As he looked up he thought that if she had been imposing in her outdoor garments she was a hundredfold more so without them. He was at his ease with her, but he wondered at it, though he was accustomed to being at his ease with everybody. A certain vanity rose in him, coarse remnant of humanity as he was, before this magnificent woman, and when he had received the silver, he turned about, facing her, and began to sing.
He was used to the plebeian admiration of his own public, but a touch of it from her would have a different flavour. He was vain of his singing, and that vanity was the one piece of romance belonging to him; it hung over his muddy soul as a weaving of honeysuckle may hang over a dank pond. Had he understood Madam Flemington perfectly, he might have sung ‘The Tod,’ but as he only understood her superficially, he sang ‘Logie Kirk.’ He did not know how nearly the extremities of the social scale can draw together in the primitive humours of humanity. It is the ends of a line that can best be bent to meet, not one end and the middle.
Yet, as ‘Logie Kirk’ rang out among the spectral ash-trees, she sat still, astonished, her head erect, like some royal animal listening; it moved her, though its sentiment had naught to do with her mood at present, nor with her cast of mind at any time. But love and loss are things that lay their shadows everywhere, and Madam Flemington had lost much; moreover, she had been a woman framed for love, and she had not wasted her gifts.
As his voice ceased, she rose and threw the window up higher.
“Go on,” she said.
He paused, taking breath, for a couple of minutes. He knew songs to suit all political creeds, but this time he would try one of the Jacobite lays that were floating round the country; if it should provoke some illuminating comment from her, he would have learned something more about her, and incidentally about Archie, though it struck him that he was not so sure of the unanimity of interest between the grandmother and grandson which he had taken for granted before seeing Madam Flemington.
His cunning eyes were rooted on her as he sang again.
“My love stood at the loanin’ side
And held me by the hand,
The bonniest lad that e’er did bide
In a’ this waefu’ land;
There’s but ae bonnier to be seen
Frae Pentland to the sea,
And for his sake but yestereen
I sent my love frae me.
“I gie’d my love the white, white rose
That’s at my feyther’s wa’,
It is the bonniest flower that grows
Where ilka flower is braw;
There’s but ae brawer that I ken
Frae Perth unto the main,
And that’s the flower o’ Scotland’s men
That’s fechtin’ for his ain.
“If I had kept whate’er was mine,
As I had gie’d my best,
My hairt were licht by day, and syne
The nicht wad bring me rest;
There is nae heavier hairt to find
Frae Forfar toon to Ayr,
As aye I sit me doon to mind
On him I see nae mair.