“Why!” said Evelyn, wondering. Then she added, “I hope Marion will end by being something much better than that.”
“Better!” he paused a little. “I wish I saw her at all like that. The voice, and the manner, and the dress. That girl talks almost like you: how composedshe is—taking everything just as it ought to be taken: understanding—You have something about you, people in your class—you are more philosophical—you seem to know what things mean, even a child like that: while Marion—poor little Marion—she is ready to cry or fly into a passion about anything—nothing—and to say little impertinent senseless things—Even the very dress—”
“Dear James, I say what I mean. Probably dear little Marion is far better in her naturalness than this. I mean nothing against Rosamond. She is made up of so many things. She is natural too, but it is a nature which is full of art. You would not like Marion to understand as she does, poor child. As for the dress—”
He had received this with much shaking of his head. Marion’s naturalness! If only Evelyn might find it so. He thought Rosamond much more natural for his part, and he was very grateful to his wife for the “dear little Marion,” which indeed was more the fruit of opposition in Evelyn than of an affection which she could scarcely have been expected to feel for a girl whom she had never seen. He caught at the last words as something to which he could reply—“The dress?”
“I have been thinking about that. It is a great pity you did not bring them both up with you to town, James, for that purpose. It was almost certain there would be deficiencies in dress.”
He smote upon his thigh in disgust with himself. “If I had only thought of that! Indeed I did think of it; but I thought—in short I got out of heart alittle with the whole concern. I thought—I would keep you from disappointment as long as I could; keep you from seeing what they are; what little, common, foolish—Evelyn, I have had a terrible disappointment, a hideous sort of undeception. It is all my own fault—that I should have been such a heartless fool as to leave them there all these years!”
Evelyn got up to support him in this sudden break-down. She put her arm round the big shoulders, which it would not half encircle. “James, dear James! what nonsense you are talking. Your children and your Mary’s—no, no, my good man! you are excited; you are over-anxious; you have judged the poor dear children too hardly. Shall we stay another week and have them down here, and set the clothes to rights? Fancy you, of all people in the world, being so much influenced by a question of clothes!”
“If it were only that!” he said, holding her close to him, almost weeping on her shoulder. It was safer not to investigate what it was that made the strong man’s eyes so wet and sore. Evelyn did not attempt any such prying, but let him hide himself—he so much stronger than she was—in her soft hold, and swallow the sob that was in his capacious heart. No one ever guessed but in that moment, what it was to James Rowland to have lost his ideal children, the little things with all their sweetness whom he remembered, and to have found the common-place young man and woman whom he now knew. Evelyn’s tender sympathy, compassion, and presently the tremulous laugh with which she began to jest and tease him about his devotion toexternals, his fancy for fine clothes, brought him at last to himself. He was a little ashamed to feel his eyes red, to know that he must look almost like a woman who had been crying when he raised his head to the light. But all that Evelyn did to betray her knowledge was a little kiss upon his eyes, which she gave him heartily, as if in spite of herself. And then they sat down to consider the question, which was decided at last in favour of “going home,” as Evelyn called it, there to take such steps for a complete renewal of Marion’s wardrobe as her taste and knowledge would suggest. It was easy to talk of the clothes, to which she had playfully directed the conversation—too serious and too emotional to be otherwise discussed: but both of them were very well aware that a great deal more was meant.
It was some time after that, when the gravity of the situation had been dissipated, and lighter thoughts and talk came in, that he asked her with a little shamefacedness, whether she had gone through that ceremonial to which Rosamond Saumarez had referred. “I suppose you have been—presented, as they call it,” he said with a laugh.
“Oh, yes—at the proper time, when I was a girl. I was only at one drawing-room after that. We were too poor to afford the dress.”
“You are not too poor now to afford—whatever you please in that way—Evelyn:” he laughed, abashed and shy, but eager, “should you think it right to—go again.”
“Oh, yes,” she said by no means so earnestly. “I hope you would not dislike it, James.”
“Dislike it!—to show one’s reverence and homage to the Queen? Good heavens, no! if a man felt good enough—It seems as if it should be a kind of duty, Evelyn.”
“Yes,” she said, not so fervent even now; “but not this year. I can take Marion next spring.”
He laughed so that he almost cried. “And I suppose I shall have to get myself up in some ridiculous costume or other to go with you—me and little Mey—a pair of guys—before the Queen!”
Thissudden glimpse into her husband’s deeper nature which it was so easy to lose sight of in his genial and easy exterior, touched Evelyn more than words could say. She entered into his profound discontent with the tenderest sympathy, a little appalled by it indeed, and by the prospect of struggling in her own person with the two grown-up children, who were so much more difficult a problem at the age they had now reached than had they been younger. She contemplated the prospect with no little dismay. The words of his faltering disclosure, “little, common, foolish,” were of all others the words most difficult to reconcile with any higher or generous quality. The only thing that seemed to have broken the shock to James was that the boy had his mother’s eyes. But what, Evelynsaid to herself with a little shudder, would the mother herself have appeared to Rowland now, if she had been living all these years stagnant in their old world, growing fat and prosaic, while he had gained so many new experiences? And how much might his disappointment have to do with herself, and that faculty of seeing things through other eyes which comes with sympathy and close intercourse. He might not have required so much from his little Marion, poor child, if it had not been for Evelyn. So much the greater, then, was her responsibility who had accustomed him to a different standard, and so unintentionally brought to him an acute pang. Evelyn said to herself that, howeverdesillusionéher husband might be, she must try to keep a motherly glamour in her own eyes. She must endeavour to suffer long and be kind, to think no evil—neither to be disgusted nor discouraged. It was perhaps partly her fault. She must take it upon her own shoulders and refuse to see anything that was undesirable to be seen. But it was very difficult for her to form any just idea of what was the special trouble which she had to expect—even of how the littleness and commonness would show themselves. She thought of a wild girl speaking broad Scotch, a young man with sinewy limbs, and perhaps (forgive her ignorance) a kilt, speaking the language which in books is put into the lips of the Celt. They were not Celts, she knew, and Glasgow was not a place for gillies and wild Highlanders. But of the gillies and wild Highlanders she did know a little, though of Glasgow, nothing, no more than if it had been in the South Seas. She tried to composethe imagination which painted a highly coloured tableau, full of red hair and freckles, and a wonderful primitive speech. Always, she felt she must recollect, James might have judged them less severely but for herself, though she in her own person would be the last to throw any cold shade upon them. It is needless to say that this new light shed an illumination that was much less tempting upon the house of which he was so proud, and which her discriminating judgment soon made out, according to the graphic description of Marion, to be chiefly “a view.” She had learned to recognise the imposing object it must be from the Clyde steamer after the description which her husband had given her so often, and from the same source she recognised the corresponding view from the colonnade upon the Clyde and the passing boats. These were the chief things he had told her—and no society, and that unkempt, uncultured two. In her innermost retirement Evelyn shuddered a little at what was before her.
It was not a very pleasant prospect, especially with Rosamond’s clear eyes observing everything in the interior, and carrying back her report to the world. However, all this had to be faced courageously. She had undertaken the burden, and she must fit it to her back. No one could help her with it, nor was it fit that she should desire to elude it. It was henceforward her work in the world, and to comfort her husband in his discontentment; to charm it away; to persuade him that things were better than he thought; and, lastly and chiefly, to make them so, was her occupation, the trust she had received. She did not confess either tohim or any one the alarm it gave her. She laughed him quietly out of his depression. “You will see things will arrange themselves,” she said. But it must be confessed that when Evelyn set out, surrounded by every luxury, with a railway director to hand her into a special carriage, and all the officials, great and small, bowing down before the great Indian railway man, she was disposed to think all this honour and glory something like a farce, considering what she was going to. Had she travelled in the simplest way, nobody taking any notice, with the humblest quiet house awaiting her, without these “complications,” how much more light-hearted would she have been! But fortunately James liked the attention of the railway people: a King’s Cross director was an important functionary in his eyes. The inspectors and porters to him were like the regiment to a military man. It was agreeable to have the recognition that he was somebody, that his life had not been spent in vain.
Meanwhile, the news of the approaching arrival had a very great effect in Sauchiehall Road, whither Mr. Rowland had written directing that Marion and Archie should proceed to Rosmore on Tuesday, to be there when he arrived with his wife. “You can go down in the morning,” he wrote, “and tell the housekeeper we shall be at home for dinner. Nothing more than this will be needed, she will know what to do. You can occupy the rooms you preferred when you were at Rosmore with me, but with this reservation, that Mrs. Rowland may make other arrangements when she comes.” This perhaps was not a very judicious wayof presenting his wife to his children, but few men are judicious in this particular. He intended that they should understand at once that Evelyn was sovereign mistress of the house.
“Mrs. Rowland,” said Aunty Jane, “and the housekeeper!” her voice sank below her breath in apparent awe, but this was only the cloak of other emotions. “Oh, the ingratitude,” she cried, “of men—though many and many a time has he thankit me for being so good to you bairns, that have been like my ain. And now he has gotten a housekeeper, and never even offered me the place: there is nae gratitude in men.”
“You the place—of the housekeeper? She’s just a servant,” said Marion.
“And what am I but just a servant? I’ve been ane, ye needna deny’t, to you: it’s been aye your pleasure that has been followed, no mine: and I was a servant lass before I was married, and thought no shame. No: I have nane of your silly pride about words. A housekeeper with a good wage and a good house behind her, and the command of all the orders, is a very responsible person. He might at least have given me the offer, and I would have thought it no discredit. It would have been a grand provision for me at my age.”
“I would never have consented,” said Archie, for once taking the first word. “A servant in my father’s house!”
“Nor me,” said Marion, “it’s just out of the question. I would never have spoken to him if he had dared to offer that to you.”
“I would have thought it nae discredit,” said Mrs. Brown. “And ye’ll maybe, with all your pride, tell me what’s to become of me now? It’s little, very little, I have laid away. My heart was aye set on to do ye full justice. A’ my young days ye have had the best of them. I’ve seen many a good place go past me, and even a good man, but I would never gie up my trust; and now ye are going away without a tear in your e’e, or a word in your mouth for your auld aunty—that was just too faithful to you. And I’ll have to take a place somegate for my living. He might have given me the offer at the least.”
“If you think my father will leave you without a provision,” said Archie——
“A provision!” said Marion, more doubtfully, “that’s a great thing—but a little assistance you may be quite sure—and we’ll always come and see you, and bring you anything we can. Aunty, ye need not be taking up time with little things of yours when there’s us to settle about. We must go, as papa says we are to go. Is there anything I will be wanting to wear?”
“We might all die and be buried, and Mey’s first thought would be what she would have to wear!”
“That’s reasonable enough,” said the aunt; “she would want mourning if ony one of the family—but we needna think of that till the time comes. There wouldna be much wanted for me,” she went on, beguiled, however, by the doleful, delightful subject, though it was contrary to her own injunction; “there’s little crape ever wasted on a poor aunty in these days. ‘Oh, it’s no a very near relation—just our aunt,’ they willsay, and oot in a’ the colours of the rainbow in six months or less.”
“Aunty Jane,” said Marion, in her calm little voice; “it’s no a funeral we’re thinking of, but to go down to Rosmore on Tuesday to meet papa—and mamma.”
“I wouldna stoop to call her mamma. I would call her just Mrs. Rowland, as he says.”
“I have settled in my mind about that,” said the girl, “but not about my frock. Will I wear that one he bought me at MacColl’s shop? The body’s not made, but Miss Peebles would do it if she got her orders to-night; or I might wear my silk? If you would tell me what you think about that, and just let the other things alone.”
“Ye have nae mair feeling,” protested Mrs. Brown, “than a little cat—as ye are.”
“But a cat has no need to take thought about its dress,” said Marion, philosophically, “and see, I’m wanting to make a good impression. My silk would maybe look too grown up, and trying to be grand; and it’s a very rustling silk, like your red one, aunty. But I notice that very soft silks are the fashion, and white is becoming to me. If the body was made like that one of Janet MacColl’s——”
“With plenty of nice red ribbons——”
“No red ribbons at all,” cried Marion, “but just muslin work, and all white. In white,” she continued, with natural perception, “you cannot go far wrong. I wish I was as easy in my mind about Archie. His trousers are all bags at the knees, and there’s something about his coat—Papa,” said Marion, “is an oldgentleman, but there’s something quite different about his coat.”
“I would just imagine sae,” said Mrs. Brown with contempt. “What is he caring about his coat, a man of his age, whereas Archie’s but a young lad! I would buy a pair of lavender gloves, Archie. With all that money in your pocket ye may weel allow yourself a pair of gloves, and Marion too.”
“Oh, I will buy her as many gloves as she likes,” said Archie, with something of the tone of the millionaire—as he felt himself to be. He had the remains of the twenty pounds in his pocket after having got many gratifications out of it, including the dinner to the lads, which had been highly successful, but not very costly, and he was on the whole very well satisfied with himself.
“I canna remember,” said Mrs. Brown, “that ye have offered gloves or onything else, or so much as a flower, to me. But that’s a very different question,” she added, with satirical briskness; “I’m just mysel’ the old glove that ye toss away. It’s done its part, poor thing, but ye’ve nae mair use for it.—Mey, slip the new frock on ye that I may see how it looks, and then you could run to Miss Peebles. If she canna do it, I will just have to cobble it up for you mysel’.”
“I’m going to have no cobbling up,” said Marion decisively. “She must just do it, whether she can or not. She would be very fain to get jobs from Rosmore.”
“Aunty, did ye mean yon—about my never giving ye anything?” said Archie, when May had gone.
“Me, laddie? No, no, I didna mean it. I was just in a girning humour. She doesna see it, and you dinna see it; and maybe I think more than I should about the dirty siller, and how I am to make my living after having been used to owre muckle comfort and ease. But it’s just my life that’s going from me,” cried Mrs. Brown, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. “If I did speak about the housekeeper’s place, it was no for the grand situation nor the wages, nor even the perquisites, it was just that I would have been near my bairns. I would have seen my bairns—them the young lady and the young gentleman, and me the servant woman; but I could have seen them every day, and now the Lord kens if I’ll ever see them mair.”
“Aunty, we’re not savages nor brute beasts: how can ye think ye will never see us mair?”
“My laddie,” she said in her tears; “it’s no only that you’ll be taken from me, but I’ll have to think of mysel’ too. I canna keep up a house like this over my head, nor a servant to do my work. I will have to get lodgers, or take a place, or do something for my bread. I will maybe leave Gleska a’ thegither,” she added in a tone of despair as who should have said leave paradise; “for I have my little pride like other folk, and I wouldna like them that have kent me here, with every comfort about me, to see me taiglin’ after a wheen lodgers, or standing about the register office looking for a place.”
“Aunty Jane, ye cannot for a moment think that my father would leave you like that without a provision. If he does, I will leavehim.”
“Oh, Archie, hold your peace; it’s not your part to speak.”
“I will!” cried the boy, flushing red. “I will never go near his grand house. He may do what he likes, he will get nothing out of me. I was just in an awful state of delight when he was coming home,” said Archie; “you know I was. It was the king enjoying his ain again, like the songs. I thought everything in the world was coming right” He turned a little aside and dashed something out of the corner of his eye. “Aunty,” he said in an altered voice, “I will confess to you that I am real disappointed in my father. He’s no the man I expected. He’s like other men, crabbed and thinking of himself. Even when he does a kind thing, as he did about that money, it’s in such a way that you just want to fling it back in his face!”
“Oh dinna say that,” cried Mrs. Brown alarmed; “you mustna say that. He has his ain ways of thinking, but he’s a good father, Archie. Look how he has kept you all your lives with every luxury; he’s grudged you nothing. It was just for me to say what you wanted, and as much as you wanted it was aye ready; never an objection in his mind. Oh, no, no! you must never say that! To turn you against your papaw is the last thing in the world that would please me. Look what he’s done for us a’ for years and years. I always kent it had to stop some time or other. At first I thought when he came hame, we would just all go to him and keep thegither. I didna realise what a grand wealthy gentleman he had grown. I thought of the siller and nothing else. I expected he would be justlike what he was in the foundry, but rich, and that’s what I brought you up to expect. It was just a dreadful mistake. I saw it all the moment I set eyes upon him. I just divined it before that when I heard of his new wife. It’s my fault: you’ve not been brought up as ye ought to have been, for I didna understand things, Archie. Now I understand. But oh, my bonnie man, dinna take up a grudge against your papaw! He’s been as kind to me as ever he could be. Now he’s done wi’ me, and I’m no more wanted. I’ve nae claim upon him that he should provide for me, a great, muckle, strong woman, no fifty, quite able to work. But for the Lord’s sake, Archie, whatever you do, dinna you turn on your papaw!”
“Aunty Jane,” said the lad who was half sobbing too, “I think he’s a just man, and, as you say, he has never grudged money. If he provides for you, I’ll give you my word I’ll do justice to him. I’ll listen to no prejudice. I’ll just give him my best attention, and maybe we’ll come to understand one another. But if he doesn’t, God forgive him for it, for I’ll not. I’ll come back here, and I’ll take a situation, and we’ll fend together. You shall have no lodger but me; you’ll be housekeeper to nobody but me. This shall just be the test for him, if he’s the man I thought him or no. And if it’s no, he may search the world for a son: he’ll get none of me!”
“Oh, my ain laddie!” said Mrs. Brown, choked by tears and emotion. She could say nothing more, for at this moment the door opened and Marion entered, wearing the skirt of the pretty dress which her fatherhad allowed her to buy at Mr. MacColl’s splendid shop. The stuff intended to make the “body” was wound round her shoulders. She resembled exceedingly one of the figures which make so fine an appearance in the shops. It was an ideal which would certainly have satisfied her highest desires. She was too much absorbed to notice the emotion of the others. “You see,” she said as she came in, “the skirt is very nice and wants no altering. It is just my length, which is a providence. I think this is far better than my silk.”
Mrs. Brown awakening to a new interest, got up and walked round her, inspecting the garment closely. Perhaps she was glad of the occasion of concluding an interview which was agitating to both; but the attraction of the half-made dress would have been a great one in any circumstances. Archie took the opportunity to escape, neither having nor pretending to have any interest in the matter, while a very keen and close discussion went on about the manner of “making up the body.” In respect to this these ladies were not of the same mind, Mrs. Brown being reluctant to accept Marion’s new theory of simplicity, which the sharp little girl had picked up somehow since the change which had come in her fortunes. Aunty Jane wanted bright ribbons, a sash, a bow at the throat “to brighten it up,” as she said. But Marion held her own. It was only at the close of the controversy that she found out that anything had been amiss. She turned upon her aunt as if she were making an accusation. “Your eyes are red,” she said; “you’ve been crying!” with a tonein which there was a certain sense of injury, as of one who had been left out.
“Weel if I have been crying, it’s naething extraordinary,” said Mrs. Brown; “naething to call for your notice.”
“What is it that’s the matter now?”
“You have just not as much heart as would lie on a sixpence, to ask me such a question. There’s your father will be just like you. He will think nothing about it. He will think I should just give ye up as I took ye; the one as pleasant as the other. Oh, it is very little that folk kens, when they begin, how it’s to end.”
“But I suppose,” said Marion, “you would like us to have the advantage now that he has come home? You never expected we were just to bide on with you.”
“Oh, no, I never expected it: I’m no just a fool for all the way that ye set up your little neb to me.”
“Well,” said Marion, “then what have ye to complain of, Aunty Jane? You knew all the time: it was always his meaning to come home; and ye have always spoken about it. Bot Archie and me, we’ve learned to look forward to it; and ye would like us to lose all the advantage now!”
“It’s you that just canna understand. It’s maybe not your fault. I was very muckle taken up with mysel’ and what I had to put on, when I was your age. No your mother: she was aye different. It’s me rather that you’re like—for all that ye’ll think shame to speak to me in the street three months after this day.”
“What for should I think shame to speak to you,” said Marion; “for everybody knows ye belong to us, Aunty Jane? There would be no reason for that: we cannot hide it if we wanted to hide it. It would just be bringing odium on ourselves.”
“And that’s a’ ye have to say?”
“What more should I say? I’ll just go and take off the skirt, and run round to Miss Peebles about the body; for between this and Tuesday there’s very little time.”
“There is none to lose, that’s true. Ye had better tell her that ye want it on Monday night, for they’re never to be lippen’t to, thae mantua-makers.”
“That will be the best way.” But perhaps she felt a little compunctious; for she paused at the door to throw a look back and a word. “I think ye may make your mind easy, Aunty Jane, that papa will not do a shabby thing either to us or to you.”
Mrs. Brown raised her hand to dismiss the subject with a certain natural pride. But though she would not discuss it with Marion, in whose calculations affection was not taken into account, it was not without a certain comfort that she adopted this conclusion. No, he would not do a shabby thing. It had never been his character. Even when he was a working man, Jims Rowland had never been shabby. He might be a wee hard to them that offended him, but shabby—no. There was comfort in that. So that perhaps, after all, Marion’s matter-of-fact consolation was practically of more importance than her brother’s feeling. “She’s no an ill creature after all,” Mrs. Brown said to herself.
The “body” was fortunately done in time, and thedress put on with much satisfaction when Tuesday came, which proved to be, fortunately, a fine day—a day on which a white dress was not inappropriate. Mrs. Brown wept plentifully as the young pair left her. To them it was only a “ploy,” but to her it was the parting—the end of her brighter life. She looked after them with maternal pride, proud of their good looks and their best clothes, and even the new boxes that were piled upon the top of the cab. She might have been invited to go down with them to break the parting a little. He might have thought of a little thing like that, not to treat her just as if she were an old nurse, to be dismissed when they were done with her. Jane looked after them with streaming eyes. They were not thinking that it was good-bye: they had left half of their things behind: they were coming back—oh, very often, and certainly in a day or two, they both said. It was only a ploy to them. And so well as they looked, two young things that anybody might be proud of. She thought of Rowland’s triumph in showing them to his wife, and how astonished that proud lady would be to see the two, just so lady-like and so gentleman-like! That was Mrs. Brown’s view of the case, and it gave her consolation in the middle of her woe.
The young people were surprised that their appearance in the boat and at the pier, where they landed, was not the subject of any demonstration. If their father had been received as a person of importance, how much more should they who were not elderly or old-fashioned like him, but in all the triumph of their youth—his heirs, to whom everything would eventuallybelong. There was, however, only the dog-cart, no more, waiting for them at the pier, with Sandy the groom, who was too friendly by half, and not nearly so much impressed as he ought to have been with their importance. They spent an hour or two by themselves, which would have hung very heavy on their hands had not Archie darted down to see the dogs, and Marion employed herself in arranging her “things” in her room, which was nearly as large as the whole area of the house in Sauchiehall Road. And then the important moment came. The dog-cart had been good enough for them, but it was not good enough for Mrs. Rowland, and it was in the great new resplendent landau that Marion solemnly drove down, all alone, and looking important enough to fill the whole carriage, to meet the lady whom she called mamma.
Evelyncame fully up to her husband’s expectations, which were not small, in the way of admiration. She had not, indeed, been thinking much about the beauty of the country, her mind being fully occupied by matters more important, so that the Clyde, and the loch, and Rosmore, burst upon her more or less as a surprise. She delighted Rowland, whose whole being was on the watch to see what she would say, by her exclamations. “What a beautiful situation! What a lovely view the people must have who live there. What is—Oh!” She broke off abruptly, seeing the flush of pleasure and broad smile of happiness which came over his face. “So that is Rosmore,” she added: “I can see it in your face!”
“Ay, that’s just Rosmore,” he said, with a thickness in his voice; “and this is just the spot, if this confounded boat would stand still for a moment, where I have watched for it appearing since ever I was a lad, and wished and wondered if it would ever be mine.” He put his arm through hers, as he had a way of doing, and held her close—“And now it is mine; and you are mine, Evelyn, that was still more unlikely by far.”
“You must not flatter me by comparing me to that beautiful place; and I pray God you may be very happy in it now you have got it. It is certainly an ideal place.”
“Is it not?” cried Rowland, delighted. It is to be feared that he did not at that moment remember his poor homely Mary, who had been with him so often when he watched for the opening in the trees, and worshipped his idol afar off. “Toots, nonsense,” Mary had said, with a laugh at his absurdity, so many times. He did not think of her, but Evelyn did, with a curious tenderness for the simple little woman who, probably, by this time would have developed into a stout and matter-of-fact matron, and disappointed her husband as much as his children had done, although the love between them had been as true and full of natural poetry as any,dans les temps. Evelyn was quite aware of her husband’s shortcomings, and that there were various superficial failures in him which justifiedthe superficial judgment that he was “not a gentleman,” that most damning of English criticism; but she knew at the same time how it was that the fact of his son not appearing a gentleman was the source of grief to him, and how critical his eyes would be, and how exacting his demands in this respect. Poor little Mary! Perhaps it was as well that she had died in the far-off poetical time. Evelyn felt a little moisture in the corner of her eye, and made a promise in her heart to the wife of James Rowland from the foundry, who was so different from James Rowland, the great railway man from India. “I will do what I can for them, Mary!” was what Evelyn said. Her husband saw the little glimmer on her eyelash, and pressed her arm with fond delight and pride. “I can never be thankful enough,” he said, “Evelyn, for the way you enter into your rough husband’s feelings—my bonnie lady of Rosmore!” That was the very foundry lad who spoke, the very poet of the ironworks whose imagination ran in the ways of iron and steel, and who had attained for himself so incalculable a triumph—everything, and more than everything, that heart could desire—Rosmore, and its bonnie lady! His emotion touched his wife, not displeased—as what woman would be?—to feel herself the very crown of his acquisition; yet her heart went back all the more to poor Mary, whose arm he had probably held in the same way while he glowered with adoration at the white colonnade from the deck of this very steamboat (if steamboats live so long), and who had said, “Toots, Jims, what nonsense!” with her Glasgow accent, thinking that in that particular her husband, who was so clever and soon might rise to be foreman, was little better than a fool.
After this ecstatic moment was over, they both fell into silence, a little anxious for the approaching meeting: he for what she would think of his children: she for what the children would turn out to be. She had begun to doubt a little whether the son would be an unkempt lad in a kilt, like the nephew with whom Mrs. Reuben Butler, once of that same parish, had made disastrous acquaintance. The shabby young men about Glasgow and Greenock had not been of the kind of the Whistler, as indeed, on second thoughts, her reason convinced her Archie was not the least likely to be: nor would Marion probably have the red hair and the short tartan frock, which had been her first idea of what was the probable appearance of the girl with whom Rowland had been so much disappointed. The sight in the distance of a white and a dark speck on the Rosmore pier, as the boat crossed the shining loch, brought Rowland’s heart to his mouth and made him almost incapable of speech. “Yon will be them,” he said with a parched mouth, gripping her arm. And Evelyn did not feel disposed to say anything, or to remark upon the beauty of the hills, though they lighted up in all their purple hollows, and threw out all their blue peaks, as if to catch her attention. Nature has a wonderful charm, if there is not some human emotion before her to pre-occupy both heart and eye. The range of mountains at the head of the loch were after all not of half so much importance as the little white figure on the pier head, of whichscarcely the first fact of its existence was as yet perceptible, or the taller one that already seemed to sway and lounge with idle limbs beside her. Evelyn kept her eyes fixed upon them as she drew nearer and nearer, and gradually a feeling of relief stole into her heart. There was nothing so very alarming that James should have made such a fuss! “My dear James,” she said turning to him, “I suppose you did it for a joke: your Marion is a dear little girl.” He pressed her arm close, but he could not say anything: his middle-aged heart was beating. “Archie I must study more at leisure, but he looks very nice too,” she added with more of an effort. Perhaps, after all, the boy would have been better in a kilt, with his hair over his eyes, like the Whistler in the “Heart of Midlothian.” She looked on breathless as the steamboat drew to the pier. Certainly they would rush on board to greet their father, to bring him home in triumph, even if they were less anxious to make her acquaintance; but Marion and Archie did not budge an inch. They stood there, on the defensive, a little defiant, staring, waiting till they were spoken to; and in the bustle of the arrival, the haste of the transference from the quickly departing steamboat to the land, with all the baggage which Rowland, with his habits of personal superintendence did not think the maid and man whom they had brought able to deal with, Evelyn found herself flung upon the two without any introduction. She put out her hand to her step-daughter. “You are Marion, I am sure,” she said, drawing the girl towards her andkissing her on both cheeks. “I am very glad to see you, my dear.”
“And so am I—to see you—mamma,” said the girl reddening and staring. The name felt to Evelyn like a stone flung in her face.
“And this is Archie,” she said, transferring Marion’s somewhat unwilling hot, little gloved hand to her left, and holding out the other to the boy. He for his part made no answer, but gave her a quick look, and then withdrew his eyes. “Your father is too busy to think about us till the luggage is all right,” she said; “but I hope we are going to be, we three, very great friends.”
“Oh, we’ll be all that,” said Marion with a laugh, working her hand out of Evelyn’s hold. Archie made no reply; he too drew his hand away from her as soon as she had shaken it, which was the only thing, so far as he was aware, that any one could want to do with another person’s hand. He gave her a second look as he did this, which Evelyn did not perceive, but in which Mary’s eyes made a little, a very little essay of a reply to her, had she but seen it. She stood by them a moment, not knowing how to proceed further, with the little crowd of the pier pressing round, and the wheelbarrow for the luggage knocking against the group. “Is that our carriage?” said Evelyn. “Don’t you think the best thing you could do would be to put your sister and me into it, until your father gets through his troubles?” Put her into it! Archie had not an idea what she meant. Was he to lift her up and set her down in it, like a doll? He staredand hung about on those loose legs of his, which could not even stand firm, and followed her awkwardly to the carriage, where the footman stood opening the door. What was there for Archie to do? The footman was there to help them in, if they needed to be helped in. He followed them, and hung about, the most unnecessary personage. The footman belonged to the turn-out, he was in his proper place; but where was the need of Archie? Evelyn took pity upon him, when she saw his helpless looks. “Go and see if you can be of use to your father,” she said. Of use to his father! when there were two servants with his father. It was their business, not Archie’s. He turned and went reluctantly back again, with his idle legs and his hands in his pockets. The Archie of Sauchiehall Road would have picked up a portmanteau and carried it in with the greatest cheerfulness; but this was the Archie of Rosmore.
“Well, there you are,” said Rowland, shaking hands with him cursorily. “Just show Stanchion, will you, where the cart is for the luggage. I suppose they’ve sent something to bring him up and Mrs. Rowland’s maid.”
Archie knew nothing about it, and said so. “You said you had given all the directions.”
“So I did, but you might show the man the way at least,” said Rowland, hurrying forward to the carriage. Archie stood among the crowd, with the boxes and barrows bumping at his legs, for a full minute more, then, as his better angel began to get the advantage, took one hand out of his pocket, and made a step tothe tall and fussy valet, who stood among a mountain of boxes. “Yonder’s the cart from the House,” he said, pointing to the highway, where the cart and dog-cart stood among the trees. “It’s no use telling me yonder’s the cart. You’ll better lend a hand, young man, or how are them boxes to get there?” said Mr. Rowland’s gentleman, who prided himself in being a better gentleman than his master. To understand the rage that boiled up in Archie’s breast, it would be necessary to fathom the angry contempt with which a Scotch clerk of the humbler kind, but capable of being a great merchant one day, or even the Scotch artisan, regards a domestic servant, however magnificent. Archie could have slain Mr. Stanchion where he stood. He did not laugh, as his father’s son ought to have done, at the mistake. As he swung round on his heel, his father called out from the carriage, “Hallo, Archie, Mrs. Rowland wants to know if you’re coming with us: make haste.” He stared a moment with a sullen countenance, and then, turning again, walked quickly off without a word.
“He says he would rather walk,” said Evelyn, “which is what young men generally do.”
“I did not hear him say a word.”
“Nor me, papa,” said Marion, with a laugh. She thought Archie’s “sulks” were a good joke, and, to do her justice, saw no harm in them, nor anticipated any consequences from his ill temper. “We just never mind,” she added, feeling mistress of the position, “when he’s in an ill key.” And Marion was very gracious to her father and his wife as they drove home.She pointed out to Mrs. Rowland various points of view. “That’s the Chieftain’s Leap, but it’s nothing to see, just a red scaur, and trees growing all about; but a little further on is a good view of Greenock and the docks and the big chimney smoking, and up there you can see down upon Kilrossi, where everybody goes for the salt water—for the sea-bathing, I mean.”
“The salt water is a very picturesque description,” said Evelyn, “and full of local colour.” She laughed at herself for her own words, but it was better to make talk of any kind, than to see that cloud settling down on her husband’s face.
“And down there,” said Marion, “is Rankin’s cottage, the old gamekeeper who has the dogues. He is a cripple creature himself since he had his accident, but the dogues are very nice little things. Archie has bought two. He says they will be good for watch-dogs about the House. And Rankin himself is a very funny old man to talk to—but I do not care for him, for he is always on about Lady Jean.”
“Who is Lady Jean?”
“Oh, she is the Earl’s sister; old, and not pretty, and not married. I don’t know why they make such a fuss about her. There’s no interest in a person like that.”
“Don’t you think you might let somebody get in a word from time to time,” said Rowland; “I have heard nothing but your little voice since ever we arrived.”
“Well, I hope my little voice is better than nothing, papa. And you will not hear very much from Archie.He is just as sulky as he can be about Aunty Jane. He thinks she should have come down here with us, to see us settled, and make acquaintance with mamma, and all that. The very idea! but boys have so little sense. That is not what Aunty Jane cares so much about herself. She is more concerned in her mind about what she is to do next.”
“Is Aunty Jane the lady who brought you up? Indeed, then, I do think, James, that she has not been very nicely treated. She has been so devoted to the children. It was the least thing you could do to ask her to bring them home, and let me show how we appreciated her goodness and affection. You must give me the address, Marion, and I will write to-morrow.”
“Oh,” said Marion with a gasp, raising herself bolt upright, “that’s not necessary—that’s not at all necessary. Aunty never expected——”
“I am afraid I must take upon myself to be the judge of what is necessary,” said Mrs. Rowland with the sweetest smile in the world. Her soft peremptoriness was for her husband as well as for his daughter. For Rowland, too, had responded with a gasp to the suggestion of inviting Jane, and his wife’s gentle assumption of supreme authority took him as much by surprise as it did Marion. He began, too, with an anxious “But——,” but got no farther. Jane at Rosmore was something which his imagination could not reach.
“Butis not a word which exists in autocratic countries,” said Evelyn laughing. “Constitutional surroundings alone encourage such expressions, and I’llhave no dissent in Rosmore. Didn’t you hail me Lady as we came over that glorious Firth?”—Evelyn would not perhaps have used the words had she not meant to reduce her husband to instantaneous submission. She thought, indeed, that the Firth was very fine, but her usual principles were against hyperbole. It would be hard, however, to refuse to a good woman the legitimate use of certain weapons because they are used to a large extent by women who are not good. And the “glorious Firth” and his wife’s smile together were far more than James Rowland could make head against. I do not think indeed that such artillery was needed. He had not the least objection, but on the contrary, the greatest pride and pleasure in thinking of her as the autocrat and supreme mistress of Rosmore, to ask any splendid visitor she liked, even Royalty, should it cost him half his fortune. It was, however, a little bewildering when it was not Royalty but Jane Brown.
“But I don’t think she can come,” said Marion’s little monotonous voice coming in, “so you may put your mind at rest, papa, for she would not like to leave the house with just Bell in it. She is thinking of selling the things, for she will not want to keep up a big house like that when there is nobody but herself, and no allowance; but she will have to take care of them all the more not to let them be spoiled by a servant-lass. And she will think she has not good enough clothes——.” Marion here made a very perceptible examination of Mrs. Rowland’s dress, which was not “a silk” nor “a satin,” but simple grey stuff and madein the most unassuming way: “I don’t see that,” she continued with an obvious comparison, “for she has some very nice silks, and she might come very well, so far as that goes. But for another thing, she could not spend the money. When it was for us, she never minded; but she always grudges a railway ticket for herself.”
“What do you mean about selling her things, and no allowance?” said Rowland hastily; but he added, “We need not discuss that here. But of course, my dear, what you decide upon must be done.”
“So I intend,” said Mrs. Rowland, with a laughing bow to him, as of a queen to a king. “We shall have a great deal to settle when we get home, and I hope that everybody will be pleased with my despotism.”
“Oh, as for that,” said Marion, taking upon herself again the role of expositor, “I’ve always read that a lady should be the mistress in her own side; the gentleman, outside; and she’s not to meddle with him; but the lady——”
“I assure you I shall meddle with him, Marion. The flower garden, for instance, I shall take entirely into my hands. In short, I don’t know the thing in which I shall not meddle.”
“The lady,” said Marion, raising her voice a little, “should have all the house to manage, and the children, and all within her own sphere. The books all say that woman’s sphere is Home.”
“With a great many capital letters.”
“You may be meaning some joke with your capital letters, but I’m saying just what I’ve read. It’s nothingabout politics nor business—not that kind of thing; but to sit at the fireside and give her orders, and everybody to be at her beck and call.”
“Excellent, Marion; you have said your lesson very well, and I hope you mean to be at this lady’s beck and call.”
“I don’t know,” said Marion, “that it means the grown-up children: for when you get to be eighteen or so, you are supposed to be able to judge for yourself. But it was no lesson. It was just what I’ve read in books. I have always been very fond of reading books.”
“You could not do better, my dear; and we must read some books together,” said Evelyn. Then she thought there had been enough of Marion for the moment. “The woods are beautiful,” she said, “and I see, James, the mountains you told me of. Is that Ben Ros—that great shoulder rising over the loch, or the peak in the distance that is so blue and misty? You must tell me when we have time, every name. I think I should prefer to stop the carriage and walk the rest of the way.”
“That is just what I would like you to do,” said her husband, “for every step’s enchanted ground.”
Marion did not know what to do, whether to join them in this walk, as curiosity suggested, or to drive home in state, as if it were she who was the mistress of everything. The paths, however, were damp in places, as they usually were, and she reflected that she could walk when she pleased, but that if her pretty white dress was marked with mud, it would have tobe washed, and that nothing, not even a white dress, looks so well after it is washed. And also her shoes were thin: they were worked with beads, and she wore them over a pair of openwork stockings. The boggy parts would be just ruination to her pretty shoes. Mrs. Rowland had strong leather ones, and a grey dress that would take no harm. “For my part,” she said, “I would be better in the house, for I have a headache. I would like to come too, but if I got my feet wet, it would give me a cold, and I might never get well.”
“By all means drive home,” said Evelyn. “Your shoes are much too thin for walking, and see that tea is ready when we come in. Now, James.”
He took her away to the opening, from which the loch was visible, and pointed out to her, hill by hill, the whole range, lying under the evening sunshine and the flying shadows; now one peak coming out, now another, now a sudden gleam, like some sun-signal calling forth an unseen knoll into glory, among all the other unnoticed slopes, now a deep purple mantle of royal wealth coming down over the great veiled shoulder of a chosen mountain. During the few minutes they stood there gazing, a hundred transformations took place upon those heights. At what strange games were those Titans playing, veiling themselves, unveiling, retiring into mist, breaking out as with a shout, into the sudden light. Evelyn, for a moment, forgot everything as she gazed at this rapid drama of the hills. She was recalled to herself by the tremble in Rowland’s arm as he held hers. He had been as happy and proud inher enthusiasm as if the beloved mountains were part of himself: but there was something more important to him even than the hills. He gave her arm a close pressure as she was silent for a moment, and said close in her ear, with a tremor in his tone, “Evelyn, what do you think of them?”
The question brought her back to a prospect more near and important than the hills, one that she had been glad to put aside for the moment in favour of this wonderful and delightful scene. The moment at least was something gained, and she said to herself that she never would forget it—this first glimpse at the surroundings of her home. The other now had to be faced again, the interior landscape, which was not so delightful. “I think, dear James,” she said, “that they are both very shy and very strange between us two. They don’t know me at all, and you so little. Nature works, of course, on your side, but even Nature must have a little time. And for me, Nature is rather against me than for me. We must wait before we form any judgment.”
“But your first impression is—bad, or if not bad, yet——”
“It is not bad at all! Don’t take up false ideas. They are both so shy——”
“Shy! Evelyn! do you think what you are saying? Marion shy!”
“It is because she is shy that she chatters, poor little girl! Did you never know that was a form it took? Archie is silent, and she chatters. He is a little—rude, and she is a little—talkative. It is allfrom the same cause. You did not tell me what a pretty little thing she was, James.”
“Pretty!—do you think she is pretty? She is not the least of your kind, Evelyn.”
“I hope she is of a better kind. Next spring, when she has learned to make her courtesy, and is dressed regardless of expense; for I will takecarte blanche, I warn you, so far as Marion is concerned—you shall see! She will make a sensation at the drawing-room.”
A glow of beatitude came over James Rowland’s face. He almost hurt her arm with the pressure he gave it. “You think so? You really think so, Evelyn—before the Queen?” The warmth ran to his very heart, and came back in a sort of dew of happiness to his eyes. His little girl before the Queen! perhaps to be noted by that mother sovereign herself with a kindly eye.Hischild! and he there to look on, paying the homage it would be more than his duty to pay. He stood for a moment clasping Evelyn’s arm, too glad to speak. And then—for the pain is more persistent than the pleasure—he added in a low confidential tone. “But the boy—is just a lout, poor lad?” It sounded like an assertion, but it was a question, and of the most anxious kind.
“He is no lout, you unjust, abominable parent. I see at once the eyes you told me of—his mother’s eyes.”
“One would think, to hear you, that you had seen his mother!”
“I have through your eyes, James. I will neverforget that first day. And I thought of her as we came across the Clyde.”
“It was more than I did, Evelyn—with you there.”
“She must have been there with you often, and thought you were talking nonsense; and now you have got all you ever dreamed of——”
“And more!” he said; “and more!” again pressing her arm.
“And now we have got to make it up,” said Evelyn, “to the two whom she has left to you—and to me, through you, James.”
“She was an innocent, simple creature, Evelyn!”
“She was your wife, James. Don’t go into the house which you have dreamed of for so long without thinking of her who never lived to be its mistress.”
Rowland took off his hat. “I had a sore heart to lose my poor Mary,” he said; “God bless her in Heaven, where she is; but I have got the best blessing a man can have in Rosmore.”
Mrs. Browndid not come to Rosmore, though she received a letter from Mrs. Rowland which dissolved her at the first moment of reading in tears and gratitude, but which afterwards she began to fear must have “some motive,” though it was difficult to imagine what. For why should the lady be so kind to her? she asked herself. There are a great many good people in the world, and especially women, who are haunted withthis idea of a “motive,” and cannot shake themselves free of it. Jane was herself an innocent person enough, acting upon impulse continually. But all the more was she anxious to investigate the supposed mysterious meaning and suggestion of self-interest which could have dictated Evelyn’s kind and simple letter. “I should have wished that you had come with the children to settle them in their new home, where, of course, there will always be a room for you, their affectionate guardian, who have been a mother to them; but at least I hope you will come now, and that you will approve of all my arrangements for them.” It was difficult to find anything in this that could be objected to, and Jane wept over it at first, as has been said; but then her habitual distrust came in. “What will the woman be wanting with me? It will be to give herself credit with Jims, and throw a’ the blame on me—but I’ll no fa’ into the snare,” she said to herself, falling into it instantly, if snare it was. When Archie appeared in the afternoon to fetch her, she shook her head. “Na, na, I’m no gaun—no a fit. It’s just some plan for exposing your poor mammaw’s family, and letting him see we’re no to be evened toher. No, no, I will never set my fit within Rosmore.”
Archie himself, though he had gone to Glasgow on Mrs. Rowland’s gentle compulsion to escort his aunt, was not perhaps very anxious that she should come. Though he was full of affection for her, it is to be feared that already the cold eye of the butler had worked its effect upon Archie. He felt himself grow red and a cold dew come over his forehead when hethought of that functionary holding his silver dish at Mrs. Brown’s elbow. What unutterable things would be in his eye! Archie felt that Morris looked at himself with a pitying wonder. What, then, would he feel for Mrs. Brown? Therefore he was not disposed to press the matter. As for Mrs. Rowland, the lively prejudice with which he had met her, had been kept up with difficulty in her presence, and he could throw no light on the motive she could have in asking Mrs. Brown. There was, alas, no difficulty whatever in proving to the most casual observer that Mr. Rowland’s family, which in this case was Mrs. Brown’s family, could not in any way be “evened” to the new wife who was supreme at Rosmore. To bring Mrs. Brown to make that doubly sure was a work of supererogation. Archie did not say this to his aunt, but with a burning sense of disadvantages which he had never suspected before he felt it in his own breast.
“And how is Mey getting on?” said Jane, when this question was decided.
“Oh, well enough. She is just copying everything she sees, like a little parrot, as she is.”
“There’s no harm in that,” said Jane, “for I suppose the leddy’s real well-bred and a’ that. It would be nothing but that he marriet her for. He was aye an ambitious man, Jims Rowland. But eh! he’s a good-hearted man—just ower good. I got a letter from him this morning, and he says the allowance will just go on, and I’m to keep the house, and make myself comfortable.”
Jane’s ready tears flowed forth upon this argument.“It’s awfu’ kind,” she sobbed; “I wouldna say a word against one of them, nor do a thing to vex him. If he had been my ain brother, he couldna have been more kind—I’m just at my ease for life; and if you could tell me ony thing I could do to please him——”
“Maybe it would please him,” said Archie doubtfully, “if you were to come to Rosmore.”
“Na, na, I’ll no do that—just to graitify that prideful woman. But ye can tell him that I want the house for his, and that whatever use can be made of it to send things to, or to come for a night’s lodging instead of one of thae dear hotels—it will be ready. There will be beds ready, and linen aired ready to put on, night and day,” said Mrs. Brown in the fervour of her gratitude. “And ye can say toher, Archie, that I’m very much obliged, but that I have not sleepit out of my own house for years, which is just the real truth, as ye can certify, though maybe it’s no just the reason in the present case; and ye may say I will be glad to see her if she comes to Gleskie—which is no perhaps exactly the case, but we maun be ceevil. Mind ye must always be ceevil, whatever happens. It would give her a grand hold upon ye, if ye were ever wanting in respec’.”
“I’ve no reason to think she’s wanting any hold upon me,” said Archie, with a little irritation.
“Eh!” said his aunt, holding up a warning finger, “she’s laying her spell on you too! I’ll no go near her, or she might make a fool o’ me. It’s easy enough to make a fool o’ me. I just greet at a kind word—I canna help mysel’. When I got her letter wi’ a’ itsfine words, I just grat till I was blin’; but then I asked myself what for should she be that ceevil to me?”
“It was maybe only for kindness after all,” said Archie.
“Dinna you be a born idiot to trust in that. Na, na, it’s no without a motive, take my word for it,” Jane said.
It was hard, however, for the closest observer to find out what the motive could be. Evelyn had no small effort to make to overcome her own natural objections to the society of the two young people, one of whom studied her like a pattern book, while the other eyed her from his corner with a hostility scantily veiled by that attempt to be “ceevil” which his aunt had enjoined upon him. Archie’s attitude, however, was on the whole less trying than that of Marion, who studied and copied Mrs. Rowland’s manners, her tone, as far as she could master it, her little tricks of gesture, till Evelyn became ridiculous to herself; which is a very curious experience. When she saw little Marion with her slight person throw back her head as Evelyn was aware she had herself the habit of doing, and drop her hand by her side, which was another peculiarity, swaying it slightly as she walked, a trick for which Evelyn had suffered much in her youth, the laugh which burst from her in spite of herself was not pleasant. Evelyn was tall, while Marion was little; she was forty, and Marion was eighteen. She belonged a little, she was aware, to a bye-gone school, which had been stately rather than piquant, and Marion’s infantile prettiness was adapted to a quite different principle. It was ludicrous to watch growing and increasing day by day the travesty of herself which was before her eyes in her husband’s little girl. Sometimes her impatience with the copy was so great that the woman’s instincts of outraged personality were upon her, and she could have seized and shaken the folly out of the little flatterer and imitator. But I need not say that this was the merest flutter of nerves on Evelyn’s part, and that she never really departed from herrôleof patience. The worst of it was that James began gradually to perceive, and not only to perceive, but regard with delight, this imitation process. “I really think she is growing a little like you, Evelyn!” he said, when his wife had been driven nearly to an end of her toleration, and it was all she could do to keep from her countenance a contraction—which Marion would probably have reproduced next day, to the confusion of all concerned.
In this way, however, a great superficial improvement was notable in the girl. She learned in an inconceivably short time how to manage all the circumstances of her changed life, adapting herself to everything as one to the manner born. No temptation of being respectful to the butler ever came to Marion. She treated him and the rest of the fine servants as if they were cabbages; which was her rendering of the easy and genial indifference with which Mrs. Rowland received the services she had never been accustomed to consider extraordinary. Evelyn’s manner to the maid in her room, though she might not say a word to her,was the easy composure of a woman perfectly considerate and friendly, and ready on any occasion to show her natural interest in the fellow-creature so near to her, both by word and deed. But Marion’s indifference went the length of insult, though she had no intention of anything but to follow exactly her stepmother’s example. The demeanour of the one was just that kind of quiet familiar affability and ease which characterises a relationship in which there is no desire, on the part of the superior at least, for any more demonstration than is felt, or unnecessary intercourse; but Marion’s was a kind of brutality by which the inferior was made to feel as if she had no existence at all except as a ministrant to certain wants. Thus the little girl achieved that polish of the Tartar, which, when scratched, shows the savage through.
Archie was not at all of this kind. And sometimes when Evelyn looked up suddenly and found him with his averted head, shoulder turned the side she was sitting on, and blank of dull opposition, she felt it almost a relief. Now and then some sentiment on her part, something quite unthought of which she said or did, and which probably had no connection whatever with himself, would make him look full at her with those eyes which Rowland had called his mother’s eyes—the honest soft blue, not too profound, but clear as the sky, in which at least the perception of the heart was not wanting, whether it was accompanied or not by any higher light of the spirit. What Archie knew or did not know it was difficult to say, for he never spoke when he could help it, and then chiefly in answerto questions which were seldom of an intellectual kind. Something had been said at first about the University, or rather, as both Archie and his father called it, “the College,” which meant, as Evelyn came slowly to understand, the same thing—only so far different that Glasgow or Edinburgh was the University meant, and not Oxford or Cambridge. That his son should go to “the College” had been Rowland’s intent, but the idea seemed to drop all the more completely, of course, that it was the summer vacation, and nothing could be done for the moment. Archie, however, instead of exerting himself like Marion to acquire a new, if it should happen to be a fictitious standing ground, remained a sort of unknown quantity in his father’s house. With all the efforts she could make Evelyn did not succeed in forming anything but the most slight acquaintance with her stepson, and neither (which was more extraordinary still) did his father attain to more than an acquaintance. Sometimes Archie would be drawn into an expression of opinion on a political subject, which naturally was, as a rule, in opposition to his father, and at once crushed by him; upon which the boy with not unnatural wrath returned into his shell more closely than before. One time, indeed, Evelyn had found herself on the very verge of attaining his confidence, or so at least she thought. It was on the day—momentous day—when Rankin judged the two little dogs to be sufficiently mature to be sent home to their master. They were brought up to the great door, which was at one end of the colonnade. Nothing more amusing could be than the two little bundles of fur andfun deposited at her feet by Sandy the groom, who was delighted with his errand, though a little discomposed to find nobody but “the mistress.”
“They’ll be for the young gentleman,” he said shamefaced.
“What delightful little things,” said Evelyn, who, like all well-conditioned persons, loved dogs. “Go and find Mr. Archibald, Sandy. I’ll take care of them till he comes.”
When Archie appeared in great haste and for once glowing with pleasure, he found her seated in the centre of a great rug on the floor of the hall with the two little dogs in convulsions of delight beside her, barking, biting, rolling and struggling upon the soft carpet, and undaunted with the something so unknown to them—a lady in a soft silken dress to play with. Perhaps the little things recognised only this of Evelyn’s many excellences, that she wore an exceptionally soft gown—not like Jenny Rankin’s rough homespun. Dogs are very susceptible to this superiority of texture.
“Come and look at your doggies, Archie,” she said without looking up. “I have taken possession of them, or they have taken possession of me. Where did you find such delights? There is nothing so nice as a puppy, except a baby perhaps—and you, I know, would not appreciate that.”
“Why would I not appreciate that?” said Archie roughly (being thereto moved by suggestions from Aunty Jane.)
Mrs. Rowland gave a glance up at the clouded countenance of the sullen boy, surprised but sayingnothing, and he ended as he generally did when alone with her, by feeling ashamed of himself.
“They’re Rankin’s doggies—a particular breed,” he added more civilly than usual to make up. “He’s the old gamekeeper, and he’s given himself up to dogues ever since his accident.”
This was quite a long speech for Archie to make.
“He has given himself up to it with great success,” said Evelyn. “You must take me to see him. These are just at the most delightful stage. I said there was nothing so nice except a baby. But kittens are almost as nice before they grow to be cats.”
“They cannot be so nice,” said Archie, “because they do grow to be cats; and these will be dogues when they’re grown up.”
Evelyn pondered a little over this dogmatic proposition before she answered: “You put it in an original way, but I think I agree with you, Archie. And what are these little things called—or have they got names—or shall we confer some on the spot?”
“Rankin hasn’t much imagination: he calls them just Roy and Dhu—that means red and black in Gaelic. But you spell the last D-h-u.”
“Roy and Dhu are very good names,” said Evelyn. “I would keep to them, I think: they sound well even if Rankin has not much imagination.”
“He has a great deal of Gaelic,” said Archie: “he writes things in papers about poetry and stuff. He discourses to me sometimes, but I never mind.”
“Then you don’t care for poetry and stuff?”
“How should I, in Gaelic, which I don’t understand?” The conversation, however, was thus getting upon general topics, which Archie eschewed, and he suddenly awoke to the danger of being drawn into a tête-à-tête with his stepmother. “The dogues will be spoiling your dress, and a bother to you.”
“I have never confessed to your father,” she said, “that I am very fond of dogs. I don’t think he likes them. Suppose you and I set up a little kennel of our own. You will want dogs for the shooting when the time comes, and I have not seen one about the place.”
“No, there are none. Gilmour—that’s the gamekeeper—has two or three. He says there’s a good deal of shooting,” said Archie, led out of himself by the interest of this subject, about which he had gleaned a little further information. It excited and charmed the lad, for he was full of eagerness to do things like other young men of his age, but afraid to show his ignorance to begin with.