"P.S.--Oh, I forget to tell you, it will be as well to barricade your door. For I left word with one of the servant la.s.ses that I was off to Edinburgh. Father will likely call to see you, and he is sure to have with him the whip wherewith he downed the highwayman. But I know well your bravery, and do sincerely thank you for all you may have to undergo for me.
"Charlotte."
"Humph," said her father, as he flung it across the table to me, "in my opinion ye are well shut of her! She will twist that Tam Gallaberry round her finger and then--whizz--she will make him spin like a peerie!"
He rose, and without any adieus stamped his way down the stairs, sniffing as he went at every landing. We stood at the window watching his progress along the street--capes swaying, broad bonnet of blue c.o.c.ked at an angle on top, red double-chinned face looking straight ahead. Amelia came over to my shoulder and looked too.
But all she said was, "And now, when it"s past and gone, will ye tell me if _Yon_ is what you learned folk caa" an avalanche?"
CHAPTER x.x.x
THE VANISHING LADY
During the next three years (and that is a long driech time) I made many excuses for not going down to Eden Valley. I cannot say whether I managed to get myself believed or not. But the fact of the matter is, that, as things were, I could not bring myself to face Irma again and so bring back the pain. My father had come up to see me twice. Once he had brought my mother, of whom Mrs. Craven had made much, recognizing a kindred refinement of spirit. But Amelia and my Aunt Jen (who came at the time of the General a.s.sembly) learned to respect one another--all the more that they had been highly prejudiced before meeting.
"She seems a weel-doing la.s.s, wi" no feery-faries aboot her!" declared my aunt, speaking of Amelia Craven. While that young woman, delivering her mind after the departure of Miss Janet Lyon, declared that she was a "wiselike woman and very civil--but I"ll wager she came here thinking that I was wanting ye. Faith, no, I wadna marry any student that ever stepped in leather--_I ken ower muckle aboot them_!"
"There"s Freddie!" I suggested.
"Oh," said Amelia shortly, "he"s different, I allow. But then, there"s a medium. One doesna want a man with his nose aye in a book. But one that, when ye spit at him, will spit back!"
"Try me!" I said, daring her in conscious security.
"Goliah of Gath," cried she, "but I wad be sair left to mysel"!"
We continued, however, to be pretty good friends always, and in a general way she knew about Irma. She had seen the oval miniature lying on the table. She had also closely interrogated Freddy, and lastly she had charged me with the fact, which I did not deny.
Freddy was now a.s.sistant to the professor of Humanity, which is to say of the Latin language, while besides my literary work on the _Universal Review_ I was interim additional Under-secretary to the University Court. In both which positions, literary and secretarial, I did the work for which another man pocketed the pay.
But after all I was not ill-off. One way and another I was making near on to a hundred pounds a year, which was a great deal for the country and time, and more than most ministers got in country parts. I wrote a great many very learned articles, though I signed none. I even directed foreign affairs in the _Review_, and wrote the most damaging indictments against "the traditional policy of the house of Austria."
Then the other man, the great one in the public eye, he who paid me--put in this and that sonorous phrase, full of echoing emptiness, launched an ant.i.thesis which had done good service a time or two on the hustings or in the House of Commons, and--signed the article. Well, I do not object.
That was what I was there for, and after all I made myself necessary to the _Universal Review_. It would never have appeared in time but for me.
I verified quotations, continued articles that were too short by half-a-dozen pages, found statistics where there were blanks in the ma.n.u.script, invented them if I could not find them, generally bullied the printers and proof-readers, saw to the cover, and never let go till the "Purple-and-Green," as we were called, was for sale on all the counters and speeding over Britain in every postboy"s leathers.
Now one of my employers (the best) lived away among the woods above Corstorphine and another out at the Sciennes--so between them I had pretty long tramps--not much in the summer time when nights hardly existed, but the mischief and all when for weeks the sun was an unrealized dream, and even the daylight only peered in for a morning call and then disappeared.
But at the time of which I write the days were lengthening rapidly. I was deep in our spring number of the _Universal_. Only the medical students were staying on at the University, and the Secretary"s s.p.a.cious office could safely be littered with all sort of printing _debris_. My good time was beginning.
Well, in one of my walks out to Corstorphine, I was aware, not for the first time, of the figure of a girl, carefully veiled, that at my approach--we were always meeting one another--slipped aside into a close. I thought nothing of this for the first two or three times. But the fourth, I conceived there was something more in it than met the eye.
So I made a detour, and, near by the end of George Street--unfinished at that time like all the other streets in that new neighbourhood--I met my vanishing lady face to face as she emerged upon the Queensferry Road.
She had lifted her veil a little in order the better to pick her way among the building and other materials scattered there.
It was Irma--Irma Maitland herself, grown into a woman, her eyes brighter, her cheeks paler, the same Irma though different--with a little startled look certainly, but now not proud any more, and--looking every day of her twenty-two years.
"Irma!" I gasped, barring the way.
She stopped dead. Then she clutched at her skirt, and said feverishly, "Let me pa.s.s, sir, or I shall call for help!"
"Call away," I answered cheerfully. "I will only say that you have run off from the home which has sheltered you for many years, and that your friends are very anxious about you. Where are you staying?"
I glanced at her black dress. It was not mourning exactly, but then Irma never did anything like any one else. A fear took me that it might be little Louis who was dead, and yet for the life of me I dared not ask, knowing how she loved the child.
When I asked where she was staying, she plucked again at her skirt, lifting it a little as when she was being challenged to run a race. But seeing no way clear, she answered as it were under compulsion, "With my Aunt Kirkpatrick at the Nun"s House!"
At first I had the fear that this might prove to be some Catholic place like the convent to which she had been sent in Paris. But it turned out to be only a fine old mansion, standing by itself in a garden with a small grey lodge to it, far out on the road to the Dean.
"Take me there!" I said, "for I must tell my grandmother what I have seen of you, or she will be up here by the coach red and angry enough to dry up the Nor" Loch!"
Irma walked by my side quite silent for a while, and I led her cunningly so as not to get too soon to our destination. I knew better than to ask why she had left Heathknowes. If I let her alone, she would soon enough begin to defend herself. And so it was.
"The lawyers took Louis away to put him to a school here," she said. "It was time. I knew it, but I could not rest down there without him. So I came also. I left them all last Wednesday. Your grandmother came herself with me to Dumfries, and there we saw the lawyers. They had not much to say to your grandmother, while she----"
"I understand," said I; "she had a great deal to say to them!"
Irma nodded, and for the first time faintly smiled.
"Yes," she answered, "the little old man in the flannel dressing-gown, of whom you used to tell us, forgot to poke the fire for a long time!"
"So you left them all in good heart about your coming away?" I said.
"Oh, the good souls," she cried, weeping a little at the remembrance, "never will I see the like till I am back there again. I think they all loved me--even your Aunt Jen. She gave me her own work-basket and a psalm book bound in black leather when I came away."
And at the remembrance she wept afresh.
"I must stop this," she said, dabbing her eyes with a very early-April smile, "my Aunt Kirkpatrick will think it is because of meeting you. She is always free with her imagination, my Lady Kirkpatrick--a clever woman for all that--only, what is it that you say, "hard and fyky!" She has seen many great people and kings, and was long counted a great beauty without anything much coming of it."
I thought I would risk changing the subject to what was really uppermost in my mind.
"And Charlotte?" I ventured, as blandly as I could muster.
"I wonder you are not shamed!" she said, with a glint in her eye that hardly yet expressed complete forgiveness. "I know all about that. And if you think you can come to me bleating like a sore wronged and innocent lamb, you are far mistaken!"
So this was the reason of her long silence. Charlotte had babbled. I might have known. Still, I could not charge my conscience with anything very grave. After all, the intention on both sides--Charlotte"s as well as mine,--had been of the best. She wanted to marry her Tam of the Ewebuchts, which she had managed--I, to wed Irma, from which I was yet as far off as ever.
So I made no remark, but only walked along in a grieved silence. It was not very long till Irma remarked, a little viciously, but with the old involuntary toss of her head which sent all her foam-light curls dipping and swerving into new effects and combinations--so that I could hardly take my eyes off her--"Would you like to hear more about Charlotte?"
"Yes!" said I boldly. For I knew the counter for her moods, which was to be of the same, only stronger.
"Well, she has two children, and when the second, a boy, was born, she claimed another five hundred pounds from her father to stock a farm for him--the old man called it "a bonny bairn-clout" for our Lottie"s Duncan!"
"What did you say the bairn"s name was?"
"Duncan--after you!" This with an air of triumph, very pretty to see.