“IT was just a very bonny ball,” said Mary. “No, I was not disappointed at all. I danced with young Mr. Campbell of the Haigh, and once with old Glendochart, who is a very well-mannered man, though he is not so young as once he was.”
“He was by far, and by far, the nicest there,” cried Kirsteen with enthusiasm.
“For them that like an auld joe,” said Mary demurely. Kirsteen had no thought of “joes” old or young, but she thought with pleasure that she had gained a friend.
“The Duke took me for his daughter—and oh! if there was such a person she would be a happy lass. Aunt Eelen, did you ever hear——”
Kirsteen cast a glance round and checked further question, for her father consuming a delicate Loch Fyne herring, with his attention concentrated on his plate, and Mary seated primly smiling over her scone, were not at all in sympathy with the tale she had been told last night. Miss Eelen, with the tray before her on which stood the teapot and teacups, peering into each to count the lumps of sugar she had placed there, did not appear much more congenial, though there were moments when the old lady showed a romantic side. No trace of the turban and feathers of last night was on her venerable head. She wore a muslin mutch, fine but not much different from those of the old wives in the cottages, with a broad black ribbon round it tied in a large bow on the top of her head; and her shoulders were enveloped in a warm tartan shawl pinned at the neck with a silver brooch. The fringes of the shawl had a way of getting entangled in the tray, and swept the teaspoons to the ground when she made an incautious movement; but nothing would induce Miss Eelen to resign the tea-making into younger hands.
“Did I ever hear?” she said. “I would like to know, Kirsteen Douglas, what it is I havena heard in my long pilgrimage of nigh upon seventy years. But there’s a time for everything. If ye ask me at another moment I’ll tell ye the whole story. Is it you, Drumcarro, that takes no sugar in your tea? No doubt you’ve had plenty in your time in yon dreadful West Indies where you were so long.”
“What’s dreadful about them?” said Drumcarro. “It’s ignorance that makes ye say so. Ye would think ye were in paradise if ye were there.”
“Oh, never with all those meeserable slaves!”
“You’re just a set of idiots with your prejudices,” said the laird, who had finished his herrings and pushed away his plate. “Slaves, quo’ she! There’s few of them would change places, I can tell ye, with your crofters and such like that ye call free men.”
“Ye were looking for something, father,” said Mary.
“I’m looking for that mutton bone,” said her father. “Fish is a fine thing; but there’s nothing like a bit of butcher’s meat to begin the day upon.”
“It’s my ain curing,” said Miss Eelen. “Ye can scarcely call it butcher’s meat, and it’s just a leg of one of your own sheep, Drumcarro. Cry upon the lassie, Kirsteen, and she’ll bring it ben in a moment. We’re so used to womenfolk in this house, we just forget a man’s appetite. I can recommend the eggs, for they’re all our own laying. Two-three hens just makes all the difference in a house; ye never perceive their feeding, and there’s aye a fresh egg for an occasion. And so you were pleased with your ball? I’m glad of it, for it’s often not the case when lassies are young and have no acquaintance with the world. They expect ower much. They think they’re to get all the attention like the heroines in thae foolish story-books. But that’s a delusion that soon passes away. And then you’re thankful for what you get, which is a far more wholesome frame of mind.”
Kirsteen assented to this with a grave face, and a little sigh for the beautiful visions of ideal pleasure which she had lost.
But Mary bridled, and declared that all her expectations had been fulfilled. “I got a great deal of attention,” she said, “and perhaps I had not such grand fancies as other folk.”
“I have bidden Glendochart to come and see us at Drumcarro. Ye’ll have to see to the spare cha’amer, and that he gets a good dinner,” said Mr. Douglas. “Him and me we have many things in common. He’s one of the best of his name, with a good record behind him—not to match with our auld Douglas line, but nothing to snuff at, and not far off the head of the house himsel’.”
“You would be at the school together, Drumcarro,” Miss Eelen said.
“No such a thing—he’s twenty years younger than me,” said Mr. Douglas angrily. “And I was at no schule, here or there, as ye might well mind.”
“Twenty years! If there’s ten between ye that’s the most of it. There’s no ten between ye. When I was a young lass in my teens John Campbell was a bit toddling bairn, and ye were little mair, Drumcarro. Na, na, ye need not tell me. If there’s five, that’s the most. Ye might have been at the schule together and nothing out of the common. But he’s had none of the cares of a family, though maybe he has had as bad to bear; and a man that is not marriet has aye a younger look. I ken not why, for with women it’s just the contrair.”
“Mr. Campbell is a very personable man,” said Mary. “I’m no judge of ages, but I would say he was just in middle life.”
“It’s but little consequence what you say,” said her father roughly. “If Kirsteen was to express an opinion——”
Kirsteen’s mind had a little wandered during this discussion. Glendochart’s age appeared to this young woman a subject quite unimportant. He was of the age of all the fathers and old friends. Had she been a modern girl she would have said he was a darling, but no such liberties were taken in her day.
“And that I will,” she said, “for we made friends though I’ve only seen him one night. He is just a man after my own heart,” said Kirsteen with warmth, with a sigh at the thought of his sad story, and a rising colour which was due to the fact that her imagination had linked the idea of young Ronald with that of this old and delightful gentleman who had been what her young lover was—but born to a less happy fate.
“Well,” said Drumcarro, “now ye’ve spoken, Kirsteen, ye’ve made no secret of your feelings; and, so far as I can judge, he has just as fine an opinion of you. And if you give your attention to making him comfortable and let him see the mettle you’re of, there is no saying what may happen. And it’s not me that will put obstacles in the way.”
“Drumcarro,” cried Miss Eelen, “ye get credit for sense among your own kind, but if ever there was a donnered auld fool in affairs of a certain description! Cannot ye hold your tongue, man, and let things take their course? They will do that without either you or me.”
Mr. Douglas had disposed of a great deal of the mutton ham. He had made a very good breakfast, and he felt himself free to retire from the table with a final volley. “If you think,” he said, “that I am going to give up my mind to manage, as you womenfolks call it, and bring a thing about, and draw on the man and fleech the lassie, ye are just sair mistaken, Eelen. When I say a word in my house I’m accustomed to see it done, and no nonsense about it. If a man comes seeking that I approve of, it’s my pleasure that he shall find what he’s askin’ for. I’ll have no picking and choosing. Men are no so plenty, and lassies are just a drug in the market. You have never got a man yourself.”
“The Lord be praised!” said Miss Eelen. “I would have broken his heart, or he would have broken mine. But I’ve kent them that would have married me, Neil Douglas, if it was for me or for my tocher I leave you to judge. I’m thankful to think I was never deceived for a moment,” said the old lady with a nod which sent the black bow upon her head into a little convulsion of tremulous movement. “I name nae names,” she said.
Drumcarro walked to the window discomfited, and turned his back upon the party, looking out upon the village street. To tell the truth he had forgotten that trifling incident in his life. To taunt a woman who has refused you with never having got a man is a little embarrassing, and his daughters exchanged astonished looks which he divined, though it took place behind his back. Their opinion did not interest him much, it is true, but the thought that they had discovered a humiliation in his past life filled him with rage, insignificant as they were. He stood there for a moment swallowing his fury; then, “There’s the gig,” he said, thankful for the diversion. “Ye’ll better get on your things and get back to your work, and mind your mother and the concerns of the house instead of senseless pleasure. But it’s just what I said, when ye begin that kind of thing there’s no end to it. When the head’s once filled with nonsense it’s a business to get it out.”
“Well, father,” said Mary, “the ball’s done, and there is no other coming if we were ever so anxious. So you need not be feared. It’s a little uncivil to Auntie Eelen to rise up the moment we’ve swallowed our breakfast.”
“Oh, dinna take me into consideration,” said Miss Eelen. “Ye must do your father’s bidding, and I’ll never lay it to your charge. But you’ll take a piece of yon fine seed cake to your mother, poor thing, and some of the bonny little biscuits that were round the trifle at the supper. I just put them in my pocket for her. It lets an invalid person see the way that things are done—and a wheen oranges in a basket. She has very little to divert her—though, poor thing, she has got a man.”
Drumcarro did not appear to take any notice of this Parthian arrow, though he fumed inwardly. And presently the girls’ preparations were made. The muslin dresses did not take up so much room as balldresses do nowadays, and had been carefully packed early in the morning in a box which was to go home by the cart in the afternoon. And they tied on their brown bonnets and fastened their cloth pelisses with an activity becoming young persons who were of so little account. To mount beside their father in the gig, squeezed together in a seat only made for two persons, and in which he himself took an undiminished share, with a basket upon their knees, and several parcels at their feet, was not an unalloyed pleasure, especially as he gave vent to various threats of a vague description, and instantly stopped either daughter who ventured to say a word. But they had few pleasures in their life, and the drive home, even in these circumstances, was not without its compensations. The girls knew that every cottar woman who came out to the door to see them pass was aware that they had been at the ball at the Castle, and looked after them with additional respect. And even the shouting children who ran after the gig and dared a cut of Drumcarro’s whip in their effort to hang on behind amused them, and gave them a feeling of pleased superiority. Coming home from the ball—it was perhaps the best part of it, after all.
When they were drawing near the house their father made a speech to them which Kirsteen at least listened to without alarm but with much wonder. “Now,” he said, suddenly, as if adding a last word to something said before, “I will have no nonsense whatever you may think. If a man comes to my door that I approve, I’ll have no denial thrown into his teeth. You’re all ready enough when it’s to your own fancy, but by——, this time, I’ll make ye respect mine.”
“What is it, father?” said Kirsteen with astonished eyes.
Mary gave her sister a smart poke with her elbow. “We’ll wait till we’re asked before we give any denial,” she said.
“Ye shall give none whether or no,” said Drumcarro, unreasonably it must be allowed; “but it’s no you I’m thinking of,” he added with contempt.
Kirsteen felt herself deficient in Mary’s power of apprehension. It was not often that this was the case, but her sister had certainly the better of her now. There were however many things said by Drumcarro to which his family did not attach a great interest, and she took it for granted that this was one of the dark sayings and vague declarations in which, when he was out of humour, he was wont to indulge. Her heart was not overwhelmed with any apprehension when she jumped lightly down from the gig glad to escape from these objurgations and feeling the satisfaction of having news to tell, and a revelation to make to the eager household which turned out to the door to meet her: Marg’ret in the front with cap-ribbons streaming behind her and her white apron folded over her arm, and little Jeanie with her hair tumbled and in disorder, her mouth and her ears open for every detail, with one or two other heads in the background—they had never seen the Castle, these ignorant people, never been to a ball. The mortifications of the evening all melted away in the delight of having so much to tell. Certainly the coming home was the best; it brought back something of the roseate colour of the setting out. And what a world of new experiences and sensations had opened up before Kirsteen since yesterday.
“Was it bonny?” said little Jeanie. “Did you see all the grand folk? Was it as fine as ye thought?”
And then Mrs. Douglas’s voice was heard from the parlour, “Come ben, come ben, this moment, bairns. I will not have ye say a word till ye’re here.” She was sitting up with a delicate colour in her cheeks, her eyes bright with anticipation. “Now just begin at the beginning and tell me everything,” she said. Certainly the best of it was the coming home.
Mary gave her little narrative with great composure and precision, though it surprised her sister. “Everybody was just very attentive,” she said. “It was clear to be seen that the word had been passed who we are. It was young Mr. Campbell of the Haigh that took me out at the first, but I just could not count them. They were most ceevil. And once I saw young Lord John looking very hard at me, as if he would like to ask me, but there was no person to introduce him. And so that passed by.”
“Oh, Mary, I wish ye had danced with a lord and a duke’s son,” cried little Jeanie, clapping her hands.
“Well, he was no great dancer,” said Mary. “I liked the young laird of the Haigh far better, and even old Glendochart—but he was Kirsteen’s one.”
“He was the nicest of all,” cried Kirsteen. “But, Jeanie, ye should have seen all the bonnie ladies with their diamonds like sparks of light. You would have thought the Duchess had stars on her head—all glinting as they do in a frosty sky—and a circle about her neck that looked just like the King’s Ellwand,[A] but far more of them. It’s not like stones or things out of the earth, as folks say. It’s like wearing little pieces of light.”
“Oh, I wish I had seen them,” said Jeanie.
“Whisht, whisht. I’ve seen diamonds many a time, but I never thought them like pieces of light. They’re more like bits of glass, which I have seen just as bonny. And who was it you danced with most, Kirsteen? You have not given us a list like Mary.”
“I danced with Glendochart,” said Kirsteen, looking down a little. “I stood a long time just looking about me. When you are dancing you cannot see the rest of the ball, and it was very bonny. Glendochart took me into the tea-room and showed me all the pictures and things.”
“But Lord John never looked in that fixed way at you?”
“No,” said Kirsteen very shortly, perceiving that it was inexpedient to repeat the little episode of Lord John.
“Then ye were not so much taken notice of as Mary?” cried Jeanie with disappointment.
“But she spoke to the Duke—or at least he spoke to Glendochart when Kirsteen was on his arm—and there was Lady Chatty that made great friends with her,” said Mary with benevolence, not to leave her sister quite in the background. But there was a momentary pause of disappointment, for they all felt that Lady Chatty was not so suggestive—had not in her name so many possibilities as Lord John.
“I hear of nothing but Glendochart,” said Mrs. Douglas; “if he is the man I mind upon, he will be the same age as your father; and what was he doing dancing and hanging about the like of you, a man at his time of life?”
Mary gave a little laugh, and repeated, “He was Kirsteen’s one.”
“What is the meaning of that, Kirsteen?”
“The meaning of it is that Glendochart, tho’ he is old, is a real gentleman,” said Kirsteen; “and he saw that we were strangers and neglected, and nobody looking the way we were on—”
At this there was an outcry that drowned the rest of the sentence. Strangers, the daughters of Drumcarro!—neglected when Mary had just said how attentive everybody had been! “You are just in one of your ill keys, Kirsteen,” said her mother.
“No,” said Mary, “but she’s looking for him to-morrow: for my father has asked him, and she is feared you will not like him when ye see him. But my opinion is, though he is old, that he is still a very personable man.”
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[A] The belt of Orion.