_ CHAPTER XXI. MEDIATION
At length it was clear to Lady Florimel that if her father had not forgotten her undertaking, but was, as she believed, expecting from her some able stroke of diplomacy, it was high time that something should be done to save her credit. Nor did she forget that the unpiped silence of the royal burgh was the memento of a practical joke of her father, so cruel that a piper would not accept the handsome propitiation offered on its account by a marquis.
On a lovely evening, therefore, the sunlight lying slant on waters that heaved and sunk in a flowing tide, now catching the gold on lifted crests, now losing it in purple hollows, Lady Florimel found herself for the first time, walking from the lower gate towards the Seaton. Rounding the west end of the village, she came to the sea front, where, encountering a group of children, she requested to be shown the blind piper's cottage. Ten of them started at once to lead the way, and she was presently knocking at the half open door, through which she could not help seeing the two at their supper of dry oat cake and still drier skim milk cheese, with a jug of cold water to wash it down. Neither, having just left the gentlemen at their wine, could she help feeling the contrast between the dinner just over at the House and the meal she now beheld.
At the sound of her knock, Malcolm, who was seated with his back to the door, rose to answer the appeal;--the moment he saw her, the blood rose from his heart to his cheek in similar response. He opened the door wide, and in low, something tremulous tones, invited her to enter; then caught up a chair, dusted it with his bonnet, and placed it for her by the window, where a red ray of the setting sun fell on a huge flowered hydrangea. Her quick eye caught sight of his bound up hand.
"How have you hurt your hand?" she asked kindly.
Malcolm made signs that prayed for silence, and pointed to his grandfather. But it was too late.
"Hurt your hand, Malcolm, my son," cried Duncan, with surprise and anxiety mingled. "How will you pe toing tat?"
"Here's a bonny yoong leddy come to see ye, daddy," said Malcolm, seeking to turn the question aside.
"She'll pe fery clad to see ta ponny young laty, and she's creatly obleeched for ta honour: put if ta ponny young laty will pe excusing her--what'll pe hurting your hand, Malcolm!"
"I'll tell ye efterhin, daddy. This is my Leddy Florimel, frae the Hoose."
"Hm!" said Duncan, the pain of his insult keenly renewed by the mere mention of the scene of it. "Put," he went on, continuing aloud the reflections of a moment of silence, "she'll pe a laty, and it's not to pe laid to her charch. Sit town, my laty. Ta poor place is your own."
But Lady Florimel was already seated, and busy in her mind as to how she could best enter on the object of her visit. The piper sat silent, revolving a painful suspicion with regard to Malcolm's hurt.
"So you won't forgive my father, Mr MacPhail?" said Lady Florimel.
"She would forgife any man put two men," he answered, "--Clenlyon, and ta man, whoefer he might pe, who would put upon her ta tiscrace of trinking in his company."
"But you're quite mistaken," said Lady Florimel, in a pleading tone. "I don't believe my father knows the gentleman you speak of."
"Chentleman!" echoed Duncan. "He is a tog!--No, he is no tog: togs is coot. He is a mongrel of a fox and a volf!"
"There was no Campbell at our table that evening," persisted Lady Florimel.
"Ten who tolt Tuncan MacPhail a lie!"
"It was nothing but a joke--indeed!" said the girl, beginning to feel humiliated.
"It wass a paad choke, and might have peen ta hanging of poor Tuncan," said the piper.
Now Lady Florimel had heard a rumour of some one having been, hurt in the affair of the joke, and her quick wits instantly brought that and Malcolm's hand together.
"It might have been," she said, risking a miss for the advantage. "It was well that you hurt nobody but your own grandson."
"Oh, my leddy!" cried Malcolm with despairing remonstrance; "--an' me haudin' 't frae him a' this time! Ye sud ha' considert an auld man's feelin's! He's as blin' 's a mole, my leddy!"
"His feelings!" retorted the girl angrily. "He ought to know the mischief he does in his foolish rages."
Duncan had risen, and was now feeling his way across the room. Having reached his grandson, he laid hold of his head and pressed it to his bosom.
"Malcolm!" he said, in a broken and hollow voice, not to be recognized as his, "Malcolm, my eagle of the crag! my hart of the heather! was it yourself she stapped with her efil hand, my son? Tid she'll pe hurting her own poy!--She'll nefer wear turk more. Och hone! Och hone!"
He turned, and, with bowed head seeking his chair, seated himself and wept.
Lady Florimel's anger vanished. She was by his side in a moment, with her lovely young hand on the bony expanse of his, as it covered his face. On the other side, Malcolm laid his lips to his ear, and whispered with soothing expostulation,--
"It's maist as weel 's ever daddy. It's nane the waur. It was but a bit o' a scart. It's nae worth twise thinkin' o'."
"Ta turk went trough it, Malcolm! It went into ta table! She knows now! O Malcolm! Malcolm! would to Cod she had killed herself pefore she hurted her poy!"
He made Malcolm sit down beside him, and taking the wounded hand in both of his, sunk into a deep silence, utterly forgetful of the presence of Lady Florimel, who retired to her chair, kept silence also, and waited.
"It was not a coot choke," he murmured at length, "upon an honest man, and might pe calling herself a chentleman. A rache is not a choke. To put her in a rache was not coot. See to it. And it was a ferry paad choke, too, to make a pig hole in her poor pag! Och hone! och hone!--Put I'm clad Clenlyon was not there, for she was too plind to kill him."
"But you will surely forgive my father, when he wants to make it up! Those pipes have been in the family for hundreds of years," said Florimel.
"Her own pipes has peen in her own family for five or six chenerations at least," said Duncan. "--And she was wondering why her poy tidn't pe mending her pag! My poor poy! Och hone! Och hone!"
"We'll get a new bag, daddy," said Malcolm. "It's been lang past men'in' wi' auld age."
"And then you will be able to play together," urged Lady Florimel.
Duncan's resolution was visibly shaken by the suggestion. He pondered for a while. At last he opened his mouth solemnly, and said, with the air of one who had found a way out of a hitherto impassable jungle of difficulty:
"If her lord marquis will come to Tuncan's house, and say to Tuncan it was put a choke and he is sorry for it, then Tuncan will shake hands with ta marquis, and take ta pipes."
A smile of pleasure lighted up Malcolm's face at the proud proposal. Lady Florimel smiled also, but with amusement.
"Will my laty take Tuncan's message to my lord, ta marquis?" asked the old man.
Now Lady Florimel had inherited her father's joy in teasing; and the thought of carrying him such an overture was irresistibly delightful.
"I will take it," she said. "But what if he should be angry?"
"If her lord pe angry, Tuncan is angry too," answered the piper.
Malcolm followed Lady Florimel to the door.
"Put it as saft as ye can, my leddy," he whispered. "I canna bide to anger fowk mair than maun be."
"I shall give the message precisely as your grandfather gave it to me," said Florimel, and walked away.
While they sat at dinner the next evening, she told her father from the head of the table, all about her visit to the piper, and ended with the announcement of the condition--word for word-- on which the old man would consent to a reconciliation.
Could such a proposal have come from an equal whom he had insulted, the marquis would hardly have waited for a challenge: to have done a wrong was nothing; to confess it would be disgrace. But here the offended party was of such ludicrously low condition, and the proposal therefore so ridiculous, that it struck the marquis merely as a yet more amusing prolongation of the joke. Hence his reception of it was with uproarious laughter, in which all his visitors joined.
"Damn the old windbag!" said the marquis.
"Damn the knife that made the mischief," said Lady Florimel.
When the merriment had somewhat subsided, Lord Meikleham, the youth of soldierly aspect, would have proposed whipping the highland beggar, he said, were it not for the probability the old clothes horse would fall to pieces; whereupon Lady Florimel recommended him to try it on the young fisherman, who might possibly hold together; whereat the young lord looked both mortified and spiteful.
I believe some compunction, perhaps even admiration, mingled itself, in this case, with Lord Lossie's relish of an odd and amusing situation, and that he was inclined to compliance with the conditions of atonement, partly for the sake of mollifying the wounded spirit of the highlander. He turned to his daughter and said,--
"Did you fix an hour, Flory, for your poor father to make amende honorable?"
"No, papa; I did not go so far as that."
The marquis kept a few moments' grave silence.
"Your lordship is surely not meditating such a solecism?" said Mr Morrison, the justice laird.
"Indeed I am," said the marquis.
"It would be too great a condescension," said Mr Cavins; "and your lordship will permit me to doubt the wisdom of it. These fishermen form a class by themselves; they are a rough set of men, and only too ready to despise authority. You will not only injure the prestige of your rank, my lord, but expose yourself to endless imposition."
"The spirit moves me, and we are commanded not to quench the spirit," rejoined the marquis with a merry laugh, little thinking that he was actually describing what was going on in him-that the spirit of good concerning which he jested, was indeed not working in him, but gaining on him, in his resolution of that moment.
"Come, Flory," said the marquis, to whom it gave a distinct pleasure to fly in the face of advice, "we'll go at once, and have it over."
So they set out together for the Seaton, followed by the bagpipes, carried by the same servant as before, and were received by the overjoyed Malcolm, and ushered into his grandfather's presence.
Whatever may have been the projected attitude of the marquis, the moment he stood on the piper's floor, the generous, that is the gentleman, in him, got the upper hand, and his behaviour to the old man was not polite merely, but respectful. At no period in the last twenty years had he been so nigh the kingdom of heaven as he was now when making his peace with the blind piper.
When Duncan heard his voice, he rose with dignity and made a stride or two towards the door, stretching forth his long arm to its full length, and spreading wide his great hand with the brown palm upwards:
"Her nainsel will pe proud to see my lord ta marquis under her roof;" he said.
The visit itself had already sufficed to banish all resentment from his soul.
The marquis took the proffered hand kindly:
"I have come to apologise," he said.
"Not one vord more, my lort, I peg," interrupted Duncan. "My lort is come, out of his cootness, to pring her a creat kift; for he'll pe hearing of ta sad accident which pefell her poor pipes one efening lately. Tey was ferry old, my lort, and easily hurt."
"I am sorry--" said the marquis--but again Duncan interrupted him.
"I am clad, my lort," he said, "for it prings me ta creat choy. If my lady and your lordship will honour her poor house py sitting town, she will haf ta pleasure of pe offering tem a little music."
His hospitality would give them of the best he had; but ere the entertainment was over, the marquis judged himself more than fairly punished by the pipes for all the wrong he had done the piper.
They sat down, and, at a sign from his lordship, the servant placed his charge in Duncan's hands, and retired. The piper received the instrument with a proud gesture of gratification, felt it all over, screwed at this and that for a moment, then filled the great bag gloriously full. The next instant a scream invaded the astonished air fit to rival the skirl produced by the towzie tyke of Kirk Alloway; another instant, and the piper was on his legs, as full of pleasure and pride as his bag of wind, strutting up and down the narrow chamber like a turkey cock before his hens, and turning ever, after precisely so many strides, with a grand gesture and mighty sweep, as if he too had a glorious tail to mind, and was bound to keep it ceaselessly quivering to the tremor of the reed in the throat of his chanter.
Malcolm, erect behind their visitors, gazed with admiring eyes at every motion of his grandfather. To one who had from earliest infancy looked up to him with reverence, there was nothing ridiculous in the display, in the strut, in all that to other eyes too evidently revealed the vanity of the piper: Malcolm regarded it all only as making up the orthodox mode of playing the pipes. It was indeed well that he could not see the expression upon the faces of those behind whose chairs he stood, while for moments that must have seemed minutes, they succumbed to the wild uproar which issued from those splendid pipes. On an opposite hillside, with a valley between, it would have sounded poetic; in a charging regiment, none could have wished for more inspiriting battle strains; even in a great hall, inspiring and guiding the merry reel, it might have been in place and welcome; but in a room of ten feet by twelve, with a wooden ceiling, acting like a drumhead, at the height of seven feet and a half!--It was little below torture to the marquis and Lady Florimel. Simultaneously they rose to make their escape.
"My lord an' my leddy maun be gauin', daddy," cried Malcolm.
Absorbed in the sound which his lungs created and his fingers modulated, the piper had forgotten all about his visitors; but the moment his grandson's voice reached him, the tumult ceased; he took the port vent from his lips, and with sightless eyes turned full on Lord Lossie, said in a low earnest voice,--
"My lort, she 'll pe ta craandest staand o' pipes she efer blew, and proud and thankful she'll pe to her lort marquis, and to ta Lort of lorts, for ta kift. Ta pipes shall co town from cheneration to cheneration to ta ent of time; yes, my lort, until ta loud cry of tem pe trownt in ta roar of ta trump of ta creat archanchel, when he'll pe setting one foot on ta laand and ta other foot upon ta sea, and Clenlyon shall pe cast into ta lake of fire."
He ended with a low bow. They shook hands with him, thanked him for his music, wished him goodnight, and, with a kind nod to Malcolm, left the cottage.
Duncan resumed his playing the moment they were out of the house, and Malcolm, satisfied of his well being for a couple of hours at least--he had been music starved so long, went also out, in quest of a little solitude. _