by Neil Munro
CHAPTER V
A SPOILED TRYST, AND OTHER THINGS THAT FOLLOWED ON THE OPENING OF THECHEST
The funeral was over before I cared to examine my bequest, and then Iwent to it with some reluctance, for if a pair of shoes was the chiefcontents of the brass-bound chest, there was like to be little elseexcept the melancholy relics of a botched life. It lay where he left iton the night he came--under the foot of his bed--and when I lifted thelid I felt as if I was spying upon a man through a keyhole. Yet, when Icame more minutely to examine the contents, I was disappointed that atthe first reflection nothing was there half so pregnant as his own mostcasual tale to rouse in me the pleasant excitation of romance.
A bairn's caul--that sailor's trophy that has kept many a marinerfrom drowning only that he might die a less pleasant death; a brokenhandcuff, whose meaning I cared not to guess at; a pop or pistol; achap-book of country ballads, that possibly solaced his exile fromthe land they were mostly written about; the batters of a Bible, withnothing between them but his name in his mother's hand on the inside ofthe board; a traveller's log or itinerary, covering a period of fifteenyears, extremely minute in its detail and well written; a brokensixpence and the pair of shoes.
The broken sixpence moved my mother to tears, for she had had the otherhalf twenty years ago, before Andrew Greig grew ne'er-do-weel; the shoesfailed to rouse in her or in my father any interest whatever. If theycould have guessed it, they would have taken them there and then andsunk them in the deepest linn of Earn.
There was little kenspeckle about them saving their colour, which wasa dull dark red. They were of the most excellent material, with a greatdeal of fine sewing thrown away upon them in parts where it seems tome their endurance was in no wise benefited, and an odd pair of silverbuckles gave at your second glance a foreign look to them.
I put them on at the first opportunity: they fitted me as if my feet hadbeen moulded to them, and I sat down to the study of the log-book. Theafternoon passed, the dusk came. I lit a candle, and at midnight, when Ireached the year of my uncle's escape from the Jesuits of Spain, I cameto myself gasping, to find the house in an alarm, and that lanthornswere out about Earn Water looking for me, while all the time I was_perdu_ in the dead uncle's chamber in the baron's wing, as we calledit, of Hazel Den House. I pretended I had fallen asleep; it was thefirst and the last time I lied to my mother, and something told me sheknew I was deceiving her. She looked at the red shoes on my feet.
"Ugly brogues!" said she; "it's a wonder to me you would put them onyour feet. You don't know who has worn them."
"They were Uncle Andy's," said I, complacently looking at them, for theyfitted like a glove; the colour was hardly noticeable in the evening,and the buckles were most becoming.
"Ay! and many a one before him, I'm sure," said she, with distaste inher tone, "I don't think them nice at all, Paul," and she shuddered alittle.
"That's but a freit," said I; "but it's not likely I'll wear much ofsuch a legacy." I went up and left them in the chest, and took the diaryinto my own room and read Uncle Andrew's marvellous adventures in thetrade of rover till it was broad daylight.
When I had come to the conclusion it seemed as if I had been in thedelirium of a fever, so tempestuous and unreal was that memoir of a wildloose life. The sea was there, buffeting among the pages in rollers andbreakers; there were the chronicles of a hundred ports, with boozingkens and raving lazarettos in them; far out isles and cays in namelessoceans, and dozing lagoons below tropic skies; a great clash of weaponsand a bewildering deal of political intrigue in every part of theContinent from Calais to Constantinople. My uncle's narrative in lifehad not hinted at one half the marvel of his career, and I read hispages with a rapture, as one hears a noble piece of music, fascinated tothe uttermost, and finding no moral at the end beyond that the worldwe most of us live in with innocence and ignorance is a crust overtremendous depths. And then I burned the book. It went up in a greysmoke on the top of the fire that I had kept going all night for itsperusal; and the thing was no sooner done than I regretted it, thoughthe act was dictated by the seemly enough idea that its contents wouldonly distress my parents if they came to their knowledge.
For days--for weeks--for a season--I went about, my head humming withUncle Andy's voice recounting the most stirring of his adventures asnarrated in the log-book. I had been infected by almost his first wordsthe night he came to Hazel Den House, and made a magic chant of the merenames of foreign peoples; now I was fevered indeed; and when I put onthe red shoes (as I did of an evening, impelled by some dandyism foreignto my nature hitherto), they were like the seven-league boots for magic,as they set my imagination into every harbour Uncle Andy had frequentedand made me a guest at every inn where he had met his boon companions.
I was wearing them the next time I went on my excursion to Earn side andthere met Isobel Fortune, who had kept away from the place since I hadsmiled at my discovery of her tryst with Hervey's "Meditations." Shecame upon me unexpectedly, when the gentility of my shoes and therecollection of all that they had borne of manliness was making me walkalong the road with a very high head and an unusually jaunty step.
She seemed struck as she came near, with her face displaying herconfusion, and it seemed to me she was a new woman altogether--at least,not the Isobel I had been at school with and seen with an indifferenteye grow up like myself from pinafores. It seemed suddenly scandalousthat the like of her should have any correspondence with so ill-suited alover as David Borland of the Dreipps.
For the first time (except for the unhappy introduction of Hervey's"Meditations") we stopped to speak to each other. She was the mostbewitching mixture of smiles and blushes, and stammering now and then,and vastly eager to be pleasant to me, and thinks I, "My lass, you'rekeen on trysting when it's with Borland."
The very thought of the fellow in that connection made me angry in herinterest; and with a mischievous intention of spoiling his sport if hehovered, as I fancied, in the neighbourhood, or at least of delaying hishappiness as long as I could, I kept the conversation going very blitheindeed.
She had a laugh, low and brief, and above all sincere, which is thegreat thing in laughter, that was more pleasant to hear than the soundof Earn in its tinkling hollow among the ferns: it surprised me that sheshould favour my studied and stupid jocosities with it so frequently.Here was appreciation! I took, in twenty minutes, a better conceit ofmyself, than the folks at home could have given me in the twelvemonths since I left the college, and I'll swear to this date 'twas theconsciousness of my fancy shoes that put me in such good key.
She saw my glance to them at last complacently, and pretended herself tonotice them for the first time.
She smiled--little hollows came near the corners of her lips; ofa sudden I minded having once kissed Mistress Grant's niece in astair-head frolic in Glasgow High Street, and the experience had beenpleasant enough.
"They're very nice," said Isobel.
"They're all that," said I, gazing boldly at her dimples. She flushedand drew in her lips.
"No, no!" I cried,"'twas not them I was thinking of; but theirneighbours. I never saw you had dimples before."
At that she was redder than ever.
"I could not help that, Paul," said she; "they have been always there,and you are getting very audacious. I was thinking of your new shoes."
"How do you know they're new?"
"I could tell," said she, "by the sound of your footstep before you camein sight."
"It might not have been my footstep," said I, and at that she was takenback.
"That is true," said she, hasty to correct herself. "I only thought itmight be your footstep, as you are often this way."
"It might as readily have been David Borland's. I have seen him abouthere." I watched her as closely as I dared: had her face changed, Iwould have felt it like a blow.
"Anyway, they're very nice, your new shoes," said she, with a marvellouscomposure that betrayed nothing.
"They were uncle's leg
acy," I explained, "and had travelled far in manyways about the world; far--and fast."
"And still they don't seem to be in such a hurry as your old ones," saidshe, with a mischievous air. Then she hastened to cover what might seema rudeness. "Indeed, they're very handsome, Paul, and become you verymuch, and--and--and--"
"They're called the Shoes of Sorrow; that's the name my uncle had forthem," said I, to help her to her own relief.
"Indeed, and I hope it may be no more than a by-name," she said gravely.
The day had the first rumour of spring: green shoots thrust among thebare bushes on the river side, and the smell of new turned soil camefrom a field where a plough had been feiring; above us the sky was blue,in the north the land was pleasantly curved against silver clouds.
And one small bird began to pipe in a clump of willows, that showered adust of gold upon us when the little breeze came among the branches. Ilooked at all and I looked at Isobel Fortune, so trim and bonny, and itseemed there and then good to be a man and my fortunes all to try.
"Sorrow here or sorrow there, Isobel," I said, "they are the shoes totake me away sooner or later from Hazel Den."
She caught my meaning with astounding quickness.
"Are you in earnest?" she asked soberly, and I thought she could nothave been more vexed had it been David Borland.
"Another year of this." said I, looking at the vacant land, "would breakmy heart."
"Indeed, Paul, and I thought Earn-side was never so sweet as now," saidshe, vexed like, as if she was defending a companion.
"That is true, too," said I, smiling into the very depths of her largedark eyes, where I saw a pair of Spoiled Horns as plainly as if I lookedin sunny weather into Linn of Earn. "That is true, too. I have neverbeen better pleased with it than to-day. But what in the world's tokeep me? It's all bye with the college--at which I'm but middling wellpleased; it's all bye with the law--for which thanks to Heaven! and,though they seem to think otherwise at Hazel Den House, I don't believeI've the cut of a man to spend his life among rowting cattle and dourclay land."
"I daresay not; it's true," said she stammeringly, with one fast glancethat saw me from the buckles of my red shoes to the underlids of myeyes. For some reason or other she refused to look higher, and thedistant landscape seemed to have charmed her after that. She drummedwith a toe upon the path; she bit her nether lip; upon my word, the lasshad tears at her eyes! I had, plainly, kept her long enough from herlover. "Well, it's a fine evening; I must be going," said I stupidly,making a show at parting, and an ugly sense of annoyance with DavidBorland stirring in my heart. "But it will rain before morning," saidshe, making to go too, but always looking to the hump of Dungoyne thatbars the way to the Hielands. "I think, after all, Master Paul, I likedthe old shoon better than the new ones."
"Do you say so?" I asked, astonished at the irrelevance that camerapidly from her lips, as if she must cry it out or choke. "And howcomes that?"
"Just because--" said she, and never a word more, like a woman, nor fairgood-e'en nor fair good-day to ye, but off she went, and I was the stirkagain.
I looked after her till she went out of sight, wondering what had beenthe cause of her tirravee. She fair ran at the last, as if eager to getout of my sight; and when she disappeared over the brae that rose fromthe river-side there was a sense of deprivation within me. I was cleangone in love and over the lugs in it with Isobel Fortune.