"My bonnie bairn!" cried the Mistress, rising from her seat, "who has dared to frichten you like this?"
"Oh, I'm safe, I'm safe," cried Mistress Jean, "now I'm here. But I thought I would never win here – " She flung herself into the great chair from which the Mistress had risen. "The hall is full of men," she said, pushing back her hair from her forehead, "drinking wine and holding muckle loud talk – and my brother, Sir Walter, that was lying there yestreen, only laid in his grave this very day."
"If there was any man that dared," cried Peter, flaming up in response, with a kindled eye and flashing face, "to lay a little finger upon you – "
"On me!" cried Mistress Jean, in high disdain. "He would have brooked a buffet in reply, and that I can answer for; but yonder young lord – if he's the Maister of Oliphant, as they say, he does muckle harm to a good name – he cried to me as a bonnie lass, the coward loon! and held wine to me to drink the health of the new lord – me! that am Leddy by all rules in my ain right."
"And so you are," cried Margaret; "I have ever said so – if nature and law were the same."
The Mistress shook her head. "Not for a lass, not for a lass!" she said; but her kind hand rested with a caressing touch upon the girl's shoulder. "Think no more o't," she said, "my bonnie doo! you are safe here."
"But I must think more of it," cried Mistress Jean. "I am no doo, but of a fighting race. He is riding off the morn, that painted pyet of a Maister – maybe to-night. And by St Margaret! – which is a good oath, for we bear her blood – I'll hold the auld house against him and all his! I will do it! Cousin Pate, you're my chief vassal, for you're the next of the name: you're my captain; up with you, when you hear what I say! Raise every Oliphant in Fife. They are no maidens spinning at their wheels, but buirdly men!"
Pate had started with a reddening cheek at the word vassal; but with another glance at her, a smile of wonderful tenderness and brightness came over his face, and he bowed his head with a look of mingled reverence and protection beautiful to see. "That am I," he said, "and at my Lady's bidding I'll – " He paused again. The old cloud, dissipated for a moment, came over him. "But, Mistress Jean," he said, "bethink you first what it will be. Clean rebellion against King and law."
"I have ever been a Queen's woman," cried Jean; "and that for your law!" she cried, snapping her fingers, "that takes your native heritage out of your hands, because, at God's will, not your own, you are a lass born instead of a man!"
"Eh! and from the man also – the true heir – at the will of a doited auld laird," cried the Mistress, forgetting the foremost grace of hospitality in her indignation for her son.
"How dare you call my brother, Sir Walter, a doited – " cried Jean, with flashing eyes. And then suddenly she calmed down. "It's maybe true, since both him and me we are cheated of our rights. And are ye then so slack, Peter Oliphant, that for the sake of King and law ye will not stand to defend your own?"
"Lady Jean," said Pate, "I and mine are at your orders, and our right is the same; but for the lads that would follow me, and rise at your name – the fishers at St Monance, the small farmers intill Carnbee – every man with his little gear that he has gathered out of the heavy ploughland or the stormy sea – do ye mind that every one would be putten to the horn, their sma' tenements levelled with the earth, and their bairns scattered to the winds? For this house we are ready, though it means want for my mother and banishment (at the best) for me. We were not even without a thought of it, as they will tell you, – though I allow for our own hand, – till that glowered at me in the face."
"What?" cried Jean, staring wildly, as if he had pointed to a ghost.
He pointed again in silence to the fireplace, where Jean's lighter eyes caught the rough carving with a flutter of volatile observation. "Eh!" she cried, "but it's ill done! But all this mocking, and I want a true man. What are these auld words – if I kent what they meant – to you, Peter Oliphant, and me?"
"They are just the o'erword of the race," he said, "that our fathers have left to us – the best they could, and the most meaning in the least buik.1 To provide for all, that's what it means – no to devote them to death and ruin for our service. Mistress Jean, when you think well of it, that will suffice, I trow, for you and me."
"I trow no such thing!" cried the girl; "for what should a man die for if not for his laird's rights, or his leddy's, as the case may be? Is there aucht more honourable, Pate? – a good cause and a good weapon, and stout auld walls to hold against the world! Me, that am only a lass, the more's the pity, it would put pith into the very arm of me!"
She held it out, pushing up her sleeve – a well-knit, vigorous, brown arm, but so slim and soft that 'the tension of the general feeling was relieved by the sudden laugh into which she herself was the first to break. "But a pistol covers all that," she added afterwards. "I could load and I could fire with any man."
"But no to shoot a neighbour dead," said Margaret, with a shiver, holding the soft arm with two caressing hands, smoothing down the sleeve over it with a tender touch. The thrill ran through the other, too, though she tossed her fair head.
"I did not say a neighbour; but if it was yon fause gallant, with his air like a lady's love, and his coarse cry to what he thought was a lass of no account – Yon was no gentleman, Cousin Pate," she said, turning to him with a glance which made Pate's face glow crimson, and filled his heart with a sudden flood of pride and exhilaration. The appeal in itself carried a sanction higher than that of any court of honour. Jean's implied acknowledgment of her rustic cousin's highest claim could not have animated him more had it come from the king upon his throne.
But the lamp burned late that night in the windows of Over-Kellie, and many were the anxious consultations held under its roof. As the evening went on, it was Pate and his mother whose voices were the most heard. Jean fell, like Margaret, into the position of an eager listener, submitting for the first time to the supremacy of strength and age, leaving the decision to them, flashing only now and then, as Margaret did, an eager light of suggestion upon every new discussion as it rose.
CHAPTER VI
News were brought to Over-Kellie only in the afternoon of the next day that the new heir, who had made so ungracious an entrance, was gone. It was brought by Neil Morison, in the faded velvet doublet which was his habit of state, attended by the varlet called Jaicque (Anglicè, Jack), who was man enough to groom all the horses left in the Kellie stables – to wit, a sober steed of all work, now ridden by Maister Neil, and the skittish pony of Mistress Jean, who held in these old unused stalls something like the same position which her mistress held in the Castle. It was Jaicque who opened the gate, and "tirled at the pin" of the house door, and held the stirrup while the major-domo got down from his horse, which he did slowly and with difficulty. He had been Sir Walter's faithful attendant, and long confinement to his master's chamber had given to his scarcely more than middle age the aspect of an old man. He gave the Mistress a bow which almost alarmed her, it was so grand, a much finer bow than that with which he signified his sense of the presence of his own young lady, whom it appeared he had come to seek.