Two days later a gig from Crossmichael deposited Frank Innes
at the doors of Hermiston. Once in a way, during the past
winter, Archie, in some acute phase of boredom, had written him a
letter. It had contained something in the nature of an
invitation or a reference to an invitation—precisely what,
neither of them now remembered. When Innes had received it,
there had been nothing further from his mind than to bury himself
in the moors with Archie; but not even the most acute political
heads are guided through the steps of life with unerring
directness. That would require a gift of prophecy which has
been denied to man. For instance, who could have imagined
that, not a month after he had received the letter, and turned it
into mockery, and put off answering it, and in the end lost it,
misfortunes of a gloomy cast should begin to thicken over
Frank’s career? His case may be briefly stated.
His father, a small Morayshire laird with a large family, became
recalcitrant and cut off the supplies; he had fitted himself out
with the beginnings of quite a good law library, which, upon some
sudden losses on the turf, he had been obliged to sell before
they were paid for; and his bookseller, hearing some rumour of
the event, took out a warrant for his arrest. Innes had
early word of it, and was able to take precautions. In this
immediate welter of his affairs, with an unpleasant charge
hanging over him, he had judged it the part of prudence to be off
instantly, had written a fervid letter to his father at
Inverauld, and put himself in the coach for Crossmichael.
Any port in a storm! He was manfully turning his back on
the Parliament House and its gay babble, on porter and oysters,
the race-course and the ring; and manfully prepared, until these
clouds should have blown by, to share a living grave with Archie
Weir at Hermiston.
To do him justice, he was no less surprised to be going than
Archie was to see him come; and he carried off his wonder with an
infinitely better grace.
“Well, here I am!” said he, as he alighted.
“Pylades has come to Orestes at last. By the way, did
you get my answer? No? How very provoking!
Well, here I am to answer for myself, and that’s better
still.”
“I am very glad to see you, of course,” said
Archie. “I make you heartily welcome, of
course. But you surely have not come to stay, with the
Courts still sitting; is that not most unwise?”
“Damn the Courts!” says Frank. “What
are the Courts to friendship and a little fishing?”
And so it was agreed that he was to stay, with no term to the
visit but the term which he had privily set to it
himself—the day, namely, when his father should have come
down with the dust, and he should be able to pacify the
bookseller. On such vague conditions there began for these
two young men (who were not even friends) a life of great
familiarity and, as the days drew on, less and less
intimacy. They were together at meal times, together
o’ nights when the hour had come for whisky-toddy; but it
might have been noticed (had there been any one to pay heed) that
they were rarely so much together by day. Archie had
Hermiston to attend to, multifarious activities in the hills, in
which he did not require, and had even refused, Frank’s
escort. He would be off sometimes in the morning and leave
only a note on the breakfast table to announce the fact; and
sometimes, with no notice at all, he would not return for dinner
until the hour was long past. Innes groaned under these
desertions; it required all his philosophy to sit down to a
solitary breakfast with composure, and all his unaffected
good-nature to be able to greet Archie with friendliness on the
more rare occasions when he came home late for dinner.
“I wonder what on earth he finds to do, Mrs.
Elliott?” said he one morning, after he had just read the
hasty billet and sat down to table.
“I suppose it will be business, sir,” replied the
housekeeper drily, measuring his distance off to him by an
indicated curtsy.
“But I can’t imagine what business!” he
reiterated.
“I suppose it will be his business,”
retorted the austere Kirstie.
He turned to her with that happy brightness that made the
charm of his disposition, and broke into a peal of healthy and
natural laughter.
“Well played, Mrs. Elliott!” he cried; and the
housekeeper’s face relaxed into the shadow of an iron
smile. “Well played indeed!” said he.
“But you must not be making a stranger of me like
that. Why, Archie and I were at the High School together,
and we’ve been to college together, and we were going to
the Bar together, when—you know! Dear, dear me! what
a pity that was! A life spoiled, a fine young fellow as
good as buried here in the wilderness with rustics; and all for
what? A frolic, silly, if you like, but no more. God,
how good your scones are, Mrs. Elliott!”
“They’re no mines, it was the lassie made
them,” said Kirstie; “and, saving your presence,
there’s little sense in taking the Lord’s name in
vain about idle vivers that you fill your kyte
wi’.”
“I daresay you’re perfectly right,
ma’am,” quoth the imperturbable Frank.
“But as I was saying, this is a pitiable business, this
about poor Archie; and you and I might do worse than put our
heads together, like a couple of sensible people, and bring it to
an end. Let me tell you, ma’am, that Archie is really
quite a promising young man, and in my opinion he would do well
at the Bar. As for his father, no one can deny his ability,
and I don’t fancy any one would care to deny that he has
the deil’s own temper—”
“If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Innes, I think the lass
is crying on me,” said Kirstie, and flounced from the
room.
“The damned, cross-grained, old broomstick!”
ejaculated Innes.
In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped into the kitchen, and
before her vassal gave vent to her feelings.
“Here, ettercap! Ye’ll have to wait on yon
Innes! I canna haud myself in. ‘Puir
Erchie!’ I’d ‘puir Erchie’ him, if
I had my way! And Hermiston with the deil’s ain
temper! God, let him take Hermiston’s scones out of
his mouth first. There’s no a hair on ayther o’
the Weirs that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he has
in his hale dwaibly body! Settin’ up his snash to
me! Let him gang to the black toon where he’s mebbe
wantit—birling in a curricle—wi’ pimatum on his
heid—making a mess o’ himsel’ wi’ nesty
hizzies—a fair disgrace!” It was impossible to
hear without admiration Kirstie’s graduated disgust, as she
brought forth, one after another, these somewhat baseless
charges. Then she remembered her immediate purpose, and
turned again on her fascinated auditor. “Do ye no
hear me, tawpie? Do ye no hear what I’m tellin’
ye? Will I have to shoo ye in to him? If I come to attend
to ye, mistress!” And the maid fled the kitchen, which had
become practically dangerous, to attend on Innes’ wants in
the front parlour.
Tantaene irae? Has the reader perceived the
reason? Since Frank’s coming there were no more hours
of gossip over the supper tray! All his blandishments were
in vain; he had started handicapped on the race for Mrs.
Elliott’s favour.
But it was a strange thing how misfortune dogged him in his
efforts to be genial. I must guard the reader against
accepting Kirstie’s epithets as evidence; she was more
concerned for their vigour than for their accuracy.
Dwaibly, for instance; nothing could be more calumnious.
Frank was the very picture of good looks, good humour, and manly
youth. He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to
them, curly hair, a charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable
carriage of the head, the look of a gentleman, the address of one
accustomed to please at first sight and to improve the
impression. And with all these advantages, he failed with
every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with the
obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the ploughman,
with the gardener and the gardener’s sister—a pious,
down-hearted woman with a shawl over her ears—he failed
equally and flatly. They did not like him, and they showed
it. The little maid, indeed, was an exception; she admired
him devoutly, probably dreamed of him in her private hours; but
she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor to
Kirstie’s tirades and silent recipient of Kirstie’s
buffets, and she had learned not only to be a very capable girl
of her years, but a very secret and prudent one besides.
Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and sympathiser in
the midst of that general union of disfavour that surrounded,
watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he had
little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure
little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own
counsel, and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive,
but inexorably unconversational. For the others, they were
beyond hope and beyond endurance. Never had a young Apollo
been cast among such rustic barbarians. But perhaps the
cause of his ill-success lay in one trait which was habitual and
unconscious with him, yet diagnostic of the man. It was his
practice to approach any one person at the expense of some one
else. He offered you an alliance against the some one else;
he flattered you by slighting him; you were drawn into a small
intrigue against him before you knew how. Wonderful are the
virtues of this process generally; but Frank’s mistake was
in the choice of the some one else. He was not politic in
that; he listened to the voice of irritation. Archie had
offended him at first by what he had felt to be rather a dry
reception, had offended him since by his frequent absences.
He was besides the one figure continually present in
Frank’s eye; and it was to his immediate dependants that
Frank could offer the snare of his sympathy. Now the truth
is that the Weirs, father and son, were surrounded by a posse of
strenuous loyalists. Of my lord they were vastly
proud. It was a distinction in itself to be one of the
vassals of the “Hanging Judge,” and his gross,
formidable joviality was far from unpopular in the neighbourhood
of his home. For Archie they had, one and all, a sensitive
affection and respect which recoiled from a word of
belittlement.
Nor was Frank more successful when he went farther
afield. To the Four Black Brothers, for instance, he was
antipathetic in the highest degree. Hob thought him too
light, Gib too profane. Clem, who saw him but for a day or
two before he went to Glasgow, wanted to know what the
fule’s business was, and whether he meant to stay here all
session time! “Yon’s a drone,” he
pronounced. As for Dand, it will be enough to describe
their first meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and the
rustic celebrity chanced to come along the path.
“I’m told you’re quite a poet,” Frank
had said.
“Wha tell’t ye that, mannie?” had been the
unconciliating answer.
“O, everybody!” says Frank.
“God! Here’s fame!” said the sardonic
poet, and he had passed on his way.
Come to think of it, we have here perhaps a truer explanation
of Frank’s failures. Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he
could have turned a neater compliment, because Mr. Scott would
have been a friend worth making. Dand, on the other hand,
he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried
to flatter. Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is
strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is! He who goes
fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait
will have an empty basket by evening.
In proof of this theory Frank made a great success of it at
the Crossmichael Club, to which Archie took him immediately on
his arrival; his own last appearance on that scene of
gaiety. Frank was made welcome there at once, continued to
go regularly, and had attended a meeting (as the members ever
after loved to tell) on the evening before his death. Young
Hay and young Pringle appeared again. There was another
supper at Windiclaws, another dinner at Driffel; and it resulted
in Frank being taken to the bosom of the county people as
unreservedly as he had been repudiated by the country folk.
He occupied Hermiston after the manner of an invader in a
conquered capital. He was perpetually issuing from it, as
from a base, to toddy parties, fishing parties, and dinner
parties, to which Archie was not invited, or to which Archie
would not go. It was now that the name of The Recluse
became general for the young man. Some say that Innes
invented it; Innes, at least, spread it abroad.
“How’s all with your Recluse to-day?” people
would ask.
“O, reclusing away!” Innes would declare, with his
bright air of saying something witty; and immediately interrupt
the general laughter which he had provoked much more by his air
than his words, “Mind you, it’s all very well
laughing, but I’m not very well pleased. Poor Archie
is a good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always
liked. I think it small of him to take his little disgrace
so hard, and shut himself up. ‘Grant that it is a
ridiculous story, painfully ridiculous,’ I keep telling
him. ‘Be a man! Live it down, man!’
But not he. Of course, it’s just solitude, and shame,
and all that. But I confess I’m beginning to fear the
result. It would be all the pities in the world if a really
promising fellow like Weir was to end ill. I’m
seriously tempted to write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly
to him.”
“I would if I were you,” some of his auditors
would say, shaking the head, sitting bewildered and confused at
this new view of the matter, so deftly indicated by a single
word. “A capital idea!” they would add, and
wonder at the aplomb and position of this young man, who
talked as a matter of course of writing to Hermiston and
correcting him upon his private affairs.
And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential:
“I’ll give you an idea, now. He’s
actually sore about the way that I’m received and
he’s left out in the county—actually jealous and
sore. I’ve rallied him and I’ve reasoned with
him, told him that every one was most kindly inclined towards
him, told him even that I was received merely because I was his
guest. But it’s no use. He will neither accept
the invitations he gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where
he’s left out. What I’m afraid of is that the
wound’s ulcerating. He had always one of those dark,
secret, angry natures—a little underhand and plenty of
bile—you know the sort. He must have inherited it
from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family of
weavers somewhere; what’s the cant phrase?—sedentary
occupation. It’s precisely the kind of character to
go wrong in a false position like what his father’s made
for him, or he’s making for himself, whichever you like to
call it. And for my part, I think it a disgrace,”
Frank would say generously.
Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this disinterested friend
took shape. He began in private, in conversations of two,
to talk vaguely of bad habits and low habits. “I must
say I’m afraid he’s going wrong altogether,” he
would say. “I’ll tell you plainly, and between
ourselves, I scarcely like to stay there any longer; only, man,
I’m positively afraid to leave him alone.
You’ll see, I shall be blamed for it later on.
I’m staying at a great sacrifice. I’m hindering
my chances at the Bar, and I can’t blind my eyes to
it. And what I’m afraid of is that I’m going to
get kicked for it all round before all’s done. You
see, nobody believes in friendship nowadays.”
“Well, Innes,” his interlocutor would reply,
“it’s very good of you, I must say that. If
there’s any blame going, you’ll always be sure of
my good word, for one thing.”
“Well,” Frank would continue, “candidly, I
don’t say it’s pleasant. He has a very rough
way with him; his father’s son, you know. I
don’t say he’s rude—of course, I couldn’t
be expected to stand that—but he steers very near the
wind. No, it’s not pleasant; but I tell ye, man, in
conscience I don’t think it would be fair to leave
him. Mind you, I don’t say there’s anything
actually wrong. What I say is that I don’t like the
looks of it, man!” and he would press the arm of his
momentary confidant.
In the early stages I am persuaded there was no malice.
He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself. He was
essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially
careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so
he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that
one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself and to
please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling
air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a presentation of
Archie which was known and talked of in all corners of the
county. Wherever there was a residential house and a walled
garden, wherever there was a dwarfish castle and a park, wherever
a quadruple cottage by the ruins of a peel-tower showed an old
family going down, and wherever a handsome villa with a carriage
approach and a shrubbery marked the coming up of a new
one—probably on the wheels of machinery—Archie began
to be regarded in the light of a dark, perhaps a vicious mystery,
and the future developments of his career to be looked for with
uneasiness and confidential whispering. He had done
something disgraceful, my dear. What, was not precisely
known, and that good kind young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to
make light of it. But there it was. And Mr. Innes was
very anxious about him now; he was really uneasy, my dear; he was
positively wrecking his own prospects because he dared not leave
him alone. How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single
prater, not needfully with any malign purpose! And if a man
but talks of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous
actions by the way, and never applies to them the name of virtue,
how easily his evidence is accepted in the court of public
opinion!
All this while, however, there was a more poisonous ferment at
work between the two lads, which came late indeed to the surface,
but had modified and magnified their dissensions from the
first. To an idle, shallow, easy-going customer like Frank,
the smell of a mystery was attractive. It gave his mind
something to play with, like a new toy to a child; and it took
him on the weak side, for like many young men coming to the Bar,
and before they had been tried and found wanting, he flattered
himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness and
penetration. They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those
days, but there was a good deal said of Talleyrand. And if
you could have caught Frank off his guard, he would have
confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled any one, it was the
Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord. It was on the occasion of
Archie’s first absence that this interest took root.
It was vastly deepened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at
breakfast, and that same afternoon there occurred another scene
which clinched the business. He was fishing Swingleburn,
Archie accompanying him, when the latter looked at his watch.
“Well, good-bye,” said he. “I have
something to do. See you at dinner.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry,” cries
Frank. “Hold on till I get my rod up.
I’ll go with you; I’m sick of flogging this
ditch.”
And he began to reel up his line.
Archie stood speechless. He took a long while to recover
his wits under this direct attack; but by the time he was ready
with his answer, and the angle was almost packed up, he had
become completely Weir, and the hanging face gloomed on his young
shoulders. He spoke with a laboured composure, a laboured
kindness even; but a child could see that his mind was made
up.
“I beg your pardon, Innes; I don’t want to be
disagreeable, but let us understand one another from the
beginning. When I want your company, I’ll let you
know.”
“O!” cries Frank, “you don’t want my
company, don’t you?”
“Apparently not just now,” replied Archie.
“I even indicated to you when I did, if you’ll
remember—and that was at dinner. If we two fellows
are to live together pleasantly—and I see no reason why we
should not—it can only be by respecting each other’s
privacy. If we begin intruding—”
“O, come! I’ll take this at no man’s
hands. Is this the way you treat a guest and an old
friend?” cried Innes.
“Just go home and think over what I said by
yourself,” continued Archie, “whether it’s
reasonable, or whether it’s really offensive or not; and
let’s meet at dinner as though nothing had happened,
I’ll put it this way, if you like—that I know my own
character, that I’m looking forward (with great pleasure, I
assure you) to a long visit from you, and that I’m taking
precautions at the first. I see the thing that
we—that I, if you like—might fall out upon, and I
step in and obsto principiis. I wager you five
pounds you’ll end by seeing that I mean friendliness, and I
assure you, Francie, I do,” he added, relenting.
Bursting with anger, but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered
his rod, made a gesture of farewell, and strode off down the
burn-side. Archie watched him go without moving. He
was sorry, but quite unashamed. He hated to be
inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father’s
son. He had a strong sense that his house was his own and
no man else’s; and to lie at a guest’s mercy was what
he refused. He hated to seem harsh. But that was
Frank’s lookout. If Frank had been commonly discreet,
he would have been decently courteous. And there was
another consideration. The secret he was protecting was not
his own merely; it was hers: it belonged to that inexpressible
she who was fast taking possession of his soul, and whom he would
soon have defended at the cost of burning cities. By the
time he had watched Frank as far as the Swingleburn-foot,
appearing and disappearing in the tarnished heather, still
stalking at a fierce gait but already dwindled in the distance
into less than the smallness of Lilliput, he could afford to
smile at the occurrence. Either Frank would go, and that
would be a relief—or he would continue to stay, and his
host must continue to endure him. And Archie was now
free—by devious paths, behind hillocks and in the hollow of
burns—to make for the trysting-place where Kirstie, cried
about by the curlew and the plover, waited and burned for his
coming by the Covenanter’s stone.
Innes went off down-hill in a passion of resentment, easy to
be understood, but which yielded progressively to the needs of
his situation. He cursed Archie for a cold-hearted,
unfriendly, rude, rude dog; and himself still more passionately
for a fool in having come to Hermiston when he might have sought
refuge in almost any other house in Scotland. But the step
once taken, was practically irretrievable. He had no more
ready money to go anywhere else; he would have to borrow from
Archie the next club-night; and ill as he thought of his
host’s manners, he was sure of his practical
generosity. Frank’s resemblance to Talleyrand strikes
me as imaginary; but at least not Talleyrand himself could have
more obediently taken his lesson from the facts. He met
Archie at dinner without resentment, almost with
cordiality. You must take your friends as you find them, he
would have said. Archie couldn’t help being his
father’s son, or his grandfather’s, the hypothetical
weaver’s, grandson. The son of a hunks, he was still
a hunks at heart, incapable of true generosity and consideration;
but he had other qualities with which Frank could divert himself
in the meanwhile, and to enjoy which it was necessary that Frank
should keep his temper.
So excellently was it controlled that he awoke next morning
with his head full of a different, though a cognate
subject. What was Archie’s little game? Why did
he shun Frank’s company? What was he keeping
secret? Was he keeping tryst with somebody, and was it a
woman? It would be a good joke and a fair revenge to
discover. To that task he set himself with a great deal of
patience, which might have surprised his friends, for he had been
always credited not with patience so much as brilliancy; and
little by little, from one point to another, he at last succeeded
in piecing out the situation. First he remarked that,
although Archie set out in all the directions of the compass, he
always came home again from some point between the south and
west. From the study of a map, and in consideration of the
great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that direction
towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his finger on
Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring farms, Kingsmuirs and
Polintarf. But it was difficult to advance farther.
With his rod for a pretext, he vainly visited each of them in
turn; nothing was to be seen suspicious about this trinity of
moorland settlements. He would have tried to follow Archie,
had it been the least possible, but the nature of the land
precluded the idea. He did the next best, ensconced himself
in a quiet corner, and pursued his movements with a
telescope. It was equally in vain, and he soon wearied of
his futile vigilance, left the telescope at home, and had almost
given the matter up in despair, when, on the twenty-seventh day
of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with the person whom he
sought. The first Sunday Kirstie had managed to stay away
from kirk on some pretext of indisposition, which was more truly
modesty; the pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too
vivid for that public place. On the two following, Frank
had himself been absent on some of his excursions among the
neighbouring families. It was not until the fourth,
accordingly, that Frank had occasion to set eyes on the
enchantress. With the first look, all hesitation was
over. She came with the Cauldstaneslap party; then she
lived at Cauldstaneslap. Here was Archie’s secret,
here was the woman, and more than that—though I have need
here of every manageable attenuation of language—with the
first look, he had already entered himself as rival. It was
a good deal in pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in
genuine admiration: the devil may decide the proportions! I
cannot, and it is very likely that Frank could not.
“Mighty attractive milkmaid,” he observed, on the
way home.
“Who?” said Archie.
“O, the girl you’re looking at—aren’t
you? Forward there on the road. She came attended by
the rustic bard; presumably, therefore, belongs to his exalted
family. The single objection! for the four black brothers
are awkward customers. If anything were to go wrong, Gib
would gibber, and Clem would prove inclement; and Dand fly in
danders, and Hob blow up in gobbets. It would be a Helliott
of a business!”
“Very humorous, I am sure,” said Archie.
“Well, I am trying to be so,” said Frank.
“It’s none too easy in this place, and with your
solemn society, my dear fellow. But confess that the
milkmaid has found favour in your eyes, or resign all claim to be
a man of taste.”
“It is no matter,” returned Archie.
But the other continued to look at him, steadily and
quizzically, and his colour slowly rose and deepened under the
glance, until not impudence itself could have denied that he was
blushing. And at this Archie lost some of his
control. He changed his stick from one hand to the other,
and—“O, for God’s sake, don’t be an
ass!” he cried.
“Ass? That’s the retort delicate without
doubt,” says Frank. “Beware of the homespun
brothers, dear. If they come into the dance, you’ll
see who’s an ass. Think now, if they only applied
(say) a quarter as much talent as I have applied to the question
of what Mr. Archie does with his evening hours, and why he is so
unaffectedly nasty when the subject’s touched
on—”
“You are touching on it now,” interrupted Archie
with a wince.
“Thank you. That was all I wanted, an articulate
confession,” said Frank.
“I beg to remind you—” began Archie.
But he was interrupted in turn. “My dear fellow,
don’t. It’s quite needless. The
subject’s dead and buried.”
And Frank began to talk hastily on other matters, an art in
which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on
anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or
the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done
with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was
greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking
“Cauldstaneslap ways.” Frank took his first
glass of port out after dinner to the toast of Kirstie, and later
in the evening he returned to the charge again.
“I say, Weir, you’ll excuse me for returning again
to this affair. I’ve been thinking it over, and I
wish to beg you very seriously to be more careful.
It’s not a safe business. Not safe, my boy,”
said he.
“What?” said Archie.
“Well, it’s your own fault if I must put a name on
the thing; but really, as a friend, I cannot stand by and see you
rushing head down into these dangers. My dear boy,”
said he, holding up a warning cigar, “consider! What
is to be the end of it?”
“The end of what?”—Archie, helpless with
irritation, persisted in this dangerous and ungracious guard.
“Well, the end of the milkmaid; or, to speak more by the
card, the end of Miss Christina Elliott of the
Cauldstaneslap.”
“I assure you,” Archie broke out, “this is
all a figment of your imagination. There is nothing to be
said against that young lady; you have no right to introduce her
name into the conversation.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” said Frank.
“She shall henceforth be nameless, nameless, nameless,
Grigalach! I make a note besides of your valuable testimony
to her character. I only want to look at this thing as a
man of the world. Admitted she’s an angel—but,
my good fellow, is she a lady?”
This was torture to Archie. “I beg your
pardon,” he said, struggling to be composed, “but
because you have wormed yourself into my
confidence—”
“O, come!” cried Frank. “Your
confidence? It was rosy but unconsenting. Your
confidence, indeed? Now, look! This is what I must
say, Weir, for it concerns your safety and good character, and
therefore my honour as your friend. You say I wormed myself
into your confidence. Wormed is good. But what have I
done? I have put two and two together, just as the parish
will be doing tomorrow, and the whole of Tweeddale in two weeks,
and the black brothers—well, I won’t put a date on
that; it will be a dark and stormy morning! Your secret, in
other words, is poor Poll’s. And I want to ask of you
as a friend whether you like the prospect? There are two
horns to your dilemma, and I must say for myself I should look
mighty ruefully on either. Do you see yourself explaining
to the four Black Brothers? or do you see yourself presenting the
milkmaid to papa as the future lady of Hermiston? Do
you? I tell you plainly, I don’t!”
Archie rose. “I will hear no more of this,”
he said, in a trembling voice.
But Frank again held up his cigar. “Tell me one
thing first. Tell me if this is not a friend’s part
that I am playing?”
“I believe you think it so,” replied Archle.
“I can go as far as that. I can do so much justice to
your motives. But I will hear no more of it. I am
going to bed.”
“That’s right, Weir,” said Frank
heartily. “Go to bed and think over it; and I say,
man, don’t forget your prayers! I don’t often
do the moral—don’t go in for that sort of
thing—but when I do there’s one thing sure, that I
mean it.”
So Archie marched off to bed, and Frank sat alone by the table
for another hour or so, smiling to himself richly. There
was nothing vindictive in his nature; but, if revenge came in his
way, it might as well be good, and the thought of Archie’s
pillow reflections that night was indescribably sweet to
him. He felt a pleasant sense of power. He looked
down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he
pulled—as on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by
sheer power of intelligence, and whom he might ride to glory or
the grave at pleasure. Which was it to be? He
lingered long, relishing the details of schemes that he was too
idle to pursue. Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted that
night the sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity over
the strands of that intrigue which was to shatter him before the
summer waned.
