Catriona
you God speed! I would never charge myself with Mr. David’s conscience;
and if you could cast some part of it (as you went by) in a moss hag,
you would find yourself to ride much easier without it.”
“Perhaps not just entirely in the same direction though, my lord!” says
I.
“And you shall have the last word, too!” cries he gaily.
Indeed, he had some cause for gaiety, having now found the means to
gain his purpose. To lessen the weight of the memorial, or to have a
readier answer at his hand, he desired I should appear publicly in the
character of his intimate. But if I were to appear with the same
publicity as a visitor to Catriona in her prison the world would scarce
stint to draw conclusions, and the true nature of James More’s escape
must become evident to all. This was the little problem I had to set
him of a sudden, and to which he had so briskly found an answer. I was
to be tethered in Glasgow by that job of copying, which in mere outward
decency I could not well refuse; and during these hours of employment
Catriona was privately got rid of. I think shame to write of this man
that loaded me with so many goodnesses. He was kind to me as any
father, yet I ever thought him as false as a cracked bell.
CHAPTER XIX.
I AM MUCH IN THE HANDS OF THE LADIES
The copying was a weary business, the more so as I perceived very early
there was no sort of urgency in the matters treated, and began very
early to consider my employment a pretext. I had no sooner finished
than I got to horse, used what remained of daylight to the best
purpose, and being at last fairly benighted, slept in a house by
Almond-Water side. I was in the saddle again before the day, and the
Edinburgh booths were just opening when I clattered in by the West Bow
and drew up a smoking horse at my lord Advocate’s door. I had a written
word for Doig, my lord’s private hand that was thought to be in all his
secrets—a worthy little plain man, all fat and snuff and
self-sufficiency. Him I found already at his desk and already bedabbled
with maccabaw, in the same anteroom where I rencountered with James
More. He read the note scrupulously through like a chapter in his
Bible.
“H’m,” says he; “ye come a wee thing ahint-hand, Mr. Balfour. The
bird’s flaen—we hae letten her out.”
“Miss Drummond is set free?” I cried.
“Achy!” said he. “What would we keep her for, ye ken? To hae made a
steer about the bairn would has pleased naebody.”
“And where’ll she be now?” says I.
“Gude kens!” says Doig, with a shrug.
“She’ll have gone home to Lady Allardyce, I’m thinking,” said I.
“That’ll be it,” said he.
“Then I’ll gang there straight,” says I.
“But ye’ll be for a bite or ye go?” said he.
“Neither bite nor sup,” said I. “I had a good wauch of milk in by
Ratho.”
“Aweel, aweel,” says Doig. “But ye’ll can leave your horse here and
your bags, for it seems we’re to have your up-put.”
“Na, na”, said I. “Tamson’s mear [17] would never be the thing for me
this day of all days.”
Doig speaking somewhat broad, I had been led by imitation into an
accent much more countrified than I was usually careful to affect a
good deal broader, indeed, than I have written it down; and I was the
more ashamed when another voice joined in behind me with a scrap of a
ballad:
“Gae saddle me the bonny black,
Gae saddle sune and mak’ him ready
For I will down the Gatehope-slack,
And a’ to see my bonny leddy.”
The young lady, when I turned to her, stood in a morning gown, and her
hands muffled in the same, as if to hold me at a distance. Yet I could
not but think there was kindness in the eye with which she saw me.
“My best respects to you, Mistress Grant,” said I, bowing.
“The like to yourself, Mr. David,” she replied with a deep courtesy.
“And I beg to remind you of an old musty saw, that meat and mass never
hindered man. The mass I cannot afford you, for we are all good
Protestants. But the meat I press on your attention. And I would not
wonder but I could find something for your private ear that would be
worth the stopping for.”
“Mistress Grant,” said I, “I believe I am already your debtor for some
merry words—and I think they were kind too—on a piece of unsigned
paper.”
“Unsigned paper?” says she, and made a droll face, which was likewise
wondrous beautiful, as of one trying to remember.
“Or else I am the more deceived,” I went on. “But to be sure, we shall
have the time to speak of these, since your father is so good as to
make me for a while your inmate; and the _gomeral_ begs you at this
time only for the favour of his liberty.”
“You give yourself hard names,” said she.
“Mr. Doig and I would be blythe to take harder at your clever pen,”
says I.
“Once more I have to admire the discretion of all men-folk,” she
replied. “But if you will not eat, off with you at once; you will be
back the sooner, for you go on a fool’s errand. Off with you, Mr.
David,” she continued, opening the door.
“He has lowpen on his bonny grey,
He rade the richt gate and the ready
I trow he would neither stint nor stay,
For he was seeking his bonny leddy.”
I did not wait to be twice bidden, and did justice to Miss Grant’s
citation on the way to Dean.
Old Lady Allardyce walked there alone in the garden, in her hat and
mutch, and having a silver-mounted staff of some black wood to lean
upon. As I alighted from my horse, and drew near to her with _congees_,
I could see the blood come in her face, and her head fling into the air
like what I had conceived of empresses.
“What brings you to my poor door?” she cried, speaking high through her
nose. “I cannot bar it. The males of my house are dead and buried; I
have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar
can pluck me by the baird [18]—and a baird there is, and that’s the
worst of it yet!” she added partly to herself.
I was extremely put out at this reception, and the last remark, which
seemed like a daft wife’s, left me near hand speechless.
“I see I have fallen under your displeasure, ma’am,” said I. “Yet I
will still be so bold as ask after Mistress Drummond.”
She considered me with a burning eye, her lips pressed close together
into twenty creases, her hand shaking on her staff. “This cows all!”
she cried. “Ye come to me to speir for her? Would God I knew!”
“She is not here?” I cried.
She threw up her chin and made a step and a cry at me, so that I fell
back incontinent.
“Out upon your leeing throat!” she cried. “What! ye come and speir at
me! She’s in jyle, whaur ye took her to—that’s all there is to it. And
of a’ the beings ever I beheld in breeks, to think it should be to you!
Ye timmer scoun’rel, if I had a male left to my name I would have your
jaicket dustit till ye raired.”
I thought it not good to delay longer in that place, because I remarked
her passion to be rising. As I turned to the horse-post she even
followed me; and I make no shame to confess that I rode away with the
one stirrup on and scrambling for the other.
As I knew no other quarter where I could push my inquiries, there was
nothing left me but to return to the Advocate’s. I was well received by
the four ladies, who were now in company together, and must give the
news of Prestongrange and what word went in the west country, at the
most inordinate length and with great weariness to myself; while all
the time that young lady, with whom I so much desired to be alone
again, observed me quizzically and seemed to find pleasure in the sight
of my impatience. At last, after I had endured a meal with them, and
was come very near the point of appealing for an interview before her
aunt, she went and stood by the music-case, and picking out a tune,
sang to it on a high key—“He that will not when he may, When he will he
shall have nay.” But this was the end of her rigours, and presently,
after making some excuse of which I have no mind, she carried me away
in private to her father’s library. I should not fail to say she was
dressed to the nines, and appeared extraordinary handsome.
“Now, Mr. David, sit ye down here and let us have a two-handed crack,”
said she. “For I have much to tell you, and it appears besides that I
have been grossly unjust to your good taste.”
“In what manner, Mistress Grant?” I asked. “I trust I have never seemed
to fail in due respect.”
“I will be your surety, Mr. David,” said she. “Your respect, whether to
yourself or your poor neighbours, has been always and most fortunately
beyond imitation. But that is by the question. You got a note from me?”
she asked.
“I was so bold as to suppose so upon inference,” said I, “and it was
kindly thought upon.”
“It must have prodigiously surprised you,” said she. “But let us begin
with the beginning. You have not perhaps forgot a day when you were so
kind as to escort three very tedious misses to Hope Park? I have the
less cause to forget it myself, because you was so particular obliging
as to introduce me to some of the principles of the Latin grammar, a
thing which wrote itself profoundly on my gratitude.”
“I fear I was sadly pedantical,” said I, overcome with confusion at the
memory. “You are only to consider I am quite unused with the society of
ladies.”
“I will say the less about the grammar then,” she replied. “But how
came you to desert your charge? ‘He has thrown her out, overboard, his
ain dear Annie!’” she hummed; “and his ain dear Annie and her two
sisters had to taigle home by theirselves like a string of green geese!
It seems you returned to my papa’s, where you showed yourself
excessively martial, and then on to realms unknown, with an eye (it
appears) to the Bass Rock; solan geese being perhaps more to your mind
than bonny lasses.”
Through all this raillery there was something indulgent in the lady’s
eye which made me suppose there might be better coming.
“You take a pleasure to torment me,” said I, “and I make a very
feckless plaything; but let me ask you to be more merciful. At this
time there is but the one thing that I care to hear of, and that will
be news of Catriona.”
“Do you call her by that name to her face, Mr. Balfour?” she asked.
“In troth, and I am not very sure,” I stammered.
“I would not do so in any case to strangers,” said Miss Grant. “And why
are you so much immersed in the affairs of this young lady?”
“I heard she was in prison,” said I.
“Well, and now you hear that she is out of it,” she replied, “and what
more would you have? She has no need of any further champion.”
“I may have the greater need of her, ma’am,” said I.
“Come, this is better!” says Miss Grant. “But look me fairly in the
face; am I not bonnier than she?”
“I would be the last to be denying it,” said I. “There is not your
marrow in all Scotland.”
“Well, here you have the pick of the two at your hand, and must needs
speak of the other,” said she. “This is never the way to please the
ladies, Mr. Balfour.”
“But, mistress,” said I, “there are surely other things besides mere
beauty.”
“By which I am to understand that I am no better than I should be,
perhaps?” she asked.
“By which you will please understand that I am like the cock in the
midden in the fable book,” said I. “I see the braw jewel—and I like
fine to see it too—but I have more need of the pickle corn.”
“Bravissimo!” she cried. “There is a word well said at last, and I will
reward you for it with my story. That same night of your desertion I
came late from a friend’s house—where I was excessively admired,
whatever you may think of it—and what should I hear but that a lass in
a tartan screen desired to speak with me? She had been there an hour or
better, said the servant-lass, and she grat in to herself as she sat
waiting. I went to her direct; she rose as I came in, and I knew her at