Part 15

"Hoot, what serves a' this cangling?" says I, taking hold o' her arm, and slipping it into mine--"you are as het in the temper as a jenny-nettle, woman."

"Ye're the first that said it," says she.

"And I hope I'll be the last," says I. And on we joggit, as loving-like as if we had been returning from the kirk on our bridal.

It might be four weeks after this meeting, that Margery and I were out, on an autumn evening, in the lang green loaning that leads down to the Linthaughs. It was as bonny a night as man could be abroad in: the moon, nearly full, was just rising owre the Black Cairn, and the deep stillness that prevailed was only broken by the low monotonous murmur o' the trees, or interrupted by our own footsteps. I dinna ken how long we might have sauntered in the loaning--aiblins, two hours--and though inclined a' the time to confess to Margery that I loved her, I could not bring mysel to out with it, for aye as I was about to attempt it, I felt as if something were threatening to choke me. At last I thought on an expedient. And what was it, think ye? No--you'll not guess, Richard; but you'll laugh when you hear. I had recently got by heart the affecting ballad that had been written by a freend o' my ain, on Willie Grahame and Jeanie Sanderson o' Cavers, a little before Jeanie's death; and, thinks I--as I was a capital hand at the Scotch--Ise try what effect the reciting o' it will have upon Margery; for wha kens but it may move her heart to love and pity? This scheme being formed, I says to her--

"Margery, did you ever hear the waesome ballad about Jeanie Sanderson and her sweetheart?"

"Where was I to hear it?" says she.

"Would ye like to hear it?" says I.

"I'm no caring," says she.

And wi' that I began the ditty; but, as it has never been in prent, I had better rin owre it, that you may be able to judge o' its fitness for accomplishing my _end_. It begins as if Jeanie--who was dying o' consumption--were addressing hersel to Willie Grahame, and he to her--_vice versa_.

SCOTTISH BALLAD.

"Six years have come and gane, Willie, Since first I met with you; And through each chequer'd scene I've been Affectionate and true. But now my yearning heart must a' Its cherish'd hopes resign; For never on this side the grave Can my true love be mine."

"Oh, do not speak o' death, Jeanie, Unless that ye would break The heart that cheerfully would shed Its life's-blood for your sake;-- For what a dreary blank this world Would prove to me, I trow, If ye were sleeping your long sleep Upon yon cauld green knowe!"

"When I have pass'd from earth, Willie, E'en sorrow as you will, Your stricken heart will pleasure seek In other objects still. For though, when my worn frame is cauld, Your grief may be profound. My very name will soon become Like a forgotten sound!"

"I'm wae to see the cheek, Jeanie, That shamed the elder wine, Now stripp'd o' a' the bloom that told Your heart's fond love langsyne. But do not, Jeanie Sanderson, Come owre your death to me: It's pain enow to see you look So sad on a' you see."

"I'm dying on my feet, Willie, Whate'er you'd have me say; And my last hour on earth, I feel, Draws nearer every day. Nor can ye with false hopes deceive; For ne'er can summer's heat Restore the early blighted flower That's crush'd aneath your feet."

"Oh, bring once more to mind, Jeanie, The happiness we've seen, When at the gloaming's tranquil fa' We sought the loaning green. Ye ken how oft I came when ye Sat eerie, love, at hame, And tapp'd at that bit lattice, whiles-- Your ain true Willie Grahame!"

"It's like a vanish'd dream, Willie, The memory o' the past, And oft I've thought our happiness Owre great at times to last. Alas! your coming now I watch In sickness and in pain; But will ye seek my mother's door When once that I am gane?"

"You're harbouring thoughts o' me, Jeanie. It's wrong for you to breathe; For oh, is wretchedness the gift To _me_ ye would bequeath? I've ne'er through life loved ane but you; And must the hopes o' years Be rooted from my heart at once, And quench'd in bitter tears?"

"Ye stand 'tween me and heaven, Willie, Yet, oh, I do not blame, Nor seek to wound the feeling heart, Whose love was aye the same. But love is selfish to the last, And I should like to wear The locket round my neck, when gane, That holds my Willie's hair!"

"It cuts me to the heart, Jeanie, To see you thus give way To trouble ye are forcing on, For a' your freends can say. And do ye think that I could e'er To others passion vow, Were death to break the link that binds Our hearts so closely now?"

"It may be that long time, Willie, Will teach you to forget, Nor leave within your breast--for me-- One feeling o' regret. But, should you fold another's heart To yours with fond regard, Oh, think on her who then shall lie Happ'd up in yon kirkyard!"

Weel, a' the time I was repeating the ballad, I saw, in the changing expression o' Margery's countenance, that there was a tender struggle going on in her heart; but when I came to the last verse, she could restrain her feelings no longer, but grat outright, as if Jeanie had been her ain sister. I was rather on, Richard, for the greeting mysel; but, affecting an indifference I did not feel, I says to her, as she was in the act o' wiping her eyes wi' her pocket-napkin--

"Would ye greet for me, Margery, were I dying?"

"You're very like a dying person, or you're naething," says she.

"There are few lovers to be met wi'," says I, "like Willie Grahame and Jeanie Sanderson--their devotedness is rare."

"Ye'll be judging frae yersel, Ise warrant," says Margery.

"Oh," says I, "I do not doubt but I could mak as guid a sweetheart as Willie Grahame, would onybody try me. But I've a secret to tell ye, woman," continued I, summoning up courage to mak a confession.

"Women canna keep secrets," says she; "so ye had better no trust me wi' it."

A long silence was the upshot o' this, and we sauntered on, as if we had been two walking statues, till we came within sight o' the manse. Margery could not but notice my perplexity; for I looked round and round about me a thousand times, for fear o' listeners, and hemmed again and again, as the words mounted to my lips, and swooned away in a burning blush on my face.

"What was it ye were gaun to tell me?" at last says she. "It maun be some great secret, surely, that ye're in such terror to disclose it."

"Weel, Margery," says I, in the greatest fervour, locking her hand passionately in baith o' mine--"if ye will have it--I LOVE YOU!"

"Is that a'?" says she, coolly slipping awa her hand. "I really thought, from seeing sae muckle dumb-show, that ye had something o' importance to tell me."

"Might I ask, if ye like _me_?" says I to her, earnestly.

"Were it even possible that I did," says she, "do ye think that I wad be sic a born fool as to tell ye?--_Atweel do I no!_"

I had often heard, Richard, o' folk being dumbfoundered; but, till that moment, I never knew what it was to be so mysel; and such was the keen sense o' my silliness, that I even wished I might sink down through the earth, clean out o' sight and hearing. As matters stood, however, I saw there was naething for it but urging Margery to discretion; so I says till her, seriously--

"I hope in heaven, Margery, that neither your partner nor anybody else will be the better o' what has passed between you and me this night!"

"What do you mean?" says she.

"Why," says I, "I mean, that ye'll no acquaint them wi' my liking for you."

"Guid truly," says she, wi' a toss o' her head, "I wad hae muckle to speak aboot! To tell ye the truth, lad, I never was thinking ony mair aboot it, nor wad it hae entered into my head again, had ye no mentioned it."

"I do not care," says I, rather wittily, "how seldom it enter your _head_, Margery, so long as it engage your _heart_."

"Ye're a queer man," says she, "to be a schulemaister;" and skipped aff to the manse, without expressing the least desire to see me again.

When I went home and lay down in bed that night, I could do nothing but toss and tumble; and aye as my silliness recurred to me, I would have uttered a loud _hem_, as a person will do when he is clearing his throat, to keep the racking thought down; but, in spite o' a' I could do, it continued uppermost, and kept torturing me till better than half-past four in the morning. Weel, thinks I, this is really a fine pass I've brought mysel to! I'll not only become the laughingstock o' the minister and his wife, but the whole town will join in with ready chorus. Time slipped on, however, and things remained much the same, save that Margery took upon hersel a great many airs, and behaved on a' occasions as if I were her humble servant. At last, Richard, I took heart o' grace, plucked up a spirit, and seemed careless about _her_. That Margery was secretly piqued at this, I had ample proof; for, meeting William Aitchison one night at her father's--for she had then left the minister's service--to mortify me, the puir creature paid the most marked attention to the young man, scarcely goaming me; but, for a' that, I could see plainly aneugh that she preferred me in her heart, though her pride would not let her show it. Nor did she stop here; for, when Aitchison rose to go away, she hurried to the press, and taking out a bottle o' spirits, she poured him out a dram, which he no sooner had swallowed, than she put away the bottle and the glass, without so muckle as saying, "Colly, will ye taste?" But I saw through a' this, Richard; and, though she went to the door and laughed and chatted with him, I knew brawlies, from her very manner, that she was acting, and would have gien the best thing in a' the house, to have been freends with me again. At last, into the room she comes, and sets hersel doun by the fire, with her hands owre ilk other. Now, thinks I, I'll pay ye back in your ain coin, lass; so I rattled away with her brother, for as guid as half-an-hour, about the qualities o' bone-dust and marl, never letting on that I saw her a' the time, until happening to pat the auld colly that lay sound asleep on the hearthstane, the puir creature, vexed at the thought o' the dumb beast getting that attention paid him which was denied to hersel, kicked him ill-naturedly with her foot, and ordered him out o' the room.

"I thought lassies were aye best-natured when they had seen their jo and dearie," says I, giving her brother a sly dunch with my arm, and looking slily up in Margery's face.

"She's in the sulks, the jade," says her mother; "and if she doesna keep a better temper, the worst will be her ain--that's a' that I'll say."

Margery made no reply to this; but taking the candlestick into her hand that stood on the table, left the parlour without uttering a word.

"What's the matter wi' ye and her now, James?" says the auld wife--for she did not mind styling me _Maister_, as we were so very familiar, though I must say that Margery's faither continued to the last to _Maister_ me--he had such a regard for mysel, and veneration for the profession.

"There is naething the matter with us," says I--"that I ken o', at least."

"Come, come, lad; ye maunna tell me that," says she; "it's no little that will ding my lass; and if ye hae slighted her for ony o' the Aitchisons, it says unco little for you, wi' a' your learning. Oh, shame fa' that weary, weary siller!" added she, shaking her head, and leaving the room; "it's been the bane o' true love sin the world had a beginning, and will, I think, till it have an end."

On my road home that night I resolved in my mind to trifle no longer with Margery; for I became convinced it was but heartless conduct, to say the very least o't. To get her to confess, however, that she loved me, I was resolutely determined on; and, after devising a thousand schemes, I at last thought o' trying what effect my way-going would have upon her. Accordingly, as ye may weel remember, Richard, I got a report circulated that I had an intention o' going out to America, to try my luck in the other world; so, meeting with Margery one night between the Rankleburn and her ain house, I asked her if she had any objections to take a walk with me as far as the Linthaughs.

"What are ye gaun to do at the Linthaughs?"

"Do ye not know," says I, "that I'm about to leave this quarter, for guid and a', for America?" Her heart lap into her mouth at hearing this, and she quickly cast her eyes round on me, which were brimful o' tears, as if to see whether or no I spoke in earnest, and hurriedly withdrew them the same moment without uttering a word. "It's a trying thing," says I, "to leave the place o' ane's nativity. It may appear childish, but there is a charm attaches even to the schulehouse, with its clay floor, and dirty hacked tables, that my heart cannot resist; and, as sure as death, Margery, the very wooden chair, whose hind legs I rock backwards and forwards on when the class is ranged before me, dimmed my eyes with tears this morning, when I reflected that, in a few weeks, some stranger lad should sit upon it. It was but the other night, too, that I chanced to light upon a few simple verses in Mrs Heslop's album that quite unmanned me."

"What were they about?" says Margery.

"Just about a person's way-going and fareweel-taking," says I; "and the writer, in speaking o' the sorrow it occasioned him, to take a last look o' ony familiar object, says, truly and feelingly--

'I never look'd a last adieu To things familiar, but my heart Shrank with a feeling, almost pain, Even from their lifelessness to part.

I never spoke the word Farewell! But with an utterance faint and broken; A heart-sick yearning for the time When it should never more be spoken.'

"God only knows," continued I, in the same deep earnestness, "whether the time will ever come round to _me_ when the bitter word shall never be spoken again. Our evening walks, Margery, will soon be at an end; but go where I will, never can I forget the green banks o' the Yarrow, and the beetling brow o' those hills, with their red heather and bleached bent, where I used to rin when a callant; and no scene, however grand or lovely, can ever have nearer and warmer claims upon my affection, than this loaning, Margery, where you and I have watched the lang streaks o' the yellow sunlight fading in the grey clouds o' evening, as the twilight thickened round us, rendering us as happy as if we were under the delusion o' glamoury. In the sad clearness o' regret, the whole o' the simple images o' the past are crowding owre my fancy; and now that I am thinking o' leaving Selkirk, I cannot describe to you the melancholy sensation o' loneliness that possesses me. I depart from it a green bough, and can only return--if ever I be permitted to come back--a withered, sapless stem; and, though the sun may shine, the birds sing, and that bonny green haugh present the same garniture o' sweets and beauties as ever, what will it a' avail, Margery, if _you_, and a' them that I care for, have gone down into the grave, and left me without a tie to bind me to the world!"

Here the tears actually trickled down my cheeks, Richard, having wrought my feelings into such a fermentation; and Margery, the same moment, threw her arms around me, and breathed on my neck, in a tremulous and broken voice, the love o' her warm and feeling heart.

"Will ye cross the Atlantic with me, Margery?" says I, while the dear creature still trembled palpably by my side.

"Yes, yes," says she, tenderly; "but ye're no gaun to leave Selkirk, James; and ye ken ye're only saying sae to try me."

"You and my happiness are so utterly entwined, Margery," says I, "that I could not for a moment harbour the thought, were it to make you uneasy. _I'll no stir a foot._"

About two months after this took place, Margery and I were married by Mr Heslop, our ain minister; and a braw wedding we had, there being no less than eight couple, besides my guidfather, at it. And, certies, she could not complain o' her down-sitting; for, though I say it who should not, I do not believe there's a brawer house than ours--among those o' our ain graith, I mean--in a' Selkirk, or one where you'll find half o' the comfort; for Margery and I are as happy as the day is long, and our twa bonny bairns, John and Mary--the laddie's christened after my faither, and the lassie after the wife's mother--mingle with us nightly around our cheerful fireside in the snug little parlour, delighting us with their endearing prattle, and beguiling our cares with the innocent joyousness o' their happy hearts. You may think me a weak man, Richard; but I doubt not the most feck o' parents are like mysel--fond o' speaking about their offspring--no minding that it may be tiresome aneugh to those that never had ony themselves; yet could we but feel how the sunshine o' their young and glad hearts reflects itself back upon a doting faither's, I am certain ye would think that I was more to be envied in my domestic happiness than the monarch o' England; and weel can I exclaim, in the words o' the Scottish sang--

"I view, with mair than kingly pride, My hearth--a heaven o' rapture; While Mary's hand in mine will slide, As Jockie reads his chapter."

THE SOUTER'S WEDDING.

"Not to flatter you, Maister Brown," said the souter, when the dominie had finished the account of his courtship, "your wooing is a capital tale in itself; and could it only be put into prent, in the simple and honest manner--for ye hide nothing--that you've gone owre it, I'll venture to say that a more laughable story is no in the book. Deil o' the like o' it I ever heard; so muckle duplicity on the one hand, and sheepishness on the other; and, after a', to think that ye should have won your wife's heart by such a wily stratagem. Ye talked, if I remember rightly, o' being weel up in years ere ye fell in love; but atweel I cannot say the same, for I was owre head and ears in it before I was rightly into my teens. Having my faither's business in Selkirk to fall back upon, and being rather handsome, and no that ill-farand, and naturally gifted, like the rest o' our family--for our cleverness a' came by the Maxwells--that's our mother's side o' the house--it is not to be wondered at that the young lassies o' the place should have held a great racket about me. I was even styled the leddies' man; and, night after night, I might have been seen strolling away down by the Pleasance, in company with the Jacksons--high as they hold their heads above you and me now, Maister Brown; and, at other times, with the braw niece o' the dean o' guild. At our annual fairs, too, I have seen the genteeler lasses--farmers' daughters and the like--flocking about me for their _fairing_ in perfect droves; and I'm certain there was not one o' them, either from Selkirkshire or Roxburghshire, but who would have waded the Tweed for me, had I but held up my thumb. I was very ill to please, however; for, unless I could get one possessed o' youth, beauty, and siller, I had resolved never to marry. These three requisites I considered indispensable in a wife; and though, at times, I felt my prudent resolution nearly sapped by the winning gentleness o' Susan Baillie, I still prevented the sacred citadel o' my heart from being openly taken, and kept cautiously speculating upon the untoward consequences o' a rash and imprudent marriage. My faither dropping off just as I was entering upon my three-and-twentieth year, his business was consigned owre to me, with the whole o' his effects; and, although the heavy bereavement did not fail to make a suitable impression upon my heart, I felt my personal consequence greatly increased, from the circumstance o' standing in his _shoon_. The Johnsons went actually mad about me, besides scores o' others, as weel to do in the world as any Johnson among them; and many a trap was set for me, by auld crones who had daughters at a marriageable age hanging on their hands. I continued, however, to gallant away among them, as a kind o' general lover; and at a' their select parties, there was I to be found figuring.

Thus weeks, and months, and years passed on, and I still remained in single blessedness, while the young leddies o' my acquaintance kept stepping off one by one--some marrying tradesmen's sons, and others the young gentlemen belonging to the neighbouring counties, till not one o' a' the number that I used to caper about with was left for my taking. The very bairns o' some o' them, breeched and unbreeched, were big aneugh to come to my shop and get the measure o' their shoon; and on one occasion, when Susan Baillie's auld Irish nurse--Susan was then Mrs Captain Fraser--brought down the auldest lassie in her hand, to get a pair o' red boots fitted on, I declare the very tears came into my eyes when I saw the little creature--she looked so like her mother!

"Losh, me!" says I to Peggy Byrne, "that lassie makes me an auld man."

"Och, and it's your own fault, Master Blackwell," says the nurse, "that your ould at all at all; for you, who are a gintleman born, should be glad to have the mistress and purty childer at home, even to spake to."

"A wife is an expensive piece o' furniture to keep about a house," says I.

"I'm sorry to the heart for you, sir," says she; "and if you care for yoursilf, you'll not let a thrifle of money prevint you from trating yoursilf to some genteel cratur of a wife. Will you just give a look to this swate girleen, God bless it!" added she, kissing the wee lassie, "and say if ye could grudge her bit of brade, poor sowl, or the brade of the moder that bore her?"

"But I cannot get anybody to please me, woman," says I, jocularly.

"Take my word and honour, as an Irishwoman," says Peggy, in Hibernian warmth, "you'll bring the shame of the world on yoursilf, and ye will, ye will. I thought once you could not live after my mistress Susan; but she's lost to you, anyhow, the jewel, and I only know you will never have it in your power to get a glance of love from such two swate eyes again."

"There are better fish in the sea," says I, "than ever came out o' it."