The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

'God speed you, then,' she said. 'Take care of yourself—beware of the dairymaids. I have heard they are dangerous.'

'For your sweet sake,' cried I, waving my bonnet to her as I ran down the path.

But before I went fairly out of sight I turned and looked back, for, indeed, I could not help it. And Marjorie was still standing under the archway where I had left her, but with so sad and lost a countenance that I had run back to ask her what was her grief. Then she seemed to awake, kissed the tips of her fingers to me, and turning her about, walked slowly within.

When I was fully arrayed, I rode past the front of the house on pretext of knowing if my lords had any further commands for me, but really that the maids might see me upon Dom Nicholas in his fair caparison of beaten silver. She whom I wished most to see I saw not indeed; but there at the great gate, with a foolish spraying branch of hawthorn in her hair, was Nell Kennedy, of whom during these last days I had scarcely so much as thought.

And with her, to my burning shame and amaze, was Kate Allison, the Grieve's daughter. The two girls stood with their arms about one another's waists, as maids that are yet half bairns are wont to do. But neither of them looked at me. Only when I made Dom Nicholas caracole by, they turned disdainfully aside as though they were avoiding the path of some poisonous toad or asp. And so, wholly without word, they passed down one of the leafy avenues that beset the place of Culzean, which thing in a moment rendered all my full, sweet cup empty and bitter.

At this I was much dashed and crestfallen, so that I had no spirit in me. For I was sure, by the attitude of the maids, and their demeanour to me, that they had gotten to the stage of the confiding of secrets. And if that were so, I had a good guess that it would be as well for me to avoid the Grieve's house by the shore for some time to come. Which thing, indeed, last evening's tryst with Marjorie had made me resolve on before. But it was not the matter of Kate Allison's anger that troubled me; it was rather that the clattering minx, Nell Kennedy, would certainly tell her sister of my past boyish affairs with the pretty young lass, and specially of our home-coming from the March fair so late at night.

But the stir of going through the town of Maybole—the lasses running to the doors to admire, the 'prentice lads envying and hating me, so worked on me that, for a space, I forgot the ill-fared memory of the two maids linking down though the greenwood together. Yet the thing came again into my mind and stuck there, before I had o'ertaken half the way to Dalrymple, by which I was behoved to go.

As I rode along I practised pulling at the wicks of my upper lip, where I was persuaded that my moustache was certainly beginning to grow apace. For so I had seen the soldiers of the King's Guard do in Edinburgh, and mightily admired them at it.

The way went pleasantly by, there being many folk of all degrees and qualities on the road. And as many as saw me come, stepped aside and stood respectfully at gaze, if they were on foot; or courteously saluted me as an equal if they were on horseback. Both which things pleased me well.

So I went on smiling to myself for the pleasantness of my thoughts, in spite of the incident of the lasses. Suddenly, however, I came upon a horseman like myself, that rode down a loaning from the muirside. I saw no weapon that he had about him, yet he was no mere landward minister or merchant, by the sober richness of his habit. He was dressed in fine cloth of Flemish blue, with a plain edging of silk, but without lace or any broidery. His face, when I saw it, was pleasant, and there was on it a smile that spoke of good cheer. He seemed to be tall of his person, and, from the manner in which he reined his horse easily with his left hand, I knew him to be strong. A well-appearing, sober, conditionable man of fifty I should have taken him to be, fit to be head of a house or to sit at a king's council table.