[CHAPTER XXIV
A ROYAL VISIT]
WHILE Granny had shaken the curtains in Gilbert’s bedroom her mind had worked as hard as her hands; there was no doubt in it of one thing; namely, that, by hook or by crook, he must be brought home. It was a large idea for her to have conceived, because she scarcely knew where he was and had no idea how he might be reached. She understood that Barclay had means of communication with him, but, since the visit he had paid her, ostensibly to examine her mended roof, and, really to pry into Speid’s affairs, she had distrusted him fundamentally. The matter was intimate and needed the intervention of someone upon whom she could depend. As the Laird of Fullarton was uncle to the person she wished to circumvent, he also was an impossible adviser. The Miss Robertsons, under any aspect but that of being Gilbert’s relations, she looked upon as futile. ‘Twa doited auld bodies wha’s lives is nae object to them,’ as she had described them, were not worth consideration in such a case. In her strait she suddenly bethought herself of Captain Somerville. He had three special advantages; he was her idol’s friend, he was exceedingly civil to herself, and she had once seen him in uniform. This last qualification gave him something of the weight and security of a public character. Also, a person who had fought the French—all foreigners were French to her—in every quarter of the world, must surely be able to put his hand on any part of it at a moment’s notice.
As a matter of fact, she could hardly have made a better choice. The sailor, who bore a most human love to his kind, had appraised many men and women in his time, and he had a vast admiration for Granny. Gallant himself, to the core of his simple soul, he loved the quality in others, and the story of her fight with circumstances and final mastery of them had struck him in a sensitive place. On that memorable day on which she had seen him in uniform he was returning from Aberdeen, where he had gone to meet an official person, and his chaise passed her cottage. As he drove by, he saw the little upright figure standing on the doorstep, and, remembering her history, with a sudden impulse, he raised his hand and saluted her.
Though he was not, perhaps, so renowned a warrior as the Queen of the Cadgers supposed, Captain Somerville had seen a good deal of service, and had lost his leg, not in the doing of any melodramatic act, but in the ordinary course of a very steadily and efficiently performed duty. As a boy, he had gone to sea when the sea was a harder profession than it is now and when parents had had to think, not twice but many times, before committing their sons to it. He had run away and smuggled himself upon a merchantman lying in the harbour near his home, and before she sailed, he had been discovered by the first mate. His irate father, to whom he was returned, thinking to cure him of an infatuation he could not, himself, understand, arranged with the captain that he should be taken on the voyage—which was a short one—and made to work hard. ‘It would show the young fool,’ he said, ‘that the Church’—for which he was destined—‘was a more comfortable place than a ship.’ But the treatment produced an exactly contrary result. Finally, the family three-decker received the person of a younger brother, and, after much discussion, His Majesty’s Navy that of a new midshipman. More than fifteen years afterwards he got into a young man’s scrape in an obscure seaport, and emerged from it with Mrs. Somerville in tow. It was one from which a less honourable man would have escaped more fortunately. The lady was accustomed to say, in after times, that she had been ‘married from the schoolroom,’ but many who heard her suspected that there had never been a schoolroom in the matter. He had now been Coastguard Inspector at Kaims for over seven years.
The sailor was sitting at the breakfast-table next morning opposite to his wife, portions of whose figure were visible behind the urn; Miss Lucilla was away on a visit. The house stood a little back from the High Street, and, though the room was quiet, a cart which had stopped at the foot of the strip of garden was unnoticed by the pair.
‘If ye please,’ said the parlour-maid, looking in, ‘there’s a fishwife wad like to speak wi’ you.’
‘We require nothing to-day,’ said Mrs. Somerville.
‘She’s no sellin’. She’s just needing a word wi’ the Captain. It’s Mrs. Stirk—her that bides out by Garviekirk.’
‘It’s Her Majesty of the Cadgers, my dear,’ said the Inspector; ‘we must ask her to come in.’
The parlour-maid smiled.