'Weel, mother's gaein to the toon the morn, and I'll be wantit fell air; I may as weel gang!' answered Kirsty, and without a goodnight, or farewell of any sort, for she knew how he felt in regard to leave-takings, Kirsty left him, and went slowly home. The moon was up and so bright that every now and then she would stop for a moment and read a little from her book, and then walk on thinking about it.

From that night, even in the stormy dark of winter, Kirsty was not nearly so anxious about Steenie away from the house: on the Horn he had his place of refuge, and she knew he never ventured on the bog after sunset. He always sought her when he wanted to sleep in the daytime, but he was gradually growing quieter in his mind, and, Kirsty had reason to think, slept a good deal more at night.

But the better he grew the more had he the look of one expecting something; and Kirsty often heard him saying to himself--'It's comin!

it's comin!'

'And at last,' she said, telling his story many years after, 'at last it cam; and ahint it, I doobtna! cam the face o' the bonny man!'

CHAPTER XV

PHEMY CRAIG

Things went on in the same way for four years more, the only visible change being that Kirsty seldomer went about bare-footed. She was now between two and three and twenty. Her face, whose ordinary expression had always been of quiet, was now in general quieter still; but when heart or soul was moved, it would flash and glow as only such a face could. Live revelation of deeps rarely rippled save by the breath of God, how could it but grow more beautiful! Cloud or shadow of cloud was hardly ever to be seen upon it. Her mother, much younger than her father, was still well and strong, and Kirsty, still not much wanted at home, continued to spend the greater part of her time with her brother and her books. As to her person, she was now in the first flower of harmonious womanly strength. Nature had indeed done what she could to make her a lady, but Nature was not her mother, and Kirsty's essential ladyhood came from higher-up, namely, from the Source itself of Nature.

Simple truth was its crown, and grace was the garment of it. To see her walk or run was to look on the divine idea of Motion.

As for Steenie, he looked the same loose lank lad as before, with a smile almost too sad to be a smile, and a laugh in which there was little hilarity. His pleasures were no doubt deep and high, but seldom, even to Kirsty, manifested themselves except in the afterglow.

Phemy was now almost a woman. She was rather little, but had a nice figure, which she knew instinctively how to show to advantage. Her main charm lay in her sweet complexion--strong in its contrast of colours, but wonderfully perfect in the blending of them: the gradations in the live picture were exquisite. She was gentle of temper, with a shallow, birdlike friendliness, an accentuated confidence that everyone meant her well, which was very taking. But she was far too much pleased with herself to be a necessity to anyone else. Her father grew more and more proud of her, but remained entirely independent of her; and Kirsty could not help wondering at times how he would feel were he given one peep into the chaotic mind which he fancied so lovely a cosmos. A good fairy godmother would for her discipline, Kirsty imagined, turn her into the prettiest wax doll, but with real eyes, and put her in a glass case for the admiration of all, until she sickened of her very consciousness. But Kirsty loved the pretty doll, and cherished any influence she had with her against a possible time when it might be sorely needed. She still encouraged her, therefore, to come to Corbyknowe as often as she felt inclined. Her father never interfered with any of her goings and comings. At the present point of my narrative, however, Kirsty began to notice that Phemy did not care so much for being with her as hitherto.

She had been, of course, for some time the cynosure of many neighbouring eyes, but had taken only the more pleasure in the cynosure, none in the persons with the eyes, all of whom she regarded as much below her. To herself she was the only young lady in Tiltowie, an assurance strengthened by the fact that no young man had yet ventured to make love to her, which she took as a general admission of their social inferiority, behaving to all the young men the more sweetly in consequence.

The tendency of a weakly artistic nature to occupy itself much with its own dress was largely developed in her. It was wonderful, considering the smallness of her father's income, how well she arrayed herself. She could make a poor and scanty material go a great way in setting off her attractions. The judicial element of the neighbourhood, not content with complaining that she spent so much of her time in making her dresses, accused her of spending much money upon them, whereas she spent less than most of the girls of the neighbourhood, who cared only for a good stuff, a fast colour, and the fashion: fit to figure and fitness to complexion they did not trouble themselves about. The possession of a fine gown was the important thing. As to how it made them look, they had not imagination enough to consider that.

She possessed, however, another faculty on which she prided herself far more, her ignorance and vanity causing her to mistake it for a grand accomplishment--the faculty of verse-making. She inherited a certain modicum of her father's rhythmic and riming gift; she could string words almost as well as she could string beads, and many thought her clever because she could do what they could not. Her aunt judged her verses marvellous, and her father considered them full of promise. The minister, on the other hand, held them unmistakably silly--as her father would had they not been hers and she his. Only the poorest part of his poetic equipment had propagated in her, and had he taught her anything, she would not have overvalued it so much. Herself full of mawkish sentimentality, her verses could not fail to be foolish, their whole impulse being the ambition that springs from self-admiration. She had begun to look down on Kirsty, who would so gladly have been a mother to the motherless creature; she was not a lady! Neither in speech, manners, nor dress, was she or her mother genteel! Their free, hearty, simple bearing, in which was neither smallest roughness nor least suggestion of affected refinement, was not to Phemy's taste, and she began to assume condescending ways.

It was of course a humiliation to Phemy to have an aunt in Mrs.

Bremner's humble position, but she loved her after her own feeble fashion, and, although she would willingly have avoided her upon occasion, went not unfrequently to the castle to see her; for the kindhearted woman spoiled her. Not only did she admire her beauty, and stand amazed at her wonderful cleverness, but she drew from her little store a good part of the money that went to adorn the pretty butterfly.

She gave her at the same time the best of advice, and imagined she listened to it; but the young who take advice are almost beyond the need of it. Fools must experience a thing themselves before they will believe it; and then, remaining fools, they wonder that their children will not heed their testimony. Faith is the only charm by which the experience of one becomes a vantage-ground for the start of another.

CHAPTER XVI

SHAM LOVE

One day Phemy went to Castle Weelset to see her aunt, and, walking down the garden to find her, met the young laird.

Through respect for the memory of his father, he had just received from the East India Company a commission in his father's regiment; and having in about six weeks to pass the slight examination required, and then sail to join it, had come to see his mother and bid her goodbye.

He was a youth no longer, but a handsome young fellow, with a pale face and a rather weary, therefore what some would call an interesting look.

For many months he had been leading an idle life.

He lifted his hat to Phemy, looked again, and recognised her. They had been friends when she was a child, but since he saw her last she had grown a young woman. She was gliding past him with a pretty bow, and a prettier blush and smile, when he stopped and held out his hand.

'It's not possible!' he said; 'you can't be little Phemy!--Yet you must be!--Why, you're a grown lady! To think how you used to sit on my knee, and stroke my face! How is your father?'

Phemy murmured a shy answer, a little goose but blushing a very flamingo. In her heart she saw before her the very man for her hero. A woman's hero gives some measure, not of what she is, hardly of what she would like to be, but of what she would like to pass for: here was the ideal for which Phemy had so long been waiting, and wherein consisted his glory? In youth, position, and good looks! She gazed up at him with a mixture of shyness and boldness not uncommon in persons of her silly kind, and Francis not only saw but felt that she was an unusually pretty girl: although he had long ceased to admire his mother, he still admired the sort of beauty she once had. He saw also that she was very prettily dressed, and, being one of those men who, imagining themselves gentlemen, feel at liberty to take liberties with women socially their inferiors, he plucked a pheasant-eye-narcissus in the border, and said--at the same time taking the leave he asked,--

'Let me finish your dress by adding this to it! Have you got a pin?--There!--all you wanted to make you just perfect!'

Her face was now in a very flame. She saw he was right in the flower he had chosen, and he saw, not his artistic success only, but her recognition of it as well, and was gratified. He had a keen feeling of harmony in form and colour, and flattered women, while he paraded his own insight, by bringing it to bear on their dress.

The flower, in its new position, seemed radiant with something of the same beauty in which it was set; it was _like_ the face above it, and hinted a sympathetic relation with the whole dainty person of the girl.

But in truth there was more expression in the flower than was yet in the face. The flower expressed what God was thinking of when he made it; the face what the girl was thinking of herself. When she ceased thinking of herself then, like the flower, she would show what God was thinking of when he made her.

Francis, like the man he was, thought what a dainty little lady she would make if he had the making of her, and at once began talking as he never would have talked had she been what is conventionally called a lady--with a familiarity, namely, to which their old acquaintance gave him no right, and which showed him not his sister's keeper. She, poor child, was pleased with his presumption, taking it for a sign that he regarded her as a lady; and from that moment her head at least was full of the young laird. She had forgotten all she came about. When he turned and walked down the garden, she walked alongside of him like a linnet by a tall stork, who thought of her as a very pretty green frog.

Lost in delight at his kindness, and yet more at his admiration, she felt as safe in his hands as if he had been her guardian angel: had he not convinced her that her notion of herself was correct! Who should know better whether she was a lady, whether she was lovely or not, than this great, handsome, perfect gentleman! Unchecked by any question of propriety, she accompanied him without hesitation into a little arbour at the bottom of the garden, and sat down with him on the bench there provided for the weary and the idle--in this case a going-to-be gallant officer, bored to death by a week at home with his mother, and a girl who spent the most of her time in making, altering, and wearing her dresses.

'How good it was of you, Phemy,' he said, 'to come and see me! I was ready to cut my throat for want of something pretty to look at. I was thinking it the ugliest place with the ugliest of people, wondering how I had ever been able to live in it. How unfair I was! The whole country is beautiful now!'

'I am so glad,' answered poor Phemy, hardly knowing what she said: it was to her the story of a sad gentleman who fell in love at first sight with a beautiful lady who was learning to love him through pity.

Her admiration of him was as clear as the red and white on her face; and foolish Francis felt in his turn flattered, for he too was fond of himself. There is no more pitiable sight to lovers of their kind, or any more laughable to its haters, than two persons falling into the love rooted in self-love. But possibly they are neither to be pitied nor laughed at; they may be plunging thus into a saving hell.

'You would like to make the world beautiful for me, Phemy?' rejoined Francis.

'I should like to make it a paradise!' returned Phemy.

'A garden of Eden, and you the Eve in it?' suggested Francis.

Phemy could find no answer beyond a confused look and a yet deeper blush.

Talk elliptical followed, not unmingled with looks bold and shy. They had not many objects of thought in common, therefore not many subjects for conversation. There was no poetry in Gordon, and but the flimsiest sentiment in Phemy. Her mind was feebly active, his full of tedium.

Hers was open to any temptation from him, and his to the temptation of usurping the government of her world, of constituting himself the benefactor of this innocent creature, and enriching her life with the bliss of loving a noble object. Of course he meant nothing serious!

Equally of course he would do her no harm! To lose him would make her miserable for a while, but she would not die of love, and would have something to think about all her dull life afterward!

Phemy at length got frightened at the thought of being found with him, and together they went to look for her aunt. Finding her in an outhouse that was used for a laundry, Francis told Mrs. Bremner that they had been in the garden ever so long searching for her, and he was very glad of the opportunity of hearing about his old friend, Phemy's father! The aunt was not quite pleased, but said little.

The following Sunday she told the schoolmaster what had taken place, and came home in a rage at the idiocy of a man who would not open his eyes when his house was on fire. It was all her sister's fault, she said, for having married such a book-idiot! She felt indeed very uncomfortable, and did her best in the way of warning; but Phemy seemed so incapable of understanding what ill could come of letting the young laird talk to her, that she despaired of rousing in her any sense of danger, and having no authority over her was driven to silence for the present. She would have spoken to her mistress, had she not plainly foreseen that it would be of no use, that she would either laugh, and say young men must have their way, or fly into a fury with Phemy for trying to entrap her son, and with Mrs. Bremner for imagining he would look at the hussey; while one thing was certain--that, if his mother opposed him, Francis would persist.

CHAPTER XVII

A NOVEL ABDUCTION

Phemy went seldom to the castle, but the young laird and she met pretty often: there was solitude enough in that country for an army of lovers.

Once or twice Gordon, at Phemy's entreaty, went and took tea with her at her father's, and was cordially received by the schoolmaster, who had no sense of impropriety in their strolling out together afterward, leaving him well content with the company of his books. Before this had happened twice, all the town was talking about it, and predicting evil.

Phemy heard nothing and feared nothing; but if feeling had been weather and talk tempest, she would have been glad enough to keep within. So rapidly, however, did the whirlwind of tongues extend its giration that within half a week it reached Kirsty, and cast her into great trouble: her poor silly defenceless Phemy, the child of her friend, was in danger from the son of her father's friend! Her father could do nothing, for Francis would not listen to him, therefore she herself must do something! She could not sit still and look on at the devil's work! Having always been on terms of sacred intimacy with her mother, she knew more of the dangers of the world, while she was far safer from them, than such girls as their natural guardians watch instead of fortifying, and understood perfectly that an unwise man is not to be trusted with a foolish girl. She felt, therefore, that inaction on her part would be faithlessness to the teaching of her mother, as well as treachery to her father, whose friend's son was in peril of doing a fearful wrong to one to whom he owed almost a brother's protection for his schoolmaster's sake. She did not believe that Francis _meant_ Phemy any harm, but she was certain he thought too much of himself ever to marry her, and were the poor child's feelings to go for nothing? She had no hope that Phemy would listen to expostulation from her, but she must in fairness, before she _did_ anything, have some speech with her!

She made repeated efforts, therefore, to see her, but without success.

She tried one time of the day after another, but, now by accident and now by clever contrivance, Phemy was not to be come at. She had of late grown tricky. One of the windows of the schoolmaster's house commanded the street in both directions, and Phemy commanded the window. When she saw Kirsty coming, she would run into the garden and take refuge in the summer-house, telling the servant on her way that she was going out, and did not know what time she would be in. On more occasions than one Kirsty said she would wait, when Phemy, learning she was not gone, went out in earnest, and took care she had enough of waiting. Such shifts of cunning no doubt served laughter to the lovers when next they met, but they showed that Phemy was in some degree afraid of Kirsty.