A Knight of the Nets

"What for are you requiring to see Sophy, Madame?"

"Is she in the house?"

"Shall I go and see?"

"Go and see, indeed! You know well she is not. You know she is away somewhere, walking or driving with my son—with the heir of Braelands. Oh, I have heard all about their shameful carryings-on."

"You'll not need to use the word 'shameful' with regard to my niece, Sophy Traill, Madame Braelands. She has never earned such a like word, and she never will. You may take my say-so for that."

"It is not anybody's say-so in this case. Seeing is believing, and they have been seen together, walking in Fernie wood, and down among the rocks on the Elie coast, and in many other places."

"Well and good, Madame. What by that? Young things will be young things."

"What by that? Do you, a woman of your age, ask me such a question? When a gentleman of good blood and family, as well as great wealth, goes walking and driving with a poor girl of no family at all, do you ask what by that? Nothing but disgrace and trouble can be looked for."

"Speak for your own kin and side, Madame. And I should think a woman of your age—being at least twenty years older than myself—would know that true love never asks for a girl's pedigree. And as for 'disgrace,' Sophy Traill will never call anything like 'disgrace' to herself. I will allow that Sophy is poor, but as for family, the Traills are of the best Norse strain. They were sea-fighters, hundreds of years before they were sea-fishers; and they had been 'at home' on the North Sea, and in all the lands about it, centuries before the like of the Braelands were thought or heard tell of."

Mistress Kilgour was rapidly becoming angry, and Madame would have been wise to have noted the circumstance; but she herself was now past all prudence, and with an air of contempt she took out her jewelled watch, and beginning to slowly wind it, said:—

"My good woman, Sophy's father was a common fisherman. We have no call to go back to the time when her people were pirates and sea-robbers."

"I am my own woman, Madame. And I will take my oath I am not your woman, anyhow. And 'common' or uncommon, the fishermen of Fife call no man master but the Lord God Almighty, from whose hands they take their food, summer and winter. And I will make free to say, moreover, that if Braelands loves Sophy Traill and she loves him, worse might befall him than Sophy for a wife. For if God thinks fit to mate them, it is not Griselda Kilgour that will take upon herself to contradict the Will of Heaven."

"Don't talk rubbish, Mistress Kilgour. People who live in society have to regard what society thinks and says."

"It is no ways obligatory, Madame, the voice of God and Nature has more weight, I'm thinking, and if God links two together, you will find it gey and hard to separate them."

"I heard the girl was promised since her babyhood to a fisherman called Andrew Binnie."

"For once you have heard the truth, Madame. But you know yourself that babyhood and womanhood are two different things; and the woman has just set at naught the baby. That is all."

"No, it is not all. This Andrew Binnie is a man of great influence among the fishers, and my son cannot afford to make enemies among that class. It will be highly prejudicial to him."

"I cannot help that Madame. Braelands is well able to row his own boat. At any rate, I am not called to take an oar in it."

"Yes, you are. I have been a good customer to you, Mistress Kilgour."

"I am not denying it; at the same time I have been a good dress and bonnet maker to you, and earned every penny-bit you have paid me. The obligation is mutual, I'm thinking."

"I can be a still better customer if you will prevent this gentle-shepherding and love-making. I would not even scruple at a twenty pound note, or perhaps two of them."

"Straa! If you were Queen of England, Madame, I would call you an insolent dastard, to try and bribe me against my own flesh and blood. You are a very Judas, to think of such a thing. Good blood! fine family! indeed! If your son is like yourself, I'm not caring for him coming into my family at all."

"Mistress Kilgour, you may close my account with you. I shall employ you no more."

"Pay me the sixteen pounds odd you owe me, and then I will shut my books forever against Braelands. Accounts are not closed till outstanding money is paid in."

"I shall send the money."

"The sight of the money would be better than the promise of it, Madame; for some of it is owing more than a twelvemonth;" and Mistress Kilgour hastily turned over to the Braelands page of her ledger, while Madame, with an air of affront and indignation, hastily left the shop.

Following this wordy battle with her dressmaker, Madame had an equally stubborn one with her son, the immediate consequence of which was that very interview whose close was witnessed by Andrew Binnie. In this conference Braelands acknowledged his devotion to Sophy, and earnestly pleaded for Mistress Kilgour's favour for his suit. She was now quite inclined to favour him. Her own niece, as mistress of Braelands, would be not only a great social success, but also a great financial one. Madame Braelands's capacity for bonnets was two every year; Sophy's capacity was unlimited. Madame considered four dresses annually quite extravagant; Sophy's ideas on the same subject were constantly enlarging. And then there would be the satisfaction of overcoming Madame. So she yielded easily and gracefully to Archie Braelands's petition, and thus Sophy suddenly found herself able to do openly what she had hitherto done secretly, and the question of her marriage with Braelands accepted as an understood conclusion.

At this sudden culmination of her hardly acknowledged desires, the girl was for a short tune distracted. She felt that Andrew must now be definitely resigned, and a strangely sad feeling of pity and reluctance assailed her. There were moments she knew not which lover was dearest to her. The habit of loving Andrew had grown through long years in her heart; she trusted him as she trusted no other mortal, she was not prepared to give up absolutely all rights in a heart so purely and so devotedly her own. For if she knew anything, she knew right well that no other man would ever give her the same unfaltering, unselfish affection.

And when she dared to consider truthfully her estimate of Archie Braelands, she judged his love, passionate as it was, did not ring true through all its depths. There were times when her little gaucheries fretted him; when her dress did not suit him; when he put aside an engagement with her for a sail with a lord, or a dinner party with friends, or a social function at his own home. Andrew put no one before her; and even the business that kept him from her side was all for her future happiness. Every object and every aim of his life had reference to her. It was hard to give up such a perfect love, and she felt that she could not see Andrew face to face and do it. Hence her refusals to meet him, and her shyness and silence when a meeting was unavoidable. Hence, also, came a very peculiar attitude of Andrew's friends and mates; for they could not conceive how Andrew's implicit faith in his love should prevent him from finding out what was so evident to every man and woman in Largo.

Alas! the knowledge had now come to him. That it could have come in any harder way, it is difficult to believe. There was only one palliation to its misery—it was quite unpremeditated—but even this mitigation of the affront hardly brought him any comfort as yet Braelands was certainly deeply grieved at the miserable outcome of the meeting. He knew the pride of the fisher race, and he had himself a manly instinct, strong enough to understand the undeserved humiliation of Andrew's position. Honestly, as a gentleman, he was sorry the quarrel had taken place; as a lover, he was anxious to turn it to his own advantage. For he saw that, in spite of all her coldness and apparent apathy, Sophy was affected and wounded by Andrew's bitter imploration and its wretched and sorrowful ending. If the man should gain her ear and sympathy, Braelands feared for the result. He therefore urged her to an immediate marriage; and when Mistress Kilgour was taken into counsel, she encouraged the idea, because of the talk which was sure to follow such a flagrant breach of the courtesies of life.

But even at this juncture, Sophy's vanity must have its showing; and she refused to marry, until at least two or three suitable dresses should have been prepared; so the uttermost favour that could be obtained from the stubborn little bride was a date somewhere within two weeks away.

During these two weeks there was an unspeakable unhappiness in the Binnie household. For oh, how dreary are those wastes of life, left by the loved who have deserted us! These are the vacant places we water with our bitterest tears. Had Sophy died, Andrew would have said, "It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth right in his sight." But the manner and the means of his loss filled him with a dumb sorrow and rage; for in spite of his mother's and sister's urging, he would do nothing to right his own self-respect at the price of giving Sophy the slightest trouble or notoriety. Suffer! Yes, he suffered at home, where Janet and Christina continually reminded him of the insult he ought to avenge; and he suffered also abroad, where his mates looked at him with eyes full of surprise and angry inquiries.

But though the village was ringing with gossip about Sophy and young Braelands, never a man or woman in it ventured to openly question the stern, sullen, irritable man who had been so long recognised as her accepted lover. And whether he was in the boats or out of them, no one dared to speak Sophy's name in his presence. Indeed, upon the whole, he was during these days what Janet Binnie called "an ill man to live with—a man out of his senses, and falling away from his meat and his clothes."

This misery continued for about two weeks without any abatement, and Janet's and Christina's sympathy was beginning to be tinged with resentment. It seems so unnatural and unjust, that a girl who had already done them so much wrong, and who was so far outside their daily life, should have the power to still darken their home, and infuse a bitter drop into their peculiar joys and hopes.

"I am glad the wicked lass isn't near by me," said Janet one morning, when Andrew had declared himself unable to eat his breakfast and gone out of the cottage to escape his mother's pleadings and reproofs. "I'm glad she isn't near me. If she was here, I could not keep my tongue from her. She should hear the truth for once, if she never heard it again. They should be words as sharp as the birch rod she ought to have had, when she first began her nonsense, and her airs and graces."

"She is a bad girl; but we must remember that she was left much to herself—no mother to guide her, no sister or brother either."

"It would have been a pity if there had been more of them. One scone of that baking is enough. The way she has treated our Andrew is abominable. Flesh and blood can't bear such doings."

As Janet made this assertion, a cousin of Sophy's came into the cottage, and answered her. "I know you are talking of Sophy," she said, "and I am not wondering at the terrivee you are making. As for me, though she is my cousin, I'll never exchange the Queen's language with her again as long as I live in this world. But all bad things come to an end, as well as good ones, and I am bringing what will put a stop at last to all this clishmaclaver about that wearisome lassie,"—and with these words she handed Janet two shining white cards, tied together with a bit of silver wire.

They were Sophy's wedding cards; and she had also sent from Edinburgh a newspaper containing a notice of her marriage to Archibald Braelands. The news was very satisfactory to Janet. She held the bits of cardboard with her fingertips, looking grimly at the names upon them. Then she laughed, not very pleasantly, at the difference in the size of the cards. "He has the wee card now," she said, "and Sophy the big one; but I'm thinking the wee one will grow big, and the big one grow little before long. I will take them to Andrew myself; the sight of them will be a bitter medicine, but it will do him good. Folks may count it great gain when they get rid of a false hope."

Andrew was walking moodily about the bit of bare turf in front of the cottage door, stopping now and then to look over the sea, where the brown sails of some of the fishing boats still caught the lazy south wind. He was thinking that the sea was cloudy, and that there was an evil-looking sky to the eastward; and then, as his mind took in at the same moment the dangers to the fishers who people the grey waters and his own sorrowful wrong, he turned and began to walk about muttering—"Lord help us! We must bear what is sent."

Then Janet called him, and he watched for her approach. She put the cards into his hand saying, "Sophy's cousin, Isobel Murray, brought them." Her voice was full of resentment; and Andrew, not at the moment realising a custom so unfamiliar in a fishing-village, looked wonderingly in his mother's face, and then at the fateful white messengers.

"Read the names on them, Andrew man, and you'll know then why they are sent to Pittendurie."

Then he looked steadily at the inscription, and the struggle of the inner man shook the outward man visibly. It was like a shot in the backbone. But it was only for a moment he staggered; though he had few resources, his faith in the Cross and his confidence in himself made him a match for his hard fate. It is in such critical moments the soul reveals if it be selfish or generous, and Andrew, with a quick upward fling of the head, regained absolutely that self-control, which he had voluntarily abdicated.

"You will tell Isobel," he said, "that I wish Mistress Braelands every good thing, both for this life and the next." Then he stepped closer to his mother and kissed her; and Janet was so touched and amazed that she could not speak. But the look of loving wonder on her face was far better than words. And as she stood looking at him, Andrew put the cards in his pocket, and went down to the sea; and Janet returned to the cottage and gave Isobel the message he had sent.

But this information, so scanty and yet so conclusive, by no means satisfied the curiosity of the women. A great deal of indignation was expressed by Sophy's kindred and friends in the village at her total ignoring of their claims. They did not expect to be invited to a house like Braelands; but they did think Sophy ought to have visited them and told them all about her preparations and future plans. They were her own flesh and blood, and they deeply resented her non-recognition of the claims of kindred. Isobel, as the central figure of this dissatisfaction, was a very important person. She at least had received "cards," and the rest of the cousins to the sixth degree felt that they had been grossly slighted in the omission. So Isobel, for the sake of her own popularity, was compelled to make common cause, and to assert positively that "she thought little of the compliment." Sophy only wanted her folk to know she was now Mistress Braelands, and she had picked her out to carry the news—good or bad news, none yet could say.

Janet was not inclined to discuss the matter with her. She was so cold about it, that Isobel quickly discovered she had 'work to finish at her own house,' for she recollected that if the Binnies were not inclined to talk over the affair there were plenty of wives and maids in Pittendurie who were eager to do so. So Janet and Christina were quickly left to their own opinions on the marriage, the first of which was, that "Sophy had behaved very badly to them."

"But I wasn't going to say bad words for Isobel to clash round the village," said Janet "and I am gey glad Andrew took the news so man-like and so Christian-like. They can't make any speculations about Andrew now, and that will be a sore disappointment to the hussies, for some of them are but ill willy creatures."

"I am glad Andrew kept a brave heart, and could bring good words out of it."

"What else would you expect from Andrew? Do you think Andrew Binnie will fret himself one moment about a wife that is not his wife? He would not give the de'il such a laugh over him. You may take my word, that he will break no commandment for any lass; and Sophy Braelands will now have to vacate his very thoughts."

"I am glad she is married then. If her marriage cures Andrew of that never-ending fret about her, it will be a comfort."