he kept up a good pace, half-running, half-striding, till they had passed the railway, and he found himself gasping with a stitch in his side, and compelled to rest in the lee of what had once been a sheepfold. Saskia amazed him. She moved over the rough heather like a deer, and it was her hand that helped him across the deeper hags. Before such youth and vigour he felt clumsy and old. She stood looking down at him as he recovered his breath, cool, unruffled, alert as Diana. His mind fled to Heritage, and it occurred to him suddenly that the Poet had set his affections very high. Loyalty drove him to speak for his friend.
“I’ve got the easy job,” he said. “Mr. Heritage will have the whole pack on him in that old Tower, and him with such a sore clout on his head. I’ve left him my pistol. He’s a terrible brave man!”
She smiled.
“Ay, and he’s a poet too.”
“So?” she said. “I did not know. He is very young.”
“He’s a man of very high ideels.”
She puzzled at the word, and then smiled. “He is like many of our young men in Russia, the students—his mind is in a ferment and he does not know what he wants. But he is brave.”
This seemed to Dickson’s loyal soul but a chilly tribute.
“I think he is in love with me,” she continued.
He looked up startled, and saw in her face that which gave him a view into a strange new world. He had thought that women blushed when they talked of love, but he eyes were as grave and candid as a boy’s. Here was one who had gone through waters so deep that she had lost the foibles of sex. Love to her was only a word of ill omen, a threat on the lips of brutes, an extra battalion of peril in an army of perplexities. He felt like some homely rustic who finds himself swept unwittingly into the moonlight hunt of Artemis and her maidens.
“He is a romantic,” she said. “I have known so many like him.”
“He’s no that,” said Dickson shortly. “Why he used to be aye laughing at me for being romantic. He’s one that’s looking for truth and reality, he says, and he’s terrible down on the kind of poetry I like myself.”
She smiled. “They all talk so. But you, my friend Dickson” (she pronounced the name in two staccato syllables ever so prettily), “you are different. Tell me about yourself.”
“I’m just what you see—a middle-aged retired grocer.”
“Grocer?” she queried. “Ah, yes, épicier. But you are a very remarkable épicier. Mr. Heritage I understand, but you and those little boys—no. I am sure of one thing—you are not a romantic. You are too humorous and—and—I think you are like Ulysses, for it would not be easy to defeat you.”
Her eyes were kind, nay affectionate, and Dickson experienced a preposterous rapture in his soul, followed by a sinking, as he realized how far the job was still from being completed.
“We must be getting on, Mem,” he said hastily, and the two plunged again into the heather.
The Ayr road was crossed, and the fir wood around the Mains became visible, and presently the white gates of the entrance. A wind-blown spire of smoke beyond the trees proclaimed that the house was not untenanted. As they entered the drive the Scots firs were tossing in the gale, which blew fiercely at this altitude, but, the dwelling itself being more in the hollow, the daffodil clumps on the lawn were but mildly fluttered.
The door was opened by a one-armed butler who bore all the marks of the old regular soldier. Dickson produced a card and asked to see his master on urgent business. Sir Archibald was at home, he was told, and had just finished breakfast. The two were led into a large bare chamber which had all the chill and mustiness of a bachelor’s drawing-room. The butler returned, and said Sir Archibald would see him. “I’d better go myself first and prepare the way, Mem,” Dickson whispered, and followed the man across the hall.
He found himself ushered into a fair-sized room where a bright fire was burning. On a table lay the remains of breakfast, and the odour of food mingled pleasantly with the scent of peat. The horns and heads of big game, foxes’ masks, the model of a gigantic salmon, and several bookcases adorned the walls, and books and maps were mixed with decanters and cigar-boxes on the long sideboard. After the wild out of doors the place seemed the very shrine of comfort. A young man sat in an arm-chair by the fire with a leg on a stool; he was smoking a pipe, and reading the Field, and on another stool at his elbow was a pile of new novels. He was a pleasant brown-faced young man, with remarkably smooth hair and a roving humorous eye.
“Come in, Mr. McCunn. Very glad to see you. If, as I take it, you’re the grocer, you’re a household name in these parts. I get all my supplies from you, and I’ve just been makin’ inroads on one of your divine hams. Now, what can I do for you?”
“I’m very proud to hear what you say, Sir Archibald. But I’ve not come on business. I’ve come with the queerest story you ever heard in your life and I’ve come to ask your help.”
“Go ahead. A good story is just what I want this vile mornin’.”
“I’m not here alone. I’ve a lady with me.”
“God bless my soul! A lady!”
“Ay, a princess. She’s in the next room.”
The young man looked wildly at him and waved the book he had been reading.
“Excuse me, Mr. McCunn, but are you quite sober? I beg your pardon. I see you are. But you know, it isn’t done. Princesses don’t as a rule come here after breakfast to pass the time of day. It’s more absurd than this shocker I’ve been readin’.”
“All the same it’s a fact. She’ll tell you the story herself, and you’ll believe her quick enough. But to prepare your mind I’ll just give you a sketch of the events of the last few days.”
Before the sketch was concluded the young man had violently rung the bell. “Sime,” he shouted to the servant, “clear away this mess and lay the table again. Order more breakfast, all the breakfast you can get. Open the windows and get the tobacco smoke out of the air. Tidy up the place for there’s a lady comin’. Quick, you juggins!”
He was on his feet now, and, with his arm in Dickson’s, was heading for the door.
“My sainted aunt! And you topped off with pottin’ at the factor. I’ve seen a few things in my day, but I’m blessed if I ever met a bird like you!”
CHAPTER 11
GRAVITY OUT OF BED
It is probable that Sir Archibald Roylance did not altogether believe Dickson’s tale; it may be that he considered him an agreeable romancer, or a little mad, or no more than a relief to the tedium of a wet Sunday morning. But his incredulity did not survive one glance at Saskia as she stood in that bleak drawing-room among Victorian water-colours and faded chintzes. The young man’s boyishness deserted him. He stopped short in his tracks, and made a profound and awkward bow. “I am at your service, Mademoiselle,” he said, amazed at himself. The words seemed to have come out of a confused
