CHAPTER XXI.

THE VOYAGE INTO HOLLAND

The ship lay at a single anchor, well outside the pier of Leith, so

that all we passengers must come to it by the means of skiffs. This was

very little troublesome, for the reason that the day was a flat calm,

very frosty and cloudy, and with a low shifting fog upon the water. The

body of the vessel was thus quite hid as I drew near, but the tall

spars of her stood high and bright in a sunshine like the flickering of

a fire. She proved to be a very roomy, commodious merchant, but

somewhat blunt in the bows, and loaden extraordinary deep with salt,

salted salmon, and fine white linen stockings for the Dutch. Upon my

coming on board, the captain welcomed me—one Sang (out of Lesmahago, I

believe), a very hearty, friendly tarpaulin of a man, but at the moment

in rather of a bustle. There had no other of the passengers yet

appeared, so that I was left to walk about upon the deck, viewing the

prospect and wondering a good deal what these farewells should be which

I was promised.

All Edinburgh and the Pentland Hills glinted above me in a kind of

smuisty brightness, now and again overcome with blots of cloud; of

Leith there was no more than the tops of chimneys visible, and on the

face of the water, where the haar [24] lay, nothing at all. Out of this

I was presently aware of a sound of oars pulling, and a little after

(as if out of the smoke of a fire) a boat issued. There sat a grave man

in the stern sheets, well muffled from the cold, and by his side a

tall, pretty, tender figure of a maid that brought my heart to a stand.

I had scarce the time to catch my breath in, and be ready to meet her,

as she stepped upon the deck, smiling, and making my best bow, which

was now vastly finer than some months before, when first I made it to

her ladyship. No doubt we were both a good deal changed: she seemed to

have shot up like a young, comely tree. She had now a kind of pretty

backwardness that became her well as of one that regarded herself more

highly and was fairly woman; and for another thing, the hand of the

same magician had been at work upon the pair of us, and Miss Grant had

made us both _braw_, if she could make but the one _bonny_.

The same cry, in words not very different, came from both of us, that

the other was come in compliment to say farewell, and then we perceived

in a flash we were to ship together.

“O, why will not Baby have been telling me!” she cried; and then

remembered a letter she had been given, on the condition of not opening

it till she was well on board. Within was an enclosure for myself, and

ran thus:

“Dear Davie,—What do you think of my farewell? and what do you say to

your fellow passenger? Did you kiss, or did you ask? I was about to

have signed here, but that would leave the purport of my question

doubtful, and in my own case _I ken the answer_. So fill up here with

good advice. Do not be too blate, [25] and for God’s sake do not try to

be too forward; nothing acts you worse. I am

“Your affectionate friend and governess,

“Barbara Grant.”

I wrote a word of answer and compliment on a leaf out of my pocketbook,

put it in with another scratch from Catriona, sealed the whole with my

new signet of the Balfour arms, and despatched it by the hand of

Prestongrange’s servant that still waited in my boat.

Then we had time to look upon each other more at leisure, which we had

not done for a piece of a minute before (upon a common impulse) we

shook hands again.

“Catriona?” said I. It seemed that was the first and last word of my

eloquence.

“You will be glad to see me again?” says she.

“And I think that is an idle word,” said I. “We are too deep friends to

make speech upon such trifles.”

“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 grand 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 is a man, and that is

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 [26] 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.