The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, and Other Stories Part 13

A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE.

The American consul at St. Kentigern stepped gloomily from the train at Whistlecrankie station. For the last twenty minutes his spirits had been slowly sinking before the drifting procession past the carriage windows of dull gray and brown hills--mammiform in shape, but so cold and sterile in expression that the swathes of yellow mist which lay in their hollows, like soiled guipure, seemed a gratuitous affectation of modesty. And when the train moved away, mingling its escaping steam with the slower mists of the mountain, he found himself alone on the platform--the only pa.s.senger and apparently the sole occupant of the station. He was gazing disconsolately at his trunk, which had taken upon itself a human loneliness in the emptiness of the place, when a railway porter stepped out of the solitary signal-box, where he had evidently been performing a double function, and lounged with exasperating deliberation towards him. He was a hard-featured man, with a thin fringe of yellow-gray whiskers that met under his chin like dirty strings to tie his cap on with.

"Ye'll be goin' to Glenbogie House, I'm thinkin'?" he said moodily.

The consul said that he was.

"I kenned it. Ye'll no be gettin' any machine to tak' ye there. They'll be sending a carriage for ye--if ye're EXPECTED." He glanced half doubtfully at the consul as if he was not quite so sure of it.

But the consul believed he WAS expected, and felt relieved at the certain prospect of a conveyance. The porter meanwhile surveyed him moodily.

"Ye'll be seein' Mistress MacSpadden there!"

The consul was surprised into a little over-consciousness. Mrs.

MacSpadden was a vivacious acquaintance at St. Kentigern, whom he certainly--and not without some satisfaction--expected to meet at Glenbogie House. He raised his eyes inquiringly to the porter's.

"Ye'll no be rememberin' me. I had a machine in St. Kentigern and drove ye to MacSpadden's ferry often. Far, far too often! She's a strange flagrant.i.tious creature; her husband's but a puir fule, I'm thinkin', and ye did yersel' nae guid gaunin' there."

It was a besetting weakness of the consul's that his sense of the ludicrous was too often reached before his more serious perceptions. The absurd combination of the bleak, inhospitable desolation before him, and the sepulchral complacency of his self-elected monitor, quite upset his gravity.

"Ay, ye'll be laughin' THE NOO," returned the porter with gloomy significance.

The consul wiped his eyes. "Still," he said demurely, "I trust you won't object to my giving you sixpence to carry my box to the carriage when it comes, and let the morality of this transaction devolve entirely upon me. Unless," he continued, even more gravely, as a spick and span brougham, drawn by two thoroughbreds, dashed out of the mist up to the platform, "unless you prefer to state the case to those two gentlemen"--pointing to the smart coachman and footman on the box--"and take THEIR opinion as to the propriety of my proceeding any further.

It seems to me that their consciences ought to be consulted as well as yours. I'm only a stranger here, and am willing to do anything to conform to the local custom."

"It's a saxpence ye'll be payin' anyway," said the porter, grimly shouldering the trunk, "but I'll be no takin' any other mon's opinion on matters of my am dooty and conscience."

"Ah," said the consul gravely, "then you'll perhaps be allowing ME the same privilege."

The porter's face relaxed, and a gleam of approval--purely intellectual, however,--came into his eyes.

"Ye were always a smooth deevel wi' your tongue, Mr. Consul," he said, shouldering the box and walking off to the carriage.

Nevertheless, as soon as he was fairly seated and rattling away from the station, the consul had a flas.h.i.+ng conviction that he had not only been grievously insulted but also that he had allowed the wife of an acquaintance to be spoken of disrespectfully in his presence. And he had done nothing! Yes--it was like him!--he had LAUGHED at the absurdity of the impertinence without resenting it! Another man would have slapped the porter's face! For an instant he hung out of the carriage window, intent upon ordering the coachman to drive back to the station, but the reflection--again a ludicrous one--that he would now be only bringing witnesses to a scene which might provoke a scandal more invidious to his acquaintance, checked him in time. But his spirits, momentarily diverted by the porter's effrontery, sunk to a lower ebb than before.

The clattering of his horses' hoofs echoed back from the rocky walls that occasionally hemmed in the road was not enlivening, but was less depressing than the recurring monotony of the open. The scenery did not suggest wildness to his alien eyes so much as it affected him with a vague sense of s...o...b..tic impoverishment. It was not the loneliness of unfrequented nature, for there was a well-kept carriage road traversing its dreariness; and even when the hillside was clothed with scanty verdure, there were "outcrops" of smooth glistening weather-worn rocks showing like bare brown knees under the all too imperfectly kilted slopes. And at a little distance, lifting above a black drift of firs, were the square rigid sky lines of Glenbogie House, standing starkly against the cold, lingering northern twilight. As the vehicle turned, and rolled between two square stone gate-posts, the long avenue before him, though as well kept as the road, was but a slight improvement upon the outer sterility, and the dark iron-gray rectangular mansion beyond, guiltless of external decoration, even to the outlines of its small l.u.s.treless windows, opposed the grim inhospitable prospect with an equally grim inhospitable front. There were a few moments more of rapid driving, a swift swis.h.i.+ng over soft gravel, the opening of a heavy door into a narrow vestibule, and then--a sudden sense of exquisitely diffused light and warmth from an arched and galleried central hall, the sounds of light laughter and subdued voices half lost in the airy s.p.a.ce between the lofty pictured walls; the luxury of color in trophies, armor, and hangings; one or two careless groups before the recessed hearth or at the centre table, and the halted figure of a pretty woman on the broad, slow staircase. The contrast was sharp, ironical, and bewildering.

So much so that the consul, when he had followed the servant to his room, was impelled to draw aside the heavy window-curtains and look out again upon the bleak prospect it had half obliterated. The wing in which he was placed overhung a dark ravine or gully choked with shrubs and brambles that grew in a new luxuriance. As he gazed a large black bird floated upwards slowly from its depths, circled around the house with a few quick strokes of its wing, and then sped away--a black bolt--in one straight undeviating line towards the paling north. He still gazed into the abyss--half expecting another, even fancying he heard the occasional stir and flutter of obscure life below, and the melancholy call of nightfowl. A long-forgotten fragment of old English verse began to haunt him--

Hark! the raven flaps hys wing In the briered dell belowe, Hark! the dethe owl loude doth synge To the night maers as thaie goe.

"Now, what put that stuff in my head?" he said as he turned impatiently from the window. "And why does this house, with all its interior luxury, hypocritically oppose such a forbidding front to its neighbors?" Then it occurred to him that perhaps the architect instinctively felt that a more opulent and elaborate exterior would only bring the poverty of surrounding nature into greater relief. But he was not in the habit of troubling himself with abstruse problems. A nearer recollection of the pretty frock he had seen on the staircase--in whose wearer he had just recognized his vivacious friend--turned his thoughts to her. He remembered how at their first meeting he had been interested in her bright audacity, unconventionality, and high spirits, which did not, however, amuse him as greatly as his later suspicion that she was playing a self-elected role, often with difficulty, opposition, and feverishness, rather than spontaneity. He remembered how he had watched her in the obtrusive a.s.sumption of a new fas.h.i.+on, in some reckless departure from an old one, or in some ostentatious disregard of certain hard and set rules of St. Kentigern; but that it never seemed to him that she was the happier for it. He even fancied that her mirth at such times had an undue nervousness; that her pluck--which was undoubted--had something of the defiance of despair, and that her persistence often had the grimness of duty rather than the thoughtlessness of pure amus.e.m.e.nt.

What was she trying to do?--what was she trying to UNDO or forget? Her married life was apparently happy and even congenial. Her young husband was clever, complaisant, yet honestly devoted to her, even to the extension of a certain camaraderie to her admirers and a chivalrous protection by half-partic.i.p.ation in her maddest freaks. Nor could he honestly say that her att.i.tude towards his own s.e.x--although marked by a freedom that often reached the verge of indiscretion--conveyed the least suggestion of pa.s.sion or sentiment. The consul, more perceptive than a.n.a.lytical, found her a puzzle--who was, perhaps, the least mystifying to others who were content to sum up her eccentricities under the single vague epithet, "fast." Most women disliked her: she had a few a.s.sociates among them, but no confidante, and even these were so unlike her, again, as to puzzle him still more. And yet he believed himself strictly impartial.

He walked to the window again, and looked down upon the ravine from which the darkness now seemed to be slowly welling up and obliterating the landscape, and then, taking a book from his valise, settled himself in the easy-chair by the fire. He was in no hurry to join the party below, whom he had duly recognized and greeted as he pa.s.sed through.

They or their prototypes were familiar friends. There was the recently created baronet, whose "b.l.o.o.d.y hand" had apparently wiped out the stains of his earlier Radicalism, and whose former provincial self-righteousness had been supplanted by an equally provincial skepticism; there was his wife, who through all the difficulties of her changed position had kept the stalwart virtues of the Scotch bourgeoisie, and was--"decent"; there were the two native lairds that reminded him of "parts of speech," one being distinctly alluded to as a definite article, and the other being "of" something, and apparently governed always by that possessive case. There were two or three "workers"--men of power and ability in their several vocations; indeed, there was the general over-proportion of intellect, characteristic of such Scotch gatherings, and often in excess of minor social qualities.

There was the usual foreigner, with Latin quickness, eagerness, and misapprehending adaptability. And there was the solitary Englishman--perhaps less generously equipped than the others--whom everybody differed from, ridiculed, and then looked up to and imitated.

There were the half-dozen smartly frocked women, who, far from being the females of the foregoing species, were quite indistinctive, with the single exception of an American wife, who was infinitely more Scotch than her Scotch husband.

Suddenly he became aware of a faint rustling at his door, and what seemed to be a slight tap on the panel. He rose and opened it--the long pa.s.sage was dark and apparently empty, but he fancied he could detect the quick swish of a skirt in the distance. As he re-entered his room, his eye fell for the first time on a rose whose stalk was thrust through the keyhole of his door. The consul smiled at this amiable solution of a mystery. It was undoubtedly the playful mischievousness of the vivacious MacSpadden. He placed it in water--intending to wear it in his coat at dinner as a gentle recognition of the fair donor's courtesy.

Night had thickened suddenly as from a pa.s.sing cloud. He lit the two candles on his dressing-table, gave a glance into the now scarcely distinguishable abyss below his window, as he drew the curtains, and by the more diffused light for the first time surveyed his room critically.

It was a larger apartment than that usually set aside for bachelors; the heavy four-poster had a conjugal reserve about it, and a tall cheval gla.s.s and certain minor details of the furniture suggested that it had been used for a married couple. He knew that the guest-rooms in country houses, as in hotels, carried no suggestion or flavor of the last tenant, and therefore lacked color and originality, and he was consequently surprised to find himself impressed with some distinctly novel atmosphere. He was puzzling himself to discover what it might be, when he again became aware of cautious footsteps apparently halting outside his door. This time he was prepared. With a half smile he stepped softly to the door and opened it suddenly. To his intense surprise he was face to face with a man.

But his discomfiture was as nothing compared to that of the stranger--whom he at once recognized as one of his fellow-guests--the youthful Laird of Whistlecrankie. The young fellow's healthy color at once paled, then flushed a deep crimson, and a forced smile stiffened his mouth.

"I--beg your par-r-rdon," he said with a nervous brusqueness that brought out his accent. "I couldna find ma room. It'll be changed, and I--"

"Perhaps I have got it," interrupted the consul smilingly. "I've only just come, and they've put me in here."

"Nae! Nae!" said the young man hurriedly, "it's no' thiss. That is, it's no' mine noo."

"Won't you come in?" suggested the consul politely, holding open the door.

The young man entered the room with the quick strides but the mechanical purposelessness of embarra.s.sment. Then he stiffened and stood erect. Yet in spite of all this he was strikingly picturesque and unconventional in his Highland dress, worn with the freedom of long custom and a certain lithe, barbaric grace. As the consul continued to gaze at him encouragingly, the quick resentful pride of a shy man suddenly mantled his high cheekbones, and with an abrupt "I'll not deesturb ye longer,"

he strode out of the room.

The consul watched the easy swing of his figure down the pa.s.sage, and then closed the door. "Delightful creature," he said musingly, "and not so very unlike an Apache chief either! But what was he doing outside my door? And was it HE who left that rose--not as a delicate Highland attention to an utter stranger, but"--the consul's mouth suddenly expanded--"to some fair previous occupant? Or was it really HIS room--he looked as if he were lying--and"--here the consul's mouth expanded even more wickedly--"and Mrs. MacSpadden had put the flower there for him."

This implied snub to his vanity was, however, more than compensated by his wicked antic.i.p.ation of the pretty perplexity of his fair friend when HE should appear at dinner with the flower in his own b.u.t.tonhole. It would serve her right, the arrant flirt! But here he was interrupted by the entrance of a tall housemaid with his hot water.

"I am afraid I've dispossessed Mr.--Mr.--Kilcraithie rather prematurely," said the consul lightly.

To his infinite surprise the girl answered with grim decision, "Nane too soon."

The consul stared. "I mean," he explained, "that I found him hesitating here in the pa.s.sage, looking for his room."

"Ay, he's always hoaverin' and glowerin' in the pa.s.sages--but it's no'

for his ROOM! And it's a deesgrace to decent Christian folk his carryin'

on wi' married weemen--mebbee they're nae better than he!"

"That will do," said the consul curtly. He had no desire to encourage a repet.i.tion of the railway porter's freedom.

"Ye'll no fash yoursel' aboot HIM," continued the girl, without heeding the rebuff. "It's no' the meestreess' wish that he's keepit here in the wing reserved for married folk, and she's no' sorry for the excuse to pit ye in his place. Ye'll be married yoursel', I'm hearin'. But, I ken ye's nae mair to be lippened tae for THAT."

This was too much for the consul's gravity. "I'm afraid," he said with diplomatic gayety, "that although I am married, as I haven't my wife with me, I've no right to this superior accommodation and comfort. But you can a.s.sure your mistress that I'll try to deserve them."

"Ay," said the girl, but with no great confidence in her voice as she grimly quitted the room.

"When our foot's upon our native heath, whether our name's Macgregor or Kilcraithie, it would seem that we must tread warily," mused the consul as he began to dress. "But I'm glad she didn't see that rose, or MY reputation would have been ruined." Here another knock at the door arrested him. He opened it impatiently to a tall gillie, who instantly strode into the room. There was such another suggestion of Kilcraithie in the man and his manner that the consul instantly divined that he was Kilcraithie's servant.

"I'll be takin' some bit things that yon Whistlecrankie left," said the gillie gravely, with a stolid glance around the room.

"Certainly," said the consul; "help yourself." He continued his dressing as the man began to rummage in the empty drawers. The consul had his back towards him, but, looking in the gla.s.s of the dressing-table, he saw that the gillie was stealthily watching him. Suddenly he pa.s.sed before the mantelpiece and quickly slipped the rose from its gla.s.s into his hand.

"I'll trouble you to put that back," said the consul quietly, without turning round. The gillie slid a quick glance towards the door, but the consul was before him. "I don't think THAT was left by your master," he said in an ostentatiously calm voice, for he was conscious of an absurd and inexplicable tumult in his blood, "and perhaps you'd better put it back."

The man looked at the flower with an attention that might have been merely ostentatious, and replaced it in the gla.s.s.