Chapter VI: Part 6

"I'm sure," she said, making an effort to speak pleasantly, "I'm very glad to hear what you say; but really there does seem to be a sad lack of what my husband calls Spiritual Freemasonry among the congregation here, and naturally one judges more or less of the Shepherd by his sheep."

"I fear," said Miss Esperance, "that it is exceedingly unsafe to do so in the majority of cases; including, surely, the fundamental Example from which your analogy is drawn."

There was a dreadful pause. Poor Mr. Wycherly was hot all over. "If they are going to talk theology," he thought to himself desperately, "I shall be compelled to escape by the window."

"You must, Mrs. Dewar," he exclaimed recklessly, and then coloured furiously for his voice sounded so loud, "you must find it very agreeable to pass a week or two in the country at this time of year."

"We always go to the country every year," Mrs. Dewar rejoined rather huffily, "but generally to the sea, it is so much better for the children. We came here this year solely to oblige Mr. Gloag," and the many bugles on Mrs. Dewar's stiff mantle chimed in concert, as though in approbation of this amiability.

"That was very good of you," said Mr. Wycherly. "I am sure he badly needed a holiday. I don't think he has been out of the village for more than a night or two for over ten years."

"That's where he makes a great mistake. My husband always says that a man grows stagnant unless he gets frequent change of scene and society. What you tell me explains much of the spiritual torpor we deplore in this village."

"I don't know what you would say to me, Mrs. Dewar; I should be afraid to confess to you how many years it is since I have been out of this village--a great many, I assure you."

"Doubtless you are engaged in various intellectual pursuits which help to pass the time," Mrs. Dewar remarked graciously, and she smiled upon Mr. Wycherly--all women did when they got the chance--and during the rest of her somewhat prolonged visit she addressed her remarks almost exclusively to him: ignoring Miss Esperance, who sat still and straight in her high-backed chair with a look of considerable amusement in her kind old eyes.

Mr. Wycherly accompanied Mrs. Dewar to the gate and held it open for her to pass out.

"You must come and see us at the Manse," she remarked condescendingly--then confidentially: "I fear you must find it sadly lonely and uncongenial living here with only that old lady for company."

"Pardon me," said Mr. Wycherly, "most people are only too inclined to envy me the great, the very great privileges that I enjoy."

And Mrs. Dewar had to learn that it was not only Miss Esperance who could surround herself with an atmosphere of almost unapproachable aloofness. She concluded her farewell with some haste, and Mr. Wycherly walked slowly back to the house.

Montagu met him in the doorway. "Who was that lady, Guardie?" he inquired eagerly. "She stayed an awful time. Who is she?"

"God made her, and therefore let her pass for a woman," said Mr. Wycherly dreamily.

Montagu stared at him in astonishment, then pursued him indoors to find out exactly what he meant by this cryptic speech; but for once Mr. Wycherly's explanations were both elusive and unsatisfactory.

Next day Miss Esperance invaded Mr. Wycherly's room right in the middle of lessons. She held an open note in her hand; a note written on pink paper, with scalloped edges.

"I am sorry to interrupt you," she said, "but here is an invitation from Miss Maggie Moffat, asking us both to take tea with them on Friday at five. May I accept for you?"

Mr. Wycherly, who had risen at her entrance, was standing behind his loaded desk.

"Oh, dear Miss Esperance, pray don't!" he exclaimed piteously. "You know I never go out anywhere--and to a tea-party--I shouldn't know how to behave. Pray, thank the Misses Moffat and say that I never go anywhere--it is most kind of them--but----!

"I'd go if I were you," Montagu suggested, sprawling over his table and sucking the handle of his pen; "they have awfully good sorts of cakes, full of squashy stuff that runs out over your fingers. My! but it is good."

"If it required anything to confirm me in my refusal," Mr. Wycherly said, smiling at Miss Esperance, "such perilous cakes as those Montagu describes would do it."

"It would please them very much if you would go," Miss Esperance said persuasively; "we shouldn't stay more than an hour."

Mr. Wycherly wrinkled up his forehead in the greatest perplexity: "But I never go anywhere," he said again.

"And why not?" Miss Esperance asked boldly. "If it were almost anybody else, I would not press you, but they are so sensitive. If you don't go they will think it is because you are proud, and don't think them good enough."

"Me! Proud!" ejaculated poor Mr. Wycherly. "But this is dreadful."

"They stopped us one day," remarked the pen-sucking Montagu, "and asked if you were not very stand-off, and Edmund said it was bosh, and you were nothing of the sort, and that if they just came and played handy-pandy with you, they'd soon see."

"Well," said Miss Esperance, tapping the letter, "what am I to say?"

"O, say Guardie's much obliged and he'll be very pleased to come, and that we'll be very pleased to come, too," suggested Montagu, who appreciated tea at the Misses Moffat's.

"I did not ask you, Montagu," Miss Esperance remarked with dignity. "Well, dear friend, may I say you will go with me?"

"Do you _wish_ me to go, Miss Esperance?" groaned Mr. Wycherly.

"I don't wish you to do anything intensely disagreeable to yourself, but, if you did go, it would assuredly give great pleasure to them--and to me----"

"Then I will go," said Mr. Wycherly; and he said it with all the resolution of a man determined to do or die.

The Misses Moffat were greatly flustered, for Mr. and Mrs. Dewar were also to be of the party, and to entertain two gentlemen at once was an unheard-of plunge into the wildest dissipation.

They paid innumerable visits of inspection to their little dining-room, where the tea-table, laid early in the afternoon, positively groaned under its load of dainties. No less than four different kinds of jam gleamed jewel-like, each in a cut-glass dish, at the four corners of the table: while cookies, soda scones, dropped scones, short bread, and the cream cakes, so appreciated by Montagu, were piled up in abundance on the various plates. In the centre of the table was a large _epergne_ arranged with flowers by Miss Jeanie's artistic hands. These preparations all completed, there yet remained the arrangement of the guests at table.

"You see, me dear," said Miss Maggie, anxiously, "we must ask Mr. Dewar to take the foot of the table because he's the minister, and will ask the blessing. But the question is, where'll we put Mr. Wycherly? Because, you see, whoever sits by Mr. Wycherly will get a gentleman on either side, which doesn't seem quite fair somehow. If we put him on my right hand and give him Mrs. Dewar for a partner, then she'll be seated next her husband, and that doesn't seem quite correct; and yet, if we put Miss Esperance Bethune there, that's not right, either, and her seeing him every day."

"Don't you think," Miss Jeanie suggested, "that he'd better sit on your right hand and Mrs. Dewar on your left, with Miss Bethune between Mr. and Mrs. Dewar, and I'll separate the gentlemen?"

"We mustn't think of ourselves on occasions like these," Miss Maggie said, with just a tinge of reproof in her voice; "it's not a matter to be settled hastily."

"Well, there's not many ways we can sit unless you give up having Mr. Dewar at the bottom of the table," Miss Jeanie responded sharply.

"That," Miss Maggie replied solemnly, "is a necessity--because of the blessing."

So, after all, Miss Jeanie had it her way.

Mr. Wycherly had assuredly never been at a similar tea-party.

At the very beginning of the meal his polite commonplaces to Miss Maggie were drowned by the minister's voice, as with uplifted hand he asked a lengthy blessing. Mr. Wycherly was rather startled, but he bent his head decorously, and when it was over continued his sentence where he had broken off.

Mrs. Dewar was so odiously patronising to the Misses Moffat that Mr. Wycherly unconsciously ranged himself on their side, devoting himself to the entertainment of Miss Maggie, so that she became hopelessly flustered and forgot to ask Mrs. Dewar if she would take some more tea--an omission pointed out by the neglected lady with some asperity.

Mr. Wycherly filled the soul of Miss Jeanie with rapture by telling her how Montagu and Edmund were consumed with envy because they were not invited. When tea was over and they repaired to the front parlour he looked anxiously at Miss Esperance. Surely the stipulated hour must be up. The Misses Moffat were quite endurable: kind and simple and almost pathetic in their tremulous eagerness to please. But Mrs. Dewar was getting on his nerves, and she insisted on addressing her conversation to him as though she were on much more familiar terms with him than the rest of the party, a dreadful supposition not to be borne for an instant.

"Perhaps," said Miss Maggie, beaming upon her guests, "the gentlemen would like a game of draughts."

Mr. Wycherly's heart went down into his boots. Some years ago he would truthfully have said he didn't play draughts; since then, however, Mr. Gloag had taught him that he, in his turn, might teach the little boys; and Mr. Wycherly was scrupulously accurate in all his statements.

Miss Esperance came to the rescue. "I fear," said she, "that we must be going. We promised the children that we would be home by about six."

Miss Esperance never made any plan that she did not intend to carry out, and five minutes later she and Mr. Wycherly were on their way home. The little boys were waiting for them at the gate and volunteered to take Mr. Wycherly for a walk.

Miss Esperance stood looking after them and her eyes were fond and proud. Old Elsa came out to ask her mistress something about the supper and joined her at the gate, and she, too, looked after the trio marching down the road, Mr. Wycherly, as usual, in the middle, with a small boy hanging on to either hand.

"He's awfu' kind to they bairns," said Elsa. "They've wauken'd him up extraordinar'. He's no' the same gentleman he was afore they came."

"_He_ is exactly the same, Elsa," Miss Esperance said gently. "Circumstances have changed, and God in His great mercy has seen fit to call out the many beautiful qualities with which He has endowed His servant. But Mr. Wycherly is not changed."

Elsa's face softened, as it always did when she looked at her mistress.

"I'm thinkin', mem," she said, "that though the Lord has seen fit to do much, He made you His instrument."

Gradually by slow degrees, but daily more and more, was Mr. Wycherly shaken out of his groove. It was he who took the little boys twice a week to be drilled at Pier's Hill; when Mr. Gloag came back, he even went occasionally to the Manse to play chess with him because Miss Esperance declared the minister to be so lonely. And, more wonderful still, that winter he made two or three journeys to Shrewsbury to confer with Mr. Woodhouse and see after his affairs in person, leaving Montagu in charge of Miss Esperance and the household.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*MONTAGU AND HIS AUNT*

In a space of shining and fragrant clarity you have a vision of marble columns and stately cities, of men august in single-heartedness and strength, and women comely and simple and superb as goddesses; and with a music of leaves and winds and waters, of plunging ships and clanging armours, of girls at song and kindly gods discoursing, the sunny-eyed heroic age is revealed in all its nobleness, in all its majesty, its candour, and its charm.--W. E. HENLEY.

It happened that Elsa died quite suddenly while Mr. Wycherly was away upon one of these journeys, and Miss Esperance would not let him be told, lest he should--as he most assuredly would--hasten home to her assistance. It was a very cold spring, and Miss Esperance drove into Edinburgh to make arrangements for Elsa's funeral, in pouring rain and in the teeth of a cutting east wind. She caught a bad cold, but being naturally very upset at the time and having a great deal to see to, she took but little care of herself, and was laid aside with a sharp attack of bronchitis before Robina had realised that there was anything the matter.

Robina, with the best intentions in life, was no nurse. She worried Miss Esperance, and yet that decided little lady would have no stranger in the house. So it ended in Montagu--who was then nearly twelve years old--doing everything for her, deftly, quietly, and with the gentle skill so often developed by dreamy people when they are roused to action.

During his aunt's illness the little boy slept in a large cupboard off her bedroom; and that he might the better be able to attend to her wants through the night, and yet not entirely lose his sleep (as he did during the first night he was on duty), he tied one end of a long string round his big toe and the other round his patient's wrist, and if Miss Esperance wanted the fire made up, or fresh poultices, or the "jelly drink" she was too weak to reach for herself, she would give the string a gentle pull, and Montagu, who was a light sleeper, was by her side in a moment, quick to hear her faintest whisper.

During that time Montagu learned to know his aunt as he never could have done under any other circumstances. As her breathing grew easier, and her wonderful constitution--result of a life temperate and self-denying in all things--reasserted itself, they would have long and intimate talks, and the little boy learned a great deal about "the family" of which Miss Esperance was very proud. It had been settled that at Mr. Wycherly's death Montagu was to take his name. "He has no son, my dear, and he has done so much for us that we could not refuse him this; but I would have you remember always that you are a Bethune. There have been some bad men among them and many good--but bad and good alike, they have all been Scottish gentlemen. You will be educated in England, Montagu, you will go to the English church, and you will learn English ways--good and pleasant ways they are which go to the making of such men as our dear friend--so wise and kind and unselfish. But never forget that you yourself are a Bethune, for it is a proud name to bear."

And then the dear old lady would show him the family's coat-of-arms in a little, fat, square calf-bound "Scots _Compendium_ of Rudiments of Honour. Containing the succession of _Scots Kings_ from Fergus, who founded the Monarchy. ALSO the Nobility of Scotland Present and Extinct--The Fifth edition improved and brought down to the year 1752."

From this work Montagu would read aloud to his aunt almost as often as from the Bible itself, and would shudder as he read how one Archibald Bethune was "famish'd at Falkland in the year 1592 so that he nearly dy'd," but escaping to France "did afterward marry one Esperance de Lanois, daughter of a Marshal of France--" "and since then," Miss Esperance would interrupt eagerly, "there was never another Esperance Bethune till I was born."

"I think she must have been like you," Montagu said, "kind to him because he was so thin from being famish'd."

Miss Esperance laughed softly. "She was a girl of sixteen, my dear, when he married her."

"I'd rather marry you than any girl of sixteen that I've ever seen," Montagu said stoutly. "You're much prettier than any of them--except perhaps Margaret," he added, for he was very faithful in his enthusiasms.

Indeed, there were many who would have agreed with him, if they could have seen Miss Esperance at that moment, sitting up in bed propped up with pillows, with a pink bed jacket, not half such a dainty colour as her flushed cheeks, and the adorable white "mutch" framing the shimmering silver of her hair.

And here it must be confessed that it is just possible that Miss Esperance knew perfectly well what a pretty old lady she was; for all the other old ladies of her time wore "fronts"--dreadful, aggressive, black, brown or yellow fronts--whether they had any hair or not. To wear one's own white hair was unusual even to boldness; and yet, Miss Esperance, most decorous and delicately feminine of womankind, quietly ignored this unpleasing fashion, and was beautiful even as nature had intended her to be.

Many and exciting were the Jacobite stories she told to Montagu, till his enthusiasm for the house of Stuart knew no bounds. He read aloud gracefully and with understanding, and his reading of the Bible was a never-failing source of delight to Miss Esperance. She would lie with shining eyes and overflowing heart while the boy's voice, gravely emphatic and justly modulated, proclaimed to her the divine message to which she had ever lent so willing an ear. She even grew accustomed to the enunciation of Montagu's "extraordinary views"; as, when one day he had read to her the story of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, he said dreamily: "It's curious, isn't it, how disagreeable nearly all the women in the Bible are?"

"Oh, Montagu!" Miss Esperance exclaimed distressedly. "Think of the mother of our Lord, and Mary, and Martha, and Dorcas----"

"Well, aunt," he interrupted, "you know in the Old Testament there's very few of them at all kind and nice. The Greek women were far better: look at Alcestis, and Penelope, and Polyxena! I don't like those Hebrew women at all; they were so vindictive and dishonourable. Fancy you behaving like Sara or Rachel or Jael!--why even Helen was far nicer than most of them, and she wasn't considered particularly good though she was so beautiful."

"Tell me about Alcestis," said Miss Esperance, lying back on her pillows and feeling unequal just then to a discussion regarding the relative merits of Hebrew and Greek women.

"I'll fetch you Mr. Wycherly's 'Euripides,'" Montagu cried eagerly, "and read it to you in English as he used to read it to me. I really think, Aunt Esperance, if you'll only listen carefully you'll like it almost as well as the Bible!"

And Montagu fled from the room before his aunt's horrified expostulations reached him.

Then began a series of readings from Euripides, followed by arguments between Miss Esperance and Montagu which would have convulsed Mr. Wycherly had he been there to hear them.

Their extreme earnestness bridged over the gulf of years between them, and it must be confessed that Miss Esperance took the greatest delight in picking holes in the characters of some of Montagu's heroes.

It was quite useless for Montagu, in imitation of Mr. Wycherly's methods, to point out that such and such ideas were so deeply rooted in the national character as to be a part of it. Miss Esperance would only shake her pretty white head, exclaiming: "Na! na! my dear laddie--right is right, and wrong wrong, and that man Admetus was just no better than a coward: grumbling at his parents, forsooth, because they wouldn't die in his place; accepting his wife's sacrifice and then blaming those poor old people. Oh, I've no patience with him, a poor-spirited creature--no man he!"

In spite, however, of the shortcomings in the character of Admetus, the most human of the Greek dramatists certainly attracted Miss Esperance. She inquired in a detached and impersonal manner whether there was not a printed translation of "Ion" in the house, and looked distinctly disappointed when Montagu informed her that there was no such thing. She had perforce to leave the characters in no matter what impasse whenever Montagu stopped reading, as he would occasionally for very mischief, at the most exciting place, just for the pleasure of being asked to "go on a little longer, dear laddie, I shall not sleep if I don't know for certain whether that poor body Kreusa knew that fine young man Ion for her son or no'."

But directly afterward her conscience smote her, and she herself stopped Montagu; fearing that, entertaining as these plays undoubtedly were, they were apt perhaps to distract her mind from higher things; and she bade him take Euripides back to Mr. Wycherly's room, and bring her Jeremy Taylor instead. When Montagu would read "The Remedies Against Wandering Thoughts," "The Remedies of Temptations Proper to Sickness," or "General Exercises Preparatory to Death."

*CHAPTER XIX*

*THE FOND ADVENTURE*

But warily tent, when ye come to court me,
And come na unless the back--yett be ajee.
_Old Song._

Miss Esperance was decidedly better, and she had at last allowed Montagu to tell Mr. Wycherly of old Elsa's sudden death, and also of her own illness. The letter, according to her instructions, put it, that she had been "rather ailing," and this guarded statement produced a telegram from Mr. Wycherly announcing his return next day.

Therefore the little household was commanded to retire especially early, and by half-past eight that night every light in Remote, save that of the fires, was extinguished; and the whole family were, as Robina would have put it, "safely bedded."

Miss Esperance had that evening insisted that Montagu should return to the bedroom he shared with Edmund; declaring that she was perfectly capable of getting anything that she wanted for herself. No one guessed how terribly Miss Esperance missed old Elsa's ministrations at every turn, for the old woman, though frail and incapable of any hard work for some time past, was yet most jealous of all personal service to her mistress, and Robina had never been permitted to do anything that brought her into direct contact with that lady.

Robina, bustling, buxom, industrious, and far handsomer at three and twenty than she had been at seventeen, had for a long time now entirely managed the housework; but as a personal attendant she left much to be desired. When she brought her mistress a cup of excellent beef-tea, she invariably slopped it over into the saucer, often on to the tray-cloth. She was economically minded, too, as regards laundry work (most people are when they have to do it themselves), and looked upon stains as a very minor matter in setting out a tray. It was Montagu who noticed the intense disfavour with which Miss Esperance regarded such small untidinesses: how often the nourishing dishes prepared by Robina with the utmost care were sent away untasted because they were not daintily served; and he took the matter and the trays into his own hands, with the result that things were served even as Elsa had served them, and Miss Esperance drank her beef-tea without remark.

Not that she was unobservant; she noted everything that Montagu did for her; and even when she was at her weakest and worst, she was filled with a tender, admiring sort of amusement at the boy's deft, dainty ways of waiting upon her--ways undoubtedly acquired during his long and close association with Mr. Wycherly.

At first Robina exclaimed in horror at the enormous number of tray-cloths and dinner napkins discarded by Montagu if they had the smallest spot or stain; but Montagu pointed out that it was better to have mountains of washing than that his aunt should be starved; and the girl gave in gracefully, for she was very eager to fill Elsa's place as far as she possibly could.

There is no doubt that she thoroughly enjoyed her new dignity and independence, and she wrote to the still faithful Sandie that he might, if he was in the mind, look in and see her one evening--"the mistress had said she was perfectly willing, though still confined to her bed."

Sandie was now in partnership with a butcher on the other side of Edinburgh, ten long miles from Burnhead, and the bicycle was not within everybody's reach in those days. Still he managed every fortnight or so to get over to see Robina, for they were now formally betrothed, and their engagement was smiled upon by the authorities.

Sandie wanted to get married at once, but Robina had declared long before Elsa's death that she could not bring herself to leave Miss Esperance, and now she felt that such a course was quite out of the question. Besides, she was in no hurry to get married. That she could get married, and well married, whenever she liked was a matter for complacent reflection, but otherwise she was very contented with things as they were.

Sandie was hardly so satisfied. If not exactly an ardent lover, he had assuredly proved himself a very faithful one, and he ruled his life largely by the somewhat strict conceptions of Robina.

Montagu was very tired. He had had a hard fortnight, with many broken, anxious nights. The responsibility had lain heavily on his young, slender shoulders. He was supremely thankful that Mr. Wycherly would be home on the morrow. It was pleasant to lie once more in his big four-post bed instead of in the somewhat cramped and stuffy cupboard where he had spent his nights lately. He stretched himself luxuriously, and turned and turned that he might find the absolutely comfortable position in which to fall asleep. But somehow sleep would not come. Every smallest sound disturbed him. Whenever a little piece of cinder fell into the grate from the fire in his aunt's bedroom, he started up to listen, thinking she had moved and might want him. But all was perfectly quiet.

Edmund, who preserved his infantile capacity for falling asleep directly he lay down, slumbered peacefully in the little bed beside the big one. Miss Esperance slept the heavy, dreamless sleep of old age and exhaustion. Mause, old now and very deaf, slept soundly in her kennel outside the little house, and Robina already slept the healthy sleep of hard-working youth. Only the little boy in the big bed with carved oaken posts and brocade canopy lay wide-eyed and wakeful with that dreadful, useless wakefulness that comes sometimes to the overtired. There was no moon to shine companionably through the blind, the room was in absolute, black darkness, and when Montagu had been in bed about half an hour it seemed to him that it must be the middle of the night. The casement window was wide open, but the night was so still that the blind never stirred. Again and again he sat up to listen for some sound from his aunt's room; it would have been a relief had she wanted him, but there was no sound of any kind.

Still he could not sleep, and at last his listening was rewarded, for he heard a step outside--a stealthy step that paused hesitating, then crept fumblingly forward.

There was no doubt whatever that it was a step; and Montagu, convinced that it must at least be midnight, immediately jumped to the conclusion that whoever was there could be there for no lawful purpose.

If it was a burglar, he must be got away without noise. That was Montagu's first thought. On no account must Miss Esperance be wakened or alarmed.

He flew out of bed, and, squeezing in behind the dressing-table, leant out of the window. Soft, impenetrable, wet darkness met him and enveloped him. A fine rain was falling, and he could see nothing, but he distinctly heard the hesitating footsteps turn and go round the house toward the front.

Softly, on naked feet, he made his way to Edmund's side and shook him. But Edmund was difficult to wake, for Montagu did not dare to speak above a whisper, and it was not until he had reiterated several times: "There's someone creeping round the house; it's a thief, probably," in the eeriest of stage whispers, that Edmund was roused.

When he did grasp the situation, however, he arose instantly, exclaiming in a joyful whisper, "Come on, and let's bash his head for him; then he can make no noise, nor break in neither."

"That's all very well," said the more cautious Montagu, whose teeth were chattering, partly from cold and partly from fear for his aunt. "We've got to catch him first. Let's come to Guardie's room and see if we can get a glimpse of the fellow from the window. The night's as black as pitch though."

Very quietly Montagu lit a candle, and the two little boys sped across the landing to Mr. Wycherly's room.

"Close the door behind you and that'll stifle his groans," the valiant Edmund whispered as they reached their goal. "I just wish we had the villain here."

"I don't," Montagu responded gloomily, "he might jump about and make no end of a row before we got him under."

They had no sort of doubt as to their ultimate triumph over the nefarious designs of this prowling stranger, but they were, unfortunately, handicapped by the necessity for extreme quietude.

"I expect it's the parlour he'll be wanting to break into," Edmund suggested. "All those silver cups and things on the sideboard, you know. The basket with the forks and spoons is in aunt's room. We must take care he doesn't go there. Don't let him see a light!" and Edmund promptly blew out the candle that Montagu held.

Together they softly opened the window and leant out. Neither could, of course, see anything, nor at the moment was anything to be heard.

"We'll wait a wee while," Edmund whispered. And wait they did in breathless silence, shoulder pressed to shoulder, the only sound the quick beating of their hearts.

Their patience was rewarded. The hesitating steps came slowly round to the front of the house and paused under their very window. Then somebody gave a low whistle.

Montagu dragged Edmund back from the window. "That's to summon his confederates. What'll we do? If there's more than one, they're sure to wake Aunt Esperance and frighten her dreadfully. We must do something--quick!"

"Will I fling out the poker on the chance of hitting him?" inquired Edmund, who had already provided himself with that weapon.

"No, that won't do, for if you don't hit him, it would warn him we'd seen him----"

"Perhaps it would make him run away."

"Not it. I've got it! Let's empty the ewer of water over him first. I think he's just under the window, and that's sure to startle him, and he'll jump out. Then you must say in an awful voice, 'Throw up your hands without a sound (you mustn't say it loud, mind) or you're a dead man.' And you'll light the candle and show me holding one of the big pistols hanging at the stair-head. I brought one in with me."

"I don't think he'd better see you," Edmund objected; "he mightn't be a bit terrified."

"Perhaps we'd better keep the room dark, then, and mebbe he'll think it's Guardie."

"Guardie's voice isn't a bit awful. I'll be a lot more frightening than him, I can tell you. Have you got that jug? Steady, now; mind you don't let the ewer go, too, else we'd catch it from Robina. Listen a minute!"

Again the low whistle immediately under their window.

Very carefully they balanced the heavy bedroom jug on the window-sill. "It must go all at once in one big splash!" Montagu whispered, "_Now!_"

A very big splash undoubtedly followed.

A series of gasps, and the sound of a voice raised in lamentation exclaiming: "Lord hae mercy! What like a way's that to greet a body? An' it that dark I couldna' find the back door. Hoo was I tae ken ye'd a' be gane tae yer beds at nine o'clock? Ye didna' use to be sae awfu' airly. But I'll just tell you this, Robina lass, it's the last time you'll catch me trailin' awa' over here to speer after ye--to get sic a like cauld welcome, as though it wasna' wet eneugh onny wye. I'm din, I can tell ye."

Montagu clutched Edmund by the arm, exclaiming in horrified tones, "I do believe it's Sandie Croall." Then leaning as far out of the window as he could, "Is it you, Sandie? Because, if so, we're most awfully sorry; only please don't speak so loud, for Aunt Esperance is asleep, and she's been so ill. We thought you must be somebody trying to break in. What made you come in the middle of the night?"

"It's no' the middle o' the night," Sandie grunted indignantly, "the church clock has only just chappit nine. It happened I could get over, an' I thocht I'd just look in an' see Robiny--little thinkin' I'd get sic a like reception. I'm jest drooket through an' through. What for did ye no' speer wha it was, young gentleman, and no' go droonin' honest folk?"

"Would you like to come in and get dry?" Edmund suggested hospitably; "there's sure to be some fire in the kitchen."

"No, thank ye," Sandie replied, still somewhat huffy, "I'll get awa' hame to my mither, an' she'll dry my claes to me whiles I'm in my bed."

"Shall I tell Robina you called?" Montagu asked politely.

Sandie paused. "I'm thinkin', young gentleman," he remarked severely, "that the less you say about to-night's wark the better it will be for you. If I am content to pass the matter over with obleevion, it's the least you can dae to dae the same."

"We're most awfully sorry," the boys said once more in subdued chorus.

"Just gang awa' back tae yer beds," said Sandie, and with these parting words he felt his way out to the green gate, and they heard his footsteps going plop-plop on the wet road till they died away in the distance.

Edmund sighed. "It was a pity we couldn't bash his head or anything," he murmured regretfully. "I hope a real one'll come some day when Aunt Esperance is well, and we don't need to be so hushified. Then we could have a jolly good mill."

Rather dispirited and extremely cold they crept back to bed.

"I wonder," Montagu murmured thoughtfully, "why he didn't want Robina to know he'd been here."

Edmund gave a smothered laugh. "My word, but he did catch his breath when we douched him, an' wasn't he cross when he thought it was Robina? I wonder if she's ever done it before?"

*CHAPTER XX*

*A QUESTION OF THEOLOGY*

Nae shauchlin' testimony here--
We were a' damned, an' that was clear,
I owned, wi' gratitude an' wonder,
He was a pleisure to sit under.
R.L.S.

The while that Mr. Wycherly looked after Montagu's secular education, Miss Esperance undertook the religious, and long, weary Sunday evenings did he spend in wrestling with the polemics of the "Shorter Catechism."

"Why shorter?" he would ask bitterly. "It's as long as ever it can be."

"There's a longer one than that, my dear son," Miss Esperance would answer cheerfully; "but you won't need to learn it unless you become a minister."

"I shall never be a minister," said Montagu firmly, one day when he had made four mistakes in the answer which defines "Effectual Calling"--an answer, by the way, which he could have learned in two minutes had he been in the slightest degree interested. "I shall never be a minister. I shall be an Epicurean when I'm grown up. Mr. Wycherly was telling me about them yesterday, and I liked them."

Miss Esperance gave a positive gasp of dismayed astonishment. "Oh, my dear!" she exclaimed. "I hope that you will always be too sincere a Christian ever to dream of being anything else. I must indeed have taught you badly that any such idea should be possible."

"Oh, no, dear aunt," said Montagu reassuringly, rubbing his head against her shoulder. "It's not that at all; but people do sometimes change their religion, you know, when they're grown up--like Calvin and Luther you told me about--and you know I really think I like the old gods best; they were very pleasant on the whole."

"Montagu, Montagu, you don't know what you are saying! Those heathen gods that you speak of never existed. There were no such beings."

"Are you sure, auntie?" Montagu asked earnestly. "They sound very real, quite as real, and much cheerfuller than--the Shorter Catechism," he concluded lamely, checked by the unfeigned horror he saw in his aunt's face.

Miss Esperance took off her spectacles and wiped them, then she put them on again and laid her frail old hand over the square, brown little hand lying on her knee, saying gently: "Montagu, dear, you are talking of what you do not understand. It will in no wise be counted against you _because_ you do not understand, but you must not say such things; really, my dear boy, you _must_ not, and it grieves me the more in that I somehow must be in fault. My teaching has in no way been blest if you are so filled with doubts already."

Poor Miss Esperance looked terribly distressed, and the little boy at her knee, who, child as he was, had realised her sweetness and her truth every day of the years he had been with her, wondered, with a sorrowful vagueness, what he could have said to vex her so. And inasmuch as he could find no words to express the thoughts that were in him he flung his arms round his aunt's neck, exclaiming: "I love you so, I won't be an Epicurean if you don't want me to; but you know, dear Auntie, it must have been so happy in those days--there were never any Sabbaths."

Miss Esperance held him close and prayed silently; she even forbore to dilate upon the blessed privileges of that Sabbath which, as she had just been instructing Montagu, "is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy."

"Is dinner a necessity or a mercy?" Montagu had asked one day, he himself being distinctly inclined to look upon it as a mercy, for it followed morning church, and after the children came, in deference to a suggestion of Mr. Wycherly's, founded upon certain youthful reminiscences of his own, there was always dessert on Sundays.

Now it happened that on the Sunday previous to Montagu's announcement of his approaching conversion to Epicureanism, the Reverend Peter Gloag had given a lengthy and vigorous discourse on Eternal Punishment. He was a true disciple of Calvin in that he believed that the majority of mankind needed herding into the right path by the sheep-dog of sheer terror as to what would most certainly befall them should they stray from it; and he succeeded in striking dire dismay to the very soul of one small member of his congregation. The minister had also touched upon predestination and election, and Montagu, who was tender-hearted and imaginative, was suddenly panic-stricken by the idea that perhaps he and Edmund, and even Mr. Wycherly, who never came to church, might be already numbered among those whom the Reverend Peter Gloag had denounced as being "rejected, left to sin, to unbelief, and to perdition."

Long after he was put to bed in the big four-post bed, while Edmund slept peacefully in the little bed beside him, did Montagu lie awake wondering whether he would die that night. The very prayer that he said every evening at his aunt's knee took on a new and terrible significance:

If I should die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.

Montagu repeated it over and over again with dry lips, while he turned from side to side in a vain endeavour to get away from the constant beating as of a hammer upon an anvil that sounded ceaselessly in his ears.

"If I should die"--the child whispered to himself, then gradually he fell once more into thinking of his beloved Greeks; they, too, if they did not actually fear death, met it sorrowfully, for it meant leaving the bright light of the sun, and presently the reiterated "If I should die" changed to the cry of Alcestis, "Lay me down, I have no strength in my feet. Hades is nigh at hand, and dark night steals over mine eyes." Then more familiar and less terrible came the thought of that "old man, the guide of the dead, who sitteth at the oar and the helm"--who in Montagu's mind was inextricably mixed up with a saturnine old boatman he knew at Leith, till at last he drifted into the blessed haven of sleep.

Next day in the Horace lesson Mr. Wycherly happened to mention that in religion he was an Epicurean, whereupon Montagu, as was his wont, asked innumerable questions, which his tutor set himself to answer as fully as possible; dilating, in his pleasantly detached and impersonal fashion, on the fact that Epicureanism pure and undefiled did away with the fear of death among its professors; and quoted the philosopher himself to the effect that "When we are, death is not; and when death is, we are not." How that in his time the great incubus of human happiness was fear--fear of the gods and fear of death--and that pleasure pursued with prudence and tempered by justice and self-control was the true end and aim of all wise men.

That what he said could by any remote possibility have any personal application to Montagu never occurred to him for a moment. He described the doctrines of Epicurus with as little expectation of their affecting the boy's attitude toward life as that the use of the prolative infinitive in his Latin prose should cause him any searchings of the heart. But he had reckoned without the minister, for Montagu, fresh from the terrors of the previous night, suddenly determined to adopt as his own a religion which seemed so singularly free from any disquieting tenets.

Edmund's curly head was never perplexed or troubled with vain imaginings or hankerings after the old gods; but equally little did he aspire to any considerable knowledge of the Shorter Catechism. Lessons of any kind he frankly detested, and as he learned by heart with difficulty, he "went through," in two senses, an inordinate number of "Shorter Catechisms" in the cinnamon paper bindings, such as Miss Esperance was wont to provide for the instruction of her grand-nephews. Hardly ever did Edmund get any answer absolutely without mistake, except the one which replies to the question, "What is the misery of that estate whereinto man fell?" When he would respond in a dismal sort of chant, "All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of Hell for ever." This Edmund would repeat with positive relish till sensitive Montagu shook in his shoes, and wished harder than ever that he had been born in an age when there seemed fewer possibilities of wrong-doing, followed by such appalling punishment; and youths and maidens, light-footed, crowned with garlands, trooped gaily to propitiate their easy-going gods by means of gifts.

* * * * *

On the evening of the day on which Montagu had announced his preference for the doctrines of Epicurus Miss Esperance knocked at the door of Mr. Wycherly's study about nine o'clock. This was a most unusual proceeding on her part, for they rarely met after supper, as Miss Esperance usually went to bed about a quarter to nine.

When Mr. Wycherly saw her standing on the threshold he rose hastily and led her in and set her in his special chair by the fire, taking up his own position on the hearth-rug. The reading lamp shone full on Miss Esperance, but his face was in shadow.

"Mr. Wycherly, I am anxious about Montagu," Miss Esperance began somewhat tremulously.

"Is he ill?" that gentleman interpolated hastily. "He seemed quite well at dinner-time."

"Oh, he's well enough in health, I think, I am thankful to think--but--" here Miss Esperance paused as if she found it somewhat difficult to broach the subject, "I am not equally confident as to his spiritual condition."

"His spiritual condition!" Mr. Wycherly repeated vaguely. "Montagu's! He is surely a very young boy to have attained to a--spiritual condition?"

"That's just it," said Miss Esperance, despair in her voice, and grave disquietude writ large upon her face. "That's just it. Would you not say that he was far too young to be assailed by doubts? Would you not expect so young a child to accept the teaching of our religion without question or rebellion? And yet Montagu--" Here poor Miss Esperance again faltered, then by a mighty effort forcing herself to voice the dreadful thing--"told me to-day, when I was hearing him the Shorter Catechism, that he intended to become an Epicurean when he was grown up! What are we to do with him?"

It was well for Mr. Wycherly that his face was in shadow, for although his mouth remained quite grave, there were little puckers round the corners of his eyes, not wholly to be accounted for by the lines that time had drawn there. He coughed slightly, and cleared his throat. "Am I, dear Miss Esperance, to gather that you think I am in some degree to blame for Montagu's unregenerate frame of mind?" he asked gently.

"Not to blame!" she hastily ejaculated. "Not to blame! But perhaps he is learning rather too much about those old days, those unenlightened heathen times, and evidently you render it all so entertaining that he gets rather carried away, and is unable to distinguish between what is mere fable and what is historical, vital truth. He is very little," she continued pleadingly. "Do you think it is quite wholesome for him to learn so much mythology? Don't you think it is apt to unsettle him?"

Mr. Wycherly was silent for a minute. "Do you know," he asked suddenly, "that with the exception of the little 'gilt-books' you had as a child, we haven't a single child's book in the house? Perhaps I was wrong to discuss any school of philosophy with him--but as regards mythology, I have only told Montagu such stories as are in reality the foundation of most of the child-stories that have ever been written. I don't think they have really hurt him, and such knowledge will be of use to him by and by."

"But why should he seem positively to dislike proper religious instruction?" persisted Miss Esperance. "I am sure that when I was a child it never occurred to me to do other than learn what was set me with the greatest reverence. Montagu's critical and rebellious attitude was undreamt of in my young days."

"Montagu has a curiously analytic mind," said Mr. Wycherly slowly, "and a passionate longing for pleasantness and gaiety. It is probably inherited. You remember dear Archie loved cheerfulness, and perhaps that poor young mother--a Cornish girl, if I remember rightly--perhaps she, too, had the Southern love of colour and brightness in life. We are old people to have to do with children, Miss Esperance, and I--perhaps my aim has been too exclusively to teach Montagu to love study by making the approach to it as pleasant as possible. It is a great temptation, for I find him so docile, so receptive, so eager to please. But perhaps I have been wrong--though Socrates would bear me out. It is pleasant to wander in the Elysian fields with a young boy--but if you think--" Mr. Wycherly's voice had dropped almost to a whisper, and here he paused altogether. He seemed to have been talking to himself rather than to Miss Esperance, and to be looking past her into that pleasaunce of memory which is the priceless heritage of the old. Miss Esperance did not interrupt him, and presently he went on again. "Perhaps the recollection of my own mother that is clearest to me is that of seeing her come dancing down a garden path toward me. To me now she seems so inexpressibly young, and gay, and gracious; and I have remembered her more distinctly lately, because the other day when I was reading with Montagu that portion of the Odyssey which describes Nausicaa at play among her maidens, he interrupted me to exclaim: '_My_ mother was like that, so beautiful!' Now he has never spoken to me of his mother before. I did not even know that he remembered her, and it has made me think of how distinctly I remember my own. She was not five and twenty when she died."

Miss Esperance sat upright in Mr. Wycherly's chair, the lamplight falling full on her troubled face. In spite of her ready sympathy, a sympathy so spontaneous that it seemed to give itself at all times independently of her volition, she felt that her dear old friend was wandering from the real question at issue. It was all very well to point out that Montagu loved beauty. She was perfectly aware of it herself, and it was not without an agreeable thrill that she recalled a little scene enacted that very evening. Montagu, according to custom, had been reading aloud to her from one of the very "Gilt-Books" Mr. Wycherly had mentioned, when the child came upon the somewhat gratuitous and ungrammatical assertion with regard to the fleeting character of personal beauty: "People's faces soon alter; when they grow old, nobody looks handsome."

Then Montagu brought his fist down on the page with a thump, declaring indignantly: "That's nonsense! You and Mr. Wycherly are both old--and you are quite beautiful. There's a beautiful oldness as well, don't you think so, Aunt Esperance?"

The delicate colour that came and went so easily flushed her face as Miss Esperance met the child's eager, admiring eyes. "For none more than children are concerned for beauty, and, above all, for beauty in the old." She not only thought so, but knew so; but it was not the custom for women of her stamp to acknowledge that they took any sort of interest in their personal appearance, and although she was distinctly gratified, she merely shook her head, saying gravely: "What the writer would point out, Montagu, is this--that without beauty of character mere personal beauty is of but small account."

Montagu, unlike Miss Esperance, who never allowed her back to "come in contact with her chair," lolled comfortably in his, disposed to argue the question. "I think it matters very much how people look," he said decidedly. "I hope I shall grow up to look like Achilles in the book Mr. Wycherly gave me."

Miss Esperance looked down at the thin, little, brown boy beside her, remarking dryly: "Well, at present, Montagu, I see small likelihood of any such transformation," and returned to the perusal of "The History of More Children than One."

But Montagu had not yet "threshed the subject out." In spite of his aunt's forefinger laid entreatingly at the line where he had left off, he continued in the tone of one who grants something to a vanquished foe. "Of course, young people look nicer in Greek clothes--I don't think, f'r instance (Montagu was very fond of "for instance," a favourite phrase of Mr. Wycherly's), that Mr. Gloag would look nice with only a wee towel."

Miss Esperance chuckled, and was fain to close the "History of More Children than One" for that day.

All this time those two dear old people waited in silence--Miss Esperance fondly remembering Montagu's unconscious compliment of the morning; Mr. Wycherly absorbed in his vision of the girl who, clad in a high-waisted, skimpy, muslin frock, with sandalled, twinkling feet, came dancing down the broad central path of a Shropshire garden nearly sixty years ago.

The sunlight was on the grass, the air charged heavily with the scent of the tall lilies on either hand, and she held out her arms toward him, singing as she came.

Miss Esperance gave a faint little cough, and Mr. Wycherly came back to the present with a start, saying: "Doubtless I have been wrong in the way I have taught Montagu. For the future we must have more grammar and less romance. I am sorry you should have been worried. It is my fault."

"No, no!" cried Miss Esperance. "I am sure that all you have done, all you are doing, is right and wise, but I--what am I to do? How can I make him see the beauty and priceless value of that knowledge without which all other knowledge is as dust and ashes?"