WHEN the morning of the seventh of April broke over Speid and his companions, they lashed the damaged pole together with a coil of rope and harnessed the wheelers. Progress was possible, though at a very slow pace, and they started again, the guard and outside passengers walking; from the coach’s interior, which cradled the slumbers of the Glasgow merchant, there came no sound.
It was past eight when they crossed the South Lour where the river curls round Blackport before plunging into the Basin of Kaims on its seaward course; it was almost nine when Gilbert saw Jimmy Stirk’s anxious face at the door of the Crown.
‘Eh, Laird! but a’m feared ye’re ower late!’ was the boy’s exclamation, as they clasped hands.
‘Come! Come in here,’ said Gilbert, dragging him into a room near the doorway.
There, in a voice lowered by reason of the slattern who was on her knees with soap and pail, Jimmy gave him the history of the last three days, from his grandmother’s receipt of his letter to her hurried message of last night.
‘She’s waitin’ ye now in River Street,’ he concluded.
Without further ado they went out of the house together.
What would be the upshot of the next two hours Speid did not know and did not dare to think. Cecilia’s freedom would pass with their passing. Captain Somerville had said in his letter that he was writing to tell her he had summoned him, and his heart stood still as he reflected that, in the face of this, she had hastened her marriage by three days. He was puzzled, dismayed, for he could not guess the full depth of Barclay’s guilt, and the boy beside him knew no more from his grandmother’s message than that the lawyer had cleared Blackport of all available horses. To appear before a woman who had forgotten him on her wedding morning, only to see her give her willing hand to another man—was that what he had come across Europe to do? His proud heart sickened.
Seeing that the night had passed unmolested, Granny Stirk had fallen at daylight into an exhausted sleep; it needed Jimmy’s thunder upon the door to awake her to the fact that Gilbert stood without. She turned the key quickly.
‘Whanland! Whanland!’ was all that she could say as he entered.
Her face was haggard with watching and exertion.
‘Oh, Granny!’ he cried. ‘You have almost killed yourself for me!’
‘Aye, but a’m no deid yet!’ exclaimed the old woman. ‘Eh, Laird! but it’s fine to see ye. A’m sweer to let ye gang, but ye canna loss a minute.’
Jimmy was harnessing Rob Roy.
‘But, Granny, what does this mean? She has hurried her wedding, though Captain Somerville told her I would come. What can I do, knowing that?’
‘Do? Ye’ll just hae to rin. Laird, she doesna ken onything. Yon tod—yon damned, leein’ Barclay—he got a haud o’ the letter. The Captain tell’t me that himsel’. Ye’ll need to drive.’
‘Good God!’ cried Speid.
The sight of her worn face and the knowledge of what she had done for him smote Gilbert hard. Though time pressed he would not consent to start till he had taken her to the Crown and left her in the landlady’s care, with an order for fire, food and dry clothing. Then he tore out of the door and down the street to the spot where Jimmy awaited him with the cart. The boy’s brown, hard face cheered him, for it seemed the very incarnation of the country he loved.
The world which lay round them as they drove out of Blackport was a new one, fresh, chastened by the scourging of the storm. The sky was high, blue and pale, and there was a scent of spring; underfoot, the wet ground glistened and the young finger of morning light touched trees and buildings as they rose from an under-world of mist.
When we look on the dying glory of evening, and again, on the spectacle of coming day, do we not regard these sights, so alike in colour and in mystery, with an indefinable difference of feeling? The reason is that sunset reminds us of Time and sunrise of Eternity.
Though sunrise was long past, the remembrance of it was still abroad, and a sense of conflict ended breathed over the ground strewn with broken boughs, wreckage of the night. Gilbert, as he sat by his companion and felt his heart outrunning their progress, could find no share in this suggestion. All cried to him of peace when there was no peace; effort was before him, possibly failure.
He knew that, though Cecilia was to be married from Fullarton, the actual wedding would take place at Morphie, according to her own desire. Somerville had told him so. It was now half-past nine and Jimmy was pressing Rob Roy to his utmost, for Fullarton was the further of the two places, some seven miles north of Kaims, and the horse would have to put his best work into the collar were Speid to arrive in time to see the bride before she started for the kirk.
The high hope and determination in which Gilbert had left Spain had changed to a foreboding that, after all, he might find fate too strong; but, though this fear lay, like a shadow, over him, he would not turn from his wild errand. Till the ring was on Cecilia’s finger and she had agreed in the face of minister and congregation to take Crauford Fordyce as her husband, he meant to persevere. He smiled gloomily at himself, sitting travel-stained and muddy, on the front of a springless cart, with what was more to him than his life depending on the speed of a cadger’s horse.
Among the crowd of relations, acquaintances, and companions alongside of which a man begins life, Time and Trouble, like a pair of witch-doctors, are busy with their rites and dances and magic sticks selecting his friends; and often the identity of the little handful they drag from the throng is a surprise. For Gilbert they had secured a wooden-legged naval captain, a sullen young cadger, and a retired fishwife with gold earrings. As he watched the ground fly past the wheels, he recognised that the dreadful functionaries had gone far to justify their existence by the choice they had made.
There were dark marks under pad and breeching, for the sun was growing strong, and, though Jimmy held his horse together and used such persuasive address as he had never been known to waste upon a human being, he was now beginning to have recourse to the whip. Speid realized that their pace was gradually flagging. By the time they had done half the journey and could see, from a swelling rise, down over the Morphie woods, it was borne in on him that Rob Roy’s step was growing short. He made brave efforts to answer to the lash, but they did not last, and the sweat had begun to run round his drooping ears. The two friends looked at each other.
‘Ma’ grannie had a sair drive last nicht,’ said Jimmy.
‘Pull up for a moment and face him to the wind,’ cried Speid, jumping down.
With handfuls of rush torn from a ditch they rubbed him down, neck, loins, and legs, and turned his head to what breeze was moving. His eyes stared, and, though he was close to the green fringe of grass which bordered the roadside, he made no attempt to pick at it.
The hands of Gilbert’s watch had put ten o’clock behind them as he looked over the far stretch to Morphie and Fullarton. Jimmy, whose light eyes rested in dogged concern on the horse’s heaving sides, put his shoulder under the shaft to ease off the weight of the cart. Away beyond, on the further edge of the wood, was the kirk; even now, the doors were probably being opened and the seats dusted for the coming marriage.
Speid stood summing up his chances, his eyes on the spreading landscape; he was attempting an impossibility in trying to reach Fullarton.
‘There is no use in pushing on to Fullarton,’ he said, laying his hand on Rob Roy’s mane, ‘we shall only break his heart, poor little brute. I am going to leave you here and get across country to the kirk on my own feet. Here is some money—go to the nearest farm and rest him; feed him when he’ll eat, and come on to Whanland when you can. Whatever may happen this morning, I shall be there in the afternoon.’
The boy nodded, measuring the miles silently that lay between them and the distant kirk. It would be a race, he considered, but it would take a deal to beat the Laird of Whanland.
‘Brides is aye late,’ he remarked briefly.
‘Who told you that?’ asked Gilbert, as he pulled off his overcoat and threw it into the cart.
‘Ma’ Grannie.’
Speid vaulted over the low wall beside them and began to descend the slope. Half-way down it he heard Jimmy’s voice crying luck to him and saw his cap lifted in the air.
The rain of the previous day and night had made the ground heavy, and he soon found that the remaining time would just serve him and no more. He ran on at a steady pace, taking a straight line to the edge of the woods; most of the fields were divided by stone dykes and those obstacles gave him no trouble. Sometimes he slipped in wet places; once or twice he was hailed by a labourer who stopped in his work to watch the gentleman original enough to race over the open landscape for no apparent reason. But he took no heed, plodding on.
When he came to where the corner of the woods protruded, a dark triangle, into the pasture land, he struck across it. The rain had made the pines aromatic, and the strong, clean smell refreshed him as he went over the elastic bed of pine-needles strewn underfoot. The undignified white bobtails of rabbits disappeared, right and left, among the stems at his approach, and once, a roe-deer fled in leaps into the labyrinth of trunks.
Before emerging again into the open he paused to rest and look at his watch; walking and running, he had come well and more quickly than he had supposed; he thanked heaven for the sound body which he had never allowed idleness to make inactive. It wanted twenty-five minutes of eleven, and he had covered a couple of miles in the quarter of an hour since he had left Jimmy. He judged himself a little under two more from Morphie kirk. The boy’s unexpected knowledge of the habits of brides had amused him, even in his hurry, and he devoutly hoped it might prove true.
Standing under the firs and pines, he realized the demand he was about to make of this particular bride. He wondered if there were a woman in the world bold enough to do what he was going to ask Cecilia to do for him. He was going to stand up before her friends, before the bridegroom and his relations, the guests and the onlookers, and ask her to leave the man to whom she had promised herself for a lover she had not seen for nearly two years; one who had not so much as an honest name to give her. Would she do it? He reflected, with a sigh, that Jimmy’s knowledge would scarce tell him that. But, at the same time, loving her as he loved her, and knowing her as he knew her, he hoped.
He was off again, leaping out over a ditch circling the skirts of the wood; he meant to follow the outline of the trees till he should come to a track which he knew would lead him down to where the kirk stood under a sloping bank. Many a time he had looked, from the further side of the Lour, at the homely building with its stone belfry. It had no beauty but that of plainness and would not have attracted anyone whose motives in regarding it were quite simple. But, for him, it had been enchanted, as common places are enchanted but a few times in our lives; and now, he was to face the turning-point of his existence in its shadow.
This run across country was the last stage of a journey begun in Spain nearly a month since. It had come down to such a fine measurement of time as would have made him wonder, had he been capable of any sensation but the breathless desire to get forward. His hair was damp upon his forehead and his clothes splashed with mud as he struck into the foot-track leading from the higher ground to the kirk. The way went through a thicket of brier and whin, and, from its further side, came the voices and the rough East-coast accent of men and women; he supposed that a certain crowd had gathered to see the bride arrive and he knew that he was in time.
It was less than ten minutes to eleven when the assembled spectators saw a tall man emerge from the scrub and take up his position by the kirk door. Many recognised him and wondered, but no Whanland people were present, and no one accosted him. He leaned a few minutes against the wall; then, when he had recovered breath, he walked round the building and looked in at a window. Inside, the few guests were seated, among them Barclay, his frilled shirt making a violent spot of white in the gloom of the kirk. Not far from him, his back to the light, was Crauford Fordyce, stiff and immaculate in his satin stock and claret colour; unconscious of the man who stood, not ten yards from him, at the other side of the wall. It was evident from their bearing that, by this hour, the minds of the allies were at rest. Gilbert returned to the door and stood quietly by the threshold; there was an irony in the situation which appealed to him.
While he had raced across the country, Cecilia, in her room at Fullarton, was putting on her wedding-gown. Agneta, who looked upon her future sister-in-law as a kind of illustrated hand-book to life, had come to help her to fasten her veil. One of the housemaids, a scarlet-headed wench who loved Cecilia dearly and whose face was swollen with tears shed for her departure, stood by with a tray full of pins.
‘You had better not wait, really, Jessie,’ said the bride in front of the glass, ‘I am so afraid the rest of the servants will start without you. Miss Fordyce will help me, I am sure. Give me my wreath and go quickly.’
The servant took up her hand and kissed it loudly; then set the wreath askew on her hair and went out, a blubbering whirl of emotion.
‘She has been a kind, good girl to me,’ said Cecilia.
‘Your hand is all wet!’ exclaimed Agneta, to whom such a scene was astonishing.
Mary and Agneta inhabited a room together and many midnight conversations had flowed from their bed-curtains in the last few nights. Agneta had gone completely over to the enemy, but her sister, who, though gentler in character, was less able to free herself from the traditions in which she had been brought up, hung back, terrified, from an opinion formed alone. Outwardly, she was abrupt, and Cecilia and she had made small progress in their acquaintance.
Robert Fullarton and his brother-in-law were ready and waiting downstairs and two carriages stood outside on the gravel sweep. Sir Thomas and his daughters were to go in one of these, and Robert, who was to give Cecilia away, would accompany her in the other.
Agneta and Mary had started when Cecilia stood alone in front of her image in the glass; she held up her veil and looked into the reflected face. It was the last time she would see Cecilia Raeburn, and, with a kind of curiosity, she regarded the outer shell of the woman, who, it seemed to her, had no identity left. The Cecilia who had grown up at Morphie was dead; as dead as that companion with whom she had shared the old house. Between the parted friends there was this momentous difference: while one was at rest, the other had still to carry that picture in the mirror as bravely as she could through the world, till the long day’s work should roll by and the two should meet. She thought of that dark morning at Morphie and of her aunt’s dying face against Fullarton’s shoulder, and told herself that, were the moment to return, she would not do differently. She was glad to remember that, had Gilbert Speid come back, he would have cast no shadow between them; the knowledge seemed to consecrate the gleam of happiness she had known with him so briefly. But it was hard that, when the path by which they might have reached each other had been smoothed at so terrible a cost, the way had been empty. She was thinking of the time when two pairs of eyes had met in a looking-glass and she had plastered his cut cheek in the candlelight. After to-day, she must put such remembrances from her. She dropped her veil and turned away, for Fullarton’s voice was calling to her to come down.
While she sat beside him in the carriage, looking out, her hands were pressed together in her lap. The rain-washed world was so beautiful, and, between the woods touched with spring, the North Lour ran full. The lights lying on field and hill seemed to smile. As they passed Morphie House she kept her face turned from it; she could not trifle with her strength. She was thankful that they would not be near the coast where she could hear the sea-sound.
As the carriage turned from the highroad into a smaller one leading up to the kirk, Captain Somerville’s hooded phaeton approached from Kaims and dropped behind, following. The sailor, who sat in the front seat by the driver, was alone, and Cecilia’s eyes met his as they drew near. She leaned forward, smiling; it did her good to see him. Mrs. Somerville had declined to appear; she was not well enough to go out, she said, and it seemed, to look at her face, as though this reason were a good one. She had scarcely slept and her eyes were red with angry weeping. Since the preceding morning, when the Inspector had discovered what part she had played, the two had not spoken and she felt herself unable to face Barclay in his presence. After the wedding the men must inevitably meet; she could not imagine what her husband might do or say, or what would happen when the lawyer should discover that she had betrayed him. She retired to the sanctuary of her bedroom and sent a message downstairs at the last moment, desiring the Captain to make her excuses to Miss Raeburn and tell her that she had too bad a cold to be able to leave the house.
The sailor’s heart was heavy as he went and the glimpse of Cecilia which he had caught made it no lighter. He had tried to save her and failed. All yesterday, since his dreadful discovery, he had debated whether or no he ought to go to Fullarton, see her, and tell her that he had tried to bring Gilbert home; that he would, in all probability, arrive a few hours before her marriage. He turned the question over and over in his mind. The conclusion he came to was that, things having gone so far, he had better hold his peace. She could not draw back now, and, being forced to go on, the knowledge that her lover would have been in time, had she not hastened her marriage, might haunt her all her life. If Speid arrived at the hour he was expected he would hear from Jimmy Stirk of the wedding. Should he be determined to act, he would do so without his—Somerville’s—intervention; and, should he see fit to accept what now seemed the inevitable, he would, no doubt, have the sense to leave Whanland quietly. He would go there himself, on his return from Morphie Kirk, in the hope of finding him and inducing him to start before anyone should see him, and before Cecilia should learn how near to her he had been. It might well be that she would never know it, for she was to leave Fullarton, with her husband, at two o’clock, for Perth. They were to go south immediately.
The sailor was not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed to find that, apparently, Speid had made no sign. Cecilia was there to play her part; no doubt, like many another, she would come to play it contentedly. With all his heart he pitied Gilbert. Meanwhile, as the carriages neared their destination, he could see the evergreen arch which some Morphie labourers had put up over the entrance at which the bride would alight.
The kirk could not be seen from the gate of the enclosure in which it stood, for the path took a turn round some thick bushes. A low dyke of unpointed stone girdled it and kept at bay the broom and whins clothing the hillock. When his phaeton stopped, Somerville got out, and was in time to greet the bride as Fullarton handed her out of the carriage; he did not fail to notice the tremor of the fingers he touched. He went on and slipped into a group of bystanders surrounding the door without observing the figure which stood near the kirk wall, a little apart.
A movement went through the group as Fullarton appeared by the tall bushes leading Cecilia. While they advanced a man walked forward and stood in the way; a man with splashed clothes and high boots, brown with the soil; the wet hair was dark upon his forehead and his eyes looked straight before him to where the bride came, brave and pale, under her green wreath. She saw him and stopped. Her hand slipped from Fullarton’s arm.
Unheeding Robert’s exclamation, he sprang towards her, his eyes burning.
‘Cecilia,’ he said, almost under his breath, ‘am I too late?’
The slight commotion caused by this unexpected incident had brought Barclay to the doorway; Crauford’s face could be seen behind his shoulder.
‘Great Heavens! Here’s Speid!’ exclaimed the lawyer, seizing his friend.
Fordyce moved irresolutely, longing to rush forward, but aware that custom decreed he should await his bride’s entrance in the kirk; he scarcely realized the import of what had happened outside its walls while he stood, unconscious, between them. Barclay ran out to the little group round which the onlookers were collecting, and he followed, unable to sacrifice his annoyance to his sense of what was expected. Not for a moment did he believe that decency could be outraged by anything more than an interruption. In the background stood Mary and Agneta, aghast under their pink-rosetted bonnets.
‘May I ask what you have come here for, sir?’ he inquired, approaching Gilbert.
But Speid’s back was turned, for he was looking at Cecilia.
‘Come!’ cried Fullarton, sternly, ‘come, Cecilia! I cannot permit this. Stand aside, Mr. Speid, if you please.’
‘Cecilia, what are you going to do?’ urged Gilbert, standing before her, as though he would bar her progress to the kirk door. ‘I have come back for you.’
She looked round and saw the steady eyes of Captain Somerville fixed upon her. He had come close and was at her side, his stout figure drawn up, his wooden leg planted firmly on the gravel; there was in his countenance a mighty loyalty.
‘Gilbert,’ she exclaimed, with a sob in her voice, ‘thank God you have come.’ Then she faced the bridegroom. ‘I cannot go on with this, Mr. Fordyce,’ she said.
‘But it is too late!’ cried Robert. ‘There shall be no more of this trifling. You are engaged to my nephew and you must fulfil your engagement. I am here to see that you do.’
‘I will not,’ she replied.—‘Forgive me, sir—forgive me, I beg of you! I know that I have no right to ask you to stand by me.’
‘I shall not do so, certainly,’ exclaimed Robert, angrily.
She glanced round, desperate. Captain Somerville was holding out his arm.
‘My phaeton is outside, Miss Raeburn,’ he said, ‘and you will do me the favour to come home with me. Speid,’ he added, ‘am I doing right?’
But Gilbert could scarcely answer. A great glory had dawned in his face.