Catriona
moors_’.” Which was a common byword or overcome in those tales of hers
that had stuck in my memory.
“Ah,” says she, “but here are no glens or mountains! Though I will
never be denying but what the trees and some of the plain places
hereabouts are very pretty. But our country is the best yet.”
“I wish we could say as much for our own folk,” says I, recalling
Sprott and Sang, and perhaps James More himself.
“I will never complain of the country of my friend,” said she, and
spoke it out with an accent so particular that I seemed to see the look
upon her face.
I caught in my breath sharp and came near falling (for my pains) on the
black ice.
“I do not know what _you_ think, Catriona,” said I, when I was a little
recovered, “but this has been the best day yet! I think shame to say
it, when you have met in with such misfortunes and disfavours; but for
me, it has been the best day yet.”
“It was a good day when you showed me so much love,” said she.
“And yet I think shame to be happy too,” I went on, “and you here on
the road in the black night.”
“Where in the great world would I be else?” she cried. “I am thinking I
am safest where I am with you.”
“I am quite forgiven, then?” I asked.
“Will you not forgive me that time so much as not to take it in your
mouth again?” she cried. “There is nothing in this heart to you but
thanks. But I will be honest too,” she added, with a kind of
suddenness, “and I’ll never can forgive that girl.”
“Is this Miss Grant again?” said I. “You said yourself she was the best
lady in the world.”
“So she will be, indeed!” says Catriona. “But I will never forgive her
for all that. I will never, never forgive her, and let me hear tell of
her no more.”
“Well,” said I, “this beats all that ever came to my knowledge; and I
wonder that you can indulge yourself in such bairnly whims. Here is a
young lady that was the best friend in the world to the both of us,
that learned us how to dress ourselves, and in a great manner how to
behave, as anyone can see that knew us both before and after.”
But Catriona stopped square in the midst of the highway.
“It is this way of it,” said she. “Either you will go on to speak of
her, and I will go back to yon town, and let come of it what God
pleases! Or else you will do me that politeness to talk of other
things.”
I was the most nonplussed person in this world; but I bethought me that
she depended altogether on my help, that she was of the frail sex and
not so much beyond a child, and it was for me to be wise for the pair
of us.
“My dear girl,” said I, “I can make neither head nor tails of this; but
God forbid that I should do anything to set you on the jee. As for
talking of Miss Grant, I have no such a mind to it, and I believe it
was yourself began it. My only design (if I took you up at all) was for
your own improvement, for I hate the very look of injustice. Not that I
do not wish you to have a good pride and a nice female delicacy; they
become you well; but here you show them to excess.”
“Well, then, have you done?” said she.
“I have done,” said I.
“A very good thing,” said she, and we went on again, but now in
silence.
It was an eerie employment to walk in the gross night, beholding only
shadows and hearing nought but our own steps. At first, I believe our
hearts burned against each other with a deal of enmity; but the
darkness and the cold, and the silence, which only the cocks sometimes
interrupted, or sometimes the farmyard dogs, had pretty soon brought
down our pride to the dust; and for my own particular, I would have
jumped at any decent opening for speech.
Before the day peeped, came on a warmish rain, and the frost was all
wiped away from among our feet. I took my cloak to her and sought to
hap her in the same; she bade me, rather impatiently, to keep it.
“Indeed and I will do no such thing,” said I. “Here am I, a great, ugly
lad that has seen all kinds of weather, and here are you a tender,
pretty maid! My dear, you would not put me to a shame?”
Without more words she let me cover her; which as I was doing in the
darkness, I let my hand rest a moment on her shoulder, almost like an
embrace.
“You must try to be more patient of your friend,” said I.
I thought she seemed to lean the least thing in the world against my
bosom, or perhaps it was but fancy.
“There will be no end to your goodness,” said she.
And we went on again in silence; but now all was changed; and the
happiness that was in my heart was like a fire in a great chimney.
The rain passed ere day; it was but a sloppy morning as we came into
the town of Delft. The red gabled houses made a handsome show on either
hand of a canal; the servant lassies were out slestering and scrubbing
at the very stones upon the public highway; smoke rose from a hundred
kitchens; and it came in upon me strongly it was time to break our
fasts.
“Catriona,” said I, “I believe you have yet a shilling and three
baubees?”
“Are you wanting it?” said she, and passed me her purse. “I am wishing
it was five pounds! What will you want it for?”
“And what have we been walking for all night, like a pair of waif
Egyptians!” says I. “Just because I was robbed of my purse and all I
possessed in that unchancy town of Rotterdam. I will tell you of it
now, because I think the worst is over, but we have still a good tramp
before us till we get to where my money is, and if you would not buy me
a piece of bread, I were like to go fasting.”
She looked at me with open eyes. By the light of the new day she was
all black and pale for weariness, so that my heart smote me for her.
But as for her, she broke out laughing.
“My torture! are we beggars then!” she cried. “You too? O, I could have
wished for this same thing! And I am glad to buy your breakfast to you.
But it would be pleisand if I would have had to dance to get a meal to
you! For I believe they are not very well acquainted with our manner of
dancing over here, and might be paying for the curiosity of that
sight.”
I could have kissed her for that word, not with a lover’s mind, but in
a heat of admiration. For it always warms a man to see a woman brave.
We got a drink of milk from a country wife but new come to the town,
and in a baker’s, a piece of excellent, hot, sweet-smelling bread,
which we ate upon the road as we went on. That road from Delft to the
Hague is just five miles of a fine avenue shaded with trees, a canal on
the one hand, on the other excellent pastures of cattle. It was
pleasant here indeed.
“And now, Davie,” said she, “what will you do with me at all events?”
“It is what we have to speak of,” said I, “and the sooner yet the
better. I can come by money in Leyden; that will be all well. But the
trouble is how to dispose of you until your father come. I thought last
night you seemed a little sweir to part from me?”
“It will be more than seeming then,” said she.
“You are a very young maid,” said I, “and I am but a very young
callant. This is a great piece of difficulty. What way are we to
manage? Unless indeed, you could pass to be my sister?”
“And what for no?” said she, “if you would let me!”
“I wish you were so, indeed,” I cried. “I would be a fine man if I had
such a sister. But the rub is that you are Catriona Drummond.”
“And now I will be Catriona Balfour,” she said. “And who is to ken?
They are all strange folk here.”
“If you think that it would do,” says I. “I own it troubles me. I would
like it very ill, if I advised you at all wrong.”
“David, I have no friend here but you,” she said.
“The mere truth is, I am too young to be your friend,” said I. “I am
too young to advise you, or you to be advised. I see not what else we
are to do, and yet I ought to warn you.”
“I will have no choice left,” said she. “My father James More has not
used me very well, and it is not the first time, I am cast upon your
hands like a sack of barley meal, and have nothing else to think of but
your pleasure. If you will have me, good and well. If you will not”—she
turned and touched her hand upon my arm—“David, I am afraid,” said she.
“No, but I ought to warn you,” I began; and then bethought me I was the
bearer of the purse, and it would never do to seem too churlish.
“Catriona,” said I, “don’t misunderstand me: I am just trying to do my
duty by you, girl! Here am I going alone to this strange city, to be a
solitary student there; and here is this chance arisen that you might
dwell with me a bit, and be like my sister; you can surely understand
this much, my dear, that I would just love to have you?”
“Well, and here I am,” said she. “So that’s soon settled.”
I know I was in duty bounden to have spoke more plain. I know this was
a great blot on my character, for which I was lucky that I did not pay
more dear. But I minded how easy her delicacy had been startled with a
word of kissing her in Barbara’s letter; now that she depended on me,
how was I to be more bold? Besides, the truth is, I could see no other
feasible method to dispose of her. And I daresay inclination pulled me
very strong.
A little beyond the Hague she fell very lame and made the rest of the
distance heavily enough. Twice she must rest by the wayside, which she
did with pretty apologies, calling herself a shame to the Highlands and
the race she came of, and nothing but a hindrance to myself. It was her
excuse, she said, that she was not much used with walking shod. I would
have had her strip off her shoes and stockings and go barefoot. But she
pointed out to me that the women of that country, even in the landward
roads, appeared to be all shod.
“I must not be disgracing my brother,” said she, and was very merry
with it all, although her face told tales of her.
There is a garden in that city we were bound to, sanded below with
clean sand, the trees meeting overhead, some of them trimmed, some
preached, and the whole place beautified with alleys and arbours. Here
I left Catriona, and went forward by myself to find my correspondent.
There I drew on my credit, and asked to be recommended to some decent,
retired lodging. My baggage being not yet arrived, I told him I
supposed I should require his caution with the people of the house; and
explained that, my sister being come for a while to keep house with me,
I should be wanting two chambers. This was all very well; but the
trouble was that Mr. Balfour in his letter of recommendation had
condescended on a great deal of particulars, and never a word of any
sister in the case. I could see my Dutchman was extremely suspicious;
and viewing me over the rims of a great pair of spectacles—he was a
poor, frail body, and reminded me of an infirm rabbit—he began to
question me close.
Here I fell in a panic. Suppose he accept my tale (thinks I), suppose
he invite my sister to his house, and that I bring her. I shall have a
fine ravelled pirn to unwind, and may end by disgracing both the lassie
and myself. Thereupon I began hastily to expound to him my sister’s
character. She was of a bashful disposition, it appeared, and be
extremely fearful of meeting strangers that I had left her at that
moment sitting in a public place alone. And then, being launched upon
the stream of falsehood, I must do like all the rest of the world in
the same circumstance, and plunge in deeper than was any service;
adding some altogether needless particulars of Miss Balfour’s
ill-health and retirement during childhood. In the midst of which I
awoke to a sense of my behaviour, and was turned to one blush.
The old gentleman was not so much deceived but what he discovered a
willingness to be quit of me. But he was first of all a man of
business; and knowing that my money was good enough, however it might
be with my conduct, he was so far obliging as to send his son to be my