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

When the gables of the cottage rose into view over the hill’s shoulder I dismissed my driver and walked forward, whistling the tune; but fell silent as I came under the lee of the garden wall, and sought for the exact spot of my old escalade. I found it by the wide beechen branches over the road, and hoisted myself noiselessly up to the coping where, as before, they screened me – or would have screened me had I cared to wait.

But I did not care to wait; and why? Because, not fifteen yards from me, she stood! – she, my Flora, my goddess, bareheaded, swept by chequers of morning sunshine and green shadows, with the dew on her sandal shoes and the lap of her morning gown appropriately heaped with flowers – with tulips, scarlet, yellow, and striped. And confronting her, with his back towards me and a remembered patch between the armholes of his stable-waistcoat, Robie the gardener rested both hands on his spade and expostulated.

“But I like to pick my tulips, leaves and all, Robie!”

“Aweel, miss; it’s clean ruinin’ the bulbs, that’s all I say to you.”

And that was all I waited to hear. As he bent over and resumed his digging I shook a branch of the beech with both hands and set it swaying. She heard the rustle and glanced up, and, spying me, uttered a gasping little cry.

“What ails ye, miss?” Robie straightened himself instanter; but she had whipped right-about face and was gazing towards the kitchen garden —

“Isn’t that a child among the arti – the strawberry beds, I mean?”

He cast down his spade and ran. She turned, let the tulips fall at her feet, and, ah! her second cry of gladness, and her heavenly blush as she stretched out both arms to me! It was all happening over again – with the difference that now my arms too were stretched out.

“Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know…”

Robie had run a dozen yards perhaps, when either the noise I made in scrambling off the wall, or some recollection of having been served in this way before, brought him to a halt. At any rate, he turned round, and just in time to witness our embrace.

“The good Lord behear!” he exclaimed, stood stock-still for a moment, and waddled off at top speed towards the back door.

“We must tell Aunt at once! She will – why, Anne, where are you going?” She caught my sleeve.

“To the hen-house, to be sure,” said I.

A moment later, with peals of happy laughter, we had taken hands and were running along the garden alleys towards the house. And I remember, as we ran, finding it somewhat singular that this should be the first time I had ever invaded Swanston Cottage by way of the front door.

We came upon Miss Gilchrist in the breakfast room. A pile of linen lay on the horse-hair sofa; and the good lady, with a measuring tape in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, was walking around Ronald, who stood on the hearthrug in a very manly attitude. She regarded me over her gold-rimmed spectacles, and, shifting the scissors into her left hand, held out her right.

“H’m,” said she; “I give ye good morning, Mosha. And what might you be wanting of us this time?”

“Madam,” I answered, “that, I hope, is fairly evident.”

Ronald came forward. “I congratulate you, St. Ives, with all my heart. And you may congratulate me: I have my commission.”

“Nay, then,” said I, “let me rather congratulate France that the war is over. Seriously, my dear fellow, I wish you joy. What’s the regiment?”

“The 4-th.”

“Chevenix’s!”

“Chevenix is a decent fellow. He has behaved very well, indeed he has.”

“Very well indeed,” said Flora, nodding her head.

“He has the knack. But if you expect me to like him any the better for it – ”

“Major Chevenix,” put in Miss Gilchrist in her most Rhadamanthine voice, “always sets me in mind of a pair of scissors.” She opened and shut the pair in her hand, and I had to confess that the stiff and sawing action was admirably illustrative. “But I wish to heaven, madam,” thought I, “you could have chosen another simile!”

In the evening of that beatific day I walked back to Edinburgh by some aërial and rose-clouded path not indicated on the maps. It led somehow to my lodgings, and my feet touched earth when the door was opened to me by Bethiah McRankine.

“But where is Rowley?” I asked a moment later, looking round my sitting-room.

Mrs. McRankine smiled sardonically. “Him? He came back rolling his eyes so that I guessed him to be troubled in the wind. And he’s in bed this hour past with a spoonful of peppermint in his little wame.”

....

And here I may ring down the curtain upon the adventures of Anne de Saint-Yves.

Flora and I were married early in June, and had been settled for little over six months, amid the splendours of Amersham Place, when news came of the Emperor’s escape from Elba. Throughout the consequent alarums and excursions of the Hundred Days (as M. de Chambord named them for us), I have to confess that the Vicomte Anne sat still and warmed his hands at the domestic hearth. To be sure, Napoleon had been my master, and I had no love for the cocarde blanche. But here was I, an Englishman, already, in legal but inaccurate phrase, a “naturalised” one, having, as Mr. Romaine put it, a stake in the country, not to speak of a nascent interest in its game-laws and the local administration of justice. In short, here was a situation to tickle a casuist. It did not, I may say, tickle me in the least, but played the mischief with my peace. If you, my friends, having weighed the pro and contra, would have counselled inaction, possibly, allowing for the hébétude de foyer and the fact that Flora was soon to become a mother, you might have predicted it. At any rate I sat still and read the newspapers: and on the top of them came a letter from Ronald, announcing that the 4-th had their marching, or rather their sailing, orders, and that within a week his boat would rock by the pier of Leith to convey him and his comrades to join the Duke of Wellington’s forces in the Low Countries. Forthwith nothing would suit my dear girl but we must post to Edinburgh to bid him farewell – in a chariot, this time, with a box seat for her maid and Mr. Rowley. We reached Swanston in time for Ronald to spend the eve of his departure with us at the Cottage; and very gallant the boy looked in his scarlet uniform, which he wore for the ladies’ benefit, and which (God forgive us men!) they properly bedewed with their tears.

Early next morning we drove over to the city and drew up in the thick of the crowd gathered at the foot of the Castle Hill to see the 4-th march out. We had waited half an hour, perhaps, when we heard two thumps of a drum and the first notes of the regimental quick-step sounded within the walls; the sentry at the outer gate stepped back and presented arms, and the ponderous archway grew bright with the red coats and brazen instruments of the band. The farewells on their side had been said; and the inexorable tramp—tramp upon the drawbridge was the burthen of their answer to the waving handkerchiefs, the huzzas of the citizens, the cries of the women. On they came, and in the first rank, behind the band, rose Major Chevenix. He saw us, flushed a little, and gravely saluted. I never liked the man; but will admit he made a fine figure there. And I pitied him a little; for while his eyes rested on Flora, hers wandered to the rear of the third company, where Ensign Ronald Gilchrist marched beside the tattered colours with chin held up and a high colour on his young cheeks and a lip that quivered as he passed us.

“God bless you, Ronald!”

“Left wheel!” The band and the Major riding behind it swung round the corner into North Bridge Street; the rear-rank and the adjutant behind it passed down the Lawnmarket. Our driver was touching up his horses to follow, when Flora’s hand stole into mine. And I turned from my own conflicting thoughts to comfort her.

END OF VOL. XX