Part 10

"I wonder," said Montagu musingly, "why the Bible people are always so ugly in pictures; so red and blue: real people aren't as ugly as that even if they are a bit plain. Can you tell how it is, Guardie, dear? D'you suppose they're really like the people in Edmund's book?"

"I expect," Mr. Wycherly said cautiously, laying down his "Alcestis" and smiling at Montagu's earnest upturned face, "that they were very like the people we see every day, some neither very handsome nor very plain. Some beautiful and delightful."

"I shall be disappointed," Edmund remarked, "if, after all, they turn out to be different from what they are in my book, after I've taken so much trouble to know them when Aunt Esperance covers the little poem at the bottom and the letter. You do think they'll be like they are here, don't you?" he asked anxiously.

"I fear not," Mr. Wycherly said, shaking his head. "We can't tell what they were like. You see, the artists who made the pictures in your book could only give their idea of the people they wished to represent----"

"Then they aren't kind of fortygraphs!" Edmund exclaimed aghast. "I sha'n't really know them when I meet them, after all--they may be quite different! What a shame!"

"I wish we might have the Theogony out on Sunday," Montagu grumbled. "The people there are pretty enough. Do you think we could, Guardie, dear?"

"I fear not. I don't think Miss Esperance would like it."

"Is your book a Sunday book?" Edmund asked severely.

"Well, no, perhaps not exactly; it is a very beautiful play."

"What's a play?"

"Something that can be acted."

"Is it wicked to act?"

"No, I don't think so--but there are people----"

"Why, then, did Elsa say the tiger-man was wicked?" Edmund interposed. "He's an actor, isn't he?"

Mr. Wycherly was spared an answer to this question, as at that very moment some one was seen coming through the garden toward them--a tall young man in black, who proved to be none other than the tiger-man himself.

The boys rushed at him, shouting joyfully. "Oh, tiger-man, have you come to play with us? You promised you would, you know."

"I've come to say good-bye," he said, as each child seized a hand and hung on to him. "I have to go to-night."

"But you'll have a little play with us first; just one? It's been such a long Sabbath, and it isn't nearly tea-time yet."

Edmund's voice was very piteous.

"Poor mites," said the tiger-man. "I'll tell you what we'll do. You go down to the bottom of the garden under the trees and wait for me for five minutes. Then I'll come to you and we'll do something--it mustn't be noisy--but we'll make some sort of a play. Just let me have five minutes with Mr. Wycherly here--see, there's my watch--when the five minutes are up you give me a call."

As he spoke he took off his watch and chain and gave it to Montagu. The little boys ran to the end of the garden and waited by the wall.

"He must have climbed over," Edmund said. "I suppose it isn't very high when your legs are so long."

"Edmund," said Montagu very seriously, "I don't think we ought to bother him to play. He looks very sorry. You see, his mother's just dead--perhaps he doesn't feel at all like playing. You see, before, when we had that lovely game, he was just going to see her--now----"

Edmund's face fell. The tiger-man's advent had seemed a direct interposition of Providence on his behalf. Now, it appeared that he was not to avail himself of it after all.

"Sha'n't you call him when it's the five minutes?" he asked.

"No," said Montagu, "it would be kinder not, don't you think?"

Edmund's mouth went down at the corners. "It's been so mizzable all day," he sighed. "Aunt Esperance is sorry, and Guardie is sorry, and now you're sorry, and say he mustn't play wiv me. How long must people keep on being sorry? He said he'd play his own self."

Montagu was puzzled. He sympathised with his small brother--it had been a long, dull day for him, too--but yet he felt that the tiger-man ought not to be bothered. Montagu was sensitive and sympathetic, and even as he had caught sight of the tiger-man walking up the path he realised that it was a different tiger-man from the one of a week ago who had rolled over and over in the grass so joyously.

He looked at the watch in his hand. "It's more'n five minutes now," he said. "You can call if you like, I sha'n't."

But Edmund did not call. Montagu moved nearer his little brother and put his arm round him. "We ought to be sorry for the tiger-man, you know," he said softly. "He's like Guardie and us now."

Edmund leaned against Montagu and sighed. It really was a very sad and puzzling day.

"Surely, it's more than five minutes," said a voice behind them, and there was the tiger-man, pale certainly, with red rims round his eyes, but evidently ready to play.

"Do you mind? Are you sure you don't mind?" Edmund asked eagerly. "If you'd rather not--we'd rather not, too."

The tiger-man sat down on the rough grass near the wall--it was one of his agreeable qualities that he was ready to sit down anywhere at any moment. He held out his hand to each of the little boys, and they sat down one on each side and cuddled up against him.

"You're jolly, decent little chaps," he said, "and I know just what you mean, but I'd like to keep my promise because--well, most of all, because she'd like me to. So now I'll try and be amusing."

And he was amusing. Edmund forgot his low spirits and rolled over and over on the grass in paroxysms of stifled laughter at the things the tiger-man did and said.

All too soon the game ended. The tiger-man put on his watch, and kissed both the little boys in farewell. "Good-bye," he said, "I'm afraid it will be some time before we meet again, but I sha'n't forget you."

"We sha'n't forget _you_. Good-bye, good-bye," called the little boys, watching the tiger-man as he vaulted lightly over the wall. Montagu ran after him. "I'd like to whisper," he said breathlessly.

The tiger-man leant over the wall, and Montagu caught him round the neck:

"Although we laughed and enjoyed it so," he whispered, "we _are_ sorry, we really are."

The tiger-man kissed Montagu once more, but this time he said nothing at all.

*CHAPTER XV*

*THE BETHUNE TEMPERAMENT*

For courage mounteth with occasion.--KING JOHN.

"It is curious, is it not," Miss Esperance said to Mr. Wycherly, "how entirely those two dear boys differ in character. Sometimes I think that Montagu must be like his mother's family. He is certainly not like ours."

"I am not sure that fundamentally Montagu is so very unlike you, Miss Esperance. In some ways, too, he strikes me as resembling Edmund, though not on the surface. I don't think that you need feel disturbed. Montagu is a Bethune _au fond_, although he may seem milder and perhaps--er--less strenuous than Edmund."

Miss Esperance shook her head, unconvinced.

"No," she said, "from all I remember of my brothers and myself and from what I know of my dear father, I don't think Montagu is one of us. Edmund is, absolutely, a Bethune for good and ill--and there's a great deal of ill, mind, in our characters. But Montagu is too reflective, too slow to act. He is not impulsive, like the rest of us, and look how serene he is! He is hardly ever in a temper, and the Bethunes have always been so hot-tempered and high-spirited."

They were sitting at table in the evening while Mr. Wycherly drank his wine, and he smiled as he looked at the pretty old lady opposite with the soft lamplight shining on her white hair: the old lady who laid claim to such violent characteristics with such calm assurance. He did not point out to her that it was her beautiful serenity that set so wide a gulf between her and more easily ruffled ordinary mortals: he said nothing, but he smiled, and Miss Esperance saw the smile.

"You must not think," she continued, "that I in any way regret Montagu's dissimilarity. He is a most kind and unselfish boy; a dear, dear boy. And I wouldn't have him different if I could. But he is not like my people. He has the scholar's temperament. He weighs and considers. He would never act upon impulse, and sometimes I wonder whether he is not lacking in the dash and courage that have always marked our race: those qualities that Edmund possesses in so marked a degree--together with so many others that are quite undesirable."

Mr. Wycherly ceased to smile. "Do you know," he said, "it is a most curious thing, and, I suppose, the result of association, but sometimes Montagu reminds me a little of myself when I was a boy. Of course it is extremely unlikely that he should resemble me in any way: yet our minds do tend to run in the same groove. But it's only our minds. Montagu has far more strength and tenacity of purpose than I ever had, and I believe that, should the necessity arise, he would show both dash and courage. The Bethune temperament is there, Miss Esperance, but in his case it is not roused to activity by little things."

Mr. Wycherly remembered this conversation next day when he was out walking with Montagu. Their way lay through the village, past some of the poorer cottages, and from one of these came Jamie Brown, a barefooted laddie, about Montagu's own age, but rather bigger.

As usual Montagu had hold of Mr. Wycherly's hand, and there was something in the sight of the two figures walking along so primly together that annoyed Jamie excessively.

Neither Edmund nor Montagu were allowed to play with the village boys: about this Miss Esperance was most firm and particular. But all the same Edmund knew and was hail-fellow-well-met with them all, and contrived many a sly game of "tippenny-nippenny" or "papes," and many a secret confab on his way to and from the Manse. They all liked Edmund, and Edmund liked them. He could talk broad Scotch, and did whenever he got the chance, although if his aunt heard him she severely discouraged his efforts, even going so far as to forbid the use of certain somewhat lurid, if expressive, adjectives. But Montagu, who spent so much of his time with Mr. Wycherly, was not drawn toward the village boys. Their loud voices and rough manners repelled him: he was naturally shy and held himself aloof. Hence he was despised and disliked as "Englishey" and stuck up.

Jamie Brown danced out into the middle of the road on his noiseless bare feet, and walked mincingly in front of Mr. Wycherly and Montagu, looking back over his shoulder from time to time to remark tauntingly: "This is you, mim's milk, like a puggie, a wee Englishey puggie in a red coatie jimp an' sma'--whaur's yer organ? Wull yon auld gentleman no gies a chune? Puggie! Puggie! wha's a wee puggie!"

Montagu turned very red, but said nothing. Mr. Wycherly had never in the smallest degree mastered the dialect of Burnhead, and was quite unconscious that Jamie's remarks were other than of the most friendly description. He regarded his gyrations with some surprise, but did not realise any offensive intention. Presently, however, Jamie began to stagger about the road like a drunken man, at the same time chanting raucously:

"Oxfordy, Oxfordy, Oxfordy, Sumph! What'll ye get from a soo but a grumph?"

Then it was that Montagu felt a little tremor in his guardian's hand, and looking up, saw that his face was lined and drawn as with pain.

Now Mr. Wycherly was well aware that Jamie Brown could not by any possibility know of his past weakness through personal knowledge; for his "foible" had ceased to be a foible long before Jamie was born. Yet it was pain inexpressible that his old frailty could be made an instrument of persecution for Montagu. The love and admiration of the two little boys, who had come so unexpectedly and beneficently into his life, were very precious to him, and that anything could be done or said to lower him in their estimation or hurt them through his past infirmity, was little short of torture.

Montagu, who couldn't imagine why Jamie was reeling about the road in that idiotic fashion, understood well enough the insulting couplet, and saw that Mr. Wycherly was pained.

"I can't stand this any more," he said, dragging his hand from his guardian's; "he's got to stop it."

He ran forward, and with a bound leapt upon Jamie from behind, who, taken by surprise, went down with Montagu on the top of him. Over and over in the mud the boys rolled, kicking, scratching, thumping, doing everything, in fact, of a combative nature except bite.

Mr. Wycherly remained where he was, watching them. Mause would fain have hurled herself into the press, too, but he caught the old dog by the collar just in time, and had hard work to hold her, as she bounced and barked and choked in her efforts to get free. He did not feel called upon to interfere between the boys, for they were not ill-matched, and Jamie had assuredly been the aggressor. Presently, however, he saw that Montagu was uppermost, that he had got his adversary by the throat, and was deliberately bumping the boy's head on the ground, while he never relaxed his hold for an instant, and that Jamie was rapidly getting black in the face.

Still holding Mause, Mr. Wycherly ran forward, shouting, "Loose him, Montagu; let him go, I say. Don't you see you're throttling the boy? You'll choke him; let go, I say."

"I want to choke him," Montagu gasped, as Mr. Wycherly, still holding the struggling Mause with one hand, attempted to drag his ward off the prostrate Jamie with the other. "I want to kill him. I'd have done it, too, if you hadn't interfered."

"Nonsense," Mr. Wycherly said sharply. "Don't you know yet that you mustn't keep on hitting a man when he's down? Here, catch hold of Mause for me. Get up, boy!"

And he half lifted the recumbent Jamie, who, though somewhat limp, was beginning to assume a normal complexion.

Montagu glared at his foe like an angry terrier. "We haven't finished," he cried. "Let me get at him to box him some more. You hold Mause again. Come on!"

And Montagu, whose nose was bleeding, while one eye was rapidly disappearing in a tremendous bruise, danced up and down impatiently, in concert with the excited Mause.

But Jamie was holding his neck and gasping.

"I'll no' fecht nae mair wi' yon wee teeger," he said slowly. "He's gey an' spunkie," he added, "for all he's sae genty and mim. Ma certie! his hauns can tak a grup although they're sae wee."

"There, you see," said Mr. Wycherly. "He says that he has had enough, so, of course, you can't go on any more. Now you must shake hands with each other, for it's all over."

Frankly, and with no sort of grudge, Jamie held out his square, brown fist. "I'll no' ca' ye a puggie onny mair," he said handsomely.

Montagu was still eyeing his late foe with some hostility: but as his guardian had bidden him to shake hands he felt it must be the proper thing to do, so he held out his hand. "Perhaps," he said hopefully, "you'll fight with me again some day."

"Ah'm no' sae shure," Jamie replied cautiously, and in another minute was speeding on his swift, bare feet toward his mother's cottage.

Montagu, still standing in the middle of the road, was indeed a deplorable figure: covered from head to foot with mud and blood, with a singing in his ears, and an extremely sore eye, he looked about as disreputable an object as could be imagined. Mr. Wycherly stood back and regarded him curiously. "We must go home," he said, "and it is to be hoped that we shall not meet many people on the way. Here's a handkerchief; just try and mop that unfortunate nose of yours. What Miss Esperance will say, my dear Montagu, I really cannot imagine."

They turned homeward, and had not gone many yards when they met the Misses Moffat, who stopped, holding up their hands in horror at Montagu's appearance.

Mr. Wycherly had never yet spoken to them and would fain have passed them now with a courteous salutation. But it was not to be. They closed in upon him and Montagu, both asking at once what dreadful mishap had occurred.

Mr. Wycherly again lifted his hat. "The fact is," he said, "Montagu has been engaged in the rough and tumble. There has been a great deal of tumble and a fair amount of rough. But no serious damage has been done. I think, however, that the sooner he gets home and changes the better." And yet again lifting his hat and holding out his hand to Montagu, he prepared to go on his way.

But the Misses Moffat were not satisfied. "And you let him fight?" Miss Maggie exclaimed reproachfully. "Oh, sir! do you think it was right?"

"Yes, madam," Mr. Wycherly answered boldly. "I think it would have been wrong to interfere."

"But you did interfere," Montagu exclaimed in injured tones. "I'd have killed him if you hadn't."

"Killed who?" shrieked Miss Jeanie. "But this is dreadful----"

"I really think," Mr. Wycherly interposed, "that we must get back at once. Good-day to you--good-day."

And seizing Montagu's hand, he fairly ran from the Misses Moffat in the direction of Remote.

Miss Esperance met them at the gate. When she caught sight of Montagu, she, too, gazed in wonder and consternation, and ran out to them, crying, "What has happened? Has he been run over? Is he badly hurt?"

"This," said Mr. Wycherly, pointing to Montagu, "is the result, my dear Miss Esperance, of a sudden manifestation of--the Bethune temperament."

Miss Esperance flushed a most beautiful pink. She stooped and kissed her great-nephew's most uninviting-looking countenance.

"He has been fighting," she said quietly, "and I fear he has had the worst of it."

"That I didn't," the belligerent one exclaimed joyously. "I'd have killed him quite dead if Guardie hadn't stopped me. He wouldn't let me."

"Who was it?" Miss Esperance asked with breathless interest.

"Jamie Broun; he was rude. His father makes wheels and things, you know."

"Come and get cleaned, my dear, dear boy. It's very wrong to fight, but sometimes--in a good cause, it maybe necessary. Come away in."

And Miss Esperance walked up the garden path with her arm round Montagu's neck.

Presently she tapped at Mr. Wycherly's door. When she came in her gentle face was wreathed with smiles.

"I've just come to confess to you," she said, "that I feel you were right and I was wrong last night. There is no doubt whatever that Montagu is a real Bethune. In 1657 Archibald Bethune did with his own hands choke to death an Irish wrestler who had set upon him in a lonely inn in Forfarshire. The man was seven feet high, so the old chronicle says. I've just been looking."

"Won't you sit down, Miss Esperance?"

"No, I thank you, not now. I have several things to see to; but, dear friend, I felt that I must tell you that I recognise that your insight is deeper than mine. Montagu is a true Bethune: he will be a man of his hands even as the rest of our house."

"For my part," Mr. Wycherly said dryly, "I would rather fall into the hands of Edmund than those of Montagu when he is roused. Especially as it would appear to be an agreeable characteristic of the Bethunes to throttle their adversaries."

"We have always been a fighting race," Miss Esperance remarked complacently, and departed with pride in her port and satisfaction writ large upon her face.

Mr. Wycherly looked thoughtful. "And she the gentlest and tenderest of women!" he murmured. "How strange they are!"

That afternoon the Misses Moffat called to ask after Montagu.

They found him resting, with a bandaged eye, upon the sofa in his aunt's parlour, with Flaxman's "Theogony" open on his knees for his amusement. His head ached badly, but he was quite happy. He knew that in some way this exploit, although it entailed much destruction to garments and was altogether of an unlawful and unusual order, had not really grieved his aunt. She had lectured him gently, it is true, but she had been very kind as well, and had given him a whole bunch of raisins to console him when he was left at home--his appearance being unsuited just then to polite society--and she and Edmund drove over to see Lady Alicia.

Miss Maggie came and sat down beside his sofa, and after sundry searching inquiries after his various wounds, she divulged the real reason of her visit.

"I felt, my dear," said kind Miss Maggie, "that I must come and tell you a story, a wee story, I read just the other day in 'Wise Words.'"

"Thank you very much," Montagu said politely.

"It was told by a Quaker gentleman----"

"What's a Quaker, please?" Montagu interrupted.

"A very good man----"

"Are there many of them or only one?"

"I think there must be a good many, but that doesn't matter," Miss Maggie said hastily, rather flurried by these interruptions.

"I like to understand things as I go along. Guardie says you must never pass a word you don't understand. Yes, a Quaker gentleman, a very good man--what next?"

"Well, this Quaker gentleman had a class for boys, a Sunday class----"

"Was he a minister as well as a Quaker?" asked the incorrigible Montagu.

"No, no, he just taught them for kindness, and he was much pleased, because one day he asked his class whether they would rather kill a man or be killed themselves, and all of them, with one accord, every single boy, said he'd rather be killed himself than take the life of a fellow-creature."

Miss Maggie paused and looked at Montagu for admiration of these noble sentiments.

He shook his head vigorously. "I'm not like that," he said decidedly. "Why, I'd rather kill ten men than be killed myself--and I'd try to do it too, first."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*THE COMING OF THE COLONEL*

Soldier, soldier, home from the wars.

At Remote a box hedge separated the path leading to the back door from the trim front garden sacred to visitors. Edmund often played behind that hedge. It made good cover for tiger shooting and suchlike thrilling sport; and on this particular day he was in pursuit of a bear, a brown bear of terrific size and grizzliness.

It was a very still morning: Elsa and Robina were busy at the back hanging out clothes to dry. Mr. Wycherly and Montagu were, as usual, engaged in the study of Greek or Latin in the room upstairs. Miss Esperance had gone to see a sick woman in the village, and Mr. Gloag was away on a holiday. Therefore was Edmund free to amuse himself as best he could, provided he did not stir beyond the garden.

He was getting a little tired of his solitary pursuit of big game when he heard a horse's hoofs ringing sharply on the road, accompanied by a quite unfamiliar jingling. Both hoofs and jingling stopped at the green gate, and Edmund, peering through a hole in the hedge, saw a soldier, a most resplendent soldier, in dark blue uniform and a brass helmet with a white plume, dismount from a big black horse and push open the green gate, where he paused and whistled.

He was a tall man, with a brown, good-humoured face, and he waited evidently in the hope that some one would hear his whistle and come.

But no one came. Mr. Wycherly generally shut the window that looked out to the front as a preventive of interruptions.

The soldier whistled again loud and clear, then he began to sing a little song. He was evidently a patient man and didn't mind waiting. Edmund, his round face glued to the hole in the hedge, watched him with absorbed interest; noting carefully both words and tune of the song.

The soldier sang, not at all loudly, but quite distinctly and with a certain rollicking joviality that the child found most fascinating. Finally he opened the green gate and led his horse up the garden path to the front door, where he rang the bell.

Still no one came, and Edmund, greatly excited, darted out into the road and in at the gate till he, too, stood beside the waiting soldier.

"Good morning, sir," said the soldier. "I've got a note here for Miss Bethune from the Colonel. This 'ere 'ouse is Remote, ain't it?"

"Yes, sir," Edmund answered with solemn politeness, "but who's the Colonel?"