WITNESSES THE LAST OF A BLATE YOUNG MAN
And all this time it may well be wondered where was my remorse for a shot fired on the moor of Mearns, for two wretched homes created by my passion and my folly. And where, in that shifting mind of mine, was the place of Isobel Fortune, whose brief days of favour for myself (if that, indeed, was not imagination on my part) had been the cause of these my wanderings? There is one beside me as I write, ready to make allowance for youth and ignorance, the untutored affection, the distraught mind, if not for the dubiety as to her feelings for myself when I was outlawed for a deed of blood and had taken, as the Highland phrase goes, the world for my pillow.
I did not forget the girl of Kirkillstane; many a time in the inward visions of the night, and of the day too, I saw her go about that far-off solitary house in the hollow of the hills. Oddly enough, 'twas ever in sunshine I saw her, with her sun-bonnet swinging from its ribbons and her hand above her eyes, shading them that she might look across the fields that lay about her home, or on a tryst of fancy by the side of Earn, hearing the cushats mourn in a magic harmony with her melancholy thoughts. As for the killing of young Borland, that I kept, waking at least, from my thoughts, or if the same intruded, I found it easier, as time passed, to excuse myself for a fatality that had been in the experience of nearly every man I now knew—of Clancarty and Thurot, of the very baker in whose house I lodged and who kneaded the dough for his little bread not a whit the less cheerily because his hands had been imbrued.
The late Earl of Clare, in France called the Maréchal Comte de Thomond, had come to Dunkerque in the quality of Inspector-General of the Armies of France, to review the troops in garrison and along that menacing coast. The day after my engagement with Father Hamilton I finished my French lesson early and went to see his lordship and his army on the dunes to the east of the town. Cannon thundered, practising at marks far out in the sea; there was infinite manoeuvring of horse and foot; the noon was noisy with drums and the turf shook below the hoofs of galloping chargers. I fancy it was a holiday; at least, as I recall the thing, Dunkerque was all en fête, and a happy and gay populace gathered in the rear of the maréchales flag. Who should be there among the rest, or rather a little apart from the crowd, but Miss Walkinshaw! She had come in a chair; her dainty hand beckoned me to her side almost as soon as I arrived.
“Now, that's what I must allow is very considerate,” said she, eyeing my red shoes, which were put on that day from some notion of proper splendour.
“Well considered?” I repeated.
“Just well considered,” said she. “You know how much it would please me to see you in your red shoes, and so you must put them on.”
I was young in these days, and, like the ass I was, I quickly set about disabusing her mind of a misapprehension that injured her nor me.
“Indeed, Miss Walkinshaw,” said I, “how could I do that when I did not know you were to be here? You are the last I should have expected to see here.”
“What!” she exclaimed, growing very red. “Does Mr. Greig trouble himself so much about the convenances? And why should I not be here if I have the whim? Tell me that, my fastidious compatriot.”
Here was an accountable flurry over a thoughtless phrase!
“No reason in the world that I know of,” said I gawkily, as red as herself, wondering what it was my foot was in.
“That you know of,” she repeated, as confused as ever. “It seems to me, Mr. Greig, that the old gentleman who is tutoring you in the French language would be doing a good turn to throw in a little of the manners of the same. Let me tell you that I am as much surprised as you can be to find myself here, and now that you are so good as to put me in mind of the—of the—of the convenances, I will go straight away home. It was not the priest, nor was it Captain Thurot that got your ear, for they are by the way of being gentlemen; it could only have been this Irishman Clancarty—the quality of that country have none of the scrupulosity that distinguishes our own. You can tell his lordship, next time you see him, that Miss Walkinshaw will see day about with him for this.”
She ordered her chairmen to take her home, and then—burst into tears!
I followed at her side, in a stew at my indiscoverable blundering, my chapeau-de-bras in my hand, and myself like to greet too for sympathy and vexation.
“You must tell me what I have done, Miss Walkinshaw,” I said. “Heaven knows I have few enough friends in this world without losing your good opinion through an offence of whose nature I am entirely ignorant.”
“Go away!” she said, pushing my fingers from the side of her chair, that was now being borne towards the town.
“Indeed, and I shall not, Miss Walkinshaw, asking your pardon for the freedom,” I said, “for here's some monstrous misconception, and I must clear myself, even at the cost of losing your favour for ever.”
She hid her face in her handkerchief and paid no more heed to me. Feeling like a mixture of knave and fool, I continued to walk deliberately by her side all the way into the Rue de la Boucherie. She dismissed the chair and was for going into the house without letting an eye light on young persistency.
“One word, Miss Walkinshaw,” I pleaded. “We are a Scottish man and a Scottish woman, our leelones of all our race at this moment in this street, and it will be hard-hearted of the Scottish woman if she will not give her fellow countryman, that has for her a respect and an affection, a chance to know wherein he may have blundered.”
“Respect and affection,” she said, her profile turned to me, her foot on the steps, visibly hesitating.
“Respect and affection,” I repeated, flushing at my own boldness.
“In spite of Clancarty's tales of me?” she said, biting her nether lip and still manifestly close on tears.
“How?” said I, bewildered. “His lordship gave me no tales that I know of.”
“And why,” said she, “be at such pains to tell me you wondered I should be there?”
I got very red at that.
“You see, you cannot be frank with me, Mr. Greig,” she said bitterly.
“Well, then,” I ventured boldly, “what I should have said was that I feared you would not be there, for it's there I was glad to see you. And I have only discovered that in my mind since you have been angry with me and would not let me explain myself.”
“What!” she cried, quite radiant, “and, after all, the red shoon were not without a purpose? Oh, Mr. Greig, you're unco' blate! And, to tell you the truth, I was just play-acting yonder myself. I was only making believe to be angry wi' you, and now that we understand each ither you can see me to my parlour.”
“Well, Bernard,” she said to the Swiss as we entered, “any news?”
He informed her there was none.
“What! no one called?” said she with manifest disappointment.
“Personne, Madame.”
“No letters?”
Nor were there any letters, he replied.
She sighed, paused irresolute a moment with her foot on the stair, one hand at her heart, the other at the fastening of her coat, and looked at me with a face almost tragic in its trouble. I cannot but think she was on the brink of a confidence, but ere it came she changed her mind and dashed up the stair with a tra-la-la of a song meant to indicate her indifference, leaving me a while in her parlour while she changed her dress. She came back to me in a little, attired in a pale primrose-coloured paduasoy, the cuffs and throat embroidered in a pattern of roses and leaves, her hair unpowdered and glossy, wantoning in and out of a neck beyond description. The first thing she did on entrance was odd enough, for it was to stand over me where I lounged on her settee, staring down into my eyes until I felt a monstrous embarrassment.
“I am wonderin',” said she, “if ye are the man I tak' ye for.”
Her eyes were moist; I saw she had been crying in her toilet room.
“I'm just the man you see,” I said, “but for some unco' troubles that are inside me and are not for airing to my friends on a fine day in Dunkerque.”
“Perhaps, like the lave of folks, ye dinna ken yoursel',” she went on, speaking with no sprightly humour though in the Scots she was given to fall to in her moments of fun. “All men, Mr. Greig, mean well, but most of them fall short of their own ideals; they're like the women in that, no doubt, but in the men the consequence is more disastrous.”
“When I was a girl in a place you know,” she went on even more soberly, “I fancied all men were on the model of honest John Walkinshaw—better within than without. He was stern to austerity, demanding the last particle of duty from his children, and to some he might seem hard, but I have never met the man yet with a kinder heart, a pleasanter mind, a more pious disposition than John Walkin-shaw's. It has taken ten years, and acquaintance with some gentry not of Scotland, to make it plain that all men are not on his model.”
“I could fancy not, to judge from his daughter,” I said, blushing at my first compliment that was none the less bold because it was sincere.
At that she put on a little mouth and shrugged her shoulders with a shiver that made the snaps in her ears tremble.
“My good young man,” said she, “there you go! If there's to be any friendship between you and Clementina Walkinshaw, understand there must be a different key from that. You are not only learning your French, but you are learning, it would seem, the manners of the nation. It was that made me wonder if you could be the man I took you for the first day you were in this room and I found I could make you greet with a Scots sang, and tell me honestly about a lass you had a notion of and her no' me. That last's the great stroke of honesty in any man, and let me tell you there are some women who would not relish it. But you are in a company here so ready with the tongue of flattery that I doubt each word they utter, and that's droll enough in me that loves my fellow creatures, and used to think the very best of every one of them. If I doubt them now I doubt them with a sore enough heart, I'll warrant you. Oh! am I not sorry that my man of Mearns should be put in the reverence of such creatures as Clancarty and Thurot, and all that gang of worldlings? I do not suppose I could make you understand it, Mr. Paul Greig, but I feel motherly to you, and to see my son—this great giant fellow who kens the town of Glasgow and dwelt in Mearns where I had May milk, and speaks wi' the fine Scots tongue like mysel' when his heart is true—to see him the boon comrade with folks perhaps good enough for Clementina Walkinshaw but lacking a particle of principle, is a sight to sorrow me.”
“And is it for that you seek to get me away with the priest?” I asked, surprised at all this, and a little resenting the suggestion of youth implied in her feeling like a mother to me. Her face was lit, her movement free and beautiful; something in her fascinated me.
She dropped in a chair and pushed the hair from her ears with a hand like milk, and laughed.
“Now how could you guess?” said she. “Am I no' the careful mother of you to put you in the hands o' the clergy? I doubt this play-acting rhetorician of a man from Dixmunde is no great improvement on the rest of your company when all's said and done, but you'll be none the worse for seeing the world at his costs, and being in other company than Clancarty's and Thurot's and Roscommon's. He told me to-day you were going with him, and I was glad that I had been of that little service to you.”
“Then it seems you think so little of my company as to be willing enough to be rid of me at the earliest opportunity,” I said, honestly somewhat piqued at her readiness to clear me out of Dunkerque.
She looked at me oddly. “Havers, Mr. Greig!” said she, “just havers!”
I was thanking her for her offices, but she checked me. “You are well off,” she said, “to be away from here while these foolish manouvrings are on foot. Poor me! I must bide and see them plan the breaking down of my native country. It's a mercy I know in what a fiasco it will end, this planning. Hearken! Do you hear the bugles? That's Soubise going back to the caserne. He and his little men are going back to eat another dinner destined to assist in the destruction of an island where you and I should be this day if we were wiser than we are. Fancy them destroying Britain, Mr. Greig!—Britain, where honest John Walkinshaw is, that never said an ill word in his life, nor owed any man a penny: where the folks are guid and true, and fear God and want nothing but to be left to their crofts and herds. If it was England—if it was the palace of Saint James—no, but it's Scotland, too, and the men you saw marching up and down to-day are to be marching over the moor o' Mearns when the heather's red. Can you think of it?” She stamped her foot. “Where the wee thack hooses are at the foot o' the braes, and the bairns playing under the rowan trees; where the peat is smelling, and the burns are singing in the glens, and the kirk-bells are ringing. Poor Mr. Greig! Are ye no' wae for Scotland? Do ye think Providence will let a man like Thomond ye saw to-day cursing on horseback—do ye think Providence will let him lead a French army among the roads you and I ken so well, affronting the people we ken too, who may be a thought dull in the matter of repartee, but are for ever decent, who may be hard-visaged, but are so brave?”
She laughed, herself, half bitterly, half contemptuously, at the picture she drew. Outside, in the sunny air of the afternoon, the bugles of Soubise filled the street with brazen cries, and nearer came the roar of pounding drums. I thought I heard them menacing the sleep of evening valleys far away, shattering the calm of the hearth of Hazel Den.
“The cause for which—for which so many are exile here,” I said, looking on this Jacobite so strangely inconsistent, “has no reason to regret that France should plan an attack on Georgius Rex.”
She shook her head impatiently. “The cause has nothing to do with it, Mr. Greig,” said she. “The cause will suffer from this madness more than ever it did, but in any case 'tis the most miserable of lost causes.”
“Prince Charlie-”
“Once it was the cause with me, now I would sooner have it Scotland,” she went on, heedless of my interruption. “Scotland! Scotland! Oh, how the name of her is like a dirge to me, and my heart is sore for her! Where is your heart, Mr. Greig, that it does not feel alarm at the prospect of these crapauds making a single night's sleep uneasy for the folks you know? Where is your heart, I'm asking?”
“I wish I knew,” said I impulsively, staring at her, completely bewitched by her manner so variable and intense, and the straying tendrils of her hair.
“Do you not?” said she. “Then I will tell you. It is where it ought to be—with a girl of the name of Isobel Fortune. Oh, the dear name! oh, the sweet name! And when you are on your travels with this priest do not be forgetting her. Oh, yes! I know you will tell me again that all is over between the pair of you, and that she loved another—but I am not believing a word of that, Mr. Greig, when I look at you—(and will ye say 'thank ye' for the compliment that's there?)—you will just go on thinking her the same, and you will be the better man for it. There's something tells me she is thinking of you though I never saw her, the dear! Let me see, this is what sort of girl she will be.”
She drew her chair closer to the settee and leaned forward in front of me, and, fixing her eyes on mine, drew a picture of the girl of Kirkillstane as she imagined her.
“She will be about my own height, and with the same colour of hair-”
“How do you know that? I never said a word of that to you,” I cried, astonished at the nearness of her first guess.
“Oh, I'm a witch,” she cried triumphantly, “a fair witch. Hoots! do I no' ken ye wadna hae looked the side o' the street I was on if I hadna put ye in mind o' her? Well, she's my height and colour—but, alack-a-day, no' my years. She 'll have a voice like the mavis for sweetness, and 'll sing to perfection. She'll be shy and forward in turns, accordin' as you are forward and shy; she 'll can break your heart in ten minutes wi' a pout o' her lips or mak' ye fair dizzy with delight at a smile. And then”—here Miss Walkinshaw seemed carried away herself by her fancy portrait, for she bent her brows studiously as she thought, and seemed to speak in an abstraction—“and then she'll be a managing woman. She'll be the sort of woman that the Bible tells of whose value is over rubies; knowing your needs as you battle with the world, and cheerful when you come in to the hearthstone from the turmoil outside. A witty woman and a judge of things, calm but full of fire in your interests. A household where the wife's a doll is a cart with one wheel, and your Isobel will be the perfect woman. I think she must have travelled some, too, and seen how poor is the wide world compared with what is to be found at your own fire-end; I think she must have had trials and learned to be brave.”
She stopped suddenly, looked at me and got very red in the face.
“A fine picture, Miss Walkinshaw!” said I, with something drumming at my heart. “It is not just altogether like Isobel Fortune, who has long syne forgot but to detest me, but I fancy I know who it is like.”
“And who might that be?” she asked in a low voice and with a somewhat guilty look.
“Will I tell you?” I asked, myself alarmed at my boldness.
“No! no! never mind,” she cried. “I was just making a picture of a girl I once knew—poor lass! and of what she might have been. But she's dead—dead and buried. I hope, after all, your Isobel is a nobler woman than the one I was thinking on and a happier destiny awaiting her.”
“That cannot matter much to me now,” I said, “for, as I told you, there is nothing any more between us—except—except a corp upon the heather.”
She shuddered as she did the first time I told her of my tragedy, and sucked in the air again through her clenched teeth.
“Poor lad! poor lad!” said she. “And you have quite lost her. If so, and the thing must be, then this glass coach of Father Hamilton's must take you to the country of forgetfulness. I wish I could drive there myself this minute, but wae's me, there's no chariot at the remise that'll do that business for John Walkinshaw's girl.”
Something inexpressively moving was in her mien, all her heart was in her face as it seemed; a flash of fancy came to me that she was alone in the world with nothing of affection to hap her round from its abrasions, and that her soul was crying out for love. Sweet beyond expression was this woman and I was young; up to my feet I rose, and turned on her a face that must have plainly revealed my boyish passion.
“Miss Walkinshaw,” I said, “you may put me out of this door for ever, but I'm bound to say I'm going travelling in no glass coach; Dunkerque will be doing very well for me.”
Her lips trembled; her cheek turned pale; she placed a hand upon her breast, and there was I contrite before her anger!
“Is this—is this your respect and your esteem, Mr. Greig?” she asked brokenly.
“They were never greater than at this moment,” I replied.
“And how are they to be manifested by your waiting on in Dunkerque?” she asked, recovering her colour and some of her ordinary manner.
How indeed? She had no need to ask me the question, for it was already ringing through my being. That the Spoiled Horn from Mearns, an outlaw with blood on his hands and borrowed money in his pocket, should have the presumption to feel any ardour for this creature seemed preposterous to myself, and I flushed in an excess of shame and confusion.
This seemed completely to reassure her. “Oh, Mr. Greig—Mr. Greig, was I not right to ask if ye were the man ye seemed? Here's a nice display o' gallantry from my giant son! I believe you are just makin' fun o' this auld wife; and if no' I hae just one word for you, Paul Greig, and it's this that I said afore—jist havers!”
She went to her spinet and ran her fingers over the keys and broke into a song—
Oh, what ails the laddie, new twined frae his mither?
The laddie gallantin' roun' Tibbie and me?—
with glances coquettish yet repelling round her shoulder at me as I stood turning my chapeau-de-bras in my hand as a boy turns his bonnet in presence of laird or dominie. The street was shaking now with the sound of marching soldiers, whose platoons were passing in a momentary silence of trumpet or drum. All at once the trumpets blared forth just in front of the house, broke upon her song, and gave a heavensent diversion to our comedy or tragedy or whatever it was in the parlour.
We both stood looking out at the window for a while in silence, watching the passing troops, and when the last file had gone, she turned with a change of topic “If these men had been in England ten years ago,” she said, “when brisk affairs were doing there with Highland claymores, your Uncle Andrew would have been there, too, and it would not perhaps be your father who was Laird of Hazel Den. But that's all by with now. And when do you set out with Father Hamilton?”
She had a face as serene as fate; my heart ached to tell her that I loved her, but her manner made me hold my tongue on that.
“In three days,” I said, still turning my hat and wishing myself elsewhere, though her presence intoxicated.
“In three days!” she said, as one astonished. “I had thought it had been a week at the earliest. Will I tell you what you might do? You are my great blate bold son, you know, from the moors of Mearns, and I will be wae, wae, to think of you travelling all round Europe without a friend of your own country to exchange a word with. Write to me; will you?”
“Indeed and I will, and that gaily,” I cried, delighted at the prospect.
“And you will tell me all your exploits and where you have been and what you have seen, and where you are going and what you are going to do, and be sure there will be one Scots heart thinking of you (besides Isobel, I daresay), and I declare to you this one will follow every league upon the map, saying 'the blate lad's there to-day,' 'the blate lad's to be here at noon to-morrow.' Is it a bargain? Because you know I will write to you—but oh! I forgot; what of the priest? Not for worlds would I have him know that I kept up a correspondence with his secretary. That is bad.”
She gazed rather expectantly at me as if looking for a suggestion, but the problem was beyond me, and she sighed.
“Of course his reverence need not know anything about it,” she said then.
“Certainly,” I acquiesced, jumping at so obvious a solution. “I will never mention to him anything about it.”
“But how will I get your letters and how will you get mine without his suspecting something?”
“Oh, but he cannot suspect.”
“What, and he a priest, too! It's his trade, Mr. Greig, and this Father Hamilton would spoil all if he knew we were indulging ourselves so innocently. What you must do is to send your letters to me in a way that I shall think of before you leave and I shall answer in the same way. But never a word, remember, to his reverence; I depend on your honour for that.”
As I was going down the stair a little later, she leaned over the bannister and cried after me:
“Mr. Greig,” said she, “ye needna' be sae hainin' wi' your red shoes when ye're traivellin' in the coach. I would be greatly pleased to be thinkin' of you as traivellin' in them a' the time.”
I looked up and saw her smiling saucily at me over the rail.
“Would you indeed?” said I. “Then I'll never put them aff till I see ye again, when I come back to Dunkerque.”
“That is kind,” she answered, laughing outright, “but fair reediculous. To wear them to bed would be against your character for sobriety.”