Chapter XXVIII

THE OFFICERS OF JUSTICE IN ST. MUNGO’S SQUARE--CLARIBEL DRYSDALE
STANDS BY HER COLOURS.

The Miss Mackinnons, arriving at home towards the close of the day, required more than the following night’s rest to restore them to their normal condition. They felt as if they had gone on a long and perilous expedition, and encountered many exciting adventures. The journey had not been altogether fruitless, and there was at the end of it that happy restoration to the grey old house in St. Mungo’s Square, which caused Miss Bethia to cry out fondly, ‘Eh! hame is kindly,’ and Miss Janet to sniff the thick air as if it were her own special property. She gloried in the reek. Still, it could not be expected that the travellers would at once master the shocks and fatigue of so unusual an experience. The ladies were not in trim for visitors, which was unfortunate, since they had for their share that day, not only the Lieutenant, who had started from Oban on hearing the news of Fenton of Strathdivie’s death, but, of all people in the world, Claribel Drysdale.

Clary had come up to town from Lochgoilhead, unattended by any other member of the family except young Tam, on his way to his office. She had meant to do a little shopping, remain for the night in the house of friends of the Drysdales, and sail back again next day. She had taken it into her head, for some reasons known only to herself, to call, for the first time in her life, on the Miss Mackinnons, knowing nothing of their recent absence, or, for that matter, of Fenton of Strathdivie, and believing Eneas Mackinnon to be still with the Semples at Oban. Could it be that Clary, so calm and cool and sufficient for herself in all circumstances, had simply pined for her absent lover, who was not to be thought of as a husband for her, and, yearning to have tidings of him, had suddenly conceived the idea of calling on his old grand-aunts, the indigent gentlewomen who were her father’s _protégées_?

Anyhow, there was Claribel behaving herself very graciously, looking a wonderful specimen of youth and beauty, in an expensively quiet and suitable walking-dress; a hat with hardly any trimming, from Paris; sober gloves and boots, also from Paris; a little exquisite embroidery on the collar and cuffs of her gown. She formed a striking figure among the others in the dull, dingy room, and won golden opinions from its usual occupants. Yet one would have thought that Claribel, with her natural and acquired elegance, was too well regulated a person in everything, had too high and at the same time too conventional a standard to meet the Miss Mackinnons’ views; that she would not be smart or bouncing, or, on the other hand, deferential enough for those her seniors. However, they were paying her homage not merely with ulterior motives on their grand-nephew’s account, or because of some regard for what her father, Tam Drysdale, had done for them first and last. It was principally because this well-assured, courteous, composed example of maidenhood--maidenhood among the upstart, wealthy, influential ‘dirt’ of modern trade, that Miss Janet was wont to despise--took the old lady by surprise--took away her breath in some occult manner, and rendered her nearly subdued, and almost well-bred.

There was Eneas, by far the most uncomfortable of the party, in some degree consoled by what in its turn amazed him--that is to say, the unexpectedly commonplace civility of his kinswomen.

Neither could the Lieutenant altogether resist a throb of what he knew, at the bottom of his heart, to be idiotic hope occasioned by Claribel’s voluntary uninvited presence in St. Mungo’s Square--Claribel with her innate refinement and dignity, sitting apparently happy, and at her ease, among his queer, plain old aunts. Was it for his sake? Could it be for his sake? Yet, if it were so, how could he--penniless, without the most distant prospect of rising to any purpose in his profession--propose to accept gratefully, and repay richly, such rare generous devotion?

A ring at the door-bell--not loud, but prolonged, as if delivered from weighty considerations--startled the party, and Miss Bethia vanished to perform the office of the servant who had never been replaced.

‘Tradesmen are very forward and pushing for orders,’ remarked Miss Janet. ‘Does not your mammaw find it so, Miss Drysdale?’

‘Well, we’re rather out of the way of shop-boys in the country; and my mother is so fond of marketing when she gets the opportunity, that she never complains,’ answered Clary, with a pleasant laugh.

At that moment Miss Bethia looked in with a face grown pale, a dazed look, and a paper in her hand.

‘Will you come here and speak, Eneas?’

She summoned him mysteriously. He rose slowly to grant her request.

‘What is’t, Betheye? Speak out. What’s a’ the hullaballoo?’ demanded Miss Janet, her imperious curiosity, together with her clear conscience, getting the better of her late decorous politeness.

Thus adjured, Miss Bethia did not know how to refuse replying. Besides, she, too, was destitute of any serious apprehension, and regarded the affair--which no doubt had given her a little fright, in spite of its absurdity--as a foolish mistake.

‘It’s twa shirra-officers, I think, come in a cab, sayin’ they have a warrant for us.’

‘A warrant!’ cried Eneas, horrified; ‘an arrest for debt, you mean? I had no idea of this. Yes, I will speak to the men, of course,’ he continued, in some agitation. ‘But I must see you out first, Miss Drysdale. This--this misfortune, of which I had no conception, is not a thing for you to be mixed up with.’

‘Don’t mind me, Mr. Mackinnon,’ said Clary, still mistress of herself, though she looked startled. ‘I shall go in a minute, if you wish it; but can I be of no use? My father is not in town, but my brother is at the office. Could he do nothing?’

‘Debt!’ shrieked Miss Janet, who had been struck dumb by the unfounded accusation. ‘We do not owe a sillar saxpence. We never did, when we were near starvation--ladies though we were: that you did not ken of, Eneas, you that have evened us to debt!’

‘I have no wish to intrude,’ the civil enough, but grave-sounding voice of the constable spoke from the hall. The speaker followed the voice with his person, punctiliously removing his hat as he entered the room, but making good his entrance. ‘I must come in to do my duty. I had better explain this is not an arrest for debt; it is a warrant from the fiscal to take the three auld leddies before a magistrate.’

The outrage was so inconceivable that Miss Janet laughed aloud, while Miss Bethia’s vague terror returned, and Miss Mackinnon appealed helplessly:

‘Wha is he? The drummer? But whaur’s his drum? Did we lose onything yesterday, Janet--Betheye?’

‘What on earth is the pretence for this extraordinary proceeding? There must be some huge blunder,’ insisted Eneas. ‘These are my aunts--the Miss Mackinnons--who have lived here for more than half a century. They are well known in Glasgow--hundreds will speak to their respectability. Good heavens! who has doubted it?’

‘I have nothing to say against it, sir,’ answered the inflexible servant of the law. ‘I presumed these were the Miss Mackinnons, and I have a warrant to take them up.’

‘On what charge?’

‘The charge I am ready to tell you. It is the wilful and malicious burning of the will of the late Archibald Fenton of Strathdivie, at Strathdivie, on the 11th of this month, by May Mackinnon, Janet Mackinnon, and Elizabeth or Bethia Mackinnon. I have to caution the prisoners against saying anything.’

‘The thing is preposterous,’ protested the Lieutenant. ‘It is true my aunts have just returned from Strathdivie, where they went for the funeral of their relative, but you may as well accuse them of setting fire to his house as of burning his will. What do you say, Aunt Janet?’ asked Eneas almost cheerfully, his confidence re-established by the incredibility of the charge.

‘That we brunt it, sure enough, and what for no?’ demanded the undaunted woman. ‘The wull had no concern with onybody save oursel’s, unless it were a couple of servants. Archie Fenton had got out his spite at me and Meye by making an eldest dochter--or, as some say, an eldest son--of Betheye, who would not lend hersel’ to sic treachery, so we agreed among oursel’s to turn the tables upon the man by burning the wull and dividing the money fair. We’ll see that the servants have their legacy, which is mair than ane of them deserves--an impident hizzie--but that’s neither here nor there. Now what have you to say against it, Lieutenant? There’s no fraud or wrang done; it was to prevent wrang; neither law nor gospel can object to that. I cannot tell what the man means. I suppose the writer body was angered at not getting a job. But I’ve explained,’ ended Miss Janet, in perfect assurance that her explanation was satisfactory.

Miss Mackinnon and Miss Betheye were equally convinced. Miss Betheye was again shaking off her alarm, and feeling some amount of complacency for the part she had played in the matter.

‘I would not have touched a farthing of what should have been Meye’s and Janet’s,’ she added her version of the story; ‘and as long as the wull was there, they wouldna tak’ their ain from me, at my pleasure, and me the youngest. There was nothing for it but to destroy the paper, which had only to do with our business, and mak’ a new settlement.’

As for Miss Mackinnon, she darted her hawk’s glance all around, and actually chuckled.

Eneas Mackinnon stood the picture of despair.

‘How could you be so mad?’ he broke out, with passion that was strange in the man. ‘I thought even old women had more sense.’

Claribel Drysdale touched him on the arm, and drew him a little aside.

‘Don’t you see, your aunts meant no harm,’ she whispered; ‘it was an accident. Don’t undeceive them yet. It would be barbarous. I’ll go with them to the magistrate.’

‘Impossible!’ he exclaimed. ‘What would your father think? You are an angel of goodness, but---- ’

‘No, no,’ she said, with a faint smile; ‘I am not very good. I am only an idle girl up in town for a day, and I have nothing particular to do when nearly all my friends are away.’

‘But your father---- ’

‘My father has the greatest respect for your aunts as worthy representatives of one of the old Glasgow families. He would be glad that I should do anything for them in an awkward dilemma.’

‘I know I ought not to allow it,’ he began to hesitate; ‘it would be very unpleasant for you; and where would be the use?’

‘The magistrate may be an acquaintance of mine, or he may know my name--my father has some influence. Go for my brother, and try what he can do. You must not seek to prevent me from accompanying the Miss Mackinnons, if the men will let me, and I think we can manage that. There is no other woman to go with them, and they may break down when they learn the truth.’

Eneas stood and looked at Claribel like a man struck dumb and fascinated. He had always guessed that she was wise and capable, but he had never known what she could do when there was a call for the exercise of her powers. He obeyed her--nay, Miss Janet obeyed her, after she had cried out violently that the magistrate might come to her--she would not stir a foot to go to him. Let them put a finger on her if they daured. The Lieutenant would take care of that, though he had to send for his swurd to strike a blow for his aunties, and for social order in their persons.

‘But we are all going, Miss Janet,’ said Claribel calmly. ‘All we ladies are going. You will not refuse to accompany your sisters and me.’

‘Weel, if you are proposin’ to mak’ a ploy o’t,’ yielded Miss Janet doubtfully, ‘if you want to tak’ a ride through the streets to see the toon--only you can do that ony day from your mammaw’s carriage.’

‘But I have not you or the other Miss Mackinnons to bear me company,’ said Clary promptly.

‘Nor Eneas here,’ said Miss Janet, falling into the trap. ‘There will be room for him on the dickie.’

‘No,’ said Claribel, with the same clear decision that was apt to carry everything before it at home and abroad. ‘He is going for my brother, to help to put an end to this little difficulty; but they will join us immediately.’

By sheer force of character, and by taking the lead--a proceeding unlooked for and extraordinary where her age and sex were concerned, but warrantable when there was no one else to stand in the breach--since the man entitled to act was stupefied and sick to the bottom of his soul with affront and dismay--Clary grasped the situation, controlled the other actors in it, and did the best that could be done under the circumstances. She gave Eneas a hint of what he was to try to do in another brief aside.

‘You know, Mr. Mackinnon’--she allowed him credit for knowledge which had not yet come to him--‘your aunts must not be detained a moment longer than can be helped. Somebody must find bail for them. Oh! it will be very easy--my father, if he could be got in time, Dr. Peter Murray--oh! dozens of people will be willing.’

He departed instantly to fulfil her behests. He had not her quick, practical brain, her unfaltering self-reliance, her moral courage; but he had, at least, the merit of appreciating them when he found them. He was ready to worship her, to make her his guiding star, to be twice the man with her that he would have been without her.

All Glasgow rang with the news when it was noised abroad that the Miss Mackinnons, of St. Mungo’s Square, had been taken before a magistrate on a charge of felony. Some laughter, but far more horror and pity, were called forth. As Claribel Drysdale had said, dozens of citizens were willing to be bail for the unfortunate ladies. They were not detained more than an hour, during which Miss Janet was so smoothed down and held in check by Clary’s peculiar tact and firmness, that the chief offender refrained from adding to her foolish vindication of her heinous misdemeanour the fresh offence of gratuitously insulting the magistrate.

The Miss Mackinnons were at home again without having incurred much harm. The misfortune was that the business could not rest there. The case, on the face of it, must be sent for trial. No exercise of interest on the ladies’ behalf could prevent the necessity for them to take their places where other offenders had stood before them, in the public court, and run the risk of a sentence which, to old women, born and bred as they had been, was all but synonymous with death. Tam Drysdale was at his wits’ end, and with many another kindly Glasgow man, full of Glasgow spirit, was willing to spare neither time, trouble, nor expense to help his townswomen in the strait into which their ignorance and rashness had brought them. The best counsel would be got, every available witness procured, and every extenuating circumstance receive a full hearing, as if the old Virginian Mackinnon were still making Glasgow ‘trim’le’ at the wag of his finger.

Tam made no objection to Claribel’s remaining in town, and going often to St. Mungo’s Square. He was proud to think that one of his daughters had shown such presence of mind, and been able to prove her loyalty to ladies in adversity. If it was any comfort to them for Clary to call on them, to do what she could to cheer and counsel them, they were heartily welcome to the comfort, so far as he and mother were concerned. Clary was only a girl, but the Miss Mackinnons might listen to less sensible encouragement and advice, though he said it who, perhaps, should not say it.

For any delicate reason why Claribel ought not to be conspicuously mixed up with the Mackinnons and their affairs, auld Tam could dismiss it without another consideration. He was entirely of opinion that this calamity to the whole Mackinnon family would knock on the head the wildest pretensions of the ‘offisher lad’ to Clary’s favour. He could never be so base--Tam had almost said--even if she would listen to him, as to propose to connect himself with the Drysdales, after the fellow’s aunts had rubbed shoulders with the hulks, and after what he--Tam Drysdale--was striving to do to avert the catastrophe. The thing was clean out of the question.

Stout-hearted as Miss Janet was, the trial hanging over her, with the restlessness of Miss Mackinnon, the lamentations of Miss Bethia, the stern remonstrances and injunctions of the lawyers, broke her down, comparatively. While she still stuck to the point that she and her sisters had meant no ill and were morally entitled to pursue the course they had adopted, she ceased to indulge in hectoring. Nay, on the great day when she had to face judge, jury, and crowded court, she was brought to the extreme length of not speaking till she was spoken to. And when Miss Janet was tamed, all were tamed, though Miss Mackinnon struggled painfully with her infirmity, and Miss Bethia looked well-nigh distracted.

Claribel Drysdale was present, but she did not sit near the old ladies. That place was for their agitated, handsome nephew from the Barracks. But it was she who had suggested to him to take it, and it was she who had induced Lady Semple to come with Dick and express her sympathy with her son’s friend. Moreover, Claribel admitted that she was in the Court at once to maintain the spirits of her singular charge, and to do what she could to keep them in order.

The judges were in their seats. The jury were sworn in. The Miss Mackinnons had surrendered to their friends’ bail, and pled guilty; the case was argued in earnest on both sides. It was no mere form or piece of mockery for as simple and ridiculous a transgression as ever the law laid hold of. On the one hand were ranged the insubordination of the proceeding, the aggravation of its committal by persons of birth, education, and mature years, its evil as a precedent. On the other hand were marshalled the absence of criminal intent on the part of the offenders, their stupid but honest ignorance of the law, their frank and full admission of what they had done the moment the question was put to them, with the crowning extenuation that they had not devised wrong to any human being by their lawless act; they had merely agreed among themselves to divide, as they judged, more fairly the money which had come to them by right. The law might say that this was a lame defence, but what right-minded man could refuse to admit its cogency?

All unseemly demonstrations of curiosity and amusement were put down while the verdict was in suspense. As a matter of fact there could only be one--that of guilty--to which indeed the Miss Mackinnons had pled. The question was, what would be the relative mildness or severity of the sentence the judge must deliver? The trespass against authority had been as audacious as trespass could be; but in consideration of the freedom from malice, and the sex and age of the trespassers, justice was tempered with mercy.

One month’s imprisonment, without hard labour, in Glasgow Gaol, was awarded to the three Miss Mackinnons.

‘My lord---- ’ said Miss Janet, recovering from her dumbness and stumbling to her feet. But she was denied a last protest. She and her sisters were surrounded and hurried out of Court.