Part 11

"Colonel Dundas, sir. Can you take the note, sir? I was to wait for an answer, but I can't seem to make anybody hear," and the soldier held out a square, white envelope to Edmund.

"I'll put it on the table inside," Edmund said. "My aunt is out, but please don't go away yet; I'd like to talk to you. Have you had a battle lately, and did you kill many enemies? And what are you? Are you a general or a major?"

The soldier laughed. "Well, sir, no, I ain't got that rank yet--I'm an orderly, sir."

"What's that?" asked Edmund.

"A private soldier, sir. Would you like a ride, little gentleman? I'll lift you up, and you can sit on the 'orse's back and I'll lead 'im down to the gate and a little way down the road, it you like, sir."

"You are a kind man," said Edmund gratefully. "I should like that so much."

And in what the soldier would have called a "brace of shakes" Edmund was seated on the back of the tall black charger and was riding down the path to the green gate.

Out into the road did he go and down the village street till they reached the corner where the highway leads to Edinburgh; there the soldier lifted him off, swung himself up into the saddle, and they parted with mutual expressions of esteem.

Edmund trotted back to the house. No one had missed him. Miss Esperance had not yet returned, and the square, white envelope still lay on the hall table unopened.

That day at dinner the little boys learned from their aunt that the Colonel of the cavalry regiment just come to Jock's Lodge was an old friend of hers, and was coming out to tea with them on the following day. They talked and thought of nothing else till bedtime. Next morning Edmund, still at a loose end, got tired of play in the garden by himself and invaded his aunt in her parlour, where she was busy mending Montagu's stockings.

He fidgeted round about Miss Esperance, dropping balls of wool and pricking his fingers with darning needles, finally upsetting a large box of pins: which his aunt commanded him to pick up and replace. This he did, and lightened his labours by suddenly bursting into song:

O there's not a king is so gay as me-- With my glass in my hand and my wench on my knee, When I gets back to the old countrie And the regiment's home again.

Edmund had a clear, loud voice, and could sing any tune on earth after he had heard it once.

Miss Esperance dropped the stocking she was darning, and exclaimed in horrified tones: "Edmund! My dear boy! Where in the world did you learn that song? _Never_ let me hear it again!"

"The soldier gentleman what brought the Colonel's letter was singing it that morning he came, and nobody answered the door to him. He waited ever so long. What's wrong with it, Aunt Esperance? D'you not like it?"

"Like it!" Miss Esperance repeated. "It's a shocking, low song, and quite unsuitable for the lips of a little boy."

"What's unshootable?" demanded the volatile Edmund, quite unabashed.

Miss Esperance was busy re-threading the darning-needle Edmund's surprising ditty had caused her to drop, and she did not reply at once.

"What's unshootable?" Edmund demanded again.

"Unsuitable," Miss Esperance corrected.

"Well, 'shootable' or 'sootable,' whichever it is; what does it mean, Aunt Esperance?"

"It means not fitting."

"Like my top-coat that's got too wee?"

"No, Edmund, I did not in this case refer to bodily things."

"Like boots, then?" Edmund persisted, his head on one side like an inquisitive sparrow's.

Miss Esperance detached her mind from her darning. "What I meant was," she said seriously, "that a vulgar and ugly song is distressing enough upon anybody's lips, but above all upon the lips of a child."

"I don't sing with my lips," Edmund objected. "What's a wench, Aunt Esperance?"

"A wench is a young woman," Miss Esperance reluctantly explained.

"Hooo!" Edmund cried scornfully. "I thought it was armour of some sort. I don't think I'd be very gay with a young woman on my knee--if she was as heavy as Robina, anyway."

"Hush, Edmund! I will not have you discuss that odious song any more. Forget it as quickly as you can; and I shall have to speak to Colonel Dundas about allowing his men to sing such songs before you!"

"He didn't know I was there," Edmund said loyally. "He was the very nicest man, and Elsa never answered the door. It's such a nice tune, too," he added regretfully.

Miss Esperance made no answer. Her busy needle flew in and out of the stocking, and she appeared absorbed in her beautiful darning.

Edmund had picked up all the pins, and he fidgeted about in silence for a minute more till he observed thoughtfully:

"So shootable's a vulgar song?"

"Child! You do nothing but misunderstand me to-day. I never said the song was suitable, I said it was unsuitable, which means inappropriate, and, in this case--improper."

"Were you ever a wench, Aunt Esperance?"

"Certainly not," Miss Esperance answered, with considerable heat.

"But you was a young woman once, Aunt Esperance?"

"That word, Edmund, is never applied to well-bred women at any time of life. It is not in itself a term of reproach, but it refers generally to--" Miss Esperance paused.

"What's it refer to?"

"Well--to women of the less refined classes. It is a South of England word--somewhat equivalent to our 'lassie."

"Which is the less refined classes, Aunt Esperance? Is they in a school?"

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! You do nothing but ask questions to-day," Miss Esperance sighed. "Still, it is right you should understand. The less refined classes, Edmund, are such as have not had many advantages in the way of education or upbringing. Excellent persons often----"

"Perhaps yon wench was an excellent person," Edmund suggested hopefully.

Miss Esperance showed no inclination to discuss the possible merits of this young woman, and Edmund continued, "Had you many advantages, Aunt Esperance?"

"Certainly I had."

"Then you was never a wench?"

"Never!"

"Why should he like a wench to sit on his knee, Aunt Esperance? She'd be very hot and heavy."

"I really must refuse to discuss that song any more. Forget it as soon as you can, and never, never sing it again."

"He was such a nice man," Edmund persisted. "He had such a beautiful helmet."

"Perhaps," said Miss Esperance, "if you are both good boys I'll take you over one day to Pier's Hill to see the soldiers being drilled." And in this entrancing prospect Edmund forgot all about the "unsuitable" song.

"Aunt Esperance would like you should come to tea with us this afternoon, Guardie, dear."

It was Montagu who spoke. Lessons were over, but he had sought Mr. Wycherly again to deliver this message.

"It is most kind of Miss Esperance," said Mr. Wycherly. "I shall of course be delighted and highly honoured, but why am I to have this treat to-day, is it a birthday?--No--I know it isn't a birthday----"

"Colonel Dundas is coming. He knew my daddie, and he knew my grandfather, and Aunt Esperance is very anxious he should see you. She said so."

"Don't you think," Mr. Wycherly said nervously, "that I might be a little in the way? If Colonel Dundas is such an old friend, they will have many things to talk over. Wouldn't it be better for me to come some other time?"

"No, it wouldn't; I'm sure it wouldn't. Aunt Esperance said that she most pertikler wants Colonel Dundas to see you. Do you think he'll be able to sing, Guardie, dear?"

"To sing," Mr. Wycherly repeated. "Why should he sing at tea-time?"

"Well, the soldier Edmund saw (that gave him the ride--I wish I'd been there, I did hear something, but I thought it was just a butcher, perhaps), he could sing beautifully. Edmund said so. I thought perhaps all soldiers can sing."

"Perhaps they can," said Mr. Wycherly. "I really don't know. You can ask him when he comes. But not at tea-time, mind--that wouldn't be polite. It seems to me, Montagu, that, as Colonel Dundas is coming, we might ask him if there is any sergeant in his regiment who would teach you to box--properly. No choking, you know, or anything of that sort--you must learn to keep your temper when you fight."

"But, Guardie, dear, I should never want to fight at all if I kept my temper. It's when I'm angry I want to fight. What's the good of fighting with someone you're perfectly pleased with?"

"You won't feel perfectly pleased when you've been cuffed about the head pretty hard, but you must behave as if you were, and that's where the good training comes in. No one can box properly who is in a rage. It would be good for you to learn."

"Will Edmund learn?"

"Certainly, if you do; but he needs it less than you."

Montagu felt rather aggrieved. His guardian's approval was very dear to him, and Mr. Wycherly had never even indirectly referred to his encounter with Jamie Brown until this moment. The little boy did not enjoy the cold water thus thrown upon his exploit. He had felt more or less of a hero ever since, and here was Mr. Wycherly suggesting that he should be taught to "fight properly," and that he needed such tuition much more than Edmund, who was not nearly so well-behaved in general as he. Montagu was puzzled; but he was accustomed to take most things that his guardian said wholly upon trust, and being really humble-minded he came to the sorrowful conclusion that in some way he had not acquitted himself quite perfectly in his battle with Jamie Brown.

He was, however, dreadfully puzzled why anyone should care to fight for the mere pleasure of fighting, and that his guardian, most gentle and peace-loving of men, should suggest such unpleasing occupation as being both necessary and beneficial was quite incomprehensible. The coming of the Colonel was shorn of some of its splendour of anticipation in consequence.

At last tea-time arrived and with it the Colonel. He, too, rode over, but, to the great disappointment of the little boys, he was not in uniform as they had expected. It is true he wore beautiful breeches and gaiters: but he hadn't a weapon of any kind except a crop, nor did he wear a helmet, which grieved Edmund unspeakably.

All the same he was a kind and jolly gentleman. He had known Admiral Bethune and Miss Esperance when he was young; and, like the honest soldier he was, did not forget people who had been kind to him; he had also been friendly with poor Archie Bethune, and was interested in seeing his little sons: and there was also just a spice of curiosity in his visit. He had heard of Mr. Wycherly; of the curious charge undertaken by Miss Esperance; of the way that charge had, in his turn, undertaken the joint guardianship of her great-nephews.

What did the Colonel expect to see?

It would be hard to define. He had formed a hazy conception of some weak-minded man: amiable, incompetent, wholly lacking in those manly attributes that the Colonel considered essential. He wondered greatly what sort of training these little boys could have with such strange protectors: an old lady--a delightful old lady Colonel Dundas would have been the first to grant--and this eccentric, ineffectual recluse who was known to have made such a hopeless fiasco of his own life.

As he rode over to Remote the Colonel shook his head sorrowfully from time to time while he murmured to himself, "Poor little chaps!"

Not until they were all seated at the tea-table and Robina rang the bell outside did Mr. Wycherly come down.

As he came into the room the Colonel looked a little startled. He rose and shook hands cordially, and then proceeded to readjust his ideas. This was not at all what he had expected. A handsome man himself, he was quite ready to recognise good looks and, above all, distinction in another man; and Mr. Wycherly's was, even by the Colonel's standard, a striking personality.

It is impossible to dream perpetually when your companions for many hours out of each day are two exceedingly lively small boys with inquiring minds. Mr. Wycherly's expression had lost much of its vagueness; and although it was still a great effort for him to brace himself to meet strangers, he did it for the sake of the little boys and Miss Esperance. He did not want them to feel that he was in any way singular. What other people felt was a matter of the greatest indifference to him, and this gave his manner a certain poise and confidence that had been wholly wanting during his first years at Remote.

All the time during tea, while Colonel Dundas was consuming quantities of Elsa's thrice-excellent scones and conversing pleasantly with his hosts, something in the back of his brain kept reiterating, "I've been confoundedly misinformed about this man." And he found himself mentally accusing vague rumour of a pack of lies: "Making me think the fellow a sort of village idiot, while all the time he's a scholar and a gentleman--I'd like to know who was responsible for it in the first place."

After tea the Colonel asked if he might smoke a cigar in the garden, when it was found to be raining.

No one had ever smoked at Remote, and Mr. Wycherly felt rather nervous in offering his room for that purpose. But Miss Esperance pressed the Colonel to go and have his smoke there, and sent him up alone with Mr. Wycherly, while she, greatly to their indignation, detained the little boys with her.

"You'll come down and have a chat with us when you've finished your smoke, Malcolm?" she said cheerfully. So it came about that Mr. Wycherly actually entertained a man of about his own age and social standing in his room at Remote.

They seemed to have plenty to say, and the Colonel's big, jolly laugh rang out from time to time.

When he came down he took a small boy on each knee and poked fun at them: till, finally, out of a perfect farrago of nonsense, they elucidated the fact that they were to go over to Pier's Hill twice a week to be drilled and instructed in the noble art of self-defence: and that the Colonel would himself write to London that very night for the two smallest pairs of boxing-gloves made.

"Did Guardie ask you about it?" Montagu inquired anxiously.

"Will my soldier teach us?" Edmund demanded at the same instant.

"Who will take us?" both asked at once, and before the Colonel could disentangle the questions his horse was brought round by a lad engaged for the purpose that very afternoon. And the weather was discovered to be perfectly fine.

The whole family turned out to see him mount and ride off, for Montagu had rushed upstairs to fetch Mr. Wycherly, that he might not miss this entrancing spectacle.

The Colonel, as he reached the corner, looked back at the little group standing by the green gate and waved his hat to them: and for just a minute after the landscape seemed a little blurred.

"There are more ways than one of making men," he said to a brother officer at mess that night. "It's the quaintest household, but upon my soul, I'm not at all sure that those two capital little chaps are not rather to be envied."

The Colonel was not familiar with the writings of a certain monk of Flanders, or he might have remembered that it is love alone that "maketh light all that is burthensome and equally bears all that is unequal."

*CHAPTER XVII*

*MR. WYCHERLY GOES INTO SOCIETY*

Where is the man who has the power and skill To stem the torrent of a woman's will?

While Mr. Gloag was away upon his holiday a strange minister and his wife came to look after the congregation at Burnhead. The inhabitants regarded them with more or less suspicion, for they came from a big town, and their ways were unaccustomed.

Mr. Dewar, the visiting minister, was mild and inoffensive, with no strongly marked characteristic of any sort; but Mrs. Dewar, a large, bustling lady of resolute character and little tact, succeeded during her first week in offending the majority of the leading members of the congregation.

Lady Alicia frankly avowed that "she couldn't endure the woman"; Miss Esperance said nothing; the Misses Moffat were encouraged by Lady Alicia's plain-speaking to go so far as to remark that Mrs. Dewar was very different from "our late dear Mrs. Gloag," while the village women in confabulation at their respective doors pronounced the newcomer to be "a leddy-buddy," which to the initiated subtly conveyed their opinion that she was not quite a lady.

Still, she was eager to do her duty in this small, benighted backwater, and she "visited" with zeal and frequency.

Her second visit to Remote was paid at a time when Mr. Wycherly happened to have gone downstairs to ask Miss Esperance a question; and Mrs. Dewar was shown into the parlour before he could escape. And even had such flight been possible, Miss Esperance held up a small, imploring hand as Robina announced the lady's name, which would have kept Mr. Wycherly at her side to face the wives of twenty ministers.

Mrs. Dewar was charmed. She had wanted all along to meet Mr. Wycherly, and she opened the conversation at once by shaking a large kid-gloved forefinger at him, remarking with ponderous jocosity:

"I didn't see you in the church last Sabbath--and how was that?"

Mr. Wycherly glanced despairingly at Miss Esperance, and she came to the rescue by remarking: "Mr. Wycherly is not a member of our church, Mrs. Dewar; he is an Episcopalian."

"Ah, but nevertheless," Mrs. Dewar persisted, "I think he should come and hear Mr. Dewar preach while he has the opportunity. It isn't often at a little place like this you get a man from such an important charge."

"I am sure Burnhead is very fortunate," murmured the ever-courteous Mr. Wycherly.

"You may well say that," the lady replied, highly satisfied, "and I must say that the place seems to me to be in great need of a little moral and intellectual quickening. Of course, poor Mr. Gloag has been much handicapped in his work by that poor invalid wife of his."

Miss Esperance always sat up very straight in her chair, but during Mrs. Dewar's speech her little figure attained to a positively awe-inspiring frigidity of displeasure, and Mr. Wycherly looked anxiously at their visitor as though he feared she might be turned into a pillar of salt there and then.

"On the contrary," Miss Esperance remarked, and her very voice seemed to have withdrawn itself to some inaccessible altitude, "by the death of his wife, dear Mr. Gloag has been deprived of such a perfect helpmeet as is seldom given to man. You must certainly have been strangely misinformed, Mrs. Dewar, to have acquired such a very mistaken conception of the true circumstances."

For a moment Mr. Wycherly felt almost sorry for Mrs. Dewar, but although she could not fail to be conscious that she had, in vulgar phrase, "put her foot in it," she was too thick-skinned and complacent to be crushed.

"I'm sure," she said, making an effort to speak pleasantly, "I'm very glad to hear what you say; but really there does seem to be a sad lack of what my husband calls Spiritual Freemasonry among the congregation here, and naturally one judges more or less of the Shepherd by his sheep."

"I fear," said Miss Esperance, "that it is exceedingly unsafe to do so in the majority of cases; including, surely, the fundamental Example from which your analogy is drawn."

There was a dreadful pause. Poor Mr. Wycherly was hot all over. "If they are going to talk theology," he thought to himself desperately, "I shall be compelled to escape by the window."

"You must, Mrs. Dewar," he exclaimed recklessly, and then coloured furiously for his voice sounded so loud, "you must find it very agreeable to pass a week or two in the country at this time of year."

"We always go to the country every year," Mrs. Dewar rejoined rather huffily, "but generally to the sea, it is so much better for the children. We came here this year solely to oblige Mr. Gloag," and the many bugles on Mrs. Dewar's stiff mantle chimed in concert, as though in approbation of this amiability.

"That was very good of you," said Mr. Wycherly. "I am sure he badly needed a holiday. I don't think he has been out of the village for more than a night or two for over ten years."

"That's where he makes a great mistake. My husband always says that a man grows stagnant unless he gets frequent change of scene and society. What you tell me explains much of the spiritual torpor we deplore in this village."

"I don't know what you would say to me, Mrs. Dewar; I should be afraid to confess to you how many years it is since I have been out of this village--a great many, I assure you."

"Doubtless you are engaged in various intellectual pursuits which help to pass the time," Mrs. Dewar remarked graciously, and she smiled upon Mr. Wycherly--all women did when they got the chance--and during the rest of her somewhat prolonged visit she addressed her remarks almost exclusively to him: ignoring Miss Esperance, who sat still and straight in her high-backed chair with a look of considerable amusement in her kind old eyes.

Mr. Wycherly accompanied Mrs. Dewar to the gate and held it open for her to pass out.

"You must come and see us at the Manse," she remarked condescendingly--then confidentially: "I fear you must find it sadly lonely and uncongenial living here with only that old lady for company."

"Pardon me," said Mr. Wycherly, "most people are only too inclined to envy me the great, the very great privileges that I enjoy."

And Mrs. Dewar had to learn that it was not only Miss Esperance who could surround herself with an atmosphere of almost unapproachable aloofness. She concluded her farewell with some haste, and Mr. Wycherly walked slowly back to the house.

Montagu met him in the doorway. "Who was that lady, Guardie?" he inquired eagerly. "She stayed an awful time. Who is she?"

"God made her, and therefore let her pass for a woman," said Mr. Wycherly dreamily.

Montagu stared at him in astonishment, then pursued him indoors to find out exactly what he meant by this cryptic speech; but for once Mr. Wycherly's explanations were both elusive and unsatisfactory.

Next day Miss Esperance invaded Mr. Wycherly's room right in the middle of lessons. She held an open note in her hand; a note written on pink paper, with scalloped edges.

"I am sorry to interrupt you," she said, "but here is an invitation from Miss Maggie Moffat, asking us both to take tea with them on Friday at five. May I accept for you?"

Mr. Wycherly, who had risen at her entrance, was standing behind his loaded desk.

"Oh, dear Miss Esperance, pray don't!" he exclaimed piteously. "You know I never go out anywhere--and to a tea-party--I shouldn't know how to behave. Pray, thank the Misses Moffat and say that I never go anywhere--it is most kind of them--but----!

"I'd go if I were you," Montagu suggested, sprawling over his table and sucking the handle of his pen; "they have awfully good sorts of cakes, full of squashy stuff that runs out over your fingers. My! but it is good."

"If it required anything to confirm me in my refusal," Mr. Wycherly said, smiling at Miss Esperance, "such perilous cakes as those Montagu describes would do it."

"It would please them very much if you would go," Miss Esperance said persuasively; "we shouldn't stay more than an hour."

Mr. Wycherly wrinkled up his forehead in the greatest perplexity: "But I never go anywhere," he said again.

"And why not?" Miss Esperance asked boldly. "If it were almost anybody else, I would not press you, but they are so sensitive. If you don't go they will think it is because you are proud, and don't think them good enough."

"Me! Proud!" ejaculated poor Mr. Wycherly. "But this is dreadful."

"They stopped us one day," remarked the pen-sucking Montagu, "and asked if you were not very stand-off, and Edmund said it was bosh, and you were nothing of the sort, and that if they just came and played handy-pandy with you, they'd soon see."

"Well," said Miss Esperance, tapping the letter, "what am I to say?"