David Douglas

“ In this room a girl sat, darning stockings and crying quietly to herself—crying because her brother David had gone to Oxford the day before, and she was afraid he would find it hard work to live on his scholarship with the small help she could give him, afraid that he might find himself shabby and feel it bitter, afraid that he might not come back to her the kind, clear-eyed boy he had gone away. ”

“ Jean said as she stroked the little head, "and yet so independent? Sheep are far before mortals. Its eyes look so perplexed, Mhor. It's quite strange to the world and doesn't know what to make of it. That's its mother over there. Take it to her; she's crying for it."
David came up and stood looking gloomily at the lamb. Perhaps he envied it being so young and careless and motor-less.
"Stark's busy with the car," he announced, rather needlessly, as the fact was apparent to all. "I'm dashed if I know what's the matter with the old bus.... Here's that man again...." ”

“ And why not—at nineteen?
"We must think about a car. Do you know all about the different makes?
We mustn't be rash."
David assured her that he would make all inquiries and went out of the room whistling blithely. Jean, left alone, sat thinking. Was the money to be a treasure to her or the reverse? It was fine to give David what he wanted, to know that Jock and Mhor could have the best of everything, but their wants would grow and grow; simple tastes and habits were easily shed, and luxurious ways easily learned. Would the possession of money spoil the boys? ”

“ That will be a quarter for each of us—David, Jock, Mhor, me."
Jean spoke as if the fortune was a lump of dough and Mr. Dickson the baker, but the lawyer did not smile.
"I understood you had only two brothers?"
"Yes, David and Jock, but Mhor is an adopted brother. His name's Gervase
Taunton."
"But—has he any claim on you?"
Jean's face got pink. "I should think he has. He's exactly like our own brother."
"Then you want him to have a full share?"
"Of course. It's odd how people will assume one is a cad! ”

“ The course of events in Scotland during the next seven years is outside the life of David. A new race of patriotic leaders—Murray of Bothwell, Robert the Steward, Douglas the Knight of Liddesdale—worthily sustained the fame of Robert Bruce, Douglas, and Randolph. At first they carried on the war with varying success, but ultimately they freed the country and retook all the castles. The greater attraction of a French campaign prevented Edward from ever using his whole strength against the northern kingdom. Not much is known of David's residence in France. ”

“ He further increased his estates by his marriage with Joanna Moray, heiress of Bothwell. During the intervals of war with the English he imposed feudal law on the border chieftains, drawing up a special code for the marches. He was twice sent on missions to the French court. The power of the Black Douglas overshadowed the crown under the weak rule of Robert III., and in 1399 he arranged a marriage between David, duke of Rothesay, the king’s son and heir, and his own daughter, Marjory Douglas. ”

“ Macdonald. "It's an uncertain world. But we'll hope that you'll come back to us, Jean. Are you sure you are warmly clad? Remember it's only April, and the evenings are cold."
David packed Jean, Jock, and Mhor into the car. Peter was poised on one of the seats that let down, a cushion under him to protect the pale fawn cloth from his paws. All the presents found places, the luggage was put on the top, Stark took his seat, David, his coat pocket bulging with maps, got in beside him ”

“ One night he did an act of charity. He brought home to his rooms a homeless wanderer whom he had found discharged from a night in the cells, gave him his own bedroom and sent for a doctor and nurse. From them he learnt that so far as Emily de Reuss was concerned, there was nothing more to be feared from David Strong. His days were numbered at last, and the end was very near. So Douglas would hear nothing of a hospital, and spent weary nights at the dying man's side. ”

“ At last the curtains were jerked apart, and revealed what seemed to be a funeral pyre. Branches were piled on the window-seat, and on the top, wrapped in an eiderdown quilt, with a laurel wreath bound round his head, lay David. Jock, with bare legs and black boots, draped in an old-fashioned circular waterproof belonging to Mrs. M'Cosh, stood with arms folded looking at him, while Mhor, almost denuded of clothing, and supported by Peter (who sat with his back to the audience to show his thorough disapproval of the proceedings) , stood at one side. ”

“ Do I know them?"
"Well," said Mhor, "there's Napoleon and Dick Turpin and Graham of Claverhouse and Prince Charlie and——"
"Mhor—you're talking too much," said David, who was jotting down figures in a notebook.
"It's to be hoped," said Jean to Mrs. M'Cosh, "that the honourable lady will suit Bella Bathgate, for Bella, honest woman, won't put herself about to suit anybody. But she's been a good neighbour to us. I always feel so safe with her near; she's equal to anything from a burst pipe to a broken arm.... ”

“ M'Cosh: a smart housemaid must be got.
"She would only worry Mrs. M'Cosh," Jean protested "and there isn't room for another maid, and I hate smart maids anyway. I like to help in the house myself."
"But that's so absurd," said David, "with all your money. You should enjoy life now."
"Yes," said Jean meekly, "but smart maids wouldn't help me to—quite the opposite.... And don't you get ideas into your head about smartness, Davie. The Rigs could never be smart: you must go to The Towers for that. So long as we live at The Rigs we must be small plain people. ”

“ Pamela spoke first. "There speaks sweet and twenty," she said.
"Yes," said Jean. "I know it's quite easy for me to speak in that lordly way of disposing of possessions, for I haven't got any to dispose of."
"Then," said Pamela, "we are to take it that you are ready to spring across any minute?"
"So far as goods and gear go; but I'm rich in other things. I'm pretty heavily weighted by David, and Jock, and Mhor."
Then Peter Reid spoke, still with his hand over his eyes.
"Once you begin to make money it clings. How can you get rid of it?" ”

“ God have mercy on us."
She regarded him with disapproving eyes as a thoroughly uncomfortable character.
One of the guests sang a drawing-room ballad in which the words "dear heart" seemed to occur with astonishing frequency. Then the entertainment took a distinctly lower turn.
David and Jock sang a song composed by themselves and set to a hymn tune, a somewhat ribald production. Mhor then volunteered the information that Mrs. M'Cosh could sing a song. Mrs. ”

“ She thinks about them all the time, and considers their comfort, and dresses them in pale grey with the daintiest spotted muslin aprons and mob caps. It is a pleasure to go to the Jowetts for a meal, everything is so perfect. The only drawback is if anyone makes the slightest mark on the cloth one of the silver-grey maids brings a saucer of water and wipes it off, and it is apt to make one nervous. I shall never forget going there to a children's party with David and Jock. Great-aunt Alison warned us most solemnly before we left home about marking the cloth, so we went rather tremblingly. ”

“ There was a cinema, too, and that was a touch of home. Talking over Priorsford with Glasgow friends she would say, "It's no' juist whit I wud ca' the deid country—no juist paraffin-ile and glaury roads, ye ken. We hev gas an' plain-stanes an' a pictur hoose."
When Mrs. M'Cosh left the room Jock returned to his books, and the Mhor, his imagination fermenting with the thought of bombs on Priorsford, retired to the window-seat to think out further damage.
Some hours later, when Jock and Mhor were fast asleep and David, his packing finished, was preparing to go to bed, Jean slipped into the room. ”

“ Douglas married Eliza, daughter of Jeremiah Riordan, Surgeon in the Royal Navy, in 1868, and has four children—William, James S., Howard R. and Amy Douglas. He was formerly Vice-President of the National Club, and is a Trustee of the Toronto General Hospital, and of the Canadian Associated Press, of which he was a promoter. A Presbyterian in religion and a Conservative in politics. Mr. Douglas numbers among his clubs the National and Albany of Toronto, the Rideau of Ottawa, the Caledon Mountain Trout Club and the Cuckoo Valley Fishing Club. Is a Justice of the Peace for the County of York. ”

“ The crisis seems to demand a standard-bearer who will meet the cunning of the pale face with the cunning of the red man, and I therefore make this nomination in order that I may go to my camp in the Gunnison country feeling that I have done my duty by calling the attention of my people to a man who is well calculated to lead us to success. Douglas has filled almost every position of trust or profit in our nation. He has held nearly every office within the gift of the people from watermelon stealer extraordinary up to most supreme bartender of the nation, and he has never betrayed a trust. ”

“ Douglas was a remarkable man, both in character and in person. In age he may have been about fifty, with a strong-jawed, rugged face, a grizzling moustache, peculiarly keen gray eyes, and a wiry, vigorous figure which had lost nothing of the strength and activity of youth. He was cheery and genial to all, but somewhat offhand in his manners, giving the impression that he had seen life in social strata on some far lower horizon than the county society of Sussex. ”

“ While the armies lay thus opposed to each other, Douglas resolved to give the young king of England a lesson in the art of war. At the dead of night, he left the Scottish camp with a small body of chosen horse, not above two hundred, well armed. He crossed the river in deep silence, and came to the English camp, which was but carelessly guarded. Seeing this, Douglas rode past the English sentinels as if he had been an officer of the English army, saying,—"Ha, Saint George! you keep bad watch here!" ”

“ The tide came up to the doors of the tents.
“One always has a good time where Douglas is,” Lillian said. “He is like a boy. I remember Princess Bibesco and Anthony Asquith once came to Hollywood and were invited by Douglas and Mary to make a party to climb the mountain behind Pickfair, and go down on the other side, for camp breakfast. We had to start very early. I drove from the Beverley Hills Hotel and it was still dark when I got to Pickfair. I dressed in Doug’s riding clothes to do the climbing. The Asquiths were to go on horseback, but Douglas made Mary and me walk. ”

“ It is hard work, and sometimes the dun is at the door, and contact is inevitable with men who don't understand the precious jewel he weareth in his head;—but the week's hard work is got through somehow; and on Sundays he sallies forth for rural air with a little knot of friends, and the talk is of art, and letters, and the world. So quick and keen a nature as his had immense buoyancy in it. Nay, for the very dun young Douglas had an epigram,—as bright, but not as welcome, as a sovereign. ”

“ Unable to withstand the attractions of the mysterious calling, he, in 1820, made his first regular appearance on the stage as Douglas in John Home's tragedy of that name. His success was immediate. His youth, his robust and manly physique, his clear, resonant voice, his fair and handsome face, won the great audience at once. ”

“ He was appointed regent of Scotland in March 1333. The leadership of Douglas was impetuous rather than skilful, and lost the Scots the battle of Halidon, 19 July 1333. Douglas was slain there with many of his companions, including the son and successor of Sir James Douglas. Douglas married Beatrice, daughter of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Crawford, who was afterwards the wife of Sir Robert Erskine of Erskine, and so ancestress of the Erskines, earls of Mar. Their eldest son, John, dying young, their second son, William, became first earl of Douglas [q. v.] ”

“ I asked, "that Douglas is against all these people and that he has all these influences to fight? For example, these Puritans cannot rule if popular sovereignty is adopted everywhere. They are numerically too inferior. How, for example, can you stop the railroads on Sunday if you let communities, states, control the matter? But if these fanatics get into control of the Federal government, they can do it. Don't you see the point? This is what Douglas is thinking about. He knows that you can have freedom about life only where every man has a say." ”

“ Douglas, Senator and Judge, was a national character, mighty in politics, invulnerable in the armor of his oratory. And he was known far and wide as the Little Giant. Those whom he did not conquer with his logic were impressed by his person.
Stephen remembered with a thrill that these debates were going on now. One, indeed, had been held, and had appeared in fine print in a corner of the Democrat. Perhaps this Lincoln might not be in; Springfield; perhaps he, Stephen Brice, might, by chance, hit upon a debate, and see and hear the tower of the Democracy, the Honorable Stephen A. Douglas. ”

“ He married Margaret Cameron Ferguson, of Vankleek Hill, in 1880, to whom were born two sons and one daughter; is a member of the Manitoba Club and the St. Charles Country Club, and as a recreation is an admirer of horses. Sir Douglas is a staunch Liberal in politics, and is considered, by the leaders of his party, as one of the ablest statesmen in Canada. In religion he is a Presbyterian and an active worker in Church and Social Reform movements. ”

“ She is betrothed to the elderly Duke of{116} L——, but at the last moment throws him over and elopes to Scotland. The companion of her flight is Douglas, a handsome young officer in the army, the child of Scotch parents, but brought up in England by a wealthy adoptive father. The honeymoon is scarce over when the young people find themselves, not only partially disabused of their illusions, but in actual pecuniary straits. Juliana's elopement has hopelessly alienated the Earl ”