Nextmorning James Rowland woke with the churning of the waves under the little Clyde steamboat in his ears, as if he were again on the deck waiting for the opening in the trees, and the sight of the white colonnade on the summit of its knoll, which brought with it the dazzle of the sunshine, the purity of the sweet fresh air, the twitter of the birds. How pleasant to have such a vision at waking, to realise with delight that all those pleasant things were henceforth to be the everyday circumstances of his life! But the next moment a cloud came over his face, for he recollected what it was that must be his occupation to-day. No shirking it any longer—no possibility of persuading himself that something else ought to be done first. That had been possible the first day: to see that their future home was comfortable—to make sure that it would be ready for them, surely that was a duty? But now he had accomplished it, and knew all about the house, there was nothing further to keep him back. I hope the reader will not think this perplexed father unnatural or unkind. As a matter of fact, he would have been, and probably would be, after this first obstacle was got over the kindest, the most fond of fathers. It was the consciousness of the great gulf between what, when he last saw his children, would have been right and natural for them, and what would be suitable and indeed necessary now—between what he himself was then, andwhat he was now, that overwhelmed him. They might be, in their hearts, everything the prudent father could desire, and yet be quite out of place at Rosmore, where he himself, if a little unpolished, would nevertheless be quite in his proper place. If they had been but the little children he remembered, who could have been trained into anything! Alas, these possibilities were all over. He dressed himself slowly, sighing from time to time, with an oppression on his heart that he could not account for, wishing now, after all, that Evelyn had been with him, who perhaps would have known better how to deal with the emergency. And he breakfasted very slowly, reading theHeraldin detail, and brooding over the paragraphs of local news which he did not understand after so many years of separation from Glasgow and its interests. At last the moment came when he could delay no longer. He had read the papers; he had finished his breakfast: he rose with a sigh and took his hat.
There is a street in Glasgow which I remember long ago, and which was then called the Sauchiehall Road. Something picturesque in the name has kept a place in the recollection of a child, over—let us not imagine how many years; but it may be that a recollection so far off has confused the outlines of the street, or that in this age of change it may be completely altered, perhaps overrun with tall tenements, perhaps fallen into irremediable decay. In like manner I am not sure that it was the Sauchiehall Road in which the young Rowlands lived with their aunt, though I think it was; and the reader may here excuse thepossibility of topographical error. It was a street in which there were many, according to a description exclusively and characteristically Scotch, “self-contained” houses of a small description, such as are not very usual in Scotland. So far as I remember, they were of a generally grimy kind, built in that dark complexioned stone which adds so much gloom to the often cloudy skies and damp atmosphere of the western city. These houses presented an aspect of faded gentility, and of having seen better days. But they were at the same time very attractive to people without any pretence at gentility, to whom the dignity of a front door and a house self-contained, in distinction to the more usual circumstances of a flat, was very tempting.
It was in one of these houses that Mrs. Brown, who was Rowland’s sister-in-law, had established herself with her charges. It was one that was supposed to be among the best of the long row. It had a yard or two of what was called garden in front, almost filled with an elderberry tree, on which there were some dusty indications of coming blossom; and as the house had been recently painted, and had a bank of flowers in the parlour window, it was easily distinguishable from its neighbours, which were generally faded and dingy in appearance. To describe the beating of the heart with which Mr. Rowland knocked at that freshly painted green door would be almost more than words are equal to: a lover at the crisis of hope and fear, not knowing what was to be the answer to his suit, could not have been more agitated than this sober-minded, middle-aged man. It occurred to him at the last moment not to give his name, but to trust to his sister-in-law’s recognition of him, and thus have his first view of his children entirely without any warning. He had scarcely done this, however, before he began to think that to have given them the fullest warning would have been better, so that his first impressions should have been of their very best aspect prepared to please him. But this was only after it was too late to change.
“Wha’ll I say?” said the servant girl, so decidedly bearing that aspect that she could not have been called the maid, or the servant, or anything but the girl. She was wiping her hands with her apron to be ready to take a card, and a cap had been stuck on rather at random upon a mass of curly and not very well-tended hair.
“You can say it’s a gentleman to speak to Mrs. Brown,” said Rowland, stepping into the parlour, which was rather dark with its flowers banked up against the window, though the flowers themselves seemed to flourish luxuriantly. There was something horribly familiar to him in the aspect of the room. He had seen nothing like it for many years, and yet he recognised it in a moment. It was the best room of the respectable mechanic—the parlour in which his wife put all her pride. There was a round stand, covered with a glass shade, of wax flowers in the centre of the table, and it stood upon a still larger mat surrounded with raised flowers worked in crochet in coloured wools standing primly up around. There were a few books laid round like the rays of a star: theCourse of Timeand other grimly orthodox productions of that character. Thechairs and sofa were covered with long “antimacassars,” also worked in wool in stripes of different colours; the mantelpiece was loaded with small pieces of china—girls with lambs, jugs with little pictures upon them, and other such impressive articles, and photographs. Hung over it in the place of honour, Mr. Rowland shivered to see his own portrait, flanked on one side by the picture of a bungalow in which he had once lived, and on the other by a group of football players, with names written underneath, one of them being conspicuously marked as “Archie.” Rowland, however, was breathing too quickly to allow him to go up to it, and prepare himself for the appearance of his son. He felt more like running away, and keeping up a fiction of being in India still.
While he was looking round him in consternation and alarm, he was suddenly aware that the door had opened, and a little bright figure in coloured muslin and many floating ribbons had come in. She twisted herself as she walked, with a swaying and movement of all the bright-coloured ribbons, and came forward with an apparent intention of shaking hands with the stranger. But stopping at the distance of a step or two, said with another twist, “Oh, I thought I knew you! Was there anything you might be wanting that I could do?”
“I am waiting to see Mrs. Brown,” he said.
“Oh! that’s aunty,” said the girl. She looked at the elderly visitor with a slight air of contempt, as if a man who could prefer to see aunty instead of herself was a most curious specimen of humanity. Andthen she laid down upon the table a parasol she had been carrying, and her gloves, and a small basket of flowers. “I’ve just been out to the nursery garden to get a flower,” she said, “I’m awfully fond of flowers. D’ye like them?—Will I give you one for your buttonhole—if you’re one of aunty’s friends?”
“You are very kind,” said the tremulous father, “but had you not better wait till you see if aunty recognises me for one of her friends?”
“Oh, it’s no matter,” said the girl, “a flower is neither here nor there—and she’ll not be fit to see a gentleman for a good while. She likes to put on her best gown, and her cap with the red ribbons, like the lady in the ‘Laird of Cockpen’—D’ye know the song?”
“I used to know it long ago—before I went to India——”
“Oh, you’ve come from Ingia? Papa’s out there—I wonder if you’ve come from papa. Archie and me, we are always wishing he would send for us. It would be awful fun. But he says he’s coming home. I hope he’ll not come home. I hope he’ll send for us out there. Isn’t it far better fun out in Ingia than it is here?”
“I don’t know about the fun here. Do you remember your father?” he asked.
“No,” said the young lady indifferently, “I was a little baby when he went away; and he must think I’m a little baby still, for he never sends me things that you might think he would. I’ve seen girls that had grand necklaces and things, and bangles. Banglesare very much worn here now. But papa never sent me any. I had to buy what I wear.”
She held out a wrist to him laden with these ornaments of the flimsiest description, wires of silver manufactured to suit a sudden demand.
“I am sure that he would have sent you things like these had he thought you cared.”
“What for would I not care?” said the unconscious girl with great reasonableness. She turned the bangles round and round upon her outstretched arm, holding it up to see how they looked, and not unwilling, perhaps, that the visitor should see how slim and white it was. The girl was pretty in her way. She had a wonderful amount of ribbons, a necklace with several lockets suspended round her neck, and about a dozen bangles on each arm. What with looking at these, letting them drop upon her arm to judge the effect, glancing at her figure reflected in the little flat glass on the mantelpiece, and casting stealthy looks aside at the stranger to see how all these pretty ways moved him, she had the air of being so fully occupied that there was no wonder it did not occur to her to compare his elderly brown face with the portrait of her father hanging over the mirror on the wall.
“Is your brother at home?” Mr. Rowland said.
“Archie! oh no, he’s never at home. It’s past the season for football, perhaps you know, but he’s taken to cricket to fill up his time. He’s not a dab at cricket,” the girl said with a laugh. “It’s more an English game than a Scotch game, and Archie is awfully Scotch. He goes on about the flag and that nonsense. Now, I never mind. I like people just to be pleasant, whether they are English or Scotch.”
“That is the most sensible way,” said the father.
“Do you hear Aunty,” said the girl, “rummaging about to get herself dressed, as if you would ever notice what kind of a gown she had on! I always put on a nice frock in the morning, and then I am fit to be seen all the rest of the day.”
“But perhaps,” said Mr. Rowland, “you have had more advantages than your aunt has had. You have been at school, and learnt a number of things.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve been at school,” said the girl. “I was at Miss Gibb’s in St. Vincent Square. It’s rather a grand place; but I have my doubts about what we learnt there. Aunty sent me because it was so grand—the parents coming in their carriages—Mr. MacColl’s daughters, that has the splendid shop in Buchanan Street, and people like that. Miss Gibbs only took me because she was told about papa being so rich. The MacColls have a pony trap of their own, and a boy in livery to drive about with them,” said Marion, with a discontented face. “If my papa is really so rich, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a pony trap too.”
“When he comes home——” Rowland began.
“Oh, when he comes home! I once thought I would like that, though both Archie and me would have liked it better if he had sent for us out to Ingia. But maybe you don’t know what has happened? Papa has married again! He’s married a governess, or something of that kind, that has just caught him for hismoney. Aunty says there are no fools like old fools. And what will we be now? We might just as well be anybody’s children as belong to a man that has got a new wife. She is just sure to put him against us, to get all the money for herself——”
It was all Rowland could do not to spring up and silence with an angry hand this little pert voice, with its ignoble complaint. He was very angry, but he subdued himself. “I should like to see your brother,” he said curtly, for just then the door had been heard to open by a latch-key, and some one had come in.
“Archie,” said Miss Marion, elevating her voice, but without any other movement. “Come in here. Here’s a gentleman that knows papa.”
The door of the room was ajar. It was pushed open, more gently than might have been expected, by a tall lad, his face highly coloured by the still unsubdued flush of violent exercise. His countenance was of a milder, perhaps feebler, type than that of his sister, and his dress and manner were something between those of an assistant gentleman in a shop and a young clerk. His clothes were good enough, but not very well made or carefully kept. Rowland’s heart gave a leap, however, when this head looked in, for the boy had his mother’s eyes—kind, honest, well-meaning eyes, devoid of guile. They looked in with an inquiry in them, and then brightened up. The door opened wide, and the young man came in and went up to Rowland, holding out his hand: “If he’s from papa,” he said, a little broadly—(papaw would be nearer the sound, yet not so much as that), “he’s very welcome.” In the delightful revulsion the father felt unspeakably grateful, though there was little to call forth that sentiment.
“I’ve been telling him,” said Marion, holding up her arm again in order that her bangles might drop back with a tinkle, which evidently was agreeable to her, “that we’re very disappointed that papa didn’t send for us to Ingia, and then we would have taken care of him and stopped this awful marriage, which will just be our destruction. And it would have been awful fun out there.”
“You will think we’ve no business to speak of his marriage in that way. And neither we have,” said the youth. “He’s old enough to judge for himself.”
“Old enough!” said Marion; “just so old that the parliament should stop people from making such fools of themselves. But there’s no fools like auld fools, as aunty says.”
“I don’t go so far as that,” said Archie, with an air of impartiality, “but of course it was a great disappointment. We’ve been brought up to think everything would be ours; and then, as my aunt says, there will perhaps be a large young family, and everything spoiled for May and me.”
A flush such as would not have misbecome a young lover—a glow of warmth and pleasure—came over Rowland. He scarcely noticed the boy’s reflection, for the curious shade of gratification which the last part of his speech gave him. A large young family;—not that perhaps: but the suggestion seemed to fill his veins with new life.
It was at this moment that a sound was heard upon the stairs, announcing Mrs. Brown’s speedy appearance; a rustling of silk, and tinkle of ornaments, and some half-whispered remarks to the servant girl—“Ye tawpy! why did ye no show the gentleman into the drawing-room? He’s just in the parlour, and that’s not the place for visitors. When I give a ring to the bell, mind that ye’re ready wi’ the cake and wine.”
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Brown, appearing in the room, and using her full and sonorous voice, “May, what tempted ye to bring a gentleman into this small bit of a room—just a family parlour, no fit for visitors, and the drawing-room standing useless up the stair? I havena heard your name, sir, but I’m sure I’m glad to see ye. I was in the middle of some femily business, and I could not get away before.”
Her appearance, however, contradicted this excuse. Mrs. Brown had put on a silk dress of a brilliant colour, which she called ruby, and which glistened and rustled exceedingly. She wore a big locket on her ample bosom; her watch, a large one, was twisted into her belt, depending from a long and heavy gold chain, which was round her neck. She had a number of rings upon her fingers. Her cap was an elaborate construction trimmed with ribbons of the same colour as her dress. Her appearance, indeed, as, large and ruddy and full of colour, she came in through the narrow doorway, turned the very atmosphere in the room to a rosy hue.
“Jane,” said Rowland, rising from his chair.
She gave a scream, and gazed at him with wondering eyes. “Wha are ye?—wha are ye?—for I’m sure that I’ve seen ye before. The lass has no sense to ask a visitor his name.”
“Is it possible that ye don’t know me, Jane?”
“God bless us!” she said, “it’s just Jims Rowland himself! Eh, man, I’m glad to see ye, Jims. Is it just you!—bairns, it’s your papaw. Lord bless me that I should been such a time putting on my cap, and Jims Rowland waiting for me down the stair.”
“Papa-w!” with about half of a W at the end of the last syllable, said Archie.
“Papa!” said Marion. They were both discomfited, but the girl least. She fell back a little upon the bodyguard as it were of her brother. “It wasyouthat said that about the new family,” she whispered in Archie’s ear.
“I am not denying it,” said Archie. “He had no business to come in like this and take us unawares.”
Mrs. Brown gave Rowland a fat hand to shake and then she subsided into a chair and began to cry: “Eh, to think it should be you! and sae mony years come and gane since ye parted with us a’—and such things as have happened. Ye was but young then and your heart was running on many a thing out of common folks’ way—and to see ye back again looking little the worse, and a’ your fancies fulfilled! It’s just the maist wonderful thing I ever heard of. But eh! Jims Rowland, you’re an awfu’ changed man from what ye were when ye went away.”
“I am seventeen years older,” Rowland said.
“It’s no that—but you’re far different. You werea heartbroken lad then. ‘Twas for the loss of your wife, my bonnie sister Mary—and now you’re back with a new lady to put out her very name from the airth.”
“I think,” said Rowland in his own defence, “that not to marry again for more than sixteen years was surely enough to show my respect for her memory.”
“I never thought you would have married again,” said Mrs. Brown. “Mony a time it’s been said to me, ‘He’ll get another wife out yonder’—but I would never believe it. I just could not think it true. Eh man, when ye had a bonny dochter o’ your ain grown up, and just real well qualified to be the mistress of her faither’s house——”
“Jane,” said Mr. Rowland, with seriousness, “I have a great regard for you. You’ve been, no doubt, a careful guardian of the children—but I cannot answer to you for what I do.”
“Na, na, I never imagined it. Ye just acted to please your ain sel’, considering nobody. I’m no finding fault—I’m just wondering. And there’s the bairns. What think ye of them? Are they no a credit to any house? and a pleasure to the eyes, and a comfort to the heart?”
She drew Marion forward with a vigorous hand, and placed the two side by side, confronting their father, who sat and gazed at them helplessly. Two well-grown, well-looking young creatures they were indeed. But Rowland gazed at them with a gradual dying out of all light from his face: his lip dropped, his eyes grew blank. What could he say? Nothing: there waslittle to find fault with, nothing that could be expressed in ordinary words. A sort of dread came over him as he looked at them, the boy and girl of whom he knew nothing; who had speculated on him, a being of whom they knew nothing, as to what he would do for them, send for them to India, which would be awful fun, or disappoint them of their lawful expectation of being his heirs. He might never have known what were their sentiments, and perhaps would have remained remorseful all his life, thinking himself to blame in not responding to their affection, but for this unintentional revelation. And now it astonished him to find himself in face of the two who had formed such clear opinions of their own as to what his duty was, and how he had deviated from it. They thought his duty was to take care of and provide for them—and he thought their duty was to regard their unknown father with affection and submission. And neither one nor the other had come true. He could not make any reply to their aunt’s appeal. He got up and went to the window, and walked about the little room, knocking against the furniture. “This is a pokey little place you are in,” he said, by way of getting rid of some of the vexation in his mind. “I could have wished that you had been in a better house.”
“It’s a very good house,” said Mrs. Brown. “This is just the femily parlour—but if ye’ll come up to the drawing-room, ye’ll see what a nice room it is. It’s just as pleasant a house as there is in Glasgow, if maybe no so big as in some of those new crescents and squares out on the Kelvin Road. But everybodyknows that the Sauchiehall Road is one of the best pairts. What ails ye at the house? it is just a very good house, quite good enough for the bairns and me.”
Rowland could make no reply. He stood and stared blankly out of the window into the elderberry tree, and said no more.
“Youwill stay to your dinner?” Mrs. Brown said. The moment that these words, prompted by an inalienable Scotch hospitality, whose promptings are sometimes less than prudent, had left her lips, she reddened suddenly, and cast an alarmed look at Marion, who, for her part, was still standing contemplating her father, with a look in which a little defiance was concealed under a good deal of curiosity. The girl was considering how to approach and mollify this unknown parent, who, after all, was papa, the giver of all things, and upon whom was dependent the comfort, not to say grandeur, of life to come. It was a pity she had spoken so unadvisedly about his wife, but that, after all, was his own fault. Marion had some experience in novels, which supply so many precedents to the ignorant and young, and knew what a meeting between a father and his children ought to be. He ought to have taken them into his paternal arms. She, the girl, ought to have thrown herself upon his bosom in tears and rapture. He ought to have lifted his eyes to theskies or the ceiling, and have said: “Just like this was her mother when I saw her first!” None of these things had been done, and the girl was a little at fault. To look at his back as he stood at the window, evidently out of temper, discouraged and discouraging, was a thing that suggested no kind of original procedure to her mind. And she was consequently of no manner of comfort to her anxious aunt, who had instantly remembered that the midday dinner of the family was nothing but hotch-potch. And how was she to set down a rich man, who fared sumptuously every day, to a dinner of hotch-potch? Marion’s mind was occupied with much more important things. How was she to do away with the disadvantages of that first introduction, and make herself agreeable to papa? A girl in a novel, she began to think, would steal up to him and put her arm through his, where he stood looking out into the elderberry tree, and lean her head upon his shoulder, and perhaps say “Dear papa!” But Marion’s courage was not quite equal to that. As for Archie, he simply stood still and stared, too completely taken by surprise to make any movement whatever, contemplating his father’s back with unspoken disappointment and dismay.
“Weel,” said Mrs. Brown, after waiting in vain for a response, seizing dexterously the opportunity of escape; “I’ll just leave ye to make acquaintance with one another, for I have things to see to in the house; and Marion, you’ll just see that your papa has a glass of wine, for the dinner, as you’re aware, is no till two o’clock. I’ll send in the girl with the tray—she oughtto have been here before now—and I’ll leave you two to entertain your papaw.”
Then there followed another rustling of the silken gown, and tinkle of the long gold chain, with its bunch ofbreloques, after which came another tinkle, that of glasses, as “the girl” brought in a tray with two decanters, a large plate of shortbread, and one of another kind of cake. The wax flowers had to be lifted from the centre of the table to make room for this, and the process occupied a little time and a good deal of commotion, of which Rowland was conscious with increasing irritation and annoyance. He began to feel, however, that the position was ridiculous, and that to stand at the window, with his back to the other occupants of the room, was certainly not to make the best of the situation in any way. He turned round accordingly, and threw himself into a chair, which rocked under him. The strangeness alike and familiarity of the scene were more bewildering to him than words could say. Mrs. Brown, in the wealth which he had supplied, had done all she could to be genteel, poor woman, according to her lights. The tray with the port and sherry was her best rendering of what a proper reception ought to be. In the foundry days it would no doubt have been a little whiskey and a bit of oatcake. The instinct was the same, but, according to all the good woman knew, this was the most lofty and cultured way of setting it forth.
“Will you take port wine or sherry wine, papa?” Marion said.
“I will take nothing, thank you. Shut the door,I beg. I want to speak to you, my dear.” He turned towards her, but his look stopped short at Archie—at Archie, the loutish lad whose lowering forehead was bent, over his mother’s honest blue eyes.
“I did wrong not to tell you at once who I was. I suppose I had some absurd idea that you might recognise me. To make up for this, I’ll forget all the foolish things you have said about my wife. As they arise from simple ignorance, and you have had unfortunately no acquaintance with ladies, I’ll look over all that, and well begin square.”
Marion listened, standing with the decanter in her hand. “Will you really take nothing, papa; not a little sherry to keep you going till dinner-time?” she said.
“My Aunt,” said Archie, “is a very good woman; she has been everything that is kind to us, and my own mother’s sister—more than the grandest lady in the land. If she is not a lady, neither was my mother, I suppose?”
“Your mother was—like nobody else, nor to be compared with anybody else,” said Rowland hastily. “But you are quite right to stand up for your aunt. I don’t doubt she has been very kind to you.”
“Oh,” said Marion, turning her head, “no more than was just her duty, papa. We’ve done a great deal for her. There is just as much to be said on the one side as the other. You can take a piece of shortbread, Archie, and a wee drop of the sherry wine will do you good.”
The lad pushed her hand away somewhat rudely.“I wish,” he said, “you wouldn’t interrupt what papaw says.”
The girl broke off a little piece of the cake for herself. She poured out a little of the port and sipped it. “Aunty will be vexed if she thinks it hasn’t been touched,” she said, munching and sipping. Rowland turned his look from her to that pair of blue eyes which were like his Mary’s. They were the only comfort he had in the strange circumstances. He addressed himself to them as to something in which there was understanding in this uncongenial place.
“I am afraid, my boy,” he said gently, “that we’ve all been wrong. I first for forgetting that you were growing into a man. It was only my wife’s enquiries, anxious as she was to hear everything about you, that showed me my dreadful mistake in this respect. And your aunt has been wrong, which was very excusable on her part, in forgetting that your bringing up, for the position you are likely to have, should have been different. Where have you been at school?”
“I’ve been at a very good school,” said Archie; “it’s no fault of the school. I’ve maybe been a little idle. Aunty always said—that is, I thought, as there was plenty of money, what was the use of being a galley slave. So I just got through.”
“And whatisthe use,” said Marion, “of toiling like the lads that have to go up for exams, when you are such a rich man, papa, and he will never need to work for his living. It’s always a nice thing to get grand prizes; but he was not going in for anything, and whatfor should he have risked his health, that was of far more consequence?”
“Let’s alone, May. I was maybe wrong, but that was my own opinion, papaw.”
“Don’t say papa,” said Rowland, glad to give vent to a little of the intolerable impatience that possessed him. “Call me father. You talk about exams, and working for your living. Do you know what a young man of the upper classes, far better than you, is doing at your age?—I don’t mean the fops and the fools—I hope,” he said with some vehemence; “a son of mine will never be either the one or the other. Do you know what they do? They work in their colleges till they are older than you, or they go and travel, or they’re away with their regiment. There are idle ones, but they are no credit, any more than an idle working lad is a credit. Are you doing anything, boy?”
Archie’s countenance fell a little. “I’m in two or three debating societies,” he said; “there’s a great many students in them. We have very good debates. I’ve read a paper twice; on the Scotch question and about local government.”
“What’s the Scotch question?” said Mr. Rowland; but like other careless inquirers, he did not wait for an answer. “At your age,” he said, “you are better employed learning than teaching, in my opinion.”
“Oh, papa,” said Marion, who had finished her cake and her wine, “it’s not teaching! He doesn’t get anything for it. He subscribes to keep up the society. It’s quite a thing a gentleman might do.”
“Hold your tongue, May!” said her brother.
“Quite a thing a gentleman might do!—and he is not a gentleman, but only a wealthy engineer’s son,” said Rowland with a sudden flash of mortified pride. The boy in his badly-cut clothes filled him with an exasperation not less keen that it was mingled with tenderness for his mother’s eyes, and the ingenuous expression in his own countenance. “I’ve been a fool!” he said; “I thought, I suppose, that you would take my rise in life like nature, and start from where I ended. I hoped you would turn out like—the lads I’ve been accustomed to see. How should you? They all started from gentlemen’s houses, and had it in their vein from their birth.”
His two children stood opposite to him listening to this tirade, which they only half heard and did not half understand. They were quite bewildered by his heat and vehemence and apparent displeasure. What was it that made him angry? Marion thought that her brother was very like a gentleman, and he thought that she was very like a lady. It was the utmost length of their ambition. The MacColls, whose father had the splendid shop in Buchanan Street, were not so like ladies as May, though they had a carriage with a pair of ponies. And as for Archie, he was of opinion that he was himself one of those manly and independent thinkers, whose mission it was to pull down the aristocrats, and to abolish caste wherever it might appear.
Mr. Rowland took another turn to the window, and wiped his forehead and came back to his chair. He was very anxious to subdue himself, since the defects of the two young people were not their fault, nor werethey at all likely to be cured in this way. He tried even to put on a smile as he said to Marion, “And what are you doing with yourself?”
“Oh,” said the girl, “I’m just like Archie. I am doing nothing to speak of. Aunty has always said it was not necessary, and there is very little to do. It’s no profit making our things at home, for you can buy them cheaper in the shops. At first Aunty used to make Archie’s shirts, but they never fitted him, and it was no saving. So I just fiddle about and plague everybody, Aunty says.”
“And who are the people you plague?” said her father.
“Oh!” The young lady hung her head a little and blushed and laughed. “Well! there’s Archie and Aunty first of all; and then there’s Archie’s Debating Boys, as we call them; and the Philosophers—fine philosophers to be so minding what a lassie says!” She laughed again consciously. “I am sure I never say a word to them but nonsense,” she cried.
Mr. Rowland drew a long sigh out of the bottom of his heart. He had not thought much of the young ladies at the Station, the General’s daughters and the others; but Marion, as she stood with her head down and that foolish laugh, conscious of her effect upon the Philosophers, and proud of it, was still another species less honourable to womankind. What Evelyn would say! flashed across his brain like an arrow. But it was not her fault, poor thing; and he could not mend it. It was his duty, at least, as her father, to bear with her, to find no fault. For, after all, this was the natural outlet for a girl who had no other interests in her life.
“You must have,” he said, “a little sense to talk to me now and then, for I am past the time for nonsense. There is nobody,” he added with a little hesitation, “who will teach you that better than my wife.”
“Oh!” said Marion; then she raised her eyes quickly, “she will be awfully clever, and know everything—for wasn’t she a governess when you were married to her, papa?”
“No, she was not a governess,” he said quickly. “That is a delusion which you seem to have got into your minds. Let me hear no more of it. She was a Miss Ferrars, of Langley Ferrars, one of the oldest families in England—as different from me in origin as she is superior to me in every quality. If you were in the very least like her, I should hope one day to be proud of you, Marion. But you will have to get rid of a great many defects first.”
Marion made a littlemouewhich was not unnatural. It was of course a very unwise speech on her father’s part—but it is difficult under such exasperation to be always wise. She felt it, however, more prudent to take no notice, but to do her best to find out what were his intentions; which was a matter of the utmost importance to all.
“If you please, papa, are we going to live on here with Aunty?” she asked.
The question gave him a startling sensation of relief: was it possible that this might be done? Would it not be kinder to leave them in the life to whichthey were accustomed? Poor Jane would probably break her heart if her children were taken away. They were more her children than his, he reflected; and money was no object. He could arrange their income so as to give Archie the freedom of a young man, without obliging the poor boy to qualify himself suddenly for the rarified atmosphere of Rosmore. This calculation passed through Rowland’s mind with the speed of light. What a happy untying of the knot would it be! He would not require to saddle himself with the discomfort and disappointment which probably would result from any attempt to prepare them for Rosmore. And they would not like Rosmore. It would be dull for them. No debating societies or philosophers’ clubs to enliven their evenings. And the arrangements of the house would be so different. Oh, if he could but solve the question that was before him in that easy way!
But then there occurred to him—the person who would suffer most, the one and only person who would oppose any such compromise with his duty—Evelyn! He dared not appear before her with the information that he had left his children behind because it was their original sphere, because they would be no credit, an impracticable pair. He could imagine the look with which she would listen, the astonishment in her face. As likely as not she would get her bonnet at once, and, before he could stop, set out to fetch them home. That was the sort of thing she would do. She would have no evasion, not even that about breaking their aunt’s heart. In that case, she was capable of suggestingthat the aunt should be brought to Rosmore, but not that the responsibility of the children should be shuffled off. What a world of thoughts can be disposed of in a minute or two! This whole course of argument, question and reply, ran through his mind while Marion’s short question was being put, and before he could make up his mind what to say in reply. He played with it for a moment, still keeping that blissful possibility before him—“What would you like best?” he asked.
The girl and the boy looked at each other—they too had a multitudinous flood running through their minds, rushing like a mill race. They had an agreeable life enough so far as their instincts went: nothing to do—which, being on the very edge of the world that has to work hard for its living, and does not like it, was delightful to them, just as work is delightful to those whom nature provides with nothing to do. But then they were tired of this life all the same, as most people are, if the possibility of a fundamental change is put before them. And though they were rather afraid of their father, and what he might require from them, the excitement of the change to a great house, horses and carriages, and all the splendour they had dreamt of was a strong counterbalance. They did not take Aunty Jane’s heart much into consideration: and it would certainly be a terrible break-down from the vague future of glory before them, which all their friends believed in, did they step back into the monotony of Sauchiehall Road and the guardianship of Aunty Jane. They consulted each other with their eyes, andthen Marion replied, “We would rather be with you, papa.”
“It is with me you ought to be,” said Rowland, with a sigh. “I have taken a house down the Clyde, which you may have seen if you have ever been down that way. You see it from the water as you come across. It is called Rosmore——”
“Rosmore!” they both said with bated breath.
“You know the place? It is a place I’ve always wanted since I was a lad like Archie. I used to stand on the deck and glance at it, but never said a word to anybody. That’s where I am going to live.”
“For a little while—for the salt water?” said they.
“For altogether; for as many years, I hope, as I live.”
“Oh!” they said again together, looking at each other. Rosmore was far more splendid than anything they had imagined. They had been with their aunt down to a cottage on the peninsula for the benefit of what Mrs. Brown picturesquely called “the salt water,”i.e., the sea-bathing: so they knew something of what it was. It was very grand, but perhaps a little oppressive to imaginations accustomed only to the cottage. Their eyes, looking at each other, had a question in them. They were overawed, but a little frightened too.
“I suppose—there will be a carriage, or a gig, or something. It is a long, long way up from the pier.”
“There will, I hope, be carriages enough for anything that is required, and horses to ride, and mostthings that may be found necessary. Archie, I hope,” said the father, unconsciously replying to Marion, “can ride?”
At this the boy burst into a great laugh. “I do not know, for I never did try,” he half sang, half said, with a big voice, inclining to be bass, but uncertain yet. His face grew red and his eyes shone. He communicated his pleasure to his sister by a look, but this time she did not respond.
“And I——” she said, with a contraction of her soft girlish forehead, “will have to bide at home.”
“No,” said Rowland, feeling at last a little pleasure in the idea of changing so entirely the lives of his children, and surrounding them with every good thing, “you will find plenty of pleasant things to do. But,” he added, pausing, “what will become of the poor Aunt Jane if I take you both away?”
They looked at each other again, and repeated in different tones the same “Oh!” Marion uttered that exclamation with a toss of her head, and a tone of indifference. “Aunty has made plenty out of us,” she said.
Archie here, for the first time, took the words out of her mouth. “She has aye expected it,” he said. “It would vex her more if you didn’t take us.”
“Are you sure of that? She has been like a mother to you.”
“But mothers expect,” said Archie, “that their families should go away.”
Marion shrugged her little shoulders. “She’ll be free then to go to the saut water or wherever she likes,” she said, “and not say she is doing this or doing that, not for herself, but for him and me.”
“Then you are not sorry to leave her solitary?” said Rowland.
They consulted each other again with their eyes, with a sort of frank surprise at the question. “Oh, she’ll have her friends,” said Marion; and she added, “It could never be thought that we would stay here with her, when our papa had come and was wanting us, and a grand house and horses and carriages. That’s very different from Sauchiehall Road.”
Archie looked as if he saw something more in the question—but he did not say anything. He was slow of expression, and perhaps not even so nimble of thought as his sister. He looked, however, a little wistfully at his father, studying his countenance.
“And what will become of her?” Rowland said.
“Oh, she will just bide on,” said Marion; “she has always expected it. She has her friends. There’s the church quite near, and she’ll go to all the prayer meetings. She aye says she has no time as long as we’re here, but that when we’re away, she will go to them, every one. But I think she’ll change her mind,” said the girl with a laugh, “and go out to her tea.”
Archie had caught his father’s eye, and was much confused. “It’ll not be any the worse for her?” he said.
Before the question could be answered, Mrs. Brown came in, a little flushed but beaming. “The dinner is just ready,” she said. “Bairns, did I not tell you totake up your papaw to the drawing-room till the cloth was laid. And you’ll be hungry, Jims, just off your journey.” She spoke as if she supposed him to have come straight from India without any chance of a meal upon the way.
The dinner was a curious mixture of what was excellent and what was bad. The hotch-potch, for which Mrs. Brown apologised, was excellent. It is a soup made with lamb and all the fresh young vegetables, which, in the characteristic Scotchcuisine, supplies the place in summer of the admirable broth. Rowland had never tasted anything better; but it was followed by what Mrs. Brown called a “made dish,” which was as bad as the other was excellent, but of which the good woman was very proud. “You see my hand has no forgotten its cunning,” she said, with a smirk across the table; and Rowland then recollected with dismay that in the distant ages, almost beyond his own recollection, Jane, his wife’s elder sister, had exercised the craft of a cook.
“Weel,” she said, after the meal, herself taking him upstairs to the glories of the drawing-room, “you’re satisfied? you would be ill to please if you were not, with these two bonnie bairns. And just as good as they are bonnie—Archie as steady as a rock, aye in to the minnint, though thae student lads are no that careful. Eh, Jims, what a pleasure it would have been to my poor sister to have seen them grown up like that.”
This softened, even while it exasperated Rowland—for no doubt poor Mary’s imagination, like her sister’s,could have gone no further than the pert intelligence of Marion and the steadiness of her boy. “I should have liked better if they had been kept to some occupation,” he said, “not suffered to lead useless lives.”
“Eh!” said the aunt in astonishment, “useless! but what would ye have them to be, and you a rich man? You wouldna have had me bring them up like a puir body’s bairns? They are just as well conditioned as can be, bidable, and pleased with what’s set before them. I’ve had no trouble with them: they will never have given me a sore heart but when they’re taken from me—Oh, I’m no saying a word! It’s your right and it’s your duty too. They maun go, and I’ve aye counted upon it—and God’s blessing’ll go with them. They’ve never given me a sleepless night nor a day’s trouble. Oh, man, be thankful! There’s no mony that can say as much. The first sore heart they’ll give me is when they go away.”
The good woman sat down upon one of the many gilded and decorated chairs of which she was so proud, and put her handkerchief over her face as she might have done the apron which she was no longer happy enough to wear, and lifted up her voice and wept: “My hoose will be left to me desolate,” she said, “me that has been, though with none of my ain, a joyful mother of children. But I’ll no say a word. It’s just what I’ve known would happen this many and many a year. And it’s my pride and pleasure to think that I give them back to you, everything that two good bairns should be.”
Rowland was silenced once and for all. He had not a word to say to the woman thus deeply conscious of having fulfilled her trust. There was something pathetic in the thought that the two children who were so unsatisfactory, so disappointing and incomplete to him were to this kind woman the highest achievement of careful training, everything that boy and girl could be, and that their mother would have been of the same opinion had she lived to see this day.
Rowlandwent back to his hotel in the evening in much depression, yet excitement of mind. He had taken his two children out with him in the afternoon, with a remorseful desire to please them in any way he could, since he could not feel towards them as their father ought to feel. It was difficult at first to make out how he could please them best, and at last it was Marion’s indications of desire that were the rule of the party. He procured the smartest carriage the hotel could supply, with a pair of horses, and drove them about, Marion in the fullest rapture of satisfaction, increased by her father’s presents to her of various articles which she admired in the shop windows as they passed. It amused him, and yet hurt him to see the air with which she got down from the carriage and swept into the jewellers and the haberdashers. Her eyes swam in a rapture of light and happiness. Sheraised her little flowing skirt, which was more like Sauchiehall Road than the temples of fashion which she visited, with an air that suggested velvet. Poor little Marion! it was impossible to be more happy than she was, turning over the pretty things presented to her, and choosing whatever she pleased, while papa, with his pocket-book full of notes, stood by. She had taken him to Mr. MacColl’s “splendid shop” in Buchanan Street, with a sense that the school friends who had overwhelmed her with their grandeur might be thereby somewhat subdued in their pretensions; and it was ecstasy to her to buy the most expensive things, and to feel the superiority of the position of patron. “It is a very good shop,” she said, so that all the young gentlemen and young ladies behind the counter might hear, “and I will advise mamma, when she comes, to patronize Mr. MacColl.”
Archie, who dragged behind, much bored and ashamed of himself, opened wide eyes at the introduction of this name, and Rowland, for his part, had a sudden pang of anger to think that this vulgar little girl should venture to speak of his Evelyn so—before he recollected, poor man, that the vulgar little girl was his own child, and that it was most desirable that she should give that character and title to his wife. “Will I say the things are for Miss Rowland of Rosmore?” she whispered to him. “Certainly not,” he said with irritation. And yet he had no right to be angry with the poor little thing who knew no better. He encouraged her in her purchases by way of compensation to her for his unfatherly thoughts. “And now, don’t you think you might buy a silk dress or something for the poor aunty?” Marion tossed her little head.
“She got yon ruby silk just six months ago, and she’s got more in her drawers than she can ever wear;” and sinking her voice a little—“it’s all offus. She would never have had a silk—”
“Hush, child!” said Rowland imperatively; but Marion was not to be hushed.
“It’s quite true, papa. She has just dresses upon dresses, and last winter she made down one of hers for me—me that it all belonged to! She said I was too young to have silks for myself. I never put on the horrid old thing! I would have thought shame for your daughter, papa!”
“There are worse things than wearing old dresses that my daughter might be ashamed of,” he said hastily. But then he repeated to himself that it was not her fault: it was his fault—his alone, that he had neglected his children, and how could he ever make up to them for that unfortunate beginning? To please Archie they drove to a cricket match going on in a field in a remote part of the town, where Mr. Rowland’s carriage made a great sensation, with the coachman in the hotel livery. Rowland himself was a little ashamed of the turn-out. But even Archie, though much simpler than his sister, jumped down from the carriage with a swagger, and strolled across the ground with an ineffable air of splendour and superiority, which made his father—oh, his poor father!—so conscious of all these weaknesses, laugh. It was a rueful laugh; and to see Marion sit and bridle and plume herself, with littletouches of re-arrangement to her hat and her tie and her gloves, looking as well as she knew how, as a fine lady and patroness of the humble but lively scene should look, was such a painful amusement as the poor man could never forget. He could not help being amused, but it was rueful fun. And then he said to himself, repressing at once the levity and the pain, that had he never left them, he would have been as proud of them as Jane was, and never would have found out the imperfections.
Archie brought several of his friends in their cricketting clothes up to the carriage to see his sister, and to be introduced to papaw. Poor Archie could not make up his mind to abandon that “papaw.” “Father” seemed almost disrespectful to so great a personage as the rich Rowland, the great engineer. He was very anxious, however, to explain,sotto voce, that several of the young men in their flannels who gathered round Marion, and to whom she dispensed smiles and small jokes, like a Duchess at Lord’s, were “students,” a description which slightly mollified Rowland. Students were better than shop-boys, which was what Archie himself was painfully like. Never had Mr. Rowland encountered a harder piece of work in his life than to smile and tolerate the small talk of his children and their friends. He could not help comparing them to the people he had been accustomed to in late years,—people, he said vehemently to himself, perhaps not worth half so much! These lads, if they were students, were probably maintaining themselves, living like Spartans, not to draw upon the limited resources at home.How much nobler and finer than the young officers and civilians he had been in the habit of seeing in that same guise, yet how different! That he, a man of the people himself, should so see the difference; that he should be so pained by it, and by the fact that his son was at home in the one strata of company, and would be quite out of the other! How painful, how miserable, how ridiculous, how wrong altogether it was! He exerted himself to talk to some of them, and said angrily to himself that they were much more conversible than the subalterns, at whom he would have thrown a jibe, whom he would not have taken the trouble to talk to! But what of that? Archie swaggered about the ground proud and inwardly uplifted because of the carriage, the pair of horses, the pretty sister, and papaw. Had he dared to ask them all to Rosmore, where they might see the family in their glory, his cup of triumph would have been full; but he did not quite venture upon such a strong step as that.
Then they drove home in triumph to the Sauchiehall Road, where the people next door and next again, looked out of their windows to see the splendid vehicle dash up to Mrs. Brown’s, and the baskets of fruit and of flowers that were lifted out. She herself came out to the door to meet them, with her dress rustling, and her gold chain tinkling, and her ruby ribbons floating behind her. “Weel!” she cried, “ye’ve gotten back! and have ye had a grand drive? and eh, the bonnie flowers; but what an extravagance, for they would cost just a fortune; and a handfu’ of sweetpeas is just so pleasant in a room. And the pine aipples! Jims, myman, you’re just a prodigal: but we cannot be severe on you, a man just new come home.” She was very anxious that he would come in “to his tea.” But poor Rowland had borne enough for one day. He made the excuse of business to do and letters to write. “Ou, ay, ye’ll just have Madam to write to, and tell her all about your bonnie bairns,” Mrs. Brown said, with a cloud upon her brow.
Yes, thank Heaven, he had madam to write to; but whether he would tell her or not about the children was a matter upon which he could not make up his mind. He drove back to his hotel in solitary splendour, still somewhat ashamed of the hotel carriage, the pretension of the showy vehicle, and the shabby horses. Should he tell Evelyn all about the children? It seemed almost a disloyalty to poor Mary who was gone, to confide his disappointment in her children to any one, above all to the wife who had taken her place, though at so long an interval of years that he felt no disloyalty in that. If Evelyn had been with him, her sympathy would have been his best solace, and she would have found something to say that would have been a comfort to him. He was certain of that—something that would prove to him that things were not so bad as they seemed, that they would mend. But to put it in black and white, to put the disappointment of his soul into words, was what he could not do. He did not even feel sure that he wanted her to know it. If he could only keep his opinions to himself, pretend that they were all he could desire, and leave her to find out! It was quite possible thatshe would be more tolerant than he; her pride would not be injured as his was by the shortcomings of those who were his own. She would not feel the mortification, the disappointment, and perhaps she would not even see so much to find fault with in them. She had finer insight than he had; she was more charitable. She would see all the good there was, and not so much of the vulgarity. What did she know about vulgarity? She would think, perhaps, it was characteristic, original, Scotch. Rowland had listened often grimly enough to such fashionable views of manner and deportment. He had heard a man, whom he considered a brute, explained away in this manner. Evelyn might take that view. So he locked up his chief trouble in his own mind, and wrote to her that delightful letter, telling her that whatever she did would be right, whether to stay in town or to set up at once at Rosmore. He was not sure himself that he did not look upon that suggestion of staying in town as a relief and postponement for which he would be grateful. Yet what did a little time matter, one way or another? Sooner or later the step would have to be taken; the permanent household formed. Indeed, he felt that it would be natural for the children to expect that their father should take them to London, and let them see something of the world, which was a suggestion at which he shivered more than ever.
Poor Rowland! being only an engineer, though a distinguished one, and a man of the people, though risen to great wealth, and sometimes even objected to in his own person as not a gentleman, it was veryhard that he should be thus sensitive to the breeding of his children, and feel their imperfections as keenly as the most accomplished “smart” man could have done. Perhaps had he not married and learned to see through Evelyn’s eyes, this catastrophe might not have happened. And he had been so long parted from the children that there was little real love, only the vague instinct of partiality to counteract the shock: and that instinct of partiality often makes everything worse, giving a double clear-sightedness, and exigence of impossible perfection to the unfortunate parent whose fatherhood is mortifying and miserable to him, not a thing of pride but of shame. These were much too strong words to use—but they were not too strong from Rowland’s point of view. The only comfort he had was in his boy’s eyes, which were like his mother’s. And even that thought was not without a pang, for it thrust upon him the question whether the mother, had she lived, would not have been like Jane. Had it been so, it was evident that Rowland himself would not have been what he was. He would have stayed on in the foundry and become a foreman, and perhaps in course of time would have ascended the social scale to a house in the Sauchiehall Road: and his son would have been a clerk in an office, and he himself would have been very proud to think that Archie had friends who were “students” and was steady, and read papers at the Debating Society. His brain seemed to whirl round as he thought of all that which might have been. It is usually the better things which might have happened to us that we think of under that formula—but there is another side in this, as in all human matters. And when Rowland thought what might have been the natural course of his life had Mary lived, it gave him a giddiness which seemed to suspend all his powers. Would it perhaps have been happier so? He would have been very fond of his children, and proud to think that they were taking a step above himself in the world—and Mary would have grown stout like her sister, and would have had, perhaps, a rustling silken gown like Jane’s, and produced with pride a bottle of port-wine and a bottle of sherry-wine when she received a visitor. And he himself would have been proud of his family and contented with his moderate means. He would have taken Archie and May to the saut water, and pointed out to them the opening in the trees and the house upon the knoll with the white colonnade, and Mary would have said with a laugh, “Hoot, your father’s just doited about that white house on the brae.” What a difference, what a wonderful difference! And which would have been best?
James Rowland, tenant of Rosmore, with a name known over India, and his money in all manner of lucky investments, and Evelyn Ferrars for his wife, thought of all this with a curious strain of sensation. He was in many respects an imaginative man. He could realise it all as distinctly as if he saw it before him. He knew the kind of man he would himself have been—perhaps a better man than he was now—a straightforward, honourable man, limited in his horizon, but as trustworthy, as honest and true as a man could be. And he would have known all the real goodthere was in his children then, and they would have been free of the vulgarities and meanness they had acquired by their false position and mistaken training. It was very startling to think how different, how altered everything might have been. Was he thankful that poor Mary had died? That which had been such a blow to him, driving him out of the country, had been the foundation of all his fortune. It had been the most important event, the turning point in his life. He would never have seen Evelyn, or would have contemplated her afar off as a fine lady, a being to be admired or made light of, but neither understood nor known. How his head went round and round!
It was naturally the same subject that suggested itself to his mind when he woke next morning to a new day, a day not like the last in which everything was unassured, but one in which certainty had taken the place of doubt, and he had no longer vague and exciting possibilities to think of, but only how to nourish and adapt the drawbacks which he knew. These cost him thought enough, all the more that the practical part of the matter had now to be determined, and every decision of life was so close to him that the sense of perspective failed, and it was impossible to realise the relative importance of things: how he should manage to satisfy their Aunt Jane, being for the moment of as great consequence as how he should order the course of their future existence.
He was received in Sauchiehall Road with great eagerness, Archie hurrying to open the door for him, while both Mrs. Brown and Marion appeared at thewindow as soon as his step was heard, full of nods and becks and wreathed smiles. Mrs. Brown wore another and different “silk,” one that was brocaded, or flowered, as she called it, the foundation being brown and the flowers in various brilliant colours; and Marion had put on the trinkets he had bought to please her on the previous day in addition to those she had worn before, so that she too tinkled as she walked. Rowland received their salutations with as much heartiness as was possible. But he was scarcely prepared for the questions with which Marion assailed him, dumbly backed up by Archie from behind, with his mother’s eyes pleading for every indulgence. “Oh you’re walking, papa?” the girl cried with disappointment, “I thought you would have come in the carriage.”
“It would be a great nuisance for me to have always to move about in a carriage,” he said. “Besides I can’t say that I am proud to be seen behind such horses, a pair of old screws from a hotel.”
“Oh, you’re not pleased with them! I thought they were beautiful,” said Marion, “and they go so splendidly—far far better than a cab or a geeg. We were making up in our minds where we were to go to-day.”
“Where you were to go?”
“To show you everything, papa,” said Marion. “You must see all the sights now that you are here. Archie and me were thinking——”
“I knew the sights,” he said interrupting her, “before you were born—but if you want the carriage, Archie can go and order it and take you where you please—I have many things to consult your aunt about.”
“To consult—Aunty!” Marion opened her eyes wide, and elevated her brow, but this impertinence did not disconcert Mrs. Brown—
“They just take their fun out of me,” she said, with a broad smile; “they think I’m a’ of the old fashion, and ken naething. And deed it’s true. They’re far beyond me with their new fangled ways. But ye see your papaw is no altogether of your way of thinking, Mey.”
Marion nodded her little head again and again in astonished acquiescence; but by this time it had dawned upon her that to drive everywhere in “the carriage,” she and Archie alone, would perhaps be still more satisfactory than with the grave countenance beside her of a not altogether understood papa—who did not enter into their fun, or even understood their jokes. The brother and sister accordingly hurried out together well-pleased, and Marion established herself in Rowland’s room at the hotel while Archie ordered the carriage. The girl turned over all her father’s papers, and examined closely the photograph of Evelyn which stood on his mantelpiece. “That’ll be her,” she said, and took it up and carried it to the window to see it better—“but no great thing,” she added under her breath, “to have made such a catch as papa! Dear bless me, she’s a very ordinary woman—nothing to catch the eye. She’ll have plain brown hair, and no colouring to speak of, and not even a brooch or alocket round her neck. What could he see in a woman like that?”
“It’s a nice kind of a face,” said Archie.
“So is Aunty’s a nice kind of a face—and plenty other people—but to catch a man like papa!”
Mrs. Brown had no greater pleasure in life than to see her children go out together in their best clothes, bent upon enjoyment. She stood at the window and watched them, as she did on every such opportunity. It was her way, even of going to church and performing the weekly worship, which was all she thought of in the light of religious observance—to watch them going, dressed in their best, with their shining morning faces, and Marion’s ribbons fluttering in the air, and to laugh with pleasure, and dry her wet eyes, and say “the blessin’ of the Lord upon them!” The humble woman did not want a share in their grandeur, not even to see the sensation they made when they walked into church, two such fine young things. She was content with the sight of them walking away. It was only when she turned her eyes, full of this emotion and delight, upon James Rowland’s disturbed and clouded face, that she began to understand that all was not perfectly, gloriously well.
“Bless me! oh, Jims! a person would think you were not content.”
“If you mean with the children,” he said, “I don’t see any reason I have for being content.”
“Lord bless us!” said Jane, thunderstruck. She added after a moment, “I canna think but it’s just your joke. No to be satisfied, and far more than satisfied! If you’re no just as prood as a man can be of the twa of them—I would just like to know what you want, Jims Rowland. Princes and princesses? but so they are!”
“It is quite just what you say,” he replied, hanging his head. “It’s my fault or it’s the fault of circumstances, that makes a thing very good in one place that is not good at all in another. But never mind that; the thing to be considered is, what is the best way of transplanting them to so different a kind of life.”
“Oh, there is no fears of that,” said Mrs. Brown; “if you were transplanting them, as you say, from your grand life to be just in the ordinar’ as they’ve been with me, I wouldna say but that was hard; but it’s easy, easy to change to grandeur and delight; there’s few but’s capable of that.”
“If it was all grandeur and delight!” said Rowland; “but there is not very much of the first, and perhaps none at all of the other. No delight for them, I fear. A number of rules they will have to give in to, and talk, dull to them, that they will have to listen to, and no fun, as they call it, at all; I don’t know how they will like being buried in a country place.”
“They will have horses and carriages, and everything that heart can desire—and servants to wait on them, hand and foot.”
“Oh, yes, they will have horses, but, I suppose, they won’t be able to ride; and carriages they don’t know how to drive; and a road to take exercise upon, which to me is beautiful, but which leads to nothing but aview, and not half-a-dozen people to be seen all the way. Marion will not like that. I may get the boy broken in, but the girl—I don’t know what my wife will do with the girl!”
“Ye are no blate,” cried Mrs. Brown, “to speak of my Mey as the girrel! or what your wife would do with her. It’s that that’s ruined you, Jims Rowland—your wife! What had you ado with a wife, a strange woman, when your own dauchter was growing up, and old enough to sit at the head of your table and order your dinner to you! It sets you well to get a wife that will not know what to do with the girrel! What would my sister Mary say to think that was the way you spoke of her bonnie bairn. Man, I never knew ye had such a hard heart!”
“The question has nothing to do with my hard heart, if I have a hard heart,” said Rowland. “We’d better leave that sort of thing aside. The question is, how are they to be brought into their new life?”
Mrs. Brown wiped her eyes, and held up her head. “The thing is just this,” she said, “I see no other way, nor any difficulty, for my part: ye’ll just take them home.”
“Ah!” said the agitated father walking up and down the room, “it is very easy to speak. Take them home, but when, and how? without any breaking in? without any preparation to a life they don’t understand and won’t like?”