FullReads

To Lord Stair belonged the credit of finding one who was approved of by Lady Stair as an entirely suitable match. David Dunbar, younger, of Baldoon in Wigtonshire, a solid young man with a good, solid fortune, was the son-in-law of their choice; and Lady Stair found no difficulty in getting him to see that her beautiful daughter was undoubtedly the right wife for him.

Contemporary history furnishes us with no description of Andrew, Lord Rutherfurd, but we learn from the Edinburgh printer who furnished the Dunbar family with an enthusiastic elegy on the death of David Dunbar of Baldoon that apparently he was a little red-faced man, ardently keen about agricultural pursuits, and deeply interested in the breeding of cattle and horses. Moreover, he was a student, well versed in modern history and in architecture, and with a good head for arithmetic (did he add up the figures of the fortune of Janet Dalrymple entirely to his own satisfaction?), and he had the additional amazing distinction chronicled by his eulogising biographer–

“He learned the French, be’t spoken to his praise, In very little more than forty days.”

It is impossible to tell how much of the love story of the girl whom he proposed to make his wife was known to young Baldoon. Possibly he had had it lightly sketched to him by Lady Stair’s skilled hand, as a mere girlish fancy, likely to be very soon past and already entirely on the wane. In any case, Baldoon evidently saw no more difficulties in the way of his nuptials than did Lord and Lady Stair. The fact that the bride “canna thole the man” must ever be a purely secondary consideration in such matrimonial arrangements. Meantime the unhappy bride-elect had the scheme laid before her, and in spite of her sobbing protests, was commanded to conform to the wishes of her parents.

The news of Lady Stair’s triumph was not long in coming to Lord Rutherfurd’s ears, and he at once wrote to Janet Dalrymple to remind her that she was pledged to him by everything that they both considered holy. No reply came from the unhappy girl, but a letter from Lady Stair informed the distracted lover that her daughter was fully sensible of the grave fault of which she had been guilty in entering into an engagement without the sanction of her parents, and that she now retracted her vows, and was about to give her hand to Mr. David Dunbar of Baldoon. Such an answer, written by the mother of his betrothed, and not by the girl herself, was scarcely likely to be received with meekness by one of the Rutherfurds of that ilk. Lord Rutherfurd demanded an interview with Janet Dalrymple, and absolutely declined to accept any reply that did not come to him from her own lips. It was a struggle between a high-spirited, determined man, deeply in love with her that he strove for, and a woman whose heart was as hard as her brain was keen, and who did not scruple to use any means, fair or foul, by which to gain her own ends. The lion and the snake are unequal combatants, and in this case the lion was worsted indeed. Lady Stair granted the interview, but took care that not for one moment was her daughter permitted to be alone with her lover. Lord Rutherfurd had many arguments that he had deemed unanswerable, but the lady’s nimble wits and ready tongue found an answer for each one.

It must have been a strange scene that took place that day in the old mansion of Carsecreugh. The girl herself was present, but, had the tales of Lady Stair’s dealings with the Evil One been true, she could not have substituted for her beautiful, happy daughter any witch-made thing that looked more lifeless than the poor, white-faced creature that sat with silent lips and down-cast eyes, terror-ridden, broken-hearted.