Catriona

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"Is she not the girl of all the world?" she cried again. "I was never
knowing such a girl so honest and so beautiful."

"And yet she cared no more for Alpin than what she did for a kale-
stock," said I.

"Ah, she will say so indeed!" cries Catriona. "Yet it was for the name
and the gentle kind blood that she took me up and was so good to me."

"Well, I will tell you why it was," said I. "There are all sorts of
people's faces in this world. There is Barbara's face, that everyone
must look at and admire, and think her a fine, brave, merry girl. And
then there is your face, which is quite different - I never knew how
different till to-day. You cannot see yourself, and that is why you do
not understand; but it was for the love of your face that she took you
up and was so good to you. And everybody in the world would do the
same."

"Everybody?" says she.

"Every living soul?" said I.

"Ah, then, that will be why the soldiers at the castle took me up!" she
cried,

"Barbara has been teaching you to catch me," said I.

"She will have taught me more than that at all events. She will have
taught me a great deal about Mr. David - all the ill of him, and a
little that was not so ill either, now and then," she said, smiling.
"She will have told me all there was of Mr. David, only just that he
would sail upon this very same ship. And why it is you go?"

I told her.

"Ah, well," said she, "we will be some days in company and then (I
suppose) good-bye for altogether! I go to meet my father at a place of
the name of Helvoetsluys, and from there to France, to be exiles by the
side of our chieftain."

I could say no more than just "O!" the name of James More always drying
up my very voice.

She was quick to perceive it, and to guess some portion of my thought.

"There is one thing I must be saying first of all, Mr. David," said
she. "I think two of my kinsfolk have not behaved to you altogether
very well. And the one of them two is James More, my father, and the
other is the Laird of Prestongrange. Prestongrange will have spoken by
himself, or his daughter in the place of him. But for James More, my
father, I have this much to say: he lay shackled in a prison; he is a
plain honest soldier and a plain Highland gentleman; what they would be
after he would never be guessing; but if he had understood it was to be
some prejudice to a young gentleman like yourself, he would have died
first. And for the sake of all your friendships, I will be asking you
to pardon my father and family for that same mistake."

"Catriona," said I, "what that mistake was I do not care to know. I
know but the one thing - that you went to Prestongrange and begged my
life upon your knees. O, I ken well enough it was for your father that
you went, but when you were there you pleaded for me also. It is a
thing I cannot speak of. There are two things I cannot think of into
myself: and the one is your good words when you called yourself my
little friend, and the other that you pleaded for my life. Let us
never speak more, we two, of pardon or offence."

We stood after that silent, Catriona looking on the deck and I on her;
and before there was more speech, a little wind having sprung up in the
nor'-west, they began to shake out the sails and heave in upon the
anchor.

There were six passengers besides our two selves, which made of it a
full cabin. Three were solid merchants out of Leith, Kirkcaldy, and
Dundee, all engaged in the same adventure into High Germany. One was a
Hollander returning; the rest worthy merchants' wives, to the charge of
one of whom Catriona was recommended. Mrs. Gebbie (for that was her
name) was by great good fortune heavily incommoded by the sea, and lay
day and night on the broad of her back. We were besides the only
creatures at all young on board the ROSE, except a white-faced boy that
did my old duty to attend upon the table; and it came about that
Catriona and I were left almost entirely to ourselves. We had the next
seats together at the table, where I waited on her with extraordinary
pleasure. On deck, I made her a soft place with my cloak; and the
weather being singularly fine for that season, with bright frosty days
and nights, a steady, gentle wind, and scarce a sheet started all the
way through the North Sea, we sat there (only now and again walking to
and fro for warmth) from the first blink of the sun till eight or nine
at night under the clear stars. The merchants or Captain Sang would
sometimes glance and smile upon us, or pass a merry word or two and
give us the go-by again; but the most part of the time they were deep
in herring and chintzes and linen, or in computations of the slowness
of the passage, and left us to our own concerns, which were very little
important to any but ourselves.

At the first, we had a great deal to say, and thought ourselves pretty
witty; and I was at a little pains to be the BEAU, and she (I believe)
to play the young lady of experience. But soon we grew plainer with
each other. I laid aside my high, clipped English (what little there
was left of it) and forgot to make my Edinburgh bows and scrapes; she,
upon her side, fell into a sort of kind familiarity; and we dwelt
together like those of the same household, only (upon my side) with a
more deep emotion. About the same time the bottom seemed to fall out
of our conversation, and neither one of us the less pleased. Whiles
she would tell me old wives' tales, of which she had a wonderful
variety, many of them from my friend red-headed Niel. She told them
very pretty, and they were pretty enough childish tales; but the
pleasure to myself was in the sound of her voice, and the thought that
she was telling and I listening. Whiles, again, we would sit entirely
silent, not communicating even with a look, and tasting pleasure enough
in the sweetness of that neighbourhood. I speak here only for myself.
Of what was in the maid's mind, I am not very sure that ever I asked
myself; and what was in my own, I was afraid to consider. I need make
no secret of it now, either to myself or to the reader; I was fallen
totally in love. She came between me and the sun. She had grown
suddenly taller, as I say, but with a wholesome growth; she seemed all
health, and lightness, and brave spirits; and I thought she walked like
a young deer, and stood like a birch upon the mountains. It was enough
for me to sit near by her on the deck; and I declare I scarce spent two
thoughts upon the future, and was so well content with what I then
enjoyed that I was never at the pains to imagine any further step;
unless perhaps that I would be sometimes tempted to take her hand in
mine and hold it there. But I was too like a miser of what joys I had,
and would venture nothing on a hazard.

What we spoke was usually of ourselves or of each other, so that if
anyone had been at so much pains as overhear us, he must have supposed
us the most egotistical persons in the world. It befell one day when
we were at this practice, that we came on a discourse of friends and
friendship, and I think now that we were sailing near the wind. We
said what a fine thing friendship was, and how little we had guessed of
it, and how it made life a new thing, and a thousand covered things of
the same kind that will have been said, since the foundation of the
world, by young folk in the same predicament. Then we remarked upon
the strangeness of that circumstance, that friends came together in the
beginning as if they were there for the first time, and yet each had
been alive a good while, losing time with other people.

"It is not much that I have done," said she, "and I could be telling
you the five-fifths of it in two-three words. It is only a girl I am,
and what can befall a girl, at all events? But I went with the clan in
the year '45. The men marched with swords and fire-locks, and some of
them in brigades in the same set of tartan; they were not backward at
the marching, I can tell you. And there were gentlemen from the Low
Country, with their tenants mounted and trumpets to sound, and there
was a grant skirling of war-pipes. I rode on a little Highland horse
on the right hand of my father, James More, and of Glengyle himself.
And here is one fine thing that I remember, that Glengyle kissed me in
the face, because (says he) 'my kinswoman, you are the only lady of the
clan that has come out,' and me a little maid of maybe twelve years
old! I saw Prince Charlie too, and the blue eyes of him; he was pretty
indeed! I had his hand to kiss in front of the army. O, well, these
were the good days, but it is all like a dream that I have seen and
then awakened. It went what way you very well know; and these were the
worst days of all, when the red-coat soldiers were out, and my father
and uncles lay in the hill, and I was to be carrying them their meat in
the middle night, or at the short sight of day when the cocks crow.
Yes, I have walked in the night, many's the time, and my heart great in
me for terror of the darkness. It is a strange thing I will never have
been meddled with by a bogle; but they say a maid goes safe. Next
there was my uncle's marriage, and that was a dreadful affair beyond
all. Jean Kay was that woman's name; and she had me in the room with
her that night at Inversnaid, the night we took her from her friends in
the old, ancient manner. She would and she wouldn't; she was for
marrying Rob the one minute, and the next she would be for none of him.
I will never have seen such a feckless creature of a woman; surely all
there was of her would tell her ay or no. Well, she was a widow; and I
can never be thinking a widow a good woman."

"Catriona!" says I, "how do you make out that?"

"I do not know," said she; "I am only telling you the seeming in my
heart. And then to marry a new man! Fy! But that was her; and she
was married again upon my Uncle Robin, and went with him awhile to kirk
and market; and then wearied, or else her friends got claught of her
and talked her round, or maybe she turned ashamed; at the least of it,
she ran away, and went back to her own folk, and said we had held her
in the lake, and I will never tell you all what. I have never thought
much of any females since that day. And so in the end my father, James
More, came to be cast in prison, and you know the rest of it an well as
me."

"And through all you had no friends?" said I.

"No," said she; "I have been pretty chief with two-three lasses on the
braes, but not to call it friends."

"Well, mine is a plain tale," said I. "I never had a friend to my name
till I met in with you."

"And that brave Mr. Stewart?" she asked.

"O, yes, I was forgetting him," I said. "But he in a man, and that in
very different."

"I would think so," said she. "O, yes, it is quite different."

"And then there was one other," said I. "I once thought I had a
friend, but it proved a disappointment."

She asked me who she was?

"It was a he, then," said I. "We were the two best lads at my father's
school, and we thought we loved each other dearly. Well, the time came
when he went to Glasgow to a merchant's house, that was his second
cousin once removed; and wrote me two-three times by the carrier; and
then he found new friends, and I might write till I was tired, he took
no notice. Eh, Catriona, it took me a long while to forgive the world.
There is not anything more bitter than to lose a fancied friend."

Then she began to question me close upon his looks and character, for
we were each a great deal concerned in all that touched the other; till
at last, in a very evil hour, I minded of his letters and went and
fetched the bundle from the cabin.

"Here are his letters," said I, "and all the letters that ever I got.
That will be the last I'll can tell of myself; ye know the lave as well
as I do."

"Will you let me read them, then?" says she.

I told her, IF SHE WOULD BE AT THE PAINS; and she bade me go away and
she would read them from the one end to the other. Now, in this bundle
that I gave her, there were packed together not only all the letters of
my false friend, but one or two of Mr. Campbell's when he was in town
at the Assembly, and to make a complete roll of all that ever was
written to me, Catriona's little word, and the two I had received from
Miss Grant, one when I was on the Bass and one on board that ship. But
of these last I had no particular mind at the moment.

I was in that state of subjection to the thought of my friend that it
mattered not what I did, nor scarce whether I was in her presence or
out of it; I had caught her like some kind of a noble fever that lived
continually in my bosom, by night and by day, and whether I was waking
or asleep. So it befell that after I was come into the fore-part of
the ship where the broad bows splashed into the billows, I was in no
such hurry to return as you might fancy; rather prolonged my absence
like a variety in pleasure. I do not think I am by nature much of an
Epicurean: and there had come till then so small a share of pleasure
in my way that I might be excused perhaps to dwell on it unduly.

When I returned to her again, I had a faint, painful impression as of a
buckle slipped, so coldly she returned the packet.

"You have read them?" said I; and I thought my voice sounded not wholly
natural, for I was turning in my mind for what could ail her.

"Did you mean me to read all?" she asked.

I told her "Yes," with a drooping voice.

"The last of them as well?" said she.

I knew where we were now; yet I would not lie to her either. "I gave
them all without afterthought," I said, "as I supposed that you would
read them. I see no harm in any."

"I will be differently made," said she. "I thank God I am differently
made. It was not a fit letter to be shown me. It was not fit to be
written."

"I think you are speaking of your own friend, Barbara Grant?" said I.

"There will not be anything as bitter as to lose a fancied friend,"
said she, quoting my own expression.

"I think it is sometimes the friendship that was fancied!" I cried.
"What kind of justice do you call this, to blame me for some words that
a tomfool of a madcap lass has written down upon a piece of paper? You
know yourself with what respect I have behaved - and would do always."

"Yet you would show me that same letter!" says she. "I want no such
friends. I can be doing very well, Mr. Balfour, without her - or you."

"This is your fine gratitude!" says I.

"I am very much obliged to you," said she. "I will be asking you to
take away your - letters." She seemed to choke upon the word, so that
it sounded like an oath.

"You shall never ask twice," said I; picked up that bundle, walked a
little way forward and cast them as far as possible into the sea. For
a very little more I could have cast myself after them.

The rest of the day I walked up and down raging. There were few names
so ill but what I gave her them in my own mind before the sun went
down. All that I had ever heard of Highland pride seemed quite
outdone; that a girl (scarce grown) should resent so trifling an
allusion, and that from her next friend, that she had near wearied me
with praising of! I had bitter, sharp, hard thoughts of her, like an
angry boy's. If I had kissed her indeed (I thought), perhaps she would
have taken it pretty well; and only because it had been written down,
and with a spice of jocularity, up she must fuff in this ridiculous
passion. It seemed to me there was a want of penetration in the female
sex, to make angels weep over the case of the poor men.

We were side by side again at supper, and what a change was there! She
was like curdled milk to me; her face was like a wooden doll's; I could
have indifferently smitten her or grovelled at her feet, but she gave
me not the least occasion to do either. No sooner the meal done than
she betook herself to attend on Mrs. Gebbie, which I think she had a
little neglected heretofore. But she was to make up for lost time, and
in what remained of the passage was extraordinary assiduous with the
old lady, and on deck began to make a great deal more than I thought
wise of Captain Sang. Not but what the Captain seemed a worthy,
fatherly man; but I hated to behold her in the least familiarity with
anyone except myself.

Altogether, she was so quick to avoid me, and so constant to keep
herself surrounded with others, that I must watch a long while before I
could find my opportunity; and after it was found, I made not much of
it, as you are now to hear.

"I have no guess how I have offended," said I; "it should scarce be
beyond pardon, then. O, try if you can pardon me."

"I have no pardon to give," said she; and the words seemed to come out
of her throat like marbles. "I will be very much obliged for all your
friendships." And she made me an eighth part of a curtsey.

But I had schooled myself beforehand to say more, and I was going to
say it too.

"There is one thing," said I. "If I have shocked your particularity by
the showing of that letter, it cannot touch Miss Grant. She wrote not
to you, but to a poor, common, ordinary lad, who might have had more
sense than show it. If you are to blame me - "

"I will advise you to say no more about that girl, at all events!" said
Catriona. "It is her I will never look the road of, not if she lay
dying." She turned away from me, and suddenly back. "Will you swear
you will have no more to deal with her?" she cried.

"Indeed, and I will never be so unjust then," said I; "nor yet so
ungrateful."

And now it was I that turned away.

CHAPTER XXII - HELVOETSLUYS

THE weather in the end considerably worsened; the wind sang in the
shrouds, the sea swelled higher, and the ship began to labour and cry
out among the billows. The song of the leadsman in the chains was now
scarce ceasing, for we thrid all the way among shoals. About nine in
the morning, in a burst of wintry sun between two squalls of hail, I
had my first look of Holland - a line of windmills birling in the
breeze. It was besides my first knowledge of these daft-like
contrivances, which gave me a near sense of foreign travel and a new
world and life. We came to an anchor about half-past eleven, outside
the harbour of Helvoetsluys, in a place where the sea sometimes broke
and the ship pitched outrageously. You may be sure we were all on deck
save Mrs. Gebbie, some of us in cloaks, others mantled in the ship's
tarpaulins, all clinging on by ropes, and jesting the most like old
sailor-folk that we could imitate.

Presently a boat, that was backed like a partancrab, came gingerly
alongside, and the skipper of it hailed our master in the Dutch.
Thence Captain Sang turned, very troubled-like, to Catriona; and the
rest of us crowding about, the nature of the difficulty was made plain
to all. The ROSE was bound to the port of Rotterdam, whither the other
passengers were in a great impatience to arrive, in view of a
conveyance due to leave that very evening in the direction of the Upper
Germany. This, with the present half-gale of wind, the captain (if no
time were lost) declared himself still capable to save. Now James More
had trysted in Helvoet with his daughter, and the captain had engaged
to call before the port and place her (according to the custom) in a
shore boat. There was the boat, to be sure, and here was Catriona
ready: but both our master and the patroon of the boat scrupled at the
risk, and the first was in no humour to delay.

"Your father," said he, "would be gey an little pleased if we was to
break a leg to ye, Miss Drummond, let-a-be drowning of you. Take my
way of it," says he, "and come on-by with the rest of us here to
Rotterdam. Ye can get a passage down the Maes in a sailing scoot as
far as to the Brill, and thence on again, by a place in a rattel-
waggon, back to Helvoet."

But Catriona would hear of no change. She looked white-like as she
beheld the bursting of the sprays, the green seas that sometimes poured
upon the fore-castle, and the perpetual bounding and swooping of the
boat among the billows; but she stood firmly by her father's orders.
"My father, James More, will have arranged it so," was her first word
and her last. I thought it very idle and indeed wanton in the girl to
be so literal and stand opposite to so much kind advice; but the fact
is she had a very good reason, if she would have told us. Sailing
scoots and rattel-waggons are excellent things; only the use of them
must first be paid for, and all she was possessed of in the world was
just two shillings and a penny halfpenny sterling. So it fell out that
captain and passengers, not knowing of her destitution - and she being
too proud to tell them - spoke in vain.

"But you ken nae French and nae Dutch neither," said one.

"It is very true," says she, "but since the year '46 there are so many
of the honest Scotch abroad that I will be doing very well. I thank
you."

There was a pretty country simplicity in this that made some laugh,
others looked the more sorry, and Mr. Gebbie fall outright in a
passion. I believe he knew it was his duty (his wife having accepted
charge of the girl) to have gone ashore with her and seen her safe:
nothing would have induced him to have done so, since it must have
involved the lose of his conveyance; and I think he made it up to his
conscience by the loudness of his voice. At least he broke out upon
Captain Sang, raging and saying the thing was a disgrace; that it was
mere death to try to leave the ship, and at any event we could not cast
down an innocent maid in a boatful of nasty Holland fishers, and leave
her to her fate. I was thinking something of the same; took the mate
upon one side, arranged with him to send on my chests by track-scoot to
an address I had in Leyden, and stood up and signalled to the fishers.

"I will go ashore with the young lady, Captain Sang," said I. "It is
all one what way I go to Leyden;" and leaped at the same time into the
boat, which I managed not so elegantly but what I fell with two of the
fishers in the bilge.

From the boat the business appeared yet more precarious than from the
ship, she stood so high over us, swung down so swift, and menaced us so
perpetually with her plunging and passaging upon the anchor cable. I
began to think I had made a fool's bargain, that it was merely
impossible Catriona should be got on board to me, and that I stood to
be set ashore at Helvoet all by myself and with no hope of any reward
but the pleasure of embracing James More, if I should want to. But
this was to reckon without the lass's courage. She had seen me leap
with very little appearance (however much reality) of hesitation; to be
sure, she was not to be beat by her discarded friend. Up she stood on
the bulwarks and held by a stay, the wind blowing in her petticoats,
which made the enterprise more dangerous, and gave us rather more of a
view of her stockings than would be thought genteel in cities. There
was no minute lost, and scarce time given for any to interfere if they
had wished the same. I stood up on the other side and spread my arms;
the ship swung down on us, the patroon humoured his boat nearer in than
was perhaps wholly safe, and Catriona leaped into the air. I was so
happy as to catch her, and the fishers readily supporting us, escaped a
fall. She held to me a moment very tight, breathing quick and deep;
thence (she still clinging to me with both hands) we were passed aft to
our places by the steersman; and Captain Sang and all the crew and
passengers cheering and crying farewell, the boat was put about for
shore.

As soon as Catriona came a little to herself she unhanded me suddenly,
but said no word. No more did I; and indeed the whistling of the wind
and the breaching of the sprays made it no time for speech; and our
crew not only toiled excessively but made extremely little way, so that
the ROSE had got her anchor and was off again before we had approached
the harbour mouth.

We were no sooner in smooth water than the patroon, according to their
beastly Hollands custom, stopped his boat and required of us our fares.
Two guilders was the man's demand - between three and four shillings
English money - for each passenger. But at this Catriona began to cry
out with a vast deal of agitation. She had asked of Captain Sang, she
said, and the fare was but an English shilling. "Do you think I will
have come on board and not ask first?" cries she. The patroon scolded
back upon her in a lingo where the oaths were English and the rest
right Hollands; till at last (seeing her near tears) I privately
slipped in the rogue's hand six shillings, whereupon he was obliging
enough to receive from her the other shilling without more complaint.
No doubt I was a good deal nettled and ashamed. I like to see folk
thrifty, but not with so much passion; and I daresay it would be rather
coldly that I asked her, as the boat moved on again for shore, where it
was that she was trysted with her father.

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