The Dew of Their Youth Part 7

"No," said the Doctor a little sharply--for him, "but still each one of us ought to be fully persuaded in his own mind."

"And that means," Miss Irma answered, quick as a flash, "that most of us are fully persuaded according to our father and mother's mind, and the way they have brought us up. But then, you see, I never _was_ brought up. I know very well that my family were Presbyterians. Once I read about their sufferings in two great volumes by a Mr. Wodrow, or some such name. But then my grandfather lost most of his estates fighting for the King----"

"For the Popish Pretender," said the Doctor, who could speak no smooth things when it was a matter of the Revolution Settlement and the government of King George.

"For the man he believed to be king, while others stayed snugly at home," persisted Miss Irma. "Then my mother was a Catholic, and my father too busy to care----"

"My poor young maid," said the Doctor, "it is wonderful to see you as you are!"

And secretly the excellent man was planning out a campaign to lead this lamb into the fold of that Kirk of Scotland, for the purity of whose doctrine and intact spiritual independence her forefathers had shed their blood.

"At any rate," said he, rising and bending again over the girl's hand with old-fashioned politeness, "you will remember that your family pew is in the front of our laft--I mean in the gallery of the parish kirk of Eden Valley."

And the Doctor took his leave without ever remembering that he had failed in the princ.i.p.al part of his mission, having quite forgotten to find out by what means these two young things came to find themselves alone in the Great House of Marnhoul.

CHAPTER VIII

KATE OF THE Sh.o.r.e

It was, I think, ten days after Agnes Anne had left us for the old house of the Maitlands when she came to me at the school-house. My father had Fred Esquillant in with him, and the two were busy with Sophocles. I was sitting dreaming with a book of old plays in my hand when Agnes Anne came in.

"Duncan," she said, "I am feared to bide this night at Marnhoul. And I think so is Miss Irma. Now I would rather not tell grandmother--so you must come!"

"Feared?" said I; "surely you never mean ghosts--and such nonsense, Agnes Anne--and you the daughter of a school-master!"

"It's the solid ghosts I am feared of," said Agnes Anne; "haste you, and ask leave of father. He is so busy, he will never notice. He has Freddy in with him, I hear."

So Agnes Anne and I went in together. We could see the man's head and the boy's bent close together, and turned from us so that the westering light could fall upon their books. Fred Esquillant was to be a great scholar and to do my father infinite credit when he went to the university. For me I was only a reader of English, a scribbler of verses in that language, a paltry essayist, with no sense of the mathematics and no more than an average cla.s.sic. Therefore in the school I was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water to my father.

"Duncan is coming with me to bide the night at Marnhoul," said Agnes Anne, "and he is going to take 'King George' with him to--scare the foxes!"

"From the hen-coops?" said my father, looking carelessly up. "Let him take care not to shoot himself then. He has no nicety of handling!"

I am sure that really he meant in the cla.s.sics, for his thoughts were running that way and I could see that he was itching to be at it again with Freddy.

"Tell your mother," he said, adjusting his spectacles on his nose, "and please shut the door after you!"

Having thus obtained leave from the power-that-was, the matter was broken to my mother. She only asked if we had told John, and being a.s.sured of that, felt that her entire responsibility was cleared, and so subsided into the fifth volume of Sir Charles Grandison, where thrilling things were going on in the cedar parlour. It was my mother's favourite book, but was carefully laid aside when my grandmother came--nay, even concealed as conscientiously as I under my coat conveyed away the bell-mouthed, silver-mounted blunderbuss which hung over the hat-rack in the lobby. Buckshot, wads, and a powderhorn I also secreted about my person.

On our way I catechized Agnes Anne tightly as to the nature of the danger which had put her so suddenly in fear. But she eluded me. Indeed, I am not sure she knew herself. All I could gather was that a letter which had reached Miss Irma that morning, had given warning of trouble of some particular deadly sort impending upon the dwellers in the house of Marnhoul. When Agnes Anne opened the door of the hall to let the sunshine and air into the gloomy recesses where the shadows still lurked in spite of the light from the high windows, she had found a folded letter nailed to the door of Marnhoul. The blade of a foreign-looking knife had been thrust through it deep into the wood, and the stag's-horn handle turned down in the shape of a reversed capital V--the spring holding the paper firm. It was addressed to Miss Irma Maitland, and evidently had reference to something disastrous, for all day Miss Irma had gone about with a pale face, and a pitiful wringing action of her fingers. No words, however, had escaped her except only "What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do? My Louis--my poor little Louis!"

The danger, then, whatever it might be, was one which particularly touched the boy baronet. I could not help hoping that it might not be any plot of the lawyers in Dumfries to get him away. For if I were obliged to fire off "King George," and perhaps kill somebody, I preferred that it should not be against those who had the law on their side. For in that case my father might lose his places, both as chief teacher and as postmaster.

I got Agnes Anne to look after "King George," my blunderbuss, while I went round to the village to see if anything was stirring about the dwelling of Constable Jacky. She would only permit me to do this on condition that I proved the gun unloaded, and permitted her to lock it carefully in one cupboard, while the powder and shot reposed each on a separate shelf outside in the kitchen, lest being left to themselves the elements of destruction might run together and blow up the house.

I scudded through the village, pa.s.sing from one end of the long street to the other. Constable Jacky in his shirt sleeves, was peaceably peeling potatoes on his doorstep, while with a pipe in his mouth Boyd Connoway was looking on and telling him how. The village of Eden Valley was never quieter. Several young men of the highest consideration were waiting within call of the millinery establishment of the elder Miss Huntingdon, on the chance of being able to lend her "young ladies" stray volumes of Rollin's _Ancient History_, Defoe's _Religious Courtship_, or such other volumes as were likely to fan the flame of love's young dream in their hearts. I saw Miss Huntingdon herself taking stock of them through the window, and as it were, separating the sheep from the goats.

For she was a particular woman, Miss Huntingdon, and never allowed the lightest attentions to "her young ladies" without keeping the parents of her charges fully posted on the subject.

All, therefore, was peace in the village of Eden Valley. Yet I nearly chanced upon war. My grandmother called aloud to some one as I pa.s.sed along the street. For a moment I thought she had caught me, in spite of the cap which I had pulled down over my eyes and the coat collar I had pulled up above my ears.

If she got me, I made sure that she would instantly come to the great house of Marnhoul with all the King's horses and all the King's men--and so, as it were, spoil the night from which I expected so much.

But it was the slouching figure of Boyd Connoway which had attracted her attention. As I sped on I heard her asking details as to the amount of work he had done that day, how he expected to keep his wife and family through the winter, whether he had split enough kindling wood and brought in the morning's supply of water--also (most unkindly of all) who had paid for the tobacco he was smoking.

To these inquiries, all put within the s.p.a.ce of half-a-minute, I could not catch Connoway's replies. Nor did I wait to hear. It was enough for me to find myself once more safe between the hedges and going as hard as my feet could carry me in the direction of the gate of Marnhoul.

No sooner was I in the kitchen with the stone floor and the freshly scoured tin and pewter vessels glinting down from the dresser, than I heard the voice of Miss Irma asking to be informed if I had come. To Agnes Anne she called me "your big brother," and I hardly ever remember being so proud of anything as of that adjective.

Then after my sister had answered, Miss Irma came down the stairs with her quick light step, not like any I had ever heard. With a trip and a rustle she came bursting in upon us, so that all suddenly the quaint old kitchen, with its shining utensils catching the red sunshine through the low western window and the swaying ivy leaves dappling the floor of bluish-grey, was glorified by her presence.

She was younger in years than myself, but something of race, of refinement, of experience, some flavour of an adventurous past and of strange things seen and known, made her appear half-a-dozen years the senior of a country boy like me.

"Has he come?" she asked, before ever she came into the kitchen; "is he afraid?"

"Only of being in a house alone with two girls," said Agnes Anne, "but I am most afraid of father's blunderbuss which he has brought with him."

"Nonsense," said Miss Irma, determination marked in every line of her face. "We have a well-armed man on the premises. It is a house fit to stand a siege. Why, I turned away three score of them with a darning needle."

"Not but what it is far more serious this time!" she said, a little sadly. By this time I was rea.s.sembling the scattered pieces of "King George's" armament, while Agnes Anne, in terror of her life, was searching on the floor and along the pa.s.sages for things she had not lost.

As soon as I had got over my first awe of Miss Irma, I asked her point-blank what was the danger, so that I might know what dispositions to take.

I had seen the phrase in an old book, thin and tall, which my father possessed, called _Monro's Expedition_. But Irma bade me help to make the ground floor of the mansion as strong as possible, and then come up-stairs to the parlour, where she would tell me "all that it was necessary for me to know."

I wished she had said "everything"--for, though not curious by nature, I should have been happy to be confided in by Miss Irma. To my delight, on going round I found that all the lower windows had been fitted with iron shutters, and these, though rusty, were in perfectly good condition. In this task of examination Miss Irma a.s.sisted me, and though I would not let her put a finger to the sharp-edged flaky iron, it was a pleasure to feel the touch of her skirt, while once she laid a hand on my arm to guide me to a little dark closet the window of which was protected by a hingeless plate of iron, held in position by a horizontal bar fitting into the stonework on either side.

There was not so much to be done above stairs, where the shutters were of fine solid oak and easily fitted. But I sought out an oriel window of a tower which commanded the pillared doorway. For I did not forget what I had seen when the Great House of Marnhoul was besieged by the rabble of Eden Valley. It was there that the danger was if the house should be attempted.

But I so arranged it, that whoever attacked the house, I should at least get one fair chance at them with "King George," our very wide-scattering blunderbuss.

In the little room in which this window was, we gathered. It made a kind of watch-tower, for from it one could see both ways--down the avenue to the main road, and across the policies towards the path that led up from the Killantringan sh.o.r.e.

I felt that it was high time for me to know against what I was to fight.

Not that I was any way scared. I do not think I thought about that at all, so pleased was I at being where I was, and specially anxious that no one should come to help, so as to share with me any of the credit that was my due from Miss Irma.

Agnes Anne, indeed, was afraid of what she was going to hear. For as yet she had been told nothing definite. But then she was tenfold more afraid of "King George"--mostly, I believe, because it had been made a kind of fetish in our house, and the terrible things that would happen if we meddled with it continually represented to us by our mother. Finally, we arranged that "King George" should be set in the angle of the oriel window, the muzzle pointing to the sky, and that in the pauses of the tale, I should keep a look-out from the watch-tower.

"It is my brother Louis--Sir Louis Maitland--whom they are seeking!"

Miss Irma made this statement as if she had long faced it, and now found nothing strange about the matter. But I think both Agnes Anne and I were greatly astonished, though for different reasons. For my sister had never imagined that there was any danger worse than the presence of "King George" in the window corner, and as for me, the hope of helping to protect Miss Irma herself from unknown peril was enough. I asked for no better a chance than that.

"We have a cousin," she continued, "Lalor Maitland is his name, who was in the rebellion, and was outlawed just like my father. He took up the trade of spying on the poor folk abroad and all who had dealings with them. He was made governor of the strong castle of Dinant on the Meuse, deep in the Low Countries. With him my father, who wrongly trusted him as he trusted everybody, left little Louis. I was with my aunt, the Abbess of the Ursulines, at the time, or the thing had not befallen. For from the first I hated Lalor Maitland, knowing that though he appeared to be kind to us, it was only a pretence.

"He entertained us hospitably enough in a suite of rooms very high up in the Castle of Dinant above the Meuse river, and came to see us every day. He was waiting till he should make his peace with the English. Then he would do away with my brother and----"