"Gien I needit you to tell me that, I wad trust ye as I wad the black dog wi' butter!—Hearken, Sandy Graham."
The result of her communication and their following conference was, that she returned about midnight with a journey before her, the object of which was to place the letters in the safe keeping of a lawyer friend in the neighbouring county town.
Long before she reached home, Mrs Catanach had left—not without communication with her ally, in spite of a certain precaution adopted by her mistress, the first thing the latter did when she entered being to take the key of the cellar stairs from her pocket, and release Jean, who issued crestfallen and miserable, and was sternly dismissed to bed. The next day, however, for reasons of her own, Miss Horn permitted her to resume her duties about the house without remark, as if nothing had happened serious enough to render further measures necessary.
CHAPTER LX: THE SACRAMENT
Abandoning all her remaining effects to Jean's curiosity, if indeed it were no worse demon that possessed her, Miss Horn, carrying a large reticule, betook herself to the Lossie Arms, to await the arrival of the mail coach from the west, on which she was pretty sure of a vacant seat.
It was a still, frosty, finger pinching dawn, and the rime lay thick wherever it could lie; but Miss Horn's red nose was carried in front of her in a manner that suggested nothing but defiance to the fiercest attacks of cold. Declining the offered shelter of the landlady's parlour, she planted herself on the steps of the inn, and there stood until the sound of the guard's horn came crackling through the frosty air, heralding the apparition of a flaming chariot, fit for the sun god himself, who was now lifting his red radiance above the horizon. Having none inside, the guard gallantly offered his one lady passenger a place in the heart of his vehicle, but she declined the attention—to him, on the ground of preferring the outside,—for herself, on the ground of uncertainty whether he had a right to bestow the privilege. But there was such a fire in her heart that no frost could chill her; such a bright bow in her west, that the sun now rising in the world's east was but a reflex of its splendour. True, the cloud against which it glowed was very dark with bygone wrong and suffering, but so much the more brilliant seemed the hope now arching the entrance of the future. Still, although she never felt the cold, and the journey was but of a few miles, it seemed long and wearisome to her active spirit, which would gladly have sent her tall person striding along, to relieve both by the discharge of the excessive generation of muscle working electricity.
At length the coach drove into the town, and stopped at the Duff Arms. Miss Horn descended, straightened her long back with some difficulty, shook her feet, loosened her knees, and after a douceur to the guard more liberal than was customary, in acknowledgment of the kindness she had been unable to accept, marched off with the stride of a grenadier to find her lawyer.
Their interview did not relieve her of much of the time, which now hung upon her like a cloak of lead, and the earliness of the hour would not have deterred her from at once commencing a round of visits to the friends she had in the place; but the gates of the lovely environs of Fife House stood open, and although there were no flowers now, and the trees were leafless, waiting in poverty and patience for their coming riches, they drew her with the offer of a plentiful loneliness and room. She accepted it, entered, and for two hours wandered about their woods and walks.
Entering with her the well known domain, the thought meets me: what would be the effect on us men of such a periodical alternation between nothing and abundance as these woods undergo? Perhaps in the endless variety of worlds there may be one in which that is among the means whereby its dwellers are saved from self and lifted into life; a world in which during the one half of the year they walk in state, in splendour, in bounty, and during the other are plunged in penury and labour.
Such speculations were not in Miss Horn's way; but she was better than the loftiest of speculations, and we will follow her. By and by she came out of the woods, and found herself on the banks of the Wan Water, a broad, fine river, here talking in wide rippled innocence from bank to bank, there lying silent and motionless and gloomy, as if all the secrets of the drowned since the creation of the world lay dim floating in its shadowy bosom. In great sweeps it sought the ocean, and the trees stood back from its borders, leaving a broad margin of grass between, as if the better to see it go. Just outside the grounds and before reaching the sea, it passed under a long bridge of many arches—then, trees and grass and flowers and all greenery left behind, rushed through a waste of storm heaped pebbles into the world water. Miss Horn followed it out of the grounds and on to the beach.
Here its channel was constantly changing. Even while she stood gazing at its rapid rush, its bank of pebbles and sand fell almost from under her feet. But her thoughts were so busy that she scarcely observed even what she saw, and hence it was not strange that she should be unaware of having been followed and watched all the way. Now from behind a tree, now from a corner of the mausoleum, now from behind a rock, now over the parapet of the bridge, the mad laird had watched her. From a heap of shingle on the opposite side of the Wan Water, he was watching her now. Again and again he had made a sudden movement as if to run and accost her, but had always drawn back again and concealed himself more carefully than before.
At length she turned in the direction of the town. It was a quaint old place—a royal burgh for five centuries, with streets irregular and houses of much individuality. Most of the latter were humble in appearance, bare and hard in form, and gray in hue; but there were curious corners, low archways, uncompromising gables, some with corbel steps—now and then an outside stair, a delicious little dormer window, or a gothic doorway, sometimes with a bit of carving over it.
With the bent head of the climber, Miss Horn was walking up a certain street, called from its precipitousness the Strait, that is difficult, Path—an absolute Hill of Difficulty, when she was accosted by an elderly man, who stood in the doorway of one of the houses.
"Ken ye wha 's yon watchin' ye frae the tap o' the brae, mem?" he said.
Miss Horn looked up: there was no one there.
"that's it! he's awa' again! That's the w'y he 's been duin' this last hoor, at least, to my knowledge. I saw him watchin' ilka mov' ye made, mem, a' the time ye was doon upo' the shore—an there he is noo, or was a meenute ago, at the heid o' the brae, glowerin' the een oot o' 's heid at ye, mem!"
"Div ye ken him?" asked Miss Horn.
"No, mem—'cep' by sicht o' ee; he hasna been lang aboot the toon. Some fowk sae he's dementit; but he's unco quaiet, speyks to nobody, an' gien onybody speyk to him, jist rims. Cud he be kennin' you, no? ye're a stranger here, mem."
"No sic a stranger, John!" returned Miss Horn, calling the man by his name, for she recognized him as the beadle of the parish church. "What 's the body like?"
"A puir, wee, hump backit cratur, wi' the face o' a gentleman."
"I ken him weel," said Miss Horn. "He is a gentleman—gien ever God made ane. But he 's sair afflickit. Whaur does he lie at nicht—can ye tell me?"
"I ken naething aboot him, mem, by what comes o' seein' him sic like 's the day, an' ance teetin (peering) in at the door o' the kirk. I wad hae weised him till a seat, but the moment I luikit at him, awa' he ran. He 's unco cheenged though, sin' the first time I saw him."
Since he lost Phemy, fear had been slaying him. No one knew where he slept; but in the daytime he haunted the streets, judging them safer than the fields or woods. The moment any one accosted him, however, he fled like the wind. He had "no art to find the mind's construction in the face;" and not knowing whom to trust, he distrusted all. Humanity was good in his eyes, but there was no man. The vision of Miss Horn was like the dayspring from on high to him; with her near, the hosts of the Lord seemed to encamp around him; but the one word he had heard her utter about his back, had caused in him an invincible repugnance to appearing before her, and hence it was that at a distance he had haunted her steps without nearer approach.