Part 3 - Chapter 30. The Vanishing Lady

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_ PART III CHAPTER XXX. THE VANISHING LADY

During the next three years (and that is a long driech time) I made many excuses for not going down to Eden Valley. I cannot say whether I managed to get myself believed or not. But the fact of the matter is, that, as things were, I could not bring myself to face Irma again and so bring back the pain. My father had come up to see me twice. Once he had brought my mother, of whom Mrs. Craven had made much, recognizing a kindred refinement of spirit. But Amelia and my Aunt Jen (who came at the time of the General Assembly) learned to respect one another--all the more that they had been highly prejudiced before meeting.

"She seems a weel-doing lass, wi' no feery-faries aboot her!" declared my aunt, speaking of Amelia Craven. While that young woman, delivering her mind after the departure of Miss Janet Lyon, declared that she was a "wiselike woman and very civil--but I'll wager she came here thinking that I was wanting ye. Faith, no, I wadna marry any student that ever stepped in leather--I ken ower muckle aboot them!"

"There's Freddie!" I suggested.

"Oh," said Amelia shortly, "he's different, I allow. But then, there's a medium. One doesna want a man with his nose aye in a book. But one that, when ye spit at him, will spit back!"

"Try me!" I said, daring her in conscious security.

"Goliah of Gath," cried she, "but I wad be sair left to mysel'!"

We continued, however, to be pretty good friends always, and in a general way she knew about Irma. She had seen the oval miniature lying on the table. She had also closely interrogated Freddy, and lastly she had charged me with the fact, which I did not deny.

Freddy was now assistant to the professor of Humanity, which is to say of the Latin language, while besides my literary work on the Universal Review I was interim additional Under-secretary to the University Court. In both which positions, literary and secretarial, I did the work for which another man pocketed the pay.

But after all I was not ill-off. One way and another I was making near on to a hundred pounds a year, which was a great deal for the country and time, and more than most ministers got in country parts. I wrote a great many very learned articles, though I signed none. I even directed foreign affairs in the Review, and wrote the most damaging indictments against "the traditional policy of the house of Austria."

Then the other man, the great one in the public eye, he who paid me--put in this and that sonorous phrase, full of echoing emptiness, launched an antithesis which had done good service a time or two on the hustings or in the House of Commons, and--signed the article. Well, I do not object. That was what I was there for, and after all I made myself necessary to the Universal Review. It would never have appeared in time but for me. I verified quotations, continued articles that were too short by half-a-dozen pages, found statistics where there were blanks in the manuscript, invented them if I could not find them, generally bullied the printers and proof-readers, saw to the cover, and never let go till the "Purple-and-Green," as we were called, was for sale on all the counters and speeding over Britain in every postboy's leathers.

Now one of my employers (the best) lived away among the woods above Corstorphine and another out at the Sciennes--so between them I had pretty long tramps--not much in the summer time when nights hardly existed, but the mischief and all when for weeks the sun was an unrealized dream, and even the daylight only peered in for a morning call and then disappeared.

But at the time of which I write the days were lengthening rapidly. I was deep in our spring number of the Universal. Only the medical students were staying on at the University, and the Secretary's spacious office could safely be littered with all sort of printing debris. My good time was beginning.

Well, in one of my walks out to Corstorphine, I was aware, not for the first time, of the figure of a girl, carefully veiled, that at my approach--we were always meeting one another--slipped aside into a close. I thought nothing of this for the first two or three times. But the fourth, I conceived there was something more in it than met the eye. So I made a detour, and, near by the end of George Street--unfinished at that time like all the other streets in that new neighbourhood--I met my vanishing lady face to face as she emerged upon the Queensferry Road. She had lifted her veil a little in order the better to pick her way among the building and other materials scattered there.

It was Irma--Irma Maitland herself, grown into a woman, her eyes brighter, her cheeks paler, the same Irma though different--with a little startled look certainly, but now not proud any more, and--looking every day of her twenty-two years.

"Irma!" I gasped, barring the way.

She stopped dead. Then she clutched at her skirt, and said feverishly, "Let me pass, sir, or I shall call for help!"

"Call away," I answered cheerfully. "I will only say that you have run off from the home which has sheltered you for many years, and that your friends are very anxious about you. Where are you staying?"

I glanced at her black dress. It was not mourning exactly, but then Irma never did anything like any one else. A fear took me that it might be little Louis who was dead, and yet for the life of me I dared not ask, knowing how she loved the child.

When I asked where she was staying, she plucked again at her skirt, lifting it a little as when she was being challenged to run a race. But seeing no way clear, she answered as it were under compulsion, "With my Aunt Kirkpatrick at the Nun's House!"

At first I had the fear that this might prove to be some Catholic place like the convent to which she had been sent in Paris. But it turned out to be only a fine old mansion, standing by itself in a garden with a small grey lodge to it, far out on the road to the Dean.

"Take me there!" I said, "for I must tell my grandmother what I have seen of you, or she will be up here by the coach red and angry enough to dry up the Nor' Loch!"

Irma walked by my side quite silent for a while, and I led her cunningly so as not to get too soon to our destination. I knew better than to ask why she had left Heathknowes. If I let her alone, she would soon enough begin to defend herself. And so it was.

"The lawyers took Louis away to put him to a school here," she said. "It was time. I knew it, but I could not rest down there without him. So I came also. I left them all last Wednesday. Your grandmother came herself with me to Dumfries, and there we saw the lawyers. They had not much to say to your grandmother, while she----"

"I understand," said I; "she had a great deal to say to them!"

Irma nodded, and for the first time faintly smiled.

"Yes," she answered, "the little old man in the flannel dressing-gown, of whom you used to tell us, forgot to poke the fire for a long time!"

"So you left them all in good heart about your coming away?" I said.

"Oh, the good souls," she cried, weeping a little at the remembrance, "never will I see the like till I am back there again. I think they all loved me--even your Aunt Jen. She gave me her own work-basket and a psalm book bound in black leather when I came away."

And at the remembrance she wept afresh.

"I must stop this," she said, dabbing her eyes with a very early-April smile, "my Aunt Kirkpatrick will think it is because of meeting you. She is always free with her imagination, my Lady Kirkpatrick--a clever woman for all that--only, what is it that you say, 'hard and fyky!' She has seen many great people and kings, and was long counted a great beauty without anything much coming of it."

I thought I would risk changing the subject to what was really uppermost in my mind.

"And Charlotte?" I ventured, as blandly as I could muster.

"I wonder you are not shamed!" she said, with a glint in her eye that hardly yet expressed complete forgiveness. "I know all about that. And if you think you can come to me bleating like a sore wronged and innocent lamb, you are far mistaken!"

So this was the reason of her long silence. Charlotte had babbled. I might have known. Still, I could not charge my conscience with anything very grave. After all, the intention on both sides--Charlotte's as well as mine,--had been of the best. She wanted to marry her Tam of the Ewebuchts, which she had managed--I, to wed Irma, from which I was yet as far off as ever.

So I made no remark, but only walked along in a grieved silence. It was not very long till Irma remarked, a little viciously, but with the old involuntary toss of her head which sent all her foam-light curls dipping and swerving into new effects and combinations--so that I could hardly take my eyes off her--"Would you like to hear more about Charlotte?"

"Yes!" said I boldly. For I knew the counter for her moods, which was to be of the same, only stronger.

"Well, she has two children, and when the second, a boy, was born, she claimed another five hundred pounds from her father to stock a farm for him--the old man called it 'a bonny bairn-clout' for our Lottie's Duncan!"

"What did you say the bairn's name was?"

"Duncan--after you!" This with an air of triumph, very pretty to see.

"And the elder, the girl?" I asked--though, indeed, that I knew--from the old letters of my Aunt Jen.

"Irma!" she answered, some little crestfallen.

"After you?"

She had barely time to nod when we passed in at the lodge gate of the Nun's House. The old porter came to the gate to make his reverence, and no doubt to wonder who the young lady, his mistress's kinswoman, had gotten home with her.

I found the Lady Kirkpatrick--Lady by courtesy, but only known thus by all her circle--to be a little vivid spark of a white-haired woman, sitting on a sofa dressed in the French fashion of forty years ago, and with a small plume of feathers in a jewelled turban that glittered as she moved. At first she was kind enough to me.

"Hey, Master-of-Arts Duncan MacAlpine, this is a bonny downcome for your grandfather's son, and you come of decent blood up in Glen Strae--to be great with the Advocate, and scribbling his blethers! A sword by your side would have suited ye better, I'm thinking!"

"Doubtless, my lady," I answered, "if such had been my state and fortune. Nevertheless, I can take a turn at that too, if need be."

"Aha, ye have not lost the Highland conceit, in drawing water from the wells of Whiggery!"

"If I mistake not," I replied, "your ladyship did not care to bide always about a king's court when she had the chance."

For I knew her history, as did everybody in Edinburgh--a little gossiping town at that time--now, they say, purged of scandal--which is a Heaven's miracle if ever there was one.

"Och, hear him!" she cried, throwing up her fan with a jerk to the end of its tether with a curious flouting disdain, "politics are very well when it is 'Have at them, my merry men a'!' But after, when all is done and laid on the shelf like broken bairns'-plaiks, better be a Whig in the West Bow than a Jesuit in a king's palace abroad!"

And, like enough (so at least it was whispered), the choice had been offered her.

Then all in a moment she turned to me with a twinkle in her eye that was hardly less than impish. Indeed, I may say that she flew at me much like an angry wasp when a chance of your walking-stick stirs its nest.

"It's prophesied," she said, "that some day a Kirkpatrick of Closeburn will be greater than a queen. For me it was, 'Thank you kindly! I would rather dwell in the Nun's House of the Dean than possess the treasures of Egypt!' But this lass is a Kirkpatrick too, though only through her grandmother, and I troth it may be her that's to wear the crown. At any rate, mind you, no dominie's son with his fingers deep in printer's ink, and in the confidence of our little Advocate that rideth on the white horse--only it's a powny--must venture any pretensions----"

"You mistake me," said I, suddenly very dignified, "my family----"

"Fiddlesticks," cried the old lady; "there's Bellman Jock wha's faither was a prince o' the bluid. But what the better is he o' that? Na, na, there's to be no trokin', nor eyesdropping, nor yet slipping of notes into itching palms, nor seeing one another to doors!--Och, aye, I ken the gait o't fine. Mony is the time I have seen it travelled. This young leddy is for your betters, sirrah, and being but the son of a village dominie, and working for your bread among Leein' Johnny's hundred black men in Parliament Close, ye may--an it please ye, and if ye please, gie this door a wide gae-by. For if ye come a second time, Samuel Whan, the porter, will have his orders to steek the yett in your face!"

"Madame," said I, very fine, "it shall not be done twice!"

I stole a glance at Irma, who was standing with her face white and her lips trembling.

"No," said she, "nor yet once. I came here at your request, Aunt Kirkpatrick. For years and years my brother and I have sorned on the family of this gentleman--you yourself grant he is that----"

"No such thing!" snapped my lady Kirkpatrick, "gentleman indeed--a newsmonger's apprentice! That's your gentrice!"

"We dwelt there, my brother and I," Irma went on, "none of my family troubling their heads or their purses about us, yet without a plack we were treated as brother and sister by all the family."

"Be off, then, with your brother, since you are so fond of him!" cried the fiery old lady, rising with a long black cane in her hand, a terrier yelping and snapping at her heels. "I am for London next week, and I cannot be at the chairge of a daft hempie, especially one of such low, common tastes."

At these words, so unexpected and uncalled for, Irma put out her hand and took mine. She spoke very gently.

"Duncan," she said, "we are not wanted here. Let us be going!"

"But--Irma----!" I gasped, for even then I would take no advantage. "Whither shall I conduct you? Have you other friends in Edinburgh?"

"Before a minister!" she said. "That will be best. I have no friends but you!"

"Aye, there ye are!" cried the old lady, "I was sure there was something at the back of this sudden flight to Edinburgh. The dear little brother--oh, but we were that fond of him--the poor, poor innocent bairn. Such a comfort for him to know his sister near at hand! Yet, though I have done with you, Mistress Irma Sobieski, I may say that I wish you no ill. Make a better use of your youth than maybe I have done. If ye need a helping hand, there's my sister Frances out at the Sciennes. She's fair crammed like a Strasburg goose wi' the belles-lettres. She will maybe never let ye within the door, but a shilling a week of outdoor relief ye are sure of--for she sets up for being full of the milk of human kindness. She set her cap at John Home when he came home from London. She would never even allow that Davie Hume was an atheist, whilk was as clear as that I hae a nose to my face!---- Off with you to Fanny's at the Sciennes. And a long guid day to the pair of ye--ye are a disobedient regardless lassock, and ye are heapin' up wrath again the day of wrath, but for all that I'm no sayin' that I'll forget you in my will! There are others I like waur nor you, when all's said and done!"

"I would not take a penny of yours if I were starving on the street!" cried Irma.

"Save us!" said the old lady, lifting up her black wand, "ye will maybe think different when ye are real hungrysome. The streets are nae better than they are caa'ed. But off wi' ye, and get honestly tied up! Bid Samuel Whan shut the yett after ye!" _

Read next: Part 3: Chapter 31. Twice Married

Read previous: Part 3: Chapter 29. The Avalanche

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