Presently, however, she heard something that startled her out of this apathetic concurrence, and set all her pulses flying. The tall, raw-boned, newspaper proprietor, eyeing this proud-featured old man with a not unkindly scrutiny, was referring to the volume on the Scottish Poets in America which George Bethune had failed to bring out in time; and his speech was considerate.
"It is not the first case of forestalling I have known," said he; "and it must just be looked on as a bit of bad luck. Better fortune next time. By the way, there is another little circumstance connected with that book—perhaps I should not mention it—but I will be discreet. No names; and yet you may like to hear that you have got another friend somewhere—somewhere in the background—"
It was at this point that Maisrie began to listen, rather breathlessly.
"Oh, yes, your friend—your unknown friend—wanted to be generous enough," Mr. Carmichael continued. "He wrote to me saying he understood that I had advanced a certain sum towards the publication of the work; and he went on to explain that as certain things had happened to prevent your bringing it out, he wished to be allowed to refund the money. Oh, yes, a very generous offer; for all was to be done in the profoundest secrecy; you were not to know anything about it, lest you should be offended. And yet it seemed to me you should be glad to learn that there was someone interesting himself in your affairs."
The two men were not looking at the girl: they could not see the pride and gratitude that were in her eyes. "And Vincent never told me a word," she was saying to herself, with her heart beating warm and fast. But that was not the mood in which old George Bethune took this matter. A dark frown was on his shaggy eyebrows.
"I do not see what right anyone has to intermeddle," said, he, in tones that fell cruelly on Maisrie's ear, "still less to pay money for me on the assumption that I had forgotten, or was unwilling to discharge, a just debt——"
"Come, come, come, Mr. Bethune," said the newspaper proprietor, with a sort of condescending good-nature, "you must not take it that way. To begin with, he did not pay any money at all. I did not allow him. I said 'Thank you; but this is a private arrangement between Mr. Bethune and myself; and if he considers there is any indebtedness, then he can wipe that off by contributions to the Chronicle.' So you see you have only to thank him for the intention—"
"Oh, very well," said the old man, changing his tone at once. "No harm in that. No harm whatever. Misplaced intention—but—but creditable. And now," he continued, in a still lighter strain, "since you mention the Chronicle, Mr. Carmichael, I must tell you of a scheme I have had for some time in mind. It is a series of papers on the old ballads of Scotland—or rather the chief of them—taking one for each weekly article, giving the different versions, with historical and philological notes. What do you think of that, now? Look at the material—the finest in the world!—the elemental passions, the tragic situations that are far removed from any literary form or fashion, that go straight to the heart and the imagination. Each of them a splendid text!" he proceeded, with an ever-increasing enthusiasm. "Think of Edom o' Gordon, and the Wife of Usher's Well, and the Baron o' Brackla; Annie of Lochryan, Hynde Etin, the piteous cry of 'Helen of Kirkconnell,' and the Rose of Yarrow seeking her slain lover by bank and brae. And what could be more interesting than the collation of the various versions of those old ballads, showing how they have been altered here and there as they were said or sung, and how even important passages may have been dropped out in course of time and transmission. Look, for example, at 'Barbara Allan.' The version in Percy's Reliques is as bad and stupid as it can be; but it is worse than that: it is incomprehensible. Who can believe that the maiden came to the bedside of her dying lover only to flout and jeer, and that for no reason whatever? And when she sees his corpse
'With scornful eye she looked downe,
Her cheek with laughter swellin''—
"Well, I say that is not true," he went on vehemently; "it never was true: it contradicts human nature; it is false, and bad, and impossible. But turn to our Scottish version! When Sir John Graeme o' the West Countrie, lying sore sick, sends for his sweetheart, she makes no concealment of the cause of the feud that has been between them—of the wrong that is rankling at her heart: