Meanwhile Cleg was looking after the General's interests when, had he known it, he ought rather to have been looking after his own. He closed the doors of the great house that afternoon, as he had done for many months, and left his master in his strange bed. He was not afraid now, any more. For, in spite of his madness, there was something engaging about the General, something at once childlike and ingenuous, which came out in the close intercourse of two people living altogether alone.
Cleg went into the little brick addition at the back, and the barred doors of the great house shut mechanically behind him.
Cleg was making up his mind to ask the General to let him live out of the house. Cleg was thinking, also, of speaking to Vara. But then Vara might not agree. Had he ever asked her? Of course he had not. It was "soft"—so he had held up to this point to speak to a girl about such things. But yet the idea had its pleasures, and some day he would speak to her about it. Had he been hidden that day in the little copse by the march-dyke, on the road from Loch Spellanderie, he might have heard something very much to his advantage, which might have spurred him on to speak for himself, even at the risk of being considered exceedingly "soft."
But the mere fact that he thought of it at all, argued [342]a mighty change in this Cleg of ours. He was no more only an Arab of the city all these years. He had given Mirren half his wages and saved the rest, so that, with the Christmas presents the General had given him, he had nearly a hundred pounds in the bank.
Cleg pushed his way through the thickly matted copses of spurge laurel and wet-shot alder. He was going to Sandyknowes. The lush green Solomon's seal was growing all around, with its broad-veined green leaves. A little farther on he came on the pure white blossoms of bog trefoil, with its flossy, delicate petals, lace-edged like feminine frilleries.
A thought came into Cleg's mind at the time which bore fruit afterwards. He thought that, if at any time he should lose his position with the General, he knew what he should do. For Cleg was an optimist, and a working, scheming optimist as well. The man who succeeds in this world is doubtless the man who, according to the copybook maxim, gives his undivided attention to the matter in hand. But he is also the man who has always a scheme or two in reserve. He is the man who is ready, if need be, to "fight it out on this line all summer," but who has also at the same time other fighting lines in reserve for the autumn and winter campaigns.
So Cleg, with his ready brain, turned the wild flowers into a means of getting the little house in the background for Vara and himself, even if the General's kindness should vanish away as quickly and unexpectedly as it had come.
The house of Sandyknowes was very quiet. Mirren Douglas had put away vain regrets even as she had laid away Muckle Alick's things—and that was as neatly as if he was to need them next Sabbath when he made ready for the kirk. She had reviewed her position. And for [343]four years, with Vara's and Cleg's help, she had owed no man anything, and had brought up Hugh and Gavin as if they were her own. But she never thought of herself as Alick's widow. She was his wife still.
Alick and she had been saving people. Also he had been, as was said, "a weel-likit man aboot the station," and he had left her nearly four hundred pounds in the bank. But this Mirren, like a prudent woman, had resolved not to touch if she could help it. She had still six years to run of the nineteen years' lease of Sandyknowes—its grass parks and its gardens, its beeskeps and little office houses. But she was often a little wearied at night, cumbered with much service. She felt that now she needed help.
Her thoughts fell on Vara. Should she not bring her home? But yet how could she take her away till the term from Mistress McWalter of Loch Spellanderie?
At that very moment Vara herself opened the door and walked in.
"Wi' lassie!" cried the astonished Mirren Douglas, "what for hae ye left your place? Hae ye gotten leave to bide a' nicht?"
"I hae gotten my fee an' my leave, like the brownie Kit Kennedy sings aboot!" said Vara pleasantly.
"And what's the reason o' that?" said Mirren, with great anxiety in her motherly face.
"The master and the mistress fell oot aboot me," said Vara simply.
"Then I needna ask what yin o' them was in your favour," said Mirren, sharply.
"I must look out for a place," said Vara. "Oh, Mirren Douglas, ye hae been kind to me. But I couldna think o' puttin' you to fash and trouble ony longer, noo that I'm woman muckle, and able to be doin' for mysel'."
[344]
"Lassie," said little Mistress Mirren Douglas of Sandyknowes, "will ye hae this place here? I was gaun awa' to look for a lass this very minute. Will ye bide at Sandyknowes, at least till ye will be wantin' to leave us o' your ain accord some day?"
"Aye, that I will, and heartily!" cried Vara, smiling gladly.
And the tender-hearted little woman in black fairly took Vara in her arms and wept over her.
"I canna think what's come ower me thae days," she said; "I greet that easy. And everything that I tak' in my fingers breaks. Since Alick gaed awa' I think whiles that my fingers hae a' grown to be thumbs!"
There was a rap at the door. Vara rose naturally and went to it as if she had never been away. It was Cleg Kelly.
All his greeting was just "Weel, Vara!" He did not so much as offer to take her hand. Clever as he thought himself, Cleg Kelly had a great deal to learn. Yet that very moment he had been dreaming of the little house which was to grow out of the General's bounty, and out of the trefoil and forget-me-not in the bog. Yet, when he found his sweetheart at the back of the door, he could only mutter "Weel, Vara!" Nothing more.
Cleg and Vara went in together, without speaking. Mirren rose to shake hands. But little Hugh was before her. He distinguished himself by summarily tumbling Gavin heels over head and scrambling towards the visitor.
"Cleg Kelly! Cleg Kelly!" he cried. "I want ye to fecht the Drabble and gar him gie me back my pistol. I'm big enough noo! There's an awesome heap o' wild beasts here to shoot if only I had a pistol. In the wood at the back there's lots o' elephants, and leepards, and—and [345]teegars," he added, when he found that Cleg looked sufficiently credulous.
"And how do ye get on with the daft General?" asked Mirren, with great interest in her face.
Cleg was amused at her question. He had become quite accustomed to the wonder on people's faces, usually shading into awe, when they asked him concerning his position in the household of the redoubtable General Theophilus Ruff.
"Fine," said Cleg. "Him and me 'grees fine. I hae nae faut to the General."
"Preserve us," said Mirren, "I never heard the like. The auld wizard hadna had a leevin' soul aboot him before you came, since his Indian servant Copper-Blackie died. And that's ten year since. And to think that ye hae nae faut to him!"
She looked at Cleg again.
"Noo, come," she said, "sit doon and tell us a' aboot what's inside the hoose."
But Cleg remained uninterestingly discreet. He said nothing about the General's bedroom; but he filled up the tale with the most minute details concerning the vaulted passages, the iron-barred casements in the hall, and the camp-like conveniences of the little brick building at the back.
Vara and Mirren Douglas listened with close attention. Hugh stopped teasing the cat with a feather, as it was trying to go to sleep on the hearthrug. Gavin was already asleep, with a brass door-knob and a whip clutched in his hands.
"Aweel," said Mirren, when Cleg had finished, "I thought it was a deal waur than that. But he maun be a fearsome creature to leeve wi', the General. Yet he is nane so ill a neebour to me."
[346]
Cleg uncrossed his legs and became instantly at ease. Mirren looked affectionately at Vara.
"Heard ye," she said, "that I hae gotten a new servant lass? I am able to do withoot her wage. And it is worth far mair for the company," she added.
"I wish I could bide and help ye too, for Alick's sake," said Cleg, shyly.
Mirren rose and ran to the boy. Hastily Cleg held out his hand, and Mirren Douglas clasped it. He was afraid that she was going to kiss him, and though he admitted the thing as an abstract possibility of the future, it had not quite come to that with him yet.
"Cleg," she said, "ye are a kind, good lad."
"Aye, that he is," chimed in Vara; "and ye wad say so if ye kenned him as I do."
Cleg began to expand in this atmosphere of appreciation. He decided to wait for tea. The hours sped all too swiftly, and the appointed time arrived before he knew it, when he must return to the great barred prison with the little brick martin's nest attached to the back of it.
But before Cleg went away he brought in the water for the night, filling all the cans. He scoured the milk pails ready for the milking of Mirren Douglas's three cows. He split abundance of kindling wood. He brought in the peats off the stack—enough to do for all the following day. He swept the yard clean as a hearth, with a worn stable brush. He promised to come back on the morrow and sweep the chimney, when Mirren puffed her cheeks at the smoke which blew down it occasionally. Then he brought home the cows, assisted by Hugh, Vara watching meanwhile a little wistfully from the gate. She felt sure that if it had been Kit Kennedy, he would not have chosen Hugh to help him. Mirren watched the girl with sharp, kindly eyes, but she said nothing.
[347]
When Cleg had done everything that he could think of for Vara and her mistress, he tied a new whip lash on Gavin's driving stick, tossed Hugh up to the ceiling, and departed.
Vara came with him to the door. Cleg did not even attempt to shake hands. On the contrary, he edged cautiously away lest Vara should offer to do it. "A chap looks saft aye shakin' hands" was how he explained the matter to himself. So when Vara stood a moment at the doorstep, with her hands wrapped tightly in her white apron and her eyes upon the beehives, Cleg looked at her a long time. It was exceedingly good to look upon her, and he had a little heartache all to himself as he thought of Theophilus Ruff in his terrible bedroom. Vara seemed all sunshine and pleasantness. But still he could think of nothing to say, till he was about ten yards down the walk. Then at last he spoke.
"Ye are takkin' your meat weel to a' appearance," he said.
Vara understood his meaning and was pleased. It was more to her from Cleg than all Kit Kennedy's sweet speeches. Her mind was mightily relieved. Cleg would learn yet.
But Vara only replied, "Do you think so, Cleg?"
"Guidnicht, Vara," said Cleg, soberly.
And with that he took his way sedately over the fields and disappeared into the coppice towards the house of Barnbogle. Vara watched him out of sight; but now not so wistfully. There was a proud little expression in her face. She looked almost conscious of her growing beauty.
"He maun think an awfu' deal o' me to say that!" she told herself.
When she went back into the house Mirren Douglas [348]was just putting on her milking apron. She pretended to busy herself with the strings.
"Cleg doesna improve muckle in looks," she said; "he's no great beauty, is he noo?"
She spoke with intent to see what Vara would reply. For, after her sorrow, the old Mirren was springing up again like roses in an Indian summer.
"I never think muckle aboot his looks when I see him," said Vara quickly. "If he had looked like an angel, he couldna hae been kinder to me."
"Hoots, lassie," said Mirren hastily, "I was only jokin' ye. He is growin' a fine, personable lad, and when he has some flesh on his banes and a wee tait o' mair growth aboot his face, he'll do verra weel."
"He does very weel as he is, I think," said the loyal Vara, who was not yet appeased. "He has chappit the firewood, fetched the water, brocht in the peats and stalled the kye, soopit the yaird—and he is coming back the morn to clean the lum."
"And to see you, Vara," said Mirren Douglas, with wicked meaning in her tone. "What said ye at the door when he cannily bade ye guidnicht, Vara?"
"He said I was lookin' like takkin' my meat weel," said Vara, demurely pulling at the corner of her apron, where a knot of the lace was coming loose. At least Vara was rapidly loosening it.
"Let your apron be, lassie; what ill-will hae ye at it?" cried Mirren from the doorstep.
Vara dropped the loop as if it had been a white-hot iron. And as Mirren Douglas carried her milking stool to the byre, she dropped a few tears. "I mind sae weel," she said to herself, "the time when Alick was a lad and coming aboot the place, I used to like naething better than for folk to be aye botherin' me aboot him!"
[349]
And if "bothering" be a provocative to love, Mirren resolved that neither Vara nor Cleg should lack the amatorious irritant.