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.