The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 11

“Do you call her by that name to her face, Mr. Balfour?” she asked.

“In troth, and I am not very sure,” I stammered.

“I would not do so in any case to strangers,” said Miss Grant. – “And why are you so much immersed in the affairs of this young lady?”

“I heard she was in prison,” said I.

“Well, and now you hear that she is out of it,” she replied, “and what more would you have? She has no need of any further champion.”

“I may have the greater need of her, ma’am,” said I.

“Come, this is better!” says Miss Grant. “But look me fairly in the face; am I not bonnier than she?”

“I would be the last to be denying it,” said I. “There is not your marrow in all Scotland.”

“Well, here you have the pick of the two at your hand, and must needs speak of the other,” said she. “This is never the way to please the ladies, Mr. Balfour.”

“But, mistress,” said I, “there are surely other things besides mere beauty.”

“By which I am to understand that I am no better than I should be, perhaps?” she asked.

“By which you will please understand that I am like the cock in the midden in the fable-book,” said I. “I see the braw jewel – and I like fine to see it too – but I have more need of the pickle corn.”

“Bravissimo!” she cried. “There is a word well said at last, and I will reward you for it with my story. That same night of your desertion I came late from a friend’s house – where I was excessively admired, whatever you may think of it – and what should I hear but that a lass in a tartan screen desired to speak with me? She had been there an hour or better, said the servant-lass, and she grat in to herself as she sat waiting. I went to her direct; she rose as I came in, and I knew her at a look. (’Grey Eyes!’ says I to myself, but was more wise than to let on.) You will be Miss Grant at last? she says, rising and looking at me hard and pitiful. Ay, it was true he said, you are bonny, at all events. —The way God made me, my dear, I said, but I would be geyan obliged if ye could tell me what brought you here at such a time of the night. —Lady, she said, we are kinsfolk, we are both come of the blood of the sons of Alpin. —My dear, I replied, I think no more of Alpin or his sons than what I do of a kale-stock. You have a better argument in these tears upon your bonny face. And at that I was so weak-minded as to kiss her, which is what you would like to do dearly, and I wager will never find the courage of. I say it was weak-minded of me, for I knew no more of her than the outside; but it was the wisest stroke I could have hit upon. She is a very staunch, brave nature, but I think she has been little used with tenderness; and at that caress (though to say the truth, it was but lightly given) her heart went out to me. I will never betray the secrets of my sex, Mr. Davie; I will never tell you the way she turned me round her thumb, because it is the same she will use to twist yourself. Ay, it is a fine lass! She is as clean as hill well-water.”

“She is e’en ’t!” I cried.

“Well, then, she told me her concerns,” pursued Miss Grant, “and in what a swither she was in about her papa, and what a taking about yourself, with very little cause, and in what a perplexity she had found herself after you was gone away. And then I minded at long last, says she, that we were kinswomen, and that Mr. David should have given you the name of the bonniest of the bonny, and I was thinking to myself, ‘If she is so bonny she will be good, at all events’; and I took up my foot-soles out of that. That was when I forgave yourself, Mr. Davie. When you was in my society, you seemed upon hot iron: by all marks, if ever I saw a young man that wanted to be gone, it was yourself, and I and my two sisters were the ladies you were so desirous to be gone from; and now it appeared you had given me some notice in the bygoing, and was so kind as to comment on my attractions! From that hour you may date our friendship, and I began to think with tenderness upon the Latin grammar.”

“You will have many hours to rally me in,” said I; “and I think besides you do yourself injustice. I think it was Catriona turned your heart in my direction. She is too simple to perceive as you do the stiffness of her friend.”

“I would not like to wager upon that, Mr. David,” said she. “The lasses have clear eyes. But at least she is your friend entirely, as I was to see. I carried her in to his lordship, my papa; and his Advocacy, being in a favourable stage of claret, was so good as to receive the pair of us. Here is Grey Eyes that you have been deaved with these days past, said I; she is come to prove that we spoke true, and I lay the prettiest lass in the three Lothians at your feet– making a papistical reservation of myself. She suited her action to my words: down she went upon her knees to him – I would not like to swear but he saw two of her, which doubtless made her appeal the more irresistible, for you are all a pack of Mahomedans – told him what had passed that night, and how she had withheld her father’s man from following of you, and what a case she was in about her father, and what a flutter for yourself; and begged with weeping for the lives of both of you (neither of which was in the slightest danger), till I vow I was proud of my sex because it was done so pretty, and ashamed for it because of the smallness of the occasion. She had not gone far, I assure you, before the Advocate was wholly sober, to see his inmost politics ravelled out by a young lass and discovered to the most unruly of his daughters. But we took him in hand, the pair of us, and brought that matter straight. Properly managed – and that means managed by me – there is no one to compare with my papa.”

“He has been a good man to me,” said I.

“Well, he was a good man to Katrine, and I was there to see to it,” said she.

“And she pled for me!” says I.

“She did that, and very movingly,” said Miss Grant. “I would not like to tell you what she said – I find you vain enough already.”

“God reward her for it!” cried I.

“With Mr. David Balfour, I suppose?” says she.

“You do me too much injustice at the last!” I cried. “I would tremble to think of her in such hard hands. Do you think I would presume, because she begged my life? She would do that for a new-whelped puppy! I have had more than that to set me up, if you but kenned. She kissed that hand of mine. Ay, but she did. And why? because she thought I was playing a brave part, and might be going to my death. It was not for my sake – but I need not be telling that to you, that cannot look at me without laughter. It was for the love of what she thought was bravery. I believe there is none but me and poor Prince Charlie had that honour done them. Was this not to make a god of me? and do you not think my heart would quake when I remember it?”

“I do laugh at you a good deal, and a good deal more than is quite civil,” said she; “but I will tell you one thing: if you speak to her like that, you have some glimmerings of a chance.”

“Me?” I cried, “I would never dare. I can speak to you, Miss Grant, because it’s a matter of indifference what ye think of me. But her? no fear!” said I.

“I think you have the largest feet in all broad Scotland,” says she.

“Troth, they are no’ very small,” said I, looking down.

“Ah, poor Catriona!” cries Miss Grant.

And I could but stare upon her; for though I now see very well what she was driving at (and perhaps some justification for the same), I was never swift at the uptake in such flimsy talk.

“Ah well, Mr. David,” she said, “it goes sore against my conscience, but I see I shall have to be your speaking-board. She shall know you came to her straight upon the news of her imprisonment; she shall know you would not pause to eat; and of our conversation she shall hear just so much as I think convenient for a maid of her age and inexperience. Believe me, you will be in that way much better served than you could serve yourself, for I will keep the big feet out of the platter.”

“You know where she is, then?” I exclaimed.

“That I do, Mr. David, and will never tell,” said she.

“Why that?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “I am a good friend, as you will soon discover; and the chief of those that I am friend to is my papa. I assure you, you will never heat nor melt me out of that, so you may spare me your sheep’s eyes; and adieu to your David-Balfourship for the now.”

“But there is yet one thing more,” I cried. “There is one thing that must be stopped, being mere ruin to herself, and to me too.”

“Well,” she said, “be brief; I have spent half the day on you already.”

“My Lady Allardyce believes,” I began – “she supposes – she thinks that I abducted her.”

The colour came into Miss Grant’s face, so that at first I was quite abashed to find her ear so delicate, till I bethought me she was struggling rather with mirth, a notion in which I was altogether confirmed by the shaking of her voice as she replied —

“I will take up the defence of your reputation,” said she. “You may leave it in my hands.”

And with that she withdrew out of the library.

CHAPTER XX

I CONTINUE TO MOVE IN GOOD SOCIETY

For about exactly two months I remained a guest in Prestongrange’s family, where I bettered my acquaintance with the Bench, the Bar, and the flower of Edinburgh company. You are not to suppose my education was neglected; on the contrary, I was kept extremely busy. I studied the French, so as to be more prepared to go to Leyden; I set myself to the fencing, and wrought hard, sometimes three hours in the day, with notable advancement; at the suggestion of my cousin Pilrig, who was an apt musician, I was put to a singing-class; and by the orders of my Miss Grant, to one for the dancing, at which I must say I proved far from ornamental. However, all were good enough to say it gave me an address a little more genteel; and there is no question but I learned to manage my coat-skirts and sword with more dexterity, and to stand in a room as though the same belonged to me. My clothes themselves were all earnestly re-ordered; and the most trifling circumstance, such as where I should tie my hair, or the colour of my ribbon, debated among the three misses like a thing of weight. One way with another, no doubt I was a good deal improved to look at, and acquired a bit of a modish air that would have surprised the good folks at Essendean.

The two younger misses were very willing to discuss a point of my habiliment, because that was in the line of their chief thoughts. I cannot say that they appeared any other way conscious of my presence; and though always more than civil, with a kind of heartless cordiality, could not hide how much I wearied them. As for the aunt, she was a wonderful still woman; and I think she gave me much the same attention as she gave the rest of the family, which was little enough. The eldest daughter and the Advocate himself were thus my principal friends, and our familiarity was much increased by a pleasure that we took in common. Before the court met we spent a day or two at the house of Grange, living very nobly with an open table, and here it was that we three began to ride out together in the fields, a practice afterwards maintained in Edinburgh, so far as the Advocate’s continual affairs permitted. When we were put in a good frame by the briskness of the exercise, the difficulties of the way, or the accidents of bad weather, my shyness wore entirely off; we forgot that we were strangers, and speech not being required, it flowed the more naturally on. Then it was that they had my story from me, bit by bit, from the time that I left Essendean, with my voyage and battle in the Covenant, wanderings in the heather, etc.; and from the interest they found in my adventures sprung the circumstance of a jaunt we made a little later on, on a day when the courts were not sitting, and of which I will tell a trifle more at length.

We took horse early, and passed first by the house of Shaws, where it stood smokeless in a great field of white frost, for it was yet early in the day. Here Prestongrange alighted down, gave me his horse, and proceeded alone to visit my uncle. My heart, I remember, swelled up bitter within me at the sight of that bare house and the thought of the old miser sitting chittering within in the cold kitchen.

“There is my home,” said I; “and my family.”

“Poor David Balfour!” said Miss Grant.

What passed during the visit I have never heard; but it would doubtless not be very agreeable to Ebenezer, for when the Advocate came forth again his face was dark.

“I think you will soon be the laird indeed, Mr. Davie,” says he, turning half about with the one foot in the stirrup.