Short Fiction · Trooping with Crows (5/5) (3/3)

“Now don’t argue, Judith,” said Aunt Rosamond; “you don’t do it well. You’ve no reasoning powers whatever. There is no satisfaction to be got out of the affair from beginning to end, except⁠—yes, perhaps⁠—a little. Matthews, did you put the large key on the outside of the observatory door?”

Matthews answered in the affirmative, and without another word Miss Tremarten took her way up the steep narrow steps which led to the castle observatory.

It was situated at an angle of the building, and was simply a large square room which had been built out by a former earl who had developed astronomical instead of agricultural tendencies. It had been out of use for more than a generation, and had served at different periods as a receptacle for lumber of various kinds, such as old pictures and antique furniture, which had no special interest for the present earl, and one or two worn-out musical instruments. These with some large old-fashioned telescopes in different stages of dilapidation constituted the sole furniture of the room.

It certainly struck Captain McCormack as very odd that Miss Tremarten should select this out-of-the-way little corner of the house for their interview. There was a damp, unused smell too about the room as he entered which struck him as far from agreeable, and accordingly he went to the rather narrow window, which he succeeded in opening, and leaned out. There was, as might be imagined, a splendid view from this height not only of the castle grounds but also of the surrounding country. Captain Ivie, however, “did not go in for that sort of thing,” as he had more than once phrased it to his intimate friends, and at the present moment his mind could hold but one thought⁠—where was Lettice? what had become of her? In fact, he could not have looked at a printed map of the world with more indifference than he gazed upon the magnificent panorama which surrounded Castle Lochiel. “Of course I shall come out of all this very badly,” he thought to himself as he leaned out. “Everything will look very black against me, and how in Heaven’s name I’m to float along is more than I can tell. Still if I could only know that no harm had come to her through me it would be a sort of consolation after all⁠—” His soliloquy was cut short by the sudden shutting of the heavy oak door behind him with a loud bang. “Ah!” he thought, “it was my opening the window⁠—strange, too, I didn’t feel a current.” His amazement, however, was increased when he heard the creak of the key in the lock and realised that he was locked in. At first he imagined it must be one of the servants in passing, who, seeing the door open and not knowing he was there, had pulled it to and locked it. Then as he began to think over the strangeness of the whole affair it suddenly flashed across his mind that for some purpose or other he had been literally trapped and caged. His anger knew no bounds; at first he stamped, called vehemently, shook the door and beat it violently with anything and everything that came to hand⁠—an old chair till it split in two, and a rotten violin till that too succumbed to the strength of the oak. Then as it occurred to him that whoever had shut him in was probably at hand to enjoy his discomfiture and anger, he subsided a little and took a calm survey of the situation. Were there any means of escape by the window? and again he leaned out, and this time with still less inclination to enjoy the landscape. No, not even a ledge; it was just a little jutting square room built out from the castle parapet, nothing above it save a turret with some ornamental slits, nothing beneath till one came to the castle grounds a hundred feet or so below.

“Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to grin and bear it,” he said to himself, feeling for his cigar-case as he spoke. But alas! even that consolation was to be denied him, for the cigar-case was comfortably reposing in the pocket of his overcoat, left behind at Ardvaroch in his hurried departure that morning.

“And this is the only satisfaction I have had out of the whole affair,” said Aunt Rosamond to her sister as she laid the big key upon the table in her dressing-room. “I haven’t enjoyed anything so much since I was a child and caught a big ugly spider which had trapped ever so many butterflies, and put him in a scent-bottle and corked him down. I feel now as if I had caught the biggest and ugliest spider that ever was, and I don’t think he’ll be in a hurry to spin his webs again!”

Then the old lady called for her writing materials, and penned a short note to Lady Elizabeth Mackreth, begging her to excuse the absence of herself and sister for the day, and asking her to suspend all judgment upon the oddity of her proceedings until the return of Dr. Herron in the evening, when everything would be satisfactorily explained.

Lady Elizabeth showed the note to her brother.

“Really,” she said, “I think a little explanation is due to us.”

“My dear Elizabeth,” said Lord Lochiel, “I have had more than half an explanation already from Dr. Herron, and if I had known the young lady’s affections were so far engaged I would not have pressed my attentions upon her as I did; and after all, as you said yesterday, she is very young for a man at my time of life, and, with settled tastes and pursuits such as mine, matrimony is not the absolute necessity it would be to a younger man.”

And as evening drew near Aunt Rosamond began to have some misgivings as to the imprisonment of Captain Ivie.

“I think we had better let him out,” she said to her sister. “I think if we can get him away from the castle before Dr. Herron comes back it would be as well. You see if Dr. Herron tries to thrash him he may object, and perhaps there will be murder done, and Lettice’s name will be brought in again, and there’ll be more fuss than there’s been already.”

So she gave Matthews the key and desired her to tell Captain McCormack that Miss Tremarten had sent her to let him out.

Matthews took the key with much misgiving at heart.

“Perhaps he’ll knock me down when he comes out,” thought the old body; “and the key’s mighty heavy to turn; maybe ’twill break in the lock.”

Matthews couldn’t hear a sound as she listened outside the door of the observatory, for Captain Ivie had by this time subsided into something of dullness and apathy.

At the first creak, however, of the key in the lock he roused up. “Who the ⸻’s at the door?” he roared, introducing a strong noun.

“Now don’t, there’s a good soul,” said poor old Matthews, “or you’ll make me tremble so I won’t be able to turn the key.”

“Take both hands,” shouted the captain, “and do it quickly, or else by Heaven⁠—”

“Now don’t,” said Matthews. “I’m shaking so already I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“There, don’t shake,” said Captain Ivie, fearing lest his liberator might be panic-stricken and take flight. “I’d give you a sovereign not to shake if I could get at you.”

“Put it under the door,” said Matthews.

Ivie did so, and Matthews somehow found strength and courage to turn the key.

“Miss Tremarten’s compliments, sir, and she sent me up to let you out, for she thought you’d been locked in long enough,” said Matthews, trembling.

“Where is Lord Lochiel?” asked Ivie. “They shall answer for this.”

“In the drawing-room with the ladies,” answered Matthews, glad to see the last of Captain McCormack.

To the drawing-room he went. A number of guests were assembled in the larger drawing-room variously occupied, and a little apart from the others sat Lady Elizabeth engaged in conversation with Mrs. Rosneath. Lord Lochiel was not to be seen.

Ivie strode angrily into the room. “Where is Lord Lochiel?” he said, going up to Lady Elizabeth. “Lady Elizabeth, I’ve many times been your guest and your husband’s⁠—”

Lady Elizabeth looked up at him, ignored him, and continued her conversation with Mrs. Rosneath. “You were saying, Mrs. Rosneath⁠—” Then, as Ivie stood there glaring at her, she said in Arctic tones, “I’ve no doubt you’ll find Lord Lochiel in the library, Captain McCormack.”

In the corridor outside the drawing-room Captain McCormack came upon Lord Lochiel and Dr. Herron.

Dr. Herron looked him full in the face. “As I was saying to you just now, Lord Lochiel,” he said slowly and distinctly, “there are some curs on whom even a good thrashing is a waste of labour, and consequently other means have to be adopted to restrain their vicious propensities.”

Ivie turned upon him.

“Have I to thank you, sir, for the insult put upon me today?”

“Most assuredly,” replied Dr. Herron; “but thank Lord Lochiel, not me, if you please, that you have been let off so lightly.”

Lord Lochiel interposed, calling to a servant who stood near.

“Show Captain McCormack the way out,” he said. “Captain McCormack, I have the honour to wish you good day.”

“I shall call you to account for your words, sir,” said Ivie in farewell thunder to Dr. Herron.

“By all means,” replied the doctor, “only you must make haste about it, for I leave for Wales the day after tomorrow.”

But somehow Captain Ivie thought better of it, and never did call Dr. Herron to account for his words.

And when “the day after tomorrow” came it found a motley gathering assembled on the up-platform of the little country station. In one corner stood Aunt Rosamond, a little worn and worried-looking still, perhaps, for the twenty-four hours of keen anxiety she had passed through, with Lord Lochiel at her elbow, for their kindhearted host had insisted on coming down himself to see the last of his guests, even to the neglect of a local agricultural dinner, for which he had been preparing speeches and cattle-breeding statistics for the last fortnight. A few yards from these two stood Miss Judith, in close converse with the old Scotch pastor, to whom the whole party felt somehow they owed a debt of gratitude impossible to discharge, and who had a quiet persistent way of putting on one side all attempts at thanks and acknowledgments one would hardly have expected from his gentle blue-eyed physique.

“If Lettice’s father were here, Dr. Forbes,” Miss Judith was saying in her high-pitched quavering voice (more quavering than ever now for the recent hysterics she had gone through)⁠—“if he were here he would insist on⁠—”

“If the father is at all like the daughter,” interrupted Dr. Forbes, “he is very likely to win his own way to everyone’s heart. Look how she’s got over my shy little lassie there. With their two heads so close together⁠—plotting mischief, no doubt⁠—one would think they had known each other for years instead of a short twenty-four hours.”

He pointed as he spoke to Lettice, with Dr. Herron in attendance of course, who, side by side and hand in hand with Maggie, was chirping and twittering like any little bird in earnest low-voiced talk.

Lettice was looking bright and radiant and as full of smiles and dimples as ever. Never before had her brown hair seemed more crisp and curled and tangled, never before had her eyes shone more changefully with the depth of fun and happiness within. As for quiet, sedate Miss Maggie, her head was bent low, and, looking under her poke sunbonnet, one could see the trace of a tear or two which Lettice’s earnest and reiterated expressions of gratitude had somehow brought to the surface. Lettice noted them with one of those quick sidelong glances of hers, but didn’t mind them in the least. She knew they didn’t come from a sore heart now, and she knew too she could soon drive them away with her light talk and fun.

“Look at those aunties of mine,” she began, stopping short in the midst of her farewell acknowledgments. “It is quite too shocking the way they are carrying on with those two middle-aged gentlemen. Why, Maggie, if you don’t take care you’ll be having Aunt Judie for a stepmother before you know where you are.” Miss Maggie looked up aghast. “You may well look shocked, dear; I assure you those two aunts are a very great anxiety to me, and will be till I can get some obliging creature who wears a coat and hat to take them off my hands. Such fun this morning, Maggie. I thought Lord Lochiel was going to make Aunt Rosamond an offer over the breakfast-table. I could see it in his face; and he did! But it was only a propitiatory offering after all, in the shape of a bull or young heifer which he thought papa might like to cross with a Welsh breed. You should have seen Aunt Rosamond’s face as she tried to express her gratitude. ‘I’m afraid my brother doesn’t at all understand the mysteries of cattle-breeding. Beef, Lord Lochiel, in any shape or form, I could undertake⁠—it would be only a question of packing⁠—but a bull! What could we do with the thing when we put up in London for the night?’ ”

Miss Maggie is rippling over with laughter now at Lettice’s perfect reproduction of Aunt Rosamond’s voice and manner. Here Dr. Herron joins in.

“Yes, I don’t quite see how it could have been managed. Matthews certainly might have charged herself with the bull’s comforts if you young ladies had not seen fit to overload her in the way you have with a kitten and puppy-dog.”

He glances to the farther end of the platform as he speaks, where stands poor old Matthews, the picture of patient endurance, with the nose of a tabby kitten peeping out of a black bag she holds in one hand, and grasping with the other a leathern lead which a small shaggy Skye is straining to its fullest extent. Both animals had been pets of Miss Maggie’s, fallen in love with by Lettice, and presented to her by the former young lady as a token of enduring friendship.

Lettice turns upon him brightly. Depend upon it she has yet another arrow left in her quiver, and the doctor will have the benefit of it.

“Oh, Dr. Herron,” she begins demurely enough, in the sweetest, softest whisper possible, “I had nearly forgotten. Do you know I had a letter from papa this morning?⁠—such a letter! I really do think he and Mary have been flirting finely while we’ve been away, and I think they’ll be married, and then, you know, our engagement must be broken off at once, because you’d be my uncle, and it would be quite too dreadful to marry one’s uncle.”

“Yes,” replies Dr. Herron, “it would be quite too dreadful to marry one’s uncle, and I don’t see any way out of it, Lettice” (this in an equally low voice, and looking down into the clear bright eyes), “unless we get married first, and then, if your papa likes to marry his own daughter-in-law⁠—my sister that is⁠—no one can have anything to say against it.”

And married first they accordingly were.