“Sir,” said he, “when an offer is frankly made, I think I honour myself most to imitate that frankness.
Your hand, Mr. David; you have the character that I respect the most; you are one of those from whom a gentleman can take a favour and no more words about it.
I am an old soldier,” he went on, looking rather disgusted-like around my chamber, “and you need not fear I shall prove burthensome.
I have ate too often at a dyke-side, drank of the ditch, and had no roof but the rain.”
“I should be telling you,” said I, “that our breakfasts are sent customarily in about this time of morning. I propose I should go now to the tavern, and bid them add a cover for yourself and delay the meal the matter of an hour, which will give you an interval to meet your daughter in.”
Methought his nostrils wagged at this.
“O, an hour?” says he. “That is perhaps superfluous.
Half an hour, Mr. David, or say twenty minutes; I shall do very well in that.
And by the way,” he adds, detaining me by the coat, “what is it you drink in the morning, whether ale or wine?”
“To be frank with you, sir,” says I, “I drink nothing else but spare, cold water.”
“Tut-tut,” says he, “that is fair destruction to the stomach, take an old campaigner’s word for it.
Our country spirit at home is perhaps the most entirely wholesome; but as that is not come-at-able, Rhenish or a white wine of Burgundy will be next best.”
“I shall make it my business to see you are supplied,” said I.
“Why, very good,” said he, “and we shall make a man of you yet, Mr. David.”
By this time, I can hardly say that I was minding him at all, beyond an odd thought of the kind of father-in-law that he was like to prove; and all my cares centred about the lass his daughter, to whom I determined to convey some warning of her visitor.
I stepped to the door accordingly, and cried through the panels, knocking thereon at the same time:
“Miss Drummond, here is your father come at last.”
With that I went forth upon my errand, having (by two words) extraordinarily damaged my affairs.
CHAPTER XXVI—THE THREESOME
Whether or not I was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps pitied, I must leave others to judge.
My shrewdness (of which I have a good deal, too) seems not so great with the ladies.
No doubt, at the moment when I awaked her, I was thinking a good deal of the effect upon James More; and similarly when I returned and we were all sat down to breakfast, I continued to behave to the young lady with deference and distance; as I still think to have been most wise.
Her father had cast doubts upon the innocence of my friendship; and these, it was my first business to allay.
But there is a kind of an excuse for Catriona also.
We had shared in a scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and received caresses: I had thrust her from me with violence; I had called aloud upon her in the night from the one room to the other; she had passed hours of wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be supposed I had been absent from her pillow thoughts.
Upon the back of this, to be awaked, with unaccustomed formality, under the name of Miss Drummond, and to be thenceforth used with a great deal of distance and respect, led her entirely in error on my private sentiments; and she was indeed so incredibly abused as to imagine me repentant and trying to draw off!
The trouble betwixt us seems to have been this: that whereas I (since I had first set eyes on his great hat) thought singly of James More, his return and suspicions, she made so little of these that I may say she scarce remarked them, and all her troubles and doings regarded what had passed between us in the night before.
This is partly to be explained by the innocence and boldness of her character; and partly because James More, having sped so ill in his interview with me, or had his mouth closed by my invitation, said no word to her upon the subject.
At the breakfast, accordingly, it soon appeared we were at cross purposes.
I had looked to find her in clothes of her own: I found her (as if her father were forgotten) wearing some of the best that I had bought for her, and which she knew (or thought) that I admired her in.
I had looked to find her imitate my affectation of distance, and be most precise and formal; instead I found her flushed and wild-like, with eyes extraordinary bright, and a painful and varying expression, calling me by name with a sort of appeal of tenderness, and referring and deferring to my thoughts and wishes like an anxious or a suspected wife.
But this was not for long.
As I behold her so regardless of her own interests, which I had jeopardised and was now endeavouring to recover, I redoubled my own coldness in the manner of a lesson to the girl.
The more she came forward, the farther I drew back; the more she betrayed the closeness of our intimacy, the more pointedly civil I became, until even her father (if he had not been so engrossed with eating) might have observed the opposition.
In the midst of which, of a sudden, she became wholly changed, and I told myself, with a good deal of relief, that she had took the hint at last.
All day I was at my classes or in quest of my new lodging; and though the hour of our customary walk hung miserably on my hands, I cannot say but I was happy on the whole to find my way cleared, the girl again in proper keeping, the father satisfied or at least acquiescent, and myself free to prosecute my love with honour.
At supper, as at all our meals, it was James More that did the talking.
No doubt but he talked well if anyone could have believed him.
But I will speak of him presently more at large.
The meal at an end, he rose, got his great coat, and looking (as I thought) at me, observed he had affairs abroad.
I took this for a hint that I was to be going also, and got up; whereupon the girl, who had scarce given me greeting at my entrance, turned her eyes upon me wide open with a look that bade me stay.
I stood between them like a fish out of water, turning from one to the other; neither seemed to observe me, she gazing on the floor, he buttoning his coat: which vastly swelled my embarrassment.
This appearance of indifference argued, upon her side, a good deal of anger very near to burst out.
Upon his, I thought it horribly alarming; I made sure there was a tempest brewing there; and considering that to be the chief peril, turned towards him and put myself (so to speak) in the man’s hands.
“Can I do anything for _you_, Mr. Drummond?” says I.
He stifled a yawn, which again I thought to be duplicity.
“Why, Mr. David,” said he, “since you are so obliging as to propose it, you might show me the way to a certain tavern” (of which he gave the name) “where I hope to fall in with some old companions in arms.”
There was no more to say, and I got my hat and cloak to bear him company.
“And as for you,” say he to his daughter, “you had best go to your bed.
I shall be late home, and _Early to bed and early to rise_, _gars bonny lasses have bright eyes_.”