Initial commitHEADmain

6 files changed, 9752 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7b82bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+*.txt text eol=lf
+*.htm text eol=lf
+*.html text eol=lf
+*.md text eol=lf
diff --git a/75486-0.txt b/75486-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f151440
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75486-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4714 @@
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75486 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                            SCOTCH MARRIAGES
+
+                                   I.
+
+
+
+
+                            SCOTCH MARRIAGES
+
+                                   BY
+
+                              SARAH TYTLER
+
+                               AUTHOR OF
+
+                ‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ &c.
+
+                            IN THREE VOLUMES
+
+                                VOL. I.
+
+                                 LONDON
+                 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
+                                  1882
+
+                        [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+    ‘Choose not alone a proper mate
+    But proper time to marry’
+
+    COWPER
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+                                  OF
+
+                           THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+                             _LADY PEGGY._
+
+CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
+
+I. BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND                                  3
+
+II. PEGGY’S WEDDING                                                   22
+
+III. PEGGY’S WELCOME HOME                                             48
+
+IV. THE LONG DAYS THAT FOLLOWED                                       71
+
+V. THE REIGN OF MISRULE                                               92
+
+VI. ‘LADY PEGGY’                                                     111
+
+VII. ‘HUNTINGTOWER’                                                  133
+
+VIII. PEGGY’S FRIENDS                                                158
+
+IX. THE LESSONS THAT PRIMROSE GAVE WHILE BALCAIRNIE LOOKED ON        182
+
+X. ‘A’ WILL BE RICHT AGAIN GIN JAMIE WERE COME BACK                  209
+
+
+                            _JEAN KINLOCH_
+
+I. JEAN SCORNED                                                      223
+
+II. BOB MEFFIN’S AMENDS                                              247
+
+III. JEAN’S REPRISALS                                                275
+
+
+
+
+                              LADY PEGGY
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                  BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND.
+
+
+During the last century there was little real difference between
+young Drumsheugh and young Balcairnie, the young laird and the young
+yeoman,[1] who was also the laird’s chief tenant and chosen friend.
+Jamie Ramsay, of Drumsheugh, and Jock Home, of Balcairnie, both
+rejoicing in a territorial appellation, had sat together on the same
+bench in the same parish school. For that matter Jock, though not
+particularly scholarly, as the cleverer of the two, had generally sat
+above his companion. The boys had played together in the same games
+of ball and hockey. In company they had scoured the fields together
+after birds’ nests, nuts, and haws. They had in their green youth worn
+and torn the same corduroys little different in quality, and satisfied
+their hearty appetites on the same wholesome porridge and kail, oatmeal
+cakes, and ‘bannocks o’ barley,’ for the laird’s table was not much
+more daintily supplied than the farmer’s.
+
+Even the lads’ homes were on the outside not so different as might
+have been expected. Drumsheugh had an avenue of crazy fir trees, and
+the dignity of a ruined tower about a bow-shot from the high, narrow,
+free-stone house which represented the modern mansion. Balcairnie was
+just such another house, a storey lower, without the avenue and the
+tower. It was not destitute of compensation for these deficiencies in
+the comfortable-looking stack-yard, which sheltered it from every
+wind that blew, and in the square of the farmyard which abutted on
+the house, and was alive and cheerful with domestic animals, and the
+constant work going on among them. Balcairnie was the livelier dwelling
+of the two. Both houses had long gardens very similar, prolific in
+hardy vegetables and primitive fruit, as well as in old-fashioned
+flowers. The gardens found room for umbrageous bowers and Dutch
+summer-houses, and included beech and holly hedges, which enclosed
+washing-greens.
+
+Inside, the best parlour of Balcairnie might have stood for the
+dining-room of Drumsheugh--furnished as they both were with Scotch
+carpets and oak, and adorned alike with silver cups, won in coursing
+matches, and great Chinese punch-bowls brought home by friendly sea
+captains. The chief difference lay in the fact that the dining-room
+at Drumsheugh was in constant use, while the _pièce de résistance_
+among the apartments in Balcairnie was the ordinary parlour, given
+over to drugget and blue-and-white checked linen, with ornaments of no
+more costly material than cherry-wood pipes, pink-lipped shells, and
+peacocks’ feathers. Again, there was no drawing-room at Balcairnie,
+with spindle-legged chairs in painted satin-wood and white chintz
+covers, such as was the company room at Drumsheugh. But the boys’ bare
+little garret dormitories were much alike.
+
+On the rare occasions, when the lads went from home, unattended by
+their parents, they journeyed by one conveyance which served the whole
+neighbourhood, except on special occasions--Tam Fleemin’s carrier’s
+cart.
+
+True, on leaving school young Drumsheugh had gone to the Edinburgh
+University, as became his birth and rank, while young Balcairnie had
+entered on the apprenticeship implied in holding a plough and drawing a
+straight furrow under the critical eyes of his father and his father’s
+foreman, according to the standard for young men in his class; but on
+the return of the one lad from the college and the promotion of the
+other on the death of his father to the possession of all the pairs of
+horses on the farm, instead of the obligation to work one pair, the
+occupations and amusements of the old allies tallied once more at many
+points.
+
+Young Drumsheugh--young only in years, for his father had died long
+before Balcairnie’s father, and the laird had grown up under the rule
+of a widowed mother--was a scion of the great house of Dalwolsie, the
+representative of a family of respectable though not very wealthy
+country gentry that had held up their heads among their equals for the
+last three hundred years at least. Young Balcairnie, though his father,
+grandfather and great-grandfather had been tenants of Balcairnie as
+long as the oldest living man in the neighbourhood could recollect,
+knew nothing further of his origin than what was to be deciphered on
+a few mossy stones leaning over in Craigture kirk yard. These did not
+condescend to mention whether the Homes of Balcairnie came of the great
+Berwickshire Homes or not. The rude, half-effaced letters only gave
+the brief, if graphic, statement that here lay ‘the cauld corp’ of
+‘Dauvit,’ or Alexander, or John Home, as it might be.
+
+But blue blood must have spoken out very unmistakably, if it had drawn
+a sharp line between two lads whose rearing, casts of mind, tastes and
+pursuits were so much in common. For the laird farmed the home farm,
+and the yeoman was one of the first in the hunting field, though he
+did not attend the hunt ball. The young men, like the boys, wore as a
+rule the same every-day suits--no longer of corduroy, but of home-spun.
+Good brown woollen stuff, shorn, spun, and woven in the district,
+diversified by yellow buckskins, boots and tops, red waistcoats,
+and three-cornered hats. The manly build of the pair rivalled each
+that of the other. Both were deep-chested, broad-shouldered, long
+and clean-limbed, with arms, not unused to fencing and boxing, quite
+capable of keeping the owners’ heads. The corresponding legs came out
+strong at coursing matches without the aid of riding horses, while
+the feet beat the floor resoundingly in reels and country dances for
+well-nigh a round of the clock at every merry-making, great and small,
+far and near. The comely ruddy faces under the three-cornered hats
+might almost have been those of brothers, except that Drumsheugh was
+dark and Balcairnie fair in hair and complexion.
+
+The men met at the kirk, they met at the market, they dined at the
+same table in the George Inn of the little town of Craigie on the
+market-day, they resorted to the same coffee-room to read the same
+newspaper, with its chronicle of war prices, victories of His Majesty’s
+forces abroad, and meal mobs at home, while the laird and the farmer
+frequently rode home together, so long as their roads were one.
+
+Balcairnie would dine several times at Drumsheugh in the course of the
+winter, and if the Lady--Drumsheugh’s mother--was a thought stately,
+and kept her visitors somewhat at a distance, all in a perfectly
+courteous way, that was not the laird’s fault. He did his best to
+make up for it by being ‘Jack-fellow-alike’ with his tenant when
+Drumsheugh returned Balcairnie’s visits at the farm-house. Indeed it
+was well known to the Lady herself that Drumsheugh, though he could
+carry himself well enough in any society, was not guilty of offence
+against any and was liked in all ranks, showed at this stage of his
+development a perilous preference for humbler company than he had
+been born to. He would rather accompany Balcairnie to a ‘maiden’[2]
+or penny wedding, and enter with all his soul into the prevailing fun
+and frolic, rendering himself the most acceptable guest in the motley
+assemblage, than go where Balcairnie could not go with him, to what was
+by comparison the high and dry hunt balls and subscription assemblies.
+
+There is this to be said in excuse for Drumsheugh’s low tastes, that
+the maidens and weddings--penny and otherwise--not less than the
+markets of those days were freely frequented by guests--male guests
+especially--many degrees higher than the mass of the company. Besides,
+as is sometimes true in a thinly peopled district, it happened that
+about the time Drumsheugh came of age, the county circle round him was
+remarkably deficient in young people of his own age, above all in young
+people endowed with such attractions as were likely to seize and retain
+the laird.
+
+Neither could the step be called a great descent, when in mind and
+manners so many were nearly on one level. For instance, not only had
+Drumsheugh and Balcairnie been fellow-scholars at the same parish
+school, but another contemporary scholar was little Peggy Hedderwick,
+the daughter of a hedger-and-ditcher, who had brought her doubled-up
+scone and whang of cheese tied up in a napkin for her dinner at school,
+just as she had carried her father’s dinner daily when the field of
+his operations was within a girl’s walk from home. Peggy, though she
+was the junior of both the lads by some three to four years, had
+darted nimbly ahead, with the precociously quick wit of girls, in all
+learning, save sums. She had been ‘out of the Testament’ and ‘into
+Proverbs’ before either of the boys, and she had been such an expert in
+repeating the shorter catechism, from ‘man’s chief end’ to the Creed,
+without halt or blunder, that the master himself could not ‘fichle’
+(puzzle) her. She had frequently coached her seniors and betters in
+that, to them, most difficult performance. As for the Psalms and
+Paraphrases, she could repeat them by heart in her shrill sing-song,
+till the master, though he was a licentiate of the Kirk, grew weary
+of hearing her. It was even seriously believed in the school that she
+had surmounted the Ass’s Bridge of the curriculum and could say right
+off, if anybody would stay to listen to her, the whole of the Hundred
+and Nineteenth Psalm. She could write a fine round hand, with an
+occasional clerkly flourish at the tail of a letter. It was at sums
+that Peggy hung her head. The multiplication table, with its barren
+chart of commercial details, unbrightened by a green spot on which
+fancy and sentiment could feed, had brought her to grief, and taken the
+pride of intellect out of the white-headed lassie. The lads who came
+through this test triumphantly had tried to help her in turn. But it
+was in vain--poor Peggy would never make even a decent arithmetician.
+It must only be by counting her fingers that she could ever reckon her
+earnings and her spendings.
+
+Peggy Hedderwick, grown up into the bonniest lass for many a mile,
+was now the acknowledged belle of every rustic merry-making in the
+parish of Craigture. She was a great deal more and better than such a
+distinction often implies. She was something else than a blue-eyed,
+white-skinned, red-cheeked maiden, with a slim yet well-rounded
+figure, a pretty foot and ankle, though they went bare six days out
+of the seven--unless in the depth of winter, a trim waist, a slender
+throat, a delicate chin, a dainty mouth, as good a nose as if she
+had been born a Ramsay--or, as far as that goes, a Stewart, and a
+broad enough brow to explain her early attainments in the Psalms and
+Paraphrases. She was even something more than an innocent creature in
+whom there was little guile, a modest child to soil whose modesty would
+be a gross sin and shame in the eyes of every man worthy of the name.
+She was an industrious, upright, pious soul, the stay--by means of
+Peggy’s busy wheel principally, of her widowed mother. For the hedger
+and ditcher, exposed to every inclemency of the weather, had early paid
+the debt of nature. Peggy discharged faithfully all obligations known
+to her. She was a reverent, unfailing worshipper--one of the favourite
+lambs of the flock with the elderly uncouth book-worm of a dominie,
+who had progressed from the parish school to the parish kirk, and was
+in either place an excellent man, master, and minister.
+
+It was to this fair, sweet, and good young Peggy Hedderwick that
+Drumsheugh, wilful and masterful in his simple condescension, paid
+unfailing homage. He sought her out--for she never threw herself in
+his way--wherever she was to be found. He went with Balcairnie under
+a hundred pretexts to wherever the laird fancied there was the most
+distant chance of meeting Peggy. To bleaching-greens, quilting-parties,
+Handsel-Monday games, even kirk-preachings, her sorely-smitten swain
+followed Peggy desperately. He made little disguise of his infatuation,
+and put small restraint on his inclinations in scenes, where, as
+a welcome visitor from another sphere, he was allowed, it must be
+confessed, a considerable amount of license. He would dance with no
+other, he would sit by no other, he would convoy Peggy home when the
+play was ended.
+
+Soon the state of the case was no secret in the neighbourhood, with
+its various circles, among them that presided over by the old Lady
+of Drumsheugh. The folly and the danger, with what would come of it
+all, were commented on and canvassed everywhere. The sole cover to
+his actions, which Drumsheugh chose to assume, was that he went about
+in these lower regions under Balcairnie’s wing, as it were. The laird
+insisted on taking the yeoman with him in all his excursions and
+escapades.
+
+This was some small comfort to Mrs. Ramsay. Balcairnie was, if
+anything, the wiser and more prudent of the two, and she felt he was,
+in a sense, on his honour to protect his friend from the consequences
+of Drumsheugh’s rashness. Perhaps the Lady also counted a little, in
+the imminence of the peril--for Drumsheugh was already of age and his
+own master, on a theory which was prevalent among the gossips. They
+said Balcairnie had been the first captivated by the charms of young
+Peggy, though he had at once drawn back from rivalry with his laird,
+and that Peggy on her part had smiled on the farmer till a bigger star
+appeared in her firmament.
+
+Even Balcairnie’s marriage with Peggy would be a great _mésalliance_,
+but it would not be so heinous an infringement of all social laws as
+Drumsheugh’s stooping to a cotter lass, either honestly or in sin and
+shame. Balcairnie’s mother as well as his father was dead, his sisters
+were married, and his brothers out in the world, so that he was a lone
+man--if a man can ever be called lone, able to disgrace nobody save
+himself, by an unequal marriage.
+
+The old Lady of Drumsheugh was particularly gracious to Balcairnie at
+this time. She inquired after his house, if it was in good repair with
+the plenishing in order? She hinted at the propriety, no less than
+the probability, of his stiff old housekeeper being superseded by an
+active young wife. After the next sentence or two, she went the length
+of asking meaningly for bonnie Peggy Hedderwick, who was so good to
+her mother and so clever with her hands. Had she not won the maiden at
+the last harvest? Was not her yarn more in request in Craigie market
+than that of any other girl or matron in Craigture? And the Lady had
+heard that from Luckie Hedderwick’s couple of hens Peggy had reared
+the finest brood of chickens that were to be seen that Candlemas.
+Such qualities in a young woman were worth her weight in gold, Mrs.
+Ramsay declared impressively, with her keen eyes fixed steadily on the
+listener. She had the greatest respect for that girl. The Lady plainly
+suggested that a farmer, whatever might be said of a laird, need seek
+no richer dower with his wife than Peggy had to bestow. If the laird’s
+mother were a consistent woman, no doubt she would call on Peggy and do
+the Lady’s best to countenance her son’s tenant’s wife, should Peggy
+receive the promotion of becoming the mistress of Balcairnie.
+
+To this stroke of policy Balcairnie merely replied by returning the
+lady’s fixed stare, with a full and grave stolid look from blue eyes
+which were not unlike Peggy’s.
+
+If Balcairnie had ever entertained a tender inclination towards Peggy,
+it made no ill-blood between him and his friend the laird. It was
+probably early nipped in the bud by the fact that Peggy’s favours had
+been swiftly transferred, ere they were well bestowed, from Balcairnie
+to Drumsheugh. Balcairnie was once heard reproaching her, more
+waggishly than bitterly, ‘Ay, Peggy, when I gie you a turn in the reel,
+fient a kiss you grant me now, gin the laird be by.’ For Peggy, with
+all her virtues, was a woman still. She was caught while her fancy
+was yet hovering in its flight, by the glamour of superior rank. Both
+of her admirers were bonnie and fine lads to her, in the first blush
+of their admiration, and while both were above her in station, there
+was not much to choose between them. But the lairdship, and perhaps
+the greater boldness of Drumsheugh, turned the scales, and after a
+few months of ardent courtship Peggy was as far gone as her lover.
+She would no more have permitted a comparison between the merits of
+Drumsheugh and Balcairnie--though the latter was her very good friend
+just as he was the laird’s--than she would have suffered the old
+bed-ridden mother who had borne her and toiled for her to be matched
+with any other woman in the kingdom, be she Queen Charlotte seated with
+her golden sceptre in her hand by the side of King George on the throne.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] In Scotland the distinction between a yeoman farmer--one who owns
+his farm--and a tenant farmer is not strictly preserved. The term
+yeoman is, or was, employed indiscriminately to any farmer.
+
+[2] A harvest-home, so called from the last sheaf of corn cut on
+the farm for the season. It was allowed to fall to the share of the
+best shearer or reaper, who tied it up with ribands so that it might
+take the semblance of a doll. It was then hung conspicuously as
+the chief adornment of the principal wall of the barn in which the
+‘maiden’--called in the north of Scotland the ‘kirn,’ was held. The
+decked-up sheaf was finally carried home by its proud winner, and
+suspended on the wall of her cottage, where it was treasured as a token
+of her prowess.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                           PEGGY’S WEDDING.
+
+
+There came a crisis to all those thoughtless daring doings, and it did
+not proceed from the old Lady of Drumsheugh, much as she loved to lead
+in life. She had ruled with a high hand her old husband, who, if all
+tales were true, was not an easy person to guide; but his young son,
+with his easy temper and pleasant speech to the world at large, though
+he was a good son at home when he was let alone, threatened to prove
+too much for her.
+
+There was another mother in the case, as has been signified,--poor
+old Luckie Hedderwick--who had never been considered more than a
+sickly ‘feckless’ body in her best days, and who was now bed-ridden
+and dependent on her daughter’s industry for her daily bread. Whether
+Luckie had been from the first an accomplished and hardened deceiver
+so that she could at last bring forward a strategy worthy of the rival
+mother--the Lady of Drumsheugh; whether the approach of death began to
+unseal her dim and dull eyes, and to teach the foolish, ignorant old
+woman wisdom beyond all earthly sagacity; whether the former dominie
+who visited his aged and sick parishioner at the cottage in Peggy’s
+unavoidable absence, was secretly at the bottom of the manœuvre, Luckie
+Hedderwick suddenly set an interdict on all future friendship and
+love-making between Peggy and the laird. The old woman had been till
+then as silly and inconsiderate as any lass in her teens in taking the
+greatest pride and pleasure in Peggy’s triumphs and conquests, and in
+encouraging the girl in what other people held to be Peggy’s sins of
+vanity and unwarrantable ambition; but she now forbade her child, under
+pain of her mother’s lamentations and reproaches--which were worse than
+her wrath--so much as to have a meeting with the gentleman, if she
+could possibly foresee and prevent it.
+
+Peggy was broken-hearted and in despair, but she never dreamt of
+defying, and still less of cheating, her mother.
+
+The laird, arrested in the full force of his passion, was goaded
+to the brink of madness and driven half beside himself. No more
+well-understood foregatherings with Peggy; no more interceptings of
+the girl on her way to the well, or the shop, or a neighbour’s house;
+no more strolls among the whins and broom[3] in the twilight, careless
+who saw; no more walking of his horse--or leaping from the saddle
+and walking himself--beside her when he came up with her, which he
+was pretty sure to do, on the return of both from Craigie market; no
+more climbing of the breezy, heathery hill and descending on the other
+side where the green trees shaded the road, throwing a white shower of
+blossom there in the spring, being full of birds singing as they rifled
+the fruit in summer, and in autumn dropping blood-shot leaves among
+the mud and mire. The laird would gallantly insist on placing Peggy’s
+basket before him on the saddle, or would carry it for her. Balcairnie
+either trotting on with a passing nod, or falling discreetly into the
+background, determined to show that he was not curious over much, or
+bent on spoiling sport.
+
+The spectacle had hardly been an improving one. The young laird had
+been demeaning himself in some lights, trifling with a poor country
+girl, and exposing her, as he ought not to have done, to serious
+misconstruction and harm. Peggy, like a senseless girl, had been laying
+herself open to scandal and slander and a hundred graver dangers.
+Still the pair had been a pretty pair, however ill-matched--there is
+no denying it. The laird in his riding-coat and boots and tops, gaily
+flourishing his silver-mounted whip; Peggy in her blue-and-red striped
+linsey-woolsey petticoat, white apron, blue-and-buff striped jacket,
+and her duffle mantle if it chanced to be wintry weather; her fair
+hair either bare and tied up with a riband--the relic of the old snood
+or cockernonie, or else covered by a Bessie-kell-a quilted cotton or
+woollen hood--under the curtains of which the bonnie face beamed with
+the mingled shyness and gladness of a child’s face.
+
+In a similar manner the larger groups, in which many minor figures had
+been represented with varying effect, were effaced from the canvas.
+These had shown Peggy on the harvest field where the laird, like
+Boaz of old, shared the labour and the mid-day meal of his servants.
+Detaching Peggy from the rest, he would act as ‘bandster’ to her
+shearing, or he would sit at her feet, and decree that as an equivalent
+to dipping her morsel in the vinegar, she should have her choice of the
+scones in the basket and the first draught of ale from the pitcher. In
+those days Peggy was the queen of the autumn fields--a gentle queen
+who bore the honours thrust upon her meekly. Still she did not fail to
+arouse animadversion, and the entire _tableau_ tended rather to the
+entertainment than the edification of the spectators.
+
+The sensations of the company were not of a much more generous or
+amiable description when Peggy was persuaded to fling her handkerchief
+to Drumsheugh in the coquettish old dance of ‘The Country Bumpkin;’ or
+when, at the entreaty of her lover, she sang with her flute-like pipe
+to a decorously hushed assembly, or sat as mute as a mouse while he
+sang in his trumpet tones. Her song might be ‘Ye Banks and Braes,’ or
+‘Aye wauken O! wauken aye and weary’--both of which ditties held tender
+warnings to heedless girls, if they would but have taken the hints--or
+it might be some blyther measure. But his song never varied. It was
+always the bold, barefaced declaration--
+
+    Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,
+      Her breath is like the morning,
+    The rosy dawn, the springing grass
+      With early gems adorning.
+
+with a peculiar emphasis on the verse--
+
+    Ye powers of honour, love, and truth,
+      From every ill defend her;
+    Inspire the highly-favoured youth
+      The destinies intend her.
+
+The laird could not stand the abrupt, harsh interference which in the
+twinkling of an eye dissolved these enchanting scenes. It would cost
+him his wits. He would rather carry off Peggy, with or without her
+will, where nobody should ever come between them. What did she mean by
+giving him up at any third person’s word, be that person her mother
+twice over? Had the two-faced lass no heart in her breast? He would be
+upsides with her yet, for the pain and mortification she was causing
+him. He confided all this to Balcairnie, who gave no further answer
+than a shake of his head and a resolute ‘I’ll no be your man in sic an
+ill job, Drumsheugh,’ so the laird went on fuming and storming if he
+did not speak of ‘louping ower a linn.’
+
+The comical side of the question was that he was his own master all the
+time to do what he liked in the circumstances. He had been left the
+Laird of Drumsheugh without limitation. He could marry Peggy Hedderwick
+to-morrow, in spite of his mother, and it was not likely that Peggy or
+her mother for her, would decline a plain offer of marriage from so
+high a quarter, or that either would draw so fine a distinction as to
+refuse the proposed honour, unless it were accompanied by the free and
+full consent of the Lady to her son’s throwing himself away.
+
+But, somehow, the laird stopped short of such rank insubordination
+and thoroughgoing independence. There was a strain of weakness in his
+wilfulness, or else the times were against him. People had not yet
+shaken off the old feudal prejudices. Drumsheugh, in his simplicity
+and homeliness, was still, both in his own estimation and in that of
+other people, the Laird, the scion of the great house of Dalwolsie,
+and Peggy was the cotter lass, come of hynds and nobodies. Balcairnie,
+who was not so far before her in the last respect, might have married
+her without reservation, though she was by no means his social equal;
+but the most disinterested unworldly version of the affair which
+the most single-hearted judges looked for from Drumsheugh was that
+he should be found fond enough of Peggy, and faithful enough to her,
+while he was sufficiently regardless of his own interests, to engage in
+a secret ancient troth-plight equivalent to a marriage with her, and
+right in the eyes of the law, though it was censurable by the Kirk.
+It would be a contract which must hamper him all his days, and if he
+were ever so far left to himself as to seek to evade it, might drag
+him down to crime and misery. Why on such small temptation, out of two
+courses--the one clear and above-board, the worst consequences of which
+would be faced at once--the other a flattering more than half-cowardly
+compromise done in the dark, and only coming to the light and
+encountering the natural results after a long interval--a manly fellow
+like the laird should inevitably, as if it were a matter of necessity,
+have adopted the second and lower course, remains a testimony to the
+force of habit and of one-sided reasoning.
+
+The laird had been accustomed to set his mother at nought in what
+seemed right in his own eyes. He was not dependent on her in money
+matters, and did not give a thought to the risk of forfeiting the
+savings of her jointure, since he was at this stage of his development
+as free-handed as he was open-hearted. Still, he could not summon
+up his courage to brave the high-spirited, determined old woman
+altogether. In the same way he could not make up his mind to despise
+the clamour and opposition of his circle of gentry, little as he had
+hitherto prized the hereditary association with them.
+
+Drumsheugh, when he was compelled to a decision, never dreamed of a
+more generous and honourable step than that of running away with Peggy,
+and vowing that he was her husband before two available witnesses;
+nay, the idea of anything less temporising and more magnanimous did
+not even cross Balcairnie’s mind. It was in serene satisfaction with
+the concession that he agreed to back the laird as usual in waylaying
+Peggy, in spite of her mother’s commands, and in propounding to her the
+grand yet sorry expedient for getting rid of all objections in future,
+by establishing the couple in the sure, if unacknowledged, relations of
+man and wife.
+
+After some spying and picking up of floating information, the two
+friends learnt that Peggy, while she now kept religiously indoors
+with her mother, for the most part of her time, was in the custom of
+recompensing the neighbour who went most of the girl’s errands. This
+reward consisted in Peggy’s ‘ca’ing,’ or driving out, the neighbour’s
+cow in the cool of the morning and late evening of the June season, to
+feed for an hour or two on the grass by the dyke sides and ditches, or
+on the short turf of a single knowe, which rose in solitary dignity
+among the flat corn-fields. The road to the knowe was for a certain
+distance that to Craigie, so often trodden in happier circumstances.
+The knowe itself, with its patches of rushes, had been Peggy’s seat
+when as a child she had played at plaiting the ‘thrashies’ into a crown
+and sceptre. She was an only child like her lover, and had known few
+playmates save her school companions. She had been used to lonely hours
+and single-handed games. Her most intimate friend in later times had
+been her ardent admirer the laird, whom she was now forbidden to see
+or speak to. He had been with her on this knowe when the dew lay on
+the grass and the corn-craik was ‘chirming,’ as it was at the present
+moment. He had made a posy for her of what Peggy merely called ‘bonnie
+floors,’ but which were in detail the dead white grass of Parnassus
+that grew among the rushes, together with the crimson and pink fumitory
+and the yellow avens which he had gathered idly as they came along,
+leaving hedge-row and dyke-side behind them. He had shown the greatest
+kindness and patience in helping her to draw out the pith of the rushes
+and plait it--no longer into a mock crown and sceptre, but into a real
+wick for her mother’s cruizie.
+
+All these soft recollections proved too much for poor Peggy, as she
+ca’d Hawkie; the girl put up her apron to her eyes to dry the blinding
+tears which rendered her more incapable of detecting prowlers in her
+vicinity.
+
+Then with the practical agility of the riever of old, the laird ‘cam’
+skipping ower the hill’ from the little hollow on the other side, to
+which he and Balcairnie had ridden, and where the latter stayed with
+the horses.
+
+In a moment Jamie Ramsay was by the sorrowful girl’s side, detaining
+her when she sought to retreat.
+
+Peggy wore her summer house dress, the pretty light cotton jacket
+which has been immortalised by Wilkie and Sir William Allen. It had a
+little collar or ‘neck,’ turned over where the sunburn of the throat
+met the whiteness of the bosom, and was only confined at the waist by
+the string of her apron. Her round arms were bare to the elbow, the
+sleeves of her jacket being rolled up for convenience’ sake. The arms
+were mottled and dimpled like those of a child. Her brown little feet
+too were bare. Her uncovered hair was arranged in the most primitive
+style--after all it is the fashion of the great Greek statues. The
+locks ‘which the wind used to blaw’ were ‘shed’ behind the ears, wound
+round the head, rippling in natural ripples as they were wound, until
+they were fastened in a knot at the back of the shapely head. Yet no
+stately ball-room belle in flowing gauze or rustling brocade, with
+high-heeled shoes and a higher powdered _tête_, had ever appeared half
+so sweet as Peggy to the enamoured young laird. He was not caught in
+undress. He came a-courting her--as he was bound to do, though she had
+been a beggar maid, and not merely an industrious cotter lass, who
+supported herself and her mother by the fruits of her honest industry.
+He wore his best snuff-brown coat, his last flowered waistcoat, his
+dress buckles in his shoes, with his dark hair combed carefully and
+neatly back and tied in a _queue_, the riband of which, in skilfully
+disposed bows and ends, hung half-way down his shoulders.
+
+‘I mauna bide. Let me gang, laird. Oh! why are you here, when I canna
+lichtlie my mither’s word?’ cried the faithful and despairing Peggy,
+with streaming eyes and heaving bosom, torn as she was by conflicting
+obligations.
+
+‘Na, but hear me, Peggy,’ insisted Drumsheugh, strong to carry the day
+in his confidence in the honesty of his intentions, and the truth of
+what he was going to say. ‘Take a message from me to your mother, and
+she will not stand in our gate, or make another thrawn rule to keep
+us apart. Tell her I am willing to join hands with you and exchange
+written lines. Lass, I’ll take the half-merk with you the morn if you
+like; neither king nor minister has power to come between us after
+that. You’ll be to all intents and purposes my wife and the young Leddy
+of Drumsheugh from that moment.’
+
+Peggy was not only staggered, she was deeply touched and proudly
+joyful. She had it in her power to become the ‘Leddy of Drumsheugh.’
+The laird had vindicated his sincerity and honour. There was no more
+question of tampering with her affections and betraying her trust. He
+had come out of the test nobly, as not one man in a thousand would have
+come.
+
+Peggy had not the least doubt that her mother would feel more than
+satisfied--she would be greatly uplifted by her daughter’s wonderful
+good fortune. Instead of thwarting Drumsheugh again in his wildest
+fancy, Mrs. Hedderwick would now defer to his least whim, and consent
+to pay him the humblest, most grateful homage. Peggy was ready to go
+with the laird to her mother and see if it were not so--to settle for
+life her grand and happy destiny.
+
+The laird, carried out of himself by the excitement of the moment,
+delighted with the effect of his words, thinking himself nearly as true
+and kind as Peggy thought him--more in love with her than ever--was
+prepared to start that instant to fulfil his pledge and knock the nail
+on the head.
+
+To Luckie Hedderwick, accordingly, the infatuated couple went
+straightway, without an attempt at concealment, widely removed as they
+were, in the exaltation of their feelings, from any consideration of
+prudence. They only waited till Drumsheugh hallooed for Balcairnie to
+come up and wish Peggy and the laird joy, and then to bring on the
+horses to the Cotton.
+
+Poor old Luckie, lying powerless in her box-bed, could hardly believe
+her fast-failing eyes and ears, when Peggy came in (followed by
+Drumsheugh in full feather), and when he sat down on the kist in the
+window, which was the only disengaged seat, her own arm-chair being
+occupied by the unmannerly cat, and Peggy’s stool at the wheel taken up
+by the tray of reeled pirns of yarn.
+
+There was no vow of vengeance on the laird’s smooth brow, or of
+reprisal on his smiling lips. On the contrary, there was the most
+abundant security and provision for Peggy Hedderwick in his presence
+there in her mother’s cottage, and his frankly undertaking to marry
+the lass at once, before competent witnesses. It was not from such a
+good end as this that her conscience and her minister alike had begun
+to frighten the widow. Her dear little Peggy would be a lady after
+all, and some day she would take her stand among the best and be freely
+acknowledged by the whole of the county side. She could not expect that
+just at first, but anyway she would be kept an honest and innocent
+woman. Her children, if she ever had children, would be born in lawful
+wedlock. She need neither fear God nor man, and poverty would no longer
+hover at her door, only held at bay by her courageous, diligent young
+arm.
+
+Of course, it was not for Mrs. Hedderwick to say the laird nay. It was
+for her to thank him from a lowly, thankful heart for not merely doing
+justly by her daughter, but for being minded to endow her with his
+favour and with her share of his portion of the world’s goods, which
+many people would reckon far beyond her deserts.
+
+A glimpse of Balcairnie and the horses as they walked up and down the
+road, which the old woman saw through the bole of a window at the
+head of her bed, completed the dazzling of any sense Mrs. Hedderwick
+possessed. She described the scene afterwards as too splendid for this
+world--like a verse of the Bible, or a line of an ‘auld ballant.’
+It was as when ‘Abraham’s servant baud the lassie munt and ride wi’
+him to be the wife of his maister’s son. To be sure the horses were
+camels then, whatever the odds. It was as when the auld knicht crossed
+the sea to bring the king o’ Norrowa’s dochter ower the faem to be
+his queen, and then the nags were boats--whilk it was a mercy they
+were not here, lest the cobbles had coupet wi’ her Peggy among the
+prood waves, as gude Sir Patrick Spens’s ship sank down, in forty
+fathoms deep. Whatever, it was a maist fine ferlie for Drumsheugh to
+come wooing and speering for her dochter at a puir body like her,
+and for Balcairnie--with whose mither, worthy woman, she hersel had
+been a servant lass for three year afore she and Simon Hedderwick
+yoked thegither--to sit or stand at her door wi’ the beasts in braid
+daylicht, in the sicht of the whole Cotton, as gin she were the leddy
+and Balcairnie the serving-man.’
+
+The entire arrangements were agreed on that evening, the laird chalking
+them out very much according to his vagrant fancy, Peggy and her
+mother assenting with meek, swelling hearts, simply entering a humble
+protest and venturing on a mild amendment when he suggested a clean
+impossibility. It would be far pleasanter as well as safer, since the
+marriage was not to be made public immediately, for the affair to take
+place from home. Peggy had a cousin--a decent man--a cow-keeper near
+Edinburgh. She could go on a visit to his wife. Such a visit would be
+made worth the couple’s while; in fact, they were likely to be filled
+with importance at the part they were called on to play. Drumsheugh
+and Balcairnie could easily take a ride to town treading on Peggy’s
+heels early one fine morning, or late one propitious evening; Peggy,
+with her cousins to bear her company, and the laird, with Balcairnie
+as his supporter, would join in a stroll to look at the shop windows
+or admire the big houses, until they reached the particular house the
+laird spoke of as the Temple of Hymen, to the mystified ears hanging
+on his words. There Peggy and he would take the half-merk together in
+the most popular mode. They would acknowledge themselves man and wife,
+and sign the lines before some queer sort of mass-John and a notary, as
+well as before Peggy’s cousins and Balcairnie; and the knot would be
+so securely tied that only death could sever it. Peggy would come back
+to her mother and the Cotton, and he would return to his mother and
+Drumsheugh. Nobody need be any wiser till the couple chose to proclaim
+what had been accomplished, when he should be at liberty to put his
+wife into his mother’s seat. But he felt sure his Peggy would not
+refuse to bide a wee for her honours, and would not weary while she had
+his love and care. And Mrs. Hedderwick would not seek to come between
+the pair when they were man and wife.
+
+Peggy would not weary, would not refuse to wait a hundred years--always
+supposing she lived a century and retained Drumsheugh’s unshaken love
+and faith while the years lasted. Was she to dictate terms and exact
+favours which were far beyond her original estate? She would be well
+off if Drumsheugh owned her for his wife, though it were but with his
+dying breath. As for Luckie Hedderwick, she would no more interfere
+with the laird’s rights when he had established them, than she would
+challenge the prerogative of the King.
+
+It all came to pass as Drumsheugh had ordained it. In an irregular
+and yet in a deliberate, formal manner, quite legal according to the
+liberal law of Scotland, and with ancient custom to justify the act,
+by no mock marriage, but by a binding rite, as both knew, Jamie Ramsay
+wedded Peggy Hedderwick. No exposure followed the event, though it
+did not go unattended by vague suspicions and fitful rumours. Such
+marriages were not so unheard of as to prevent the signs of their
+recurrence from being quickly noted and eagerly caught up.
+
+But as the Lady of Drumsheugh did not see fit to cause an
+investigation, to cross-question her son, or to go out of her way to
+assail and harass Peggy; as Peggy’s mother in her box-bed did not stir
+in the matter by proxy; as it was the old daffing intercourse between
+the laird and the lass, which was openly resumed, and went on much as
+formerly to hoodwink the public, what was everybody’s business proved
+nobody’s business. Nothing was said or done to clear up the mystery as
+to the precise terms on which the Laird of Drumsheugh stood with the
+lass of low degree.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3]
+
+    He’s low down, he’s in the broom,
+      That’s waiting for me.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                         PEGGY’S WELCOME HOME.
+
+
+Balcairnie could have spoken out and enlightened the neighbourhood, but
+he did not. Affectionately attached as he was both to Drumsheugh and
+Peggy, he had not as yet any strong temptation to speak out and shame
+the Devil, while delivering his victims. Granted that the position
+was most awkward and indefensible, it had not become so untenable as
+to shock and scare a man like Balcairnie--not wholly unaccustomed to
+such difficult conditions--into breaking his word and exposing the
+offenders, with whom he had been ‘art and part,’ for the good of one or
+both.
+
+It was hardly possible that Drumsheugh’s passion would remain at
+its first white heat. It was too probable that it might pass into
+weariness, even disgust, where the poor girl he had married was
+concerned. True, there had been no such fundamental disparity between
+the two as may be imagined. Still, Drumsheugh was a man with a man’s
+power of varying his life. He could not rid himself of his blue blood
+and his lairdship. The likelihood was that the longer he lived their
+claims on him would increase and intensify, till what he had slighted
+in his youth might, in inverse proportion, become a heavy chain on
+his mature years. He might come to clutch his hereditary advantages
+and brandish them in a surly fashion in the face of poor Peggy, who
+not only lacked such on her own account, but would to a considerable
+extent qualify and damage her husband’s privileges. The shallowness
+of the laird’s nature, in the middle of its single-heartedness and
+transparency, would tend to this result.
+
+In the meantime Peggy, arrested and isolated by her own deed, instead
+of moving on and becoming transplanted, would stand still or retrograde
+in her false suspended position. Half envied, half doubted, and blamed
+by her former equals, wholly distrusted and shunned by those who were
+still her social superiors, her heart would grow sick under the painful
+ordeal, her gentle, modest nature wax bold and defiant. The very
+appearance of evil--which is to be avoided in its turn--would work much
+of the harm of the evil itself.
+
+But long before this deplorable conclusion was reached, within three or
+four months of the unceremonious marriage, while the laird was still
+the fond bridegroom and Peggy the tender bride, an accident happened
+which brought matters to an unexpected crisis.
+
+One windy October afternoon the laird had been helping to take down
+the first new stack to be thrashed or flailed out from the stack-yard
+of the home-farm, when by some chance he missed his footing, fell
+headlong from the stack-head among the horses’ feet below, and received
+a kick in the chest from one of the startled horses. He was taken up
+insensible and carried to the mansion-house. The misadventure created a
+lively sensation, and the news gathered gravity and tragic horror as it
+spread abroad.
+
+It was said that Drumsheugh was dead, that he had been vomiting blood,
+that he had never spoken, that he had cried loudly for Peggy Hedderwick
+to bid her a last farewell. In the conflicting testimony one serious
+bit of evidence was certain. Dr. Forsyth had been summoned post-haste
+from Craigie. Balcairnie had been seen riding like a madman from
+his biggest potatoe field, in which the gatherers had been toiling
+anxiously all day, for frost was in the air, and if the potatoes were
+not ‘pitted’ in time there would be havock among the earth-apples.
+
+It was almost night-fall before the calamitous tidings got Peggy’s
+length. They were thrown in at the half-open door of the cottage in
+which she and her mother dwelt, by an ill-conditioned drunken brute of
+a carter, who was driving by, and had caught a glimpse of the girl as
+she moved about between the dim gloaming without and the fire-light
+within. In the spirit of mischief and strange pleasure in inflicting
+pain which belongs to very small, low, and morbidly hostile natures,
+just as the man in other circumstances might have pelted her with a
+snow-ball in which lay lodged a cruelly sharp stone; so he called
+out to her in a bullying, inhumanly indifferent tone, ‘Hey! Peggy
+Hedderwick, what are you doing there? Do you ken your fine laird’s
+felled? He’s met his dead in the corn-yard of Drumsheugh an hour or
+twa syne.’
+
+Peggy gave a piteous, plaintive cry, like that of a wounded hare--the
+most helpless, timid creature in its misery; but she did not sink down
+or faint away, and the next moment she was beginning to make nervous
+preparations to set forth for the scene of the disaster. She would
+not listen to her startled mother, imploring, in the mingled terror
+and weakness of age, for the explanations and reassurances there was
+nobody to afford. The informant had driven off after launching his
+thunderbolt, and the occupants of the neighbouring cottages were still
+about in the potatoe fields. ‘I maun gang to him at aince,’ Peggy
+kept muttering as she groped instinctively in the waning light for a
+shawl to fling over her head--not so much as a shelter from the bitter
+blast which had been scouring along the floor and causing her to
+spin by the warm hearth-side, as with a lingering sense of what was
+womanly and fitting, because it would not be wiselike in a lass to go
+abroad at such a season without a screen from inquisitive eyes. ‘He
+wouldna forbid me ony mair. He’s my man. Oh! Jamie, Jamie, if you’re
+felled outricht, and there is nocht left for me to do for you, but
+to streek you and dress you in your dead-claes, it is for your puir
+lassie’s--your wife’s hand, to steek your een and kame your hair for
+the last time. I dinna mind your leddy-mither now; I’m nearer to you
+than she is, and I’ll daur her to do her worst the nicht--as if the
+worst were not come already, gin my Jamie be felled dead! Wae’s me!
+wae’s me! And it was but this mornin’, and no a terrible lifetime syne,
+that he clasped and kissed me at parting.’
+
+Peggy did not even notice to lift off the gridle on which cakes were
+toasting. She who had been reared in the most frugal habits was
+abandoning the good oaten bread which must ‘scouther’ unheeded. The
+room was full of the sharp, searching smell of scorched oatmeal, at
+which every mouse in the farthest recesses of its hole in the clay
+biggin’ was snuffing with relish as at the potent odour of toasted
+cheese.
+
+Luckie was feebly protesting and whimpering over the waste, when Peggy
+unheeding stepped across the threshold and ran right against Balcairnie
+in the act of entering.
+
+‘Balcairnie, is the tale true? Is he living or dead? For the love o’
+Heaven, speak,’ gasped Peggy, clasping the friendly arm and making as
+if she would fall on her knees at the yeoman’s feet, treating him like
+the arbiter of fate.
+
+‘Oh! Balcairnie, sir, will you stop her--she winna mind me--frae goin’
+on a fule’s errand?’ implored Luckie from her bed, wiping her bleared
+eyes with a blue checked linen handkerchief; ‘and gin you will forgie
+me for the liberty, will you turn the cakes and tak’ them aff, or do
+something to hinder sic a wicket throwing awa’ o’ gude victuals and me
+no able to steer a finger.’
+
+‘Canny, canny,’ remonstrated the doubly-assailed Balcairnie. ‘Yes,
+Peggy, he’s livin’ and life-like in spite of this mischanter, thank
+his Maker and yours and mine--no me. Oo, ay, gudewife, I’ll see to
+the cakes. Mony a time I had a hand--not always a helping hand--in
+your bakings--do you mind? When you were my puir mither’s douce lass
+and I was a mischievious deil o’ a laddie birslin’ peas among your
+bannocks.--Peggy, have I given you time to draw breath? If so, you maun
+come wi’ me this minute. I’m sent to fetch you: no by Drumsheugh alone,
+by his mither the Leddy: “Go and bring Peggy Hedderwick here,” were her
+words, and you maun haste ye to do her bidding.’
+
+But Peggy hung back. The reaction had come. She was relieved from her
+depth of despair and extremity of fear for Drumsheugh’s life. Her old
+childish dread of the Lady and reluctance to encounter her reproaches
+and scorn revived in full force. ‘Oh, Balcairnie, I canna gang,’ she
+protested incoherently, twisting her fingers. ‘Does he want me? What
+has she sent for me to do to me?’
+
+‘To gie you your paiks (whips),’ Balcairnie, who was somewhat of a
+humourist in his way, could not resist saying dryly, taking off the
+abject fright of poor Peggy. But the kind fellow relented the next
+moment. ‘If so, Drumsheugh and me had need to come in for muckle
+heavier skelps, as the Leddy is a just woman, who has a name for
+uprightness, and has ta’en pride in the fact all her days. Na, Peggy,
+dinna be a cawf,’ he admonished her with great friendliness though
+little ceremony. ‘You maunna stand in your ain licht. You must tak’
+the wind when it blaws in your barn door. Forbye you maun obey your
+gude mither and your man, like a gude bairn. Drumsheugh cried for you
+as soon as he cam’ to himself, and vowed he but to see you richted, or
+it’s like his mither the Leddy micht not have minded your existence or
+mentioned your name. And he does want you, lass, for his breast has
+gotten a bit stave in from that ugly brute’s cloot; he’s lying groaning
+and peching yonder, though the doctor promises to put him richt in a
+wheen weeks or months.’
+
+Thus urged and alarmed anew, Peggy prepared to go home to Drumsheugh
+a weeping, downcast bride with a troubled home-coming--altogether
+different from the happy woman making the triumphant, if late, entrance
+on her honours which she and her laird had confidently pictured to
+themselves.
+
+Balcairnie would not suffer Peggy to tarry for any change of dress.
+He had spoken the truth and he was fain to hope the best, but he was
+by no means so sure as he tried to pretend of the laird’s ultimate
+recovery, or even of his long surviving the bad injury he had received.
+And when Peggy detected some gleam of this dire uncertainty in the mind
+of his friend where her husband’s fate was in question, she had no more
+heart to put on her best clothes and seek humbly to make as favourable
+an impression as could be hoped for, on the mind of the Lady.
+
+Indeed, Mrs. Ramsay had often enough seen Peggy before, and till lately
+had been in the habit of speaking to her in a gracious condescending
+way, becoming in a laird’s mother, when the girl worked in the fields,
+or carried in her yarn and eggs to the market at Craigie. But that
+notice and these salutations had been bestowed on Peggy Hedderwick, a
+cotter lass. It was Peggy Ramsay, the Lady’s son’s wife by a lawful
+though summary marriage, who in other circumstances might have been
+tremblingly desirous to prepossess the dowager-lady in the younger
+woman’s favour.
+
+As it was, Peggy could but take down from their respective ‘cleeks’ her
+ordinary duffle cloak and rustic straw bonnet as the articles of dress
+which came readily to her hand, and tie their strings in such desperate
+speed and confusion that they at once fell into ‘run knots,’ which must
+be cut or torn asunder before she could be freed from their encumbrance
+when she arrived at Drumsheugh.
+
+‘God bless you, my lass, gin this be fare-you-weel,’ her mother’s
+quavering voice said wistfully, and Peggy minded so far as to turn
+quickly before quitting the room and bend over the prostrate figure
+with a half-choked reply, ‘Mither, Merrin will be in next door or I’m
+weel gane, gin you gie a chap she’ll look ben and see to you. If I
+dinna come back the nicht, I’ll send ower the first thing the morn,
+and I’ll never forget you, mither, only I can think o’ naething but him
+the nicht.’
+
+Peggy had no other idea than that she would trudge on foot all the way
+through the cold, darkness and storm, too thankful to have Balcairnie’s
+escort to Drumsheugh. But he had made a more considerate arrangement,
+though his care for Peggy had not impelled him to so bold a measure as
+ordering out the Drumsheugh coach to fulfil the lady’s commission and
+for Peggy’s benefit. When it came to that, he had never dreamt of such
+a step. Peggy and the family coach--the chief symbol of the country
+gentry’s rank and state, were still far apart even in Balcairnie’s
+loyal eyes. If Peggy should ever arrive at ordering out the Drumsheugh
+coach, and driving in it at her pleasure, as another young Mrs. Ramsay
+might have done in the sense of an unquestionable right, it could
+only be after a considerable apprenticeship still to sufferance and
+dependence on the part of the low-born wife.
+
+Balcairnie had merely brought his horse, with a pillion fastened to the
+saddle. There was no ‘louping-on-stane’ at the cot-house door. Nobody
+except the laird had been in the habit of mounting and dismounting
+there, any more than of driving up in a coach with horses taken from
+the plough. But the example of Katherine Janfarie’s lover, though it
+had not yet been sung in more than the rough border ballad, could very
+well be followed in one respect--
+
+    He’s mounted her hie behind himsel’,
+      At her kinsmen speer’d nae leave.
+
+Balcairnie was far too true, generous, and reverent, with too
+well-balanced a mind in his yeoman estate, to find a further analogy
+in the situation. But it was on the cards that he should have his
+thoughts, as he rode on, stooping forward to see and guide his horse
+in the gathering night and tempest on the rough road, with the feeble
+woman’s arms clinging to him. For Peggy became forced, in order to
+keep her seat, to cling tenaciously to the other rider, and let her
+drooping head rest on his friendly shoulder, as she shook and quivered
+with the sobs into which she broke out now and then in her distraction
+and dismay, and as she was further flung here and there by the hard
+trot over the stones and through the holes, in a painful, perilous mode
+of locomotion to which she had been totally unaccustomed. Did he ask
+himself was it thus that Peggy would have held by him and depended on
+him utterly, had that vision which he was supposed to have entertained
+for a fleeting moment come to pass long ago--had she been for more than
+a year now the goodwife of Balcairnie, and had he been taking her home
+as a common event from kirk, or market, or friendly visit in scenes
+where she had already established her claim to be treated like the best
+of the company? Faithful as he was to the laird no less than to Peggy,
+Balcairnie knew that in such a case it would have been infinitely
+better for Peggy, whatever it might have been for himself.
+
+Other thoughts and associations thronged thickly on the young couple as
+they rode on in their excitement and suspense. The first snow of the
+season began to fall blindingly and blow strongly in their bent faces,
+before they passed between the two battered pillars originally crowned
+with stone balls, one of which had fallen down and been suffered to
+lie, like a decapitated head, at the side of the entrance to the
+avenue. By some means the stone ball had become split in two and could
+not be replaced on its site. In this condition the two halves always
+reminded Balcairnie, who was tolerably familiar with Scotch history,
+though it was the only history he had ever read, of that unlucky
+De Bohun, Earl of Essex, whose head good King Robert clove with his
+battle-axe, just to give the blustering champion of England his due,
+and as an earnest of the feats the warlike monarch was to perform that
+day on the field of Bannockburn.
+
+Balcairnie sought to cheer Peggy by claiming the snow as a good omen;
+she was ‘ganging a white gate,’ which, as everybody knew, boded high
+prosperity to a bride. But, in spite of themselves, another and very
+different picture arose in their minds. It was that which in song
+and legend has formed the burden of many a local tragedy. The scene
+is familiar to all when the betrayed and ruined woman wanders in her
+despair to her cruel lover’s door, while the ‘whuddering blast’ pierces
+her to the marrow, and the deadly white and chill snow threatens to
+prove her winding-sheet. She knocks, and implores piteously in vain
+for admission and shelter. ‘Oh, ope, Lord Gregory, ope the door!’ cries
+the sobbing, wailing voice, fast sinking into everlasting silence.
+
+Balcairnie and Peggy were now riding down the avenue of firs, sombre
+in the height of summer, with their black canopies blacker than ever
+under their powdering of white, while the bare stems were ‘swirled’
+by the wind in the wildest, dreariest manner. The ruin of the old
+tower was faintly visible. Shaken as it was, with its loose stones
+rattling in the hurlyburly, it seemed as if it might fall and crush
+Peggy in punishment of her heinous sin against the ancient dignity of
+Drumsheugh, and her audacious intrusion within its precincts.
+
+The front of the house was lit up with lights stationary in ordinarily
+obscured windows, or flitting up and down staircases, showing that
+something out of the common had happened, and that the whole household
+was roused and restless.
+
+At the moment when the clatter of Balcairnie’s horse’s hoofs might
+be heard, the hall-door was suddenly thrown open, showing what, by
+contrast with the darkness without, looked a blaze of light within. A
+group of servants was in the glare, but still more prominently in front
+of them stood the Lady in her black mode gown, tippet, and mittens,
+with her lace lappets fluttering in the night-wind as they framed a
+high-nosed, high-browed face--the face of a born ruler.
+
+Peggy set her teeth to keep back a scream of dismay, while Balcairnie
+lept down quickly and lifted his companion, ready to fall in a heap on
+the ground, from his horse.
+
+Was the Lady come out to kill her on the spot by telling her Drumsheugh
+was gone, and there was no longer a place for his poor Peggy in the
+house that had ceased with his passing breath to be his dwelling? When
+it came to that, Peggy thought in her despair, there was no place for
+her on the face of that earth where her young lover walked no longer.
+
+Was the Lady come out to spurn Peggy in the sight of the powdered
+flunkeys and flouting waiting-maids, and still-maids for whom Peggy,
+cotter lass as she was, had been wont, in her greater independence
+and simpler sufficiency for her few needs, to entertain a mild,
+somewhat inconsequent scorn? At the same time, in her perturbation, she
+indulged in extravagant hyperbole, for there was only one miserable
+flunkey--guiltless of powder, who was also coachman and gardener,
+and one ancient waiting-maid, who united the offices of abigail and
+housekeeper, at Drumsheugh.
+
+As Peggy’s tottering feet touched the ground a firm foot stepped up to
+her, a steady hand was laid upon her to hold her up, a voice addressed
+her in clear, unfaltering accents, which, though they were imperious,
+were far from unkind. ‘Come away, my dear. Come in where it is your
+right to be in your man’s house and by your man’s side. If I had been
+told, for certain, four months since what I’ve been told to-day, you
+should not have waited and been kept so long out of your own. Fie!’
+exclaimed the lady in a little heat, bending her brows, ‘it was not fit
+that Drumsheugh’s wife should shaw neeps and sell yarn, whatever might
+be free to his Joe. But we’ll say no more of that. I ken it was not
+you who were the most to blame, my bonnie Peggy. It was all the fault
+of these two foolish loons, Drumsheugh and Balcairnie. But we cannot
+wyte the one, can we? when he is lying sick and sorry, and we may come
+to forgive the second in time, for the service he has rendered us this
+night. Cheer up, Peggy, the doctor says Jamie will pull through, and
+be as braw a man as ever yet.’[4]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] The author cannot refrain from recording that the magnanimous
+reception which the Lady of Drumsheugh is represented as according to
+her son’s low-born, privately married wife, was, in fact, given in
+similar circumstances by the widow and mother of an old Fife laird
+to her son’s sorely daunted, humble bride. A very different fate
+was hers from that of the Portuguese Inez and the German Agnes. The
+sagacious Scotch mother, finding that the losing game was about to
+be taken out of her hands, by what she did not hesitate to regard as
+an interposition of Providence in the illness of the laird, made her
+concession frankly and handsomely. Stout Drumsheugh and Balcairnie and
+bonnie Peggy are more than mere shadows, as the reader could not fail
+to see but for what is lacking in the skill of their chronicler.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+                      THE LONG DAYS THAT FOLLOWED
+
+
+Drumsheugh recovered gradually from the consequences of his fall; but
+he had a long and dangerous illness, during which there was much to
+subdue any human being to whom he was first and dearest.
+
+Peggy proved herself a harmless, guileless, fond and faithful creature.
+She was meek in her exaltation, which, to begin with, consisted mainly
+of the liberty to nurse day and night a young man who had been too
+much spoilt by rude health, an active life, and the getting of his own
+way, though it had not necessarily been a base--not even a mean and
+heartless way--to come out strong as a patient, considerate invalid.
+
+The old lady opened her eyes more and more to the truth, and did not
+repent of her wise generosity. She was won so far as to take Peggy
+into a degree of favour on her own account. Still, there could not
+fail to be an amount of reaction here also. Mrs. Ramsay made the best
+of Peggy: she brought herself to think that the laird’s mother might
+be the most suitable person to train the laird’s wife and to mould her
+in the course of years into the future Lady as well as mistress of
+Drumsheugh. She, the present Lady, might do it and get over the contact
+with all Peggy’s innumerable rusticities and gaucheries, not merely
+out of unselfish regard for her son, but because of some grains of
+tenderness already springing up, whether she would or not, in her by no
+means unmotherly heart, for her daughter. Poor little Peggy Hedderwick
+that was, had been thrust on an undesirable eminence, which brought
+her in unsuitable rivalry--not with one alone, but with every former
+aggrieved Lady of Drumsheugh; yet Peggy deferred so sincerely to Mrs.
+Ramsay in the smallest particular, and looked up to her from such a
+lowly depth of respect that was almost awe, and of gratitude which in
+its intensity was well-nigh anguish, that the worst part of the offence
+became cancelled.
+
+But when all was said and done, it galled and fretted Mrs. Ramsay’s
+proud, punctilious nature to see Peggy scared and ashamed, floundering
+and bungling hugely and grotesquely whenever she could not avoid
+taking the place which had been vacated to her. For the old lady did
+nothing by halves. The head of the dinner-table, the central seat
+on the principal settee in the drawing-room, the top of the front
+gallery ‘bucht’ in Craigture Kirk, the front seat of that coach which
+Balcairnie had not caused to be driven to the Cotton to bring Peggy
+home, the ordering of the servants, the receiving of the guests--all
+belonged now to Peggy’s duties and privileges. She might discharge
+them very unworthily, but she might not refuse to accept them; and no
+third person who had Peggy’s interest at heart might decline them for
+her or appropriate them in order to save her from suffering. This was
+not to be done for young Mrs. Ramsay’s own sake, to avoid injuring her
+fatally, since if any rash, short-sighted person were to interfere
+and adopt this course, worse would be sure to come of it, and for the
+sake of shielding her present the poor young woman’s future would be
+irretrievably ruined.
+
+No, as Peggy had brewed she must drink--as she had aspired, and by
+what would universally be held a wonderful stroke of good fortune,
+gained her aspirations, she must consent to rise to them, and fit
+herself for a new sphere. She must learn to live up to the blue china
+of a hundred years ago. She must agree to learn the lessons of her
+womanhood, with whatever toil and torture; she must struggle upwards
+against overwhelming obstacles and crushing defeats; she must resign in
+exchange for her dearly bought success, all the peace, ease, and happy
+equality of her hardest day’s work as a labouring woman.
+
+There were others besides Peggy who had to endure mental pain when
+Drumsheugh was sufficiently recovered to quit the retirement of
+his rooms and appear even in the small publicity of family life.
+At first, though the news had gone abroad at once, as the Lady had
+intended it should, since the marriage was confessed and could never
+be controverted, that Peggy Hedderwick had been acknowledged in the
+presence of the household of Drumsheugh, and received by the mother of
+the laird, as Jamie Ramsay’s wife, there were few witnesses of the
+cotter’s girl’s lack of qualifications for her dignities. Only the
+doctor and the minister and Drumsheugh’s confidant, Balcairnie, besides
+Mrs. Ramsay and Peggy, and the elder servants, entered the sick room.
+These spectators were bound in honour to keep their own counsel on the
+subject of Peggy’s mistakes and eccentricities.
+
+Besides, when a man lies hovering between life and that death which
+ends all social distinctions, grades and rank, with their different
+standards and clashing practices, dwindle into vagueness and unreality.
+Love may be as strong as death, and so capable of doing battle with the
+last enemy; but there is a tendency, even in the noblest antecedents,
+the best breeding, and the most polished manners, to collapse before
+the primitive foe with his rude directness of dealing. It hardly
+signified in these circumstances whether Peggy were a laird’s or a
+hind’s daughter, though it did matter still that she was Drumsheugh’s
+first and last love, that it was to her his eye turned in every wrestle
+with the assailant, that her voice could soothe or rouse him when
+not even his mother’s tones could penetrate through the turmoil of
+unaccustomed torture, fever, and weakness under which his senses were
+reeling.
+
+But everything became different when the first stage was over, and
+Drumsheugh had returned in a state of convalescence to the family
+sitting-room, with no further trace of having lingered on the brink
+of the grave than was to be found in that peculiar unreasonable
+‘fractiousness’ or crossness, which in itself caused Peggy to shed
+salt tears half a dozen times a day, as if she had been the most to be
+pitied instead of the most to be envied of low-born lasses. The fact
+was she was incurably gentle and tender-hearted, and had neither the
+wit to understand nor the spirit to withstand what was merely a passing
+trouble not worth the reckoning, the natural result of the previous
+disaster, for which the victim, in his inexperience, was not altogether
+to blame. Not that Peggy found fault with her laird. It was simply
+over her own presumption and demerits, and because she could no longer
+‘please him,’ that she grew periodically hopeless.
+
+The servants felt the seal set on their powers of observation,
+criticism and ridicule--and here and there their secret spitefulness,
+so far withdrawn. Other spies began to drop in: neighbours who, under
+the plea of inquiring for Drumsheugh, came to take a look and a laugh
+at bonnie Peggy on her promotion. When they were formally introduced to
+her as young Mrs. Ramsay they would, in their own minds and in the same
+breath, praise Drumsheugh’s taste for beauty, and censure his want of
+sense and worldly wisdom in committing so gross a _mésalliance_. They
+would seriously debate with themselves whether it would be fit for
+their wives and daughters to call on Peggy, and make her acquaintance
+as one of themselves, till the lass could bear herself more like a
+gentlewoman and less like a field-worker. The old lady had taken care
+to have Peggy dressed as became her new station; but of what use was it
+when Peggy huddled away her hands in her black silk apron, just as she
+had hidden them in her linen ‘brat,’ and bobbed a curtsey, ‘looting’
+till she caught her foot in her train, tearing the lace from her skirt,
+and threatening to come down with violence on her own drawing-room
+floor.
+
+No, the Lady could not stand the first tug of the social struggle,
+above all as Drumsheugh had been ordered away from home to avoid
+the cold spring winds till his chest should be stronger. He was
+actually going to take a voyage either to Gibraltar or Madeira--great
+expeditions in those days--promising such adventures and risks of being
+chased and taken prisoner by foreign privateers, that it quite raised
+the laird’s spirits to think of them.
+
+Nobody proposed that Peggy should accompany her husband. It would have
+doubled the considerable expense of the journey, while the laird was
+but a poor man for his station. Besides, to tell the truth, Peggy,
+with all her sweetness and humility, would have been of very little
+use, rather a good deal of an incumbrance, as a travelling companion.
+She had been rendered just then still more _distrait_ and lost by the
+sudden death of her own mother, poor Luckie Hedderwick, which happened
+not long after Peggy had been transferred to Drumsheugh. The melancholy
+event overwhelmed Peggy with sorrow to an extent which the laird and
+his mother were inclined to consider unreasonable. They did not mean to
+be unkind, but it was difficult for them, after their first sympathy
+with Peggy in her grievous shock and the solemnity of the occasion had
+worn away, to regard the widow’s death otherwise than as a release to
+more than herself, an opportune end to one of the most trying of the
+awkward complications involved in the marriage. It was still harder
+to be quite patient with Peggy for having so little judgment in her
+lamentations for my ‘mither’ as not to recognise the compensations
+in the trial, and to remain the next thing to inconsolable--letting
+herself get more stupid and shyer than ever in her affliction, when the
+sole foundation for it was the death of a ‘frail,’ bed-ridden woman
+well up in years and laden with infirmities, so that she had become
+betimes a burden both to herself and others. She could not have been
+long spared to her friends in the nature of things. Peggy could not
+have seen much more of her mother in the circumstances. If Luckie had
+not happily been taken away at a stroke, her daughter could not have
+been permitted to leave her husband’s house to wait upon her mother
+without signal incongruity and a host of serious objections. Peggy
+ought to be thankful that she had escaped these divided duties, and
+to rest content with having been a good daughter to her mother when
+the girl still belonged to the old woman, before Peggy had married far
+above her in rank, and thus raised heavy barriers between the pair.
+The poor soul herself had been reasonable. She had been tolerably
+reconciled to what was inevitable, while she had cherished the utmost
+pride and pleasure in her daughter’s lot. Peggy had been permitted to
+gladden her mother’s heart in this respect: she ought to remember that
+no woman, whether old or young, could have everything in this world.
+
+As Peggy, with all her submission, could not see this side of the
+question for the present--on the contrary, kept foolishly reproaching
+herself and mourning her loss, it would be better on the whole that
+she should be left to herself--under good guidance, however,--for a
+time, to recover from the blow she had received and come round to a
+more cheerful and becoming frame of mind. The old lady would take the
+opportunity of her son’s going South to accompany him as far as London,
+from which he was to sail. She, too, would be better for a complete
+change of scene and interests. She would pay the second visit of her
+life to the English metropolis, and renew a friendship with some old
+Scotch families that had removed to England, the members of which she
+had not seen since they were all school-girls together.
+
+The Lady would have liked to supply her place efficiently. She was
+really a fine woman and proved more thoughtfully careful of her son’s
+wife in the absence of both mother and son than he showed himself. In
+his lightness of heart and simple philosophy he never doubted that
+Peggy would do quite well if she did not weary too much for him. But
+he would write and tell her how strong he was growing, that he did
+not forget her, and would be home to her again ‘belyve.’ She, on her
+part, must exert herself, write and let him know all about the house
+and garden, the cows and the cocks and hens; while Balcairnie would
+look after the horses and cattle, manage the cropping, and the buying
+and selling in the market for him, and would keep him informed on the
+business of the farm which was beyond a woman’s comprehension. She must
+go out and recover her roses which she had lost, good lass! in his
+sick-room, for he meant to return as brown as sea air and a foreign sun
+would tan and burn him.
+
+Mrs. Ramsay would have fain done more for Peggy. She would have
+provided her with a wonderful ally. It was not that the old lady did
+not think of it or wish it strenuously that she made no motion in
+this direction. It was because she was conscious that in her former
+ambition for her son and engrossment with what she had reckoned his
+welfare, she had wronged this ally, and so did not have it in her power
+to ask a great favour from the injured person.
+
+As the next best thing, the Lady repeatedly and earnestly recommended
+Peggy to the good officies of Cunnings,[5] Mrs. Ramsay’s old maid
+and housekeeper, an excellent servant, devoted to the family, honest
+enough to be trusted with untold gold, and having but one failing to
+be watched and weighed against so many virtues. True-hearted, kind
+Cunnings, powerful in her worth, invulnerable on every other point, was
+‘too fond of a drappie’--to put her weakness in the euphemistic words
+in which it was for the most part respectfully and tenderly veiled.
+She could not look on the wine when it was red, or more correctly, on
+whisky when it was clear and colourless as the water at a well-eye, or
+just tinged with the suspicion of amber which belongs to a mountain
+stream flowing over a bed of peat, without danger of forgetting her
+obligations and falling lamentably from her honourable reputation.
+
+But except on rare and unhappy occasions, Mrs. Ramsay’s strong hand
+had always been able to keep Cunnings from stumbling into the snare.
+And the Lady argued that Peggy could take care of the keys of the
+cellar and side-board if she could do nothing else, and that having
+been solemnly warned of Cunnings’ weakness, she would not be so silly
+and unprincipled as to expose her servant to temptation. Poor fallible
+Cunnings, on her part, was incapable, in spite of the flaw in her
+perfect integrity, of laying snares to induce Peggy to leave the keys
+about, or abandon them altogether.
+
+Mrs. Ramsay then provided Peggy with a maid of her own; a sort of
+humble companion, to lighten the tedium when she should be left alone,
+and to prevent her seeking undesirable associates elsewhere. The person
+selected was a distant cousin of Peggy’s, five or six years older, who
+had been in good service, and knew and could teach young Mrs. Ramsay
+many things of which she was profoundly ignorant. In this way Jenny
+Hedderwick would break the fallow ground of Peggy’s mind and pave the
+way for the Lady’s more thorough and farther-reaching cultivation of
+the soil.
+
+It may sound strange to the modern reader that any relative of Peggy’s
+should be received as a domestic at Drumsheugh. But such arrangements,
+of doubtful propriety as they seem to us, were not at all uncommon
+in those single-hearted, downright days, when the world accepted a
+situation frankly and made the best of it all round. In the case of
+_més alliances_ like the laird’s and sudden elevations in rank like
+Peggy’s, far nearer and less well endowed relatives than Jenny were
+often received as a matter of course into the household that they might
+profit in their degree and in their turn by the promotion of one of
+their kindred. A mother would come as a nurse or a cook, a brother as a
+groom or a gamekeeper, to the establishment, over which another member
+of the family ruled as master or mistress. The arrangement could not
+have worked very smoothly one would think. There must have been rough
+and tough tugs and hitches; but there were inequalities everywhere, and
+the seamy side was then unhesitatingly exposed in all circumstances.
+The one advantage which we have lost, was still in full force; defects
+and obligations were freely acknowledged, not scrupulously concealed,
+while plain speaking flourished to an extent which we can hardly
+conceive in these self-conscious and artificial days. Even Cunnings,
+old and attached retainer as she was, with a grave defect in her
+character which ought to have taught her humility, treated Mrs. Ramsay,
+senior, to her unvarnished opinion on many points in a manner that
+would not be ventured on or suffered in the case of our polished,
+accomplished servants--who are also far removed from us.
+
+Indeed, another relative of Peggy’s, with immeasurably smaller
+qualifications than Jenny could boast, had already been put on the
+Drumsheugh staff. Peggy had a second cousin, called Johnnie Fuggie, or
+Foggo, who was a jobbing gardener by trade. The old gardener, coachman,
+and general serving-man at Drumsheugh had become fairly superannuated
+and incapable even of the pretence of performing his duties. Whereupon
+Johnnie, a foolish, conceited fellow of mature years, not hindered by
+any modest doubt of his abilities, or deterred by the least delicate
+consideration for the difficulties of Peggy’s position, applied for the
+honourable post, and actually urged as a strong title to it the fact
+of his relationship to the young Lady of Drumsheugh. ‘The laird can
+never ha’e the face to refuse me the place, when he has marriet my ain
+uncle’s dochter’s dochter. It would be a fell thing if young Mistress
+Ramsay were not to hand out a helping hand and lend a lift to her ain
+flesh and blude. Wha but her cuzin should be her gairner and fut-man
+and a’? Wha will care for Drumsheugh gairden and the coach and my Leddy
+hersel as he will? Sowl! man, he has his ain share in them, and pride
+in them, because o’ the kinship!’
+
+Thus boldly urged by Johnnie Fuggie and his emissaries, who had easily
+procured access to her, Peggy had made her first ignorant, humble
+petition to her easy-minded, good-natured husband, who answered without
+thinking twice on the subject, ‘Oh, aye, Peggy, if you like. The place
+is promised to no other that I know of. Let Johnnie succeed to poor
+old Robbie Red-Lugs, but bid him mind the cauliflowers and codlins, and
+the horses’ knees, or I’ll break his head for him the first time I’m
+across the door.’
+
+The Lady was not so content with this hasty appointment, which had been
+none of her contriving, but she thought if it did not work well, it
+could be summarily set aside when she and her son came back.
+
+So Peggy was left--not in solitary state, but doubly fenced with
+kindred at Drumsheugh after the deplorable day when she hung on her
+husband’s neck at parting, and saw him and his mother drive away down
+the fir-tree avenue, with the most miserable forebodings that she would
+never see Jamie Ramsay in the flesh again.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] Scotticè for Cunningham.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                         THE REIGN OF MISRULE.
+
+
+Apart from Peggy’s despair at the separation from her husband,
+following so close on the death of her mother, the young wife felt
+as pleased as she could feel that she was to have her cousin Jenny
+for her helper and counsellor. Peggy had always looked up to Jenny,
+putting her under a different classification from that bestowed on
+ordinary servants. Peggy knew how clever and diligent her older,
+better-instructed kinswoman had proved herself. It had been entirely
+by her own laudable exertions that she had attained a higher standing,
+from which she had always been reasonably condescending and indulgent
+to her little cousin.
+
+The tables were turned now, but it never entered Peggy’s head to be
+anything save highly gratified that she could be of use to Jenny, while
+Peggy was grateful in proportion for the services which she was sure
+Jenny would render her. Jenny, who had lived as an upper servant among
+ladies, would show Peggy how to behave like a lady, so that she might
+no longer annoy the laird and affront his mother. And Jenny would speak
+to the poor, yearning, mourning girl’s hungry heart of the mother whose
+name had come to be a forbidden word at Drumsheugh, long before Peggy
+had left off wearing her first crape. Luckie Hedderwick’s memory must
+be cherished in a measure by Jenny also, since she had known the widow
+well, and had even been indebted to her in her better days.
+
+Jenny was quite of Peggy’s opinion that she ought to profit by her
+cousin’s good fortune. But there the thoughts of the kinswomen diverged
+widely, and ran in two distinct and opposing channels. Jenny Hedderwick
+was a calculating, unscrupulous young woman, bent on making her
+own--and that as quickly as might be--out of Peggy’s advantages, and of
+what Johnnie Fuggie had confidently reckoned, in more senses than one,
+her relations’ share in them. Johnnie was a forward fool, as obtuse
+as he was intrusive, but Jenny was worse. She had viewed what was to
+her Peggy’s utterly unwarrantable exaltation with indignant amazement
+and disgust, while she had at the same time endeavoured to swallow her
+jealous vexation, and reap all the benefit she could gain from her
+cousin’s prosperity without paying any heed to what Peggy might lose in
+the process.
+
+Jenny did not go the length of hating Peggy, or even of bearing her
+decided ill-will. She was not worth it in Jenny’s estimation. She was
+a silly ‘coof,’ who, if one lost sight of her fair face, had not a
+single claim to rise above her old allies, and was as totally unfitted
+to do so as a girl could be. All the use she was for, in Jenny’s sharp,
+mocking estimate, was to serve as available prey for those who had
+spirit and wit to spoil the new-made lady.
+
+In accomplishing her object Jenny would not dream of being harsh
+or cruel to young Mrs. Ramsay. She would be as good to Peggy in a
+half-jeering, contemptuous manner as the girl would permit. Jenny
+was too astute a schemer as well as too reasonable a mortal for the
+opposite course of conduct. Indeed, hers was not a harsh or cruel
+nature, though she was wholly worldly and in many respects unfeeling.
+
+At the same time, Jenny would not take the trouble or undergo the
+personal mortification of keeping up much of a disguise before
+Peggy--her own cousin, who had been wont to convoy Jenny and carry
+her bundle for her in the elder woman’s earlier visits to the Cotton,
+when Peggy had felt amply rewarded for her trudge and toil by an old
+riband of Jenny’s or a handful of the ‘sweeties’ which had been her
+last ‘market fare’--a silly lass, who could not hold up her head in her
+own house, fill the place she had won, give orders and exact obedience
+and deference from a laird himself, as Jenny would have done with a
+high hand in Peggy’s place. But Peggy must ‘pinge’ like a senseless
+bairn for the poor old mother well out of the way. Who was to stand on
+ceremony and put herself about to maintain a great show of appearances
+before such an unmitigated goose?
+
+Accordingly, the very day after the setting out of Drumsheugh and his
+mother, Jenny--a strapping-enough figure, with a foxy head and steely
+eyes--proceeded to ‘rake’ through the house, up and down, backwards
+and forwards, opening cupboards and turning out the contents of
+drawers; taking an inventory, as it were, of what might be useful to
+her, with an eye to future raids.
+
+Peggy came upon her cousin standing on a chair, narrowly inspecting the
+articles of dress put away on the shelves of Mrs. Ramsay’s wardrobe, to
+which the prowler had found access by means of a key on the bunch which
+she carried with her ready for action.
+
+‘Eh, Jenny, ye mauna meddle there, nor touch a preen in this room,’
+cried Peggy, in the utmost dismay. ‘There’s naething o’ mine there,
+it’s a’ Mrs. Ramsay’s; this is her room.’
+
+‘Hoot, Peggy,’ said Jenny lightly, in no manner discomposed. ‘Div ye no
+ken yet a’ the rooms here are yours, and it is only by your will and
+pleasure that the auld flytin’ wife gets house-room now at Drumsheugh?’
+
+Peggy was in greater distress than before. ‘But, Jenny, you’re sair
+mista’en; Mrs. Ramsay is Drumsheugh’s leddy-mither. She has the best
+title to be here, and she is nae randy. She has behaved as I could
+never have looked for her to behave, as no common woman would have
+acted. She neither flat nor grat, but took me in as her dochter without
+a word against it, though we had deceived her--Drumsheugh and me; and
+she has been gude to me, and patient wi’ me. Oh, Jenny, surely I never
+said a word to the contrary.’
+
+‘I daresay no,’ said Jenny carelessly; ‘she’s your gude-mither--you’re
+bund to keep her up ahint her back, whatever you may do to her face.
+But that need not hinder you from taking a look at her gear when you
+have the chance. It will be a’ yours in the end, for she has no other
+bairn save Jamie Ramsay, unless the body play you an ill trick, and put
+it past you in her wull, which is the mair reason that ye should mak’
+yoursel’ acquent wi’ what there is for her to leave ahint her.’
+
+‘No, no, Jenny,’ protested Peggy, wringing her hands; ‘come down off
+that chair. I dinna want to ken what that press hauds so long as it is
+no mine but hers--Mrs. Ramsay’s, to do what she likes wi’.’
+
+Jenny paid no heed to the prohibition. ‘Look, Peggy,’ she said, pulling
+out and throwing down a long, lace scarf, so that it fell over Peggy’s
+head and shoulders, ‘see how you’ll set that. I’m thinking you’ll wear
+that, or something like it, when you come out o’ your shell and gang
+wi’ your laird to grand parties.’
+
+But Peggy was not to be betrayed through her vanity. She snatched off
+the scarf and began to fold it up quickly with trembling fingers. She
+knit her smooth brows into the semblance of a frown, and set down her
+foot with a desperate stamp, as an outraged worm will turn on a wanton
+aggressor. ‘Do you hear me speaking to you, Jenny? Put back Mrs.
+Ramsay’s things this minute? Let them alane, or I’ll ring for her maid
+Cunnings.’
+
+Jenny leapt down instantly and cleverly took the first and worst word
+of accusation: ‘What do you mean, Peggy Ramsay? Am I a thief, think
+ye, that ye should ca’ in Cunnings or ony other woman to catch me
+for taking a look about me when I was brocht here to look after you,
+madam, and see to your belongings, and put you on the richt road to
+behaving like ane o’ the gentles? I can tell you it will be a long time
+before you do that, Peggy, my woman, when you begin by wyting your ain
+mither’s kith and kin for a cantrip, because you have said the word
+and you are my leddy now, and are not to be contered. Had I ever the
+name of being licht-fingered, Peggy Ramsay, when I had whole charge of
+a hantle grander braws than I’m like to see at Drumsheugh? What ill
+was I doing to the leddy’s claes by just giving them a bit turn and
+air and proper fauld up, which is beyond Cunnings’s power now that she
+is ower stiff to mount upon a chair? Has it crossed your mind what
+folk would think and say gin you ca’ed in ony o’ your servants--_your
+servants_--Peggy Ramsay, to stop your cuzin from looking over Mrs.
+Ramsay’s wardrobe? Do you want to brand me as a thief, mem?’
+
+‘Oh! Jenny, Jenny, how can you say sic words!’ cried Peggy, in an
+agony, willing to fling herself at her cousin’s feet, and beg her
+pardon a dozen times. ‘You ken that I ken you’re as honest as mysel’. I
+never dreamt of evening you to sic sin and shame. It would be insulting
+mysel’ and my mither and a’, as well as you! I niver, niver meant sic a
+wrang!’
+
+‘Weel, then, Peggy, you’ll better take care what you say, and think
+twice afore you speak again,’ said Jenny, not so much wrathfully as
+in delivering the calm warning of a deeply-injured woman. ‘I like you,
+Peggy, for auld lang syne, and I’ll do my best for you in spite o’ what
+has happened. But, I’m just flesh and blude after a’, and though you
+ha’e marriet a laird you maunna try to ride roch shod ower my head, and
+bleck my gude name!’
+
+‘Jenny, do you still believe I would?’ implored the weeping Peggy, but
+with an accent of indignant reproach in the pleading, which told Jenny
+she had gone far enough.
+
+‘Na, I hardly think it,’ Jenny said with a return to reassuring,
+patronising kindness. ‘But you’re a young lassie and you’re uplifted a
+bit, nae doubt. Your best friend’s advice to you would be to take tent,
+and ca’ canny, and dinna lippen to your ain first thochts, till you’re
+aulder and wiser and less likely to be mista’en.’
+
+Jenny came off the undoubted conqueror in the preliminary sparring,
+though she showed some wariness in pursuing her victory. She did not
+again enter old Mrs. Ramsay’s private domain and rummage among her
+personal possessions before Peggy. Jenny confined herself to what was
+the common ground of the laird and Peggy.
+
+Cunnings was the next person who interfered with Jenny in her little
+arrangements. ‘Ye maunna shift the ornaments in the rooms,’ the old
+servant said with stolid impassiveness, which might have meant anything
+or nothing to Jenny, whom she caught abstracting an agate patch-box
+and a pair of silver lazy tongs from the drawing-room--and a gold
+and tortoise-shell snuff-box, and a shagreen case which might have
+suited a pair of Moses Primrose’s gross of green spectacles, from the
+dining-room. ‘Mair by token that flowered pelerine which I heard you
+borrow from young Mrs. Ramsay that you micht wear it at a friend’s
+house in Craigie, was sent down by smack frae Lon’on as a gift from
+the laird to his leddy. It is not my place to interfere wi’ ony favour
+young Mrs. Ramsay may chuse to grant, but I will tak’ it upon me as
+an auld servant, weel acquent wi’ the ways of the family, to say that
+the laird may no tak’ it weel from her to bestow his gift, even in the
+licht o’ a len’ on anither woman. I’ll also say as a frien’ to baith,
+that whatever may have been fitting eneuch aince on a time, in the
+niffer o’ bunches o’ ribands and strings o’ beads and sic worthless
+troke o’ lasses when you were equals, the fine pelerine, noo shuitable
+for Drumsheugh’s leddy, is hardly the wear for a young woman even in
+upper service like you or me, Jenny Hedderwick.’
+
+Jenny snuffed the air with her upturned nose, and her eyes shot out
+an ominous flash, but she thanked Cunnings with the greatest apparent
+friendliness and respect. She had taken the accurate measure of the
+older woman in her strength and weakness, for such natures as Jenny’s
+seldom fail to gauge the flaws of their neighbours. Accordingly in
+the week following this incident, Jenny betrayed symptoms of falling
+into an ailing state of health, languished, and stood clearly in need
+of the ale-saps and bread-berry, the white wine, whey possets, and
+warm drinks for which Peggy, in her anxiety and affection, furnished
+abundant materials; while Cunnings prepared the food and drink for the
+threatened invalid, disinterestedly to begin with.
+
+There are various curious old legends and traditions of all countries
+and ages--travesties, like the swallowing of the pomegranate seeds
+by Proserpine--of the sacred record of the eating of the apple in
+Paradise--which illustrate the danger of tasting forbidden fruit. If
+a man or woman who hesitates is apt to be lost, the weak individual
+who prees and prees as Rab and Allan preed the famous peck o’ maut
+which Willie brewed, till nothing of the peck remains, is still more
+likely to become the victim of a fatal appetite. Within a month poor
+old Cunnings had fallen lower before her mortal enemy, and disgraced
+herself more irretrievably than she had done in the whole course of
+her long service. She had been so helpless in her degradation that
+she could not ‘bite a finger’ in the customary phrase, though why the
+wretched sinner should seek to accomplish such a useless performance
+in the circumstances has not been explained. She had been seen in this
+state, and had been put to bed, the guilty woman, like an innocent
+baby, by one of the more compassionate of the mocking under-servants,
+to whom Cunnings ought to have served as an example while she ruled
+over them. She knew it all--the extent of her transgression, the shame
+of it, the degree to which she had exposed herself. She was down in
+the mire, and did not believe she could ever rise again and free
+herself from its defilement, while her infatuated base propensity was
+tempting her to lie and wallow in the dirt, so that she could gratify
+the horrible craving. She shrank from poor Peggy, who, in place of
+challenging and denouncing her housekeeper, was fit to break her heart
+over Cunnings’s lamentable breakdown.
+
+Cunnings was terrified to meet her old mistress. She became the
+bond-slave of Jenny Hedderwick, who had led the older woman into
+temptation and was now prepared to feed her vice, so that it might
+serve Jenny’s evil ends.
+
+There never was so thorough a moral ruin effected in so short a time.
+The truth is that a man liable to Cunnings’s sin might have indulged
+in it, succumbed so far, and still have continued true to the trust
+reposed in him and to one half of his better antecedents. He might
+have escaped a complete collapse, and saved his integrity and honour.
+But it is a well-known melancholy instance of psychological difference
+between men and women that, whereas there remains a reservation and
+some power of resistance, even of retaining a few of the finer traits
+of character in the drunken man, in the case of the woman, in whom
+reason is weaker and passion stronger, an indulgence in an excess of
+intoxicating drink is prone to open the flood-gates to all corruption,
+and to produce a complete demoralisation of the individual.
+
+There was no further hope or help for Peggy from Cunnings.
+
+Jenny, triumphing in an unhallowed victory over all obstacles, sought
+to get Peggy too in her power, as she had got Cunnings. And Peggy had
+no defence from Jenny’s wily stratagems and bold, fierce assaults,
+except God’s grace and her own good intentions. She was not wise,
+but she had grown up pious and dutiful, faithful and tender of
+conscience as of heart. It remained to be seen whether God and goodness
+alone would suffice to protect Peggy from Jenny, the flesh, and the
+devil--all the evil influences to which her husband’s thoughtlessness
+and Mrs. Ramsay’s mistake had given her over.
+
+Balcairnie could not interfere or come to Peggy’s rescue, though he
+was in a position to be soon aware of the mischief which was going
+on. Balcairnie was, to a great extent, gagged, if not tongue-tied. He
+was not one of those impulsive, inconsiderate male-friends who figure
+in so many stories, and by way of helping the women, for whom the men
+are supposed to have some regard, rush rashly into the breach, indulge
+in a great deal of foolish Platonic philandering, and precipitate the
+wrong they have been solicitous to avert. The Scotch yeoman was a man
+of another sort. He possessed straightforward honesty and common sense
+approaching to sagacity in his slowness and solidity of intellect. He
+was further endowed with some of the delicacy of feeling and action in
+which those fine gentlemen of fiction are often curiously deficient.
+He knew perfectly well that it was not in his honorary office of
+farm-manager to go much about the young Lady of Drumsheugh and attempt
+to control her in her domestic concerns. To do so would be to draw down
+upon both the strongly-flavoured gossip of the country side. It would
+be to take a liberty which not even his intimacy with his laird could
+freely warrant, and which Drumsheugh, easy-going as he was, might very
+possibly resent. In that case Balcairnie would have played beautifully
+into Jenny Hedderwick’s hands.
+
+No, he was aware from the beginning that he must stand at a distance,
+and only come forward if matters went utterly amiss so as to forebode a
+grand catastrophe.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                             ‘LADY PEGGY.’
+
+
+Jenny made use of Johnnie Fuggie and employed him in her aim. Her
+motive here was twofold. Johnnie was a person interested in Peggy’s
+kindred making their own out of Peggy, since she had become a powerful
+woman with favours in her right hand. It was better for all concerned
+that there should be a safe understanding rather than a dangerous feud
+between the rival claimants for young Mrs. Ramsay’s bounties. In other
+respects Johnnie himself was a despicable object to Jenny--a crouse,
+clavering carle, up in years, with a silly wife and family keeping
+him down. But Johnnie’s relations were not all detrimentals. He had
+a spruce, pushing nephew, who had risen to be a commercial traveller
+for ‘a big Edinburgh house in the drapery line.’ This nephew was
+considerably younger than Jenny, therefore flattered by her notice,
+while the disparity in years did not prevent her from making sheep’s
+eyes at him.
+
+The double inducement caused Jenny to be particularly attentive to
+Johnnie Fuggie, who was even more taken in by her graciousness than
+his nephew had yet proved himself. If the innocent man had known it,
+she wished that Johnnie should be art and part in her manœuvres and
+aggressions. Her clever tactics were to compromise everybody all round,
+and when each person was deeply involved, to rule the roast, and play
+her own winning game by means of her accomplices.
+
+One afternoon, in the end of April, when the weather was unusually warm
+for a Scotch spring, so that the gooseberry bushes were covered with
+their pale green blossom, and there was a fine sprinkling of red and
+lilac ‘spinks’ (polyanthuses) and white daisies already brightening the
+garden borders, Jenny come coolly into the dining-room at Drumsheugh,
+followed slowly by Johnnie Fuggie in his corduroys, velveteen jacket,
+and woollen comforter, which he wore summer and winter.
+
+Johnnie had the grace to pause, glance ruefully at his earth-laden
+feet, and even execute half a scrape of a bow on the threshold. He was
+a small, rickety-looking man, with a slight halt in his gait--more
+perceptible in his fatigue. He was not wont to be troubled with
+scruples, still he hung back a little.
+
+But Jenny explained his presence there volubly. ‘It’s Johnnie,
+cuzin Peggy,’ she said, with a wave of the hand to the unanswerable
+proposition and unnecessary introduction. ‘He has been a’ the way to
+the Knockruddery planting for pea-sticks, and has carriet them hame,
+the gomerel, on his back instead of ordering a cart from the offices,
+though Balcairnie could not ha’e said strae to that. Johnnie, puir
+chap, is clean forfochten, as ye may see, with the long walk and
+the load; sae, as he would ha’e needed to gang round by the Cotton
+to slocken his drouth, I ha’e just brocht him in here to eat his
+fower hours, but ceremony wi’ you and me. I ha’e telled Cunnings in
+the by-going, and gin you’ll send her the keys, she’ll bring in the
+Hollands and yale wi’ the dishes o’ tea, which are no for a man’s
+refreshment. Sit ye doon, Johnnie, my man; dinna be blate, rest ye, and
+mak yoursel’ at hame in the muckle chair in your ain cuzin’s hoose.’
+
+He was her own cousin, once or twice removed, and Peggy would willingly
+have given him of her best for his rest and refreshment; but Johnny
+Fuggie in Drumsheugh’s absence in the laird’s chair at his table, was
+what she could not authorise, whether or not she had strength of mind
+to forbid it. She stood up, trembling from head to foot, growing very
+pale, and gasping for breath.
+
+Johnnie took pity upon her. The girl’s tremor still farther abashed
+instead of emboldening him. It reached even through his coarse and
+thick skin.
+
+‘Na, Jenny, ye’re wrang, lass, this time,’ he mumbled. ‘This is no’
+the place for me. I couldna be comfortable, ony mair than ither folk
+could be. Gude e’en to you, young Mistress Ramsay, mem, I give you a’
+your titles wi’ a’ my heart. I’ll gang my ways and you’ll forgie this
+mischanter. It is a’ the wyte o’ this sorry Jenny. She means weel, but
+her frien’liness runs awa’ wi’ her at times.’
+
+‘You’ll no gang out o’ this house without tasting for the house’s ain
+credit, Johnnie Fuggie; no’ sae lang as I’m to the fore and under
+its roof, though I suld ha’e to set up a bottle and a kebbock wi’
+a fardel o’ cakes on my ain account, as I have never needed to do
+yet,’ protested Jenny clamorously. ‘Na, I’ll tell you what,’ with the
+ready adaptation of her scheme to circumstances which is the gift of
+first-rate conspirators, and is for that matter an attribute of genius,
+‘we’ll sally but to Cunnings’s room, if the dining-room flegs you, and
+I’m sure Peggy will not refuse to grace us wi’ her presence.’
+
+Poor Peggy caught at the compromise, overlooking the sneer scarcely
+hidden under Jenny’s accommodating suggestion. She would cheerfully
+bear her relations company in the housekeeper’s room for half-an-hour,
+if that would keep them out of Drumsheugh’s dining-room or the Lady’s
+drawing-room.
+
+Peggy little guessed that the visit was destined to be often repeated,
+till it became almost a daily occurrence, brought about, as it
+was, by Jenny’s determined, deliberate design, Johnnie’s sloth and
+folly, Cunnings’s desperate self-indulgence, and Peggy’s humility and
+incapacity.
+
+But Peggy was only a troubled, frightened spectatress of those feasts,
+which were rapidly degenerating into orgies where Johnnie and Cunnings
+were concerned. Jenny herself was as sober a woman from inclination and
+policy as Peggy was in her innocence and purity. Many women of grosser
+nature, in Peggy’s position--raised suddenly from penury and frugality
+to what is to them luxury and lavish abundance, without work to do,
+destitute of any faculty for such duties as the women have to perform,
+without the smallest capacity for the poorest kind of intellectual
+recreation--sink piteously and repulsively into gulfs of gluttony and
+excess. But Peggy was secure from such hideous pitfalls--on which
+Jenny may have counted, by Providence, Peggy’s goodness, and the
+refinement which belonged, to be sure, to the core, and not to the
+surface of her nature.
+
+It was the season for Johnnie Puggie’s nephew making his spring
+rounds in the way of business, and Jenny was strongly bent at once on
+gratifying and benefiting him, and on raising herself in his estimation
+by proving the terms she was on at Drumsheugh. She persuaded Peggy
+that it would only be doing her duty and being barely hospitable if
+she invited young Baldie Puggie to spend a quiet evening at the house,
+during which he might let them see his ‘swatches,’ or patterns, and
+young Mrs. Ramsay might have the opportunity and pleasure of giving
+him a handsome order, for old acquaintance and kinship’s sake, since
+Drumsheugh did not stint his wife either in house-money or pocket-money.
+
+Peggy in her simplicity was rather pleased that she had one relation
+on her side of the house in so good a way as Baldie Fuggie, who wore
+a cloth coat, and could handle his knife and fork, and was almost a
+gentleman. He might rise to be ‘a merchant’ in his own person. He might
+sit down even now at the same table with Balcairnie and the laird,
+though his tone was not just like theirs, and he was not altogether
+without the traces of the pit whence he had been dug. Yes; she was glad
+to be able to grant Jenny’s request on Jenny’s account too.
+
+Peggy was ready to welcome Baldie Fuggie to a supper at Drumsheugh, and
+she would be proud to give him a lady-like commission. She must have a
+braw new gown in glad anticipation of Drumsheugh’s home-coming safe and
+sound. Her laird must see her at her best, so that all his admiration
+might revive, and he might fall in love with his wife afresh.
+
+There are some people to whom to vouch-safe an inch is to grant a
+yard, in whatever request is pending--people who, if they are permitted
+to insert a finger in an opening will forthwith introduce the whole
+hand and break down every impediment to their will. This was true of
+Jenny and the family supper to which Baldie Fuggie was to be bidden.
+First, Johnnie must come also, because he was Baldie’s uncle and
+nearest surviving relation. Next, Johnnie’s wife and children could
+not be left out, and after them Baldie had one or two other friends
+with whom he had been much more intimate, among the shopkeepers,
+sewing-girls, and maid-servants of Craigie--honest lads and lasses
+well-known to Jenny--and Peggy also in the days when she was not
+mistress of Drumsheugh. It could do no harm to have them for once up
+at the house to see that their old friend had not forgotten them and
+wished them well. She could take leave of them, for that matter, in
+this handsome, informal manner.
+
+Then the gathering might be in Cunnings’s room, and it might be called
+Cunnings’s and Jenny’s little party, merely permitted and countenanced
+by young Mrs. Ramsay. Thus no reasonable person could find fault with
+‘the bit ploy.’ Peggy was led on, half unconscious how far she was
+going, with dust thrown into her eyes at every reluctant step. But
+for any preparation she had received and permission she had given,
+she was not the less overwhelmed and aghast at the size and style of
+the entertainment when it burst fully upon her in the hour of its
+celebration. It was far too late then to stop the details--supposing
+the mistress of Drumsheugh had possessed the strength of mind and the
+mother-wit to issue an interdict and organise on the spur of the moment
+something very different.
+
+Jenny had actually bespoken a fiddler. Before Peggy could believe her
+eyes that Tam Lauder, the young gauger, had taken it upon him to
+bring his fiddle in its green bag, there were reels forming on the
+floor, and she could not refuse to let herself be ‘lifted’ (led to the
+top of the set) to take the first turn, lest folk should say she was
+proud and held herself above dancing in the same rounds with her old
+friends, she who had been born and bred a cotter lass, and had footed
+it blithely with the laird and Balcairnie at many a maiden! Oh! how far
+removed from this those dances had been, when she had lived free from
+responsibility, and her grandest title had been ‘Bonnie Peggy.’
+
+It goes without saying that Peggy had no heart for that unsuitable,
+inopportune merry-making when her laird was far away and her mother’s
+grave had not grown green. Bitter self-reproach for what she had been
+powerless to prevent, with aversion to the ill-timed gaiety and dismay
+of what might come of it, wrung her gentle spirit. Notwithstanding,
+Peggy was swept on with the current and compelled to take a part in the
+fun which grew fast and furious, and was maintained far into the small
+hours, while Baldie Fuggie betrayed that his small amount of polish was
+but skin-deep.
+
+Peggy escaped at last from what had become a homely edition of the
+situation of the lady in the Masque of ‘Comus,’ crying, ‘Oh, mind,
+I’m a marriet woman, I’m the laird’s Leddy,’ to shut herself up in
+her room, sink scared and remorseful on the first seat, stare with
+tightly-clasped hands at one of Drumsheugh’s three-cornered hats which
+she had kept fondly hanging on the most available peg behind the
+door, and finally begin to sob and cry her heart out. Cunnings had
+been removed in a state of insensibility from her presidence over the
+festivities, and Jenny was leading a troop of skirling women racing
+over the house, pursued with loud shouts by Baldie Fuggie and his
+fellows, who did not pretend to Baldie’s scraping of veneer, bent on
+extorting forfeits of kisses and inflicting the penalty of rubbing
+rough beards on blowsy cheeks.
+
+The report of Peggy’s party--it was never called Jenny’s, not to say
+Cunnings’s--spread far and wide, and created as lively a sensation
+in select circles as if it had been the inauguration of a county
+Almacks. In the days and places where hardly anybody read a line of
+anything, save of the newspaper on one day a week and of the Bible
+on the Sabbath, local gossip counted for a great deal. Without it
+conversation would have languished, and men and women’s minds become
+stagnant. Every scrap of gossip was therefore carefully collected and
+made much of. Peggy’s party was reckoned very racy and droll gossip,
+essentially characteristic and not without its moral. It proved a great
+boon and set off half a dozen teas and three dinner-parties among the
+neighbours. Fine doings at Drumsheugh, but no more than what was
+to be expected. See what came of low marriages. Time the laird were
+home, whether to reap the fruits of his folly, or to stave off a worse
+catastrophe, if that were possible. Poor old Mrs. Ramsay, who had held
+her head high, and had hardly reckoned a young lady in the country-side
+a fit match for her son. But pride comes before a fall.
+
+It was at this time that the mocking title of ‘Lady Peggy’ was first
+bestowed on the interloper, the heroine of all these good stories.
+For Jenny Hedderwick and Cunnings were beneath these worthy people’s
+notice, and little mention was made of either delinquent in the
+arraignment of their victim.
+
+Though Jenny had to some extent achieved her purpose, and it might have
+been said that nobody resisted her will, she began to bear a greater
+grudge against Peggy, and to go near to treating her with a purely
+vindictive malice, strangely unreasoning, in so reasonable a woman.
+This was not merely because Jenny had taken advantage of Peggy in every
+way, and wronged her to the utmost of Jenny’s power, though that is
+generally a fertile enough source of ill-will in the wrongdoer, but
+because Peggy beyond a certain point remained invulnerable. Jenny had a
+secret resentful conviction that while apparently successful, she was
+really foiled in her chief object of dragging down her cousin below
+Jenny’s own level, and so obtaining a firm, permanent hold on the poor
+girl through her errors and fears.
+
+Jenny lost her prudence and her temper with it. She proceeded to cast
+aside the semblance of kindness which she had kept up and even felt for
+Peggy. Jenny now treated Peggy with positive rudeness and insolence.
+She was for ever jeering at the young wife because of her unfitness
+for her position, her ignorance, and her mistakes. And Jenny taunted
+Peggy on the tenderest point, dwelling on Drumsheugh’s protracted
+absence, broadly hinting that he, and all belonging to him, were
+mortally ashamed of the low-born intruder in their ranks. Was there not
+a cousin of the laird’s who had spent most of her early girlhood at
+Drumsheugh, and who was now on a visit to the doctor’s wife in Craigie,
+in the immediate neighbourhood? But though Miss Ramsay did not think
+it beneath her to come and stay for weeks with an old schoolfellow who
+had only married a country doctor, did she ever dream of walking out to
+Drumsheugh nowadays, to hear tell how the laird was getting on, and to
+make the acquaintance of her new cousin? Mrs. Forsyth, Miss Ramsay’s
+friend and hostess, could not advise her to the condescension--not
+even though Drumsheugh was a good patient of Dr. Forsyth’s, and Peggy
+herself was acquainted with the doctor.
+
+Lady Peggy was crushed and heart-broken in her helplessness and her
+miserable sense of culpability, though she was hardly accountable for
+her faults as a matron. She found no resource in reading, though good
+books would have been a strengthening and sustaining influence; while
+Peggy, as a carefully instructed Scotch child, had been fond of her
+book--a little rustic scholar, and the taste would have remained with
+any food for its sustenance. But when we learn in ‘Lord Campbell’s
+Life’ that the library even of a well-born, classically cultivated
+divine consisted of some odd volumes of the ‘Spectator,’ two volumes
+of ‘Tom Jones,’ and the ‘History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless,’ some
+idea may be formed of the dearth of profane literature at Drumsheugh.
+The stock of books had not increased since the reign of the second
+George, and was scarcely a whit better than Peggy might have found in
+her mother’s cottage room. Certainly Luckie Hedderwick had not owned a
+cookery-book or a work on farriery, which would have been in a measure
+supererogatory, seeing that she possessed few and simple materials for
+cookery, and had no horses to keep in health. But she had thumbed,
+well-preserved copies of the ‘Death of Abel’ and ‘Blind Harry’ to match
+‘The Cloud of Witnesses’--this branch of the Ramsays having been on the
+Whig and Covenanting side in politics and religion--and ‘Allan Ramsay’s
+Songs,’ in a much more tattered condition, at Drumsheugh.
+
+Peggy’s sole earthly stays consisted in the faithful reading of the
+little pocket Bible which had descended to her from her mother, and
+the somewhat rigid observance of the sabbath and unfailing attendance
+at the kirk in which she had been brought up, to which she clung, and
+from which neither fraud nor force on Jenny’s part could detach her.
+The minister was Peggy’s old friend, the Dominie, who took an interest
+in her, and had always a kind word and glance for her when they met,
+though in the ordinarily dreamy, absorbed life of a book-worm, he never
+guessed she was again in circumstances well-nigh as perilous as those
+from which he had helped to deliver her. But, however rambling and
+incoherent his prayers, or dry and doctrinal his sermons, they were
+always solemn, holy words delivered by God’s commissioned messenger
+to Peggy. They served as balm to the wounded spirit, and bracing to
+the unnerved will, they saved her from despair. Yet Peggy was fast
+losing all modest satisfaction in her front seat in the ‘laft,’ all
+womanly pride in her appearance and surroundings. Disengaging herself
+with difficulty, and almost running away to get to the kirk, walking
+there in all states of the weather rather than provoke discussion by
+summoning Johnny Fuggie to drive her, Peggy would reach her destination
+with disordered, shabby, black dress, ill-arranged head-gear, shoes
+almost as cumbered with the soil as ever were Johnny Fuggie’s on
+working days--a poor, hunted, forlorn-looking waif of a laird’s lady.
+The sight would disturb Balcairnie in his worship. ‘If I had thocht she
+would be left like this--what for doesna Drumsheugh come hame and look
+after her?’ He would enter silent, broken, indignant protests. ‘But the
+laird, puir fally, canna help himsel’;’ the loyal yeoman would correct
+his assumption, ‘and puir Peggy was ay a saft, silly quean to let
+hersel’ be put upon.’
+
+The late spring was waning into early summer; the budding roses were
+replacing the withering lilies alike in Drumsheugh and Balcairnie
+gardens, and still the laird tarried abroad, though the news was
+always of his amendment, while every day Peggy was drifting into more
+heavy-hearted helplessness on her own account and a falser report in
+the mouths of her neighbours.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                            ‘HUNTINGTOWER.’
+
+
+Primrose Ramsay bore a Christian name which was not altogether uncommon
+among the Scotch-women of her era. It was also the surname of the
+excellent vicar of Wakefield and of a noble Scotch family, and the
+ordinary title of the sweetest and most welcome of spring flowers. She
+was, as Jenny Hedderwick had reported, on a friendly visit to young
+Mrs. Forsyth, the doctor’s wife in Craigie. Primrose was not like her
+namesake and emblem, strictly fair to see, but she was cheery as ever
+was pinched daisy in February, promising to close the gloomy winter and
+herald the glad summer. She was a little, pale, somewhat meagre girl,
+whom a passer-by might have stigmatised as insignificant-looking. Her
+spirit, sense, and kindness, and not her face, constituted her fortune,
+and it was only when mind and heart took possession of her slight,
+though wiry, frame, coloured her ordinarily colourless cheeks, and
+kindled up her grey eyes that they looked handsome. Primrose Ramsay was
+valued even in the matter of personal appearance exactly in proportion
+as she was known. Slight acquaintances thought little of her, intimate
+friends agreed to admire her very defects, and the old relation who had
+brought up the orphan girl, and with whom she usually resided, set such
+store upon her that Mrs. Purvis grudged Primrose out of her sight, and
+confidently believed her the attraction of all eyes and hearts, the
+greatest beauty, and the most virtuous, charming young woman in the
+world.
+
+Withal, there was something about Primrose Ramsay--unprotected, poor,
+unassuming, and kindly as she was--which prevented anyone from taking
+liberties with her; something which daunted the coarse and shallow, and
+rendered her, on occasions, as formidable as her aunt, the old Lady
+of Drumsheugh, could prove. Primrose won respect in her youth, and
+exercised influence wherever she went.
+
+Primrose heard from Mrs. Forsyth, with a mixture of interest,
+amusement, and pain, all the nonsensical stories, loud ridicule, and
+blame, and increasingly rampant scandal afloat with regard to young
+Mrs. Ramsay. Primrose could not help feeling diverted, in spite of her
+goodness; for she was a girl in whom the sense of humour abounded in
+exceptional strength, keeping pace with that ‘weeping-blood in woman’s
+breast,’ which made her sorry too; because it went to her heart not
+to be able to go over to Drumsheugh where she had spent some of her
+happiest youthful holidays, or to hold out her hand to Jamie Ramsay’s
+wife, when Jamie was Primrose’s nearest male relative, and he and she
+had been fast boy and girl friends. And she was sure Jamie was not half
+a bad fellow, though he had made a low marriage.
+
+Primrose entertained a shrewd suspicion that the day had been when her
+aunt, Mrs. Ramsay, had experienced a dread lest Jamie should throw his
+handkerchief at her (Primrose); and so, just when the girl was growing
+up, had managed to put a stop to her annual visits to Drumsheugh. But
+in place of bearing malice or enjoying her revenge, Primrose proved,
+among other things, how perfectly disengaged her own juvenile feelings
+had been, by only laughing and shaking her head, ever so little, over
+the _mal à propos_ recollection, and perhaps cherishing a livelier
+grain of curiosity respecting that bonnie Peggy who had figured as
+Primrose’s unconscious rival.
+
+Primrose’s sole chance of catching a glimpse of her cousin’s wife,
+whom she did not remember having seen as the cotter lass, Peggy
+Hedderwick, was at Craigture Kirk, to which the Forsyths went
+one afternoon on purpose to furnish their guest with the desired
+opportunity. Primrose felt puzzled and disappointed by the glimpse
+she got. Yes, young Mrs. Ramsay was very bonnie so far as features,
+skin, and what colour remained to her, went. But could this shabby,
+dowdy, almost slatternly ‘disjasket’ (out of joint from some depressing
+cause)--young woman be the lass who had caught bauld Jamie Ramsay’s
+fancy? Primrose, notwithstanding her fine eye for beauty, had some
+difficulty in believing it. Poor, low-born lass! bonnie Peggy’s
+exaltation seemed likely to end in her destruction. Poor Jamie! whose
+single-heartedness and recklessness had brought Drumsheugh to such
+a pass. But there was nothing to be done: Peggy Ramsay, according
+to all accounts, was developing into a woman with whom no lady, no
+respectable person, would care to hold intercourse.
+
+Primrose Ramsay improved her visit in other ways. She and Mrs. Forsyth
+occupied and amused themselves after the most approved standards of
+their class and generation. Mrs. Forsyth had put herself slightly out
+of the upper circles by marrying a country-town doctor. Still the
+simple, stay-at-home gentry were not over-particular, else they must
+have narrowed their set to a nearly stifling extent; and there was a
+nice enough lower stratum of professional men, bankers, clergy and
+half-pay officers with their families in Craigie, to which the Forsyths
+could justly consider themselves as belonging, that at many points
+touched upon and merged into the lairds and their ladies’ sphere.
+Young Mrs. Forsyth had committed no heinous solecism in marrying her
+doctor, and she was not punished for the small offence. She did not
+feel ashamed to invite Primrose Ramsay to become the Forsyths’ first
+guest in fulfilment of an old school-girl promise. Primrose could
+accept the invitation and be happy in the visit, without any further
+_arrière-pensée_ than belonged to her stifled regret that she was
+thenceforth banished from Drumsheugh, which had become a prohibited
+place to her.
+
+Mrs. Forsyth had acted differently from Jamie Ramsay, and the result
+was much more satisfactory. The single light in which the two affairs
+might be said to act and react on each other was that though the laird
+was Dr. Forsyth’s patient, as Jenny Hedderwick had remarked, none
+looked on the unfortunate match with more disfavour, or inveighed
+against Peggy’s delinquencies with greater contempt, than did Mrs.
+Forsyth. It was as if she felt bound to exonerate herself from the most
+distant suspicion of such gross imprudence by exaggerating the public
+sentiment where Drumsheugh and ‘Lady Peggy’ were concerned.
+
+Mrs. Forsyth was a tall, blooming, consequential bride, to whom, at the
+first glance, her friend served as a foil. Dr. Forsyth was a brisk,
+busy, aspiring young man, well pleased with the attainment of some of
+his aspirations. The couple did the honours of their new home, where
+everything was fresh, bright, and hopeful, pleasantly to the young
+lady visitor Primrose. She entered with heart and soul into all their
+sanguine plans and projects, and so relished them in turn with her
+wholesome young appetite. She had her share of the marriage-parties,
+the teas and suppers, which were not yet over for the pair. She drove,
+bodkin-fashion, between the two, in the doctor’s gig, without any
+loss to their gentility, far and near to these blithe, yet decorous,
+merry-makings. She could not execute half so well as the bride could a
+lesson in classic music on any spinnet which presented itself handily,
+but Primrose beat her friend hollow in playing without a music-book
+tunes to which feet could keep time in carpet dances. She had her own
+song, which she was always asked to give after supper, and which never
+failed to elicit well-merited applause, for she had a sweet, tolerably
+trained voice, and sang with feeling and taste. Strange to say, her
+song was the old ballad ‘Huntingtower,’ and its echoes used to wake in
+the singer dim, contradictory associations with Jamie Ramsay and his
+miserable _mésalliance_.
+
+Did the other ‘Jamie’ of the song go away lightly after all, and
+leave the peasant bride to whom, in the first brush of the affair,
+he gave Blair-in-Athole, Little Dunkel’, St. Johnstown’s Bower, and
+Huntingtower, and all that was his so freely, to bear the brunt of
+their foolish wedlock? Did the ‘Jeannie’ who refused so decisively the
+braw new gown ‘wi’ Valenciennes trimmed roun’, lassie,’ that subtle
+allurement to a woman’s heart, and claimed only the heart which was
+hers already, who with unwavering voice, though her heart-strings were
+cracking, bade her cruelly jesting, unfairly suspicious lover, ‘gae
+hame’ to the wife and the bairnies three he invented to torture and
+try her, pass in the sequel and in the natural order of things into
+such a wasteful, reckless, low-lifed woman as Peggy Ramsay was turning
+out? Had true love no real foundation? Was there a canker at its core,
+sure to come to light in the end, even when it seemed most genuine and
+generous?
+
+Primrose and Mrs. Forsyth worked and read, walked and talked together,
+so as to have little time to weary, even when the doctor was too much
+engaged to attend to them, or was sent for to some distant patient.
+The ladies drew, and embroidered ruffles, caps, and aprons for
+themselves--the favourite fancy-work of the day after work of necessity
+in steady, solid gown and shirt making was disposed of.
+
+Primrose had been so far reared in intellectual circles that she
+possessed something like a large portable library of her own, which
+she generally carried about with her at the foot of her father’s great
+hair trunk; for, apart from the Bible in which she read as regularly as
+Peggy read in hers, it was to these other books Primrose had recourse
+to draw fresh springs of wisdom and happiness. She had not only ‘Hannah
+More’s Essays’ and ‘Dr. Gregory’s Advice to his Daughter,’ she had sets
+of ‘Sir Charles Grandison’ and ‘Evelina.’ The two novels represented
+all fiction to the girl, and she read in them with as inexhaustible
+sympathy and delight as her grandmother had found for the interminable
+adventures of the grand Cyrus.
+
+During Primrose’s stay in Craigie she found less need for her books
+than she was wont to do on a rainy day, not only because Mrs.
+Forsyth was no reader, but because Dr. Forsyth, being something of a
+naturalist, had indulged himself in buying copies of ‘Bewick’s British
+Birds’ and ‘White’s Natural History of Selborne.’ These offered new
+treasures to Primrose Ramsay’s quickness of observation and fondness
+for nature.
+
+‘Bewick’s Birds’ bore a practical result to both Mrs. Forsyth and
+Primrose, and had a strange collateral bearing--presumably not
+intended by the author--on certain future events in more than one
+human history. The ladies were stimulated by the inspection of the
+life-like engravings to a fresh enterprise for their ingenious brains
+and fingers--not that the device was altogether original. Feather
+tippets had become almost as much the fashion as muslin ruffles. But
+Mrs. Forsyth and Primrose would make themselves such tippets as had
+seldom been seen even in the wardrobes of the Duchess of Portland and
+Mrs. Delany. The whole country-side was to be ransacked for a variety
+of feathers. The doctor’s gig was to be put in requisition to carry
+the collectors to different poultry yards, from which they were to beg,
+borrow, and, it is to be feared, when temptation waxed too strong,
+steal, their spoil. Mrs. Forsyth and Primrose’s minds became as stuffed
+with feathers as if the minds had been so many beds and pillows for
+mortal aches and bruises. The girls, even the doctor, who did not often
+consent to lose sight of the superior enlightenment and dignity of
+his college, medical school, and learned profession, with the burden
+of responsibility involved in a promising practice, grew zealously
+engrossed and affected, as only young, eager, care-free natures could
+be usurped and excited by such a trifle.
+
+‘There is Balcairnie,’ said Mrs. Forsyth one day, when the two women
+were earnestly speculating on the places they ought to visit in their
+search. ‘We have not been to Balcairnie yet. I am told that Balcairnie,
+in addition to his peacock and a most splendid bubbly-jock, has got
+a pair of guinea-fowls. We have not a single guinea-fowl’s feather,
+and we ought to have a whole row of them. What a good thing for us,
+Primrose, that Balcairnie has set up a pair of guinea-fowls. We must go
+a-begging to Balcairnie.’
+
+‘He is my cousin’s great friend,’ said Primrose meditatively. ‘I
+remember him as a long-legged laddie running about with Jamie; but I
+had not much to do with him.’
+
+‘Of course not,’ said Mrs. Forsyth emphatically, ‘your aunt would take
+care of that. Your poor cousin had too much to do with his tenant--not
+that Balcairnie was so far beneath Drumsheugh. Balcairnie is a good
+farm, and they say its tenant has grown rich in these war times,
+though he is well liked, and has not a lowe raised among his stacks
+for keeping up famine prices, like some other farmers. But it was he
+who took about Drumsheugh to maidens and country ploys, where he fell
+in with “Lady Peggy.” Had it not been for her there would have been no
+great harm done, since young men will have their heads out and know
+for themselves what a splore means. Why, even Davie, though he was
+coming out for a doctor, which is the next thing to being a minister
+so far as douceness is wanted, went his round of first-footings, and
+feet-washings, and dergies, before he had me to take care of him,’ the
+young wife ended, with a fine show of power and sedateness. ‘But as
+they tell,’ she began again, ‘Balcairnie had gone too far himself in
+daundering and sitting among the stooks, and dancing with the barn-door
+beauty, who was as cunning as Sawtan himself in her schemes. He might
+have given her his promise--who knows?--in their trysts and convoys and
+caperings, for a wily fool never loses sight of her own interest. At
+last, he pushed the laird into the breach, and escaped by causing the
+officer to cover the soldier, instead of the soldier the officer.’
+
+‘What a shame!’ cried Primrose; and then her natural candour and
+sagacity came to her aid in disentangling the perversion of the story.
+‘If Jamie did not put Balcairnie out,’ she suggested; ‘that was more
+likely than that Drumsheugh should serve as a cat’s paw to another lad.’
+
+‘Any way, Balcairnie acted as blackfoot to the laird and played him an
+ill turn,’ maintained Mrs. Forsyth, who in the midst of her youth and
+happiness was not disposed to take a charitable view of human nature.
+Kirsty Forsyth showed herself a trifle hardened at that stage of her
+history.
+
+But so blinding is covetousness--granted the object coveted is no
+heavier than a feather--that Balcairnie’s evil deeds did not hinder
+Mrs. Forsyth from instigating her husband to invite the yeoman to
+dinner on the market-day.
+
+This invitation was with the sole purpose of the two fair traffickers
+in feathers getting round the simple farmer and inducing him to have
+every ‘pen’ which fell from the guinea-fowls carefully picked up and
+stored on the ladies’ behalf--if the greed did not prompt them to
+lead or drive their victim to the barbarous extremity of slaying the
+birds that they might then be plucked for the benefit of the tippet
+manufacturers. The still greater wantonness of torture by which birds
+have been plucked alive to serve the vanity of women had not so much as
+entered the heads of a more primitive generation.
+
+Mrs. Forsyth’s single scruple was on the score of comparative
+gentility. ‘Jock Home is only the farmer of Balcairnie,’ she said
+anxiously to her husband; and ‘though Drumsheugh has thought fit to run
+and ride the country with him, they were two young men after their own
+pursuits. I do not know, Davie, if it is right for us to have him at
+our table otherwise than as your patient, to bid him to meet Primrose
+Ramsay as though he were young Pittentullo’, or Captain Don, or any
+other gentleman of our set.’
+
+‘Hout, Kirsty,’ said the more liberal doctor, ‘you have not stuck so
+fast to your set. Balcairnie is a fine enough fellow who would pass
+muster anywhere. He is well to do; I should not wonder though he were
+to buy his farm, if Drumsheugh let it get into the market, and come out
+as a laird among the best of them some day.’
+
+So Mrs. Forsyth swallowed her misgivings and Balcairnie furnished a
+stalwart figure to the two o’clock dinner-table in the flat above the
+apothecary’s shop, which also belonged to Dr. Forsyth, and was a source
+of considerable profit to him. Such a house was thought then quite
+good enough for the best doctor in Craigie, even though he had mated
+with a sprig of the gentry. Their olfactory nerves were not supposed
+sufficiently sensitive to feel mortally offended by the occasionally
+pungent smell of those drugs which helped to butter the couple’s bread.
+
+Balcairnie and Primrose regarded each other in side glances, under
+their eyelashes, with some interest. He had heard in the inveterate
+distortion of facts which is a prominent feature in gossip, that the
+Lady had intended her niece for her son. Primrose had just been told
+that Balcairnie had contrived to shift his folly and its consequences
+to Drumsheugh’s broad shoulders, though her mother-wit had cancelled
+the error, and laid hold of the greater probability of the yeoman’s
+having been jilted for the laird.
+
+The estimate which the two formed of each other at first sight differed
+comically and unfairly.
+
+‘A shilpet sparroy of a lass like that!’ Balcairnie reflected
+disdainfully, ‘was she to stand in Bonnie Peggy’s licht? Drumsheugh
+would not have had an ee in his head or a mind of his ain, if he had
+preferred this leddy to yon kimmer.’
+
+‘Jamie’s a well-favoured, manly chield, with a good heart, though he
+may have a thick head,’ considered Primrose, not without reluctance;
+‘but I doubt his Peggy stood in her own light for all that. If I am not
+mistaken, the yeoman is worth double the laird.’ Her penetration saw at
+once, against her will, that Balcairnie was the bigger, better man of
+the two.
+
+But by the time the party had repaired to the drawing-room, and the
+ladies were exerting themselves with their interested object in helping
+to entertain Balcairnie, a remarkable reversal of his opinion took
+place, while her verdict remained unchanged.
+
+As the conversation was craftily turned to ornithology generally, he
+became deeply impressed by Primrose’s lively intelligence in expounding
+these plates in the bird-book, which so delighted him, and by her
+wonderful acquaintance with the looks and habits of those fowls of the
+air with which he himself was most familiar.
+
+‘The leddy-lass kens as muckle about craws and doos and laverocks as
+I do, though I have followed the ploo, and set girns for them, when I
+should have thocht she would have been sitting with her feet on the
+fender, or at a window fanning herself, ganting over a nouvelle and
+holding a yapping lap-dog on her knee.’
+
+Mrs. Forsyth made a dead set at him with the feather tippets. He looked
+at them, laughed with surprised pleasure, and ventured to touch them
+shyly with his great brown hand in a sort of marvelling, fearful,
+wholly large-hearted admiration. He glanced round at the tambour
+frames, the open spinnet, the books which might be nouvelles, but which
+must be so much better reading than he had imagined when they did not
+incapacitate the readers for all this ability and industry, and for
+a practical appreciation of the bird-book. It is to be doubted that
+Balcairnie applied to Primrose and Mrs. Forsyth a homely, if emphatic,
+classification and commendation, which at the same time meant a great
+deal from his mouth and that of Robbie Burns--‘clever hizzies!’ he
+said to himself. Balcairnie remembered Peggy with a rueful sense of
+contrast. Poor lass! she could not be half so useful now at Drumsheugh.
+She could not divert herself in all these charming fashions. Poor
+Drumsheugh had, indeed, thrown himself away. How could he have been so
+blind and besotted? It made au odds when a man kenned little better.
+
+Of course, Balcairnie would be right glad to be allowed to be of any
+use to the ladies. The guinea-fowls were at their service, living or
+dead, and he thought he could put them in the way of some moor-hens and
+wild ducks. If Mrs. Forsyth and her friend would not object to honour
+his bachelor-house by their presence, if they could put up with the
+poor accommodation of a farm-house, perhaps the doctor would bring them
+out to see what they could find at Balcairnie, where the cherries were
+nearly ripe and curds and cream were always to be had for the taking.
+
+The ladies were correspondingly gratified, not only with the success
+of their design, but in addition with Balcairnie’s somewhat quaint and
+naïve but altogether becoming deference and gallantry. An engagement to
+visit him was entered into on the spot.
+
+All this agreeable social intercourse had nothing whatever to do with
+old friendship and its obligations--on the contrary. Balcairnie, as
+he looked and listened, more and more enchanted by the bright face
+and womanly eloquence of Primrose Ramsay, in the revulsion of his
+feelings, was conscious of an increasing temptation to undervalue and
+decry Peggy’s charms and Drumsheugh’s taste, which the fickle man had
+been applauding to the skies hardly three hours before. Balcairnie no
+longer called Primrose ‘a shilpet sparroy.’ Where had his eyes or his
+ears been when he made that invidious comparison? She was like the lady
+wren in her dainty proportions as she flitted here and there with such
+light grace, and such deftness of hand in everything she did, whether
+she helped Mrs. Forsyth to dispense the dishes of tea, or showed Dr.
+Forsyth the impressions of seals the ladies had taken in his absence,
+or arranged the counters on the card-table. She was like his mother’s
+favourite white hen, which always looked so dainty and spotless beside
+the other hens, that discriminating people grew disgusted with their
+flaunting yellow or red necks relieved against their brown or black
+backs. She was like the white calf, which his father had held to be
+so lucky. No pet lamb could have been so canty as this orphan lassie
+showed herself. She was an orphan lassie, though she was also a lady
+who had danced at the hunt balls into which Balcairnie might not
+intrude.
+
+But when Primrose was farther called upon to lend her aid to the
+hilarity of the evening by singing for Balcairnie’s benefit, and when
+she sang her romantic ditty of ‘Huntingtower,’ Balcairnie, struck
+by the unintentional coincidence, swayed by more than one powerful
+influence, and penetrated to his melted heart, took a swift and bold
+resolution which was neither time-serving nor personal.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                           PEGGY’S FRIENDS.
+
+
+The woman who sang ‘Huntingtower’ as Primrose Ramsay sang it could
+neither be hard-hearted nor narrow-minded, Balcairnie said to himself,
+and he acted on the speech.
+
+The visit to Balcairnie was paid. The ladies behaved as graciously as
+the host was intent on rendering the visit a pleasure to his guests.
+Everything was propitious, even to a recent fortuitous moulting of
+the guinea-fowls. There was quite a heap of the clear grey and black
+and white spotted feathers, which Primrose called ‘second mourning
+feathers,’ at their fanciers’ disposal. The cherries were at their
+best, the curds and cream as rich and sweet as could be desired. Yellow
+ragwart, small pink and white convolvuluses, great purple mallows grew
+among last autumn’s russet stacks, which sheltered the farm-house
+more effectually than the fir-tree avenue sheltered the mansion of
+Drumsheugh. The garden was fragrant with red and white gilliflower,
+pink cabbage-roses and lilac lavender, and gay with orange marigolds.
+The kye were coming home from the pasture, the sheep were in the
+fauld, the pigeons were flying back to the pigeon-house as the evening
+drew on. The whole place looked so ‘couthie’ and sweet and bright, so
+home-like and cheery, that the women felt it hard it should be wasted
+on a single man and his servants. The hardship to her sex surprised
+Mrs. Forsyth into something like an aggrieved wonder that Balcairnie
+did not take a wife.
+
+The remark in its turn startled a deeper colour into Balcairnie’s ruddy
+cheeks, and provoked a laugh from Dr. Forsyth and Primrose Ramsay.
+
+At last Balcairnie found an opportunity when the party were still
+strolling about the garden, and Dr. Forsyth had called away his wife
+to examine one of the Dutch summer-houses which were then in great
+favour, and of which he proposed erecting a specimen in their garden at
+Craigie. Balcairnie and Primrose Ramsay were left sauntering along a
+broad box-edged walk, listening to a blackbird in a neighbouring lilac
+bush. Balcairnie interrupted the bird, and went to the gist of the
+matter and of his purpose at once. He had no notion of courtly fencing.
+Artful preambles were not in his way. ‘Miss Ramsay, I want to speak to
+you about your cousin’s lady up at Drumsheugh.’
+
+Primrose met his request, which was more like a demand, with a look
+of surprise and some annoyance. She was not easily offended, but she
+felt vexed that this man--her cousin’s friend, whom she had begun to
+respect as well as to like--should introduce an unpalatable subject,
+one on which they could not be expected to agree, at his own place too.
+He was less of a gentleman--one of nature’s gentlemen--than she had
+been thinking him. Then she said, with a shade of distance and dryness
+in her manner and tone, ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Home, but I am not
+acquainted with young Mrs. Ramsay, though she is my cousin’s wife.’
+
+‘That is the very reason I want to speak to you about her,’ he said,
+looking her straight in the face. ‘What for are you not acquainted with
+Drumsheugh’s wife?’ he asked bluntly. ‘You should be. Not only has she
+become your relation by marriage, you could be of the first service to
+her; you could do her all the gude in the world. And I have conceived
+such an opinion of you, madam, that I believe you would be pleased to
+confer a favour even on a stranger, and do gude to one you might never
+see again.’
+
+She stood still, perplexed and a little softened.
+
+He was forced to go on; he must speak out now or be silent for ever.
+‘Young Mrs. Ramsay is lonesome in the laird’s absence. For mair reasons
+than one she has great need of a friend. If I mistake not, you could be
+the best friend she has ever had in this world.’
+
+‘How could I?’ stammered Primrose. ‘She is your acquaintance, not mine.
+Why cannot you help her if she requires help?’
+
+He waived aside the proposal with an impatient swing of his arm. ‘A
+man body is worse than nothing to a woman in some straits. A woman
+friend--a gude woman to give gude advice from her own experience,
+is everything. If I were even to mint the trouble in a letter to
+Drumsheugh, I might only breed more mischief. I tell you what, Miss
+Ramsay, you may rue it to the day of your death, if you do not give a
+thocht to what I’m asking from you.’
+
+‘Be reasonable, Mr. Home,’ remonstrated Primrose, whom his earnestness
+infected and stirred with agitation. ‘How can I interfere? I have no
+commission from my cousin Jamie or my aunt, even supposing I could move
+in this matter. From what I have heard--forgive me, if she is a friend
+of yours--I could do no good. Young Mrs. Ramsay is taking her own
+course--a foolish, downward course, I fear--with which it would not be
+fitting that I should intermeddle.’
+
+‘Then what is the gude of your being a young leddy, so muckle cleverer
+and wiser and better-bred, with no chance of your making a mistake
+or the world’s finding faut with you?’ Balcairnie put the question
+sharply, almost sternly, and the next moment grew abashed and shocked
+at his own rudeness. ‘I beg your pardon, humbly, Miss Ramsay, I’ve no
+manners, as I need not tell you, but it makes me mad’--with a quick
+groan--‘to think of another woman, a leddy gude and kind, as I can see,
+leaving a poor sister lass to be sorned on, trodden down and driven
+desperate--never by her own wickedness and hardness of heart, but just
+because she’s as tender and gentle as any leddy in the land.’
+
+Primrose was struck by his passionate advocacy. How he must have loved
+this girl, who had forsaken him for a grander suitor, to be so deceived
+in his view of her character--if he were deceived. She had already had
+a conception of him as a larger-minded man than Jamie Ramsay, and his
+present appeal proved his largeness of heart.
+
+‘I daresay she is to be pitied, poor thing, with her man so long away,
+though he is recovering,’ she granted slowly and doubtfully, for even
+Primrose Ramsay’s prejudices were strong. ‘But has she not been very
+thoughtless, to say the least, in bringing so many of her own folk
+about her and letting them run riot--disturbing Drumsheugh and the
+neighbourhood by their pranks?’ Primrose ended more severely.
+
+‘How could she help having her own folk when they were ordained, and
+placed about her by Drumsheugh and the auld lady? When no other body
+would look near her to see whether she could say her head or her feet
+were her ain, or speak or go but as her so-called servants would let
+her!’ maintained Peggy’s champion stoutly. ‘I grant you Peggy ocht to
+have been firm,’ he admitted, forgetting in the half-bitterness of the
+admission the scrupulous ceremony with which he had been previously
+naming his laird’s lady. ‘She should have stood like a rock and defied
+all inroads on her dignity and authority as the new-made Leddy and
+mistress of Drumsheugh--as you, madam, with your birth and breeding,
+would have done, no doubt. But when, you find a poor bit leveret
+behaving like the dog that chases him, or a lintie like the hawk that’s
+striking her down, then you may reasonably--you spak’ of reason, Miss
+Ramsay--count on sic behaviour from a meek, young creature like Peggy.’
+
+‘Has she no spirit of her own?’ Primrose was goaded on to inquire.
+
+‘I do not know what you mean by spirit,’ said Balcairnie, doggedly.
+‘She had enough spirit to do her mither’s bidding, and save the laird
+from being betrayed into becoming a scoundrel who might have ruined her
+and flung her to the dogs. But as for the spirit to hold her ain and
+keep off all that would rob and murder her, where her gudes and credit
+are concerned, I trow Peggy has not muckle of that spirit to boast of.
+There is some word about the wind being tempered to the shorn lamb. I
+wuss it may blaw lown ower Peggy’s grave, for, so far as I can see, the
+best thing she could do would be to dee soon, poor lass. Then when her
+head’s lying among the mools, the fact that it was ever raised to be
+one of the heads of the house of Drumsheugh may be forgiven her, and
+the scum of her folk cannot prey on her any longer.’
+
+‘Oh! do not say that,’ cried Primrose in real distress. ‘It cannot be
+so bad as that. Think of Drumsheugh who has cared so much for her--what
+would he do?’
+
+‘I’ve thocht of Drumsheugh long enough, ower long; I’m going to think
+of Peggy now and what she’s to do. It was I who brocht her hame to
+Drumsheugh, and I swear to you, Miss Ramsay, if I had kenned what
+the innocent, loving soul was coming to, I would suner the beast had
+fallen and broken his neck--baith of our necks. For it is true I
+was Drumsheugh’s aider and abettor--his blackfoot in courting Peggy
+Hedderwick. He was my friend and Peggy’s choice; it was not for me to
+conter them.’
+
+Primrose looked in the manly, honest face, and believed every word he
+said, to the last syllable. Her dauntless spirit rose and her generous
+heart swelled. ‘There is a better resource,’ she said, with hearty
+sympathy and goodwill, relinquishing her opposition all at once, and,
+womanlike, passing in a bound to warm partisanship. ‘She shall not be
+set upon like that! How base of her kindred! But we will circumvent
+them, sir. You and I will beat them before the game is played out.
+I’m not afraid that my cousin Jamie will be seriously angered by my
+interference. I’ll venture to take him in my own hand. As for my aunt,
+she’s an upright woman, Mr. Home. She would never countenance such
+wrong-doing. She is ignorant of it. When she welcomed Bonnie Peggy
+home she meant to receive her as a daughter and behave to her as a
+mother should--I am sure of it.’
+
+It was a difficult enough task which Balcairnie had set Primrose
+Ramsay, and he could render her no assistance in the beginning. It must
+not even appear that she was acting on his prompting.
+
+Mrs. Forsyth was exceedingly aggrieved by Primrose’s proposing to pay
+a visit to Peggy, and opposed the step violently. Doctor Forsyth, who
+should have known better, shook his head at his wife’s instigation.
+Primrose’s happy first visit to the couple was in danger of having
+its harmony entirely spoilt, and the girl suspected that her friends’
+opinion was a tolerably sure sign of the light in which the world
+generally would regard her conduct. It was mean, time-serving, and
+unworthy of her to go near ‘Lady Peggy,’ and seek to get the foolish
+mistress of Drumsheugh out of the mess into which she had floundered.
+
+But Primrose was as strong and staunch in facing and overcoming
+difficulties in what she recognised to be a good cause as Peggy was
+weak and yielding. There was the courage of a lion in the small, pale,
+pleasant-mannered, merry-tongued girl.
+
+Primrose walked out alone to Drumsheugh, claimed the right of entrance
+to the drawing-room, which could not well be denied to her, and begged
+young Mrs. Ramsay to be told that her cousin, Miss Ramsay, had come to
+wait upon her.
+
+Peggy did not pause, like ‘Mistress Jean’ in the ‘Laird o’ Cockpen,’
+to ask petulantly what brought her visitor there ‘at sic a like time,’
+for it was early in the day. She was overwhelmed with consternation
+and shame while Jenny coolly informed her cousin that here was one of
+the laird’s family come to call his wife to account, to require a
+statement of her stewardship, and to pounce on all her shortcomings.
+
+‘Oh! what sall I do, Jenny? Mercy on me! what sall I do?’ besought the
+poor changeling in the foreign nest.
+
+‘Say you’re no weel--I’m sure that’s true eneuch,’ suggested the
+temptress. ‘Say you never trysted her here, and you maun bid her
+excuse you for you’re no fit to receive a visitor, you’ve gotten the
+heartburn, or the headache, or ony other convenient ailment.’
+
+Accordingly a message was brought to Primrose: ‘Young Mrs. Ramsay was
+very sorry, she was not able to see a stranger.’
+
+But Primrose was more than a match for Jenny. The young lady had quite
+as much ready wit at her command as the woman owned. It would be
+strange if the powers of light did not sometimes overcome the powers
+of darkness. Primrose presented her compliments, and she too was very
+sorry to hear that her cousin’s lady was ailing. But it did not matter
+so much--Mrs. Ramsay need not put herself about, or exert herself when
+she was not fit for the exertion. She--Miss Ramsay--had walked out from
+Craigie with the intention of staying for a few days at her cousin’s
+house of Drumsheugh. If its mistress was not well enough to come down
+to her visitor to-day, no doubt Mrs. Ramsay would be better to-morrow
+or the next day. In the meantime Miss Ramsay could entertain herself,
+and her old friend Cunnings would see that she had everything she
+wanted.
+
+‘Hech, sirs! hech, sirs! sirs the day!’ moaned Peggy, shrinking away in
+the fastness of her chamber from the most distant sight or sound of her
+deliverer.
+
+‘Send the bauld cutty about her business. Bid her leave the hoose this
+minute,’ stormed Jenny.
+
+‘Oh, I canna do that, Jenny,’ insisted the cowering Peggy.
+‘Drumsheugh’s leddy cousin--she maun bide here as long as she likes,
+till he come back, if she takes it into her head, though I wonder what
+pleasure it can be to her to force herself in and sit in judgment on a
+puir lass like me. Oh, Jamie, Jamie! will you never come back and stand
+by me?’
+
+‘It’s no your chirming will bring him back. If he had wanted to come
+he might have been here long syne,’ said Jenny scornfully. ‘Peggy, tak
+your choice--either that insolent hempie maun gang, or me.’
+
+‘Jenny, Jenny, will you leave me, when the auld leddy engaged you
+to stay with me till she came back?’ implored the girl, to whose
+transparent mind infidelity to a pledge was simply incomprehensible.
+‘How can I put Drumsheugh’s cousin to the door? It would come ill aff
+my hand; I could look neither him nor his mither in the face again if
+I were guilty of sic sauciness.’
+
+‘Then you’ve ta’en your choice, Peggy, my woman, and you maun abide by
+it,’ said Jenny, beginning instantly to gather together her ‘pickings’
+and belongings. ‘It’s muckle gratitude I’ve gotten for a’ the trouble
+I’ve wared upon you. But you’ll maybe think on me, madam, when you’re
+in the hands of your gaoler. For Drumsheugh and his mither have sent
+you a rale gaoler at last, and it’s little pity she’ll ha’e on your
+fule tricks, you heartless gipsy.’ Jenny had the wisdom to anticipate
+defeat, and beat a masterly retreat, while the wretched Peggy was
+weeping and quailing, and abjectly beseeching her tyrant to reconsider
+her resolution.
+
+However, Jenny was not sufficiently prudent to avoid altogether an
+encounter with her adversary, in which Peggy’s ’cuzin’ came off second
+best.
+
+‘Gude day to you, mem.’ Jenny flounced past Primrose who had gone
+out to stroll in the avenue. ‘I wuss you joy o’ the charge you’ve
+underta’en. I suld ken something o’t, and I tell you for your comfort
+you may as weel be a daft woman’s keeper. Peggy Ramsay is bund to gang
+daft as sure as ever lass gaed. I may tell you a bit o’ my mind since
+you’ve not stucken at treating me like a common thief.’
+
+Primrose turned round upon Jenny with a flame of outraged righteousness
+in the girl’s aspect like the flaming sword which the angel held to bar
+the way to Paradise. ‘These words are very ready on your lips, Jenny
+Hedderwick. I believe they are too ready. If young Mrs. Ramsay were to
+lose her wits, it would be you who had scared them away. Woman, you are
+worse than a common thief! You have seethed a kid in its mother’s milk.’
+
+At that terribly mysterious accusation even Jenny looked cowed for the
+moment and slunk away, muttering a denial. The first news she heard
+when she entered Craigie was that the firm to which Baldie Fuggie was
+attached had broken--become bankrupt. ‘Sae that door is steekit for the
+present,’ Jenny said to herself without equivocation. But she had her
+pickings--a profitable four months’ work, in addition to her wages to
+console her, and for such as Jenny open doors are plentiful.
+
+Cunnings was also stumbling and fumbling about, in trembling
+preparations to be gone without delay from what had been her home for
+forty years; but Primrose anticipated her. She came softly into the
+housekeeper’s room and looked shyly and sadly at the sinner. Primrose
+said no more than ‘Oh, Cunnings, Cunnings, I’m sorry, sorry,’ and the
+grey-haired delinquent groaned out her abasement: ‘Ye may weel be
+sorry, Miss Ramsay, for I’m a lost woman, and yet I’m no worth the
+sorrow o’ the like o’ you. I’m just a miserable, auld drucken drab.’
+
+‘Oh! whisht! whisht! Cunnings,’ cried the girl, hiding her face, and
+thinking how the trusted servant had been proud to teach her many a
+secret of housekeeping, and had made much of her and petted her in
+the old happy days, when Primrose came between a child and a girl to
+Drumsheugh.
+
+‘Let me gang!’ cried Cunnings desperately, ‘afore the auld mistress
+claps her een on me again. She’ll walk in neist and speer what I’ve
+dune wi’ the hoose and the keys when they fell into my keeping. I’ve
+betrayed them baith, Miss Ramsay, and what’s waur I’ve sided wi’ that
+limb o’ Sawtan Jenny in betrayin’ the puir simple bairn up the stair.
+Mind ye she was betrayed. She would never o’ hersel’ had ony troke
+wi’ sic doings as we were fain to carry on to cloak our ill deeds.
+I’ve selled my sowl for drink, and I’ve betrayed the young mistress
+(Maister Jamie’s wife). Let me gang, Miss Ramsay, if you’ve a thocht o’
+sorrow for a wicket wretch like me.’
+
+‘No, Cunnings, you shall not go,’ said Primrose brave and steadfast,
+like a pitying guardian angel this time. ‘You’ll stay and help me
+to undo all the wrong, and then your own fall may be forgiven and
+forgotten. You’ll trust to me and I’ll protect you from your fell
+weakness. I’ll speak to my aunt and cousin when they come back. I’ll
+tell them that you wanted to go. I’ll bear the blame of keeping you
+here. You were a faithful servant once; you’ll be faithful again,
+please God. It is never too late to repent and win back respect and
+confidence. Cunnings, you do not need a girl like me to tell you that.’
+
+Cunnings hung her head more and more, and wept the few scalding tears
+of age; but she stopped her packing and submitted to Primrose Ramsay’s
+guidance when at the words of sympathy and encouragement, remorse was
+converted into repentance.
+
+Primrose had frequently and anxiously conned over the part she should
+play in her first meeting with Peggy. Miss Ramsay would approach the
+young mistress of Drumsheugh with studied deference and all the formal
+homage which was now Peggy’s due.
+
+But when Peggy, compelled to stand at bay for the second time in her
+life, after a hasty, ineffectual effort to arrange her dress properly
+and remove the traces of tears from her face, crept like a guilty
+culprit or a forlorn ghost into the room, Primrose forgot all her
+preconceived theories and studies and thought only of the fair young
+creature thus blighted in what should have been her pride of bloom.
+Instead of advancing in a stately fashion, curtseying and waiting for
+Peggy to offer her hand, Primrose went swiftly to the wife, clasped
+her in the girl’s kind arms and kissed the cold cheek, which began to
+blush warmly with amazement, doubting relief and trembling pleasure.
+‘My cousin Peggy,’ said Primrose, in her clear, sweet voice, ‘I’m glad
+to know you. Will you forgive my intrusion? I’ve often heard of you and
+so must you have heard of me; and now we must make the hearing knowing,
+and become good friends as well as kinswomen, if you will let me stay
+as long as you can spare room for me at Drumsheugh.’
+
+‘Stay as long as you like,’ stammered Peggy. ‘There’s no want of room.
+Ony o’ Drumsheugh’s frien’s maun aye be welcome here. Oh! surely you
+ken that, though I canna say what I should,’ beginning to twist her
+fingers.
+
+‘I ken,’ said Primrose gently, ‘and you say all you should. You’re very
+good to me, cousin Peggy--you’ll let me call you that in stead of Mrs.
+Ramsay, which I’ve been accustomed to say to my aunt, and you’ll call
+me cousin Primrose. You are very good to permit me to stay here when
+I’ve taken you by surprise.’
+
+‘_Me_ good! Permit _you_, Miss Ramsay! Oh! you’re laughing at me in
+your condescension,’ cried Peggy, aghast.
+
+‘No, I’m not laughing, and there is no condescension. I’ll never laugh
+at you,’ answered Primrose a little gravely; and then she went on
+cheerfully, ‘When we come to know each other better, I’m sure we’ll
+be good friends, and you’ll not suspect me of laughing at you in that
+sense again.’
+
+Peggy stood rebuked without being chidden, and somehow her crushed
+spirit rose a little under the rebuke. She began to look Primrose in
+the face with timid satisfaction, and to proceed to ask her to sit
+down and try to make her comfortable, as Peggy had been wont, in the
+few happy moments after her marriage, to busy herself modestly with
+Drumsheugh and Mrs. Ramsay.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+      THE LESSONS THAT PRIMROSE GAVE WHILE BALCAIRNIE LOOKED ON.
+
+
+Even Primrose, who was of a hopeful disposition, with some well-placed
+confidence in her social powers, had wondered what she could get to
+say to Peggy in the intercourse which must follow, and Peggy had been
+in mortal terror at the appalling necessity of making conversation
+for Miss Ramsay. But after the first ten minutes the talk became
+wonderfully easy between these two honest, single-hearted, gentle
+souls, though they were on different levels of intelligence and
+education. Peggy was entranced by what Primrose could tell of her
+early visits to Drumsheugh--including innumerable anecdotes of
+the young laird. Why, Primrose was the first intimate friend and
+equal--like a sister of Drumsheugh’s--whom Peggy had ever known, who
+could and would give the loving girl--pining for talk of Drumsheugh in
+his absence--welcome, though not very recent information concerning
+him. Primrose, in her turn, enjoyed drawing forth Peggy’s tales of
+her school days, when she had been the little class-fellow of both
+Drumsheugh and Balcairnie.
+
+Gradually and almost inadvertently Peggy passed in her talk from
+her school to her home and her mother. When she would have stopped,
+abashed, recollecting with tingling cheeks and a pang at her heart that
+her husband and his mother had not cared for her recalling these tender
+associations, she found, to her deep, ineffaceable gratitude, that it
+was otherwise with Primrose Ramsay. ‘Tell me about your mother, Peggy;
+I like to hear about mothers--I think all the more because I have not
+been so favoured as you. I never knew my mother; she died when I was
+a child in arms. But your talk helps me to judge what my mother would
+have been like--is like. For our mothers are both alive, and we’ll see
+them yet in Heaven,’
+
+Primrose introduced a new _régime_ at Drumsheugh--a reign of order and
+diligence, peace and prosperity. And in place of its being opposed by
+Peggy or proving distasteful to her, it was hailed and clung to by her
+with breathless, well-nigh pathetic eagerness. She was so desirous,
+when the least prospect of attainment was held out to her, of being a
+good wife, a mistress of Drumsheugh of whom its old owners need not be
+altogether ashamed.
+
+One of Primrose’s first questions had been whether or not Johnny Fuggie
+should be sent away after Jenny. If necessary, Primrose would assume
+the responsibility of the dismissal, and save Peggy from every grain
+of the pain of it. But after consultation with Balcairnie, and on
+examination for herself, when the righteous young reformer found that
+the man had only been a tool in Jenny’s hands, like poor Cunnings, that
+he had got a wholesome warning, and was capable of being induced to
+behave with fitting respect and keep at a discreet distance from his
+mistress--especially when it was taken into account that he had a wife
+and family whom it would go to Peggy’s heart to punish through their
+bread-winner--Primrose agreed that Johnnie should remain on trial, so
+to speak. The trial, as in the case of Cunnings, ended well. Johnnie,
+in spite of his temporary aberration, his long tongue, and his foolish
+conceit, behaved thenceforth very tolerably under difficulties. If
+Peggy and he occasionally lapsed into too rash, free-and-easy gossip
+when she happened to be alone with him in the garden, it was probably
+as much her fault as his, and it might serve for a safety-valve in the
+tension of their relations. Though poor Peggy would flutter off like
+a lapwing when surprised in the indulgence, no serious harm followed,
+and Drumsheugh was the last man in the world to come down heavily on so
+natural and venial an offence.
+
+Peggy, as a rule, showed herself very docile and a very quick pupil.
+She only displayed a little restiveness now and then, when the lessons
+trenched too closely on much-prized associations.
+
+Primrose said one day, ‘You have very bonnie hair, Peggy, but I think
+I could let you see how to dress it better, so that your friends might
+more easily guess how long, and fine, and glossy it is.’
+
+‘This was the way Drumsheugh liked my hair busket lang syne,’ answered
+Peggy, a little jealously; ‘and if I were to alter it, then it would
+be to put on a mutch. My mother put on a mutch when she was married;
+she held that all married women should wear mutches,’ Peggy explained,
+evidently a little troubled that she had not complied with her mother’s
+standard.
+
+‘But maybe Drumsheugh will like your hair busket in another fashion
+now,’ said Primrose persuasively. ‘His fancy may be as taken with the
+new as with the old way. His fondness does not rest with the past,
+it is to last all your lives, and it will always be finding out new
+beauties in his wife and her fashions. The glory of wedded love is
+its growth in fidelity and its fidelity in growth. It is, or should
+be, like God’s love--new every morning, and so it never gets stawed
+(satiated), or tires, or shifts. As for the mutch, you can always wear
+it of a morning in our rank, and you may come on to something like it
+of an evening, if my cousin Jamie bring you, as I should not wonder
+though he will, a fine lace ‘head’ of Mechlin or Valenciennes.’
+
+After that conversation, under the blissful prognostication of her
+laird’s finding new beauties in her every day, Peggy consented to
+learn to put up her hair like Primrose’s, in a modified version of
+some becoming mode of the time, and thus came considerably nearer in
+appearance to the conventional lady of her generation. So with her
+clothes: Primrose taught Peggy how to choose them, and how to wear them.
+
+Strange as it may sound, it was not otherwise with her mind; for Peggy
+had received the good, solid, parish education of a Scotch child a
+hundred years ago. Her constant study of the Bible had trained her
+intellect, so far as it went, as well as her heart. Her familiarity
+with the Hebrew prophets and poets, with old Scotch ballads, and
+with the exquisite songs which Burns was then causing to flood the
+whole country, from castle to cottage, had cultivated her imagination
+and taste. Peggy entered with positive zest into the new world of
+literature, didactic and fanciful, to which Primrose introduced her. To
+the teacher’s joyful surprise, and a little to her bewilderment, Peggy
+was far more impressed and enthralled by a book than Kirsty Forsyth had
+ever been. Peggy listened with the most respectful attention to the
+advice of Hannah More and Dr. Gregory. She hung on Richardson’s and
+Fanny Burney’s stories. She was wrapped up in the fortunes of Harriet
+Byron, Clementina and Evelina, though their spheres were so different,
+and the ‘_ma foi_’ of Evelina’s aunt, with the cockney follies of her
+cousins might have been Greek or Latin, or the practices of Timbuctoo
+to Peggy. Still she had perfect, comprehensive sympathy for each
+heroine. Primrose’s entire heart was won by Peggy’s unexpected openness
+to Primrose’s beloved books.
+
+Another gift of Peggy’s was susceptible of training. Under Primrose’s
+judicious direction Peggy’s singing became greatly improved, and
+brought on a par with that of the chief young lady vocalists round
+Craigie. Peggy’s broad Doric did not interfere in the least with this
+accomplishment, for she sang Scotch songs, and her mother tongue only
+enabled her to give them with truer effect.
+
+Dancing was an additional available attainment of the age--so highly
+coveted that the acquirement was often prosecuted under what might
+have appeared insurmountable obstacles. The poor notable wives of
+impecunious lairds dispensed with expensive dancing-masters, and
+taught their children to dance the intricate country-dances of the day
+by means of chairs set up in rows.[6] Lord Campbell, after he was
+a distinguished, hard-working lawyer, went under an assumed name to
+an evening dancing-school. Dr. Norman Macleod’s aunts were supposed
+to have acquired dancing from an enterprising little governess,
+heavily weighted with a wooden leg. Primrose was bent on refining and
+perfecting Peggy’s dancing. She would make feints of practising her own
+steps and of longing for a country-dance till she coaxed Peggy to stand
+up with her at the head of a double row of chairs.
+
+Balcairnie, who could go oftener to Drumsheugh now that Miss Ramsay
+was there, caught the two girls in the middle of such a performance.
+Primrose with long-winded assiduity was singing the tune of ‘The
+White Cockade,’ in addition to taking her part in the dance. Peggy
+was slightly holding out her gown as she was bidden, and sliding
+bashfully, yet not without a certain natural grace, down the room at
+the backs of the chairs. No gazer could have been more imbued with
+keen pleasure and humble admiration, but, like Actæon, he had to
+pay a penalty for his rash gazing. He was compelled by the autocrat
+Primrose to join in dancing a ‘three-some reel,’ performed to his
+whistling instead of her singing, while the last rays of the setting
+sun were yet gilding the pear-tree round the western window of the
+Drumsheugh drawing-room. When he was brought to the point he did his
+duty gallantly, not withholding a single spring, shuffle or ‘hough!’
+which was Primrose’s due, but capering his best, with the serious face
+which most English and Scotchmen put on to qualify their gambols. It
+might be some consolation for the effort of the exhibition to hear a
+judge and mistress of the art like Primrose say graciously after the
+deed was done, ‘Well danced, sir. I have often heard that there were
+no reels to be seen far or near like those danced by you and Drumsheugh
+and my cousin Peggy here, and now, though I am a poor substitute for
+the laird, I know what the folk said was true.’
+
+Peggy’s hands were far more unmanageable than her head or her heels.
+She had been brought up too entirely in the country, and Luckie
+Hedderwick had been too poor for the child to have derived any
+advantage from such a ‘sewing school’ as Craigie possessed, under
+the patronage of some of the Ladies Bountiful in the neighbourhood.
+It need hardly be said in addition that Peggy had not the smallest
+acquaintance with the mysteries of high cooking, preserve and pastry
+making, and the brewing of home-made wine. Peggy could spin and knit
+well, and do a little coarse sewing and darning rather indifferently.
+She could scour a floor or a table, make porridge and kail, boil
+potatoes and bake cakes, but she could do little else in the light of
+domestic attainments. Unfortunately, with the exception of the spinning
+and knitting, even Peggy’s few acquirements were out of count. The
+field for them was gone. Primrose set herself with affectionate zeal
+to supply the blank, but long before Peggy had toiled half through her
+first sampler, Miss Ramsay was forced to own to herself that here was
+labour thrown away, as much as if she had sought to train Peggy to play
+on the spinnet late in the day. There are some respects in which lost
+opportunities--however innocently and inevitably lost--can never be
+recalled. Peggy’s fingers had grown stiff, and her eyes dull to nice
+distinctions of pattern and colour. She must be left to her spinning
+which, fortunately, was not yet banished from drawing-rooms; and she
+must be permitted to hem towels and dusters in the same dignified
+quarter. For the child-wife Dora could not have felt prouder to be
+of use than was the rustic ‘Lady Peggy.’ Indeed, Peggy went further
+than Dora, since the little English girl could feel content to be
+played with--whether by David Copperfield or Gyp, while it made the
+deeper-souled Scotch girl, who had once actually been the bread-winner
+of a household, feel humbled and miserable to realise herself of no
+real moment, an idle ornament--if she could be called an ornament--and
+not one of the stays of her house.
+
+At last Peggy’s wifely ambition was fired to gigantic struggles by
+two grand and glorious achievements which were dangled before her
+eyes. If she would give her whole attention and try and try again, she
+might--who knows?--so improve in white seam and cookery as to be fit
+before she died, or her sight and memory failed, to make a frilled
+shirt for Drumsheugh, and bake a pie which he could eat.
+
+How hard Peggy strove at her tasks, with such splendid rewards before
+her, during the long summer days! So immeasurable was her enthusiasm
+that against tremendous odds she attained her object, even before
+Drumsheugh’s return. She made the shirt, every bit with her own slow
+hands:
+
+    Seam, gusset, and band;
+    Band, gusset, and seam;
+
+sewing on the buttons in an intensely happy dream. She baked a
+preparatory pie, pondering as anxiously over its ingredients as the
+eastern princess debated over her crucial cream tart with the pepper
+seasoning, and more impartial authorities than Primrose and Cunnings
+would have pronounced the feats highly creditable to their author.
+
+With innocent pride and exultation Peggy displayed the trophies of her
+prowess to Balcairnie. She showed the sark of Hollands fine, solemnly
+assuring him that she had put in every ‘steek’ herself, and gleefully
+boasting that she had a web of the same cloth bleaching on the green,
+and by the next summer she would have made a dozen of shirts to keep
+the laird well provided. She conducted her friend the yeoman into the
+larder, and invited him to break off a lump of the pie-crust and ‘pree’
+it for himself.
+
+Having examined these two credentials of capable womanhood, which
+used to be demanded from every young girl before she passed into a
+young lady, that were often crowned by gratified parents with such
+substantial gifts as silk gowns or gold watches, he said with profound
+conviction, and the utmost approval: ‘Ay, Mrs. Ramsay, you’re a
+finished leddy now, and you may thank Miss Ramsay for it.’ He made a
+little obeisance to Primrose in his turn, and looked as if he felt
+certain that Peggy’s prosperous future was thenceforth secured.
+
+Primrose had grown very proud as well as fond of her pupil, after the
+visitor had by earnest representations induced the old relative with
+whom she usually dwelt, to grant her further leave of absence and
+suffer her stay at Drumsheugh to extend to many weeks.
+
+It happened to be Primrose’s first long visit from home after she was
+quite grown up. Therefore it formed an era in the girl’s life which
+might never be repeated. This was not foreboding an early death for
+Primrose, but she was no longer a school girl, and before travelling
+had been made easy, when it was still both hazardous to the person and
+a drain on the purse, friendly visits were not frequent though they
+might be long. Primrose and Peggy had laughed together over that famous
+marriage visit paid by the ‘heartsome lass,’ Miss Suff Johnstone, to
+the young matron the Countess of Balcarres, which lasted over a period
+of thirteen years. ‘I should like to give her safe out of my own
+hands, improved as she is, the dear lamb, into the hands of my cousin
+Jamie and my aunt,’ Primrose proposed to herself. ‘I wonder what they
+will think of her; if they will thank me. But I have done little; I had
+such good ground to work upon.’
+
+The Ramsays, mother and son, had heard of Primrose’s presence at
+Drumsheugh, and were thoroughly acquiescent and complacent, though not
+in equal degrees. The laird was simply well pleased that Peggy should
+have good company, be acknowledged by his kin, and become acquainted
+with one of the best of them. It was left for his mother to cry out:
+‘Primrose Ramsay at Drumsheugh! That beats all! Now all will go well
+with my son’s wife.’
+
+To do the old lady justice, she had been accustoming herself more and
+more to think and speak of Peggy as ‘my son’s wife’; while she did
+so, she took the girl nearer to her heart, and made Peggy’s joys and
+sorrows more her own. ‘I would have given ten years of my dowager’s
+jointure to have said before to Primrose, “Come and help us,” but I had
+not the face. Primrose Ramsay is a fine as well as a clever creature.’
+Mrs. Ramsay reflected further: ‘Who but she would have looked over all
+former shortcomings and been the first to hold out her hand to Peggy? I
+see now what a wife Primrose would have made to Jamie, but it was not
+to be.’
+
+No doubt the fatalistic sentence had been to a considerable extent
+worked out by the speaker. For it had been on the cards that Jamie
+Ramsay might have been won from Peggy in the earlier stages of their
+acquaintance, and his allegiance transferred to Primrose, if that most
+winning young woman--at once strong and sweet--had continued thrown in
+his way as a visitor at Drumsheugh.
+
+Still, Mrs. Ramsay, though rather an exceptionally truthful woman,
+consoled herself by repeating, with a shake of the head, ‘It was not to
+be,’ slurring over all the details in the failure of such a marriage,
+and adding briskly, ‘But the next best thing is for Primrose to have
+taken Mrs. Jamie in hand.’
+
+So long as Drumsheugh and his mother used the privilege of rare
+travellers in pro-longing their travels, Miss Ramsay had to content
+herself with showing off Peggy in the first blush of her rapid
+improvement to Balcairnie. Generous man though he was, he sometimes
+sighed in the middle of his unaffected satisfaction--not so much for
+Peggy as for that charmed region into which she was fast passing, and
+which he might never enter. No fairy princess or gifted woman, however
+good, would quit her rank to train his clumsy hands and feet and
+tongue, to refine his plain manners and rude tastes.
+
+But other company besides Balcairnie now came freely to Drumsheugh.
+Primrose’s presence there made the greatest difference in this
+respect to Peggy. If the laird’s cousin--a sensible, well-conducted,
+well-educated, young lady like Miss Ramsay, went and stayed with his
+wife, the scandals against her must have been grossly exaggerated. She
+must have been more sinned against than sinning: Miss Ramsay had taken
+care to remedy all that was wrong, and if she supported ‘Lady Peggy’
+thus cordially, Drumsheugh’s neighbours could do no less than back her
+a little, for the sake of the laird and his mother.
+
+When people did notice young Mrs. Ramsay, everybody was struck by the
+change in her, and the immense advance she had made. She was becoming
+quite presentable, and like the rest of the world. Poor young thing!
+after all she had always been modest and harmless, though she had been
+a cotter’s daughter and a field worker not two years ago. Her elevation
+had been the fault of Drumsheugh and Balcairnie, as Drumsheugh’s own
+mother had said.
+
+Mrs. Forsyth herself made her appearance at Drumsheugh, acknowledging
+by her presence there some glimmering suspicion that a fresh mild
+sun might be about to rise on the social horizon. ‘You have worked
+wonders,’ she said to her old friend. ‘I believe I could bid young Mrs.
+Ramsay to my house to tea now, without fear of how she might behave and
+what folk would say. Still, it was a great risk, and I cannot acquit
+you of much imprudence in exposing yourself to it.’
+
+‘I am not so foolish as to ask your acquittal, Kirsty,’ said Primrose,
+‘and we are not out of the wood yet. Take care that you do not run into
+danger yourself. My cousin Peggy might help herself and drain your
+tea-pot.’ Primrose was provoked into a hit at the private parsimony
+which was already the weak point of Kirsty Forsyth’s housekeeping ‘Do
+you know what Mrs. Jamie said to me when we were speaking the other
+night of the dancing-school ball at Craigie, and I was remarking that
+if Drumsheugh had been at home we might all have graced it? “I might
+have tried a reel or even a country dance,” she ventured to promise,
+“but a high dance I would not have attempted.” Yet, if it had not been
+going out of fashion, so that she might have danced it at the wrong
+time and place, seeing that she does not know all the outs and ins of
+society, poor dearie, I would have engaged to instruct her to walk
+through a _minuet de la cour_ ravishingly.’
+
+‘Primrose, you are out of your mind or fey,’ said Mrs. Forsyth angrily,
+for to dance a _minuet de la cour_ ravishingly had been till quite
+lately the height of polite accomplishments.
+
+Primrose was not always in a merry mood. Like most fine characters,
+hers had a pensive side, which it remained for Peggy to find out. ‘Why
+do you take so much trouble with me, cousin Primrose?’ inquired the
+young wife in one of her paroxysms of gratitude.
+
+‘Because I like you so well, my lassie,’ answered Primrose promptly.
+‘I’m real fond of you--as fond as though you had been the sister I
+never possessed, and that is saying something. I would have liked a
+brother--a big, blustering, fleeching chield of a brother--to order me
+about and make a stir in the house. But oh! Peggy, I would fain have
+had a sister. I would have had a great work either with an elder or a
+younger sister.’
+
+‘But when you first kenned me?’ urged Peggy.
+
+‘Well, you see, I could not let you be wronged, as Balcairnie told me
+you were wronged, and my cousin Jamie is the nearest man-body I have.
+Some day he or his son, if you bring him an heir, will walk at the
+head of my coffin as chief mourner at my funeral.’
+
+‘Na, na,’ interposed Peggy; ‘you’ll marry yoursel’--you’re bound to;
+and a man and bairns of your ain will lament you sair. But death and
+auld age are far awa’.’
+
+‘I dinna ken,’ said Primrose softly; ‘we do not all live to grow old,
+Peggy; my mother and father both died young. As for marrying,’ speaking
+a little more lightly, ‘we do not all marry either. I’m not bonnie,
+like you, and I’ve no tocher.’
+
+‘What a tocher you would be to any lucky lad who had the gude fortune
+to win you!’ cried Peggy ecstatically.
+
+‘But he cannot ken that ere he set his heart on me,’ said Primrose
+naïvely. Then she went on to tell Peggy that the income of the elderly
+relative with whom Primrose stayed died with the annuitant. Primrose
+might be a very poor gentlewoman indeed, in a generation when there
+were few channels by which a gentlewoman could earn independence.
+She was often forced to think how anxiously she would have to pinch
+and scrape to secure a living in her old age, when she was ‘a single
+leddy,’ without even the small privilege of ‘a lass with a lantern,’
+for her evening escort to the houses of better provided friends.
+
+While Peggy vowed in her heart that Primrose should never know such
+straits, since the best seat, the best room, and the most precious
+thing which Drumsheugh held must be at her command, young Mrs. Ramsay
+was made to understand that the sense of her loneliness, her lack
+of family ties, and her uncertain future often pressed heavily on
+Primrose. Yet this was the girl Peggy had always envied, because
+Primrose was so clever and helpful and blithe that she never entered
+a household without becoming quickly like sunshine there. It taught
+Peggy another, and that one of the most valuable, lessons she learned
+from her friend--the mingled warp and woof of which the web of human
+life is composed, the hard knots beneath the smooth surface.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] As an example of the rigid self-restraint, no less than the
+indefatigable self-devotion of one of these ladies, it is recorded that
+when a son was about to sail for India--a terrible exile then--and came
+in to say farewell, when he found her playing on her piano, she merely
+looked over her shoulder, nodded a ‘good-bye, my dear,’ and immediately
+turning resumed her tune, and played on till his last footstep had
+sounded in the avenue.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+          ‘A’ WILL BE RICHT AGAIN WHEN JAMIE HE’S COME BACK.’
+
+
+At last, when the late harvest of those days was nearly over, when
+Balcairnie was ‘grieving,’ or ‘leading,’ or ‘forking’ in the fields and
+in the stack-yards both of Balcairnie and Drumsheugh, before the first
+hoar frost had melted in the early rays of the morning sun, till it was
+lying again thick and white all around, like the manna of the children
+of Israel, in the moon-light; when the mellow russet and yellow apples
+had long replaced the delicate pink-and-white apple blossom, and there
+were no lingering flowers in the gardens save sun-flowers, marigolds,
+and daisies, Drumsheugh and his mother were to come home--not ‘late,
+late in the gloamin,’ like Kilmeny, but at a more rational hour of
+the afternoon. It would permit a four o’clock tea, or ‘fower hours,’
+something perfectly distinct from a modern kettledrum. At the ‘fower
+hours’ Peggy’s famous pie was to serve as the _pièce de résistance_,
+well balanced by ale and glenlivat. Her maiden efforts in preserves,
+elderflower and elderberry, currant, and ginger wines were to keep
+company with the butter-bannocks and cakes and honey, the loaf-bread,
+the short-bread and the diet-loaf which suited the old lady’s green
+tea. The provision was not too ample for the large execution sanguinely
+expected from the ravenous appetites of the travellers. Balcairnie,
+too, had donned his best coat in honour of the occasion, hurrying
+from the harvest-field at the first word of warning that a yellow
+post-chaise was seen on the road to Drumsheugh.
+
+It had not been altogether the laird’s careless procrastination, or any
+reluctance to return home from a growing fear of what he was to find
+there, which had delayed the mother and son so long. There had been
+chases by privateers, contrary winds, an illness of Mrs. Ramsay’s, an
+accident to the London coach, uncontrollable impediments turning up in
+succession and baffling the travellers.
+
+But at last Peggy wore, under happy auspices, one of the new gowns
+which had been ordered from Baldie Fuggie. It had been carefully cut
+out, made up, and toned down under Primrose’s superintendence; next it
+had been brightened up by dexterous touches here and there, of lawn
+neckerchief and apron, and bonnie breast-knot. It was a very fair and
+gentle-looking young lady, whose trim feet in their rosetted shoes,
+under the dainty skirt well tucked through the pocket-hole, tripped
+so lightly--though the speed was tremulous, from her post by the
+decapitated stone pillars at the head of the fir avenue, into the
+middle of the rough road--along which she had jogged with Balcairnie on
+the wintry night of her dismal home-coming--to take that first place at
+the chaise door to which she was entitled.
+
+Old Mrs. Ramsay’s head, well protected with wraps, though it still
+wanted a month to Martinmas, was poked out of the window on her side in
+anticipation of her arrival. ‘Eh! can that be you, Peggy, my love?’ she
+cried with glad surprise. ‘You’re looking so well I would hardly have
+known you.’
+
+But when Drumsheugh leapt from the chaise and took his wife in his
+arms, he said the very reverse, though he had not even heard his
+mother’s comment, and had no thought of contradicting her. ‘I’m glad to
+find my Peggy the same,’ he said fervently, ‘the very same as when I
+left her. I’m far gladder of that than to be at hame again, though that
+is good, too. I have not seen any leddy like you, Peggy, my doo, since
+I quitted Drumsheugh.’
+
+Peggy looked uplifted to the sky as at the very words she would have
+liked best to hear.
+
+‘The ungrateful man!’ said Primrose Ramsay to Balcairnie, when the two
+were comparing notes together in the recess of one of the drawing-room
+windows before he left. ‘The ungrateful woman!’ after all I have done
+to make her liker him and her place henceforth.’
+
+He was not sure whether she was most in jest or earnest, and there
+was a strain of wistfulness in his reply. ‘But did you not see how
+his speech pleased her, Miss Ramsay? She would rather have been told
+she was the same to him than that she had grown like the queen on
+the throne; yet she would not have been the same to him if she had
+not changed with the weeks and months, thanks to you. Do you hear
+me, madam, or do you suppose I’m contradicting myself? He has been
+learning, almost without his knowledge, to see her with other een all
+the time he has been away, and if she had come upon him, just as she
+used to be, he would have been startled and flegged. It is these other
+een which the improvement in her fits so well, that he was as proud and
+happy as a king to see at a glance she was as bonnie and dear to him as
+ever. Except for you, Miss Ramsay, this gude end would never have come
+to pass.’
+
+‘I’m afraid you’re a flatterer, Balcairnie,’ said Primrose demurely.
+
+‘Na, na,’ he said hastily, with some trouble and agitation laying hold
+of him, in consequence of her accusation, ‘I have no saft words. I’m
+but a yeoman-farmer. Nobody’s likely to ettle to rub me down--or up,’
+he finished, a little sorely.
+
+‘Don’t let them, if there is anybody so conceited and impertinent as
+to try,’ she said quickly, with a curious tone of half-smothered
+indignation against him rather than against herself, mingling with her
+half fun; ‘there is no call for it. You are best as you are; you could
+not be better. But why do you let me speak like that? Why do you need
+to be told such a plain truth?’
+
+A rush of colour flew into his face, a glow into his eyes; still he
+paused doubtfully, as at news too good to be believed. ‘Forgive me for
+being a gowk,’ he said humbly, ‘but do you really mean I could not be
+better to you, Miss Ramsay?’
+
+She bit her lips, frowned, laughed, and nodded, while she grew as red
+as fire herself. ‘Why do you make me say and do such things?’ she
+repeated, with an impatient tap of her foot.
+
+‘Well,’ he said eagerly, ‘I’ve gear enough, and if I were to buy a
+place like this, and be a laird like Drumsheugh, you and me would never
+be equal in anything worth counting--never. Nobody kens that better
+than myself; but there would be less outward odds, less descent in the
+sight of the world for you.’
+
+‘Please yourself. I daresay it is very natural for a man to wish to
+have land of his own,’ she said, with the indulgent sympathy which was
+one of her chief charms. ‘Most natural for a man like you who would
+know and love every inch of his land, and spend his life in causing it
+to wave with corn. But if you please, I have my pride too, and I think
+I would rather stoop a little in outward show, if the world likes to
+call it stooping, than that you should be in a hurry to rax up (stretch
+violently) an idle fancy, to me. I would like fine to try what it is
+to be the gudewife of Balcairnie. I’ve a notion it would be a pleasant
+place to fill, to stand in your mither’s shoes, and be to you what she
+was to her gude man.’
+
+In after years, when Primrose had long been the much-loved,
+much-honoured wife of Jock Home, and their love had room and to spare
+for merry jesting, he was wont to assure their daughters that he would
+never have presumed to approach their mother as a suitor if she had not
+given him the first word of encouragement.
+
+On the whole, Balcairnie and Primrose’s _mésalliance_--small by
+comparison, though, to be sure, it was a direct result of the first
+flagrant transgression of social laws, met with large tolerance. There
+were even persons, only slightly acquainted with the future bride,
+certainly, who maintained she had done very well for herself--‘a
+penniless lass with a long pedigree,’ white-faced, and small to boot,
+who had won so braw a bridegroom and so comfortable a down-sitting as
+Balcairnie. She had cut her own cloth when she was pretending to be
+looking after the interests of others. Even the old Lady of Drumsheugh
+grieved over the marriage principally because she was conscious that
+here too she had been to blame for the misadventure. And Primrose was
+so fine and generous a creature she deserved the very best match in the
+country, which, when it came to that, Primrose argued with spirit she
+had got.
+
+As for Primrose’s proper guardian, she would not have thought the
+Prince of Wales or the Duke of York good enough for her darling, so
+that it did not matter so much that Mrs. Purvis should resent the
+child’s infatuation, and experience a large amount of chagrin, which
+had to be tenderly borne with and persuaded away before the wedding
+could take place.
+
+Mrs. Forsyth, though she had set the example, did not clearly perceive
+the parallel, and was by no means without several strong private
+objections. Balcairnie might have plenty of money and old wheat stacks,
+but he was not in a learned profession like Dr. Forsyth, and it would
+be a terrible upheaval of the very foundations of gentility if unequal
+marriages were to become common, the rule instead of the exception.
+
+But there was great and unmixed joy in the hearts of Drumsheugh and
+Peggy over the delightful fortuitousness of the attachment. Drumsheugh
+almost shook the bridegroom elect’s hand off, and loudly claimed the
+right to be ‘blackfoot’ in turn to his friend. Peggy hugged Primrose as
+if they had been very sisters, and cried that now she was not to lose
+her, she, Peggy, had little more to desire; she was near the summit
+of human bliss. In the end even the few hostile voices were silenced,
+for Balcairnie, in the course of a year or two, fulfilled his purpose
+of buying a fair estate, was welcomed among the lairds, and held up
+his head modestly among them. Then the old Lady of Drumsheugh and Mrs.
+Forsyth took him fully to their hearts.
+
+
+
+
+                             JEAN KINLOCH.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                             JEAN SCORNED.
+
+
+‘Ower the muir among the heather,’ Jean Kinloch walked straight and
+fast on a sunny sabbath morning in autumn. She was only nineteen years
+of age but already she was tall and broad-shouldered, with the perfect
+proportions and perfect development of health and strength. She was
+nearer to a beautiful woman than to a bonnie lassie. She had the
+dark-haired, black-browed, grey-eyed face, with the clear-cut features
+and clear complexion which one is accustomed to associate with the
+highest type of Norman beauty. But Jean’s white square teeth, and round
+somewhat massive chin, were departures from the type as it is usually
+to be met with. And if she had the dignity and earnestness which on
+occasions break into sunshine--incomparably sweeter, more pathetic,
+even more radiant, relieved against the almost sombre background, than
+an all-pervading, soulless light-heartedness can be--it was not Norman
+dignity and earnestness. It was the self-respect and sedateness of the
+Scotch peasant woman, on whom a Hebrew stamp has been deeply impressed,
+who is enamoured of duty as other women are enamoured of pleasure, to
+whom the sternest doctrines of Calvinism are invested with an awful
+beauty. These are the Lord’s decrees, and though He should slay her,
+yet will she trust in Him.
+
+Jean’s dress had lost the picturesqueness which would have
+distinguished her grand-mother’s, but it was good of its kind--if
+somewhat severe in the tone and cut, and only remarkable as worn by
+Jean Kinloch. But Jean carried a bible which was no modern, cheaply
+printed, cheaply bound Bible Society’s volume: it was a valuable
+hereditary possession in a couple of small volumes bound in fine and
+lasting russian leather with flaps fastened by burnished silver clasps,
+while there was dim gold on the edges of the yellow leaves with their
+clear delicate print. A bible not unlike it is to be seen among the
+relics of Burns. It was given by the peasant farmer’s son to his
+Highland Mary--the girl whom he was to immortalise by two out of the
+most exquisite love-laments in any language--in that autumn when she
+came down and ‘shore’ the harvest with him among the
+
+    ‘banks and braes and streams around
+          The Castle o’ Montgomery.’
+
+But Jean Kinloch’s bible was not a love-gift, on which, as it was held
+in the man’s left hand over a running stream, the woman and her lover
+clasped hands, and swore in the sight of their God to be faithful to
+death. Such bibles with the broken sixpences of a more worldly form of
+troth-plight were already gone out of fashion. This book possessed a
+different distinction, having been Jean’s mother’s kirking bible.
+
+Jean was bound on a long and fatiguing walk even for her youth and
+vigour, so that she had got up by daybreak, before even the minister,
+the earliest riser in the manse, had replaced the Greek and Hebrew
+studies of ordinary days, by the preparatory devotions peculiar
+to the sabbath day, while the rest of the household lay in silent
+unconsciousness. She had set out ere the raw mist had cleared away, in
+order to reach Logan Kirk in time for the forenoon ‘diet of worship.’
+
+The only sufficient warrant in Jean’s eyes for such a distant
+expedition on that ‘sawbath day’ which she had been taught to reverence
+so intensely, would have been an exceptional privilege of sitting down
+at one of the sacred ‘tables,’ after they had been jealously ‘fenced.’
+Then she would have heard it ‘served’ by some grand minister, a very
+patriarch and prophet in one, a man famed in Jean’s circle for lofty
+austere piety, impassioned zeal, and immense experience with learning
+to match, though the latter quality was held in small account compared
+to the recommendations which went before it. Such a minister was a fit
+successor to ‘Holy Renwick’ and ‘gude Cargill’ and the other heroes and
+martyrs who endured to the end--till they were shot down in peat bogs,
+or mounted steadfastly and triumphantly the long ladder to the high
+gallows in the Grass Market of Edinburgh.
+
+But young Jean was not journeying on so unexceptionable and profitable
+an errand. It was her own private affairs which sent her forth to cross
+the broad moor on the sabbath morning, and any competent judge might
+easily guess that Jean’s affairs were in dire confusion when she took
+such a step.
+
+Jean’s story was not unprecedented in her rank of life, though it is to
+be hoped that hers was an extreme case. She had been courted for years,
+young as she was, and at last trothplighted to a young ploughman.
+Their marriage had been fixed to take place in the following spring at
+Whitsunday, one of the two great feeing, flitting, and marrying terms
+among Scotch agricultural labourers. Jean had been making manifold
+happy preparations in her quiet womanly way by little purchases from
+pedlars, by seams sewed diligently in the half hours which were
+honestly hers, by plans made over and over again with fond deliberation
+and reiteration for the laying out of her little savings and her next
+half year’s wages. She had been undecided whether she herself should
+invest in a chest of drawers, or help Bob to buy an eight-day clock,
+either of which would be an ‘honesty,’ that is a standing mark of
+respectability in their ‘cot house’ and might descend as an heirloom
+to their children.
+
+In the meantime the bridegroom elect had left Dalroy, which was his
+native parish as well as Jean’s, and gone ‘to better himself’ on a
+farm in the parish of Logan. But it did not seem to her to matter
+much--except where their feelings were concerned, that he should have
+little communication with her, either personally or by letter in the
+interval. He might or he might not, after the pitting of the potatoes,
+the last pressing job of the rural year,
+
+    tak his stick into his hand
+
+on his sabbath-day out, and cross ten miles of moor, as Jean was doing
+now, to visit her for a few hours. He might or he might not send her a
+formal letter or two, or a message occasionally by the carrier. What
+was his performance or failure in such trifles to Jean’s great trust in
+her lad? Yet of all classes of men, perhaps with the single exception
+of soldiers, not one is so notoriously fickle in love-making as Scotch
+ploughmen, not one is more exposed to special sources of temptation,
+and not one, alas! as Jean knew, though her pure mind recoiled from the
+grievous knowledge and refused absolutely to connect it with her lover,
+is more apt to fall into a particular form of vice.
+
+But it is to be hoped that the class’s frequent fickleness and folly do
+not often attain the climax they reached here; for Jean had not only
+been courted, a solemn promise of marriage had been exchanged between
+her and her lover, and such promises are not broken--either by lord or
+lout, lady or lass, without causing such a scandal in their respective
+worlds, as proves the comparative rarity of the offence.
+
+Jean had dwelt in her dream of perfect faith and security until two
+days before the sabbath in question. Then the sister of the lover, who
+was also Jean’s bosom friend, came to the back door of the manse and
+called out Jean in the middle of the day at the height of her household
+work, to break to her a catastrophe.
+
+‘Oh Jean!’ said Eppie, taking the first word--before Jean could cry
+out was there anything wrong with Bob--and speaking with tears and
+groans and honest blushes--‘Oh! that ever I should see the day I would
+be black ashamed of my ain kith an’ kin--that ever I should have to
+say it to you--a lass that mither an’ me were proud to count as are of
+the family. There is word by Willie Broon the carrier--and I doubt it
+is ower true, for Willie, though he may take a drap, was never given
+to leein’--our Bob has played you fause, he has ta’en up with another
+lass--ane Leezbeth Red (Reid), a fellow-servant at Blawart Brae. Nae
+doubt she has set her cap at him ilka day and hour, ilka kye milking
+and horse suppering, and Bob was aye a simple chield--even mair sae
+when a fair flattering tongue than when red and white cheeks came in
+his way. The upshot is--and I could have seen him, my ain brither,
+in the mools afore I had to carry the tidings to you--and I’ll never
+speak to the other lass who has stealt him from you--never, be she ten
+times my gude sister--but it is richt you should ken at aince; they say
+Bob has done her a sair wrang, and there is nothing left for him but
+to marry her; so the twa are to be cried together this very incoming
+sabbath in Logan Kirk. They may be cried and marriet too,’ protested
+the informant in her righteous indignation for Jean, ‘but it’s no his
+friends that will ever own them after sic heartless deceit, and sic
+disgrace as they have brocht upon us a’.’
+
+‘Dinna speak in that wild way, Eppie,’ said Jean with a little of her
+natural stateliness and reserve after the first deadly spasm of sick
+incredulity and terrible pain, when Jean had held her breath for a
+moment. ‘If it be sae that Bob has changed his mind without telling
+me, even if he has fallen into greater sin, still it is not for you
+to refuse to own his wife; though I ken you mean weel, what gude would
+that do to me? And now I maun go in, Eppie, for I am in the middle of
+ironing the minister’s best sark, and if I tarry longer the irons will
+get cauld.’ And the irons must not get cold though Jean’s heart should
+break. She must go on ironing in a dazed sort of way, but yet to the
+best of her ability, that special sark of the minister’s which he was
+to wear when he presided over the Synod next Tuesday.
+
+Then Jean resolved to ascertain for herself, beyond the possibility of
+doubt, whether Bob Meffin were a traitor or a true man. It was not a
+subject to ask questions about, nor was she the woman to lay bare her
+heart to the public gaze. But this coming sabbath was Jean’s sabbath
+out, and she could, without saying a word to anybody else, get her
+unsuspecting mistress to grant her leave to spend the day in walking
+across the moor and attending public worship at Logan Kirk instead of
+waiting on the ministrations of her master at Dalroy.
+
+Jean shed no tear nor did she sob and sigh audibly as she walked along
+to meet her destiny. But she was utterly unobservant of the nature she
+loved in the scene around her, either in its broad outlines or in its
+minute details. She had no attention to spare to-day for the spreading
+heathery moor, as fresh and free almost as the blue sky above it, on
+a sunny morning like this, when what had been the summer’s glistening
+dew-drops were just beginning to fall heavily and hoarily in the first
+suspicion of frost.
+
+Jean had no notice to give to the sweet pungent smell of the heather,
+to the varying hues of the purple milkwort, the yellow rock rose, the
+nodding white-flowered grass of Parnassus which diversified the red
+ling. She did not listen to the hum of the big bee--a splendid fellow
+in black and gold, who was continually crossing her path and sounding
+his drone in her ear, or to the twitter of the brown and grey linnet
+which brushed her very skirts as he rose from the broom, or to the crow
+of the moor cock and to the cry of the plover. Yet all these noises
+were made doubly distinct by the sabbath stillness which rendered
+itself felt even on the moor when no sportsmen were shooting there, no
+quarry men or bands of late shearers taking near cuts to their quarries
+and fields.
+
+Now and then Jean roused herself from her painful abstraction,
+and tried to control her racked heart and brain, by what she had
+always known as the potent spell of duty. It was the sabbath day,
+and therefore she was not her own mistress; though it was her ‘day
+out,’ she ought not, as a Christian woman, to be engrossed with her
+own worldly concerns, however imperative. She should try at least
+to engage in some mental exercise befitting the day--since, as Jean
+held, its divine obligation was not affected by her human distress.
+She made a great effort and prepared to repeat aloud, as she walked,
+one of the psalms with which her memory was stored, using it as the
+early Christians raised the symbol of the cross for a charm against
+distracting worldly thoughts.
+
+She began mechanically to say the first psalm, the earliest learnt by
+Scotch children, one of the most familiar throughout life. But
+
+    All people that on earth do dwell,
+    Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice,
+
+in its call to universal praise--associated closely as it is with
+the noblest, simplest, most moving melody which ever rang rudely yet
+thrillingly through barn kirk or along bleak hill-side, faltered and
+died away on Jean’s quivering lips.
+
+The staunch-hearted woman began again with the psalm which holds the
+second place in the regard of her nation--
+
+    The Lord’s my shepherd,
+    I’ll not want;
+
+and when she had reached the fourth verse, she found that her choice
+was more appropriate:
+
+    Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,
+    Yet will I fear none ill,
+
+said Jean steadfastly--and truly, it was like voluntarily descending
+into ‘death’s dark vale’ to go on with the end in view for which Jean
+journeyed this day. And if she had got her choice, the girl in her
+magnificent bloom of young womanhood, with all her warm interest in
+life--which her religion sanctified but did not stifle, would far
+rather have lain her down and died, than found Bob Meffin a leear, a
+still more cruel sinner against another woman than against Jean herself.
+
+Jean was not well known to the congregation of Logan Kirk; she had not
+been there more than once or twice in her life before, and the one
+person in the neighbourhood with whom she was well acquainted she did
+not expect to see in the kirk this morning.
+
+She reached the little kirk close to the adjoining hamlet, both of
+the ‘drystane dyke’ order of architecture, just as the most primitive
+of bells commenced to make discord instead of harmony, clattering and
+tinkling instead of clashing and booming its summons.
+
+Nobody recognised Jean as she passed through the groups in the
+roughly kept kirkyard, and though she did not absolutely shrink from
+observation, being too brave and upright to take, as if by natural
+instinct, to hiding her head, she certainly did not desire notice.
+She was glad to get into a back seat without attracting any further
+remark--than what was casually bestowed on a strange face, from the
+fellow-worshippers who were equally strange to her.
+
+The country people--most of them farmers and farm-servants with the
+village hand-loom weavers--tramped and tumbled in, with the want
+of ceremony which used to distinguish a Scotch rural congregation.
+The minister and precentor took their places, and Jean fixed mute
+imploring eyes on the latter as if the decision of her fate rested
+with him. He was a homely, elderly man, distinguished among his
+compeers by the _sobriquet_, derived from his office in the kirk, of
+‘Singing Johnny,’ a souter by trade, but a less thirsty and a more
+theological souter than his great namesake. As he rose for the secular
+rite which in Scotland precedes the religious services, even the most
+austerely devout listened attentively with human interest. And if
+the congregation had only known, so as to watch a young woman in the
+obscurity of the back seats, they might have been aroused by the fading
+of the rich colour in her face, the rigid set of her mouth, and the
+desperate light as of a creature at bay, in what ought to have been
+her reasonable grey eyes, to comprehend that her hands were clasped
+tight--even clenched--under the shelter of the book-board in an agony.
+
+Johnny dallied with the matter in hand, perfectly unaware of the
+torture he was inflicting. He laboured under no press of business as
+at Martinmas or Whitsunday; this was a sabbath between terms when
+little was doing in Johnny’s line. He was able to rise in a deliberate
+manner, to sleek down his stubbly hair as he was wont to do, before
+raising the psalm tune, to look around him with even more philosophical
+indifference; indeed, the only customary act which he refrained from
+doing as if to distinguish his secular from his religious duties,
+was that of putting up his hands before his mouth and giving a
+preliminary cough behind the screen. At last he proclaimed sonorously:
+‘There is a purpose of marriage between Tammas Proodfit and Ailison
+Clinkscales--for the second time,’ not that the purpose had been
+entertained, dropped and resumed, but that the announcement had been
+made before and would ring out once again in the ears of the listening
+kirk.
+
+One woman was listening intently with bent head as if she would fain
+catch even the sound of a pin’s fall, through the thick tumultuous
+beating of her heart. At the words spoken there was the faintest rustle
+of relaxation in her attitude. The couple whose intention had been thus
+sounded abroad were entire strangers to her. What had she to do with
+a Tammas Proodfit and an Ailison Clinkscales, or what had they to do
+with her? It was not to hear them ‘cried’ that she had walked ten miles
+across the moor.
+
+After the proclamation there was a distinct pause, which had the air
+of being instituted for sensational effect, unless Johnny had no
+more ‘purposes of marriages’ in the background to fire off at the
+congregation.
+
+One fainting heart leapt up with half wild relief and joy. After all
+it was a base report without a word of truth in it. Bob was to be
+proved innocent as the babe unborn.
+
+Woe’s me! Johnny was even then fumbling with another set of lines in
+his horny fingers; he lifted up his voice afresh and called all present
+to witness that there was also a purpose of marriage ‘between Robert
+Meffin and Leezbeth Red for the first time.’ Having discharged his lay
+functions, he stopped abruptly to look up, in expectation of the folded
+paper which the minister rose and bent over the pulpit to hand to him,
+taking Singing Johnny into his confidence as it were, with regard to
+the psalms and paraphrases appropriate to the sermon, which were to
+be sung during the service, for which the precentor was to find the
+fitting tunes on the spur of the moment.
+
+Even after the commencement of the second proclamation, the formal
+employment of the full christian name struck so unfamiliarly on Jean’s
+ears, as to stay the flood of anguish for an instant longer, till the
+enunciation of the surname in company with the name she had heard given
+to her rival, rendered doubt no longer possible. It was all over, as
+Jean had heard said after her father and mother had drawn their last
+breath. It was too true: this was her Bob Meffin and no other whom she
+had heard cried with another woman in order to repair as far as might
+be a shameful wrong.
+
+Jean felt like the rest of us when the catastrophe we have most dreaded
+has come upon us, that she had not known how much she had hoped against
+hope--how hard a battle hope had fought for bare life, till it lay
+slain stark and cold at her feet.
+
+For she had not come there with any intention of protesting against the
+marriage which would be celebrated within the next few weeks. Such a
+step is even rarer in Scotland than in England; neither could there be
+any appeal under the circumstances. It was only that Bob Meffin had
+lied to her and before the Lord, had fallen from what Jean had judged
+to be the glory of his manhood and dragged down another with him in his
+fall. Thenceforth the two who had been all in all could be less than
+nothing to each other.
+
+Jean had listened to the sentence which blighted her youthful hopes,
+crushed her tenderest affections, and left her in the flower of her
+beauty, in all her sense and goodness, for no fault of her own, a lass
+‘lichtlied’--scorned before the world--that sorest humiliation to a
+woman. And it was all for the wiles of another lass with regard to whom
+Jean knew full well, without any vanity or arrogance on her part, that
+Leezbeth Red and such as she were not worthy to be named in the same
+breath with her--Jean, since they could not save either themselves or
+the men whom they had never loved with a noble unselfish love, from
+gross sin and degradation.
+
+But unless in the involuntary shiver which ran through her--while long
+rays of sunshine were finding their way into the kirk windows and into
+the open door, lighting up and warming even the remotest corner--and in
+the breath drawn in and let out again with a dry inaudible sob, Jean
+gave no sign. She neither screamed nor fainted, she made no ‘dust’ or
+disturbance in the kirk of all places, she would have thought that
+neither maidenly--‘wiselike’ she would have called it--nor reverent.
+Bob Meffin was a fallen sinner, that was all, though it was enough
+for her to carry branded on her heart to her dying day. And she would
+never see or speak with him again, though she had loved him with all
+her heart. And what power of passion and depth of tenderness existed
+in that heart may be fairly conceived in the light of a biblical
+compliment which her master the minister once paid her. He had been
+watching Jean with his younger children when he exclaimed suddenly,
+‘Jean, your mistress is right, you’re a fine young woman; you remind me
+of that riddle of Samson’s, “Out of the strong came forth sweetness.”’
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                         BOB MEFFIN’S AMENDS.
+
+
+Fourteen years passed--not without their changes. It was a fine frosty
+winter afternoon when two knots of homely men and women--forming two
+distinct coteries--were gathered at one end of Dalroy village, where,
+on the right side of the little street stood the Dalroy ‘smiddy,’ and
+on the left was ‘the smiddy well’--a dipping-in-well famous throughout
+the village for the excellence of its ‘tea-water.’ Horses were waiting
+to be shod round the smiddy door, while their temporary owners--dark
+figures in the ruddy glow of the furnace, prepared to hold their rustic
+parliament. At the centre of attraction over the way maids and matrons
+took their turn in filling their cans and pitchers.
+
+Very nearly at the same moment Jean Kinloch came in sight--emerging
+from the blue haze made up of the frost and the gloaming, while there
+was heard, with the peculiar distinctness of such a sound in such
+weather, the rumbling of a cart, with cart, horse, and driver still
+unseen, sounding louder and louder as it drew near in the opposite
+direction.
+
+Jean had a plaid pinned over her cap, and carried a bright pitcher
+dangling lightly from one wrist; she was sniffing with satisfaction
+‘the caller air,’ which sent her rich blood coursing through her veins,
+and yet not refusing to welcome the hot blast which met her as she
+crossed in front of the smiddy door.
+
+Of course, Jean’s arrival was hailed before she was within ear-shot by
+a double chorus of half-approving, half-ironical comments--the purport
+of which she could very well guess--beginning with ‘Here comes the Miss
+Fraser’s Jean.’
+
+Jean had remained in the service of the Manse family all these years,
+though both the minister and his wife were dead, and the Manse was no
+longer the home of the remnant of the household. Impoverished as such
+remnants usually are, and consisting only of Jean’s young ladies, they
+could hardly have continued to live on, in genteel poverty, if Jean,
+who was so closely allied to them as to be styled theirs by inalienable
+possession, had not worked their double work on diminished wages.
+
+‘Jean’s true to a minute,’ said another speaker, a man in the smiddy.
+‘She’s nae daidler either at meat or wark.’
+
+‘Ay, lasses, ye may stand about,’ a woman at the well took up the
+theme, without hearing the man’s contribution to the subject. ‘Jean
+Kinloch’s no sma’ graith--least of a’ in her ain opinion.’ It was like
+a version of that climax of commendation pronounced on the virtuous
+woman in Proverbs, ‘Let her own works praise her in the gates,’ with
+the grudging qualification that must have mingled with the praise.
+
+Jean did not mind much either the concentrated scrutiny or the sifting
+analysis of her merits and demerits, to which, with her knowledge of
+the world, she knew she was exposed. Like a pillar of strength in her
+self-reliance and composure, her fine presence was unimpaired by her
+servant’s costume, and her goodly prime untouched by any token of
+decay. Though she had not risen in worldly rank and prosperity, this
+was a very different Jean from the miserable lass, high-souled and
+innocent as she was, who had sat in a back seat in Logan Kirk to hear
+Bob Meffin cried with another woman.
+
+Before Jean could say ‘Gude day’ to anybody, while she was still coming
+forward in the mingled lights of a cold primrose in the western
+sky behind her, and a warm saffron from the glare of the smiddy at
+her right hand, the cart--the rumble of which had been constantly
+increasing--rattled up, bringing cart, horse, and driver into the
+illumination. And even before the din of its progress had ceased or the
+half-dazzled eyes could distinguish the face of the new comer, a voice,
+which seemed to issue from the past, suddenly called in eager excited
+tones, ‘Jean Kinloch!’
+
+Jean turned startled, and with a shock even to her well-strung nerves,
+at the imperative summons. In spite of changes in the speaker, to which
+those in herself were infinitesimal, she recognised, without a moment’s
+hesitation, her old lover. She had not seen him since six months before
+that day in Logan Kirk, on the last occasion when the two had parted
+a fond loving lad and lass--a plighted bridegroom and bride. She had
+heard little of him in the interval, for his sister Eppie had married
+a soldier and ‘followed the drum,’ while with her departure Jean had
+lost all chance of news of her recreant lover.
+
+Taken by surprise as she was, Jean cried out with shaken accents, in
+turn, ‘Bob Meffin!’ Then she recalled, as any true woman would have
+recalled, instantaneously, the whole circumstances, the scene, the
+spectators. Some of them had known the two in their green youth, and
+were doubtless speculating already, with keen interest and a sense of
+the ridiculous, how Jean Kinloch would meet Bob Meffin now that the
+pair had reached the years of discretion--after what had once been
+between them, after the falseness of Bob which had separated them.
+
+Jean was equal to the occasion; she stepped up to the cart, to which
+Bob sat nailed, with the intention of speaking to him, and doing her
+part in the interchange of such light questions and answers, as might
+be expected between old acquaintances who had known each other well
+in youth, and who happened to encounter each other in later years. As
+to any nearer relation which had ever existed between them, Jean’s
+attitude showed that she, at least, meant to behave as if she had
+forgotten it as utterly as the most trifling incident of her girlish
+days.
+
+But unfalteringly as Jean carried out this line of conduct, in the few
+paces that intervened between her and Bob Meffin, which she crossed
+steadily with every eye upon her, and with her own eyes not fixed on
+the ground, but raised to catch his, she took in at a glance the whole
+man--including every indication of the transformation he had undergone
+since the last time she had seen him.
+
+That Bob Meffin had been a gallant-looking young fellow in his degree,
+stalwart, lithe, fit to heave up the biggest sheaves on the stack which
+was in the process of building--as Jean had shorn foremost on her
+harvest rig--and to dance longest and with lightest foot at harvest
+home or bridal.
+
+This Bob Meffin was a broken-down, fast-ageing man, while Jean was
+still in her prime. His back was bent, while hers was straight; his
+hair had grown thin, and hung in uncared-for grey locks under his faded
+cap, while hers, in its undiminished profusion and without one dead
+white thread, was carefully disposed beneath her spotless white cap.
+His cheeks and forehead were weather-worn, dragged, and wrinkled, while
+hers remained fresh, round, and smooth. His working clothes had lost
+all the smartness with which the Bob Meffin of old had worn his most
+patched jacket and most clay-clogged shoon. Before that lightning-flash
+of womanly observation, they gave evidence of such untidiness and
+neglect in absent buttons, ragged cuffs, and the frayed, dangling ends
+of his neckerchief, as not only cast the utmost discredit on the wife
+who had supplanted Jean, but told in graphic language that Bob had
+lost all personal pride and even proper sense of what was due in the
+dress of a respectable ploughman, who had risen to be foreman over the
+younger men on the farm.
+
+Here were the wrong doer and the wrong sufferer. A fine moral could
+have been pointed from the difference between them, even though a
+hair-splitting casuist might have urged that it was not a case of
+retribution alone, since the constant exposure and the coarse fare
+of a ploughman, even when he carries the clearest of consciences
+within his bosom, is apt to tell upon him betimes, and make him look
+elderly before he is forty. As for Jean, though she had undergone
+‘a disappointment,’ having continued in domestic service, she had
+of necessity missed such parallel drudgery and lack of sufficiently
+nourishing food, as she had once looked forward to willingly and
+cheerfully. But such causes make the ploughman’s wife keep pace with
+her husband in ageing prematurely.
+
+Still Bob Meffin had altered with a vengeance; and Jean could hardly
+believe the testimony of her eyes and was impressed by the change. For
+surely nobody will say that because Adam delved and Eve span, because
+Jean had been a servant lass and Bob a ploughman all their respective
+lives, they had not the feelings of their kind, so that Jean should
+fail to have a sensitive perception that her former hero had lost, in
+the rough battle of life, all the glamour with which he had once been
+surrounded?
+
+Was Jean pleased that it should be so? That she had lived to see how
+Bob Meffin had been punished for his desertion of her and degradation
+of another? She could not tell, there was such a tumult of pride and
+pain in her heart.
+
+But she went up to him where he sat and said with the easiest manner
+imaginable, ‘Is this you, Bob? How are you, and how are your wife and
+bairns?’
+
+‘My wife!’ cried Bob aghast. ‘Do you no ken, Jean, she’s dead and gane
+a year and a half syne?’
+
+Jean received another shock in which there were appalling elements.
+The dead woman had been one against whom Jean--Christian woman as
+she was--had borne a sore grudge for many a day. Nay, only a moment
+ago, Jean had been sharply summing up, with rising disdain and not
+without a sense of bitter satisfaction, what she had reckoned as so
+many unanswerable proofs of Leezbeth Red’s wifely incompetency, while
+all the time Jean’s successful rival had passed away long months ago
+without Jean’s knowledge, to give in her--Leezbeth’s--account to the
+Great Judge.
+
+‘Poor woman!’ said Jean more softly; ‘she had gotten her ca’ early.’
+
+‘She was never a strong woman,’ said Bob, speaking without the
+awkwardness which must have accompanied the discussion of his living
+wife’s qualities with Jean. He spoke also with that little hush of
+reverence, which is found in every man or woman with a spark of
+generosity and awe in the soul, when he or she refers to the dead--once
+so near, but who has gone far beyond all kindly communion and familiar
+every-day life.
+
+In addition Bob showed that grave composure of regret which might be
+expected from a reasonable man and a widower whose grief was a year
+and a half old. ‘Leezbeth was silly from the time of our marriage,’
+continued Bob, not uttering a supercilious reflection on the limited
+mental capacity of his wife, simply expressing himself in the
+vernacular for delicate health. ‘She had mostly to keep her bed, for
+the last year or twa of her life.’
+
+That sentence explained much. The misfortune of having married a
+sickly wife doomed to die prematurely, may only serve to call forth
+the deeper tenderness of the rich man whose personal independence and
+the necessaries--nay, the soothing solaces of whose life, remain
+altogether untouched by the calamity. But it is a crushing blow to
+the poor man, however faithfully and gallantly he may bear it. Bob’s
+slouching gait, haggard face, grey hair and uncared-for clothes were
+all easily accounted for now, without farther severe reflection either
+on himself or on his dead wife. They spoke of hard work doubled when
+rest should have come; of the son of the soil returning from his day’s
+darg,
+
+    Wat, wat, wat and weary,
+
+with neither a blazing ingle nor a clean hearth-stone, not a single
+creature-comfort to sustain him; of ill or uncooked food such as a
+dainty townbred beggar would have turned from in supreme disgust; of a
+father who had to be father and mother in one to his helpless children;
+of long nights of waking and watching for the labouring man whose sleep
+ought to have been sweet.
+
+Jean, who understood the circumstances so well, was not the woman
+to be unmoved by them. ‘But your bairns, Bob?’ she suggested kindly,
+turning instinctively to what seemed to her the single prospect of
+better days for the speaker. ‘They will be getting on, and rising up to
+be a blessing to you?’
+
+‘They are that already, woman,’ said Bob heartily, while his careworn
+face brightened inexpressibly, ‘though the auldest of the two lasses,
+Lizzie and Peggy, is but growing thirteen, and they have to take turn
+and turn about at their schulin’ and at keepin’ the house. They are
+as gude and clever, though I should na say sae, as lasses can be. My
+word! Jean, they can kindle a fire and put out a bannock that would not
+disgrace yoursel’.’
+
+Here was a trace of the old Bob with his impetuosity and sanguineness.
+Jean smiled faintly in listening to him, even while she asked herself
+sternly, how she could be such a weak and wicked sinner as to feel a
+pang of jealous resentment shoot through her. It was because she heard
+this poor man who had suffered so much, refer in terms which proved
+his high esteem for the only thing of value that remained to him--his
+bairns and Leezbeth Red’s--not Jean’s--to her, who must go a lone woman
+to her grave through his treachery.
+
+‘For the bit laddie,’ continued Bob with a slight fall and wistful
+yearning in his voice, ‘he’s but a wee chappie of three years. We
+lost twa weans between him and the lasses. He’s no stout--I’m whiles
+frightened that he has his mither’s constitution. But his sisters and
+a gude auld body of a wife in our cotton do the best they can for
+him, and wha kens but that we’ll be permitted to pu’ him through--and
+live to see him a braw man some day?’ Bob lifted his bent head with
+glistening eyes at the remote but inspiring prospect.
+
+Jean thought of a manse child that had died in its infancy, on
+which she had doted as women like her are apt to lavish passionate
+affection on little children. ‘I hope sae too, Bob, my man,’ she said
+in the kindly phraseology of her class, and addressing him all the
+more gently, because she sought, in her own mind, to atone for the
+unreasonable, unrighteous anger she had felt stirring in her heart
+against him, for his very fatherliness, only a moment before. ‘I’ll be
+right glad to hear that your laddie has thriven.’
+
+Bob’s face brightened more and more, as he leapt down from the
+cart-head, and stood by Jean’s side. But in spite of the decided action
+a certain hesitation and agitation began to appear in his manner.
+
+The movement served to remind Jean of what she had been losing
+consciousness of, that she and Bob Meffin were central figures in an
+attentive circle scrutinising their proceedings, and probably catching
+scraps of their conversation.
+
+‘Jean,’ said her old lover, lost to, or careless of, their public
+position, a broken red rising in his face while his eyes fell before
+hers, ‘I’m pleased to have seen you here, lass; and I own I had a
+notion we might forgather, after I had been with the cart for draff
+at the brewery, and made up my mind to come this way, because I had a
+doubt about a nail in ane of Bruce the horse’s shoon--the back fit on
+the hinder side--which Jamie Caird could put richt. Jean, I leed to
+you when we were young, I’ll never deny it; but oh! woman, ye dinna
+ken what it is for a man to own to a lee, whether to man or woman.
+And ye dinna ken how I was tempted--a thochtless lad as I was, in the
+same place with a bonnie fulish young lass who took a liking to him,
+and would let him see her heart richt or wrang. Jean, I’ll no say ill
+of the dead to whom I did wrang, who was the mither of my bairns. She
+did her best, puir feckless thing, when she had gotten me--no sic a
+bargain after all, since I was neither so clever nor so handy as to
+make up for her lack of pith and experience--and she was a tried woman,
+racked wi’ pain and faint with heart sickness, longing to be gane to
+her rest, her worst enemy might have pitied her, puir Leezbeth! long
+before she gaed aff the face of the earth. I would be a muckle brute
+to blame her at this time of the day, and to throw a’ the wyte of my
+faut on her. Still, Jean, the truth must be spoken, and gin ye had
+kenned, even at the time, there was some puir excuse for a moment’s
+madness of passion and its miserable consequences--you were aye so
+strong yoursel’ that you micht hae had some mercy on the weak--and
+we were weak as water, baith Leezbeth and me. But it’s a’ ower now,
+Jean, and you are to the fore and a “wanter” yet. Woman, gin you would
+suffer me to make some amends--a’ that’s in my power. I’ve keepet my
+place and risen to be foreman at Blawart Brae in spite of a’. I’ve
+gude thirty pounds a year o’ wages, and I’ve paid up my debt this last
+twalmonth. If I had onybody to manage for me I micht do weel yet. It’s
+not to certain puirtith I’m bidding you, Jean. And there’s my little
+cummers,’ continued the infatuated man, with a flash of exultant hope,
+well-nigh conviction, at the mention of his young daughters; ‘they will
+be proud to do your will, and wait on you like a queen; you could rear
+them into fine women like yoursel’. The wee chappie would be a fash to
+you, no doubt, but you are never the woman to heed sic fash, and oh!
+lass, you dinna ken what a takin’ way he has wi’ him, how he is the pet
+of ilka body that comes near him, though he’s ill-grown and weakly. He
+tholes his trouble like a bit man, and when he’s no clean knocked on
+the head wi’t, and wallied like the young grass in simmer-time when
+there has not been a shower to slocken its drouth for sax weeks, he’s
+the plaisantest o’ God’s creatures you ever saw. Jean, you would like
+Jockie as gin he were your ain, and you micht be the saving of my
+laddie,’ pleaded Bob passionately, as he had never pled before, not
+even for Jean’s young love.
+
+Jean was so confounded at the turn matters had taken, and the advantage
+Bob Meffin was seeking to wrest from her pity, and the softening of
+her heart towards him and his, that she hardly gave their full meaning
+to the first words of this second suit, and it was not for a moment
+that the extent of their presumption struck her. ‘The deil’s in the
+man!’ Jean said under her breath, in spite of her principles, her
+decorum, and the recollection that she had served in a minister’s
+family for a large part of her life. Was there no end to the conceit
+of men, in themselves and their bairns? And so he thought he could
+make her amends! Doubtless he imagined she was still hankering after
+his fickle love, and pining for his sake, while she being an honest
+woman had banished him from her thoughts, as a married man, fourteen
+years before. By his careless use of the slighting term ‘wanter,’ which
+complaisant contemptuous married couples applied to single men but
+particularly to single women, he betrayed that he shared in the coarse
+popular scorn of old maids, and the mean opinion that they would be
+only too glad to snatch at any--the most wretched, chance of changing
+their condition and escaping from its reproach. He, the middle-aged,
+battered, and broken-down ploughman with his two forward hempies of
+lasses, and his heavy handful of a sick bairn, concluding impudently
+that any husband was better than none, judged himself a fit match for
+an independent well-esteemed woman like Jean Kinloch! And he had been
+the very man, the leear, as he had rightly called himself, to the one
+woman, the worst enemy to the other, of the two who had trusted him.
+He had wrung Jean’s heart when it was young and tender, and lichtlied
+her for a lass like Leezbeth Red, leaving Jean to be the mark for the
+jests and scoffs of mocking tongues.
+
+Jean was burning with indignation, and looking at it in her light,
+greater provocation could not have been given her. ‘Are you daft, Bob
+Meffin?’ She turned upon him with a pale face set like iron, and words
+which cut like swords. ‘Do you think I would have a gift of you, after
+what has come and gane? If I had been brodent on a man, I might have
+had my wale of a hantle better than you ever were, without waiting so
+long. Man, I’m weel content to be an auld maid, it’s no sic a forlorn
+lot as you marriet folk in your crouseness fancy. But I would be keen
+to get marriet gin I could consent to stand in a dead woman’s shoon, a
+lass who was like to have had “a misfortune”’--Jean used the apologetic
+phrase with strong contempt--‘who had so little truth and honesty in
+her that she could steal the fickle man’s heart and word which were
+not worth the taking, though they had been flung at her feet, kennin’
+a’ the time they belonged to another woman--would I be plaguet wi’ her
+brats o’ bairns, think ye?’
+
+Bob heard the terms of her answer with as much amazement as she had
+experienced at his proposal, with consternation added to the amazement,
+and with the pain of a great disappointment in the crestfallen and
+wounded expression of his face.
+
+But at the last scornful words the man’s spirit kindled within him. He
+faced Jean, and replied to her with volleys of wrath: ‘Jean Kinloch,
+you may cast laith at me, you’ve ower gude richt, though I thocht--I
+was wrang--a’ the same I had a fulish notion it would be grander to
+forgi’e and forget, and that the lass I had lo’ed sae weel, when there
+was naebody to come atween us, micht be fit to play the grander
+part. But to cast laith at the silent dead for the wrong-doing of her
+youth, after she has paid the heavy cost--to cast laith, to my face,
+at my innocent bairns, my twa gude lasses and my stricken laddie, Jean
+Kinloch, you were na blate.’
+
+‘Na, Bob, I didna mean--’ began Jean hesitatingly, but he would not
+hear her.
+
+‘You’ve done what I’ll stand frae no man or woman born, no frae the
+woman I aince lo’ed as I lo’ed my life, and whom even when I gaed her
+up, because I couldna say “na” either to mysel’ or to anither, I would
+hae focht ony mither’s son in braid Scotland who would have dared to
+say that she was not amaist worthy to be worshipped. I thocht you were
+ower gude for me, and it was a comfort in repenting o’ my folly, that
+you were weel rid o’ me. But I tell you where you stand glowering
+there, you’re not the woman I thocht you; you’re not gude enough for
+the gift o’ my bairns that you have spoken tantingly o’--Jean Kinloch,
+you’re a hard, cauld woman this day.’
+
+This was turning the tables in truth, and an astounding effect followed.
+
+Bob Meffin’s words could hardly be called reasonable, and yet the
+utterance of them seemed to lift him above his fall and to lend a
+homely dignity to the sinner, as he walked away from the old love to
+whom he had not been true.
+
+Jean felt it with a curious force. She had the strongest conception
+that Bob Meffin, who had jilted her in the past and was insulting her
+in the present--as she had thought only a moment before, who defended
+his dead wife and loved his children so fondly, was having the best of
+it in their contest. He had been foolish and false in word and deed, he
+might be what she had called him--the most conceited and audacious of
+men. He might share in the low views current as to ‘wanters’ and old
+maids, yet could it be that Bob Meffin had grown a better man than Jean
+was a woman, while he had been the sinner and she the sinned against?
+Had the simple, manly patience with which he had paid the penalty
+reversed the result in character, in the subtle workings by which good
+may triumph over evil? Had Bob become less and she more worldly-minded
+since they parted? Had his nature been softened, mellowed, purified in
+his ceaseless toil for his sick wife and helpless children, while she
+in her comparative ease, her leisure for her bible and her kirk, had
+lost sight of magnanimity and mercy and learnt only vindictiveness and
+malice? And if so, had she not been doubly defrauded? Was Bob to cheat
+her not only of earthly, but of heavenly happiness?
+
+Jean’s sense of justice rebelled against the merest bewildered
+suspicion of such a sentence. But she was sorry for the words she
+had spoken; she had been mean enough to cherish the recollection of
+Bob’s offence after all these years, and, with a full knowledge of the
+apples of Sodom it had borne, to cast it up to the offender. And he had
+been perfectly right in his accusation--she had ‘cast laith’ at the
+dead wife whose soul had gone before the great tribunal--at Leezbeth
+Red’s and Bob Meffin’s innocent bairns, thus outraging the most sacred
+feelings of humanity. As Jean was a good woman she must take back her
+words in part, she must say she was sorry for having uttered them.
+
+‘Forgi’e me, Bob,’ she said in a low tone, her handsome face working
+with suppressed emotion. ‘It was sma’ of me and unworthy of a Christian
+woman to let on about byganes--no to say it was cruel to say an
+unbecoming word o’ your dead wife and your living bairns.’
+
+Alas! the original mercurial temperament of the man which no suffering
+had altogether subdued, leapt up on the slightest encouragement from
+the depth of alienation and despondency to the height of fresh love
+and hope. He was not merely propitiated, he was elevated by a single
+word of regret so as to be ready to repeat the affront he had given.
+‘Will you no think better of it, Jean, lass, and make me a prood and
+happy man at last?’ he called out loudly and recklessly. Jean’s recent
+remorse for her harshness was nipped in the bud, and she was furious at
+the renewed outrage. ‘No me, niver, niver,’ she proclaimed to him and
+to all who might choose to listen.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                           JEAN’S REPRISALS.
+
+
+Eppie Meffin had returned with her soldier, a full-blown sergeant
+in possession of a comfortable pension, to settle in her native
+village. And Jean went to congratulate her old friend, but found that
+condolences instead of congratulations were in requisition.
+
+Eppie stood bathed in tears with her good bonnet and shawl thrown on
+anyhow, in her haste to set out for the Dalroy railway-station, which
+was now within three miles of the village, while the train stopped for
+five minutes at another station a mile from Logan, on its way to a
+place of greater note.
+
+‘Come a bittie with me, Jean, it’s lang since we’ve seen ane anither,
+lass. I take your early visit very kind, and am fain to hear your
+cracks, ‘but I canna stop to speak to you,’ said Eppie, without waiting
+to be questioned on the cause of her distress.
+
+Jean complied with the petition, excited almost out of her staid
+maidenly composure. And her companion was not slow to pour forth her
+lamentations over the misfortune that had befallen her, through all
+that was left of her kindred.
+
+‘Oo, aye, it’s that unlucky Bob: you may be satisfied now, Jean, you
+ha’e lived to see vengeance execut’ on him--as they say, it’s aye
+ta’en--even in this world, on the deceivers and deserters o’ women.’
+
+‘Me satisfied!’ cried Jean in unfeigned horror; ‘what do you tak me
+for, Eppie Meffin? Do you think I wish, or ha’e ever wished, an ill
+wish on your brither? You’re speakin’ like an unregenerate heathen.
+Is’t his ae bit laddie?’ inquired Jean almost tenderly.
+
+‘It’s a hantle waur than the bairn,’ groaned Eppie. ‘I canna help
+liking the wee thing who is no accountable for a’ the fash he gies; but
+’deed he would be weel awa’, at rest from a’ his pains.’
+
+‘Oh! Eppie, Eppie,’ said Jean reproachfully, ‘when Bob’s heart is set
+on this bairn, and ane can never tell what the silliest callant may
+come through, and live, and grow to; you a mither yoursel’ to speak sic
+words!’
+
+‘You speak o’ me bein’ a mither,’ said Eppie with a half-choked voice,
+‘woman, you dinna ken what the outcome o’ a mither’s love may lead to,
+though you’re gude--you were aye a gude lass, Jean Kinloch. There’s
+my ain brisk mannie Peter. Do you think if I had the choice, and if I
+kenned I was to be ta’en away frae him, and his father was to forfeit
+his pension and become superannuate’, I wouldna rather choose to have
+a’ the briskness ta’en out of my laddie, and see him lying still--never
+to stir mair--only fit for the mools, than look forward to a chance of
+his comin’ to want, and fa’n on the parish, and being knocked about and
+scorned, and treated to a dog’s life?’
+
+‘Then it’s Bob himsel’,’ said Jean briefly.
+
+‘Wha else should it be?’ demanded Eppie, made peevish by her grief.
+
+‘Ye dinna say he’s dead?’ said Jean, with white lips.
+
+‘No dead outricht,’ said Eppie, not so grateful as she ought to have
+been for the great respite, never having contemplated the extremity,
+‘but he is no muckle better, so far as being a bread-winner is
+concerned. He was trying to break in a maisterfu’ horse, when it turned
+and flung at him, and struck him atween the elbow and the shouther.
+His arm--and it’s his richt ane--is that melled the doctor is feared
+the banes will never gang thegither again, and he may have to cut it
+aff bodily. If poor Bob survive the operation, and be left an ae-armed
+man, he’ll no even be fit for a hag man’ (the used-up man who is the
+cattle-feeder on a farm). His maister may do something for him, so long
+as he lives, since the hurt was got in his service, but Bob cannot be
+allowed mair than will provide for his ain bite and sup, and what is
+to become of his bairns even in his lifetime Gude can tell. Me and my
+man micht take ane o’ the halflin lassies, but we could do nae mair;
+and little as the like o’ her is gude for, she’s like to be ill spared
+with her faither as weel as her little brither thrown on her and her
+sister’s care. Pity me! for the care, wi’ the auldest of the twa hardly
+in her teens. Now, Jean, when you’ve heard a’ will you flee out on me
+again for wishing the weary wean were safe in a better place?’
+
+Jean was silent in the magnitude of the calamity.
+
+At this moment Eppie had only one complaint to make of the victim,
+and she did not dream of including Jean in it, for Eppie was a loyal
+friend as well as an attached sister. She had heard already how Bob
+as a widower had ventured to make up to Jean Kinloch again, and so
+far from approving of the venture, Eppie, in fairness to her sex, and
+still more in fairness to Jean, had said stoutly, unswayed by family
+interest and partiality, that Bob was rightly served in the repulse he
+had received. He had no reason to count on any other answer. He was
+both bold and simple to speer Jean Kinloch’s price a second time. There
+had always been a simplicity about him, poor chap, though he was no
+fool either. Doubtless that had been the cause of his falling an easy
+victim to the wiles of that light-headed cutty Leezbeth Red--that Eppie
+should miscall the dead. But Eppie’s auld mother, who had a great work
+with Jean, could never abide Leezbeth. Thus Eppie took refuge from any
+self-reproach for the disparaging criticism on her late sister-in-law,
+by regarding it as a mark of filial respect.
+
+‘You ken, Jean, it’s a mercy, “there was never a silly Jocky but
+there was aye as silly a Jenny,” and some canny woman, a wee bit up
+in years, wi no muckle to lippen to, micht have drawn up wi’ Bob and
+his foreman’s house and wages. And what though, she had been a thocht
+ill-faured?’ speculated Eppie boldly, ‘she would not ha’e made a waur
+wife and step-mither because of the shape of her nose or the colour of
+her skin. Of course I dinna mean a weel-to-do, weel-looking woman like
+you, Jean,’ broke off Eppie in perfect sincerity; ‘a match like that
+was no longer to be thought of for him. If you were inclined to change
+your state, you micht aspire as high as a butler or a schulemaister.
+But about the woman that might ha’e done for our Bob afore this
+mischanter--if she had not been a fule o’ a lassie--caring only for
+idleset and a reive at whatever pleasure came in her way--she would not
+ha’e been that ill aff. Puir Bob has learnt to serve hissel’ and to be
+easy served, and his patience wi’ these bairns o’ his, and his pleasure
+in them, is jist extraordinar’.’
+
+‘Yes,’ Jean said half abstractedly, ‘he seemed to think a deal o’ his
+bairns.’
+
+‘Nae doubt, ilka craw thinks its ain bird whitest, and Bob’s birds
+were aye birds o’ Paradise. No that I would deny they’re fine lasses
+as lasses gang, but will that prevent them being frichtet out o’ their
+wits if Bob has to get his arm chapped aff? and if he come round, how
+long will they be, think ye, of forgetting the trouble and getting out
+their heads? And how can I, wi’ a man and bairns and a house o’ my ain
+to look after, and a railway journey atween me and Bob’s family, keep
+the lasses out of a’ but good company, and set them down and haud them
+on their seats, at their seams and their knittin’, and teach them to be
+orderly and punctual and weel-mannered,’ said the sergeant’s wife with
+emphasis. ‘No that it matters muckle since it has come to the warst,’
+she added the next moment, sinking back into dejection. ‘I see nae way
+now for them but they maun gang on the parish--that ever ony o’ my folk
+should come to this!’ Eppie ended with fresh tears of mingled personal
+mortification and grief for ‘our Bob.’
+
+Jean tarried a couple of weeks, hearing various reports of Bob’s
+keeping up or giving way--of the youngest of his doctors maintaining
+that he would both save the arm and restore it to usefulness, only
+months of suffering and helplessness must intervene--of the eldest
+of his doctors swearing that Bob’s arm, if it were not amputated at
+once, would cost him his life at no distant day. Jean could bear it no
+longer. Her punishment, not Bob’s, was more than she could bear. She
+would ‘take her foot in her hand,’ go across the moor, and ask how Bob
+Meffin fared. She was an old enough woman to decide for herself on the
+desirability of such a step. She was old enough in her rank of life to
+be her own chaperon, and dispense with the presence of Eppie on her
+visit.
+
+Jean was not accustomed to railways as her travelled friend was, so it
+did not occur to her to lessen the fatigue of the expedition by having
+recourse to the station, nearly three miles off, and being carried by
+the iron horse and deposited a mile from her destination. To Jean, by
+far the simpler and less troublesome course was to ‘take her foot in
+her hand’ and walk the ten miles to Logan.
+
+It was already the month of February, and the days were lengthening,
+though spring was making little show in the woods and fields, and least
+of all on the moor.
+
+Jean accomplished this journey as she had accomplished that other,
+with the frost-bitten instead of the blooming heather under her feet,
+and the former summer sky still grey with wintry clouds over her head.
+It was not the sabbath day, so Jean was not called upon to redeem the
+holy time by speaking to herself in psalms and hymns and spiritual
+songs, as she trod the long and hard road; but she caught herself
+muttering involuntarily half aloud more than once, ‘God be gude to
+Bob Meffin and his mitherless bairns.’ And she was conscious, through
+her anxiety, that peace with God and man, instead of restless misery,
+filled her breast.
+
+Jean passed the kirk where she had sat and heard Bob ‘cried’ with
+another woman, as it seemed to her an age ago--passed the kirkyard
+where Leezbeth Red lay sleeping. She knew the road to Blawart Brae
+perfectly well. Had she not learnt its every turning by heart in the
+days when she had thought of the farm in the light of her home as a
+young wife? Bob’s present house was not, indeed, the house which
+that young wife would have dwelt in, the last was tenanted by one of
+the junior ploughmen and his wife--no older than Jean would have been
+if she had come to Blawart Brae a married woman by the time she was
+twenty. Jean caught a glimpse of a young lass whose brown hand was
+already invested with the dignity of a wedding-ring, as she looked up
+and paused in the act of pulling up a curly green kail-stock from her
+‘yaird.’ Jean stared wistfully at the fresh contented face as at a
+picture of what her own face might have been like, if Bob Meffin had
+not broken his vows more than a dozen of years before.
+
+Bob’s cottage was that of the foreman on the farm, but the little
+advantages which the promotion secured had all been lost in the
+grinding poverty to which he had been subjected.
+
+Bob himself opened the door to Jean’s knock, for he was able to walk
+about the house, though his arm was still in an early precarious stage
+of recovery.
+
+‘Eh! Jean, is this you? Come in by; it’s kind of you to look in and
+speer for me in the by-going, since you maun ha’e some other errand at
+Logan.’ He cried with such glad surprise, that Jean had no more cause
+to fear the nature of her welcome.
+
+He insisted upon her occupying the one arm-chair, and he would break
+up with his left hand the little fire gathered on the hearth, while
+he kept repeating, as in a wonderfully pleasant dream, ‘Is’t possible
+you’ve come aince errand to see me? Woman, the sicht of you is gude for
+a sick man;’ and Jean knew that he admired her fine carriage and fine
+face as of old--that to him, as to the rest of the world, she was still
+the well-endowed, the well- not the ill-favoured woman whom Eppie had
+proposed as a fit wife for her brother.
+
+As for him, he looked fifty times more haggard and worn than when Jean
+had seen him sitting, still able-bodied and active, on the head of
+his cart between the smiddy and the well, in the winter gloaming. His
+cheeks were more sunken, his hair had received an additional white
+powdering, his very voice piped a little with weakness, his fustian
+clothes naturally were worse--not better, attended to, while his
+right arm, that sign and seal of a working man’s independence, hung
+pathetically incapable of service in its sling.
+
+But he was eager, even cheerful, in his greetings to Jean. At the
+same time it was clear that though he had no regrets to spare for his
+personal appearance, he was full of apologies for his house which might
+throw discredit on the management of his young house-keepers. Both
+of them were absent for the moment, since Lizzie had carried out her
+little brother, and Peggy, who had returned to the parish school, was
+not come back for the day.
+
+To tell the truth, Jean saw Bob’s house when it was about its best,
+while he remained constantly at home to give directions to his lasses,
+and when his sister Eppie came over, once a fortnight, expending her
+surplus energy and emotion in scouring not only the family wardrobe,
+but the windows and the grate.
+
+But it was a house bare and barren in its small space, as the great
+ward of a poor-house, while it was liable to the squalor the absence of
+which is the redeeming feature of the poor-house. Here there was not
+one of the articles which are the pride of a well-to-do ploughman’s
+heart, and which make all the difference between ‘couthiness’ (plenty
+and comfort combined) and dreariness in his homely dwelling. In Bob’s
+house there was no chest of drawers rubbed by proud patient hands--such
+as Jean had been once laying by ten shillings of her wages at a
+time to buy; no grandiose eight-day clock with perhaps a wreath of
+brilliant pink roses and gorgeous blue convolvuluses painted round its
+broad face, to which Bob in the heyday of his fortunes had aspired;
+no coarse but gay earthenware, for show as well as for use, in the
+cupboard with its glass door; no resplendent coloured engravings of
+worse than doubtful merit as works of art, but bright suggestive spots
+relieving the staring or dingy blankness of the white-washed walls; no
+exquisitely patched quilt--a marvel of womanly ingenuity and industry,
+such as Jean had once stitched together and sung over, and laid aside
+to fade in her kist--adorning the box-bed. There was not even a cat
+purring about the ‘clean hearth-stane,’ or a bird chirping in its
+cage, or a growing plant on the ledge of the small window. Yet Bob as
+a young man had been fond of animals and plants. Only there had been
+hard times in his history. Then a cat, if it did not cast aside its
+domestic habits and run wild about the stack-yard and barn, killing
+rats and mice which Bob might have been tempted to grudge it, for its
+own consumption, would have grown as lean in flesh and as unthrifty in
+coat as Bob himself. The pence to be paid for an ounce of bird-seed
+might have formed a far larger sum than he, with any conscience, would
+have dared to abstract from the family capital. The burdened man could
+not have given the moment’s thought and time necessary to supply the
+‘flooer’ with the common sunshine, air, and water--all that it craved.
+
+Jean, who had been thinking much of late of her old comfortable
+manse-kitchen glittering with pewter, tin and brass, the very roof
+groaning with the weight of mutton hams, pigs’ cheeks, dried fish,
+bags of onions, bunches of herbs, contrasted it with this region of
+desolation, but did not shrink from the contrast.
+
+Jean and Bob chatted together one on each side of the flickering
+fire--the blinking of which was more kindly than the pale February
+sunbeams, which shone steadily on the dispiriting house-place.
+
+But Bob was not down-hearted: he was wonderfully hopeful, as, by the
+Providence which makes the back fit for the burden, it was his nature
+to be. He was ready to praise to the skies the cleverness and kindness
+of his young doctor--Bob having affectionately appropriated his medical
+man, with a certain proud admiration and tenderness for his gifts and
+his youth, much as Jean had appropriated her young mistresses, dwelling
+with fond delight on their graces. Bob proclaimed with unstinted
+gratitude the generosity of his master, who was paying in full a
+term’s wages which the servant had not earned, and only putting an
+orra (extra man) man into Bob’s place, till it could be ascertained
+whether he should recover from the effects of his accident, as Bob was
+well assured he would in time, if it were the Lord’s will--he used the
+expression without the slightest affectation. Eppie was a good sister
+to him, while all his neighbours were richt kind. He could better thole
+the pain of his arm now, that he had the comfort of trusting it was not
+to be sawn off. Bob said the words without shrinking and with manly
+fortitude. He had been in worse straits and seen far greater ‘trouble,’
+and he had much to be thankful for. There was no more pretence in the
+acknowledgment of thankfulness than in the reference to his Maker’s
+will. Bob was one of those wayfaring men who, though a fool, was
+prevented, in part by his very simplicity, from erring in his judgment
+of the way he had to go through life and death.
+
+Then he quietly dropped his own affairs and turned with kindly
+interest to discuss Jean’s concerns, and also to hear the news of old
+acquaintances which could only reach him and Jean orally, and could
+never come to them through any humble substitute for ‘Fashionable
+News’ in West-end newspapers. Bob could and did read stray newspapers,
+but they rarely brought him intelligence of the doings of friends old
+or new, and news were especially acceptable to Bob in these weeks of
+enforced idleness and pain, from which, though he bore the infliction
+bravely, he was fain to have his mind diverted for an hour. He took the
+friendliest interest in the changes going on in Jean’s ‘family,’ which
+happened at that moment to be looking up in the world, while now and
+then that very interest betrayed him into precarious allusions. ‘So
+Miss Mary is to be buckled with young Logan o’ Logan! I mind her weel
+as a bairn. She was the little leddy wi’ the lint white locks I ha’e
+carried on my shouther many a time--you mind, Jean? when there was a
+lock o’ us among the minister’s hay. And Miss Catrine’s to go back to
+the manse--how bools rin round! and she wants you to go back wi’ her.
+You’ll do’t, Jean,’ said Bob with cordial confidence. ‘You’ll like the
+auld place far better than Logan House after young Logan has come to
+his kingdom. The manse o’ Dalroy was a bonnie pairt and a happy hame
+even for a servant lass in the auld days. I’ve no doubt it will be as
+nearly as possible the same, under Miss Catrine who comes o’ a gude
+stock and the young minister who I am told has the making o’ a powerful
+preacher in him, while he is a kind man to the puir. I’m as pleased as
+you can think, Jean, to hear o’ your down-sitten in the end--for you’ll
+never leave them, they’ll never let you go. Woman, you’ll be an honour
+to their house among their young maids; you’ll be like Rebeecy’s nurse
+whom all Israel murned for, that the auld Doctor aince preached about,
+and you could turn up chapter and verse, and read what was said o’ her
+in the “Word.”’
+
+‘Thanks to you, Bob,’ said Jean in a low tone, conscious of his
+self-forgetfulness.
+
+But all through the conversation Bob was alert for any sign of the
+return of his bairns. He was extremely desirous that they should come
+home in time for Jean to see them before she left. ‘I wouldna like to
+keep you ower long, Jean, when you have siccan a tramp between toons,
+and it was mair than kind of you to come. But if you could just aince
+cast een on the bairns, if you could see Jockie and tell me what you
+think o’ him, I would like it aboon a’ things. If I were at their
+heels,’ cried Bob, waxing hot in his great longing to bring about the
+introduction, ‘I would try if a gude paik wouldna put smeddum in them.
+But you ken bairns will be bairns,’ he turned the next moment and
+craved indulgence for his culprits. ‘They will find things to play wi’,
+were it but a wheen burrs to stick on ane anither’s backs, and keep
+them ahint on the road.’
+
+At last the members of Bob’s family arrived simultaneously, the lasses
+with their bleached hair and round rosy faces, and the puny little
+lad. Lizzie was lugging along her brother in her motherly young arms,
+Peggy had her bag with her books hung round her neck. There was no
+particular sign of that seeking to get their heads out of the yoke
+which Eppie had foreboded, though they might not have been guiltless of
+the light-heartedness of sticking burrs on each other’s backs for the
+last quarter of an hour. But the two, and even the small child, having
+a spindly arm hanging loosely across the breast of his sister’s blue
+pinafore, with his eyes looking large and hollow like his father’s, in
+his wasted mite of a face, stared open-mouthed at Jean. In vain their
+father strove to do the honours with the best effect. ‘Gie me the
+bairn, Lizzie. This is Lizzie and thon’s Peggy, Jean; and here’s an
+auld friend of mine, lasses.’
+
+In his deep anxiety that the children might make a favourable
+impression on his old friend, Bob suddenly fell foul of the objects of
+his devotion with a sharpness of fault-finding which not only took them
+completely by surprise, but drove them into a frame of mind still more
+stupid and provoking.
+
+‘Ha’e you no a tongue in your head, Lizzie?’ Bob reproached his
+eldest-born cuttingly. ‘And as for you, Peggy,’ he turned furiously
+on the second girl, ‘lowse that bag from your neck this minute, and
+put aff that bannet that you have a’ but torn the croon frae since
+you left hame this morning. What garred you be sae royd--and noo you
+are as blate, when I would have had you look wiselike and behave your
+best no to disgrace yoursel’s and me.’ Bob ended with a groan of
+disappointment--well-nigh despair.
+
+Jean had to interfere with her womanly forbearance and consideration.
+‘Let them alane, Bob. There’s naithing wrang. What would you ha’e o’
+the bairns--fine bairns, who I am sure will do a’ they can to please
+you?’
+
+But Bob’s heart melted utterly to his youngest-born, his son and heir,
+and he failed to attack him with scathing sarcasm. ‘Here’s Jockie,’
+he said, smiling on the child that nestled in his left arm. ‘Tak him
+frae me, Jean, he’ll no greet--he’s the best manners o’ us a’--he’s
+sic a licht wecht, though he’s a hantle heavier than he was six months
+syne, you’ll no feel it, even though you’re tired,’ said Bob, putting
+his darling awkwardly with his one free hand into Jean’s arms. He
+gave a sigh half of speechless satisfaction, half of unfathomable
+sorrow--looking in her face at the same time, seeking to hear her utter
+her tribute to the child’s attractions, and hanging breathlessly on
+what was likely to be her outspoken verdict of whether it was to be
+life or death for the lad.
+
+Jean took the bairn reverently and gently. He did not greet; in his
+weakness he appreciated fully Jean’s light firm grasp, while he
+cuddled to her breast and looked up in her face with his child’s eyes.
+‘Puir wee lamb,’ said Jean, sitting down again, for she had risen, as
+if his feather’s weight had overpowered her strength; and she stroked
+the wan cheeks till Jockie smiled with the ineffable sweetness of a
+sick child’s smile.
+
+‘He looks far frae strong,’ said truthful Jean slowly, while Bob
+listened to her words as if they had been those of an oracle. ‘But I
+dinna think he has just the look that little Jack at the manse had--I
+ha’e a hope he’ll get ower his sickness. Do you mind, Bob, your mither
+used to say you were a silly bairn yoursel’ till you were sax years
+auld? and your Jockie has a look o’ you.’
+
+‘Do you think sae, Jean?’ said Bob, almost shame-faced at the
+extent of the compliment, while ready to bless her for the faintest
+encouragement to trust that Jockie might live to become a toil-worn,
+care-laden man like his father. But, no; Jockie, if he were spared,
+would have brighter fortunes; no true father or mother has ever ceased
+to dream that his or her child will be more successful in the best
+sense--happier in every way, in the path trodden and cleared before him.
+
+‘I canna keep you longer, Jean,’ said Bob reluctantly but with manly
+tender forethought for her. ‘And I canna expeck that sic a favour will
+be repeated. I canna even find words to express to you how much I’m
+obleeged for this ca’. But if we should never meet again in this world,
+you’ll mind, Jean, I said as my last words to you, that, like the
+Maister you ha’e served all your life, you’ve returned gude for evil,
+you have done what you could to cheer the heart of a sick and lanely
+man.’
+
+It was the single word of complaint he had allowed to fall from him,
+and he only let it pass his lips to enhance the value of her good deeds.
+
+The two had left the children in the room behind them, and were
+standing in the doorway about to part.
+
+‘Bob,’ said Jean hurriedly, ‘I’m ready and willing to come again and
+stop, if you’re in the same mind that you were on the afternoon you
+spoke with me, at the smiddy well. The Miss Frasers have no more need
+o’ me. Eppie will gie in the lines and cite the minister to come here,
+and I’ll walk across the moor as soon as a’ is ready--if you are in the
+same mind, Bob.’
+
+Jean spoke the words tremulously, but merely as a matter of course, in
+her recantation of her refusal. It was the thought farthest from her
+generous heart to choose this moment of all others in which to reproach
+him with his former faithlessness.
+
+But as a wrong once done is indelible, the reproach of which Jean
+never dreamt, smote Bob’s conscience keenly, even while he protested
+vehemently, ‘I’m in the same mind. Could I be in any other to my auld
+true love Jean?’ And he cried again, ‘Oh, Jean! your tender mercies
+are baith kind and cruel,’ while he bowed himself in such an agony
+of shame as he had never yet felt for the past. He had even, for an
+instant, a notion that it must be the bitterest part of his punishment
+to have to put away from him, with his own hand, this ecstasy of hope
+and happiness for the future--not of himself alone but of his children.
+‘I canna let your mercies be, Jean, I daurna let them be,’ he muttered
+hoarsely.
+
+‘Then I winna ask your leave, Bob,’ said Jean in her triumph of love,
+before the might of which Bob’s anguish and resistance went down.
+
+‘It’s no me, it’s the bairns, who have won you, as I aye kenned they
+would,’ said Bob, taking heart again at the thought of his treasure;
+‘and they will thank you as I couldna do--no, though I were to live to
+ninety-nine and never cease speaking your praises.’
+
+
+                       END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+                           LONDON: PRINTED BY
+                SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+                         AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber’s Notes
+
+Obvious punctuation errors and omissions have been silently corrected.
+
+Page 41: “freely acknowleged” changed to “freely acknowledged”
+
+Page 55: “scorched outmeal” changed to “scorched oatmeal”
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75486 ***
diff --git a/75486-h/75486-h.htm b/75486-h/75486-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ed0b85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75486-h/75486-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,5021 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>Scotch marriages, vol. 1 | Project Gutenberg</title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style>
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+p {
+    margin-top: .51em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .49em;
+    text-indent: 1em;
+}
+
+.p2       {margin-top: 2em;}
+.p4       {margin-top: 4em;}
+.p0 {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: 33.5%;
+    margin-right: 33.5%;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;}
+hr.r5  {width: 5%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 47.5%; margin-right: 47.5%;}
+@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} }
+ 
+div.chapter {page-break-before: always;}
+h2.nobreak  {page-break-before: avoid;}
+
+table {
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+}
+table.autotable    { border-collapse: collapse; width: 60%;}
+table.autotable td,
+table.autotable th { padding: 4px; }
+.x-ebookmaker table {width: 95%;}
+
+.tdc      {text-align: center; vertical-align: top;}
+.tdr      {text-align: right; vertical-align: top;}
+.page {width: 8em; vertical-align: top;}
+
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    left: 92%;
+    font-size: smaller;
+    text-align: right;
+    font-style: normal;
+    font-weight: normal;
+    font-variant: normal;
+    text-indent: 0;
+}
+
+.center   {text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;}
+
+
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+
+/* Footnotes */
+.footnotes        {border: 1px dashed; margin-top: 1em;}
+
+.footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+
+.footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;}
+
+.fnanchor {
+    vertical-align: super;
+    font-size: .8em;
+    text-decoration:
+    none;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+
+.poetry {
+    display: block;
+    text-align: left;
+    margin-left: 0
+    }
+/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry in browsers */
+/* .poetry           {display: inline-block;} */
+/* large inline blocks don't split well on paged devices */
+@media print { .poetry {display: block;} }
+
+.x-ebookmaker .poetry {
+    margin-left: 5%;
+    margin-right: 5%
+    }
+.poetry-container {
+    margin: 1.5em auto;
+    text-align: center;
+    font-size: 98%;
+    display: flex;
+    justify-content: center
+    }
+.poetry .stanza {
+    padding: 0.5em 0;
+    page-break-inside: avoid
+    }
+.poetry .verse {
+    text-indent: -3em;
+    padding-left: 3em
+    }
+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
+    color: black;
+     font-size:smaller;
+     padding:0.5em;
+     margin-bottom:5em;
+     font-family:sans-serif, serif; }
+
+.xbig {font-size: 2em;}
+.big {font-size: 1.3em;}
+.small {font-size: 0.8em;}
+
+abbr[title] {
+  text-decoration: none;
+}
+
+/* Poetry indents */
+.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;}
+.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2em;}
+.poetry .indent6 {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75486 ***</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</span></p>
+
+
+
+<h1>                            SCOTCH MARRIAGES<br><span class="small">I.</span></h1>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center xbig">
+SCOTCH MARRIAGES<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center p2">
+BY<br><span class="big">
+SARAH TYTLER</span> <br><span class="small">
+AUTHOR OF
+‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ &amp;c.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p2">
+IN THREE VOLUMES<br><span class="big">
+VOL. I.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p4">
+LONDON<br>
+SMITH, ELDER, &amp; CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE<br>
+1882<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+[<i>All rights reserved</i>]<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</span></p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘Choose not alone a proper mate</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But proper time to marry’</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent6"><span class="smcap">Cowper</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS<br>
+OF<br>
+THE FIRST VOLUME.</h2>
+</div>
+<hr class="r5">
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr><th class="tdr">CHAPTER</th><th></th><th class="tdr page">PAGE</th></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="3"><i>LADY PEGGY.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+I.</td><td><span class="smcap">Bridegroom and Bridegroom’s Friend</span>     </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+II.</td><td><span class="smcap">Peggy’s Wedding</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+III.</td><td><span class="smcap">Peggy’s Welcome Home</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+IV.</td><td><span class="smcap">The Long Days that followed</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+V.</td><td><span class="smcap">The Reign of Misrule</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+VI.</td><td>‘<span class="smcap">Lady Peggy</span>’      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+VII.</td><td>‘<span class="smcap">Huntingtower</span>’      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+VIII.</td><td><span class="smcap">Peggy’s Friends</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+IX.</td><td><span class="smcap">The Lessons that Primrose gave while Balcairnie
+looked on</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+X.</td><td>‘<span class="smcap">A’ will be richt again gin Jamie were
+come back</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="3"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</span>
+<i>JEAN KINLOCH</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+I.</td><td><span class="smcap">Jean Scorned</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+II.</td><td><span class="smcap">Bob Meffin’s Amends</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">
+III.</td><td><span class="smcap">Jean’s Reprisals</span>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="LADY_PEGGY">LADY PEGGY</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.<br><span class="small">BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>During the last century there was little real difference between
+young Drumsheugh and young Balcairnie, the young laird and the young
+yeoman,<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> who was also the laird’s chief tenant and chosen friend.
+Jamie Ramsay, of Drumsheugh, and Jock Home, of Balcairnie, both
+rejoicing in a territorial appellation, had sat together on the same
+bench in the same parish school. For that matter Jock, though not
+particularly scholarly, as the cleverer of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> two, had generally sat
+above his companion. The boys had played together in the same games
+of ball and hockey. In company they had scoured the fields together
+after birds’ nests, nuts, and haws. They had in their green youth worn
+and torn the same corduroys little different in quality, and satisfied
+their hearty appetites on the same wholesome porridge and kail, oatmeal
+cakes, and ‘bannocks o’ barley,’ for the laird’s table was not much
+more daintily supplied than the farmer’s.</p>
+
+<p>Even the lads’ homes were on the outside not so different as might
+have been expected. Drumsheugh had an avenue of crazy fir trees, and
+the dignity of a ruined tower about a bow-shot from the high, narrow,
+free-stone house which represented the modern mansion. Balcairnie was
+just such another house, a storey lower, without the avenue and the
+tower. It was not destitute of compensation for these deficiencies in
+the comfortable-looking stack-yard,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span> which sheltered it from every
+wind that blew, and in the square of the farmyard which abutted on
+the house, and was alive and cheerful with domestic animals, and the
+constant work going on among them. Balcairnie was the livelier dwelling
+of the two. Both houses had long gardens very similar, prolific in
+hardy vegetables and primitive fruit, as well as in old-fashioned
+flowers. The gardens found room for umbrageous bowers and Dutch
+summer-houses, and included beech and holly hedges, which enclosed
+washing-greens.</p>
+
+<p>Inside, the best parlour of Balcairnie might have stood for the
+dining-room of Drumsheugh—furnished as they both were with Scotch
+carpets and oak, and adorned alike with silver cups, won in coursing
+matches, and great Chinese punch-bowls brought home by friendly sea
+captains. The chief difference lay in the fact that the dining-room at
+Drumsheugh was in constant use, while the <i>pièce de résistance</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>
+among the apartments in Balcairnie was the ordinary parlour, given
+over to drugget and blue-and-white checked linen, with ornaments of no
+more costly material than cherry-wood pipes, pink-lipped shells, and
+peacocks’ feathers. Again, there was no drawing-room at Balcairnie,
+with spindle-legged chairs in painted satin-wood and white chintz
+covers, such as was the company room at Drumsheugh. But the boys’ bare
+little garret dormitories were much alike.</p>
+
+<p>On the rare occasions, when the lads went from home, unattended by
+their parents, they journeyed by one conveyance which served the whole
+neighbourhood, except on special occasions—Tam Fleemin’s carrier’s
+cart.</p>
+
+<p>True, on leaving school young Drumsheugh had gone to the Edinburgh
+University, as became his birth and rank, while young Balcairnie had
+entered on the apprenticeship implied in holding a plough and drawing a
+straight furrow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> under the critical eyes of his father and his father’s
+foreman, according to the standard for young men in his class; but on
+the return of the one lad from the college and the promotion of the
+other on the death of his father to the possession of all the pairs of
+horses on the farm, instead of the obligation to work one pair, the
+occupations and amusements of the old allies tallied once more at many
+points.</p>
+
+<p>Young Drumsheugh—young only in years, for his father had died long
+before Balcairnie’s father, and the laird had grown up under the rule
+of a widowed mother—was a scion of the great house of Dalwolsie, the
+representative of a family of respectable though not very wealthy
+country gentry that had held up their heads among their equals for the
+last three hundred years at least. Young Balcairnie, though his father,
+grandfather and great-grandfather had been tenants of Balcairnie as
+long as the oldest living man in the neighbourhood could recollect,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
+knew nothing further of his origin than what was to be deciphered on
+a few mossy stones leaning over in Craigture kirk yard. These did not
+condescend to mention whether the Homes of Balcairnie came of the great
+Berwickshire Homes or not. The rude, half-effaced letters only gave
+the brief, if graphic, statement that here lay ‘the cauld corp’ of
+‘Dauvit,’ or Alexander, or John Home, as it might be.</p>
+
+<p>But blue blood must have spoken out very unmistakably, if it had drawn
+a sharp line between two lads whose rearing, casts of mind, tastes and
+pursuits were so much in common. For the laird farmed the home farm,
+and the yeoman was one of the first in the hunting field, though he
+did not attend the hunt ball. The young men, like the boys, wore as a
+rule the same every-day suits—no longer of corduroy, but of home-spun.
+Good brown woollen stuff, shorn, spun, and woven in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> district,
+diversified by yellow buckskins, boots and tops, red waistcoats,
+and three-cornered hats. The manly build of the pair rivalled each
+that of the other. Both were deep-chested, broad-shouldered, long
+and clean-limbed, with arms, not unused to fencing and boxing, quite
+capable of keeping the owners’ heads. The corresponding legs came out
+strong at coursing matches without the aid of riding horses, while
+the feet beat the floor resoundingly in reels and country dances for
+well-nigh a round of the clock at every merry-making, great and small,
+far and near. The comely ruddy faces under the three-cornered hats
+might almost have been those of brothers, except that Drumsheugh was
+dark and Balcairnie fair in hair and complexion.</p>
+
+<p>The men met at the kirk, they met at the market, they dined at the
+same table in the George Inn of the little town of Craigie on the
+market-day, they resorted to the same<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> coffee-room to read the same
+newspaper, with its chronicle of war prices, victories of His Majesty’s
+forces abroad, and meal mobs at home, while the laird and the farmer
+frequently rode home together, so long as their roads were one.</p>
+
+<p>Balcairnie would dine several times at Drumsheugh in the course of the
+winter, and if the Lady—Drumsheugh’s mother—was a thought stately,
+and kept her visitors somewhat at a distance, all in a perfectly
+courteous way, that was not the laird’s fault. He did his best to
+make up for it by being ‘Jack-fellow-alike’ with his tenant when
+Drumsheugh returned Balcairnie’s visits at the farm-house. Indeed it
+was well known to the Lady herself that Drumsheugh, though he could
+carry himself well enough in any society, was not guilty of offence
+against any and was liked in all ranks, showed at this stage of his
+development a perilous preference for humbler company than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> he had
+been born to. He would rather accompany Balcairnie to a ‘maiden’<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+or penny wedding, and enter with all his soul into the prevailing fun
+and frolic, rendering himself the most acceptable guest in the motley
+assemblage, than go where Balcairnie could not go with him, to what was
+by comparison the high and dry hunt balls and subscription assemblies.</p>
+
+<p>There is this to be said in excuse for Drumsheugh’s low tastes, that
+the maidens and weddings—penny and otherwise—not less than the
+markets of those days were freely frequented by guests—male guests
+especially—many<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> degrees higher than the mass of the company. Besides,
+as is sometimes true in a thinly peopled district, it happened that
+about the time Drumsheugh came of age, the county circle round him was
+remarkably deficient in young people of his own age, above all in young
+people endowed with such attractions as were likely to seize and retain
+the laird.</p>
+
+<p>Neither could the step be called a great descent, when in mind and
+manners so many were nearly on one level. For instance, not only had
+Drumsheugh and Balcairnie been fellow-scholars at the same parish
+school, but another contemporary scholar was little Peggy Hedderwick,
+the daughter of a hedger-and-ditcher, who had brought her doubled-up
+scone and whang of cheese tied up in a napkin for her dinner at school,
+just as she had carried her father’s dinner daily when the field of
+his operations was within a girl’s walk from home. Peggy, though she
+was the junior of both the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> lads by some three to four years, had
+darted nimbly ahead, with the precociously quick wit of girls, in all
+learning, save sums. She had been ‘out of the Testament’ and ‘into
+Proverbs’ before either of the boys, and she had been such an expert in
+repeating the shorter catechism, from ‘man’s chief end’ to the Creed,
+without halt or blunder, that the master himself could not ‘fichle’
+(puzzle) her. She had frequently coached her seniors and betters in
+that, to them, most difficult performance. As for the Psalms and
+Paraphrases, she could repeat them by heart in her shrill sing-song,
+till the master, though he was a licentiate of the Kirk, grew weary
+of hearing her. It was even seriously believed in the school that she
+had surmounted the Ass’s Bridge of the curriculum and could say right
+off, if anybody would stay to listen to her, the whole of the Hundred
+and Nineteenth Psalm. She could write a fine round hand, with an
+occasional<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> clerkly flourish at the tail of a letter. It was at sums
+that Peggy hung her head. The multiplication table, with its barren
+chart of commercial details, unbrightened by a green spot on which
+fancy and sentiment could feed, had brought her to grief, and taken the
+pride of intellect out of the white-headed lassie. The lads who came
+through this test triumphantly had tried to help her in turn. But it
+was in vain—poor Peggy would never make even a decent arithmetician.
+It must only be by counting her fingers that she could ever reckon her
+earnings and her spendings.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy Hedderwick, grown up into the bonniest lass for many a mile,
+was now the acknowledged belle of every rustic merry-making in the
+parish of Craigture. She was a great deal more and better than such a
+distinction often implies. She was something else than a blue-eyed,
+white-skinned, red-cheeked maiden, with a slim yet well-rounded<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>
+figure, a pretty foot and ankle, though they went bare six days out
+of the seven—unless in the depth of winter, a trim waist, a slender
+throat, a delicate chin, a dainty mouth, as good a nose as if she
+had been born a Ramsay—or, as far as that goes, a Stewart, and a
+broad enough brow to explain her early attainments in the Psalms and
+Paraphrases. She was even something more than an innocent creature in
+whom there was little guile, a modest child to soil whose modesty would
+be a gross sin and shame in the eyes of every man worthy of the name.
+She was an industrious, upright, pious soul, the stay—by means of
+Peggy’s busy wheel principally, of her widowed mother. For the hedger
+and ditcher, exposed to every inclemency of the weather, had early paid
+the debt of nature. Peggy discharged faithfully all obligations known
+to her. She was a reverent, unfailing worshipper—one of the favourite
+lambs of the flock with the elderly uncouth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> book-worm of a dominie,
+who had progressed from the parish school to the parish kirk, and was
+in either place an excellent man, master, and minister.</p>
+
+<p>It was to this fair, sweet, and good young Peggy Hedderwick that
+Drumsheugh, wilful and masterful in his simple condescension, paid
+unfailing homage. He sought her out—for she never threw herself in
+his way—wherever she was to be found. He went with Balcairnie under
+a hundred pretexts to wherever the laird fancied there was the most
+distant chance of meeting Peggy. To bleaching-greens, quilting-parties,
+Handsel-Monday games, even kirk-preachings, her sorely-smitten swain
+followed Peggy desperately. He made little disguise of his infatuation,
+and put small restraint on his inclinations in scenes, where, as
+a welcome visitor from another sphere, he was allowed, it must be
+confessed, a considerable amount of license. He would dance with no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>
+other, he would sit by no other, he would convoy Peggy home when the
+play was ended.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the state of the case was no secret in the neighbourhood, with
+its various circles, among them that presided over by the old Lady
+of Drumsheugh. The folly and the danger, with what would come of it
+all, were commented on and canvassed everywhere. The sole cover to
+his actions, which Drumsheugh chose to assume, was that he went about
+in these lower regions under Balcairnie’s wing, as it were. The laird
+insisted on taking the yeoman with him in all his excursions and
+escapades.</p>
+
+<p>This was some small comfort to Mrs. Ramsay. Balcairnie was, if
+anything, the wiser and more prudent of the two, and she felt he was,
+in a sense, on his honour to protect his friend from the consequences
+of Drumsheugh’s rashness. Perhaps the Lady also counted a little, in
+the imminence of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> peril—for Drumsheugh was already of age and his
+own master, on a theory which was prevalent among the gossips. They
+said Balcairnie had been the first captivated by the charms of young
+Peggy, though he had at once drawn back from rivalry with his laird,
+and that Peggy on her part had smiled on the farmer till a bigger star
+appeared in her firmament.</p>
+
+<p>Even Balcairnie’s marriage with Peggy would be a great
+<i>mésalliance</i>, but it would not be so heinous an infringement
+of all social laws as Drumsheugh’s stooping to a cotter lass, either
+honestly or in sin and shame. Balcairnie’s mother as well as his father
+was dead, his sisters were married, and his brothers out in the world,
+so that he was a lone man—if a man can ever be called lone, able to
+disgrace nobody save himself, by an unequal marriage.</p>
+
+<p>The old Lady of Drumsheugh was particularly gracious to Balcairnie at
+this time. She inquired after his house, if it was in good<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> repair with
+the plenishing in order? She hinted at the propriety, no less than
+the probability, of his stiff old housekeeper being superseded by an
+active young wife. After the next sentence or two, she went the length
+of asking meaningly for bonnie Peggy Hedderwick, who was so good to
+her mother and so clever with her hands. Had she not won the maiden at
+the last harvest? Was not her yarn more in request in Craigie market
+than that of any other girl or matron in Craigture? And the Lady had
+heard that from Luckie Hedderwick’s couple of hens Peggy had reared
+the finest brood of chickens that were to be seen that Candlemas.
+Such qualities in a young woman were worth her weight in gold, Mrs.
+Ramsay declared impressively, with her keen eyes fixed steadily on the
+listener. She had the greatest respect for that girl. The Lady plainly
+suggested that a farmer, whatever might be said of a laird, need seek
+no richer dower with his wife than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> Peggy had to bestow. If the laird’s
+mother were a consistent woman, no doubt she would call on Peggy and do
+the Lady’s best to countenance her son’s tenant’s wife, should Peggy
+receive the promotion of becoming the mistress of Balcairnie.</p>
+
+<p>To this stroke of policy Balcairnie merely replied by returning the
+lady’s fixed stare, with a full and grave stolid look from blue eyes
+which were not unlike Peggy’s.</p>
+
+<p>If Balcairnie had ever entertained a tender inclination towards Peggy,
+it made no ill-blood between him and his friend the laird. It was
+probably early nipped in the bud by the fact that Peggy’s favours had
+been swiftly transferred, ere they were well bestowed, from Balcairnie
+to Drumsheugh. Balcairnie was once heard reproaching her, more
+waggishly than bitterly, ‘Ay, Peggy, when I gie you a turn in the reel,
+fient a kiss you grant me now, gin the laird be by.’ For Peggy, with
+all her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> virtues, was a woman still. She was caught while her fancy
+was yet hovering in its flight, by the glamour of superior rank. Both
+of her admirers were bonnie and fine lads to her, in the first blush
+of their admiration, and while both were above her in station, there
+was not much to choose between them. But the lairdship, and perhaps
+the greater boldness of Drumsheugh, turned the scales, and after a
+few months of ardent courtship Peggy was as far gone as her lover.
+She would no more have permitted a comparison between the merits of
+Drumsheugh and Balcairnie—though the latter was her very good friend
+just as he was the laird’s—than she would have suffered the old
+bed-ridden mother who had borne her and toiled for her to be matched
+with any other woman in the kingdom, be she Queen Charlotte seated with
+her golden sceptre in her hand by the side of King George on the throne.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> In Scotland the distinction between a yeoman farmer—one
+who owns his farm—and a tenant farmer is not strictly preserved. The
+term yeoman is, or was, employed indiscriminately to any farmer.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> A harvest-home, so called from the last sheaf of corn
+cut on the farm for the season. It was allowed to fall to the share
+of the best shearer or reaper, who tied it up with ribands so that it
+might take the semblance of a doll. It was then hung conspicuously as
+the chief adornment of the principal wall of the barn in which the
+‘maiden’—called in the north of Scotland the ‘kirn,’ was held. The
+decked-up sheaf was finally carried home by its proud winner, and
+suspended on the wall of her cottage, where it was treasured as a token
+of her prowess.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.<br><span class="small">PEGGY’S WEDDING.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>There came a crisis to all those thoughtless daring doings, and it did
+not proceed from the old Lady of Drumsheugh, much as she loved to lead
+in life. She had ruled with a high hand her old husband, who, if all
+tales were true, was not an easy person to guide; but his young son,
+with his easy temper and pleasant speech to the world at large, though
+he was a good son at home when he was let alone, threatened to prove
+too much for her.</p>
+
+<p>There was another mother in the case, as has been signified,—poor
+old Luckie Hedderwick—who had never been considered more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> than a
+sickly ‘feckless’ body in her best days, and who was now bed-ridden
+and dependent on her daughter’s industry for her daily bread. Whether
+Luckie had been from the first an accomplished and hardened deceiver
+so that she could at last bring forward a strategy worthy of the rival
+mother—the Lady of Drumsheugh; whether the approach of death began to
+unseal her dim and dull eyes, and to teach the foolish, ignorant old
+woman wisdom beyond all earthly sagacity; whether the former dominie
+who visited his aged and sick parishioner at the cottage in Peggy’s
+unavoidable absence, was secretly at the bottom of the manœuvre, Luckie
+Hedderwick suddenly set an interdict on all future friendship and
+love-making between Peggy and the laird. The old woman had been till
+then as silly and inconsiderate as any lass in her teens in taking the
+greatest pride and pleasure in Peggy’s triumphs and conquests, and in
+encouraging<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> the girl in what other people held to be Peggy’s sins of
+vanity and unwarrantable ambition; but she now forbade her child, under
+pain of her mother’s lamentations and reproaches—which were worse than
+her wrath—so much as to have a meeting with the gentleman, if she
+could possibly foresee and prevent it.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy was broken-hearted and in despair, but she never dreamt of
+defying, and still less of cheating, her mother.</p>
+
+<p>The laird, arrested in the full force of his passion, was goaded
+to the brink of madness and driven half beside himself. No more
+well-understood foregatherings with Peggy; no more interceptings of
+the girl on her way to the well, or the shop, or a neighbour’s house;
+no more strolls among the whins and broom<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> in the twilight, careless
+who saw; no more walking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> of his horse—or leaping from the saddle
+and walking himself—beside her when he came up with her, which he
+was pretty sure to do, on the return of both from Craigie market; no
+more climbing of the breezy, heathery hill and descending on the other
+side where the green trees shaded the road, throwing a white shower of
+blossom there in the spring, being full of birds singing as they rifled
+the fruit in summer, and in autumn dropping blood-shot leaves among
+the mud and mire. The laird would gallantly insist on placing Peggy’s
+basket before him on the saddle, or would carry it for her. Balcairnie
+either trotting on with a passing nod, or falling discreetly into the
+background, determined to show that he was not curious over much, or
+bent on spoiling sport.</p>
+
+<p>The spectacle had hardly been an improving one. The young laird had
+been demeaning himself in some lights, trifling with a poor country
+girl, and exposing her, as he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> ought not to have done, to serious
+misconstruction and harm. Peggy, like a senseless girl, had been laying
+herself open to scandal and slander and a hundred graver dangers.
+Still the pair had been a pretty pair, however ill-matched—there is
+no denying it. The laird in his riding-coat and boots and tops, gaily
+flourishing his silver-mounted whip; Peggy in her blue-and-red striped
+linsey-woolsey petticoat, white apron, blue-and-buff striped jacket,
+and her duffle mantle if it chanced to be wintry weather; her fair
+hair either bare and tied up with a riband—the relic of the old snood
+or cockernonie, or else covered by a Bessie-kell-a quilted cotton or
+woollen hood—under the curtains of which the bonnie face beamed with
+the mingled shyness and gladness of a child’s face.</p>
+
+<p>In a similar manner the larger groups, in which many minor figures had
+been represented with varying effect, were effaced from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> the canvas.
+These had shown Peggy on the harvest field where the laird, like
+Boaz of old, shared the labour and the mid-day meal of his servants.
+Detaching Peggy from the rest, he would act as ‘bandster’ to her
+shearing, or he would sit at her feet, and decree that as an equivalent
+to dipping her morsel in the vinegar, she should have her choice of the
+scones in the basket and the first draught of ale from the pitcher. In
+those days Peggy was the queen of the autumn fields—a gentle queen
+who bore the honours thrust upon her meekly. Still she did not fail to
+arouse animadversion, and the entire <i>tableau</i> tended rather to
+the entertainment than the edification of the spectators.</p>
+
+<p>The sensations of the company were not of a much more generous or
+amiable description when Peggy was persuaded to fling her handkerchief
+to Drumsheugh in the coquettish old dance of ‘The Country Bumpkin;’ or
+when, at the entreaty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> of her lover, she sang with her flute-like pipe
+to a decorously hushed assembly, or sat as mute as a mouse while he
+sang in his trumpet tones. Her song might be ‘Ye Banks and Braes,’ or
+‘Aye wauken O! wauken aye and weary’—both of which ditties held tender
+warnings to heedless girls, if they would but have taken the hints—or
+it might be some blyther measure. But his song never varied. It was
+always the bold, barefaced declaration—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Her breath is like the morning,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The rosy dawn, the springing grass</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">With early gems adorning.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p0">with a peculiar emphasis on the verse—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Ye powers of honour, love, and truth,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">From every ill defend her;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Inspire the highly-favoured youth</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The destinies intend her.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The laird could not stand the abrupt, harsh interference which in the
+twinkling of an eye dissolved these enchanting scenes. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> would cost
+him his wits. He would rather carry off Peggy, with or without her
+will, where nobody should ever come between them. What did she mean by
+giving him up at any third person’s word, be that person her mother
+twice over? Had the two-faced lass no heart in her breast? He would be
+upsides with her yet, for the pain and mortification she was causing
+him. He confided all this to Balcairnie, who gave no further answer
+than a shake of his head and a resolute ‘I’ll no be your man in sic an
+ill job, Drumsheugh,’ so the laird went on fuming and storming if he
+did not speak of ‘louping ower a linn.’</p>
+
+<p>The comical side of the question was that he was his own master all the
+time to do what he liked in the circumstances. He had been left the
+Laird of Drumsheugh without limitation. He could marry Peggy Hedderwick
+to-morrow, in spite of his mother, and it was not likely that Peggy or
+her mother for her, would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> decline a plain offer of marriage from so
+high a quarter, or that either would draw so fine a distinction as to
+refuse the proposed honour, unless it were accompanied by the free and
+full consent of the Lady to her son’s throwing himself away.</p>
+
+<p>But, somehow, the laird stopped short of such rank insubordination
+and thoroughgoing independence. There was a strain of weakness in his
+wilfulness, or else the times were against him. People had not yet
+shaken off the old feudal prejudices. Drumsheugh, in his simplicity
+and homeliness, was still, both in his own estimation and in that of
+other people, the Laird, the scion of the great house of Dalwolsie,
+and Peggy was the cotter lass, come of hynds and nobodies. Balcairnie,
+who was not so far before her in the last respect, might have married
+her without reservation, though she was by no means his social equal;
+but the most disinterested unworldly version of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> the affair which
+the most single-hearted judges looked for from Drumsheugh was that
+he should be found fond enough of Peggy, and faithful enough to her,
+while he was sufficiently regardless of his own interests, to engage in
+a secret ancient troth-plight equivalent to a marriage with her, and
+right in the eyes of the law, though it was censurable by the Kirk.
+It would be a contract which must hamper him all his days, and if he
+were ever so far left to himself as to seek to evade it, might drag
+him down to crime and misery. Why on such small temptation, out of two
+courses—the one clear and above-board, the worst consequences of which
+would be faced at once—the other a flattering more than half-cowardly
+compromise done in the dark, and only coming to the light and
+encountering the natural results after a long interval—a manly fellow
+like the laird should inevitably, as if it were a matter of necessity,
+have adopted the second and lower course,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> remains a testimony to the
+force of habit and of one-sided reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>The laird had been accustomed to set his mother at nought in what
+seemed right in his own eyes. He was not dependent on her in money
+matters, and did not give a thought to the risk of forfeiting the
+savings of her jointure, since he was at this stage of his development
+as free-handed as he was open-hearted. Still, he could not summon
+up his courage to brave the high-spirited, determined old woman
+altogether. In the same way he could not make up his mind to despise
+the clamour and opposition of his circle of gentry, little as he had
+hitherto prized the hereditary association with them.</p>
+
+<p>Drumsheugh, when he was compelled to a decision, never dreamed of a
+more generous and honourable step than that of running away with Peggy,
+and vowing that he was her husband before two available witnesses;
+nay, the idea of anything less temporising and more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> magnanimous did
+not even cross Balcairnie’s mind. It was in serene satisfaction with
+the concession that he agreed to back the laird as usual in waylaying
+Peggy, in spite of her mother’s commands, and in propounding to her the
+grand yet sorry expedient for getting rid of all objections in future,
+by establishing the couple in the sure, if unacknowledged, relations of
+man and wife.</p>
+
+<p>After some spying and picking up of floating information, the two
+friends learnt that Peggy, while she now kept religiously indoors
+with her mother, for the most part of her time, was in the custom of
+recompensing the neighbour who went most of the girl’s errands. This
+reward consisted in Peggy’s ‘ca’ing,’ or driving out, the neighbour’s
+cow in the cool of the morning and late evening of the June season, to
+feed for an hour or two on the grass by the dyke sides and ditches, or
+on the short turf of a single knowe, which rose in solitary dignity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>
+among the flat corn-fields. The road to the knowe was for a certain
+distance that to Craigie, so often trodden in happier circumstances.
+The knowe itself, with its patches of rushes, had been Peggy’s seat
+when as a child she had played at plaiting the ‘thrashies’ into a crown
+and sceptre. She was an only child like her lover, and had known few
+playmates save her school companions. She had been used to lonely hours
+and single-handed games. Her most intimate friend in later times had
+been her ardent admirer the laird, whom she was now forbidden to see
+or speak to. He had been with her on this knowe when the dew lay on
+the grass and the corn-craik was ‘chirming,’ as it was at the present
+moment. He had made a posy for her of what Peggy merely called ‘bonnie
+floors,’ but which were in detail the dead white grass of Parnassus
+that grew among the rushes, together with the crimson and pink fumitory
+and the yellow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> avens which he had gathered idly as they came along,
+leaving hedge-row and dyke-side behind them. He had shown the greatest
+kindness and patience in helping her to draw out the pith of the rushes
+and plait it—no longer into a mock crown and sceptre, but into a real
+wick for her mother’s cruizie.</p>
+
+<p>All these soft recollections proved too much for poor Peggy, as she
+ca’d Hawkie; the girl put up her apron to her eyes to dry the blinding
+tears which rendered her more incapable of detecting prowlers in her
+vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>Then with the practical agility of the riever of old, the laird ‘cam’
+skipping ower the hill’ from the little hollow on the other side, to
+which he and Balcairnie had ridden, and where the latter stayed with
+the horses.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Jamie Ramsay was by the sorrowful girl’s side, detaining
+her when she sought to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy wore her summer house dress, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> pretty light cotton jacket
+which has been immortalised by Wilkie and Sir William Allen. It had a
+little collar or ‘neck,’ turned over where the sunburn of the throat
+met the whiteness of the bosom, and was only confined at the waist by
+the string of her apron. Her round arms were bare to the elbow, the
+sleeves of her jacket being rolled up for convenience’ sake. The arms
+were mottled and dimpled like those of a child. Her brown little feet
+too were bare. Her uncovered hair was arranged in the most primitive
+style—after all it is the fashion of the great Greek statues. The
+locks ‘which the wind used to blaw’ were ‘shed’ behind the ears, wound
+round the head, rippling in natural ripples as they were wound, until
+they were fastened in a knot at the back of the shapely head. Yet no
+stately ball-room belle in flowing gauze or rustling brocade, with
+high-heeled shoes and a higher powdered <i>tête</i>, had ever appeared
+half so sweet as Peggy to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> the enamoured young laird. He was not caught
+in undress. He came a-courting her—as he was bound to do, though she
+had been a beggar maid, and not merely an industrious cotter lass, who
+supported herself and her mother by the fruits of her honest industry.
+He wore his best snuff-brown coat, his last flowered waistcoat, his
+dress buckles in his shoes, with his dark hair combed carefully and
+neatly back and tied in a <i>queue</i>, the riband of which, in
+skilfully disposed bows and ends, hung half-way down his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>‘I mauna bide. Let me gang, laird. Oh! why are you here, when I canna
+lichtlie my mither’s word?’ cried the faithful and despairing Peggy,
+with streaming eyes and heaving bosom, torn as she was by conflicting
+obligations.</p>
+
+<p>‘Na, but hear me, Peggy,’ insisted Drumsheugh, strong to carry the day
+in his confidence in the honesty of his intentions, and the truth of
+what he was going to say. ‘Take a message<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> from me to your mother, and
+she will not stand in our gate, or make another thrawn rule to keep
+us apart. Tell her I am willing to join hands with you and exchange
+written lines. Lass, I’ll take the half-merk with you the morn if you
+like; neither king nor minister has power to come between us after
+that. You’ll be to all intents and purposes my wife and the young Leddy
+of Drumsheugh from that moment.’</p>
+
+<p>Peggy was not only staggered, she was deeply touched and proudly
+joyful. She had it in her power to become the ‘Leddy of Drumsheugh.’
+The laird had vindicated his sincerity and honour. There was no more
+question of tampering with her affections and betraying her trust. He
+had come out of the test nobly, as not one man in a thousand would have
+come.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy had not the least doubt that her mother would feel more than
+satisfied—she would be greatly uplifted by her daughter’s wonderful
+good fortune. Instead of thwarting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> Drumsheugh again in his wildest
+fancy, Mrs. Hedderwick would now defer to his least whim, and consent
+to pay him the humblest, most grateful homage. Peggy was ready to go
+with the laird to her mother and see if it were not so—to settle for
+life her grand and happy destiny.</p>
+
+<p>The laird, carried out of himself by the excitement of the moment,
+delighted with the effect of his words, thinking himself nearly as true
+and kind as Peggy thought him—more in love with her than ever—was
+prepared to start that instant to fulfil his pledge and knock the nail
+on the head.</p>
+
+<p>To Luckie Hedderwick, accordingly, the infatuated couple went
+straightway, without an attempt at concealment, widely removed as they
+were, in the exaltation of their feelings, from any consideration of
+prudence. They only waited till Drumsheugh hallooed for Balcairnie to
+come up and wish Peggy and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> the laird joy, and then to bring on the
+horses to the Cotton.</p>
+
+<p>Poor old Luckie, lying powerless in her box-bed, could hardly believe
+her fast-failing eyes and ears, when Peggy came in (followed by
+Drumsheugh in full feather), and when he sat down on the kist in the
+window, which was the only disengaged seat, her own arm-chair being
+occupied by the unmannerly cat, and Peggy’s stool at the wheel taken up
+by the tray of reeled pirns of yarn.</p>
+
+<p>There was no vow of vengeance on the laird’s smooth brow, or of
+reprisal on his smiling lips. On the contrary, there was the most
+abundant security and provision for Peggy Hedderwick in his presence
+there in her mother’s cottage, and his frankly undertaking to marry
+the lass at once, before competent witnesses. It was not from such a
+good end as this that her conscience and her minister alike had begun
+to frighten the widow. Her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> dear little Peggy would be a lady after
+all, and some day she would take her stand among the best and be freely
+acknowledged by the whole of the county side. She could not expect that
+just at first, but anyway she would be kept an honest and innocent
+woman. Her children, if she ever had children, would be born in lawful
+wedlock. She need neither fear God nor man, and poverty would no longer
+hover at her door, only held at bay by her courageous, diligent young
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it was not for Mrs. Hedderwick to say the laird nay. It was
+for her to thank him from a lowly, thankful heart for not merely doing
+justly by her daughter, but for being minded to endow her with his
+favour and with her share of his portion of the world’s goods, which
+many people would reckon far beyond her deserts.</p>
+
+<p>A glimpse of Balcairnie and the horses as they walked up and down the
+road, which the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> old woman saw through the bole of a window at the
+head of her bed, completed the dazzling of any sense Mrs. Hedderwick
+possessed. She described the scene afterwards as too splendid for this
+world—like a verse of the Bible, or a line of an ‘auld ballant.’
+It was as when ‘Abraham’s servant baud the lassie munt and ride wi’
+him to be the wife of his maister’s son. To be sure the horses were
+camels then, whatever the odds. It was as when the auld knicht crossed
+the sea to bring the king o’ Norrowa’s dochter ower the faem to be
+his queen, and then the nags were boats—whilk it was a mercy they
+were not here, lest the cobbles had coupet wi’ her Peggy among the
+prood waves, as gude Sir Patrick Spens’s ship sank down, in forty
+fathoms deep. Whatever, it was a maist fine ferlie for Drumsheugh to
+come wooing and speering for her dochter at a puir body like her,
+and for Balcairnie—with whose mither, worthy woman, she hersel had
+been a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> servant lass for three year afore she and Simon Hedderwick
+yoked thegither—to sit or stand at her door wi’ the beasts in braid
+daylicht, in the sicht of the whole Cotton, as gin she were the leddy
+and Balcairnie the serving-man.’</p>
+
+<p>The entire arrangements were agreed on that evening, the laird chalking
+them out very much according to his vagrant fancy, Peggy and her
+mother assenting with meek, swelling hearts, simply entering a humble
+protest and venturing on a mild amendment when he suggested a clean
+impossibility. It would be far pleasanter as well as safer, since the
+marriage was not to be made public immediately, for the affair to take
+place from home. Peggy had a cousin—a decent man—a cow-keeper near
+Edinburgh. She could go on a visit to his wife. Such a visit would be
+made worth the couple’s while; in fact, they were likely to be filled
+with importance at the part they were called on to play. Drumsheugh
+and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> Balcairnie could easily take a ride to town treading on Peggy’s
+heels early one fine morning, or late one propitious evening; Peggy,
+with her cousins to bear her company, and the laird, with Balcairnie
+as his supporter, would join in a stroll to look at the shop windows
+or admire the big houses, until they reached the particular house the
+laird spoke of as the Temple of Hymen, to the mystified ears hanging
+on his words. There Peggy and he would take the half-merk together in
+the most popular mode. They would acknowledge themselves man and wife,
+and sign the lines before some queer sort of mass-John and a notary, as
+well as before Peggy’s cousins and Balcairnie; and the knot would be
+so securely tied that only death could sever it. Peggy would come back
+to her mother and the Cotton, and he would return to his mother and
+Drumsheugh. Nobody need be any wiser till the couple chose to proclaim
+what had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> accomplished, when he should be at liberty to put his
+wife into his mother’s seat. But he felt sure his Peggy would not
+refuse to bide a wee for her honours, and would not weary while she had
+his love and care. And Mrs. Hedderwick would not seek to come between
+the pair when they were man and wife.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy would not weary, would not refuse to wait a hundred years—always
+supposing she lived a century and retained Drumsheugh’s unshaken love
+and faith while the years lasted. Was she to dictate terms and exact
+favours which were far beyond her original estate? She would be well
+off if Drumsheugh owned her for his wife, though it were but with his
+dying breath. As for Luckie Hedderwick, she would no more interfere
+with the laird’s rights when he had established them, than she would
+challenge the prerogative of the King.</p>
+
+<p>It all came to pass as Drumsheugh had ordained<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> it. In an irregular
+and yet in a deliberate, formal manner, quite legal according to the
+liberal law of Scotland, and with ancient custom to justify the act,
+by no mock marriage, but by a binding rite, as both knew, Jamie Ramsay
+wedded Peggy Hedderwick. No exposure followed the event, though it
+did not go unattended by vague suspicions and fitful rumours. Such
+marriages were not so unheard of as to prevent the signs of their
+recurrence from being quickly noted and eagerly caught up.</p>
+
+<p>But as the Lady of Drumsheugh did not see fit to cause an
+investigation, to cross-question her son, or to go out of her way to
+assail and harass Peggy; as Peggy’s mother in her box-bed did not stir
+in the matter by proxy; as it was the old daffing intercourse between
+the laird and the lass, which was openly resumed, and went on much as
+formerly to hoodwink the public, what was everybody’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> business proved
+nobody’s business. Nothing was said or done to clear up the mystery as
+to the precise terms on which the Laird of Drumsheugh stood with the
+lass of low degree.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">He’s low down, he’s in the broom,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">That’s waiting for me.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+</div></div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.<br><span class="small">PEGGY’S WELCOME HOME.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>Balcairnie could have spoken out and enlightened the neighbourhood, but
+he did not. Affectionately attached as he was both to Drumsheugh and
+Peggy, he had not as yet any strong temptation to speak out and shame
+the Devil, while delivering his victims. Granted that the position
+was most awkward and indefensible, it had not become so untenable as
+to shock and scare a man like Balcairnie—not wholly unaccustomed to
+such difficult conditions—into breaking his word and exposing the
+offenders, with whom he had been ‘art and part,’ for the good of one or
+both.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was hardly possible that Drumsheugh’s passion would remain at
+its first white heat. It was too probable that it might pass into
+weariness, even disgust, where the poor girl he had married was
+concerned. True, there had been no such fundamental disparity between
+the two as may be imagined. Still, Drumsheugh was a man with a man’s
+power of varying his life. He could not rid himself of his blue blood
+and his lairdship. The likelihood was that the longer he lived their
+claims on him would increase and intensify, till what he had slighted
+in his youth might, in inverse proportion, become a heavy chain on
+his mature years. He might come to clutch his hereditary advantages
+and brandish them in a surly fashion in the face of poor Peggy, who
+not only lacked such on her own account, but would to a considerable
+extent qualify and damage her husband’s privileges. The shallowness
+of the laird’s nature, in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> middle of its single-heartedness and
+transparency, would tend to this result.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Peggy, arrested and isolated by her own deed, instead
+of moving on and becoming transplanted, would stand still or retrograde
+in her false suspended position. Half envied, half doubted, and blamed
+by her former equals, wholly distrusted and shunned by those who were
+still her social superiors, her heart would grow sick under the painful
+ordeal, her gentle, modest nature wax bold and defiant. The very
+appearance of evil—which is to be avoided in its turn—would work much
+of the harm of the evil itself.</p>
+
+<p>But long before this deplorable conclusion was reached, within three or
+four months of the unceremonious marriage, while the laird was still
+the fond bridegroom and Peggy the tender bride, an accident happened
+which brought matters to an unexpected crisis.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p>
+
+<p>One windy October afternoon the laird had been helping to take down
+the first new stack to be thrashed or flailed out from the stack-yard
+of the home-farm, when by some chance he missed his footing, fell
+headlong from the stack-head among the horses’ feet below, and received
+a kick in the chest from one of the startled horses. He was taken up
+insensible and carried to the mansion-house. The misadventure created a
+lively sensation, and the news gathered gravity and tragic horror as it
+spread abroad.</p>
+
+<p>It was said that Drumsheugh was dead, that he had been vomiting blood,
+that he had never spoken, that he had cried loudly for Peggy Hedderwick
+to bid her a last farewell. In the conflicting testimony one serious
+bit of evidence was certain. Dr. Forsyth had been summoned post-haste
+from Craigie. Balcairnie had been seen riding like a madman from
+his biggest potatoe field, in which the gatherers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> had been toiling
+anxiously all day, for frost was in the air, and if the potatoes were
+not ‘pitted’ in time there would be havock among the earth-apples.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost night-fall before the calamitous tidings got Peggy’s
+length. They were thrown in at the half-open door of the cottage in
+which she and her mother dwelt, by an ill-conditioned drunken brute of
+a carter, who was driving by, and had caught a glimpse of the girl as
+she moved about between the dim gloaming without and the fire-light
+within. In the spirit of mischief and strange pleasure in inflicting
+pain which belongs to very small, low, and morbidly hostile natures,
+just as the man in other circumstances might have pelted her with a
+snow-ball in which lay lodged a cruelly sharp stone; so he called
+out to her in a bullying, inhumanly indifferent tone, ‘Hey! Peggy
+Hedderwick, what are you doing there? Do you ken your fine laird’s
+felled? He’s met<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> his dead in the corn-yard of Drumsheugh an hour or
+twa syne.’</p>
+
+<p>Peggy gave a piteous, plaintive cry, like that of a wounded hare—the
+most helpless, timid creature in its misery; but she did not sink down
+or faint away, and the next moment she was beginning to make nervous
+preparations to set forth for the scene of the disaster. She would
+not listen to her startled mother, imploring, in the mingled terror
+and weakness of age, for the explanations and reassurances there was
+nobody to afford. The informant had driven off after launching his
+thunderbolt, and the occupants of the neighbouring cottages were still
+about in the potatoe fields. ‘I maun gang to him at aince,’ Peggy
+kept muttering as she groped instinctively in the waning light for a
+shawl to fling over her head—not so much as a shelter from the bitter
+blast which had been scouring along the floor and causing her to
+spin by the warm hearth-side, as with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> a lingering sense of what was
+womanly and fitting, because it would not be wiselike in a lass to go
+abroad at such a season without a screen from inquisitive eyes. ‘He
+wouldna forbid me ony mair. He’s my man. Oh! Jamie, Jamie, if you’re
+felled outricht, and there is nocht left for me to do for you, but
+to streek you and dress you in your dead-claes, it is for your puir
+lassie’s—your wife’s hand, to steek your een and kame your hair for
+the last time. I dinna mind your leddy-mither now; I’m nearer to you
+than she is, and I’ll daur her to do her worst the nicht—as if the
+worst were not come already, gin my Jamie be felled dead! Wae’s me!
+wae’s me! And it was but this mornin’, and no a terrible lifetime syne,
+that he clasped and kissed me at parting.’</p>
+
+<p>Peggy did not even notice to lift off the gridle on which cakes were
+toasting. She who had been reared in the most frugal habits was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>
+abandoning the good oaten bread which must ‘scouther’ unheeded. The
+room was full of the sharp, searching smell of scorched oatmeal, at
+which every mouse in the farthest recesses of its hole in the clay
+biggin’ was snuffing with relish as at the potent odour of toasted
+cheese.</p>
+
+<p>Luckie was feebly protesting and whimpering over the waste, when Peggy
+unheeding stepped across the threshold and ran right against Balcairnie
+in the act of entering.</p>
+
+<p>‘Balcairnie, is the tale true? Is he living or dead? For the love o’
+Heaven, speak,’ gasped Peggy, clasping the friendly arm and making as
+if she would fall on her knees at the yeoman’s feet, treating him like
+the arbiter of fate.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! Balcairnie, sir, will you stop her—she winna mind me—frae goin’
+on a fule’s errand?’ implored Luckie from her bed, wiping her bleared
+eyes with a blue checked linen handkerchief; ‘and gin you will forgie
+me for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> liberty, will you turn the cakes and tak’ them aff, or do
+something to hinder sic a wicket throwing awa’ o’ gude victuals and me
+no able to steer a finger.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Canny, canny,’ remonstrated the doubly-assailed Balcairnie. ‘Yes,
+Peggy, he’s livin’ and life-like in spite of this mischanter, thank
+his Maker and yours and mine—no me. Oo, ay, gudewife, I’ll see to
+the cakes. Mony a time I had a hand—not always a helping hand—in
+your bakings—do you mind? When you were my puir mither’s douce lass
+and I was a mischievious deil o’ a laddie birslin’ peas among your
+bannocks.—Peggy, have I given you time to draw breath? If so, you maun
+come wi’ me this minute. I’m sent to fetch you: no by Drumsheugh alone,
+by his mither the Leddy: “Go and bring Peggy Hedderwick here,” were her
+words, and you maun haste ye to do her bidding.’</p>
+
+<p>But Peggy hung back. The reaction had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> come. She was relieved from her
+depth of despair and extremity of fear for Drumsheugh’s life. Her old
+childish dread of the Lady and reluctance to encounter her reproaches
+and scorn revived in full force. ‘Oh, Balcairnie, I canna gang,’ she
+protested incoherently, twisting her fingers. ‘Does he want me? What
+has she sent for me to do to me?’</p>
+
+<p>‘To gie you your paiks (whips),’ Balcairnie, who was somewhat of a
+humourist in his way, could not resist saying dryly, taking off the
+abject fright of poor Peggy. But the kind fellow relented the next
+moment. ‘If so, Drumsheugh and me had need to come in for muckle
+heavier skelps, as the Leddy is a just woman, who has a name for
+uprightness, and has ta’en pride in the fact all her days. Na, Peggy,
+dinna be a cawf,’ he admonished her with great friendliness though
+little ceremony. ‘You maunna stand in your ain licht. You must tak’
+the wind when it blaws in your barn<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> door. Forbye you maun obey your
+gude mither and your man, like a gude bairn. Drumsheugh cried for you
+as soon as he cam’ to himself, and vowed he but to see you richted, or
+it’s like his mither the Leddy micht not have minded your existence or
+mentioned your name. And he does want you, lass, for his breast has
+gotten a bit stave in from that ugly brute’s cloot; he’s lying groaning
+and peching yonder, though the doctor promises to put him richt in a
+wheen weeks or months.’</p>
+
+<p>Thus urged and alarmed anew, Peggy prepared to go home to Drumsheugh
+a weeping, downcast bride with a troubled home-coming—altogether
+different from the happy woman making the triumphant, if late, entrance
+on her honours which she and her laird had confidently pictured to
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Balcairnie would not suffer Peggy to tarry for any change of dress.
+He had spoken<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> the truth and he was fain to hope the best, but he was
+by no means so sure as he tried to pretend of the laird’s ultimate
+recovery, or even of his long surviving the bad injury he had received.
+And when Peggy detected some gleam of this dire uncertainty in the mind
+of his friend where her husband’s fate was in question, she had no more
+heart to put on her best clothes and seek humbly to make as favourable
+an impression as could be hoped for, on the mind of the Lady.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Mrs. Ramsay had often enough seen Peggy before, and till lately
+had been in the habit of speaking to her in a gracious condescending
+way, becoming in a laird’s mother, when the girl worked in the fields,
+or carried in her yarn and eggs to the market at Craigie. But that
+notice and these salutations had been bestowed on Peggy Hedderwick, a
+cotter lass. It was Peggy Ramsay, the Lady’s son’s wife by a lawful
+though summary marriage, who in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> other circumstances might have been
+tremblingly desirous to prepossess the dowager-lady in the younger
+woman’s favour.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, Peggy could but take down from their respective ‘cleeks’ her
+ordinary duffle cloak and rustic straw bonnet as the articles of dress
+which came readily to her hand, and tie their strings in such desperate
+speed and confusion that they at once fell into ‘run knots,’ which must
+be cut or torn asunder before she could be freed from their encumbrance
+when she arrived at Drumsheugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘God bless you, my lass, gin this be fare-you-weel,’ her mother’s
+quavering voice said wistfully, and Peggy minded so far as to turn
+quickly before quitting the room and bend over the prostrate figure
+with a half-choked reply, ‘Mither, Merrin will be in next door or I’m
+weel gane, gin you gie a chap she’ll look ben and see to you. If I
+dinna come back the nicht, I’ll send ower the first thing the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> morn,
+and I’ll never forget you, mither, only I can think o’ naething but him
+the nicht.’</p>
+
+<p>Peggy had no other idea than that she would trudge on foot all the way
+through the cold, darkness and storm, too thankful to have Balcairnie’s
+escort to Drumsheugh. But he had made a more considerate arrangement,
+though his care for Peggy had not impelled him to so bold a measure as
+ordering out the Drumsheugh coach to fulfil the lady’s commission and
+for Peggy’s benefit. When it came to that, he had never dreamt of such
+a step. Peggy and the family coach—the chief symbol of the country
+gentry’s rank and state, were still far apart even in Balcairnie’s
+loyal eyes. If Peggy should ever arrive at ordering out the Drumsheugh
+coach, and driving in it at her pleasure, as another young Mrs. Ramsay
+might have done in the sense of an unquestionable right, it could
+only be after a considerable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> apprenticeship still to sufferance and
+dependence on the part of the low-born wife.</p>
+
+<p>Balcairnie had merely brought his horse, with a pillion fastened to the
+saddle. There was no ‘louping-on-stane’ at the cot-house door. Nobody
+except the laird had been in the habit of mounting and dismounting
+there, any more than of driving up in a coach with horses taken from
+the plough. But the example of Katherine Janfarie’s lover, though it
+had not yet been sung in more than the rough border ballad, could very
+well be followed in one respect—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">He’s mounted her hie behind himsel’,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">At her kinsmen speer’d nae leave.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Balcairnie was far too true, generous, and reverent, with too
+well-balanced a mind in his yeoman estate, to find a further analogy
+in the situation. But it was on the cards that he should have his
+thoughts, as he rode on,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> stooping forward to see and guide his horse
+in the gathering night and tempest on the rough road, with the feeble
+woman’s arms clinging to him. For Peggy became forced, in order to
+keep her seat, to cling tenaciously to the other rider, and let her
+drooping head rest on his friendly shoulder, as she shook and quivered
+with the sobs into which she broke out now and then in her distraction
+and dismay, and as she was further flung here and there by the hard
+trot over the stones and through the holes, in a painful, perilous mode
+of locomotion to which she had been totally unaccustomed. Did he ask
+himself was it thus that Peggy would have held by him and depended on
+him utterly, had that vision which he was supposed to have entertained
+for a fleeting moment come to pass long ago—had she been for more than
+a year now the goodwife of Balcairnie, and had he been taking her home
+as a common event from kirk, or market, or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> friendly visit in scenes
+where she had already established her claim to be treated like the best
+of the company? Faithful as he was to the laird no less than to Peggy,
+Balcairnie knew that in such a case it would have been infinitely
+better for Peggy, whatever it might have been for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Other thoughts and associations thronged thickly on the young couple as
+they rode on in their excitement and suspense. The first snow of the
+season began to fall blindingly and blow strongly in their bent faces,
+before they passed between the two battered pillars originally crowned
+with stone balls, one of which had fallen down and been suffered to
+lie, like a decapitated head, at the side of the entrance to the
+avenue. By some means the stone ball had become split in two and could
+not be replaced on its site. In this condition the two halves always
+reminded Balcairnie, who was tolerably familiar with Scotch history,
+though<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> it was the only history he had ever read, of that unlucky
+De Bohun, Earl of Essex, whose head good King Robert clove with his
+battle-axe, just to give the blustering champion of England his due,
+and as an earnest of the feats the warlike monarch was to perform that
+day on the field of Bannockburn.</p>
+
+<p>Balcairnie sought to cheer Peggy by claiming the snow as a good omen;
+she was ‘ganging a white gate,’ which, as everybody knew, boded high
+prosperity to a bride. But, in spite of themselves, another and very
+different picture arose in their minds. It was that which in song
+and legend has formed the burden of many a local tragedy. The scene
+is familiar to all when the betrayed and ruined woman wanders in her
+despair to her cruel lover’s door, while the ‘whuddering blast’ pierces
+her to the marrow, and the deadly white and chill snow threatens to
+prove her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> winding-sheet. She knocks, and implores piteously in vain
+for admission and shelter. ‘Oh, ope, Lord Gregory, ope the door!’ cries
+the sobbing, wailing voice, fast sinking into everlasting silence.</p>
+
+<p>Balcairnie and Peggy were now riding down the avenue of firs, sombre
+in the height of summer, with their black canopies blacker than ever
+under their powdering of white, while the bare stems were ‘swirled’
+by the wind in the wildest, dreariest manner. The ruin of the old
+tower was faintly visible. Shaken as it was, with its loose stones
+rattling in the hurlyburly, it seemed as if it might fall and crush
+Peggy in punishment of her heinous sin against the ancient dignity of
+Drumsheugh, and her audacious intrusion within its precincts.</p>
+
+<p>The front of the house was lit up with lights stationary in ordinarily
+obscured windows, or flitting up and down staircases, showing that
+something out of the common had happened,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> and that the whole household
+was roused and restless.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment when the clatter of Balcairnie’s horse’s hoofs might
+be heard, the hall-door was suddenly thrown open, showing what, by
+contrast with the darkness without, looked a blaze of light within. A
+group of servants was in the glare, but still more prominently in front
+of them stood the Lady in her black mode gown, tippet, and mittens,
+with her lace lappets fluttering in the night-wind as they framed a
+high-nosed, high-browed face—the face of a born ruler.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy set her teeth to keep back a scream of dismay, while Balcairnie
+lept down quickly and lifted his companion, ready to fall in a heap on
+the ground, from his horse.</p>
+
+<p>Was the Lady come out to kill her on the spot by telling her Drumsheugh
+was gone, and there was no longer a place for his poor Peggy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> in the
+house that had ceased with his passing breath to be his dwelling? When
+it came to that, Peggy thought in her despair, there was no place for
+her on the face of that earth where her young lover walked no longer.</p>
+
+<p>Was the Lady come out to spurn Peggy in the sight of the powdered
+flunkeys and flouting waiting-maids, and still-maids for whom Peggy,
+cotter lass as she was, had been wont, in her greater independence
+and simpler sufficiency for her few needs, to entertain a mild,
+somewhat inconsequent scorn? At the same time, in her perturbation, she
+indulged in extravagant hyperbole, for there was only one miserable
+flunkey—guiltless of powder, who was also coachman and gardener,
+and one ancient waiting-maid, who united the offices of abigail and
+housekeeper, at Drumsheugh.</p>
+
+<p>As Peggy’s tottering feet touched the ground a firm foot stepped up to
+her, a steady<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> hand was laid upon her to hold her up, a voice addressed
+her in clear, unfaltering accents, which, though they were imperious,
+were far from unkind. ‘Come away, my dear. Come in where it is your
+right to be in your man’s house and by your man’s side. If I had been
+told, for certain, four months since what I’ve been told to-day, you
+should not have waited and been kept so long out of your own. Fie!’
+exclaimed the lady in a little heat, bending her brows, ‘it was not fit
+that Drumsheugh’s wife should shaw neeps and sell yarn, whatever might
+be free to his Joe. But we’ll say no more of that. I ken it was not
+you who were the most to blame, my bonnie Peggy. It was all the fault
+of these two foolish loons, Drumsheugh and Balcairnie. But we cannot
+wyte the one, can we? when he is lying sick and sorry, and we may come
+to forgive the second in time, for the service he has rendered us this
+night. Cheer up,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> Peggy, the doctor says Jamie will pull through, and
+be as braw a man as ever yet.’<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> The author cannot refrain from recording that the
+magnanimous reception which the Lady of Drumsheugh is represented as
+according to her son’s low-born, privately married wife, was, in fact,
+given in similar circumstances by the widow and mother of an old Fife
+laird to her son’s sorely daunted, humble bride. A very different fate
+was hers from that of the Portuguese Inez and the German Agnes. The
+sagacious Scotch mother, finding that the losing game was about to
+be taken out of her hands, by what she did not hesitate to regard as
+an interposition of Providence in the illness of the laird, made her
+concession frankly and handsomely. Stout Drumsheugh and Balcairnie and
+bonnie Peggy are more than mere shadows, as the reader could not fail
+to see but for what is lacking in the skill of their chronicler.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.<br><span class="small">THE LONG DAYS THAT FOLLOWED</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>Drumsheugh recovered gradually from the consequences of his fall; but
+he had a long and dangerous illness, during which there was much to
+subdue any human being to whom he was first and dearest.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy proved herself a harmless, guileless, fond and faithful creature.
+She was meek in her exaltation, which, to begin with, consisted mainly
+of the liberty to nurse day and night a young man who had been too
+much spoilt by rude health, an active life, and the getting of his own
+way, though it had not necessarily been a base—not even a mean and
+heartless<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> way—to come out strong as a patient, considerate invalid.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady opened her eyes more and more to the truth, and did not
+repent of her wise generosity. She was won so far as to take Peggy
+into a degree of favour on her own account. Still, there could not
+fail to be an amount of reaction here also. Mrs. Ramsay made the best
+of Peggy: she brought herself to think that the laird’s mother might
+be the most suitable person to train the laird’s wife and to mould her
+in the course of years into the future Lady as well as mistress of
+Drumsheugh. She, the present Lady, might do it and get over the contact
+with all Peggy’s innumerable rusticities and gaucheries, not merely
+out of unselfish regard for her son, but because of some grains of
+tenderness already springing up, whether she would or not, in her by no
+means unmotherly heart, for her daughter. Poor little Peggy Hedderwick
+that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span> was, had been thrust on an undesirable eminence, which brought
+her in unsuitable rivalry—not with one alone, but with every former
+aggrieved Lady of Drumsheugh; yet Peggy deferred so sincerely to Mrs.
+Ramsay in the smallest particular, and looked up to her from such a
+lowly depth of respect that was almost awe, and of gratitude which in
+its intensity was well-nigh anguish, that the worst part of the offence
+became cancelled.</p>
+
+<p>But when all was said and done, it galled and fretted Mrs. Ramsay’s
+proud, punctilious nature to see Peggy scared and ashamed, floundering
+and bungling hugely and grotesquely whenever she could not avoid
+taking the place which had been vacated to her. For the old lady did
+nothing by halves. The head of the dinner-table, the central seat
+on the principal settee in the drawing-room, the top of the front
+gallery ‘bucht’ in Craigture Kirk, the front seat of that coach which
+Balcairnie had not caused<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> to be driven to the Cotton to bring Peggy
+home, the ordering of the servants, the receiving of the guests—all
+belonged now to Peggy’s duties and privileges. She might discharge
+them very unworthily, but she might not refuse to accept them; and no
+third person who had Peggy’s interest at heart might decline them for
+her or appropriate them in order to save her from suffering. This was
+not to be done for young Mrs. Ramsay’s own sake, to avoid injuring her
+fatally, since if any rash, short-sighted person were to interfere
+and adopt this course, worse would be sure to come of it, and for the
+sake of shielding her present the poor young woman’s future would be
+irretrievably ruined.</p>
+
+<p>No, as Peggy had brewed she must drink—as she had aspired, and by
+what would universally be held a wonderful stroke of good fortune,
+gained her aspirations, she must consent to rise to them, and fit
+herself for a new<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> sphere. She must learn to live up to the blue china
+of a hundred years ago. She must agree to learn the lessons of her
+womanhood, with whatever toil and torture; she must struggle upwards
+against overwhelming obstacles and crushing defeats; she must resign in
+exchange for her dearly bought success, all the peace, ease, and happy
+equality of her hardest day’s work as a labouring woman.</p>
+
+<p>There were others besides Peggy who had to endure mental pain when
+Drumsheugh was sufficiently recovered to quit the retirement of
+his rooms and appear even in the small publicity of family life.
+At first, though the news had gone abroad at once, as the Lady had
+intended it should, since the marriage was confessed and could never
+be controverted, that Peggy Hedderwick had been acknowledged in the
+presence of the household of Drumsheugh, and received by the mother of
+the laird, as Jamie Ramsay’s wife, there were few witnesses<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> of the
+cotter’s girl’s lack of qualifications for her dignities. Only the
+doctor and the minister and Drumsheugh’s confidant, Balcairnie, besides
+Mrs. Ramsay and Peggy, and the elder servants, entered the sick room.
+These spectators were bound in honour to keep their own counsel on the
+subject of Peggy’s mistakes and eccentricities.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, when a man lies hovering between life and that death which
+ends all social distinctions, grades and rank, with their different
+standards and clashing practices, dwindle into vagueness and unreality.
+Love may be as strong as death, and so capable of doing battle with the
+last enemy; but there is a tendency, even in the noblest antecedents,
+the best breeding, and the most polished manners, to collapse before
+the primitive foe with his rude directness of dealing. It hardly
+signified in these circumstances whether Peggy were a laird’s or a
+hind’s daughter, though it did matter still that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> she was Drumsheugh’s
+first and last love, that it was to her his eye turned in every wrestle
+with the assailant, that her voice could soothe or rouse him when
+not even his mother’s tones could penetrate through the turmoil of
+unaccustomed torture, fever, and weakness under which his senses were
+reeling.</p>
+
+<p>But everything became different when the first stage was over, and
+Drumsheugh had returned in a state of convalescence to the family
+sitting-room, with no further trace of having lingered on the brink
+of the grave than was to be found in that peculiar unreasonable
+‘fractiousness’ or crossness, which in itself caused Peggy to shed
+salt tears half a dozen times a day, as if she had been the most to be
+pitied instead of the most to be envied of low-born lasses. The fact
+was she was incurably gentle and tender-hearted, and had neither the
+wit to understand nor the spirit to withstand what was merely a passing
+trouble not worth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> the reckoning, the natural result of the previous
+disaster, for which the victim, in his inexperience, was not altogether
+to blame. Not that Peggy found fault with her laird. It was simply
+over her own presumption and demerits, and because she could no longer
+‘please him,’ that she grew periodically hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>The servants felt the seal set on their powers of observation,
+criticism and ridicule—and here and there their secret spitefulness,
+so far withdrawn. Other spies began to drop in: neighbours who, under
+the plea of inquiring for Drumsheugh, came to take a look and a laugh
+at bonnie Peggy on her promotion. When they were formally introduced to
+her as young Mrs. Ramsay they would, in their own minds and in the same
+breath, praise Drumsheugh’s taste for beauty, and censure his want of
+sense and worldly wisdom in committing so gross a <i>mésalliance</i>.
+They would seriously debate with themselves whether it would be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+fit for their wives and daughters to call on Peggy, and make her
+acquaintance as one of themselves, till the lass could bear herself
+more like a gentlewoman and less like a field-worker. The old lady had
+taken care to have Peggy dressed as became her new station; but of what
+use was it when Peggy huddled away her hands in her black silk apron,
+just as she had hidden them in her linen ‘brat,’ and bobbed a curtsey,
+‘looting’ till she caught her foot in her train, tearing the lace
+from her skirt, and threatening to come down with violence on her own
+drawing-room floor.</p>
+
+<p>No, the Lady could not stand the first tug of the social struggle,
+above all as Drumsheugh had been ordered away from home to avoid
+the cold spring winds till his chest should be stronger. He was
+actually going to take a voyage either to Gibraltar or Madeira—great
+expeditions in those days—promising such adventures and risks of being
+chased and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> taken prisoner by foreign privateers, that it quite raised
+the laird’s spirits to think of them.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody proposed that Peggy should accompany her husband. It would have
+doubled the considerable expense of the journey, while the laird was
+but a poor man for his station. Besides, to tell the truth, Peggy, with
+all her sweetness and humility, would have been of very little use,
+rather a good deal of an incumbrance, as a travelling companion. She
+had been rendered just then still more <i>distrait</i> and lost by the
+sudden death of her own mother, poor Luckie Hedderwick, which happened
+not long after Peggy had been transferred to Drumsheugh. The melancholy
+event overwhelmed Peggy with sorrow to an extent which the laird and
+his mother were inclined to consider unreasonable. They did not mean to
+be unkind, but it was difficult for them, after their first sympathy
+with Peggy in her grievous shock and the solemnity of the occasion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> had
+worn away, to regard the widow’s death otherwise than as a release to
+more than herself, an opportune end to one of the most trying of the
+awkward complications involved in the marriage. It was still harder
+to be quite patient with Peggy for having so little judgment in her
+lamentations for my ‘mither’ as not to recognise the compensations
+in the trial, and to remain the next thing to inconsolable—letting
+herself get more stupid and shyer than ever in her affliction, when the
+sole foundation for it was the death of a ‘frail,’ bed-ridden woman
+well up in years and laden with infirmities, so that she had become
+betimes a burden both to herself and others. She could not have been
+long spared to her friends in the nature of things. Peggy could not
+have seen much more of her mother in the circumstances. If Luckie had
+not happily been taken away at a stroke, her daughter could not have
+been permitted to leave her husband’s house<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> to wait upon her mother
+without signal incongruity and a host of serious objections. Peggy
+ought to be thankful that she had escaped these divided duties, and
+to rest content with having been a good daughter to her mother when
+the girl still belonged to the old woman, before Peggy had married far
+above her in rank, and thus raised heavy barriers between the pair.
+The poor soul herself had been reasonable. She had been tolerably
+reconciled to what was inevitable, while she had cherished the utmost
+pride and pleasure in her daughter’s lot. Peggy had been permitted to
+gladden her mother’s heart in this respect: she ought to remember that
+no woman, whether old or young, could have everything in this world.</p>
+
+<p>As Peggy, with all her submission, could not see this side of the
+question for the present—on the contrary, kept foolishly reproaching
+herself and mourning her loss, it would be better on the whole that
+she should be left to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span> herself—under good guidance, however,—for a
+time, to recover from the blow she had received and come round to a
+more cheerful and becoming frame of mind. The old lady would take the
+opportunity of her son’s going South to accompany him as far as London,
+from which he was to sail. She, too, would be better for a complete
+change of scene and interests. She would pay the second visit of her
+life to the English metropolis, and renew a friendship with some old
+Scotch families that had removed to England, the members of which she
+had not seen since they were all school-girls together.</p>
+
+<p>The Lady would have liked to supply her place efficiently. She was
+really a fine woman and proved more thoughtfully careful of her son’s
+wife in the absence of both mother and son than he showed himself. In
+his lightness of heart and simple philosophy he never doubted that
+Peggy would do quite well if she did not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> weary too much for him. But
+he would write and tell her how strong he was growing, that he did
+not forget her, and would be home to her again ‘belyve.’ She, on her
+part, must exert herself, write and let him know all about the house
+and garden, the cows and the cocks and hens; while Balcairnie would
+look after the horses and cattle, manage the cropping, and the buying
+and selling in the market for him, and would keep him informed on the
+business of the farm which was beyond a woman’s comprehension. She must
+go out and recover her roses which she had lost, good lass! in his
+sick-room, for he meant to return as brown as sea air and a foreign sun
+would tan and burn him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ramsay would have fain done more for Peggy. She would have
+provided her with a wonderful ally. It was not that the old lady did
+not think of it or wish it strenuously that she made no motion in
+this direction. It was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> because she was conscious that in her former
+ambition for her son and engrossment with what she had reckoned his
+welfare, she had wronged this ally, and so did not have it in her power
+to ask a great favour from the injured person.</p>
+
+<p>As the next best thing, the Lady repeatedly and earnestly recommended
+Peggy to the good officies of Cunnings,<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Mrs. Ramsay’s old maid
+and housekeeper, an excellent servant, devoted to the family, honest
+enough to be trusted with untold gold, and having but one failing to
+be watched and weighed against so many virtues. True-hearted, kind
+Cunnings, powerful in her worth, invulnerable on every other point, was
+‘too fond of a drappie’—to put her weakness in the euphemistic words
+in which it was for the most part respectfully and tenderly veiled.
+She could not look on the wine when it was red, or more correctly, on
+whisky when it was clear and colourless as the water at a well-eye, or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>
+just tinged with the suspicion of amber which belongs to a mountain
+stream flowing over a bed of peat, without danger of forgetting her
+obligations and falling lamentably from her honourable reputation.</p>
+
+<p>But except on rare and unhappy occasions, Mrs. Ramsay’s strong hand
+had always been able to keep Cunnings from stumbling into the snare.
+And the Lady argued that Peggy could take care of the keys of the
+cellar and side-board if she could do nothing else, and that having
+been solemnly warned of Cunnings’ weakness, she would not be so silly
+and unprincipled as to expose her servant to temptation. Poor fallible
+Cunnings, on her part, was incapable, in spite of the flaw in her
+perfect integrity, of laying snares to induce Peggy to leave the keys
+about, or abandon them altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ramsay then provided Peggy with a maid of her own; a sort of
+humble companion,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> to lighten the tedium when she should be left alone,
+and to prevent her seeking undesirable associates elsewhere. The person
+selected was a distant cousin of Peggy’s, five or six years older, who
+had been in good service, and knew and could teach young Mrs. Ramsay
+many things of which she was profoundly ignorant. In this way Jenny
+Hedderwick would break the fallow ground of Peggy’s mind and pave the
+way for the Lady’s more thorough and farther-reaching cultivation of
+the soil.</p>
+
+<p>It may sound strange to the modern reader that any relative of Peggy’s
+should be received as a domestic at Drumsheugh. But such arrangements,
+of doubtful propriety as they seem to us, were not at all uncommon
+in those single-hearted, downright days, when the world accepted a
+situation frankly and made the best of it all round. In the case of
+<i>més alliances</i> like the laird’s and sudden elevations in rank
+like Peggy’s, far nearer and less well endowed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> relatives than Jenny
+were often received as a matter of course into the household that they
+might profit in their degree and in their turn by the promotion of one
+of their kindred. A mother would come as a nurse or a cook, a brother
+as a groom or a gamekeeper, to the establishment, over which another
+member of the family ruled as master or mistress. The arrangement
+could not have worked very smoothly one would think. There must have
+been rough and tough tugs and hitches; but there were inequalities
+everywhere, and the seamy side was then unhesitatingly exposed in
+all circumstances. The one advantage which we have lost, was still
+in full force; defects and obligations were freely acknowledged, not
+scrupulously concealed, while plain speaking flourished to an extent
+which we can hardly conceive in these self-conscious and artificial
+days. Even Cunnings, old and attached retainer as she was, with a grave
+defect in her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> character which ought to have taught her humility,
+treated Mrs. Ramsay, senior, to her unvarnished opinion on many points
+in a manner that would not be ventured on or suffered in the case of
+our polished, accomplished servants—who are also far removed from us.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, another relative of Peggy’s, with immeasurably smaller
+qualifications than Jenny could boast, had already been put on the
+Drumsheugh staff. Peggy had a second cousin, called Johnnie Fuggie, or
+Foggo, who was a jobbing gardener by trade. The old gardener, coachman,
+and general serving-man at Drumsheugh had become fairly superannuated
+and incapable even of the pretence of performing his duties. Whereupon
+Johnnie, a foolish, conceited fellow of mature years, not hindered by
+any modest doubt of his abilities, or deterred by the least delicate
+consideration for the difficulties of Peggy’s position, applied for the
+honourable post, and actually urged as a strong title to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span> it the fact
+of his relationship to the young Lady of Drumsheugh. ‘The laird can
+never ha’e the face to refuse me the place, when he has marriet my ain
+uncle’s dochter’s dochter. It would be a fell thing if young Mistress
+Ramsay were not to hand out a helping hand and lend a lift to her ain
+flesh and blude. Wha but her cuzin should be her gairner and fut-man
+and a’? Wha will care for Drumsheugh gairden and the coach and my Leddy
+hersel as he will? Sowl! man, he has his ain share in them, and pride
+in them, because o’ the kinship!’</p>
+
+<p>Thus boldly urged by Johnnie Fuggie and his emissaries, who had easily
+procured access to her, Peggy had made her first ignorant, humble
+petition to her easy-minded, good-natured husband, who answered without
+thinking twice on the subject, ‘Oh, aye, Peggy, if you like. The place
+is promised to no other that I know of. Let Johnnie succeed to poor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+old Robbie Red-Lugs, but bid him mind the cauliflowers and codlins, and
+the horses’ knees, or I’ll break his head for him the first time I’m
+across the door.’</p>
+
+<p>The Lady was not so content with this hasty appointment, which had been
+none of her contriving, but she thought if it did not work well, it
+could be summarily set aside when she and her son came back.</p>
+
+<p>So Peggy was left—not in solitary state, but doubly fenced with
+kindred at Drumsheugh after the deplorable day when she hung on her
+husband’s neck at parting, and saw him and his mother drive away down
+the fir-tree avenue, with the most miserable forebodings that she would
+never see Jamie Ramsay in the flesh again.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> Scotticè for Cunningham.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.<br><span class="small">THE REIGN OF MISRULE.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>Apart from Peggy’s despair at the separation from her husband,
+following so close on the death of her mother, the young wife felt
+as pleased as she could feel that she was to have her cousin Jenny
+for her helper and counsellor. Peggy had always looked up to Jenny,
+putting her under a different classification from that bestowed on
+ordinary servants. Peggy knew how clever and diligent her older,
+better-instructed kinswoman had proved herself. It had been entirely
+by her own laudable exertions that she had attained a higher standing,
+from which she had always been reasonably<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span> condescending and indulgent
+to her little cousin.</p>
+
+<p>The tables were turned now, but it never entered Peggy’s head to be
+anything save highly gratified that she could be of use to Jenny, while
+Peggy was grateful in proportion for the services which she was sure
+Jenny would render her. Jenny, who had lived as an upper servant among
+ladies, would show Peggy how to behave like a lady, so that she might
+no longer annoy the laird and affront his mother. And Jenny would speak
+to the poor, yearning, mourning girl’s hungry heart of the mother whose
+name had come to be a forbidden word at Drumsheugh, long before Peggy
+had left off wearing her first crape. Luckie Hedderwick’s memory must
+be cherished in a measure by Jenny also, since she had known the widow
+well, and had even been indebted to her in her better days.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny was quite of Peggy’s opinion that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> she ought to profit by her
+cousin’s good fortune. But there the thoughts of the kinswomen diverged
+widely, and ran in two distinct and opposing channels. Jenny Hedderwick
+was a calculating, unscrupulous young woman, bent on making her
+own—and that as quickly as might be—out of Peggy’s advantages, and of
+what Johnnie Fuggie had confidently reckoned, in more senses than one,
+her relations’ share in them. Johnnie was a forward fool, as obtuse
+as he was intrusive, but Jenny was worse. She had viewed what was to
+her Peggy’s utterly unwarrantable exaltation with indignant amazement
+and disgust, while she had at the same time endeavoured to swallow her
+jealous vexation, and reap all the benefit she could gain from her
+cousin’s prosperity without paying any heed to what Peggy might lose in
+the process.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny did not go the length of hating Peggy, or even of bearing her
+decided ill-will.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> She was not worth it in Jenny’s estimation. She was
+a silly ‘coof,’ who, if one lost sight of her fair face, had not a
+single claim to rise above her old allies, and was as totally unfitted
+to do so as a girl could be. All the use she was for, in Jenny’s sharp,
+mocking estimate, was to serve as available prey for those who had
+spirit and wit to spoil the new-made lady.</p>
+
+<p>In accomplishing her object Jenny would not dream of being harsh
+or cruel to young Mrs. Ramsay. She would be as good to Peggy in a
+half-jeering, contemptuous manner as the girl would permit. Jenny
+was too astute a schemer as well as too reasonable a mortal for the
+opposite course of conduct. Indeed, hers was not a harsh or cruel
+nature, though she was wholly worldly and in many respects unfeeling.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Jenny would not take the trouble or undergo the
+personal mortification of keeping up much of a disguise before<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>
+Peggy—her own cousin, who had been wont to convoy Jenny and carry
+her bundle for her in the elder woman’s earlier visits to the Cotton,
+when Peggy had felt amply rewarded for her trudge and toil by an old
+riband of Jenny’s or a handful of the ‘sweeties’ which had been her
+last ‘market fare’—a silly lass, who could not hold up her head in her
+own house, fill the place she had won, give orders and exact obedience
+and deference from a laird himself, as Jenny would have done with a
+high hand in Peggy’s place. But Peggy must ‘pinge’ like a senseless
+bairn for the poor old mother well out of the way. Who was to stand on
+ceremony and put herself about to maintain a great show of appearances
+before such an unmitigated goose?</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, the very day after the setting out of Drumsheugh and his
+mother, Jenny—a strapping-enough figure, with a foxy head and steely
+eyes—proceeded to ‘rake’ through the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> house, up and down, backwards
+and forwards, opening cupboards and turning out the contents of
+drawers; taking an inventory, as it were, of what might be useful to
+her, with an eye to future raids.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy came upon her cousin standing on a chair, narrowly inspecting the
+articles of dress put away on the shelves of Mrs. Ramsay’s wardrobe, to
+which the prowler had found access by means of a key on the bunch which
+she carried with her ready for action.</p>
+
+<p>‘Eh, Jenny, ye mauna meddle there, nor touch a preen in this room,’
+cried Peggy, in the utmost dismay. ‘There’s naething o’ mine there,
+it’s a’ Mrs. Ramsay’s; this is her room.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hoot, Peggy,’ said Jenny lightly, in no manner discomposed. ‘Div ye no
+ken yet a’ the rooms here are yours, and it is only by your will and
+pleasure that the auld flytin’ wife gets house-room now at Drumsheugh?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span></p>
+
+<p>Peggy was in greater distress than before. ‘But, Jenny, you’re sair
+mista’en; Mrs. Ramsay is Drumsheugh’s leddy-mither. She has the best
+title to be here, and she is nae randy. She has behaved as I could
+never have looked for her to behave, as no common woman would have
+acted. She neither flat nor grat, but took me in as her dochter without
+a word against it, though we had deceived her—Drumsheugh and me; and
+she has been gude to me, and patient wi’ me. Oh, Jenny, surely I never
+said a word to the contrary.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I daresay no,’ said Jenny carelessly; ‘she’s your gude-mither—you’re
+bund to keep her up ahint her back, whatever you may do to her face.
+But that need not hinder you from taking a look at her gear when you
+have the chance. It will be a’ yours in the end, for she has no other
+bairn save Jamie Ramsay, unless the body play you an ill trick, and put
+it past you in her wull, which is the mair reason that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> ye should mak’
+yoursel’ acquent wi’ what there is for her to leave ahint her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, no, Jenny,’ protested Peggy, wringing her hands; ‘come down off
+that chair. I dinna want to ken what that press hauds so long as it is
+no mine but hers—Mrs. Ramsay’s, to do what she likes wi’.’</p>
+
+<p>Jenny paid no heed to the prohibition. ‘Look, Peggy,’ she said, pulling
+out and throwing down a long, lace scarf, so that it fell over Peggy’s
+head and shoulders, ‘see how you’ll set that. I’m thinking you’ll wear
+that, or something like it, when you come out o’ your shell and gang
+wi’ your laird to grand parties.’</p>
+
+<p>But Peggy was not to be betrayed through her vanity. She snatched off
+the scarf and began to fold it up quickly with trembling fingers. She
+knit her smooth brows into the semblance of a frown, and set down her
+foot with a desperate stamp, as an outraged worm will turn on a wanton
+aggressor. ‘Do you hear<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span> me speaking to you, Jenny? Put back Mrs.
+Ramsay’s things this minute? Let them alane, or I’ll ring for her maid
+Cunnings.’</p>
+
+<p>Jenny leapt down instantly and cleverly took the first and worst word
+of accusation: ‘What do you mean, Peggy Ramsay? Am I a thief, think
+ye, that ye should ca’ in Cunnings or ony other woman to catch me
+for taking a look about me when I was brocht here to look after you,
+madam, and see to your belongings, and put you on the richt road to
+behaving like ane o’ the gentles? I can tell you it will be a long time
+before you do that, Peggy, my woman, when you begin by wyting your ain
+mither’s kith and kin for a cantrip, because you have said the word and
+you are my leddy now, and are not to be contered. Had I ever the name
+of being licht-fingered, Peggy Ramsay, when I had whole charge of a
+hantle grander braws than I’m like to see at Drumsheugh? What ill was
+I doing to the leddy’s claes by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> just giving them a bit turn and air
+and proper fauld up, which is beyond Cunnings’s power now that she is
+ower stiff to mount upon a chair? Has it crossed your mind what folk
+would think and say gin you ca’ed in ony o’ your servants—<i>your
+servants</i>—Peggy Ramsay, to stop your cuzin from looking over Mrs.
+Ramsay’s wardrobe? Do you want to brand me as a thief, mem?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! Jenny, Jenny, how can you say sic words!’ cried Peggy, in an
+agony, willing to fling herself at her cousin’s feet, and beg her
+pardon a dozen times. ‘You ken that I ken you’re as honest as mysel’. I
+never dreamt of evening you to sic sin and shame. It would be insulting
+mysel’ and my mither and a’, as well as you! I niver, niver meant sic a
+wrang!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Weel, then, Peggy, you’ll better take care what you say, and think
+twice afore you speak again,’ said Jenny, not so much wrathfully as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>
+in delivering the calm warning of a deeply-injured woman. ‘I like you,
+Peggy, for auld lang syne, and I’ll do my best for you in spite o’ what
+has happened. But, I’m just flesh and blude after a’, and though you
+ha’e marriet a laird you maunna try to ride roch shod ower my head, and
+bleck my gude name!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Jenny, do you still believe I would?’ implored the weeping Peggy, but
+with an accent of indignant reproach in the pleading, which told Jenny
+she had gone far enough.</p>
+
+<p>‘Na, I hardly think it,’ Jenny said with a return to reassuring,
+patronising kindness. ‘But you’re a young lassie and you’re uplifted a
+bit, nae doubt. Your best friend’s advice to you would be to take tent,
+and ca’ canny, and dinna lippen to your ain first thochts, till you’re
+aulder and wiser and less likely to be mista’en.’</p>
+
+<p>Jenny came off the undoubted conqueror in the preliminary sparring,
+though she showed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> some wariness in pursuing her victory. She did not
+again enter old Mrs. Ramsay’s private domain and rummage among her
+personal possessions before Peggy. Jenny confined herself to what was
+the common ground of the laird and Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>Cunnings was the next person who interfered with Jenny in her little
+arrangements. ‘Ye maunna shift the ornaments in the rooms,’ the old
+servant said with stolid impassiveness, which might have meant anything
+or nothing to Jenny, whom she caught abstracting an agate patch-box
+and a pair of silver lazy tongs from the drawing-room—and a gold
+and tortoise-shell snuff-box, and a shagreen case which might have
+suited a pair of Moses Primrose’s gross of green spectacles, from the
+dining-room. ‘Mair by token that flowered pelerine which I heard you
+borrow from young Mrs. Ramsay that you micht wear it at a friend’s
+house in Craigie, was sent down by smack frae Lon’on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> as a gift from
+the laird to his leddy. It is not my place to interfere wi’ ony favour
+young Mrs. Ramsay may chuse to grant, but I will tak’ it upon me as
+an auld servant, weel acquent wi’ the ways of the family, to say that
+the laird may no tak’ it weel from her to bestow his gift, even in the
+licht o’ a len’ on anither woman. I’ll also say as a frien’ to baith,
+that whatever may have been fitting eneuch aince on a time, in the
+niffer o’ bunches o’ ribands and strings o’ beads and sic worthless
+troke o’ lasses when you were equals, the fine pelerine, noo shuitable
+for Drumsheugh’s leddy, is hardly the wear for a young woman even in
+upper service like you or me, Jenny Hedderwick.’</p>
+
+<p>Jenny snuffed the air with her upturned nose, and her eyes shot out
+an ominous flash, but she thanked Cunnings with the greatest apparent
+friendliness and respect. She had taken the accurate measure of the
+older<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span> woman in her strength and weakness, for such natures as Jenny’s
+seldom fail to gauge the flaws of their neighbours. Accordingly in
+the week following this incident, Jenny betrayed symptoms of falling
+into an ailing state of health, languished, and stood clearly in need
+of the ale-saps and bread-berry, the white wine, whey possets, and
+warm drinks for which Peggy, in her anxiety and affection, furnished
+abundant materials; while Cunnings prepared the food and drink for the
+threatened invalid, disinterestedly to begin with.</p>
+
+<p>There are various curious old legends and traditions of all countries
+and ages—travesties, like the swallowing of the pomegranate seeds
+by Proserpine—of the sacred record of the eating of the apple in
+Paradise—which illustrate the danger of tasting forbidden fruit. If
+a man or woman who hesitates is apt to be lost, the weak individual
+who prees and prees as Rab and Allan preed the famous peck o’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> maut
+which Willie brewed, till nothing of the peck remains, is still more
+likely to become the victim of a fatal appetite. Within a month poor
+old Cunnings had fallen lower before her mortal enemy, and disgraced
+herself more irretrievably than she had done in the whole course of
+her long service. She had been so helpless in her degradation that
+she could not ‘bite a finger’ in the customary phrase, though why the
+wretched sinner should seek to accomplish such a useless performance
+in the circumstances has not been explained. She had been seen in this
+state, and had been put to bed, the guilty woman, like an innocent
+baby, by one of the more compassionate of the mocking under-servants,
+to whom Cunnings ought to have served as an example while she ruled
+over them. She knew it all—the extent of her transgression, the shame
+of it, the degree to which she had exposed herself. She was down in
+the mire, and did not believe she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> could ever rise again and free
+herself from its defilement, while her infatuated base propensity was
+tempting her to lie and wallow in the dirt, so that she could gratify
+the horrible craving. She shrank from poor Peggy, who, in place of
+challenging and denouncing her housekeeper, was fit to break her heart
+over Cunnings’s lamentable breakdown.</p>
+
+<p>Cunnings was terrified to meet her old mistress. She became the
+bond-slave of Jenny Hedderwick, who had led the older woman into
+temptation and was now prepared to feed her vice, so that it might
+serve Jenny’s evil ends.</p>
+
+<p>There never was so thorough a moral ruin effected in so short a time.
+The truth is that a man liable to Cunnings’s sin might have indulged
+in it, succumbed so far, and still have continued true to the trust
+reposed in him and to one half of his better antecedents. He might
+have escaped a complete collapse,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> and saved his integrity and honour.
+But it is a well-known melancholy instance of psychological difference
+between men and women that, whereas there remains a reservation and
+some power of resistance, even of retaining a few of the finer traits
+of character in the drunken man, in the case of the woman, in whom
+reason is weaker and passion stronger, an indulgence in an excess of
+intoxicating drink is prone to open the flood-gates to all corruption,
+and to produce a complete demoralisation of the individual.</p>
+
+<p>There was no further hope or help for Peggy from Cunnings.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny, triumphing in an unhallowed victory over all obstacles, sought
+to get Peggy too in her power, as she had got Cunnings. And Peggy had
+no defence from Jenny’s wily stratagems and bold, fierce assaults,
+except God’s grace and her own good intentions. She was not wise,
+but she had grown up pious and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span> dutiful, faithful and tender of
+conscience as of heart. It remained to be seen whether God and goodness
+alone would suffice to protect Peggy from Jenny, the flesh, and the
+devil—all the evil influences to which her husband’s thoughtlessness
+and Mrs. Ramsay’s mistake had given her over.</p>
+
+<p>Balcairnie could not interfere or come to Peggy’s rescue, though he
+was in a position to be soon aware of the mischief which was going
+on. Balcairnie was, to a great extent, gagged, if not tongue-tied. He
+was not one of those impulsive, inconsiderate male-friends who figure
+in so many stories, and by way of helping the women, for whom the men
+are supposed to have some regard, rush rashly into the breach, indulge
+in a great deal of foolish Platonic philandering, and precipitate the
+wrong they have been solicitous to avert. The Scotch yeoman was a man
+of another sort. He possessed straightforward honesty and common<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> sense
+approaching to sagacity in his slowness and solidity of intellect. He
+was further endowed with some of the delicacy of feeling and action in
+which those fine gentlemen of fiction are often curiously deficient.
+He knew perfectly well that it was not in his honorary office of
+farm-manager to go much about the young Lady of Drumsheugh and attempt
+to control her in her domestic concerns. To do so would be to draw down
+upon both the strongly-flavoured gossip of the country side. It would
+be to take a liberty which not even his intimacy with his laird could
+freely warrant, and which Drumsheugh, easy-going as he was, might very
+possibly resent. In that case Balcairnie would have played beautifully
+into Jenny Hedderwick’s hands.</p>
+
+<p>No, he was aware from the beginning that he must stand at a distance,
+and only come forward if matters went utterly amiss so as to forebode a
+grand catastrophe.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.<br><span class="small">‘LADY PEGGY.’</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>Jenny made use of Johnnie Fuggie and employed him in her aim. Her
+motive here was twofold. Johnnie was a person interested in Peggy’s
+kindred making their own out of Peggy, since she had become a powerful
+woman with favours in her right hand. It was better for all concerned
+that there should be a safe understanding rather than a dangerous feud
+between the rival claimants for young Mrs. Ramsay’s bounties. In other
+respects Johnnie himself was a despicable object to Jenny—a crouse,
+clavering carle, up in years, with a silly wife and family keeping
+him down. But<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> Johnnie’s relations were not all detrimentals. He had
+a spruce, pushing nephew, who had risen to be a commercial traveller
+for ‘a big Edinburgh house in the drapery line.’ This nephew was
+considerably younger than Jenny, therefore flattered by her notice,
+while the disparity in years did not prevent her from making sheep’s
+eyes at him.</p>
+
+<p>The double inducement caused Jenny to be particularly attentive to
+Johnnie Fuggie, who was even more taken in by her graciousness than
+his nephew had yet proved himself. If the innocent man had known it,
+she wished that Johnnie should be art and part in her manœuvres and
+aggressions. Her clever tactics were to compromise everybody all round,
+and when each person was deeply involved, to rule the roast, and play
+her own winning game by means of her accomplices.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, in the end of April, when the weather was unusually warm
+for a Scotch<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span> spring, so that the gooseberry bushes were covered with
+their pale green blossom, and there was a fine sprinkling of red and
+lilac ‘spinks’ (polyanthuses) and white daisies already brightening the
+garden borders, Jenny come coolly into the dining-room at Drumsheugh,
+followed slowly by Johnnie Fuggie in his corduroys, velveteen jacket,
+and woollen comforter, which he wore summer and winter.</p>
+
+<p>Johnnie had the grace to pause, glance ruefully at his earth-laden
+feet, and even execute half a scrape of a bow on the threshold. He was
+a small, rickety-looking man, with a slight halt in his gait—more
+perceptible in his fatigue. He was not wont to be troubled with
+scruples, still he hung back a little.</p>
+
+<p>But Jenny explained his presence there volubly. ‘It’s Johnnie,
+cuzin Peggy,’ she said, with a wave of the hand to the unanswerable
+proposition and unnecessary introduction. ‘He has been a’ the way to
+the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span> Knockruddery planting for pea-sticks, and has carriet them hame,
+the gomerel, on his back instead of ordering a cart from the offices,
+though Balcairnie could not ha’e said strae to that. Johnnie, puir
+chap, is clean forfochten, as ye may see, with the long walk and
+the load; sae, as he would ha’e needed to gang round by the Cotton
+to slocken his drouth, I ha’e just brocht him in here to eat his
+fower hours, but ceremony wi’ you and me. I ha’e telled Cunnings in
+the by-going, and gin you’ll send her the keys, she’ll bring in the
+Hollands and yale wi’ the dishes o’ tea, which are no for a man’s
+refreshment. Sit ye doon, Johnnie, my man; dinna be blate, rest ye, and
+mak yoursel’ at hame in the muckle chair in your ain cuzin’s hoose.’</p>
+
+<p>He was her own cousin, once or twice removed, and Peggy would willingly
+have given him of her best for his rest and refreshment; but Johnny
+Fuggie in Drumsheugh’s absence in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> the laird’s chair at his table, was
+what she could not authorise, whether or not she had strength of mind
+to forbid it. She stood up, trembling from head to foot, growing very
+pale, and gasping for breath.</p>
+
+<p>Johnnie took pity upon her. The girl’s tremor still farther abashed
+instead of emboldening him. It reached even through his coarse and
+thick skin.</p>
+
+<p>‘Na, Jenny, ye’re wrang, lass, this time,’ he mumbled. ‘This is no’
+the place for me. I couldna be comfortable, ony mair than ither folk
+could be. Gude e’en to you, young Mistress Ramsay, mem, I give you a’
+your titles wi’ a’ my heart. I’ll gang my ways and you’ll forgie this
+mischanter. It is a’ the wyte o’ this sorry Jenny. She means weel, but
+her frien’liness runs awa’ wi’ her at times.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ll no gang out o’ this house without tasting for the house’s ain
+credit, Johnnie<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> Fuggie; no’ sae lang as I’m to the fore and under
+its roof, though I suld ha’e to set up a bottle and a kebbock wi’
+a fardel o’ cakes on my ain account, as I have never needed to do
+yet,’ protested Jenny clamorously. ‘Na, I’ll tell you what,’ with the
+ready adaptation of her scheme to circumstances which is the gift of
+first-rate conspirators, and is for that matter an attribute of genius,
+‘we’ll sally but to Cunnings’s room, if the dining-room flegs you, and
+I’m sure Peggy will not refuse to grace us wi’ her presence.’</p>
+
+<p>Poor Peggy caught at the compromise, overlooking the sneer scarcely
+hidden under Jenny’s accommodating suggestion. She would cheerfully
+bear her relations company in the housekeeper’s room for half-an-hour,
+if that would keep them out of Drumsheugh’s dining-room or the Lady’s
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy little guessed that the visit was destined to be often repeated,
+till it became almost<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> a daily occurrence, brought about, as it
+was, by Jenny’s determined, deliberate design, Johnnie’s sloth and
+folly, Cunnings’s desperate self-indulgence, and Peggy’s humility and
+incapacity.</p>
+
+<p>But Peggy was only a troubled, frightened spectatress of those feasts,
+which were rapidly degenerating into orgies where Johnnie and Cunnings
+were concerned. Jenny herself was as sober a woman from inclination and
+policy as Peggy was in her innocence and purity. Many women of grosser
+nature, in Peggy’s position—raised suddenly from penury and frugality
+to what is to them luxury and lavish abundance, without work to do,
+destitute of any faculty for such duties as the women have to perform,
+without the smallest capacity for the poorest kind of intellectual
+recreation—sink piteously and repulsively into gulfs of gluttony and
+excess. But Peggy was secure from such hideous pitfalls—on which
+Jenny<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> may have counted, by Providence, Peggy’s goodness, and the
+refinement which belonged, to be sure, to the core, and not to the
+surface of her nature.</p>
+
+<p>It was the season for Johnnie Puggie’s nephew making his spring
+rounds in the way of business, and Jenny was strongly bent at once on
+gratifying and benefiting him, and on raising herself in his estimation
+by proving the terms she was on at Drumsheugh. She persuaded Peggy
+that it would only be doing her duty and being barely hospitable if
+she invited young Baldie Puggie to spend a quiet evening at the house,
+during which he might let them see his ‘swatches,’ or patterns, and
+young Mrs. Ramsay might have the opportunity and pleasure of giving
+him a handsome order, for old acquaintance and kinship’s sake, since
+Drumsheugh did not stint his wife either in house-money or pocket-money.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy in her simplicity was rather pleased<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> that she had one relation
+on her side of the house in so good a way as Baldie Fuggie, who wore
+a cloth coat, and could handle his knife and fork, and was almost a
+gentleman. He might rise to be ‘a merchant’ in his own person. He might
+sit down even now at the same table with Balcairnie and the laird,
+though his tone was not just like theirs, and he was not altogether
+without the traces of the pit whence he had been dug. Yes; she was glad
+to be able to grant Jenny’s request on Jenny’s account too.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy was ready to welcome Baldie Fuggie to a supper at Drumsheugh, and
+she would be proud to give him a lady-like commission. She must have a
+braw new gown in glad anticipation of Drumsheugh’s home-coming safe and
+sound. Her laird must see her at her best, so that all his admiration
+might revive, and he might fall in love with his wife afresh.</p>
+
+<p>There are some people to whom to vouch-safe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span> an inch is to grant a
+yard, in whatever request is pending—people who, if they are permitted
+to insert a finger in an opening will forthwith introduce the whole
+hand and break down every impediment to their will. This was true of
+Jenny and the family supper to which Baldie Fuggie was to be bidden.
+First, Johnnie must come also, because he was Baldie’s uncle and
+nearest surviving relation. Next, Johnnie’s wife and children could
+not be left out, and after them Baldie had one or two other friends
+with whom he had been much more intimate, among the shopkeepers,
+sewing-girls, and maid-servants of Craigie—honest lads and lasses
+well-known to Jenny—and Peggy also in the days when she was not
+mistress of Drumsheugh. It could do no harm to have them for once up
+at the house to see that their old friend had not forgotten them and
+wished them well. She could take leave of them, for that matter, in
+this handsome, informal manner.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then the gathering might be in Cunnings’s room, and it might be called
+Cunnings’s and Jenny’s little party, merely permitted and countenanced
+by young Mrs. Ramsay. Thus no reasonable person could find fault with
+‘the bit ploy.’ Peggy was led on, half unconscious how far she was
+going, with dust thrown into her eyes at every reluctant step. But
+for any preparation she had received and permission she had given,
+she was not the less overwhelmed and aghast at the size and style of
+the entertainment when it burst fully upon her in the hour of its
+celebration. It was far too late then to stop the details—supposing
+the mistress of Drumsheugh had possessed the strength of mind and the
+mother-wit to issue an interdict and organise on the spur of the moment
+something very different.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny had actually bespoken a fiddler. Before Peggy could believe her
+eyes that Tam Lauder, the young gauger, had taken it upon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> him to
+bring his fiddle in its green bag, there were reels forming on the
+floor, and she could not refuse to let herself be ‘lifted’ (led to the
+top of the set) to take the first turn, lest folk should say she was
+proud and held herself above dancing in the same rounds with her old
+friends, she who had been born and bred a cotter lass, and had footed
+it blithely with the laird and Balcairnie at many a maiden! Oh! how far
+removed from this those dances had been, when she had lived free from
+responsibility, and her grandest title had been ‘Bonnie Peggy.’</p>
+
+<p>It goes without saying that Peggy had no heart for that unsuitable,
+inopportune merry-making when her laird was far away and her mother’s
+grave had not grown green. Bitter self-reproach for what she had been
+powerless to prevent, with aversion to the ill-timed gaiety and dismay
+of what might come of it, wrung her gentle spirit. Notwithstanding,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>
+Peggy was swept on with the current and compelled to take a part in the
+fun which grew fast and furious, and was maintained far into the small
+hours, while Baldie Fuggie betrayed that his small amount of polish was
+but skin-deep.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy escaped at last from what had become a homely edition of the
+situation of the lady in the Masque of ‘Comus,’ crying, ‘Oh, mind,
+I’m a marriet woman, I’m the laird’s Leddy,’ to shut herself up in
+her room, sink scared and remorseful on the first seat, stare with
+tightly-clasped hands at one of Drumsheugh’s three-cornered hats which
+she had kept fondly hanging on the most available peg behind the
+door, and finally begin to sob and cry her heart out. Cunnings had
+been removed in a state of insensibility from her presidence over the
+festivities, and Jenny was leading a troop of skirling women racing
+over the house, pursued with loud shouts by Baldie Fuggie<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> and his
+fellows, who did not pretend to Baldie’s scraping of veneer, bent on
+extorting forfeits of kisses and inflicting the penalty of rubbing
+rough beards on blowsy cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>The report of Peggy’s party—it was never called Jenny’s, not to say
+Cunnings’s—spread far and wide, and created as lively a sensation
+in select circles as if it had been the inauguration of a county
+Almacks. In the days and places where hardly anybody read a line of
+anything, save of the newspaper on one day a week and of the Bible
+on the Sabbath, local gossip counted for a great deal. Without it
+conversation would have languished, and men and women’s minds become
+stagnant. Every scrap of gossip was therefore carefully collected and
+made much of. Peggy’s party was reckoned very racy and droll gossip,
+essentially characteristic and not without its moral. It proved a great
+boon and set off half a dozen teas and three dinner-parties among the
+neighbours.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> Fine doings at Drumsheugh, but no more than what was
+to be expected. See what came of low marriages. Time the laird were
+home, whether to reap the fruits of his folly, or to stave off a worse
+catastrophe, if that were possible. Poor old Mrs. Ramsay, who had held
+her head high, and had hardly reckoned a young lady in the country-side
+a fit match for her son. But pride comes before a fall.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time that the mocking title of ‘Lady Peggy’ was first
+bestowed on the interloper, the heroine of all these good stories.
+For Jenny Hedderwick and Cunnings were beneath these worthy people’s
+notice, and little mention was made of either delinquent in the
+arraignment of their victim.</p>
+
+<p>Though Jenny had to some extent achieved her purpose, and it might have
+been said that nobody resisted her will, she began to bear a greater
+grudge against Peggy, and to go near<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> to treating her with a purely
+vindictive malice, strangely unreasoning, in so reasonable a woman.
+This was not merely because Jenny had taken advantage of Peggy in every
+way, and wronged her to the utmost of Jenny’s power, though that is
+generally a fertile enough source of ill-will in the wrongdoer, but
+because Peggy beyond a certain point remained invulnerable. Jenny had a
+secret resentful conviction that while apparently successful, she was
+really foiled in her chief object of dragging down her cousin below
+Jenny’s own level, and so obtaining a firm, permanent hold on the poor
+girl through her errors and fears.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny lost her prudence and her temper with it. She proceeded to cast
+aside the semblance of kindness which she had kept up and even felt for
+Peggy. Jenny now treated Peggy with positive rudeness and insolence.
+She was for ever jeering at the young wife<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> because of her unfitness
+for her position, her ignorance, and her mistakes. And Jenny taunted
+Peggy on the tenderest point, dwelling on Drumsheugh’s protracted
+absence, broadly hinting that he, and all belonging to him, were
+mortally ashamed of the low-born intruder in their ranks. Was there not
+a cousin of the laird’s who had spent most of her early girlhood at
+Drumsheugh, and who was now on a visit to the doctor’s wife in Craigie,
+in the immediate neighbourhood? But though Miss Ramsay did not think
+it beneath her to come and stay for weeks with an old schoolfellow who
+had only married a country doctor, did she ever dream of walking out to
+Drumsheugh nowadays, to hear tell how the laird was getting on, and to
+make the acquaintance of her new cousin? Mrs. Forsyth, Miss Ramsay’s
+friend and hostess, could not advise her to the condescension—not
+even though Drumsheugh was a good patient of Dr. Forsyth’s,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> and Peggy
+herself was acquainted with the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Peggy was crushed and heart-broken in her helplessness and her
+miserable sense of culpability, though she was hardly accountable for
+her faults as a matron. She found no resource in reading, though good
+books would have been a strengthening and sustaining influence; while
+Peggy, as a carefully instructed Scotch child, had been fond of her
+book—a little rustic scholar, and the taste would have remained with
+any food for its sustenance. But when we learn in ‘Lord Campbell’s
+Life’ that the library even of a well-born, classically cultivated
+divine consisted of some odd volumes of the ‘Spectator,’ two volumes
+of ‘Tom Jones,’ and the ‘History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless,’ some
+idea may be formed of the dearth of profane literature at Drumsheugh.
+The stock of books had not increased since the reign of the second
+George,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> and was scarcely a whit better than Peggy might have found in
+her mother’s cottage room. Certainly Luckie Hedderwick had not owned a
+cookery-book or a work on farriery, which would have been in a measure
+supererogatory, seeing that she possessed few and simple materials for
+cookery, and had no horses to keep in health. But she had thumbed,
+well-preserved copies of the ‘Death of Abel’ and ‘Blind Harry’ to match
+‘The Cloud of Witnesses’—this branch of the Ramsays having been on the
+Whig and Covenanting side in politics and religion—and ‘Allan Ramsay’s
+Songs,’ in a much more tattered condition, at Drumsheugh.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy’s sole earthly stays consisted in the faithful reading of the
+little pocket Bible which had descended to her from her mother, and
+the somewhat rigid observance of the sabbath and unfailing attendance
+at the kirk in which she had been brought up, to which she clung, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>
+from which neither fraud nor force on Jenny’s part could detach her.
+The minister was Peggy’s old friend, the Dominie, who took an interest
+in her, and had always a kind word and glance for her when they met,
+though in the ordinarily dreamy, absorbed life of a book-worm, he never
+guessed she was again in circumstances well-nigh as perilous as those
+from which he had helped to deliver her. But, however rambling and
+incoherent his prayers, or dry and doctrinal his sermons, they were
+always solemn, holy words delivered by God’s commissioned messenger
+to Peggy. They served as balm to the wounded spirit, and bracing to
+the unnerved will, they saved her from despair. Yet Peggy was fast
+losing all modest satisfaction in her front seat in the ‘laft,’ all
+womanly pride in her appearance and surroundings. Disengaging herself
+with difficulty, and almost running away to get to the kirk, walking
+there in all states of the weather<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> rather than provoke discussion by
+summoning Johnny Fuggie to drive her, Peggy would reach her destination
+with disordered, shabby, black dress, ill-arranged head-gear, shoes
+almost as cumbered with the soil as ever were Johnny Fuggie’s on
+working days—a poor, hunted, forlorn-looking waif of a laird’s lady.
+The sight would disturb Balcairnie in his worship. ‘If I had thocht she
+would be left like this—what for doesna Drumsheugh come hame and look
+after her?’ He would enter silent, broken, indignant protests. ‘But the
+laird, puir fally, canna help himsel’;’ the loyal yeoman would correct
+his assumption, ‘and puir Peggy was ay a saft, silly quean to let
+hersel’ be put upon.’</p>
+
+<p>The late spring was waning into early summer; the budding roses were
+replacing the withering lilies alike in Drumsheugh and Balcairnie
+gardens, and still the laird tarried abroad, though the news was
+always of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span> amendment, while every day Peggy was drifting into more
+heavy-hearted helplessness on her own account and a falser report in
+the mouths of her neighbours.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.<br><span class="small">‘HUNTINGTOWER.’</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>Primrose Ramsay bore a Christian name which was not altogether uncommon
+among the Scotch-women of her era. It was also the surname of the
+excellent vicar of Wakefield and of a noble Scotch family, and the
+ordinary title of the sweetest and most welcome of spring flowers. She
+was, as Jenny Hedderwick had reported, on a friendly visit to young
+Mrs. Forsyth, the doctor’s wife in Craigie. Primrose was not like her
+namesake and emblem, strictly fair to see, but she was cheery as ever
+was pinched daisy in February, promising to close the gloomy winter and
+herald the glad summer. She was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> a little, pale, somewhat meagre girl,
+whom a passer-by might have stigmatised as insignificant-looking. Her
+spirit, sense, and kindness, and not her face, constituted her fortune,
+and it was only when mind and heart took possession of her slight,
+though wiry, frame, coloured her ordinarily colourless cheeks, and
+kindled up her grey eyes that they looked handsome. Primrose Ramsay was
+valued even in the matter of personal appearance exactly in proportion
+as she was known. Slight acquaintances thought little of her, intimate
+friends agreed to admire her very defects, and the old relation who had
+brought up the orphan girl, and with whom she usually resided, set such
+store upon her that Mrs. Purvis grudged Primrose out of her sight, and
+confidently believed her the attraction of all eyes and hearts, the
+greatest beauty, and the most virtuous, charming young woman in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Withal, there was something about Primrose<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> Ramsay—unprotected, poor,
+unassuming, and kindly as she was—which prevented anyone from taking
+liberties with her; something which daunted the coarse and shallow, and
+rendered her, on occasions, as formidable as her aunt, the old Lady
+of Drumsheugh, could prove. Primrose won respect in her youth, and
+exercised influence wherever she went.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose heard from Mrs. Forsyth, with a mixture of interest,
+amusement, and pain, all the nonsensical stories, loud ridicule, and
+blame, and increasingly rampant scandal afloat with regard to young
+Mrs. Ramsay. Primrose could not help feeling diverted, in spite of her
+goodness; for she was a girl in whom the sense of humour abounded in
+exceptional strength, keeping pace with that ‘weeping-blood in woman’s
+breast,’ which made her sorry too; because it went to her heart not
+to be able to go over to Drumsheugh where she had spent some of her
+happiest youthful holidays, or to hold<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> out her hand to Jamie Ramsay’s
+wife, when Jamie was Primrose’s nearest male relative, and he and she
+had been fast boy and girl friends. And she was sure Jamie was not half
+a bad fellow, though he had made a low marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose entertained a shrewd suspicion that the day had been when her
+aunt, Mrs. Ramsay, had experienced a dread lest Jamie should throw his
+handkerchief at her (Primrose); and so, just when the girl was growing
+up, had managed to put a stop to her annual visits to Drumsheugh. But
+in place of bearing malice or enjoying her revenge, Primrose proved,
+among other things, how perfectly disengaged her own juvenile feelings
+had been, by only laughing and shaking her head, ever so little, over
+the <i>mal à propos</i> recollection, and perhaps cherishing a livelier
+grain of curiosity respecting that bonnie Peggy who had figured as
+Primrose’s unconscious rival.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose’s sole chance of catching a glimpse<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> of her cousin’s wife,
+whom she did not remember having seen as the cotter lass, Peggy
+Hedderwick, was at Craigture Kirk, to which the Forsyths went
+one afternoon on purpose to furnish their guest with the desired
+opportunity. Primrose felt puzzled and disappointed by the glimpse
+she got. Yes, young Mrs. Ramsay was very bonnie so far as features,
+skin, and what colour remained to her, went. But could this shabby,
+dowdy, almost slatternly ‘disjasket’ (out of joint from some depressing
+cause)—young woman be the lass who had caught bauld Jamie Ramsay’s
+fancy? Primrose, notwithstanding her fine eye for beauty, had some
+difficulty in believing it. Poor, low-born lass! bonnie Peggy’s
+exaltation seemed likely to end in her destruction. Poor Jamie! whose
+single-heartedness and recklessness had brought Drumsheugh to such
+a pass. But there was nothing to be done: Peggy Ramsay, according
+to all accounts, was developing into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> a woman with whom no lady, no
+respectable person, would care to hold intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose Ramsay improved her visit in other ways. She and Mrs. Forsyth
+occupied and amused themselves after the most approved standards of
+their class and generation. Mrs. Forsyth had put herself slightly out
+of the upper circles by marrying a country-town doctor. Still the
+simple, stay-at-home gentry were not over-particular, else they must
+have narrowed their set to a nearly stifling extent; and there was a
+nice enough lower stratum of professional men, bankers, clergy and
+half-pay officers with their families in Craigie, to which the Forsyths
+could justly consider themselves as belonging, that at many points
+touched upon and merged into the lairds and their ladies’ sphere.
+Young Mrs. Forsyth had committed no heinous solecism in marrying her
+doctor, and she was not punished for the small offence. She did not
+feel ashamed to invite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> Primrose Ramsay to become the Forsyths’ first
+guest in fulfilment of an old school-girl promise. Primrose could
+accept the invitation and be happy in the visit, without any further
+<i>arrière-pensée</i> than belonged to her stifled regret that she was
+thenceforth banished from Drumsheugh, which had become a prohibited
+place to her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Forsyth had acted differently from Jamie Ramsay, and the result
+was much more satisfactory. The single light in which the two affairs
+might be said to act and react on each other was that though the laird
+was Dr. Forsyth’s patient, as Jenny Hedderwick had remarked, none
+looked on the unfortunate match with more disfavour, or inveighed
+against Peggy’s delinquencies with greater contempt, than did Mrs.
+Forsyth. It was as if she felt bound to exonerate herself from the most
+distant suspicion of such gross imprudence by exaggerating the public
+sentiment where Drumsheugh and ‘Lady Peggy’ were concerned.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Forsyth was a tall, blooming, consequential bride, to whom, at the
+first glance, her friend served as a foil. Dr. Forsyth was a brisk,
+busy, aspiring young man, well pleased with the attainment of some of
+his aspirations. The couple did the honours of their new home, where
+everything was fresh, bright, and hopeful, pleasantly to the young
+lady visitor Primrose. She entered with heart and soul into all their
+sanguine plans and projects, and so relished them in turn with her
+wholesome young appetite. She had her share of the marriage-parties,
+the teas and suppers, which were not yet over for the pair. She drove,
+bodkin-fashion, between the two, in the doctor’s gig, without any
+loss to their gentility, far and near to these blithe, yet decorous,
+merry-makings. She could not execute half so well as the bride could a
+lesson in classic music on any spinnet which presented itself handily,
+but Primrose beat her friend hollow in playing without a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> music-book
+tunes to which feet could keep time in carpet dances. She had her own
+song, which she was always asked to give after supper, and which never
+failed to elicit well-merited applause, for she had a sweet, tolerably
+trained voice, and sang with feeling and taste. Strange to say, her
+song was the old ballad ‘Huntingtower,’ and its echoes used to wake in
+the singer dim, contradictory associations with Jamie Ramsay and his
+miserable <i>mésalliance</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Did the other ‘Jamie’ of the song go away lightly after all, and
+leave the peasant bride to whom, in the first brush of the affair,
+he gave Blair-in-Athole, Little Dunkel’, St. Johnstown’s Bower, and
+Huntingtower, and all that was his so freely, to bear the brunt of
+their foolish wedlock? Did the ‘Jeannie’ who refused so decisively the
+braw new gown ‘wi’ Valenciennes trimmed roun’, lassie,’ that subtle
+allurement to a woman’s heart, and claimed only the heart<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> which was
+hers already, who with unwavering voice, though her heart-strings were
+cracking, bade her cruelly jesting, unfairly suspicious lover, ‘gae
+hame’ to the wife and the bairnies three he invented to torture and
+try her, pass in the sequel and in the natural order of things into
+such a wasteful, reckless, low-lifed woman as Peggy Ramsay was turning
+out? Had true love no real foundation? Was there a canker at its core,
+sure to come to light in the end, even when it seemed most genuine and
+generous?</p>
+
+<p>Primrose and Mrs. Forsyth worked and read, walked and talked together,
+so as to have little time to weary, even when the doctor was too much
+engaged to attend to them, or was sent for to some distant patient.
+The ladies drew, and embroidered ruffles, caps, and aprons for
+themselves—the favourite fancy-work of the day after work of necessity
+in steady, solid gown and shirt making was disposed of.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose had been so far reared in intellectual<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span> circles that she
+possessed something like a large portable library of her own, which
+she generally carried about with her at the foot of her father’s great
+hair trunk; for, apart from the Bible in which she read as regularly as
+Peggy read in hers, it was to these other books Primrose had recourse
+to draw fresh springs of wisdom and happiness. She had not only ‘Hannah
+More’s Essays’ and ‘Dr. Gregory’s Advice to his Daughter,’ she had sets
+of ‘Sir Charles Grandison’ and ‘Evelina.’ The two novels represented
+all fiction to the girl, and she read in them with as inexhaustible
+sympathy and delight as her grandmother had found for the interminable
+adventures of the grand Cyrus.</p>
+
+<p>During Primrose’s stay in Craigie she found less need for her books
+than she was wont to do on a rainy day, not only because Mrs.
+Forsyth was no reader, but because Dr. Forsyth, being something of a
+naturalist, had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span> indulged himself in buying copies of ‘Bewick’s British
+Birds’ and ‘White’s Natural History of Selborne.’ These offered new
+treasures to Primrose Ramsay’s quickness of observation and fondness
+for nature.</p>
+
+<p>‘Bewick’s Birds’ bore a practical result to both Mrs. Forsyth and
+Primrose, and had a strange collateral bearing—presumably not
+intended by the author—on certain future events in more than one
+human history. The ladies were stimulated by the inspection of the
+life-like engravings to a fresh enterprise for their ingenious brains
+and fingers—not that the device was altogether original. Feather
+tippets had become almost as much the fashion as muslin ruffles. But
+Mrs. Forsyth and Primrose would make themselves such tippets as had
+seldom been seen even in the wardrobes of the Duchess of Portland and
+Mrs. Delany. The whole country-side was to be ransacked for a variety
+of feathers. The doctor’s gig<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> was to be put in requisition to carry
+the collectors to different poultry yards, from which they were to beg,
+borrow, and, it is to be feared, when temptation waxed too strong,
+steal, their spoil. Mrs. Forsyth and Primrose’s minds became as stuffed
+with feathers as if the minds had been so many beds and pillows for
+mortal aches and bruises. The girls, even the doctor, who did not often
+consent to lose sight of the superior enlightenment and dignity of
+his college, medical school, and learned profession, with the burden
+of responsibility involved in a promising practice, grew zealously
+engrossed and affected, as only young, eager, care-free natures could
+be usurped and excited by such a trifle.</p>
+
+<p>‘There is Balcairnie,’ said Mrs. Forsyth one day, when the two women
+were earnestly speculating on the places they ought to visit in their
+search. ‘We have not been to Balcairnie yet. I am told that Balcairnie,
+in addition to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span> his peacock and a most splendid bubbly-jock, has got
+a pair of guinea-fowls. We have not a single guinea-fowl’s feather,
+and we ought to have a whole row of them. What a good thing for us,
+Primrose, that Balcairnie has set up a pair of guinea-fowls. We must go
+a-begging to Balcairnie.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is my cousin’s great friend,’ said Primrose meditatively. ‘I
+remember him as a long-legged laddie running about with Jamie; but I
+had not much to do with him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course not,’ said Mrs. Forsyth emphatically, ‘your aunt would take
+care of that. Your poor cousin had too much to do with his tenant—not
+that Balcairnie was so far beneath Drumsheugh. Balcairnie is a good
+farm, and they say its tenant has grown rich in these war times,
+though he is well liked, and has not a lowe raised among his stacks
+for keeping up famine prices, like some other farmers. But it was he
+who took about Drumsheugh to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> maidens and country ploys, where he fell
+in with “Lady Peggy.” Had it not been for her there would have been no
+great harm done, since young men will have their heads out and know
+for themselves what a splore means. Why, even Davie, though he was
+coming out for a doctor, which is the next thing to being a minister
+so far as douceness is wanted, went his round of first-footings, and
+feet-washings, and dergies, before he had me to take care of him,’ the
+young wife ended, with a fine show of power and sedateness. ‘But as
+they tell,’ she began again, ‘Balcairnie had gone too far himself in
+daundering and sitting among the stooks, and dancing with the barn-door
+beauty, who was as cunning as Sawtan himself in her schemes. He might
+have given her his promise—who knows?—in their trysts and convoys and
+caperings, for a wily fool never loses sight of her own interest. At
+last, he pushed the laird into the breach, and escaped by causing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> the
+officer to cover the soldier, instead of the soldier the officer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What a shame!’ cried Primrose; and then her natural candour and
+sagacity came to her aid in disentangling the perversion of the story.
+‘If Jamie did not put Balcairnie out,’ she suggested; ‘that was more
+likely than that Drumsheugh should serve as a cat’s paw to another lad.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Any way, Balcairnie acted as blackfoot to the laird and played him an
+ill turn,’ maintained Mrs. Forsyth, who in the midst of her youth and
+happiness was not disposed to take a charitable view of human nature.
+Kirsty Forsyth showed herself a trifle hardened at that stage of her
+history.</p>
+
+<p>But so blinding is covetousness—granted the object coveted is no
+heavier than a feather—that Balcairnie’s evil deeds did not hinder
+Mrs. Forsyth from instigating her husband to invite the yeoman to
+dinner on the market-day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p>
+
+<p>This invitation was with the sole purpose of the two fair traffickers
+in feathers getting round the simple farmer and inducing him to have
+every ‘pen’ which fell from the guinea-fowls carefully picked up and
+stored on the ladies’ behalf—if the greed did not prompt them to
+lead or drive their victim to the barbarous extremity of slaying the
+birds that they might then be plucked for the benefit of the tippet
+manufacturers. The still greater wantonness of torture by which birds
+have been plucked alive to serve the vanity of women had not so much as
+entered the heads of a more primitive generation.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Forsyth’s single scruple was on the score of comparative
+gentility. ‘Jock Home is only the farmer of Balcairnie,’ she said
+anxiously to her husband; and ‘though Drumsheugh has thought fit to run
+and ride the country with him, they were two young men after their own
+pursuits. I do not know,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> Davie, if it is right for us to have him at
+our table otherwise than as your patient, to bid him to meet Primrose
+Ramsay as though he were young Pittentullo’, or Captain Don, or any
+other gentleman of our set.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hout, Kirsty,’ said the more liberal doctor, ‘you have not stuck so
+fast to your set. Balcairnie is a fine enough fellow who would pass
+muster anywhere. He is well to do; I should not wonder though he were
+to buy his farm, if Drumsheugh let it get into the market, and come out
+as a laird among the best of them some day.’</p>
+
+<p>So Mrs. Forsyth swallowed her misgivings and Balcairnie furnished a
+stalwart figure to the two o’clock dinner-table in the flat above the
+apothecary’s shop, which also belonged to Dr. Forsyth, and was a source
+of considerable profit to him. Such a house was thought then quite
+good enough for the best doctor in Craigie, even though he had mated
+with a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span> sprig of the gentry. Their olfactory nerves were not supposed
+sufficiently sensitive to feel mortally offended by the occasionally
+pungent smell of those drugs which helped to butter the couple’s bread.</p>
+
+<p>Balcairnie and Primrose regarded each other in side glances, under
+their eyelashes, with some interest. He had heard in the inveterate
+distortion of facts which is a prominent feature in gossip, that the
+Lady had intended her niece for her son. Primrose had just been told
+that Balcairnie had contrived to shift his folly and its consequences
+to Drumsheugh’s broad shoulders, though her mother-wit had cancelled
+the error, and laid hold of the greater probability of the yeoman’s
+having been jilted for the laird.</p>
+
+<p>The estimate which the two formed of each other at first sight differed
+comically and unfairly.</p>
+
+<p>‘A shilpet sparroy of a lass like that!’ Balcairnie<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span> reflected
+disdainfully, ‘was she to stand in Bonnie Peggy’s licht? Drumsheugh
+would not have had an ee in his head or a mind of his ain, if he had
+preferred this leddy to yon kimmer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Jamie’s a well-favoured, manly chield, with a good heart, though he
+may have a thick head,’ considered Primrose, not without reluctance;
+‘but I doubt his Peggy stood in her own light for all that. If I am not
+mistaken, the yeoman is worth double the laird.’ Her penetration saw at
+once, against her will, that Balcairnie was the bigger, better man of
+the two.</p>
+
+<p>But by the time the party had repaired to the drawing-room, and the
+ladies were exerting themselves with their interested object in helping
+to entertain Balcairnie, a remarkable reversal of his opinion took
+place, while her verdict remained unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>As the conversation was craftily turned to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span> ornithology generally, he
+became deeply impressed by Primrose’s lively intelligence in expounding
+these plates in the bird-book, which so delighted him, and by her
+wonderful acquaintance with the looks and habits of those fowls of the
+air with which he himself was most familiar.</p>
+
+<p>‘The leddy-lass kens as muckle about craws and doos and laverocks as
+I do, though I have followed the ploo, and set girns for them, when I
+should have thocht she would have been sitting with her feet on the
+fender, or at a window fanning herself, ganting over a nouvelle and
+holding a yapping lap-dog on her knee.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Forsyth made a dead set at him with the feather tippets. He looked
+at them, laughed with surprised pleasure, and ventured to touch them
+shyly with his great brown hand in a sort of marvelling, fearful,
+wholly large-hearted admiration. He glanced round at the tambour<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>
+frames, the open spinnet, the books which might be nouvelles, but which
+must be so much better reading than he had imagined when they did not
+incapacitate the readers for all this ability and industry, and for
+a practical appreciation of the bird-book. It is to be doubted that
+Balcairnie applied to Primrose and Mrs. Forsyth a homely, if emphatic,
+classification and commendation, which at the same time meant a great
+deal from his mouth and that of Robbie Burns—‘clever hizzies!’ he
+said to himself. Balcairnie remembered Peggy with a rueful sense of
+contrast. Poor lass! she could not be half so useful now at Drumsheugh.
+She could not divert herself in all these charming fashions. Poor
+Drumsheugh had, indeed, thrown himself away. How could he have been so
+blind and besotted? It made au odds when a man kenned little better.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Balcairnie would be right glad to be allowed to be of any
+use to the ladies.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> The guinea-fowls were at their service, living or
+dead, and he thought he could put them in the way of some moor-hens and
+wild ducks. If Mrs. Forsyth and her friend would not object to honour
+his bachelor-house by their presence, if they could put up with the
+poor accommodation of a farm-house, perhaps the doctor would bring them
+out to see what they could find at Balcairnie, where the cherries were
+nearly ripe and curds and cream were always to be had for the taking.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies were correspondingly gratified, not only with the success
+of their design, but in addition with Balcairnie’s somewhat quaint and
+naïve but altogether becoming deference and gallantry. An engagement to
+visit him was entered into on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>All this agreeable social intercourse had nothing whatever to do with
+old friendship and its obligations—on the contrary. Balcairnie, as
+he looked and listened, more and more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span> enchanted by the bright face
+and womanly eloquence of Primrose Ramsay, in the revulsion of his
+feelings, was conscious of an increasing temptation to undervalue and
+decry Peggy’s charms and Drumsheugh’s taste, which the fickle man had
+been applauding to the skies hardly three hours before. Balcairnie no
+longer called Primrose ‘a shilpet sparroy.’ Where had his eyes or his
+ears been when he made that invidious comparison? She was like the lady
+wren in her dainty proportions as she flitted here and there with such
+light grace, and such deftness of hand in everything she did, whether
+she helped Mrs. Forsyth to dispense the dishes of tea, or showed Dr.
+Forsyth the impressions of seals the ladies had taken in his absence,
+or arranged the counters on the card-table. She was like his mother’s
+favourite white hen, which always looked so dainty and spotless beside
+the other hens, that discriminating people grew disgusted with their
+flaunting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> yellow or red necks relieved against their brown or black
+backs. She was like the white calf, which his father had held to be
+so lucky. No pet lamb could have been so canty as this orphan lassie
+showed herself. She was an orphan lassie, though she was also a lady
+who had danced at the hunt balls into which Balcairnie might not
+intrude.</p>
+
+<p>But when Primrose was farther called upon to lend her aid to the
+hilarity of the evening by singing for Balcairnie’s benefit, and when
+she sang her romantic ditty of ‘Huntingtower,’ Balcairnie, struck
+by the unintentional coincidence, swayed by more than one powerful
+influence, and penetrated to his melted heart, took a swift and bold
+resolution which was neither time-serving nor personal.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.<br><span class="small">PEGGY’S FRIENDS.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>The woman who sang ‘Huntingtower’ as Primrose Ramsay sang it could
+neither be hard-hearted nor narrow-minded, Balcairnie said to himself,
+and he acted on the speech.</p>
+
+<p>The visit to Balcairnie was paid. The ladies behaved as graciously as
+the host was intent on rendering the visit a pleasure to his guests.
+Everything was propitious, even to a recent fortuitous moulting of
+the guinea-fowls. There was quite a heap of the clear grey and black
+and white spotted feathers, which Primrose called ‘second mourning
+feathers,’ at their fanciers’ disposal. The cherries were at their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>
+best, the curds and cream as rich and sweet as could be desired. Yellow
+ragwart, small pink and white convolvuluses, great purple mallows grew
+among last autumn’s russet stacks, which sheltered the farm-house
+more effectually than the fir-tree avenue sheltered the mansion of
+Drumsheugh. The garden was fragrant with red and white gilliflower,
+pink cabbage-roses and lilac lavender, and gay with orange marigolds.
+The kye were coming home from the pasture, the sheep were in the
+fauld, the pigeons were flying back to the pigeon-house as the evening
+drew on. The whole place looked so ‘couthie’ and sweet and bright, so
+home-like and cheery, that the women felt it hard it should be wasted
+on a single man and his servants. The hardship to her sex surprised
+Mrs. Forsyth into something like an aggrieved wonder that Balcairnie
+did not take a wife.</p>
+
+<p>The remark in its turn startled a deeper colour into Balcairnie’s ruddy
+cheeks, and provoked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> a laugh from Dr. Forsyth and Primrose Ramsay.</p>
+
+<p>At last Balcairnie found an opportunity when the party were still
+strolling about the garden, and Dr. Forsyth had called away his wife
+to examine one of the Dutch summer-houses which were then in great
+favour, and of which he proposed erecting a specimen in their garden at
+Craigie. Balcairnie and Primrose Ramsay were left sauntering along a
+broad box-edged walk, listening to a blackbird in a neighbouring lilac
+bush. Balcairnie interrupted the bird, and went to the gist of the
+matter and of his purpose at once. He had no notion of courtly fencing.
+Artful preambles were not in his way. ‘Miss Ramsay, I want to speak to
+you about your cousin’s lady up at Drumsheugh.’</p>
+
+<p>Primrose met his request, which was more like a demand, with a look
+of surprise and some annoyance. She was not easily offended,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> but she
+felt vexed that this man—her cousin’s friend, whom she had begun to
+respect as well as to like—should introduce an unpalatable subject,
+one on which they could not be expected to agree, at his own place too.
+He was less of a gentleman—one of nature’s gentlemen—than she had
+been thinking him. Then she said, with a shade of distance and dryness
+in her manner and tone, ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Home, but I am not
+acquainted with young Mrs. Ramsay, though she is my cousin’s wife.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is the very reason I want to speak to you about her,’ he said,
+looking her straight in the face. ‘What for are you not acquainted with
+Drumsheugh’s wife?’ he asked bluntly. ‘You should be. Not only has she
+become your relation by marriage, you could be of the first service to
+her; you could do her all the gude in the world. And I have conceived
+such an opinion of you, madam, that I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> believe you would be pleased to
+confer a favour even on a stranger, and do gude to one you might never
+see again.’</p>
+
+<p>She stood still, perplexed and a little softened.</p>
+
+<p>He was forced to go on; he must speak out now or be silent for ever.
+‘Young Mrs. Ramsay is lonesome in the laird’s absence. For mair reasons
+than one she has great need of a friend. If I mistake not, you could be
+the best friend she has ever had in this world.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How could I?’ stammered Primrose. ‘She is your acquaintance, not mine.
+Why cannot you help her if she requires help?’</p>
+
+<p>He waived aside the proposal with an impatient swing of his arm. ‘A
+man body is worse than nothing to a woman in some straits. A woman
+friend—a gude woman to give gude advice from her own experience,
+is everything. If I were even to mint the trouble in a letter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span> to
+Drumsheugh, I might only breed more mischief. I tell you what, Miss
+Ramsay, you may rue it to the day of your death, if you do not give a
+thocht to what I’m asking from you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Be reasonable, Mr. Home,’ remonstrated Primrose, whom his earnestness
+infected and stirred with agitation. ‘How can I interfere? I have no
+commission from my cousin Jamie or my aunt, even supposing I could move
+in this matter. From what I have heard—forgive me, if she is a friend
+of yours—I could do no good. Young Mrs. Ramsay is taking her own
+course—a foolish, downward course, I fear—with which it would not be
+fitting that I should intermeddle.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then what is the gude of your being a young leddy, so muckle cleverer
+and wiser and better-bred, with no chance of your making a mistake
+or the world’s finding faut with you?’ Balcairnie put the question
+sharply, almost<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> sternly, and the next moment grew abashed and shocked
+at his own rudeness. ‘I beg your pardon, humbly, Miss Ramsay, I’ve no
+manners, as I need not tell you, but it makes me mad’—with a quick
+groan—‘to think of another woman, a leddy gude and kind, as I can see,
+leaving a poor sister lass to be sorned on, trodden down and driven
+desperate—never by her own wickedness and hardness of heart, but just
+because she’s as tender and gentle as any leddy in the land.’</p>
+
+<p>Primrose was struck by his passionate advocacy. How he must have loved
+this girl, who had forsaken him for a grander suitor, to be so deceived
+in his view of her character—if he were deceived. She had already had
+a conception of him as a larger-minded man than Jamie Ramsay, and his
+present appeal proved his largeness of heart.</p>
+
+<p>‘I daresay she is to be pitied, poor thing, with her man so long away,
+though he is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span> recovering,’ she granted slowly and doubtfully, for even
+Primrose Ramsay’s prejudices were strong. ‘But has she not been very
+thoughtless, to say the least, in bringing so many of her own folk
+about her and letting them run riot—disturbing Drumsheugh and the
+neighbourhood by their pranks?’ Primrose ended more severely.</p>
+
+<p>‘How could she help having her own folk when they were ordained, and
+placed about her by Drumsheugh and the auld lady? When no other body
+would look near her to see whether she could say her head or her feet
+were her ain, or speak or go but as her so-called servants would let
+her!’ maintained Peggy’s champion stoutly. ‘I grant you Peggy ocht to
+have been firm,’ he admitted, forgetting in the half-bitterness of the
+admission the scrupulous ceremony with which he had been previously
+naming his laird’s lady. ‘She should have stood like a rock and defied
+all inroads<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> on her dignity and authority as the new-made Leddy and
+mistress of Drumsheugh—as you, madam, with your birth and breeding,
+would have done, no doubt. But when, you find a poor bit leveret
+behaving like the dog that chases him, or a lintie like the hawk that’s
+striking her down, then you may reasonably—you spak’ of reason, Miss
+Ramsay—count on sic behaviour from a meek, young creature like Peggy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Has she no spirit of her own?’ Primrose was goaded on to inquire.</p>
+
+<p>‘I do not know what you mean by spirit,’ said Balcairnie, doggedly.
+‘She had enough spirit to do her mither’s bidding, and save the laird
+from being betrayed into becoming a scoundrel who might have ruined her
+and flung her to the dogs. But as for the spirit to hold her ain and
+keep off all that would rob and murder her, where her gudes and credit
+are concerned, I trow Peggy has not muckle of that spirit to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span> boast of.
+There is some word about the wind being tempered to the shorn lamb. I
+wuss it may blaw lown ower Peggy’s grave, for, so far as I can see, the
+best thing she could do would be to dee soon, poor lass. Then when her
+head’s lying among the mools, the fact that it was ever raised to be
+one of the heads of the house of Drumsheugh may be forgiven her, and
+the scum of her folk cannot prey on her any longer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! do not say that,’ cried Primrose in real distress. ‘It cannot be
+so bad as that. Think of Drumsheugh who has cared so much for her—what
+would he do?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ve thocht of Drumsheugh long enough, ower long; I’m going to think
+of Peggy now and what she’s to do. It was I who brocht her hame to
+Drumsheugh, and I swear to you, Miss Ramsay, if I had kenned what
+the innocent, loving soul was coming to, I would suner the beast had
+fallen and broken his neck—baith<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span> of our necks. For it is true I
+was Drumsheugh’s aider and abettor—his blackfoot in courting Peggy
+Hedderwick. He was my friend and Peggy’s choice; it was not for me to
+conter them.’</p>
+
+<p>Primrose looked in the manly, honest face, and believed every word he
+said, to the last syllable. Her dauntless spirit rose and her generous
+heart swelled. ‘There is a better resource,’ she said, with hearty
+sympathy and goodwill, relinquishing her opposition all at once, and,
+womanlike, passing in a bound to warm partisanship. ‘She shall not be
+set upon like that! How base of her kindred! But we will circumvent
+them, sir. You and I will beat them before the game is played out.
+I’m not afraid that my cousin Jamie will be seriously angered by my
+interference. I’ll venture to take him in my own hand. As for my aunt,
+she’s an upright woman, Mr. Home. She would never countenance such
+wrong-doing.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span> She is ignorant of it. When she welcomed Bonnie Peggy
+home she meant to receive her as a daughter and behave to her as a
+mother should—I am sure of it.’</p>
+
+<p>It was a difficult enough task which Balcairnie had set Primrose
+Ramsay, and he could render her no assistance in the beginning. It must
+not even appear that she was acting on his prompting.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Forsyth was exceedingly aggrieved by Primrose’s proposing to pay
+a visit to Peggy, and opposed the step violently. Doctor Forsyth, who
+should have known better, shook his head at his wife’s instigation.
+Primrose’s happy first visit to the couple was in danger of having
+its harmony entirely spoilt, and the girl suspected that her friends’
+opinion was a tolerably sure sign of the light in which the world
+generally would regard her conduct. It was mean, time-serving, and
+unworthy of her to go near ‘Lady Peggy,’ and seek to get<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span> the foolish
+mistress of Drumsheugh out of the mess into which she had floundered.</p>
+
+<p>But Primrose was as strong and staunch in facing and overcoming
+difficulties in what she recognised to be a good cause as Peggy was
+weak and yielding. There was the courage of a lion in the small, pale,
+pleasant-mannered, merry-tongued girl.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose walked out alone to Drumsheugh, claimed the right of entrance
+to the drawing-room, which could not well be denied to her, and begged
+young Mrs. Ramsay to be told that her cousin, Miss Ramsay, had come to
+wait upon her.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy did not pause, like ‘Mistress Jean’ in the ‘Laird o’ Cockpen,’
+to ask petulantly what brought her visitor there ‘at sic a like time,’
+for it was early in the day. She was overwhelmed with consternation
+and shame while Jenny coolly informed her cousin that here was one of
+the laird’s family come to call his wife<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span> to account, to require a
+statement of her stewardship, and to pounce on all her shortcomings.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! what sall I do, Jenny? Mercy on me! what sall I do?’ besought the
+poor changeling in the foreign nest.</p>
+
+<p>‘Say you’re no weel—I’m sure that’s true eneuch,’ suggested the
+temptress. ‘Say you never trysted her here, and you maun bid her
+excuse you for you’re no fit to receive a visitor, you’ve gotten the
+heartburn, or the headache, or ony other convenient ailment.’</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly a message was brought to Primrose: ‘Young Mrs. Ramsay was
+very sorry, she was not able to see a stranger.’</p>
+
+<p>But Primrose was more than a match for Jenny. The young lady had quite
+as much ready wit at her command as the woman owned. It would be
+strange if the powers of light did not sometimes overcome the powers
+of darkness. Primrose presented her compliments,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span> and she too was very
+sorry to hear that her cousin’s lady was ailing. But it did not matter
+so much—Mrs. Ramsay need not put herself about, or exert herself when
+she was not fit for the exertion. She—Miss Ramsay—had walked out from
+Craigie with the intention of staying for a few days at her cousin’s
+house of Drumsheugh. If its mistress was not well enough to come down
+to her visitor to-day, no doubt Mrs. Ramsay would be better to-morrow
+or the next day. In the meantime Miss Ramsay could entertain herself,
+and her old friend Cunnings would see that she had everything she
+wanted.</p>
+
+<p>‘Hech, sirs! hech, sirs! sirs the day!’ moaned Peggy, shrinking away in
+the fastness of her chamber from the most distant sight or sound of her
+deliverer.</p>
+
+<p>‘Send the bauld cutty about her business. Bid her leave the hoose this
+minute,’ stormed Jenny.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I canna do that, Jenny,’ insisted the cowering Peggy.
+‘Drumsheugh’s leddy cousin—she maun bide here as long as she likes,
+till he come back, if she takes it into her head, though I wonder what
+pleasure it can be to her to force herself in and sit in judgment on a
+puir lass like me. Oh, Jamie, Jamie! will you never come back and stand
+by me?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s no your chirming will bring him back. If he had wanted to come
+he might have been here long syne,’ said Jenny scornfully. ‘Peggy, tak
+your choice—either that insolent hempie maun gang, or me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Jenny, Jenny, will you leave me, when the auld leddy engaged you
+to stay with me till she came back?’ implored the girl, to whose
+transparent mind infidelity to a pledge was simply incomprehensible.
+‘How can I put Drumsheugh’s cousin to the door? It would come ill aff
+my hand; I could look neither<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> him nor his mither in the face again if
+I were guilty of sic sauciness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you’ve ta’en your choice, Peggy, my woman, and you maun abide by
+it,’ said Jenny, beginning instantly to gather together her ‘pickings’
+and belongings. ‘It’s muckle gratitude I’ve gotten for a’ the trouble
+I’ve wared upon you. But you’ll maybe think on me, madam, when you’re
+in the hands of your gaoler. For Drumsheugh and his mither have sent
+you a rale gaoler at last, and it’s little pity she’ll ha’e on your
+fule tricks, you heartless gipsy.’ Jenny had the wisdom to anticipate
+defeat, and beat a masterly retreat, while the wretched Peggy was
+weeping and quailing, and abjectly beseeching her tyrant to reconsider
+her resolution.</p>
+
+<p>However, Jenny was not sufficiently prudent to avoid altogether an
+encounter with her adversary, in which Peggy’s ’cuzin’ came off second
+best.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Gude day to you, mem.’ Jenny flounced past Primrose who had gone
+out to stroll in the avenue. ‘I wuss you joy o’ the charge you’ve
+underta’en. I suld ken something o’t, and I tell you for your comfort
+you may as weel be a daft woman’s keeper. Peggy Ramsay is bund to gang
+daft as sure as ever lass gaed. I may tell you a bit o’ my mind since
+you’ve not stucken at treating me like a common thief.’</p>
+
+<p>Primrose turned round upon Jenny with a flame of outraged righteousness
+in the girl’s aspect like the flaming sword which the angel held to bar
+the way to Paradise. ‘These words are very ready on your lips, Jenny
+Hedderwick. I believe they are too ready. If young Mrs. Ramsay were to
+lose her wits, it would be you who had scared them away. Woman, you are
+worse than a common thief! You have seethed a kid in its mother’s milk.’</p>
+
+<p>At that terribly mysterious accusation even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span> Jenny looked cowed for the
+moment and slunk away, muttering a denial. The first news she heard
+when she entered Craigie was that the firm to which Baldie Fuggie was
+attached had broken—become bankrupt. ‘Sae that door is steekit for the
+present,’ Jenny said to herself without equivocation. But she had her
+pickings—a profitable four months’ work, in addition to her wages to
+console her, and for such as Jenny open doors are plentiful.</p>
+
+<p>Cunnings was also stumbling and fumbling about, in trembling
+preparations to be gone without delay from what had been her home for
+forty years; but Primrose anticipated her. She came softly into the
+housekeeper’s room and looked shyly and sadly at the sinner. Primrose
+said no more than ‘Oh, Cunnings, Cunnings, I’m sorry, sorry,’ and the
+grey-haired delinquent groaned out her abasement: ‘Ye may weel be
+sorry, Miss Ramsay, for I’m a lost woman, and yet I’m no worth the
+sorrow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span> o’ the like o’ you. I’m just a miserable, auld drucken drab.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! whisht! whisht! Cunnings,’ cried the girl, hiding her face, and
+thinking how the trusted servant had been proud to teach her many a
+secret of housekeeping, and had made much of her and petted her in
+the old happy days, when Primrose came between a child and a girl to
+Drumsheugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me gang!’ cried Cunnings desperately, ‘afore the auld mistress
+claps her een on me again. She’ll walk in neist and speer what I’ve
+dune wi’ the hoose and the keys when they fell into my keeping. I’ve
+betrayed them baith, Miss Ramsay, and what’s waur I’ve sided wi’ that
+limb o’ Sawtan Jenny in betrayin’ the puir simple bairn up the stair.
+Mind ye she was betrayed. She would never o’ hersel’ had ony troke
+wi’ sic doings as we were fain to carry on to cloak our ill deeds.
+I’ve selled my sowl for drink, and I’ve betrayed the young<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> mistress
+(Maister Jamie’s wife). Let me gang, Miss Ramsay, if you’ve a thocht o’
+sorrow for a wicket wretch like me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, Cunnings, you shall not go,’ said Primrose brave and steadfast,
+like a pitying guardian angel this time. ‘You’ll stay and help me
+to undo all the wrong, and then your own fall may be forgiven and
+forgotten. You’ll trust to me and I’ll protect you from your fell
+weakness. I’ll speak to my aunt and cousin when they come back. I’ll
+tell them that you wanted to go. I’ll bear the blame of keeping you
+here. You were a faithful servant once; you’ll be faithful again,
+please God. It is never too late to repent and win back respect and
+confidence. Cunnings, you do not need a girl like me to tell you that.’</p>
+
+<p>Cunnings hung her head more and more, and wept the few scalding tears
+of age; but she stopped her packing and submitted to Primrose Ramsay’s
+guidance when at the words<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> of sympathy and encouragement, remorse was
+converted into repentance.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose had frequently and anxiously conned over the part she should
+play in her first meeting with Peggy. Miss Ramsay would approach the
+young mistress of Drumsheugh with studied deference and all the formal
+homage which was now Peggy’s due.</p>
+
+<p>But when Peggy, compelled to stand at bay for the second time in her
+life, after a hasty, ineffectual effort to arrange her dress properly
+and remove the traces of tears from her face, crept like a guilty
+culprit or a forlorn ghost into the room, Primrose forgot all her
+preconceived theories and studies and thought only of the fair young
+creature thus blighted in what should have been her pride of bloom.
+Instead of advancing in a stately fashion, curtseying and waiting for
+Peggy to offer her hand, Primrose went swiftly to the wife, clasped
+her in the girl’s kind arms and kissed the cold cheek,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> which began to
+blush warmly with amazement, doubting relief and trembling pleasure.
+‘My cousin Peggy,’ said Primrose, in her clear, sweet voice, ‘I’m glad
+to know you. Will you forgive my intrusion? I’ve often heard of you and
+so must you have heard of me; and now we must make the hearing knowing,
+and become good friends as well as kinswomen, if you will let me stay
+as long as you can spare room for me at Drumsheugh.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Stay as long as you like,’ stammered Peggy. ‘There’s no want of room.
+Ony o’ Drumsheugh’s frien’s maun aye be welcome here. Oh! surely you
+ken that, though I canna say what I should,’ beginning to twist her
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>‘I ken,’ said Primrose gently, ‘and you say all you should. You’re very
+good to me, cousin Peggy—you’ll let me call you that in stead of Mrs.
+Ramsay, which I’ve been accustomed to say to my aunt, and you’ll call
+me<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span> cousin Primrose. You are very good to permit me to stay here when
+I’ve taken you by surprise.’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>Me</i> good! Permit <i>you</i>, Miss Ramsay! Oh! you’re laughing at
+me in your condescension,’ cried Peggy, aghast.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, I’m not laughing, and there is no condescension. I’ll never laugh
+at you,’ answered Primrose a little gravely; and then she went on
+cheerfully, ‘When we come to know each other better, I’m sure we’ll
+be good friends, and you’ll not suspect me of laughing at you in that
+sense again.’</p>
+
+<p>Peggy stood rebuked without being chidden, and somehow her crushed
+spirit rose a little under the rebuke. She began to look Primrose in
+the face with timid satisfaction, and to proceed to ask her to sit
+down and try to make her comfortable, as Peggy had been wont, in the
+few happy moments after her marriage, to busy herself modestly with
+Drumsheugh and Mrs. Ramsay.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.<br><span class="small">THE LESSONS THAT PRIMROSE GAVE WHILE BALCAIRNIE LOOKED ON.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>Even Primrose, who was of a hopeful disposition, with some well-placed
+confidence in her social powers, had wondered what she could get to
+say to Peggy in the intercourse which must follow, and Peggy had been
+in mortal terror at the appalling necessity of making conversation
+for Miss Ramsay. But after the first ten minutes the talk became
+wonderfully easy between these two honest, single-hearted, gentle
+souls, though they were on different levels of intelligence and
+education. Peggy was entranced by what Primrose could tell of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span> her
+early visits to Drumsheugh—including innumerable anecdotes of
+the young laird. Why, Primrose was the first intimate friend and
+equal—like a sister of Drumsheugh’s—whom Peggy had ever known, who
+could and would give the loving girl—pining for talk of Drumsheugh in
+his absence—welcome, though not very recent information concerning
+him. Primrose, in her turn, enjoyed drawing forth Peggy’s tales of
+her school days, when she had been the little class-fellow of both
+Drumsheugh and Balcairnie.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually and almost inadvertently Peggy passed in her talk from
+her school to her home and her mother. When she would have stopped,
+abashed, recollecting with tingling cheeks and a pang at her heart that
+her husband and his mother had not cared for her recalling these tender
+associations, she found, to her deep, ineffaceable gratitude, that it
+was otherwise with Primrose Ramsay. ‘Tell me<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span> about your mother, Peggy;
+I like to hear about mothers—I think all the more because I have not
+been so favoured as you. I never knew my mother; she died when I was
+a child in arms. But your talk helps me to judge what my mother would
+have been like—is like. For our mothers are both alive, and we’ll see
+them yet in Heaven,’</p>
+
+<p>Primrose introduced a new <i>régime</i> at Drumsheugh—a reign of order
+and diligence, peace and prosperity. And in place of its being opposed
+by Peggy or proving distasteful to her, it was hailed and clung to by
+her with breathless, well-nigh pathetic eagerness. She was so desirous,
+when the least prospect of attainment was held out to her, of being a
+good wife, a mistress of Drumsheugh of whom its old owners need not be
+altogether ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>One of Primrose’s first questions had been whether or not Johnny Fuggie
+should be sent away after Jenny. If necessary, Primrose<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> would assume
+the responsibility of the dismissal, and save Peggy from every grain
+of the pain of it. But after consultation with Balcairnie, and on
+examination for herself, when the righteous young reformer found that
+the man had only been a tool in Jenny’s hands, like poor Cunnings, that
+he had got a wholesome warning, and was capable of being induced to
+behave with fitting respect and keep at a discreet distance from his
+mistress—especially when it was taken into account that he had a wife
+and family whom it would go to Peggy’s heart to punish through their
+bread-winner—Primrose agreed that Johnnie should remain on trial, so
+to speak. The trial, as in the case of Cunnings, ended well. Johnnie,
+in spite of his temporary aberration, his long tongue, and his foolish
+conceit, behaved thenceforth very tolerably under difficulties. If
+Peggy and he occasionally lapsed into too rash, free-and-easy gossip
+when she happened to be alone with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span> him in the garden, it was probably
+as much her fault as his, and it might serve for a safety-valve in the
+tension of their relations. Though poor Peggy would flutter off like
+a lapwing when surprised in the indulgence, no serious harm followed,
+and Drumsheugh was the last man in the world to come down heavily on so
+natural and venial an offence.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy, as a rule, showed herself very docile and a very quick pupil.
+She only displayed a little restiveness now and then, when the lessons
+trenched too closely on much-prized associations.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose said one day, ‘You have very bonnie hair, Peggy, but I think
+I could let you see how to dress it better, so that your friends might
+more easily guess how long, and fine, and glossy it is.’</p>
+
+<p>‘This was the way Drumsheugh liked my hair busket lang syne,’ answered
+Peggy, a little jealously; ‘and if I were to alter it, then<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span> it would
+be to put on a mutch. My mother put on a mutch when she was married;
+she held that all married women should wear mutches,’ Peggy explained,
+evidently a little troubled that she had not complied with her mother’s
+standard.</p>
+
+<p>‘But maybe Drumsheugh will like your hair busket in another fashion
+now,’ said Primrose persuasively. ‘His fancy may be as taken with the
+new as with the old way. His fondness does not rest with the past,
+it is to last all your lives, and it will always be finding out new
+beauties in his wife and her fashions. The glory of wedded love is
+its growth in fidelity and its fidelity in growth. It is, or should
+be, like God’s love—new every morning, and so it never gets stawed
+(satiated), or tires, or shifts. As for the mutch, you can always wear
+it of a morning in our rank, and you may come on to something like it
+of an evening, if my cousin Jamie bring you, as I should not wonder<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>
+though he will, a fine lace ‘head’ of Mechlin or Valenciennes.’</p>
+
+<p>After that conversation, under the blissful prognostication of her
+laird’s finding new beauties in her every day, Peggy consented to
+learn to put up her hair like Primrose’s, in a modified version of
+some becoming mode of the time, and thus came considerably nearer in
+appearance to the conventional lady of her generation. So with her
+clothes: Primrose taught Peggy how to choose them, and how to wear them.</p>
+
+<p>Strange as it may sound, it was not otherwise with her mind; for Peggy
+had received the good, solid, parish education of a Scotch child a
+hundred years ago. Her constant study of the Bible had trained her
+intellect, so far as it went, as well as her heart. Her familiarity
+with the Hebrew prophets and poets, with old Scotch ballads, and
+with the exquisite songs which Burns was then causing to flood<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> the
+whole country, from castle to cottage, had cultivated her imagination
+and taste. Peggy entered with positive zest into the new world of
+literature, didactic and fanciful, to which Primrose introduced her. To
+the teacher’s joyful surprise, and a little to her bewilderment, Peggy
+was far more impressed and enthralled by a book than Kirsty Forsyth had
+ever been. Peggy listened with the most respectful attention to the
+advice of Hannah More and Dr. Gregory. She hung on Richardson’s and
+Fanny Burney’s stories. She was wrapped up in the fortunes of Harriet
+Byron, Clementina and Evelina, though their spheres were so different,
+and the ‘<i>ma foi</i>’ of Evelina’s aunt, with the cockney follies
+of her cousins might have been Greek or Latin, or the practices of
+Timbuctoo to Peggy. Still she had perfect, comprehensive sympathy for
+each heroine. Primrose’s entire heart was won by Peggy’s unexpected
+openness to Primrose’s beloved books.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span></p>
+
+<p>Another gift of Peggy’s was susceptible of training. Under Primrose’s
+judicious direction Peggy’s singing became greatly improved, and
+brought on a par with that of the chief young lady vocalists round
+Craigie. Peggy’s broad Doric did not interfere in the least with this
+accomplishment, for she sang Scotch songs, and her mother tongue only
+enabled her to give them with truer effect.</p>
+
+<p>Dancing was an additional available attainment of the age—so highly
+coveted that the acquirement was often prosecuted under what might
+have appeared insurmountable obstacles. The poor notable wives of
+impecunious lairds dispensed with expensive dancing-masters, and
+taught their children to dance the intricate country-dances of the day
+by means of chairs set up in rows.<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Lord Campbell, after he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>
+a distinguished, hard-working lawyer, went under an assumed name to
+an evening dancing-school. Dr. Norman Macleod’s aunts were supposed
+to have acquired dancing from an enterprising little governess,
+heavily weighted with a wooden leg. Primrose was bent on refining and
+perfecting Peggy’s dancing. She would make feints of practising her own
+steps and of longing for a country-dance till she coaxed Peggy to stand
+up with her at the head of a double row of chairs.</p>
+
+<p>Balcairnie, who could go oftener to Drumsheugh now that Miss Ramsay
+was there, caught the two girls in the middle of such a performance.
+Primrose with long-winded assiduity was singing the tune of ‘The
+White Cockade,’ in addition to taking her part in the dance. Peggy
+was slightly holding out her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span> gown as she was bidden, and sliding
+bashfully, yet not without a certain natural grace, down the room at
+the backs of the chairs. No gazer could have been more imbued with
+keen pleasure and humble admiration, but, like Actæon, he had to
+pay a penalty for his rash gazing. He was compelled by the autocrat
+Primrose to join in dancing a ‘three-some reel,’ performed to his
+whistling instead of her singing, while the last rays of the setting
+sun were yet gilding the pear-tree round the western window of the
+Drumsheugh drawing-room. When he was brought to the point he did his
+duty gallantly, not withholding a single spring, shuffle or ‘hough!’
+which was Primrose’s due, but capering his best, with the serious face
+which most English and Scotchmen put on to qualify their gambols. It
+might be some consolation for the effort of the exhibition to hear a
+judge and mistress of the art like Primrose say graciously after the
+deed was done,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> ‘Well danced, sir. I have often heard that there were
+no reels to be seen far or near like those danced by you and Drumsheugh
+and my cousin Peggy here, and now, though I am a poor substitute for
+the laird, I know what the folk said was true.’</p>
+
+<p>Peggy’s hands were far more unmanageable than her head or her heels.
+She had been brought up too entirely in the country, and Luckie
+Hedderwick had been too poor for the child to have derived any
+advantage from such a ‘sewing school’ as Craigie possessed, under
+the patronage of some of the Ladies Bountiful in the neighbourhood.
+It need hardly be said in addition that Peggy had not the smallest
+acquaintance with the mysteries of high cooking, preserve and pastry
+making, and the brewing of home-made wine. Peggy could spin and knit
+well, and do a little coarse sewing and darning rather indifferently.
+She could scour a floor or a table, make porridge<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> and kail, boil
+potatoes and bake cakes, but she could do little else in the light of
+domestic attainments. Unfortunately, with the exception of the spinning
+and knitting, even Peggy’s few acquirements were out of count. The
+field for them was gone. Primrose set herself with affectionate zeal
+to supply the blank, but long before Peggy had toiled half through her
+first sampler, Miss Ramsay was forced to own to herself that here was
+labour thrown away, as much as if she had sought to train Peggy to play
+on the spinnet late in the day. There are some respects in which lost
+opportunities—however innocently and inevitably lost—can never be
+recalled. Peggy’s fingers had grown stiff, and her eyes dull to nice
+distinctions of pattern and colour. She must be left to her spinning
+which, fortunately, was not yet banished from drawing-rooms; and she
+must be permitted to hem towels and dusters in the same dignified
+quarter. For the child-wife<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span> Dora could not have felt prouder to be
+of use than was the rustic ‘Lady Peggy.’ Indeed, Peggy went further
+than Dora, since the little English girl could feel content to be
+played with—whether by David Copperfield or Gyp, while it made the
+deeper-souled Scotch girl, who had once actually been the bread-winner
+of a household, feel humbled and miserable to realise herself of no
+real moment, an idle ornament—if she could be called an ornament—and
+not one of the stays of her house.</p>
+
+<p>At last Peggy’s wifely ambition was fired to gigantic struggles by
+two grand and glorious achievements which were dangled before her
+eyes. If she would give her whole attention and try and try again, she
+might—who knows?—so improve in white seam and cookery as to be fit
+before she died, or her sight and memory failed, to make a frilled
+shirt for Drumsheugh, and bake a pie which he could eat.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span></p>
+
+<p>How hard Peggy strove at her tasks, with such splendid rewards before
+her, during the long summer days! So immeasurable was her enthusiasm
+that against tremendous odds she attained her object, even before
+Drumsheugh’s return. She made the shirt, every bit with her own slow
+hands:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Seam, gusset, and band;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Band, gusset, and seam;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p0">sewing on the buttons in an intensely happy dream. She baked a
+preparatory pie, pondering as anxiously over its ingredients as the
+eastern princess debated over her crucial cream tart with the pepper
+seasoning, and more impartial authorities than Primrose and Cunnings
+would have pronounced the feats highly creditable to their author.</p>
+
+<p>With innocent pride and exultation Peggy displayed the trophies of her
+prowess to Balcairnie. She showed the sark of Hollands fine, solemnly
+assuring him that she had put in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span> every ‘steek’ herself, and gleefully
+boasting that she had a web of the same cloth bleaching on the green,
+and by the next summer she would have made a dozen of shirts to keep
+the laird well provided. She conducted her friend the yeoman into the
+larder, and invited him to break off a lump of the pie-crust and ‘pree’
+it for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Having examined these two credentials of capable womanhood, which
+used to be demanded from every young girl before she passed into a
+young lady, that were often crowned by gratified parents with such
+substantial gifts as silk gowns or gold watches, he said with profound
+conviction, and the utmost approval: ‘Ay, Mrs. Ramsay, you’re a
+finished leddy now, and you may thank Miss Ramsay for it.’ He made a
+little obeisance to Primrose in his turn, and looked as if he felt
+certain that Peggy’s prosperous future was thenceforth secured.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span></p>
+
+<p>Primrose had grown very proud as well as fond of her pupil, after the
+visitor had by earnest representations induced the old relative with
+whom she usually dwelt, to grant her further leave of absence and
+suffer her stay at Drumsheugh to extend to many weeks.</p>
+
+<p>It happened to be Primrose’s first long visit from home after she was
+quite grown up. Therefore it formed an era in the girl’s life which
+might never be repeated. This was not foreboding an early death for
+Primrose, but she was no longer a school girl, and before travelling
+had been made easy, when it was still both hazardous to the person and
+a drain on the purse, friendly visits were not frequent though they
+might be long. Primrose and Peggy had laughed together over that famous
+marriage visit paid by the ‘heartsome lass,’ Miss Suff Johnstone, to
+the young matron the Countess of Balcarres, which lasted over a period
+of thirteen years. ‘I should like to give her safe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span> out of my own
+hands, improved as she is, the dear lamb, into the hands of my cousin
+Jamie and my aunt,’ Primrose proposed to herself. ‘I wonder what they
+will think of her; if they will thank me. But I have done little; I had
+such good ground to work upon.’</p>
+
+<p>The Ramsays, mother and son, had heard of Primrose’s presence at
+Drumsheugh, and were thoroughly acquiescent and complacent, though not
+in equal degrees. The laird was simply well pleased that Peggy should
+have good company, be acknowledged by his kin, and become acquainted
+with one of the best of them. It was left for his mother to cry out:
+‘Primrose Ramsay at Drumsheugh! That beats all! Now all will go well
+with my son’s wife.’</p>
+
+<p>To do the old lady justice, she had been accustoming herself more and
+more to think and speak of Peggy as ‘my son’s wife’; while she did
+so, she took the girl nearer to her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span> heart, and made Peggy’s joys and
+sorrows more her own. ‘I would have given ten years of my dowager’s
+jointure to have said before to Primrose, “Come and help us,” but I had
+not the face. Primrose Ramsay is a fine as well as a clever creature.’
+Mrs. Ramsay reflected further: ‘Who but she would have looked over all
+former shortcomings and been the first to hold out her hand to Peggy? I
+see now what a wife Primrose would have made to Jamie, but it was not
+to be.’</p>
+
+<p>No doubt the fatalistic sentence had been to a considerable extent
+worked out by the speaker. For it had been on the cards that Jamie
+Ramsay might have been won from Peggy in the earlier stages of their
+acquaintance, and his allegiance transferred to Primrose, if that most
+winning young woman—at once strong and sweet—had continued thrown in
+his way as a visitor at Drumsheugh.</p>
+
+<p>Still, Mrs. Ramsay, though rather an exceptionally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span> truthful woman,
+consoled herself by repeating, with a shake of the head, ‘It was not to
+be,’ slurring over all the details in the failure of such a marriage,
+and adding briskly, ‘But the next best thing is for Primrose to have
+taken Mrs. Jamie in hand.’</p>
+
+<p>So long as Drumsheugh and his mother used the privilege of rare
+travellers in pro-longing their travels, Miss Ramsay had to content
+herself with showing off Peggy in the first blush of her rapid
+improvement to Balcairnie. Generous man though he was, he sometimes
+sighed in the middle of his unaffected satisfaction—not so much for
+Peggy as for that charmed region into which she was fast passing, and
+which he might never enter. No fairy princess or gifted woman, however
+good, would quit her rank to train his clumsy hands and feet and
+tongue, to refine his plain manners and rude tastes.</p>
+
+<p>But other company besides Balcairnie now<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span> came freely to Drumsheugh.
+Primrose’s presence there made the greatest difference in this
+respect to Peggy. If the laird’s cousin—a sensible, well-conducted,
+well-educated, young lady like Miss Ramsay, went and stayed with his
+wife, the scandals against her must have been grossly exaggerated. She
+must have been more sinned against than sinning: Miss Ramsay had taken
+care to remedy all that was wrong, and if she supported ‘Lady Peggy’
+thus cordially, Drumsheugh’s neighbours could do no less than back her
+a little, for the sake of the laird and his mother.</p>
+
+<p>When people did notice young Mrs. Ramsay, everybody was struck by the
+change in her, and the immense advance she had made. She was becoming
+quite presentable, and like the rest of the world. Poor young thing!
+after all she had always been modest and harmless, though she had been
+a cotter’s daughter and a field worker not two years ago. Her elevation
+had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span> the fault of Drumsheugh and Balcairnie, as Drumsheugh’s own
+mother had said.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Forsyth herself made her appearance at Drumsheugh, acknowledging
+by her presence there some glimmering suspicion that a fresh mild
+sun might be about to rise on the social horizon. ‘You have worked
+wonders,’ she said to her old friend. ‘I believe I could bid young Mrs.
+Ramsay to my house to tea now, without fear of how she might behave and
+what folk would say. Still, it was a great risk, and I cannot acquit
+you of much imprudence in exposing yourself to it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not so foolish as to ask your acquittal, Kirsty,’ said Primrose,
+‘and we are not out of the wood yet. Take care that you do not run into
+danger yourself. My cousin Peggy might help herself and drain your
+tea-pot.’ Primrose was provoked into a hit at the private parsimony
+which was already the weak point of Kirsty Forsyth’s housekeeping ‘Do
+you know<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span> what Mrs. Jamie said to me when we were speaking the other
+night of the dancing-school ball at Craigie, and I was remarking that
+if Drumsheugh had been at home we might all have graced it? “I might
+have tried a reel or even a country dance,” she ventured to promise,
+“but a high dance I would not have attempted.” Yet, if it had not been
+going out of fashion, so that she might have danced it at the wrong
+time and place, seeing that she does not know all the outs and ins of
+society, poor dearie, I would have engaged to instruct her to walk
+through a <i>minuet de la cour</i> ravishingly.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Primrose, you are out of your mind or fey,’ said Mrs. Forsyth angrily,
+for to dance a <i>minuet de la cour</i> ravishingly had been till quite
+lately the height of polite accomplishments.</p>
+
+<p>Primrose was not always in a merry mood. Like most fine characters,
+hers had a pensive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span> side, which it remained for Peggy to find out. ‘Why
+do you take so much trouble with me, cousin Primrose?’ inquired the
+young wife in one of her paroxysms of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>‘Because I like you so well, my lassie,’ answered Primrose promptly.
+‘I’m real fond of you—as fond as though you had been the sister I
+never possessed, and that is saying something. I would have liked a
+brother—a big, blustering, fleeching chield of a brother—to order me
+about and make a stir in the house. But oh! Peggy, I would fain have
+had a sister. I would have had a great work either with an elder or a
+younger sister.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But when you first kenned me?’ urged Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, you see, I could not let you be wronged, as Balcairnie told me
+you were wronged, and my cousin Jamie is the nearest man-body I have.
+Some day he or his son, if you bring him an heir, will walk at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span>
+head of my coffin as chief mourner at my funeral.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Na, na,’ interposed Peggy; ‘you’ll marry yoursel’—you’re bound to;
+and a man and bairns of your ain will lament you sair. But death and
+auld age are far awa’.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I dinna ken,’ said Primrose softly; ‘we do not all live to grow old,
+Peggy; my mother and father both died young. As for marrying,’ speaking
+a little more lightly, ‘we do not all marry either. I’m not bonnie,
+like you, and I’ve no tocher.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What a tocher you would be to any lucky lad who had the gude fortune
+to win you!’ cried Peggy ecstatically.</p>
+
+<p>‘But he cannot ken that ere he set his heart on me,’ said Primrose
+naïvely. Then she went on to tell Peggy that the income of the elderly
+relative with whom Primrose stayed died with the annuitant. Primrose
+might be a very poor gentlewoman indeed, in a generation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span> when there
+were few channels by which a gentlewoman could earn independence.
+She was often forced to think how anxiously she would have to pinch
+and scrape to secure a living in her old age, when she was ‘a single
+leddy,’ without even the small privilege of ‘a lass with a lantern,’
+for her evening escort to the houses of better provided friends.</p>
+
+<p>While Peggy vowed in her heart that Primrose should never know such
+straits, since the best seat, the best room, and the most precious
+thing which Drumsheugh held must be at her command, young Mrs. Ramsay
+was made to understand that the sense of her loneliness, her lack
+of family ties, and her uncertain future often pressed heavily on
+Primrose. Yet this was the girl Peggy had always envied, because
+Primrose was so clever and helpful and blithe that she never entered
+a household without becoming quickly like sunshine there. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span> taught
+Peggy another, and that one of the most valuable, lessons she learned
+from her friend—the mingled warp and woof of which the web of human
+life is composed, the hard knots beneath the smooth surface.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> As an example of the rigid self-restraint, no less than
+the indefatigable self-devotion of one of these ladies, it is recorded
+that when a son was about to sail for India—a terrible exile then—and
+came in to say farewell, when he found her playing on her piano, she
+merely looked over her shoulder, nodded a ‘good-bye, my dear,’ and
+immediately turning resumed her tune, and played on till his last
+footstep had sounded in the avenue.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.<br><span class="small">‘A’ WILL BE RICHT AGAIN WHEN JAMIE HE’S COME BACK.’</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>At last, when the late harvest of those days was nearly over, when
+Balcairnie was ‘grieving,’ or ‘leading,’ or ‘forking’ in the fields
+and in the stack-yards both of Balcairnie and Drumsheugh, before the
+first hoar frost had melted in the early rays of the morning sun,
+till it was lying again thick and white all around, like the manna
+of the children of Israel, in the moon-light; when the mellow russet
+and yellow apples had long replaced the delicate pink-and-white apple
+blossom, and there were no lingering flowers in the gardens save
+sun-flowers, marigolds,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span> and daisies, Drumsheugh and his mother were to
+come home—not ‘late, late in the gloamin,’ like Kilmeny, but at a more
+rational hour of the afternoon. It would permit a four o’clock tea, or
+‘fower hours,’ something perfectly distinct from a modern kettledrum.
+At the ‘fower hours’ Peggy’s famous pie was to serve as the <i>pièce
+de résistance</i>, well balanced by ale and glenlivat. Her maiden
+efforts in preserves, elderflower and elderberry, currant, and ginger
+wines were to keep company with the butter-bannocks and cakes and
+honey, the loaf-bread, the short-bread and the diet-loaf which suited
+the old lady’s green tea. The provision was not too ample for the
+large execution sanguinely expected from the ravenous appetites of the
+travellers. Balcairnie, too, had donned his best coat in honour of the
+occasion, hurrying from the harvest-field at the first word of warning
+that a yellow post-chaise was seen on the road to Drumsheugh.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span></p>
+
+<p>It had not been altogether the laird’s careless procrastination, or any
+reluctance to return home from a growing fear of what he was to find
+there, which had delayed the mother and son so long. There had been
+chases by privateers, contrary winds, an illness of Mrs. Ramsay’s, an
+accident to the London coach, uncontrollable impediments turning up in
+succession and baffling the travellers.</p>
+
+<p>But at last Peggy wore, under happy auspices, one of the new gowns
+which had been ordered from Baldie Fuggie. It had been carefully cut
+out, made up, and toned down under Primrose’s superintendence; next it
+had been brightened up by dexterous touches here and there, of lawn
+neckerchief and apron, and bonnie breast-knot. It was a very fair and
+gentle-looking young lady, whose trim feet in their rosetted shoes,
+under the dainty skirt well tucked through the pocket-hole, tripped
+so lightly—though the speed was tremulous, from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span> her post by the
+decapitated stone pillars at the head of the fir avenue, into the
+middle of the rough road—along which she had jogged with Balcairnie on
+the wintry night of her dismal home-coming—to take that first place at
+the chaise door to which she was entitled.</p>
+
+<p>Old Mrs. Ramsay’s head, well protected with wraps, though it still
+wanted a month to Martinmas, was poked out of the window on her side in
+anticipation of her arrival. ‘Eh! can that be you, Peggy, my love?’ she
+cried with glad surprise. ‘You’re looking so well I would hardly have
+known you.’</p>
+
+<p>But when Drumsheugh leapt from the chaise and took his wife in his
+arms, he said the very reverse, though he had not even heard his
+mother’s comment, and had no thought of contradicting her. ‘I’m glad to
+find my Peggy the same,’ he said fervently, ‘the very same as when I
+left her. I’m far gladder of that than to be at hame again, though that
+is good, too.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span> I have not seen any leddy like you, Peggy, my doo, since
+I quitted Drumsheugh.’</p>
+
+<p>Peggy looked uplifted to the sky as at the very words she would have
+liked best to hear.</p>
+
+<p>‘The ungrateful man!’ said Primrose Ramsay to Balcairnie, when the two
+were comparing notes together in the recess of one of the drawing-room
+windows before he left. ‘The ungrateful woman!’ after all I have done
+to make her liker him and her place henceforth.’</p>
+
+<p>He was not sure whether she was most in jest or earnest, and there
+was a strain of wistfulness in his reply. ‘But did you not see how
+his speech pleased her, Miss Ramsay? She would rather have been told
+she was the same to him than that she had grown like the queen on
+the throne; yet she would not have been the same to him if she had
+not changed with the weeks and months, thanks to you. Do you hear
+me, madam, or do you suppose I’m contradicting myself? He has been
+learning,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> almost without his knowledge, to see her with other een all
+the time he has been away, and if she had come upon him, just as she
+used to be, he would have been startled and flegged. It is these other
+een which the improvement in her fits so well, that he was as proud and
+happy as a king to see at a glance she was as bonnie and dear to him as
+ever. Except for you, Miss Ramsay, this gude end would never have come
+to pass.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid you’re a flatterer, Balcairnie,’ said Primrose demurely.</p>
+
+<p>‘Na, na,’ he said hastily, with some trouble and agitation laying hold
+of him, in consequence of her accusation, ‘I have no saft words. I’m
+but a yeoman-farmer. Nobody’s likely to ettle to rub me down—or up,’
+he finished, a little sorely.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t let them, if there is anybody so conceited and impertinent as
+to try,’ she said quickly, with a curious tone of half-smothered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>
+indignation against him rather than against herself, mingling with her
+half fun; ‘there is no call for it. You are best as you are; you could
+not be better. But why do you let me speak like that? Why do you need
+to be told such a plain truth?’</p>
+
+<p>A rush of colour flew into his face, a glow into his eyes; still he
+paused doubtfully, as at news too good to be believed. ‘Forgive me for
+being a gowk,’ he said humbly, ‘but do you really mean I could not be
+better to you, Miss Ramsay?’</p>
+
+<p>She bit her lips, frowned, laughed, and nodded, while she grew as red
+as fire herself. ‘Why do you make me say and do such things?’ she
+repeated, with an impatient tap of her foot.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well,’ he said eagerly, ‘I’ve gear enough, and if I were to buy a
+place like this, and be a laird like Drumsheugh, you and me would never
+be equal in anything worth counting—never.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span> Nobody kens that better
+than myself; but there would be less outward odds, less descent in the
+sight of the world for you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please yourself. I daresay it is very natural for a man to wish to
+have land of his own,’ she said, with the indulgent sympathy which was
+one of her chief charms. ‘Most natural for a man like you who would
+know and love every inch of his land, and spend his life in causing it
+to wave with corn. But if you please, I have my pride too, and I think
+I would rather stoop a little in outward show, if the world likes to
+call it stooping, than that you should be in a hurry to rax up (stretch
+violently) an idle fancy, to me. I would like fine to try what it is
+to be the gudewife of Balcairnie. I’ve a notion it would be a pleasant
+place to fill, to stand in your mither’s shoes, and be to you what she
+was to her gude man.’</p>
+
+<p>In after years, when Primrose had long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span> been the much-loved,
+much-honoured wife of Jock Home, and their love had room and to spare
+for merry jesting, he was wont to assure their daughters that he would
+never have presumed to approach their mother as a suitor if she had not
+given him the first word of encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, Balcairnie and Primrose’s <i>mésalliance</i>—small by
+comparison, though, to be sure, it was a direct result of the first
+flagrant transgression of social laws, met with large tolerance. There
+were even persons, only slightly acquainted with the future bride,
+certainly, who maintained she had done very well for herself—‘a
+penniless lass with a long pedigree,’ white-faced, and small to boot,
+who had won so braw a bridegroom and so comfortable a down-sitting as
+Balcairnie. She had cut her own cloth when she was pretending to be
+looking after the interests of others. Even the old Lady of Drumsheugh
+grieved over the marriage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span> principally because she was conscious that
+here too she had been to blame for the misadventure. And Primrose was
+so fine and generous a creature she deserved the very best match in the
+country, which, when it came to that, Primrose argued with spirit she
+had got.</p>
+
+<p>As for Primrose’s proper guardian, she would not have thought the
+Prince of Wales or the Duke of York good enough for her darling, so
+that it did not matter so much that Mrs. Purvis should resent the
+child’s infatuation, and experience a large amount of chagrin, which
+had to be tenderly borne with and persuaded away before the wedding
+could take place.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Forsyth, though she had set the example, did not clearly perceive
+the parallel, and was by no means without several strong private
+objections. Balcairnie might have plenty of money and old wheat stacks,
+but he was not in a learned profession like Dr. Forsyth,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span> and it would
+be a terrible upheaval of the very foundations of gentility if unequal
+marriages were to become common, the rule instead of the exception.</p>
+
+<p>But there was great and unmixed joy in the hearts of Drumsheugh and
+Peggy over the delightful fortuitousness of the attachment. Drumsheugh
+almost shook the bridegroom elect’s hand off, and loudly claimed the
+right to be ‘blackfoot’ in turn to his friend. Peggy hugged Primrose as
+if they had been very sisters, and cried that now she was not to lose
+her, she, Peggy, had little more to desire; she was near the summit
+of human bliss. In the end even the few hostile voices were silenced,
+for Balcairnie, in the course of a year or two, fulfilled his purpose
+of buying a fair estate, was welcomed among the lairds, and held up
+his head modestly among them. Then the old Lady of Drumsheugh and Mrs.
+Forsyth took him fully to their hearts.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="JEAN_KINLOCH">JEAN KINLOCH.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I2">CHAPTER I.<br><span class="small">JEAN SCORNED.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>‘Ower the muir among the heather,’ Jean Kinloch walked straight and
+fast on a sunny sabbath morning in autumn. She was only nineteen years
+of age but already she was tall and broad-shouldered, with the perfect
+proportions and perfect development of health and strength. She was
+nearer to a beautiful woman than to a bonnie lassie. She had the
+dark-haired, black-browed, grey-eyed face, with the clear-cut features
+and clear complexion which one is accustomed to associate with the
+highest type of Norman beauty. But Jean’s white square teeth, and round
+somewhat massive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> chin, were departures from the type as it is usually
+to be met with. And if she had the dignity and earnestness which on
+occasions break into sunshine—incomparably sweeter, more pathetic,
+even more radiant, relieved against the almost sombre background, than
+an all-pervading, soulless light-heartedness can be—it was not Norman
+dignity and earnestness. It was the self-respect and sedateness of the
+Scotch peasant woman, on whom a Hebrew stamp has been deeply impressed,
+who is enamoured of duty as other women are enamoured of pleasure, to
+whom the sternest doctrines of Calvinism are invested with an awful
+beauty. These are the Lord’s decrees, and though He should slay her,
+yet will she trust in Him.</p>
+
+<p>Jean’s dress had lost the picturesqueness which would have
+distinguished her grand-mother’s, but it was good of its kind—if
+somewhat severe in the tone and cut, and only remarkable as worn by
+Jean Kinloch. But<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span> Jean carried a bible which was no modern, cheaply
+printed, cheaply bound Bible Society’s volume: it was a valuable
+hereditary possession in a couple of small volumes bound in fine and
+lasting russian leather with flaps fastened by burnished silver clasps,
+while there was dim gold on the edges of the yellow leaves with their
+clear delicate print. A bible not unlike it is to be seen among the
+relics of Burns. It was given by the peasant farmer’s son to his
+Highland Mary—the girl whom he was to immortalise by two out of the
+most exquisite love-laments in any language—in that autumn when she
+came down and ‘shore’ the harvest with him among the</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘banks and braes and streams around</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">The Castle o’ Montgomery.’</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But Jean Kinloch’s bible was not a love-gift, on which, as it was held
+in the man’s left hand over a running stream, the woman and her lover
+clasped hands, and swore in the sight of their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span> God to be faithful to
+death. Such bibles with the broken sixpences of a more worldly form of
+troth-plight were already gone out of fashion. This book possessed a
+different distinction, having been Jean’s mother’s kirking bible.</p>
+
+<p>Jean was bound on a long and fatiguing walk even for her youth and
+vigour, so that she had got up by daybreak, before even the minister,
+the earliest riser in the manse, had replaced the Greek and Hebrew
+studies of ordinary days, by the preparatory devotions peculiar
+to the sabbath day, while the rest of the household lay in silent
+unconsciousness. She had set out ere the raw mist had cleared away, in
+order to reach Logan Kirk in time for the forenoon ‘diet of worship.’</p>
+
+<p>The only sufficient warrant in Jean’s eyes for such a distant
+expedition on that ‘sawbath day’ which she had been taught to reverence
+so intensely, would have been an exceptional privilege of sitting down
+at one of the sacred<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span> ‘tables,’ after they had been jealously ‘fenced.’
+Then she would have heard it ‘served’ by some grand minister, a very
+patriarch and prophet in one, a man famed in Jean’s circle for lofty
+austere piety, impassioned zeal, and immense experience with learning
+to match, though the latter quality was held in small account compared
+to the recommendations which went before it. Such a minister was a fit
+successor to ‘Holy Renwick’ and ‘gude Cargill’ and the other heroes and
+martyrs who endured to the end—till they were shot down in peat bogs,
+or mounted steadfastly and triumphantly the long ladder to the high
+gallows in the Grass Market of Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>But young Jean was not journeying on so unexceptionable and profitable
+an errand. It was her own private affairs which sent her forth to cross
+the broad moor on the sabbath morning, and any competent judge might
+easily guess that Jean’s affairs were in dire confusion when she took
+such a step.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span></p>
+
+<p>Jean’s story was not unprecedented in her rank of life, though it is to
+be hoped that hers was an extreme case. She had been courted for years,
+young as she was, and at last trothplighted to a young ploughman.
+Their marriage had been fixed to take place in the following spring at
+Whitsunday, one of the two great feeing, flitting, and marrying terms
+among Scotch agricultural labourers. Jean had been making manifold
+happy preparations in her quiet womanly way by little purchases from
+pedlars, by seams sewed diligently in the half hours which were
+honestly hers, by plans made over and over again with fond deliberation
+and reiteration for the laying out of her little savings and her next
+half year’s wages. She had been undecided whether she herself should
+invest in a chest of drawers, or help Bob to buy an eight-day clock,
+either of which would be an ‘honesty,’ that is a standing mark of
+respectability in their ‘cot<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span> house’ and might descend as an heirloom
+to their children.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime the bridegroom elect had left Dalroy, which was his
+native parish as well as Jean’s, and gone ‘to better himself’ on a
+farm in the parish of Logan. But it did not seem to her to matter
+much—except where their feelings were concerned, that he should have
+little communication with her, either personally or by letter in the
+interval. He might or he might not, after the pitting of the potatoes,
+the last pressing job of the rural year,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">tak his stick into his hand</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p0">on his sabbath-day out, and cross ten miles of moor, as Jean was doing
+now, to visit her for a few hours. He might or he might not send her a
+formal letter or two, or a message occasionally by the carrier. What
+was his performance or failure in such trifles to Jean’s great trust in
+her lad? Yet of all classes of men, perhaps with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span> the single exception
+of soldiers, not one is so notoriously fickle in love-making as Scotch
+ploughmen, not one is more exposed to special sources of temptation,
+and not one, alas! as Jean knew, though her pure mind recoiled from the
+grievous knowledge and refused absolutely to connect it with her lover,
+is more apt to fall into a particular form of vice.</p>
+
+<p>But it is to be hoped that the class’s frequent fickleness and folly do
+not often attain the climax they reached here; for Jean had not only
+been courted, a solemn promise of marriage had been exchanged between
+her and her lover, and such promises are not broken—either by lord or
+lout, lady or lass, without causing such a scandal in their respective
+worlds, as proves the comparative rarity of the offence.</p>
+
+<p>Jean had dwelt in her dream of perfect faith and security until two
+days before the sabbath in question. Then the sister of the lover, who
+was also Jean’s bosom friend, came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span> to the back door of the manse and
+called out Jean in the middle of the day at the height of her household
+work, to break to her a catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh Jean!’ said Eppie, taking the first word—before Jean could cry
+out was there anything wrong with Bob—and speaking with tears and
+groans and honest blushes—‘Oh! that ever I should see the day I would
+be black ashamed of my ain kith an’ kin—that ever I should have to
+say it to you—a lass that mither an’ me were proud to count as are of
+the family. There is word by Willie Broon the carrier—and I doubt it
+is ower true, for Willie, though he may take a drap, was never given
+to leein’—our Bob has played you fause, he has ta’en up with another
+lass—ane Leezbeth Red (Reid), a fellow-servant at Blawart Brae. Nae
+doubt she has set her cap at him ilka day and hour, ilka kye milking
+and horse suppering, and Bob was aye a simple chield—even mair sae
+when a fair flattering tongue than when red and white cheeks came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span> in
+his way. The upshot is—and I could have seen him, my ain brither,
+in the mools afore I had to carry the tidings to you—and I’ll never
+speak to the other lass who has stealt him from you—never, be she ten
+times my gude sister—but it is richt you should ken at aince; they say
+Bob has done her a sair wrang, and there is nothing left for him but
+to marry her; so the twa are to be cried together this very incoming
+sabbath in Logan Kirk. They may be cried and marriet too,’ protested
+the informant in her righteous indignation for Jean, ‘but it’s no his
+friends that will ever own them after sic heartless deceit, and sic
+disgrace as they have brocht upon us a’.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dinna speak in that wild way, Eppie,’ said Jean with a little of her
+natural stateliness and reserve after the first deadly spasm of sick
+incredulity and terrible pain, when Jean had held her breath for a
+moment. ‘If it be sae that Bob has changed his mind without telling
+me, even if he has fallen into greater sin, still it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span> is not for you
+to refuse to own his wife; though I ken you mean weel, what gude would
+that do to me? And now I maun go in, Eppie, for I am in the middle of
+ironing the minister’s best sark, and if I tarry longer the irons will
+get cauld.’ And the irons must not get cold though Jean’s heart should
+break. She must go on ironing in a dazed sort of way, but yet to the
+best of her ability, that special sark of the minister’s which he was
+to wear when he presided over the Synod next Tuesday.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jean resolved to ascertain for herself, beyond the possibility of
+doubt, whether Bob Meffin were a traitor or a true man. It was not a
+subject to ask questions about, nor was she the woman to lay bare her
+heart to the public gaze. But this coming sabbath was Jean’s sabbath
+out, and she could, without saying a word to anybody else, get her
+unsuspecting mistress to grant her leave to spend the day in walking
+across the moor and attending public worship<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span> at Logan Kirk instead of
+waiting on the ministrations of her master at Dalroy.</p>
+
+<p>Jean shed no tear nor did she sob and sigh audibly as she walked along
+to meet her destiny. But she was utterly unobservant of the nature she
+loved in the scene around her, either in its broad outlines or in its
+minute details. She had no attention to spare to-day for the spreading
+heathery moor, as fresh and free almost as the blue sky above it, on
+a sunny morning like this, when what had been the summer’s glistening
+dew-drops were just beginning to fall heavily and hoarily in the first
+suspicion of frost.</p>
+
+<p>Jean had no notice to give to the sweet pungent smell of the heather,
+to the varying hues of the purple milkwort, the yellow rock rose, the
+nodding white-flowered grass of Parnassus which diversified the red
+ling. She did not listen to the hum of the big bee—a splendid fellow
+in black and gold, who was continually crossing her path and sounding
+his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span> drone in her ear, or to the twitter of the brown and grey linnet
+which brushed her very skirts as he rose from the broom, or to the crow
+of the moor cock and to the cry of the plover. Yet all these noises
+were made doubly distinct by the sabbath stillness which rendered
+itself felt even on the moor when no sportsmen were shooting there, no
+quarry men or bands of late shearers taking near cuts to their quarries
+and fields.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then Jean roused herself from her painful abstraction,
+and tried to control her racked heart and brain, by what she had
+always known as the potent spell of duty. It was the sabbath day,
+and therefore she was not her own mistress; though it was her ‘day
+out,’ she ought not, as a Christian woman, to be engrossed with her
+own worldly concerns, however imperative. She should try at least
+to engage in some mental exercise befitting the day—since, as Jean
+held, its divine obligation was not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span> affected by her human distress.
+She made a great effort and prepared to repeat aloud, as she walked,
+one of the psalms with which her memory was stored, using it as the
+early Christians raised the symbol of the cross for a charm against
+distracting worldly thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>She began mechanically to say the first psalm, the earliest learnt by
+Scotch children, one of the most familiar throughout life. But</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">All people that on earth do dwell,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice,</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p0">in its call to universal praise—associated closely as it is with
+the noblest, simplest, most moving melody which ever rang rudely yet
+thrillingly through barn kirk or along bleak hill-side, faltered and
+died away on Jean’s quivering lips.</p>
+
+<p>The staunch-hearted woman began again with the psalm which holds the
+second place in the regard of her nation—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The Lord’s my shepherd,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">I’ll not want;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span></p>
+<p class="p0">and when she had reached the fourth verse, she found that her choice
+was more appropriate:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Yet will I fear none ill,</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p0">said Jean steadfastly—and truly, it was like voluntarily descending
+into ‘death’s dark vale’ to go on with the end in view for which Jean
+journeyed this day. And if she had got her choice, the girl in her
+magnificent bloom of young womanhood, with all her warm interest in
+life—which her religion sanctified but did not stifle, would far
+rather have lain her down and died, than found Bob Meffin a leear, a
+still more cruel sinner against another woman than against Jean herself.</p>
+
+<p>Jean was not well known to the congregation of Logan Kirk; she had not
+been there more than once or twice in her life before, and the one
+person in the neighbourhood with whom she was well acquainted she did
+not expect to see in the kirk this morning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span></p>
+
+<p>She reached the little kirk close to the adjoining hamlet, both of
+the ‘drystane dyke’ order of architecture, just as the most primitive
+of bells commenced to make discord instead of harmony, clattering and
+tinkling instead of clashing and booming its summons.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody recognised Jean as she passed through the groups in the
+roughly kept kirkyard, and though she did not absolutely shrink from
+observation, being too brave and upright to take, as if by natural
+instinct, to hiding her head, she certainly did not desire notice.
+She was glad to get into a back seat without attracting any further
+remark—than what was casually bestowed on a strange face, from the
+fellow-worshippers who were equally strange to her.</p>
+
+<p>The country people—most of them farmers and farm-servants with the
+village hand-loom weavers—tramped and tumbled in, with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span> want
+of ceremony which used to distinguish a Scotch rural congregation.
+The minister and precentor took their places, and Jean fixed mute
+imploring eyes on the latter as if the decision of her fate rested with
+him. He was a homely, elderly man, distinguished among his compeers
+by the <i>sobriquet</i>, derived from his office in the kirk, of
+‘Singing Johnny,’ a souter by trade, but a less thirsty and a more
+theological souter than his great namesake. As he rose for the secular
+rite which in Scotland precedes the religious services, even the most
+austerely devout listened attentively with human interest. And if
+the congregation had only known, so as to watch a young woman in the
+obscurity of the back seats, they might have been aroused by the fading
+of the rich colour in her face, the rigid set of her mouth, and the
+desperate light as of a creature at bay, in what ought to have been
+her reasonable grey eyes, to comprehend that her hands were clasped
+tight—even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span> clenched—under the shelter of the book-board in an agony.</p>
+
+<p>Johnny dallied with the matter in hand, perfectly unaware of the
+torture he was inflicting. He laboured under no press of business as
+at Martinmas or Whitsunday; this was a sabbath between terms when
+little was doing in Johnny’s line. He was able to rise in a deliberate
+manner, to sleek down his stubbly hair as he was wont to do, before
+raising the psalm tune, to look around him with even more philosophical
+indifference; indeed, the only customary act which he refrained from
+doing as if to distinguish his secular from his religious duties,
+was that of putting up his hands before his mouth and giving a
+preliminary cough behind the screen. At last he proclaimed sonorously:
+‘There is a purpose of marriage between Tammas Proodfit and Ailison
+Clinkscales—for the second time,’ not that the purpose had been
+entertained, dropped and resumed,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span> but that the announcement had been
+made before and would ring out once again in the ears of the listening
+kirk.</p>
+
+<p>One woman was listening intently with bent head as if she would fain
+catch even the sound of a pin’s fall, through the thick tumultuous
+beating of her heart. At the words spoken there was the faintest rustle
+of relaxation in her attitude. The couple whose intention had been thus
+sounded abroad were entire strangers to her. What had she to do with
+a Tammas Proodfit and an Ailison Clinkscales, or what had they to do
+with her? It was not to hear them ‘cried’ that she had walked ten miles
+across the moor.</p>
+
+<p>After the proclamation there was a distinct pause, which had the air
+of being instituted for sensational effect, unless Johnny had no
+more ‘purposes of marriages’ in the background to fire off at the
+congregation.</p>
+
+<p>One fainting heart leapt up with half wild<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span> relief and joy. After all
+it was a base report without a word of truth in it. Bob was to be
+proved innocent as the babe unborn.</p>
+
+<p>Woe’s me! Johnny was even then fumbling with another set of lines in
+his horny fingers; he lifted up his voice afresh and called all present
+to witness that there was also a purpose of marriage ‘between Robert
+Meffin and Leezbeth Red for the first time.’ Having discharged his lay
+functions, he stopped abruptly to look up, in expectation of the folded
+paper which the minister rose and bent over the pulpit to hand to him,
+taking Singing Johnny into his confidence as it were, with regard to
+the psalms and paraphrases appropriate to the sermon, which were to
+be sung during the service, for which the precentor was to find the
+fitting tunes on the spur of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>Even after the commencement of the second proclamation, the formal
+employment of the full christian name struck so unfamiliarly on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span> Jean’s
+ears, as to stay the flood of anguish for an instant longer, till the
+enunciation of the surname in company with the name she had heard given
+to her rival, rendered doubt no longer possible. It was all over, as
+Jean had heard said after her father and mother had drawn their last
+breath. It was too true: this was her Bob Meffin and no other whom she
+had heard cried with another woman in order to repair as far as might
+be a shameful wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Jean felt like the rest of us when the catastrophe we have most dreaded
+has come upon us, that she had not known how much she had hoped against
+hope—how hard a battle hope had fought for bare life, till it lay
+slain stark and cold at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>For she had not come there with any intention of protesting against the
+marriage which would be celebrated within the next few weeks. Such a
+step is even rarer in Scotland than in England; neither could there be
+any appeal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span> under the circumstances. It was only that Bob Meffin had
+lied to her and before the Lord, had fallen from what Jean had judged
+to be the glory of his manhood and dragged down another with him in his
+fall. Thenceforth the two who had been all in all could be less than
+nothing to each other.</p>
+
+<p>Jean had listened to the sentence which blighted her youthful hopes,
+crushed her tenderest affections, and left her in the flower of her
+beauty, in all her sense and goodness, for no fault of her own, a lass
+‘lichtlied’—scorned before the world—that sorest humiliation to a
+woman. And it was all for the wiles of another lass with regard to whom
+Jean knew full well, without any vanity or arrogance on her part, that
+Leezbeth Red and such as she were not worthy to be named in the same
+breath with her—Jean, since they could not save either themselves or
+the men whom they had never loved with a noble unselfish love, from
+gross sin and degradation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span></p>
+
+<p>But unless in the involuntary shiver which ran through her—while long
+rays of sunshine were finding their way into the kirk windows and into
+the open door, lighting up and warming even the remotest corner—and in
+the breath drawn in and let out again with a dry inaudible sob, Jean
+gave no sign. She neither screamed nor fainted, she made no ‘dust’ or
+disturbance in the kirk of all places, she would have thought that
+neither maidenly—‘wiselike’ she would have called it—nor reverent.
+Bob Meffin was a fallen sinner, that was all, though it was enough
+for her to carry branded on her heart to her dying day. And she would
+never see or speak with him again, though she had loved him with all
+her heart. And what power of passion and depth of tenderness existed
+in that heart may be fairly conceived in the light of a biblical
+compliment which her master the minister once paid her. He had been
+watching Jean with his younger children when he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span> exclaimed suddenly,
+‘Jean, your mistress is right, you’re a fine young woman; you remind me
+of that riddle of Samson’s, “Out of the strong came forth sweetness.”’</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II2">CHAPTER II.<br><span class="small">BOB MEFFIN’S AMENDS.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>Fourteen years passed—not without their changes. It was a fine frosty
+winter afternoon when two knots of homely men and women—forming two
+distinct coteries—were gathered at one end of Dalroy village, where,
+on the right side of the little street stood the Dalroy ‘smiddy,’ and
+on the left was ‘the smiddy well’—a dipping-in-well famous throughout
+the village for the excellence of its ‘tea-water.’ Horses were waiting
+to be shod round the smiddy door, while their temporary owners—dark
+figures in the ruddy glow of the furnace, prepared to hold their rustic
+parliament. At<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span> the centre of attraction over the way maids and matrons
+took their turn in filling their cans and pitchers.</p>
+
+<p>Very nearly at the same moment Jean Kinloch came in sight—emerging
+from the blue haze made up of the frost and the gloaming, while there
+was heard, with the peculiar distinctness of such a sound in such
+weather, the rumbling of a cart, with cart, horse, and driver still
+unseen, sounding louder and louder as it drew near in the opposite
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>Jean had a plaid pinned over her cap, and carried a bright pitcher
+dangling lightly from one wrist; she was sniffing with satisfaction
+‘the caller air,’ which sent her rich blood coursing through her veins,
+and yet not refusing to welcome the hot blast which met her as she
+crossed in front of the smiddy door.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Jean’s arrival was hailed before she was within ear-shot by
+a double chorus of half-approving, half-ironical comments—the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span> purport
+of which she could very well guess—beginning with ‘Here comes the Miss
+Fraser’s Jean.’</p>
+
+<p>Jean had remained in the service of the Manse family all these years,
+though both the minister and his wife were dead, and the Manse was no
+longer the home of the remnant of the household. Impoverished as such
+remnants usually are, and consisting only of Jean’s young ladies, they
+could hardly have continued to live on, in genteel poverty, if Jean,
+who was so closely allied to them as to be styled theirs by inalienable
+possession, had not worked their double work on diminished wages.</p>
+
+<p>‘Jean’s true to a minute,’ said another speaker, a man in the smiddy.
+‘She’s nae daidler either at meat or wark.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ay, lasses, ye may stand about,’ a woman at the well took up the
+theme, without hearing the man’s contribution to the subject. ‘Jean
+Kinloch’s no sma’ graith—least of a’ in her ain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span> opinion.’ It was like
+a version of that climax of commendation pronounced on the virtuous
+woman in Proverbs, ‘Let her own works praise her in the gates,’ with
+the grudging qualification that must have mingled with the praise.</p>
+
+<p>Jean did not mind much either the concentrated scrutiny or the sifting
+analysis of her merits and demerits, to which, with her knowledge of
+the world, she knew she was exposed. Like a pillar of strength in her
+self-reliance and composure, her fine presence was unimpaired by her
+servant’s costume, and her goodly prime untouched by any token of
+decay. Though she had not risen in worldly rank and prosperity, this
+was a very different Jean from the miserable lass, high-souled and
+innocent as she was, who had sat in a back seat in Logan Kirk to hear
+Bob Meffin cried with another woman.</p>
+
+<p>Before Jean could say ‘Gude day’ to anybody, while she was still coming
+forward in the mingled lights of a cold primrose in the western<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>
+sky behind her, and a warm saffron from the glare of the smiddy at
+her right hand, the cart—the rumble of which had been constantly
+increasing—rattled up, bringing cart, horse, and driver into the
+illumination. And even before the din of its progress had ceased or the
+half-dazzled eyes could distinguish the face of the new comer, a voice,
+which seemed to issue from the past, suddenly called in eager excited
+tones, ‘Jean Kinloch!’</p>
+
+<p>Jean turned startled, and with a shock even to her well-strung nerves,
+at the imperative summons. In spite of changes in the speaker, to which
+those in herself were infinitesimal, she recognised, without a moment’s
+hesitation, her old lover. She had not seen him since six months before
+that day in Logan Kirk, on the last occasion when the two had parted
+a fond loving lad and lass—a plighted bridegroom and bride. She had
+heard little of him in the interval, for his sister Eppie had married
+a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span> soldier and ‘followed the drum,’ while with her departure Jean had
+lost all chance of news of her recreant lover.</p>
+
+<p>Taken by surprise as she was, Jean cried out with shaken accents, in
+turn, ‘Bob Meffin!’ Then she recalled, as any true woman would have
+recalled, instantaneously, the whole circumstances, the scene, the
+spectators. Some of them had known the two in their green youth, and
+were doubtless speculating already, with keen interest and a sense of
+the ridiculous, how Jean Kinloch would meet Bob Meffin now that the
+pair had reached the years of discretion—after what had once been
+between them, after the falseness of Bob which had separated them.</p>
+
+<p>Jean was equal to the occasion; she stepped up to the cart, to which
+Bob sat nailed, with the intention of speaking to him, and doing her
+part in the interchange of such light questions and answers, as might
+be expected between old acquaintances who had known<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span> each other well
+in youth, and who happened to encounter each other in later years. As
+to any nearer relation which had ever existed between them, Jean’s
+attitude showed that she, at least, meant to behave as if she had
+forgotten it as utterly as the most trifling incident of her girlish
+days.</p>
+
+<p>But unfalteringly as Jean carried out this line of conduct, in the few
+paces that intervened between her and Bob Meffin, which she crossed
+steadily with every eye upon her, and with her own eyes not fixed on
+the ground, but raised to catch his, she took in at a glance the whole
+man—including every indication of the transformation he had undergone
+since the last time she had seen him.</p>
+
+<p>That Bob Meffin had been a gallant-looking young fellow in his degree,
+stalwart, lithe, fit to heave up the biggest sheaves on the stack which
+was in the process of building—as Jean had shorn foremost on her
+harvest rig—and to dance<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span> longest and with lightest foot at harvest
+home or bridal.</p>
+
+<p>This Bob Meffin was a broken-down, fast-ageing man, while Jean was
+still in her prime. His back was bent, while hers was straight; his
+hair had grown thin, and hung in uncared-for grey locks under his faded
+cap, while hers, in its undiminished profusion and without one dead
+white thread, was carefully disposed beneath her spotless white cap.
+His cheeks and forehead were weather-worn, dragged, and wrinkled, while
+hers remained fresh, round, and smooth. His working clothes had lost
+all the smartness with which the Bob Meffin of old had worn his most
+patched jacket and most clay-clogged shoon. Before that lightning-flash
+of womanly observation, they gave evidence of such untidiness and
+neglect in absent buttons, ragged cuffs, and the frayed, dangling ends
+of his neckerchief, as not only cast the utmost discredit on the wife
+who had supplanted Jean, but told in graphic language that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span> Bob had
+lost all personal pride and even proper sense of what was due in the
+dress of a respectable ploughman, who had risen to be foreman over the
+younger men on the farm.</p>
+
+<p>Here were the wrong doer and the wrong sufferer. A fine moral could
+have been pointed from the difference between them, even though a
+hair-splitting casuist might have urged that it was not a case of
+retribution alone, since the constant exposure and the coarse fare
+of a ploughman, even when he carries the clearest of consciences
+within his bosom, is apt to tell upon him betimes, and make him look
+elderly before he is forty. As for Jean, though she had undergone
+‘a disappointment,’ having continued in domestic service, she had
+of necessity missed such parallel drudgery and lack of sufficiently
+nourishing food, as she had once looked forward to willingly and
+cheerfully. But such causes make the ploughman’s wife keep pace with
+her husband in ageing prematurely.</p>
+
+<p>Still Bob Meffin had altered with a vengeance;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span> and Jean could hardly
+believe the testimony of her eyes and was impressed by the change. For
+surely nobody will say that because Adam delved and Eve span, because
+Jean had been a servant lass and Bob a ploughman all their respective
+lives, they had not the feelings of their kind, so that Jean should
+fail to have a sensitive perception that her former hero had lost, in
+the rough battle of life, all the glamour with which he had once been
+surrounded?</p>
+
+<p>Was Jean pleased that it should be so? That she had lived to see how
+Bob Meffin had been punished for his desertion of her and degradation
+of another? She could not tell, there was such a tumult of pride and
+pain in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>But she went up to him where he sat and said with the easiest manner
+imaginable, ‘Is this you, Bob? How are you, and how are your wife and
+bairns?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘My wife!’ cried Bob aghast. ‘Do you no ken, Jean, she’s dead and gane
+a year and a half syne?’</p>
+
+<p>Jean received another shock in which there were appalling elements.
+The dead woman had been one against whom Jean—Christian woman as
+she was—had borne a sore grudge for many a day. Nay, only a moment
+ago, Jean had been sharply summing up, with rising disdain and not
+without a sense of bitter satisfaction, what she had reckoned as so
+many unanswerable proofs of Leezbeth Red’s wifely incompetency, while
+all the time Jean’s successful rival had passed away long months ago
+without Jean’s knowledge, to give in her—Leezbeth’s—account to the
+Great Judge.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor woman!’ said Jean more softly; ‘she had gotten her ca’ early.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She was never a strong woman,’ said Bob, speaking without the
+awkwardness which must have accompanied the discussion of his living<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>
+wife’s qualities with Jean. He spoke also with that little hush of
+reverence, which is found in every man or woman with a spark of
+generosity and awe in the soul, when he or she refers to the dead—once
+so near, but who has gone far beyond all kindly communion and familiar
+every-day life.</p>
+
+<p>In addition Bob showed that grave composure of regret which might be
+expected from a reasonable man and a widower whose grief was a year
+and a half old. ‘Leezbeth was silly from the time of our marriage,’
+continued Bob, not uttering a supercilious reflection on the limited
+mental capacity of his wife, simply expressing himself in the
+vernacular for delicate health. ‘She had mostly to keep her bed, for
+the last year or twa of her life.’</p>
+
+<p>That sentence explained much. The misfortune of having married a
+sickly wife doomed to die prematurely, may only serve to call forth
+the deeper tenderness of the rich man whose personal independence and
+the necessaries—nay,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span> the soothing solaces of whose life, remain
+altogether untouched by the calamity. But it is a crushing blow to
+the poor man, however faithfully and gallantly he may bear it. Bob’s
+slouching gait, haggard face, grey hair and uncared-for clothes were
+all easily accounted for now, without farther severe reflection either
+on himself or on his dead wife. They spoke of hard work doubled when
+rest should have come; of the son of the soil returning from his day’s
+darg,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Wat, wat, wat and weary,</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p0">with neither a blazing ingle nor a clean hearth-stone, not a single
+creature-comfort to sustain him; of ill or uncooked food such as a
+dainty townbred beggar would have turned from in supreme disgust; of a
+father who had to be father and mother in one to his helpless children;
+of long nights of waking and watching for the labouring man whose sleep
+ought to have been sweet.</p>
+
+<p>Jean, who understood the circumstances so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span> well, was not the woman
+to be unmoved by them. ‘But your bairns, Bob?’ she suggested kindly,
+turning instinctively to what seemed to her the single prospect of
+better days for the speaker. ‘They will be getting on, and rising up to
+be a blessing to you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘They are that already, woman,’ said Bob heartily, while his careworn
+face brightened inexpressibly, ‘though the auldest of the two lasses,
+Lizzie and Peggy, is but growing thirteen, and they have to take turn
+and turn about at their schulin’ and at keepin’ the house. They are
+as gude and clever, though I should na say sae, as lasses can be. My
+word! Jean, they can kindle a fire and put out a bannock that would not
+disgrace yoursel’.’</p>
+
+<p>Here was a trace of the old Bob with his impetuosity and sanguineness.
+Jean smiled faintly in listening to him, even while she asked herself
+sternly, how she could be such a weak and wicked sinner as to feel a
+pang of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span> jealous resentment shoot through her. It was because she heard
+this poor man who had suffered so much, refer in terms which proved
+his high esteem for the only thing of value that remained to him—his
+bairns and Leezbeth Red’s—not Jean’s—to her, who must go a lone woman
+to her grave through his treachery.</p>
+
+<p>‘For the bit laddie,’ continued Bob with a slight fall and wistful
+yearning in his voice, ‘he’s but a wee chappie of three years. We
+lost twa weans between him and the lasses. He’s no stout—I’m whiles
+frightened that he has his mither’s constitution. But his sisters and
+a gude auld body of a wife in our cotton do the best they can for
+him, and wha kens but that we’ll be permitted to pu’ him through—and
+live to see him a braw man some day?’ Bob lifted his bent head with
+glistening eyes at the remote but inspiring prospect.</p>
+
+<p>Jean thought of a manse child that had died in its infancy, on
+which she had doted as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span> women like her are apt to lavish passionate
+affection on little children. ‘I hope sae too, Bob, my man,’ she said
+in the kindly phraseology of her class, and addressing him all the
+more gently, because she sought, in her own mind, to atone for the
+unreasonable, unrighteous anger she had felt stirring in her heart
+against him, for his very fatherliness, only a moment before. ‘I’ll be
+right glad to hear that your laddie has thriven.’</p>
+
+<p>Bob’s face brightened more and more, as he leapt down from the
+cart-head, and stood by Jean’s side. But in spite of the decided action
+a certain hesitation and agitation began to appear in his manner.</p>
+
+<p>The movement served to remind Jean of what she had been losing
+consciousness of, that she and Bob Meffin were central figures in an
+attentive circle scrutinising their proceedings, and probably catching
+scraps of their conversation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Jean,’ said her old lover, lost to, or careless of, their public
+position, a broken red rising in his face while his eyes fell before
+hers, ‘I’m pleased to have seen you here, lass; and I own I had a
+notion we might forgather, after I had been with the cart for draff
+at the brewery, and made up my mind to come this way, because I had a
+doubt about a nail in ane of Bruce the horse’s shoon—the back fit on
+the hinder side—which Jamie Caird could put richt. Jean, I leed to
+you when we were young, I’ll never deny it; but oh! woman, ye dinna
+ken what it is for a man to own to a lee, whether to man or woman.
+And ye dinna ken how I was tempted—a thochtless lad as I was, in the
+same place with a bonnie fulish young lass who took a liking to him,
+and would let him see her heart richt or wrang. Jean, I’ll no say ill
+of the dead to whom I did wrang, who was the mither of my bairns. She
+did her best, puir feckless thing, when she had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span> gotten me—no sic a
+bargain after all, since I was neither so clever nor so handy as to
+make up for her lack of pith and experience—and she was a tried woman,
+racked wi’ pain and faint with heart sickness, longing to be gane to
+her rest, her worst enemy might have pitied her, puir Leezbeth! long
+before she gaed aff the face of the earth. I would be a muckle brute
+to blame her at this time of the day, and to throw a’ the wyte of my
+faut on her. Still, Jean, the truth must be spoken, and gin ye had
+kenned, even at the time, there was some puir excuse for a moment’s
+madness of passion and its miserable consequences—you were aye so
+strong yoursel’ that you micht hae had some mercy on the weak—and
+we were weak as water, baith Leezbeth and me. But it’s a’ ower now,
+Jean, and you are to the fore and a “wanter” yet. Woman, gin you would
+suffer me to make some amends—a’ that’s in my power. I’ve keepet my
+place and risen to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span> be foreman at Blawart Brae in spite of a’. I’ve
+gude thirty pounds a year o’ wages, and I’ve paid up my debt this last
+twalmonth. If I had onybody to manage for me I micht do weel yet. It’s
+not to certain puirtith I’m bidding you, Jean. And there’s my little
+cummers,’ continued the infatuated man, with a flash of exultant hope,
+well-nigh conviction, at the mention of his young daughters; ‘they will
+be proud to do your will, and wait on you like a queen; you could rear
+them into fine women like yoursel’. The wee chappie would be a fash to
+you, no doubt, but you are never the woman to heed sic fash, and oh!
+lass, you dinna ken what a takin’ way he has wi’ him, how he is the pet
+of ilka body that comes near him, though he’s ill-grown and weakly. He
+tholes his trouble like a bit man, and when he’s no clean knocked on
+the head wi’t, and wallied like the young grass in simmer-time when
+there has not been a shower to slocken<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span> its drouth for sax weeks, he’s
+the plaisantest o’ God’s creatures you ever saw. Jean, you would like
+Jockie as gin he were your ain, and you micht be the saving of my
+laddie,’ pleaded Bob passionately, as he had never pled before, not
+even for Jean’s young love.</p>
+
+<p>Jean was so confounded at the turn matters had taken, and the advantage
+Bob Meffin was seeking to wrest from her pity, and the softening of
+her heart towards him and his, that she hardly gave their full meaning
+to the first words of this second suit, and it was not for a moment
+that the extent of their presumption struck her. ‘The deil’s in the
+man!’ Jean said under her breath, in spite of her principles, her
+decorum, and the recollection that she had served in a minister’s
+family for a large part of her life. Was there no end to the conceit
+of men, in themselves and their bairns? And so he thought he could
+make her amends! Doubtless he imagined she was still hankering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span> after
+his fickle love, and pining for his sake, while she being an honest
+woman had banished him from her thoughts, as a married man, fourteen
+years before. By his careless use of the slighting term ‘wanter,’ which
+complaisant contemptuous married couples applied to single men but
+particularly to single women, he betrayed that he shared in the coarse
+popular scorn of old maids, and the mean opinion that they would be
+only too glad to snatch at any—the most wretched, chance of changing
+their condition and escaping from its reproach. He, the middle-aged,
+battered, and broken-down ploughman with his two forward hempies of
+lasses, and his heavy handful of a sick bairn, concluding impudently
+that any husband was better than none, judged himself a fit match for
+an independent well-esteemed woman like Jean Kinloch! And he had been
+the very man, the leear, as he had rightly called himself, to the one
+woman, the worst enemy to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span> other, of the two who had trusted him.
+He had wrung Jean’s heart when it was young and tender, and lichtlied
+her for a lass like Leezbeth Red, leaving Jean to be the mark for the
+jests and scoffs of mocking tongues.</p>
+
+<p>Jean was burning with indignation, and looking at it in her light,
+greater provocation could not have been given her. ‘Are you daft, Bob
+Meffin?’ She turned upon him with a pale face set like iron, and words
+which cut like swords. ‘Do you think I would have a gift of you, after
+what has come and gane? If I had been brodent on a man, I might have
+had my wale of a hantle better than you ever were, without waiting so
+long. Man, I’m weel content to be an auld maid, it’s no sic a forlorn
+lot as you marriet folk in your crouseness fancy. But I would be keen
+to get marriet gin I could consent to stand in a dead woman’s shoon, a
+lass who was like to have had “a misfortune”’—Jean used the apologetic
+phrase with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span> strong contempt—‘who had so little truth and honesty in
+her that she could steal the fickle man’s heart and word which were
+not worth the taking, though they had been flung at her feet, kennin’
+a’ the time they belonged to another woman—would I be plaguet wi’ her
+brats o’ bairns, think ye?’</p>
+
+<p>Bob heard the terms of her answer with as much amazement as she had
+experienced at his proposal, with consternation added to the amazement,
+and with the pain of a great disappointment in the crestfallen and
+wounded expression of his face.</p>
+
+<p>But at the last scornful words the man’s spirit kindled within him. He
+faced Jean, and replied to her with volleys of wrath: ‘Jean Kinloch,
+you may cast laith at me, you’ve ower gude richt, though I thocht—I
+was wrang—a’ the same I had a fulish notion it would be grander to
+forgi’e and forget, and that the lass I had lo’ed sae weel, when there
+was naebody to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span> come atween us, micht be fit to play the grander
+part. But to cast laith at the silent dead for the wrong-doing of her
+youth, after she has paid the heavy cost—to cast laith, to my face,
+at my innocent bairns, my twa gude lasses and my stricken laddie, Jean
+Kinloch, you were na blate.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Na, Bob, I didna mean—’ began Jean hesitatingly, but he would not
+hear her.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ve done what I’ll stand frae no man or woman born, no frae the
+woman I aince lo’ed as I lo’ed my life, and whom even when I gaed her
+up, because I couldna say “na” either to mysel’ or to anither, I would
+hae focht ony mither’s son in braid Scotland who would have dared to
+say that she was not amaist worthy to be worshipped. I thocht you were
+ower gude for me, and it was a comfort in repenting o’ my folly, that
+you were weel rid o’ me. But I tell you where you stand glowering
+there, you’re not the woman I thocht you;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span> you’re not gude enough for
+the gift o’ my bairns that you have spoken tantingly o’—Jean Kinloch,
+you’re a hard, cauld woman this day.’</p>
+
+<p>This was turning the tables in truth, and an astounding effect followed.</p>
+
+<p>Bob Meffin’s words could hardly be called reasonable, and yet the
+utterance of them seemed to lift him above his fall and to lend a
+homely dignity to the sinner, as he walked away from the old love to
+whom he had not been true.</p>
+
+<p>Jean felt it with a curious force. She had the strongest conception
+that Bob Meffin, who had jilted her in the past and was insulting her
+in the present—as she had thought only a moment before, who defended
+his dead wife and loved his children so fondly, was having the best of
+it in their contest. He had been foolish and false in word and deed, he
+might be what she had called him—the most conceited and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span> audacious of
+men. He might share in the low views current as to ‘wanters’ and old
+maids, yet could it be that Bob Meffin had grown a better man than Jean
+was a woman, while he had been the sinner and she the sinned against?
+Had the simple, manly patience with which he had paid the penalty
+reversed the result in character, in the subtle workings by which good
+may triumph over evil? Had Bob become less and she more worldly-minded
+since they parted? Had his nature been softened, mellowed, purified in
+his ceaseless toil for his sick wife and helpless children, while she
+in her comparative ease, her leisure for her bible and her kirk, had
+lost sight of magnanimity and mercy and learnt only vindictiveness and
+malice? And if so, had she not been doubly defrauded? Was Bob to cheat
+her not only of earthly, but of heavenly happiness?</p>
+
+<p>Jean’s sense of justice rebelled against the merest bewildered
+suspicion of such a sentence.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span> But she was sorry for the words she
+had spoken; she had been mean enough to cherish the recollection of
+Bob’s offence after all these years, and, with a full knowledge of the
+apples of Sodom it had borne, to cast it up to the offender. And he had
+been perfectly right in his accusation—she had ‘cast laith’ at the
+dead wife whose soul had gone before the great tribunal—at Leezbeth
+Red’s and Bob Meffin’s innocent bairns, thus outraging the most sacred
+feelings of humanity. As Jean was a good woman she must take back her
+words in part, she must say she was sorry for having uttered them.</p>
+
+<p>‘Forgi’e me, Bob,’ she said in a low tone, her handsome face working
+with suppressed emotion. ‘It was sma’ of me and unworthy of a Christian
+woman to let on about byganes—no to say it was cruel to say an
+unbecoming word o’ your dead wife and your living bairns.’</p>
+
+<p>Alas! the original mercurial temperament<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span> of the man which no suffering
+had altogether subdued, leapt up on the slightest encouragement from
+the depth of alienation and despondency to the height of fresh love
+and hope. He was not merely propitiated, he was elevated by a single
+word of regret so as to be ready to repeat the affront he had given.
+‘Will you no think better of it, Jean, lass, and make me a prood and
+happy man at last?’ he called out loudly and recklessly. Jean’s recent
+remorse for her harshness was nipped in the bud, and she was furious at
+the renewed outrage. ‘No me, niver, niver,’ she proclaimed to him and
+to all who might choose to listen.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III2">CHAPTER III.<br><span class="small">JEAN’S REPRISALS.</span></h3></div>
+
+
+<p>Eppie Meffin had returned with her soldier, a full-blown sergeant
+in possession of a comfortable pension, to settle in her native
+village. And Jean went to congratulate her old friend, but found that
+condolences instead of congratulations were in requisition.</p>
+
+<p>Eppie stood bathed in tears with her good bonnet and shawl thrown on
+anyhow, in her haste to set out for the Dalroy railway-station, which
+was now within three miles of the village, while the train stopped for
+five minutes at another station a mile from Logan, on its way to a
+place of greater note.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Come a bittie with me, Jean, it’s lang since we’ve seen ane anither,
+lass. I take your early visit very kind, and am fain to hear your
+cracks, ‘but I canna stop to speak to you,’ said Eppie, without waiting
+to be questioned on the cause of her distress.</p>
+
+<p>Jean complied with the petition, excited almost out of her staid
+maidenly composure. And her companion was not slow to pour forth her
+lamentations over the misfortune that had befallen her, through all
+that was left of her kindred.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oo, aye, it’s that unlucky Bob: you may be satisfied now, Jean, you
+ha’e lived to see vengeance execut’ on him—as they say, it’s aye
+ta’en—even in this world, on the deceivers and deserters o’ women.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Me satisfied!’ cried Jean in unfeigned horror; ‘what do you tak me
+for, Eppie Meffin? Do you think I wish, or ha’e ever wished, an ill
+wish on your brither? You’re speakin’ like an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span> unregenerate heathen.
+Is’t his ae bit laddie?’ inquired Jean almost tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s a hantle waur than the bairn,’ groaned Eppie. ‘I canna help
+liking the wee thing who is no accountable for a’ the fash he gies; but
+’deed he would be weel awa’, at rest from a’ his pains.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! Eppie, Eppie,’ said Jean reproachfully, ‘when Bob’s heart is set
+on this bairn, and ane can never tell what the silliest callant may
+come through, and live, and grow to; you a mither yoursel’ to speak sic
+words!’</p>
+
+<p>‘You speak o’ me bein’ a mither,’ said Eppie with a half-choked voice,
+‘woman, you dinna ken what the outcome o’ a mither’s love may lead to,
+though you’re gude—you were aye a gude lass, Jean Kinloch. There’s
+my ain brisk mannie Peter. Do you think if I had the choice, and if I
+kenned I was to be ta’en away frae him, and his father was to forfeit
+his pension and become superannuate’, I wouldna<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span> rather choose to have
+a’ the briskness ta’en out of my laddie, and see him lying still—never
+to stir mair—only fit for the mools, than look forward to a chance of
+his comin’ to want, and fa’n on the parish, and being knocked about and
+scorned, and treated to a dog’s life?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then it’s Bob himsel’,’ said Jean briefly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Wha else should it be?’ demanded Eppie, made peevish by her grief.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ye dinna say he’s dead?’ said Jean, with white lips.</p>
+
+<p>‘No dead outricht,’ said Eppie, not so grateful as she ought to have
+been for the great respite, never having contemplated the extremity,
+‘but he is no muckle better, so far as being a bread-winner is
+concerned. He was trying to break in a maisterfu’ horse, when it turned
+and flung at him, and struck him atween the elbow and the shouther.
+His arm—and it’s his richt ane—is that melled the doctor is feared
+the banes will never gang thegither again, and he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span> may have to cut it
+aff bodily. If poor Bob survive the operation, and be left an ae-armed
+man, he’ll no even be fit for a hag man’ (the used-up man who is the
+cattle-feeder on a farm). His maister may do something for him, so long
+as he lives, since the hurt was got in his service, but Bob cannot be
+allowed mair than will provide for his ain bite and sup, and what is
+to become of his bairns even in his lifetime Gude can tell. Me and my
+man micht take ane o’ the halflin lassies, but we could do nae mair;
+and little as the like o’ her is gude for, she’s like to be ill spared
+with her faither as weel as her little brither thrown on her and her
+sister’s care. Pity me! for the care, wi’ the auldest of the twa hardly
+in her teens. Now, Jean, when you’ve heard a’ will you flee out on me
+again for wishing the weary wean were safe in a better place?’</p>
+
+<p>Jean was silent in the magnitude of the calamity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span></p>
+
+<p>At this moment Eppie had only one complaint to make of the victim,
+and she did not dream of including Jean in it, for Eppie was a loyal
+friend as well as an attached sister. She had heard already how Bob
+as a widower had ventured to make up to Jean Kinloch again, and so
+far from approving of the venture, Eppie, in fairness to her sex, and
+still more in fairness to Jean, had said stoutly, unswayed by family
+interest and partiality, that Bob was rightly served in the repulse he
+had received. He had no reason to count on any other answer. He was
+both bold and simple to speer Jean Kinloch’s price a second time. There
+had always been a simplicity about him, poor chap, though he was no
+fool either. Doubtless that had been the cause of his falling an easy
+victim to the wiles of that light-headed cutty Leezbeth Red—that Eppie
+should miscall the dead. But Eppie’s auld mother, who had a great work
+with Jean, could never abide<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span> Leezbeth. Thus Eppie took refuge from any
+self-reproach for the disparaging criticism on her late sister-in-law,
+by regarding it as a mark of filial respect.</p>
+
+<p>‘You ken, Jean, it’s a mercy, “there was never a silly Jocky but
+there was aye as silly a Jenny,” and some canny woman, a wee bit up
+in years, wi no muckle to lippen to, micht have drawn up wi’ Bob and
+his foreman’s house and wages. And what though, she had been a thocht
+ill-faured?’ speculated Eppie boldly, ‘she would not ha’e made a waur
+wife and step-mither because of the shape of her nose or the colour of
+her skin. Of course I dinna mean a weel-to-do, weel-looking woman like
+you, Jean,’ broke off Eppie in perfect sincerity; ‘a match like that
+was no longer to be thought of for him. If you were inclined to change
+your state, you micht aspire as high as a butler or a schulemaister.
+But about the woman that might ha’e done for our Bob afore this
+mischanter—if<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span> she had not been a fule o’ a lassie—caring only for
+idleset and a reive at whatever pleasure came in her way—she would not
+ha’e been that ill aff. Puir Bob has learnt to serve hissel’ and to be
+easy served, and his patience wi’ these bairns o’ his, and his pleasure
+in them, is jist extraordinar’.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ Jean said half abstractedly, ‘he seemed to think a deal o’ his
+bairns.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nae doubt, ilka craw thinks its ain bird whitest, and Bob’s birds
+were aye birds o’ Paradise. No that I would deny they’re fine lasses
+as lasses gang, but will that prevent them being frichtet out o’ their
+wits if Bob has to get his arm chapped aff? and if he come round, how
+long will they be, think ye, of forgetting the trouble and getting out
+their heads? And how can I, wi’ a man and bairns and a house o’ my ain
+to look after, and a railway journey atween me and Bob’s family, keep
+the lasses out of a’ but good company, and set them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span> down and haud them
+on their seats, at their seams and their knittin’, and teach them to be
+orderly and punctual and weel-mannered,’ said the sergeant’s wife with
+emphasis. ‘No that it matters muckle since it has come to the warst,’
+she added the next moment, sinking back into dejection. ‘I see nae way
+now for them but they maun gang on the parish—that ever ony o’ my folk
+should come to this!’ Eppie ended with fresh tears of mingled personal
+mortification and grief for ‘our Bob.’</p>
+
+<p>Jean tarried a couple of weeks, hearing various reports of Bob’s
+keeping up or giving way—of the youngest of his doctors maintaining
+that he would both save the arm and restore it to usefulness, only
+months of suffering and helplessness must intervene—of the eldest
+of his doctors swearing that Bob’s arm, if it were not amputated at
+once, would cost him his life at no distant day. Jean could bear it no
+longer. Her punishment, not Bob’s, was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span> more than she could bear. She
+would ‘take her foot in her hand,’ go across the moor, and ask how Bob
+Meffin fared. She was an old enough woman to decide for herself on the
+desirability of such a step. She was old enough in her rank of life to
+be her own chaperon, and dispense with the presence of Eppie on her
+visit.</p>
+
+<p>Jean was not accustomed to railways as her travelled friend was, so it
+did not occur to her to lessen the fatigue of the expedition by having
+recourse to the station, nearly three miles off, and being carried by
+the iron horse and deposited a mile from her destination. To Jean, by
+far the simpler and less troublesome course was to ‘take her foot in
+her hand’ and walk the ten miles to Logan.</p>
+
+<p>It was already the month of February, and the days were lengthening,
+though spring was making little show in the woods and fields, and least
+of all on the moor.</p>
+
+<p>Jean accomplished this journey as she had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span> accomplished that other,
+with the frost-bitten instead of the blooming heather under her feet,
+and the former summer sky still grey with wintry clouds over her head.
+It was not the sabbath day, so Jean was not called upon to redeem the
+holy time by speaking to herself in psalms and hymns and spiritual
+songs, as she trod the long and hard road; but she caught herself
+muttering involuntarily half aloud more than once, ‘God be gude to
+Bob Meffin and his mitherless bairns.’ And she was conscious, through
+her anxiety, that peace with God and man, instead of restless misery,
+filled her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Jean passed the kirk where she had sat and heard Bob ‘cried’ with
+another woman, as it seemed to her an age ago—passed the kirkyard
+where Leezbeth Red lay sleeping. She knew the road to Blawart Brae
+perfectly well. Had she not learnt its every turning by heart in the
+days when she had thought of the farm in the light of her home as a
+young wife? Bob’s present<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span> house was not, indeed, the house which
+that young wife would have dwelt in, the last was tenanted by one of
+the junior ploughmen and his wife—no older than Jean would have been
+if she had come to Blawart Brae a married woman by the time she was
+twenty. Jean caught a glimpse of a young lass whose brown hand was
+already invested with the dignity of a wedding-ring, as she looked up
+and paused in the act of pulling up a curly green kail-stock from her
+‘yaird.’ Jean stared wistfully at the fresh contented face as at a
+picture of what her own face might have been like, if Bob Meffin had
+not broken his vows more than a dozen of years before.</p>
+
+<p>Bob’s cottage was that of the foreman on the farm, but the little
+advantages which the promotion secured had all been lost in the
+grinding poverty to which he had been subjected.</p>
+
+<p>Bob himself opened the door to Jean’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span> knock, for he was able to walk
+about the house, though his arm was still in an early precarious stage
+of recovery.</p>
+
+<p>‘Eh! Jean, is this you? Come in by; it’s kind of you to look in and
+speer for me in the by-going, since you maun ha’e some other errand at
+Logan.’ He cried with such glad surprise, that Jean had no more cause
+to fear the nature of her welcome.</p>
+
+<p>He insisted upon her occupying the one arm-chair, and he would break
+up with his left hand the little fire gathered on the hearth, while
+he kept repeating, as in a wonderfully pleasant dream, ‘Is’t possible
+you’ve come aince errand to see me? Woman, the sicht of you is gude for
+a sick man;’ and Jean knew that he admired her fine carriage and fine
+face as of old—that to him, as to the rest of the world, she was still
+the well-endowed, the well- not the ill-favoured woman whom Eppie had
+proposed as a fit wife for her brother.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span></p>
+
+<p>As for him, he looked fifty times more haggard and worn than when Jean
+had seen him sitting, still able-bodied and active, on the head of
+his cart between the smiddy and the well, in the winter gloaming. His
+cheeks were more sunken, his hair had received an additional white
+powdering, his very voice piped a little with weakness, his fustian
+clothes naturally were worse—not better, attended to, while his
+right arm, that sign and seal of a working man’s independence, hung
+pathetically incapable of service in its sling.</p>
+
+<p>But he was eager, even cheerful, in his greetings to Jean. At the
+same time it was clear that though he had no regrets to spare for his
+personal appearance, he was full of apologies for his house which might
+throw discredit on the management of his young house-keepers. Both
+of them were absent for the moment, since Lizzie had carried out her
+little brother, and Peggy, who had returned to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span> parish school, was
+not come back for the day.</p>
+
+<p>To tell the truth, Jean saw Bob’s house when it was about its best,
+while he remained constantly at home to give directions to his lasses,
+and when his sister Eppie came over, once a fortnight, expending her
+surplus energy and emotion in scouring not only the family wardrobe,
+but the windows and the grate.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a house bare and barren in its small space, as the great
+ward of a poor-house, while it was liable to the squalor the absence of
+which is the redeeming feature of the poor-house. Here there was not
+one of the articles which are the pride of a well-to-do ploughman’s
+heart, and which make all the difference between ‘couthiness’ (plenty
+and comfort combined) and dreariness in his homely dwelling. In Bob’s
+house there was no chest of drawers rubbed by proud patient hands—such
+as Jean had been once laying by ten shillings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span> of her wages at a
+time to buy; no grandiose eight-day clock with perhaps a wreath of
+brilliant pink roses and gorgeous blue convolvuluses painted round its
+broad face, to which Bob in the heyday of his fortunes had aspired;
+no coarse but gay earthenware, for show as well as for use, in the
+cupboard with its glass door; no resplendent coloured engravings of
+worse than doubtful merit as works of art, but bright suggestive spots
+relieving the staring or dingy blankness of the white-washed walls; no
+exquisitely patched quilt—a marvel of womanly ingenuity and industry,
+such as Jean had once stitched together and sung over, and laid aside
+to fade in her kist—adorning the box-bed. There was not even a cat
+purring about the ‘clean hearth-stane,’ or a bird chirping in its
+cage, or a growing plant on the ledge of the small window. Yet Bob as
+a young man had been fond of animals and plants. Only there had been
+hard times in his history. Then a cat, if<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span> it did not cast aside its
+domestic habits and run wild about the stack-yard and barn, killing
+rats and mice which Bob might have been tempted to grudge it, for its
+own consumption, would have grown as lean in flesh and as unthrifty in
+coat as Bob himself. The pence to be paid for an ounce of bird-seed
+might have formed a far larger sum than he, with any conscience, would
+have dared to abstract from the family capital. The burdened man could
+not have given the moment’s thought and time necessary to supply the
+‘flooer’ with the common sunshine, air, and water—all that it craved.</p>
+
+<p>Jean, who had been thinking much of late of her old comfortable
+manse-kitchen glittering with pewter, tin and brass, the very roof
+groaning with the weight of mutton hams, pigs’ cheeks, dried fish,
+bags of onions, bunches of herbs, contrasted it with this region of
+desolation, but did not shrink from the contrast.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span></p>
+
+<p>Jean and Bob chatted together one on each side of the flickering
+fire—the blinking of which was more kindly than the pale February
+sunbeams, which shone steadily on the dispiriting house-place.</p>
+
+<p>But Bob was not down-hearted: he was wonderfully hopeful, as, by the
+Providence which makes the back fit for the burden, it was his nature
+to be. He was ready to praise to the skies the cleverness and kindness
+of his young doctor—Bob having affectionately appropriated his medical
+man, with a certain proud admiration and tenderness for his gifts and
+his youth, much as Jean had appropriated her young mistresses, dwelling
+with fond delight on their graces. Bob proclaimed with unstinted
+gratitude the generosity of his master, who was paying in full a
+term’s wages which the servant had not earned, and only putting an
+orra (extra man) man into Bob’s place, till it could be ascertained
+whether he should recover from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span> the effects of his accident, as Bob was
+well assured he would in time, if it were the Lord’s will—he used the
+expression without the slightest affectation. Eppie was a good sister
+to him, while all his neighbours were richt kind. He could better thole
+the pain of his arm now, that he had the comfort of trusting it was not
+to be sawn off. Bob said the words without shrinking and with manly
+fortitude. He had been in worse straits and seen far greater ‘trouble,’
+and he had much to be thankful for. There was no more pretence in the
+acknowledgment of thankfulness than in the reference to his Maker’s
+will. Bob was one of those wayfaring men who, though a fool, was
+prevented, in part by his very simplicity, from erring in his judgment
+of the way he had to go through life and death.</p>
+
+<p>Then he quietly dropped his own affairs and turned with kindly
+interest to discuss Jean’s concerns, and also to hear the news of old
+acquaintances<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span> which could only reach him and Jean orally, and could
+never come to them through any humble substitute for ‘Fashionable
+News’ in West-end newspapers. Bob could and did read stray newspapers,
+but they rarely brought him intelligence of the doings of friends old
+or new, and news were especially acceptable to Bob in these weeks of
+enforced idleness and pain, from which, though he bore the infliction
+bravely, he was fain to have his mind diverted for an hour. He took the
+friendliest interest in the changes going on in Jean’s ‘family,’ which
+happened at that moment to be looking up in the world, while now and
+then that very interest betrayed him into precarious allusions. ‘So
+Miss Mary is to be buckled with young Logan o’ Logan! I mind her weel
+as a bairn. She was the little leddy wi’ the lint white locks I ha’e
+carried on my shouther many a time—you mind, Jean? when there was a
+lock o’ us among the minister’s hay.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span> And Miss Catrine’s to go back to
+the manse—how bools rin round! and she wants you to go back wi’ her.
+You’ll do’t, Jean,’ said Bob with cordial confidence. ‘You’ll like the
+auld place far better than Logan House after young Logan has come to
+his kingdom. The manse o’ Dalroy was a bonnie pairt and a happy hame
+even for a servant lass in the auld days. I’ve no doubt it will be as
+nearly as possible the same, under Miss Catrine who comes o’ a gude
+stock and the young minister who I am told has the making o’ a powerful
+preacher in him, while he is a kind man to the puir. I’m as pleased as
+you can think, Jean, to hear o’ your down-sitten in the end—for you’ll
+never leave them, they’ll never let you go. Woman, you’ll be an honour
+to their house among their young maids; you’ll be like Rebeecy’s nurse
+whom all Israel murned for, that the auld Doctor aince preached about,
+and you could turn up chapter and verse, and read what was said o’ her
+in the “Word.”’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks to you, Bob,’ said Jean in a low tone, conscious of his
+self-forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>But all through the conversation Bob was alert for any sign of the
+return of his bairns. He was extremely desirous that they should come
+home in time for Jean to see them before she left. ‘I wouldna like to
+keep you ower long, Jean, when you have siccan a tramp between toons,
+and it was mair than kind of you to come. But if you could just aince
+cast een on the bairns, if you could see Jockie and tell me what you
+think o’ him, I would like it aboon a’ things. If I were at their
+heels,’ cried Bob, waxing hot in his great longing to bring about the
+introduction, ‘I would try if a gude paik wouldna put smeddum in them.
+But you ken bairns will be bairns,’ he turned the next moment and
+craved indulgence for his culprits. ‘They will find things to play wi’,
+were it but a wheen burrs to stick on ane anither’s backs, and keep
+them ahint on the road.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span></p>
+
+<p>At last the members of Bob’s family arrived simultaneously, the lasses
+with their bleached hair and round rosy faces, and the puny little
+lad. Lizzie was lugging along her brother in her motherly young arms,
+Peggy had her bag with her books hung round her neck. There was no
+particular sign of that seeking to get their heads out of the yoke
+which Eppie had foreboded, though they might not have been guiltless of
+the light-heartedness of sticking burrs on each other’s backs for the
+last quarter of an hour. But the two, and even the small child, having
+a spindly arm hanging loosely across the breast of his sister’s blue
+pinafore, with his eyes looking large and hollow like his father’s, in
+his wasted mite of a face, stared open-mouthed at Jean. In vain their
+father strove to do the honours with the best effect. ‘Gie me the
+bairn, Lizzie. This is Lizzie and thon’s Peggy, Jean; and here’s an
+auld friend of mine, lasses.’</p>
+
+<p>In his deep anxiety that the children might<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span> make a favourable
+impression on his old friend, Bob suddenly fell foul of the objects of
+his devotion with a sharpness of fault-finding which not only took them
+completely by surprise, but drove them into a frame of mind still more
+stupid and provoking.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ha’e you no a tongue in your head, Lizzie?’ Bob reproached his
+eldest-born cuttingly. ‘And as for you, Peggy,’ he turned furiously
+on the second girl, ‘lowse that bag from your neck this minute, and
+put aff that bannet that you have a’ but torn the croon frae since
+you left hame this morning. What garred you be sae royd—and noo you
+are as blate, when I would have had you look wiselike and behave your
+best no to disgrace yoursel’s and me.’ Bob ended with a groan of
+disappointment—well-nigh despair.</p>
+
+<p>Jean had to interfere with her womanly forbearance and consideration.
+‘Let them alane, Bob. There’s naithing wrang. What<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span> would you ha’e o’
+the bairns—fine bairns, who I am sure will do a’ they can to please
+you?’</p>
+
+<p>But Bob’s heart melted utterly to his youngest-born, his son and heir,
+and he failed to attack him with scathing sarcasm. ‘Here’s Jockie,’
+he said, smiling on the child that nestled in his left arm. ‘Tak him
+frae me, Jean, he’ll no greet—he’s the best manners o’ us a’—he’s
+sic a licht wecht, though he’s a hantle heavier than he was six months
+syne, you’ll no feel it, even though you’re tired,’ said Bob, putting
+his darling awkwardly with his one free hand into Jean’s arms. He
+gave a sigh half of speechless satisfaction, half of unfathomable
+sorrow—looking in her face at the same time, seeking to hear her utter
+her tribute to the child’s attractions, and hanging breathlessly on
+what was likely to be her outspoken verdict of whether it was to be
+life or death for the lad.</p>
+
+<p>Jean took the bairn reverently and gently. He did not greet; in his
+weakness he appreciated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span> fully Jean’s light firm grasp, while he
+cuddled to her breast and looked up in her face with his child’s eyes.
+‘Puir wee lamb,’ said Jean, sitting down again, for she had risen, as
+if his feather’s weight had overpowered her strength; and she stroked
+the wan cheeks till Jockie smiled with the ineffable sweetness of a
+sick child’s smile.</p>
+
+<p>‘He looks far frae strong,’ said truthful Jean slowly, while Bob
+listened to her words as if they had been those of an oracle. ‘But I
+dinna think he has just the look that little Jack at the manse had—I
+ha’e a hope he’ll get ower his sickness. Do you mind, Bob, your mither
+used to say you were a silly bairn yoursel’ till you were sax years
+auld? and your Jockie has a look o’ you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think sae, Jean?’ said Bob, almost shame-faced at the
+extent of the compliment, while ready to bless her for the faintest
+encouragement to trust that Jockie might live to become a toil-worn,
+care-laden man like his father. But, no; Jockie, if he were spared,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span>
+would have brighter fortunes; no true father or mother has ever ceased
+to dream that his or her child will be more successful in the best
+sense—happier in every way, in the path trodden and cleared before him.</p>
+
+<p>‘I canna keep you longer, Jean,’ said Bob reluctantly but with manly
+tender forethought for her. ‘And I canna expeck that sic a favour will
+be repeated. I canna even find words to express to you how much I’m
+obleeged for this ca’. But if we should never meet again in this world,
+you’ll mind, Jean, I said as my last words to you, that, like the
+Maister you ha’e served all your life, you’ve returned gude for evil,
+you have done what you could to cheer the heart of a sick and lanely
+man.’</p>
+
+<p>It was the single word of complaint he had allowed to fall from him,
+and he only let it pass his lips to enhance the value of her good deeds.</p>
+
+<p>The two had left the children in the room behind them, and were
+standing in the doorway about to part.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Bob,’ said Jean hurriedly, ‘I’m ready and willing to come again and
+stop, if you’re in the same mind that you were on the afternoon you
+spoke with me, at the smiddy well. The Miss Frasers have no more need
+o’ me. Eppie will gie in the lines and cite the minister to come here,
+and I’ll walk across the moor as soon as a’ is ready—if you are in the
+same mind, Bob.’</p>
+
+<p>Jean spoke the words tremulously, but merely as a matter of course, in
+her recantation of her refusal. It was the thought farthest from her
+generous heart to choose this moment of all others in which to reproach
+him with his former faithlessness.</p>
+
+<p>But as a wrong once done is indelible, the reproach of which Jean
+never dreamt, smote Bob’s conscience keenly, even while he protested
+vehemently, ‘I’m in the same mind. Could I be in any other to my auld
+true love Jean?’ And he cried again, ‘Oh, Jean! your tender mercies
+are baith kind and cruel,’ while he bowed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span> himself in such an agony
+of shame as he had never yet felt for the past. He had even, for an
+instant, a notion that it must be the bitterest part of his punishment
+to have to put away from him, with his own hand, this ecstasy of hope
+and happiness for the future—not of himself alone but of his children.
+‘I canna let your mercies be, Jean, I daurna let them be,’ he muttered
+hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I winna ask your leave, Bob,’ said Jean in her triumph of love,
+before the might of which Bob’s anguish and resistance went down.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s no me, it’s the bairns, who have won you, as I aye kenned they
+would,’ said Bob, taking heart again at the thought of his treasure;
+‘and they will thank you as I couldna do—no, though I were to live to
+ninety-nine and never cease speaking your praises.’</p>
+
+
+<p class="center p2">END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center p2">
+LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.,<br>
+NEW-STREET SQUARE
+AND PARLIAMENT STREET<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter transnote">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
+
+
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors and omissions have been silently corrected.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_41">Page 41</a>: “freely acknowleged” changed to “freely acknowledged”</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_55">Page 55</a>: “scorched outmeal” changed to “scorched oatmeal”
+</p></div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75486 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/75486-h/images/cover.jpg b/75486-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81b1209
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75486-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf86b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75486 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75486)