Sandy McGrab, a young tailor, one day reciting his beloved Shakespeare, in the hills above his native Kirkhumphries, is overheard by a young actress, one of a company of obscure traveling players, She recognizes his genius, and announces herself as a fellow professional. Sandy's denial that he is an actor leads her to think that he is the “laird,” while he takes her for a famous actress who is expected in the neighborhood. When the truth finally comes out, it serves only to deepen their growing love. Sandy sells his shop to enable her to get to London to keep an engagement upon which her future depends, promising to meet her there to play Romeo to her Juliet. Then he starts after her on foot. She, meanwhile, makes a great success, but is pursued by the jealousy of her leading man, Rolf Derwent. Sandy arrives in time to frustrate a plot to deprive her of her engagement, and at the same time makes a chance for himself to appear with her.
VI.—THE LAST ENGAGEMENT
A SHADOW hung over Kirkhumphries—one of those almost palpable shadows that seem to lie like a dead weight on one's shoulders and lungs, even on one's very feet, so that movement of any sort becomes burdensome.
The very urchins in Kirkhumphries were listless. Their depths of depression may be judged by the fact that, though the sun had already set in wintry red behind the hills over Glen Every, not one of their freckled faces was seriously dirty, and there was a painful immaculateness about their attire that suggested a very serious state of things, indeed.
Mrs. Saunders, snatching her youngest off the steps of the shop, where he had been sitting in an attitude of sullen dejection, groaned as she looked at him.
“Hoots, laddie, ye maun be sickening with the rest of them!” she exclaimed bitterly. “Ye hae no been so clean sin' ye were born!”
The youth took the remark as an insult.
“I'm no clean,” he muttered, and wiped a challengingly smutty hand overt a stubby nose. “I'm no sickening.” He burst into a sudden wail. “The laird's deed!” he ended, in tragic explanation.
Mrs. Saunders shook him.
“And what's the laird to ye, ye puir, foolish bairn?”
“He's deed!” her son repeated gloomily.
Mrs. Saunders gave him another shake, and, apparently finding no satisfactory retort to this statement, pushed the scion of the House of Saunders resolutely in front of her into the sitting room behind the shop. There he vanished into a cloud of tobacco smoke which emanated from the three men seated round the table. Mrs. Saunders coughed, and the three looked up at her with a kind of sullen truculence.
“Ye canna complain, woman,” said her husband. “When a man's heart is oot o' him, he maun take his comfort where he finds it. Pass the whisky, meenister,”
The “meenister” passed the whisky, and there was a moment's silence, broken only by lugubrious sniffs from an invisible corner of the apartment. Then the minister sat up with a jerk, as if suddenly conscious that some special effort was expected of him.
“I think, gentlemen,” he began, in beautiful university English, “I think, gentlemen, it is time that we considered earnestly our reason for coming together. The laird is dead. To-morrow the old castle is to be put up for auction by his creditors. As far as we can see, Sir John Hodge is the only likely purchaser, and”
“We hae eno' of Sir John,” Saunders interrupted fiercely. “There's no been a furriner up on the crag sin' me fathers came to Kirkhumphries. We'll hae no Sir John, thank ye, with his puffed-up English ways. If there's to be a laird, he maun be a Scotchman—and a Highlander, as well,” he added hurriedly.
Mr. Firth, the third man, a greengrocer, who hailed all too recently from Glasgow, looked uncomfortable.
“Could ye no step into the breach ye'sel', mon?” he suggested ingratiatingly. “The reserve's no more than three thousand pounds, and they say Sir John's unco careful with the bawbees. He'll no go so high for an auld tumble-down ruin”
“It's the grandest castle in Scotland,” Saunders interrupted, with cold scorn. “And if it were three thousand sixpences, I couldna do it. I'm no sae rich as a' that, mon.”
They sighed together.
“The Lord doesna send troubles singly,” Saunders went on gloomily. “There's that lassie o' mine fretting her heart out for that feckless Jamie Douglas. He'll no come back, and if he did, he shouldna have her. But she's greeting sore over him. She'll no eat, and the doctor, he's no sae easy in his mind about her.”
“The willfu' hussy!” said Mrs. Saunders, from the background.
The Reverend John Andrews shook his head.
“Jamie Douglas is a brave laddie,” he remarked, forgetting his English, “and I ken he has a way with him.”
“And women maun be queer folk—fra all I've heard say,” added the greengrocer, who was unmarried.
Further remarks on the subject were cut short by a sharp rap at the outer door. Mrs. Saunders went out and returned with two letters, which she handed across the table. Whereat, both visitors stared fixedly into the fire. Letters were rare in Kirkhumphries, and it behooved them to show no undue curiosity nor even any consciousness that anything unusual had happened. Over the first epistle, Mr. Saunders snorted; the second, as his guests felt by a certain tension of the atmosphere, contained news of grave import.
“Sandy McGrab is coming home,” said Saunders abruptly.
The Reverend John Andrews looked up with his mouth open, as if on the point of uttering some remark, and then apparently changed his mind.
“And who may Sandy McGrab be?” Mr. Firth ventured to ask.
Mr. Saunders' face was wry with disgust.
“Ye maun be very new to Kirkhumphries if ye dinna ken Sandy McGrab,” he said crushingly. “Sandy McGrab had the finest homespun in a' Scotland, and he could throw the caber like no other man alive. He's been awa' these three years, and I'd almost begun to think that nae guid had come o' him. But he says he's come home with a wee bit of a fortune, so I ken he maun hae walked in the ways o' the Lord weel eno'.” He paused, and stared reminiscently into the fire. “I'm the only man who's ever got the better of Sandy McGrab,” he added.
“And how was that?” asked the grocer, anxious to propitiate.
“He sold me his business for seventy pounds,” Saunders answered, with the same dreamy satisfaction. “And it was worth two hundred. I ken it was the week the play actors were here. It was an awfu' time. The de'il ran rampant in Kirkhumphries. An' 'twas after that he gang awa'.”
“Who—the de'il or Sandy McGrab?”
“Both,” Saunders answered sepulchrally.
The Reverend John Andrews got up and drew his slight young frame to its full height.
“We will hope they did not go together,” he said. “And who knows? Mr. McGrab may come in time to save the castle.”
“Aye,” said Mr. Firth.
“Aye,” Saunders agreed thoughtfully.
He did not accompany his two guests to the door, as was his wont, but left it to his wife to perform that hospitable duty. When she came back, he was still staring into the fire, but there was a subtly suggestive change in his position. He had the look of a man about to be photographed, and keenly conscious of the fact.
“Joan!” he said.
“Weel?”
“I'm thinking 'Saunders o' Glen Every' is no sae bad sounding,” he suggested.
“Gang oot with ye, mon!” was the impatient retort.
“Or maybe ye'd fancy your daughter as the laird's wife,” he continued, unperturbed.
Mrs. Saunders stopped in the midst of her busy preparation for supper to stare at him.
“Ye maun be fay,” she said scornfully. “Sir John Hodge will be laird here. And Jeannie? I ken ye hae better look to your daughter, mon. She's no sae canty as to be thinking o' marriages. Funerals, more likely.”
Saunders made no answer, but his silence was weighty. He got up, and, taking down a candle from the shelf, lit it, and proceeded upstairs with the same air of ponderous importance. He tapped at a door on the narrow landing, and then entered, the light held magnificently above his head.
“Weel, lassie, hae ye slept a wee bitie?” he inquired.
The girl on whom the light fell blinked, and shook her head in a dejected negative. She was curled up in a little white bed that looked all the whiter for the shadows with which the low-built room was filled; and her face, framed in dark, curly hair, was whitest of all. There was a melancholy, rather sullen, droop to her pretty mouth, and a big medicine bottle on the chest of drawers completed a picture of poignant suffering.
“I canna sleep,” she said. “I'm deeing, father.”
Saunders did not attempt to refute the tragic assertion. He sat on the edge of the bed, with the candle balanced on his kilted knee, and considered her solemnly.
“The meenister and Mr. Firth hae been to ask after ye,” he remarked.
“Ye maun tell every one that I'm deeing,” she persisted, with considerable energy. “For I am deeing, father. I can feel it a' over me. One minute I'm cold and then I'm hot. Hold my pulse—it jumps like—like” She hesitated, partly for want of a simile, partly to give vent to a hitherto smothered sob. Saunders held her wrist sympathetically between his two large hands.
“It's unco bad,” he admitted. “And to think ye are throwing awa' your young life and a' your bonnie looks for that young scamp, lassie! It breaks your auld father's heart.”
She wrenched her hand back, her eyes flashing.
“If it's Jamie ye mean, father”
“Ah, weel!” He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe ye're deeing, lassie, and I'd no shake your faith. But he's gone, my girl. Ye'll see Jamie Douglas no more in Kirkhumphries. There's a lassie with muckle siller where he is, so they say, and he was always a lad for the bawbees”
The invalid sat up vigorously.
“It's no true!” she blazed.
“I had a letter.” He looked about vaguely as if he expected it to appear somewhere in the room. “I maun hae burnt it by mistake. But it's true, Jeannie. He'll no come back. And if he did—I ken ye too weel, Jeannie—ye'd no speak to a man who had gang awa' and left ye to dee o' a broken heart.”
“Maybe Jamie doesna ken I'm deeing,” she sobbed brokenly.
“A' the town kens. And to think there's a fine, honest Highlander a-coming home to fetch ye, lassie, and ye'll no sae much as see him, though Jamie Douglas hae thrown ye over and laughs at ye!”
He spoke with a mingling of pathos and indignation that, coming from his usually stolid soul, was the more effective. Jeannie Saunders stopped crying to listen.
“Who did ye say was coming home, father?”
“Sandy McGrab. He's coming home with a grand fortune, and I ken weel for whom he's coming. Maybe he'll buy the castle up on the crag and be laird. But it'll be unco hard for him, puir laddie. For it was for you he went awa', Jeannie.”
The girl lay very still.
Her father sighed heavily.
“Maybe Jamie'll bring his bride back to Kirkhumphries,” he went on, as if following a gloomy train of thought. “Ye maun hold your head high, Jeannie, for she'll hae the laugh over ye, lassie.”
Her eyes sparkled for an instant behind her tears.
“I'm deeing,” she said. “It canna make much difference to me when I'm deed.”
“That's true eno', puir lassie.” He patted the frail little hand on the counterpane with a rough tenderness. “Maybe she'll be just sorry for ye then,” he added comfortingly.
He waited a moment. Jeannie Saunders had disappeared under her bedclothes, and the convulsive shudderings of the bed suggested that no great degree of consolation had been attained by his suggestion. He got up, with another heavy sigh. “Puir Sandy McGrab!” he muttered. “Puir laddie!”
There was no answer. But there was a momentary cessation in the convulsions.
Mr. Saunders crept from the room, with the air of a man well satisfied.
II.
It so happened that at the moment when Donald Saunders was laying his own plans for the future of Sandy McGrab, his daughter, himself, and Kirkhumphries generally, the first-named was bidding a fond farewell to a lady on the platform of an Edinburgh station. The fondness was open and quite unabashed; the most ill-natured traveler who stumbled over their utter obliviousness was fain to change a scowl into a grim smile of amusement.
“And when you get there, you'll have to go straight up to the place where we met first,” Mary Eliot was saying. “Do you remember, Sandy?—up there in the hills where I caught you reciting Shakespeare so beautifully. You must remember how I played Juliet to your Romeo from the top of that old rock, and try to imagine it all over again. What triumphs since then! Won't they be proud of their great man in Kirkhumphries, dear?”
He laughed down at her.
“I shan't dare tell them. Don't you know actors are the cheeldren of the de'il?”
“And actresses?”
“Oh, they're worse—much worse.”
“Won't you dare tell them that you're marrying an actress person?”
“Not all at once, I'm thinking. They'll have to see you and love you first, dear.”
The shriek of an engine whistle hustled Sandy McGrab into his carriage, and a moment later darkness shut out the vision of a sweet, bravely smiling face against a cheery background of posters which announced the advent of a certain famous London company with a long Shakespearean repertory, and Miss “Mary—Eliot and Mr. McGrab in the leading parts.
Mr. McGrab left Edinburgh as a gentleman of fashion. The morning sun found him striding his way into Kirkhumphries in kilts, and with a suddenly recovered Scotch accent. The intervening years, with all their strange experiences, had slipped away into the winter mists that hid the hills, and it was no other than plain Sandy McGrab, the clothier's son, who came at a gallant swing over the little bridge, crunching the frosty ground under impatient feet, and humming to himself in sheer exuberance of spirits. But there were no brass bands to meet this most satisfactory of returning prodigals—scarcely a friendly face. Even the prodigal himself, busy picking out the old, familiar landmarks—the kirk, the ancestral shop, the schoolhouse—could not but feel the atmosphere of general depression, He rapped at the door of one Donald Saunders, and no other than Saunders opened to him.
“Ah, mon, if it's no Sandy McGrab himsel'!”
They shook hands solemnly. Sandy McGrab had ceased to smile. He felt, facing that expression of unalterable gloom, that his own joy was inappropriate. Some disaster of which he was ignorant had evidently sunk upon Kirkhumphries. His host led the way into the parlor and wordlessly produced a whisky bottle. They drank in the same silence. Only at the bottom of his second glass did Saunders recover his speech.
“We're right glad to see you back, Sandy, mon.”
“Ye canna be sae glad as I am, Donald.”
Another momentous silence.
“The laird's dead,” remarked Saunders abruptly.
McGrab made no comment. He knew there was more to come, and he knew better than to hurry matters, Saunders considered his glass and the half-empty bottle with a gloomy, measuring eye.
“The castle's to go by auction,” he went on, “and Sir John Hodge is going to buy it.”
“That bull-necked gowk of an Englishman?”
Saunders' face lit up.
“The vurry mon,” he assented.
“He shallna hae it!” burst out Sandy McGrab. “Not if I have to buy it mysel'.”
Saunders' face was like the sun breaking through the clouds.
“Ye maun sit down and make yoursel' at home,” he said. “Ye're a true-born Highlander, for a' your low English associates. Shake hands, laddie. I'm sae glad to see ye I canna say. Sit down, and I'll call the auld woman. The Lord has indeed sent ye in His own guid time, Sandy McGrab.” Suddenly his expression darkened again, and he came back slowly from the door, whither he had hurried in his first enthusiasm, “Though maybe ye are too late for some things,” he added, in the first tone of mysterious gloom.
McGrab looked up in sympathetic expectancy.
“Business good?” he asked.
“It's no sae bad.”
“And the womenfolk?”
“It's Jeannie,” Saunders answered laconically.
“She's married?”
“Nay. And she'll no marry noo.”
“Why not?”
Saunders turned his head away.
“The lassie's deeing,” he said.
There was a moment's appalled silence. Sandy McGrab had risen to his feet. This disaster was something real—irremediable. All his money was useless here. His old playfellow, Jeannie—Jeannie with the rosy cheeks and the teasing eyes and the black, unruly hair—Jeannie dying!
“It's no possible!” Sandy said hoarsely.
“It's true,” his host returned sternly. “It's been coming these three years. She's faded like a flower—ever sin' ye went awa', Sandy.” He gave a slight start, as if conscious of having made a slip. “Ye maun forget what I said,” he insisted hurriedly. “The puir lassie would die of shame if she thought I'd told ye.”
“I dinna ken what ye mean,” McGrab returned helplessly.
“Maybe ye don't. Maybe ye hae forgotten many things in these three years, Sandy McGrab. Such is the way o' young men. But lassies are no sae quick at forgetting, and my Jeannie canna forget.” He passed a hand over his shaggy brows. “Aweel, it's of no guid to greet over the Lord's will. Maybe ye'll be kind to the lassie in her last hours, laddie.”
McGrab stood there in the same attitude of paralyzed horror.
“Ye canna mean it, mon!' he stammered. “Ye canna mean that I—that she”
“I dinna blame ye, laddie,” Saunders. interrupted resignedly. “Maybe ye didna ken what ye were doing. I was young and foolish mysel' once. But if ye would speak a word with her”
“Wait!” McGrab. held out a desperate hand. “I canna do it noo. I maun hae time to think—to remember. Saunders, I canna believe it.”
“And ye'd best forget it. I was wrong to tell ye. Maybe I wanted ye to—to show-her a bit o' kindness for the sake o' auld times, laddie.”
McGrab picked up his tam-o'-shanter. His face was white and hard-set.
“Ye dinna understand,” he said. “And I canna understand mysel'. I'll look in to-night, mon. I maun be alone noo.”
“There's no sae much time for ye to lose,” was the gloomy answer.
Such was the home-coming of Sandy McGrab. He had strode into Kirkhumphries like a triumphant young giant, and he slunk out of it like a hunted criminal. It was in vain that the loved hills, glimmering in a frosty brightness under the winter's sun, lured him with their unforgotten charm. Not even a familiar speck moving swiftly along the sky line of the crags overhead could stir his pulse. Jeannie dying—and dying because of him! A burden of unrecollected, mysterious guilt lay on his soul. What had he done three years ago? What had he said? How had he looked? Memory was blank. To his knowledge, there was but one woman in his life—only one woman his thoughts had ever lingered over; but in three years one forgets so much. He wondered
He walked from morning till late noon, still wondering, torn between remorse and grief and a defiant innocence. Just as the sun began to set, he found his way back to the rock where he had first met Mary Eliot. He had promised himself so much in that return, the revival of so many dear memories; and, instead, he stood there, with his back against the bowlder, frowning miserably out over the glen, striving to remember, cross-questioning, arguing with himself, till in sheer physical weariness a smothered groan burst from his heavy breast.
“Och, Mary Eliot!”
“Och, Sandy McGrab!” came a mocking echo.
He swung around, and there she was as he had so often dreamed of her, perched on the rock overhead, and laughing down at him.
“Sandy McGrab!” she repeated gayly, “I've waited nearly an hour for you, and my nose is red with cold.”
“Mary—you here?” he exclaimed.
“T knew you'd come,” she answered, “and it was to be a nice, romantic surprise for you. Oh, Sandy, I couldn't wait till you had smoothed all those dear, respectable folk into the right frame of mind about me. I came along by the next train. My dear, I wanted to have my share in your home-coming. Don't you understand—aren't you pleased?”
He held out his hand, and very cautiously she scrambled down to his side.
“Sandy—has the cold made me so plain as all that? You look as if you had had the worst shock of your life.”
He made no answer for a minute, but stood with her hands in his, gazing down at her as if he were trying to make sure of her reality. His hold of her brought the tears to her eyes; it was so passionate, so desperate.
“Mary,” he said, “an awful thing has happened”
“I know,” she broke in. “I heard at the Macpherson's Arms. The laird's dead, and they're frightened out of their wits that Sir John is going to buy the castle. But he shan't. You shall buy it, and be a real laird, as—as you were once in your dreams. Do you remember? And I shall be the lairdess—or whatever you call it—and we'll live here in the off season”
“Mary—it's worse than a' that.”
“What? Worse than marrying me—do you mean?” And then the real distress in his eyes reached her. “Sandy, what is it—what has happened?”
“It's Jeannie Saunders,” he answered hoarsely and incoherently. “She's dying—and—and it's because of me.”
Mary Eliot looked at him in silence. Then she sat down on the rock and drew him down beside her.
“It's very cold,” she said, “but I think all this wants explaining, Sandy, and I'd like you to explain now.”
He told her, and she listened in grave attention, her eyes dimming as they gazed out thoughtfully over the glowing winter scene.
“And—and I thought I was the only woman you'd ever loved!” she broke in once, with sad reproach.
“Mary, you are! I swear I canna remember even thinking of the lassie.”
“Then perhaps you've forgotten quite a lot of things, dear. Think. Did you ever go for long walks together?”
“I dinna remember.”
“Did—did you ever kiss her, Sandy McGrab?”
“I dinna remember.”
“Did you ever look at her as you look at me sometimes?”
“I dinna remember.”
Mary Eliot sighed.
“You don't remember much, dear. I'm afraid you've had a lot to forget.”
He threw up his stubborn head.
“Mary, I think I never saw but you in all my life, and this morning I could have sworn it. Now I'm no so sure of anything. I canna understand how it a' happened.”
“I do.” He had buried his face in his hands, but she drew them gently away and kissed him. “You see, I fell in love with you myself, without any encouragement from any one. It was just your fatal fascination, my dear—your bigness, your innocence, your primitiveness. I don't blame her—and, whatever you did, I don't blame you. I'm only awfully, awfully sorry.”
“I remember now—I brought her a scarf from the gathering,” he broke in, with a rush of guilty recollection.
“I don't think it was that,” she replied gravely.
They were very silent, seated there, hand in hand, growing with every instant colder and more miserable while the twilight enveloped them.
“And she was so bonnie and gay!” came from McGrab's tortured memory.
Mary Eliot winced.
“And now she's dying.” Her grasp on his big hand tightened. “Sandy, we're so happy—we can spare a little of our happiness, can't We? My dear, I'll go back to Edinburgh, and you'll go back to Kirkhumphries. And you'll be nice to her—you'll try to make her happy, too.”
“Mary!” .
“Why not? She's dying, poor child. Every condemned man has his last wish granted. Let her have hers. Let her think you came back for her. It can do no harm—and—and afterward we shall be glad. And if you were really to blame, you will be gladdest of all.”
“I canna do it—it wouldna be true.”
“Oh, Sandy, you—the actor—not able to act for charity?”
“If you knew how I love you” he broke out indignantly.
“I do. And that's why I ask this of you. Sandy, if she could have loved you so long—she must love you very dearly. And I understand that so well; I shouldn't be jealous. But I should be sad—sadder than I can say—if I thought of her dying with that awful ache in her heart. You see”—she brushed the tears from her cheeks—“I missed you, too, once, Sandy.”
He seized her hands and kissed them.
“You angel!”
“You'll do it?”
“It's hard, but I'd do anything you told me to.”
She tried to laugh.
“Don't be rash. We've all our lives yet. And now we'll go back, Sandy. I'll walk with you to the village. And then afterward you're—you're not engaged to me—any more—not till—till you're free”
“Mary!”
She kissed him solemnly.
“Till our next engagement, Sandy McGrab!”
They walked down the mountain path, hand in hand, in solemn, tragic silence.
II.
The next day two things happened in Kirkhumphries. The first was that Sir John Hodge left for London in a fume, having been outbidden by an “upstart Highlander, who had got his money Heaven only knows where”; and the second was that Sandy McGrab, the new owner of the castle, sat on the edge of Jeannie Saunders' sick bed and held her hand. Such an action could point only one way, and the townfolk wagged their heads.
“Puir laddie! He's waited and worked all these years for her, and the hussy's just playing him against Jamie. When Jamie hears, there'll be muckle bloodshed to pay for it.”
And they took care that Jamie Douglas should hear at once.
Meanwhile, Sandy McGrab sat and held Jeannie's hand. It must be admitted that, considering his undoubted histrionic talent, he did it very badly. Every now and then, as he caught sight of the white, still face of the sufferer, he gave a spasmodic squeeze of sympathy, and tears of guilt and pity sprang to his eyes. When he was not looking at her, she looked at him, rather critically.
“Ye maun get better quickly, Jeannie,” he remarked, from time to time, with monotonous cheerfulness.
“Would ye be glad, Sandy?”
“How can ye ask?”
“I dinna ken; I wondered. Father says ye hae waited a' this time to—to ask for me. Is that true?”
Sandy McGrab felt that his hesitation lasted an eternity. The affirmative that finally escaped him sounded like a groan. His pity and grief were increasing by leaps and bounds, but they brought him no newer inspiration than the threadbare:
“Ye maun get better, Jeannie.”
“I canna get better,” she returned doggedly. “I'm deeing.” Then, for the first time, she pressed his hand in return, and looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Puir Sandy!” she said. “It's vurry hard on ye. Ye maun find another lassie when I'm gone.”
“I couldna” he stammered involuntarily, driven by sheer panic; and then he got up, the cold perspiration on his forehead. “I'm tiring ye, Jeannie,” he said. “Ye maun try and sleep a while.”
She nodded, without answering. His agitation was obviously sincere, and her eyes followed him with a kindly compunction as he turned and stumbled uncertainly from the little room. Then, the door having closed, she drew a deep sigh and turned her face to the wall.
So she lay for nearly an hour, the very counterpart of some frail flower dying from exposure to bitter winds. Then a pebble struck against her windowpane, and she sat up. It was now twilight, and only the dim square of her window showed among the shadows. A second pebble, better aimed than the first, flew through the opening and struck against the wall opposite. Jeannie Saunders smoothed her hair down vigorously with both hands. The next instant a figure rose up outside the window.
“Jeannie!”
She screamed, but not loud enough to be heard outside her door.
“Jeannie!”
“How dare ye!”
There was a smothered curse, the tearing and rustling of the ivy on the wall outside, and then the figure perched itself, breathless and triumphant, on the window sill.
“Jeannie, ye maun listen to me. I must speak with ye. I've been in hell, lassie. Down there in Dumefferie they said ye was deeing.”
“I am deeing,” she said triumphantly.
“It's no true! I'll no believe it! And they said Sandy McGrab had come home and was claiming ye for his ain—and I had to come. I had a heart sick wi' pride and longing, Jeannie, and I couldna bear it another hour. Ye maun tell me it's no true—none o' it. I maun hae the truth fra ye.”
“I'm deeing,” she repeated stoically, “and Sandy McGrab hae come home for me.”
“You'd no marry him?”
“And why not, Jamie Douglas?”
He held out his hands toward her in an impulsive appeal that nearly cost him his balance.
“Jeannie, ve canna do it! It's me ye love”
“You, Jamie Douglas! D'ye think I'd love a man who had gone off with another woman, for a' her plain face, for the sake of her siller? D'ye no ken me better than that?”
“I hae gone off with no woman!” he burst out. “It's lies ye hae been listening to, Jeannie. What do I care for any one in the wide world but ye? I went awa' because ye had hurt me sore with your high ways, but I hae had your face in my eyes the livelong day. I haena slept for nights for thinking of ye.”
“It's too late,” she sobbed. “Ye hae come too late, Jamie. I canna break Sandy McGrab's heart.”
“Ye canna love him, Jeannie?”
“Love him? That puir gowk? But he's waited these three years for me. It would be wrong and cruel. And then there's father. He's sae pleased! Sandy McGrab hae bought the laird's castle, and we shall be rich, grand folk. Father'll no listen-to talk of ye, Jamie.”
“Is the castle and the fine clothes and a' more to ye than me?” he begged, in angry pain.
“Ye ken weel eno' I'd rather hae ye and no roof to me head, Jamie Douglas,” she answered, between her sobs.
“Me ain lassie!”
“Jamie!”
“Ye're no deeing noo.”
“I'm no sae deeing as I was,” she admitted indistinctly, from amid the tear-stained pillows.
He managed to lean forward, and, fumbling over the counterpane, his hand found hers.
“I'll win ye yet, lassie,” he whispered huskily.
She rubbed her hot, wet cheek against his hand.
“Ye canna do it. I willna break puir Sandy McGrab's heart.”
“And ye shallna break your ain and mine as weel, Jeannie. I'll no give ye up to any mon living”
“My bra' Jamie!”
They both wept. The ivy groaned dangerously under Jamie's precarious foothold, and caused the occupants of the lower chamber to glance up in some surprise, for the night was a calm one.
“Sounds as if some one were oot in the garden,” said Donald Saunders suspiciously.
“It's the meenister coming up the path,” his wife announced from her place at the window.
Sandy McGrab stirred uneasily. As the door opened briskly, he half turned, and the eyes of the newcomer immediately rested on his face. The Reverend John Andrews hesitated on the brink of an impulsive exclamation, but McGrab's scowl silenced him effectually, and he merely bowed.
“Mr. McGrab?” he observed tentatively.
Sandy acknowledged his own identity with a nod, and Saunders glanced curiously from one man to the other.
“I didna ken that ye had met,” he said. “The meenister was no here in your time, Sandy?”
“We met in London—in the kirk,” the minister explained lamely.
“Ye could hae said so before, then,” Saunders retorted, with some ill humor.
He got up to fetch the hospitable whisky bottle, and a moment later called for his wife from the adjoining room. She followed him, and their voices, confused in heated altercation, successfully drowned the sound of a heavy thud in the cabbage bed outside.
The Reverend John Andrews slipped into his host's vacant chair, and leaned forward eagerly.
“Sandy McGrab,” he said, in a hurried undertone, “are ye here as a wolf in sheep's clothing?”
“I dinna ken what ye mean,” McGrab retorted sullenly.
“Ye ken weel eno'. These puir, honest folk—do they ken what ye are—a play actor—a mon on thebroad road that leadeth”
“They'll ken in guid time,” McGrab interrupted.
“A mon who is to marry a play actress”
“It's no true—I mean” He broke off, aghast at the horrible significance of his own words. “I mean I'm no engaged to any woman” he stammered.
“Ye swear it, Mr. McGrab? Ye ken the little girl in London who was Miss Eliot's dresser? Weel, she's my wife, noo, and it was she who told me you were to marry Miss Eliot. And then when I heard you were here, and after Donald Saunders' daughter, I couldna understand”
“Ye maun understand as best ye can,” McGrab answered between clenched teeth. “I'm a free mon, meenister.”
“I'm glad to hear ye say so, Mr. McGrab. I apologize.” His gaunt, earnest young face softened. “I'll say nought about the play acting. Maybe if ye broke it gently to them, they'd bear with ye. And then when they see their Jeannie grow bonnie and strong again”
“Eh?” said Sandy McGrab.
“I said, when she grew bonnie and strong again”
He got no further. At that moment, Mrs. Saunders made her reappearance, the whisky bottle in one hand, a lighted candle in the other, her bony face white with alarm.
“There's some one on the stairs,” she said faintly. “Either it's a ghost or it's”
She turned, with a start. The door had opened, and Jeannie Saunders stood on the threshold. She was fully dressed, and there was a faint, excited flush on her thin cheeks.
“I'm no sae sick any more, mother,” she said. “I've come down to supper.”
She looked at Sandy McGrab, who had sprung to his feet, and stood, white and aghast, staring at her. Then her eyes dropped, and she blushed.
IV.
That was how matters stood when Sandy McGrab went to bid an eternal farewell to the only woman he could ever remember having loved. She was seated by the fire that had been specially lit for her in the best parlor of the Macpherson's Arms, and her fair, cruelly drawn young face was buried in her hands. Sandy McGrab held himself in his place opposite her. The desire to seize her in his arms and carry her off in spite of everything was very strong in him, and as he saw an irrepressible tear creep through her fingers and splash down on her knee, he had to look away to keep the mastery over himself.
“It's an awfu' thing we've done between us, Mary,” he said brokenly. “It's a wicked thing. We meant well. We wanted to make the lassie happy, didn't we? But not at this price. And now we've got to pay, whether we like it or not.”
She nodded. “There's no way out, dear. We might have foreseen what would happen. You're all she wanted, and now that she has you, joy has given her back health and strength. We ought to be glad. That's what is so terrible! I can't” She broke off, with a husky little sob. “Oh, Sandy, it's all like a dream—our life in London, our triumphs, our hopes! And now you're back in Kirkhumphries. It's got you—and—and I've lost you! I'll have to face the audience alone, and you”
“Mary, my darling”
She rose and stood facing him, with a quiet dignity.
“You mustn't. That's all over. You—you had better go, dear, while we can both bear it.”
“I canna do it. I maun see you again.”
“To-night, then—at the rock—for the last time”
He held her hand. His grip hurt her, though the pain was lost in the greater agony of that frigid parting.
“If a kind chance should end our folly, I'd marry you out of hand—in twenty-four hours,” he said hoarsely. “I'd never wait again, Mary; I swear it! We're not safe unmarried. Fate knew how badly we wanted each other and—and”
“Don't!” she interrupted painfully. “Nothing can help us. Whatever else we do, we cannot break the girl's heart a second time. We've got to go through with it honorably. Please go—Sandy McGrab!”
He looked at her, and saw that she had reached the limit of her self-control. Without a word, he bent over her hand, kissed it, and was gone.
In the hall of the little inn he stumbled against a quietly dressed little woman, who turned and looked after him with a puzzled interest. For all her plain attire, she was rather pretty, and very resolute looking, and when Sandy McGrab had vanished out of sight, she nodded to herself, as if at some newly formed determination. Without hesitation, she knocked at the door of the room McGrab had just vacated, and walked in.
“Miss Eliot?'” she said.
The woman seated by the fire, with her face hidden in her hands, sprang to her feet, a quick anger burning the tears dry, but the next instant her expression softened to a questioning recognition.
“Surely” she began.
The other nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “It's I, Miss Eliot. I thought perhaps you'd have forgotten. I was your dresser at the Avonia Theater, and I was the suffragette whom Mr. McGrab tried to save from the clutches of the law. I got two months. Don't you remember?” She laughed gayly. “And now I'm a Scotch minister's wife,” she ended, with a grim little flash of humor.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Oh, Miss Eliot, how can any one not know things in Kirkhumphries? And when I heard you were here, I had to come. I had to see you, even if I had to walk right in without knocking. You see”—her bright eyes twinkled—“I'm a suffragette still.”
“If there's anything I can do for you” Mary began.
The Reverend John Andrews' wife came a step forward.
“I want to do something for you,” she said earnestly. “I'd like to do something for a man who tried to help me once. And I want to know why Mr. McGrab is to marry Jeannie Saunders?”
“How dare you”
The visitor waved the interruption aside.
“I'm not afraid of anything or anybody—not even of John Andrews,” she declared; “and I'm not afraid of doing the right thing. I want to know why Mr. McGrab is to marry a woman he doesn't care twopence for?”
“He—he does.”
“He doesn't!” was the unperturbed answer.
“How do you know?”
“Because he loves you,” returned the one-time inmate of Holloway. Mary Eliot caught her breath. “And I want to know why Jeannie Saunders' marrying a man she cares less than twopence for?” her visitor continued.
“She does—she—she was breaking her heart for him.”
“Nonsense!”
“How do you know?”
“Because she loves Jamie Douglas.”
There was a moment's silence. Light had begun to dawn in Mary Eliot's haggard face.
“But I—I don't understand,” she stammered.
“You would if you knew Donald Saunders. Hasn't Mr. McGrab bought the castle? Doesn't that suggest anything?”
“But the girl?”
“She did it first of all to spite Jamie, and now she's going through with it—to save Sandy McGrab from a broken heart.”
The two women looked at each other steadily. Then Mary Eliot laughed, laughed until she cried; and finally she put her arms around her visitor and kissed her.
“Come and sit down by the fire,” she said, “and help me think.”
The wife of John Andrews stayed an hour, and when she went away it was with a peculiar little twinkle in her bright eye. Sandy McGrab, standing on the little bridge that crosses the river, saw her coming, and fled away up into the mountains. He had not recognized her, but she was a human being, and he felt that he could face no one, For the last hour he had been trying to enter Donald Saunders' house to pay his dutiful respects to the woman he was to marry, but his heart had failed him. It was too sore with grief to feign happiness, or even a pitiable show of affection.
Once, as he had lingered at the turning of the highroad, he had seen Jeannie Saunders come out of her father's garden. No one would have thought that a week previous she had been “deeing.” She had been wearing her Sunday best, and there had been bright roses in her cheeks and a new light in her eyes. That was his work, Sandy McGrab thought. That was what he had done for her. It was terrible that he could not rejoice. He could only think of Mary Eliot—Mary Eliot, whom he had loved and lost. And so he had hidden while his bride to be had hurried past him.
Up in the hills, he wrestled with himself—a last, desperate conflict between desire and honor. He prowled miserably around the castle that was now his, and thought of the woman at whose feet he would have laid it and all he had. He thought, too, of those brilliant evenings—now never to be again—when they had acted together before tense audiences; or, rather, not acted, but lived, as Romeo and Juliet, as Antony and Cleopatra, as all the world's great lovers. He must leave the stage, if he was to marry Jeannie Saunders. So much was clear. He knew Donald Saunders' opinion of play actors; no daughter of his should ever marry such an outcast. For an instant, temptation loomed up at once hideous and beautiful in his path, and then Sandy McGrab turned his back on temptation, castle, and hopes, and went back to Kirkhumphries, stumbling over the stony path because his eyes were too blind with pain to see.
He entered Donald Saunders' house with head erect and resolve fixed. He would marry Jeannie Saunders while he had the strength; he would cancel his theatrical engagements, and the past should be buried.
“A long farewell to all my greatness,” was Sandy McGrab's tragic leave-taking of the past as he pushed open the door of the sitting room. But there he paused, conscious of disaster. Donald Saunders stood with his back to the fire. His wife was crying, with her face in her apron, and the Reverend John Andrews stood by the table in his best pulpit attitude, erect, severe, terribly in earnest.
“Ye hae come in the nick of time, Sandy McGrab!” he said severely.
“Aye,” said Donald Saunders. He brought his clenched fist down thunderingly on the table. “Ye thieving, meeserible skellum!” he burst out. “Ye son of the de'il!”
“Sir!” said Sandy McGrab.
“Is it no true that ye be a play actor—a low, godless wastling of a play actor?”
Sandy McGrab drew himself up. The first momentary inclination to apologize, explain, retract was gone. His pride in his calling was ablaze, and shone through his angry eyes.
“Sir, I am an actor,” he said haughtily.
“Is it true that ye are in love with a common actress woman? That ye were with her this very morning?”
Thereat Sandy McGrab strode down upon him, and Donald Saunders quailed in spite of himself.
“Ye maun be careful, Saunders,” McGrab said, from between clenched teeth.
“And ye dared to come after my daughter!” Saunders retorted, with waning fierceness.
“Ye ken weel eno' why I did it,” said Sandy McGrab.
There was a moment's silence. Donald Saunders avoided the eye of the Reverend John Andrews, or he might have seen that that gentleman's severity was now mitigated by a most unprofessional beam of amusement. Sandy McGrab saw it, and wondered.
“If ye hae done this, meenister,” he said sternly, “then the life and happiness of a young and innocent lassie is on your shoulders.”
“Ye're sure of yourself, laddie,” said the Reverend John.
“I'd rather me daughter married that feckless Jamie Douglas than such a mon as ye be,” Saunders added, as a culminating insult.
And then the door of the best parlor opened, and Jeannie Saunders entered, leaning on the arm of Jamie Douglas himself. There was a moment's paralyzed silence. Even Mrs. Saunders left off her monotonous sniffs of despair. Jeannie Saunders glanced from one to the other. She looked as pretty as her companion was proud and triumphant.
“We're married, Jamie and I,” she said simply. Then she turned to Sandy McGrab, and her voice broke. “Sandy,” she said tearfully, “ye maun forgive me. I wouldna hae done ye wrong. But I tried, and couldna love ye as ye wished. Ye maun find another lassie”
And then Sandy McGrab did an unexpected thing: He caught her in his arms and kissed her twice—once on each cheek.
“Ye're the sonsiest lassie in a' Scotland, bar one,” he said. “And ye may hae the auld castle as a weddin' gift,” he added wildly.
“Sandy McGrab, where are ye going?”
The Reverend John Andrews restrained her with a gentle hand.
“He's no going to cut his throat,” he assured her. “He's only going after the other lassie.” He went out into the garden. “Ye maun let me do the marrying of ye, Sandy McGrab!” he shouted after the retreating figure.
But Sandy McGrab neither saw nor heard.
He raced up the mountain path to where Mary Eliot awaited him.