"Whatever you--I mean _we_--can get out of father is to the good," she said. "He will never miss it. If you don"t, I will ask him for the money for your fees myself and give it to Tom----"
"If you do!" I cried in horror,--"oh--you don"t know what you are talking about, girl!"
"You don"t love me a bit," she said. "What would it matter to you?
Besides, if it comes to giving a receipt, I can imitate your signature to a nicety. Agnes Anne says so."
"But, Charlotte, it would be forgery," I gasped. "They hang people for forgery."
"No, they don"t--at least, not for that sort," she argued, her eyes very bright with the working of her inward idea. "For how can it be forgery when it is _your_ name I write, and I"ve told you of it beforehand? It"s my father"s money, isn"t it, and he gives it to you for marrying me?
Very well, then, it"s yours--no, I mean it"s Tom"s because he means to marry me. At least I mean to marry him. Anyway, the money is not my father"s, because he gives it freely to you (or Tom) for a certain purpose. Well, Tom is going to be the one who will carry out that purpose. So the money is his. Therefore it"s honest and no forgery!"
These arguments were so strong and convincing to Charlotte that I did not attempt to discuss them further, salving my conscience by the thought that there remained his Majesty"s post, and that a letter addressed to her father at the Farmers" Ordinary Room, in care of the King"s Arms, would clear me of all financial responsibility. But this I took care not to mention to Lottie, because it might have savoured of treachery and disturbed her.
On the other hand, I began urging her to find another confidant than Agnes Anne. She would do well enough for ordinary letters which I was to send on to Cousin Tom. But she must not know they were not for me. She must think that all was going on well between us. This, I showed her, was a necessity. Charlotte felt the need also, and suggested this girl and that at Miss Seraphina Huntingdon"s. But I objected to all. I had to think quick, for some were very nice girls, and at most times would have served their country quite well. But I stuck to it that they were too near head-quarters. They would be sure to get found out by Miss Huntingdon.
"It is true," she meditated, "she _is_ a prying old cat."
"I don"t see anybody for it but Miss Irma, over at my grandmother"s!" I said, boldly striking the blow to which I had been so long leading up.
Charlotte gazed at me so long and so intently that I was sure she smelt a rat. But the pure innocence of my gaze, and the frank readiness with which I gave my reasons, disarmed her.
"You see," I said, "she is the only girl quite out of the common run to whom you have access. You can go to Heathknowes as often as you like with Agnes Anne. n.o.body will say a word. They will think it quite natural--to hear the latest about me, you know. Then when you are alone with Miss Irma, you can burst into tears and tell her our secret----"
"All----?" she questioned, with strong emphasis.
"Well," I hastened to reply, "all that is strictly necessary for a stranger to know--as, for instance, that _you_ don"t want to marry me, and that _I_ never wanted to marry you----"
"Oh," she cried, moving in a shocked, uneasy manner, "but I thought _you_ did!"
"Well, but--," I stammered, for I was momentarily unhinged, "you see you must put things that way to get Miss Irma to help us. She can do anything with my father, and I believe she could with yours too if she got a chance."
"Oh, no, she couldn"t!"
"Well, anyway, she would serve us faithfully, so long as we couldn"t trust Agnes Anne. And you know we agreed upon that. If you can think of anything better, of course I leave it to you!"
She sat a long while making up her mind, with a woman"s intuition that all the cards were not on the table. But in the long run she could make no better of it.
"Well, I will," she said; "I always liked her face, and I don"t believe she is nearly so haughty as people make out."
"Not a bit, she isn"t----" I was beginning joyously, when I caught Lottie"s eye; "I mean--" I added lamely, "a girl always understands another girl"s affairs, and will help if she can--unless she has herself some stake in the game!"
And in saying this, I believe that for once in a way I hit upon a great and nearly universal truth.
CHAPTER XXVIII
LOVE AND THE LOGICIAN
I knew that the Yule Fair was going on down in the village, and that on account of it all Eden Valley was in an uproar. The clamour was deafening at the lower end of the "clachan," where most of the show folk congregated. The rooks were cawing belatedly in the tall ashes round the big square--into which, in the old times of the Annandale thieves, the country folk used to drive the cattle to be out of the way of Johnstones and Jardines.
I skirted the town, therefore, so as not to meet with the full blast of the riot. With such an unruly gang about, I kept Charlotte Anderson well in sight till I saw her safe into Miss Seraphina"s. Of course, n.o.body who knew her for a daughter of Fighting Rob of Birkenbog would have laid hand upon her, but at such a time there might be some who did not know the repute of her father.
The great gong in front of the "Funny Folks" booth went "Bang! bang!"
Opposite, the fife and drum spoke for the temple of the legitimate drama. At the selling-stalls importunate vendors of tin-ware rattled their stock-in-trade and roared at the world in general, as if buyers could be forced to attend to the most noisy--which, indeed, they mostly did.
From the dusky kennels in which the gipsies told fortunes and mended the rush-bottomed chairs of the Valley goodwives came over the wall a faint odour of mouldy hay, which lingered for weeks about every apartment to which any of their goods were admitted.
As for me, I had had enough of girls for one day, and I was wondering how best to cut across the fields, take a turn about the town, and so get home to my father"s by the wood of pines behind the school, when suddenly a voice dropped upon me that fairly stunned me, so unexpected it was.
"Mr. Duncan MacAlpine," it said, "I congratulate you on your choice of a father-in-law. You could not have done better!"
It was Miss Irma herself, taking a walk in a place where at such a time she had no business to be--on the little farm path that skirts the woods above the town. Louis was with her, but I thought that in the far distance I could discern the lounging shadow of the faithful Eben.
I stood speechless straight before her, but she pa.s.sed on, lightly switching the crisped brown stalks of last year"s thistles with a little wand she had brought. I saw that she did not mean to speak to me, and I turned desperately to accompany her.
"I will thank you to pa.s.s your way," she said sharply. "I am glad you are to have such a wife and such a dowry. Also a father-in-law who will be at the kind trouble of paying your college fees till you are quite ready to marry his daughter. It is a thing not much practised among gentlefolk, but, what with being so much with your mantua-makers, you will doubtless not know any better!"
"Irma--Irma," I cried, not caring any more for Eben, now in the nearer distance, "it is all a mistake--indeed, a mistake from the beginning!"
"Very possibly," she returned, with an airy haughtiness; "at any rate, it is no mistake of mine!"
And there, indeed, she had me. I had perforce to shift my ground.
"I am not going to marry Charlotte Anderson," I said.
"Then the more shame of you to deceive her after all!" she cried. "It seems that you make a habit of it! Surely I am the last person to whom you ought to boast of that!"
"On the contrary, you are the first!"
But she pa.s.sed on her way, her head high, an invincible lightness in the spring of every footstep, a splash of scarlet berries making a star among her dark hair, and humming the graceless lilt which told how--
"Willie"s ga"en to Melville Castle, Boots an" spurs an" a"--!"
As for me, I was ready to sink deep into the ground with despondency, wishful to rise never more. But I stopped, and though Uncle Eben was almost opposite to me, and within thirty yards, I called after her, "The day will come, Irma Maitland, when you will be sorry for the injustice you are doing!"
For I thought of how she would feel when Charlotte told about her cousin Tam Gallaberry and all that I had done for them--though, indeed, it was mostly by accident. Only I could trust Charlotte to keep her thumb upon that part of it.
I did not know what she felt then, nor, perhaps, do I quite know yet; but she caught a tangle of wild cut-leafed ivy from a tree on which I had long watched it grow, and with a spray of small green leaves she crowned herself, and so departed as she had come, singing as if she had not a care in the world, or as if I, Duncan MacAlpine, were the last and least of all.
And yet I judged that there might be a message for me in that very act.
She had escaped me, and yet there was something warm in her heart in spite of all. Perhaps, who knows, an angel had gone down and troubled the waters; nor did I think, somehow, that any other would step in there before me.
After that I went down to see Fred Esquillant, who listened with sad yet brilliant eyes to my tangled tale.
"You are the lucky one," I said, "to have nothing to do with the la.s.ses.
See what trouble they lead you into."