would look down and secretly smile.Clem was a spy whom they had sent out into the world of men.He had come back with the good news that there was nobody to compare with the Four Black Brothers, no position that they would not adorn, no official that it would not be well they should replace, no interest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediately bloom under their supervision.The excuse of their folly is in two words: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry.The measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity were kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestral practice.To the world their serious faces were never deformed by the suspicion of any simper of self-contentment.Yet it was known."They hae a guid pride o' themsel's!" was the word in the country-side.
Lastly, in a Border story, there should be added their "two-names." Hob was The Laird."Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne"; he was the laird of Cauldstaneslap - say fifty acres - IPSISSIMUS.Clement was Mr.Elliott, as upon his door-plate, the earlier Dafty having been discarded as no longer applicable, and indeed only a reminder of misjudgment and the imbecility of the public; and the youngest, in honour of his perpetual wanderings, was known by the sobriquet of Randy Dand.
It will be understood that not all this information was communicated by the aunt, who had too much of the family failing herself to appreciate it thoroughly in others.But as time went on, Archie began to observe an omission in the family chronicle.
"Is there not a girl too?" he asked.
"Ay: Kirstie.She was named for me, or my grandmother at least - it's the same thing," returned the aunt, and went on again about Dand, whom she secretly preferred by reason of his gallantries.
"But what is your niece like?" said Archie at the next opportunity.
"Her? As black's your hat! But I dinna suppose she would maybe be what you would ca' ILL-LOOKED a'thegither.Na, she's a kind of a handsome jaud - a kind o' gipsy," said the aunt, who had two sets of scales for men and women - or perhaps it would be more fair to say that she had three, and the third and the most loaded was for girls.
"How comes it that I never see her in church?" said Archie.
" 'Deed, and I believe she's in Glesgie with Clem and his wife.A heap good she's like to get of it! I dinna say for men folk, but where weemen folk are born, there let them bide.Glory to God, I was never far'er from here than Crossmichael."In the meanwhile it began to strike Archie as strange, that while she thus sang the praises of her kinsfolk, and manifestly relished their virtues and (I may say) their vices like a thing creditable to herself, there should appear not the least sign of cordiality between the house of Hermiston and that of Cauldstaneslap.Going to church of a Sunday, as the lady housekeeper stepped with her skirts kilted, three tucks of her white petticoat showing below, and her best India shawl upon her back (if the day were fine) in a pattern of radiant dyes, she would sometimes overtake her relatives preceding her more leisurely in the same direction.Gib of course was absent: by skreigh of day he had been gone to Crossmichael and his fellow-heretics; but the rest of the family would be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand, stiff-necked, straight-backed six-footers, with severe dark faces, and their plaids about their shoulders; the convoy of children scattering (in a state of high polish) on the wayside, and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer.At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a delicate living pink.
"A braw day to ye, Mistress Elliott," said she, and hostility and gentility were nicely mingled in her tones."A fine day, mem," the laird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while her plumage - setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to the mere man, the pattern of her India shawl.Behind her, the whole Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with an indescribable air of being in the presence of the foe; and while Dandie saluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well in court, Hob marched on in awful immobility.There appeared upon the face of this attitude in the family the consequences of some dreadful feud.
Presumably the two women had been principals in the original encounter, and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, too late to be included in the present skin-deep reconciliation.
"Kirstie," said Archie one day, "what is this you have against your family?""I dinna complean," said Kirstie, with a flush."I say naething.""I see you do not - not even good-day to your own nephew," said he.
"I hae naething to be ashamed of," said she."I can say the Lord's prayer with a good grace.If Hob was ill, or in preeson or poverty, Iwould see to him blithely.But for curtchying and complimenting and colloguing, thank ye kindly!"Archie had a bit of a smile: he leaned back in his chair."I think you and Mrs.Robert are not very good friends," says he slyly, "when you have your India shawls on?"She looked upon him in silence, with a sparkling eye but an indecipherable expression; and that was all that Archie was ever destined to learn of the battle of the India shawls.
"Do none of them ever come here to see you?" he inquired.
"Mr.Archie," said she, "I hope that I ken my place better.It would be a queer thing, I think, if I was to clamjamfry up your faither's house -that I should say it! - wi' a dirty, black-a-vised clan, no ane o' them it was worth while to mar soap upon but just mysel'! Na, they're all damnifeed wi' the black Ellwalds.I have nae patience wi' black folk."Then, with a sudden consciousness of the case of Archie, "No that it maitters for men sae muckle," she made haste to add, "but there's naebody can deny that it's unwomanly.Long hair is the ornament o'
woman ony way; we've good warrandise for that - it's in the Bible - and wha can doubt that the Apostle had some gowden-haired lassie in his mind - Apostle and all, for what was he but just a man like yersel'?"