“Your father has not said much about it. He is not a shooting man, you know. You will have to go out with the gamekeeper and bring us our first grouse.”
“I’ll not bring in many grouse,” he said almost under his breath.
“You are not a good shot? Never mind: you are young enough to mend that. The great thing is to keep cool and not get flurried, I believe.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose lassies”—he corrected himself quickly with a violent blush—“ladies know much about it.”
“Perhaps not,” said Evelyn, “but my father wasone of the best shots in Northamptonshire. It is not a very great distinction,” she added with a smile. “I could quite forgive a man for not shooting at all.”
“It’s no a crime,” said Archie, as if to himself, and with a tone of defiance.
“Oh no, quite the reverse—neither one way nor another. I think,” she added with a little hesitation, “that your father, though he does not shoot himself, would be pleased if you showed a little enthusiasm about it. Forgive me for saying so. It is worth while taking a little trouble to please him, he cares so much—”
“Not for me,” said Archie, setting his pale face within his high collar like a rock.
“Oh, you silly boy!—more for you in that way than for any living creature. And very naturally, for are not you his heir—his successor—to represent him in anything he does not do himself?”
“For pride, then,” said Archie, throwing down rather roughly upon the rug one of the dogs with which he was playing, “not for anything else.”
“Oh, poor little doggie,” said Evelyn, seeing it inexpedient to continue this subject, and then she added more lightly, “What are they to be called then, Archie? Roy and Dhu?”
“Whatever you like,” cried the young man. “I care nothing for them now: they are just little brutes that fawn on anybody. You may call them Red and Black, if you like, like the cards. I don’t care if I never saw them more.”
And he turned upon his heel and strode away. Butthese were words too dignified and tragical to suit with Archie’s appearance, which was not that of the hero of romance who grandly does those things. To turn on your heel and stride away, you ought to be six feet at least, with chest and shoulders to match. Archie was about five feet six, stooped, and was badly dressed. He had not yielded to any soft compulsion on this point, as Marion had done so easily. He had begun to perceive it himself, nay, he could see that the youngest footman’s cut of livery suit was better than his. But he clung to his old suit all the same.
The shooting which Mr. Rowland had taken along with Rosmore was not very great—a few grouse on the hillside, a few partridges late in the season, some pheasants as tame as poultry in those delightful woods which were so pleasant to wander in (when your shoes were thick and you did not mind the damp), but not sufficient to entertain many birds. I don’t know how rich men generally who have made their money, and have not been used to those luxuries, arrange about the shooting in the fine “places” which they buy and retire to when their portion is made—whether they fall naturally into the habit of it, and shoot like the other gentlemen, or whether it is a matter that lies heavy on their mind. It certainly lay very heavy on the mind of Archie, who was too shy to acknowledge that he knew nothing about that mode of exercise, and therefore went out with the keeper when the dreadful moment came in great perturbation, not frightened, indeed, for his gun, or for shooting himself, which would have been a certain deliverance, but for cutting a ridiculous figure in the eyes of Roderick, the gamekeeper, who talked to him, the inexperienced Glasgow boy, as he would have talked to any young gentleman who had been accustomed to the moors from his cradle. Archie did not reflect that Roderick knew perfectly where he had come from and how he had been bred, and that this assumption that he knew all about it was indeed pure ridicule on the keeper’s part, which would have been completely divested of its sting if the lad had possessed sufficient courage to say that he was a novice. But he did not, and the consequence was a few days of utter humiliation and weariness, after which Archie became painfully capable of shooting within a few yards of the bird, and once actually brought down a rabbit, to his great exultation yet remorse. Poor rabbit, what had it done to have its freedom and its life thus cut short? But the lad durst no more express this sentiment than he durst say that he had never fired a gun in his life before that terrible Twelfth when he went out for the first time on the hillside and barked his unaccustomed shins, and made his arms ache and his head swim with the fatiguing, sickening, hopeless day. Rowland had been warned that there was no game to be had which would justify him in inviting company. “Me and the young gentleman—twa guns—we will want nae mair—just enough to keep up a bit supply for the hoose,” Roderick said, with a twinkle in his eye. And as Archie made no protest, his father thought that somehow or other the boy who had never had anything to do all his life must know how to manage his gun.
There were some ideas of going out to the hill with luncheon, which Evelyn, however, seeing the terror and despair at once in the lad’s eyes, discouraged.
“No,” she said, “men only pretend to like it when there’s a party: they never like it when they mean serious work.”
“Do you ever desire work, Archie?” said his father, “Come in with a good bag, there’s a good fellow.”
“If I might speak a word, sir,” said Roderick, “the finest fallow in the world will no bring up a cheeper if there’s nane to come.”
“Well, well, start early, and good luck to you,” said Rowland.
And they all came out to meet the pair returning in the afternoon, Archie more dead than alive, with his hands blistered and his shins scratched, and the look of absolute exhaustion on his face, but somehow with a bird or two in his bag which he was not conscious of, still less of how they got there.
“Ou ay, there’s aye a hare or twa,” said the gamekeeper; “but it was very warm on the hill, and Mr. Archibald is not used to the work, as few gentlemen are the first day. I’ll take your gun, sir, and I’ll take your bag, and the ladies will give ye a lift hame.”
Archie obeyed, and clambered into the carriage, the most dilapidated sportsman, perhaps, that the evening of the twelfth ever saw.
“Well, sir, had ye good sport?” said his father, feeling a glow of pride in the performances of the boy.
“Oh, I don’t know if you call that good sport,” the lad said with a gasp.
But this was set down to modesty, or fatigue, or crossness, which unfortunately had grown of late to be a recognised quality of Archie. And Mr. Rowland himself took down a brace of grouse to the Manse next morning, a proud father handing out “my son’s birds,” as if Archie had been the finest shot in the world. But this was not Archie’s fault, who knew nothing of the transaction. He managed to be able to carry his gun like other feeble sportsmen after that terrible initiation. Thus both Mr. Rowland’s children learned to adapt themselves to the duties of their new sphere.
Rowland’sideas of the absence of society in his new home were confounded by the number of visits his wife received within the first six weeks of their stay at Rosmore. It had, I have no doubt, been noised abroad that the wife of the great railway man was, in the loose but convenient phraseology of the time, “a lady,” and that there was therefore no appreciable peril to the gentility of her caller, from making her acquaintance. Lady Jean, of course, was one of the first to call upon her brother’s tenant. Her arrival was attended by circumstances of which James Rowland could never think afterwards without shame and humiliation. Indeed it all but happened to him to turn the little shabby old lady who was trudging through the woods in short petticoats and a waterproof to the kitchen door as the natural entrance. Lady Jean was a littlewoman of about fifty, who had long ceased to take the least pride in her appearance, or to care what people thought on the subject. This last presumption was of course quite unnecessary in the parish of Rosmore, where everybody knew who she was, and where, had she gone about in cloth of gold, it would have made no particular difference. She wore tweed accordingly with the most reckless indifference to quality (I believe the quality was generally good—it came in bales from Romans and Paterson, which the Glasgow shopkeepers thought disloyal to them, and unpatriotic)—one society gown after another being manufactured for her as need arose; and she was fond of giving a gown-piece to any girl that might strike her fancy, walked well, and was, as she expressed it in pregnant Scotch, “purpose-like.” This is not to say that Lady Jean could not be every inch the Earl’s sister when occasion demanded, and strike terror into the Radical multitude, or that she did not possess, and occasionally wear, a wardrobe more fitted to her condition.
Her arrival at Rosmore had nearly led to disastrous effects, as I have said. For when Mr. Rowland saw the little old lady nimbly climbing the hill, with the tweed petticoats reaching to her ankles, and her hat bearing traces of encounters with several showers, he had not a doubt in his mind that she was a friend of the housekeeper or some of the servants. He had said “Hi!” and he was hurrying along partly out of kindness, for the way to the servants’ entrance was shorter than the one which swept round to the front of the house, when he saw Archie meet and pause to answerthe old lady’s questions. His father, deeply critical, yet not so critical as he would have been had he known who the visitor was, saw his son turn and accompany her, taking off his hat, which Rowland thought unnecessary (though to be over civil was always better than being rude) not to the servants’ door, but up to the left hand, to the front of the house. He had another “Hi!” on his very lips, but stopped, thinking he might as well leave it to Archie, no great harm being possible. If the housekeeper’s friend did get admission at the great door, what then? He gave a regretful thought to the evident fact that Archie was more at home with the old lady than he was with people in his own position. Mr. Rowland shook his head sadly over this, and said to himself that it was in the boy’s blood, and that he would never make a gentleman: yet comforted himself next moment and justified Archie by declaring to himself with some warmth that he had a better opinion of a lad when he was civil to those who had but little claim to the civility of their neighbours.
Consequent upon this, however, a little curiosity about this old lady came into Rowland’s mind. She was perhaps some ancient sempstress—some old pensioner of “the family,” which was a title only accorded by the public in general to the Clydesdale family, not to the interlopers at present at the house. The old person was very nimble, whoever she was, and she had “neat feet,” Mr. Rowland remarked, who had always an eye for a good point in a woman—very neat feet—shod with strong, purpose-like shoes. If Marionwould only learn to have shoes like that instead of the things like paper she went about in. He went on very much at his leisure, following till the old lady disappeared under the colonnade. It would do her good to get a glimpse of the hall with its Indian carpets and wonderful hangings. It’s fine to show a poor old body like that once in a way what wealth can do. It would be a thing for her to make a great gossip about in the village when she got home. Mr. Rowland was still smiling with the pleasure of this benevolent view when he saw Archie come out again. “Who is that old dame you were showing in? I’m glad to see you so civil,” said the father.
“Civil!” said the young man. And then he added with his usual look of suppressed indignation, “I’m surprised you did not know her: it is Lady Jean.”
“Lady Jean!!” But a thousand notes of admiration could not express the dismay of Rowland when he found out that he had very nearly called out “Hi!” to Lady Jean.
Lady Jean was greatly pleased with Mrs. Rowland, whom she described as “probably a little too English for this place—but very well meaning, and a gentlewoman. It appears I once knew her grandmother,” said Lady Jean. This, so far as the point was concerned, was as good as a patent of nobility. Her grandmother!—it added the charm of antiquity to all the rest—though, indeed, Lady Jean was not more than a dozen years older than Mrs. Rowland. Evelyn had besought the Earl’s sister to let her take charge of “the poor” in the village, which gave Lady Jean occasionfor a lecture, which pleased her. “But I must ask you not to call them the poor. They are neighbours not so well off in this world’s goods as we are. ‘Poor folk’ is an allowable phrase, meaning a large class; and it is mostly neighbourly kindness, not charity, that you will be called on to give. Something off your own table to the sick and ailing—that’s a fashion of speaking—something off your housekeeper’s table, not French dishes, will be the best, and a helping hand with the schooling, and a kind thought of the old people. That is what you want here.”
“But that is very much what is wanted everywhere,” Evelyn said.
“Very true, but there are Scotch susceptibilities which you must respect,” said Lady Jean. She liked to make this explanation, and then to laugh at it, with a twinkle in her eye.
But her conclusion was that Mrs. Rowland was a most creditable person. “Rich, oh richer than anybody has a right to be—but not much the worse, considering—just a well-looking, well-mannered gentlewoman.”
Nothing could be more satisfactory than this report. It ran up the loch and across the mountains. The Duchess heard of it in her quarters among the hills. It flew east to another duchess on the lowland side. Of course I need not say to people who know the country which was the one duchess and which the other. In the course of time they both called, which was a prodigious distinction: and so did all the smaller gentry, and some of those great Glasgow potentateswho build themselves new castles upon the banks of the Clyde. Some of them were very fine gentlemen indeed, but they were “mixed,” and some were only “Glasgow builders” of a kind quite unknown to Evelyn. One whose carriage would have made a sensation in Hyde Park, even in the days of hammercloth, with two powdered footmen behind, had the manners still of the blacksmith he had originally been. Mr. Rowland rather liked these personages, especially the old gentleman who had been a blacksmith. He stood up in a group with two or three of them who represented among them heaven knows how many millions, and thrust his hands into his pockets and talked investments and money. Why should not people talk money who have more of that than of anything else? Painters talk of their pictures, and literary men of their books. Why not millionaires of that which makes them so? Rowland was very intelligent, and he liked to talk upon money subjects; but an occasional laying of the heads together with a few other rich men over the subject of money was refreshing to him, as it is refreshing to an artist after long deprivation to find himself once more among his own kind.
With all this flash of fine society, however, which so soon made an end of Rowland’s fears, it is astounding how much in the foreground of the picture was Miss Eliza, briefly described as “of the Burn,” in the nomenclature of the parish. What Miss Eliza’s surname was, and what was implied by the designation “of the Burn,” it was really quite unnecessary to add. The same surname is so very general in Scotch west countryparishes, that it confers little distinction in itself. Miss Eliza came to call in a little wickerwork carriage, called a clothes-basket by her friends, with a russet pony to draw it and equally russet groom or stable-boy to look after the vehicle when she made a call. Miss Eliza drove the pony herself, with Colin generally behind, to whom she threw a word occasionally when a longer time than usual elapsed without meeting anybody on the road: but as the kind woman knew everybody, from the fishwife who came over with her creels from Kilrossie during the season of the saut water, up to the Earl himself, when he happened to be seen in those regions, or even the Duchess, who was a still more rare visitor, there was but little time for her to entertain Colin with a special remark. “How do you do the day?” she said with a wave of her whip in salutation of her friends. “How’s a’ with you, David? I hope the hoast is better, and that you like the lozenges.—Good morning, Mrs. Dean, and isn’t it just a pleasure to see such a fine day: grand for the hay, as I have been saying all the way down the loch, fifty times if I’ve said it once. I’m hoping they’ll get it all well carted in at Rowanson, and a fine heavy crop it is, just a pleasure to see.—Eh, is that you, Lizzie, with your basket? It’s awfu’ heavy for you, my poor lass, and you not got up your strength yet. Climb up beside Colin: I’ll take ye a bittie of the way.—Good day to ye, minister. Ye see I’ve got Lizzie Chalmers in the basket. Ye must just give her a good talking to, for she’s come out before she has got up her strength. Would you like any ofher fish at the Manse? I would call and leave them on my way back, with pleasure, and it would aye be something for her to take home. I will have some of the herrings and the little haddies myself, though the haddies are not equal to the Fife haddies, and the herrings are not so good as Loch Fyne. Oh yes, I am just going to Rosmore. I hear she’s just an uncommon nice person, and a credit to the loch-side.—Dear me, there’s Lady Jean. It’s a sight for sore eyes to see you now, and a sore trouble to think you’re in the parish no longer, and I can scarcely offer to give you a lift when I have Lizzie Chalmers in the cart. Isn’t she just a very presentable sort of person? I’m meaning the new lady at the house, no Lizzie: we all know everything there is to know about her. And I hope his lordship is quite well, and you are not finding Ardnachrean damp.—Dear, bless me, there is the doctor, and I want to ask him about young Rankin, and make him speak his mind to Lizzie there. Good-day to you all, good-day.”
If it may be suggested that a country lady driving her own machine could scarcely be likely to meet so much company on a country road, I must say in my own defence that it was the same day on which Lady Jean had paid her visit to Mrs. Rowland, which accounted for her; and as for the usual inhabitants of Rosmore, from the minister down to old David, they were all to be met with in the afternoon, within a few hundred yards. Lizzie Chalmers, it is true, was from Kilrossie, and did not come every day, but she was the only one of the party with the exception of LadyJean who was not to be met with about the same hour on the same road every day.
“Is he any better, doctor?” said Miss Eliza, coming down upon the doctor with a little rush of the russet pony, prompted by a smarter than ordinary flourish of the whip. “Yes, I was afraid it was his own fault, the foolish fellow. Men are just idiots rushing upon destruction, and him so sensible when he ishimself. There is Lizzie Chalmers, behind me in the basket, just as silly in another way, coming out with her heavy creel before she is well over her trouble. I would wish you to speak very seriously to her, doctor. You must just lay me out my herrings and haddies, and the codfish for the manse, it will make your creel the lighter. And Colin, fill you that long basket with grass to make a nice caller bed for the fish.—And here we are at the gate of Rosmore, and to take you further would just be to take you out of your way. Help her out, Colin, and you can put out the biggest codfish—if it’s too much for them, I’ll make them a present of it, and they can send the rest to that ne’er-do-weel’s poor wife, poor thing. And Lizzie, my woman, here’s another shilling for you. Stay at home and look after the bairns, and don’t come out to-morrow. Now, Rufus, on you go, my man. It’s a stiff brae, and I know you don’t like it; but we’ll just make Colin get out and run. Come away, my bonnie man,” said Miss Eliza, with a chirrup, as she slanted the pony’s head towards the brae. Having no one else to speak to, she talked to Rufus, who was very well used to it, and responded by little shakings of his head and jinglingsof his harness. “Come away,” she added, meaning “go on”; “It’s a stey brae, but ye must just go at it with a stout heart, and it will be over in a moment. Come away, my bonnie man! Just jump in to Colin, and not let him cool after that fine burst, for I like to come in at the door with a dash, and Rufus can do it if he likes. Now down with ye again, and give a good peal to the bell.—Will Mrs. Rowland be in this afternoon?” she added, with a sweep of the whip towards the footman at the door. Then Miss Eliza got down a little more dexterously than an inexperienced spectator would have looked for. She went into Rosmore in the same cheerful manner, talking all the way. The footman, it is true, was English, and an unknown quantity, but even to him Miss Eliza found something to say.
“They will be in, both Mrs. Rowland and the young lady? That is very lucky for me, for in a fine day like this most people are on the road. They will be using the long drawing-room with the view? Well, I do not blame them: it is best, though Lady Jean used to keep it for company.—Who will ye say? Oh, there is my card, that is the most sensible way.—My dear Mrs. Rowland, I am very glad to make your acquaintance. We have heard just everything that is good of you, and I have been most anxious to welcome you to the parish. And this is Miss Rowland? Dear me, how delighted all the young folk will be to hear of such an addition. And now that you have got settled down a little, I hope you like the house?”
“The house is delightful,” said Evelyn, “and so arethe views. My husband prepared me for the beauty of the country, but he said very little about the excellence inside.”
“He would know but little,” said Miss Eliza. “They’re not noticing about houses, the men folk. And as for the views, we have been settled here this forty years since we came quite young creatures ourselves; but I’ve never tired of this. I’ve never got indifferent, as you generally do, with what you’ve seen every day: it’s just as new to me now as it was at the first.”
“It is a beautiful country,” said Evelyn civilly.
“Is it not—just a blessed country! Eh, if the people were but equal. ‘Every prospect pleases,’ you remember the hymn says, ‘and only man—’ No, no, I will not say that man is vile: that is a great deal too strong. What I complain of in very religious folk is that they are censuring their neighbours, when perhaps, if the truth was known, their neighbours—But we must not pursue that subject. Man is not vile, but he’s not so satisfying as the everlasting hills.”
“Oh,” said Marion, with the little fictitious intonation which copied Evelyn’s, “but men are more amusing than the mountains.” She herself was not by any means so amusing in her diction since she had become an echo of Mrs. Rowland in her gesture and voice.
“The young ladies,” said Miss Eliza with a laugh, “are mostly of that opinion, and I should not say nay, for I have not less than six nephews coming to-morrow for tennis, and everything that they can find that is diverting. They are either at the college, for there’s a summer session in the scientific classes, or else they’rein offices, and they come down to us on Saturday to play. I hope you’ll come up to the Burn, you and your brother, to meet my young men. There will be a view or two as well. And after the diversion there will be a kind of supper, and then they will see you home.”
Marion did not know how to act in such an emergency, but it was understood that the invitation was accepted. And Miss Eliza returned after half-an-hour’s talking, full of the genius of the mistress of the house, and the wealth of its fitting up. “There would need to be something very sustaining in the sense of good old blood in your veins, and a family that has existed for generations,” she said, “for if I was Lady Jean, I could not bear to see how the house is changed, just by the railway man. For it was always a bare, cauldrife sort of house. I used to feel that there were not carpets enough on the floor, nor coals enough in the grate. Now it’s just all blazing and shining with warmth—curtains that just clothe the place, and pictures on the walls, and grand carpets that your foot sinks in. It may not be such good taste, but it is far more comfortable. And Mrs. Rowland is a most personable woman, and him a very good sort of a man.”
“And the daughter, Aunt Eliza?” cried the miss, to whom this was the most interesting part of all.
“The daughter—well she’s just a young lady like the rest. I asked her to come to-morrow, and you can judge for yourself,” Miss Eliza said.
The minister and his wife formed a still more interesting part of the immediate society of the littleplace, and puzzled Evelyn, who had been brought up in the somewhat narrow creed of her country to ignore everything but “the Church,” and to look with small respect upon dissenters in general as a community of uneducated people. She did not at all know what to make of the trim and well dressed pair who called upon her, he in garments almost more sacerdotal than if he had been a priest of All Saints, Elizabeth Street, and she with the fashionable cut of her dress shadowed by the inevitable mackintosh. This was the Scotch minister whom she had met with in pictures in a very different aspect, but of whom she knew nothing in real life except that she had a puzzled comprehension that he did not belong to “the Church,” but yet was—what was he?—a kind of vicar or rector after another fashion, like yet quite unlike the vicars and rectors whom she knew. Mrs. Rowland had her limitations like others, and did not know what to think. But she was, as ever, charmingly polite, and did her best to please these bewildering neighbours. She apologised for not having yet been to church, giving some excuse of tiredness or headache. As a matter of fact the headache had been a result of the same bewilderment which made her so curious and so unassured about the position of Mr. Dean. A Scottish gentlewoman in England would have had no such ignorance; which is a curious fact, and one, perhaps, which proves the superiority of the wealthier and more remote ecclesiastical economy.
“I dare say,” said Mrs. Dean, “that you were not sure if you should come to our church. There is anEpiscopalian Chapel in Kilrossie. As you are English, Mrs. Rowland, it’s perhaps there you should go.”
“Indeed, I cannot say,” said Evelyn, “I have never gone anywhere but to the parish church—but—I don’t quite understand—”
“We both understand perfectly,” said Mrs. Dean, “that you would miss the ritual and your beautiful prayer-book. We have a great sympathy for that. There is nothing in the prayer-book, I am sure, that would be a stumbling-block to my husband, and he sometimes takes a collect just straight out of it without any kind of clipping or trimming. There is a great movement in Scotland, which perhaps you are not acquainted with, to improve the baldness of our services, and make them more generally attractive. We have a harmonium,” Mrs. Dean said with pride, “and I am happy to say that our choir is beginning to chant just extraordinarily well. You will see no such terrible difference as maybe you think.”
Evelyn held her peace, being more and more bewildered with every word. She wondered what Mrs. Reuben Butler,néeJeanie Dean, who was once the minister’s wife of this parish, would have thought of this statement. She only bowed in reply, not being for her own part at all qualified to speak.
“Alexander will explain to you far better than I can, and you will find no intolerance in him. He perhaps agrees better with you,” she added, with a smile, “than with the old-fashioned folk who insist upon keeping up all the difference.—Alexander, Mrs. Rowland would like you to explain the way we’re tryingto bridge over the debateable land between our establishment and the other. Just come here. I will change places with you.” The good wife, with these words, rose and took a chair beside Rowland, to whom her husband had been talking, which was very self-denying on the part of the minister’s wife, there being nothing at all novel in the gentleman of the house, whereas there was a great deal that was novel in the lady, and therefore interesting. She relinquished the post to the minister, who was perhaps better able to expound—was he better able to expound?—the problem of that ecclesiastical movement in Scotland which is so much more puzzling to unsophisticated English understandings, prepared for polemics and opposition, than the good old conventional figure of the Presbyterian Calvinist, which is a primitive type that everybody knows.
“I don’t know what there is to explain,” said Mr. Dean, taking, nothing loth, the chair his wife had vacated: he too preferred the mistress to the master of the house. “Our services—but then Mrs. Rowland will understand them better when she has seen them.”
“Oh, I was very tired after my long journey—and I had a headache.”
“She was not out of her bed,” replied Rowland, as if his wife were being blamed.
“I am sure,” said Mr. Dean, “that if I was Mrs. Rowland, I should not go through the tedious drawl of the old-fashioned Scotch church on any account, or listen to a sermon an hour long, which is what some of our neighbouring clergymen still indulge in. But it is modified in Rosmore church, and I promise you youshall not have more of me than twenty minutes. We have very decent music, thanks to my wife. In short, for a country service in an out-of-the-way place like this, I’m glad to think that we are making it much more attractive.”
“Attractive?” Evelyn said, more bewildered than ever. “To whom were they intended to be attractive? To the persons to whom they were addressed?”
“It is in no way necessary,” said the minister, “that music and everything that is pleasant should be appropriated by one body. We can take up our inheritance in that way just as fitly as the Episcopalians. I am not a bigoted Presbyterian,” he said, “even in the way of Church government, which is really the only peculiar part of our economy. I think it is just as good as the other. I don’t think that either of them is divinely appointed. I am used to presbytery, you are used to bishops—very well. We need not go to loggerheads about that. I know a bishop or two, and I’ve always found them very friendly, without being inclined to bow down to kiss the pastoral ring any more than the papal toe.”
“You are not so peaceably inclined when you come home from a Presbytery meeting, Alexander,” said the wife of his bosom. “For my part I am rather fond of the lawn sleeves. I think equality of ministers is just as great nonsense as equality generally. Don’t you think so, Mr. Rowland? When young Lord Rosmore says to me we are all born equal, I just say to him, Bah! As if anybody in his senses would put my husband and Johnny Shanks at the head of the lochupon the same level! You will remember Johnny Shanks? just a nobody; whereas Alexander——”
“My wife,” said Mr. Dean, while this was going on, “likes the decorative side. Lawn sleeves and gaitered legs take her fancy. But if there is one thing convenient in our simplicity, it is that we are saved all the millinery questions. And that, I think, goes for a great deal.”
Evelyn had never been ecclesiastically minded, and was but vaguely aware what the millinery question meant. As for the rest, though she was an intelligent woman, these two people might as well have talked Hebrew to her: there was no understanding in her mind.
Itwas October when the young Saumarez’s arrived at Rosmore. October is very lovely in the west of Scotland. The trees are thinned but still glowing, the birches like lamps of gold among the darker woods, scattering round them, as the leaves drop, a golden underground that gives out light. The great line of mountains at the head of the loch were lightly touched with snow. The villas on the banks came out more brightly from the thinned foliage, and stood reflected in the shining water, with all the tints round them of red rowan berries and dazzling autumnal leaves. The air had a clearness as of the rarified air of high altitudes. There had not been any rain for ten days, soremarkable a fact that the district in general was beginning to fear the failure of its wells.
In such an evening, while the sun lavished its last rays upon the loch and the opposite shore, bathing them in golden light, Rosamond and Edward came across in the steamboat to the whole Rowland family, which awaited them on the pier. I am wrong, however, to say the whole family: for Archie, who had been seized by a strong repugnance to the newcomers without any reason—a fact which, of course, made it more strong—was not of the number. He had gone up the loch or the hill with a determined intention of returning only in time for dinner. If truth had been told, he was extremely curious, even anxious about the young man who was of his own age, about whom there could be no doubt that he was a gentleman born to everything which Archie had not been born to, yet possessed. He did not think at all about the pretty sister, who probably would have most engaged the interest of the ordinary youth of twenty. But the more Archie was curious, the less had he any intention of showing it. He listened himself to what was said, but he asked no questions. Finally he started, half an hour before they went to meet the newcomers, for a long walk up the hill.
“It is too lovely,” said Rosamond, presenting her cheek, as usual, that Mrs. Rowland should kiss it. “I wish some one had told me that it was a beautiful place. I never began to look till we got into the steamboat. I am not in the least tired, thank you. Eddy! where are you, Eddy? One never knows whereto find him. He is always picking up everywhere some fellow he knows. He is not nice to travel with, because there are so many fellows he knows.”
Here there advanced from the other end of the boat, and bounded across the gangway just before it was withdrawn, a short young man, with a travelling cap upon one side of his head and a cigar in his mouth. He had to make a jump upon the pier amid a shout of “Take care, will ye!” and “What are ye doing, lad?” from the man at the pier; and dropped like a projectile in the midst of the group which, so undistinguished was Eddy’s appearance, were not looking for him except his sister, who put out a hand as if to help him. “That was cleverly done,” said Rowland, opposing his own substantial bulk to arrest the stranger who was standing in their midst; “but I would advise you, my young friend, to bestir yourself sooner, and not run such a risk again.”
“Oh, it is his way,” replied Rosamond. “You would not think it, but this is Eddy, Mrs. Rowland. He is like nobody one ever saw.”
Certainly he was not like his handsome father, the young Edward Saumarez whom Evelyn remembered so well. She had been half afraid of seeing a reproduction of his old look. But that was one of the anticipatory troubles that she might well have spared herself. He was short; his hair was light and scanty; his eyes half lost under many folds of loose eyebrows, and a brow which contracted with what some unkind critic has called the short-sighted soul, was rather small. His nose was turned up a little. Marion, who, in the interests of Archie, had been looking forward, half with hope and half with fear, to the arrival of a beautiful youth—a darling of society, exquisitely clothed and of distinguished appearance—felt a pang, half of disappointment, half of relief. Perhaps the relief was the stronger. Archie!—why Archie was taller, better looking, and more a man than this little shambling fellow! The foolish father felt much more cordial to Eddy, and grasped him strongly by the hand.
“You’re welcome to Rosmore, both you and your sister,” he said.
There came an answer from Eddy’s lips which sounded very much like “Who’s this?” but a glance from his sister brought him to himself, and he made his bow accordingly.
“I’m very glad to be here, I can tell you,” said Eddy. “Never knew such a beast of a journey—tumbled out of one carriage into another, and then Glasgow, and then a boat, and I don’t know all what. How do you do? Been here long?—and have you got any sport? It’s just like my luck to come so late.”
“My son,” said Rowland with ineffable pleasure—for he did not feel ashamed of his son now, quite the reverse in sight of this shabby young lad, who looked like nothing at all—“has arranged a day for you, and I think you’ll find a bird or two yet.”
“That’s all right,” said Eddy. “How do you do, Mrs. Rowland! It is very pretty, as Rose says, but I’m not a man for the picturesque myself. Oh, you’re going to walk? Excuse me, I’m not much of a walking man: I’ll go with the ladies, if it’s the same to you.”
“Certainly,” said Rowland amazed, but always with a certain exultation on Archie’s account. This an example for Archie! the boy was twice the man this fellow was. It is not good to rejoice in the disadvantages of other people, but he had been so sure, and professed his pleasure in it, that Saumarez’s son—a man in the best society—could be a model for Archie, that the satisfaction in finding him so shabby a little fellow was more than words could say. He did not need to be ashamed of his own boy in this company at least. Mr. Rowland started to walk, while the little man jumped into his place in the carriage, with a certain elation, as if somebody had given him something he acknowledged to himself.
“How jolly of you to come to meet us,” said Eddy, “country fashion. We were wondering, Rose and I, if there would be a dog-cart or something. Never expected this luxury. Rose, did you see after the luggage? I had no time to think of it—met a fellow who was with me at Eton—one of the great plucked, don’t you know—run all over the country in crowds at this time of the year.”
“Yes,” said Rosamond with her calm air, “he was plucked of course, Mrs. Rowland. I told you we could not come any sooner because of his exam. Of course I knew quite well how it would turn out, and so I told father. But there are some things that people will not believe. I never can see the good, for my part, of going in for exams. that you are sure not to pass.”
“Oh,” said Eddy, light-heartedly, “it is always something to do—keeps you from feeling that you’ve gotno centre to your life, don’t you know. I like a sort of fixed point; if you don’t work up to it, of course that’s your fault, but all the same an object,—a fine thing. Don’t you agree with me, Miss Rowland?” said the young man, turning round a little to look into the face of his companion on the front seat, who had given up her place to Rosamond without any pleasure, and was now studying that young lady in every line of her costume, with something of the same sensation of mingled disappointment and relief which her father had experienced. Marion was accustomed now to all the subtleties of the toilette. She was more respectful of Rosamond’s grey gown than she had been of Evelyn’s travelling dress; but she perceived at a glance that from this visitor there would be little to learn.
“I don’t know what you mean by an object. I think most gentlemen’s object is to please themselves,” Marion said.
“That’s what you call epigrammatic, ain’t it,” said Eddy, “and severe.”
“Oh, I just say what I think,” said Marion. She had not had a young man given her to play with since the days of the students, who laughed at her saucy speeches, and said among themselves that Rowland’s sister was clever, much cleverer than he was; and the prospect was agreeable to her. Not that there was anything attractive in Eddy personally, but still he was of the kind of mouse to her cat—or cat to her mouse, as sometimes happens in that sort of exercise. They eyed each other with furtive glances, both aware of this probable relationship.
“Father has left Aix,” said Rosamond, “they have sent him to some other place which it is supposed may do him good. Of course so long as he has Rogers with him we know that he is well attended to. I hope we shall not stay too long and bore you, Mrs. Rowland. Would it be too much to say a month? I hope you will be so kind as to tell us if you want our rooms for other visitors, or get tired of us. Of course people always do in society, or it would be impossible to get on.”
“Yes, I promise, my dear, I shall tell you if I get tired of you,” said Evelyn.
“We have been for a fortnight with grandmamma. I think we bored her very much. She told us she had people coming for the 22nd. But we really could not get away on the 22nd. One’s grandmother is not the same as any one else, do you think? However much she may be bored, it is right that she should put up with it. We don’t go there very much. Once in a year is not a great deal. She never has anything to say to father: he makes her so nervous, she says. She will soon say that Eddy makes her nervous too: when there is no smoking-room, perhaps it may be a little unpleasant to smell his cigars; but if there is anything at all in being a grandmother—then she is of course impatient that he has not passed his exam. I cannot see why, for my part. They ought to have known it from the first. If you will not even open a book, how can you expect to pass any exam.?”
“My object, I allow, is to amuse myself,” said Eddy to Marion, dropping his voice, as it is the rightthing to do when you wish to set up a separate conversation. “I am quite candid, as you are—and, tell me, isn’t that yours too?”
“I am afraid you will not find it very easy,” said Marion, “to amuse yourself at Rosmore.”
“What! is there nothing to do?” said Eddy, looking a little dismayed.
“We never see anybody from morning to night but the old maids out of the village. And we never go anywhere. There was a ball at Campbellton, but they refused it, and there was one at Eagle’s Craig, but they just went themselves.”
“Good heavens!” cried Eddy, “what depravity! you never mean to say that the old people, papa and mamma——”
“They just went themselves!” said Marion with an indignation almost too terrible for words.
“This must be looked into,” said Eddy, “it is almost beyond belief.”
“I will tell you after,” said Marion, as the conversation on the other side of the carriage came to a pause.
Thus Mr. Edward Saumarez, jun., procured for himself, without a moment’s delay, something to do at Rosmore. And Marion Rowland found at once an additional interest in life. It was quite innocent, and as trivial as could have been desired. In the evening after dinner she confided a part of her troubles to him, and then the next day, when the young visitors were conducted by the young people of the house to see the neighbourhood, Marion managed so that Rosamondwent on with Archie, while she herself followed attended by Eddy. And the sight of the two pairs thus arranged was amusing enough. Rosamond went on in advance, very quickly, with her smooth firm step, and her head held high, as she walked in London, where, intent upon her own business, this young woman of the period passed where she pleased, as safe in her own protection and that, but in a most secondary degree, of her mastiff, as safely as Una with her lion; while Archie walked by her, a step behind, finding it slightly difficult to keep up with her long yet graceful steps, and still more difficult to answer the occasional questions which she addressed to him without turning her head. Archie for his own part could not, however he cudgelled his brains, find out anything to say to this beautiful young lady. He felt her to be miles, nay Alps above him, and that he could not say anything which did not feel common, vulgar, mean—like a boy in a shop talking to a princess. He kept striving to keep up with her, yet never quite kept up with her save when she stopped suddenly and turned with the same swiftness of movement with which she walked to look out on the water or up to the hills, when he would outgo her, and be compelled to swing himself round with an effort to get back to his place.
“What is the name of that hill?” she asked, all at once coming to one of those sudden pauses. “That?” said Archie, anxiously turning to quite another point; “oh that is Ben Ros—or no, I think it is what they call The Miller—if it is not Ros-dhu.”
“You don’t seem to know very much about them,” said the stately girl, and then she set off again, certainly indifferent to the blundering explanation he made that he was afraid he had a bad memory, and that one person said one thing and one another, so that it was difficult to know. At another time it was on the seaside that Rosamond paused, demanding to know the name of the lighthouse in the distance, and what was the shadowy height to be seen far off down the course of the Clyde. If it had cost him his life, poor Archie could not remember whether he had been told that this peak was Goatfell or if it was one of the Cumbraes, which he knew lay “that way.” And the light: what was it that Roderick called the light? If he had ever dreamt that he would be interrogated this way, Archie would have given his whole attention to the acquisition of local knowledge. A cold perspiration came out upon his forehead, as he stammered out answers which he was sure were all wrong. “Oh!” said Miss Saumarez, not even deigning to cast a glance at him. Eddy did not suffer half so much from his unsuccessful examination as poor Archie did from this totally unexpected process, which showed him the profound depth of his ignorance. What a fool she must think him! What an idiot he was!
“I am afraid, Mr. Rowland, you don’t admire your own country so much as I do,” Rosamond said at the end of the walk, with a smile that went over his head like an arrow, which she did not even take the trouble to aim at him. And he was tongue-tied and could not say a word, could not think of anything to say; though after she had gone on, a dozen little darts of wordswhich he might have said, came into his mind, wounding himself with little pricks instead of compelling her to respect him a little, as, if they had but come soon enough, they might have done.
Meanwhile the other pair had got on, as Eddy would have said, like a house on fire. Marion had given him the whole history of the ball at Eagle’s Craig, to which she had been invited with her stepmother; but to which Mrs. Rowland had gone alone—with diamonds round her neck and in her hair.
“She would not have had any diamonds but for papa,” said Marion. “She was quite nobody when he married her.”
“Oh, now I don’t think that can be true,” said Eddy, “for my governor, you know—” an impulse of wisdom checked the young man—“couldn’t have known her, could he, if she had been nobody?”
“Well, at least she was nobody out in India,” said Marion, “and to see her now! And I had to stay at home—me, papa’s own daughter, and the only one, and a very good dancer! And it was her that went to the ball, an old lady, and me, I had to stay at home!”
“It is a sort of thing that would justify an appeal to parliament,” said Eddy, “but there must have been some sort of reason alleged. Perhaps you had not a frock?”
“I have dozens of frocks,” said Marion, turning upon him with a gleam in her eye.
“Or you did not know the people?”
“I know heaps of people; that is, I did not knowthem myself, but what does it matter about that when I am papa’s daughter, and he could just—buy them all up!”
“Oh,” said Eddy, taken a little aback—for though he was accustomed to a great deal of slang and much frank speaking, it was not generally quite of this kind. “Then,” he said, “I am at my wit’s end, and I can’t think what they meant.”
“They said,” cried Marion, “that I was not out.”
“Oh,” said Eddy again.
“But what did that matter—for who would have ever known? And it was a delightful ball, with a great many officers. And I am a fine dancer,” said Marion with a deep sigh of mingled indignation and regret.
“Oh, as for that, there is no doubt,” said Eddy, “you are as light as a feather, and with those pretty little feet—”
“No, I am not as light as a feather: I am just the weight I ought to be, and my feet are just the same as other people’s; but I know,” said Marion with conviction, “that I am good at dancing. Archie is not very good at it, and he is not fond of it.”
“He does not look as if he would be,” said Eddy, with a look at the son of the house tramping on before them at a considerable distance in close pursuit of the lady who was in his charge.
“No,” said Marion, “he never was fond of it—are you?”
“Oh, I adore it,” said the young man, “when I have a partner to my mind. You and I, Miss Marion,would fly like the wind. We’d leave everybody behind us. I’ll tell you what we must do to make up for that Ravenscraig—no, Eagle’s Craig business—we’ll make them give a ball here.”
“A ball at Rosmore!”
“The very thing! while we are here. Rosamond has not come out either, but, as you say, who will ever know? We may as well have our fun, and you and she can keep each other in countenance. Nobody will tell—and what would it matter if they did? Why, girls not out are to be seen everywhere—always at balls at home. You put on a high dress.”
“No,” cried Marion, “I would rather die than go to a dance in a high dress.”
“Well, don’t then,” said the complacent Eddy, “anything you please. Oh, don’t be afraid. I will speak to Mrs. Rowland. I can be as independent as you like when there’s any occasion for it. And my governor, you know, poor old chap——”
“Do you mean ‘your papa,’”said Marion.
“Well, I don’t call him so,” said Eddy with a laugh. “There was a story, don’t you know, about him and your mamma-in-law. The governor behaved badly, but she has a sneaking kindness for him all the same. That’s why we are here.”
“Oh!” cried Marion, with a gasp of excitement, “tell me! for I know nothing about her. I want to know about her. I was sure there was some story.”
“The governor was a sad dog when he was young,” said Eddy. “Oh, he’s a nice fellow to blow a fellowup for some trifle not half so bad as himself. He was up to anything that was naughty. It’s funny, isn’t it, to hear of these anti-diluvian lovers—my old governor, who can’t move a limb, poor old chap, and this prim lady here who looks like a saint.”
“As if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” said Marion; “but I always knew there was some story. Be quick and tell me, for they are coming back.”
“I will tell you another time. Can’t we come out to-night in the moonlight to smoke a cigarette. Did you ever try a cigarette? Oh, all the girls do! I’ll teach you how. It makes you much better company when you don’t mind a cigarette.—Hi! here’s Rosamond down upon us. Not a word to her, whatever I tell you. And your brother coming lagging behind as if she had given him a touch of the lash. She’s a rare one for that; keeps a fellow in his place, as if she was too grand to mind.”
“Oh, Archie is just as grand as she is,” said the girl, slightly offended; “and it is just his way to keep behind. I would like to see anybody giving my brother a touch of the lash!”
“It is not because he is your brother, but because he is himself,” said Eddy. “I don’t mean any offence. I mean that’s Rosamond’s way. She is like the governor, don’t you know. She has got a great deal of the devil in her. So have you, I should think.”
“Me!” said Marion, much shocked. “I am not what you think at all.”
“Yes,” said Eddy, “I am sure you are what I think. As nice as girls are made, but plenty of devilry, anda spirit for anything. That is precisely what I like best.”
“Well,” said Marion, “I will allow that I have a great deal of spirit, if that’s what you call the——; but you shouldn’t say bad words. Do you mean that girls are not made so nice as men? for I think you’re very impudent to say so, and me a girl that you are speaking to.”
“Girls,” said Eddy, with an air of authority, “are sometimes much better, and sometimes they are a great deal worse than men. There’s no medium in them. You are one of the nice ones, so of course you are a great deal nicer than a fellow like me, or even your brother. I am a dreadful little beggar, and that is the truth.”
“Oh, you like to say ill things of yourself.”
“No, I don’t, if they weren’t true. You hit me off exactly, the very first thing, when you said men had no object but to amuse themselves. You must be awfully clever as well as nice. I don’t see what we’re in the world for but to enjoy ourselves. I’m sure I didn’t ask to come, and I dare say I shan’t have a very long life, so I mean it to be a merry one, I can tell you. As for the governor,” said Eddy, “he has no right to complain. Rose is too good for him, but he deserves to have me to keep him in mind of how naughty he has been.”
“What have you done,” said Marion, interested, “that is so——naughty, as you say?”
“Oh, you would like to know?” he said, openinghis eyes wide, with a laugh. “Perhaps if I were to tell you, you would never speak to me any more.”
“I am not that kind,” said Marion. “I would always speak to you, whatever you did—if you were sorry.”
“Ah! but the chief thing in me is that I am not a bit sorry,” said Eddy.—“Are you going back already you two? You go off like a hunter, Rose, never minding who toils after you. Miss Rowland and I are going further on.”
“There is a beautiful view up there,” said Rosamond, pointing to the west, “if you cared about views, and the mountains are beautiful in that direction, but as you never would look at a landscape in your life——”
“Not when I had mettle more attractive,” said Eddy, with a look at Marion, and then he laughed out, “When I can combine both, I like it very much.”
“Mary, it is perhaps going to rain. I would not advise you to go very far,” said Archie, who was more susceptible than his sister to the light compliment and the laughter. But Marion stood her ground.
“Since we came to Rosmore,” she said, “it has always been going to rain, and we can shelter under the trees, and it does no harm. I have promised to Mr. Saumarez to show him Ben Ros before we go in.”
“I am very anxious to make the acquaintance of Ben Ros,” said Eddy with a laugh. “Au revoir, you people who have accomplished that part already. I don’t suppose you are deeply attached to Ben Ros—what do you call him—are you? But it is always a good excuse for a walk—and a talk.”
“You never call me by my name,” said Marion; “you say justyou, as if I were not a person at all.”
“Because you would be angry if I called you by your name.”
“Me, angry! Why I am just Miss Rowland to everybody, servants and all.”
“I suppose you don’t rank me with the servants? I shall say Marion or nothing—and of course you would not allow me—or May, that is your name too, and the prettiest of all.”
“May is short for Marion,” she said with a blush.
“And I’m to call you so? Then I shall do nothing but call you by it. May, May—it is the prettiest name in the world.”
Thus there came into conjunction another two who were not Mr. Rowland’s two, nor perhaps a two who were very desirable companions for each other, yet who suited each other, as Mr. Edward Saumarez eloquently expressed it, down to the ground.
“A ball! It is not Archie, I am sure, who would like a ball,” said Mrs. Rowland from the sofa, where Eddy had been sitting by her, in an attitude of respectful adoration for some time. He had cast repeated startling glances at Marion, calling her observation while he was so engaged. And Marion, seated at adistance with a book held up in front of her face, gave way now and then to little bursts of laughter, which she quickly repressed. It was infinitely ludicrous to Marion that any one should pretend to advise Mrs. Rowland, a woman of that age; but Eddy, she thought, played his part to perfection, and it was the funniest thing in the world.
Rosamond was seated at the piano, playing as it were in an undertone, and for her own pleasure, various bits of music, one suggesting another, as one verse of poetry suggests another. She was a good musician, but she did not attempt to play to so indifferent an audience, though Rowland was always certainly civil in his desire to “have a little music,” when he came into the drawing-room after dinner. The good man knew that this was the right thing, and that Miss Saumarez would expect to be asked, and sat and yawned dutifully through what he privately thought to himself “just a terrible jingle,” out of respect to his guest. But Rowland had not left the dining-room on this occasion. He had a playfellow of his own who had dined with him, and was now engaging him in much more congenial talk. Archie was not much more educated in music than his father; but there was in his unpossessed being a power of perception, only half developed, of beautiful things. A sonata would have disconcerted him as much as it did Rowland; but the bits of melody that Rosamond was playing, and which he called in his simplicity tunes, seemed to make an atmosphere about her which was poetically appropriate, and filled the background of the large partially lighted sitting-room. The group onthe sofa, with Marion’s detached figure full in the light of a lamp, seemed like a group on the stage, carrying on the thread of some half-comprehended story. Rosamond and the music belonged to a different sphere. There were shaded candles upon the piano, throwing a white light upon a pair of white hands, moving softly over the ivory keys; behind, the curtains were drawn back from one of the rounded windows, a line of moonlight came in, and in the distance from the corner in which Archie was seated unseen there was a glimmer visible of the distant waters of the Clyde, in glistening life and movement under the white blaze of the moon. Archie’s heart was full of strange and uncomprehended emotion. He was in a new world, listening to those soft strains which touched him as the light might touch a being coming to life, and feeling the vague enchantment of the night, the presence, like a charm, of the half seen figure, half dark half light, at the piano, and this subtle atmosphere in which she breathed. He had said very little to Rosamond in the week during which they had lived under the same roof. She despised him quite frankly, taking no pains to disguise it. He read in her looks that she thought him a lout, a fool, a nuisance, and he was not angry or even surprised that she should think so. But he had no such thoughts of her. He liked to watch her, as he liked to look (but this he had never betrayed to any one) at the hills. He liked this atmosphere of the music, which seemed to have a curious appropriateness to her—not that he appreciated the music, although she was playing, he thought, some very pretty tunes, but it suited hersomehow. He had not read much poetry, and could not remember any that would apply to her as a better instructed man might have done; but the whole scene had a vague poetry which filled in a dim sort of way Archie’s inarticulate soul. He listened sitting in what was almost the dark, listening and listening though he did not suppose she even knew he was there.
But the sound of one’s own name penetrates distance and music and even the envelopment of thought in the strangest way. He heard Mrs. Rowland say that Archie, she could see, would not desire a ball, and the impulse of opposition sprang up quick and strong within him.
“Why should I not like a ball as well as the rest?” he said out of his corner, raising his voice that his opinion might be heard.
“There! I told you so,” said Eddy; “who wouldn’t wish for a ball in this house? The floor in the hall is perfect—it is wasting a good thing not to dance upon it. I am sure you of all people, dear lady, are not one to waste good things. Then fancy what a thing for us. We should make acquaintance with everybody, and probably reap a harvest of invitations. We are on the prowl. We want to be asked places. The Governor would feel how nobly you had done your part by us——and——and——”
That shower of fluent words flowed on, but Archie’s attention to it suddenly failed. For out of the dimness nearer to him, through the sound of the softly tinkling notes, came a soft but very distinct question—“Why should you, Mr. Rowland, wish for a ball?”
“I don’t,” he cried abruptly in his surprise.
“Then you gave a false impression. Mrs. Rowland must think from what you said that you gave the project your support.” She spoke without turning her head, playing softly all the while, speaking in her usual calm and serious vein.
“I would not oppose,” said Archie, “what Marion wanted, and you.”
“You are quite right to put Marion first. It is not generally accounted civil, but it was honest, and I like it from you. I do not care—I am not fond of dancing. There are so many things more important in this life. I should have been surprised if you had wished it,” she added after an interval, during which she had gone on modulating, with her hands pressed down upon the keys.
“Would you tell me why?” said Archie timidly out of the dim world behind her.
“Oh,” she said, “not because it is the fashion with a certain sort of young man, for I don’t suppose you would—” she meant to say “know,” in her disdain, but moved by some better feeling, said instead “care. But I should not think you were fond of dancing,” she said, pressing firmly upon the two bass keys.
“You think,” said Archie, emboldened by the fact that she could not see him, “that I don’t look much like dancing. And it’s true. I am not good at it. Marion is, though,” he said after a little pause.
“And what has that got to do with you?”
“Oh!” he said surprised. Then after a pause, “I would naturally like her to be pleased.”
“You would naturally—like her to be pleased?” Rosamond ceased her playing and turned right round upon the music stool, facing him. But the light of the candles was now entirely behind her, shining upon the ribbons of her sash—shining a line of colour beyond her white figure, but leaving her countenance invisible as before. “Why?” she said after an interval, “Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, yes, why? Don’t I speak plain? Why? I want to know why?”
“But there is no why to it,” said Archie, “it is just so.”
She sat dark against the light and thought over this proposition for some time. “Well,” she said at length, “but you are inconsistent. You go against your father in everything, and this lady—who is so out of place here—”
“Why,” said Archie hotly, “is she so much out of place here?”
“Oh!” said Rosamond, and turning round again she burst into a loud heroic tuneful strain, filling the still room with a clamour of sound. In a few minutes more she had changed into a waltz. Then there occurred a complete transformation scene. Eddy jumped up from his seat by Mrs. Rowland, and snatched or seemed to snatch Marion from her chair, and the pair began to fly and flout about the room, as lightly as a pair of birds. Eddy Saumarez was not an elegant cavalier, but he danced very well, and Marion had not done herself more than justice when she said that she was “very good at it.” They threaded the intricaciesof the furniture with the greatest lightness and ease, and whirled from dark to light and from light to dark, from where Mrs. Rowland sat looking on with a smile in the full revelation of a large lamp, to where Archie sat unseen in his corner. Rosamond never turned her head but played on, varying the tune with anespritwhich her brother followed, ducking and anon sweeping on the light figure of the girl with all the art of an accomplished performer. Archie taken completely by surprise at first, watched them with a vague sensation of pleasure in the same, which was against all his prepossessions. The sudden indignation in his mind died out. The novelty and suddenness of the movement beguiled him out of himself. There appeared suddenly at the open door while the dancers still went on, all preliminary sound being drowned by the music, the jovial and ruddy countenances of Rowland and his friend, who stood looking on with broad smiles. “Well done,” cried the master of the house clapping his hands; and then, as if this had been the signal, Rosamond concluded in a moment with a resounding chord, and the dancers stopped short.
“Well, that was a pretty sight—are we to have no more of it?” Rowland said.
“I think I can manage an old-world waltz,” said Evelyn, “for Rosamond no doubt would like a turn too.”
“No, thanks—Eddy will never dance with me—and I like the piano best.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” said the master of the house. “Where’s Archie? Get up, ye lout! can ye see a prettygirl wanting a dance and not be on your feet in a moment? Come, Evelyn, let us have the old-world waltz, and see the young ones enjoy themselves.”
“Come on,” said Eddy to his partner. “It will be as slow as a funeral, but its fine all the same. Come on, and never mind.”
Rosamond stood up by the piano with a perfectly serious face. She turned half round towards Archie’s corner, who in an agony of incapacity and reluctance hesitated to make a step towards her. Rosamond did not care any more for the young man than if he had been a cabbage. He had no mystery or attraction for her, as she had for him, nor was heramour propreaffected by his hesitation. She said, scarcely looking at him from the pitch to which her head thrown high seemed to reach, above every one, “Are we to dance?” in those clear tones of unaffected indifference and disdain. She knew that she would be bumped against all the furniture, and expected to be thrown upon the rock of Mr. Rowland standing in the middle of the room where Eddy and Marion encircled, brushed with their wings, wound into the gyrations of their indefatigable whirl; but she was resigned, and ready for the sacrifice. To poor Archie it was a far more serious affair. He came slowly forward, slouching his shoulders and bending his head. “You were right in thinking I was not fit for it,” he said; “if it’s disagreeable to you, you will remember it’s not my fault.” She put out her hand without a word and placed it on his shoulder. I have read many rhapsodies about the manly character of a waltz, in which two people on the verge of lovefind themselves suddenly swept together into paradise; but the unhappy young man who cannot dance, who finds a fair partner suddenly, in spite of himself, thrust into his awkward arms, who does not know what to do with her, nor with his own unlucky fate, and the things which seem suddenly to spring up and put themselves into his way—no one, so far as I know, has ever found any interest in the sufferings of such an unlucky hero. He held himself as far apart from her as possible as he turned her slowly round, wondering if she hated him, if she would ever again look at him, afraid to glance at her lest he should read disgust in her face. A time of giddy anguish followed, how long or how short Archie could not tell. He supposed that Rosamond exerted herself to keep him up, to guide him blindly about the room; for when those horrible gyrations were over, and the whirl ceased, and the walls began once more to settle straight into their places, he heard himself addressed with noisy congratulations. “Well done, Archie, you’re not such a duffer after all,” cried his father. “Bravo, Rowland!” said Eddy. Mrs. Rowland laughed and clapped her hands. “You are far better at it than I thought,” said Marion. Rosamond alone stood as serious as before, her breathing a little quickened, looking at it as if she thought she might have soiled the hand which had been upon his shoulder. He felt as if he could have struck her as he turned away his head.