Chapter XXIII: The Contents of the Knapsack

‘Come, this must be seen to,’ said Tam half reluctantly, half roughly, for he felt that though he might have to act in his character of magistrate, personally he had got enough of the Mackinnons. He had no inclination to mix himself up in what was the business of the fellow who was Clary’s foolish fancy, whom her father had begun to regard as his natural enemy. The probabilities flashed upon Tam as he reflected for an instant: ‘Gavin Mackinnon was a great stravaiger [wanderer] after sport. He may have carried that article with a change of linen; he was a particular man in his dress, forgettin’ what else had been stowed awa’ in the bag, and then left it behind him. It was like the pompous, careless puppy; and now it has fallen to my lot to claim the papers in the name of their proper owner, if, indeed, one of them be not my ain concern.’

Opposite Tam, Sandy Macnab was still holding back his man, and enjoining him to ‘bide still for a senseless dug,’ or he might be had up for contempt of a magistrate, and committed as a vagrant and thief. The asylum was one thing and the county gaol another, as Rory might find to his cost.

Tam Drysdale, in search of a further clue, picked up a loose single sheet of paper which looked as if it had been wrapped round the other papers. It had a line or two written on it in the clear round text which belonged to the parish school of former days: ‘Left behind by a Lowland gentleman, whose name appears to have been Gavin Mackinnon, but whose further address is unknown at the King’s Arms Inn, North Uist. It is probable that the property, which may be of value to the owner, will be called for.’ Then followed a date of a quarter of a century back.

Whether the Morag who had been the grandmother of Rory, and had in course of time passed on to him the lost luggage, was a managing kinswoman of the innkeeper retired from business, or an acquisitive elderly chambermaid picking up what she could find--stowing it away in case it should come handy to herself at some future day, and ending by brooding on the unacknowledged possession till she hugely magnified its importance--Rory was never likely to tell, and there was no other person to explain.

‘I cannot say that I approve of your mode of conductin’ business, Sandy Macnab,’ said Tam sternly. ‘You may be taken up for assault if you do not take care. I would bid you let go your grip this minute, if you had to do with a reasonable being; as it is, it will be on your head if you treat him like a cowardly brute when you see him off the premises, which I must ask you to do. I’ll keep the papers. So far as I can judge, they are of little moment to anybody--which you’ve seen already, I doubt not. But whether that cratur is a born natural, or a raging madman, he has nothing to do with auld deeds--on the face of them.’ As he spoke, Tam picked up two separate folded-up sheets of yellowing parchment. ‘They must not be left in his hands. Stay! he seems to have been deluded into the belief that they were worth money, which he would receive when he delivered them up in the proper quarter. He had no warrant whatever for detaining them; but as I understand he travelled south with them, to his ain loss of time and trouble, he may be entitled morally, if not legally, to some sma’ compensation.’

‘That’s just what I’ve been thinking, Mr. Drysdale,’ chimed in Sandy, glib and unabashed, as Rory of the Shelties, exhausted by the fruitless conflict, leant back panting and glaring in the clutch of the other son of the Gael. ‘I kenned fine the scartipikin [scarecrow] had neither airt nor pairt in the papers in the kistie that he was so full o’. But he cam’ with them sooth, there can be nae question of that; so I brocht him here to deliver up his booty with his ain hands, and get what reward or punishment was his due.’

‘There’s a five-pound note--and mind, Macnab, you’re answerable for what becomes o’t,’ said Tam, handing over the money, at which Rory, making a desperate effort, caught with his bony fingers.

‘Is it gude paper?’ he demanded breathlessly; ‘will it buy back Morag’s cruivie [croft]?’

‘Hoots! ye maunna back-spear [cross-question] a gentleman, or look a gift-horse in the mooth; ye’ve come off real weel when you micht be laid up in jile for keepin’ back papers that’s no your ain,’ Sandy assured his compatriot cheerfully. ‘Out with your leather pouch, you ill-bred deil’s buckie [devil’s shell], and thank his honour--it’s little thanks ye gie a body--and come your wa’s without mair trouble; I’m sure ye’ve gien a hantle mair, since I kenned you first, than you’re a’ worth.’

‘There’s a couple of half-crowns to you, Sandy Macnab,’ said Tam, on second thoughts. ‘I believe you’ve not done so ill by this poor wretch. It would be well, if consistent with your duty to Sir Jeames, that you should see him on board ane of the Hielant boats before his pockets are picked and he’s left to die on the streets.’

‘Mony thanks--I’m your man, Mr. Drysdale. I’ll be in Glasgy for mair medicine for the pups, that have ta’en the distemper, the day after the morn at farrest. I’ll put the body into the hands of Nicol MacNicol, a steward, who is a friend of mine that gangs as far as the Lewis. Gude-day, sir!’ and Sandy marched off with his unruly _protégé_.

Tam was left alone to inspect the papers which had come by a curious chance into his possession. The first, which Sandy had called ‘spun-out marriage lines,’ was, as Tam had taken for granted, the very marriage contract, the disappearance of which had been such a puzzle to the Miss Mackinnons. It was the deed drawn up jointly by David Milne and William Dalgleish, according to which Gavin Mackinnon and Margaret Craig had agreed that her property should be settled upon her. All that Tam Drysdale knew was that she set the agreement aside, by granting her husband and his partner power to sell both land and works, when Tam bought them for an old song, compared to what they would fetch now. The bargain had been made a year or two before Mrs. Mackinnon died, like her mother, in giving birth to her only child, the same supercilious ‘offisher lad’ who had become a thorn in Tam’s flesh.

Tam regarded the deed as so much waste-paper, and merely glanced at it to see that he had been right in his conjecture of its purport. He had little sentiment to spare for the different circumstances in which it had been executed. He had never associated much feeling with Gavin Mackinnon and his wife, who had not, indeed, been sentimental persons. All that Tam Drysdale thought, as he folded up the document, was--

‘Weel, Gauvin Mackinnon was never crouse [self-satisfied] when I kenned him; he had not the spunk [spirit] in him to be crouse, though he could blaw and give himself airs in his slow, lazy way. But if he ever were crouse, it must have been the nicht he signed that paper, and, without a penny belongin’ to him, prepared to marry the heiress of Drysdale Haugh, and give her back her ain with a swagger, while he set himself to mismanage for her, and play ducks and drakes with her gudes. Puir woman! she had the worst of the bargain. The son--confoond him for a fine gentleman of an offisher, who disdains to put himself forrit!--seems up to the same trick, as auld as the hills and as shabby as a worn saxpence. Before I sorned [lived] on ony woman I would cast aff my coat and break stanes at the side of the road. But he’ll not get in his hand if I can help it--not though Clary were so far left to hersel’--a lassie with Clary’s wit! But in that case he’ll tak’ her as she stands, she’ll not get a farthing of mine; she can follow the drum if that be her will, only young Tam, who may need the sillar, and little Eppie, who would never cross her father, will be the gainers. But it cannot be; Clary’s not a fule, though she’s high-headed, to fling hersel’ awa’ on a great pithless lump--just because he has the richt to put on the Queen’s regimentals, which, nowadays, neither he nor his brother offishers have the speerit to wear, and is made welcome to straik [stretch] his lang legs beneath sic a table as that at Semple Barns. No, it canna be.’

It was an annoyance to Tam that he should be burdened, even to the small extent of having to keep this old marriage contract, till he could hand it over to the person for whom he had so little esteem, who had the best right to it. Tam might be safely depended upon to take prompt steps to ascertain whether young Mackinnon was at Semple Barns, where he stayed so often, or when he was expected there, in order to get rid of the trust.

Tam Drysdale turned with much more interest to what proved the will of his namesake, the original owner of the Drysdale Haugh farm and works. The two papers had no doubt been brought together at the time of the drawing out of the marriage contract, in the office of one or other of the lawyers, and had eventually been lost in company by Gavin Mackinnon’s notorious incompetence.

The loss need not have been hopeless, if the Miss Mackinnons had but known it. Copies of the deeds would have been found in the proper places. But small blame to Miss Janet for her ignorance, since Tam Drysdale--a good business man, for whom the law had a certain fascination--shared her lack of information on these points.

Tam examined the will carefully, but without much speculation how it had come there, and whether it was the sole indication of the dead man’s pleasure in the disposal of his property. He had no reason to doubt what had been his father’s cousin’s meaning, and it would have taken a powerful reason to shake his broad acquiescence in all that had happened. If he read the settlement slowly, every word, it was from a motive quite apart from any eager desire or vague impulse to dispute its authority. Early associations were rising thick and fast, and filling his mind. He recalled the old man, homely and a little harsh, but not unrighteous or altogether untender, when his mother had sometimes received permission to take her boy to the farmhouse. He had not been without little relentings and kindnesses to Tam and his mother, though he had openly and indignantly condemned the husband and father who had wasted his little patrimony and sunk to the lowest social grade, dragging down his wife and child in the process. Neither had old Drysdale ever concealed his intention of leaving his goods past his Drysdale cousins to his late wife’s niece, Mrs. Craig, in India. He had talked openly of the arrangement as one he had entered into when he took home the lass-bairn and fancied she would be the solace of his old age. He had been mistaken, but he had made the stipulation, and it was not for him to break his part of the bargain, while the poor, credulous lass, who must drink as she had brewed, might want all the help that he could give her. It was for young Tam--auld Tam was young Tam in these days--who was a brisk, sturdy laddie, to work, to redeem what his father had lost. It was the discipline which might save the son from going the same road; for anything else--such as gifting the chap who had begun the world a working lad with gear he had never earned--would have been in these austere eyes to send him straight to destruction.

And Tam had never greatly grudged the alienation of the property, for which he had always been prepared, though the moment he had seen the possibility he had worked hard to recover it. But it gave him a thrill now, though he was not a superstitious man, to handle and study the document, as nearly as possible on the spot where it had been devised. He could conjure up the circumstances--the old man sitting solitary, but without visible weakness, nay, stiff, upright, and determined, in his bare parlour; the complacent lawyer from the town waiting his instructions; a tolerable bottle of wine--not the sour stuff the Miss Mackinnons treasured, but good wine of its kind, ordered for the old man’s infirmities--or two rummers of toddy and a plate with a cut lemon standing between the couple.

Tam remembered to have heard a characteristic anecdote of his namesake’s scorn of insincerity and of covert acts to obtain by favour what had not been justified by right, or by work done for the coveted reward.

The old man had taken it into his head that his doctor, in addition to his claim for the fee of which he was certain, had surreptitious views on the sick man’s estate, and desired to figure as a legatee in his will. On the last night that the medical man visited his patient, whose hours were numbered, the undaunted invalid suddenly asked for the physician’s cane, which was furnished with a cord and tassel. The sick man, amidst the wondering, half-scared looks of the watchers, raised himself in bed and asked for a penknife and a bit of narrow black riband which happened to be lying near. With feeble hands he cut away the cord and tassel, laced the riband through the hole in the wood, tied it in a little bow, and then handed the stick back to its owner, with a formal inclination of the head, saying: ‘There, sir, are both your murnins and your legacy.’ Within a few hours from perpetrating the grim jest, the jester departed this life.

Tam wondered what his kinsman would have thought if he could have seen the result of his will. Surely he must have approved and been proud of the achievements of his descendant. Tam straightened himself, got up and took a turn across his business-room with something of the peacock strut which, alas! sometimes distinguished him. He thought of the greatly enlarged and improved works, the immensely extended trade, the honour in the commercial world, the field added to field, the grand house, the friendship of such men as Sir James and Sir Hugo Willoughby, the position of Tam’s family when it had been thought that little Eppie might end by being ‘my leddy,’ and contrasted all these changes with the limited and clumsy materials of the past, the small reputation, the plain farmhouse, and its almost sordid domestic economy.

Blood was thicker than water. Though Tam’s cousin had once on a day been fond as a father of his dead wife’s niece, the girl he had brought up, she had disappointed him, and he had never got over his rooted dislike to Jock Craig. Old Drysdale had not so much as made mention of any children of the marriage in dictating the deed. It was but an accident, after all, the fact that Mrs. Craig had survived her uncle by a few hours, which had stood between Tam’s father, despised reprobate as he had been, and the inheritance of Drysdale Haugh.

Tam himself had never before fully realized how close the run had been, how narrow the escape of Mrs. Craig’s infant daughter from the forfeiture of her mother’s succession. It would have made a difference. He would have been saved from a youth of toil and hardship, for he would very soon have come into his father’s shoes.

The poor prodigal from whom Tam had drawn his being, though his physique was from his mother, had been near his last gasp when fortune dealt him the final blow, which none could say had been undeserved. Not even the strong stimulant of unexpected good fortune would have prolonged his life for many months, or given him time to squander the larger inheritance as he had squandered the smaller. Tam would have come into it almost intact. He might have been able to educate himself while he was yet young, to spare himself many a drudging day and weary night.

But looking back calmly over the gulf of years, with the mountains of difficulty well past, the man decided it was better as it had been. He had profited by the warfare he had undergone--it had made twice the man of him that he might have been otherwise. It was more honourable to have hewed out the fortune which he honestly thought so great and enviable, than to have derived even a part of it from the gift of another. Tam held his head the higher for the thought. At the same time he would not return the will which had so strangely found its way to him unsought, till he saw a clear obligation to relinquish it. Surely it was more his property than that of any Mackinnon of them, whose name did not even occur in its pages. When it came to the question, it was not probable that anybody, be he a Mackinnon or a stranger, would wrangle with Tam for the possession of an old deed which had taken effect and been overturned by Tam’s own purchase, more than twenty years before.

With regard to the marriage contract, it was clearly young Mackinnon’s. But the next day Tam ascertained that Mr. Mackinnon was not at Semple Barns, and that he was not expected there soon, for the good reason that he and Dick Semple had gone in a friend’s yacht to Norway. Their present address was unattainable, and by the time they returned, the Drysdales would have gone with the rest of the world to the coast. The matter was of little consequence. Any unnecessary intercourse between Tam and the young man, while Tam’s feelings towards him were what has been stated, would be, to say the least, the reverse of agreeable. The matter might stand over. The paper was safer in Tam’s desk than it had been for many a day. Altogether it seemed the natural and proper course to wait till the two men came in contact again, in the ordinary intercourse, at Semple Barns or elsewhere, before telling the story and committing Guy Mackinnon’s marriage contract to the keeping of his son.