David Balnillo’s discoveries were extremely unpalatable to him. If Christian had cherished his vanity, she had made it smart, too. No man, least of all one like the self-appreciative judge, can find without resentment that he has been, even indirectly, the dupe of a person to whom he has attached himself; but when that person is a woman, determined not to let him escape from her influence, the case is not always desperate. For three unblessed days it was wellnigh desperate with Balnillo, and he avoided her completely, but at the end of that time a summons from her was brought to him that his inclination for her company and the chance sight of Lord Grange holding open the door of her chair forbade him to disobey. She had worded her command as though she were conferring a favour; nevertheless, after an hour’s hesitation, David had taken his hat and repaired to Hyndford’s Close, dragging his dignity after him like a dog on a leash.
If she guessed the reason of his absence from her side she made no remark, receiving him as if she had just parted from him, with that omission of greeting which implies so much. She had sent for him, she said, because her man of business had given her a legal paper that she would not sign without his advice. She looked him in the face as fearlessly as ever, and her glance sparkled with its wonted fire. For some tormented minutes he could not decide whether or no to charge her with knowledge of the fraud that had been carried on under his roof, but he had not the courage to do so. Also, he was acute enough to see that she might well reply to his reproaches by reminding him that he had only himself to thank for their acquaintance. She had not made the advances; his own zeal had brought about their situation. He felt like a fool, but he saw that in speaking he might look like one, which some consider worse.
He left her, assuring himself that all was fair in love and politics; that he could not, in common good breeding, withhold his help from her in her legal difficulty; that, should wind of Archie’s dealings with him get abroad in the town, he would be saving appearances in avoiding a rupture with the lady whose shadow he had been since he arrived in Edinburgh, and that it was his duty as a well-wisher of Prince Charles to keep open any channel that might yield information about Flemington’s movements. Whatsoever may have been the quality of his reasons, their quantity was remarkable. He did not like the little voice that whispered to him that he would not have dared to offer them to James.
There was no further risk of a meeting with Archie, for within a few days of the latter’s appearance in Hyndford’s Close he had been sent to the Border with instructions to watch Jedburgh and the neighbourhood of Liddesdale, through which the Prince’s army had passed on its march to England. Madam Flemington knew that the coast was clear, and David had no suspicion that it had been otherwise. Very few people in Edinburgh were aware of Flemington’s visit to it; it was an event of which even the caddies were ignorant.
And so Balnillo lingered on, putting off his return to Angus from week to week. His mouse-coloured velvet began to show signs of wear and was replaced by a suit of dark purple; his funds were dwindling a little, for he was not a rich man, and a new set of verses about him was going the round of the town. Then, with January, came the battle of Falkirk and the siege of Stirling Castle, and the end of the month brought Cumberland and the mustering of loyal Whigs to wait upon him at Holyrood Palace.
David departed quietly. He had come to Edinburgh to avoid playing a marked part in Angus, and he now returned to Angus to avoid playing a marked part in Edinburgh. He was behaving like the last remaining king in a game of draughts when he skips from square to square in the safe corner of the board; but he did not know that Government had kept its eye on all his doings during the time of his stay. Perhaps it was on account of her usefulness in this and in other delicate matters that Madam Flemington augured well for her grandson, for when the Whig army crossed the Forth, Archie went with it as intelligence officer to the Duke of Cumberland.
[CHAPTER XX
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS]
JULY spread a mantle of heather over the Grampians. In Glen Esk, the rough road into the Lowlands, little better than a sheep-track, ran down the shore of Loch Lee, to come out at last into the large spaces at the foot of the hills. The greyness of the summer haze lay over everything, and the short grass and the roots of bog-myrtle and thyme smelt warm and heady, for the wind was still. The sun seemed to have sucked up some of the heather-colour out of the earth; the lower atmosphere was suffused with a dusty lilac where, high overhead, it softened the contours of the scattered rocks. Amongst carpets of rush and deep moss, dappled with wet patches, the ruddy stems of the bog-asphodel raised slim, golden heads that drooped a little, as though for faintness, in the scented warmth. An occasional bumble-bee passed down wind, purposeful and ostentatious, like a respectable citizen zealous on the business of life.