A Knight of the Nets

"Let my Bible alone," shouted Andrew. "I'll have no man swear to a lie on my Bible. Get out of my house, James Logan, and be thankful that I don't call the officers to take care of you."

"There is a mad man inside of you, Andrew Binnie, or a devil of some kind, and you are not fit to be in the same house with good women. Come with me, Christina. I'll marry you tonight at the Largo minister's house. Come my dear lassie. Never mind aught you have, but your plaidie."

Christina rose and put out her hand. Andrew leaped to his feet and strode between them.

"I will strike you to the ground, if you dare to touch my sister again," he shouted, and if Janet had not taken both his hands in her own strong grip, Andrew would have kept his threat. Then Janet's anger turned most unreasonably upon Christina—

"Go ben the house," she screamed. "Go ben the house, you worrying, whimpering lassie. You will be having the whole village fighting about you the next thing."

"I am going with Jamie, Mother."

"I will take very good care, you do not go with Jamie. There is not a soul, but Jamie Logan, will leave this house tonight. I would just like to see any other man or woman try it," and she looked defiantly both at Andrew and Christina.

"I ran the risk of losing my berth to come here," said Jamie. "More fool, I. I have been called 'thief' and 'loon' for doing it. I came for your sake, Christina, and now you must go with me for my sake. Come away, my dearie, and there is none that shall part us more."

Again Christina rose, and again her mother interfered. "You will go out of this house alone, Jamie Logan. I don't know whether you are right or wrong. I know nothing about that weary siller. But I do know there has been nothing but trouble to my boy since he saved you from the sea. I am not saying it is your fault; but the sea has been against him ever since, and now you will go away, and you will stay away."

"Christina, am I to go?"

"Go, Jamie, but I will come to you, and there is none that shall keep me from you."

Then Jamie went, and far down on the sands Christina heard him call, "Good-bye, Christina! Good-bye!" And she would have answered him, but Janet had locked the door, and the key was in her pocket. Then for hours the domestic storm raged, Andrew growing more and more positive and passionate, until even Janet was alarmed, and with tears and coaxing persuaded him to go to bed. Still in this hurly burly of temper, Christina kept her purpose intact. She was determined to go to Glasgow as soon as she could get outside. If she was in time for a marriage with Jamie, she would be his wife at once. If Jamie had gone, then she would hire herself out until the return of his ship.

This was the purpose she intended to carry out in the morning, but before the dawn her mother awakened her out of a deep sleep. She was in a sweat of terror.

"Run up the cliff for Thomas Roy," she cried, "and then send Sandy for the doctor."

"What is the matter, Mother."

"Your brother Andrew is raving, and clean beyond himself, and I'm feared for him, and for us all. Quick Christina! There is not a moment to lose!"

CHAPTER VII

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

On this same night the Mistress of Braelands sat musing by the glowing bit of fire in her bedroom, while her maid, Allister, was folding away her silk dinner-gown, and making the preparations for the night's toilet. She was a stately, stern-looking woman, with that air of authority which comes from long and recognised position. Her dressing-gown of pale blue flannel fell amply around her tall form; her white hair was still coiled and puffed in an elaborate fashion, and there was at the wrist-bands of her sleeves a fall of lace which half covered her long, shapely white hands. She was pinching its plaits mechanically, and watching the effect as she idly turned them in the firelight to catch the gleam of opal and amethyst rings. But this accompaniment to her thoughts was hardly a conscious one; she had admired her hands for so many years that she was very apt to give to their beauty this homage of involuntary observation, even when her thoughts were fixed on subjects far-off and alien to them.

"Allister," she said, suddenly, "I wonder where Mr. Archibald will be this night."

"The Lord knows, Madame, and it is well he does; for it is little we know of ourselves and the ways we walk in."

"The Lord looks after his own, Allister, and Mr. Archibald was given to him by kirk and parents before he was a month old. But if a man marries such a woman as you know nothing about, and then goes her ways, what will you say then?"

"It is not as bad as that, Madame. Mrs. Archibald is of well-known people, though poor."

"Though low-born, Allister. Poverty can be tholed, and even respected; but for low birth there is no remedy but being born over again."

"Well, Madame, she is Braelands now, and that is a cloak to cover all defects; and if I was you I would just see that it did so."

"She is my son's wife, and must be held as such, both by gentle and simple."

"And there is few ills that have not a good side to them, Madame. If Mr. Archibald had married Miss Roberta Elgin, as you once feared he would do, there would have been a flitting for you and for me, Madame. Miss Roberta would have had the whole of Braelands House to herself, and the twenty-two rooms of it wouldn't have been enough for her. And she would have taken the Braelands's honour and glory on her own shoulders. It would have been 'Mrs. Archibald Braelands' here and there and everywhere, and you would have been pushed out of sight and hearing, and passed by altogether, like as not; for if youth and beauty and wealth and good blood set themselves to have things their own way, which way at all will age that is not rich keep for itself? Sure as death, Madame, you would have had to go to the Dower House, which is but a mean little place, though big enough, no doubt, for all the friends and acquaintances that would have troubled themselves to know you there."

"You are not complimentary, Allister. I think I have few friends who would not have followed me to the Dower House."

"Surely, Madame, you may as well think so. But carriages aye stop at big houses; indeed, the very coachmen and footmen and horses are dead set against calling at cottages. There is many a lady who would be feared to ask her coachman to call at the Dower House. But what for am I talking? There is no occasion to think that Mrs. Archibald will ever dream of sending you out of his house."

"I came here a bride, nearly forty years ago, Allister," she said, with a touch of sentimental pity for herself in the remembrance.

"So you have had a long lease, Madame, and one like to be longer; for never a better son than your son; and I do think for sure that the lady he has married will be as biddable as a very child with you."

"I hope so. For she will have everything to learn about society, and who can teach her better than I can, Allister?"

"No one, Madame; and Mrs. Archibald was ever good at the uptake. I am very sure if you will show her this and that, and give her the word here and there yourself, Madame, there will be no finer lady in Fife before the year has come and gone. And she cannot be travelling with Mr. Archibald without learning many a thing all the winter long."

"Yes, they will not be home before the spring, I hear."

"And oh, Madame, by that date you will have forgot that all was not as you wanted it! And no doubt you will give the young things the loving welcome they are certain to be longing for."

"I do not know, Allister. The marriage was a great sorrow, and shame, and disappointment to me. I am not sure that I have forgiven it."

"Lady Beith was saying you never would forgive it. She was saying that you could never forgive any one's faults but your own."

"Lady Beith is very impertinent. And pray what faults has Lady Beith ever seen in me?"

"It was her general way of speaking, Madame. She has that way."

"Then you might tell Lady Beith's woman, that such general ways of speaking are extremely vulgar. When her ladyship speaks of the Mistress of Braelands again, I will ask her to refer to me, particularly. I have my own virtues as well as my own faults, and my own position, and my own influence, and I do not go into the generalities of life. I am the Mistress of Braelands yet, I hope."

"I hope so, Madame. As I was saying, Mrs. Archibald is biddable as a child; but then again, she is quite capable of taking the rudder into her own hands, and driving in the teeth of the wind. You can't ever be sure of fisher blood. It is like the ocean, whiles calm as a sleeping baby, whiles lashing itself into a very fury. There is both this and that in the Traills, and Mrs. Archibald is one of them."

"Any way and every way, this marriage is a great sorrow to me."

"I am not disputing that, Madame; but I am sure you remember what the minister was saying to you at his last visitation—that every sorrow you got the mastery over was a benefactor."

"The minister is not always orthodox, Allister."

"He is a very good man; every one is saying that."

"No doubt, no doubt, but he deviates."

"Well then, Madame, even if the marriage be as bad as you fancy it, bad things as well as good ones come to an end, and life, after all, is like a bit of poetry I picked up somewhere, which says:

There's nane exempt frae worldly cares
And few frae some domestic jars
Whyles all are in, whyles all are out,
And grief and joy come turn about.