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

The end was that I wore through the remaining hours of darkness upon the sodden hillside. Superlative Miss Gilchrist! Folded in the mantle of that Spartan dame; huddled upon a boulder, while the rain descended upon my bare head, and coursed down my nose, and filled my shoes, and insinuated a playful trickle down the ridge of my spine; I hugged the lacerating fox of self-reproach, and hugged it again, and set my teeth as it bit upon my vitals. Once, indeed, I lifted an accusing arm to heaven. It was as if I had pulled the string of a douche-bath. Heaven flooded the fool with gratuitous tears; and the fool sat in the puddle of them and knew his folly. But heaven at the same time mercifully veiled that figure of abasement: and I will lift but a corner of the sheet.

Wind in hidden gullies, and the talk of lapsing waters on the hillside, filled all the spaces of the night. The high-road lay at my feet, fifty yards or so below my boulder. Soon after two o’clock (as I made it) lamps appeared in the direction of Swanston, and drew nearer; and two hackney coaches passed me at a jog-trot, towards the opaline haze into which the weather had subdued the lights of Edinburgh. I heard one of the drivers curse as he went by, and inferred that my open-handed cousin had shirked the weather and gone comfortably from the Assembly Rooms to Dumbreck’s Hotel and bed, leaving the chase to his mercenaries.

After this you are to believe that I dozed and woke by snatches. I watched the moon descend in her foggy circle; but I saw also the mulberry face and minatory forefinger of Mr. Romaine, and caught myself explaining to him and Mr. Robbie that their joint proposal to mortgage my inheritance for a flying broomstick took no account of the working-model of the whole Rock and Castle of Edinburgh, which I dragged about by an ankle chain. Anon I was pelting with Rowley in a claret-coloured chaise through a cloud of robin-redbreasts; and with that I awoke to the veritable chatter of birds and the white light of dawn upon the hills.

The truth is, I had come very near to the end of my endurance. Cold and rain together, supervening in that hour of the spirit’s default, may well have made me light-headed; nor was it easy to distinguish the tooth of self-reproach from that of genuine hunger. Stiff, qualmish, vacant of body, heart, and brain, I left my penitential boulder and crawled down to the road. Glancing along it for sight or warning of the runners, I spied, at two gunshots’ distance or less, a milestone with a splash of white upon it – a draggled placard. Abhorrent thought! Did it announce the price upon the head of Champdivers? “At least I will see how they describe him” – this I told myself; but that which tugged at my feet was the baser fascination of fright. I had thought my spine inured by the night’s experiences to anything in the way of cold shivers. I discovered my mistake while approaching that scrap of paper.

“AERIAL ASCENSION EXTRAORDINARY!!!

IN THE MONSTRE BALLOON

LUNARDI

Professor Byfield (by Diploma), the World-renowned exponent of Aerostatics and Aeronautics, as the honour to inform the Nobility and Gentry of Edinburgh and the neighbourhood – ”

The shock of it – the sudden descent upon sublimity, according to Byfleld – took me in the face. I put up my hands. I broke into elfish laughter, and ended with a sob. Sobs and laughter together shook my fasting body like a leaf; and I zigzagged across the fields, buffeted this side and that by a mirth as uncontrollable as it was idiotic. Once I pulled up in the middle of a spasm to marvel irresponsibly at the sound of my own voice. You may wonder that I had will and wit to be drifted towards Flora’s trysting-place. But in truth there was no missing it – the low chine looming through the weather, the line of firs topping it, and, towards the west, diminishing like a fish’s dorsal fin. I had conned it often enough from the other side; had looked right across it on the day when she stood beside me on the bastion and pointed out the smoke of Swanston Cottage. Only on this side the fish-tail (so to speak) had a nick in it; and through that nick ran the path to the old quarry.

I reached it a little before eight. The quarry lay to the left of the path, which passed on and out upon the hill’s northern slope. Upon that slope there was no need to show myself. I measured out some fifty yards of the path, and paced it to and fro, idly counting my steps; for the chill crept back into my bones if I halted for a minute. Once or twice I turned aside into the quarry, and stood there tracing the veins in the hewn rock: then back to my quarter-deck tramp and the study of my watch. Ten minutes past eight! Fool – to expect her to cheat so many spies. This hunger of mine was becoming serious…

A stone dislodged – a light footfall on the path – and my heart leapt. It was she! She came, and earth flowered again, as beneath the feet of the goddess, her namesake. I declare it for a fact that from the moment of her coming the weather began to mend.

“Flora!”

“My poor Anne!”

“The shawl has been useful,” said I.

“You are starving.”

“That is unpleasantly near the truth.”

“I knew it. See, dear.” A shawl of hodden grey covered her head and shoulders, and from beneath it she produced a small basket and held it up. “The scones will be hot yet, for they went straight from the hearth into the napkin.”

She led the way to the quarry. I praised her forethought; having in those days still to learn that woman’s first instinct, when a man is dear to her and in trouble, is to feed him.

We spread the napkin on a big stone of the quarry, and set out the feast: scones, oatcake, hard-boiled eggs, a bottle of milk, and a small flask of usquebaugh. Our hands met as we prepared the table. This was our first housekeeping; the first breakfast of our honeymoon I called it, rallying her. “Starving I may be; but starve I will in sight of food, unless you share it,” and, “It escapes me for the moment, madam, if you take sugar.” We leaned to each other across the rock, and our faces touched. Her cold cheek with the rain upon it, and one small damp curl – for many days I had to feed upon the memory of that kiss, and I feed upon it yet.

“But it beats me how you escaped them,” said I.

She laid down the bannock she had been making pretence to nibble. “Janet – that is our dairy girl – lent me her frock and shawl: her shoes too. She goes out to the milking at six, and I took her place. The fog helped me. They are hateful.”

“They are, my dear. Chevenix – ”

“I mean these clothes. And I am thinking, too, of the poor cows.”

“The instinct of animals – ” I lifted my glass. “Let us trust it to find means to attract the notice of two paid detectives and two volunteers.”

“I had rather count on Aunt,” said Flora, with one of her rare and adorable smiles, which fleeted as it came. “But, Anne, we must not waste time. They are so many against you, and so near. O, be serious!”

“Now you are talking like Mr. Romaine.”

“For my sake, dear!” She clasped her hands. I took them in mine across the table, and, unclasping them, kissed the palms.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “before this weather clears – ”

“It is clearing.”

“We will give it time. Before this weather clears, I must be across the valley and fetching a circuit for the drovers’ road, if you can teach me when to hit it.”

She withdrew one of her hands. It went up to the throat of her bodice, and came forth with my packet of notes.

“Good Lord!” said I: “if I hadn’t forgotten the money!”

“I think nothing teaches you,” sighed she.

She had sewed them tightly in a little bag of yellow oiled silk; and as I held it, warm from her young bosom, and turned it over in my hand, I saw that it was embroidered in scarlet thread with the one word “Anne” beneath the Lion Rampant of Scotland, in imitation of the poor toy I had carved for her – it seemed, so long ago!

“I wear the original,” she murmured.

I crushed the parcel into my breast-pocket, and, taking both hands again, fell on my knees before her on the stones.

“Flora – my angel! my heart’s bride!”

“Hush!” She sprang away. Heavy footsteps were coming up the path. I had just time enough to fling Miss Gilchrist’s shawl over my head and resume my seat, when a couple of buxom country wives bustled past the mouth of the quarry. They saw us, beyond a doubt: indeed, they stared hard at us, and muttered some comment as they went by, and left us gazing at each other.

“They took us for a picnic,” I whispered.

“The queer thing,” said Flora, “is that they were not surprised. The sight of you – ”

“Seen sideways in this shawl, and with my legs hidden by the stone here, I might pass for an elderly female junketer.”

“This is scarcely the hour for a picnic,” answered my wise girl, “and decidedly not the weather.”

The sound of another footstep prevented my reply. This time the wayfarer was an old farmer-looking fellow in a shepherd’s plaid and bonnet powdered with mist. He halted before us and nodded, leaning rheumatically on his staff.

“A coarse moarnin’. Ye’ll be from Leadburn, I’m thinkin’?”

“Put it at Peebles,” said I, making shift to pull the shawl close about my damning finery.

“Peebles!” he said reflectively. “I’ve ne’er ventured so far as Peebles. I’ve contemplated it! But I was none sure whether I would like it when I got there. See here: I recommend ye no’ to be lazin’ ower the meat, gin ye’d drap in for the fun. A’m full late, mysel’!”

He passed on. What could it mean? We hearkened after his tread. Before it died away, I sprang and caught Flora by the hand.

“Listen! Heavens above us, what is that?”

“It sounds to me like Gow’s version of ‘The Caledonian Hunt’s Delight,’ on a brass band.”

Jealous powers! Had Olympus conspired to ridicule our love, that we must exchange our parting vows to the public strains of “The Caledonian Hunt’s Delight,” in Gow’s version and a semitone flat? For three seconds Flora and I (in the words of a later British bard) looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent. Then she darted to the path, and gazed along it down the hill.