He broke out suddenly.
"Be honest, Duncan," he said, "if you must boast! If you are bound to lie, let it not be to me. You would not have it otherwise. You would not be as I am, not for all the gold of earth. No"--he held his breath a long while--"no, and I, if I had the choice, would I not give all that I have, or am ever likely to have, for--but no, I"m a silent Scot, and I canna speak the word----"
"I"m the other sort of Scot," I cried, "and I"ll speak it for you. Man, it"s the first decent human thing I have ever heard come out o" your mouth. You would give all for LOVE!"
"Oh, man," he cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing his fingers to his ears as if I blasphemed, "are ye not feared?"
"No, I"m not," I declared, truly enough; "what for should I be feared?
Of a la.s.sie? Tell a la.s.sie--that ye--that ye----"
"No, no," cried Fred Esquillant, "not again!"
"Well, then, that ye "like" her--we will let it go at that. She will want ye to say the other, but at least that will do to begin on. And come, tell me now, what"s to hinder ye, Fred?"
"Oh, everything," he said; "it"s just fair shameless the way folk can bring themselves to speak openly of suchlike things!"
"And where would you have been, my lad, if once on a day your faither had not telled your mither that she was bonny?"
"I don"t know, and as little do I care," he cried.
"Well, then," said I, "there"s Amaryllis--what about her?"
"That"s Latin," said Fred, waving his arm.
"And there"s Ruth, and the la.s.s in the Song of Solomon!"
"That"s in the Bible," he murmured, as if he thought no better of the Sacred Word for giving a place to such frivolities.
"Fred," I said, "tell me what you would be at? Would you have all women slain like the babes of Bethlehem, or must we have you made into a monk and locked in a cell with only a book and an inkhorn and a quill?"
"Neither," he said; "but--oh, man, there is something awesome, coa.r.s.e-grained and common in the way the like o" you speak about women."
"Aye, do ye tell me that?" I said to try him; "coa.r.s.e, maybe, as our father Adam, when he tilled his garden, and common as the poor humanity that is yet of his flesh and blood."
"There ye go!" he cried; "I knew well that my words were thrown away."
"Speak up, Mr. Lily Fingers," I answered; "let _us_ hear what sort of a world you would have without love--and men and women to make it."
"It would be like that in which dwell the angels of heaven--where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage!"
"Well," said I, "speaking for myself and most lads like me, we will mend our ways before we get a chance of trying that far country! And in the meantime here we are--our feet in the mire, and our heads not so very near the sky. Talk of angels--where are we to get their society? And the likest to them that I have ever heard tell of are just women--good women, innocent la.s.ses, beginning to feel the stir of their own power--and all the better and the stronger are they for that! Oh, Fred, I saw an angel within the last half-hour! There she stood, her eyes shooting witcheries, poised for flight like a b.u.t.terfly, the dimples playing hide-and-seek on her face, and her whole soul and body saying to the sons of men, "Come, seek me on your knees--you know you can"t help loving me! It is very good for you to worship me!"
"And you are not ashamed, Duncan MacAlpine, to speak such words?"
"Oh, ye Lallan Scot!" I cried; "ye Westland stot! Is there no hot blood of the Celt in you? What brought _you_ to Galloway, where the Celt sits on every hill-top, names every farm and lea-rig, and lights his Baal-fires about the standing stones on St. John"s Eve?"
"Man," said Fred, shaking his head, "I aye thought ye were a barbarian.
Now I know it. If you had your way, you would raid your neighbours"
womenfolk and bring them in by the hair of their heads, trailing them two at a time. For me, I worship them like stars, standing afar off."
"Aye," said I, "that would be a heap of use to the next generation, and the la.s.ses themselves would like it weel!"
But what Freddy Esquillant said about the next generation was unworthy of him, and certainly shall not sully this philosophic page. Besides, he spake in his haste.
All the same, I noticed that, if ever any of the stars came near to his earth, it would be a certain very moderately brilliant planet, bearing the name of Agnes Anne or, more scientifically, MacAlpine Minima, which would attract Master Fred"s reluctant worship.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE AVALANCHE
And now there was a second and longer probation in that gaunt town of Edinburgh, without any miniature to lie beside me on my work-table like a tickless watch, and help along the weary hours. And though the session before I had thought but little of the letters (and indeed there was nothing in them), yet this time there were none at all, which suited me far worse. For, as it seemed, the mere sight of the hand-of-write would have cheered me.
Henceforward I could only learn, as it were, by ricochet what was going on. My grandmother never set pen to paper. Her tongue to guide was trouble enough to her without setting down words on paper to rise up in judgment against her. True, my father wrote regularly to inquire if my professor had any new light on the high things of Plato, the Iberian flavour in Martial"s Epigrams, and such like subjects which were better fitted to interest a learned dominie who had lost the scholar of his choice than to comfort a young fellow who has only lost his sweetheart.
For her part Agnes Anne wrote me reams about Charlotte, but never mentioned a word as to the Maitlands, though she did say that Charlotte was a good deal at Heathknowes, and (a trifle spitefully, perhaps) that she did not know what took her there unless it were to see Uncle Rob!
This poor Uncle Rob of ours--his reputation was in everybody"s mouth, certainly. He had been, so they said, a runagate, a night-raker, and in the days of his youth a trifle wild. But now with the shadows of forty deepening upon him, it was not fair that all the hot blood of his teens and twenties should rise up in judgment against him. Still so it was.
And the reason of it was, he had not, as he ought, married and settled.
For which sin of omission, as the gossips of Eden Valley said, "there was bound to be a reason!"
Charlotte herself did not send a line, excepting always the letters I was to forward to Tom Gallaberry at his farm of Ewebuchts on the Water of Ae. This at the time I judged unkind, but afterwards I found that Cousin Tom had insisted upon it, on the threat of going to her father and telling him the whole affair. For, in spite of all, Cousin Thomas was jealous--as most country lads are of college-bred youths, and he pinned Charlotte carefully down in her correspondence. However, I made him pay his own postages, which was a comfort, and as Agnes Anne and often my father would slip their letters into the same packet, after all I had only the extra weight to pay.
Still, I did think that some of them might have told me something of Irma. But none did, till one great day I got a letter--from whom think you? I give you fifty guesses--well, from my Aunt Jen. And it contained more than all the rest put together, though all unconsciously, and telling me things that I might have gone a long time ignorant of--if she had suspected for a moment I was keen about them.
Heathknowes, this the thirteenth Aprile.
"Dear Nephew Duncan,
"Doubtless you will be having so many letters that you will not be caring for one from a cross auld maid, who is for ever finding fault with you when ye are at home. But who, for all that, does not forget to bear ye up in the arms of her pet.i.tions before the Throne--no, night and morning both.
"This is writ to tell you that I have sent ye, by the wish of my mither, one cheese of seven pounds weight good, as we are hearing that you are thinking to try and find something to do in Edinburgh during the summer time. Which will be an advisable thing, if it be the Lord"s will--for faint-a-hait do ye do here except play ill pranks and run the country.
"However, what comes o"t we shall see. Also there is a pig of b.u.t.ter. It may be the better of a trifle more salt, that is, if the weather is onyway warm. So I have put in a little piece of board and ye can work the salt in yourself. Be a good lad, and mind there are those here that are praying for ye to be guided aright. Big towns are awful places for temptation by what they say, and that ye are about the easiest specimen to be tempted, that I have yet seen with these eyes. Howsomever, maybe ye will have gotten grace, or if not that, at least a pickle common-sense, whilk often does as well--or better.
"It"s a Guid"s blessing that ye have been led to stop where ye are.
For that la.s.sie Charlotte Anderson is going on a shame to be seen.
Actually she is never off our doorstep--fleeing and rinning all hours of the day. At first I thought to mysel", it was to hear news of you. But she kens as weel as us when the posts come in, besides the letters she gets from Agnes Anne--some that cost as muckle as sevenpence--a ruination and a disgrace!" [Tom Gallaberry must have been prolix that week.] "Then I thought it was maybe some of the lads--for, like it or no, ye had better ken soon as syne, that maiden"s e"e is filled with vanity and the gauds o" grandeur, disdaining the true onputting of a meek and quiet spirit!
"But, for your comfort, if ye are so far left to yourself as to take comfort in the like--and the bigger fool you--it is no the lads after all. It"s just Irma Maitland!
"I declare they two are never sindry. They will be out talk-talking, yatter-yattering when the kye are being milked in the morning. Irma makes her carry the water, that"s one comfort. But I wonder at that silly auld clocking hen, Seraphina Huntingdon. It"s a deal of work she will be getting, but I suppose the premium pays for all, and she will not care a farthing now that Charlotte"s market is made. Not that I would trust you (or any student lad) the length of my stirabout potstick--or indeed (not to shame my own father) anything that wears hose and knee-breeches. And maybe that"s the reason every silly birkie thinks he has the right to cast up to me that I am an auld maid. Faith, there"s few that wear the wedding ring with whom I would change places. But what of that?
"The folk are all well here, both bairns and grown folk, and we will be blithe to hear from you, and if you have the time to send a sc.r.a.ps of your pen to your auld maiden aunt, that mony a time (though Lord knows not half often enough) has garred your lugs ring for your misdeeds--she will be pleased to hear if the b.u.t.ter and cheese were some kitchen to your tasteless town"s bread.
"Your obdt. servt. and affectionate aunt, "Janet Lyon."