"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 lookout.  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 
Swingleburn-foot, 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 homespun 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, Grigalach!  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 tomorrow, 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 Archle.  "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.



CHAPTER VIII - A NOCTURNAL VISIT



KIRSTIE had many causes of distress.  More and more as we grow old - and 
yet more and more as we grow old and are women, frozen by the fear of 
age - we come to rely on the voice as the single outlet of the soul.  
Only thus, in the curtailment of our means, can we relieve the 
straitened cry of the passion within us; only thus, in the bitter and 
sensitive shyness of advancing years, can we maintain relations with 
those vivacious figures of the young that still show before us and tend 
daily to become no more than the moving wall-paper of life.  Talk is the 
last link, the last relation.  But with the end of the conversation, 
when the voice stops and the bright face of the listener is turned away, 
solitude falls again on the bruised heart.  Kirstie had lost her "cannie 
hour at e'en"; she could no more wander with Archie, a ghost if you 
will, but a happy ghost, in fields Elysian.  And to her it was as if the 
whole world had fallen silent; to him, but an unremarkable change of 
amusements.  And she raged to know it.  The effervescency of her 
passionate and irritable nature rose within her at times to bursting 
point.

This is the price paid by age for unseasonable ardours of feeling.  It 
must have been so for Kirstie at any time when the occasion chanced; but 
it so fell out that she was deprived of this delight in the hour when 
she had most need of it, when she had most to say, most to ask, and when 
she trembled to recognise her sovereignty not merely in abeyance but 
annulled.  For, with the clairvoyance of a genuine love, she had pierced 
the mystery that had so long embarrassed Frank.  She was conscious, even 
before it was carried out, even on that Sunday night when it began, of 
an invasion of her rights; and a voice told her the invader's name.  
Since then, by arts, by accident, by small things observed, and by the 
general drift of Archie's humour, she had passed beyond all possibility 
of doubt.  With a sense of justice that Lord Hermiston might have 
envied, she had that day in church considered and admitted the 
attractions of the younger Kirstie; and with the profound humanity and 
sentimentality of her nature, she had recognised the coming of fate.  
Not thus would she have chosen.  She had seen, in imagination, Archie 
wedded to some tall, powerful, and rosy heroine of the golden locks, 
made in her own image, for whom she would have strewed the bride-bed 
with delight; and now she could have wept to see the ambition falsified.  
But the gods had pronounced, and her doom was otherwise.

She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged with feverish thoughts.  
There were dangerous matters pending, a battle was toward, over the fate 
of which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and 
disloyalty to either side.  Now she was reincarnated in her niece, and 
now in Archie.  Now she saw, through the girl's eyes, the youth on his 
knees to her, heard his persuasive instances with a deadly weakness, and 
received his overmastering caresses.  Anon, with a revulsion, her temper 
raged to see such utmost favours of fortune and love squandered on a 
brat of a girl, one of her own house, using her own name - a deadly 
ingredient - and that "didna ken her ain mind an' was as black's your 
hat."  Now she trembled lest her deity should plead in vain, loving the 
idea of success for him like a triumph of nature; anon, with returning 
loyalty to her own family and sex, she trembled for Kirstie and the 
credit of the Elliotts.  And again she had a vision of herself, the day 
over for her old-world tales and local gossip, bidding farewell to her 
last link with life and brightness and love; and behind and beyond, she 
saw but the blank butt-end where she must crawl to die.  Had she then 
come to the lees? she, so great, so beautiful, with a heart as fresh as 
a girl's and strong as womanhood?  It could not be, and yet it was so; 
and for a moment her bed was horrible to her as the sides of the grave.  
And she looked forward over a waste of hours, and saw herself go on to 
rage, and tremble, and be softened, and rage again, until the day came 
and the labours of the day must be renewed.

Suddenly she heard feet on the stairs - his feet, and soon after the 
sound of a window-sash flung open.  She sat up with her heart beating.  
He had gone to his room alone, and he had not gone to bed.  She might 
again have one of her night cracks; and at the entrancing prospect, a 
change came over her mind; with the approach of this hope of pleasure, 
all the baser metal became immediately obliterated from her thoughts.  
She rose, all woman, and all the best of woman, tender, pitiful, hating 
the wrong, loyal to her own sex - and all the weakest of that dear 
miscellany, nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly 
flattering, hopes that she would have died sooner than have 
acknowledged.  She tore off her nightcap, and her hair fell about her 
shoulders in profusion.  Undying coquetry awoke.  By the faint light of 
her nocturnal rush, she stood before the looking-glass, carried her 
shapely arms above her head, and gathered up the treasures of her 
tresses.  She was never backward to admire herself; that kind of modesty 
was a stranger to her nature; and she paused, struck with a pleased 
wonder at the sight.  "Ye daft auld wife!" she said, answering a thought 
that was not; and she blushed with the innocent consciousness of a 
child.  Hastily she did up the massive and shining coils, hastily donned 
a wrapper, and with the rushlight in her hand, stole into the hall.  
Below stairs she heard the clock ticking the deliberate seconds, and 
Frank jingling with the decanters in the dining-room.  Aversion rose in 
her, bitter and momentary.  "Nesty, tippling puggy!" she thought; and 
the next moment she had knocked guardedly at Archie's door and was 
bidden enter.

Archie had been looking out into the ancient blackness, pierced here and 
there with a rayless star; taking the sweet air of the moors and the 
night into his bosom deeply; seeking, perhaps finding, peace after the 
manner of the unhappy.  He turned round as she came in, and showed her a 
pale face against the window-frame.

"Is that you, Kirstie?" he asked.  "Come in!"

"It's unco late, my dear," said Kirstie, affecting unwillingness.

"No, no," he answered, "not at all.  Come in, if you want a crack.  I am 
not sleepy, God knows!"

She advanced, took a chair by the toilet table and the candle, and set 
the rushlight at her foot.  Something - it might be in the comparative 
disorder of her dress, it might be the emotion that now welled in her 
bosom - had touched her with a wand of transformation, and she seemed 
young with the youth of goddesses.

"Mr. Erchie," she began, "what's this that's come to ye?"

"I am not aware of anything that has come," said Archie, and blushed, 
and repented bitterly that he had let her in.

"O, my dear, that'll no dae!" said Kirstie.  "It's ill to blend the eyes 
of love.  O, Mr. Erchie, tak a thocht ere it's ower late.  Ye shouldna 
be impatient o' the braws o' life, they'll a' come in their saison, like 
the sun and the rain.  Ye're young yet; ye've mony cantie years afore 
ye.  See and dinna wreck yersel' at the outset like sae mony ithers!  
Hae patience - they telled me aye that was the owercome o' life - hae 
patience, there's a braw day coming yet.  Gude kens it never cam to me; 
and here I am, wi' nayther man nor bairn to ca' my ain, wearying a' 
folks wi' my ill tongue, and you just the first, Mr. Erchie!"

"I have a difficulty in knowing what you mean," said Archie.

"Weel, and I'll tell ye," she said.  "It's just this, that I'm feared.  
I'm feared for ye, my dear.  Remember, your faither is a hard man, 
reaping where he hasna sowed and gaithering where he hasna strawed.  
It's easy speakin', but mind!  Ye'll have to look in the gurly face o'm, 
where it's ill to look, and vain to look for mercy.  Ye mind me o' a 
bonny ship pitten oot into the black and gowsty seas - ye're a' safe 
still, sittin' quait and crackin' wi' Kirstie in your lown chalmer; but 
whaur will ye be the morn, and in whatten horror o' the fearsome 
tempest, cryin' on the hills to cover ye?"

"Why, Kirstie, you're very enigmatical to-night - and very eloquent," 
Archie put in.

"And, my dear Mr. Erchie," she continued, with a change of voice, "ye 
mauna think that I canna sympathise wi' ye.  Ye mauna think that I 
havena been young mysel'.  Lang syne, when I was a bit lassie, no twenty 
yet - "  She paused and sighed.  "Clean and caller, wi' a fit like the 
hinney bee," she continned.  "I was aye big and buirdly, ye maun 
understand; a bonny figure o' a woman, though I say it that suldna - 
built to rear bairns - braw bairns they suld hae been, and grand I would 
hae likit it!  But I was young, dear, wi' the bonny glint o' youth in my 
e'en, and little I dreamed I'd ever be tellin' ye this, an auld, lanely, 
rudas wife!  Weel, Mr. Erchie, there was a lad cam' courtin' me, as was 
but naetural.  Mony had come before, and I would nane o' them.  But this 
yin had a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and the bees frae the 
foxglove bells.  Deary me, but it's lang syne!  Folk have dee'd sinsyne 
and been buried, and are forgotten, and bairns been born and got merrit 
and got bairns o' their ain.  Sinsyne woods have been plantit, and have 
grawn up and are bonny trees, and the joes sit in their shadow, and 
sinsyne auld estates have changed hands, and there have been wars and 
rumours of wars on the face of the earth.  And here I'm still - like an 
auld droopit craw - lookin' on and craikin'!  But, Mr. Erchie, do ye no 
think that I have mind o' it a' still?  I was dwalling then in my 
faither's house; and it's a curious thing that we were whiles trysted in 
the Deil's Hags.  And do ye no think that I have mind of the bonny 
simmer days, the lang miles o' the bluid-red heather, the cryin' of the 
whaups, and the lad and the lassie that was trysted?  Do ye no think 
that I mind how the hilly sweetness ran about my hairt?  Ay, Mr. Erchie, 
I ken the way o' it - fine do I ken the way - how the grace o' God takes 
them, like Paul of Tarsus, when they think it least, and drives the pair 
o' them into a land which is like a dream, and the world and the folks 
in't' are nae mair than clouds to the puir lassie, and heeven nae mair 
than windle-straes, if she can but pleesure him!  Until Tam dee'd - that 
was my story," she broke off to say, "he dee'd, and I wasna at the 
buryin'.  But while he was here, I could take care o' mysel'.  And can 
yon puir lassie?"

Kirstie, her eyes shining with unshed tears, stretched out her hand 
towards him appealingly; the bright and the dull gold of her hair 
flashed and smouldered in the coils behind her comely head, like the 
rays of an eternal youth; the pure colour had risen in her face; and 
Archie was abashed alike by her beauty and her story.  He came towards 
her slowly from the window, took up her hand in his and kissed it.

"Kirstie," he said hoarsely, "you have misjudged me sorely.  I have 
always thought of her, I wouldna harm her for the universe, my woman!"

"Eh, lad, and that's easy sayin'," cried Kirstie, "but it's nane sae 
easy doin'!  Man, do ye no comprehend that it's God's wull we should be 
blendit and glamoured, and have nae command over our ain members at a 
time like that?  My bairn," she cried, still holding his hand, "think o' 
the puir lass! have pity upon her, Erchie! and O, be wise for twa!  
Think o' the risk she rins!  I have seen ye, and what's to prevent 
ithers!  I saw ye once in the Hags, in my ain howl, and I was wae to see 
ye there - in pairt for the omen, for I think there's a weird on the 
place - and in pairt for pure nakit envy and bitterness o' hairt.  It's 
strange ye should forgather there tae!  God! but yon puir, thrawn, auld 
Covenanter's seen a heap o' human natur since he lookit his last on the 
musket barrels, if he never saw nane afore," she added, with a kind of 
wonder in her eyes.

"I swear by my honour I have done her no wrong," said Archie.  "I swear 
by my honour and the redemption of my soul that there shall none be done 
her.  I have heard of this before.  I have been foolish, Kirstie, not 
unkind, and, above all, not base."

"There's my bairn!" said Kirstie, rising.  "I'll can trust ye noo, I'll 
can gang to my bed wi' an easy hairt."  And then she saw in a flash how 
barren had been her triumph.  Archie had promised to spare the girl, and 
he would keep it; but who had promised to spare Archie?  What was to be 
the end of it?  Over a maze of difficulties she glanced, and saw, at the 
end of every passage, the flinty countenance of Hermiston.  And a kind 
of horror fell upon her at what she had done.  She wore a tragic mask.  
"Erchie, the Lord peety you, dear, and peety me!  I have buildit on this 
foundation" - laying her hand heavily on his shoulder - "and buildit 
hie, and pit my hairt in the buildin' of it.  If the hale hypothec were 
to fa', I think, laddie, I would dee!  Excuse a daft wife that loves ye, 
and that kenned your mither.  And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae 
inordinate desires; haud your heart in baith your hands, carry it canny 
and laigh; dinna send it up like a hairn's kite into the collieshangic 
o' the wunds!  Mind, Maister Erchie dear, that this life's a' 
disappointment, and a mouthfu' o' mools is the appointed end."

"Ay, but Kirstie, my woman, you're asking me ower much at last," said 
Archie, profoundly moved, and lapsing into the broad Scots.  "Ye're 
asking what nae man can grant ye, what only the Lord of heaven can grant 
ye if He see fit.  Ay!  And can even He!  I can promise ye what I shall 
do, and you can depend on that.  But how I shall feel - my woman, that 
is long past thinking of!"

They were both standing by now opposite each other.  The face of Archie 
wore the wretched semblance of a smile; hers was convulsed for a moment.

"Promise me ae thing," she cried in a sharp voice.  "Promise me ye'll 
never do naething without telling me."

"No, Kirstie, I canna promise ye that," he replied.  "I have promised 
enough, God kens!"

"May the blessing of God lift and rest upon ye dear!" she said.

"God bless ye, my old friend," said he.



CHAPTER IX - AT THE WEAVER'S STONE



IT was late in the afternoon when Archie drew near by the hill path to 
the Praying Weaver's stone.  The Hags were in shadow.  But still, 
through the gate of the Slap, the sun shot a last arrow, which sped far 
and straight across the surface of the moss, here and there touching and 
shining on a tussock, and lighted at length on the gravestone and the 
small figure awaiting him there.  The emptiness and solitude of the 
great moors seemed to be concentrated there, and Kirstie pointed out by 
that figure of sunshine for the only inhabitant.  His first sight of her 
was thus excruciatingly sad, like a glimpse of a world from which all 
light, comfort, and society were on the point of vanishing.  And the 
next moment, when she had turned her face to him and the quick smile had 
enlightened it, the whole face of nature smiled upon him in her smile of 
welcome.  Archie's slow pace was quickened; his legs hasted to her 
though his heart was hanging back.  The girl, upon her side, drew 
herself together slowly and stood up, expectant; she was all languor, 
her face was gone white; her arms ached for him, her soul was on tip-
toes.  But he deceived her, pausing a few steps away, not less white 
than herself, and holding up his hand with a gesture of denial.

"No, Christina, not to-day," he said.  "To-day I have to talk to you 
seriously.  Sit ye down, please, there where you were.  Please!" he 
repeated.

The revulsion of feeling in Christina's heart was violent.  To have 
longed and waited these weary hours for him, rehearsing her endearments 
- to have seen him at last come - to have been ready there, breathless, 
wholly passive, his to do what he would with - and suddenly to have 
found herself confronted with a grey-faced, harsh schoolmaster - it was 
too rude a shock.  She could have wept, but pride withheld her.  She sat 
down on the stone, from which she had arisen, part with the instinct of 
obedience, part as though she had been thrust there.  What was this?  
Why was she rejected?  Had she ceased to please?  She stood here 
offering her wares, and he would none of them!  And yet they were all 
his!  His to take and keep, not his to refuse though!  In her quick 
petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted love and 
wounded vanity wrought.  The schoolmaster that there is in all men, to 
the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in 
possession of Archie.  He had passed a night of sermons, a day of 
reflection; he had come wound up to do his duty; and the set mouth, 
which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed the 
expression of an averted heart.  It was the same with his constrained 
voice and embarrassed utterance; and if so - if it was all over - the 
pang of the thought took away from her the power of thinking.

He stood before her some way off.  "Kirstie, there's been too much of 
this.  We've seen too much of each other."  She looked up quickly and 
her eyes contracted.  "There's no good ever comes of these secret 
meetings.  They're not frank, not honest truly, and I ought to have seen 
it.  People have begun to talk; and it's not right of me.  Do you see?"

"I see somebody will have been talking to ye," she said sullenly.

"They have, more than one of them," replied Archie.

"And whae were they?" she cried.  "And what kind o' love do ye ca' that, 
that's ready to gang round like a whirligig at folk talking?  Do ye 
think they havena talked to me?"

"Have they indeed?" said Archie, with a quick breath.  "That is what I 
feared.  Who were they?  Who has dared - ?"

Archie was on the point of losing his temper.

As a matter of fact, not any one had talked to Christina on the matter; 
and she strenuously repeated her own first question in a panic of self-
defence.

"Ah, well! what does it matter?" he said.  "They were good folk that 
wished well to us, and the great affair is that there are people 
talking.  My dear girl, we have to be wise.  We must not wreck our lives 
at the outset.  They may be long and happy yet, and we must see to it, 
Kirstie, like God's rational creatures and not like fool children.  
There is one thing we must see to before all.  You're worth waiting for, 
Kirstie! worth waiting for a generation; it would be enough reward." - 
And here he remembered the schoolmaster again, and very unwisely took to 
following wisdom.  "The first thing that we must see to, is that there 
shall be no scandal about for my father's sake.  That would ruin all; do 
ye no see that?"

Kirstie was a little pleased, there had been some show of warmth of 
sentiment in what Archie had said last.  But the dull irritation still 
persisted in her bosom; with the aboriginal instinct, having suffered 
herself, she wished to make Archie suffer.

And besides, there had come out the word she had always feared to hear 
from his lips, the name of his father.  It is not to be supposed that, 
during so many days with a love avowed between them, some reference had 
not been made to their conjoint future.  It had in fact been often 
touched upon, and from the first had been the sore point.  Kirstie had 
wilfully closed the eye of thought; she would not argue even with 
herself; gallant, desperate little heart, she had accepted the command 
of that supreme attraction like the call of fate and marched blindfold 
on her doom.  But Archie, with his masculine sense of responsibility, 
must reason; he must dwell on some future good, when the present good 
was all in all to Kirstie; he must talk - and talk lamely, as necessity 
drove him - of what was to be.  Again and again he had touched on 
marriage; again and again been driven back into indistinctness by a 
memory of Lord Hermiston.  And Kirstie had been swift to understand and 
quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in 
flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and 
her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, 
to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of 
these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded 
madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future.  But these 
unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his 
memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well 
uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony.  She was raised up and dashed 
down again bleeding.  The recurrence of the subject forced her, for 
however short a time, to open her eyes on what she did not wish to see; 
and it had invariably ended in another disappointment.  So now again, at 
the mere wind of its coming, at the mere mention of his father's name - 
who might seem indeed to have accompanied them in their whole moorland 
courtship, an awful figure in a wig with an ironical and bitter smile, 
present to guilty consciousness - she fled from it head down.

"Ye havena told me yet," she said, "who was it spoke?"

"Your aunt for one," said Archie.

"Auntie Kirstie?" she cried.  "And what do I care for my Auntie 
Kirstie?"

"She cares a great deal for her niece," replied Archie, in kind reproof.

"Troth, and it's the first I've heard of it," retorted the girl.

"The question here is not who it is, but what they say, what they have 
noticed," pursued the lucid schoolmaster.  "That is what we have to 
think of in self-defence."

"Auntie Kirstie, indeed!  A bitter, thrawn auld maid that's fomented 
trouble in the country before I was born, and will be doing it still, I 
daur say, when I'm deid!  It's in her nature; it's as natural for her as 
it's for a sheep to eat."

"Pardon me, Kirstie, she was not the only one," interposed Archie.  "I 
had two warnings, two sermons, last night, both most kind and 
considerate.  Had you been there, I promise you you would have grat, my 
dear!  And they opened my eyes.  I saw we were going a wrong way."

"Who was the other one?" Kirstie demanded.

By this time Archie was in the condition of a hunted beast.  He had 
come, braced and resolute; he was to trace out a line of conduct for the 
pair of them in a few cold, convincing sentences; he had now been there 
some time, and he was still staggering round the outworks and undergoing 
what he felt to be a savage cross-examination.

"Mr. Frank!" she cried.  "What nex', I would like to ken?"

"He spoke most kindly and truly."

"What like did he say?"

"I am not going to tell you; you have nothing to do with that," cried 
Archie, startled to find he had admitted so much.

"O, I have naething to do with it!" she repeated, springing to her feet.  
"A'body at Hermiston's free to pass their opinions upon me, but I have 
naething to do wi' it!  Was this at prayers like?  Did ye ca' the grieve 
into the consultation?  Little wonder if a'body's talking, when ye make 
a'body yer confidants!  But as you say, Mr. Weir, - most kindly, most 
considerately, most truly, I'm sure, - I have naething to do with it.  
And I think I'll better be going.  I'll be wishing you good evening, Mr. 
Weir."  And she made him a stately curtsey, shaking as she did so from 
head to foot, with the barren ecstasy of temper.

Poor Archie stood dumbfounded.  She had moved some steps away from him 
before he recovered the gift of articulate speech.

"Kirstie!" he cried.  "O, Kirstie woman!"

There was in his voice a ring of appeal, a clang of mere astonishment 
that showed the schoolmaster was vanquished.

She turned round on him.  "What do ye Kirstie me for?" she retorted.  
"What have ye to do wi' me!  Gang to your ain freends and deave them!"

He could only repeat the appealing "Kirstie!"

"Kirstie, indeed!" cried the girl, her eyes blazing in her white face.  
"My name is Miss Christina Elliott, I would have ye to ken, and I daur 
ye to ca' me out of it.  If I canna get love, I'll have respect, Mr. 
Weir.  I'm come of decent people, and I'll have respect.  What have I 
done that ye should lightly me?  What have I done?  What have I done?  
O, what have I done?" and her voice rose upon the third repetition.  "I 
thocht - I thocht - I thocht I was sae happy!" and the first sob broke 
from her like the paroxysm of some mortal sickness.

Archie ran to her.  He took the poor child in his arms, and she nestled 
to his breast as to a mother's, and clasped him in hands that were 
strong like vices.  He felt her whole body shaken by the throes of 
distress, and had pity upon her beyond speech.  Pity, and at the same 
time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works 
he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with.  There arose 
from before him the curtains of boyhood, and he saw for the first time 
the ambiguous face of woman as she is.  In vain he looked back over the 
interview; he saw not where he had offended.  It seemed unprovoked, a 
wilful convulsion of brute nature. . . .




GLOSSARY




Ae, one.
Antinomian, one of a sect which holds that under the gospel dispensation 
the moral law is not obligatory.
Auld Hornie, the Devil.

Ballant, ballad.
Bauchles, brogues, old shoes.
Bauld, bold.
Bees in their bonnet, eccentricities.
Birling, whirling.
Black-a-vised, dark-complexioned.
Bonnet-laird, small landed proprietor, yeoman.
Bool, ball.
Brae, rising ground.
Brig, bridge.
Buff, play buff on, to make a fool of, to deceive.
Burn, stream.
Butt end, end of a cottage.
Byre, cow-house.

Ca', drive.
Caller, fresh.
Canna, cannot.
Canny, careful, shrewd.
Cantie, cheerful.
Carline, old woman.
Cauld, cold.
Chalmer, chamber.
Claes, clothes.
Clamjamfry, crowd.
Clavers, idle talk.
Cock-laird.  See Bonnet-laird.
Collieshangie, turmoil.
Crack, to converse.
Cuist, cast.
Cuddy, donkey.
Cutty, jade, also used playfully = brat.

Daft, mad, frolicsome.
Dander, to saunter.
Danders, cinders.
Daurna, dare not.
Deave, to deafen.
Denty, dainty.
Dirdum, vigour.
Disjaskit, worn out, disreputable-looking.
Doer, law agent.
Dour, hard.
Drumlie, dark.
Dunting, knocking.
Dwaibly, infirm, rickety.
Dule-tree, the tree of lamentation, the hanging-tree.

Earrand, errand.
Ettercap, vixen.

Fechting, fighting.
Feck, quantity, portion.
Feckless, feeble, powerless.
Fell, strong and fiery.
Fey, unlike yourself, strange, as if urged on by fate, or as persons are 
observed to be in the hour of approaching death or disaster.
Fit, foot.
Flit, to depart.
Flyped, turned up, turned in-side out.
Forbye, in addition to.
Forgather, to fall in with.
Fower, four.
Fushionless, pithless, weak.
Fyle, to soil, to defile.
Fylement, obloquy, defilement.

Gaed, Went.
Gang, to go.
Gey an', very.
Gigot, leg of mutton.
Girzie, lit. diminutive of Grizel, here a playful nickname.
Glaur, mud.
Glint, glance, sparkle.
Gloaming, twilight.
Glower, to scowl.
Gobbets, small lumps.
Gowden, golden.
Gowsty, gusty.
Grat, wept.
Grieve, land-steward.
Guddle, to catch fish with the hands by groping under the stones or 
banks.
Gumption, common sense, judgment.
Guid, good.
Gurley, stormy, surly.
Gyte, beside itself.

Hae, have, take.
Haddit, held.
Hale, whole.
Heels-ower-hurdie, heels over head.
Hinney, honey.
Hirstle, to bustle.
Hizzie, wench.
Howe, hollow.
Howl, hovel.
Hunkered, crouched.
Hypothec, lit. in Scots law the furnishings of a house, and formerly the 
produce and stock of a farm hypothecated by law to the landlord as 
security for rent; colloquially "the whole structure," "the whole 
concern."

Idleset, idleness.
Infeftment, a term in Scots law originally synonymous with investiture.

Jaud, jade.
Jeely-piece, a slice of bread and jelly.
Jennipers, juniper.

Jo, sweetheart.
Justifeed, executed, made the victim of justice.
Jyle, jail

Kebbuck, cheese.
Ken, to know.
Kenspeckle, conspicuous.
Kilted, tucked up.
Kyte, belly.

Laigh, low.
Laird, landed proprietor.
Lane, alone.
Lave, rest, remainder.
Linking, tripping.
Lown, lonely, still.
Lynn, cataract.
Lyon King of Arms, the chief of the Court of Heraldry in Scotland.

Macers, offiers of the supreme court. [Cf.  Guy Mannering, last 
chapter.]
Maun, must.
Menseful, of good manners.
Mirk, dark.
Misbegowk, deception, disappointment.
Mools, mould, earth.
Muckle, much, great, big.
My lane, by myself.

Nowt, black cattle.

Palmering, walking infirmly.
Panel, in Scots law, the accused person in a criminal action, the 
prisoner.
Peel, fortified watch-tower.
Plew-stilts, plough-handles.
Policy, ornamental grounds of a country mansion.
Puddock, frog.

Quean, wench.

Rair, to roar.
Riff-raff, rabble.
Risping, grating.
Rout, rowt, to roar, to rant.
Rowth, abundance.
Rudas, haggard old woman.
Runt, an old cow past breeding; opprobriously, an old woman.

Sab, sob.
Sanguishes, sandwiches.
Sasine, in Scots law, the act of giving legal possession of feudal 
property, or, colloquially, the deed by which that possession is proved.
Sclamber, to scramble.
Sculduddery, impropriety, grossness.
Session, the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland.
Shauchling, shuffling, slipshod.
Shoo, to chase gently.
Siller, money.
Sinsyne, since then.
Skailing, dispersing.
Skelp, slap.
Skirling, screaming.
Skriegh-o'day, daybreak.
Snash, abuse.
Sneisty, supercilious.
Sooth, to hum.
Sough, sound, murmur.
Spec, The Speculative Society, a debating Society connected with 
Edingburgh University.
Speir, to ask.
Speldering, sprawling.
Splairge, to splash.
Spunk, spirit, fire.
Steik, to shut.
Stockfish, hard, savourless.
Suger-bool, suger-plum.
Syne, since, then.

Tawpie, a slow foolish slut, also used playfully = monkey.
Telling you, a good thing for you.
Thir, these.
Thrawn, cross-grained.
Toon, town.
Two-names, local soubriquets in addition to patronymic.
Tyke, dog.

Unchancy, unlucky.
Unco, strange, extraordinary, very.
Upsitten, impertinent.

Vennel, alley, lane.  The Vennel, a narrow lane in Edingburgh, running 
out of the Grassmarket.
Vivers, victuals.

Wae, sad, unhappy.
Waling, choosing.
Warrandise, warranty.
Waur, worse.
Weird, destiny.
Whammle, to upset.
Whaup, curlew.
Whiles, sometimes.
Windlestae, crested dog's-tail, grass.
Wund, wind.

Yin, one.