CHAPTER VIII.

I’m young and stout, my Marion, Nane dances like me on the green, And gin ye forsake me, Marion, I’ll e’en gae draw up wi’ Jean.--SONG.

It was past midsummer. Halbert Graeme, younger of Mossgray, was already a famous man in the country-side, and had not his gentle kinsman been more gravely occupied through that long, slow summer, we are not sure that the Laird would have been quite satisfied with the considerable number of incipient flirtations which Halbert had on his hands. At Firthside, at Mount Fendie, and all neighbouring places where youthful people were, Halbert was immensely popular; and it was very true that Miss Georgina Maxwell and he had been experimenting a little upon each other; very true that Adelaide Fendie blushed her dull blush when her mischievous sister plied her with railleries touching the gallant Halbert. Adelaide was seventeen, and her large, soft, good-humoured face was not uncomely; besides she had begun to read greedily Maxwell Dickson’s select and edifying collection of novels, and seventeen is quite the heroic age for young ladies of the Minerva Press. Adelaide thought it was full time that she should begin a private romance of her own.

And Halbert’s letters to the North were by no means so frequent as they used to be. He was often very busy now, and really believed that he had not time to write; besides that, there had been a very pretty quarrel between him and the gentle Menie, provoked on her side by some saucy allusions to the Lilias whom he praised so much, and on his by some pique at a certain young Laird, who began to bulk very largely in the Aberdeenshire glen.

It was the market day in Fendie, and Halbert now attended the markets, where both buyers and sellers had learned to know the young Laird of Mossgray. These groups of rustical people--strong, tall, red-whiskered men, with their immense stooping shoulders, and primitive blue coats and universal gray plaids, worn in this brilliant June weather to keep out the heat, as in January they kept out the cold, whom you see stalking about the Main Street, with long deliberate steps, lifting their feet high, so that you fancy they must believe themselves still wading among the heather, acknowledged his acquaintance by grasping the rusty brim of the unbrushed hat as he passed them. More dignified, the lounging farmers in their short coats of gray plaiden, gathered in knots about the door of the inn where their stout ponies and comfortable gigs had been put up, held erudite conversation with young Mossgray on the markets, the weather, and the “craps.” He was perfectly at home among them; had they been Ojibbeway Indians, the result would have been quite the same. He was born to make friends anywhere, this brisk cosmopolitan Halbert.

He had just been at the post-office, and was carrying home with him the letters of the household. There was one for himself, directed in the large, stiff handwriting of his old teacher: but Halbert was not so anxious about Mr Monikie’s letter as he would once have been; he put it coolly into his pocket till his market business should be over.

At last, having discussed all the momentous subjects of the day, ascertained all the prices, and recognized all his acquaintances, Halbert felt that his duty was done, and that he might return home. But he had only opened the seal of Mr Monikie’s despatch, with its agreeable odour of black rappee, and ascertained that it contained no enclosure from Menie, when he heard the clatter of John Brown’s light cart on the road behind him. Halbert closed the letter again; it was by no means of pressing interest; at the moment he preferred a chat with John.

“Fine weather this,” said the young Laird.

“Ay, its weel eneuch,” said John Brown, examining the sky with the curious eye of a connoisseur, “but ower drouthy, Sir--ower drouthy; and ower muckle drouth is guid for neither beast or body, let alane the craps. Yon muckle park at Shortrigg will be burnt brown afore the July rain, and syne it’ll be as wat as a peat moss; ye’ll never be dune, Sir, noo ye hae ta’en up the farming trade--ye’ll never be dune battling wi’ the weather.”

Halbert laughed.

“I am not so warlike, John. I shall be content with the rain when it comes. Are they all well at the Mount--Mrs Fendie and the young ladies?”

“Middling, middling,” said John Brown; “we have our bits of touts noo and then, but we’re no to compleen o’; and the noo, we’ve nae time to think o’ being no weel, for Mr Alick’s coming hame.”

“Indeed!” said Halbert; the news interested him. “When does Mrs Fendie expect him, John?”

“I hear about the harvest--August or September,” said the factotum of Mount Fendie; “but we’re gaun to gar the haill countryside stand about, so we’ve begoud in time. But ye’ll mind he’s no a free-spoken, pleasant lad like yourself, Mr Graeme, begging your pardon for the freedom; he’s ane o’ your fleeaway sodger officers, and there’s mair o’ the same kind coming wi’ him.”

Halbert enjoyed his popularity; but at the same time he became still more interested in Alick Fendie, who being less popular, promised to be more aristocratic than himself.

“Has he been long in India, John?” asked Halbert.

“Na, no that lang. I mind him mysel frae he was a kittlin o’ a laddie like that wee evil spirit o’ a brither o’ his. He’s been twa--three years out bye yonder,” and John jerked his ponderous thumb in the direction of the sea. “I wad just like to see him fechting--or the like o’ him--fusionless, shilpit laddies. I’m no Wallace Wight myself, but if I couldna tak twa o’ them in ilka hand!--and that minds me, Mr Graeme, that my auntie Eesabell up at Murrayshaugh bothers folk even on about your young lady. I’m no meaning the lady that is to be ye ken, but just Miss Maxwell. Our auld auntie’s ta’en a notion that she kens some o’ the auld family--the Murrays. Its a’ havers, ye ken, for Miss Lucy’s aulder, if she’s leeving, than Eesabell hersel; but the young lady hasna been at Murrayshaugh for lang, and the auld wife deaves a’body asking about her. I tell’t her it was said in the town that Miss Maxwell was no weel. She’s aye bee awfu’ delicate like; isna she no weel, Mr Graeme?”

“She has been very ill,” said Halbert; “but she is recovering now, I hope. She lost a friend lately.”

John Brown paused respectfully, rendering the instinctive homage which men pay to grief.

“I saw Robbie Caryl the day,” said John, after an interval; “Robbie was in last week wi’ some grand salmon at Dumbraes market, and he saw a man there that has a son a sodger, somegate near where Mr Alick is; and there’s word--sure word, Robbie says--that Peter Delvie--ye wadna ken Peter? was killed yonder wi’ a wheen mair, fechting wi’ thae wild Indians--Affghans--what is’t they ca’ them? Onyway Peter’s dead; and what the auld man, Saunders, will say till’t, noo, is mair than I ken.”

“He was harsh to him, I believe,” said Halbert.

“Ay, ye may say that; but I’m no sae sure he aye meant it; ye see he was proud o’ the lad, and when he gaed an ill gate, Saunders nigh broke his heart. Ye wad maist say he had na heart, yon hard auld man--but it’s ill telling. Robbie was gaun to the minister to get him to break it to Saunders. _I_ wadna do’t for a’ Fendie.”

The roads to Mossgray and the Mount separated at this point. Whistling gaily, John Brown set off at considerable speed, to make up for the gossiping slow pace with which he had begun; and Halbert leaped over the stile, and again opened the letter of Mr Monikie.

It was a startling letter; the young man’s face flushed with the angry colour of mortification and wounded pride, as he read it:

* * * * *

“I hear from Menie,” wrote the pragmatical man of Aberdeen, “that you are not so good friends as you might be; and you know how often I have warned you, Halbert, about the danger of an unstable temper; a weakness to which I have always seen you were liable. It is a bad sign of a lad like you--a great evil--to have an unsteady mind, and to meditate breaking lightly the ties you have yourself made. Even as it regarded only yourself, I would have thought it my duty to impress your infirmity upon you, but far more when it endangers the comfort of a girl like my Menie. It disappoints me, Halbert; I confess that, though I might know better, after my long experience as a teacher of youth, I had expected other things from you; but human nature, even with all advantages, and when its judgment is matured like mine, is prone to vain expectations, and you have disappointed me.

“I do not think I would be justified in trusting the happiness of a good girl like Menie in hands that want the firmness which is needful in my eyes to a manly character. I hoped you had more of it, Halbert; and Menie herself, like a dutiful child as she has always been, agrees with her father, and says she thinks you will be very glad to be free, and at liberty to form new engagements. Also Menie sends a message that she forgives you, and has given to me the half of the coin you broke with her; a very foolish, superstitious, and heathenish ceremony, which I should have certainly condemned had I known of it, or could I have fancied that my daughter and my pupil would ever think of so foolish a thing.

“Young John Keith of Blackdean is giving us much of his company, and helps to keep up our spirits, otherwise we might have felt your backsliding even more than we do. I have never seen the marks of instability in him that I used to lament in you, though he has not had the same advantages of education; indeed in every way I have reason to be pleased with him, and so has Mrs Monikie and Menie. If Menie settles near us it will be a great satisfaction, and I think it is not unlikely.

“I hope you will learn to correct these faults which I have pointed out to you, and we will always be glad to see you here, in spite of what has passed. I trust I can forgive an injury, especially when it has been made an instrument of good; and if you hear of any changes in my family, I hope you will be able to think of them without any great disappointment, seeing that I always remain, with compassion upon the errors of your youth,

“Your sincere friend,

“MATTHEW MONIKIE.”

* * * * *

Halbert was very red, very angry; he folded up the letter bitterly, and felt indignant at treatment so unjust. His first flash of jealous resolution was to start for Aberdeenshire immediately, and carry off the faithless Menie from his supplanter the Laird of Blackdean. The merry, pretty Menie! He had been getting rather indifferent, there was no denying that; but now when he had lost her, tender recollections of his first love returned to the honest heart of Halbert. Something swelled in his breast of that sad disappointment with which youthful people see the first tie of their own forming rudely snapt asunder. One or two tears rose into his eyes; the petulant, fickle Menie was victor over him.

But Halbert was not long melancholy. He began to think of the injustice--the insult.

“It is very well for herself; she has only taken the first word of flyting; she was wise,” muttered the angry Halbert, as he turned on his heel, and with a quick, impatient step went on to Mossgray; and so he salved his wounded pride and consoled himself, not without a pleasurable consciousness, increasing as he grew familiar with the idea, that he was free.

Lucy Murray and Adam Graeme had borne the first epidemic grief of youth on that Waterside before him. This last example perfected the story of the others. The woman’s sad endurance--the man’s passionate pain--these were not types broad enough for universal humanity. Only a few here and there can feel as they did, but Halbert’s lighter emotions were of the common stock; the momentary melancholy--the sting of mortification--the buoyance of new life and freedom. Lightly the cloud passed over the head of Halbert, a thing to be laughed at by and by; for he had no ideal to be sacrificed. And so he completed the tale of youthful disappointments; he brought them into the ordinary level, the common stream of life.

In the kitchen of Mossgray Robbie Caryl the fisherman stood in grave and earnest conversation with the old housekeeper and her niece. Neither cuddie nor creels were visible to-day, and Robbie himself wore his Sabbath-day’s well-preserved suit, and his Sabbath-day’s look of gravity.

“Eh, Robbie!” exclaimed Mrs Mense, “it’s a judgment--it’s just a visible judgment and retribution on that hard auld man! As if we werena sinfu’ enough oursels to learn us mercy to our neighbours, let alane our ain bairns, bane of our bane, and flesh of our flesh.”

“The minister says we maun hae sure word afore we tell Saunders,” said Robbie; “as if the word we hae gotten wasna ower sure; but I say we’ve nae richt to keep the news frae the faither and the mother. Thea hae mair richt to ken than fremd folk. To be sure, I gied my word to the minister that I wad tell naebody. I’m saying, Jen, mind; till ance the minister maks his inquiries, ye’re no’ to say a word about it; though I kenna but what it wad be richt to tell the auld man, whether it turned out true or no, just to bring him to himsel’.”

“Eh, preserve me!” said Janet Mense, “they say he put his curse upon the lad.”

“I wadna say onything was ower hard for Saunders Delvie,” said the fisherman.

“Whisht! nane o’ ye ken,” said the old woman. “If he had been mair moderate in his liking, he wad hae been mair moderate in his wrath. I tell ye, nane o’ ye ken. Wha’s yon, Jen? is’t no’ Saunders, his ain sel’?”

The fisherman glanced eagerly out, and then drew back.

“I pat on my Sabbath-day’s claes just for the purpose, but I canna face him now. I’ll slip awa into the milk-house, Mrs Mense; and say naething to him. It’s in the minister’s hands; we maun just leave it to the minister.”

So saying, Robbie with some trepidation hastened away to conceal himself in the dairy until the old man had passed.

The stern, harsh face of Saunders Delvie was lighted with a fire of strange and wild excitement. Defiance and yearning, tears and frowns, were strangely mingled in it. His voice shook, his gray eyelashes were wet, and under his heavy, bushy eyebrows his eyes shot out glances of fiery grief. His stern composure of manner was entirely broken. A burst of weeping, or a paroxysm of fierce rage, might, either of them, have brought to a climax the old man’s unusual agitation. With his heavy, quick, unsteady step, he came into the kitchen of Mossgray. No one spoke to him, for both of the women were afraid.

Mrs Mense was sitting in her chair by the fireside; he went up to her hurriedly.

“Auld friend,” he said abruptly, with that harsh tremor in his voice, more moving than many lamentations, “ken ye onything that concerns me or mine? tell me plain out what it is, for this I wunna bear.”

“Oh, Saunders,” exclaimed the old woman, wiping the tears from her withered cheek, “have pity upon the lad--the puir lad!”

“Is that a’? have ye nae mair to say but that?” said Saunders. Janet had followed the example of the fisherman, and the two old servants of Mossgray were alone. “Is that a’?” repeated Saunders, speaking rapidly, as if, in the contradictory impulse of his anxiety, he wished to prevent her from answering. “Ye’re sure that’s a’? Then I maun gang my ways--I maun tak counsel; if it’s righteous it maunna be ower late; but I’ll no’ speak to the Laird. He’s no’ a man like me; he taks the reprobate and the race o’ the reprobate into his bosom. Na, I winna speak to the Laird.”

And lifting his head again with something of his usual rigid pride, the old man went away, as hastily as he had entered.

The market was over in Fendie, and as the summer afternoon drowsily waned, and the weekly stir subsided, Mr Oswald sat in his little private office alone. The banker was an elder of the Church, and a man, as Saunders thought, of kindred mind and temperament to his own. It was from him that he came to seek counsel.

Mr Oswald looked up in some astonishment as the old man was ushered into his _sanctum_.

“It’s a case of conscience, Sir,” said Saunders, in his harsh, tremulous voice. “I was wanting to ask your counsel.”

Mr Oswald was a little startled. Cases of conscience were not quite in his way, although he had the ordination of the eldership upon him.

“Had you not better speak to the minister, Saunders?” he said; “but sit down, and tell me what troubles you.”

The banker’s heart was touched with the trembling vehemence of the old man’s manner and appearance as he stood before him.

“Na, Sir, I canna speak to the minister,” said Saunders. “The minister’s a young man, and doesna ken the afflictions of the like o’ me. He may hae comfort for his ain kind, but the griefs o’ the gray head are aboon the ken o’ lads like him. I canna speak to the minister.”

Mr Oswald had heard the rumour of Peter Delvie’s death, and pitied the stern old father; again he asked him to sit down.

Saunders took the offered seat, and pressed his bonnet convulsively between his hands.

“It’s touching the lawfulness of a vow--a vow before the Lord.”

Mr Oswald’s voice faltered a little; an indefinite thrill of conscience moved him.

“What is it, Saunders?”

“I made a resolve,” said the old man, his features twitching, and his strong, harsh voice shaking with the very force of his determination to steady it, “to put forth ane--ane that had sinned--out from my house as an alien and a reprobate. He had shamed the name that righteous puir men had laboured to keep honest for him--he had sinned in the sight of God and man; and before the Lord I pat him forth, and took a vow on me that he should cross my doorstane never mair. Maister Oswald, ye’re an elder of the Kirk, and a man of years, and ane that has had bairns born to ye, and ken--am I no’ bound before the Lord to haud to my vow?”

Mr Oswald moved upon his chair uneasily. He could not answer.

“I have had converse with Mossgray,” continued Saunders, shrill tones of excitement mingling with the usual slow, grave accents of his broken voice, “but Mossgray is anither manner of man, and kensna--kensna the like o’ me. He tells me that change is a guid gift of God, given for our using like ither providences, and that what I have said wi’ my lips may be broken, and me no mansworn--but I say, no--I ken nae law ither than the auld law of Scripture, and I maun perform to the Lord my vow. Sir, Mr Oswald, think ye not so?”

The old man’s shaggy eyelash was wet, but the fire shot forth behind. Strongly the two contending powers within him struggled for the mastery. He wanted his authority to second the dictates of the yearning nature, which, moved by whispers of some unknown calamity to his son, contended bitterly with the stern obstinacy of his temper and his sense of right; yet he had entered upon the oft-repeated arguments, with which he had been used to defend himself against the gentle attacks of Mossgray, and was becoming heated in his own defence. If the banker had pronounced his judgment against the breaking of this vow, it would have carried a bitter pang to the old man’s heart, and yet would have been a triumph. He sat, pressing his bonnet in his hard hands, and shaking like a palsied man. He had put his fate on this chance. He had resolved to make the judgment of the other pertinacious man to whom he appealed, his final rule, and anxiously he waited for the decision.

But George Oswald moving there uneasily in his elbow chair was too much perplexed and conscience-stricken to give a ready answer. The vehement father-love of Saunders Delvie, which in its agony of disappointed hope produced this vow, sublimed the old man’s sternness and lifted it out of the class of ordinary emotions. It was not anger, or wounded pride, or shame alone, but it was all these, intensified and burning with the strong, bitter love which still worshipped in its secret heart the son whom it had expelled from his home. The worldly man who had put the barrier of his disapproval in the way of _his_ son’s happiness, for such paltry motives as Saunders Delvie never knew, felt himself abashed in presence of the old, stern peasant, whose appealing eye was upon him.

“Saunders,” said Mr Oswald, with a faltering voice, “we are bound at all times to forgive.”

“It’s no that I dinna forgive him,” cried the old man in his passion. “It’s no that I dinna think upon him night and day--it’s no that--oh man! do ye no ken?”

And Saunders, forgetting all artificial respectfulness, put down his gray head into his hard toil-worn hands and sobbed aloud--such strong convulsive sobs as the awed banker had never heard before.

Hope Oswald had opened the door very quietly to look in, and the instincts of childhood were scarcely yet subdued in the young heart of the banker’s daughter. She came softly across the room to stand by Saunders’ side, and touch his hand with awe and pity.

“Saunders,” whispered Hope, “maybe it is not true--the minister says it is not true.”

The old man lifted his face; no face less stern could have been moved so greatly.

“What is’t that’s no true?”

“Poor Peter!” said Hope, with tears upon her cheek, “do you mind how good he aye was, Saunders? and his heart broke, people say, because you were angry at him; but you are not angry now; and when he comes back you will go out to meet him like the man in the Bible, and be friends? for, Saunders, you are friends with Peter now?”

He could not wait for any judgment; he could not think of any vow. A burst of weeping, such as might have hailed the prodigal’s return, followed the simple speech of Hope. The living love within him burst through its perverse and unseemly garments; and those peaceful walls, unused to great emotion, had never heard such a cry as broke through them now, from lips that trembled as the great king’s did of old, when he too wept for his Absalom. “My son! my son!”