ENTER Méphistophélè
Two days later a gig from Crossmichael
deposited Frank Innes at the doors of Hermiston.
Once in a way during the past winter Archie in
some acute phase of boredom had written him a letter.
It had contained something in the nature of an invitation
or a reference to an invitation precisely
what neither of them now remembered. When Innes
had received it there had been nothing further from
his mind than to bury himself in the moors with Archie;
but not even the most acute political heads are guided
through the steps of life with unerring directness.
That would require a gift of prophecy which has been
denied to man. For instance who could have imagined
that not a month after he had received the letter
and turned it into mockery and put off answering
it and in the end lost it misfortunes of a gloomy
cast should begin to thicken over Frank’s career?
His case may be briefly stated. His father a
small Morayshire laird with a large family became
recalcitrant and cut off the supplies; he had fitted
himself out with the beginnings of quite a good law
library which upon some sudden losses on the turf
he had been obliged to sell before they were paid
for; and his bookseller hearing some rumour of the
event took out a warrant for his arrest. Innes
had early word of it and was able to take precautions.
In this immediate welter of his affairs with an unpleasant
charge hanging over him he had judged it the part
of prudence to be off instantly had written a fervid
letter to his father at Inverauld and put himself
in the coach for Crossmichael. Any port in a storm!
He was manfully turning his back on the Parliament
House and its gay babble on porter and oysters the
racecourse and the ring; and manfully prepared until
these clouds should have blown by to share a living
grave with Archie Weir at Hermiston.
To do him justice, he was no less
surprised to be going than Archie was to see him come;
and he carried off his wonder with an infinitely better
grace.
“Well, here I am!” said
he, as he alighted. “Pylades has come to
Orestes at last. By the way, did you get my answer?
No? How very provoking! Well, here I am
to answer for myself, and that’s better still.”
“I am very glad to see you,
of course,” said Archie. “I make you
heartily welcome, of course. But you surely have
not come to stay, with the Courts still sitting; is
that not most unwise?”
“Damn the Courts!” says
Frank. “What are the Courts to friendship
and a little fishing?”
And so it was agreed that he was to
stay, with no term to the visit but the term which
he had privily set to it himself the day,
namely, when his father should have come down with
the dust, and he should be able to pacify the bookseller.
On such vague conditions there began for these two
young men (who were not even friends) a life of great
familiarity and, as the days drew on, less and less
intimacy. They were together at meal-times, together
o’ nights when the hour had come for whisky-toddy;
but it might have been noticed (had there been any
one to pay heed) that they were rarely so much together
by day. Archie had Hermiston to attend to, multifarious
activities in the hills, in which he did not require,
and had even refused, Frank’s escort. He
would be off sometimes in the morning and leave only
a note on the breakfast-table to announce the fact;
and sometimes with no notice at all, he would not return
for dinner until the hour was long past. Innes
groaned under these desertions; it required all his
philosophy to sit down to a solitary breakfast with
composure and all his unaffected good-nature to be
able to greet Archie with friendliness on the more
rare occasions when he came home late for dinner.
“I wonder what on earth he finds
to do, Mrs. Elliott?” said he one morning, after
he had just read the hasty billet and sat down to table.
“I suppose it will be business,
sir,” replied the housekeeper drily, measuring
his distance off to him by an indicated curtsey.
“But I can’t imagine what business!”
he reiterated.
“I suppose it will be his business,”
retorted the austere Kirstie.
He turned to her with that happy brightness
that made the charm of his disposition, and broke
into a peal of healthy and natural laughter.
“Well played, Mrs. Elliott!”
he cried; and the housekeeper’s face relaxed
into the shadow of an iron smile. “Well
played indeed!” said he. “But you
must not be making a stranger of me like that.
Why, Archie and I were at the High School together,
and we’ve been to College together, and we were
going to the Bar together, when you know!
Dear, dear me! what a pity that was! A life spoiled,
a fine young fellow as good as buried here in the
wilderness with rustics; and all for what? A frolic,
silly, if you like, but no more. God, how good
your scones are, Mrs. Elliott!”
“They’re no mines, it
was the lassie made them,” said Kirstie; “and,
saving your presence, there’s little sense in
taking the Lord’s name in vain about idle vivers
that you fill your kyte wi’.”
“I daresay you’re perfectly
right, ma’am,” quoth the imperturbable
Frank. “But as I was saying, this is a pitiable
business, this about poor Archie; and you and I might
do worse than put our heads together, like a couple
of sensible people, and bring it to an end. Let
me tell you, ma’am, that Archie is really quite
a promising young man, and in my opinion he would
do well at the Bar. As for his father, no one
can deny his ability, and I don’t fancy any
one would care to deny that he has the deil’s
own temper ”
“If you’ll excuse me,
Mr. Innes, I think the lass is crying on me,”
said Kirstie, and flounced from the room.
“The damned, cross-grained,
old broom-stick!” ejaculated Innes.
In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped
into the kitchen, and before her vassal gave vent
to her feelings.
“Here, ettercap! Ye’ll
have to wait on yon Innes! I canna hand myself
in. ‘Puir Erchie!’ I’d ‘puir
Erchie’ him, if I had my way! And Hermiston
with the deil’s ain temper! God, let him
take Hermiston’s scones out of his mouth first.
There’s no a hair on ayther o’ the Weirs
that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he
has in his hale dwaibly body! Settin’ up
his snash to me! Let him gang to the black toon
where he’s mebbe wantit birling on
a curricle wi’ pimatum on his heid making
a mess o’ himsel’ wi’ nesty hizzies a
fair disgrace!” It was impossible to hear without
admiration Kirstie’s graduated disgust, as she
brought forth, one after another, these somewhat baseless
charges. Then she remembered her immediate purpose,
and turned again on her fascinated auditor. “Do
ye no hear me, tawpie? Do ye no hear what I’m
tellin’ ye? Will I have to shoo ye into
him? If I come to attend to ye, mistress!”
And the maid fled the kitchen, which had become practically
dangerous, to attend on Innes’s wants in the
front parlour.
Tantaene irae? Has the
reader perceived the reason? Since Frank’s
coming there were no more hours of gossip over the
supper-tray! All his blandishments were in vain;
he had started handicapped on the race for Mrs. Elliott’s
favour.
But it was a strange thing how misfortune
dogged him in his efforts to be genial. I must
guard the reader against accepting Kirstie’s
epithets as evidence; she was more concerned for their
vigour than for their accuracy. Dwaibly, for
instance; nothing could be more calumnious. Frank
was the very picture of good looks, good humour, and
manly youth. He had bright eyes with a sparkle
and a dance to them, curly hair, a charming smile,
brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head,
the look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed
to please at first sight and to improve the impression.
And with all these advantages, he failed with every
one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with
the obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also
the ploughman, with the gardener and the gardener’s
sister a pious, down-hearted woman with
a shawl over her ears he failed equally
and flatly. They did not like him, and they showed
it. The little maid, indeed, was an exception;
she admired him devoutly, probably dreamed of him
in her private hours; but she was accustomed to play
the part of silent auditor to Kirstie’s tirades
and silent recipient of Kirstie’s buffets, and
she had learned not only to be a very capable girl
of her years, but a very secret and prudent one besides.
Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and
sympathiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour
that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the
house of Hermiston; but he had little comfort or society
from that alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve
on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and
tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but
inexorably unconversational. For the others,
they were beyond hope and beyond endurance. Never
had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians.
But perhaps the cause of his ill-success lay in one
trait which was habitual and unconscious with him,
yet diagnostic of the man. It was his practice
to approach any one person at the expense of some
one else. He offered you an alliance against the
some one else; he flattered you by slighting him;
you were drawn into a small intrigue against him before
you knew how. Wonderful are the virtues of this
process generally; but Frank’s mistake was in
the choice of the some one else. He was not politic
in that; he listened to the voice of irritation.
Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt
to be rather a dry reception, had offended him since
by his frequent absences. He was besides the
one figure continually present in Frank’s eye;
and it was to his immediate dependants that Frank
could offer the snare of his sympathy. Now the
truth is that the Weirs, father and son, were surrounded
by a posse of strenuous loyalists. Of my lord
they were vastly proud. It was a distinction
in itself to be one of the vassals of the “Hanging
Judge,” and his gross, formidable joviality was
far from unpopular in the neighbourhood of his home.
For Archie they had, one and all, a sensitive affection
and respect which recoiled from a word of belittlement.
Nor was Frank more successful when
he went farther afield. To the Four Black Brothers,
for instance, he was antipathetic in the highest degree.
Hob thought him too light, Gib too profane. Clem,
who saw him but for a day or two before he went to
Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule’s business
was, and whether he meant to stay here all session
time! “Yon’s a drone,” he pronounced.
As for Dand, it will be enough to describe their first
meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and the
rustic celebrity chanced to come along the path.
“I’m told you’re quite a poet,”
Frank had said.
“Wha tell’t ye that, mannie?” had
been the unconciliating answer.
“O, everybody!” says Frank.
“God! Here’s fame!”
said the sardonic poet, and he had passed on his way.
Come to think of it, we have here
perhaps a truer explanation of Frank’s failures.
Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott, he could have turned
a neater compliment, because Mr. Scott would have
been a friend worth making. Dand, on the other
hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it
even while he tried to flatter. Condescension
is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided
the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing among
the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will
have an empty basket by evening.
In proof of this theory Frank made
a great success of it at the Crossmichael Club, to
which Archie took him immediately on his arrival;
his own last appearance on that scene of gaiety.
Frank was made welcome there at once, continued to
go regularly, and had attended a meeting (as the members
ever after loved to tell) on the evening before his
death. Young Hay and young Pringle appeared again.
There was another supper at Windielaws, another dinner
at Driffel; and it resulted in Frank being taken to
the bosom of the county people as unreservedly as he
had been repudiated by the country folk. He occupied
Hermiston after the manner of an invader in a conquered
capital. He was perpetually issuing from it,
as from a base, to toddy parties, fishing parties,
and dinner parties, to which Archie was not invited,
or to which Archie would not go. It was now that
the name of The Recluse became general for the young
man. Some say that Innes invented it; Innes, at
least, spread it abroad.
“How’s all with your Recluse to-day?”
people would ask.
“O, reclusing away!” Innes
would declare, with his bright air of saying something
witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter
which he had provoked much more by his air than his
words, “Mind you, it’s all very well laughing,
but I’m not very well pleased. Poor Archie
is a good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I
always liked. I think it small of him to take
his little disgrace so hard and shut himself up.
’Grant that it is a ridiculous story, painfully
ridiculous,’ I keep telling him. ‘Be
a man! Live it down, man!’ But not he.
Of course it’s just solitude, and shame, and
all that. But I confess I’m beginning to
fear the result. It would be all the pities in
the world if a really promising fellow like Weir was
to end ill. I’m seriously tempted to write
to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him.”
“I would if I were you,”
some of his auditors would say, shaking the head,
sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of
the matter, so deftly indicated by a single word.
“A capital idea!” they would add, and
wonder at the aplomb and position of this young
man, who talked as a matter of course of writing to
Hermiston and correcting him upon his private affairs.
And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential:
“I’ll give you an idea, now. He’s
actually sore about the way that I’m received
and he’s left out in the county actually
jealous and sore. I’ve rallied him and I’ve
reasoned with him, told him that every one was most
kindly inclined towards him, told him even that I
was received merely because I was his guest.
But it’s no use. He will neither accept
the invitations he gets, nor stop brooding about the
ones where he’s left out. What I’m
afraid of is that the wound’s ulcerating.
He had always one of those dark, secret, angry natures a
little underhand and plenty of bile you
know the sort. He must have inherited it from
the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family
of weavers somewhere; what’s the cant phrase? sedentary
occupation. It’s precisely the kind of character
to go wrong in a false position like what his father’s
made for him, or he’s making for himself, whichever
you like to call it. And for my part, I think
it a disgrace,” Frank would say generously.
Presently the sorrow and anxiety of
this disinterested friend took shape. He began
in private, in conversations of two, to talk vaguely
of bad habits and low habits. “I must say
I’m afraid he’s going wrong altogether,”
he would say. “I’ll tell you plainly,
and between ourselves, I scarcely like to stay there
any longer; only, man, I’m positively afraid
to leave him alone. You’ll see, I shall
be blamed for it later on. I’m staying
at a great sacrifice. I’m hindering my chances
at the Bar, and I can’t blind my eyes to it.
And what I’m afraid of is, that I’m going
to get kicked for it all round before all’s done.
You see, nobody believes in friendship nowadays.”
“Well, Innes,” his interlocutor
would reply, “it’s very good of you, I
must say that. If there’s any blame going,
you’ll always be sure of my good word,
for one thing.”
“Well,” Frank would continue,
“candidly, I don’t say it’s pleasant.
He has a very rough way with him; his father’s
son, you know. I don’t say he’s rude of
course, I couldn’t be expected to stand that but
he steers very near the wind. No, it’s
not pleasant; but I tell ye, man, in conscience I
don’t think it would be fair to leave him.
Mind you, I don’t say there’s anything
actually wrong. What I say is that I don’t
like the looks of it, man!” and he would press
the arm of his momentary confidant.
In the early stages I am persuaded
there was no malice. He talked but for the pleasure
of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as
becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless
of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass;
and so he talked at random. There was no particular
bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal,
to flatter himself and to please and interest the
present friend. And by thus milling air out of
his mouth, he had presently built up a presentation
of Archie which was known and talked of in all corners
of the county. Wherever there was a residential
house and a walled garden, wherever there was a dwarfish
castle and a park, wherever a quadruple cottage by
the ruins of a peel-tower showed an old family going
down, and wherever a handsome villa with a carriage
approach and a shrubbery marked the coming up of a
new one probably on the wheels of machinery Archie
began to be regarded in the light of a dark, perhaps
a vicious mystery, and the future developments of
his career to be looked for with uneasiness and confidential
whispering. He had done something disgraceful,
my dear. What, was not precisely known, and that
good kind young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to make
light of it. But there it was. And Mr. Innes
was very anxious about him now; he was really uneasy,
my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects
because he dared not leave him alone. How wholly
we all lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully
with any malign purpose! And if a man but talks
of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous
actions by the way, and never applies to them the
name of virtue, how easily his evidence is accepted
in the court of public opinion!
All this while, however, there was
a more poisonous ferment at work between the two lads,
which came late indeed to the surface, but had modified
and magnified their dissensions from the first.
To an idle, shallow, easy-going customer like Frank,
the smell of a mystery was attractive. It gave
his mind something to play with, like a new toy to
a child; and it took him on the weak side, for like
many young men coming to the Bar, and before they
have been tried and found wanting, he flattered himself
he was a fellow of unusual quickness and penetration.
They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those days,
but there was a good deal said of Talleyrand.
And if you could have caught Frank off his guard,
he would have confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled
any one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand-Périgord.
It was on the occasion of Archie’s first absence
that this interest took root. It was vastly deepened
when Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast, and
that same afternoon there occurred another scene which
clinched the business. He was fishing Swingleburn,
Archie accompanying him, when the latter looked at
his watch.
“Well, good-bye,” said
he. “I have something to do. See you
at dinner.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry,”
cries Frank. “Hold on till I get my rod
up. I’ll go with you; I’m sick of
flogging this ditch.”
And he began to reel up his line.
Archie stood speechless. He took
a long while to recover his wits under this direct
attack; but by the time he was ready with his answer,
and the angle was almost packed up, he had become
completely Weir, and the hanging face gloomed on his
young shoulders. He spoke with a laboured composure,
a laboured kindness even; but a child could see that
his mind was made up.
“I beg your pardon, Innes; I
don’t want to be disagreeable, but let us understand
one another from the beginning. When I want your
company, I’ll let you know.”
“O!” cries Frank, “you don’t
want my company, don’t you?”
“Apparently not just now,”
replied Archie. “I even indicated to you
when I did, if you’ll remember and
that was at dinner. If we two fellows are to
live together pleasantly and I see no reason
why we should not it can only be by respecting
each other’s privacy. If we begin intruding ”
“O, come! I’ll take
this at no man’s hands. Is this the way
you treat a guest and an old friend?” cried
Innes.
“Just go home and think over
what I said by yourself,” continued Archie,
“whether it’s reasonable, or whether it’s
really offensive or not; and let’s meet at dinner
as though nothing had happened. I’ll put
it this way, if you like that I know my
own character, that I’m looking forward (with
great pleasure, I assure you) to a long visit from
you, and that I’m taking precautions at the
first. I see the thing that we that
I, if you like might fall out upon, and
I step in and obsto principiis. I wager
you five pounds you’ll end by seeing that I mean
friendliness, and I assure you, Francie, I do,”
he added, relenting.
Bursting with anger, but incapable
of speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a gesture
of farewell, and strode off down the burn-side.
Archie watched him go without moving. He was
sorry, but quite unashamed. He hated to be inhospitable,
but in one thing he was his father’s son.
He had a strong sense that his house was his own and
no man else’s; and to, lie at a guest’s
mercy was what he refused. He hated to seem harsh.
But that was Frank’s look-out. If Frank
had been commonly discreet, he would have been decently
courteous. And there was another consideration.
The secret he was protecting was not his own merely;
it was hers: it belonged to that inexpressible
she who was fast taking possession of his soul, and
whom he would soon have defended at the cost of burning
cities. By the time he had watched Frank as far
as the Swingleburnfoot, appearing and disappearing
in the tarnished heather, still stalking at a fierce
gait, but already dwindled in the distance into less
than the smallness of Lilliput, he could afford to
smile at the occurrence. Either Frank would go,
and that would be a relief or he would continue
to stay, and his host must continue to endure him.
And Archie was now free by devious paths,
behind hillocks and in the hollow of burns to
make for the trysting-place where Kirstie, cried about
by the curlew and the plover, waited and burned for
his coming by the Covenanter’s Stone.
Innes went off down-hill in a passion
of resentment, easy to be understood, but which yielded
progressively to the needs of his situation.
He cursed Archie for a cold-hearted, unfriendly, rude,
rude dog; and himself still more passionately for
a fool in having come to Hermiston when he might have
sought refuge in almost any other house in Scotland.
But the step, once taken, was practically irretrievable.
He had no more ready money to go anywhere else; he
would have to borrow from Archie the next club-night;
and ill as he thought of his host’s manners,
he was sure of his practical generosity. Frank’s
resemblance to Talleyrand strikes me as imaginary;
but at least not Talleyrand himself could have more
obediently taken his lesson from the facts. He
met Archie at dinner without resentment, almost with
cordiality. You must take your friends as you
find them, he would have said. Archie couldn’t
help being his father’s son, or his grandfather’s,
the hypothetical weaver’s, grandson. The
son of a hunks, he was still a hunks at heart, incapable
of true generosity and consideration: but he had
other qualities with which Frank could divert himself
in the meanwhile, and to enjoy which it was necessary
that Frank should keep his temper.
So excellently was it controlled that
he awoke next morning with his head full of a different,
though a cognate subject. What was Archie’s
little game? Why did he shun Frank’s company?
What was he keeping secret? Was he keeping tryst
with somebody, and was it a woman? It would be
a good joke and a fair revenge to discover. To
that task he set himself with a great deal of patience,
which might have surprised his friends, for he had
been always credited not with patience so much as
brilliancy; and little by little, from one point to
another, he at last succeeded in piecing out the situation.
First he remarked that, although Archie set out in
all the directions of the compass, he always came home
again from some point between the south and west.
From the study of a map, and in consideration of the
great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that
direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid
his finger on Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring
farms, Kingsmuirs and Polintarf. But it was difficult
to advance farther. With his rod for a pretext,
he vainly visited each of them in turn; nothing was
to be seen suspicious about this trinity of moorland
settlements. He would have tried to follow Archie,
had it been the least possible, but the nature of
the land precluded the idea. He did the next best,
ensconced himself in a quiet corner, and pursued his
movements with a telescope. It was equally in
vain, and he soon wearied of his futile vigilance,
left the telescope at home, and had almost given the
matter up in despair, when, on the twenty-seventh
day of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with
the person whom he sought. The first Sunday Kirstie
had managed to stay away from kirk on some pretext
of indisposition, which was more truly modesty; the
pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too
vivid for that public place. On the two following,
Frank had himself been absent on some of his excursions
among the neighbouring families. It was not until
the fourth, accordingly, that Frank had occasion to
set eyes on the enchantress. With the first look,
all hesitation was over. She came with the Cauldstaneslap
party; then she lived at Cauldstaneslap. Here
was Archie’s secret, here was the woman, and
more than that though I have need here of
every manageable attenuation of language with
the first look, he had already entered himself as
rival. It was a good deal in pique, it was a little
in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration:
the devil may decide the proportions! I cannot,
and it is very likely that Frank could not.
“Mighty attractive milkmaid,”
he observed, on the way home.
“Who?” said Archie.
“O, the girl you’re looking
at aren’t you? Forward there
on the road. She came attended by the rustic
bard; presumably, therefore, belongs to his exalted
family. The single objection! for the Four Black
Brothers are awkward customers. If anything were
to go wrong, Gib would gibber, and Clem would prove
inclement; and Dand fly in danders, and Hob blow up
in gobbets. It would be a Helliott of a business!”
“Very humorous, I am sure,” said Archie.
“Well, I am trying to be so,”
said Frank. “It’s none too easy in
this place, and with your solemn society, my dear
fellow. But confess that the milkmaid has found
favour in your eyes, or resign all claim to be a man
of taste.”
“It is no matter,” returned Archie.
But the other continued to look at
him, steadily and quizzically, and his colour slowly
rose and deepened under the glance, until not impudence
itself could have denied that he was blushing.
And at this Archie lost some of his control.
He changed his stick from one hand to the other, and “O,
for God’s sake, don’t be an ass!”
he cried.
“Ass? That’s the
retort delicate without doubt,” says Frank.
“Beware of the home-spun brothers, dear.
If they come into the dance, you’ll see who’s
an ass. Think now, if they only applied (say)
a quarter as much talent as I have applied to the
question of what Mr. Archie does with his evening
hours, and why he is so unaffectedly nasty when the
subject’s touched on ”
“You are touching on it now,”
interrupted Archie, with a wince.
“Thank you. That was all
I wanted, an articulate confession,” said Frank.
“I beg to remind you ”
began Archie.
But he was interrupted in turn.
“My dear fellow, don’t. It’s
quite needless. The subject’s dead and
buried.”
And Frank began to talk hastily on
other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for
it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing.
But although Archie had the grace or the timidity
to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done
with the subject. When he came home to dinner
he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking
“Cauldstaneslap ways.” Frank took
his first glass of port out after dinner to the toast
of Kirstie, and later in the evening he returned to
the charge again.
“I say, Weir, you’ll excuse
me for returning again to this affair. I’ve
been thinking it over, and I wish to beg you very seriously
to be more careful. It’s not a safe business.
Not safe, my boy,” said he.
“What?” said Archie.
“Well, it’s your own fault
if I must put a name on the thing; but really, as
a friend, I cannot stand by and see you rushing head
down into these dangers. My dear boy,”
said he, holding up a warning cigar, “consider!
What is to be the end of it?”
“The end of what?” Archie,
helpless with irritation, persisted in this dangerous
and ungracious guard.
“Well, the end of the milkmaid;
or, to speak more by the card, the end of Miss Christina
Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap.”
“I assure you,” Archie
broke out, “this is all a figment of your imagination.
There is nothing to be said against that young lady;
you have no right to introduce her name into the conversation.”
“I’ll make a note of it,”
said Frank. “She shall henceforth be nameless,
nameless, nameless, Gregarach! I make a note besides
of your valuable testimony to her character.
I only want to look at this thing as a man of the
world. Admitted she’s an angel but,
my good fellow, is she a lady?”
This was torture to Archie. “I
beg your pardon,” he said, struggling to be
composed, “but because you have wormed yourself
into my confidence ”
“O, come!” cried Frank.
“Your confidence? It was rosy but unconsenting.
Your confidence, indeed? Now, look! This
is what I must say, Weir, for it concerns your safety
and good character, and therefore my honour as your
friend. You say I wormed myself into your confidence.
Wormed is good. But what have I done? I
have put two and two together, just as the parish
will be doing to-morrow, and the whole of Tweeddale
in two weeks, and the Black Brothers well,
I won’t put a date on that; it will be a dark
and stormy morning! Your secret, in other words,
is poor Poll’s. And I want to ask of you
as a friend whether you like the prospect? There
are two horns to your dilemma, and I must say for myself
I should look mighty ruefully on either. Do you
see yourself explaining to the Four Black Brothers?
or do you see yourself presenting the milkmaid to
papa as the future lady of Hermiston? Do you?
I tell you plainly, I don’t!”
Archie rose. “I will hear
no more of this,” he said, in a trembling voice.
But Frank again held up his cigar.
“Tell me one thing first. Tell me if this
is not a friend’s part that I am playing?”
“I believe you think it so,”
replied Archie. “I can go as far as that.
I can do so much justice to your motives. But
I will hear no more of it. I am going to bed.”
“That’s right, Weir,”
said Frank heartily. “Go to bed and think
over it; and I say, man, don’t forget your prayers!
I don’t often do the moral don’t
go in for that sort of thing but when I
do, there’s one thing sure, that I mean it.”
So Archie marched off to bed, and
Frank sat alone by the table for another hour or so,
smiling to himself richly. There was nothing
vindictive in his nature; but, if revenge came in his
way, it might as well be good, and the thought of
Archie’s pillow reflections that night was indescribably
sweet to him. He felt a pleasant sense of power.
He looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose
strings he pulled as on a horse whom he
had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence,
and whom he might ride to glory or the grave at pleasure.
Which was it to be? He lingered long, relishing
the details of schemes that he was too idle to pursue.
Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted that night the
sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity over
the strands of that intrigue which was to shatter
him before the summer waned.