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.”