The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales | Page 8

Willie's gone. It's from the lawyer, and it
was sudden or they'd ha' sent word of it. Carbuncle, he says, and a flush
o' blood to the head."
"Ah! well, his trouble's over," said my mother.
My father rubbed his ears with the tablecloth.
"He's left a' his savings to his lassie," said he, "and by gom if she's not
changed from what she promised to be she'll soon gar them flee. You
mind what she said of weak tea under this very roof, and it at seven
shillings the pound!"
My mother shook her head, and looked up at the flitches of bacon that

hung from the ceiling.
"He doesn't say how much, but she'll have enough and to spare, he says.
And she's to come and bide with us, for that was his last wish."
"To pay for her keep!" cried my mother sharply. I was sorry that she
should have spoken of money at that moment, but then if she had not
been sharp we would all have been on the roadside in a twelvemonth.
"Aye, she'll pay, and she's coming this very day. Jock lad, I'll want you
to drive to Ayton and meet the evening coach. Your Cousin Edie will
be in it, and you can fetch her over to West Inch."
And so off I started at quarter past five with Souter Johnnie, the
long-haired fifteen-year-old, and our cart with the new-painted
tail-board that we only used on great days. The coach was in just as I
came, and I, like a foolish country lad, taking no heed to the years that
had passed, was looking about among the folk in the Inn front for a slip
of a girl with her petticoats just under her knees. And as I slouched past
and craned my neck there came a touch to my elbow, and there was a
lady dressed all in black standing by the steps, and I knew that it was
my cousin Edie.
I knew it, I say, and yet had she not touched me I might have passed
her a score of times and never known it. My word, if Jim Horscroft had
asked me then if she were pretty or no, I should have known how to
answer him! She was dark, much darker than is common among our
border lasses, and yet with such a faint blush of pink breaking through
her dainty colour, like the deeper flush at the heart of a sulphur rose.
Her lips were red, and kindly, and firm; and even then, at the first
glance, I saw that light of mischief and mockery that danced away at
the back of her great dark eyes. She took me then and there as though I
had been her heritage, put out her hand and plucked me. She was, as I
have said, in black, dressed in what seemed to me to be a wondrous
fashion, with a black veil pushed up from her brow.
"Ah! Jack," said she, in a mincing English fashion, that she had learned
at the boarding school. "No, no, we are rather old for that"--this

because I in my awkward fashion was pushing my foolish brown face
forward to kiss her, as I had done when I saw her last. "Just hurry up
like a good fellow and give a shilling to the conductor, who has been
exceedingly civil to me during the journey."
I flushed up red to the ears, for I had only a silver fourpenny piece in
my pocket. Never had my lack of pence weighed so heavily upon me as
just at that moment. But she read me at a glance, and there in an instant
was a little moleskin purse with a silver clasp thrust into my hand. I
paid the man, and would have given it back, but she still would have
me keep it.
"You shall be my factor, Jack," said she, laughing. "Is this our carriage?
How funny it looks! And where am I to sit?"
"On the sacking," said I.
"And how am I to get there?"
"Put your foot on the hub," said I. "I'll help you."
I sprang up and took her two little gloved hands in my own. As she
came over the side her breath blew in my face, sweet and warm, and all
that vagueness and unrest seemed in a moment to have been shredded
away from my soul. I felt as if that instant had taken me out from
myself, and made me one of the race. It took but the time of the
flicking of the horse's tail, and yet something had happened, a barrier
had gone down somewhere, and I was leading a wider and a wiser life.
I felt it all in a flush, but shy