Catriona
it fell in this way. On my return from classes, thinking upon her
devoutly with a great deal of love and a good deal of annoyance in the
bargain, the annoyance began to fade away out of my mind; and spying in
a window one of those forced flowers, of which the Hollanders are so
skilled in the artifice, I gave way to an impulse and bought it for
Catriona. I do not know the name of that flower, but it was of the pink
colour, and I thought she would admire the same, and carried it home to
her with a wonderful soft heart. I had left her in my clothes, and when
I returned to find her all changed and a face to match, I cast but the
one look at her from head to foot, ground my teeth together, flung the
window open, and my flower into the court, and then (between rage and
prudence) myself out of that room again, of which I slammed she door as
I went out.
On the steep stair I came near falling, and this brought me to myself,
so that I began at once to see the folly of my conduct. I went, not
into the street as I had purposed, but to the house court, which was
always a solitary place, and where I saw my flower (that had cost me
vastly more than it was worth) hanging in the leafless tree. I stood by
the side of the canal, and looked upon the ice. Country people went by
on their skates, and I envied them. I could see no way out of the
pickle I was in no way so much as to return to the room I had just
left. No doubt was in my mind but I had now betrayed the secret of my
feelings; and to make things worse, I had shown at the same time (and
that with wretched boyishness) incivility to my helpless guest.
I suppose she must have seen me from the open window. It did not seem
to me that I had stood there very long before I heard the crunching of
footsteps on the frozen snow, and turning somewhat angrily (for I was
in no spirit to be interrupted) saw Catriona drawing near. She was all
changed again, to the clocked stockings.
“Are we not to have our walk to-day?” said she.
I was looking at her in a maze. “Where is your brooch?” says I.
She carried her hand to her bosom and coloured high. “I will have
forgotten it,” said she. “I will run upstairs for it quick, and then
surely we’ll can have our walk?”
There was a note of pleading in that last that staggered me; I had
neither words nor voice to utter them; I could do no more than nod by
way of answer; and the moment she had left me, climbed into the tree
and recovered my flower, which on her return I offered her.
“I bought it for you, Catriona,” said I.
She fixed it in the midst of her bosom with the brooch, I could have
thought tenderly.
“It is none the better of my handling,” said I again, and blushed.
“I will be liking it none the worse, you may be sure of that,” said
she.
We did not speak so much that day; she seemed a thought on the reserve,
though not unkindly. As for me, all the time of our walking, and after
we came home, and I had seen her put my flower into a pot of water, I
was thinking to myself what puzzles women were. I was thinking, the one
moment, it was the most stupid thing on earth she should not have
perceived my love; and the next, that she had certainly perceived it
long ago, and (being a wise girl with the fine female instinct of
propriety) concealed her knowledge.
We had our walk daily. Out in the streets I felt more safe; I relaxed a
little in my guardedness; and for one thing, there was no Heineccius.
This made these periods not only a relief to myself, but a particular
pleasure to my poor child. When I came back about the hour appointed, I
would generally find her ready dressed, and glowing with anticipation.
She would prolong their duration to the extreme, seeming to dread (as I
did myself) the hour of the return; and there is scarce a field or
waterside near Leyden, scarce a street or lane there, where we have not
lingered. Outside of these, I bade her confine herself entirely to our
lodgings; this in the fear of her encountering any acquaintance, which
would have rendered our position very difficult. From the same
apprehension I would never suffer her to attend church, nor even go
myself; but made some kind of shift to hold worship privately in our
own chamber—I hope with an honest, but I am quite sure with a very much
divided mind. Indeed, there was scarce anything that more affected me,
than thus to kneel down alone with her before God like man and wife.
One day it was snowing downright hard. I had thought it not possible
that we should venture forth, and was surprised to find her waiting for
me ready dressed.
“I will not be doing without my walk,” she cried. “You are never a good
boy, Davie, in the house; I will never be caring for you only in the
open air. I think we two will better turn Egyptian and dwell by the
roadside.”
That was the best walk yet of all of them; she clung near to me in the
falling snow; it beat about and melted on us, and the drops stood upon
her bright cheeks like tears and ran into her smiling mouth. Strength
seemed to come upon me with the sight like a giant’s; I thought I could
have caught her up and run with her into the uttermost places in the
earth; and we spoke together all that time beyond belief for freedom
and sweetness.
It was the dark night when we came to the house door. She pressed my
arm upon her bosom. “Thank you kindly for these same good hours,” said
she, on a deep note of her voice.
The concern in which I fell instantly on this address, put me with the
same swiftness on my guard; and we were no sooner in the chamber, and
the light made, than she beheld the old, dour, stubborn countenance of
the student of Heineccius. Doubtless she was more than usually hurt;
and I know for myself, I found it more than usually difficult to
maintain any strangeness. Even at the meal, I durst scarce unbuckle and
scarce lift my eyes to her; and it was no sooner over than I fell again
to my civilian, with more seeming abstraction and less understanding
than before. Methought, as I read, I could hear my heart strike like an
eight-day clock. Hard as I feigned to study, there was still some of my
eyesight that spilled beyond the book upon Catriona. She sat on the
floor by the side of my great mail, and the chimney lighted her up, and
shone and blinked upon her, and made her glow and darken through a
wonder of fine hues. Now she would be gazing in the fire, and then
again at me; and at that I would be plunged in a terror of myself, and
turn the pages of Heineccius like a man looking for the text in church.
Suddenly she called out aloud. “O, why does not my father come?” she
cried, and fell at once into a storm of tears.
I leaped up, flung Heineccius fairly in the fire, ran to her side, and
cast an arm around her sobbing body.
She put me from her sharply, “You do not love your friend,” says she.
“I could be so happy too, if you would let me!” And then, “O, what will
I have done that you should hate me so?”
“Hate you!” cries I, and held her firm. “You blind less, can you not
see a little in my wretched heart? Do you not think when I sit there,
reading in that fool-book that I have just burned and be damned to it,
I take ever the least thought of any stricken thing but just yourself?
Night after night I could have grat to see you sitting there your lone.
And what was I to do? You are here under my honour; would you punish me
for that? Is it for that that you would spurn a loving servant?”
At the word, with a small, sudden motion, she clung near to me. I
raised her face to mine, I kissed it, and she bowed her brow upon my
bosom, clasping me tight. I saw in a mere whirl like a man drunken.
Then I heard her voice sound very small and muffled in my clothes.
“Did you kiss her truly?” she asked.
There went through me so great a heave of surprise that I was all shook
with it.
“Miss Grant?” I cried, all in a disorder. “Yes, I asked her to kiss me
good-bye, the which she did.”
“Ah, well!” said she, “you have kissed me too, at all events.”
At the strangeness and sweetness of that word, I saw where we had
fallen; rose, and set her on her feet.
“This will never do,” said I. “This will never, never do. O Catrine,
Catrine!” Then there came a pause in which I was debarred from any
speaking. And then, “Go away to your bed,” said I. “Go away to your bed
and leave me.”
She turned to obey me like a child, and the next I knew of it, had
stopped in the very doorway.
“Good night, Davie!” said she.
“And O, good night, my love!” I cried, with a great outbreak of my
soul, and caught her to me again, so that it seemed I must have broken
her. The next moment I had thrust her from the room, shut to the door
even with violence, and stood alone.
The milk was spilt now, the word was out and the truth told. I had
crept like an untrusty man into the poor maid’s affections; she was in
my hand like any frail, innocent thing to make or mar; and what weapon
of defence was left me? It seemed like a symbol that Heineccius, my old
protection, was now burned. I repented, yet could not find it in my
heart to blame myself for that great failure. It seemed not possible to
have resisted the boldness of her innocence or that last temptation of
her weeping. And all that I had to excuse me did but make my sin appear
the greater—it was upon a nature so defenceless, and with such
advantages of the position, that I seemed to have practised.
What was to become of us now? It seemed we could no longer dwell in the
one place. But where was I to go? or where she? Without either choice
or fault of ours, life had conspired to wall us together in that narrow
place. I had a wild thought of marrying out of hand; and the next
moment put it from me with revolt. She was a child, she could not tell
her own heart; I had surprised her weakness, I must never go on to
build on that surprisal; I must keep her not only clear of reproach,
but free as she had come to me.
Down I sat before the fire, and reflected, and repented, and beat my
brains in vain for any means of escape. About two of the morning, there
were three red embers left and the house and all the city was asleep,
when I was aware of a small sound of weeping in the next room. She
thought that I slept, the poor soul; she regretted her weakness—and
what perhaps (God help her!) she called her forwardness—and in the dead
of the night solaced herself with tears. Tender and bitter feelings,
love and penitence and pity, struggled in my soul; it seemed I was
under bond to heal that weeping.
“O, try to forgive me!” I cried out, “try, try to forgive me. Let us
forget it all, let us try if we’ll no can forget it!”
There came no answer, but the sobbing ceased. I stood a long while with
my hands still clasped as I had spoken; then the cold of the night laid
hold upon me with a shudder, and I think my reason reawakened.
“You can make no hand of this, Davie,” thinks I. “To bed with you like
a wise lad, and try if you can sleep. To-morrow you may see your way.”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE RETURN OF JAMES MORE
I was called on the morrow out of a late and troubled slumber by a
knocking on my door, ran to open it, and had almost swooned with the
contrariety of my feelings, mostly painful; for on the threshold, in a
rough wraprascal and an extraordinary big laced hat, there stood James
More.
I ought to have been glad perhaps without admixture, for there was a
sense in which the man came like an answer to prayer. I had been saying
till my head was weary that Catriona and I must separate, and looking
till my head ached for any possible means of separation. Here were the
means come to me upon two legs, and joy was the hindmost of my
thoughts. It is to be considered, however, that even if the weight of
the future were lifted off me by the man’s arrival, the present heaved