The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 20

“Ducie.”

“To be sure. As I was saying, any friend of Mr. Robbie – one of my oldest acquaintance. If you can manage now to break him of his bachelor habits? You are making a long stay in Edinburgh?”

“I fear, madam, that I must leave it to-morrow.”

“You have seen all our lions, I suppose? The Castle, now? Ah, the attractions of London! – now don’t shake your head, Mr. Ducie. I hope I know a Londoner when I see one. And yet ’twould surprise you how fast we are advancing in Edinburgh. Camilla dear, that Miss Scrymgeour has edged her China crape with the very ribbon trimmings – black satin with pearl edge – we saw in that new shop in Princes Street yesterday: sixpenny width at the bottom, and three-three-farthings round the bodice. Perhaps you can tell me, Mr. Ducie, if it’s really true that ribbon trimmings are the height in London and Bath this year?”

But the band struck up, and I swept the unresisting Camilla towards the set. After the dance, the ladies (who were kind enough to compliment me on my performance) suffered themselves to be led to the tea-room. By this time the arrivals were following each other thick and fast; and, standing by the tea-table, I heard name after name vociferated at the ball-room door, but never the name my nerves were on the strain to echo. Surely Flora would come: surely none of her guardians, natural or officious, would expect to find me at the ball. But the minutes passed, and I must convey Mrs. and Miss McBean back to their seats beneath the gallery.

“Miss Gilchrist – Miss Flora Gilchrist – Mr. Ronald Gilchrist! Mr. Robbie! Major Arthur Chevenix!”

The first name plumped like a shot across my bows, and brought me up standing – for a second only. Before the catalogue was out I had dropped the McBeans at their moorings, and was heading down on my enemies’ line of battle. Their faces were a picture. Flora’s cheek flushed, and her lips parted in the prettiest cry of wonder. Mr. Robbie took snuff. Ronald went red in the face, and Major Chevenix white. The intrepid Miss Gilchrist turned not a hair.

“What will be the meaning of this?” she demanded, drawing to a stand, and surveying me through her gold-rimmed eye-glass.

“Madam,” said I, with a glance at Chevenix, “you may call it a cutting-out expedition.”

“Miss Gilchrist,” he began, “you will surely not – ”

But I was too quick for him.

“Madam, since when has the gallant Major superseded Mr. Robbie as your family adviser?”

“H’mph!” said Miss Gilchrist; which in itself was not reassuring. But she turned to the lawyer.

“My dear lady,” he answered her look, “this very imprudent young man seems to have burnt his boats, and no doubt recks very little if, in that heroical conflagration, he burns our fingers. Speaking, however, as your family adviser” – and he laid enough stress on it to convince me that there was no love lost between him and the interloping Chevenix – “I suggest that we gain nothing by protracting this scene in the face of a crowded assembly. Are you for the card-room, madam?”

She took his proffered arm, and they swept from us, leaving Master Ronald red and glum, and the Major pale but nonplussed.

“Four from six leaves two,” said I; and promptly engaged Flora’s arm, and towed her away from the silenced batteries.

“And now, my dear,” I added, as we found two isolated chairs, “you will kindly demean yourself as if we were met for the first or second time in our lives. Open your fan – so. Now listen: my cousin, Alain, is in Edinburgh, at Dumbreck’s Hotel. No, don’t lower it.”

She held up her fan, though her small wrist trembled.

“There is worse to come. He has brought Bow Street with him, and likely enough at this moment the runners are ransacking the city hot-foot for my lodgings.”

“And you linger and show yourself here! – here of all places! O, it is mad! Anne, why will you be so rash?”

“For the simple reason that I have been a fool, my dear. I banked the balance of my money in George Street, and the bank is watched. I must have money to win my way south. Therefore I must find you and reclaim the notes you were kind enough to keep for me. I go to Swanston and find you under surveillance of Chevenix, supported by an animal called Towzer. I may have killed Towzer, by the way. If so, transported to an equal sky, he may shortly have the faithful Chevenix to bear him company. I grow tired of Chevenix.”

But the fan dropped: her arms lay limp in her lap; and she was staring up at me piteously, with a world of self-reproach in her beautiful eyes.

“And I locked up the notes at home to-night – when I dressed for the ball – the first time they have left my heart! O, false! – false of trust that I am!”

“Why, dearest, that is not fatal, I hope. You reach home to-night – you slip them into some hiding – say in the corner of the wall below the garden – ”

“Stop: let me think.” She picked up her fan again, and behind it her eyes darkened while I watched and she considered. “You know the hill we pass before we reach Swanston? – it has no name, I believe, but Ronald and I have called it the Fish-back since we were children: it has a clump of firs above it like a fin. There is a quarry on the east slope. If you will be there at eight – I can manage it, I think, and bring the money.”

“But why should you run the risk?”

“Please, Anne – O, please, let me do something! If you knew what it is to sit at home while your – your dearest – ”

“The Viscount of Saint-Yves!”

The name, shouted from the doorway, rang down her faltering sentence as with the clash of an alarm bell. I saw Ronald – in talk with Miss McBean but a few yards away – spin round on his heel and turn slowly back on me with a face of sheer bewilderment. There was no time to conceal myself. To reach either the tea-room or the card-room, I must traverse twelve feet of open floor. We sat in clear view of the main entrance; and there already, with eye-glass lifted, raffish, flamboyant, exuding pomades and bad style, stood my detestable cousin. He saw us at once; wheeled right-about-face and spoke to some one in the vestibule; wheeled round again, and bore straight down, a full swagger varnishing his malign triumph. Flora caught her breath as I stood up to accost him.

“Good evening, my cousin! The newspaper told me you were favouring this city with a stay.”

“At Dumbreck’s Hotel: where, my dear Anne, you have not yet done me the pleasure to seek me out.”

“I gathered,” said I, “that you were forestalling the compliment. Our meeting, then, is unexpected?”

“Why, no; for, to tell you the truth, the secretary of the Ball Committee, this afternoon, allowed me a glance over his list of invités. I am apt to be nice about my company, cousin.”

Ass that I was! I had never given this obvious danger so much as a thought.

“I fancy I have seen one of your latest intimates about the street.”

He eyed me, and answered, with a bluff laugh, “Ah! You gave us the very devil of a chase. You appear, my dear Anne, to have a hare’s propensity for running in your tracks. And begad, I don’t wonder at it!” he wound up, ogling Flora with an insolent stare.

Him one might have hunted by scent alone. He reeked of essences.

“Present me, mon brave.”

“I’ll be shot if I do.”

“I believe they reserve that privilege for soldiers,” he mused.

“At any rate they don’t extend it to – ” I pulled up on the word. He had the upper hand, but I could at least play the game out with decency. “Come,” said I, “contre-danse will begin presently. Find yourself a partner, and I promise you shall be our vis-à-vis.”

“You have blood in you, my cousin.”

He bowed, and went in search of the Master of Ceremonies. I gave an arm to Flora. “Well, and how does Alain strike you?” I asked.

“He is a handsome man,” she allowed. “If your uncle had treated him differently, I believe – ”

“And I believe that no woman alive can distinguish between a gentleman and a dancing-master! A posture or two, and you interpret worth. My dear girl – that fellow!”

She was silent. I have since learned why. It seems, if you please, that the very same remark had been made to her by that idiot Chevenix, upon me!

We were close to the door: we passed it, and I flung a glance into the vestibule. There, sure enough, at the head of the stairs, was posted my friend of the moleskin waistcoat, in talk with a confederate by some shades uglier than himself, a red-headed, loose-legged scoundrel in cinder-grey.

I was fairly in the trap. I turned, and between the moving crowd caught Alain’s eye and his evil smile. He had found a partner: no less a personage than Lady Frazer of the lilac sarsnet and diamond bandeau.

For some unaccountable reason, in this infernal impasse my spirits began to rise, to soar. I declare it: I led Flora forward to the set with a gaiety which may have been unnatural, but was certainly not factitious. A Scotsman would have called me fey. As the song goes – and it matters not if I had it then, or read it later in my wife’s library —

“Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,