it was not long after this that i found myself, almost against my will, skirting the side of the long loch of ken, on the road to the great house of earlstoun.
the lady of the castle met me by the outer gate. when i came near her she lifted up her hands like a prophetess.
“three times have ye been warned! the lord will not deal always gently with you. it is ill to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds!”
“mistress gordon,” said i, “wherein have i now offended?” for indeed there was no saying what cantrip she had taken into her head.
“how was it then,” she said, “that the talk went through the countryside that ye were married to that lassie jean gemmell on her dying bed?”{276}
“it is true,” said i, “but wherein was the sin?”
“oh,” said she, “the sin was not in the marrying (though that was doubtless a silly caper and the lass so near dead’s door), but in being married by a minister of the kirk established and uncovenanted.”
“but what else could i have done?” i hasted to make answer; “there are none other in all scotland. for the hill folk have never had an ordained minister, since they took down james renwick’s body from the gallows tree, and wrapped him gently in swaddling clothes for his burial.”
“it is even true,” she said, “but i would have gone unmarried till my dying day before i would have let an erastian servant of belial couple me. but i forgat—’tis not long since you yourself escaped from that fold!”
so there she stood so long on the step of the door and argued concerning the points of faith and doctrine without ever asking me in, that at last i grew weary, and begged that she would permit me to sit and refresh me on the step of the well-house, which was close at hand, even under the arch of the gateway.
“aye, surely, ye may that!” she made me{277} answer, and again took up her parable without further offer of hospitality.
and even thus they found us, when mary gordon and her father returned from the hill, walking hand in hand as was their wont.
“wi’ janet, woman!” cried hearty alexander, “what ails you at the minister that ye have set him down there by the waters o’ babylon like a pelican in the wilderness? could ye no hae asked the laddie ben and gied him bite and sup? come, lad,” cried he, reaching me a hand, “step up wi’ me—there’s brandy in the cupboard as auld as yoursel’!”
but as for me i had thought of nothing but the look in mary gordon’s eyes.
“brandy!” cried jean hamilton. “alexander, think shame—you that are an elder and have likewise been privileged to be a sufferer for the cause of truth, to be speaking about french brandy at this hour o’ the day. do ye not see that i have been refreshing the soul of this poor, weak, downcast brother with appropriate meditations from my own spiritual diary and covenantings?”
she took again a little closely-written book from her swinging side-pocket.{278}
“let me see, we were, i think, at the third section, and the——”
“lord help us—i’m awa!” cried sandy gordon suddenly, and vanished up the turnpike stair. mary gordon held out her hand to me in silence, permitted her eyes to rest a moment on mine in calm and friendly fashion, all without anger or embarrassment, and then softly withdrawing her hand she followed her father up the stairs.
i was again left alone with the lady of earlstoun.
“‘tis a terrible cross that i must bear,” said that lugubrious professor, shaking her head, “in that my man hath not the inborn grace of my brother—ah—that proven testifier, that most savoury professor, sir robert hamilton. for our sandy is a man that cannot stand prosperity and the quiet of the bieldy bush. in time of peace he becomes like a rusty horologe. he needs affliction and the evil day, that his wheels may be taken to pieces, oiled with the oil of mourning, washed with tears of bitterness, and then set up anew. then for a while he goes on not that ill.”
“your husband has come through great{279} trials!” i said. for indeed i scarce knew what to say to such a woman.
“sandy—o aye!” cried his wife. “but what are his trials to the ills which i have endured with none to pity? have not i suffered his carnal doings well-nigh thirty years and held my peace? have i not wandered by the burn-side and mourned for his sin? and now, worse than all, my children seek after their father’s ways.”
“janet hamilton,” cried a great voice from a window of the tower, “is there no dinner to be gotten this day in the house of earlstoun?”
the lady lifted up her hands in holy horror.
“dinner, dinner—is this a time to be thinking aboot eating and drinking, when the land is full of ravening and wickedness, and when iniquity sits unashamed in high places?”
“never ye heed fash your thumb about the high places, janet my woman,” cried her husband from the window, out of which his burly, jovial head protruded. “e’en come your ways in, my denty, and turn the weelgaun mill-happer o’ your tongue on yon lazy, guid-for-nae-thing besoms in the kitchen. then the high places will never steer ye, and ye will hae a{280} stronger stomach to wrestle wi’ the rest o’ the sins o’ the times!”
“sandy, sandy, ye were ever by nature a mocker! i fear ye have been looking upon the strong drink!”
“faith, lass,” replied her husband, with the utmost good humour, “i was e’en looking for it—but the plague o’ muckle o’t there is to be seen.”
the lady of earlstoun arose forthwith and went into the tall tower, from the lower stories of which her voice, raised in flyting and contumelious discourse, could be distinctly heard.
“ungrateful madams,” so she addressed her subordinates, “get about your business! hear ye not that the laird is quarrelling for his dinner, which ought to have been served half-an-hour ago by the clock!
“nay, tell me not that i keeped you so long at the taking of the book that there was no time left for the kirning of the butter. never ought is lost by the service of the lord.”
thus i sat on the well kerb, listening to the poor wenches getting, as the saw hath it, their kail through the reek. but at that moment i observed sandy gordon’s head look through the open window. he beckoned me to him{281} with his finger in a cunning manner. i went up the stairs with intent to find the room where he was, but by a curious mischance i alighted instead on the long oaken chamber where i had been entertained of yore by mistress mary.
i found her there again, busy with the ordering of the table, setting out platters and silver of price, the like of which i had never seen, save as it might be in the house of the laird of girthon.
“come your ways in, sir,” she said, briskly, “and help me with my work.”
this i had been very glad to do, but that i knew her father was waiting for me above.
“right willingly,” said i, “but earlstoun himself desires my presence aloft in his chamber.”
she gave her shoulders a dainty little shrug in the foreign manner she had learned from her cousin kate of lochinvar.
“i think,” she said, “that the job at which ye would find my father can be managed without your assistance.”
so in the great chamber i abode very gratefully. and with the best will in the world i set myself to the fetching and carrying of dishes, the spreading of table-cloths fine as the{282} driven snow. and all the time my heart beat fast within me. for i had never before been so near this maid of the great folk, nor so much as touched the robe that rustled about her, sweet and dainty.
and i do not deny (surely i may write it here) that the doing of these things afforded me many thrills of heart, the like of which i have not experienced ofttimes even on other and higher occasions.
and as i helped the lady mary, or pretended to help her rather, she continued to converse sweetly and comfortably to me. but all as it had been my sister anna speaking—a thousand miles from any thought of love. her eyes beneath the long dark lashes remained cool and quiet.
“i am glad,” she said, “that ye have played the man, and withstood your enemies even to the last extremity.”
“i could do no other,” i made answer.
“there are very many who could very well have ‘done other’ without stressing themselves,” she said.
and i well knew that she meant mr. boyd, who was the neighbouring minister and a recreant from the societies.{283}
then she looked very carefully to the ordering of certain wild flowers, which like a bairn she had been out gathering, and had now set forth in sundry flat dishes in the table-midst, in a fashion i had never seen before. more than once she spilled a little of the water upon the cloth, and cried out upon herself for her stupidity in the doing of it, discovering ever fresh delights in the delicate grace of her movements, the swinging of her dress, and in especial a pretty quick way she had of jerking back her head to see if she had gotten the colour and ordering of the flowers to her mind.
this i minded for long after, and even now it comes so fresh before me that i can see her at it now.
“i heard of the young lass of drumglass and her love for you,” she said presently, very softly, and without looking at me, fingering at the flowers in the shallow basins and pulling them this way and that.
i did not answer, but stood looking at her with my head hanging down, and a mighty weight about my heart.
“you must have loved her greatly?” she said, still more softly.
“i married her,” said i, curtly. but in a{284} moment was ashamed of the answer. yet what more could i say with truth? but i had the grace to add, “almost i was heartbroken for her death.”
“she was happy when she died, they said,” she went on, tentatively.
“she died with her hand in mine,” i answered, steadily, “and when she could not speak any longer she still pressed it.”
“ah! that is the true love which can make even death sweet,” she said. “i should like to plant lads’ love and none-so-pretty upon her grave.”
yet all the while i desired to tell her of my love for herself, and how the other was not even a heat of the blood, but only for the comforting of a dying girl.
nevertheless i could not at that time. for it seemed a dishonourable word to speak of one who was so lately dead, and, in name and for an hour at least, had been my wife.
then all too soon we heard the noise of sandy her father upon the garret stair, trampling down with his great boots as if he would bring the whole wood-work of the building with him bodily.
mary gordon heard it, too, for she came{285} hastily about to the end of the table where i had stood transfixed all the time she was speaking of jean gemmell.
she set a dish on the cloth, and as she brought her hand back she laid it on mine quickly, and, looking up with such a warm light of gracious wisdom and approval in her eyes that my heart was like water within me, she said: “quintin, you are a truer man than i thought. i love your silences better than your speeches.”
and at her words my heart gave a great bound within me, for i thought that at last she understood. then she passed away, and became even more cold and distant than before, not even bidding me farewell when i took my departure. but as i went down the loaning with her father she looked out of the turret window, and waved the hand that had lain for an instant upon mine.
