Marmaduke Part 3

Jack Jardine said nothing; then he walked to the window.

"You may as well know, Duke, it may help you to steer your way. It is because I, a poor lawyer, loved your mother--not before, but after she became Lady Drummuir! Of course she never guessed; but I helped her to try and keep your father straight. She led an awful life----"

"You needn't tell me that!" broke in Marmaduke, fiercely.

"Yet your father didn't mean ill to her. Anyhow, I tried to help her, and so I suppose it became a habit. Love is a queer thing, Duke!"

"I believe it is," said Marmaduke, magisterially, "but it has not come my way yet," and he added joyously, "I hope it won't for some years to come, for I like enjoying myself."

Apparently he did; for as the summer evening began to close in on Drummuir Castle and the menkind, with only Mdlle. Fantine and her _duenna_ to represent the opposite s.e.x, gathered in the huge dining-room to attack a heavy dinner which would have sufficed for a regiment, he was the life and soul of the party, and ate through the _menu_ with a relish which aroused regret and admiration in the old lord.

"Dash it all," he bawled, "why can't I eat soup, fish, top and bottom and four sides through five courses like that dashed youngster of mine, who puts it on to his shoulders instead of his waist like I do?"

And when the claret began to circle round faster and faster Marmaduke never let it pa.s.s; so that when, with sweet decorum, Mdlle. Fantine and her _duenna_ prepared to withdraw, he nearly killed the Skye terrier in his flamboyant haste to open the door. Nay, more! He followed them into the corridor for an instant. What pa.s.sed there none saw, but he returned to his seat with flushed cheeks and throbbing veins, feeling vaguely that the battle of wits had begun.

Of what followed his memory was confused. He remembered that outside the windows the summer twilight was still flooding the green lawns, while humanity inside, after guzzling itself stupid with rich food, was trying to grow witty over the boozing of mulled claret and whisky-toddy. They began, of course, with the young queen's health, and went on methodically till they came to the good old Scotch toast: "Here's to oorsels. Wha' better? d.a.m.n few!" After this, which seemed to afford general satisfaction, they proceeded to particularise, and Marmaduke had a dim recollection of someone proposing "The future Commander-in-Chief, coupled with the name of Captain Marmaduke Muir."

But whether he replied, or whether the effort to rise and do so was too much for him and he rolled under the table, he could not say.

Certain it is that on that first night of his return to the home of his fathers Marmaduke Muir was hopelessly drunk.

Certain also that he erred in company, the only sober man being Jack Jardine, who invariably sought the shelter of the table at an early period and lay there comfortably, his head on a buffet, listening to the commiserations on his weak head until he fell asleep, to wake when the carouse was over, and see that the gentlemen's gentlemen sorted their respective masters to their respective beds.

CHAPTER IV

Marrion Paul sat in the semi-darkness of the summer night waiting for her grandfather to return from his duties at the Castle. She did not generally do so, for he was apt to be late; but on this, the first day of Captain Duke's return, sleep would have been out of the question until she heard something of the evening. For she did not mince matters with herself; those six years of independent life in Edinburgh had opened her eyes to the world, and the first sight of Marmaduke Muir had told her that the long ten years had not changed her at all; that he was as much the sun in her heaven as he had been in the old childish days. The sun in her heaven, and something more superadded to those olden times.

Then the day had been disturbing. Everyone had come to her praising the Captain's looks and ways and general charm; to all of which she had replied coolly, feeling the while in a perfect quiver of gladness.

Miss Margaret had been the hardest to damp when she had appeared in the afternoon with the sporting dogs and a stout crop in her hand on her way to take them a scramble over the rocks and round by the lower bay.

"Oh, Marrion!" she cried enthusiastically. "Saw you ever the like?

Elizabeth says he's like the Apollo Belvidere!"

"I am not knowing the gentleman," protested Marrion distantly. "But Captain Duke has grown to a fine figure. But has Miss Muir seen Andrew Fraser? He's twice the man he was when he went away."

It was a false move on Marrion's part, for it brought on her instantly the hearty reply--

"I'm glad to hear it, Marmie; so I suppose we will be having you cried in the kirk before long. Duke says he has been most faithful."

Whereupon the speaker called to her dogs in a stentorian voice worthy her father's, cracked her whip scientifically, and strode away for an hour or two's freedom. For the atmosphere of the dower house was stifling, and there was always a chance of meeting the Rev. Patrick Bryce on the sands below the rocks, where he went always to compose his sermons, with which the reverend gentleman had no little difficulty. Not because he was stupid, but because he found it laborious to reconcile his own views with those of his flock; they, however, being inclined to be lenient with one who had earned for himself the nickname of "the bonny parson," and who was known to be the best shot and fisherman in the district. For this reason he would have been welcome at the Castle, but for his unswerving outspoken protest against its general behaviour.

Marrion, meanwhile, finding more peace as the day died down, took to wandering at the far side of the quadrangle listening to the distant sounds of revelry; her hands, as she walked, busy with her knitting-pins--after the fashion of Scotchwomen in those days--going faster and faster as her thoughts grew hotter over what she knew was happening at the other side of the blank wall. Guzzling and boozing!

First the masters, then the men-servants, while away in the back premises the scullerymaids and kitchenmaids were working hard. It was a shame, a burning shame; but if ever she had a son she would see to it that he was different.

But she never would have a son; anyhow, not Andrew Fraser's, be he ever so sober, so upright. That was the worst of it. With an impatient sigh she hurried outside the keep door to stand and watch the last faintly flushed clouds of sunset in the nor'-west fade over the darkling stretches of moorland.

It must be nigh twelve of the clock, for eastwards, over the darkling stretches of the sea, a faint lightening of the horizon, which held such a hint of restlessness even in its shadow, told where the sun would soon rise again. For in those high northern lat.i.tudes there is a bare two hours' darkness in a summer night.

Twelve o' the clock, and after that would be their birthday.

Well, good luck to him wherever he went! Some day he must be the laird--Baron Drummuir. Nothing to hinder that must come into his life--nothing!

The faithfulness of inherited service was in her blood. She recognised this and sometimes wondered if her own devotion to the honour and welfare of the House of Drummuir was not stronger even than her grandfather's; possibly because her father, by all repute, had been a faithful servant, too; such things are not to be escaped.

She was aroused from her thoughts by a wavering step in the quadrangle, and returned to meet her grandfather in the expansive stage of intoxication.

"Aye, my la.s.s," he went on, when he had wept a few easy tears over her goodness in sitting up for him, "it was just a gran' nicht. The pipes seemed fey and I blawed at them till we was baith like to burst. An'

my lord, he was for havin' oot the biggest bottle o' pickled foxes'

tongues, an' he devilled them himsel' in a chaffin' dish afore them all, an' they a' drunk wi' mirth an' guid claret. Jock, the butler, was tellin' me--there was twal o' them--that they were drinkin' thirty bottles o' the best, forbye sixteen tum'lers of hot whisky-toddy, the Sheriff and the Lord Provost had, honest gentlemen, to their lane--an'

there wud be no 'hoot-toots' where the Shirra was concerned! Then the laird o' Balbuggo--he has a weak head, yon man, was for ridin' hame and was no to be hindered frae it; sae Captain Duke an' anither young spark jest perched his saddle to the loupin'-on-stane and pit the guid man to it. An' there he sat t.i.ttuping away his lane for an hour or sae quite blythe, till they tell't him he was at Balbuggo, and he just aff an' awa tae his bed like a lammie."

"And Captain Duke?" asked the girl, with scorn in her voice, pity in her heart, despite the irrepressible smile in her eyes. "Was he drunk, too?"

Old Davie winked solemnly.

"Aye, that was he--he was fair fou--but," he added carefully; "he took his cups real well! Not like Mr. Peter, that syne gets tae sickness and----"

"Gran'father," cried the girl pa.s.sionately, interrupting him, "it's gettin' late! You must away to your bed, or you'll no be up the morn to pipe 'Hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet?' I'll see to the doors."

"No be up?" contended the old man. "I tell ye if the arkaungel Gabbriel was tae soun' his trump any day at half-after seven, he'd find Davie Sims--aye, and his forbears an' descendants--skirling awa'

at that same tune up an' dune a' the pa.s.sages in Drummuir Castle tae wake the gentlefolk! Aye, that wad he"--here he began stumbling up the stair with his candle held at an angle of forty-five--"though it's hard on a body that's had tae pipe to the deil ower nicht to think o'

his duty tae the sluggard."

Here his maunderings became unintelligible, and the girl he left turned to the closing of the house, her heart hot as fire with indignation, chill as ice with scorn.

What else was there to expect? Like father, like son! When she had drawn the bolts she went up to her own room and flung its little window wide. The full moon shone round like a shield, and by its light she could see the whole wild coast stretching northwards from Drumkirk Point to Rattray Head. And after that? The North Pole, of course! Dear inaccessible region to all but the strong, the single of heart, the men who could command others--and themselves.

She scarcely knew what it was that she raged against as slowly, methodically, she began to undress. The little brilliant or paste brooch, she knew not which, formed of two crossed p's which was the only relic she possessed of her dead father, arrested her for a second. What sort of a man had he been really, she wondered, and what sort of a son would hers be when she had one?

She flung the tiny bauble from her impatiently, so stood for a second drawn up to her full height, her bare arms crossed, her shapely hands clasping their smooth roundness; then, with a sudden sob, she realised what had come to her, and, throwing herself face downwards on her bed, lay for a minute or two still as the dead. Then as suddenly she sat up again with a world of puzzled wonder in her strained eyes.

"I canna think," she murmured, "what gars' me love him so, but I do, and there's an end o' it."

Possibly; but such knowledge as that which had just burst over her like a storm does not make for quiet sleep. She told herself a thousand and one wise things, but the hours slipped by, bringing at last a conviction of hopelessness. She would be better up than pretending to rest, so she went to stand at the window once more.

The flush of coming day was clear now in the northeast, the flood-tide of the full moon lay mysterious in the embrace of the rocks. Ere long the rising sun would send battalions on battalions of shining golden ripples to storm the estuary and climb the shadowy cliff on which the castle stood--where he lay drunk!

Ah, well! That would not spoil the beauty of it all, which she had so often seen, and the nip of the salt North Sea might check her silly desire for him. The room felt stifling; she would be better outside.

So, slipping on her swimming-dress of coa.r.s.e white flannel blanketing (for ever since those childish days when she and Duke had done everything in common she had been an expert swimmer), she threw a plaid round her, and made her way through the keep gateway to the rocks below. There was no breeze, the tide must be at its height almost, and there was the spent moon, pale with its long night-watch, hanging on the grey sky of dawn. Ah, these were the things worth having--the others could be set aside with joy!

Ere five minutes were over, breathless from her fierce driving strokes through the water, she had turned over on her back, and, face to the skies, was trying to imagine she was floating thitherwards. The gulls, wakened by the coming light, skimmed over her in their quest for food.

The little pointed wavelets that rose and fell, marking the course of the river stream, made a fine, sobbing, tinkling noise in her ears.

Full flood-tide!