The next morning came a note to the cottage, in which Sercombe thanked the Macruadh for changing his mind, and said that, although he was indeed glad to have secured such a splendid head, he would certainly have stalked another deer, had he known the chief set such store by the one in question.
It was handed to Alister as he sat at his second breakfast with his mother and Ian: even in winter he was out of the house by six o'clock, to set his men to work, and take his own share. He read to the end of the first page with curling lip; the moment he turned the leaf, he sprang from his seat with an exclamation that startled his mother.
"The hound!—I beg my good dogs' pardon, one and all!" he cried.
"—Look at this, Ian! See what comes of taking your advice!"
"My dear fellow, I gave you no advice that had the least regard to the consequence of following it! That was the one thing you had nothing to do with."
"READA," insisted Alister, as he pranced about the room. "No, don't read the letter; it's not worth, reading. Look at the paper in it."
Ian looked, and saw a cheque for ten pounds. He burst into loud laughter.
"Poor Ruadh's horns! they're hardly so long as their owner's ears!" he said.
"I told you so!" cried the chief.
"No, Alister! You never suspected such a donkey!"
"What is it all about?" asked the mother.
"The wretch who shot Ruadh," replied Alister, "—to whom I gave his head, all to please Ian,—"
"Alister!" said Ian.
The chief understood, and retracted.
"—no, not to please Ian, but to do what Ian showed me was right:—I believe it was my duty!—I hope it was!—here's the murdering fellow sends me a cheque for ten pounds!—I told you, Ian, he offered me ten pounds over the dead body!"
"I daresay the poor fellow was sorely puzzled what to do, and appealed to everybody in the house for advice!"
"You take the cheque to represent the combined wisdom of the New House?"
"You must have puzzled them all!" persisted Ian. "How could people with no principle beyond that of keeping to a bargain, understand you otherwise! First, you perform an action such persons think degrading: you carry a fellow's bag for a shilling, and then himself for nothing! Next, in the very fury of indignation with a man for killing the finest stag in the country on your meadow, you carry him home the head with your own hands! It all comes of that unlucky divine motion of yours to do good that good may come! That shilling of Mistress Conal's is at the root of it all!"
Ian laughed again, and right heartily. The chief was too angry to enter into the humour of the thing.
"Upon my word, Ian, it is too bad of you! What ARE you laughing at? It would become you better to tell me what I am to do! Am I free to break the rascal's bones?"
"Assuredly not, after that affair with the bag!"
"Oh, damn the bag!—I beg your pardon, mother."
"Am I to believe my ears, Alister?"
"What does it matter, mother? What harm can it do the bag? I wished no evil to any creature!"
"It was the more foolish."
"I grant it, mother. But you don't know what a relief it is sometimes to swear a little!—You are quite wrong, Ian; it all comes of giving him the head!"
"You wish you had not given it him?"
"No!" growled Alister, as from a pent volcano.
"You will break my ears, Alister!" cried the mother, unable to keep from laughing at the wrath in which he went straining through the room.
"Think of it," insisted Ian: "a man like could not think otherwise without a revolution of his whole being to which the change of the leopard's spots would be nothing.—What you meant, after all, was not cordiality; it was only generosity; to which his response, his countercheck friendly, was an order for ten pounds!—All is right between you!"
"Now, really, Ian, you must not go on teasing your elder brother so!" said the mother.
Alister laughed, and ceased fuming. "But I must answer the brute!" he said. "What am I to say to him?"
"That you are much obliged," replied Ian, "and will have the cheque framed and hung in the hall."
"Come, come! no more of that!"
"Well, then, let me answer the letter."
"That is just what I wanted!"
Ian sat down at his mother's table, and this is what he wrote.
"Dear sir,—My brother desires me to return the cheque which you unhappily thought it right to send him. Humanity is subject to mistake, but I am sorry for the individual who could so misunderstand his courtesy. I have the honour to remain, sir, your obedient servant, Ian Macruadh."
As Ian guessed, the matter had been openly discussed at the New House; and the money was sent with the approval of all except the two young ladies. They had seen the young men in circumstances more favourable to the understanding of them by ordinary people.
"Why didn't the chief write himself?" said Christian.
"Oh," replied Sercombe, "his little brother had been to school, and could write better!"
Christina and Mercy exchanged glances.
"I will tell you," Mercy said, "why Mr. lau answered the note: the chief had done with you!"
"Or," suggested Christina, "the chief was in such a rage that he would write nothing but a challenge."
"I wish to goodness he had! It would have given me the chance of giving the clodhopper a lesson."
"For sending you the finest stag's head and horns in the country!" remarked Mercy.
"I shot the stag! Perhaps you don't believe I shot him!"
"Indeed I do! No one else would have done it. The chief would have died sooner!"
"I'm sick of your chief!" said Christian. "A pretty chief without a penny to bless himself! A chief, and glad of the job of carrying a carpet-bag! You'll be calling him MY LORD, next!"
"He may at least write BARONET after his name when he pleases," returned Mercy.
"Why don't he then? A likely story!"
"Because," answered Christina, "both his father and himself were ashamed of how the first baronet got his title. It had to do with the sale of a part of the property, and they counted the land the clan's as well as the chief's. They regarded it as an act of treachery to put the clan in the power of a stranger, and the chief looks on the title as a brand of shame."
"I don't question the treachery," said Christian. "A highlander is treacherous."
Christina had asked a friend in Glasgow to find out for her anything known among the lawyers concerning the Macruadhs, and what she had just recounted was a part of the information she had thereby received.
Thenceforward silence covered the whole transaction. Sercombe neither returned the head, sent an apology, nor recognized the gift. That he had shot the stag was enough!
But these things wrought shaping the idea of the brothers in the minds of the sisters, and they were beginning to feel a strange confidence in them, such as they had never had in men before. A curious little halo began to shimmer about the heads of the young men in the picture-gallery of the girls' fancy. Not the less, however, did they regard them as enthusiasts, unfitted to this world, incapable of self-protection, too good to live—in a word, unpractical! Because a man would live according to the laws of his being as well as of his body, obeying simple, imperative, essential human necessity, his fellows forsooth call him UNPRACTICAL! Of the idiotic delusions of the children of this world, that of being practical is one of the most ludicrous.
Here is a translation, made by Ian, of one of Alister's Gaelic songs.
THE SUN'S DAUGHTER
A bright drop of water
In the gold tire
Of a sun's daughter
Was laughing to her sire;
And from all the flowers about,
That never toiled or spun,
The soul of each looked out,
Clear laughing to the sun.
I saw them unfolding
Their hearts every one!
Every soul holding
Within it the sun!
But all the sun-mirrors
Vanished anon;
And their flowers, mere starers,
Grew dry in the sun.
"My soul is but water,
Shining and gone!
She is but the daughter,"
I said, "of the sun!"
My soul sat her down
In a deep-shaded gloom;
Her glory was flown,
Her earth was a tomb,
Till night came and caught her,
And then out she shone;
And I knew her no daughter
Of that shining sun—
Till night came down and taught her
Of a glory yet unknown;
And I knew my soul the daughter
Of a sun behind the sun.
Back, back to him that wrought her
My soul shall haste and run;
Straight back to him, his daughter,
To the sun behind the sun.
CHAPTER IX.
ANNIE OF THE SHOP
At the dance in the chief's barn, Sercombe had paired with Annie of the shop oftener than with any other of the girls. That she should please him at all, was something in his favour, for she was a simple, modest girl, with the nicest feeling of the laws of intercourse, the keenest perception both of what is in itself right, and what is becoming in the commonest relation. She understood by a fine moral instinct what respect was due to her, and what respect she ought to show, and was therefore in the truest sense well-bred. There are women whom no change of circumstances would cause to alter even their manners a hair's-breadth: such are God's ladies; there are others in whom any outward change will reveal the vulgarity of a nature more conscious of claim than of obligation.
I need not say that Sercomhe, though a man of what is called education, was but conventionally a gentleman. If in doubt whether a man be a gentleman or not, hear him speak to a woman he regards as his inferior: his very tone will probably betray him. A true gentleman, that is a true man, will be the more carefully respectful. Sercombe was one of those who regard themselves as respectable because they are prudent; whether they are human, and their brother and sister's keeper, they have never asked themselves.
To some minds neither innocent nor simple, there is yet something attractive in innocence and simplicity. Perhaps it gives them a pleasing sense of their superiority—a background against which to rejoice in their liberty, while their pleasure in it helps to obscure the gulf between what the man would fain hold himself to be, and what in reality he is. There is no spectre so terrible as the unsuspected spectre of a man's own self; it is noisome enough to the man who is ever trying to better it: what must it appear to the man who sees it for the first time! Sercombe's self was ugly, and he did not know it; he thought himself an exceptionally fine fellow. No one knows what a poor creature he is but the man who makes it his business to be true. The only mistake worse than thinking well of himself, is for a man to think God takes no interest in him.
One evening, sorely in lack of amusement, Sercombe wandered out into a star-lit night, and along the road to the village. There he went into the general shop, where sat Annie behind the counter. Now the first attention he almost always paid a woman, that is when he cared and dared, was a compliment—the fungus of an empty head or a false heart; but with Annie he took no such initiative liberty, and she, accustomed to respectful familiarity from the chief and his brother, showed no repugnance to his friendly approach.
"Upon my word, Miss Annie," said Sercombe, venturing at length a little, "you were the best dancer on the floor that night!"
"Oh, Mr. Sercombe! how can you say so—with such dancers as the young ladies of your party!" returned Annie.
"They dance well," he returned, "but not so well as you."
"It all depends on the dance—whether you are used to it or not."
"No, by Jove! If you had a lesson or two such as they have been having all their lives, you would dance out of their sight in the twinkling of an eye. If I had you for a partner every night for a month, you would dance better than any woman I have ever seen—off the stage—any lady, that is."
The grosser the flattery, the surer with a country girl, he thought. But there was that in his tone, besides the freedom of sounding her praises in her own ears, which was unpleasing to Annie's ladyhood, and she held her peace.
"Come out and have a turn," he said thereupon. "It is lovely star-light. Have you had a walk to-day?"
"No, I have not," answered Annie, casting how to get rid of him.
"You wrong your beauty by keeping to the house."
"My beauty," said Annie, flushing, "may look after itself; I have nothing to do with it—neither, excuse me, sir, have you."
"Why, who has a right to be offended with the truth! A man can't help seeing your face is as sweet as your voice, and your figure, as revealed by your dancing, a match for the two!"
"I will call my mother," said Annie, and left the shop.
Sercombe did not believe she would, and waited. He took her departure for a mere coquetry. But when a rather grim, handsome old woman appeared, asking him—it took the most of her English—"What would you be wanting, sir?" as if he had just come into the shop, he found himself awkwardly situated. He answered, with more than his usual politeness, that, having had the pleasure of dancing with her daughter at the chief's hall, he had taken the liberty of looking in to inquire after her health; whereupon, perplexed, the old woman in her turn called Annie, who came at once, but kept close to her mother. Sercombe began to tell them about a tour he had made in Canada, for he had heard they had friends there; but the mother did not understand him, and Annie more and more disliked him. He soon saw that at least he had better say nothing more about a walk, and took himself off, not a little piqued at repulse from a peasant-girl in the most miserable shop he had ever entered.
Two days after, he went again—this time to buy tobacco. Annie was short with him, but he went yet again and yet sooner: these primitive people objected to strangers, he said; accustomed to him she would be friendly! he would not rest until he had gained some footing of favour with her! Annie grew heartily offended with the man. She also feared what might be said if he kept coming to the shop—where Mistress Conal had seen him more than once, and looked poison at him. For her own sake, for the sake of Lachlan, and for the sake of the chief, she resolved to make the young father of the ancient clan acquainted with her trouble. It was on the day after his rejection of the ten-pound note that she found her opportunity, for the chief came to see her.
"Was he rude to you, Annie?" he asked.
"No, sir—too polite, I think: he must have seen I did not want his company.—I shall feel happier now you know."
"I will see to it," said the chief.
"I hope it will not put you to any trouble, sir!"
"What am I here for, Annie! Are you not my clanswoman! Is not Lachlan my foster-brother!—He will trouble you no more, I think."
As Alister walked home, he met Sercombe, and after a greeting not very cordial on either side, said thus:
"I should be obliged to you, Mr. Sercombe, if you would send for anything you want, instead of going to the shop yourself. Annie Macruadh is not the sort of girl you may have found in such a position, and you would not wish to make her uncomfortable!"
Sercombe was, ashamed, I think; for the refuge of the fool when dissatisfied with himself, is offence with his neighbour, and Sercombe was angry.
"Are you her father—or her lover?" he said.
"She has a right to my protection—and claims it," rejoined Alister quietly.
"Protection! Oh!—What the devil would you protect her from?"
"From you, Mr. Sercombe."
"Protect her, then."
"I will. Force yourself on that young woman's notice again, and you will have to do with me."
They parted. Alister went home. Sercombe went straight to the shop.
He was doing what he could to recommend himself to Christina; but whether from something antagonistic between them, or from unwillingness on her part to yield her position of advantage and so her liberty, she had not given him the encouragement he thought he deserved. He believed himself in love with her, and had told her so; but the truest love such a man can feel, is a poor thing. He admired, and desired, and thought he loved her beauty, and that he called being in love with HER! He did not think much about her money, but had she then been brought to poverty, he would at least have hesitated about marrying her.
In the family he was regarded as her affianced, although she did not treat him as such, but merely went on bewitching him, pleased that at least he was a man of the world.
While one is yet only IN LOVE, the real person, the love-capable, lies covered with the rose-leaves of a thousand sleepy-eyed dreams, and through them come to the dreamer but the barest hints of the real person of whom is the dream. A thousand fancies fly out, approach, and cross, but never meet; the man and the woman are pleased, not with each other, but each with the fancied other. The merest common likings are taken for signs of a wonderful sympathy, of a radical unity—of essential capacity, therefore, of loving and being loved; at a hundred points their souls seem to touch, but their contacts are the merest brushings as of insect-antennae; the real man, the real woman, is all the time asleep under the rose-leaves. Happy is the rare fate of the true—to wake and come forth and meet in the majesty of the truth, in the image of God, in their very being, in the power of that love which alone is being. They love, not this and that about each other, but each the very other—a love as essential to reality, to truth, to religion, as the love of the very God. Where such love is, let the differences of taste, the unfitnesses of temperament be what they may, the two must by and by be thoroughly one.
Sercombe saw no reason why a gentleman should not amuse himself with any young woman he pleased. What was the chief to him! He was not his chief! If he was a big man in the eyes of his little clan, he was nothing much in the eyes of Hilary Sercombe.
CHAPTER X
THE ENCOUNTER
Annie came again to her chief, with the complaint that Mr. Sercombe persisted in his attentions. Alister went to see her home. They had not gone far when Sercombe overtook them, and passed. The chief told Annie to go on, and called after him,
"I must have a word or two with you, Mr. Sercombe!"
He turned and came up with long steps, his hands in his coat-pockets.
"I warned you to leave that girl alone!" said the chief.
"And I warn you now," rejoined Sercombe, "to leave me alone!"
"I am bound to take care of her."
"And I of myself."
"Not at her expense!"
"At yours then!" answered Sercombe, provoking an encounter, to which he was the more inclined that he saw Ian coming slowly up the ridge.
"It was your deliberate intention then to forget the caution I gave you?" said the chief, restraining his anger.
"I make a point of forgetting what I do not think worth remembering."
"I forget nothing!"
"I congratulate you."
"And I mean to assist your memory, Mr. Sercombe."
"Mr. Macruadh!" returned Sercombe, "if you expect me not to open my lips to any hussy in the glen without your leave,—"
His speech was cut short by a box on the ear from the open hand of the chief. He would not use his fist without warning, but such a word applied to any honest woman of his clan demanded instant recognition.
Sercomhe fell back a step, white with rage, then darting forward, struck straight at the front of his adversary. Alister avoided the blow, but soon found himself a mere child at such play with the Englishman. He had not again touched Sercombe, and was himself bleeding fast, when Ian came up running.
"Damn you! come on!" cried Sercombe when he saw him; "I can do the precious pair of you!"
"Stop!" cried Ian, laying hold of his brother from behind, pinning his arms to his sides, wheeling him round, and taking his place. "Give over, Alister," he went on. "You can't do it, and I won't see you punished when it is he that deserves it. Go and sit there, and look on."
"YOU can't do it, Ian!" returned Alister. "It is my business. One blow in will serve. He jumps about like a goat that I can't hit him!"
"You are blind with blood!" said Ian, in a tone that gave Sercombe expectation of too easy a victory. "Sit down there, I tell you!"
"Mind, I don't give in!" said Alister, but turning went to the bank at the roadside. "If he speak once again to Annie, I swear I will make him repent it!"
Sercombe laughed insultingly.
"Mr. Sercombe," said Ian, "had we not better put off our bout till to-morrow? You have fought already!"
"Damn you for a coward, come on!"
"Would you not like to take your breath for a moment?"
"I have all I am likely to need."
"It is only fair," persisted Ian, "to warn you that you will not find my knowledge on the level of my brother's!"
"Shut up," said Sercombe savagely, "and come on."
For a few rounds Ian seemed to Alister to be giving Sercombe time to recover his wind; to Sercombe he seemed to be saving his own. He stood to defend, and did not attempt to put in a blow.
"Mr. Sercombe," he said at length, "you cannot serve me as you did my brother."
"I see that well enough. Come on!"
"Will you give your word to leave Annie of the shop alone?"
Sercombe answered with a scornful imprecation.
"I warn you again, I am no novice in this business!" said Ian.
Sercombe struck out, but did not reach his antagonist.
The fight lasted but a moment longer. As his adversary drew back from a failed blow, Alister saw Ian's eyes flash, and his left arm shoot out, as it seemed, to twice its length. Sercombe neither reeled nor staggered but fell supine, and lay motionless. The brothers were by his side in a moment.
"I struck too hard!" said Ian.
"Who can think about that in a fight!" returned Alister.
"I could have helped it well enough, and a better man would. Something shot through me—I hope it wasn't hatred; I am sure it was anger—and the man went down! What if the devil struck the blow!"
"Nonsense, Ian!" said Alister, as they raised Sercombe to carry him to the cottage. "It was pure indignation, and nothing to blame in it!"
"I wish I could be sure of that!"
They had not gone far before he began to come to himself.
"What are you about?" he said feebly but angrily. "Set me down."
They did so. He staggered to the road-side, and leaned against the bank.
"What's been the row?" he asked. "Oh, I remember!—Well, you've had the best of it!"
He held out his hand in a vague sort of way, and the gesture invaded their soft hearts. Each took the hand.
"I was all right about the girl though," said Sercombe. "I didn't mean her any harm."
"I don't think you did," answered Alister; "and I am sure you could have done her none; but the girl did not like it."
"There is not a girl of the clan, or in the neighbourhood, for whom my brother would not have done the same." said Ian.
"You're a brace of woodcocks!" cried Sercombe. "It's well you're not out in the world. You would be in hot water from morning to night! I can't think how the devil you get on at all!"
"Get on! Where?" asked Ian with a smile.
"Come now! You ain't such fools as you want to look! A man must make a place for himself somehow in the world!"
He rose, and they walked in the direction of the cottage.
"There is a better thing than that," said Ian!
"What?"
"To get clean out of it."
"What! cut your throats?"
"I meant that to get out of the world clean was better than to get on in it."
"I don't understand you. I don't choose to think the man that thrashed me a downright idiot!" growled Sercombe.
"What you call getting on," rejoined Ian, "we count not worth a thought. Look at our clan! it is a type of the world itself. Everything is passing away. We believe in the kingdom of heaven."
"Come, come! fellows like you must know well enough that's all bosh!
Nobody nowadays—nobody with any brains—believes such rot!"
"We believe in Jesus Christ," said Ian, "and are determined to do what he will have us do, and take our orders from nobody else."
"I don't understand you!"
"I know you don't. You cannot until you set about changing your whole way of life."
"Oh, be damned! what an idea! a sneaking, impossible idea!"
"As to its being an impossible idea, we hold it, and live by it. How absurd it must seem to you, I know perfectly. But we don't live in your world, and you do not even see the lights of ours."
"'There is a world beyond the stars'!—Well, there may be; I know nothing about it; I only know there is one on this side of them,—a very decent sort of world too! I mean to make the best of it."
"And have not begun yet!"
"Indeed I have! I deny myself nothing. I live as I was made to live."
"If you were not made to obey your conscience or despise yourself, you are differently made from us, and no communication is possible between us. We must wait until what differences a man from a beast make its appearance in you."
"You are polite!"
"You have spoken of us as you think; now we speak of you as we think. Taking your representation of yourself, you are in the condition of the lower animals, for you claim inclination as the law of your life."
"My beast is better than your man!"
"You mean you get more of the good of life!"
"Right! I do."
The brothers exchanged a look and smile.
"But suppose," resumed Ian, "the man we have found in us should one day wake up in you! Suppose he should say, 'Why did you make a beast of me?'! It will not be easy for you to answer him!"
"That's all moonshine! Things are as you take them."
"So said Lady Macbeth till she took to walking in her sleep, and couldn't get rid of the smell of the blood!"
Sercombe said no more. He was silent with disgust at the nonsense of it all.
They reached the door of the cottage. Alister invited him to walk in. He drew back, and would have excused himself.
"You had better lie down a while," said Alister.
"You shall come to my room," said Ian. "We shall meet nobody."
Sercombe yielded, for he felt queer. He threw himself on Ian's bed, and in a few minutes was fast asleep.
When he woke, he had a cup of tea, and went away little the worse.
The laird could not show himself for several days.
After this Annie had no further molestation. But indeed the young men's time was almost up—which was quite as well, for Annie of the shop, after turning a corner of the road, had climbed the hill-side, and seen all that passed. The young ladies, hearing contradictory statements, called upon Annie to learn the truth, and the intercourse with her that followed was not without influence on them. Through Annie they saw further into the character of the brothers, who, if they advocated things too fine for the world the girls had hitherto known, DID things also of which it would by no means have approved. They valued that world and its judgment not a straw!