Jock o' Hazelgreen

Front matter

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Part I. Chapter

I. NINON - - - - - -83 II. NINON - - - - - - 94 III. WEDDING BELLS _ - - - 98 IV. MARTIN STRANGE'S RErLY - - - 1 03 V. THE MIDNIGHT SALLY - - - - I09

Part II

I. TWO YEARS AFTER - - - - 121 II. THE LAST FRIEND - - - - 131 III. AT THE SIGN OF THE 'GOLDEN APPLE' - 137 IV. PART OF THE TRUTH - - - - 150 V. THE WHOLE TRUTH - - - - 1 58 'WHO MAKETH THE UEAF TO HEAR' - 178 'LAND O' THE LEAL' - - - - 198 STEPHEN HATTON - - - - - 299 I. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDF.XCS - - - 299 II. DINAH - - - - - - 311 III. TOO LATE - - - - -

Chapter I

'As I went forth to take the air Intill an evening clear, I heard a pretty damsel Making a heavy bier. Making a heavy bier, I wot, But and a piteous moan, And aye she sighed, and said, " Alas 1 For Jock o' Hazelgreen." ' 1 SNOW J' Eight eager eyes looking upward from the open tallet door, detect the first snowflake of the season descending airily, delicately, leisurely to earth. Snow is never in a hurry ; it may increase its quantity, till in the hurly-burly of the millions of crossing atoms, each flake appears to be circling giddily, but if we choose out a special one, following it in its many windings, we shall discover that it attends strictly to its own business, which is to reach the ground as gracefully and slowly as if no such thing as time existed. We hold our breaths JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 12 as we watch the fragile messenger of fun and frolic descend, then as the same thought pierces our hearts, we huddle closer to each other beneath the horse-cloth that has so much ado to cover us all.

For he loved snow, and if we are a-cold, it is colder yet where he lies, as in the house yonder there is a deeper coldness and quietness still, and its hearth has held no warmth for us since a certain empty chair stood beside it. ' He cannot feel it,' says Sue softly, ' but I wish we could have laid Uncle Jock beside him. They loved each other .... and they must have died in the same hour. . . . Who knows but what they are together ?*" she adds below her breath. Please God they may be. Sundered for twenty years, yet setting out on the same long journey in the same moment, may they not have met and clasped hands, as friends who meet in a far country that neither has ever consciously thought to tread ? The snow is falling in good earnest now, it is filling our noses, eyes, and mouths, even powdering Sue's pretty head till she looks like some bright marquise, but still in our hearts we are watching a certain grave in God's acre upon which is descending its first brilliant, virgin robe of white. ' And to think that Uncle Jock should have such JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 13 a friend as Mr. Biron !' says Cinderella, in as mild a tone as though she were not uttering something worse than battle, murder, and sudden death.

We look covertly at one another, and then boldly at her. She has given a name to what we have shrunk from acknowledging even to our own hearts, and we are not sure if we ought to be grateful or angry for our enlightenment. ' Does a gentleman listen at doors, and go peep ing into all the cupboards and closets of his host's house ?' cries Cindy, shivering with cold and ex citement ; ' do you catch a gentleman in the dead of night trying to unlock doors with his own keys? — for that is what I caught him doing between one and two o'clock this morning !' ' Which room ?' cries Tom, pushing back the horse-cloth ; ' not father's ?' ' It was the haunted room,' says Cinderella almost in a whisper. ' I was awakened out of my sleep by a curious sound, and I put on my dressing gown and slippers, and opened my door, and there — at the very end of the corridor I saw him.

He had a bunch of keys in his hand, and was fitting one to the lock. I almost laughed, knowing that the door was barred from the inside, and after some time he went away, never dreaming that I saw him.' ' I knew he wasn't a gentleman by the way he insisted on kissing you two girls as a father,' cries Tom in a tone of disgust, ' and what has a father got to do, I should like to know, with girls' waists ? I shouldn't wonder if Uncle Jock is alive after all, and this man is his valet, or something of that sort, who read his letters and started off here to see what he could pick up.' But Cinderella shakes her head. ' He has the position of a gentleman, even if he is not one,' she says ; ' and he knows Aunt Maisry, he has met her in society.' ' Waited behind her chair, probably,' grumbles Tom ; ' the fellow is too civil by half.

Talk about politeness,give me the wholesome instinct of one man towards another, " I'm as good as you, and better." ' ' But Nan isn't a man,' objects Sue, nodding, and he addresses most of his conversation to her /' / am Nan, tall and strong as a trooper, whom father used to call his right arm, and upon whom (thank God for that) he leaned to the last, but loved no better, I think, than the frailest of us, though surely I loved him more than they ever did. ' He has fallen in love with Nan/ says Cinderella, looking round ; ' if she would only stand still whilo he placed a ladder against her back, I am sure he would climb up it, and kiss her !' ' I should put him in the duck pond,' I say ab sently, ' but what could he have wanted in the haunted room ?' 'Perhaps Uncle Jock gave him some dying charge about it,' says Sue, in the tone of one who desires fair-play. ' Then he might tell us,' retorts Tom. ' It's my belief he is on a loafing expedition, trying to pick up something good — say Nan there, or Aunt Maisry, for he knows she is as rich as Crœsus.' ' As if she could ever care for anybody but Uncle Jock V cries Sue indignantly ; ' didn't she refuse everybody for his sake, and wait twenty years for him, hoping he would come back when grandfather died, and when she heard that he was dead, didn't she say, " I've waited a little while for him, but please God he shall not have to wait so long for me " ?' ' That's the sort of woman I mean to marry one of these days !' says Tom, and hunts with his sub stantial forefinger and thumb for the first downy signs of adolescence that grace his lips. ' Lay it down tenderly, Lift it with care, Fashioned so slenderly, Young and so fair !' says Cinderella below her breath softly.

JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 16 ' Oh, confound it all !' cries Tom, turning scarlet, ' I've a great mind, miss, to box your ears well for you ' 'The Kicker's, you mean,' says our youngest sister, who has drawn the horse-cloth over her head, and now shows one bright eye in the place where the larger optic of that much enduring beast is wont to roll, while for the magnificent Roman nose below, our parents most distinctly were not responsible. ' Never you wear a bonnet again so long as you live,' says Tom wrathfully, ' those donkey's ears suit you to the life, and look so natural that nobody would guess they weren't your own.' ' They'd be sure of it if I had you beside of me,' says Cinderella sweetly ; ' for wouldn't it be very odd if I didn't resemble my brother ?' Tom's retort is not audible, for squash ! full in his eye, he receives the first snowball of the season, the same being apparently hurled by a giant, who comes stalking across the mixen, and whose tall head is exactly on a level with ours, although we are upstairs while he is down.

Swish ! goes a second, and Cindy's Roman nose is knocked flat as a flounder. Crack ! and Tom's brimless hat vanishes into limbo. Then as for a moment we stand puzzled, taken at a disadvantage, JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 17 we recognise a neighbour who in this gentle fashion comes a-wooing our Cinderella. ' Fen !' we cry, as with one breath, then laugh ing, scrambling, threatening, we scuttle down the wooden steps and across the mixen to which the snow has given a deceitful appearance of stability, and leaping the low wall into the court-yard, dash in at the stable doors, where the Kicker, whinny ing, shows frantic delight, as thinking she discovers a sister, or a brother. But off goes the horse-cloth, and out again goes Cindy with the rest, but not empty-handed ; and now what do you suppose we went to fetch ?

Whatever it is, we leave it propped against the stable wall, and stooping, fashion, with the rapidity of lightning, handfuls of snow into as many small hard balls as time permits, for he who can make most, and is first in the field, is best equipped against the fortune of war. And then, if you had crossed the courtyard a minute later, you might have seen a strange sight. Wrestling together through the maze and whirl of the falling snow, great gnomelike figures come and go, hurl and retire, mingle and tower, while voices Titanic as the struggling forms fill the air with their shouts and cries. And overhead and around, the hurly-burly waxes, and grows, and stings till JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 18 heaven and earth and spirits as of air mingle in one blinding giddy teetotum of dazzle, and fire, and laughter, and the delirium is at its height, when lo ! as with one mighty breath from God, the snowstorm is swept aside, and the gnomes it called into being sink gasping in very human fashion to earth. .*

Chapter II

'What like a man was Hazelgreen? Will ye show him to me ? He is a comely proper youth, I in my days did see. His shoulders broad, his arms lang, He's comely to be seen.' ' And were you so very fond of Uncle Jock, sir ?' I ask, as I move a little farther towards the circle of lamplight in which sits Mr. Biron, whose summons I have obeyed unwillingly, for since our great trouble we have shrunk from father's study to our own half-dismantled, disused schoolroom. ' Yes, you tall, beautiful Nan,' he says, approaching me. ' I was very fond of him, and he of me, if you can suppose it possible that anyone should care about such an old fellow as myself.' 1 You are no older than Uncle Jock,' I say, as I JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 19 sit down opposite him, while he (perhaps he does not know whose chair it was) takes father's place and looks at me.

If only he could speak to me in father's voice, if only I could hear the familiar' Nan ! Nan!' that had power to rouse me from my deepest reverie .... it is only when we know the silence in our ears to be for evermore unbroken that we realize how sweet was the music that once filled them. ' And Jock was twenty years younger than your father,' says Mr. Biron, ' and yet you never thought your father old ?' ' Love is always young,' I say softly, as out of the blood-red heart of the fire my dear one's face seems to look, as a hundred times a day, within the house and out of it, he speaks to me by mere commonest sights and sounds. Perhaps the day has been a trying one : perhaps the haunting thought of that lonely grave out yonder, with its shroud of snow, comes back to me all the more keenly for the warmth in which I sit ; but presently the clasp of a hand on mine rouses me to the consciousness that unheeded tears are rolling down my cheeks.

It is Mr. Biron's hand, and he himself is kneeling beside me, his pale, handsome face lit by a better expression than I have ever seen on it yet. JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 20 ' Don't cry,' he says passionately, ' dear, sweet, beautiful Nan, there are others in the world to love you as well as he did, and better.' ' Not fathers/ I say, taking my hand from him to wipe my eyes ; ' they're too good to come more than once in a lifetime.' ' Perhaps so,' says Mr. Biron, who has risen, ' but may not in time a lover perhaps be as admirable as a parent ?' I lift my eyes to look at him. He is nearly as tall as I am ; he is dark ; but of that complexion which is paled, not flushed, by emotion; he must be forty years old, but has no such venerable signs about him as I loved in father. ' I never had a lover/ I say, with a keen sense of irritation against my companion. ' Cindy has them by dozens, and perhaps she believes what they say, as if they could know anything of the real heart and mind of a person they have only seen six or seven times in their lives !' ' How long have I been here ?' says Mr. Biron abruptly, ' it must be about a week.

And yet I never even discovered that Cinderella was beautiful ; but I love you, Nan, loveyou with all my heart and soul.' ' So did father,' I say sadly; ' sometimes — some times I think he loved me best, after all.' JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 21 • But I am so old,' he goes on — hesitates — ' Oh, no !' I say with an alacrity that dries my tears, ' age improves a person ; you will be quite — quite tolerable in twenty years' time.' ' And am I intolerable now ?' he says, standing up and facing me. ' You have some bad habits,' I say reluctantly ; 1 listening at doors is one ; inquisitiveness mostly belongs to young people, and walking about at night. But to be sure you may do that in your sleep ; I do it myself sometimes.' ' Who says that I walk about at night ?' he says almost violently, and I turn to look at him, my new found pity for him dried up at its fount. ' Cindy saw you/ I say gravely. ' But what made you try the lock of the haunted room ?

It is barred inside, and has not been opened since I was born.' Love usually bows, and yields the pas to self interest, especially when one is forty years of age, and there is no trace of softness in his manner as he says — ' I was your Uncle Jock's friend. . He gave me a sacred charge to fulfil that is connected with that room. The footing upon which I am here might surely have spared me such dishonourable suspicions.' JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 22 ' You could have told us that,' I say gravely ; ' surely what is his business is ours. And if the threshold must be crossed by anyone but him — which grandfather forbade — calling down curses on the head of any who ventured there save Uncle Jock, surely one of his own people, and not a stranger, should cross it first ?' ' You are a child,' says Mr. Biron impatiently, ' and Colonel Hazelgreen had his own wishes on the subject.

But at the last,' Mr. Biron pauses, then speaks slowly, ' his voice failed, his instruc tions became confused, and in struggling to tell me the secret way of entrance into the chamber, he died.' ' You press the carved pomegranate in the right hand panel,' I say, thinking aloud, as absent-minded people will, ' but the spring must be rusty, or per haps broken after all these years.' Mr. Biron's eyes are shaded by his hand. When at last he speaks, it is more in the tone he has hitherto used towards me. 'It is a wild improbable tale, this story of a curse,' he says. 'The words of a dead man can hold no venom. There must have been something more than this to keep him abroad for twenty years.' 'Did he never tell you, sir, though you were JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 23 such friends ?' I say wistfully ; ' it was for our Aunt Maisry's sake that he quarrelled with grandfather ; but when the old man died, our father married Miss Hazelgreen, and they named their eldest child Maisry, after father's sister.

She died, and by mistake her age was not put in the paper, and we think that perhaps Uncle Jock saw it, and thought it was Aunt Maisry who had died, for he never wrote home again, and for many years we have believed him to be dead. This is our mother's house — she was always fonder of it than father's, and besides, it cost less to keep up.' ' But your mother inherited a fortune,' says Mr. Biron musingly; 'your uncle told me that by his father's will he was cut off with a shilling.' But I shake my head. ' Grandfather was not a rich man at the best of times,' I say, my eyes seeking his portrait, ' perhaps that was one reason why he so hated and scorned the Hazelgreens, but when he died it was found that he had scarcely left a penny. There was a strange story told at the time that he had realized his property — about twenty thousand pounds in all — but what became of it no one has ever found out to this day.' Mr. Biron has risen, and with a curious flush on his face is standing beside me.

JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 24 ' It was odd your mentioning those very figures,' he says, 'for they exactly constitute my private fortune. It is a small one, but it would be just possible to live on it. Do you think, Nan, if I stayed here a little while, and got older and more like your father' — he smiles here — 'you might think about sharing it with me — you wild, sweet, beautiful Nan ?' ' Do you wish to adopt me, sir ?' I say, looking in some amazement; 'but I couldn't leave Tom and the girls ; father wouldn't have wished it/ ' No,' he says, compelling me to look at him, and with a sudden, disagreeable instinct also com pelling me to recognise that he is very handsome — or so most women would consider him.

I suppose I am one of the 'other women,' for when he takes my hand, I tear it away from him and stand at bay, panting and breathless, with a feeling at my heart (some girls will understand it) that there are certain forms of love that it is sacrilege to call by that holy name. ' I love you, Nan/ he says, and there is a genuine manliness in the ring of his voice ; ' I want you for my wife, not my daughter, and if I am old, twice your age, I can love you better than a young fellow would.' ' You couldn't love me like father did, or as the JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 25 girls and Tom do/ I say, feeling a little sorry for him, as one must for any middle-aged person who makes himself ridiculous ; ' and oh, dear ! what xvonld Uncle Jock say if he were alive to hear you?" 'So you are laughing at me,' he says bitterly, and coming close to my side ; ' I have a great mind ' ' To carry me away by force ?' I say, struggling after gravity. ' I'm too strong — as strong as Tom, and a great deal stronger than you are !' For a moment he seems likely to try conclusions of strength with me ; for perhaps three moments he measures me from head to heel with a glance that I feel to be an insult, and that makes my strength and vigour hateful in my own eyes. 'And so you think you could thrash me,' he says. ' Well, I would rather be beaten by your hands than caressed by a less magnificent creature.

If your mother resembled you, I can understand your father acting as he did. And was she called Nan — like you ?' ' And some called her Lady Nancy-cy, and some called her Lady Nancy,' I say, retreating back wards towards the door. ' Come back,' he cries, approaching, but I draw the door to with such suddenness that for a moment JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 26 I am in doubt if I have not imprisoned his nose. But the quietness within convinces me that no such catastrophe has occurred. I pause to indulge in an irrepressible but smothered laugh on the mat, when a sixth sense informs me that the handle is noiselessly turning, and some instinct of resistance within me — perhaps some spark of the old spirit that I thought had died in me with father — makes me seize the lock and hold it fast, putting out my whole strength against that of Mr. Biron, who is trying to drag the door open from the other side.

We are equally matched. The lock is tough. I am in too deadly earnest, in too great dread of being beaten, to find time to smile ; but when at the end of three minutes' grim tussle I discover that I am pulling against air, a sense of pride in my woman's arm thrills me, and I think of how lie used to cling to it for years before he died. As my hold relaxes on the lock, another tight ness — before I can turn Mr. Biron stands before me, has clasped me in his arms ; has he ? I don't know if those seekers of la chasse, whose highest game is woman, ever think of the fierce delight their pursuit causes their prey ; they see only the animal's fear, its failing breath ; but if it is strong and swift, may it not exult in the delight of out-distancing its pursuers ? JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 27 It is only by an ace that I escape him, bursting into the schoolroom with all the force and fury of a whirlwind. ' Is the ghost behind you ?' says Tom, as I sub side into a chair. ' No,' I say, with both hands to my sides, ' it was — it was — did anybody that you hated ever nearly catch you, Cindy ?' ' Once or twice/ says Cinderella, ' lovers, you know.' ' I think I should like it/ I say, drawing a deep breath ; ' the only thing I should hate would be to be overtaken.' ' That depends on the pursuer,' says our youngest sister wisely. ' Didn't I always tell you/ says Tom, who has been surveying me with a fixed look of suspicion ever since my entrance, ' that when Nan did begin to flirt she'd be the worst of the lot ? And it's my belief she's trying her 'prentice hand on Biron/ JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 28

Chapter III

1 And for her sake I vowed a vow I ne'er would wed but she ; Should this fair ladye cruel prove, I'll lay me down and dee.' It is Christmas-eve, and we have filled every nook and cranny with boughs of holly ; while from the ceiling is suspended a magnificent mistletoe bough, that is somewhat wasted upon a company of three sisters and a brother, for Mr. Biron is indisposed, and keeps his room. Not so, however, is the round dish placed below it, which Sue's prodigal hand is filling with raisins, while Cinderella more frugally covers the same with spirit out of the stone bottle she carries in her arms. There is no light save that which the fire, now in a fit of the sulks, affords ; and without, the night is black as pitch and as cold as charity, the latter circumstance delighting us greatly, as giving us hopes of fresh snow ere morning, and a white, proper Christmas.

A light being applied to the surface of the dish, the circle of faces round the table seems to leap vividly into life, and with it our tongues, that have JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 29 been silent during the preparation of the great event of the evening. Who has not played at snap-dragon ? and who ever played at it without making himself heard, and burning his fingers, and eating far more raisins than were good for him ? The excitement of successfully fishing them out makes the process of swallowing a mere secondary consideration, since he who most nearly approaches to a salamander in his power of swallowing flames is accredited with the highest honours of the game. And now the dish is empty, the spirit alone burning fitfully therein, and we curl our lips, wishing regretfully that we had tasted the flavour of the delicacies we have bolted, and hunt upon the uncovered table for stray raisins.

Suddenly a hand ful of salt is thrown into the vessel, and straight way our faces, with a sort of wonder at each other's ghastly looks, start out from a canvas of black — a wreath of ghosts. Sue's beauty, ex aggerated to grotesque ugliness, fixes my attention ; and then it is, that, with a sudden leap of the blood, I become aware of another face being added to our number, for over her shoulder, which is turned to the unshuttered window, I see a countenance even more horrible than either of our own looking in upon us. JOCK 0' HAZELGREEN. 30 I do not stir, or speak, but who shall say that electricity does not exist ? In a second the other three persons present are seeing what I see ; and Cindy, turning with the common impulse, has found herself face to face with what ? We cannot tell. It has come, it has gone ; its progress marked by our startled nerves, our beating hearts only.