Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume I)

"I've called you Maisrie once or twice, by accident, and you didn't seem to mind," he pointed out.

"I am sure I did not notice," she made answer at once. "How should I? I am used to nothing else."

"Then I am to be allowed to call you Maisrie?" said he, clutching eagerly at this new-found privilege. "And you will call me Vincent – when you find Mr. Vincent become too formal: is it a compact?"

"Yes, it is – Mr. Vincent – if you like," said she, with a smile. "But why do you make it so very serious?"

"Because," said he, gravely, "when any solemn bargain is completed, people shake hands to make it secure."

"Not in the middle of Oxford-street?" she said.

"We will postpone the ceremony, if you prefer it; and now I will begin and tell you how it is still possible we may have that long ramble through Scotland together. You were anxious that before anything of the kind were attempted, your grandfather should go back to the United States to get materials for his book on the Scottish poets in America. Well, now, it seems a pity to make such a long voyage if it can be done without; and so I have taken the liberty of sending over to New York to see if there isn't some handy young fellow there – some clerk or reporter – who would undertake to collect all the necessary materials, and send them over here for your grandfather to work up. Then we could go to Scotland all the same – that is, if you will let me accompany you."

"Someone to collect the materials and send them over?" she repeated; and then she said: "But would that be fair, Mr. Harris – Mr. Vincent – would that be honest? Surely not! The book would not be my grandfather's book at all; properly it would belong to the young man in New York."

"I beg your pardon," said he, with decision. "He only supplies the bricks; he does not build the house. When a Chancellor of the Exchequer produces his budget, of course he claims it as his own; but he has got his facts from the heads of departments, and most likely his quotations have been hunted out for him by his private secretary. It would be your grandfather's book, solely and wholly."

"But the cost?" she said, after a second. "Supposing it were practicable, the expense – "

"Oh, never mind about that," said he, lightly. "It will be next to nothing – you needn't mind about that. Our deputy in New York will find very little difficulty in getting the memoranda that he wants. There is no sort of unnecessary modesty about minor poets; they will be glad enough to give him specimens of their work, as soon as it is known what he aims at. And in Scotland," he continued (grown suddenly bold), "don't you see how it would work? Your grandfather must have an occasional morning to give to his MSS; then you and I could leave him in absolute peace and quiet; and we might go away for a stroll up to Arthur's Seat, or round the ramparts of the Castle, and return to him by lunch-time. Wouldn't that be an excellent arrangement?"

"Yes, that would be very nice indeed," said she, with a pleased expression: she seemed to look forward to this close and constant companionship as the most natural thing in the world.

And in fact so sanguine was the young man about the success of his new scheme that, when the three of them were seated at a small table in Mentavisti's Restaurant, he ventured to hint to old George Bethune his fond hope that he might be allowed to join in that prolonged excursion through Scotland; and the old man at once acquiesced.

"Yes, yes, why not?" he said; and then he went on, absently: "Yet my nerve is not what it was. Sometimes I hesitate. It would grieve me more than I can say if Maisrie here were to be disappointed. It is a long time since I was in the country; perhaps I remember only the beautiful things; and it is only of these she has heard me talk. When Sturrock thinks of the old home, the dappled hills shine for him: you remember, Maisrie? —

'Oh native land! Oh cherished home,I've sailed across the sea,And, though my wandering footsteps roam,My heart still turns to thee!My thoughts and dreams are sweet and brightWith dew which love distils;While every gleam of golden lightFalls on the Scottish hills.'

He forgets the mists and the rain and the darkened days. And you, Maisrie, you have been brought up under fair blue skies; you have never learnt how sombre days and wild and driving clouds stir the imagination; perhaps, if you stood in the very street where the 'bonnie Earl o' Moray came sounding through the town,' you would see only the wet pavements and the dull windows; and you might turn to me and say 'Is this what you have talked about to me, grandfather?'" Then all of a sudden he seemed to throw off this despondent fit as by a violent effort. "No, no!" said he, in quite a different tone. "I will not believe but that there are still yellow cornfields and silver lakes in bonnie Scotland, and the lark singing as high in the heavens as when Tannahill, or Hogg, or Motherwell paused to listen. I will show you the red rowans hanging from the mountain crag, and the golden bracken down by the side of the burn; and if we go still further away – to the lonely islands of the western seas – then you must learn to forget the soft prettiness of the sunnier south, and to let the mysterious charm of isolation hold you, and the majesty of the darkened mountains, and the pathetic beauty of the wandering veils of rain. I would sooner forget the mother that bore me," he said, with a proud ring in his voice, "than believe that bonnie Scotland had lost her glamour and wonder and fascination. And you would be no holiday-tourist, Maisrie; you belong by blood to the 'land of wild weather'; and imagination is part of the dowry of youth. No, no; I do not fear. I – I made a mistake when I said I was afraid – I am not afraid of you, Maisrie – not afraid of you – you have the fine sympathy, the intelligence, the quick imagination that I can trust – I am not afraid of you, Maisrie – "

"You need not be afraid, grandfather," the girl said, gently – for she saw that he was somewhat disturbed. "Why should you be afraid, grandfather? I shall be looking with your eyes."

But the curious thing was that despite all this talking about the projected pilgrimage, it never seemed to come any nearer. No mention of a date or even of any approximate time, was ever made. In like manner, their return to America, though the old gentleman spoke of it now and again as a fixed and definite and necessary thing, kept receding backwards and backwards into a perfectly nebulous future. The present moment was everything to old George Bethune, whether he was engaged with a roe-deer cutlet at a restaurant in Regent-street, or lighting his pipe and mixing his toddy on his return home, while he was descanting on Barbour, and Drummond, and Sir David Lindesay, or Ramsay, and Ferguson, and Burns. People were beginning to leave town; Vincent had received, and declined, an invitation to join a big house-party in Argyllshire, notwithstanding that it was to the same house that Mrs. Ellison and Lord Musselburgh were going; but old George Bethune and his granddaughter appeared to pay no heed to the changing times and seasons; their placid, uneventful life seemed quite enough for them. And was it not enough for this young man also, who had been admitted to be their constant associate and friend? Why should he vex himself about literary schemes that were none of his devising? Day by day he waved a good-morning to Maisrie as she came to water her flowers, and an answer came from her smiling eyes; sometimes he walked out into the parks in the afternoon, with her grandfather and herself, and ever he rejoiced to see that the fine peach-bloom on her cheek was surmounting the sun-tinge that had been left there by travel; then in the evening they had all London to choose from, as to where they should dine, with a quiet stroll homeward thereafter, to music, and dominoes, and careless talk. What more? The great outer world might go on its way, and welcome.

But Master Vin was about to be startled out of this dreamful ease. At last there came an answer to the communication he had sent to the editor of the Western Scotsman, with many apologies for unavoidable delay: Mr. Anstruther, it appeared, had been in Canada, taking his annual holiday among his kinsmen and countrymen there.

"I must say your letter has astonished me beyond measure," the writer went on, "and I would fain believe that there is some great mistake somewhere, which is capable of explanation. It is quite true that when I gave my venerable friend Mr. Bethune a note of introduction to Lord Musselburgh, I was aware that he had in view various literary projects – in fact, his brain teems with them as if he were a young man of five-and-twenty – the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum in his case has taken hold of his imagination; but I cannot understand how he could have included in these the publication of a volume on the Scottish poets in America, for the simple reason that he must have known that such a work was not only in progress here, but that it was near completion. Why, I myself showed Mr. Bethune proofs of the early sheets of this volume; for the author is a particular friend of mine; and as it was being set up, he used to send me the sheets as they were printed; and Mr. Bethune being in the habit of calling at my office, I not only showed them to him, but I fancy I let him take some of them away, that he might read them at his leisure. How he should now propose to bring out a similar work – and bespeak Lord Musselburgh's patronage for it, as I presume he did – passes my comprehension, except on the ground that, being an old man, he may have suffered from some temporary attack of mental aberration and forgetfulness. I would rather believe this than that a man whom I had taken for a thorough Scot, loyal and true to the backbone, and proud of his country and of his own name and lineage, should be endeavouring to supplant another worker who is already in possession of the field. However, no actual harm can be done; for the volume I speak of is on the eve of publication, and no doubt it will be issued simultaneously in England. That is all I have to say, on a subject which at present seems to me to have something of a painful aspect – though I hope a satisfactory explanation may be forthcoming. In conclusion may I beg of you to keep this letter private? The facts are as I have stated; but I would rather Mr. Bethune did not know you had them from me.

"Yours faithfully,

"HUGH ANSTRUTHER."

For some time Vincent sat with this letter in his hand, in a sort of stupefaction. Curiously enough his first question to himself was – What if Mrs. Ellison should get to know? – would she not triumphantly declare that her worst suspicions had been confirmed? That was but a first thought. There must be some explanation! He had not associated so continually with George Bethune – he had not heard the old man's voice thrill with proud emotion as he spoke of Scotland's hills and dales – he had not seen his eyes fill with unbidden tears as he talked of his granddaughter and the loneliness that might be in store for her – all for nothing: not at once could he be convinced that this old man was a mere charlatan, a thief, a begging-letter impostor. But he had been startled; and when he reached his lodgings in that small thoroughfare, he hardly dared look across the way: he knew not what to think.

END OF VOL. I