Catriona

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Here I fell in a panic. Suppose he accept my tale (thinks I), suppose
he invite my sister to his house, and that I bring her. I shall have a
fine ravelled pirn to unwind, and may end by disgracing both the lassie
and myself. Thereupon I began hastily to expound to him my sister's
character. She was of a bashful disposition, it appeared, and be
extremely fearful of meeting strangers that I had left her at that
moment sitting in a public place alone. And then, being launched upon
the stream of falsehood, I must do like all the rest of the world in
the same circumstance, and plunge in deeper than was any service;
adding some altogether needless particulars of Miss Balfour's ill-
health and retirement during childhood. In the midst of which I awoke
to a sense of my behaviour, and was turned to one blush.

The old gentleman was not so much deceived but what he discovered a
willingness to be quit of me. But he was first of all a man of
business; and knowing that my money was good enough, however it might
be with my conduct, he was so far obliging as to send his son to be my
guide and caution in the matter of a lodging. This implied my
presenting of the young man to Catriona. The poor, pretty child was
much recovered with resting, looked and behaved to perfection, and took
my arm and gave me the name of brother more easily than I could answer
her. But there was one misfortune: thinking to help, she was rather
towardly than otherwise to my Dutchman. And I could not but reflect
that Miss Balfour had rather suddenly outgrown her bashfulness. And
there was another thing, the difference of our speech. I had the Low
Country tongue and dwelled upon my words; she had a hill voice, spoke
with something of an English accent, only far more delightful, and was
scarce quite fit to be called a deacon in the craft of talking English
grammar; so that, for a brother and sister, we made a most uneven pair.
But the young Hollander was a heavy dog, without so much spirit in his
belly as to remark her prettiness, for which I scorned him. And as
soon as he had found a cover to our heads, he left us alone, which was
the greater service of the two.

CHAPTER XXIV - FULL STORY OF A COPY OF HEINECCIUS

THE place found was in the upper part of a house backed on a canal. We
had two rooms, the second entering from the first; each had a chimney
built out into the floor in the Dutch manner; and being alongside, each
had the same prospect from the window of the top of a tree below us in
a little court, of a piece of the canal, and of houses in the Hollands
architecture and a church spire upon the further side. A full set of
bells hung in that spire and made delightful music; and when there was
any sun at all, it shone direct in our two chambers. From a tavern
hard by we had good meals sent in.

The first night we were both pretty weary, and she extremely so. There
was little talk between us, and I packed her off to her bed as soon as
she had eaten. The first thing in the morning I wrote word to Sprott
to have her mails sent on, together with a line to Alan at his chief's;
and had the same despatched, and her breakfast ready, ere I waked her.
I was a little abashed when she came forth in her one habit, and the
mud of the way upon her stockings. By what inquiries I had made, it
seemed a good few days must pass before her mails could come to hand in
Leyden, and it was plainly needful she must have a shift of things.
She was unwilling at first that I should go to that expense; but I
reminded her she was now a rich man's sister and must appear suitably
in the part, and we had not got to the second merchant's before she was
entirely charmed into the spirit of the thing, and her eyes shining.
It pleased me to see her so innocent and thorough in this pleasure.
What was more extraordinary was the passion into which I fell on it
myself; being never satisfied that I had bought her enough or fine
enough, and never weary of beholding her in different attires. Indeed,
I began to understand some little of Miss Grant's immersion in the
interest of clothes; for the truth is, when you have the ground of a
beautiful person to adorn, the whole business becomes beautiful. The
Dutch chintzes I should say were extraordinary cheap and fine; but I
would be ashamed to set down what I paid for stockings to her.
Altogether I spent so great a sum upon this pleasuring (as I may call
it) that I was ashamed for a great while to spend more; and by way of a
set-off, I left our chambers pretty bare. If we had beds, if Catriona
was a little braw, and I had light to see her by, we were richly enough
lodged for me.

By the end of this merchandising I was glad to leave her at the door
with all our purchases, and go for a long walk alone in which to read
myself a lecture. Here had I taken under my roof, and as good as to my
bosom, a young lass extremely beautiful, and whose innocence was her
peril. My talk with the old Dutchman, and the lies to which I was
constrained, had already given me a sense of how my conduct must appear
to others; and now, after the strong admiration I had just experienced
and the immoderacy with which I had continued my vain purchases, I
began to think of it myself as very hazarded. I bethought me, if I had
a sister indeed, whether I would so expose her; then, judging the case
too problematical, I varied my question into this, whether I would so
trust Catriona in the hands of any other Christian being; the answer to
which made my face to burn. The more cause, since I had been entrapped
and had entrapped the girl into an undue situation, that I should
behave in it with scrupulous nicety. She depended on me wholly for her
bread and shelter; in case I should alarm her delicacy, she had no
retreat. Besides I was her host and her protector; and the more
irregularly I had fallen in these positions, the less excuse for me if
I should profit by the same to forward even the most honest suit; for
with the opportunities that I enjoyed, and which no wise parent would
have suffered for a moment, even the most honest suit would be unfair.
I saw I must be extremely hold-off in my relations; and yet not too
much so neither; for if I had no right to appear at all in the
character of a suitor, I must yet appear continually, and if possible
agreeably, in that of host. It was plain I should require a great deal
of tact and conduct, perhaps more than my years afforded. But I had
rushed in where angels might have feared to tread, and there was no way
out of that position save by behaving right while I was in it. I made
a set of rules for my guidance; prayed for strength to be enabled to
observe them, and as a more human aid to the same end purchased a
study-book in law. This being all that I could think of, I relaxed
from these grave considerations; whereupon my mind bubbled at once into
an effervescency of pleasing spirits, and it was like one treading on
air that I turned homeward. As I thought that name of home, and
recalled the image of that figure awaiting me between four walls, my
heart beat upon my bosom.

My troubles began with my return. She ran to greet me with an obvious
and affecting pleasure. She was clad, besides, entirely in the new
clothes that I had bought for her; looked in them beyond expression
well; and must walk about and drop me curtseys to display them and to
be admired. I am sure I did it with an ill grace, for I thought to
have choked upon the words.

"Well," she said, "if you will not be caring for my pretty clothes, see
what I have done with our two chambers." And she showed me the place
all very finely swept, and the fires glowing in the two chimneys.

I was glad of a chance to seem a little more severe than I quite felt.
"Catriona," said I, "I am very much displeased with you, and you must
never again lay a hand upon my room. One of us two must have the rule
while we are here together; it is most fit it should be I who am both
the man and the elder; and I give you that for my command."

She dropped me one of her curtseys; which were extraordinary taking.
"If you will be cross," said she, "I must be making pretty manners at
you, Davie. I will be very obedient, as I should be when every stitch
upon all there is of me belongs to you. But you will not be very cross
either, because now I have not anyone else."

This struck me hard, and I made haste, in a kind of penitence, to blot
out all the good effect of my last speech. In this direction progress
was more easy, being down hill; she led me forward, smiling; at the
sight of her, in the brightness of the fire and with her pretty becks
and looks, my heart was altogether melted. We made our meal with
infinite mirth and tenderness; and the two seemed to be commingled into
one, so that our very laughter sounded like a kindness.

In the midst of which I awoke to better recollections, made a lame word
of excuse, and set myself boorishly to my studies. It was a
substantial, instructive book that I had bought, by the late Dr.
Heineccius, in which I was to do a great deal reading these next few
days, and often very glad that I had no one to question me of what I
read. Methought she bit her lip at me a little, and that cut me.
Indeed it left her wholly solitary, the more as she was very little of
a reader, and had never a book. But what was I to do?

So the rest of the evening flowed by almost without speech.

I could have beat myself. I could not lie in my bed that night for
rage and repentance, but walked to and fro on my bare feet till I was
nearly perished, for the chimney was gone out and the frost keen. The
thought of her in the next room, the thought that she might even hear
me as I walked, the remembrance of my churlishness and that I must
continue to practise the same ungrateful course or be dishonoured, put
me beside my reason. I stood like a man between Scylla and Charybdis:
WHAT MUST SHE THINK OF ME? was my one thought that softened me
continually into weakness. WHAT IS TO BECOME OF US? the other which
steeled me again to resolution. This was my first night of wakefulness
and divided counsels, of which I was now to pass many, pacing like a
madman, sometimes weeping like a childish boy, sometimes praying (I
fain would hope) like a Christian.

But prayer is not very difficult, and the hitch comes in practice. In
her presence, and above all if I allowed any beginning of familiarity,
I found I had very little command of what should follow. But to sit
all day in the same room with her, and feign to be engaged upon
Heineccius, surpassed my strength. So that I fell instead upon the
expedient of absenting myself so much as I was able; taking out classes
and sitting there regularly, often with small attention, the test of
which I found the other day in a note-book of that period, where I had
left off to follow an edifying lecture and actually scribbled in my
book some very ill verses, though the Latinity is rather better than I
thought that I could ever have compassed. The evil of this course was
unhappily near as great as its advantage. I had the less time of
trial, but I believe, while the time lasted, I was tried the more
extremely. For she being so much left to solitude, she came to greet
my return with an increasing fervour that came nigh to overmaster me.
These friendly offers I must barbarously cast back; and my rejection
sometimes wounded her so cruelly that I must unbend and seek to make it
up to her in kindness. So that our time passed in ups and downs, tiffs
and disappointments, upon the which I could almost say (if it may be
said with reverence) that I was crucified.

The base of my trouble was Catriona's extraordinary innocence, at which
I was not so much surprised as filled with pity and admiration. She
seemed to have no thought of our position, no sense of my struggles;
welcomed any mark of my weakness with responsive joy; and when I was
drove again to my retrenchments, did not always dissemble her chagrin.
There were times when I have thought to myself, "If she were over head
in love, and set her cap to catch me, she would scarce behave much
otherwise;" and then I would fall again into wonder at the simplicity
of woman, from whom I felt (in these moments) that I was not worthy to
be descended.

There was one point in particular on which our warfare turned, and of
all things, this was the question of her clothes. My baggage had soon
followed me from Rotterdam, and hers from Helvoet. She had now, as it
were, two wardrobes; and it grew to be understood between us (I could
never tell how) that when she was friendly she would wear my clothes,
and when otherwise her own. It was meant for a buffet, and (as it
were) the renunciation of her gratitude; and I felt it so in my bosom,
but was generally more wise than to appear to have observed the
circumstance.

Once, indeed, I was betrayed into a childishness greater than her own;
it fell in this way. On my return from classes, thinking upon her
devoutly with a great deal of love and a good deal of annoyance in the
bargain, the annoyance began to fade away out of my mind; and spying in
a window one of those forced flowers, of which the Hollanders are so
skilled in the artifice, I gave way to an impulse and bought it for
Catriona. I do not know the name of that flower, but it was of the
pink colour, and I thought she would admire the same, and carried it
home to her with a wonderful soft heart. I had left her in my clothes,
and when I returned to find her all changed and a face to match, I cast
but the one look at her from head to foot, ground my teeth together,
flung the window open, and my flower into the court, and then (between
rage and prudence) myself out of that room again, of which I slammed
she door as I went out.

On the steep stair I came near falling, and this brought me to myself,
so that I began at once to see the folly of my conduct. I went, not
into the street as I had purposed, but to the house court, which was
always a solitary place, and where I saw my flower (that had cost me
vastly more than it was worth) hanging in the leafless tree. I stood
by the side of the canal, and looked upon the ice. Country people went
by on their skates, and I envied them. I could see no way out of the
pickle I was in no way so much as to return to the room I had just
left. No doubt was in my mind but I had now betrayed the secret of my
feelings; and to make things worse, I had shown at the same time (and
that with wretched boyishness) incivility to my helpless guest.

I suppose she must have seen me from the open window. It did not seem
to me that I had stood there very long before I heard the crunching of
footsteps on the frozen snow, and turning somewhat angrily (for I was
in no spirit to be interrupted) saw Catriona drawing near. She was all
changed again, to the clocked stockings.

"Are we not to have our walk to-day?" said she.

I was looking at her in a maze. "Where is your brooch?" says I.

She carried her hand to her bosom and coloured high. "I will have
forgotten it," said she. "I will run upstairs for it quick, and then
surely we'll can have our walk?"

There was a note of pleading in that last that staggered me; I had
neither words nor voice to utter them; I could do no more than nod by
way of answer; and the moment she had left me, climbed into the tree
and recovered my flower, which on her return I offered her.

"I bought it for you, Catriona," said I.

She fixed it in the midst of her bosom with the brooch, I could have
thought tenderly.

"It is none the better of my handling," said I again, and blushed.

"I will be liking it none the worse, you may be sure of that," said
she.

We did not speak so much that day; she seemed a thought on the reserve,
though not unkindly. As for me, all the time of our walking, and after
we came home, and I had seen her put my flower into a pot of water, I
was thinking to myself what puzzles women were. I was thinking, the
one moment, it was the most stupid thing on earth she should not have
perceived my love; and the next, that she had certainly perceived it
long ago, and (being a wise girl with the fine female instinct of
propriety) concealed her knowledge.

We had our walk daily. Out in the streets I felt more safe; I relaxed
a little in my guardedness; and for one thing, there was no Heineccius.
This made these periods not only a relief to myself, but a particular
pleasure to my poor child. When I came back about the hour appointed,
I would generally find her ready dressed, and glowing with
anticipation. She would prolong their duration to the extreme, seeming
to dread (as I did myself) the hour of the return; and there is scarce
a field or waterside near Leyden, scarce a street or lane there, where
we have not lingered. Outside of these, I bade her confine herself
entirely to our lodgings; this in the fear of her encountering any
acquaintance, which would have rendered our position very difficult.
From the same apprehension I would never suffer her to attend church,
nor even go myself; but made some kind of shift to hold worship
privately in our own chamber - I hope with an honest, but I am quite
sure with a very much divided mind. Indeed, there was scarce anything
that more affected me, than thus to kneel down alone with her before
God like man and wife.

One day it was snowing downright hard. I had thought it not possible
that we should venture forth, and was surprised to find her waiting for
me ready dressed.

"I will not be doing without my walk," she cried. "You are never a
good boy, Davie, in the house; I will never be caring for you only in
the open air. I think we two will better turn Egyptian and dwell by
the roadside."

That was the best walk yet of all of them; she clung near to me in the
falling snow; it beat about and melted on us, and the drops stood upon
her bright cheeks like tears and ran into her smiling mouth. Strength
seemed to come upon me with the sight like a giant's; I thought I could
have caught her up and run with her into the uttermost places in the
earth; and we spoke together all that time beyond belief for freedom
and sweetness.

It was the dark night when we came to the house door. She pressed my
arm upon her bosom. "Thank you kindly for these same good hours," said
she, on a deep note of her voice.

The concern in which I fell instantly on this address, put me with the
same swiftness on my guard; and we were no sooner in the chamber, and
the light made, than she beheld the old, dour, stubborn countenance of
the student of Heineccius. Doubtless she was more than usually hurt;
and I know for myself, I found it more than usually difficult to
maintain any strangeness. Even at the meal, I durst scarce unbuckle
and scarce lift my eyes to her; and it was no sooner over than I fell
again to my civilian, with more seeming abstraction and less
understanding than before. Methought, as I read, I could hear my heart
strike like an eight-day clock. Hard as I feigned to study, there was
still some of my eyesight that spilled beyond the book upon Catriona.
She sat on the floor by the side of my great mail, and the chimney
lighted her up, and shone and blinked upon her, and made her glow and
darken through a wonder of fine hues. Now she would be gazing in the
fire, and then again at me; and at that I would be plunged in a terror
of myself, and turn the pages of Heineccius like a man looking for the
text in church.

Suddenly she called out aloud. "O, why does not my father come?" she
cried, and fell at once into a storm of tears.

I leaped up, flung Heineccius fairly in the fire, ran to her side, and
cast an arm around her sobbing body.

She put me from her sharply, "You do not love your friend," says she.
"I could be so happy too, if you would let me!" And then, "O, what
will I have done that you should hate me so?"

"Hate you!" cries I, and held her firm. "You blind less, can you not
see a little in my wretched heart? Do you not think when I sit there,
reading in that fool-book that I have just burned and be damned to it,
I take ever the least thought of any stricken thing but just yourself?
Night after night I could have grat to see you sitting there your lone.
And what was I to do? You are here under my honour; would you punish
me for that? Is it for that that you would spurn a loving servant?"

At the word, with a small, sudden motion, she clung near to me. I
raised her face to mine, I kissed it, and she bowed her brow upon my
bosom, clasping me tight. I saw in a mere whirl like a man drunken.
Then I heard her voice sound very small and muffled in my clothes.

"Did you kiss her truly?" she asked.

There went through me so great a heave of surprise that I was all shook
with it.

"Miss Grant?" I cried, all in a disorder. "Yes, I asked her to kiss me
good-bye, the which she did."

"Ah, well!" said she, "you have kissed me too, at all events."

At the strangeness and sweetness of that word, I saw where we had
fallen; rose, and set her on her feet.

"This will never do," said I. "This will never, never do. O Catrine,
Catrine!" Then there came a pause in which I was debarred from any
speaking. And then, "Go away to your bed," said I. "Go away to your
bed and leave me."

She turned to obey me like a child, and the next I knew of it, had
stopped in the very doorway.

"Good night, Davie!" said she.

"And O, good night, my love!" I cried, with a great outbreak of my
soul, and caught her to me again, so that it seemed I must have broken
her. The next moment I had thrust her from the room, shut to the door
even with violence, and stood alone.

The milk was spilt now, the word was out and the truth told. I had
crept like an untrusty man into the poor maid's affections; she was in
my hand like any frail, innocent thing to make or mar; and what weapon
of defence was left me? It seemed like a symbol that Heineccius, my
old protection, was now burned. I repented, yet could not find it in
my heart to blame myself for that great failure. It seemed not
possible to have resisted the boldness of her innocence or that last
temptation of her weeping. And all that I had to excuse me did but
make my sin appear the greater - it was upon a nature so defenceless,
and with such advantages of the position, that I seemed to have
practised.

What was to become of us now? It seemed we could no longer dwell in
the one place. But where was I to go? or where she? Without either
choice or fault of ours, life had conspired to wall us together in that
narrow place. I had a wild thought of marrying out of hand; and the
next moment put it from me with revolt. She was a child, she could not
tell her own heart; I had surprised her weakness, I must never go on to
build on that surprisal; I must keep her not only clear of reproach,
but free as she had come to me.

Down I sat before the fire, and reflected, and repented, and beat my
brains in vain for any means of escape. About two of the morning,
there were three red embers left and the house and all the city was
asleep, when I was aware of a small sound of weeping in the next room.
She thought that I slept, the poor soul; she regretted her weakness -
and what perhaps (God help her!) she called her forwardness - and in
the dead of the night solaced herself with tears. Tender and bitter
feelings, love and penitence and pity, struggled in my soul; it seemed
I was under bond to heal that weeping.

"O, try to forgive me!" I cried out, "try, try to forgive me. Let us
forget it all, let us try if we'll no can forget it!"

There came no answer, but the sobbing ceased. I stood a long while
with my hands still clasped as I had spoken; then the cold of the night
laid hold upon me with a shudder, and I think my reason reawakened.

"You can make no hand of this, Davie," thinks I. "To bed with you like
a wise lad, and try if you can sleep. To-morrow you may see your way."

CHAPTER XXV - THE RETURN OF JAMES MORE

I WAS called on the morrow out of a late and troubled slumber by a
knocking on my door, ran to open it, and had almost swooned with the
contrariety of my feelings, mostly painful; for on the threshold, in a
rough wraprascal and an extraordinary big laced hat, there stood James
More.

I ought to have been glad perhaps without admixture, for there was a
sense in which the man came like an answer to prayer. I had been
saying till my head was weary that Catriona and I must separate, and
looking till my head ached for any possible means of separation. Here
were the means come to me upon two legs, and joy was the hindmost of my
thoughts. It is to be considered, however, that even if the weight of
the future were lifted off me by the man's arrival, the present heaved
up the more black and menacing; so that, as I first stood before him in
my shirt and breeches, I believe I took a leaping step backward like a
person shot.

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