Todescribe the blank which fell upon the successful man as he went briskly up through the woods, which in his heart he called his own, reflecting upon his success and how he had won it all unaided, his happy selection of a house, his still happier luck in a wife, and saw the pair of limp young figures without interest in anything, vaguely standing about in front of the colonnade, would be too much for words. They stood a little apart, Archie with his hands in his pockets, Marion drawing lines in the ground with the end of her parasol. They were not even looking at “the view.” The air of caring for nothing, finding no interest in anything, was so strong in them both that they might have been taken as impersonations of ennui, that most hopeless of all the immoralities. They did not know what to do with themselves—they would never know what to do with themselves, Rowland thought in despair. They would stand about his life as they were doing about the vacant space in front of the house, empty, indifferent, uninterested. Going wrong, he said to himself (heaven forgive him!) was almost better than that—anything is better than nullity, the state of doing and being nothing. The outline of themagainst the light struck him as he came up to them like a dull blow.
“Well,” he said, “what have you been doing since I saw you last?”
“Nothing,” said Marion, with a slight look up at him, and a yawn, “for there is nothing to do.”
“No—thing,” said Archie with hesitation and a less assured, more anxious look. He wanted to speak to his father about those puppies, if he could only venture: but he did not dare.
“You might have explored the woods,” said Rowland, “or gone down to the loch, or taken a boat, or rambled up the hill—there’s a hundred things to do.”
“The woods are very damp: I would have spoiled my shoes: and the hills very craggy: it would have torn my frock: and Archie, he is too lazy to row a boat, and too grumpy to speak. Will it soon be time to go back to Glasgow? You might have taken me with you, papa.”
“It is a pity I did not: for there was company at the Manse, and I have an invitation for you.”
“Oh papa!”
Archie too looked up with a certain lightning of his preoccupied face.
“Yes—if you are not too fine for it. It is to go to some place that is called the Burn, to a lady whose name is Miss Eliza, who has a number of nieces and nephews, and something always going on, tennis, or boating, or dancing.”
“Oh, papa!” Marion’s eyes shone; but presently alittle cloud came over her. “I have not had much chance of learning tennis. The MacColls can play, they’ve got a nice ground of their own—they have just everything! But there’s no club you can get into out of the Sauchiehall Road, and you want shoes and things. I never was in the way of learning.” A little furtive moisture glistened in Marion’s eyes.
“I could let you see the way,” said Archie.
“Oh yes, laddies learn everything,” said his sister with an offended air; and then she perceived that she had been guilty of an unauthorised word. “I mean young gentlemen,” she cried.
“For heaven’s sake, whatever you mean, don’t say that,” said Rowland hastily. “However it is not a desert, as you thought: there is balm in Gilead. When you come back and settle down, you must make friends with Miss Eliza.”
“Is she a lady, papa? I would not, not for anything, make friends out of our own sphere.”
Rowland laughed loud and long. He said, “I am glad you have such an exalted idea of your sphere; but how about the MacColls?”
“I am not meaning,” said Marion, with dignity, “to keep up with the MacColls. They’re just acquaintances, not to call friends. They never even ask me to their grandest parties. If they were friends, they would have let me learn tennies and all that. I have always meant to let them know that when my papa came home, they were not good enough for me.”
“Well—perhaps it’s legitimate—if they thought you not good enough for their grand parties, and no questionof friendship in the matter. But you, Archie, you’ve got some friends?”
“Yes,” said the lad with hesitation. He had no friend whom he would not have sacrificed on the altar of the puppies. “There are some of the students—but I perhaps will have little chance of seeing them after——”
“If you please,” said Sandy, the groom, who had been loitering near, “will I put in the horse? for yonder’s the steamer leaving the loch head, and she’ll sune be here.”
“Never mind the horse: we’ll walk,” said Rowland, at which Marion gave him a look of wonder and reproach. Walk! a dog-cart was not much, but it was always a more dignified thing than to think a young lady like herself capable of walking like a common person to the pier.
“And, sir,” said Sandy, “about the little dougs—Rankin would be glad to know.”
“The little dougs?”
“The young gentleman will have tell’t ye. It’s Rankin’s little dougs that are kent for a grand breed—and there’s aye somebody wanting them. He would like to ken one way or anither afore the young gentleman goes away.”
“It’s some little terriers,” said Archie, coming forward a step, “we were looking at them. They’re very bonnie little beasts. I thought that maybe—there would be watch-dogs wanted about the house—or—just for the fun of them—they’re—fine little things. I—I—thought it might be—a good thing.”
Rowland looked severely at his son as he stammered and hesitated. He replied coldly, “If you want the dogs, I suppose that is enough.” He waved his hand to Sandy, dismissing him. “Now Marion, are you ready, for your walk?”
Marion pouted and protested that she was sure she could not walk so far, but Rowland was inflexible. “It will be something to do,” he said grimly. And with a troubled countenance and trembling limbs Archie followed.
A more beautiful walk could scarcely have been conceived. Here and there, as they descended the hill, they came out upon an open space where the lovely loch, with the great range of hills at the head lying full in the western sun, stretched out before them. Its surface glistened with gleams of reflection, repeating everything from the white scattered houses on its banks to the whiter clouds that goated on the surface of the sky. A boat or two, between the dazzling atmosphere above and the still more dazzling reflection below, lay like a thing beatified. Woods and hills and shining water—there was nothing wanting to the perfection of the scene. “Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile:” and troubled—troubled, full of care—wanting for something wherever he is.
The successful man marched along with his head high, his pretty little daughter running with her short steps by his side, the house of his choice behind him, the wife of his choice awaiting him, and so well off, able to do whatever he pleased, the admiring, curious people said. Whatever he pleased! yes, to buy furniture of the rarest description, horses and carriages, even Rosmore itself, if he could by any means procure that it should be brought to market; but not with all his wealth able to expand the little vulgar nature of the girl, or open the disturbed heart of the boy beside him. Poor rich man! to whom his wealth could give no pleasure while this constant irritation gnawed at his heart.
He took them back to Sauchiehall Road, not exhilarated by their day’s outing; and while Marion recovered her fatigue and began really to enjoy Rosmore in describing its grandeur to her aunt, he took Archie aside for a few brief words. “What was that about the dogs?” he said. “Did you pay for them, or have they to be paid for, or what did the groom mean? I won’t have any familiarity with the grooms. Why should I be consulted as if you couldn’t settle such a matter for yourself?”
“I never wanted you to be consulted,” said the boy, retiring within himself.
“What did it mean then? Remember I consider you old enough to take the responsibility of your own actions. If you want anything, get it: if I don’t approve, I’ll let you know my opinion. If I find you spending too much, I’ll put a stop to it. But I am not to be consulted about every trifle as if you were a child.”
Archie was so struck with the irony of this address as applied to himself, that his wounded feelings and strained temper burst out into a harsh laugh. “As for spending,” he said, “much or little, you may set your mind at rest, for I’ve nothing to spend.”
Rowland took out his pocket-book with a look of doubt, glancing from Archie to Mrs. Brown. “You must have your allowance of course,” he said. “You’ve had it, I suppose, for years past?”
“A shilling a week or sometimes half-a-crown,” said Archie, prolonging the laugh which was the only witness of emotion his boyish pride and shyness permitted him to indulge in. “But I’m not asking you for money,” he said harshly. The puppies flitted in vision before his eyes, and counselled a softer tone, but he could not, in spite of the puppies, put forward a finger to touch the crisp piece of paper which his father held out to him.
“I’ll see about that,” said Rowland. “Here, in the meantime.”
“I am not wanting your money.”
“You young ass! take what I give you. I’ll see that you have at your command in future, a proper sum.—Here!” Rowland, who was much out of temper too, flung the note at the boy, who let it drop upon the floor. “And try to behave like a gentleman,” he said, exasperated, “and not like a sullen dog, as you’re doing now.”
He did not mean to be so severe. He was tired and sick of it all, as he said to himself as he hurried away. The boy was not true, he was not genuine, not frank nor open. The father was very angry, disappointed: yet in the dark, as he walked back to the hotel, there gleamed somehow upon him, he did not know how, a reflection, a gleam from poor Mary’s blue eyes, that had so long been hidden in the grave.
Meanwhile, the party in Mrs. Brown’s parlour had been disturbed by a sense of something sulphurous in the air, and by the flutter of the piece of paper which had been thrown at Archie like a blow. All demand for explanation or possibility of interference had been stopped by the rapid leave-taking and departure of Rowland. “Are you not going to stay to your supper? and me prepared the table for you, and everything ready!” Mrs. Brown had said in great disappointment and dismay; but Rowland had not yielded. He had letters to write, he said, that unanswerable reason for everything. When the sound of his quick steps had died out upon the pavement, Mrs. Brown came back with a blank countenance into the parlour, where Archie still sat with the bit of white crisp paper at his feet.
“There’s been some quarrel atween you,” she said. “Tell me no lees: you’ve been setting up your face to your father, that’s just a gentleman and far above ye, as ye whiles do to me.”
“I tell no lies,” said the boy.
“That means ye just acknowledge to it, ye thrawn, vexatious callant? What’s that bit of paper lying at your feet?”
“Its of no consequence,” said Archie.
“But it is of consequence when I say so. Give it to me!”
“I will not touch it,” said the boy.
“Then I’ll touch it!” She stooped suddenly with a nimbleness for which Archie was unprepared and snatched the paper.
Then she gave a loud scream. “Preserve us a’! It’s nae less than a twenty-pound note. Lord, laddie, what did you say to him that he’s given you a twenty-pound note?”
“Give me the note!” said Archie hoarsely, holding out his hand.
“Atweel and I’ll do nothing of the kind. What was it for? Twenty pound! to the like of you that never had twenty pence! Archie Rowland, what is the meaning of this? It’s a thing I will no put up with to have notes (nots Mrs. Brown called them) lying about my carpet and naebody condescending to lift them up.”
“Let him be, aunty,” said Marion; “he’s in one of his ill keys; he was real disagreeable to-day, and would do nothing. I have had just a very dismal day because he would never rouse himself up.”
“He may rouse himself or not as he likes,” said Jane; “but I’ve gotten possession of the not, and I’ll just keep it till I find out what it’s for.”
“It’s my note,” said Archie.
“And ye leave it lying at your feet! Twenty pounds! that would put pith into many a man’s arm, and courage in his heart. Besides, what would ye do with all that siller? I’ll give ye a shilling or twa, and I’ll just put it by. Your father must be clean gyte to put the like o’ that in the power of a callant like you.—Come ben to your supper. I’ll wager ye havena had a decent bite nor sup the haill day.”
“I’m wanting no supper. I’m wanting my note,” Archie said.
“Ye can have the one but no the other. The table’s a’ set and ready. Come in, ye fool, and take your supper. We’ll no wait for you, neither Mey nor me.”
Archie sat by himself with his head in his hands for some moments after they had gone away. Mrs. Brown had carried the lamp with her, but it was not dark. The days are long in June, and the soft visionary light, which was neither night nor day, came through the bars of the Venetian blinds, making the little shabby room faintly visible. He was tired, he was even hungry, but he would not stoop to the degradation of owning it, now that he had said he would have no supper. This added to the general sum of wretchedness in Archie’s mind. It had all ended so miserably, the day which began so well. He was aware that he had been a fool. He had been tempted with the puppies—which even now, when he thought of them, tempted him still, filling him with a sort of forlorn pleasure in the recollection, and making him feel how silly it was to have let his “not” be taken from him—though he knew he had no money to pay for them. And then he had not had the courage to tell his father that he wanted them. Surely he who had bought May so many things would have given this little gratification to Archie, had he gone rightly about it. But he had been a fool. What was he always but a fool? He had got himself into several scrapes because he had not had the courage to ask anything from Aunty Jane. And now when he had gotten the opportunity—the note that was his own, that nobody else had any right to, to think that he had let thatbe taken out of his hand! He would never get a penny of it, Archie knew; yes, a shilling perhaps, or maybe half-a-crown, like a little bairn. And what good were they to him, when he had twenty pounds—twenty whole pounds of his own—to get the little dogs with, and many another luxury besides, and pay up his subscriptions to his clubs, which were always in arrears, and maybe treat some of the lads to a dinner without having to account for every penny? But he had let it be taken from him, and farewell to the doggies and everything else that was pleasant. Oh what a fool he was, what a fool! He went up to his room, and tumbled as he was upon his bed, in his best clothes, though he was hungry, and smelt the supper, and wanted it, with all his vigorous young appetite. Happily for Archie, in this painful complication of circumstances, it was not very long before he fell asleep.
Next morning Mrs. Brown received Rowland in the parlour above. “I am wanting to speak to you, Jims,” she said, “you’re no used to the charge of young folk, and I maun speak out my mind. Ye mayna take it well of me, but at any rate I will have delivered my soul.”
“Well,” said Rowland, “I hope that will be for your comfort, however little it may be for mine.”
“It will be for baith our goods, if ye will take my advice. Jims, what was that you threw at Archie last night before you went away?”
“Did I throw it at him? That was a curious thing to do; but I don’t suppose it was intentional on my part.”
“What was it, Jims? Answer me that.”
“And may I ask what it matters to you, whatever it was?”
“It matters a great deal to me. I have been like a mother to him, and I’ll no have the laddie to be led away. I know very well what it was. It was an English note, and I’ve got it here. Eh, Jims Rowland, knowing the world as ye must know it, how daur ye put the means of evil in that boy’s innocent hands!”
“This is very strange,” said Rowland, “to be brought to book because I give my son a little money.”
“Do ye ca’ twenty pounds a little money! My patience! a sma’ fortune,” said Mrs. Brown.
“My dear Jane, this is one of the things, unfortunately, that we have made a great mistake about. My boy should have been accustomed to a little freedom, a little money of his own. It is all very unfortunate. He will be plunged into spending money when he is quite unacquainted with the use of it. It is the very worst thing.”
“And that’s a’ my faut ye’ll be thinking,” said Jane, grimly.
“I don’t say it is your fault. It is my fault as much as yours. I thought of securing them kindness and motherly care. I should have remembered there was something more necessary. You have been very kind to them, Jane.”
“Kind!” the good woman flushed with a high angry colour; “Kind! that’s a bonny word to use to me. Astranger’s kind that says a pleasant word. The first person in the street that’s taken with their winnin’ ways is kind, if you please. But me! that has given them a’ the love of my heart, that has been a mother to them and mair——!”
“I beg your pardon,” said Rowland, “I am very much obliged to you: I know you have been all that.”
“A mother, and mair,” said Mrs. Brown. “No mony mothers would have done for them what I’ve done, watching every step they took, that ye might find them good bairns, no spendthrifts, nor wasters of your substance, but knowing the value of money, and using their discretion. I’ve given him the siller for his clubs and things, for I’m told that’s the fashion now-a-days, and he’s aye had a shilling in his pouch for an occasion. If he had been my own I would never have held him with half as tight a hand, for he would have been making his week’s wages if he had been a son of mine, and wouldna have been depending upon either you or me.”
“That’s just the pity of it,” said Rowland. “He has fallen between two stools, neither a working lad nor a gentleman’s son. That proves, Jane, we have both been in the wrong, and I, more than you, for I should have known better. We have made a terrible mistake.”
“I’ve made nae mistake,” said Mrs. Brown. The tears were near which would soon choke her voice, and she spoke quickly to get out as much as she could before the storm came. “You may be in thewrang, Maister Rowland, but I’m no in the wrang. I’ve just acted on principle from beginning to end, to save him from the temptation of riches. They’re a great temptation. If he had been learned to dash his way about like young MacColl, or the most of the lads that have had a father before them, what would ye have said to me? You will see that laddie dashing about a’ Glesco in his phaeton, or whatever ye ca’t; and his grandmother was just a howdie in the High Street, nae mair. Would ye have likit that, Jims Rowland? folk saying ‘set a beggar on horseback,’ and a’ the rest, to a son of yours, and calling to mind the stock he came of, that was just working folk, though aye respectable. I’m no the one to bring up a lad to that. If ye had wanted him made a prodigal o’, ye should have pit him in other hands. I’ve just keeped him in his right place. And ye tell me it’s a mistake, and my fault and terrible wrong. Lord forgive ye, Jims Rowland! How dare ye say it’s a mistake to me, that has been a mother to them—and mair!”
Rowland, like other men, was made very uncomfortable by the sight of the woman crying, but he held his ground. “I am very sorry to seem ungrateful, Jane. I am not ungrateful. You’ve given them a happy childhood, which is everything. But we must try a different system now. I can’t have a young man stumbling and stammering before me, as if he had something on his conscience. I am not going to watch every step he takes. He must learn to take steps on his own account, and understand that he’s a responsible creature. If you have taken his money from him——”
Mrs. Brown jumped up as if she had received a blow. She rushed to the door of the room, which she flung open, calling upon “Archie! Archie!” in a voice broken by angry sobs. The lad came stumbling downstairs not knowing what was wrong, and appeared with his still somewhat sullen face, asking “What’s the matter?” in a tone which was half-alarmed and half-defiant. She seized him by the arm and dragged him into the room, then flying to a little desk, opened it, flinging back the lid, and seizing the unfortunate bit of paper, flung it again in Archie’s face. “Hae;” she said, “there it’s till ye. Me taken his money? Me that have just done everything for them, and never thought of mysel’. Me! taken his money!” Mrs. Brown’s voice rose to a shriek, and then she fell into a chair and burst into a more renewed and violent passion of tears.
“What have ye been saying to her to make her like that?” said Archie, turning to his father. “I was not wanting your money, and if she put it away it was no harm. Her take your money! She cares nothing for money but to get things for May and me. Aunty,” he said, going up to her, putting his hand on her shoulder, “I’ll just put a notice in theHeraldto-morrow. If he is my father, I’ll not be dependent upon him. What right has he to fling his dirty money in a man’s face, and come into this house like a wild beast and make you cry. He made hismoney himself, and he can spend it himself. I’ll make what I want for mysel’.”
But oh the puppies, barking with their ridiculous noses in his hand, sprawling over old Rankin’s bed! They suddenly came before Archie’s mental vision, and made his voice waver. No such luxuries as Rankin’s puppies could be in the lot of a poor young clerk in an office, making perhaps a pound a week—and he the great railway man’s son that was rolling in wealth!—a sense of the great injustice of it made Archie’s voice harsh. Who should all that money be for but for him? And the rich father, the hoped for incarnation of wealth, was there scolding about a miserable note, accusing Aunty Jane of having taken the money! The lad went and stood at the back of her chair, putting himself on her side, defying the other who thought so much of his filthy siller! Let him keep his siller! he had made it himself and he could spend it on himself. Archie for his part would do the same. But as he uttered these noble sentiments, an almost overwhelming sense of the wickedness of it, of the cruelty of the unjust father, and of the unimaginable wrong to himself flooded Archie’s mind. He could have cried too with anger and the intolerable sense of wrong.
Rowland stood for a minute or two contemplating the scene, and then he burst into a laugh. The climax was too ridiculous, he said to himself, for any serious feeling. And yet it was not a pleasant climax to come to, after so many years.
Thehusband and wife met with perhaps a greater sense of satisfaction and pleasure than either had anticipated feeling when they parted. Marriage is a curious thing notwithstanding all the ill that is said of it. They had not been long married; they had not been exactly what people call in love with each other; nor was James Rowland at all a sentimental person. Yet there is something in that old-fashioned expression which speaks of making two persons one flesh, which has a most powerful influence. They meet as people only can meet whose interests are one, who are fain to confide everything that affects them to the bosom of the other, who is theirself. The thing is indescribable; it is simple as a b c to those who have experienced it. It would probably be impossible without the other circumstances of the union, yet it is superior to all the rest—the most essential, the most noble. Both these persons had been disturbed and troubled by various matters peculiar to themselves; Rowland by the problem of his children, Evelyn by other problems not unlike, yet so different from his. When they met, there seemed an instant lull in these disturbances. The two-fold being was now complete, and was able to deal with all problems.
Rowland had travelled by night, as busy men so often get the habit of doing, and Evelyn superintended the excellent breakfast he always made, and looked onat the satisfaction of that admirable appetite with much complacency, before she asked any questions. She was not a woman who was fond of asking questions. She awaited confidences, and did not press them; which is a very good way for those who can do it, but not perhaps very easy to an anxious mind. The difference of her position from that of a mother was, that she was interested without being anxious, and this made her also more charitable in judging, and probably would make her less hard upon the shortcomings of the children. She was very much interested, but she was calm, and it was not to her a question of life and death. It was not till he had eaten the very last spoonful of marmalade and piece of roll, of which he was capable, that she said “Well?” looking with a smile into his eyes.
“Well—,” he said with satisfaction, pushing back his seat from the table, “you’re ready to hear all about my troubles, Evelyn?”
“I hope they are not very bad troubles.”
“That will be very much as you take them, my dear. They might be bad enough, but I’ve great confidence in my wife. In the first place, the house is, I think, perfection; but you may not agree with me—you know I have not your refinement. It stands on a green knoll overlooking the Clyde, with a background of the most beautiful hills in the world, and for the foreground the grand Firth—and all the wealth and life that pass over it—— But,” he said pausing, and with a half shamefaced laugh, “I’ve told you all that before.”
“Yes, you have told me before; but that does not take away my interest. Tell me more.”
He took her hand with a grateful pressure, and so began to tell her about the arrangement of the house, and other matters on which she was not informed before, to all of which she listened with much grace and satisfaction, nodding her head as one thing was reported to her after another. I do not say that Mrs. Rowland did not exercise a natural privilege, and suspend her judgment on one or two points. It was only natural that she should know better what the internal arrangements of a great house should be than he did. But she received it all as if in every way he had done well; which was the case so far as she yet knew. “There is one thing, however, I must tell you of, Evelyn,” he said, “and your feeling about that will of course make all the difference. You may not feel inclined to put up with it. And in that case it matters very little about anything else. It is you that must be the judge.”
“What is this great thing?” she said with a smile.
“It is a great thing, my dear. I dare say even I might not like it, though, having your society, I’m very indifferent. It is that I’m afraid there is very little society at Rosmore.”
She burst out into a pleasant laugh. “Society—is that all? Dear James, I thought you were going to say there was no good water, or that the drainage was bad, or something of that sort.”
“We’d soon have managed that,” he said, laughing too with relief, “sunk a well or turned the whole placeupside down; that would have presented no difficulty. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to me that you take it so easily, Evelyn. It was—it was—Marion who put it into my head. She said, ‘There will be nobody that mamma will like to associate with here.’ That was all her own doing—not suggested in any way by me: for I did not know whether you would like it, if a little girl you never saw before called you, right out—”
“Like it!” said Evelyn—Perhaps, to tell the truth, she had winced a little. “Of course I should like it. It shows an inclination to adopt me, which is the very best thing I could have hoped for. Tell me about her, James. The house is very interesting, but the children are more interesting than the house.”
“You take a load off my mind when you say so. I would give a thousand pounds that the first was over—that you had met them and made acquaintance with them. She’s eighteen, and he’s twenty. The boy is rather a cub—and the girl—”
“My dear James! it’s very likely they are not made up exactly to your taste: how could they be? They are very young, and it will be quite exciting to put them a little into shape—into our shape. Society, indeed!—Society, whatever it was, would not be nearly so interesting as that. Tell me everything about them, James.”
Encouraged by this, Mr. Rowland began to tell her his experiences with the children; but by some means it came about that, he could not tell how, their faults got slurred over, and their good qualities magnified in his hand. How did it happen? He could not tell.He had Marion’s impertinent littleminoisbefore him every word he said, yet he managed to give an inoffensive saucy look to Marion—a saucy look which fathers do not dislike, though mothers may object to it. And then the boy—
“Archie disarms me,” he said, “because I can’t help seeing in him his mother’s eyes. I’m afraid he’s a dour fellow and sullen, and you can’t be expected to be mollified as I am. It takes away my anger when I look at him. And yet I had cause to be angry.”
“Tell me,” she said.
And then Mr. Rowland told the story, beginning at the apparition of the groom with his question about the dougs, and ending with Archie’s defence of his aunt, who had taken his money from him, against the father who had given it. As he told this, it seemed to himself less bad as an indictment against Archie than he had supposed. What was it, after all, that the boy had done? The enormity disappeared as it was put into words. And Evelyn sat smiling, from time to time shaking her head.
“It appears to me,” she said, “that if Archie was wrong, as no doubt he was, Archie’s father was also a little to blame.”
“Do you think so?” he said eagerly. He was glad to think that perhaps this might be so.
“You would not like him to be disloyal, not for twenty bank-notes? He might have swallowed the injury to himself of having that money flung in his face—”
“Injury!”—Mr. Rowland’s countenance fell.
She put her hand upon his, smiling—“Yes, Sir SternFather. That’s not your rôle, James: you were born to be a most indulgent father, giving in to them in everything. And you must henceforward take up your right rôle, and let me be the repressive influence.”
He took her hands between both his. It was not a very strong support, so far as physical force went, and yet for the first time James Rowland felt their soft fingers close upon his in a way that expressed not their usual soft gentleness, but strength. He felt himself suddenly holding on to that hand as if it were his sheet anchor, which indeed it was.
“To tell the truth,” he said, “I think perhaps I looked at them through what I supposed were your eyes, Evelyn, seeing how unlike they were to you, how little worthy to live with you, to have the rank of your children. It was that, at all events, made me hard upon poor little May. It’s not her fault if she is more like Jane Brown than she is like a lady, or anything that had even been near you.”
“Whom should she be like but the person who has brought her up? I am delighted to hear that they are so loyal. I would not have that changed for anything in the world.”
“I am not so sure about their loyalty,” said Rowland, recalling to mind Marion’s strict impartiality in respect to her aunt and detachment from her. But he felt sure that Evelyn would be able to explain that away also; and put his foot upon it. No need to make the child out worse than she was; and a rush of paternal kindness came over him now that the two were out of his sight. It was not their fault. He said,“I don’t doubt you’ll do wonders with Marion, my dear. The little thing is very quick. Even in the day or two I was with them, a change came over her. She kept her eye upon me, and without a word just adopted manners. No, I don’t think I am partial. Indeed I found that I was quite the reverse.”
I am afraid that a cold shudder, unsuspected by her husband, passed over Evelyn, in which, if there was horror, there was also a distinctly comic element. What sort of a wonderful creature must the girl be who “adopted manners” from good James, the most excellent man, but not a model of refinement. She could not but laugh, yet shivered a little as well.
“I am more afraid of Marion than of Archie,” she said, “for he will chiefly be your concern. I shall have only the consoling part, the petting to do with him. I hope your little May is a magnanimous little person, who will not mind being pulled to pieces for her good; for I suppose I shall have to do that—if you are right.”
She added these last words with a little quick awakening to possible danger. He had not been at all complimentary to his little girl. Yet was it possible that there was a faint little cloud, a suspicion of a cloud on his face, to be taken at his word, and to have even his wife express, nay repeat what was his own opinion? She was very quick to see these almost imperceptible changes of countenance, and with a little start and catching of her breath, awoke to a sense of risk, which she had never realised before.
“I have a story of my own to tell you,” she saidhastily, “in which I shall have to crave a great deal of forbearance on your part, James, and pardon for what I have taken upon myself to do, or rather to consent to. I thought of asking your permission first, but then I felt that anything of this kind might seem a want of confidence in you.”
His face had changed in a moment to the widest of smiles, and brightest of aspects. “Fancy!” he said, “anything for which you should have to ask my permission, any wish of yours that it would not be my highest pleasure to do.”
“Thank you,” she said, “dear. I felt sure you would back me up: and now I have got this pretty speech to the boot, to make me happy. James, do you remember a story I told you when you first spoke to me, when you asked me first, in Helen Stanhope’s house?”
“About?”—He paused and added, “Yes: you have seen him again?”
“I have seen a man paralysed, in a Bath chair, moved, dressed, fed, ordered about by a servant. The ghost, or far worse than the ghost, the wreck of a man.”
“And that was he?” A certain gleam—was it of satisfaction?—was for a moment in James Rowland’s eyes. But it was only for a moment, and the next they were subdued by the most genuine sympathy. “My poor dear!” he said.
“It was a great shock to see him, you may suppose: but that is a small matter. He has two children, like ourselves.”
The light sprang up in his eyes, and he thanked her with a sudden kiss upon her hand.
“A boy and a girl, about the same ages. The girl I have seen—a strange specimen to me of a new generation I have no knowledge of; the boy, I fear, a very careless boy. Of all things in the world it has occurred to Mr. Saumarez, of all people in the world, to desire to confide these children to me.”
“It shows that he has more sense than I could have thought.”
“Their mother, of course, is dead, and he thinks he will die soon. I hear from others that how he lives at all is a wonder, though they think him likely to go on living; but he wishes me to take the guardianship of his children——”
“And you have accepted?”
“No, I have not accepted. That was too much to do, without your approval at least: even with it I doubt if I could take such a responsibility. It is not so bad as that. But I have pledged myself to ask them to Rosmore, for a long visit, to make their acquaintance thoroughly. They are young people who are, according to their slang, up to everything. I have been in great doubt since, whether it would be a good thing for—our two.”
James Rowland’s eyes flashed again. After all there are some things which the experiences of a lifetime cannot do away with. As a point of fact, he knew well enough that the higher classes as he had seen them, chiefly in India, were fundamentally not a bit superior to the lower classes as he knew them by moreintimate experience; and yet, risen from the ranks as he was, it gave him the strangest sensation of pleasure to hear that two young aristocrats, children of Society, “up to everything,” were about to become his guests. Even the flavour of something a little wrong which was conveyed in these words, rather heightened than diminished the pleasure. A good thing for—our two. Surely it would be a good thing: it would teach them manners far more effectually than if they were to observe their father’s ways to the end of the chapter. It would smarten up Archie, and let him see what a young man should look like in his new sphere.
“My dear,” he said, “if that is all you are in doubt about, I think you may set your mind at rest. Two young people who are up to everything, will probably find it very dull at Rosmore; but so far as we are concerned, and the two—it can be nothing but an advantage. Ask as many people as you like: there is plenty of room in the house, and there will be plenty of carriages and horses, and plenty of things to see, though there is nothing to do, as Archie says.”
“That is a very advanced thing for Archie to say: it is the fashionable complaint.”
“Is it?” said Rowland, brightening more and more. He began to think that perhaps he had been too severe upon the young people, that his anxiety had made him see blemishes which perhaps did not exist. It was quite possible that well-made clothes, and a little money in his pocket, would make entirely a different figure of Archie; and little May—well perhaps little May wanted still less. She was as sharp as a needle. She wouldpick up everything without letting it be seen that she did not know it to begin with. The thought flashed through his mind that in a week she would have made herself an exact copy of Evelyn, and what could a girl do better than that? Marion was not like her own mother at all; she had not those eyes which gave Archie, though he did not know it, so much power. But she was very clever: she could make herself whatever she wanted to be.
The Rowlands had a great deal before them in the few days which they were to spend in London, before going, as Mr. Rowland proudly said, home. There were a great many things still to buy, which could be got only in town, though the Glasgow people had been indignantly sure that nothing was to be had in London (to call Londontown, was an arrogance which was not to be endured) which could not be much better procured in Glasgow. Rowland, however, was precisely the man to be of a contrary opinion, and he had a list as long as his arm of things that were still wanted. Plate, for one inconsiderable item, and carriages on which Evelyn’s judgment was necessary, and for which orders had to be given at once. He approved of her purchases, but thought them far too few and unimportant. “I believe you are afraid of spending money,” he said, with a long rich laugh. This rich laugh of contempt at all small economies and insignificant expenditure is offensive in many people, but it was not offensive in James Rowland—perhaps, indeed, to the wives of the millionaires, who are thus allowedcarte blanche, and egged on in the way of pleasant extravagance, it is never offensive. Evelyn entered into the joke of being niggardly, of spending too little. “As if there was not enough to come and go upon,” he said, with perfect satisfaction. When any one was by, especially any one who was not rich, who could not afford these liberalities, she might blush a little and restrain with a look, or a touch upon his arm, the large utterances of her good man; but when they were alone, she did not find it offensive. She went with him from one shop to another, quite pleased with herself and him. He was really a satisfactory person to go shopping with. He found nothing too costly so long as it was good, and threw over cheap things with a fine contempt that was refreshing to behold, especially to one who for a long time had been obliged to take cheapness much into consideration. One day he took her into Christie’s, and bade her look if there was anything good enough for her boudoir at home, and stood by smiling with pride in his wife’s taste and superior knowledge, while she was inspecting those treasures which he declared he did not understand. But he did understand bric-a-brac, it turned out, much better than Evelyn did, though perhaps his taste in pictures was not so pure.
Thus the days passed by; and though those pleasures depended very much on the depth of Mr. Rowland’s purse, they could scarcely be called vulgar pleasures, although Evelyn sometimes at the end of the day blushed to think how she had enjoyed herself. Was it the fact of spending money, an operation which in itself seemed to give pleasure to her husband, or was it the acquisition of so many valuable and beautiful things which wasdelightful? It was complicated, as everything human is, with the contrast of previous life, with the pleasure of pleasing him by being pleased herself, even perhaps a little by the obsequious respect by which their progress was attended. This was a poor view, and we are poor creatures, the best of us—for there was something even in that. As for the purchases themselves, Evelyn knew that a cracked pot, a scrap of an old picture, a bit of clumsy carving, was capable of giving quite as much pleasure as all the treasures of art which accumulated in their rooms at the hotel. Happily there is compensation in all things, and the highest of all delights, in bric-a-brac at least, is not to him who buys whatever strikes his fancy, regardless of expenses, but to him who “picks up” an unexpected gem, for a few pence or shillings, in some ignoble corner where no such treasure could be suspected to be.
And they dined out in the evenings, at the Leightons, of course, and at other places where the great railway man found himself a sort of lion, to his great astonishment, where he expected modestly to be received, chiefly on his wife’s account, in spheres which were not his. In this point of view Mr. Rowland was delighted, and Evelyn was as proud of her husband as he could be of her, which was saying a great deal. Like many other people in this world, Rowland was not in the least vain of the real work he had done. He was aware that he had been very lucky in many things, in the means he had employed, in the curious natural facilities which always came in his way; but his own skill and patience and thought did not seem to comeinto his mind as deserving of special distinction. “Oh, of course, since it was my business, I tried to do it the best I could,” he said, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. It was his assistants who were the wonderful fellows; he was so fortunate in always getting hold of the best men; no man but had been true to him, as Brutus says. Evelyn sat by and listened with such light in her eyes that her friend, Lady Leighton, looked at her in wonder. “Why, you are in love with him!” said that woman of the world.
There was one meeting, however, in which Evelyn’s feelings were exercised in a more complicated and difficult way. She had kept safe from all encounter with Saumarez, whose invalid chair she had seen repeatedly in the distance with a sense of an escape, until the very last day, which Rowland had insisted upon devoting to amusement alone. “Why shouldn’t we begin with this ‘Row’ which I hear everybody speaking of?”
“Oh, it is too early for the Row.”
“Never mind; it seems to be pretty, and to have pretty people about it. I want to sit down on a chair and look at them.”
“As if you were a man to sit long quiet on a chair!”
“Come along, Evelyn. I believe you’re jealous of the pretty girls,” he said with his big laugh. How well she had known how it would be! Saumarez had no objection at any time to be seen of the crowd. He had grown to feel his helplessness a distinction as he would have felt anything else that belonged to him. But histime for his promenade was before the fashionable hour, and the Rowlands had not gone half the way along before the well-known chair became visible slowly approaching. Evelyn gripped her husband’s arm.
“James, I see an invalid chair there in front of us, with three ladies standing round it. I rather think it must be Mr. Saumarez. He is sure to see us; he will ask to be introduced to you.”
“Well, my dear: if you would rather not let’s turn back; otherwise, it makes no difference to me. Yes, I might almost say I have a kind of curiosity—but not if it trouble you.”
“How should it trouble me?” said Evelyn. But yet it did, though there was no reason for it. What was her reason? A half vexation that her husband should see him so humiliated, so helpless and pitiful a spectacle; a half terror to see her husband reflected through his eyes. But there was no help for it now.
“Make me acquainted with Mr. Rowland, my dear lady,” Saumarez said. “I have wanted to make his acquaintance ever since I heard—how lucky a man he was.”
“You may say that,” said Rowland heartily, “the luckiest man, I think, in the whole world.”
“You say so,” said the invalid, “to the man who can perhaps best understand you in the whole world, being the unluckiest man in it, I should think; a failure in everything beside you, who are a success in everything. You must let me congratulate you, as one of your wife’s earliest friends. I am just sufficientlyolder than she is to have held her in my arms as an infant.”
“For heaven’s sake, none of that!” Evelyn exclaimed under her breath, with a flash of overpowering offence. He eyed her with a smile in those two brilliant eyes.
“To have petted her as a little girl, to have—admired her as a woman: nobody can know so well as I what a prize you have got, Mr. Rowland.”
James was a little surprised, and slightly, faintly disturbed. “I hope I know that,” he said, “and my great good fortune.”
“And I hope,” said Evelyn, “that I am not considered likely to enjoy all this, listening to those mutual compliments. I, for my part, am fully alive to my own good fortune. James, I think we must go on. We have to be at Madeline’s.”
“Madeline,” said Saumarez with a laugh, “is always Mrs. Rowland’s excuse. She is constantly going to Madeline’s if one tries to detain her for a moment. But you must wait till I tell you how kind she has been to my children. It cannot but do a young girl good to be in Mrs. Rowland’s society; and I am doubly grateful for my motherless Rose. I hear you’ve got Lord Clydesdale’s place at Rosmore.”
Mr. Rowland did not like to hear it called Lord Clydesdale’s place. “Until the moment when we can get him to sell it to us,” he said.
“Ah, will he sell? That’s a different matter. A rich tenant paying a good rent, that’s one thing—but Clydesdale won’t sell. I hope you are not calculating upon that.”
“We shall see,” said Rowland, not well pleased.
“Yes, we shall see. And must you really go—to Madeline? Lay me at her ladyship’s feet. I will go and give her ladyship my opinion of—things in general, one day very soon.”
“My dear,” said Mr. Rowland to his wife, “I don’t think much of that—old friend of yours. Cripple or no cripple, he’s got a devil in his eye.”
“You cannot think less of him than I do, James,” said Evelyn, holding fast by her husband’s arm. She knew very well what he had meant when he had said he would give Madeline his opinion on—things in general; and she knew what barbed arrow he had intended to place in her heart when he spoke of holding her in his arms as an infant. To think that she should have been in that man’s arms a happy girl, considering herself happy in his love! She shuddered as the thought passed through her mind.
“Are you cold, Evelyn?” Rowland said with surprise.
“Only with the moral cold that is in that man’s horrible atmosphere,” she said.
“Yes, he is rather a dreadful spectacle,” said Lady Leighton. “Now, one wonders he likes to exhibit himself about the world, where he once was so well known in another way. There’s nothing so strange as human vanity, Mr. Rowland. I think he rather likes to showas a sort of prize example of suffering and misery. It’s a distinction in its way. He had the distinction of being one of the handsomest men of his day, and of behaving more badly than almost anybody else, and now he’s the most deplorable sufferer—always the first, you know, whatever he’s at.”
“You are a little hard upon him, Lady Leighton.”
“Not a bit too hard. I know the man so well. We’ve always been very good friends——”
“What! Though he behaved more badly than almost anybody else?” Rowland said, with a laugh. Evelyn, who, knowing what her friend meant, and still smarting as she was from the previous encounter, felt it almost as an added injury, looked on with the gravest face, feeling herself unable to speak.
“Well!—you don’t know society as I do. You’ve spent your life in primitive countries, where men fly at each other’s throats when they disapprove of each other. We don’t do that here. We carry on our relations all the same. Sometimes, however, we speak very plainly, I am glad to say. Ned Saumarez knows exactly what I think of him, but he comes to see me as if we were the dearest of friends.”
“I don’t understand society,” said Rowland, “and I don’t think I should ever know that part of it. How is anybody to know which you prefer, the good or the bad, if you treat them just the same?”
“Oh, everybody knows what I think of him, including himself,” said Madeline, lightly; “that’s one of our refinements. And so you are going to have Rose and Eddy to visit you in the country. You are a coupleof bold people—with a boy and a girl of your own. Of course there will be fallings in love.”
Rowland laughed again, opening his mouth in simple enjoyment of the joke, as he took it. “I think I can answer for my two,” he said.
“Oh, you can’t answer for anybody!” said Lady Leighton, somewhat sharply, “Rose is a girl of the period, and scorns that kind of thing—so does my Mabel, save the mark! They are both going to do all sorts of things as soon as they are out—walk the hospitals! I don’t know what absurd projects they have. But Eddy, I warn you, is amauvais sujet, Evelyn. He is like his father. He makes love to everybody. I don’t know what age Miss Rowland is——”
“Eighteen,” said her father.
Lady Leighton threw up her hands. “His natural prey! And she has been brought up in the country, I suppose, and believes anything that is said to her——”
“She has been brought up,” said Rowland, a little displeased with the turn the conversation was taking, “in Glasgow, which is a very different thing from the country, and perhaps not so much given to the innocence of faith.”
“Oh!” said Lady Leighton, making a dead pause. She had not the least idea how a girl could be brought up in Glasgow, any more than if it had been Timbuctoo. The country she comprehended: town she comprehended—but Glasgow! A “smart” lady’s information stops long before it comes to such a point as that.
“Perhaps,” said Evelyn, troubled by all this, “I have been imprudent. It is awkward, anyhow, to havethese young people coming to us so soon, when we are scarcely settled; but it is hard to say no, when one is appealed to, for the good of others.”
“I hope,” said Rowland, “it is an appeal you never will refuse. It shocks me rather to hear you now discussing your future guests. Don’t they become sacred as soon as you invite them, like the strangers in a Bedouin’s tent? That’s our old Scotch way.”
“Mr. Rowland, you are a darling,” said Lady Leighton, “quite too great a darling, Evelyn, for this wicked world. I am so glad you have invited me! But is it not the Scotch way to tear one into little pieces after one is gone? The balance must be kept straight somehow.”
“It is not the way in my house,” he said, with a certain severity, not liking that little scoff at the Scotch way, though he had brought it on himself. Rowland had no objection to have his fling at his fellow-Scot when occasion served. He had vituperated the Glasgow tradesman largely for being slow, for being behind the time. He had thought everything “provincial”—the hardest word to be applied to such a huge and important place; but he felt offended when any one else followed his example. Evelyn had begun to know the look in his face.
That afternoon when they had completed all their lastemplettes, chosen everything, ordered everything they wanted, and were seated together over the little tea-table which has once more become, though under changed circumstances from those of the eighteenth century, one of the confidential centres of life in England, a visitor appeared who disturbed their talk, and gave to the astonished Rowland another new sensation. He was tired with much movement, declaring that London fatigued him more than the hottest of the plains, and that the shops made a greater call on his energies than any railway or canal he had ever had to do with; and the rest and comparative coolness of the room was pleasant to them both, the beginning of the day having been unlucky, and a disagreeable turn given, as sometimes happens, to all its occurrences. There is something in luck after all, and perhaps the primitive people who turn back from the day’s adventure at sea and labour on land, because they have met an ill-omened passenger—an evil eye—have more reason in their superstition than is generally supposed. That morning’s encounter with the invalid in his chair had been bad for the Rowlands. They had found nothing they wanted. The persons they desired to see had been out of the way. The commissions they had given were not executed to their mind. Everybody knows that sometimes, without any apparent cause, this will be the case to the trial of one’s temper and the confusion of all one’s arrangements. Some one else had snapped up the picture which they had selected at the picture-dealer’s. There had been nothing successful that they had done that day. Rowland, of course, was too enlightened and modern to think of anything like an evil eye. But Evelyn was old-fashioned, and not without a touch of natural and womanish superstition. She set it down to the score of Saumarez and that meeting which she had wished so much to avoid; and the thought oppressed her more than the contrarieties of the day. “It was all our unlucky meeting with that man,” she even went so far as to say, when she came in, jaded and disappointed, feeling the unsuccessful day all the more that everything hitherto had been so very much the reverse. “Do you think he threw a spell upon us?” Rowland said with a laugh. “He doesn’t look at all unlike an old magician, to say the truth.” Evelyn’s little outburst of temper somehow soothed her husband. And though he grumbled a little at the heat, which was worse than Indian, and declared that the English were asses never to have introduced the punkah, yet he soon recovered his elasticity of mind. And when the door opened and Miss Saumarez was announced, he was lounging in the easiest way upon a sofa, and discoursing to his wife, as he loved to discourse, upon the beautiful country to which he was about to take her, and the views from the colonnade which encircled Rosmore.
“Miss Saumarez.” There walked in a tall girl in the simplest of dresses, but without a soil or sign of dust, or crease, or crumple of any description, perfectly self-possessed, yet perfectly unpretending, with that air of being and knowing that she was the best of her kind, which is born with some people, and to others is utterly beyond the possibility of being acquired. Rosamond would not have been fluttered, she would have known perfectly what to do and how to behave herself, had she walked into the presence of the Queen instead of into that of James Rowland, who, very much flustered, and conscious that he had loosed his necktiea little, and that his collar was not so stiff as it ought to be, got up in much surprise and discomfiture. Evelyn rose slowly from her low chair, with a feeling more wretched still. A sort of sick loathing of the very name, and of the connection she had so foolishly allowed herself to be drawn into, overwhelmed her; and it was all she could do to keep this sensation out of her face as Rosamond came forward and offered a peachy cheek to her kiss. The young lady took in the aspect of things in a moment.
“I am afraid I have disturbed you,” she said, “just when you are tired and resting. I asked the man if it was a good time, but he did not know. They never know anything, those servants in a hotel. But I will go away directly, as soon as I have asked one little question. Thank you very much, but I don’t think I had better sit down.”
She had a high-bred voice, soft but perfectly clear, with the finest low intonation. She spoke very quietly, but Rosamond always had the gift of being heard.
“Yes, yes, you must sit down,” said Rowland, awakening to a more agreeable sentiment as he handed her a chair.
“We have just come in,” said Evelyn. “You must forgive me: we have had a very tiring day.”
“It is so hot and dusty, I do not wonder. One feels as if one were breathing dust and noise and people, anything but air. But you have it hotter in India,” she said, turning her face towards Rowland, with a little gracious acknowledgment of his presence, and of what and who he was.
“It is hotter, but there are more appliances. I was saying to my wife we should have had a punkah.”
“Something that the poor natives pull and pull to give you air? I have heard of that—but who punkahs them?” said Rosamond, with a sweet severity, as if calling upon him to give an account of tyranny and selfish misgovernment, presumably, yet perhaps not inexcusably his fault.
“I am afraid we don’t think much on that subject,” said Rowland; “they are natives, you know, and like it, not the punkah, but the heat.”
“Ah! there is, of course, always something to be said on both sides of a question. Dear Mrs. Rowland, I came to you from my father, who gets a great fidget with his illness. Since he cannot move himself, he likes to keep some one always in motion. It was to ask when we were to go to you, Eddy and I. I thought it would be better to wait until you let us know, but father thinks those who are to be obliged should take all the trouble, which of course is just, too. So will you please think it was not wanton intrusion, but to save you the trouble of writing a note.”
“I’ll answer for my wife, that she could not be otherwise than glad to see you,” said Rowland, astonished to see that Evelyn hesitated.
Miss Rosamond gave him a pretty bow and smile, but it was evident that she considered his judgment an exceedingly small matter, and did not at all accept his answering for his wife, as he ignorantly thought himself quite qualified to do.
“Indeed, you must not think I take your comingas intrusion. And, of course, you must arrange your visits beforehand.”
“It is scarcely that,” said Rosamond. “We have not many visits to arrange: people don’t ask a girl who is not out, except it is for charity, like you. And Eddy is rather a pickle: I have not concealed that from you. Nor is it to tell us the very day, as if I were putting a pistol to your head. Indeed, I only came because I was sent. Father is often exceedingly tiresome, but it is easier to do what he tells one than to argue with him that it is not what one ought to do.”
“We have scarcely had time yet to consider what we shall be doing. Our house, you know, is scarcely in order yet. I hardly know what accommodation there is, or how we shall arrange matters. I know nothing yet but what I have been told. But as soon as we are quite settled,” said Evelyn, “you may be sure that I will let you know.”
“To be sure,” said Rosamond; “I knew my instinct was right. Now, that is just what I wanted. I shall be able to satisfy father.”
“But, my dear,” cried Rowland in horror, “of course you will be delighted to see this young lady whenever she pleases. There is plenty of accommodation, and we could be doing nothing in which we should not be glad to have the pleasure of her company.”
“Let me settle, please, James,” said Evelyn, a little crossly. “These things want arranging, as Rosamond quite knows.”
Consternation filled the mind of the man who did not know the ways of society. To allow an intendingguest to feel as if by any possibility she might not be welcome at any time, overwhelmed him with dismay. He got up and walked to the window to free himself at least from responsibility—to be no party to such an astounding act of inhospitableness. Certainly that was not “our Scotch way.” He stood there a little, with his back to them, listening to the soft voices running on. He was very susceptible to the music of these mellow, well-bred voices. And the girl’s had no sound of offence in it, neither had Evelyn’s any hardness. He stood looking at the street, while they had it out between them, calculating the times and seasons. Not for about a month did the Saumarez family leave London. Miss Rosamond had to go to her grandmother’s, and it was the time of Eddy’s examination; so that arrangement was necessary on both sides. He stood there feeling more and more every moment what an ignoramus he was. He would have bidden the young people to come at once, to accompany him through all the difficulties of settling down, had he had his way; and to accept such an invitation would have disturbed all their plans as well as Evelyn’s. Well, well! in this respect it was evident that the calm society way was the best. And yet, middle-aged as he was, and acquainted with the world as he believed himself to be, he felt that he would not have liked to have a proposed visit from himself discussed and regulated like this.
“I hope you have settled,” he said, coming back from the window, when the soft ripple of the voices came to a little pause.
“Oh, yes, the 5th of October; thank you very much,” said Rosamond. “That will suit us quite, extremely well. Father will still be at Aix, and Eddy’s exam. will be over, and I shall have finished with grandmamma. Thank you so very much, dear Mrs. Rowland. Now I see father was right in making me come—though I did disturb you at the first.”
“Only because I was a little cross, my dear, and tried—”
“I don’t believe she is ever cross—is she?” said Rosamond, appealing to Rowland. “We shall see how you put up with Eddy. Eddy is enough to make any one cross. Of course he will break down in his exam.: he always has done it, and he always will. There are some boys who seem to go on like that on purpose that everybody may see they will not take the trouble. There seems some pride among boys as to not taking trouble. They are ashamed to say they have worked for anything. And father seems to understand it, but I do not.”
“Neither do I, Miss Rosamond,” said Rowland; “you and I will agree. I think a young fellow should be flogged that goes on like that.”
“I should not like Eddy to be flogged,” said Rosamond, in her cool, even, sweet voice. “Of course he was flogged at Eton—swished, as they call it—and he did not mind one bit. They rather like it. They are proud of what is a shame, and ashamed of things they ought to be proud of. That’s one of the things Eddy says ‘that no girl can understand.’”
Rowland approached the table where the tea still stood, and where the young lady was eating bread andbutter in her composed and reasonable way. “Do you go to a great many balls?” he said, in the tone which he might have applied to a child.
Rosamond regarded him from top to toe with her calm luminous eyes. She paused a moment as if wondering at such extreme fatuity. Then she said, “I am not out yet,” with great seriousness. A few minutes later she unbent. “I do not wonder you are surprised. I am eighteen, but father’s condition stops him from doing many things—that he does not care to do. Grandmother is too old to go to Court, and nobody has cared very much to take me. I shall perhaps be presented next year.”
“By-the-bye,” said Rowland, looking with eagerness at his wife.
“What is it, James?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said, going off again to the window. Both of the ladies divined at once what he wanted to say; Evelyn with a faint regretful sense of the excitement which he betrayed; Rosamond with a much more prosaic feeling that here was something which they wanted to consult each other about. She would have liked to stay to hear what it was, but a better instinct persuaded her that it was time to go away.
“You have some one with you?” said Evelyn, as she rose to go.
“I have Champion: he always takes care of me. I do not often bring him out at this hour; but he is quite sufficient for a protector. Ah, might I bring Champion? He does nothing wrong, never misbehaves,nor attempts to lie on sofas. He is a gentleman.MightI bring him? It would be such a favour, for the house will be shut up, and grandmamma cannot bear dogs.”
“Is it a dog?—to be sure!” said Rowland, “I suppose that’s in my department, Evelyn. My son Archie and you will get on very well, if you are fond of dogs.”
“Oh!” said Rosamond. There was something in that monosyllable which implied a good deal more. “Oh,” it seemed to say, “you have a son Archie, and he is fond of dogs? I don’t make much account of your son Archie—still—” There was all this in the varying of her tone; but she did not ask any questions. She presented her peachlike cheek once more to Evelyn to be kissed, and she offered her hand with a little inclination of a curtsey to Rowland. He went downstairs with her, though she remonstrated, and watched her untie her dog from the railings with a sense of wondering, wistful admiration. “Oh,” he breathed in his heart, “if Marion was but like that!” He burst into words when he got upstairs. “Oh, if I could but see Marion like that!” This exclamation was quite unintentional and involuntary: he was startled into it, and almost regretted he had said it the moment the words were out.