‘He’ll no’ do that,’ said Peter, in a tone of quiet decision, looking the schoolmaster all over. Andrew was a much younger man, but the arm of the gigantic old labourer could still have laid him low. Andrew, however, was irritable and sore, and he looked up with by no means a conciliatory demeanour.
‘I’ll do what’s becoming,’ he said. ‘I’ll not be dictated to. A man has a right to know what a woman means that has accepted him for her husband. Either she’ll fulfil her contract or—we’ll have to come to other terms.’
‘Oh!’ cried Janet, unable to refrain from that little triumph. ‘Did I no’ tell ye that? Ye were fain to make friends with yon grand gentleman, and leave Peter and me on the ither side, but I telt ye ye would be the first to feel it—and so it’s turned out.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ said Andrew, buttoning his overcoat. ‘It’s a very dark night, and without a light I could scarcely have kept the road—though I should know it well enough,’ he added, with a little bitterness. ‘I was not called upon to take all this trouble to come over and see you. But I would not go without letting you know. I was not asking your opinion. The thing is, if you have any message or parcel—I could take a parcel.’
‘I’m sure I canna tell what I could send her, unless it was some fresh eggs, or a bunch of the monthly roses off the wa’. She’ll have everything that heart can desire—and the eggs would be a trouble to ye. And nae doot she has far better flowers than a wheen late roses off a cottage wa’.’
Peter had got up while Janet was speaking, and opened his large knife. ‘Len’ me your lantern, Andrew,’ he said, and went out with heavy slow steps to the little garden, or ‘yaird’ as they called it. He came in, a minute after, with a branch from the old China rose, which half covered that side of the house. The old man, with his heavy figure and rugged countenance, the lantern in one hand and the cluster of pale roses in the other, might have made a symbolical picture. He set down the lantern and began to trim off the thorns from the long bough with its nodding flowers. There could not have been a more wintry posy. The leaves were curled up and brown with frost; the hips, only half coloured, pale as the flowers, hung in clusters, glistening with cold November dews; and the faint roses gave a sort of plaintive cheer and melancholy prettiness, like the faces of children subdued into unnatural quiet. ‘Ye’ll take her this from her auld folk,’ Peter said.
‘Eh, but it’ll be hard to carry a lang brainch like that: tak’ just the flowers, Andrew; ye can pit them in your hat.’
‘I’ll take it as it is,’ said Andrew. He was not below the level of that tender feeling; and though there was a great deal of angry disappointment, there was love also in his heart. He took the branch of roses and unripe hips, and frost-bitten leaves, and disappeared into the darkness with it, with a curt ‘good-night.’ The old couple stood by the fire, listening to his steps as he went quickly out of hearing; then shut the door for the night, and opened the Book, and said their prayers for Joyce,—‘her that Thou gavest us, and that Thou hast taken from us, we darena doubt for her good; and oh, that a’ the blessings o’ the covenant may rest upon her bonnie heid!’ It was the petition of every night, and Janet gave the response of nature (though responses, it need not be said, were profoundly contrary to all her principles) in a whispered repetition of the words, and a faint little sob.
Andrew walked the three miles with his lantern in one hand and his long branch of roses in the other, a strange apparition to have met upon the road in the darkness of the November night. And next evening he set out, after having completed all his school work, by the night train, with a great determination in his heart, and yet many softened and wistful thoughts. He was going to ‘put it to the touch, to gain or lose it all,’—repeating to himself over and over Montrose’s noble verse. He was going to decide his fate: if there was no hope of that headmastership; if, perhaps, competition and vile interest and patronage—always vile when they are opposed to one’s self—had rendered all efforts impossible: to bid them strive no more, since he was content to wait for the reward of a conscious merit which did not, after all, want any foreign aid to gain eventually all that was meet; and in the meantime to secure his love, to insist upon it that no circumstances should separate him from Joyce. He went over and over in his imagination the interview he would have with her, fancying how she would excuse herself that she had waited for good news, and answering, with a little burst of natural eloquence, ‘Do you think I would not rather have a kind word from your hand than all the news in the world? Do you think a grand appointment would make up to me for losing sight of you?’ A hundred speeches like this floated through his mind, and were said over by his lips in the little preliminary journey to Edinburgh in the chill afternoon. The thought of going to London was in itself a great excitement too.