Sir James Dalrymple was made a baronet in the same year that Andrew Rutherfurd got his title, and both he and his wife, Dame Margaret, a daughter of Ross of Balniel, were ambitious folk. The worldly success in life of her husband and of all her family was what Lady Stair constantly schemed and planned and worked for. A clever, hard, worldly woman, with a witty and unsparing tongue, was Lady Stair, but obviously she was not a popular member of the society in which she lived, and when her plans succeeded in spite of all obstacles, there were many who were ready to say that she belonged to the blackest sisterhood of her day, and that to be "worried at the stake" and burned would only be the fate that she deserved.
Lady Stair's daughter was singularly unlike the mother who bore her, for the beautiful Janet Dalrymple was a gentle, shrinking, highly strung girl, who was like wax in the hands of one who ruled her household with a rod of iron. As a child her will had always had to bend to her mother's. Scarcely had she dared to hold an opinion on anything save under her mother's direction, and so when it came about that the tricksy god of love made her give her heart passionately and utterly to a man of whom her parents disapproved, poor Janet Dalrymple must have felt as though she were the victim of a sort of moral earthquake. Naturally she could see no reason why the man who in her eyes was peerless was not approved by her parents. Surely his politics did not matter. He had money enough for all their needs, and he would make her the Lady Rutherfurd; and, besides, what more could they want than just this—that he loved her and she loved him, and they would love each other until death—and after it.
These reasons given to a woman of Lady Stair's type were scarcely likely to be listened to with much patience, and Janet Dalrymple and Lord Rutherfurd soon saw that all their love-making must be done under the rose, and that they must wait as best they could for the obdurate parents to change their minds. Together they broke a gold coin, of which each wore a half, and solemnly called upon God to witness them plighting their troth, and together imprecated dreadful evils upon the one who should prove faithless. Doubtless Lady Stair was too clever a woman not to have a shrewd suspicion that her daughter's attachment to Lord Rutherfurd was something more than a mere piece of girlish sentiment; but if she did know, the knowledge did not overburden her. Obviously another suitor must be provided without loss of time. The expulsive power of a new affection must promptly be tried on the love-sick girl, whose pale face was in itself enough to betray the condition of her heart.
To Lord Stair belonged the credit of finding one who was approved of by Lady Stair as an entirely suitable match. David Dunbar, younger, of Baldoon in Wigtonshire, a solid young man with a good, solid fortune, was the son-in-law of their choice; and Lady Stair found no difficulty in getting him to see that her beautiful daughter was undoubtedly the right wife for him.
Contemporary history furnishes us with no description of Andrew, Lord Rutherfurd, but we learn from the Edinburgh printer who furnished the Dunbar family with an enthusiastic elegy on the death of David Dunbar of Baldoon that apparently he was a little red-faced man, ardently keen about agricultural pursuits, and deeply interested in the breeding of cattle and horses. Moreover, he was a student, well versed in modern history and in architecture, and with a good head for arithmetic (did he add up the figures of the fortune of Janet Dalrymple entirely to his own satisfaction?), and he had the additional amazing distinction chronicled by his eulogising biographer—
"He learned the French, be't spoken to his praise,
In very little more than forty days."
It is impossible to tell how much of the love story of the girl whom he proposed to make his wife was known to young Baldoon. Possibly he had had it lightly sketched to him by Lady Stair's skilled hand, as a mere girlish fancy, likely to be very soon past and already entirely on the wane. In any case, Baldoon evidently saw no more difficulties in the way of his nuptials than did Lord and Lady Stair. The fact that the bride "canna thole the man" must ever be a purely secondary consideration in such matrimonial arrangements. Meantime the unhappy bride-elect had the scheme laid before her, and in spite of her sobbing protests, was commanded to conform to the wishes of her parents.
The news of Lady Stair's triumph was not long in coming to Lord Rutherfurd's ears, and he at once wrote to Janet Dalrymple to remind her that she was pledged to him by everything that they both considered holy. No reply came from the unhappy girl, but a letter from Lady Stair informed the distracted lover that her daughter was fully sensible of the grave fault of which she had been guilty in entering into an engagement without the sanction of her parents, and that she now retracted her vows, and was about to give her hand to Mr. David Dunbar of Baldoon. Such an answer, written by the mother of his betrothed, and not by the girl herself, was scarcely likely to be received with meekness by one of the Rutherfurds of that ilk. Lord Rutherfurd demanded an interview with Janet Dalrymple, and absolutely declined to accept any reply that did not come to him from her own lips. It was a struggle between a high-spirited, determined man, deeply in love with her that he strove for, and a woman whose heart was as hard as her brain was keen, and who did not scruple to use any means, fair or foul, by which to gain her own ends. The lion and the snake are unequal combatants, and in this case the lion was worsted indeed. Lady Stair granted the interview, but took care that not for one moment was her daughter permitted to be alone with her lover. Lord Rutherfurd had many arguments that he had deemed unanswerable, but the lady's nimble wits and ready tongue found an answer for each one.
It must have been a strange scene that took place that day in the old mansion of Carsecreugh. The girl herself was present, but, had the tales of Lady Stair's dealings with the Evil One been true, she could not have substituted for her beautiful, happy daughter any witch-made thing that looked more lifeless than the poor, white-faced creature that sat with silent lips and down-cast eyes, terror-ridden, broken-hearted.
With every impassioned word he spoke Rutherfurd hoped to bring some sign of life to her, to glean a look from her eyes that showed that her love was still his, but he pled in vain. As for his arguments, Lady Stair could quote Scripture with any minister in the land, and the texts she hurled at him were fearful missiles for one who had not the book of Numbers at his fingers' ends.