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.