Read Ebook: Stand Fast Craig-Royston! (Volume I) by Black William

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"I hope, grandfather, you won't think of remaining in this country on my account. Perhaps it is better to read about those beautiful places, and to dream about them, than to see them--you remember 'Yarrow Unvisited.' And indeed, grandfather, if you are collecting materials for that book, why should we not go back at once? It would be dreadful if--if--the other volume were to come out first--and you indebted to Lord Musselburgh, or any one else; but if yours were written and published--if you could show them you had done what you undertook to do, then it would be all perfectly right. For you know, grandfather," she continued, in a gently persuasive and winning voice, "no one could do it as well as you! Who else has such a knowledge of Scotland and Scottish literature, or such a sympathy with Scottish music and poetry? And then your personal acquaintance with many of those writers--who used to welcome you as one of themselves--who else could have that? You could do it better than any one, grandfather; and you have always said you would like to do something for the sake of Scotland; and here is the very thing ready to your hand. Some other time, grandfather," she pleaded, with those beautiful clear eyes turned beseechingly upon him, "some other time you will take me to all those beautiful places. It is not as if I had come back home; I have hardly ever had a home anywhere; I am as well content in Montreal or Toronto as anywhere else. And then you could get all the assistance you might need over there--you could go to your various friends in the newspaper offices, and they would give you information."

"Yes, yes; well, well," he said, peevishly; "I am not a literary hack, to be driven, Maisrie. I must have my own time. I made no promise. There, now, get me my pipe; and bring your violin; and play some of those Scotch airs. Yes, yes; you can get at the feeling of them; and that comes to you through your blood, Maisrie--no matter where you happen to be born."

Twilight had fallen. At the open window, with a long clay pipe, as yet unlit, in his fingers, old George Bethune sate and stared out into the semi-darkness, where all was quiet now, for the carriages from the neighbouring mews had long ago been driven away to dinner-parties and operas and theatres. And in the silence, in the dusky part of the room, there arose a low sound, a tender-breathing sound of most exquisite pathos, that seemed to say, as well as any instrument might say--

"I'm wearin' awa', Jean, Like snaw-wreaths in thaw, Jean, I'm wearin' awa', To the land o' the leal; There's nae sorrow there, Jean, There's neither cauld nor care, Jean, The day's aye fair In the land o' the leal."

Most tenderly she played, and slowly; and with an absolute simplicity of tone.

"There's Scotch blood in your veins, Maisrie--Scotch blood," he said, approvingly, as the low-vibrating notes ceased.

And then again in the darkness another plaintive wail arose--it was the Flowers o' the Forest this time--and here the old man joined in, singing in a sort of undertone, and with a sufficiently sympathetic voice:

"I've heard the liltin' at our yowe-milkin', Lasses a-liltin, before the dawn o' day; But now there's a moanin' on ilka green loanin'; The Flowers o' the Forest are a' wede away.

"We hear nae mair liltin' at our yowe-milkin', Women and bairns are dowie and wae; Sighin' and moanin', on ilka green loanin'-- The Flowers o' the Forest are a' wede away."

"London's bonnie woods and braes, I maun leave them a', lassie; Wha can thole when Britain's faes Would gie Briton law, lassie? Wha would shun the field o' danger? Wha to fame would live a stranger? Now when freedom bids avenge her, Wha would shun her ca', lassie?"

Maisrie Bethune had laid aside her violin; but she did not light the gas. She stood there, in the semi-darkness, in the middle of the room, timidly regarding her grandfather, and yet apparently afraid to speak. At last she managed to say--

"Grandfather--you will not be angry--?"

"What's this, now?" he said, wheeling round and staring at her, for the peculiarity of her tone had caught his ear.

"Grandfather," she continued, in almost piteous embarrassment. "I--I wish to say something to you--I have been thinking about it for a long while back--and yet afraid you mightn't understand--you might be angry--"

"Well, well, what is it?" he said, impatiently. "What are you dissatisfied with? I don't see that you've much to complain of, or I either. We don't live a life of grandeur; nor is there much excitement about it; but it is fairly comfortable. I consider we are very well off."

"We are too well off, grandfather," she said, sadly.

He started at this, and stared at her again.

"What do you mean?"

"Grandfather," she said, in the same pathetic voice, "don't you see that I am no longer a child? I am a woman. And I am doing nothing. Why did you give me so careful an education if I am not to use it? I wish to earn something--I--I wish to keep you and me, grandfather--"

The stammering sentences ceased: he replied slowly, and perhaps a trifle coldly.

"Why did I have you carefully educated? Well, I should have thought you might have guessed--might have understood. But I will tell you. I have given you what education was possible in our circumstances in order to fit you for the station which some day you may be called upon to fill. And if not, if it is fated that injustice and iniquity are to be in our case perpetual, at all events you must be worthy of the name you bear. But it was not as an implement of trade," he continued, more warmly, "that I gave you such education as was possible in our wandering lives. What do you want to do? Teach music? And you would use your trained hand and ear--and your trained soul, which is of more importance still--to drum mechanical rudiments into the brats of some bourgeois household? A fit employment for a Bethune of Balloray!"

She seemed bewildered--and agonised.

But here the incoherent appeal broke down; she fell on her knees before him, and clasped her hands over her face; and in the dark the old man--stern and immovable--could hear the sound of her violent sobbing.

"Have you finished?" he asked.

She rose, and would have seized his hand to enforce her appeal, but he withdrew a step, and motioned her to be seated.

He altered his tone; and spoke more proudly.

He spoke haughtily, and yet without anger; and there was a ring of sincerity in his tones that could not be mistaken. The girl sate silent and abashed.

"No," said he, in the same proud fashion; "during all my troubles, and they have been more numerous than you know or need ever know, I have never cowered, or whimpered, or abased myself before any living being. I have held my head up. My conscience is clear towards all men. 'Stand fast, Craig-Royston!' it has been with me--and shall be!"

He went to the window and shut it.

"Come, light the gas, Maisrie; and let us talk about something else. What I say is this, that if anyone, recognising the injustice that I and mine have suffered, should feel it due to himself, due to humanity, to make some little reparation, why, that is as between man and man--that ought to be considered his privilege; and I take no shame. I ask for no compassion. The years that I can hope for now must be few; but they shall be as those that have gone before. I abase myself before no one. I hold my head erect. I look the world in the face; and ask which of us has the greater cause to complain of the other. 'Stand fast, Craig-Royston!'--that has been my motto; and so, thank God, it shall be to the end!"

Maisrie lit the gas, and attended to her grandfather's other wants--in a mechanical sort of way. But she did not take up the violin again. There was a strangely absent look on the pale and beautiful and pensive face.

NEIGHBOURS.

The young man whom Lord Musselburgh had hailed came into the middle of the room. He was a handsome and well-made young fellow of about three or four-and-twenty, with finely-cut and intelligent features, and clear grey eyes that had a curiously straightforward and uncompromising look in them, albeit his manner was modest enough. At the present moment, however, he seemed somewhat perturbed.

"Who were those two?" he said, quickly.

"Didn't you listen while the old gentleman was declaiming away?" Lord Musselburgh made answer. "An enthusiastic Scot, if ever there was one! I suppose you never heard of the great Bethune lawsuit?"

"But the other--the girl?"

"His granddaughter, I think he said."

"She is the most beautiful human creature I ever beheld!" the young man exclaimed, rather breathlessly.

His friend looked at him--and laughed.

"That's not like you, Vin. Take care. The Hope of the Liberal Party enmeshed at four-and-twenty--that wouldn't do! Pretty--oh, yes, she was pretty enough, but shy: I hardly saw anything of her. I dare say her pretty face will have to be her fortune; I suspect the poor old gentleman is not overburdened with worldly possessions. He has his name, however; he seems proud enough of that; and I shouldn't wonder if it had made friends for him abroad. They seem to have travelled a good deal."

While he was speaking his companion had mechanically lifted from the table the card which old George Bethune had sent up. The address in Mayfair was pencilled on it. And mechanically the young man laid down the card again.

"Well, come along, Vin--let's get to Victoria."

"Oh, thank you, Musselburgh," the young man said, in the same embarrassed fashion, "but if you'll excuse me--I'd rather stay in town to-night."

"Oh, thanks--awfully good of you--I shall be delighted," the young man murmured; and a few seconds thereafter the two friends had separated, Lord Musselburgh driving off in a hansom to Victoria-station.

This young Vincent Harris who now walked away along Piccadilly towards Hyde Park was in a sort of waking trance. He saw nothing of the people passing by him, nor of the carriages, nor of the crowd assembled at the corner of the Row, expecting the Princess. He saw a pale and pathetic face, a dimly-outlined figure standing by a table, a chastened splendour of girlish hair, an attitude of meekness and diffidence. Once only had he caught a glimpse of the beautiful, clear, blue-grey eyes--when she came in at the door, looking startled almost; but surely a man is not stricken blind and dumb by a single glance from a girl's wondering or enquiring eyes? Love at first sight?--he would have dismissed the suggestion with anger, as an impertinence, a profanation. It was not love at all: it was a strange kind of interest and sympathy she had inspired--compassionate almost, and yet more reverent than pitiful. There appeared to be some mysterious and subtle appeal in her very youth: why should one so young be so solitary, so timid, sheltering herself, as it were, from the common gaze? Why that touch of pathos about a mouth that was surely meant to smile?--why the lowered eyelashes?--was it because she knew she was alone in this great wilderness of strangers, in this teeming town? And he felt in his heart that this was not the place for her at all. She ought to have been away in sunny meadows golden with buttercups, with the laughter of young children echoing around her, with the wide air fragrant with the new-mown hay, with thrushes and blackbirds piping clear from amidst the hawthorn boughs. Who had imprisoned this beautiful child, and made a white slave of her, and brought her into this great roaring market of the world? And was there no one to help?

But it was all a perplexity to him; even as was this indefinable concern and anxiety about one to whom he had never even spoken a word. What was there in that pensive beauty that should so strangely trouble him? She had made no appeal to him; their eyes could scarcely be said to have met, even in that brief moment; her cruel fate, the tyranny of her surroundings, her pathetic resignation, were all part and parcel of a distracted reverie, that seemed to tear his heart asunder with fears, and indignation, and vows of succour. And then--somehow--amidst this chaos and bewilderment--his one desire was that she should know he wished to be her friend--that some day--oh, some wild white day of joy!--he should be permitted to take her hand and say "Do not be so sad! You are not so much alone. Let me be by your side for a little while--until you speak--until you tell me what I can do--until you say 'Yes, I take you for my friend!'"

He had wandered away from the fashionable crowd--pacing aimlessly along the unfrequented roadways of the Park, and little recking of the true cause of the unrest that reigned in his bosom. For one thing, speculations about love or marriage had so far concerned him but slightly; these things were too remote; his aspirations and ambitions were of another sort. Then again he was familiar with feminine society. While other lads were at college, their thoughts intent on cricket, or boating, or golf, he had been kept at home with masters and teachers to fit him for the practical career which had been designed for him; and part of the curriculum was that he should mix freely with his kind, and get to know what people of our own day were thinking, not what people of two thousand years ago had been thinking. One consequence of this was that 'Vin' Harris, as he was universally called, if he did not know everything, appeared to know everybody; and of course he was acquainted with scores on scores of pretty girls--whom he liked to look at when, for example, they wore a smart lawn tennis costume, and who interested him most perhaps when they were saucy; and also he was acquainted with a considerable number of young married ladies, who were inclined to pet him, for he was good-natured, and easy-mannered, and it may be just a little careless of their favour. But as for falling seriously in love or perplexing himself with dreams of marriage--that was far from his scheme of life. His morning companions were Spencer, Bain, John Mill, Delolme, Hallam, Freeman, and the like; during the day he was busy with questions relating to food supply, to the influence of climate on character, the effect of religious creeds on mental development, the protection and cultivation of new industries, and so forth; then in the evening he was down at the House of Commons a good deal, especially when any well-known orator was expected to speak; and again he went to all kinds of social festivities, particularly when these were of a political cast, or likely to be attended by political people. For Vin Harris was known to be a young man of great promise and prospects; he was received everywhere; and granted a consideration by his elders which was hardly justified by his years. That he remained unspoiled--and even modest in a degree unusual at his age--may be put down to his credit, or more strictly to the fortunate accident of his temperament and disposition.

Suddenly the silence sprung into life; some one seemed to speak to him; and then he knew that it was a violin--being played in that very room. He glanced up towards the open window; he could just make out that the old man was sitting there, within the shadow; therefore it must be the girl herself who was playing, in the recess of the chamber. And in a sort of dream he stood and listened to the plaintive melody--hardly breathing--haunted by the feeling that he was intruding on some sacred privacy. Then, when the beautiful, pathetic notes ceased, he noiselessly withdrew with bowed head. She had been speaking to him, but he was bewildered; he hardly could tell what that trembling, infinitely sad voice had said.

He walked quickly now; for in place of those vague anticipations and reveries, a more definite purpose was forming in his brain; and there was a certain joyousness in the prospect. The very next morning he would come up to this little thoroughfare, and see if he could secure lodgings for himself, perhaps opposite the house where the old man and his granddaughter lived. It was time he was devoting himself more vigorously to study; there were too many people calling at the big mansion in Grosvenor Place; the frivolities of the fashionable world were too seductive. But in the seclusion of that quiet little quarter he could give himself up to his books; and he would know that he had neighbours; he might get a glimpse of them from time to time; that would lighten his toil. Then when Mary Bethune--he had come to the conclusion that Mary was her name, and had made not such a bad guess, after all--when Mary Bethune played one of those pathetic Scotch airs, he would have a better right to listen; he would contentedly put down Seaman's "Progress of Nations," and go to the open window, and sit there, till the violin had ceased to speak. It was a most excellent scheme; he convinced himself that it would work right well--because it was based on common sense.

When he arrived at the great house in Grosvenor Place, he went at once into the dining-room, and found, though not to his surprise, that dinner was just about over. There were only three persons seated at the long table, which was sumptuously furnished with fruit, flowers, and silver. At the bead was Vin Harris's father, Mr. Harland Harris, a stout, square-set, somewhat bourgeois-looking man, with a stiff, pedantic, and pompous manner, who nevertheless showed his scorn of conventionalities by wearing a suit of grey tweed; on his right sate his sister-in-law, Mrs. Ellison, a remarkably pretty young widow, tall and elegant of figure, with wavy brown hair, shrewd blue eyes, and a most charming smile that she could use with effect; the third member of the group being Mr. Ogden, the great electioneerer of the north, a big and heavy man, with Yorkshire-looking shoulders, a bald head, and small, piggish eyes set in a wide extent of face. Mr. Ogden was resplendent in evening dress, if his shining shirt-front was somewhat billowy.

"What's this now?" said the pretty Mrs. Ellison to the young man, as he came and pulled in a chair and sate down by her. "Haven't you had any dinner?"

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