“Bless me! are you taking them to be servants, or to learn a trade!” cried Mrs. Brown.
Itwas very difficult for Rowland to decide what course he ought to pursue practically at the moment after these bewildering experiences. He was a man who had a great contempt for what he would himself have called shilly-shallying, and for the impotence which could be mastered by difficulties, and could not make the most of a trying situation. He would a little time before have scoffed at the possibility of any such thing happening to himself. No such thing had ever happened in the course of his work, which had involved many interests far more important than the interests of two insignificant creatures—girl and boy: which had sometimes been weighted with the responsibility of life and death for many; and yet he had not paused and hesitated as now. Two insignificant creatures, girl or boy, will blot out earth and even heaven from you, standing so near as they do, annihilating all perspective. What short work would he have made with them had they been a gang of navvies, or more difficult, a staff of clerks or engineers! But Marion and Archie were a very different matter. They had a right not only to all he could do for them, but to himself and everything that was best in him. Nothing could do away with that claim of nature. Not disapproval, dissatisfaction on his part, not even unworthiness on theirs. And they were not unworthy, poor things. Their only fault it was, and it was not their fault, that theirfather was in one atmosphere and they in another. Not their fault! he it was who had left them in that atmosphere—condemned them to it, and he must bear the penalty.
They enjoyed their day in the carriage, driving about wherever they liked, displaying their grandeur to admiring friends—at least Marion enjoyed it to the bottom of her heart. And she wasbon princein her elevation. She waited in all her splendour at the door of a little house, where everybody came to the window to stare at “the carriage” while a sick girl was hastily dressed in her best—and took the invalid out for a drive. There was a vain kindness in the girl, and a warm desire to bestow favours which was partly the product of vanity and partly of a better inspiration. She was really proud and happy when the colour came faintly into the cheeks of her ailing friend, although she never failed afterwards to attribute her recovery to “yon drive I took you.” The kindness was vulgar, and fed conceit, yet it was kindness in its way. Archie was not perhaps so happy. He soon tired of “the carriage,” and desired to be left at the cricket ground, which they again visited, and joined his friends, not without a certain glow of superior rank and importance about him from the fact of his being dropped there by the carriage, yet glad to escape from a position that was tiresome.
They all dined that evening with Mr. Rowland at his hotel—Mrs. Brown in such splendour of apparel that her brother-in-law was abashed by her appearance. Marion was fortunately more simply arrayed, and her father tried to believe that it was her own good tastewhich made the difference. The poor man felt all their little solecisms at table with double force, as remembering that he had once himself felt all the perplexity which paralysed Archie as to what he was to do with his knife and fork and table-napkin, and the finger-bowl which was put before him at dessert. As for Mrs. Brown, she showed no perplexity at all, but frankly broke every rule, stuck her fork into the potato she preferred, helped herself to the salt with her knife, and then ate her peas with it in the most assured simplicity, unconscious of criticism.
“Will you give me a little of that, sir,” she said to the waiter. “I’m no just sure what it is, but I would like to try. I tell the bairns no to be prejudiced, but just to try everything.”
Rowland felt that the imperturbable waiters were laughing in their sleeves at this strange party. But Marion gave him a little comfort. Marion was as sharp as a needle. She had all her wits about her. She divined from the smallest indication what was the right thing to do; but then she had read a great many novels, in some of which the very circumstances in which she now stood were set forth. Novels are a great help to an intelligent young lady endeavouring to acquire the manners of society to which she has been unaccustomed. Between these several sources of enlightenment she came out with credit from the ordeal, which made Archie feel himself a clown, and which Jane blundered through without being aware. This somehow eased the weight of trouble in Rowland’s heart.
“And what are ye gaun to do the morn?” saidMrs. Brown, lying back in an easy chair with her cap strings unloosed, and a genial glow upon her countenance after her abundant meal. “Have ye some ferlies to let your father see? But he just knew them all before ye were born.”
“I am afraid I have no time to see ferlies,” said Rowland. “I’ve seen a great many in my time. I am engaged to-morrow: and I must get back to London as soon as I can. I can’t leave my wife alone.”
“Oh, man, ye might first let the bairns have their turn,” said Jane, with a cloud on her brow. But alarmed by the darkness of that which gathered on his, she added hastily, “They might take a trip down the water if ye’re so busy. Ye canna expect them to settle to anything and you here.”
Then Rowland had a momentary struggle with himself. He came out of it victoriously on the side of virtue. “I am going,” he said, “to Rosmore to-morrow. Perhaps you would like to come with me, and see the house.”
There was a cry of eager acceptance from Marion of this proposal, and Archie gave his father a look of pleasure. Mr. Rowland was emboldened to add—“We must make the most of it, for in a day or two I must go to London.”
“That’s just what they would like best of all,” said Mrs. Brown. “Archie, puir laddie, would just give his little finger for a look of London. I’ve always said no, for it’s a place full of temptations. But to be with his own father makes a great difference.”
“And me,” said Marion. “Ah, papa,” she added,studying his countenance, “I want to see London; but far more, I want to see mamma.”
“Don’t say——!” said Rowland, and then stopped. He felt a sort of pang of indignation to think of this girl calling Evelyn by that name. This girl—his own girl—his child! He stopped short with a hard drawn breath of vexation. Of course she must say mamma if she would—or mother, a more sacred title. And it would be necessary for Evelyn to submit to it—Evelyn would desire it. Between these two certainties he felt himself caught as in a vice.
“I am sorry,” he said, “that I can’t take you with me to London—it is out of my power.”
“Dear, man,” said Mrs. Brown, “you that just have your pockets full of money, how can it be out of your power? It’s a journey that costs dear, and living in a hotel is just ruination; but you’re no one to consider that. You mauna say it’s out of your power.”
“Money is not everything,” said Rowland shortly.
“Eh no—far be it from me to say it is; but in the matter of taking your two children upon a veesit, what else is there to think o’? Na, na, there are plenty things it canna buy. It can neither bring ease o’ body nor peace o’ mind; but railroad tickets to London—Hoot! it’s siller alone that’s wanted—and you that has just your pockets full!”
“It is out of the question,” said Rowland, and then he stopped suddenly once more, for he had encountered the wistful look in Archie’s eyes—the eyes that were his mother’s. It cost him an effort to repeat his negative in the face of that silent appeal. “I cannot doit,” he said hastily. “Another time—but not now. However, if you would like to come with me and see the house—”
This proposal was acceptedfaute de mieux, and he set off next morning accompanied by the two young people, who by this time had become a little accustomed to him, and had learned to adapt themselves a little to his “ways.” Marion at least had learned to note when he was worried and put out, and though she was not yet at all aware what points in her conduct disturbed him, or that it was her conduct that disturbed him, her quick perception had already noticed that something did from time to time derange his equanimity, and that it was his children who were the cause.
“It will be Archie,” she said to herself. Already, so quick is the contagion of a new sentiment, Marion had begun to be dissatisfied about Archie’s clothes. His coat was rough and badly made in comparison with his father’s coat; his boots were clumsy, his linen dingy. All these things she had found out for herself. Archie was not bad-looking: he was rather handsome than the reverse; but he had not at all the same appearance as his father, who was old and without any graces. This Marion discovered all by herself. She had not attained to any such enlightenment on her own account.
When they got out at Rosmore pier, other revelations began. They found a dog-cart awaiting them with a beautiful horse and a groom, the perfection of whose get up was more than words could tell, though they were not learned enough to perceive that. Onlya dog-cart!—Marion felt that she was coming down from the glories of “the carriage;” but the obsequiousness of everybody around reconciled her a little to the less dignified vehicle. The drive through the woods overawed the young people. They gave each other a look of unmingled gratification and dismay. When they reached the house itself, the dismay perhaps was uppermost, but they did not as yet venture to say a word. Nothing could be more beautiful than the situation of the house, or the woods which approached it, when everything was in the full height of summer; the sun blazing over a country in which at almost every corner there was a burn to toss back a dazzling ray. From the colonnade the view had been opened a little by judicious clearing, and the broad Clyde, like a silver sea, lay glistening at the foot of the knoll, with all its passing boats and sails, and the background of the smoky but not unpicturesque town throwing up its towers and spires on the other side of the estuary. They were impressed for a moment in spite of themselves, and lingered looking at the view while their father went indoors.
“It’s awfully bonnie,” said Archie.
“So it is,” said Marion, holding her breath a little. They stood side by side overawed, not venturing to say any more. Indoors they were still more silent, following their father from room to room. In every one of them were workmen, and every kind of luxurious article was being added to the original furniture. By-and-bye they became bewildered by the number of rooms and their names—dining-rooms and drawing-rooms were comprehensible, but the libraries, morning rooms, boudoirs, studies, made their heads go around.
“And what’s this?” said Marion in bewilderment.
“This is Mrs. Rowland’s own sitting-room,” said a polite functionary with what the young people characterised as an English accent.
“What does she want,” said Marion, almost angrily, “with another sitting-room? when she’s got the dining-room and the drawing-room, the morning-room and the library.”
“Oh, that is just the thing, Miss,” said the functionary; an enigmatical saying which made the girl stare at him for a moment in perplexity, but added no light.
They wandered upstairs and downstairs, wondering where their own places were to be in the middle of this bewildering space and unaccustomed luxury. There were some small back rooms in the corner of a wing, to which instinctive suspicion naturally pointed as the “holes” that would be allotted to them.
“That’s where she’ll put us,” said Marion, “to get us out of the way.”
Archie did not make any reply, but he thought it very likely. To tell the truth, those back rooms were larger and quite as well fitted up as the rooms in Sauchiehall Road.
Rowland almost forgot their existence as he went over the house, examining what had been done, pointing out what there was still to do. So much of his ideal was in it, of which nobody knew save himself. He had furnished the house in fancy many a time,fitted it up in such a way as house was never fitted up before. It filled him at once with sweet delight and disappointment, to see the reality growing before him. It was not, and could not be, ever so fine as his dreams, and yet it was Rosmore, and it was his. He went about anxious, yet elated, looking out from every window tosavourerover and over again the well-known prospect—the Clyde, visible in a different aspect from every corner; the boats upon its dazzling surface, which seemed to hang in space, which seemed to pause and quiver, as if upon the wing, as they crossed the openings, to give the passengers a sight of the house. He knew what was being said on the deck of the steamboats that rustled across and across. “Oh, ay, it’s let—and maybe it will be sold—to Jims Rowland, that was once a lad in a foundry in Glescow, nae mair, and now is the great Railway Man from India, and has come hame very well-off, and gotten the place he had aye set his heart upon. Oh, my lord doesna like to part with it, nae doubt, but siller is not a thing to be turned from the door.” He knew that was what was being said. He had heard it himself, or something very near it; it kept singing in his ears like a pleasant tune—“Jims Rowland, that was once a lad in a Glescow foundry, and has gotten the place he had aye set his heart upon.” Yes, it was what he had set his heart upon, and it was his at the last. And to make it perfect was all his intent and thought. He forgot again that natural difficulty which his own neglect and forgetfulness had gone so far to make—the two standing under the colonnade, wherethey had strayed after their examination of the newly furnished rooms, and looking out again with a sullen shade over their eyes upon “the view.”
“Well?” he said, coming suddenly upon them, full of his own elation and excitement, “and what do you think of the house?”
There was a pause; and then Marion answered him. “Oh, the house is very well, papa. It is a great big house, and there is a fine view.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“I don’t know what more I can say. It will be awfully lonely in the winter-time, and when it’s raining; but perhaps you will only come here in the summer, and have another place for the dark days.”
“The dark days,” he repeated with a little trouble. “You don’t know much about it, I’m afraid,” he added with an attempt to be jocular; “the fine folk go to London in the summer, and spend what you call the dark days in the country. That’s the right thing to do.”
“But it’s awfully foolish,” said Marion with a very serious face.
Archie did not say anything in articulate words, but he made a sort of murmur of assent.
“Now if it was me,” said the girl, “I would live here in the summer and take one of the new houses, the new big houses out by the Park, or on the Kelvin Road; they’re grand big houses, bigger than this, just like palaces, to spend the winter in; and where we could go to all the grand parties, and be near thefootball ground—where there was aye something going on. There will be very little going on here.”
“Unless there might, maybe be a curling pond,” suggested Archie, but very dubiously, and with a sigh.
Rowland was struck with a certain reasonableness in this suggestion, which chilled his enthusiasm a little in spite of himself. “Come and have some luncheon,” he said, “and afterwards we can talk of that.” Lunch was set out for them in a small room, one of the many which had bewildered Marion. There was already a tribe of servants in possession, and the small, well-ordered table and silent servants overawed the young people once more. The new butler had the air of a minister (he had, indeed, though Marion did not understand these fine distinctions, the airs of a Dean at the least), and it was all that the girl could do not to call him sir. She accepted what he handed to her meekly with a reverential submission to his better knowledge. As for Archie, he had committed himself, but fortunately not so as to be comprehended by any one but his sister, by offering the gentleman in black a chair.
“Well,” said their father again, “so you think Rosmore will be dull, and there will be nothing going on?”
“That was my opinion,” said Marion firmly. Archie was not to be reckoned upon in company as a steady backer up, and she thought it wisest not to give him the opportunity of betraying her. “The rooms are very pretty, and there’s a beautiful view; but you cannot be always looking at the view. And it’s very rainy down here. It rains mostly every day. And then there are so many trees. In the winter-time itwill be terrible dark, and not a shop on this side, or a place to go to.”
“You will have to lay in all your stores, my dear, before the winter comes.”
“No, not that,” said Marion; “but the shops are always a diversion; it is not for buying things. And there will be no parties to go to.”
“Have you many parties,” said Rowland with a laugh, “where you are?”
Marion gave a glance round, feeling it necessary to keep up her dignity before the solemn servants. “Oh, yes,” she said, “plenty! We go out a great deal. There was a ball last week at the MacColls. I was all in white; at my age, just newout, that’s aye the proper thing.”
“So you areout, are you,” said Rowland somewhat grimly; “the MacColls are——”
“Oh, papa, they are people of great consideration,” said Marion stopping him; “it is a real good name, well-known everywhere.” Marion was making very rapid progress. She was proud at their first interview of knowing the MacColls, who had the great shop in Buchanan Street. Now she had cut adrift the shop and sheltered her friends under the ægis of a well-known name, with all the skill of a leader of society. “But there’s nobody here,” she said, spreading out her hands and shaking her head.
“How do you know there is nobody here? There seem a number of houses as far as I can see.”
“Not of people like us, papa,” said Marion; “not of houses that mamma could visit at.” She had hereye upon the butler, who was visibly impressed, and to whom she was consciously playing. “There are only Glasgow people coming for the salt water—I mean for the sea-bathing; and the Manse, and the like of that; no gentlemen’s houses. Of course it was onlythatI was looking for,” she added with the air of a princess. Archie sat opposite and regarded his sister with wide-open eyes. He did not know her in this new development. As a person of rank standing on her dignity, Marion was to him a new revelation. He admired yet wondered at her.
As for her father, he burst into a laugh which was louder and more boisterous than became his usual character. “You might perhaps,” he said, “recommend the place to your friends, the MacColls, for the salt water.”
“Papa!” said Marion in dismay. The butler was just going out of the room followed by his attendant footman. She watched him till he was quite gone, and the door softly closed behind him. Then she said in a lower tone, “I have always read that the servants know more about you than you know yourselves, and I took care to say very little about the MacColls; for though they are well-off, they are not—in our position, papa.”
“Oh May!” said Archie in consternation.
It was the comic side of this speech which first struck her father. He laughed once more loud and long. “You will soon be quite fit for a society lady,” he said. But immediately fell into absolute gravity again, with a face blank as wood; discouraging andrepressive, had Marion been sensitive. It was very amusing, but one does not desire to be so amused by one’s own child.
“I was thinking chiefly,” Marion resumed with dignity, “of mamma. She will expect some society, and there will be none; just the Manse, and a house or two like that, scarcely genteel, not in Our Position. We might do very well, Archie and me, though it would be dull; but she will be expecting to go out to her dinner, and to be asked to parties, and show off all her grand gowns. And there will be nobody. And not even a shop to go to, to spend an hour in an afternoon. And you cannot always be looking at the view. It is mamma that I am thinking about,” Marion said.
He did not again bid her not to speak of Evelyn so; for was it not the best thing he could hope for, that his child should think of his wife as of a mother? but his heart revolted all the same, and the girl’s commonplace prettiness, her little assured speech, even the undeniable sense that there was in her remarks, sense of the most prosaic kind, yet genuine enough in its way, exasperated him. He said dryly, “I think I can take my wife in my own hand.”
“Yes,” said Marion; “but maybe it will be a great disappointment to her, when she knows that it is so bonnie a place and all that and then comes here, so far away, and finds that there is nothing but the view.”
Sense! undeniably it was sense, in its petty, miserable way; and what if it might be true? After all, he had only known Evelyn on one side of her character. She was much superior to himself in a hundred ways.She had the habits of a life very different from his, the habits of good society, of knowing “the best people.” Rowland himself, in his rough practical way, had not a very profound admiration for the best people. There were even more bores among them, he thought, than among the most simple, and their views were not more elevated. But then Evelyn knew no other life than theirs, and to bring her down here to an unbroken solitude, or to the society of the sea-bathers, the people who came for “the salt water,” might perhaps be a dangerous experiment. A cold shiver ran over him, while his daughter prattled on in her cool precocious wisdom. How could he tell that she would be sufficiently compensated by “the view” as to forget everything else, or that she would be able to bear from morning to night the unbroken enjoyment of his own society, and of Marion and Archie? His mind went away into a close consideration of her previous life as far as he knew it. The society at the Station was perhaps not very choice, but it was abundant. The people there knew people whom she knew, were acquainted with her own antecedents, and the kind of life to which she had been accustomed, a life which he himself did not know much about, much less his daughter and his son. A woman brought up in a great country house, overflowing with company, such as people in humbler positions know only by books, accustomed to go up to town for the season, to make rounds of visits, etc., etc.—would not she perhaps expect all that to begin over again after the period of her humiliation was over, when she had become thewife of a rich man? And if instead she found herself seated opposite to him for life, with his two children only to diversify the scene, though it was in a beautiful house with a beautiful view! how would Evelyn bear it? Nothing but a view! The little monkey! the little wretch! Rowland in his heart was still a man of the people, and he would have liked to take Marion by the shoulders and give her a shake. And yet, probably, she was right.
Therewere a great many hours to be got through still before the evening steamer which would take them across the loch on their way back to Glasgow. And after the luncheon was over, Archie and Marion did not know what to do with themselves. They went out together and walked about the grounds, not without a feeling of elation now and then as they looked back upon the great house with all its velvet lawns, and the commotion of furnishing and arranging which was going on. There were carts unlading at the door which had come all the way from Glasgow, round the head of the loch, a very roundabout way, with delicate furniture which could not bear the transfer from railway to steamboat, and with the great boxes containing Mr. Rowland’s curiosities; the Indian carpets, curtains, shawls, carved ebony, inlaid ivory, and other wonderful things. Had the young people been aware what were the content of these boxes, they would no doubt have felt thatsome amusement was possible in the unpacking of them. But, indeed, I doubt whether Marion’s interest would have held out long unless there had been pickings—a bracelet, or a brooch, or an Indian chain among the more curious matters to indemnify her for time lost over the carpets or even the shawls, which, as altogether “out of the fashion” (so far as Marion knew) would have had no interest to the girl. But they did not have this source of entertainment, for they were totally unaware what was in the boxes which Marion thought probably contained napery, a kind of wealth not without interest yet scarcely exciting. They stood about for a time in front of the door watching the unpacking of the big chests and crates until that amusement palled. And then they went round to look at the stables, in which as yet there were only two horses, one of which had brought them up with the dog-cart from the ferry. Archie examined this animal, and the rough and useful pony which acted as a sort of four-legged messenger, with an assumption of knowing all about horses, which was very superficial and imperfect, and did not at all deceive the groom who was in charge, and to whom one glance at the young master had been enough. But Marion did not even pretend an interest which she did not feel, and soon went out yawning and stood at the door, half-despising, half-advising her brother. She felt a little ill-used that there was no carriage which she could order out as she had done with delight, the carriage from the hotel. There would be carriages to come, no doubt, but they would not be for her, and Marion knew that she herself mustrelapse into a very secondary place. She called to Archie, while he was improving his mind by questions to the groom, with great impatience, “Are you going to stay there all day? with nothing to see,” said Marion. And then she broke in upon the conversation, yawning largely, “Is there anything here to see?” The groom informed them of certain points which were considered interesting by visitors, the Chieftain’s Jump, and the Hanging Hill, where there was a “graun point o’ view.” “Oh, I’m not caring about the view,” said the girl pettishly, “but we’ll go and see the Chief’s Jump. It’ll always be something to do.” It proved, however, not very much to do, and the young lady was disappointed. “It’s only a rock,” she said with much impatience; “is there nothing, nothing to see in this dull place?” The groom was a native of the parish, and he was naturally offended. “It’s a great deal thought of,” he said, “the family—that is the real family—the Earl when he’s doun, and the young ladies, brings a’ the veesitors here. It’s a historical objeck as well as real romantic in itsel.”
“I am not caring for historical things: and I don’t call that romantic,” said Marion.
“Maybe,” said the groom, “you would like to go down the wood to auld Rankine’s cottage, that has the dougs?”
“What dougs?” cried Archie, pricking up his ears.
“Weel they’re just auld Rankin’s breed. He’s no historical, nor yet is he romantic: but Miss here will maybe relish him a’ the better. He’s a funny auld fellow, and the place is just fu’ o’ dougs—terriers: it’s a grand breed—a wee delicate, being just ower weelbred: but awfu’ thought upon by the leddies. The Earl and Lady Jean they get them for a’ their grand friends.”
“I am just sick of the Earl and Lady Jean,” said Marion, stamping her foot.
“That’s a peety,” said the groom, calmly, “for you’ll no live long here without hearing o’ them. Will I let ye see the way to auld Rankine’s? They’re funny bits o’ things.”
“I would like to see the dougs,” said Archie mildly.
Marion yielded, being not without a little hope of amusement hereby. But she took, and pinched, his arm as they went on, saying under her breath, “For any sake don’t say that—don’t say dougs! It’s so common, so Glesco! You are dreadfully Glesco—the man will think you are just like himself.”
“What am I to say?” said Archie indignant, shaking his arm free of her hand.
“Say dogues,” whispered Marion, drawing out the long O. She was very careful herself to be as English as possible. It had always been her ambition, though the success was perhaps scarcely equal to the desire. She threaded her way through the woods with delicate steps, protesting that it was very damp and a very long way. It was a delightful way through narrow woodland paths, where the hawthorn, which in Scotland is neither called nor has much to do with May, was, still in the height of June, breathing fragrance over the copse, and where the wild rose-buds were beginning to peep upon the long branches thatoverhung the path. Now and then they shook a drop of moisture upon the passer by, for, needless to say, it had rained that morning, leaving little pools full of reflections in the hollows. Marion gave little jumps when a drop came upon her face, and went upon the tips of her toes past the damp places: but it was always “something to do.”
Old Rankin’s cottage was in the depths of the wood that encircled Rosmore. He had been a gamekeeper before “his accident.” It was supposed in the peninsula that everybody must know about old Rankin’s accident, so that no further account was ever given. It was a red-roofed cottage, looking comfortable and cheerful among the grass, with a big ash tree in a plot of grass before the door, and honeysuckle covering it on the southern side where the sun came. In northern regions people are indifferent about the sun. It is a curious fact, but it is so. “Where the sun does not go the doctor must,” says the Italian who has almost too much; but the Scot turns his back upon it sturdily and does not mind. The sunshine caught only one corner of Rankin’s cottage, and no windows looked that way. It was buried deep in the greenness, adding itself a little ruddy reflection to brighten the atmosphere. In the room on the left side of the door Rankin himself lay upon his bed, with a large head and shoulders appearing out of the tartan rugs that covered the rest of his person. He had a head like an ancient prophet or bard, with a high bald forehead, and a long grey beard, and with supple long arms which seemed to reach to all the corners of the room. Naturally therewas a fire burning, though the day was warm. The mistress of the house came trotting forward, and dusted two chairs with her apron for the visitors. “You’re kindly welcome,” she said, “Come ben, come ben. He’s aye weel pleased to see company.” The good woman did not require any introduction of the visitors; but this the groom, more formal, made haste to give.
“It’s the young lady and the young—lad from the Hoose,” he said. The pause before his description of Archie was significant. In that coat which Sandy felt was not so good as his own, how was any one to recognise a gentleman? Sandy could not disguise his sentiments. He could not give a false designation even to his master’s son.
“I am Miss Rowland,” said Marion, graciously, “of Rosmore.”
The big grey head and beard were shaken at her from the bed, even while its owner, waving his long arm, pointed out the chair on which she was to sit down. “No of Rosmore, if you’ll excuse me, my bonnie young leddy,” he said. “Ye may say Miss Rowland, Rosmore, and that will be right enough: but tenants never can take the name of the laird.”
“My papa,” said Marion half angrily, “is going to buy the place. He is rich enough to buy it ten times over.”
“He may be that,” said Rankin with polite doubt. Then he added, “You will maybe be wanting a doug.”
“We would like to see them,” said Archie.
“Oh, I’ll let you see them, though it’s no a thing I do in a general way. Them that visit at the House,they are a’ keen for a sight of my dougs; and I have one here and one there over all the country; a quantity in England. They’re wonderful little beasts, though I say it that maybe shouldna—here’s one of the last batch.” He put down his hand somewhere behind his back and produced a small, round, struggling puppy of a light fawn colour, with brown ears, newly arrived at the seeing stage of its babyhood, and sprawling with all its four feeble limbs, and the tail, which looked like a fifth, in his large hand. Put down upon the bed, it began to tumble helplessly over the heights and hollows of Rankin’s large, helpless figure. The sight of it moved Archie, and indeed Marion, in a lesser degree, to greater delight than anything had yet moved them at Rosmore.
“Oh the bonnie little beast!” cried Archie; “oh the clever little creature! Look, May! look at its little nose, and the bits of paws, and the long hair.” He threw himself on his knees to get the puppy within reach, which paused in its tumbling on the mountainous ridge of one of the old keeper’s knees, to regard the simple young face brought so close to its own with that look of premature sagacity common to puppies. Marion put out her gloved hand to distract the attention bestowed on her brother. “It’s just like a little baby,” she said.
“Baby! a baby’s a little brute: it’s ten times nicer than any baby that ever was born. Here, doggie! Man, keep your feet! Eh, look, May! it’s tummilt off the bed. The little beastie! I’ve got it; I’ve got it. Are ye hurt, my wee man?”
“Poor little doggie!” said Marion, patting with a finger the puppy which Archie had placed on her knee. The two young creatures, bending over the animated toy of the little dog, made a group which was pretty enough. And Rankin and the groom looked on sympathisingly, flattered by their applause. To Rankin the puppy was like a child of his own.
“Oh, ay,” he said, “it’s no an ill specimen. Here’s”—and he dived once more into the hidden reservoir from whence came a sort of infantile murmur which had puzzled the visitors at first—“another. It’s a variety. Now ye see the twa kinds: them that are no licht in the colour are dark. I could scarcely gie ye my opinion which is the bonniest: What’s ca’ed the Skye breed are just the sauvage dougs that would have eaten up the country by this time if they hadna received a check by being made leddies’ pets of. One o’ my name was the first to tak’ the business in hand, and improve the breed. Yon lang, low-bodied creaturs, with nae legs to speak of, are the original stock, as the wild bushes are the stock of the rose tribe. My anes are an awfu’ improvement in pint o’ symmetry—and temper too. They have langer legs and no sae short a temper. Ye’ll hear a’ the world ower of the Rosmore breed. It’s just celebrated from one end o’ the country to anither. Lady Jean she was aye coming with orders; but I’m no fond of taking orders especially from foreign countries, like England and the like. I canna bide to send my dougs where they are ill fed or kept careless. There was ae lady that let twa o’ them, ane after the ither, get lost.She was a friend o’ the minister. I canna understand decent folk keeping on with sic friends. And as for the feeding o’ them, leddies are just maist inveterate, and ruins their health, whatever I can say. They’ll feed my doggies, just fresh from their guid halesome parridge, with sweet biscuits and bits of sugar, and every silly thing they can think of, and syne they’ll write and say the dougs are delicate. Naething of the kind! the dougs are nane delicate. It’s just the traitment; if you can think o’ onything mair foolish than that—beasts used to guid fresh country air, shut up in rooms with carpets and dirt of a’ kinds, and when they’re dowie and aff their meat, a dose o’ strong physic! And they ca’ that a kind home. I ca’ it just murder! and that’s a’ I’ve got to say.”
Rankin had worked himself to a point of vehemence which brought the moisture in great drops to his forehead, for the day was warm and so was the fire. But it cannot be said that his visitors were much affected by it. Sandy the groom, indeed, formed a sympathetic audience, but Archie and Marion were too young and foolish to be interested in the old gamekeeper. They played with the puppies, each choosing one. Marion held fast the one of light colour—Archie secured the dark grey. Their comments on their respective prizes ran on through Rankin’s speech. “Mine’s the bonniest!”—“No, I like mine best. Look at its funny little face.”—“Mine has no een at all—just a little spark out under the hair.”—“And look, the little brick that it is, showing fight,” said Archie in great triumph and elation.
The old gamekeeper wiped his brow, and looked on with a smile of grim amusement at the mimic fight going on between those two little balls of animated fur, “I would ca’ those two Donal’bane and Donal’dhu—as ye might say in a less cultivated tongue, Whitey and Darkie,” he said benevolently. “If ye would like to have the pair of them, I’ll not say no to the Hoose, even when it’s in a tenant’s hands. But ye maun mak up your minds, for I haven’t a doggie about the place that’s no bespoke afore it’s born, and I owe my duty to Lady Jean first.”
“I’m tired hearing of Lady Jean,” said Marion petulantly, throwing her puppy upon the bed.
“Aye, my Missie, are ye that?” said old Rankin: “ye’ll be tireder afore you’re done, for Lady Jean’s muckle thought of in this parish: and a tenant is just a tenant and nae mair—there’s no continuance in them. Your papaw and you will be just here the day and gane the morn. Ye canna expect to be thought upon like our ain folk.—Are ye wantin’ the puppy, Maister—— what’s the name, Sandy? I hae never maistered the name,” added the gamekeeper with polite disrespect. “Oh ay, now I mind—Rowland”—he pronounced the first syllable broadly like a street row—“I’m no sure,” he added thoughtfully, “but I may have ken’t your papaw before he went abroad.”
Archie paid no attention to this talk. He had a puppy in each hand comparing them, wondering which he might venture to buy. Dared he go to such an expense as to buy? Mrs. Brown, though lavish in many ways, had not been liberal in the matter of pocketmoney, and to spend money for a dog, a creature that would cost something to feed, and could do nothing to make up for the cost of it, would have seemed to her the most wicked of extravagances. Archie was forced by the habit of his life into a great timorousness about money. He did not feel himself justified in spending even a shilling. He looked at the little dogs and longed and hesitated. He had taken one up in each hand with a wild impulse of expenditure, of buying both—unheard of extravagance!—and then he put one down, feeling the cold shade as of Aunty Jane come over him. Then he bethought himself that his father was a rich man—ay! but then he would probably like to spend his money himself, not to give it to his son to spend. Then Archie put down the other dog upon the bed. But he did not abstract his eyes from the pleasing prospect; and presently a tempting demon suggested to him that about such a big house dogs would be wanted for the purpose of watching, if for nothing else; and he took one, the little dark grey one, up again. It was the bonniest little doggie he had ever seen—ready to play already, though it was such a small puppy, looking as wise as Solomon, though it was so silly; the greatest diversion possible in this dull country place, where there never would be anything to do. And two of them would be funnier still. Archie took up the rival in his other hand. He held them as if he were weighing them against each other like pounds of flesh, but no such thought was in his mind: he wondered if perhaps Rankin might not want to be paid at once. In case of delay there were ahundred chances that the money might be procured somehow. He might even ask his father—or Mr. Rowland might make him a present. He had bought a great many things for Marion, who, being a lassie, could be gratified in that way more than was possible for a man. A man didn’t want silks and things, or even brooches and rings, though Archie would not have disliked a pin. What a man liked was manly things—maybe a bonnie little beast of a doug. What bonnie little beasties they were! and they would be capital watch-dogs when they grew up. Would it do if he were to ask papa? If May wanted such a thing, she would ask in a moment. She might perhaps do it on her own account if she took a fancy to little Light and little Dark. Poor Archie was so absorbed in this question that he did not know what Rankin said.
He was roused by a sweep of the gamekeeper’s long arm, which swung over the bed for a moment, then suddenly came down upon one of the puppies and conveyed it swiftly away. Archie followed his movements with a gape of disappointment as he took up the coveted grey. He put out his hand to avert the second withdrawal. “Eh, man, leave the little beastie,” he said.
“Would you like to have it? You have naething to do but to say sae.”
“I have no money—with me—to pay for’t,” said Archie, with the profoundest sense of humiliation. He had come into his fortune, so to speak; but he had never felt so poor before.
The gamekeeper answered with a laugh. “There’s plenty of time for ye to put your siller in your pouch, my young gentleman—for I’ll no send ane of them out for sax weeks to come—or maybe mair. Ye can come and see them when you like, but I’ll no risk my credit for a wheen pounds, me that never sends out a doug but in the best condition and able to fend for themselves. Will I keep the twa for ye? Ye maun speak now, or for ever hold your tongue, for every puppy I have is ordered long before it’s born.”
Archie looked at his sister, endeavouring to catch her eye, but Marion refused him all help. She betook herself to the task of buttoning her glove, which required all her energies, and then she got up shaking out her skirts: “I’ll die,” she said, “if I stay longer here—it’s so hot, and there’s a smell of dougs. You can come when you’re ready. I want the fresh air.”
“Dear me,” said Rankin with scorn; “this’ll be a very delicate Miss! and ower grand for the likes of us. Lady Jean never minded the smell of the dougs. Sandy, man, what made you bring such a grand lady here? Are ye for them, or are ye no for them?” he added, severely, turning to Archie. “It’s no of the least consequence to me—but you’ll have to say.”
Archie, with his hair standing on end at his own audacity, gave the order hurriedly, and went out after his sister, with a sort of despairing sense that he had now committed himself beyond recall, and that the stories he had read in books about the miseries of men who had large sums to make up and no prospect of finding the wherewithal, were about in his dread experience to come true. The gamekeeper and the groomdiscussed the abrupt withdrawal after their fashion, and with no particular precaution not to be heard by the subjects of their discourse.
“Yon’s a queer pair to be gentry,” said Rankin. “I would have said a lad and a lass from Glesco in an excursion; just the kind that comes doun at the fair-time, and has nae manners nor education. I’m no much accustomed to that kind—A smell o’ dougs! set her up! Mony a leddy has sat there and had her crack, and never a word about the dougs, poor things. The smell of a mill would maybe be more in her way.”
“Whisht, man,” said the groom, “they’re maybe listening. Where could they get their manners or their eddication? They’re just Jims Rowland’s bairns that my father knew when he was in the foundry; and they’ve lived a’ their lives with Jane Brown, that was ance the auld man’s joe, and micht have been my mother if a’ things had gane straight—think o’ that! I micht have been their cousin, and I’m just the groom in the stables. ‘Od! I could have brought doun Missie’s pride if I had been a drap’s blood to her. They’re no a preen better nor you and me.”
“In the sicht o’ heaven,” said Rankin, “there’s no one person better than anither: I dinna just rank myself with the commonality. But I’ll allow that the auld family has the pull of it even with me. There’s something about Lady Jean now—ye canna say what it is, and yet it maks a difference. I’m a man that has seen a’ kinds. The real gentry, and what ye may call the Glesco gentry, and them that’s just shamsthrough and through. The Glesco gentry has grand qualities sometimes. They just never care what they spend. If ye put a fancy price upon a little doug, they just say, ‘Oh ay, nae doubt you have great trouble in rearing them,’ and gies ye your price without a word. The tither kind’s no that liberal—they canna bide to be imposed upon. They just stiffen up, and they say, ‘That’s mair than I thought of giving, and good day to ye.’ But I canna bide them that would and then they wouldna, that just hankers and grudges and have nae money in their pouches. Without money, nae man has any right to take up my time coming here.”
Archie heard this diatribe as he stood outside, waiting under the protection of the great ash tree till a passing shower should have blown over, with a sense of the truth of it which went over him in a great wave of heat and discomfiture down to his very boots. That was just what he was, a sham with nothing in his pocket, combining all the defects of the Glesco great people with an absolute want of that real foundation on which they stood. He had no education, no manners, nothing upon which any claim of superiority could be put forth. Superiority! he did not mean that. Poor Archie felt himself the equal of nobody, not even of Sandy the groom, who, at least, had an occupation of his own and knew how to do it. And no money in his pocket! that was perhaps the worst of all. He had always heard a great deal about money all his life. Mrs. Brown had an unlimited reverence for it, and for those who possessed it. She had no particular knowledge of the gentry. But to be able to pay yourway, to be able to lay by a little, to have something in the bank, that was the height of her ambition. And though she highly disapproved of large expenditure, she admired it as the most dazzling of greatness. “He just never minds what he spends,” she had said of Rowland a hundred times, almost with awe. Archie had been accustomed to admire this quality in his father from his earliest consciousness. And to stand on the soil which to him was his father’s (though the people of the place were so strong upon the fact that he was only a tenant), almost within sight of the great house which was being fitted up regardless of expence, and to have nothing in his pocket, filled the lad with the bitterest shame and humiliation. “If I had only five pounds—or knew where to get it,” he said to himself with a gesture of disgust and despair. “Five pounds,” said Marion, who heard him though he did not want to be heard, and repeated it in her usual clear very distinct voice, not lowered in the least, “What do ye want with five pounds? and why don’t you get it from papa?” Archie thought he heard a laugh from the cottage which proved that the men inside had heard. It wrought him almost to fury. He dashed out into the rain and left her standing there astonished. Marion did not care for what the groom and the gamekeeper said. She was quite confident that she had only to “ask papa,” and that whatever she wished would fall into her lap. She had not, like Archie, any difficulty in asking papa. After a few moments of hesitation she too stepped out of the shelter of the ash, and followed her brother through the wood. The showerwas over, the sun had come out again, every branch and leaf was glistening. The birds had taken up their songs at the very note where they left off, with renewed vigour. Marion too broke out into a little song as she went on. The boughs as she brushed past scattered shining drops like diamonds over her, which she eluded with a little run and cry. Even the woodland walk was thus more amusing than she thought.
Mr. Rowland, when his children left him, was left with a very uncomfortable prick of thought, a sort of thorn lacerating the skin, so to speak, of his mind. The suggestion which had been thrown at him as the Spanish bullfighters throw their ornamented darts, stuck as they do, and kept up an irritating smart, though it was not, he said, to himself of the least importance. No society! He came out to the colonnade in the intervals of his anxious work of supervision, and looked round him wistfully. He walked indeed all round the house, looking out in every direction. Towards the west there were visible, by glimpses among the trees, some houses of the village of Kilrossie, a high roof or two, and the white spire of the newly built church; to the east, on the other side of the loch, another village-town extended along the edge of the gleaming water, shining in the sunshine. Plenty of human habitations, fellow-creatures on every side: but society! Wealth has a very curious effect upon the mind in this respect.The people who came to the handsome houses at Kilrossie for the bathing season were many of them much superior to James Rowland in birth and education, and quite equal to him in intelligence, except in his own particular sphere; yet this man who had been only a man in a foundry when those good people were enjoying the advantages of the saut water, and all the luxuries of comparative wealth, would now have felt himself humiliated had he been obliged to accept the society of the good people at Kilrossie as all he might hope to attain. Their neighbourhood was rather a trouble than an enlivenment to his mental vision. And the county people, who had their “places” scattered about at intervals, were in many cases neither so well off, nor so intelligent as these: and they would look down upon the railway man, while the others would regard him with respect. There was no possibility of doubt as to which of the two he would be most comfortable with. And yet he slurred them over cursorily as if they were not there, and sighed into the sweet vacant air which contained no loftier indication of society. How proud he would have been to have known the Kilrossie people fifteen years ago—how it would have elated him to be asked under their roof! and now their presence irritated him as a set of imposters who perhaps would thrust themselves upon him in the guise of society: that was not the society for which he cared.
The prick of the banderilla discharged by Marion’s trifling little hand was in him all day: and in the afternoon when he had done everything he could, and givenall his orders about the arrangement of the furniture, he too went out to take a walk and to spy out the nakedness of the land. He did not go into the woods as his children had done, nor would the dogs have had any charm for him. He went down to the village, where there certainly was no society except in the one house which held modest sway over the cluster of whitewashed and red-tiled cottages—the manse, where the minister represented, if not the wealthier yet the educated portion of the community, and might at least furnish information, if nothing else, as to the prospects and possibilities of the place. In spite of himself Rowland’s discouragement reflected itself in his countenance, making him, as so often happens, look angry and discontented. There was something even in the way in which his heel spurned the gravel, making it fly behind him, which betrayed the unsatisfied state of his mind. He had scarcely emerged from his own gate when he met the minister in person, who turned with him and walked along the country road by his side with great complaisance, partly because he was glad to meet any one on that not much frequented road, and partly because it was a good thing to make a friend of the inhabitant of “The House.” The shower which had caught Marion and Archie at Rankin’s cottage, made the two gentlemen pause for a few moments but no more under the shade of an overhanging tree. A shower is too common a thing in that country to disturb any one. It discharged its harmless volley, and then cleared away with rapidity as if the sportive angel who had that brief job in hand was glad on the whole to getit over; which is very often the way with the sky officials in that particular in the west of Scotland. The cloud blew away in a second, dispersing what was left of it in floating rags of white, which fled towards the hills, leaving the sky radiant over Peterston on the other side of the loch, and the loch itself as blue, reflecting the sky, as was that capricious firmament itself—for the moment. The road ran inland, with fields of wheat between it and the margin of the shining water, beyond which rose the low banks of the loch, and further off a background of mountains. If it was not quite equal to the great “view” of Rosmore House, this prospect was at least very fine, soft and clear, in all the harmony of a blueness and whiteness such as a rainy climate confers; and Mr. Rowland too, like his daughter, was comforted by the singing of the birds, which all burst forth again with unusual energy after the subduing influence of the shower. He said, “It is certainly a beautiful place,” as he paused for a moment to look over the green field at the little steamers which seemed to hang suspended in the beatific air, one on the surface of the water, one reflected below.
“Yes, it is a lovely place,” said the minister with a sigh.
He was a middle-aged man dressed in careful clerical fashion like an Anglican priest—a costume new and rather distressing to Rowland, no such thing having been thought of in his early days before he left Scotland. At that period a white tie (or neckcloth, to use the proper phraseology) rather limp, and a black coat often shabby, were all that were thought of as necessary. But Mr. Dean, which was the name of the minister of Rosmore, liked to be called a clergyman rather than a minister, and would not at all have objected to hold the ecclesiastical rank which is denoted by his name. He was of the new school. He had a harmonium in his church, and a choir which chanted the psalms. He was very advanced, and his wife still more so. He shook his head a little as he made this reply. Yes, it was a lovely place—but—this latter word was inferred and not said.
“I want to ask you,” said Rowland, by no means reassured by this, “about the society.”
Mr. Dean now shrugged his shoulders a little. “You have perhaps heard of the chapter about snakes in Ireland,” he said.
“I have always understood there weren’t any.” It is a very unjustifiable thing to cut in this way a quotation out of another person’s mouth. Mr. Dean was a little disconcerted, as was natural. “Well,” he said, “that’s just the thing, there is none. I answer the same to your question: there is no society. I hope that Chamberlayne did not bring you here on false pretences.”
“I cannot remember that I asked him anything about it, nor would it have made any difference if I had. Society or not, it’s always this place I’ve set my heart upon. But what do you do and the other people in the place?”
“Well,” said Mr. Dean, with a glance at his companion’s face, “the House, as we all call it, has been our great resource. Lady Jean—you must hear herquoted everywhere, and, I dare say, are sick of her name.”
“No; I have not heard her quoted.” He remembered that he had not cared anything about it, who was quoted, his whole heart being fixed upon the house.
“She’s very good company,” said the minister. “She was always our resource. And sometimes the Earl was here. I don’t want to speak evil of dignities, but his lordship was perhaps less of an acquisition. And they had visitors from time to time. That’s the great thing,” Mr. Dean added with perhaps just a touch of condescension to the simplicity of the millionaire, “in the country. You just fill the house, and one amuses the other. My wife and I have seen a great many interesting people in that way, which was a little compensation to us for being buried here. You will come in and take a cup of tea. This is the nearest way.”
The Manse garden was on the slope of the hillside, but the Manse itself was tucked in below, in what was supposed to be a sheltered position, out of the way of all sunshine, or other impertinent invasions. It surprised Mr. Rowland to see several pony carriages about, and to hear a noise of talk coming out into the garden all perfumed with sweetpeas and roses. He looked at the minister with an inquiring air.
“Oh, I don’t call this society,” said Mr. Dean, “though perhaps you will be of a different opinion,” he added. He was a little supercilious in his tone to the railway man, who was a rich person and no more; not that the minister had any inclination to break any tie that might be formed with “the House.” He wasnot himself fond of tea parties, and his expression had made it plain that dinners were chiefly to be found, if anywhere, at Rosmore.
“I have inveigled Mr. Rowland in for a cup of tea. I did not know you had guests.”
“Dear me, Henry!” said Mrs. Dean; “of course you knew. It’s my day: everybody in the parish knows, if you don’t. But I am very glad to see Mr. Rowland; he has just come at the very nick of time. I was saying to Mrs. Wedderburn, so much depends on who is at the House.”
“It is just the centre of everything,” said a fat lady who was thus referred to. She gave Mr. Rowland a little bow, half rising from her chair. “We all defer to the House,” she added with an ingratiating smile to which Rowland answered as best he could with a bow which was as deferential as hers was condescending. There were a dozen of people or more in the room, which was not very large, and hot with the fumes of tea. There were two or three matronly persons like Mrs. Wedderburn, and a few who were younger, and two men who were making themselves useful and handing the tea and the cake. There were also some queerly dressed, middle-aged ladies, of the class to which Scotch society owes so much, the rural single woman, individual and strong-minded: and there were some with a great air of fashion and the consciousness of fine clothes. These last Rowland set down, and justly, as sea-bathers from Kilrossie. One of the others was the minister’s wife from the next parish, also unmistakeable. His name caused a little rustle of interest among them, as he made his bow all round.
“I’m sure you’re very welcome among us,” said another lady rising up from the window where she sat. “Since we cannot have our dear Lady Jean, we’re well content to have a tenant that is creditable and a well-known name. You are just new from India, and our climate will be a great change to ye, at least for the first.”
“Oh, I am well accustomed to the climate,” said Rowland. “I don’t think that will trouble me much.”
“You’re really then a west-country man to begin with? so we’ve heard; but Mrs. Rowland, I’m afraid, will not be so used to it. Nor perhaps your young folk. You’ll think me bold,” added his interrogator, “but we hear there are young folk?”
“My wife is not Scotch,” said Rowland; “but the difference between Rosmore and an English county is not so very great.” He longed to say who she was—one of the oldest families—but the same pride which suggested this statement held him back.
“Oh,” said the ladies, two or three together; and then Mrs. Dean, bringing him his cup of tea, took up the parole.
“You’ll soon learn the weakness of a country neighbourhood, Mr. Rowland. We never rest till we’re at the bottom of everything. We had heard it was a lady from India that was to be the mistress of ‘the Hoose.’”
And now his opportunity arrived. “I will give you all the information in my power,” he said smiling. “My wifewas a Miss Ferrars of Langley Ferrars, a very old family—Leicestershire people. She is a lady from India just as I am a man from India. We arrived about a fortnight ago. Is there anything else I can satisfy the ladies about?”
He knew of old that there was no such way of discomfiting the curious as to proclaim your own story, whatever it might be. And he had recovered his spirit, which Marion and Archie had subdued. Society at the station had endeavoured to keep him in his place, but in vain. Even the attachés and aid-de-camps had not been able to manage that. He was a little amused at the thought of this little rural tea party questioning him, sitting upon his claims to be considered one of them.—One of them! His suppressed sense of the absurdity of this gave a gleam of mischief to his eyes, and quite restored him to his own self-opinion, which had been so rudely interfered with of late. He stood with his back to the fireplace, which, even when there is no fire, is a commanding attitude for a man, and regarded them all with a smile.
“We are all looking forward to calling,” said fat Mrs. Wedderburn, who did not like the trouble of much talking, yet evidently felt that it lay with her to inaugurate every subject.
“That we are,” said his other questioner, who was called Miss Eliza by the other ladies. “I’m just a very pushing person, and ye’ll excuse me. Is it true, Mr. Rowland, what the folk say, that from a boy ye had set your heart on Rosmore House?”
“Quite true,” he said promptly, “when I seemed tohave as much chance of it as of the moon. They say there’s nothing like boding of a golden gown—for you see there I am—”
“It’s a wonderful encouragement to the young,” said Miss Eliza. “The minister should put it into one of the papers he’s aye writing. Did ye not know that our minister was a leeterary character? Oh, that he is! and a real prop to the constitution; for though he may not be always so in the pulpit, he’s real sound in politics—that’s what I always say.”
“Miss Eliza,” said the other clergyman, “you must not raise afamaabout a reverend brother. We’re all sound till we’re proved otherwise, and Presbytery proceedings are against the spirit of the time.”
“Oh,” said Miss Eliza, “Mr. Dean knows well what I think. There’s no man I like so well to hear, but his views are whiles very papistical. He would just like to be the bishop and more. He’s no sound for Presbytery. He would like vestments and that kind of thing, and incense, perhaps, for anything I can tell. I would not wonder but he would put on a white surplice, if that is what they call it, if he could get one over his decent black gown.”
“I was an Episcopalian before I married Mr. Wedderburn,” said the fat lady. “I do not regret it, for Mr. Dean knows we are all uncommonly well pleased with him. And a surplice would become him very well.”
“It’s a very becoming thing,” said another of the ladies. “We’re very glad to come to hear Mr. Dean, but we’re all Episcopalians when we’re at home.”
“It’s the fashion,” said Mrs. Wedderburn, folding her fat hands.
“I’ve no desire to enter into that question. I’m saying nothing but that the minister is no very sound on certain points. I’ve said it to his face, and he just laughs, as you see. But, bless me! this conversation has wandered far from where it began, for I was asking Mr. Rowland, in the interests of all the nieces and the nephews, whether he had not, as we’ve been informed, some young folk.”
Rowland had dropped out of the talk a little, and had forgotten that he was being cross-examined. He woke up suddenly at this question with a start. The lingering smile disappeared from his mouth. He put up shutters at all his windows, so to speak. The light went out in his eyes. “Yes,” he said in a voice which he felt to be as dull as his countenance was blank; “I have a son and a daughter.”
“That was just what I heard,” said Miss Eliza with triumph. “We have usually some young folk staying with us up at the Burn. My sister and me, we are overrun with nieces and nephews. It’s just a plague. There is scarcely a boat but brings one at the least. I hope your two will come and see them. There is aye something going on; a game at that tennis, or whatever they call it, or a party on the water, or a climb up the hills. If they will just not stand upon ceremony, but come any day——”
“When they are here,” said Rowland stolidly; “as yet they are not here. The house will not be ready for a week or more.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. We thought—there were so many waggons coming and going, and the dog-cart out at the pier.”
“I hope you don’t think,” he said, “that I would take home my wife either in a waggon or a dog-cart?”
The ladies looked at each other, and there came a faint “oh!” that universal British interjection which answers to every emergency—from some unidentified person. But a sort of awe stole over the party. Who was this lady that could not be taken home in a dog-cart? Lady Jean had been driven from the pier in a dog-cart many and many a day. Did the woman who had married this foundry lad from Glesco, this railway man, that had made his fortune in India, did she think herself better than Lady Jean?
Mr. Rowland walked away through his own woods, much amused by this incident generally. They were not his own woods: they were the Earl’s woods, which was a reflection very unpleasant to him. If money could smooth over the difficulty, they should be his own woods still before he was done with them; and in the meantime he had a long lease, and a strong determination to call them his own. He looked at every tree, and put a mental mark upon it, to prove to himself that he was right. There was a great silver fir, an unusually fine tree, near the gates, at which he paused, saying to himself, “this is not mine,” with an assumption that all the rest were, which was strange in such a sensible man; but his mind had a little twist in it so far as Rosmore was concerned. He smiledat the little society of the place with a sense of superiority, at which they would have been extremely indignant. The Miss Elizas of the peninsula were nothing to him, and their gracious intention of calling upon his wife, gave him such a feeling of the ridiculous, that he laughed aloud as he went on. Call upon Evelyn! Mr. Rowland had perhaps as exaggerated an idea of Evelyn’s claims as the village people had a humble one. They had heard that she was a governess whom he had picked up in India; and he was of opinion that she was a very high-born lady, as good as the Queen. He chuckled to himself as he realised how she would look amid the ladies who came to Kilrossie for the sea-bathing, and the ladies of the parish: Miss Eliza with her big rusty hat and shawl, and the two ministers’ wives. Evelyn with the look of a princess, and her beautiful dresses, that were like nothing else in the world, which her mere putting them on gave the air of royal robes to! This was his way of looking at the matter, which probably would not have been at all the way of the county ladies, who had a general idea what was the fashion, though they did not take the trouble to adopt it. But to Mr. Rowland whatever Evelyn wore was the fashion, and it was she, he felt, who ought to be everybody’s model, to dress after, as far as it was in vain flesh and blood to follow such an ideal. Lady Jean herself would be but a rural dowdy in presence of Evelyn. He thought of the impression she would make. The startled “oh!” of wonder which would burst from all their lips when she was first seen. It would be something altogethernew to them to see such a lady! It restored him to his natural spirits and self-confidence to think of this; indeed, his pride in his wife was the very apex of Rowland’s self-esteem and proud sense of having acquired everything that man could hope to acquire, and all by his own exertions and good judgment. He reflected to himself with satisfaction that he had owed nothing to anybody; that it was all his own doing, not only his success in life,i. e., the fortune he had made, but all those still more dazzling successes, which he could not have got had not the fortune been made. Nobody, for instance, had ever suggested Rosmore to him: no benevolent teacher, or other guide of youth, had pointed out to him the house with the white colonnade as an inspiring object and stimulus to ambition. Himself alone had been his counsellor. Nor had anybody indicated to him at the Station the pale and graceful woman who was Mrs. Stanhope’s dependent and poor friend. He had for himself found out and chosen both the wife and the house. This triumphant thought returning to his mind wiped out the impression of the morning, and even the recollection that he had gone out to hunt for society, and had—found it! He remembered this a little later with a sense that it was the best joke in the world. He had found it! Mrs. Dean had a “day,” as if she lived in a novel or Mayfair; and the neighbouring gentry and the sea-bathers, when they came in force, elated her soul as if they had been all out of the peerage. He wondered, with a laugh to himself, what Evelyn would say to Miss Eliza and the fat Mrs. Wedderburn, and went back toRosmore in high glee, really oblivious for a time of the two “difficulties,” the irreconcilable portion of his new life, whom he had left there.