Catriona
guide and caution in the matter of a lodging. This implied my
presenting of the young man to Catriona. The poor, pretty child was
much recovered with resting, looked and behaved to perfection, and took
my arm and gave me the name of brother more easily than I could answer
her. But there was one misfortune: thinking to help, she was rather
towardly than otherwise to my Dutchman. And I could not but reflect
that Miss Balfour had rather suddenly outgrown her bashfulness. And
there was another thing, the difference of our speech. I had the Low
Country tongue and dwelled upon my words; she had a hill voice, spoke
with something of an English accent, only far more delightful, and was
scarce quite fit to be called a deacon in the craft of talking English
grammar; so that, for a brother and sister, we made a most uneven pair.
But the young Hollander was a heavy dog, without so much spirit in his
belly as to remark her prettiness, for which I scorned him. And as soon
as he had found a cover to our heads, he left us alone, which was the
greater service of the two.
CHAPTER XXIV.
FULL STORY OF A COPY OF HEINECCIUS
The place found was in the upper part of a house backed on a canal. We
had two rooms, the second entering from the first; each had a chimney
built out into the floor in the Dutch manner; and being alongside, each
had the same prospect from the window of the top of a tree below us in
a little court, of a piece of the canal, and of houses in the Hollands
architecture and a church spire upon the further side. A full set of
bells hung in that spire and made delightful music; and when there was
any sun at all, it shone direct in our two chambers. From a tavern hard
by we had good meals sent in.
The first night we were both pretty weary, and she extremely so. There
was little talk between us, and I packed her off to her bed as soon as
she had eaten. The first thing in the morning I wrote word to Sprott to
have her mails sent on, together with a line to Alan at his chief’s;
and had the same despatched, and her breakfast ready, ere I waked her.
I was a little abashed when she came forth in her one habit, and the
mud of the way upon her stockings. By what inquiries I had made, it
seemed a good few days must pass before her mails could come to hand in
Leyden, and it was plainly needful she must have a shift of things. She
was unwilling at first that I should go to that expense; but I reminded
her she was now a rich man’s sister and must appear suitably in the
part, and we had not got to the second merchant’s before she was
entirely charmed into the spirit of the thing, and her eyes shining. It
pleased me to see her so innocent and thorough in this pleasure. What
was more extraordinary was the passion into which I fell on it myself;
being never satisfied that I had bought her enough or fine enough, and
never weary of beholding her in different attires. Indeed, I began to
understand some little of Miss Grant’s immersion in the interest of
clothes; for the truth is, when you have the ground of a beautiful
person to adorn, the whole business becomes beautiful. The Dutch
chintzes I should say were extraordinary cheap and fine; but I would be
ashamed to set down what I paid for stockings to her. Altogether I
spent so great a sum upon this pleasuring (as I may call it) that I was
ashamed for a great while to spend more; and by way of a set-off, I
left our chambers pretty bare. If we had beds, if Catriona was a little
braw, and I had light to see her by, we were richly enough lodged for
me.
By the end of this merchandising I was glad to leave her at the door
with all our purchases, and go for a long walk alone in which to read
myself a lecture. Here had I taken under my roof, and as good as to my
bosom, a young lass extremely beautiful, and whose innocence was her
peril. My talk with the old Dutchman, and the lies to which I was
constrained, had already given me a sense of how my conduct must appear
to others; and now, after the strong admiration I had just experienced
and the immoderacy with which I had continued my vain purchases, I
began to think of it myself as very hazarded. I bethought me, if I had
a sister indeed, whether I would so expose her; then, judging the case
too problematical, I varied my question into this, whether I would so
trust Catriona in the hands of any other Christian being; the answer to
which made my face to burn. The more cause, since I had been entrapped
and had entrapped the girl into an undue situation, that I should
behave in it with scrupulous nicety. She depended on me wholly for her
bread and shelter; in case I should alarm her delicacy, she had no
retreat. Besides I was her host and her protector; and the more
irregularly I had fallen in these positions, the less excuse for me if
I should profit by the same to forward even the most honest suit; for
with the opportunities that I enjoyed, and which no wise parent would
have suffered for a moment, even the most honest suit would be unfair.
I saw I must be extremely hold-off in my relations; and yet not too
much so neither; for if I had no right to appear at all in the
character of a suitor, I must yet appear continually, and if possible
agreeably, in that of host. It was plain I should require a great deal
of tact and conduct, perhaps more than my years afforded. But I had
rushed in where angels might have feared to tread, and there was no way
out of that position save by behaving right while I was in it. I made a
set of rules for my guidance; prayed for strength to be enabled to
observe them, and as a more human aid to the same end purchased a
study-book in law. This being all that I could think of, I relaxed from
these grave considerations; whereupon my mind bubbled at once into an
effervescency of pleasing spirits, and it was like one treading on air
that I turned homeward. As I thought that name of home, and recalled
the image of that figure awaiting me between four walls, my heart beat
upon my bosom.
My troubles began with my return. She ran to greet me with an obvious
and affecting pleasure. She was clad, besides, entirely in the new
clothes that I had bought for her; looked in them beyond expression
well; and must walk about and drop me curtseys to display them and to
be admired. I am sure I did it with an ill grace, for I thought to have
choked upon the words.
“Well,” she said, “if you will not be caring for my pretty clothes, see
what I have done with our two chambers.” And she showed me the place
all very finely swept, and the fires glowing in the two chimneys.
I was glad of a chance to seem a little more severe than I quite felt.
“Catriona,” said I, “I am very much displeased with you, and you must
never again lay a hand upon my room. One of us two must have the rule
while we are here together; it is most fit it should be I who am both
the man and the elder; and I give you that for my command.”
She dropped me one of her curtseys; which were extraordinary taking.
“If you will be cross,” said she, “I must be making pretty manners at
you, Davie. I will be very obedient, as I should be when every stitch
upon all there is of me belongs to you. But you will not be very cross
either, because now I have not anyone else.”
This struck me hard, and I made haste, in a kind of penitence, to blot
out all the good effect of my last speech. In this direction progress
was more easy, being down hill; she led me forward, smiling; at the
sight of her, in the brightness of the fire and with her pretty becks
and looks, my heart was altogether melted. We made our meal with
infinite mirth and tenderness; and the two seemed to be commingled into
one, so that our very laughter sounded like a kindness.
In the midst of which I awoke to better recollections, made a lame word
of excuse, and set myself boorishly to my studies. It was a
substantial, instructive book that I had bought, by the late Dr.
Heineccius, in which I was to do a great deal reading these next few
days, and often very glad that I had no one to question me of what I
read. Methought she bit her lip at me a little, and that cut me. Indeed
it left her wholly solitary, the more as she was very little of a
reader, and had never a book. But what was I to do?
So the rest of the evening flowed by almost without speech.
I could have beat myself. I could not lie in my bed that night for rage
and repentance, but walked to and fro on my bare feet till I was nearly
perished, for the chimney was gone out and the frost keen. The thought
of her in the next room, the thought that she might even hear me as I
walked, the remembrance of my churlishness and that I must continue to
practise the same ungrateful course or be dishonoured, put me beside my
reason. I stood like a man between Scylla and Charybdis: _What must she
think of me_? was my one thought that softened me continually into
weakness. _What is to become of us_? the other which steeled me again
to resolution. This was my first night of wakefulness and divided
counsels, of which I was now to pass many, pacing like a madman,
sometimes weeping like a childish boy, sometimes praying (I fain would
hope) like a Christian.
But prayer is not very difficult, and the hitch comes in practice. In
her presence, and above all if I allowed any beginning of familiarity,
I found I had very little command of what should follow. But to sit all
day in the same room with her, and feign to be engaged upon Heineccius,
surpassed my strength. So that I fell instead upon the expedient of
absenting myself so much as I was able; taking out classes and sitting
there regularly, often with small attention, the test of which I found
the other day in a note-book of that period, where I had left off to
follow an edifying lecture and actually scribbled in my book some very
ill verses, though the Latinity is rather better than I thought that I
could ever have compassed. The evil of this course was unhappily near
as great as its advantage. I had the less time of trial, but I believe,
while the time lasted, I was tried the more extremely. For she being so
much left to solitude, she came to greet my return with an increasing
fervour that came nigh to overmaster me. These friendly offers I must
barbarously cast back; and my rejection sometimes wounded her so
cruelly that I must unbend and seek to make it up to her in kindness.
So that our time passed in ups and downs, tiffs and disappointments,
upon the which I could almost say (if it may be said with reverence)
that I was crucified.
The base of my trouble was Catriona’s extraordinary innocence, at which
I was not so much surprised as filled with pity and admiration. She
seemed to have no thought of our position, no sense of my struggles;
welcomed any mark of my weakness with responsive joy; and when I was
drove again to my retrenchments, did not always dissemble her chagrin.
There were times when I have thought to myself, “If she were over head
in love, and set her cap to catch me, she would scarce behave much
otherwise;” and then I would fall again into wonder at the simplicity
of woman, from whom I felt (in these moments) that I was not worthy to
be descended.
There was one point in particular on which our warfare turned, and of
all things, this was the question of her clothes. My baggage had soon
followed me from Rotterdam, and hers from Helvoet. She had now, as it
were, two wardrobes; and it grew to be understood between us (I could
never tell how) that when she was friendly she would wear my clothes,
and when otherwise her own. It was meant for a buffet, and (as it were)
the renunciation of her gratitude; and I felt it so in my bosom, but
was generally more wise than to appear to have observed the
circumstance.
Once, indeed, I was betrayed into a childishness greater than her own;