'My Bonnie Lady:' a novel

Front matter

"MY BONNsE LADY' Uniform with "My Bonnie Lady," Crown 8vo, Art Linen, Gilt Top, price 6/- each. THE INN BY THE SHORE. By Florence Warden, Author of " The House on the Marsh." (Fourth Edition.) THE POWER OF THE DOG. By Rowland Grey, Author of '" By Virtue of His Office." (Second Edition.) BLACK DIAMONDS. By Maurus Jokai, Author of "Midst the Wild Carpathians" etc. ( Third Edition. ) JUDY, A JILT. By Mrs. Conney, Author of '" Gold for Dross," etc. (Second Edition.) LADY JEAN'S SON. By Sarah Tytler, Author of " Lady Jean's Vagaries," etc. (Second Edition.) COLOUR-SERGEANT No. i COMPANY. By Mrs. Leith Adams, Author of " Bonnie Kate" etc. (Second Edition. ) THE GREEN BOOK. By Maurus Jokai. Translated by Airs. Waugh. (Fifth Edition. ) THE WINDS OF MARCH. By George Knight, Author of "Dust in the Balance," " Sapphira of 'the Stage," " The Circle of the Earth" etc.

A STRONG NECESSITY. By Isabel Don, Author of "Only Cldrchen" " Zohrat" " The Story of Rolland," etc. FORBIDDEN BY LAW. By Major Arthur Griffiths, Author of " The Rome Express" " Secrets of the Prison House" "Fast and Loose," etc. London : Jarrold & Sons io and ii Warwick Lane E.C. And of all Booksellers. li My Bonnie Lady" A NOVEL BY Leslie Keith Author of^'The Chilcotes," '"Lisbeth," "The Indian Uncle," etc. London: Jarrold & Sons IO AND 1 1 WARWICK LANE E.C. ALL rights reserved CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. CARMYLIE 7 II. AN ANCIENT FEUD 19 III. THE CAPTAIN'S HOME-COMING THE MINISTER 23 IV. 35 46 V. A EOLD SCHEME THE OLD LAIRD VI. 55 65 VII. VIII. THE NEW SERVANT LASS AT BREAK OF DAY ... 78 s9 IX. MISS JENNET A NIGHT OF RECONCILIATION .. A PAINFUL ERRAND ... x. 102 XI. 112 "YOUR KINSWOMAN" XII.

XIII. XIV. 124 MISS JENNET GOES TO KIRK DEEPS OF SORROW ... i35 i4S XV. CONSPIRACY i57 XVI A LONG WINTER 170 "THE KIRK'S A-LOWE" " I GIVE HER TO YOU " XVII. XVIII. 1 84 i97

Chapter I. Carmylie

I DOUBT if in the whole length and breadth of bonnie Scotland it would have been easy in the early days of the century, when this chronicle begins, to find a quieter village than Carmylie, or one where old folk were so plentiful or young so few. The reason is not far to seek, for those who are done with the bustle and birr of life find anchorage and shelter in the eddy, where time has stranded them ; but for the eager, bold, and strong it is the ocean with its strange upheavals, its stress and storm, its unplumbed deeps, that alone can satisfy. So the din and squalor of Glasgow, or the vaster blackness and roar of London, not to speak of the strange lands over the seas, lured Carmylie's lads and lasses ; and those that were left to cheer its quiet firesides might almost be counted on the fingers of one hand.

No such sweet presence brightens old Andrew White's lonely hearth, though, as a Burgh schoolmaster should, he can reckon sons and daughters by the score over half the world, and has god bairns not a few of an unknown generation, and is grandfather by brevet to as many more. And what is this to one who has laid aside the tawse, and administered the last pawmie, but to enjoy all the pleasures of parentage without its correspond ing penalties ? The doctor is, like the school master, a wifeless and bairnless man, though whether by choice or of necessity is a point upon which Carmylie is divided. If that sly jade, rumour, might be trusted, there was a time when Miss Jennet, the doctor's sister, went in dread lest Thomas should be so far led astray as to set another over her in kitchen and parlour.

But that was years and years ago, and the caps that nodded with alluring pink and blue knots are prudence caps now, covering grey heads ; and eyes that were bright are faded and spectacled ; and hearts that beat fast go doucely under shawls and double waistcoats ; and the doctor and the dominie are old fellows, and old fools maybe, who go to all the wa' teas and take a hand at whist for love without raising a single flutter in any bosom. But I would remind those to whom a hasty judgment is ever the easiest, that if there are hearts that are stagnant pools because no healing angel has ever disturbed their selfish calm, there are others that have only learned the dear-bought lesson of peace through years of unswerving CARMYLIE. 9 submission and self-repression. If you would know to which of these orders Thomas Hay belongs, I would ask you to look upon his countenance.

In sixty years character writes its own indelible history for all men to read. And forby all that, a man if he is wise will not seek to lead about a wife as well as a sister, much less set them as rivals on his hearthstone and bid them agree on an income that could jimply afford braws for one. For the air of Carmylie is fine and caller, and fitted to starve the doctor and grave-digger, if it makes old bones of the rest of us. But years bring consolations for most regrets, and love missed makes friendship stronger. The doctor and the dominie were great cronies, and punctiliously took their toddy together at least twice a week, showing their affection for each other by many a stiff argument over points upon which nobody has ever agreed, and which they, at least, are not likely to settle on this side of time.

The school-master, as the idler of the pair, would daunder up on many a summer afternoon or winter evening, and if the doctor was out on his rounds, as was frequently the case, there was Miss Jennet ever ready for a crack. One June day, as he stood on one side of the garden fence and she on the other, she aired an oft-repeated grievance — " If Thomas knew his business," she said, " but he never could see on which side his bannock was buttered. He puts me past patience with his B ongoings, giving away pills and powders, not to say leeches, as if money was as plentiful as sclate stanes, and telling the old lady up at Kingshouse there's nothing wrong with her inside when she's just daft to be thought an invalid." " You would be for giving her bread pills, Miss Jennet ? " said the school-master, humouring her.

" Aye," she said grimly, " and maybe something a wee thing nastier in the taste to give her a reason for yammering. And Thomas, the gowk, has set her back up, telling her to think less of herself and more of other folk, when all she wants is a medicine bottle and a shake of his pow when he feels her pulse. And I ask you, Andrew White, though it's little less of a gowk you are than Thomas himself, what's the use of being a thrawn, camsteerie rich old woman if you cannot even buy your whim-whams from a country surgeon that has sore need of their price ? " " Aye, he's a gowk ; " the school-master's eye had a sly twinkle in it. " He sticks to honesty and lets policy fend for itself, and few that take that road ever reach fortune." " Or make salt to their porridge," she said dryly. The bees were flying in and out of the skeps, and the scent from the sweet-pea hedge filled the nostril with clean sweetness : all the pretty purple, pink, and white blossoms looked like butterflies poised for flight.

Carmylie was great on gardens ; even Miss Jennet, grim and Roman-nosed like the CARMYLIE. 11 old white horse free to end his days in the doctor's field, yielded to the general craze, and brought her flowers up severely, like old maids' bairns, with more care than mothering. But flowers are dorty things, and where one least expects it they flourish. She plucked a handful of bright blossoms and passed it over the gate — her deeds ever kinder than her words. He took them and had gone upon his way, stravaiging up the hill, when she called him back again. She had stepped outside the gate now, and stood in the middle of the dusty road, an odd-looking figure in her short purple skirt, which displayed a considerable length of white cotton stocking, a yellow gauze cap perched on the top of her bunchy grey curls.

" Are you going by the manse ? " she asked. " Have you a message ? " he replied, Scotch fashion, answering one question by asking another. For it must here be said that the manse and the minister were two subjects upon which the school master cared little to discourse with Miss Jennet ; for the minister was a young man, strange to Carmylie, put in by the patron, Lady Inglis, against the will of the people, and Miss Jennet had been one of the keenest to protest against his placing. She had besides a touch of that contempt which the strong sometimes have for the physically weak, as if it were a kind of personal disgrace to feel the aches and ails of a suffering body ; as if a man must needs have a moral twist, because he has a crooked back. But having borne her testimony beforehand, and being a woman of some fairness, she curbed her tongue except at moments of special provocation.

"Every man should be guidet by his ain con science," she would say, " and keep sight of his ain duty ; but for me, I'm overly old to be sitting under a halflin laddie whose mother I am well fitted to be in years, though, thank Providence, I have mair sense than to be taigled wi' a man. And when bairns who but yesterday were flyted at for dirty ing their daidlies, set up to preach, it's time for grey heads to seek the Word at hame." Miss Jennet was accordingly a very rare attender at the kirk except when there was supply, sitting at home in the dark little parlour, the blinds conscientiously drawn that she might not be distracted by the contemplation of her neighbours' bonnets from the devout study of the big Bible and Boston's Fourfold Slate, or the singing of the psalms or offering of prayers she appointed as a substitute for public worship.

A good many others in Carmylie were scarcely more reconciled to the crooked minister who, with his youth, his fiery zeal, his frail body, and the clippet English of his Edinburgh tongue, woke a continual wonder and ferment in our sober minds, so long used to the uninspired dronings of worthy Mr. Todd. But here and there some response was wakened in another soul by the words which shook and stirred CARMYLIE. 13 his own, and I would fain hope he knew we liked him better than it was possible for our undemon strative natures to show. The manse lay west the doctor's, among the Kingshouse woods, and he lived alone there, faithfully waited on by the nurse, an old woman now, who in her girlhood had been the cause of his accident, and in passionate remorse gave what was left of her life to his service.

" Message ? No ! " Miss Jennet retorted ; " what would I have to be saying to a laddie like yon that he would lippen to ? I have no book-learning to be argle-bargling with him on points of doctrine, but I have a misdoubt if yon Nanny, as he calls her, gives due attention to the body of the creature for admiring his mind, like some others of the flock that might ken better. But though I have nae broo of him in the pulpit, I wish the lad no ill. Onyway, a fresh egg beat up in a drop new milk will do him no harm, and the hens have been laying brawly, so that the eggs winna to say be missed. You'll just deposit the basket in the by going, at the door-cheek, or where you will, as if the corbies brought it. Never you heed about the basket," she waved aside the school-master's query, for he knew well that Miss Jennet had a sacred regard for her property.

" I'll see that I get my ain again. I would send the lass, and 'deed she would be cleverer in the up-tak' than you, Andrew White, but I'm for no clashes and clavers carried through the town." " I'll be your corbie, and gladly, Miss Jennet," he replied, amused at the part he was expected to play in forwarding her secret benevolence, " if I should have to wait the gloaming to get a quiet chance, and thanks to you, Dr. Diet, the minister will sup on something better than porridge and skim milk," for it was not eggs alone that made the basket she handed him so heavy. Doubtless she had it all ready packed with the big fat fowl and the jar of her own clear honey, and hidden behind the hedge, waiting for the first messenger whom she could trust. For Miss Jennet had her own ways of being benevolent, and if she seasoned her gifts with a sermon there were few that refused them on that score.

But how to smuggle in his load of provender was what concerned the school-master as he went upon his way. He knew that, to the old servant at least, it would not be unwelcome, since the minister, it was well known, had drains upon his purse that caused him to live like an anchorite, and robbed him of the better part of his stipend ; but before he had got near the manse he was wishing his evil star had not led him by Miss Jennet's door. For how was he, a douce and sober elder of the kirk, to be keeking and spying, and playing the eavesdropper in the broad light of day, for all the world as if he was set on mischief instead of seeking to do good by stealth ? The big beast chained by the kailyard would take little trouble CARMYLIE. 15 to discriminate motives if his trouser leg came within reach of its jaws, and indeed no honest dog can be expected to recognize a dominie if he takes to the ways of a tramp.

He climbed the brae to reconnoitre, and hid himself and his burden behind a beech bole. For the woods of Kingshouse fringe the by-road here, and make a fine green setting for the manse, in itself a poor building, as nipped and clipped as Lady Inglis, chief and most penurious of the heritors, could make it. The village and the parish kirk lie in a hollow, a mile or more away, and no other dwelling was in sight but the back premises of the great house embowered with trees. The garden gate stood open, and the minister's border of annuals shone in the afternoon sunshine — frail, fragile things that had little better hold on life than he. The blind was half drawn in the room to the left of the porch, which was at once study and parlour ; but as he stood hesitating, a hand drew it up. Old Nancy, a stout, comfortable figure of a body, was busy taking in a washing from the lines stretched across the small green ; he could hear her in the still, lown evening, crooning to herself, and now and then casting a cheery word to the dog.

It was a peaceful scene enough. Doubtless the minister was reading, for he wasted himself with books, or maybe writing out the heads of his sermon. The school-master was "MY BONNIE LADY." thinking of this, and considering it was a weariful business he had undertaken, if he had to skulk there till the darkening to do his errand, when the manse door opened and the minister came out. " Now's my time," thought he, " to creep up to the porch when he's well upon his road," but in a minute more he saw that he was not alone. A lady was with him, young and bonnie, and as straight and slim as a young birken tree. She carried herself in a way that no Carmylie lass ever achieved, and had something in her air and carriage that smacked of great folk, and yet the simplest and homeliest of her sex could not have talked more gaily and freely than she to the crooked minister.

She made him laugh too, a hearty boy's laugh coming out of his mis-shapen body, and he walked with his head an inch or two higher than usual, though the crown of it only came up to her shoulder. There was not a flower they did not stop to examine as they sauntered down the little path, and he gathered a handful for her, she making a knot of them to wear in her bosom. The schoolmaster was too fascinated for a moment to remember that this bonnie lady was not lingering there for him to admire. There was but the width of the road between them, and he could well discern the yellow hair and the blue eyes and the smiling mouth of her, as bewitching a sight as man could see. She wore a flowered muslin gown that flowed round her in billows, a scarf hanging from her arm, CARMYLIE. 17 and upon her head a spoon-shaped bonnet with roses nestling within the rim that matched the roses of her cheeks and lips — and she had a way of looking at the minister, full of the kindliest, sisterliest friendliness, that would have made the oldest heart beat quicker for envy.

While Andrew White was staring his eyes wide with wonder and admiration, the minister pushed open the gate, and crossing the road with his com panion they made for the very direction in which he stood. He was in a fair panic lest they should see him and be indignant with him, as they very well might, for spying on their innocent intercourse, and he shrank farther behind the bramble bushes, but they were so taken up with each other that they had not a look or a thought for him. Their speech had taken a graver turn, and the minister as he went by within touch of the hider's arm, wore a troubled look, his black brows knit, his eyes downcast. " It is as well not to talk of things we don't understand," he said, in a tone that was both dogmatic and hesitating, as if he would have been bolder had it been any other creature under the sun he was addressing.

" There would be little conversation if we kept to that rule," said she archly, with a smiling look flung at him. The school-master thought there was a good deal of sense as well as spirit in the observation, but c maybe it was only her pretty face that turned his judgment that way. The old woman was keeking from the corner of the green watching the pair too, as they went their way into the leafy glades of Kingshouse woods. When they were lost to sight and she fell again upon the minister's shirts, dangling limp from their ropes, the conspirator stole unperceived up the garden path and laid his burden within the shadow of the porch. And never thief bent on plunder, felt more criminal than he.

Chapter II. An Ancient Feud

We of Carmylie are not, as I have said, much taken up with the big world beyond our borders, but we have no lack of small concerns of our own to keep our tongues wagging. And chief of these is the great quarrel between old Lady Inglis and her nearest neighbours, the Mintos of Minto House. The original cause of dispute between former generations of Inglises and Mintos, over which blood was shed and fortunes squandered, is lost in obscurity, but it centres itself now in a certain right of way to which both families lay claim, and as neither will yield, a very pretty difference has been built on this slender foundation. Our modern Capulets and Montagues live opposite each other, with nothing but the King's highway to divide them, and fine work it is for both to keep the peace, even when they meet there.

Such curtseyings and sarcastic bows, such dignified head-tossings from little Mistress Minto, such glowering down looks from the ancient sedan chair in which my Lady Inglis takes her airings ! "And do ye think a Minto's going to bend her spine and offer herself to be trodden on by an Inglis ? " cries the laird's lady with fine scorn, — "we that were rulers in the land or ever an Inglis had risen from the dirt ! " To hear her you would think that Adam himself had founded the Minto family. She was a spirity old lady with the brightest blue eyes, and wee white hands covered with sparkling rings, though her gown was mended and turned and near as old as her pedigree. For the pair had fallen on evil times, and the few fields in dispute were almost all that was left them of a once goodly heritage.

It was a matter of wonder to us all how she had come to marry the old laird, so different were they in mould and genus, in spirit and temper ; she, with a drop of Highland blood in her veins, all fire and spunk and unrest ; he, silent, mild, patient, with little to say or to do beyond waiting on her with an old-world chivalry and patient courtesy, obeying her every whim. He had an old-farrand look too, and was the last man in Carmylie or anywhere else to wear knee-breeches and his hair tied with a black ribbon. Rob Menzies, the tailor, took good care that we should not be more than five years behind the town fashions, and Sandy Pringle, the barber, cut our hair as short as was consistent with the interests of business. But if we were not, so to say, in the height of the mode, the laird looked as if he had stepped out of a by-gone century, and found himself a lone and stray man in this.

"Why did I marry him," his wife would say with a laugh, " but to spite the old woman over yonder ? She would have married you herself, Minto, to get the victory that way ; the old acres and the old name. It was to save you from dis grace, my man, I took ye in hand. We're the last of our line, and we'll fight together till we lie under the mools." The quarrel was the very breath of her nostrils, just as it was her secret grief and sorrow that she had no son to inherit it and win the cause for her. The day on which her husband found out this passionate desire of her heart made an epoch in his quiet, still life. For all the years he had lived with his little companion he had understood her so ill. She was standing at the window, where it was her chief diversion to watch who came and went to the big house opposite.

The old laird's gentle dignity forbade him so much as to glance over her little shoulder ; he shunned the side of the house that looked upon the Kingshouse gates, with the big lions guarding the tall posts, and would fain have ignored the existence of his neighbours had such a thing been possible. But if he would not use his eyes he was compelled to keep his ears open. " The road's like a cried fair, Minto," she was saying in a high key of animation. " Is the old lady dying of drops and drugs at last that all the world and his wife are making for her door? There's Miss Betsy Pringle in her turned camlet, and the doctor allemanding her as if she was the Queen's own Majesty, and Mary Morrison in a new spencer, the silly quean, as if she had no more to do with her bawbees than put braws on her back."

" My dear," said the laird a little testily, as he walked up and down the long room, " it is surely no concern of ours what company Lady Inglis chooses to keep," — his wife's curiosity was always a distress to him, — " so long as she does not inter fere with us." " And who's to be sure of that if there's nobody to watch ? " she retorted briskly. " It's little you would be finding out but for me, Minto, and less you would be doing. If I weren't an old failed wife, it's not standing by the window or sitting at the door-cheek would content me, or keeping a calm sough when there's ongoings like yon over the way." " No, no, Kitty," he interrupted uneasily ; " you're young by me, my dear, and if you outlive me, as in the course of nature it is very right and proper you should, you'll mind it was never a Minto's way to borrow a weapon from an Inglis.

The tongue's a poor sword, Kitty, even if you've right on your side." " You needn't be feared, Minto," she said with a laugh ; " I would be sweir to niffer mine with hers, but," she added passionately, " it's little good it does us to be in the right when we've to stand by and endure the wrong. You've your legs, Minto, to defend your own with, if you are tongue tackit — but leave me my freedom of speech. A woman without a tongue is as wersh as porridge without salt." " My dear, you have ever been the spice of my life," he said in his slow, dignified way, stooping to lift her little hand and kiss it. She looked up at him blithely. " You've the trick of saying bonnie things, Minto, and that's a very fine quality in a husband when the wedding day is as far in the past as yours and mine is." " Forty years, Kitty."

" Forty years," she repeated, with a sigh she tried to repress, " and we no further forward than the day we joined hands, and agreed to fight our house's enemy together." She turned again to the window. It seemed, indeed, as if the enemy were all-conquering. The big gates stood open, and while she looked the red-headed gardener came out of the lodge with two bushy green wreaths suspended over his arm, his boy behind him carrying a ladder. " Preserve me ! what's the body after now ? " she ejaculated, moving to one side to command a less interrupted view. The man was very deliberate in his movements. He stepped solemnly out into the middle of the road, and stood scratching his head, and staring up first at one rampant lion and then at the other. "Tak the fierce ane first, feyther — the ane at the richt, the ither's heid's broke," cried the boy.

Mrs. Minto could hear the shrill-pitched words quite plainly. That decided the gardener. Perhaps by way of preserving parental authority, he com manded that the ladder should be placed against the left gate first. Spitting on his palms, he laid hold of it, and, climbing it with great deliberation, he placed one of the fat green wreaths round the mutilated neck of the heraldic beast. By the time the second green ruffle was in position, Mrs. Minto's breath and her wits had come back to her. " I thought the man had gone wud. It's laurel — laurel for victory, Minto; the Captain's come home." The news startled the old laird into disregarding all his resolutions. He went to the window and peered over her shoulder, fumbling in his agitation for his glasses. The wreaths were there, and the gardener complacently admiring them, his boy perched on the ladder, condescendingly looking down upon the gaping audience of butchers' and bakers' lads.

Then, mincing along the highway, came young Mrs. Proudie, her husband on one side, and the sea-captain her brother on the other, and they, too, stopped to admire before turning in at the open gate, where all the world was flocking to welcome the hero home from the wars. The yellow chariot of the Mortons, with my lord and my lady inside, overtook them, and Mrs. Proudie had scarce time to skip aside and drop a deep, respectful curtsey to these fine folk before they had dashed round the corner and were reining up at the door, which Paterson, Lady Inglis's fat man servant, threw wide open. For, years before, when the Captain, Lady Inglis's orphan nephew, was a little boy, and we who were older went in fear of the all-conquering Boney, he was promised a commission by the Iron Duke himself, a pledge which was faithfully kept when the lad was old enough to gird on a sword.

We had heard the story a thousand times (and never twice quite the same), and not one of us but felt that the Duke's patronage had reflected a glory on our village, as if he had specially designed to do it honour. But the truth was that the young Captain owed his interest in the great soldier's eyes to his father, who had fallen bravely at Waterloo, with not a few others who had learned the goose step on our green haughs by the river, and had marched away to come back no more. For there was not a laddie in those stirring days that did not burn to defend his country, and the skirl and burdoun of the pipes, and the flutter of the tartan, would set even old hearts like the school-master's D — whose benches were sorely thinned — beating to bursting. And now the young Captain, as we called him, was returning from his baptism of fire with a wounded arm to mend, but, as news travels slowly in our parts, the letter that announced his coming reached Carmylie but a day before himself, and it was not till Mr. Paterson had superintended his mistress's dinner at five o'clock (for she kept fashionable hours), and was able to step over to the Nag's Head, that the tidings were passed from mouth to mouth.