and give her character free play, and show littleness or cherish spite, or be greedy of common pleasures, and he continue to worship without a thought of incongruity. To love a character is only the heroic way of under- standing it. When we love, by some noble method of our own or some nobility of mien or nature in the other, we apprehend the loved one by what is noblest in ourselves. When we are merely study- ing an eccentricity, the method of our study is but a series of allowances. To begin to under- stand is to begin to sympathise; for comprehen- sion comes only when we have stated another's faults and virtues in terms of our owrQ Hence the proverbial toleration of artists for their own evil creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick Naseby, a high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the various human creeping things whom he had met and studied. One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking, two-legged animal of the inter- national genus, and by profession of general and more than equivocal utility. Years before he had been a painter of some standing in a colony, and portraits signed " Van Tromp " had celebrated the THE STORY OF A LIE 285 greatness of colonial governors and judges. In those days he had been married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony trap. What were the steps of his declension? No one ex- actly knew. Here he was at least, and had been, any time these past ten years, a sort of dismal para- site upon the foreigner in Paris. It would be hazardous to specify his exact in- dustry. Coarsely followed, it would have merited a name grown somewhat unfamiliar to our ears. Followed as he followed it, with a skilful reticence, in a kind of social chiaroscuro, it was still possible for the polite to call him a professional painter. His lair was in the Grand Hotel and the gaudi- est cafes. There he might be seen jotting off a sketch with an air of some inspiration; and he was always affable, and one of the easiest of men to fall in talk withal. A conversation usually ripened into a peculiar sort of intimacy, and it was extraordinary how many little services Van Tromp contrived to render in the course of six- and-thirty hours. He occupied a position between a friend and a courier, which made him worse than embarrassing to repay. But those whom he obliged could always buy one of his villainous little pictures, or, where the favours had been prolonged and more than usually delicate, might order and pay for a large canvas, with perfect certainty that they would hear no more of the transaction. Among resident artists he enjoyed the celebrity of a non-professional sort. He had spent more 286 THE STORY OF A LIE money no less than three individual fortunes, it was whispered than any of his associates could ever hope to gain. Apart from his colonial career, he had been to Greece in a brigantine with four brass carronades; he had travelled Europe in a chaise-and-four, drawing bridle at the palace doors of German princes; queens of song and dance had followed him like sheep and paid his tailor's bills. And to behold him now, seeking small loans with plaintive condescension, spong- ing for breakfast on an art student of nineteen, a fallen Don Juan who had neglected to die at the propitious hour, had a colour of romance for young imaginations. His name and his bright past, seen through the prism of whispered gossip, had gained him the nickname of The Admiral. Dick found him one day at the receipt of custom, rapidly painting a pair of hens and a cock in a little water-colour sketching-box, and now and then glancing at the ceiling like a man who should seek inspiration from the muse. Dick thought it remarkable that a painter should choose to work over an absinthe in a public cafe, and looked the man over. The aged rakishness of his appearance was set off by a youthful costume; he had dis- reputable grey hair and a disreputable, sore, red nose; but the coat and the gesture, the outworks of the man, were still designed for show. Dick came up to his table and inquired if he might look at what the gentleman was doing. No one was so delighted as the Admiral. " A bit of a thing," said he. " I just dash them THE STORY OF A LIE 287 off like that. I I dash them off," he added, with a gesture. " Quite so," said Dick, who was appalled by the feebleness of the production. " Understand me," continued Van Tromp, " I am a man of the world. And yet once an artist always an artist. All of a sudden a thought takes me in the street ; I become its prey ; it 's like a pretty woman ; no use to struggle ; I must dash it off." * I see," said Dick. " Yes," pursued the painter ; " it all comes easily, easily to me ; it is not my business ; it 's a pleasure. Life is my business life this great city, Paris Paris after dark its lights, its gardens, its odd corners. Aha ! " he cried, " to be young again! The heart is young, but the heels are leaden. A poor, mean business, to grow old ! Nothing remains but the coup d'ceil, the con- templative man's enjoyment, Mr. ," and he paused for the name. " Naseby," returned Dick. The other treated him at once to an exciting beverage, and expatiated on the pleasure of meet- ing a compatriot in a foreign land; to hear him you would have thought they had encountered in Central Africa. Dick had never found any one take a fancy to him so readily, nor show it in an easier or less offensive manner. He seemed tickled with him as an elderly fellow about town might be tickled by a pleasant and witty lad; he indi- cated that he was no precisian, but in his wildest 288 THE STORY OF A LIE times had never been such a blade as he thought Dick. Dick protested, but in vain. This manner of carrying an intimacy at the bayonet's point was Van Tromp's stock-in-trade. With an older man he insinuated himself ; with youth he imposed him- self, and in the same breath imposed an ideal on his victim, who saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this old and vicious patron. And what young man can bear to lose a character for vice ? At last, as it grew towards dinner-time, " Do you know Paris ? " asked Van Tromp. " Not so well as you, I am convinced," said Dick. "And so am I," returned Van Tromp gaily. " Paris ! My young friend you will allow me? when you know Paris as I do, you will have seen Strange Things. I say no more; all I say is, Strange Things. We are men of the world, you and I, and in Paris, in the heart of civilised existence. This is an opportunity, Mr. Naseby. Let us dine. Let me show you where to dine. ,, Dick consented. On the way to dinner the Admiral showed him where to buy gloves, and made him buy them; where to buy cigars, and made him buy a vast store, some of which he obligingly accepted. At the restaurant he showed him what to order, with surprising consequences in the bill. What he made that night by his per- centages it would be hard to estimate. And all the while Dick smilingly consented, understanding well that he was being done, but taking his losses THE STORY OF A LIE 289 in the pursuit of character, as a hunter sacrifices his dogs. As for the Strange Things, the reader will be relieved to hear that they were no stranger than might have been expected, and he may find things quite as strange without the expense of a Van Tromp for guide. Yet he was a guide of no mean order, who made up for the poverty of what he had to show by a copious, imaginative commentary. " And such," said he with a hiccup, " such is Paris." " Pooh ! " said Dick, who was tired of the performance. The Admiral hung an ear, and looked up side- long with a glimmer of suspicion. " Good-night," said Dick; " I 'm tired." " So English ! " cried Van Tromp, clutching him by the hand. " So English ! So blase! Such a charming companion! Let me see you home." " Look here," returned Dick, " I have said good- night, and now I 'm going. You 're an amusing old boy ; I like you, in a sense ; but here 's an end of it for to-night. Not another cigar, not another grog, not another percentage out of me." " I beg your pardon ! " cried the Admiral with dignity. " Tut, man ! " said Dick ; " you 're not offended ; you 're a man of the world, I thought. I 've been studying you, and it 's over. Have I not paid for the lesson? Au revoir." Van Tromp laughed gaily, shook hands up to the elbows, hoped cordially they would meet again *9 290 THE STORY OF A LIE and that often, but looked after Dick as he de- parted with a tremor of indignation. After that they two not unfrequently fell in each other's way, and Dick would often treat the old boy to break- fast on a moderate scale and in a restaurant of his own selection. Often, too, he would lend Van Tromp the matter of a pound, in view of that gentleman's contemplated departure for Australia; there would be a scene of farewell almost touching in character, and a week or a month later they would meet on the same boulevard without sur- prise or embarrassment. And in the meantime Dick learned more about his acquaintance on all sides; heard of his yacht, his chaise-and-four, his brief season of celebrity amid a more confiding population, his daughter, of whom he loved to whimper in his cups, his sponging, parasitical, nameless way of life; and with each new detail something that was not merely interest nor yet altogether affection grew up in his mind towards this disreputable stepson of the arts. Ere he left Paris Van Tromp was one of those whom he entertained to a farewell supper ; and the old gen- tleman made the speech of the evening, and then fell below the table, weeping, smiling, paralysed. CHAPTER II A LETTER TO THE PAPERS OLD Mr. Naseby had the sturdy, untutored nature of the upper middle class. The universe seemed plain to him. " The thing's right," he would say, or "the thing's wrong " ; and there was an end of it. There was a contained, prophetic energy in his utterances, even on the slightest affairs; he saw the damned thing; if you did not, it must be from perversity of will; and this sent the blood to his head. Apart from this, which made him an exacting companion, he was one of the most upright, hot- tempered old gentlemen in England. Florid, with white hair, the face of an old Jupiter, and the figure of an old fox-hunter, he enlivened the Vale of Thyme from end to end on his big, cantering chestnut. He had a hearty respect for Dick as a lad of parts. Dick had a respect for his father as the best of men, tempered by the politic revolt of a youth who has to see to his own independence. Whenever the pair argued, they came to an open rupture; and arguments were frequent, for they were both positive, and both loved the work of the intelligence. It was a treat to hear Mr. Naseby a 9 2 THE STORY OF A LIE defending the Church of England in a volley of oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with an en- thusiasm not entirely innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and none the less so be- cause, as his father was a skilful disputant, he found himself not seldom in the wrong. On these occasions he would redouble in energy, and declare that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction and heat of manner; but in the morn- ing such a licence of debate weighed upon him like a crime, and he would seek out his father, where he walked before breakfast on a terrace overlook- ing all the Vale of Thyme. " I have to apologise, sir, for last night " he would begin, " Of course you have," the old gentleman would cut in cheerfully. " You spoke like a fool. Say no more about it." " You do not understand me, sir. I refer to a particular point. I confess there is much force in your argument from the doctrine of possibilities." " Of course there is," returned his father. " Come down and look at the stables. Only," he would add, " bear this in mind, and do remember that a man of my age and experience knows more about what he is saying than a raw boy." He would utter the word " boy " even more offensively than the average of fathers, and the light way in which he accepted these apologies cut Dick to the heart. The latter drew slighting comparisons, and remembered that he was the only one who ever apologised. This gave him THE STORY OF A LIE 293 a high station in his own esteem, and thus con- tributed indirectly to his better behaviour; for he was scrupulous as well as high-spirited, and prided himself on nothing more than on a just submission. So things went on until the famous occasion when Mr. Naseby, becoming engrossed in securing the election of a sound party candidate to Parlia- ment, wrote a flaming letter to the papers. The letter had about every demerit of party letters in general: it was expressed with the energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a little more than half unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what was untrue, you may be sure; but he had rashly picked up gossip, as his prejudice suggested, and now rashly launched it on the public with the sanction of his name. " The Liberal candidate," he concluded, " is thus a public turncoat. Is that the sort of man we want? He has been given the lie, and has swallowed the insult. Is that the sort of man we want? I answer, No! with all the force of my conviction, I answer, No!" And then he signed and dated the letter with an amateur's pride, and looked to be famous by the morrow. Dick, who had heard nothing of the matter, was up first on that inauspicious day, and took the journal to an arbour in the garden. He found his father's manifesto in one column; and in another a leading article. " No one that we are aware of," <2 9 4 THE STORY OF A LIE ran the arcticle, " had consulted Mr. Naseby on the subject, but if he had been appealed to by the whole body of electors, his letter would be none the less ungenerous and unjust to Mr. Dal ton. We do not choose to give the lie to Mr. Naseby, for we are too well aware of the consequences, but we shall venture instead to print the facts of both cases referred to by this red-hot partisan in another portion of our issue. Mr. Naseby is of course a large proprietor in our neighbourhood : but fidelity to facts, decent feeling, and English grammar, are all of them qualities more important than the pos- session of land. Mr. N is doubtless a great man; in his large gardens and that half-mile of greenhouses, where he has probably ripened his intellect and temper, he may say what he will to his hired vassals, but (as the Scots say) here He maunna think to domineer. Liberalism/' continued the anonymous journalist, " is of too free and sound a growth," etc. Richard Naseby read the whole thing from be- ginning to end; and a crushing shame fell upon his spirit. His father had played the fool ; he had gone out noisily to war, and come back with con- fusion. The moment that his trumpets sounded, he had been disgracefully unhorsed. There was no question as to the facts; they were one and all against the Squire. Richard would have given his ears to have suppressed the issue; but as that could not be done, he had his horse saddled, and, THE STORY OF A LIE 295 furnishing himself with a convenient staff, rode off at once to Thymebury. The editor was at breakfast in a large, sad apartment. The absence of furniture, the extreme meanness of the meal, and the haggard, bright- eyed, consumptive look of the culprit, unmanned our hero; but he clung to his stick and was stout and warlike. "You wrote the article in this morning's paper ? " he demanded. " You are young Mr. Naseby? I published it," replied the editor, rising. " My father is an old man," said Richard ; and then with an outburst, " And a damned sight finer fellow than either you or Dalton ! " He stopped and swallowed ; he was determined that all should go with regularity. " I have but one question to put to you, sir," he resumed. " Granted that my father was misinformed, would it not have been more decent to withhold the letter and communicate with him in private ? " " Believe me," returned the editor, " that alter- native was not open to me. Mr. Naseby told me in a note that he had sent his letter to three other journals, and in fact threatened me with what he called exposure if I kept it back from mine, I am really concerned at what has happened; I sym- pathise and approve of your emotion, young gen- tleman; but the attack on Mr. Dalton was gross, very gross, and I had no choice but to offer him my columns to reply. Party has its duties, sir," added the scribe, kindling as one who should ^-?-'*-/