Catriona
very ridiculous (and, I thought, offensive) with his admiration for the
young lady, and to my wonder (only it is so common a weakness of her
sex) she seemed, if anything, to be a little gratified. One use it had:
for when we were come to the other side, she laid her commands on him
to mind the boat, while she and I passed a little further to the
alehouse. This was her own thought, for she had been taken with my
account of Alison Hastie, and desired to see the lass herself. We found
her once more alone—indeed, I believe her father wrought all day in the
fields—and she curtsied dutifully to the gentry-folk and the beautiful
young lady in the riding-coat.
“Is this all the welcome I am to get?” said I, holding out my hand.
“And have you no more memory of old friends?”
“Keep me! wha’s this of it?” she cried, and then, “God’s truth, it’s
the tautit [19] laddie!”
“The very same,” says I.
“Mony’s the time I’ve thocht upon you and your freen, and blythe am I
to see in your braws,” [20] she cried. “Though I kent ye were come to
your ain folk by the grand present that ye sent me and that I thank ye
for with a’ my heart.”
“There,” said Miss Grant to me, “run out by with ye, like a guid bairn.
I didnae come here to stand and haud a candle; it’s her and me that are
to crack.”
I suppose she stayed ten minutes in the house, but when she came forth
I observed two things—that her eyes were reddened, and a silver brooch
was gone out of her bosom. This very much affected me.
“I never saw you so well adorned,” said I.
“O Davie man, dinna be a pompous gowk!” said she, and was more than
usually sharp to me the remainder of the day.
About candlelight we came home from this excursion.
For a good while I heard nothing further of Catriona—my Miss Grant
remaining quite impenetrable, and stopping my mouth with pleasantries.
At last, one day that she returned from walking and found me alone in
the parlour over my French, I thought there was something unusual in
her looks; the colour heightened, the eyes sparkling high, and a bit of
a smile continually bitten in as she regarded me. She seemed indeed
like the very spirit of mischief, and, walking briskly in the room, had
soon involved me in a kind of quarrel over nothing and (at the least)
with nothing intended on my side. I was like Christian in the
slough—the more I tried to clamber out upon the side, the deeper I
became involved; until at last I heard her declare, with a great deal
of passion, that she would take that answer from the hands of none, and
I must down upon my knees for pardon.
The causelessness of all this fuff stirred my own bile. “I have said
nothing you can properly object to,” said I, “and as for my knees, that
is an attitude I keep for God.”
“And as a goddess I am to be served!” she cried, shaking her brown
locks at me and with a bright colour. “Every man that comes within waft
of my petticoats shall use me so!”
“I will go so far as ask your pardon for the fashion’s sake, although I
vow I know not why,” I replied. “But for these play-acting postures,
you can go to others.”
“O Davie!” she said. “Not if I was to beg you?”
I bethought me I was fighting with a woman, which is the same as to say
a child, and that upon a point entirely formal.
“I think it a bairnly thing,” I said, “not worthy in you to ask, or me
to render. Yet I will not refuse you, neither,” said I; “and the stain,
if there be any, rests with yourself.” And at that I kneeled fairly
down.
“There!” she cried. “There is the proper station, there is where I have
been manoeuvring to bring you.” And then, suddenly, “Kep,” [21] said
she, flung me a folded billet, and ran from the apartment laughing.
The billet had neither place nor date. “Dear Mr. David,” it began, “I
get your news continually by my cousin, Miss Grant, and it is a
pleisand hearing. I am very well, in a good place, among good folk, but
necessitated to be quite private, though I am hoping that at long last
we may meet again. All your friendships have been told me by my loving
cousin, who loves us both. She bids me to send you this writing, and
oversees the same. I will be asking you to do all her commands, and
rest your affectionate friend, Catriona Macgregor-Drummond. P.S.—Will
you not see my cousin, Allardyce?”
I think it not the least brave of my campaigns (as the soldiers say)
that I should have done as I was here bidden and gone forthright to the
house by Dean. But the old lady was now entirely changed and supple as
a glove. By what means Miss Grant had brought this round I could never
guess; I am sure, at least, she dared not to appear openly in the
affair, for her papa was compromised in it pretty deep. It was he,
indeed, who had persuaded Catriona to leave, or rather, not to return,
to her cousin’s, placing her instead with a family of Gregorys—decent
people, quite at the Advocate’s disposition, and in whom she might have
the more confidence because they were of his own clan and family. These
kept her private till all was ripe, heated and helped her to attempt
her father’s rescue, and after she was discharged from prison received
her again into the same secrecy. Thus Prestongrange obtained and used
his instrument; nor did there leak out the smallest word of his
acquaintance with the daughter of James More. There was some
whispering, of course, upon the escape of that discredited person; but
the Government replied by a show of rigour, one of the cell porters was
flogged, the lieutenant of the guard (my poor friend, Duncansby) was
broken of his rank, and as for Catriona, all men were well enough
pleased that her fault should be passed by in silence.
I could never induce Miss Grant to carry back an answer. “No,” she
would say, when I persisted, “I am going to keep the big feet out of
the platter.” This was the more hard to bear, as I was aware she saw my
little friend many times in the week, and carried her my news whenever
(as she said) I “had behaved myself.” At last she treated me to what
she called an indulgence, and I thought rather more of a banter. She
was certainly a strong, almost a violent, friend to all she liked,
chief among whom was a certain frail old gentlewoman, very blind and
very witty, who dwelt on the top of a tall land on a strait close, with
a nest of linnets in a cage, and thronged all day with visitors. Miss
Grant was very fond to carry me there and put me to entertain her
friend with the narrative of my misfortunes: and Miss Tibbie Ramsay
(that was her name) was particular kind, and told me a great deal that
was worth knowledge of old folks and past affairs in Scotland. I should
say that from her chamber window, and not three feet away, such is the
straitness of that close, it was possible to look into a barred
loophole lighting the stairway of the opposite house.
Here, upon some pretext, Miss Grant left me one day alone with Miss
Ramsay. I mind I thought that lady inattentive and like one
preoccupied. I was besides very uncomfortable, for the window, contrary
to custom, was left open and the day was cold. All at once the voice of
Miss Grant sounded in my ears as from a distance.
“Here, Shaws!” she cried, “keek out of the window and see what I have
broughten you.”
I think it was the prettiest sight that ever I beheld. The well of the
close was all in clear shadow where a man could see distinctly, the
walls very black and dingy; and there from the barred loophole I saw
two faces smiling across at me—Miss Grant’s and Catriona’s.
“There!” says Miss Grant, “I wanted her to see you in your braws like
the lass of Limekilns. I wanted her to see what I could make of you,
when I buckled to the job in earnest!”
It came in my mind that she had been more than common particular that
day upon my dress; and I think that some of the same care had been
bestowed upon Catriona. For so merry and sensible a lady, Miss Grant
was certainly wonderful taken up with duds.
“Catriona!” was all I could get out.
As for her, she said nothing in the world, but only waved her hand and
smiled to me, and was suddenly carried away again from before the
loophole.
That vision was no sooner lost than I ran to the house door, where I
found I was locked in; thence back to Miss Ramsay, crying for the key,
but might as well have cried upon the castle rock. She had passed her
word, she said, and I must be a good lad. It was impossible to burst
the door, even if it had been mannerly; it was impossible I should leap
from the window, being seven storeys above ground. All I could do was
to crane over the close and watch for their reappearance from the
stair. It was little to see, being no more than the tops of their two
heads each on a ridiculous bobbin of skirts, like to a pair of
pincushions. Nor did Catriona so much as look up for a farewell; being
prevented (as I heard afterwards) by Miss Grant, who told her folk were
never seen to less advantage than from above downward.
On the way home, as soon as I was set free, I upbraided Miss Grant with
her cruelty.
“I am sorry you was disappointed,” says she demurely. “For my part I
was very pleased. You looked better than I dreaded; you looked—if it
will not make you vain—a mighty pretty young man when you appeared in
the window. You are to remember that she could not see your feet,” says
she, with the manner of one reassuring me.
“O!” cried I, “leave my feet be—they are no bigger than my
neighbours’.”
“They are even smaller than some,” said she, “but I speak in parables
like a Hebrew prophet.”
“I marvel little they were sometimes stoned!” says I. “But, you
miserable girl, how could you do it? Why should you care to tantalise
me with a moment?”
“Love is like folk,” says she; “it needs some kind of vivers.” [22]
“Oh, Barbara, let me see her properly!” I pleaded. “_You_ can—you see
her when you please; let me have half an hour.”
“Who is it that is managing this love affair! You! Or me?” she asked,
and as I continued to press her with my instances, fell back upon a
deadly expedient: that of imitating the tones of my voice when I called
on Catriona by name; with which, indeed, she held me in subjection for
some days to follow.
There was never the least word heard of the memorial, or none by me.
Prestongrange and his grace the Lord President may have heard of it
(for what I know) on the deafest sides of their heads; they kept it to
themselves, at least—the public was none the wiser; and in course of
time, on November 8th, and in the midst of a prodigious storm of wind
and rain, poor James of the Glens was duly hanged at Lettermore by
Ballachulish.
So there was the final upshot of my politics! Innocent men have
perished before James, and are like to keep on perishing (in spite of
all our wisdom) till the end of time. And till the end of time young
folk (who are not yet used with the duplicity of life and men) will
struggle as I did, and make heroical resolves, and take long risks; and
the course of events will push them upon the one side and go on like a
marching army. James was hanged; and here was I dwelling in the house
of Prestongrange, and grateful to him for his fatherly attention. He
was hanged; and behold! when I met Mr. Simon in the causeway, I was
fain to pull off my beaver to him like a good little boy before his
dominie. He had been hanged by fraud and violence, and the world wagged
along, and there was not a pennyweight of difference; and the villains
of that horrid plot were decent, kind, respectable fathers of families,
who went to kirk and took the sacrament!
But I had had my view of that detestable business they call politics—I
had seen it from behind, when it is all bones and blackness; and I was
cured for life of any temptations to take part in it again. A plain,