Chapter XVI: My Father's Love Story (6)

"So I was thinkin'!" he answered.

"I had it in my mind at the time he was speakin'," began Matthew, and then hesitated.

"Aye, what was in your mind?"

"I was thinkin' on the days when I courted Jean!"

"Aye, man!"

There was another long silence.

It was Draws who broke it this time, and he said, "I--I was thinkin' too, Mathy! Aye, man, I was thinkin'!"

"Aboot Marget?" queried Matthew Carment.

"_Na, no aboot Marget!_"

They were silent again. The ruling elder settled to another green sprig of hedge-thorn. It seemed palatable. He got on well with it.

"Man," he said at last, "do ye ken, Mathy--when he turned on us like yon, I was kind o' prood o' him. My heart burned within me. It was maybe no verra like a minister o' the Kirk. But, oh man, it was awesome human!"

"Then I judge we'll say nae mair aboot it!" said Matthew Carment, turning towards the farm where the lamb sale was by this time well under weigh. "Hoo mony are ye thinkin' o' biddin' for the day, Drows?"

*THE SUIT OF BOTTLE GREEN*

At the Manse of Dullarg things did not go over well. Dr. Stuart, being by nature a quick, passionate, and imperious Celt, had first of all ordered his daughter to promise never again to hold any communication with the young Cameronian minister of Cairn Edward. It was thus that he himself had been taught to understand family discipline. He was the head of the clan, as his father had been before him. He claimed to be Providence to all within his gates. His hand of correction was not withheld from his boys, Frank and Sandy, until the day they ran away from home to escape him. He could not well adopt this plan to the present case, but when Elspeth refused point blank to give any promise, her father promptly convoyed his daughter to her own room and locked her up there. She would stay where she was till she changed her mind. Her aunt would take up her meals, and he himself would undertake to inform her as to her duties and responsibilities at suitable intervals. There was not the least doubt in the mind of Dr. Stuart as to the result of such a course of treatment. Had he not willed it? That was surely enough.

But his sister was not so sure, though she did not dare to say so to the Doctor more than once.

"She is a very headstrong girl, Murdo," she said, tremulously, as she gathered Elspeth's scanty breakfast on a tray next morning, "it might drive her to some rash act!"

"Nonsense," retorted her brother, sharply, "did not our father do exactly the same to you, to keep you from marrying young Campbell of Luib?"

Mary Stuart's wintry-apple face twitched and flushed.

"Yes--yes," she fluttered, with a quaver in her voice, as if deprecating further allusion to herself, "but Elspeth is not like me, Murdo. She has more of your spirit."

"Let me hear no more of the matter," said her brother, turning away, "_I_ wish it, and besides, I have my sermon to write."

But when the maiden aunt knocked at the door and entered with Elspeth's breakfast, she was astonished to find the girl sitting by the window dressed exactly as she had been on the previous evening. Her face was very pale, but her lips were compressed and her eyes dry.

"Elspeth," she said uncertainly, her woman's intuition in a moment detecting that which a man might not have discovered at all, "you have not had off your clothes all night. You have never been to bed!"

"No, Aunt Mary!"

"But what will the Doctor say--think of your father----"

"I do not care what he will say. Let him come and compel me if he can. He can thrash me as he does Frank."

"But--oh, Elspeth--Elspeth, dear," the old lady trembled so much that she just managed to lay the tray down on the untouched bed opposite the window, "what will God say?"

"'Like as a father pitieth his children,' isn't that what it says?" The words came out of the depths of the bitterness of that young heart, "well, if that be true, God will say nothing; for if He is like my father, He will not care!"

The old lady sat down on an old rocking-chair which Elspeth liked to keep in the window to sit in and read, half because it had been her mother's, and half (for Elspeth was not usually a sentimental young woman) because it was comfortable.

She put her hands to her face and sobbed into them. Then for the first time Elspeth looked at her. Hitherto she had been staring straight out at the window. So she had seen the day pass and the night come. So she had seen and not seen, heard and not heard the shadow of night sweep across the broad river, the stars come out, the cue owls mew as they flashed past silent as insects on the wing, and last of all, the rooks clamour upwards from the tall trees at break of day.

Now, however, she watched her aunt weeping with that curious sense of detachment which comes to the young along with a first great sorrow.

"Why should _she_ weep?" Elspeth was asking herself, "she had nothing to cry for. There can be no sorrow in the world like my sorrow and shame--and _his_, that is, if he really cares. Perhaps he does not care. They say in books that men often pretend. But no--he at least never could do that. He is too true, too simple, too direct--and he loves me!"

So she watched her aunt rock to and fro and sob without any pity in her heart, but only with a growing wonderment--much as a condemned man might look at a companion who was complaining of toothache. The long vigil of the night had made the girl's heart numb and dead within her. At twenty sorrow and joy alike arrive in superlatives.

Then quite suddenly a spasm of pity of a curious sort came to Elspeth Stuart. After all, it was worth while to love. _He_ was suffering too. Aunt Mary had no one to love her--to suffer with her. Poor Aunt Mary! So she went quickly across and laid her hand on the thin shoulder. It felt angular even through the dress. The sobs shook it.

"Do not cry, auntie," she said, softly and kindly. "I am sorry I vexed you. I did not know."

The old lady looked up at her niece. Elspeth started at the sight of a tear stealing down a wrinkle. Tears on young faces are in place. They can be kissed away, but this seemed wrong somehow.

She patted the thin cheek which had already begun to take on the dry satiny feel of age, which is so different from the roseleaf bloom of youth.

"Then you will obey your father?"

The words came tremulously. The pale lips "wickered." The tear had trickled thus far now, but Aunt Mary did not know it. It is only youth that tastes its own tears. And generally rather likes the flavour.

Elspeth did not stop petting her aunt. She stroked the soft hair, thinning now and silvering. Then she smiled a little.

"No," she said, "I will _not_ obey my father, Aunt Mary. I am no child to be put in the corner. I am a woman, and know what I want."

Yet it was only during the past night watches that she had known it for certain. But yesterday her desire to see Allan Syme had been no more than a little ache deep down in her heart. Now it had become all her life. So fertile a soil wherein to grow love is injudicious opposition.

"But at any rate you will take your breakfast?"

"To please you I will try, aunt!"

Aunt Mary plucked up heart at once. This was better. She had made a beginning. The rest would follow.

When she went downstairs her brother came out of his study to get the key of his daughter's room. She told him how that Elspeth had never gone to bed, and had barely picked at her breakfast.

Dr. Stuart made no remark. He turned and went into his study again to work at his sermon. He too thought that all went well. He held that belief which causes so much misery in the world, that woman's will must always bend before man's.

So it does--provided the man is the right man.

* * * * *

On the third day of her confinement Elspeth Stuart wrote a letter. It began without ceremony, and ended without signature:

"You told me that you loved me. Tell it me again--on paper. I am very unhappy. My father keeps me locked up to make me promise never to speak to you or write to you. I do not mind this, except that I cannot go to Lowe's Seat. But I must be assured that you continue to love me. I know you do, but all the same I want to be told it. If you address, 'Care of the Widow Barr, at the Village of Crosspatrick,' Frank will bring it safely."

It was a simple epistle, without lofty aspirations or wise words. But it was a loving letter, and admirably adapted to prove satisfactory to its recipient. And had Allan Syme known what was on its way to him he would have lifted up his heart. He was completing his pastoral visitation, and with a sort of fixed despair awaiting the next meeting of Session. For neither his ruling elder nor yet that slow-spoken veteran, Matthew Carment, had passed a word more to him concerning the vision they had seen upon the fringes of the Airds woods, on the day that had proved such a day of doom to his sweetheart and himself.

* * * * *

Frank Stuart, keenly sympathetic with Elspeth's sufferings though notably contemptuous of their cause, willingly performed what was required of him. Being as yet untouched by love, he thought Elspeth extremely silly. He had no interest ministers. If Elspeth had fallen in love with a soldier now--he meant to be a sailor himself, but a soldier was at least somebody in the scheme of things. Of course, his father was a minister--but then people must have fathers. This was different. However, it was not his business: girls were all silly.

And on this broad principle Master Frank took his stand. With equal breadth of view he conveyed the letter to the "Weedow's" at Crosspatrick, en route for the Cameronian manse at Cairn Edward.

But before he set out, he must have his grumble. He was beneath the window of his sister's room at the time. His father had been under observation all the morning, and was now safely off on his visitations. By arrangement with Aunt Mary, Elspeth was allowed the run of the whole upper story of the Dullarg Manse during Dr. Stuart's daily absences. So, on parole, she came to this little window in the gable end, where Frank and she could commune without fear of foreign observation.

"What for could ye no have promised my father onything--and then no done it!"

The suggestion betrayed Master Frank's own plan of campaign, and renders more excusable the Doctor's frequent appeal to the argument of the hazel.

* * * * *

After this there ensued for Elspeth a long and weary time. Every day Frank, detaching himself from the untrustworthy Sandy, slid off down the waterside to Crosspatrick. Every day he returned empty-handed and contemptuous.

This it was to love a minister, and one who was not even a "regular." Why had not Elspeth, if she must fall in love, chosen a sailor?

In those days there was no regular postal delivery on the remoter country districts. The mails came in an amateurish sort of way by coach to Cairn Edward, and thereafter distributed themselves, as it were, automatically. When the postage was paid, the authorities had no more care in the matter. Yet there was a kind of system in the thing, too.

It was understood that any one being in Cairn Edward on business should "give a look in" at the Post Office, and if there were any letters for his neighbourhood, and he happened to have in his pocket the necessary spare "siller" at the moment, he would pay the postage and bring them to the "Weedow Barr's" shop in the village of Crosspatrick.

It may be observed that there were elements of uncertainty inseparable from such an arrangement. And these told hard on our poor prisoner of fate during these great endless midsummer days. She pined and grew pale, like a woodland bird shut suddenly in a close cage at that season when mate begins to call to mate through all the copses of birch and alder.

"He does not love me--oh, he cannot love me!" she moaned. But again, as she thought of the stile on the way to Lowe's Seat--"But he does love me!" she said.

Then, sudden as a falling star, Fear fell on that green summer world. There came a weird sough through all the valley, a crying of folk to each other across level holms, shrill answerings of herd to herd on the utmost hills. The scourge of God had come again! The Cholera--the Cholera! Dread word, which we in these times have almost forgot the thrill of in our flesh. Mysteriously and inevitably the curse swept on. It was at Leith at Glasgow--at Dumfries--at Cairn Edward. It was coming! coming! coming! Nearer, nearer ever nearer!

And men at the long scythe, sweeping the lush meadow hay aside with that most prideful of all rustic gestures, fell suddenly chill and shuddered to their marrows. The sweat of endeavour dried on them, and left them chill, as if the night wind had stricken them. Women with child swarfed with fear at their own door cheeks, and there was a crying within long ere the posset-cup could be made ready. Neighbour looked with sudden suspicion at neighbour, and men at friendly talk upon the leas manoeuvred to get to windward of each other.

Death was coming--had come! And in his study, grim and unmoved, Dr. Murdo Stuart sat preparing his Sabbath's sermon on the text, "Therefore ... because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!"

But in the shut chamber above Elspeth waited and watched, the hope that is deferred making her young heart sicker and ever sicker. Still she had not heard. No answering word had reached her, and it was now the second week. He did not love her--he could not.

_But still!_

They had told her nothing, and, indeed, during that first time of fear and uncertainty, they knew nothing for certain, away up by themselves in the wide wild moor parish of Dullarg. There were no market days in Cairn Edward any more. So much the farmers knew. The men of the landward parishes set guards with loaded guns upon every outgoing road. There was no local authority in those days, and men in such cases had to look to themselves. The infected place, be it city, town, or village, farm-steading or cottage, was completely and bitterly isolated. None might come out or go in. Provisions, indeed, were left in a convenient spot; but secretly and by night. And the bearer shot away again, bent half to the ground with eagerness, fear, and speed, a cloth to his mouth, for the very wind that passed over him was Death. It was not so much a disease as a certain Fate. Whoso was smitten was taken. In fact, to all that rustic world it was the Visitation of Very God.

In the main street of Cairn Edward grass grew; yet the place was not unpopulous. With the revival of trade and industry during the later years of the great war a cotton mill had been erected in a side street. The houses of the work folk were strung out from it. Then parallel with this there was a more ancient main street of low beetle-browed houses, many of them entering by a step down off the uneven causeway. At the upper end, near the Cross, were some better-class houses, some of them of two stories, a change-house or two, and down on the damp marshy land towards the loch, the cluster of huts which had formed the original nucleus of the village--now fallen into disrepute and disrepair, and nominated, from the nationality of many of its inhabitants, "Little Dublin."

In ten days a third of the inhabitants of this suburb had died. There was but one minister within the strait bounds of the straggling village. The parish church and manse lay two miles away out on a braeface overlooking yellowing widths of corn-land. And the minister thereof abode in his breaches, every day giving God thank that he was not shut up within those distant white streets, from which, day by day, the housewifely reek rose in fewer and fewer columns.

But Allan Syme was within, and could not pause to marry or to give in marriage, to preach or to pray, so full of his Master's business was he. For he must nurse and succour by day and bury by night, week day and Holy Day. He it was who upheld the dying head. He swathed the corpse while it was yet warm. He tolled the death-bell in the steeple. He harnessed the horse to the rude farm-cart. Sometimes all alone he dug the grave in the soft marshy flow, and laid the dead in the brown peat-mould. For it was no time to stand upon trifles this second time that the Scourge of God had come to Cairn Edward.

To the outer limit of the cordon of watchers came the carriers and the farmers, the country lairds' servants, and less frequently the bien well-stomached meal millers. In silence they deposited their goods, for the most part with no niggard hand. In silence they took the fumigated pound notes, smelling of sulphur, or the silver coin of the realm, with the crumbles of quick-lime still sticking to the milling of the edges.

So across a kind of neutral zone, fearful country and infected town stood glowering at each other like embattled enemies, musket laid ready in the crook of elbow.

And when one mad with the Fear tried to cross, he was hunted like a wild beast, or shot at like a rabbit running for its burrow. And the townsmen did in like manner. For ill as it might fare with them, there was deadlier yet to fear. In Cairn Edward they had the White Cholera, as it was called. The Black was at Dumfries--so, at least, the tale ran.

And as he went about his work, Allan Syme called upon his God, and thought of Elspeth. But her letter never reached him, and he knew nothing of her vigils. The day before he might have known the Fear fell, and the door was shut.

* * * * *

It was on Saturday afternoon that the tidings came to Elspeth Stuart, lonely watcher and loving heart. It was her brother Sandy who brought them. He knew nothing of Elspeth's matters, being young and by nature unworthy of trust. He had been down to Crosspatrick on some errand, and now, having arrived back within hailing distance, he was retailing his experiences to his brother Frank.

"I got yon letter back frae the Weedow--an', as I wasna gangin' hame, I gied it to my faither."

"_What letter?_"

Elspeth could hear the sudden angry alarm in Frank's voice; but she herself had no premonition of danger.

"The letter ye took doon to Crosspatrick for Elspeth ten days syne. Ye'll catch it, my man!"

The girl's heart sank, and then leapt again within her.

Her father had her letter--he would read it. It was plainly addressed in her handwriting to Allan Syme. What should she do?

But wait--there was something else. With a quick back-spang came the countering joy.

"But then he has never got my letter. He knows nothing of my unhappiness. He has not forgotten me. He loves me still. What care I for aught else but that?"

There came up from the courtyard a sound of blows, and then Sandy's wail.

"I'll tell my faither on ye, that I will. How was I to ken aboot Elspeth's letter? And they say the minister-man it was wrote to is dead, at ony rate!"

Elspeth heard unbelievingly. Dead--Allan dead! And she not know. Absurd! It was only one of Sandy's lies to irritate his brother because he had been thrashed. She knew Sandy. Nevertheless she threw up the window. Sandy was again at his parable.

"They buried twenty-five yesterday in the moss. The minister was there wi' the last coffin, and fell senseless across it. He never spoke again. He is to be buried the morn if they can get the coffin made!"

Then, so soon as she was convinced that Sandy was not inventing, and that he had only repeated the gossip of the village, a kind of cold calmness took hold of Elspeth. She called Frank in to her, and when he came, lo! his face was far whiter than hers.

She made him tell her all they had kept from her--of the dread plague that had fallen so sudden and swift upon the townlet to which Allan had carried her heart. Then she thought awhile fiercely, not wavering in her purpose, but only trying this way and that, like one who thrusts with his staff for the safest passage over a dangerous bog. Frank watched her keenly, but could make nothing of her intent. At last she spoke:

"Go and get me the key of your box."

"What do ye want with the key of my box?" queried her brother, astonished.

"Never heed that," said Elspeth, clipping her words imperiously, as, in seasons of stress, she had a way of doing; "do as I bid you!"

And being accustomed to such obediences, and albeit sorry for her, Frank went out, only remarking ominously that he would have a job, for that Aunt Mary carried it on her bunch.

He came back in exactly ten minutes, and threw the key on the floor.

"Easier than I expected," he said, triumphantly; "the old buzzer was asleep!"

"Give me the key," said Elspeth, still in a brown study by the window.

But this was too much for Frank.

"Pick it up for yourself, Els," he said, "and mind you are to swear you found it on the floor!"

Frank knew very well that if one is going to lie back and forth (as he intended to do when questioned), it is well to be prepared with occasional little scraps of truth. They cheer one up so.

Elspeth took the key, and hid it in her pocket.

"Now you can go," she said, and sat down on the bed, staring out at the broad river quietly slipping by.

"Well, you might at least have said 'thank you----'" began Frank. But catching the expression of her face, he suddenly desisted, and went out without another word.

* * * * *

No, Allan Syme was not dead. But he staggered home that night certainly more dead than alive. All day long he had moved in an atmosphere of the most appalling pestilence. The reek of mortality seemed to solidify in his nostrils, and his heart for the first time fainted within him.

He knew that there would be no welcome for him in the dark and lonely manse; no meal, no comfort, no living voice; not so much as a dog to lick his hand. His housekeeper, a mere hireling, had fled at the first alarm.

It was dusk as he thrust the key into the latch, as he did so staggering against the lintel from sheer weariness. He stood a little while in the passage, shuddering with the oncomings of mortal sickness. Then with flint, steel, and laborious tinder box he coaxed a light for the solitary taper on the hall table. This done, he turned aside into the little sitting-room on the right hand, where he kept his divinity books.

A slight figure came forward to meet him, with upturned face and clasped petitionary hands. The action was a girl's, but the dress and figure were those of a boy. Upon the threshold the minister stopped dead. He thought that this was the first symptom of delirium--he had seen it in so many, and had watched for it in himself.

But the lad still came forward, and laid a hand on his arm. He wore a suit of bottle green with silver buttons, a world too wide for his slim form. Knee breeches and buckled shoes completed his attire. Allan Syme stared wide-eyed, uncomprehending, his hand pressed to his aching brow in the effort to see truly.

"You are not dead. Thank God!" said the boy, in a voice that took him by the throat.

"Who--who are you?" The words came dry and gasping from the minister's parched lips.

"_I am Elspeth--do you not know me?_"

"Elspeth--Elspeth--why did you come here--and thus?"

"They told me you were dead--and my father locked me up! And--what chance had a girl to pass the guards? They fired at me--see!"

And lifting a wet curl from her brow, she showed a wound.

"Elspeth--Elspeth--what is all this? What have they done to you?"

"Nothing--nothing--it is but a scratch. The man almost missed me altogether."

"Beloved, what have you done with your hair?"

"I cut it off, that I might the better deceive them!"

"Elspeth--you must go back! This is no place for you!"

"I will not go back home. I will die first!"

"But, Elspeth, think if any one saw you--what would they say?"

"That I came to help you--to nurse you! I do not care what they would say."

"My dear--my dear, you cannot bide here. I would to God you could; but you cannot. I must think how to get you away. I must think--I must think!"

The minister, sick unto death, stood with his hand still pressed to his brow. At sight of him, and because, after all she had gone through for him, he had given her neither welcome nor kiss, a swift spasm of anger flashed up into Elspeth's eyes.

"You are ashamed of me, Allan Syme--let me go. I will never see you more. You do not love me! I will not trouble you. Open the door!"

"God knows I love you better than my soul!" said Allan; "but let me think. Father in heaven--I cannot think! My brain runs round."

He gave a slight lurch like a felled ox, and swayed forward.

Instantly, as a lamp that the wind blows out, all the anger went out of Elspeth Stuart's eyes. She caught Allan in her strong young arms and laid him on the worn couch, displacing with a sweep of her hand a whole score of volumes as she laid him down.

He lay a moment stiff and still. Then a spasm of pain contorted his features. He opened his eyes, and looked into his sweetheart's eyes. Then, with the swift astonishing clearness of the mortally stricken, he saw what must be done.

"Allan, Allan, what is the matter--what shall I do for you?" she mourned over him.

"Do this," answered the minister. "Take the cloak out of that cupboard there. I have never worn it. Go straight to John Allanson. He is my Ruling Elder. He bides at his daughter's house close by the cotton mill. Tell him all, and bid him come to me."

"The dreadful man who was so angry--that day at Lowe's Seat!" she objected, not fearing for herself, but for him.

"He is not a dreadful man. Do as I bid you, childie; I am sick, but I judge not unto death!"

"But you may die before I return!"

"Do as I bid you, Elspeth," said the minister, waving her away; "not a hundred choleras can deprive me of one minute God has appointed mine!"

She bent over quickly, and kissed him on lips and brow.

"There--and there! Now if you die, I will die too. Remember that! And I do not care now. I will go!"

Saying this, she rushed from the room.

* * * * *

It was a strange visitor who came to the house of the Elder's daughter that evening, as the gloaming fell darker, her feet making no sound on the deserted and grass-grown streets.

"A young laddie wants to see you, father," said John Allanson's married daughter, with whom he had been lodging for a night when the plague came, in a single hour putting a great gulf between town and country. Then, finding his minister alone, he was not the man to leave him to fight the battle single-handed.

Shamefacedly Elspeth crept in. The old man and his daughter were by themselves, the husband not yet home from the joiner's shop, where the hammers went _tap-tap_ at the plain deal coffins all day and all night.

"The minister is dying--come and help him or he will die!" she cried, as they sat looking curiously at her in the clear, leaping red of the firelight.

"Who are you, laddie?" said the elder.

"I am no laddie," said Elspeth, redder than the peat ashes. "Oh, I am shamed--I am shamed! But I could not help it. And I am not sorry! They told me he was dead. I am Elspeth Stuart, of the Dullarg Manse."

The elder sat gazing at her, open-mouthed, leaning forward, his hands on his knees. But his daughter, with the quick sympathy of woman, held out her arms.

"My puir lassie!" she said. She had once lost a bairn, her only one.

And Elspeth wept on her bosom.

The daughter waved her father to the door with one hand.

"She will tell me easier!" she said.

And straightway the old man went out into the dark.

* * * * *

It did not take long to tell, with Allan Syme lying so near to the gates of death. Almost in less time than it needs to write it, Elspeth was arrayed, so far at least as outer seeming went, in the garments of her sex. A basket was filled with the necessities which were kept ready for such an emergency in every house.

"Come, father," the loving wife cried at the door; "I will tell you as we gang!"

And before she had won third way through her story, John Allanson had taken Elspeth's hand in his.

"My bairn! my bairn!" he said.

In this manner Elspeth came the second time to the Manse of Allan Syme.

* * * * *

But the third time was as the mistress thereof. For she and the elder's daughter nursed Allan Syme through into safety. For the very day that Allan was stricken, a great rain fell and a great wind blew. The birds came back to the gardens of Cairn Edward, and the plague lifted. In time, too, Dr. Stuart submitted with severe grace to that which he could not help.

"Indeed, it was all my fault, father," Elspeth said; "I made Allan come back by the stile. I had made up my mind that he should. I knew he would kiss me there!"

"Then I can only hope," answered her father, severely, lifting up his gold-knobbed cane and shaking it at her to emphasise his point, "that by this time your husband has learned the secret of making you obey him. It is more than ever your father did!"

*A SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM*

(_Being some Hitherto Unobserved Phenomena of Feminine Psychology from the notebook of A. McQuhirr, M.D. Edin._)

These papers of mine have been getting out of hand of late. I am informed from various quarters that they are becoming so exceedingly popular and discursive in their character, that they are enough to ruin the reputation of any professing man of science. I will therefore be severe with myself (and, incidentally, with my readers), and occupy one or two papers with a consideration of some of the minor characteristics common to the female sex. Indeed, upon a future occasion I may even devote an entire work to this subject.

I have mentioned before that my wife's younger sister was called the "Hempie,"[#] which, being interpreted, signifies a wild girl. This had certainly been her character at one time; and though she deserves the name less now than of yore, all her actions are still marked by conspicuous decision and independence.

[#] Some of the earlier and less reputable of the "Hempie's" adventures may be found in a certain unscientific work entitled "Lad's Love."

For instance, the year after Nance and I were married, the Hempie abruptly claimed her share of her mother's money, and departed to Edinburgh "to get learning."

Now it was a common thing enough in our part of the country for boys to go out on such a quest. It was unheard of in a girl. And the parish would have been shocked if the emigrant had been any other than the Hempie. But Miss Elizabeth Chrystie, daughter of Peter of Nether Neuk, was a young woman not accustomed to be bound by ordinary rules. In person she had grown up handsome rather than pretty, and was so athletic that she stood in small need of the ordinary courtesies which girls love--hands over stiles, and so forth. Eyes and hair of glossy jet, the latter crisping naturally close to her head, a healthy colour in her cheeks, an ironic curl to her firm fine lips,--that is how our Hempie came back to us.

Of her career in the metropolis, of the boarding-school dames, strait-laced and awful, whom she scandalised, the shut ways of learning which somehow were opened before her, I have no room here to tell. It is sufficient to say that out of all this the Hempie came home to Nether Neuk, and at once established herself as the wonder of the neighbourhood.

Nance was gone, Grace going; Clemmy Kilpatrick, the unobtrusive little woman whom Peter Chrystie had married as a kind of foot-warmer, had been laid aside for six weeks with an "income" on her knee. The maidservants naturally took advantage. Every individual pot and pan in the house cumbered the back kitchen unwashed and begrimed. In the byres you did not walk--you waded. The ploughmen hung about the house half the morning, gossiping with the half-idle maidens. The very herds on the hill eluded Peter's feeble judicature, and lay asleep behind dyke-backs, while the week-weaned lambs, with many tail-wagglings, rejoined their mothers on the pastures far below.

Upon this confusion enter the New Hempie. And with her gown pinned up and a white apron on that met behind her shapely figure, she set to and helped the servants.

In six days she had the farm town of Nether Neuk in such a state of perfection as it had not known since my own Nance left it. For Grace, though a good girl enough, cared not a jot for house work. Her sphere was the dairy and cheese-room, where in an atmosphere of simmering curds and bandaged cheddars she reigned supreme.

So much to indicate to those who are not acquainted with Miss Elizabeth Chrystie the kind of girl she was.

For the rest, she despised love and held wooers in contempt, as much as she had done in the old days when she ascended the roofs of the pigstyes, and climbed into the beech-tree tops in the courtyard of Nether Neuk, rather than meet me face to face as I went to pay my court to her eldest sister.

"Love----" she said, scornfully, when I questioned her on the subject the first time she came to see us at Cairn Edward, "_love_--have Nance and you no got ower sic nonsense yet? _Love_----" (still more scornfully); "as if I hadna seen as much of that as will serve me for my lifetime, wi' twa sisters like Grace and Nance there!"

It did not take us much by surprise, therefore, when one morning, while we sat at breakfast, the Hempie dropped in with the announcement that she could not stand her father any longer, and that she had engaged herself to be governess in the house of a certain Major Randolph Fergus of Craignesslin.

To a young lady so determined there was no more to be said. Besides which, the Hempie was of full age, perfectly independent as far as money went, and more than independent in character.

"Now," she said, "I have just fifteen minutes to catch my train: how am I to get my bag up to the station?"

"If you wait," I said, "the gig will be round at the door in seven minutes. I have a case, or I should go up with you myself."

"Who is driving the gig?"

"Tad Anderson," said I.

The Hempie picked up a pair of tan gloves and straightened her tall lithe figure.

"Good-morning," she said; "give me a lift with my box and wraps to the door. I would not trust Tad Anderson to get to the station in time if he had seven hours to do it in!"

At the door a boy was passing with a grocer's barrow. The Hempie swung her box upon it with a deft strong movement.

"Take that to the station, boy," she commanded, "and tell Muckle Aleck that Elizabeth Chrystie of the Nether Neuk will be up in ten minutes."

"But--but," stammered the boy, astonished, "I hae thae parcels to deliver."

"Then deliver them on your road down!" said the Hempie. And her right hand touched the boy's left for an instant.

"A' richt, mem!" he nodded, and was off.

"Don't trouble, Alec. Nance, bide where you are--I have three calls to make on the way up. Good-morning!"

And the Hempie was off. We watched her through the little oriel window, Nance nestling against my coat sleeve pleasantly, and, in the shadow of the red stuff curtain, even surreptitiously kissing my shoulder--a thing I had often warned her against doing in public. So I reproved her.

"Nance, mind what you are about, for heaven's sake! Suppose anyone were to see you. It is enough to ruin my professional reputation to have you do that on a market day in your own front window."

"Well, please may I hold your hand?" (Then, piteously, and, if I might call it so, "Nancefully") "You know I shall not see you all day."

"The Hempie would not do a thing like that!" I answer, severely.

Nance watches the supple swing of her sister's figure, from the stout-soled practical boots to the small erect head, with its short black curls and smart brown felt hat with the silver buckle at the side.

"No," she said, "she wouldn't." Then, after a sigh, she added, "Poor Hempie!"

That was the last we saw of our sister for more than a year. Elizabeth Chrystie did not come back even for Grace's marriage to the laird of Butterhole.

"I am of more use where I am," she wrote. "Tell Grace I am sending her an alarm clock!"

Whether this was sarcasm on the Hempie's part, I am not in a position to say. Grace had always been the sleepy-head of the family. If, however, it was meant ironically, the sarcasm was wasted, for Grace was delighted with the present.

"It is so useful, you know," the Mistress of Butterhole told Nance. "I set it every morning for four o'clock. It is so nice to turn over and know that you do not need to get up till eight!"

* * * * *

As suddenly as she had gone away, so suddenly the Hempie returned, giving reasons to no man. I am obliged to say that even I would never have known the true story of the adventures which follows had I not shamefully played the eavesdropper.

It happened this way.

My study, where I try upon occasion to do a little original work and keep myself from dropping into the rut of the pill-and-potion practitioner so common in rural districts, is next the little room where Nance sits reading, or sewing at the garmentry, white and mysterious, which some women seem never to be able to let out of their reach. Here I have a small wall-press, in which I keep my microscopes and preparations. It is divided by a single board from a similar one belonging to Nance on the other side. When both doors are open you can hear as well in one room as in the other. I often converse with Nance without rising, chiefly as to how long it will be till dinner-time, together with similar important and soul-elevating subjects. But it never seems to strike her that I can hear as easily what is said in her room when I am not expected to hear.

Now, if you are an observant man, you have noticed, I daresay, that so soon as women are alone together, they begin to talk quite differently from what they have done when they had reason to know of your masculine presence. Yes, it is true--especially true of your nearest and dearest. Men do something of the same kind when women go out after dinner. But quite otherwise. A man becomes at once broader and louder, more unrestrained in quotation, allusion, illustration, more direct in application. His vocabulary expands. In anecdote he is more abounding and in voice altogether more natural. But with women it is not so. They do not look blankly at the tablecloth or toy with the stem of a wineglass, as men do when the other sex vanishes. They glance at each other. A gentle smile glimmers from face to face, in which is a world of irony and comprehension. It says, "They are gone--the poor creatures. We can't quite do without them; but oh, are they not funny things?" Then they exchange sighs equally gentle. If you listen closely you can hear a little subdued rustle. That is the chairs being moved gently forward nearer each other--not dragged, mark you, as a man would do. A man has no proper respect for a carpet.

"Well, dear----?"

"Well?"

And then they begin really to talk. They have only "conversed" so far. How do I know all this? Well, that's telling. As I say, I eavesdropped part of it--in the interests of science. But the facts are true, in every case.

The Hempie came in one Saturday morning. It was in August, and a glorious day. There was nothing pressing. I had been out early at the only case which needed to be seen to till I went on my afternoon round.

Nance was upstairs giving a wholly supererogatory attention to a certain young gentleman who had already one statutory slave to anticipate his wants. He was getting ready to be carried into the garden. I could detect signs from the basement that cook also was tending nursery-wards. The shrine would have its full complement of devout worshippers shortly.

It was thus that I came to be the first to welcome the Hempie upon her return. She opened the glass door and walked in without ceremony, putting her umbrella in the rack and hanging her hat on a peg like a man, not bringing them in to cumber a bedroom as a woman does. These minor differences of habit in the sexes have never been properly collated and worked out. As I said before, I think I must write a book on the subject.

At any rate, the Hempie's action was the exception which proved the rule.

Then she strolled nonchalantly into my study and flung herself into a chair without shaking hands. I leaped to my feet.

"Hempie," I cried, "I am dreadfully glad to see you." And I stooped to kiss her.

To my utter astonishment she took the salute as a matter of course, a thing she had never done before. Yes, somehow the Hempie was startlingly different.

"What," she said, "are you as glad as all that? What a loving brother!"

But I think she was pleased all the same.

"Where's Nance?" The question was shot out rather than asked.

I indicated the upper regions of the house with my thumb, and inclined my ear to direct her attention.

A high voice of wonderful tone and compass (if a little thin) was lifted up in a decimating howl. Ensued a gentle confused murmur: "_Didums, then? Was it, then?_" together with various lucid observations of that kind.

A change passed over the Hempie's face.

"Now we are in for it," I thought. "She will leave the house and never enter it again. The Hempie hates babies. She has always been particularly clear on that point."

"_Why_ did you never tell me, Alec?"

"Because--because--we thought you would not care to hear. I understood you didn't like----"

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Boy."

There was a sudden uprising from the depths of the easy-chair, a rustle of skirts, the clang of a door, hasty footsteps on the stairs, a clamour of voices from which, after a kind of confused climax as the hope of the house blared his woes like a young bull of Bashan, there finally emerged the following remarkable sentiments:--

"Oh, the darling! Isn't he a _pet_? Give him to me. Was they bad to him? Then--well then! They shan't--no, indeed they shan't! Now, then! Didums, then!"

And _da capo_.

I could not believe my ears. The words were the words of Nance, but the voice was undoubtedly the voice of the Hempie. It was half an hour and more before they descended the stairs, the Hempie still carrying young "Bull of Bashan," now pacifically sucking his thumb and gazing serenely through and behind his nurse in the disconcerting way which is common to infants of the human species--and cats.

The Hempie passed out across the little strip of garden we had at the back. The sunlight checkered the grass, and the new nurse carried her charge as if she had never done anything else all her life. Every moment she would stop to coo at him. Then she would duck her head like a turtle-dove bowing to his mate; and finally, as if taken by some strange contortive disease, she would bend her neck suddenly and nuzzle her whole face into the child's, as a pet pony does into your hand--a hot, fatiguing, and wholly unscientific proceeding on an August day.

I called Nance back on pretext of matters domestic.

"What's the matter with the Hempie?" I said.

"Matter with the Hempie?" repeated Nance, trying vainly to look blank. "Why, what should be the matter with the Hempie?"

"Don't try that on with me, you little fraud. There _is_ something! What is it?"

"I have not the least idea."

"Have you kissed her?"

"No, she never looked at me--only at the baby, _of course_."

"Then go and kiss her."

Nance went off obediently, and the sisters walked a while together. Presently the baby took the red thumb out of his mouth, and through the orifice thus created issued a bellow. The nurse came running. Nance took him in her arms, replaced the thumb, and all was well. Then she handed him back to the Hempie and kissed her as she did so. The Hempie raised her head into position naturally, like one well accustomed to the operation.

Nance came slowly back and rejoined me. She was unusually thoughtful.

"Well?" I said.

She nodded gravely and shook her head.

"It _is_ true," she murmured, as if convinced against her will; "there is something. She is different."

"Nance," said I, triumphantly, for I was pleased with myself, "the Hempie is in love at last. You must find out all about it and tell me."

She looked at me scornfully.

"I will do no such thing----" she began.

"It is not curiosity--as you seem to think," I remarked with dignity. "It is entirely in the interests of science," I said.

"Rats!" cried Nance, rudely.

As I have had occasion to remark more than once before, she does not show that deference to her husband to which his sterling worth and many merits entitle him. Indeed, few wives do--if any.

"Well, I will find out for myself," I said, carelessly.

"_You!_"

Scorn, derision, challenge were never more briefly expressed.

"Yes, I."

"I'll wager you a new riding-whip out of my house money that you don't find out anything about it!"

"Done!" said I.

For I remembered about the little wall-press where I kept my microscope. Not that I am by nature an eavesdropper; but, after all, a scientific purpose--and a new riding-whip, make some difference.

I was busy mounting my slides when I heard them come in. Instantly I needed some Canada balsam out of the wall-press--in the interests of science. I heard Nance go to the door to listen "if baby was asleep." I have often represented to her that she does not require to do this, because the instant baby is awake he advertises the fact to the whole neighbourhood, as effectually as if he had been specially designed with a steam whistle attachment for the purpose. But I have never succeeded.

"You think you are a doctor, Alec," is the answer, "but you know nothing about babies! You know you don't!"

Which shows that I must have spent a considerable part of my medical curriculum in vain.

There ensued the soft muffled hush of chairs being pushed into the window. Then came the first _click-click, jiggity-click_ of a rocking-chair, which Nance had bought for me "when you are tired, dear"--and has used ever since herself. I did not regret this, for it left the deep-seated chintz-covered one free. They are useless things, anyway: a man cannot go to sleep on a rocking-chair, or strike a match under the seat, or stand on it to put up a picture--or, in fact, do any of the things for which chairs are really designed.

Now when a woman goes to sleep in a chair, she always wakes up cross. All that stuff in romances about kissing the beloved awake in the dear old rose-scented parlour, and about the lids rising sweetly from off loving and happy eyes, is, scientifically considered, pure nonsense. Believe me, if she greets you that way the lady has not been asleep at all, and was waiting for you to do it.

But when she, on the other hand, wakes with a start and opens her eyes so promptly that you step back quickly (having had experience); when she speaks words like these, "Alec, I have a great mind to give you a sound box on the ear--coming waking me up like that, when you know I didn't have more than an hour's good sleep last night!"--this is the genuine article. The lady was asleep that time. The other kind may be pretty enough to read about, but that is its only merit.

It was Nance who spoke first. I heard her drop the scissors and stoop to pick them up. I also gathered from the tone of her first words that she had a pin in her mouth. Yet she goes into a fit if baby tries to imitate her, and wonders where he can learn such habits. This also is incomprehensible.

"Have you left Craignesslin for good?" said Nance, using a foolish expression for which I have often reproved her.

"I am going back," said the Hempie. I am not so well acquainted with the _nuances_ of the Hempie's voice and habit as I am with those of her sister, but I should say that she was leaning back in her chair with her hands clasped behind her head, and staring contentedly out at the window.

"I thought perhaps the death of the old major would make a difference to you," said Nance. I knew by the mumbling sound that she was biting a thread.

"It does make a difference," said the Hempie, dreamily, "and it will make a greater difference before all be done!"

Nance was silent for a while. I knew she was hurt at her sister's lack of communicativeness. The rocking-chair was suddenly hitched sideways, and the stroking rose from fifty in the minute to about sixty or sixty-five, according, as it were, to the pressure on the boiler.

Still the Hempie did not speak a word.

The rocking-chair was doing a good seventy now--but it was a spurt, and could not last.

"Elizabeth," said Nance, suddenly, "I did not think you could be so mean. I never behaved like this to you."

"No?" said the Hempie, with serene interrogation, but did not move, so far as I could make out. The rocking-chair ceased. There was a pause, painful even to me in my little den. The strain on the other side of the wall must have been enormous.

When Nance spoke it was in a curiously altered voice. It sounded even pleading. I wish the Hempie would teach me her secret.

"Who is it?--tell me, Hempie," said Nance, softly.

I did not catch the answer, though obviously one was given. But the next moment I heard the unbalanced clatter of the abandoned rocker, and then Nance's voice saying: "No, it is impossible!"