The Project Gutenberg eBook of Saint Mungo's city; vol. 2 [of 3]
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Title: Saint Mungo's city; vol. 2 [of 3]
Author: Sarah Tytler
Release date: August 16, 2026 [eBook #79372]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Chatto and Windus, 1884
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79372
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAINT MUNGO'S CITY; VOL. 2 [OF 3] ***
SAINT MUNGO’S CITY
A Novel
By SARAH TYTLER
AUTHOR OF ‘THE BRIDE’S PASS,’ ‘WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH,’
‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,’ ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.
London
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1884
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER PAGE
XIII. THE COMMON ENEMY 1
XIV. ATHOLE MURRAY COMES TO THE RESCUE 28
XV. YOUNG TAM’S PARTNERSHIP--GAY DOINGS 42
XVI. THE DINNER-PARTY 65
XVII. THE COMMON TEMPTATION, WITH ITS
USUAL ACCOMPANIMENT 97
XVIII. DR. PETER AND ATHOLE MURRAY MAKE
THEIR STAND 117
XIX. SIR HUGO WILLOUGHBY ENTERS THE
LISTS, AND IS CAPTIVATED BY THE
MERCHANT PRINCES 139
XX. ‘A YOUNG THING JUST COME FRAE HER
MAMMY’ 160
XXI. SIR HUGO DRAWN BY ‘LE GRAND
SIMPLE’ 200
XXII. RORY OF THE SHELTIES COME ALIVE AGAIN 219
XXIII. THE CONTENTS OF THE KNAPSACK 235
XXIV. THE DEATH OF FENTON OF STRATHDIVIE 255
XXV. STRATHDIVIE 282
XXVI. THE READING OF THE WILL--JEAN MACKINNON’S
TOCHER 300
SAINT MUNGO’S CITY.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE COMMON ENEMY.
That winter there was one of the most terrible outbreaks of typhoid
fever, which had stricken Rory of the Shelties, ever known in St.
Mungo’s City. The sickness extended to the suburbs, and sent long arms
into the country, reaching to the Aytoun Water, which was so valuable an
auxiliary of Drysdale Haugh, creeping up and down its banks in foul
malaria, which prostrated alike strong men and weak women, robbed
families of their breadwinners, or slew the strapping lads and blooming
lasses who were the hope and pride of elderly fathers and mothers.
There was no doubt the first signs of the plague had made their
appearance after the excesses and exposure of the Fair week. There had
been no spell of short hours and starvation wages to induce such a low
state of body and mind as to form a fit foundation for the mischief. But
whatever its origin, it soon extended far beyond the defaulters whose
deeds had wrought their doom. The fever, after a certain course,
appeared to strike impartially the sober, industrious workman, and the
idle, dissipated hanger-on for a day’s ‘turn’ to relieve his most
pressing wants. The evil rose in the scale of society, and fell upon the
well-to-do, scattering sickness and distress among the rich, while
naturally its vantage-ground was the quarters of the poor. It clove to
them as to its fitting haunts, and, like a cowardly assailant, did
deadliest injury where there was least power of resistance.
It was a busy time for Dr. Peter and Athole Murray, who acted from the
first as her father’s indefatigable assistant, feeling no fear to go on
the call of duty where he went with his life in his hand, day and night.
Auld Tam took the greatest interest in the nature of the outbreak, and
showed not the slightest shrinking from a contact with which, indeed, he
had been familiar in his early days. It was a mortification to him to
discover that his best cottages were not spared; but he fell back on the
comfort that there the remedies were applied with the least difficulty
and the greatest average of success.
But the tug of war came when the epidemic raged so fiercely in the worst
Glasgow slums that it roused an apathetic public. Tam Drysdale was not
the man to stand and gape and groan or merely moralize or sermonize over
the calamity, far less was he the heartless egotist who would employ
his resources to flee from the foe, leaving a helpless multitude in its
clutches. He was ready to fight it hand to hand, as he had fought all
the early obstacles in his career. He was not only foremost in
appointing and attending meetings of men in high enough places to cope
with sanitary mischief; but when a house-to-house visitation was
started, he, who might have pleaded that his interests were at Drysdale
Haugh, was one of the first to put down his name as a visitor in the
darkest places of the city. His strong firm step was the readiest to
enter the infected dwellings, where there was not a breath of air that
was not heavy with poison. He was known to pull off his coat, on an
emergency, and carry a patient--a man mad with delirium, whom it would
have required two ordinary men to master--on his back from one room to
another; and where he found none save exhausted, half-distracted women
to watch the sick, he sometimes sent the watchers to bed, and took
their vigil till some other good Samaritan relieved him in turn.
Every morning the two Eppies--not to be deceived, knowing too well the
expeditions on which auld Tam was bent--clung to him at parting with
prayers and tears. He put the woman and the girl gently from him, and
went his way; and on his return, for the first time in his life, he
would not permit them to hang about him till he had passed through such
processes of bathing and changing his clothes as should ensure his wife
and daughter’s safety. His obduracy would have half-broken their hearts
if the stayers at home had not been encouraged to be as busy as bees in
Tam’s absence, concocting such stores of jellies and soups, and
manufacturing such loads of sick-room clothes, as not the most
accomplished cook and housekeeper in the world could have achieved
single-handed--even if she had condescended to employ her talents day
after day--not for the dining-room or the linen-presses at Drysdale
Hall, but for afflicted sections of the Gallowgate and the Sautmarket.
The strait was so great that everybody with time and means and a heart
to feel was called into requisition. Neither did Claribel Drysdale
refuse to obey the call, but she worked in the ranks of Lady Semple, to
whom she was an available auxiliary, while the two Eppies were
sufficient for themselves at home.
The first thing that staggered Tam Drysdale was stumbling on his son Tam
engaged in the same work as himself. The father’s hale colour sensibly
paled, and a troubled look came into his eyes.
‘What are you seeking here, Tam?’ he asked almost roughly. ‘This is not
a place for a student fellow like you. You are not used to the ways of
the poor folk; you’ll only add to the trouble if you come to grief; you
can do no possible good. Go home to your books, but take care you do
not come near your mother and sisters in that coat and these breeks.’
Young Tam looked his father more fully in the face than he had done for
some time, with more of an answering challenge in the brown eyes which
were so like his mother’s in tint, and yet had his father’s determined
glance. There was no sullenness in Tam’s face at this moment--rather a
sense of grim amusement and something that might have stood for
fellow-feeling.
‘I’m not such a mere bookworm as you think me, sir. How should I not
know the ways of the working people, among whom I have dwelt all my
life? I’ll not come to grief any more than you will. What are _you_
seeking here, may I ask, father?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, Tam,’ said his father testily; ‘you know it is my
place, as the maister of a public work, to see into the condition of the
people, both here and at Drysdale Haugh, on an occasion like the
present. Forbye, I am familiar with the situation. I mind the last bad
outbreak of the fivver. It was when I was in my ‘prenticeship and
staying with my uncle Geordie. There were five in the hoose laid down
with it. My cousin Nancy deed, poor lass! and there was nobody to look
after Sandy during the night, and keep him from louping over the windy,
but me. I had a regular training to such scenes.’
Young Tam hesitated for a moment.
‘I have not quite understood hitherto what duties a master’s position is
supposed to include,’ he said at last, a little stiffly; ‘but if I am
ever to undertake them, I should say my training had better begin.’
Auld Tam’s whole aspect brightened indescribably.
‘Plenty of time for that,’ he said gruffly, but heartily, ‘and your
experience should come by degrees, Tam, not in a dunt [sudden blow], as
it comes to working lads bred hardily as I was, and called to face the
best and the worst all round from the beginning. It is not easy, but it
is in the day’s work--part of their lives. Besides, they say,’ added Tam
hastily, ‘the fivver is more catching for the young than for the auld.’
‘You’re not old,’ said young Tam hastily, with a quick sharp denial that
sent a glow through his progenitor’s veins. ‘You are hardly middle-aged.
People should call stages of existence by their right names.’
‘Anyway, I’m auld Tam when you are to the fore,’ said his father, much
as he would have spoken to his daughter Eppie, ‘and it is richt the
young should be spared to take the place of the auld.’
‘It is nothing of the kind,’ answered young Tam doggedly. ‘Take your
place! very likely. I wonder which would be most missed. You know very
well, father, you could ill be spared. You ought not to run risks like
these, while it does not matter for a fellow like me.’
‘Lad, you are tempting the Almichty!’ cried Tam almost fiercely; ‘are
you so left to yoursel’ as to think you could well be spared by your
mither--and me?’ he ended with a gulp of the words, and a grip as of
iron of young Tam’s shoulder. ‘But it is all nonsense!’ he said, putting
force upon himself the next moment. ‘We’ve got a trick of disagreeing;
that is what it is.’
‘And I am afraid there is little prospect of our doing anything else, if
the alternative is my keeping out of Glasgow, and your going on as you
have been doing for the last ten days,’ retorted young Tam, defying his
father openly.
And auld Tam gave in with the moisture in his eyes, and his hand still
on his son’s shoulder.
‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘have it your own way, laddie; you’ve always been
as kittle [ticklish] to deal with as a woman, Tam--far worse than your
sisters. But if we sail in the same boat for once, it will be some sma’
comfort.’
The sailing in the same boat through a crisis of life and death meant
from this moment a certain alteration of tone between father and son--a
certain fraternization--temporary, and only on one point as yet, but
never entirely lost sight of in their subsequent differences, when young
Tam was born to object, and auld Tam hated to be contradicted. For one
thing, they saw a good deal of each other during the next week or
two--more than they had seen since young Tam was a schoolboy. For
another, it was understood between them that there was a probability of
auld Tam’s gaining the desire of his heart, by his son’s becoming, under
whatever variety of opinion, his father’s partner and successor.
Some of the fever cases in Glasgow were of the most virulent kind.
Occasionally they assumed the form of the worst sewer-poisoning, from
which there was hardly a chance of escape. The inspector of nuisances
had neglected his duty. A man and wife--a helpless, handless,
poverty-stricken, though honest and sober couple--had been suffered to
live, with a large family, in a house which was not fit for a pigsty.
First one child sickened, and then another, and died in the briefest
interval of time, so that four little bodies were carried away in one
hearse, and the expense even of a combined funeral threatened to add
starvation to the other pangs of the living. The skin of the last child
attacked took green and livid hues before the breath went out of his
body.
Auld Tam bent his brows sternly, and swore it was social murder. He half
conceived the idea, if he lived and continued to prosper, of doing
something more than found a family, and bring Drysdale Haugh to
perfection--something to atone for the neglect by the better endowed
and better informed of the less qualified and more ignorant--something
in which young Tam might be with him heart and soul, till Glasgow should
speak of the father and son, as, indeed, they were speaking of them at
this moment, though auld Tam paid no heed to it.
The fever, as it raged, was turning up in the more respectable quarters,
in the old squares and streets, where the houses were good and spacious,
but the drains had been little thought of, and the sun seldom shone.
Young Tam Drysdale saw his father at the office one afternoon, and
remarked with consternation that he looked as if he had received a shock
to his whole system--at the same time he was deliberately delaying the
ordinary hour of his return to Drysdale Hall. He pooh-poohed the idea of
anything wrong with him physically, or of rest being desirable, at the
very moment that he was moving about in a perturbed manner, showing
signs of trouble and perplexity in every line of his usually strong,
sagacious face.
‘Shut the door, Tam; I do not want those fellies out there to catch a
sough [murmur] of what I have got to say. Yes, I have come across
something that has grieved me. Grieved is not the word. Gude Lord! it is
enough to shake a man’s faith in the established order of things. What
would your mither think? Her that was wont to stand in fear and
trembling before such gentlefolks. But, there, she said, only the other
day, that it was a mystery we should be so weel aff in the world’s
gudes, and others as gude--maybe a hantle better (she’s a humble lass,
your mither)--brought to want what they had been bred to from their
cradles. Well, well, it comes to this, I had speech with one of the
doctors, and he mentioned there were cases of fever in St. Mungo’s
Square.’
‘So I heard,’ said young Tam.
‘One of them was an auld Miss Mackinnon, and as I’m a living man, Tam,
he added that he did not believe the leddies had enough to eat, though
they put the best face on it to him; and it was a delicate matter to
propose to get parish or any other relief for them. The Lord preserve
us! the auld Mackinnons--Gavin Mackinnon’s aunties, come of the
Virginian Mackinnons--to be in want of food, very likely of clothing! Is
the end of the world come upon us? I mind of them being about Drysdale
Hall when their nephew had it--no very weel-faured [handsome], but
gallant, portly, gabby [talkative] leddies, as they had a gude title to
be, since they were real edicate leddies for generations back--none of
your upstarts that do not know their finger from their thoomb, while
they wear silks and velvets. I mind ane of them cracked [talked] like a
pen-gun--on things she did not ken muckle about, I must confess, but she
had the gift of conversation for a’ that; and another--an aulder woman
than mother is now--played the pianny better than Clary can do, at a
dance and supper that Mackinnon gave the men before trips down the water
were the order of the day; and now to say that the auld leddies have
come to want--Tam, it’s seeckening!’
Young Tam had not his father’s keen susceptibilities where real ladies
and gentlemen were concerned. His mind went off on another tack.
‘They must be relations of Mackinnon who stays so often at Semple Barns.
Why does he not look after his people? I suppose you would call him a
real gentleman?’ suggested Tam, somewhat sardonically.
‘It is a burning shame to him!’ auld Tam swore stoutly, ‘though a young
offisher has not much to spare. Maybe the lad does help them, and they
are ill managers, as these gentry often are. But that is neither here
nor there. Something must be done, I could not sleep in my bed with
such a burden on my mind; and if your mither were to hear of it, she
would not break bread for the next twal’ hours. I want you to come along
and call with me, Tam. We can pass ourselves off as sent on an
inspection among great and small throughout the town. The leddies cannot
be going much about to hear the story contradicted. We can see and judge
for ourselves. And it may be possible to put in a word about the
superiority of country provisions, and whether the Miss Mackinnons would
do me the honour to accept a specimen of meat and dairy produce and
vegetables and fruit from Drysdale Hall. I think it might be managed in
that way, and the favour could be repeated. I have been turning over in
my mind whether I could not get up an auld debt to Gauvin Mackinnon, but
sic a lee would stick in my throat; then the young lad Mackinnon might
interfere, and detection would be awkward.’
‘Upon my word, father, I never knew you were so accomplished a
deceiver,’ said young Tam, grave as he was, unable to keep from
laughter. ‘I never thought to pay visits with you under false
pretences.’
‘Do not gibe, Tam,’ said his father, as solemnly as he would have
rebuked a jest at a death-bed. ‘This is not a subject for gibing. You
heard what the doctor said--it is a most delicate matter to ask leddies
to take anything save a parcel of idle compliments from you. If
stratagems are ever allowable, it must be here.’
Indeed, death was very near, in more shapes than one, to the old
stripped house in St. Mungo’s Square. It was Miss Bethia, the youngest
and the most able-bodied sister who had been smitten, and when she was
‘sooming [swimming] for her life,’ as Miss Janet admitted brokenly, the
chief source of livelihood for the other sisters was withdrawn from
them. The moment the disease had declared itself, Miss Janet had
written to her grand-nephew, forbidding him to come near the house on
account of the infection. He broke through the prohibition, but he never
got beyond the front-door, where Miss Janet consented to parley with
him, solely on condition that he held his handkerchief to his mouth and
did not cross the door-step.
Such aid as the Lieutenant sent consisted of trifling delicacies, while,
alas! there was dismal lack of the commonest necessaries.
While Miss Bethia was at the worst, it seemed that her sisters needed
little more food than sufficed for the sick-room. They lived upon their
anxiety--hope and fear acted as stimulants to them. It was when the
patient had got the turn, and required more nourishment than milk and
beef-tea, that the exhausted state of Miss Janet and Miss Mackinnon
began to show itself plainly. But as people can grow accustomed to
abstinence up to a certain point, and cease to feel the cravings of
appetite, after they have failed by degrees to be appeased in anything
save the most partial and perfunctory manner, so the feeble, shaky, but
still dauntless scarecrow, Miss Janet, preserved an attitude of heroic
stoicism throughout her interview with the two Drysdales.
Miss Janet had two motives to nerve her to endure to the end. She had
never quite forgiven Tam Drysdale for having succeeded her late nephew
at Drysdale Haugh; therefore he was the last man in Glasgow to whom she
would have consented to be beholden in the direst extremity. It made no
difference that the grudge was groundless and utterly unreasonable. That
was one link in the argument; another, and still stronger, turned on the
fact that if she ever consented to waive her displeasure and accept the
overtures of the Drysdales, it must be, as before, on the plea of a
marriage, and she was not going to spoil Eneas’s chances by betraying
the poverty of the land in St. Mungo’s Square. No; there were still
some potatoes and oatmeal in the larder, and Miss Janet felt as
independent as Andrew Marvel with his mutton-bone.
Miss Bethia might have behaved differently, when she lay on her bed,
weakly crying, with the stirrings of new life in her, and the promptings
of a child’s fresh hunger, never satisfied; but she would have been the
first to feel ashamed of her infirmity when strength was restored to
her.
Tam Drysdale was nearer to breaking down in his manliness than he had
been in the whole course of his life, when he sat in the bare wreck of a
room, without a fire, on the chill autumn day, waiting for the
appearance of one of the ladies. He kept muttering, half under his
breath, ‘Gude Lord, Tam!’ and, ‘Have the leddies come to this?’ He
‘thought shame’ when he recalled the prized grandeur and substantial
comforts and luxuries of Drysdale Hall. He rubbed his forehead, and
screwed up his courage for the carrying out of his mission.
When Miss Janet entered, Tam’s heart was wrung anew. He would never have
known his old acquaintance--the gallant, portly lady of the past--in the
fallen away, haggard woman in the old-fashioned garments, that looked so
much too wide, they appeared to flap about the big-boned figure; only
the remembered ‘gabbiness’ of the lady remained as a present trait. For
if Miss Janet did not receive her late nephew’s former servant with
‘becks and bows and wreathed smiles,’ she treated him and his son with a
kind of brow-beating condescension. She made her explanations with
wonderfully little cutting short of her long tongue, considering the
small amount of fuel in the form of nourishment it and the rest of her
bodily powers had to work upon. But the voice was at once weaker and
shriller in what _timbre_ it possessed, and a little faltering
occasionally, while a tremulous movement passed from time to time over
the hard-favoured features; and the worn hands, which she had not been
sufficiently mistress of herself to encase in gloves, shook beyond the
power of control as they lay in her lap.
Miss Janet said she and her elder sister had been sitting in poor
Betheye’s room, and had dispensed with a fire elsewhere. Betheye was
doing very well now. Oh yes! she had every advantage--a good doctor, and
her grand-nephew the Lieutenant was constantly sending fruit, and what
not. They--the Miss Mackinnons--felt for the poor sufferers from the
sickness. It was quite right a fund should be raised for them. She would
look about, when she had time, and see if she could find any odds and
ends that might be useful. She spoke as if she and hers were as far
removed as the Drysdales themselves from the deprivations and dependence
of poverty.
Young Tam had never seen his father so deferential as to this ‘genteel,
half-crazy object of charity,’ the younger man was guilty of calling
poor Miss Janet. It was with absolute trepidation and a
doubly-respectful ‘Miss Mackinnon, mem,’ that auld Tam delivered the
sentence he had laboriously composed of the excellent unadulterated
character of all articles of food in the country, and the comfort to be
derived from availing one’s self of them in an unhealthy season. This
was the prelude to a petition that Miss Janet would permit him to send
her ‘a basket from Drysdale Haugh which might remind her of “auld lang
syne.”’
Perhaps the reference was not very happy; anyhow, Miss Janet gave a
quavering laugh, and told him she was greatly obliged, but he must not
trouble himself. The town and the country were brought so near now, they
were equally well supplied with victuals of every description; she and
her sisters had all they could wish. She did not think even the
Strathdivie curds and cream, new-laid eggs, and stubble chickens could
taste better than what could be found in Buchanan Street. She remembered
hearing that her grandfather would always have fowls from Strathdivie
when he wanted cockie-leekie or hen-broth, but farm troke [goods] were
rife everywhere now. She would offer the gentlemen wine (there was only
a thimbleful in Miss Bethia’s room), but she understood from her
grand-nephew that it was not the fashion now to taste anything after
luncheon; so Miss Janet, with flying colours, dismissed the intruders.
Neither father nor son was in the least degree deceived, and young Tam,
at this stage, felt as little inclined to gibe as his father.
‘The puir leddy is reduced to skin and bane,’ said auld Tam, with a
groan. ‘I do not believe she has had butcher meat, or any other support
than a bit bread and a blash [watery mixture] of tea, for a month. If
we do not get the better of her quickly, she’ll be past the reach of
mortal man. And there are three of them--one just out of the fivver--in
the same plight. Gude Lord! something must be done. Shall we drive to
the Barracks and break the story to that careless puppy of an offisher?
It is for him to interfere, and not suffer his aunties, who brought him
up, to perish, though he has to force meat and drink down their craigs
[throats].’
Certainly, if no other resource could be hit upon, Eneas Mackinnon must
be appealed to, however painful the appeal to both parties.
But young Tam had another idea which might obviate the disagreeable
step, for the present at least.
‘The Mackinnons and Murrays were old acquaintances when Gavin Mackinnon
and Dr. Peter’s father were partners. Send in Dr. Peter to see the
ladies, as a piece of attention from an old friend. That will save them
the expense of further medical attendance, if it does nothing else, and
he will make his observation and deliver his report.’
Auld Tam was only too thankful to take his son’s advice, and secure
another coadjutor in the ticklish business.
CHAPTER XIV.
ATHOLE MURRAY COMES TO THE RESCUE.
Dr. Peter, in the middle of his work, responded readily to the call. It
proved that he had not only known the Mackinnons in his youth; he had
always kept up some intercourse with them, and Athole had been in the
habit of calling in St. Mungo’s Square occasionally. He looked grave and
resolute when he saw Tarn Drysdale by appointment afterwards. Yes, the
poor old ladies were at the wall, sure enough; and even viewing the
matter in a professional light alone, something must be done
immediately, or there would be more than one death to answer for. But he
had his proposal ready. Athole must take up her abode in St. Mungo’s
Square for a week or two, till Miss Bethia was able to be removed for
change of air to Barley Riggs. Only a woman could cope with the
circumstances where women were concerned, and he had paved the way for
his daughter’s arrival. He had told Miss Janet that he wanted a little
change for Athole, asked if she--Miss Janet--would take in the girl for
a while, and hinted at a board. The old lady, with her instincts of
hospitality, her necessities, and her pride, had been too bewildered to
make any decided opposition. Now he would not stand on further ceremony;
he would act as if he took Miss Janet’s and her sister’s consent for
granted, despatch Athole the next morning, and when she was once in the
house, it would be hard for the Miss Mackinnons to turn her out. Athole
would bring the sinews of war, and would propose to undertake the
housekeeping on the plea of relieving the sister-nurses, who were too
weak and worn out to make any effectual resistance.
Auld Tam as he listened, stared fixedly at Dr. Peter.
‘But, man, she’s your dochter, your last-hame lassie, the very apple of
your eye,’ he remonstrated, with wonder and rising vehemence. ‘I ken
what Tam and little Eppie and Clary are to me, and I have their
mither--that I sometimes say is worth them all--while you have only this
lassie left at hame; and you are sending her where the fever has just
been, and where a great burden of responsibility, work, and fatigue will
fall upon her young shoulders.’
‘I know,’ said Dr. Peter, bowing his head as if sealing a bargain. ‘But
did you never think, Tam, that the way to keep a thing you prized was to
give it freely in the name of God and your neighbour? I never would shut
Athole out of the way of the fever, when she could be of use. She had no
fear, and I believed I could take care that she ran little more risk
than if she had stayed locked up in the parlour at Barley Riggs. I was
right, and you’ll see I’ll be right again. You may trust me to take care
of Athie,’ he ended, with a smile.
‘But what if you should be mistaken, Peter?’ Tam felt bound to press the
point. ‘If an accident were to happen, if you were to lose your lassie
by her foolhardy exposure?’
‘There is no foolhardiness, and there is very little exposure,’
maintained Dr. Peter unflinchingly; ‘not more than happens to every
doctor and nurse--indeed less, for I shall be always in the background,
ready to step in at the first note of warning. And if it were to come to
the worst, Tam,’ he said slowly, with a peculiar light coming into his
eyes, ‘what then? It would be the will of God. It is given to every man
and woman once to die; nothing--not all the love and care in the
world--can prevent the execution of that sentence. And can death come
better to any man or woman than in the way of duty? I know what is in
your mind--it is not of the one to be taken, but of the one left behind,
you are thinking. Well, what is to come of somebody’s journey might be
shorter, as the road would be darker--that is all--not so very much when
the day is far spent and its work three-fourths done.’
‘Peter Murray, I honour you with all my heart,’ said auld Tam warmly;
‘but I could not do it, man--I could--not--do it. It is with no will of
mine that young Tam is in the thick of this fray; but he’s man-grown,
with a mind of his own. I’ll not say that it has been all loss that I’ve
seen a bit of the lad’s mind lately, and we’ve focht together against
the fivver--young Tam and me; only the price might have been ower heavy,
God help me! and I could not have sent him into the battle, or even
given my consent to his entering the ranks, if he had condescended to
ask it. Na, not though it is the first time since I was a wean that
I’ve had a glimmering that the auld Bible story of Aubraham’s offering
up his son, his only son Isaac, is more than an allegory or a prophecy,
and holds a lesson for men and faithers,’
Auld Tam continued sorely exercised in his mind about the Miss
Mackinnons, with Dr. Peter’s lassie Athole in the midst of them. To him
she was a slip of a young lady whom he knew best as a clever
pattern-designer, a bit gentlewoman, with her inalienable rights as
such, though neither bonnie nor braw, only as bright as a mavis thrush,
as quick as a needle, the charm of whose womanly blitheness and lively
wit Tam himself had felt, while he was well aware she was the light of
Barley Riggs, the delight of her father’s heart. In spite of what Dr.
Peter had said, was this a creature to put in the breach, to send to
share the privations she was seeking to lighten, and to brave the hardly
overcome fever?
Tam was so troubled in his mind that he forgot to watch the effect of
the news on his son. He neither saw how young Tam set his teeth, nor how
he reared his head, and his loss of colour was succeeded by a warm glow.
Sure enough, if any harm happened to Athole Murray, it might be laid at
the door of the two Tam Drysdales. Who was it that had summoned her
father on the scene, and offered a temptation to Dr. Peter’s Quixotic
philanthropy?
Both auld and young Tam took it upon them to go as far as Eneas
Mackinnon had gone--indeed, to go farther, to enter the hall of the
house in St. Mungo’s Square, and solicit speech with Miss Murray, to
hear how her father’s scheme was prospering.
The first time that Athole came down to the two men, who were together,
as she spoke to them the tears ran down her cheeks without her knowing
it, and she was half laughing, half crying, though she was not
naturally hysterical.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I could not have imagined anything like it. If I had
guessed a hundredth part of it, I must have got the better of Miss
Janet’s scruples long ago, though I had let meat and drink down the
chimney, as the barber and his wife disposed of the body of the Caliph’s
favourite in the “Arabian Nights;” I would have come after it was dark,
rung the bell, pushed in the basket, and run away. Maybe Miss Janet
would have thought the angels or Elijah’s ravens had come to her aid. If
the Miss Mackinnons had advertised for the owner of that basket they
would have been clever if they had found her. Now, we are all right,
thank you--at least, we are fast getting right. I open the door, for of
course I am the youngest, and the stairs try me least, and I take in all
the parcels. If there is anything very suspicious, even for my extensive
requirements, I carry it to my room, and Miss Janet is too much of a
lady to meddle with what I do there. My father fills the pockets of his
overcoat, and has always to speak to me, in private. I can’t tell if
Miss Janet suspects--I think she must--but her endurance had been
stretched to the last thread, and now she submits and ignores my
manœuvres. She is so tired that when she has once given in she can’t
rally her forces for some time. Indeed, my father feared she would
either have a bad illness or sink from sheer exhaustion for the first
ten days after I came. Oh yes, she’s a great deal better, and Miss
Mackinnon is pretty well--I am sure Miss Janet must have managed to give
her the larger share of the little that was going--and Miss Bethia is
progressing favourably. She is by far the most manageable. She and I
have quite little feasts in her room.’
‘I am most happy to hear it,’ said auld Tam, with enthusiasm.
‘But, oh! the gaunt emptiness, the gnawing want, the fainting
hopelessness that must have been in this house!’ cried Athole
passionately. ‘The mice had deserted it months before, Miss Bethia told
me. But Miss Janet and I never speak of it. We winked at it even when I
was labouring, like a well-disposed brownie, to fill the cupboards as if
they had never been bare, without anybody witnessing the performance,
and to make a great display of my accomplishments in cooking--the fruits
of my last lessons at the cooking school. But I never saw anything at
all like what I beheld first, in the most miserable cottage at Drysdale
Haugh.’
‘I sincerely trust you have not suffered yourself, Miss Murray, mem,
from your great pity and kindness,’ said auld Tam, standing with his hat
in his hand before her.
‘I!’ she cried incredulously; ‘how should I suffer? It was a bit of an
adventure for me, and I had “a piece in my pocket” all the time. You
know, Mr. Drysdale, the task was to get older people, more in need of
it, to halve my piece with me.’
Athole had recovered her composure by the time the next visit of inquiry
was made, and her accounts grew always cheerier and cheerier, till she
began to laugh quite naturally at young Tam coming alone to ask for the
three Miss Mackinnons, and to affront him by making game of his odd
contributions to the larder in St. Mungo’s Square, on the whole rather
more unsuitable than the Lieutenant’s gifts to his aunts. ‘It is not the
same as a picnic, Mr. Tom,’ she was at the trouble of explaining to him.
At last she nearly quarrelled with him by flatly refusing to take it
upon her to have anything to do with scalloped oysters and preserved
ginger. The Miss Mackinnons were pretty sure to disapprove of both them
and their donor, and she must also decline wasting another fraction of
her valuable time in telling him that Miss Bethia’s convalescence was
an established fact, and that there was nothing the matter with any
other person in the house, while it was too absurd that he should
constitute himself a purveyor for their wants. He had better go and shop
with his sisters. Oh! _she_ did not despise shopping--she was quite fond
of it, when she had plenty of time and money, and nothing better to do.
If he did not attend the Nasmyths’ ball--the first ball of the
season--the more fool he; the loss would be his, for she could not
flatter him that one gentleman would be missed, and balls were excellent
things to those who were not above dancing and making themselves
agreeable and useful.
‘That is all she thinks me fit for,’ he told himself in a rage; ‘she
regards me as a perfect humbug. When she is so grossly unfair I wonder I
trouble myself what she thinks: though there is nobody like her that I
know, nobody so good to everybody except me, so brave and bright--but I
will let her alone in future.’
Miss Bethia was not hard to persuade to try a change of air at Barley
Riggs, and her sisters were induced to accompany her. During their
absence as much of the old furniture of the house in St. Mungo’s Square
as could be hunted up was restored to it, without a word said on either
side, until its absence appeared to have been part of an uncomfortable
dream.
The next step was to make Miss Janet let her name, and the names of her
sisters, be put, in strictest privacy, on the list of impoverished
better-class families helped by a certain fund. She was led to do so by
being shown the signature of her grandfather among those of the early
subscribers to the fund, and by the facts being impressed upon her that
she was only taking back what he had given. Miss Bethia was, as Athole
Murray had found, by far the most pliable of the sisters, and she lent
herself half willingly, half with fear and trembling for what Miss Janet
would say if she ever found out the unbecoming traffic, to sundry wiles
and devices of Athole’s, as the instrument appointed by her father and
Tam Drysdale for lending the Miss Mackinnons substantial assistance. At
the same time Miss Bethia had never received so many or such well-paid
orders for work; altogether, there was hope of the Miss Mackinnons
keeping soul and body together till a share of Strathdivie fell to their
lot.
CHAPTER XV.
YOUNG TAM’S PARTNERSHIP--GAY DOINGS.
In the course of the winter the terms of partnership were settled and
signed between young Tam and his father, to the immense private
satisfaction of the latter, and the innocent jubilation of Mrs.
Drysdale. The word ‘Son’ was added to the halting inscription on the
office door. Young Tam began not only to relinquish the college lectures
and learned societies to which he had been addicted, in order to stick
to the business he had entered upon--he insisted on going back to the
beginning and passing through all the preparatory drudgery from which he
had till now stood aloof. He wanted to acquire a thorough acquaintance
with every stage and department of the business of which he had elected
to be one of the masters.
Auld Tam’s judgment went with his son’s decision. He was in his heart
pleased with young Tam, and proud of him for his resolution. The senior
partner rejoiced to see the junior in an office coat, or even in a
dyer’s suit, more than he had ever magnified him in a dress-coat among
his peers; yet the father would have willingly spared the son any ordeal
that could well have been avoided. He would have treated young Tam’s
early reluctance to become a dyer and calico-printer, now that it was
overcome, with the greatest delicacy, dealing gently with the
deficiencies which were likely to be its fruit. Auld Tam dreaded the
young man’s becoming soured at the outset, and turned beyond recall, in
his heart, against the business, though his father had enough confidence
in him to feel sure that he would keep his word and the terms of the
partnership. He would be nominally ‘son’ in a business sense, though he
had lost all save a pocket interest in the matter, and though he ended
by being the veriest of sleeping partners raised up to serve as a tool
for rogues.
But young Tam doggedly declined to suffer himself to be spared. He was
one of the few people who, in the course of every fault and blunder they
commit, when punishment is going, choose to punish themselves first and
most, and derive a grisly solace from such atonement as can be afforded
by the hard lines the culprits compel themselves to endure. But it is
not a pleasant process to go against the grain, and swallow huge
mouthfuls of irksome details in a cause that is apt to look like nothing
better than mercenary enterprise. The worst does not turn to the best,
to the brave, at once.
There are many things to be taken into consideration. There is a
natural reaction from the exalted mood in which a man gives up his will
and makes what appears to him a signal sacrifice, which includes the
subsequent depression, mortification, and irritation with which he finds
he has not counted all the cost, and is hardly equal to the payment of
the pound of flesh. Hitches are certain to occur in late concessions.
Among the hitches are the lurking jealousy and latent malice of
subordinates who have been disappointed in little schemes of their own,
and do not want a new master.
In addition, young Tam Drysdale’s temper was not of the best; and
although he was perfectly sincere in what he was about, he did not
accomplish his transformation into a man of business altogether
gracefully or graciously. It was far from being uninterruptedly smooth
water in the Glasgow office, and at the Drysdale Haugh vats and
bleaching-greens in those days; yet auld Tam was wonderfully
forbearing, and young Tam, having once given in his adherence to his
natural destination, practically kicked against it no more.
There was a considerable amount of gaiety this year, as there always was
in winter among the young people of the Drysdale set, notably among
Clary’s peculiar allies. Dick Semple was much at home, and his friend
Eneas Mackinnon was frequently with him. Lady Semple had a couple of
young ladies, English cousins, paying her a visit, whom she turned over
as much as possible to Clary Drysdale, because her ladyship was a busy
woman, and because she honestly believed there was a free-masonry
between young people which rendered them the best company for each
other. Yet there was nothing more conspicuous about Lady Semple--that is
to the members of the mercantile class on whom she bestowed her
countenance--than the perennial youthfulness of her character. It was
not juvenility of dress and make up, for she happened to be a woman who
cared little for such things. She said it was impossible for her to
compete with the Glasgow ladies. She never failed to call the most
dubious specimens on her visiting list ‘ladies’--the mere circumstance
of their knowing her gave them rank so far. She feared to enter the
lists, she declared, not only in skunk and silver fox, Brussels point
and cut velvet, but in French and Court millinery. Her old gowns were
comfortable; and her maid fitted her as well as she cared to be fitted.
Lady Semple wore her own grey hair, though she was not more than midway
between fifty and sixty. She had never either powdered or painted in her
life. She patronized bonnets which, whatever else they did in the way of
becoming her, covered her head. Her mantles were not tight to her
figure, neat and light as that figure still was for her age. Her
nearest approach to full dress did not go beyond dinner-dress, and
failed to expose her neck and arms.
When a young woman, Lady Semple had married a man much older than
herself. She had always been perfectly respectable, without the smallest
taste for the platonic admiration of a circle of idle young men, which
might explain what even Claribel Drysdale, who permitted a great deal to
Lady Semple, called her well-bred dowdiness. No competition with other
women, no attempt to attract the attention of any man save her husband,
who gave her _carte blanche_ to dress as she liked, for that matter
hardly noticed how she dressed, accounted for a good deal.
But whatever youthfulness of person Lady Semple had early lost, her mind
remained as buoyant, versatile, and superficial as ever. The influence
of her husband, by this time far advanced in age, had not quenched those
attributes in the least. She was always starting new pursuits, new
systems, new studies, to this day never doing anything more than skim
over the surface, while she hopped from one to the other in a fashion
most distracting to those who were not accustomed to her middle-aged
schoolgirl ways.
All the same, Lady Semple was convinced that she had very little to say
to the Vaughan girls--that, having no daughters of her own, she had
well-nigh forgotten what young women would care for. On the other hand,
their constant dependence on her for entertainment would seriously
interfere with her music-practising according to the last Stuttgart
method, the hangings she was working in _appliqué_, her cottage
lectures, her acquisition of dates by an original method never thought
of before. Claribel Drysdale, who was always disengaged enough to help
her friends, would know what the Vaughans would like.
Clary was nothing loth to become, with Dick Semple’s and Mr.
Mackinnon’s help, Lady Semple’s representative. Miss Drysdale was quite
willing to introduce the Miss Vaughans to everything and everybody they
might care to know, in a sphere rather different from that to which the
daughters of a well-connected but poor English vicar had been hitherto
accustomed. Clary was ready to get up riding-parties, skating-parties,
walking-parties, singing parties, carpet-dances, for the strangers’
benefit.
Perhaps it was somewhat unreasonable in his sister to expect young Tam
to join her in incurring similar trouble, particularly when the Miss
Vaughans presented no attraction to him. He was over-burdened with
worries and weariness from his new course of life, returning every night
from the office or the Haugh dead-beat, without confessing it, by
engagements which would have been child’s play to his father. To the
Miss Vaughans young Tam was a surly Scot--an ungenial if not exactly
unmannerly--for modern manners give great scope for
rudeness--mercantile young man.
Florence and Louise Vaughan were neither very young nor very
sympathetic. Their standard of duty was framed largely for clergymen’s
daughters with a view to parish-work. They could tell a good deal with
regard to English Church schools, village choirs, and charitable
clubs--excellent things to know; but the same judges had few and vague
opinions as to what should or what should not be said or done by
laywomen, especially by laywomen who were not of the clergywomen’s
species.
The Miss Vaughans had come to Scotland and Semple Barns, in the
immediate neighbourhood of a great commercial city, deeply impressed
beforehand with the shocks and surprises the travellers would receive,
as if they were about to invade African kraals or Indian wigwams. The
new-comers did not miss the sensational element in this visit. They
heard a new language, saw a new style of person, looked at life from a
different standpoint. Not the least of their discoveries was the
abounding wealth which made life so much easier, and endowed a girl like
Claribel Drysdale with a hundred advantages in dress, amusements, and
power--in a republican world--of going where she liked, doing what she
chose, and commanding to a great extent her friends and associates--all
with a quiet mind and a clear conscience. No young women who were so
unfortunate as to own parents with straitened means, though the parents’
descent was aristocratic, and their occupations and behaviour
unimpeachable, could hope to attain like privileges.
The strangers, however restricted their experience might have been, were
not fools. Their eyes were opened. They saw what a good thing it was to
be commercially rich, since their mission of religion not only did not
include a vow of poverty, but made no stand against worldliness, so long
as worldliness went to daily service, paid respect to saints’ days, and
decorated the church for festivals.
Lady Semple’s cousins were content to accept Claribel Drysdale as a
friend. They put due value on her father’s carriage, very much at her
disposal, her riding-horses, her high-class dress and appointments.
Neither was a home like Drysdale Hall left out of the count. It might be
over-gorgeous, but it was the perfection of luxury and comfort in its
way, where nothing was stinted and nothing grudged. If there were
serious objections to Claribel’s rustic father and mother, the house was
spacious enough; her individual pursuits and engagements were
sufficiently respected to allow her to see as little of her near kindred
as she chose.
The Miss Vaughans were so won by the material gain that Glasgow trade
can produce, they ceased to wonder at their cousin Lady Semple’s
extending the right hand of fellowship to the wives of those
calico-printers, cotton-spinners, and boiler-makers, with whom her
husband was on excellent terms. The English ladies went so far as to
contemplate the possibility of merging the natural superiority derived
from their father’s and mother’s birth and breeding, name and
profession, in commercial husbands with the opulence and the indulgence
to their wives’ whims and fancies which these moneyed men were bound to
show.
But young Tam Drysdale did not betray the smallest sign of appreciating
Lady Semple’s visitors’ condescension, or of properly esteeming the
severe simplicity of their looks, dress, and ornaments. It was a
simplicity which was in honourable accordance with the Rev. Reginald
Vaughan’s limited income, but it was not of the same order as Lady
Semple’s simplicity, being studied and elaborate, where hers was
unstudied and careless. Neither was it like that of Athole Murray, which
was full of individual character and clever touches.
Young Tam was not vulgar; he had very little of the bagman about him. He
had risen above his surroundings still more than his sister Clary had
risen above hers. He might pass for a gentleman anywhere. But if he did
not happen to be the man for either of the Miss Vaughans, it mattered
little, however eccentrically gentleman-like he appeared in other
respects.
In lieu of the support of young Tam, Claribel had to fall back on the
adherence of Dick Semple and Eneas Mackinnon; though, alas! they were
still less eligible in a matrimonial light. Young Tam wanted the will in
relation to the Miss Vaughans; but the other two men wanted both the
will and the way. Dick Semple had no chance of marrying in his own
station without Sir James’s concurrence. Lady Semple had always been
easy in her mind about her son, even with regard to Claribel Drysdale,
however much they were thrown together, and however friendly the terms
on which they stood to each other. For her ladyship’s liberal ideas of
fraternization with the families of Glasgow ‘bailies,’ as she was apt to
call them, whether in or out of office, did not extend to proposing to
Sir James that his and her solitary chick should quit the ranks of the
country gentry to intermarry with sugar or shipping, or Turkey-red dye,
however gilded.
Lady Semple was sure of Dick’s sentiments--that they did not incline in
the direction of Drysdale Hall, but in that of a baronial castle, not of
yesterday, and still in the hands of a family as old as the time of
Queen Mary. Dick did not stoop--he aspired; and if he persevered long
enough, and if no better suitor came for one of several daughters, why,
the Semples of Semple Barns, with a baronetcy of a date not quite so
far back as the baron’s charters, but not of yesterday either, and an
estate as unencumbered as the deplorable condition of agriculture would
permit, were not to be despised. Dick might live to have his innings,
with the full consent of his father and mother, and of a greater man.
But apart from the Honourable Lilias and Claribel Drysdale, the Vaughan
girls, who would never see six and eight and twenty again, and had no
looks to speak of, were quite out of the question for Dick.
As for Eneas Mackinnon, to speak of marriage in the same breath with him
was a wild absurdity, unless he married a fortune--and every heiress was
not so easily attracted by a Mackinnon as poor Maggie Craig had been;
while a dowered young lady, unless she drew her dower from the lower
walks of trade, was hardly likely to look on the imposing rank of a
lieutenant with the reverential eyes of the old aunties in St. Mungo’s
Square. Where there were no fortunes, Eneas Mackinnon, in his youth, was
as much vowed to celibacy as any old Knight of Malta, any monk among
them.
No doubt Claribel might have summoned to her aid, for the better
entertainment of the Miss Vaughans, other young men, sons of her
father’s friends, better inclined than young Tam or Dick Semple--better
supplied with the means of setting up establishments than Eneas
Mackinnon. But Clary had for a long time hung back a little from her
natural companions. She had no desire to enter the lists with the
Honourable Lilias. She had not the ghost of a passion for Dick Semple,
who, though a good enough fellow, was still less a man to die for than
Clary had once stated Eneas Mackinnon to be. But though she did not care
in that sense for Dick, she was fantastically attached to the grade to
which he belonged, even in its farthest ramifications, in preference to
her own. She exaggerated the advantages of the one, and underrated the
benefits of the other. She lacked entirely the Miss Vaughans’ experience
of the stints, shifts, and shams--the unsatisfactory make-believes--of
genteel poverty. Clever young woman as Clary was, she showed herself a
person utterly ignorant in this respect, while she was willing to stand
aside and bide her time, and rather put up with a good many serious
objections than relinquish her beau-ideal.
Notwithstanding the drawbacks, the group of young people who had so many
appointments together, or in common, presented an attractive enough
aspect to lookers-on at Semple Barns and Drysdale Hall, at the meets in
the neighbourhood, at the theatre or assembly-rooms, to which Mrs.
Drysdale chaperoned them with some trepidation, but abundant kindly
good-humour. Claribel Drysdale and her mother were handsome enough in
different styles for all the four women. The Miss Vaughans were
supposed to make up by that severely simple air of theirs for what they
lacked in fairness of face and costliness of apparel. Some
unsophisticated people held that they were distinguished-looking,
because of the uncompromising absence of the very gifts and graces which
the mass of the assembly prized and struggled for, and pretended to have
if they did not possess them.
The Miss Vaughans were Lady Semple’s cousins, which meant much in the
mercantile community, and their presence at public places under Mrs.
Drysdale’s care was further promotion for her, of which her daughter
Clary was well aware, if the mother, with her humble-mindedness in the
middle of her gratified vanity, made little of it.
Poor young Eppie, who was still prohibited from the gaieties of a
grown-up young lady, pined longingly after the people who had carried
off her mother. Eppie thought Dick Semple, who was thick-set and plain,
quite nice-looking when he wore his cat’s-eye studs, and a bouquet in
his coat; and Eneas Mackinnon an Adonis, though his studs were of the
plainest, and he had only a couple of ivy leaves, which Clary had given
him, in his button-hole. The same partial critic considered her mother,
in her velvet and diamonds, and Clary in her satins and pearls, as
‘grand and lovely.’ But Eppie had not much admiration to bestow on
Florence and Louise Vaughan. She did not care for their clinging gauzes,
or whatever the material of their gowns might be; the oxydized silver
girdles, which replaced the austerely plain leather belts with which the
sisters encircled the waists of their morning dresses; the natural
flower-trimming for their corsages; the coronals of natural flowers in
their hair. It might all be elegant and æsthetic, but there was a
mummy-like swathing in the arrangement of the folds, while the
flower-trimmings withered, and the result was not satisfactory. Unless
a man or a woman was naturally gifted, he or she had to be trained up to
such fashions, as to the profusion of yellow daffodils used not long
before at a city banquet by a confectioner of advanced principles of
taste.
‘Sheafs of common yellow lilies, auld-fashioned daffondondillies!’ more
than one of the guests had exclaimed in scorn and derision, feeling
himself shamefully balked of the hot-house flowers to which the price of
his ticket entitled him.
Auld Tam sought to console his younger daughter left at home.
‘Never mind, my lassie, your day will come. I’ll be a proud man when I
see you setting out with mother for your first ball--you’ll make all the
other young leddies stand about.’
‘You’ll go with me yourself, father, or I’ll not stir a foot!’ cried
Eppie, recovering her spirits, and tyrannizing by anticipation. ‘But,
eh, I wonder young Tam can bide at home. To think he might dance with
the best, and that he should stay away to smoke and read. I’m sure he
has plenty of time for smoking and reading.’
‘Not so much as he was wont to have,’ auld Tam corrected her; ‘but the
felly is well aff if he would but think so; he has a hantle privileges
if he would only use them. He is on thrawn [cross] terms with the world,
that’s what it is, poor Tam!’ his father added in a softer tone the next
moment. ‘For all that has come and gone, will his day ever come?’
‘Never mind him, father,’ said Eppie cheerfully, ‘he’s a gowk [fool] not
to make the best of his opportunities. He’ll come to himself some day,
without you troubling your head any more about it. He has gone into the
business, and that is something that has pleased mother and you. You’ll
be my first partner at that ball.’
‘Bairn, I would be a fell-like pairtner,’ protested Tam, by no means
displeased by Eppie’s selection. ‘I have not danced since I stood up at
a kirn [harvest-home]; I believe it was your grandfather’s. Your mither
was my pairtner, and I dare say she was so far left to herself as to
admire my steps, and the cut and shuffle I had learnt for the occasion.’
‘You used to dance with me--at least you made me dance and ride when I
was a wee thing. Do you not mind how
‘“Jenny rode to Ru’glen”?
and
‘“Shu! shuggie! shug!
A little birdie in the moss,
Aneath a bunch o’ fug.
Shu! shuggie! shug!”’
CHAPTER XVI.
THE DINNER-PARTY.
‘You’ll tak’ the high road,
And I’ll tak’ the low.’
On the greater occasions of the plays and balls, Eneas Mackinnon was
given to lounging in the back of the box or about the door of the
assembly. He had a sense that he was not wanted. He disliked to be
conspicuous; he told himself that he was a detrimental, and accepted the
situation with a half-haughty, half-despairing submission. At the home
affairs he came out better. It was there that Claribel Drysdale
gradually grew to see in him a hero of romance, the only romance that
existed for her. She contrasted him favourably with some of the
awkward, engrossed, or pretentious, presuming young Glasgow men. Eneas
Mackinnon was never put out in his quietness. He had plenty of leisure,
of which the ladies he knew, and Claribel Drysdale in particular, were
welcome to avail themselves. He was not at every girl’s beck, yet he was
ready to serve women in general in a way that was very agreeable, and he
was quick to wait upon Claribel in a manner that had its fascination. He
was for the most part at hand to ride, or skate, or walk, or dance with
Lady Semple’s friends or his own. He was never missing where he could be
of the least use to Claribel Drysdale.
Though Clary was formed to shine in the society she liked, she had not
all the qualities which render women popular. Rich man’s daughter, and
beautiful, quick-witted girl as she was, she had not been accustomed to
command devotion at once unobtrusive, unfailing, and unexacting.
Besides, the men whom commerce claimed, even the young men, were not
always free to pay such homage. Eneas Mackinnon’s regimental duty was
light and brief compared to the obligations of merchant and
manufacturer. They were all due at their offices or works on some of the
days of the week, if not on all. The most independent, irresponsible
fellows of the number treated business engagements with great respect.
It was a dogma of St. Mungo’s City, an article of the creed in which
they had been brought up.
Eneas Mackinnon behaved in his proud, silent manner as if he were
nobody, which somehow made him look so much more like somebody than the
lads whose yachts, and shooting-boxes, and clubs were never out of the
owners’ minds or off their tongues. He had none of these things, and
still he seemed better without them. He never took advantage of any
favour granted to him, neither blazoned it forth, nor made further
advances on the strength of it, nor refused to vacate his place, on the
least hint, to a better-endowed newcomer.
Lieutenant Mackinnon, poor, and helpless to better his position, had
emphatically the stamp of one sort of gentleman on him--not only Dick
Semple saw it and chose him out of all the other officers in their
regiment for his friend: the brusquer young city men had a perception of
the same attraction. They cultivated Mackinnon’s acquaintance, and paid
him the compliment of looking up to him and copying him in a good many
things; which was a wonder, seeing that he was next to penniless, and
his admirers by no means steered clear of the rock of purse-pride in
their walk and conversation.
Of course it was the finer spirits who were thus moved; the coarser
mammon-worshippers sneered unmercifully at Mackinnon, and at the whole
set of empty-pocketed young officers in the Barracks. The assailants
did their best on all occasions to bring into strong relief the
assailed’s lack of that gear which Glasgow fathers had picked up for
their sons, about which the said sons puffed and blew, bragged and
hectored.
Attacks of this nature provoked girls like Claribel Drysdale to stand up
in defence of their partners, and become their determined partizans.
Clary, with her unbounded regard for gentle breeding, began to get a
little infatuated where the Lieutenant was concerned, to admire his very
laziness, hopelessness, ponderousness, and powerlessness to remedy the
misfortune of his circumstances. Though she was quite different, she
sympathized all the more with what seemed his creed.
‘The world is all wrong, but I cannot set it right, and, indeed, I have
not much confidence in the power of any man to set it right--an absence
of conviction which leaves me languidly philosophic and gently
indolent.’
This is the peculiar form of agnosticism held by young men of the
Lieutenant Mackinnon type.
Auld Tam had little respect, but some pity, for young Mackinnon. The
present proprietor of Drysdale Hall made it a point of honour to be
hospitable towards the son of the former owner, not without a display of
the improvements he, Tam Drysdale, had brought about.
‘Your father would not know the place again if he were to see it--eh,
Mr. Mackinnon? You see there has been a considerable amount of capital
invested both at the Haugh and the Hall, and capital can work wonders.
These gates, now, cost hunders before they were out of the foundry. If
you like to take a turn through the stables, or the cattle-sheds, or the
greenhouses, or to go over to the bleaching-ground and the dyeing-rooms,
you’ll see the extent of the improvements. But now, I mind, you were
too young when you left to notice much; however, you can guess.’
Beyond this courtesy and flourish of trumpets, Tam had not the slightest
desire to go.
It came upon Tam with the shock of an unpleasant surprise he could
hardly realize for scorn, and yet was forced to believe, with angry
alarm, that this son of Gavin Mackinnon’s--this officer lad without a
penny, and with nothing but what appeared to Tam the fellow’s cool
superciliousness to sustain him--was having the impudence to make up to
Clary. Nay, if the truth were to be told, it was rather Clary who, in a
maidenly way, was having the folly to make up to him, distinguishing him
by her notice, lending him every encouragement. Clary! who was so proud,
so wise, thought so much of herself, and looked so high.
The unpalatable idea thrust itself on Tam in the course of a dinner at
Semple Barns. Lady Semple did not draw the strict line between the old
and the young, the married and the single, in the matter of dinners,
which was the rule in Tam’s circle. An invitation to dinner at Semple
Barns was never limited to Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale. It always included
Claribel; young Tam, if he could be had; even young Eppie sometimes, in
spite of her not having come out elsewhere; and necessarily other young
people to meet the young Drysdales.
Sir James’s health was failing. He had been a shrewd old man, with a few
foibles and testy finicalities which caused him to dismiss whatever trod
on his toes as ‘ridiklous, ridiklous.’ He had really appreciated Tam
Drysdale’s broad commonsense and mother wit, and had enjoyed samples of
them as a variety on the tone of the country gentlemen in the
neighbourhood. But the host was no longer equal to protracted
hospitalities. His guests knew it, and repaired in a body to the
drawing-room within a quarter of an hour of the ladies quitting the
table.
The elder men of the party had been confined to a neighbouring sheriff,
who had far to drive, and started almost immediately; an old laird, who
had little to say at any time, and had acquired a trick of falling
asleep wherever he was; and Tam Drysdale. Sir James, on his part,
conceived himself bound to devote whatever energy was left in him to the
discomfited wife of the somnolent laird, who happened to be an old
family friend.
Tam was by no means averse to the society of women, but he was not quite
at home with Lady Semple and the Miss Vaughans, though he was one of her
ladyship’s first favourites, for whose good opinion she was anxious. In
fact, the spare little woman in the plain silk gown, with the grey hair
under her small lace cap, laid herself out for his entertainment, and
aired all her theories, or what he called, in his own mind, her
fal-lals, in vain, for he still fought shy of her. He could not speak to
his wife, content to sit with her hands in her lap and be shown an
album, which she had seen twenty times before, by the more disengaged of
the Miss Vaughans. He wished he were back at Drysdale Hall. He did not
think young Eppie and young Tam had such a great loss in being absent,
after all. Auld Tam took to watching the young people gathered round the
piano, and speculating about them. Was he dreaming? Could he trust his
eyes that Clary was singing to that polished stick Mackinnon; that she
was looking to him to turn over her music, pick up her handkerchief and
get her fan; that she was spending her strength in putting a little
animation into the listless puppy?
There was nothing to find fault with in the manner of the deed. Clary
had been well brought up, and was as modest as her mother. Auld Tam knew
there were girls in the better classes who could not be depended on,
but he thanked God he could never have that to say of his
daughters--Eppie’s daughters. Still, that would not prevent Clary’s
‘throwing herself away like a fool’--Clary who had been so wise--too
wise in the wisdom of the world, he had sometimes been tempted to
suspect. She had always held her head high, and got a great deal of her
own way, so that it would be hard to hold her in at this time of the
day. Tam began to doubt whether it was not girls like
Clary--self-sufficing, ambitious--who astonished their friends by their
inconsistencies in the crowning acts of their lives. It was as if the
girl had professed too much--as if nature, early trampled down, rose up
when it was least expected, and revenged itself.
What did Lady Semple mean by not looking better after the young people
committed to her charge? He recalled that Clary had gone in to dinner
with Mackinnon, and had seemed well pleased with her partner. And there
was that lad of her ladyship’s playing at some game of making pictures,
with one of the English lasses, who was neither bonnie nor braw, and
looked old enough to be his auntie; for all that, mischief might come to
one or other from the close association. She might mistake his
intentions, of which, doubtless, he had none to be mistaken; or he might
be drawn into an entanglement which would hamper him all the days of his
life. Why did Lady Semple not mind the lads and lasses instead of
plaguing poor Sir Jeames to try the allotment system, persuading herself
she had a knowledge of fat pigs, and pretending to spin?
If this was all the good that was to be got by Lady Semple’s making such
a friend of Clary, auld Tam wished the girl had never seen the woman.
No, his fine-looking, fine-mannered edicate lass, with a fair fortune,
was not daidlin’, bletherin’ Gauvin Mackinnon’s son’s bargain, at any
price.
Naturally Tam relieved his mind, whenever he was left alone with his
wife, after their return, on the subject which had troubled him.
‘Mother, you are more in the way of spying such ferlies than I am. Such
troke is for you, and not for me. There is a great deal of forgathering
[meeting] between the young folk here and at Semple Barns just now.
There is no harm in that, but it may be carried ower far and have vexing
consequences. I’m half ashamed to speak out--it seems a wrang to Clary;
but do you not fancy she’s leading on, without thinking, I dare say,
that stupid, stuck-up chap of an offisher, Mackinnon? The couple are
carrying on--in short, people will make remarks, and that must not be.’
In the beginning of this confidence Eppie blushed like a girl, her brown
eyes twinkled, and her mouth pursed itself up with a mixture of
importance and eager earnest.
‘Have you seen something between them, father?’ she asked, with a little
excitement. ‘I did think that Clary was different to him from what she
was to the other lads. But it might have been fancy. I had aye telled
myself Clary would not be easy to get round, or would be won by
grandeur, and not give her heart a chance, which would have been a sore
pity, for when a woman’s heart is cauld, a’s cauld. Now, he has little
to say for himself, and is a kind of drifted aboot chield--ye ken what I
mean, Tam--letting himself be mastered and carried awa’ by
circumstances; no like you, fechting every inch of the grund, and bund
to come aff the conqueror. But I suppose it is all richt. You’re strong
enough for twa, and we’ve enough for everybody. Clary will ken her own
mind, if anybody will, and you will not be hard upon them, if it come to
that; you’ll never stand in their way, and make two people--one of them
your ain auldest dochter--meeserable? To think of Clary with a hoose of
her ain! Only I’m thinking she’ll not have a hoose, just rooms in the
Barracks with the other sodgers’ wives--well, to think of her following
the drum may be stranger still. Eh! it will be queer to have a dochter
the length of being married. It will be little Eppie next, and it mak’s
you and me an auld couple, Tam,’ she said, looking up at him with
wistful eyes.
‘Are you daft [mad], Eppie?’ cried Tam at last. ‘Are you clean daft? You
may be auld, but you’ve your wisdom-teeth to cut yet. I tell you there
is to be no word of sic havers. Mackinnon would be a most unsuitable man
for Clary. I will not hear of sic folly.’
‘But if they’re in love, Tam?’ remonstrated Eppie, a little startled by
his warmth, but still urging her plea as if it were irresistible. ‘You
would not cross true love! And as to his not being fit for her, he’s a
very personable lad; and though he’s a thocht canny, he’ll be the easier
guided. Clary will take the reins wherever she is; she’s made to rule.
And have you forgotten that his faither was the maister here when you
were the man? There’s a sort of justice in another change of seats. It
will be a Mackinnon coming back to the Haugh, as it was a Drysdale
returning in your shoon.’
‘A fell odds in the return, and a very limping kind of justice,’
protested Tam indignantly. ‘Woman, you surely ken, if onybody kens, that
I wrocht for my return, and earned it with the sweat o’ my broo. If a
man’s ain wife smoors [smothers] his honour, I would not give muckle
for’t at other hands. It was for a long time that Gauvin Mackinnon
continued the maister, and me the man, and it would be the same with
this son of his--long he would hold thegither ony sillar he might make
out of me! And it’s that he’s seeking when he seeks Clary,’ the speaker
declared bitterly. ‘The men of the Mackinnons may be gude for little
else nowadays, but they’re gude arithmeticians when they mean marriage.
It belongs to the kind.’
‘Eh! that’s not fair of you, Tam,’ interrupted Eppie, scandalized.
‘Clary’s a bonnie, strapping lass--I’ve seen that he thocht sae in the
laddie’s een, mony a time, when he did not guess that I was so gleg
[sharp]. You’ve no richt to belie him. But I did not mean to vex you,’
added Eppie earnestly, quick to rue a sharp word to her husband. ‘I
never thocht of evening young Mackinnon to the like of you; but if he’s
Clary’s fancy you would not pairt lovers.’
‘Yes, I would,’ maintained Tam doggedly; ‘and for that matter, true love
can take care of itself. But it is, as you say, a fancy, and nothing but
a fancy, bred of idleset [idleness], and over-indulgence. Clary does not
ken what she would be at, and she does not ken what it is to live; so
she makes sheep’s-eyes at this jackanapes, and she’ll be the first to
thank me for saving her from him. As for him, it’s an instinct of
self-preservation--an easy way of winning his living, say what you will
of what you’ve seen in his een. Een have lied ere now to women, and
before their Maker. So you’ll take heed, and look after the twa; and let
there be no more of this nonsense--I will not have it!’
Eppie looked at him in silence, as he turned away. It was not for her to
rise up in open opposition to her husband, though she could cross him
firmly enough in the cause of the bairns, and for conscience’ sake. Such
women as Eppie are always strong where conscience is concerned. She was
her Tam’s wedded wife--his most loving wife to boot, but she was not his
slave. However, in this case, apart from the question of love, she did
not know that he was far wrong. She had never really taken very kindly
to the whetheror-no lad of whom Clary approved, in spite of his good
looks, and what some might hold his misfortunes. What she doubted was
her ability to fulfil Tam’s behest. She had even her suspicion of his
unqualified power in this light, and she told him her opinion honestly,
as a true wife should.
‘You’re a clever man, Tam Drysdale,’ said Eppie, ‘and you’ve focht your
battle and triumphed; but you’ve never bridled or saddled hearts, or set
bounds to the sea, that you should say you will not have this, or you
forbid that, as if you were lord of all. And Clary is as high-headed as
you are high-handed; she has it from you, and we’ve made her what she
is. Will she mind me? Yes, she will so far; for she’s a leddy, and so
she cannot set her mither at nocht. And, of course, I can say, “You’ll
not have these Vaughan lassies and the lads in their train here soon
again, Clary. I have never contered [contradicted] you about going to
Leddy Semple’s, but I maun conter you now. Me and your faither hold
you’re a thocht too often there when Mr. Semple is at hame, and Mr.
Mackinnon is keeping him company. And, on second thochts, Clary, I’ve
given up the idea of taking you all to the club-ball. Your faither is
not in the humour for me going more out at present.” Then she would
stare, and maybe she would argue a bit, in a composed, half-laughing
way, but she would end by saying, “Very well, mother; of course we’ll
not go if you don’t wish it.” She would do nothing underhand, for I tell
you Clary is a leddy--not a make-believe leddy in fine clothes; she’s a
leddy like Leddy Semple and the Miss Vaughans. But would that be giving
up the lad? My certie! if you kenned women, it would be mair like
clinging to him from that moment, through thick and thin. It would not
be as if she put her arms round my neck, and grat [wept] on my breast,
as young Eppie might do, and cried, “You and my faither ken best,
mother, and I’ll try and do your bidding; and if I fail, you’ll try to
forgive me.” Na, na, Tam; you’re strong, but you canna boo [bend] wills,
and put out the dawn of love, like the lowe of a candle between your
finger and your thoomb, to meet your views,’
Young Tam had gone little to Barley Riggs lately. Perhaps he felt he had
enough to do without visiting--perhaps he had not forgiven Athole for
dismissing him and his offerings from the hall of the house in St.
Mungo’s Square. Perhaps, with the perversity of human nature--one of the
subtlest contradictions sinners have to strive against--he refused to
give himself the comfort of Dr. Peter’s hearty approval. He was
shamefaced over what looked like a recantation of his diatribes against
social inequalities. He shrank from reading the cool congratulation, the
sly malice, the happy carelessness in Athole’s bright eyes.
Dr. Peter and Athole talked of the young man many a time, though she
grew involuntarily shyer of the subject than she had been. Dr. Peter
thought it as well to leave young Tam to himself in these days of
struggling self-mastery; and Athole began to fear the situation was
changing somehow, and that her grave and sardonic companion, at older
people’s revels, would be less himself, less comical in his youthful
disdain and disgust than of old. For aught that she knew, he might begin
to talk ‘shop’ like the rest--the most zealously of all, even as she had
predicted that he would live to become the keenest trader, the most
lavishly spending architect of another Drysdale Hall. He might mellow
altogether, and wax brisk and lively. He might seek to outrival Mr.
Rowland in story-telling, and herself in singing ‘Major Macpherson
heaved a Sigh.’ He might ask her to dance a quadrille, or propose, when
the summer came again, to join Clary’s tennis-party; and the proceeding
would be as out of place as if Werther or Hamlet had executed the steps
of a hornpipe, or suggested a game at battledoor and shuttlecock. She
could not say that she would like the transformation; it would be a
species of shock, and she grew absolutely apprehensive of it.
It was not at any dinner that Athole chanced to encounter young Tam for
the first time after he was his father’s partner. Neither was it on a
charitable errand like that which had united them in the interest of the
Miss Mackinnons. It was not at Drysdale Hall or Barley Riggs. The
meeting took place amidst business surroundings. Athole had gone to the
works one day with a little packet of patterns, and made her way to the
pattern-room, to find the man at the head of the department, her usual
referee, absent. There was another referee in his place, young Tam
Drysdale, looming big and solemn, his very moustache showing
portentously, seated at the man’s desk, taking stock of the patterns,
and qualifying himself for a pattern-furnisher.
Athole was herself again, to her own great satisfaction, in an instant,
while young Tam, as he rose from his elevated seat, appeared undeniably
confused and disturbed. Certainly she did not curtsey to him, but
neither did she pay any heed to his overture to shake hands. She bowed
sedately, and proceeded to do her errand at once. She unfolded her
patterns, explained their designs, when these did not speak for
themselves, asked his opinion of their merit, and whether he would have
them, with the greatest propriety. She would have been a thousand times
franker and more discursive to auld Tam.
When young Tam said of course, and that she was a better judge of such
things than he was, she waved aside the simple truth with energy, as if
it were the most fulsome compliment. The only approach she made to
accepting the tribute, was suddenly to overwhelm him with a
dissertation on patterns--so fluent, so thorough, that it took away his
breath, and did not leave room for the introduction of a single word on
other topics. She dismissed herself in the middle of the harangue, with
her eyes sparkling, and at the same time a sort of
‘dare-to-come-with-me-to-the-door’ air, that nailed the young man to the
spot on which he was standing.
But he was determined she should not get the better of him here. He
consulted every available authority, drew elaborately, with the help of
a pair of compasses, a calico pattern out of his head, as the fruit of
his investigations, and sent it over to Barley Riggs, with a polite
request that Miss Murray would try something in this style, which he had
worked out, and should like to introduce into the works.
Athole returned the pattern in a quarter of an hour, with a civil note,
proving in half-a-dozen lines that most of the curves were wrong, and
mentioning that apparently colour had not come within the scope of the
design.
When young Tam was initiating himself practically into the mysteries of
the dye-vats, he had to wear a dyer’s suit, and his hands--sometimes
even his face--were a sight to contemplate. As a rule, he changed his
dress and did his best to wash himself at the works; but once or
twice--once by an accident which overthrew his arrangements, and twice
when a spirit of boyish bravado came over him--he walked home in the
guise which Tintoret may have displayed when he was still a lad about
his father’s dye-works, before he had taken up the palette and brushes
of the prince of painters. In the dark December afternoon there was
little light to distinguish what garb a man had donned. But at one
point, where the road to the works joined the loaning which led to
Barley Riggs, a lamp had been put up, and made a broad illumination in
a circle, through which wayfarers had to go in passing the spot.
When young Tam, dressed in character, arrived at this stage of
revelation on his homeward road, he was suddenly confronted by Athole
Murray, who had strolled as far as the end of her own road to look out
for her father returning from one of his medical rounds. Had young Tam
got a glimpse of Athole a moment sooner, before he had himself entered
the enchanted ring, which exposed all the horrible incongruity and
fantasticalness of his coat--nay, his skin--of many colours, and if he
could not have beaten a retreat down the path he had come up, in
double-quick time, he would have been fool enough to risk his neck by
attempting to scale, at a moment’s notice, the high wall belonging to
the works.
Now, had auld Tam been the victim, he would have advanced with the
courage and composure of a wise man, though one side of his nose had
been orange and the other blue, and there had been a splash of vermilion
on his chin. It would have made no difference, though his age had been
reduced to young Tam’s, and it had been bonnie Eppie Mercer who had
crossed his path when he was in this plight. His demeanour would have
been much the same as it had been on the occasion of a little incident
which had impressed his family. An enterprising mouse had invaded
Drysdale Hall, penetrated to the dining-room, and actually ran up the
foot of the master of the house, where he sat after dinner. There were
screaming and scuttling on all sides. Young Eppie was on the top of the
sideboard in as short a time as it takes to record the feat. Even Clary
was moved to mount a chair. Mrs. Drysdale backed, in a hasty manner,
from the table, drawing her skirts round her. Young Tam took up the
poker. But auld Tam, with a robust superiority to all qualms of
feeling, treated the aggressor simply as a ‘fellow-mortal.’ He sat where
he was, gave his nether garments a shake, said in the easiest of tones,
‘Get awa’ with you, sir,’ and went on with what he had been saying
previous to the episode.
Though Athole Murray was plainly dressed, she was invariably neat, with
a dainty neatness which is not always attained by the height of
extravagance. She was particularly so this afternoon, as she stood in
her dark serge, with the little thin, white muslin apron she was fond of
wearing fluttering in the wind, and over her head and shoulders a
quilted hood of old dove’s-neck-coloured silk, which she put on when she
visited her out-of-door pets.
‘Mr. Thomas Drysdale as the clown in the pantomime, three weeks before
Christmas,’ she said, eyeing him from head to foot, taking in every daub
and stain, and making the miserable man visibly conscious of the sum of
them.
‘The performance has one merit--it is gratis,’ he said hurriedly; ‘and
if you will stand aside, Miss Murray, so that I may not get you into a
mess, it won’t be tedious.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind a stain or two,’ she said, in the most obliging
manner. ‘I can always use salts of sorrel. I could recommend them
honestly. But how did you get so many and such bright patches? Did any
colour get on the cloth? You haven’t tumbled into the vats?’
‘No,’ he answered shortly; ‘but I’m a bungler--I always was, and always
shall be; and there’s an end of it. Will you let me pass, Miss Murray,
without giving yourself the trouble and annoyance of becoming further
acquainted with the beastly condition I am in?’
‘Of course, but don’t be hard upon yourself: indeed, you do not always
bungle--you have done the thing completely this time,’ she said, her
eyes overflowing with laughter; ‘the doubt is, will it pay?’
‘It is no matter whether it pays or what it costs, if it ought to be
done,’ he retorted, with his old lofty manner, and the odd figure
vanished in the darkness.
Athole went back to the house into the parlour, and stood looking into
the fire. The fun passed out of her face, and was replaced by a wistful
gravity. Her father found her thus, and she turned and said to him,
without any preamble, as if she were announcing a discovery she had just
made:
‘Father, young Tam Drysdale is a fine fellow.’
‘Have you only found that out now, Athole?’ Dr. Peter replied, raising
his eyebrows.
‘Well, he hides his head under a bushel of extravagance,’ she said, as
an apology for her slowness; ‘I suppose all modern heroes are laughable.
The penalty of looking ridiculous is what they must suffer for their
spice of heroism. Don’t you think there is a grain of heroism in a
man--especially a young man’s owning that he has been in the wrong, and
eating his leek, so thoroughly as young Tam is doing?’
‘Yes; and what is more, it is heroism of the right, not the stagey,
sort. It is not particularly picturesque, and if it has a flavour of
self-martyrdom about it, let us be thankful it is common homely
self-martyrdom, not martyrdom on stilts. The victim will not exalt
himself over it.’
‘It would be a good deal finer, as well as less absurd, if the hero did
not make wry faces,’ remarked Athole reflectively; ‘but one cannot have
everything.’
It may have been by way of bringing about a hardly hoped-for perfection,
and of serving as a wholesome discipline for young Tam in the interval,
that Athole’s pungent mockery flourished as much as ever, in their
casual intercourse, after this date.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE COMMON TEMPTATION, WITH ITS USUAL ACCOMPANIMENT.
A period of remarkably flourishing trade followed in Glasgow. The recent
prosperous years had all been leading up to this flush of enterprise and
attainment. The expansion, if it did not pervade every source, reached
to many departments of trade. Never had the hammers of the boiler-makers
and the shipbuilders rung with more inspiring din, sending sonorous
music down the misty river. Never had such strings of casks rumbled
heavily in and out of the sugar warehouses and the spirit vaults. Never
had St. Rollax and its sister chimneys vomited forth heavier volumes of
tainted smoke. Never had the Exchange been so thronged and so busy, or
Buchanan Street so crowded with promenaders and purchasers, or the
Broomielaw so besieged with the shipping of all nations.
Mechanics and mill-hands had the maximum of wages. The homes of employés
abounded not only in comforts, but in expensive, inappropriate
luxuries--in port wine, oysters, and early strawberries; in rosewood
couches, pianos, and feather-beds. The women of the class figured, on
high days and holidays, in silk and lace. The custom of the smaller
shops became steady and richly remunerative; that of the larger swelled
enormously, till it reached so grand a scale of fortune-making that it
ceased to be worth while asking the hitherto crucial question whether
the process were wholesale or retail.
There seemed a limitless buoyance in the markets, an inexhaustible
capacity for buying and selling beyond what had ever been dreamt of.
Only invention, of which necessity is the parent, languished, and Dr.
Peter, out at Barley Riggs, shook his head.
‘It is a fever-fit,’ he said to Athole, ‘when the patient looks full in
the face and rosy, with an eye like a star, and a pulse beating like the
throbs of a steam-engine, and when the man has the strength of ten men.
But even before the collapse, which will not tarry, can come, a train of
evils, like Michael Scott’s wee devils, will start into being, come to
the front, and plague the man for work to do to employ their spare
energies, till he is worn out with the very power that is about to quit
him in a moment, and leave him next to dead on his bed.’
But what although there were fewer Glasgow patents taken out this year
than for a dozen or more years before? What although words of warning
were spoken in the country by an elderly poorish man who had gone far
and come back with his hands not above a quarter full, so that he had to
take the not very distinguished post of doctor at the Drysdale Haugh
Works, and be thankful for it? This was a man who, as many would have
said, had ‘made a mull’ of his own life; it signified little, and might
be taken as a matter of course, that he should deliver a jeremiad on the
uncertainty of fortune. All the big men, the great traders and
financiers, were taking the tide at its height, and seizing the
opportunity to extend their already vast operations, to double and
quadruple their huge receipts. It seemed as if the rebound would never
reach them. This condition of splendid success must be fortified and
confirmed, until it lasted to the extreme border of the century.
Men were so eager to avail themselves of the chances opening out before
them, that wherever they had irons at all, they put every one into the
fire. Speculators caught at the materials out of which millions might
be made, and launched them on the rising waters, with a faith that
scarcely knew a doubt. A large amount of capital was lifted out of the
old channels, which, by comparison, paid miserably, and laid out in the
new cent. per cent. ventures of a brilliant era in commerce. Credit
followed capital, and he was counted happiest who could command most,
who had a bank of which he was one of the principal directors at his
back, into whose cash-box--speaking figuratively--he could dip his hand
at will; or who belonged to an old-established firm in high repute for
sagacity and wealth; or a new firm whose good fortune kept step with its
daring, so that it dazzled the eyes of its contemporaries, forgetting to
apply the word ‘plunging’ to its great triumphant undertakings.
The abounding life of manufacturing and mercantile Glasgow was not
confined to itself by any means. It spread in wider and wider circles,
till it might be said to girdle the world. The zone of trade extended
from France to Russia, from the East to the West Indies, from America in
the far north to America in the far south, from the territory of an
enlightened Khedive in ancient Egypt, to the domains of a fore-seeing
Queen in the special Pacific Island which had renounced cannibalism. In
all these quarters men felt that great Glasgow was up and doing, that
her craftsmen were wielding their brawny arms, and her merchants busying
their shrewd brains with glorious results to the prosperity of lands
beyond the seas.
Even the people who were least touched by the strong impetus, awoke to a
distant rumour of the city’s tremendous transactions and mighty profits,
and invented fables more incredible still of the men who were puddlers,
or winders, or dock-labourers to-day and princes to-morrow; of granite
palaces which were equivalent to streets paved with gold. The risings in
life at the Australian and American diggings were a trifle to the
upheavals in Glasgow society--nothing was said at this moment of the
corresponding downfalls. The gold nuggets of Ballarat and San Francisco
were not to be spoken of in a breath with the floating capital of
Glasgow--the real nuggets were bills of lading and invoices. Tyre and
Ormus, in their traditions, must thenceforth hide their diminished
heads; Manchester bolstered up by Salford, and Liverpool backed by
Birkenhead, had better withdraw from the idle competition.
Tam Drysdale was not out of the vortex, though for a time he trod it
cautiously, more so than young Tam. When the latter encountered the full
sweep of the current, he lost his head a little, as he found the
order-books no longer fit to contain the orders and commissions for
calico of every tint and pattern pouring in from the ends of the earth.
Indeed, the longest hours were not long enough. All the workmen that
could be pressed into the service, though they were to work day and
night, would not have availed to bring the supply on a level with the
demand. It was the first time that the young man had come into personal
contact with the intoxication of trade, which was wont to address itself
chiefly to the middle-aged, and to make up to them for the passing away
of earlier stimulants in the visionary dreams of youth and the strong
passions of manhood.
But, as time rolls on, the hurry of trade, in England and America
particularly, engrosses younger and younger men, and becomes often their
keenest pursuit. This is especially the case with the gilded youth of
both countries. It had not been so hitherto with young Tam Drysdale; but
it had been predicted of him, and who was he that he should resist the
stream which was carrying all before it? What was characteristic about
his plunge was that it took colouring from his previous associations.
Young Tam, if left to himself, would have gone in a little wildly for
ventures in his business, as the means of a millennium in trade, by an
immediate raising of the masses, and rendering them decent and happy for
ever afterwards, with civilization and Christianity borne in the
conqueror’s car from pole to pole.
Auld Tam knew better than that, but his blood was up at last, and then
it became plain what a giant in his sphere the man was. How he could
contrive, organize, and execute on the most colossal lines, till beside
his achievements the greatest deeds of his neighbours grew dwarfed. His
office and works, his branch of trade, Glasgow itself, felt proud of
him, and the sweet incense of general homage to auld Tam, who in his
boyhood had been the poorest artisan of them all, rose to his brain
also. The self-approbation and vanity which had never been deficient in
his composition waxed rampant and soared to sublime heights.
Tam’s confidential talk became vapouring. He spoke as if every dyeing
and calico-printing business in the world must yield to his and merge
into it; as if all other trades would grow subordinate to the staining
of cotton cloth in different colours and the stamping it in various
designs; as if the wonders which chemical affinities and repulsions
could produce had never been sounded to their depths, but he--Tam
Drysdale--or if not he, his son, young Tam, was the man to sound them,
and to discover the dye of dyes--before which Tyrian purple, Venetian
green, Derby blue, magenta red, and coal-tar mauve, would sink into
dimness and eclipse. He would witch the world with noble dyes. The
kingdom of beauty should own his magnificent contributions. His
grandsons would inherit the land when dyeing and printing had their
proper place among the arts and sciences, and auld Tam’s descendants
were the princes of dyers and printers. It was hearing his father, wise
on all else, discourse thus madly that cured young Tam of his own
dawning delusions.
In truth, the strain of that period of over-trade was awful, and it
spoke much for the strength and balance of those West-country minds,
that they were only shaken--not crushed and overthrown for ever--by the
fierce tension. As the race quickened to lightning-speed, a tendency to
push production to impossibilities in fair trade, to substitute spurious
for genuine articles, to flood the markets with inferior goods, and
pander to the craving for cheapness by apparent underselling, became
more and more conspicuous. Auld Tam did not fall into this snare; he was
at once too clear-sighted and too honest. But the necessity of fighting
with his own weapons against such rivals, and the determination to come
off the victor, drew him farther and farther into lawful but perilous
speculation.
Commensurate with the strain was the exhaustion of such times. Men must
have relaxation, and they must have artificial support, else flesh and
blood would not endure the ordeal to which they were subjected.
Different classes of men and different men themselves took their sops in
various ways. The New-Year time, according to old style, was kept with
such bestial excess, riot, and waste, by many of the people, as dismayed
their best friends. Who was to know that the finer spirits, coming
between the scum and the dregs, took their pleasure temperately,
soberly? The select few among the working-men were laying by for an
independent, peaceful old age, were rising in the social scale,
carefully cultivating tastes for higher, more exquisite pleasures,
making time for attendance at schools and lectures, buying books and
reading them, haunting museums and picture-galleries. With the first
breath of spring these men would snatch sails ‘down the water,’ and runs
into the country; would nourish grand projects of holiday excursions to
Ireland, to London--that capital of the world; to Manchester, or
Birmingham--Glasgow’s sister town: to France, or Belgium--wide flights
after the old yearly trips to Arran and Largs, with which the
able-bodied holiday-makers had been formerly satisfied.
It would seem as if the mode of living all over Glasgow altered at this
time, and the rate of family expenditure increased in proportion. Men
who were in their shops and offices late and early, who were pursued by
letters and caught by telegrams, whatever the season--on the
wedding-morning of this lad, and when that father’s first-born lay cold
in death--who were, in fact, hunted like runaway slaves to the last
gasp, had need of all the indulgences and all the support which money,
dearly earned, could procure for them. If their weakness should dream of
haunches of venison, pipes of red Burgundy, whitebait soaked in white
wine, let the spent toilers have their desires, though they had been
contented at no distant day with legs of mutton, cod’s head and
shoulders, poorish claret or sherry, and the native vintage of the
country. When the over-burdened men returned home in the small hours,
and sought to sup on devilled turkey, pine-apple, and the last best
brand of champagne, don’t deny the wearied wights what they sought,
though the least surfeit might increase the danger of apoplexy; it was
to be hoped that lemon-squash and a pick-me-up would restore the balance
next morning.
If wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, never saw their mankind
from the drab-coloured dawn to the mirk midnight, except on Sundays; if
even then the men were engrossed and oppressed, slept like logs in and
out of the churches--to which Glasgow never neglects to go--and when
awakened were flighty and cross beyond the conception of the liveliest
imagination, surely the women, in their turn, deserved compensation for
their enforced loneliness and dulness, in the loss of rational
intercourse with the heads of their houses, Give matron and maiden their
share of the spoil, which was costing everybody dear, in cookery and
confectionery, to suit feminine tastes, in bigger houses, finer
furniture, more servants, in sables and seal-skins, Duchesse and
Valenciennes lace, in jewel-cases, opera-boxes, and carriages--where
carriages had never been hinted at before. The two turning-points fondly
contemplated in many a Glasgow career--‘to be riding in a carriage, and
to be keeping a butler’--were attained by a multitude this year. By the
way, this riding in a carriage seems peculiarly the goal of West-country
ambition; nowhere else do men and women, who have stood behind a
counter, toiled in shirt-sleeves, washed at a washing-tub, take
instantly and inevitably to private carriages, like ducks to water, as
the inhabitants of St. Mungo’s city take to them. And after the
carriages, but at a considerable distance, come the large yachts.
When all was done, it was no great entertainment to be luxurious and
splendid _en famille_. More and more visiting had to be resorted to, in
order to put the top-stone to the fairy edifice, to divert the thoughts,
to rouse the imagination, to excite the languid senses. When there was a
moment to spare, it was filled up by some dinner or evening engagement.
There was the theatre, if there was nothing else. The Glasgow clubs were
becoming more and more like the London clubs; the whist-play was
excellent, and if whist formed too strong meat, there were Napoleon and
_vingt-et-un_. But the theatre was still the _pièce de résistance_.
Glasgow could afford to pay the lessee to bring down the greatest stars
to strut and sing and charm away its idle moments, when idleness there
was none, unless among the women. There was not even the most necessary
repose. The hurry of life was becoming hotter, more entangling and
bewildering. The pace grew terrific. ‘I wish I could get a
breathing-space to scart my broo [scratch my brow], no to speak of
saying a prayer!’ exclaimed an unhappy man on the verge of desperation.
There were other men and women who had long ago ridden in their
carriages and kept their butlers: these thrice fortunate individuals
bought more of the estates which the old country gentry saw themselves
compelled to bring to the hammer; rented the best deer-forests; extended
and enlarged ranges of conservatories and picture-galleries; had visions
of entering Parliament, or going on the turf--if only the men had
leisure. Fathers promised their elder sons and daughters trips up the
Nile and voyages round the world, and sent their younger children to the
most strictly select and outrageously expensive schools that could be
heard of for love or money.
Still, as the ball went round merrily, while handsomer incomes were
taken for granted, and larger sums spent simply as a matter of course,
there appeared the more absolute necessity for unrelaxing exertions to
maintain the great trade which was to feed all these drains. The
daughters of the horse-leech were crying, ‘Give, give!’ and refusing to
add ‘Enough.’
The readers of Tennyson’s ‘Palace of Art’ know that there is only one
end to self-indulgence, of however high a kind. The appetite fails, the
food palls, the mind turns and preys upon itself, or it demands coarser
and more powerful fare, and fierier stimulants. Men and women in all
grades, who had been modest, contented, domestic, temperate, before the
period of inordinate activity and prosperity, received from it the fatal
bias which left them, after long years perhaps, arrogant, dissatisfied,
unable to remain quietly at home, gluttons, drunkards in secret or
openly.
At the same time, it would be false to say that the season of success
was put to no great end. Grand improvements were inaugurated and brought
to pass, worthy the public spirit of the mediæval Italian cities.
Magnificent acts of charity, which the middle ages hardly knew, were
performed without a grudge, almost without an effort. The citizens of
St. Mungo’s city seldom button up their pockets. Her big, burly
merchants are very humane, whatever their faults. Many of them are as
liberal-hearted and open-handed as any men in Christendom, dispensing
their bounty without hesitation or fuss. There is a gruff ‘Say no more
about it’ tone in their generosity, which has a curious delicacy in its
very abruptness. The fellow-feeling among the inhabitants is strong. In
order to buy fresh machinery for a burnt-out or sold-out manufacturer,
or to furnish the means of independence to the helpless, destitute
children of a former townsman, five thousand--ten thousand--pounds have
been subscribed for within an hour on the Exchange, with no stipulation
made, except that the names of the donors should be withheld, in order
that the recipients of the gift might remain in ignorance of their
benefactors.
The almsgiving at this date was lavish, like everything else; and Tam
Drysdale had his hand in it, as well as in sending to London for lists
of dinner-services in silver-gilt, and for having out a famous authority
to Drysdale Hall to see whether the corridor could not be supplied with
panels painted in fresco by all the first artists in Europe. In the face
of such prodigality auld Tam still raised a storm in the house when he
found a crust of bread had been thrown to the pigs, and threatened to
discharge a groom because he had paid a few pence beyond the ordinary
charge for the feed of a horse in a country-inn stable. And all the time
there was a pauper lunatic out at Gartnavel who clawed at the door of
his cell, and chattered of Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh.
CHAPTER XVIII.
DR. PETER AND ATHOLE MURRAY MAKE THEIR STAND.
An elderly man with his young daughter, living in full sound of the
periodical revolution in Glasgow habits and manners, did not follow
suit. Life at Barley Riggs went on exactly as it had done before these
busy, delirious days. Not a change did the family make in their routine,
for they had still plenty of time for everything. Not a fresh
incongruous article was added to the old simple seasoned household gods.
Athole had not an additional gown of costlier material. Dr. Peter even
bought fewer books than usual, and denied himself an improved telescope
which he had thought of buying. He could do star-gazing without it,
every time he was called out on a clear night, and perhaps it was not
worth the while of a man of his age to fix the study on the latest
scientific basis. It seemed as if the family were called upon to testify
to a different order of things, and to utter their small protest against
the opposite extreme.
The only one who murmured was the handmaiden Jeannie. For she would come
and lay siege to Athole with tales of the dainties and ‘bonny-dies’
[pretty things], the cakes and puddings, the trays and mirrors, which
were now to be seen in the houses of the Haugh work-people, as plentiful
as blackberries. Jeannie appeared to feel it as a personal injury that
the table at Barley Riggs was not more richly furnished, but was kept as
wholesomely plain and light in its good and sufficient cookery as ever;
and that her young mistress would not launch into the attire of an
extravagant countess, in order to afford Jeannie a precedent for doing
likewise within her sphere. The maiden was not very wise, but she was a
kindly-disposed girl, knew a good place when she had it, and, though she
was restive, retained a creditable respect and regard for the master and
mistress who had taken a constant interest in her welfare.
There were many more than Jeannie, among people who ought to have known
better, who thought it very absurd that the household at Barley Riggs
should be standing still while the rest of the world was advancing.
These judges viewed with loud scorn the old-fashioned, poor-spirited,
unneighbourly pair. Yes, Dr. Peter and Athole, who in their corner, with
their stinted means, kept abreast of much of the thought of the day,
were called old-fashioned, and the man and woman who had entered the
breach to deliver the Miss Mackinnons, were styled poor-spirited and
unneighbourly. To row against the stream is not only hard work--it
strikes the mass as an ungracious performance.
Certainly Dr. Peter’s income did not vary much with the rise of the
popular funds. He did not take the money he had saved out of the old
investment, in order to put it into the new, and quadruple the interest.
Tam Drysdale had proposed that the men with their higher wages should
contribute a larger moiety, as he himself agreed to do from his
increased profits, to their doctor’s pay. The men were willing, but Dr.
Peter interfered, and limited the addition to the lowest sum. He said
the working world would have need of all their spare pennies when the
rate of orders and wages had fallen again, as it was bound to subside.
He had no more doubt of slack times coming round, in a kind of natural
order, than that cloudy strata would follow upon tracts of blue sky, and
the east wind succeed the west. Most people agreed with him in theory,
but in practice he was thought a Jeremiah for his pains.
There was a peculiarities element of coolness and repose about Barley
Riggs at this time, in contrast to the fever and unrest in its vicinity.
Yet life was not without its excitement there, as elsewhere. Dr. Peter
had specially interesting cases and problems which engrossed him. Athole
hit on a new pattern, or was inspired with a design beyond the range of
calico-printing, which she burned to express in wood or on earthenware,
and managed to work out in a halting manner that did not render the idea
barren, but by the very difficulty of clothing it in material form, made
it fruitful in amended ideals, if in nothing else. All the news of all
the world, ancient and modern, came to them in books and journals which
the couple could study, digest, talk of in earnest and in jest, for Dr.
Peter and Athole were great and good talkers together.
The seasons were constantly bringing some new thing--the first snowdrop,
the catkin on the willow, the blossom on the gean-tree, the earliest
rose, the latest hazel-nut. Dr. Peter and Athole, though the latter in a
less degree--for the young are too full of the mystery of themselves to
be always open to nature--scarcely ever missed a fine sunset, the
evening star hanging tremulous in a daffodil sky, or the full moon when
she was riding without check, white and glittering, in the purple
darkness beyond her track. The two rarely lost the look of the garden
before the morning sun had melted the cranreuch on bough and leaf; or
that other aspect when spring had come, and the earth was brown, with
the grass springing, the reddened buds swelling, the softest haze of
genial mist hovering over the tender, everlasting youth of the scene.
There was never a day or an hour when some event did not happen in the
animal kingdom at Barley Riggs, and it never happened without
observation and interest--another calf, another kid, a brood of spring
chickens; the patriarchal dog held fast in a rabbit-trap, the baby
kitten catching a mouse; this bird beginning to sing, that to moult; Dr.
Peter’s pony undergoing a clipping, Athole’s old Shetland treated for a
cough; the first butterfly, the first swallow.
Early morning hours were kept at Barley Riggs, though Dr. Peter had not
to bolt his breakfast and start for Glasgow by the nine o’clock train.
On the contrary, he rose not later than seven, and--unless it were
raining pigs and whistles--took a stroll over the place to see that all
was right, leant a minute over the gate to have a ‘crack’ with this or
that familiar working man or woman who had been home for breakfast. Or
he made a bolt out to inquire for some patient who might have had a
restless night and be wearying to see his doctor, for Athole did not
approve, if the obligation were not urgent, of her father’s attending
his sick before he had broken his fast. Then Dr. Peter walked back to
the house as fresh as a daisy, and ate his meal in a leisurely, sensible
fashion.
He hailed the postman, read his letters, glanced over the newspaper, and
cleaned and fed such furred and feathered retainers as fell to his care.
Next he changed his coat, and set out on his morning round, leaving
Athole and her handmaiden to the household cares which belonged to the
early part of the day, and were as regularly and satisfactorily
discharged on their part as another mission was fulfilled on his.
Dr. Peter practised what he preached. He recommended early dining as the
rule of life for working-men and invalids alike, and he came home in
anticipation of his dinner an hour after noon, and did a little work in
the surgery--the constant accompaniment of a country doctor’s house,
where he was training a homely assistant, whose college terms were yet
to begin. In addition to this assistant, Dr. Peter had the services of a
stout boy for his pony and in the garden, and on him the doctor bestowed
a few additional minutes of his time before he appeared in the parlour
at the sound of the dinner-bell.
There was a smoking season after dinner, when the great advantages of a
veranda which had been erected on one side of the house were regularly
recognised. Athole was generally with Dr. Peter then--‘playing,’ as he
called it, taking her part in a lively argument, teasing or being
teased, hearing and giving the gossip of the morning.
A little later the two frequently walked out together when he had such
professional visits as he could pay in this way, or he took another
round to keep his evening clear, or he worked in the garden. In the
latter case he would call to Athole where she sat at work in the
window, every ten minutes or so, to come out and listen to some weighty
piece of information he had to give her--on the state of the mould,
which would require special treatment; about a singular grub he had
turned up; with regard to the flight of the rooks, which determined the
next day’s weather; or the appearance of the gooseberry-blossom as a
criterion of next July’s crop of gooseberries. If the weather were hot,
and he felt tired, Dr. Peter would withdraw to the old Dutch
summer-house, in which he remembered his young brothers holding merry
smoking-parties, and read or meditate, or take a nap, as the humour
moved him.
In winter Dr. Peter would be more in his surgery, or he would retire to
the loft in which he did his joinery and turning, when Athole would look
in upon him, and put a summary stop to his working more than he was
able.
At the tea-table--set out in the old methodical substantial fashion,
with Cowper’s ‘hissing urn’ in the place of honour--Dr. Peter came out
in full force. He was as fond of tea as if he had been Dr. Samuel
Johnson, or an old washerwoman, he was accustomed to say. He insisted if
people would drink the beverage rationally, well ‘wafted’ with bread, or
perhaps a slice of tongue or corned beef, or ewe-milk cheese, he would
stake his credit as a medical man that it would not do the veriest old
wife harm. It was the unnatural, senseless ‘babbling’ at the drink at
all hours of the day which played the mischief. At the same time he
regarded the meal as essentially feminine, the woman’s hour, to which,
if you would cultivate her good graces, you must do justice by rendering
yourself as agreeable as it was in your power to be. He thought no woman
ever looked better than when she was presiding at a tea-table, and
dispensing her own peculiar good things. He liked to see Athole in his
sister’s place; his wife, whom he had married and immediately taken
abroad, where she died, had never been at Barley Riggs.
Dr. Peter generally revealed at the tea-table what book he had unearthed
from his shelves, or intercepted at the railway station, and deposited
in his pocket to surprise Athole. ‘Ah ha, lassie! you do not know what I
have got here,’ he would cry in glee, patting the bulging-out pocket.
And Athole would guess wildly, wide of the mark, till she grew
impatient. Then he would give up his treasure, and she would handle it,
peep into it, read sentences from it like a connoisseur. She would hurry
to get her work, when he would read to her till his eyes were weary, and
she would take her turn and read to him, with plenty of pauses for
comment, contradiction, or agreement.
If the book were either not interesting enough, or too interesting, he
would call a halt, and bid Athole sing to him, which she did pleasantly
enough, either with or without the piano. She had a gift for quaint
‘genteel comedies’ and farces, for old songs like ‘Major Macpherson
heaved a sigh,’ ‘_Monsieur, je vous n’entend pas_,’ ‘My face is my
fortune;’ though she could not give ‘Logie o’ Buchan,’ or ‘Wha’s at the
window, wha, wha?’ with such naïve sweetness as young Eppie Drysdale
rendered them.
If there was anything left of the evening, Dr. Peter would challenge his
daughter to draughts or bézique, and whoever the victor was, he or she
was rarely great enough to refrain from crowing over the vanquished.
The master of the house was a country doctor, and suffered in full from
the lingering dilatoriness and sudden panic which causes the poorer,
more ignorant country people to try every remedy in illness save sending
for the qualified judge, and to practise the patience of Job till the
small hours, then to rush helter-skelter, disturbing the lieges
generally, and knocking an unhappy man out of his hard-earned bed, for
help which he might have bestowed with comparatively little trouble, and
to more purpose, half-a-dozen hours before. Still, Dr. Peter could
generally manage to keep his hours sufficiently regulated for him to act
as family priest. He could appear with his household for a brief time in
what he believed to be the Great Presence, acknowledge an Almighty
Father’s supremacy, and supplicate His mercy.
Sometimes patients were so thriving and considerate as to permit their
doctor to eat in peace his simple supper of a haddock or a herring, or
‘a shape of potted head,’ and drink the single glass of toddy which was
supposed to fortify him against the effects of exposure and fatigue, if
he were summoned late, which occurred sufficiently often to have tried
the constitution, mental and bodily, of a much younger man. Then Dr.
Peter would rise and stretch himself, cry cheerily:
‘Hey for boot and horse, lads,’ charge Athole not to sit up herself, or
let Jeannie sit up for him, and go his way, perhaps not to be back till
daybreak.
Sunday could not, in the nature of things, absolve Dr. Peter from the
duties of his profession, since men sicken and die on the Saturday and
Sunday indiscriminately. But, taken in their highest sense, these duties
fitted in well with the day of Him who, on the Jewish Sabbath, restored
the withered hand, and bade the palsied man take up his bed and walk.
They rarely prevented Dr. Peter from going with Athole to join his
neighbours in public worship, in the church where he held the office of
an elder, the minister of which was one of his oldest and most esteemed
friends. In other respects, Sunday was a day of rest to Dr. Peter, in
the sense of a day quiet, and calm, and bright--for knitting closer
family ties, for still more intimate association with nature, for
reading his best books, for remembering friends near and far away, for
communing with the unseen, and penetrating behind the veil.
Not only was Dr. Peter well content with these unhurrying days, as a
leisurely end to an active career, a slight experience of the land of
Beulah before he passed beyond the light of sun and star; Athole had the
feeling and taste to be sensible of their fine flavour. She said to
herself, truly, that she would not change her father and their home-life
together for any other father--however well endowed and indulgent; or
any other life--however full of change and movement. This was in spite
of the fact that Athole’s heart was ‘hot and restless,’ like other young
hearts, that she felt tempted to welcome variety, emulation, opposition,
so that it promised excitement, to be in the thick of the conflict, the
rush of the strife--of a good deal that was going on in St. Mungo’s
city at this moment. She could even have welcomed a passage at arms with
young Tam Drysdale, to strike a spark from the steel. But always, when
Athole came to think of it, she grew sorry for such a mood. She knew she
was wronging herself and her father, and wished, in an exalted mood,
that nothing at Barley Riggs might ever alter, for nothing on earth
could be better.
Barley Riggs was not out of the range of visiting and visitors, while
Dr. Peter was hospitable with all the friendly hospitality of a man who
has lived at a foreign station, and known what a neighbour may be at a
pinch. But though he put his best before his guests, it must be his
natural best, what was in keeping with his position and habits, and only
outran in a cordial, gracious way his ordinary experience. From the
first day that Dr. Peter returned to Barley Riggs and settled there, he
set his face steadfastly against display and competition for the prize
in extravagant outlay, or in _recherché_ attainment, the sole virtue of
which was that it happened to be _recherché_.
‘Our friends know what to expect from us, Athie,’ Dr. Peter would
counsel his daughter; ‘and upon my soul I believe they will be better
pleased with that than with something out of all bounds. If they’re not,
I am mistaken in them, that is all; and they had better stay away, and
go where they can be served according to their fancy.’
‘In what way?’ inquired Athole tentatively.
‘In what way? When a man looks round on crystal, silver, and flowers
enough to dazzle and bewilder him, and reads a _menu_ as long as his
arm, containing three times as many dishes as he can touch.’
‘There is no great harm in that,’ said Athole mischievously.
‘Wait. He eats what he is not accustomed to; what, very likely, is not
good for him, and what his instincts are often sound enough to warn him
away from, if he would attend to them. But no, he must ape his
neighbours, pretend to tastes he never felt, and bolster up his
gastronomical feats by drinking less or more of all the wines and
liqueurs that are handed round, and pretending to like them, too, till
he is miserable. And if he does come to feel the liking he has feigned,
the worse for him.’
‘Father, I am afraid you are talking shop,’ objected Dr. Peter’s
daughter. ‘You ought to have thrown the substance of that speech into a
paper for the _Lancet_.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, child. We could not afford such dinners, Athole,
and we will not try. People have enough of that kind of thing elsewhere.
When they come to us they must come for more than the bill of fare, or
for such a bill of fare as is perfectly good and appetizing--even tasty
of its kind.’
‘Now you overwhelm me,’ professed Athole.
‘Lassie, what would the soldiers in the Crimea, or in Zululand, or in
Egypt have thought of it? Yet it has not cost what is equivalent to a
poor man’s house-rent for a year, and will not spoil anybody’s
digestion, or ruin me, though I were to give a dinner to a dozen friends
once a month.’
To the credit of mankind, no less than of Dr. Peter and his housekeeper,
when he did indulge in giving unpretending, well-cooked dinners, they
were highly popular with rich and poor alike. Their success might be
due, in a degree, to his excellent qualities as a host, and his gifts as
a _raconteur_, and to the able manner in which Athole abetted him in
both these directions. Yet it seemed as if, in the leap which the west
had taken in wealth and luxury, there was a little less relish for the
mother-wit of the past, a little less inclination to be reminded of
ancient thrift or waste, stoic endurance, or passionate assertion. The
present, the crowded present, threatened to become all in all. But to
Dr. Peter the old records and stories never lost their charm. He
delighted in picturing Glasgow when Queen Mary was said to have given
its name to a certain suburb, then a country village, as she looked at
the crucifix in the palm of her hand, and swore, in defiance of the
rebel army barring her way, ‘By the cross in my loof, I will sleep in
Dumbarton this night!’ He had equal pleasure in recalling later
centuries, when golf was still played on Glasgow Green, and a walk round
it before breakfast was the ‘constitutional’ of all the active old
gentlemen in the town. He would fain have known the ingredients of that
hot herb ale which the pedestrians afterwards drank, with such relish
and benefit, in Currie’s Close.
Dr. Peter fairly angered auld Tam by speculating on whether he (Dr.
Peter) would not have liked Glasgow better when fish was her sole
trade, and Clyde’s banks were bonnie and blooming, and the air caller
and sweeter from Hamilton to Campbelton; when the inhabitants of St.
Mungo’s city thought nothing fairer or grander than their own cathedral,
beneath which good Kentigern slept; when a double rainbow spanning the
Clyde, or a troop of ‘merry dancers’ in the northern sky, was an event
worthy of notice, spoken of for days, no more eclipsed and obscured by
the rushing, noisy obligations of trade, than by the reek of a forest of
chimneys which did not yet exist.
CHAPTER XIX.
SIR HUGO WILLOUGHBY ENTERS THE LISTS, AND IS CAPTIVATED BY THE
MERCHANT PRINCES.
Glasgow is not the most aristocratic city in her Majesty’s dominions.
Her merchant princes may be lavish of that wealth which commands so
much; their establishments, both in town and country, may have passed
beyond the stage of soulless luxury and sumptuousness, and attained the
higher distinction of intellectual culture. The West-End clubs may be
exclusive; the city may have resources within herself, which do
something to counterbalance the disadvantages of enormous traffic.
Glasgow society, hospitable in every walk, may, in the upper classes,
be only too flatteringly kind to sprigs of gentility. For some of them
do find their way to a field where they receive so much
favour--condescend to bask in its sunshine, and profit by its
substantial benefits. Witness the Miss Vaughans, Lady Semple’s cousins,
who were not disinclined to consider overtures of alliance, backed by
full purses, from the sons of commerce. Still, as a matter of fact,
Glasgow is not the haunt of the nobility and gentry of the United
Kingdom. Titles, except in the case of Lord Provosts, or of titled men
and women appearing at civic feasts, election and volunteer balls, or
charitable breakfasts, rarely figure in the lists of company at this or
that table.
For a real live baronet of ancient line and good estates, one who was
neither a blackleg nor a prodigal, to alight and abide for any length of
time--not merely to be passing a night in one of the best hotels, on his
way to the Highlands--was for a rara avis to show himself, when a
flutter of wings from all the common birds called attention to the fact.
If the baronet happened to be young, and a bachelor, the flutter, which
was always better defined in feminine quarters, became twenty times more
eager and animated. The excitement referred to an event which did not
happen often, but had been known to occur, and to produce the most
charming consequences. Daughters of St. Mungo’s city, like the daughters
of Augsburg of old, had departed ere now with their tochers, to gild
afresh old titles, to appear no more in commercial circles, but to be
heard of from afar as denizens of the politest regions.
Public feeling pointed in this direction when the news spread abroad
that young Horsburgh--of ‘Horsburgh and Tennant,’ the great West Indian
merchants--who had been to Cambridge, had brought back with him for his
Easter holidays his college chum, Sir Hugo Willoughby, of Willoughby
Court. Sir Hugo was reported young, handsome, intelligent, agreeable, of
a race dating from the Conquest--which is a great deal better than
dating from Adam--with a rental that, though it did not come within a
tenth or twentieth part of the profits of some of the larger city firms,
was perhaps safer, and was certainly not to be despised. In addition,
the rental was said to be accompanied by such a perfect old Court in
Lincolnshire, that the mere possession of it conferred the finest odours
of gentility on its fortunate owner.
Moreover, Sir Hugo was likely to remain for a time. He was understood to
have a laudable curiosity about city life and trade centres. He would
not only inspect warehouses, he would ride to cover with the Lanarkshire
hunting men; he might take a run in Guy Horsburgh’s yacht. Early as the
season was, he would be seen at the dinners and balls of the select
traders who could claim the acquaintance of the family in which Sir
Hugo was staying. And, as if to render the public good greater, and the
chances of war fairer for all, Guy Horsburgh had no unmarried sisters.
There was no dangerous propinquity settling the question at once, and
leaving hardly the ghost of an opportunity for any other girl.
Is it wonderful that the maiden heart of richest Glasgow heaved high,
like the breast of Major Macpherson in the song, that many a council of
war was held between mothers and daughters and sisters, this windy
March, and many a box from court milliners in London, and even from
Worth in Paris, was hastily conjured up with materials for the short but
what might be the momentous campaign?
Really, Sir Hugo was worthy of it on his own individual merits. He was a
fine young fellow. The foundation of his principles had been laid by a
good mother--a widow who had never ceased to mourn for the husband of
her youth, whose son, her only child, was the apple of her eye. From
her he had derived a remarkable amount of ingenuousness and a dash of
enthusiasm, which such intercourse with the world as he had commanded
had failed to extinguish. He was regarded as something of a young
Quixote at his University, which had been his world for the most part,
but he had possessed wit to defend his views. He was manly, rather rash,
and a little thoughtless; but in his very thoughtlessness he was
generous and honest--a lad to be liked first and trusted afterwards. He
was unconventional--reckoning according to the last, the Eneas
Mackinnon, pattern of young men.
Sir Hugo had sufficient brains to seek to extend his knowledge of
humanity. It was true that he had come to Glasgow with an ardent desire
to learn all he could pick up about one of the wonderful man-hives of
Britain and the world, as unlike as possible in its ceaseless stir among
all classes, and recurring flights and falls, to the traditions of his
order. These pointed to dignified quiet and leisure, an established
order of things, a God-appointed institution of rulers and ruled, of
different sorts and conditions of men, who were to govern and obey, to
amuse themselves and to work, to be helpful to each other while they
remained far apart--above all, to rest content with the very different
lots which Providence had assigned to them.
It is impossible to deny another motive which had brought Sir Hugo to
Glasgow. He was young, and therefore merry, facile, and so open to
temptation. He had heard amazing and unsurpassable stories of the
incongruities and absurdities of Glasgow life, as of life at the
diggings, of the gulf between the _nouveaux riches_ and their former
habits, and the blunders these lucky men and women committed. He was
fain to test for himself the truth or falsehood of these travellers’
tales, to have his share of the laugh that was habitually playing round
the comedy, in the better-informed world. But his native generosity
caused him to repent of the deed before it was committed; and if he
should see the slightest reason to qualify his impressions, he would be
the first to renounce them.
As it chanced, Sir Hugo was delighted with Glasgow life. Its powerful
vitality, innumerable lights and shades, and the magnitude of its
achievements, took hold of his large stock of sympathy, and made a mark
on what was at this time his rampant imagination. He was quite capable
of going out of himself and his order to appreciate qualities and
conditions which, however admirable in themselves, were foreign to his
earlier experience. Indeed, the novelty of the situation was one of its
chief attractions.
Young Horsburgh was not without _amor patriæ_. He had been a good deal
aggrieved by the estimation in which he had found his native city held
in other regions, and by the chaffing which he had been called on to
endure on its account. One of his purposes in bringing Sir Hugo down
with him had been to open his eyes, by showing him what St. Mungo’s city
really was, and by proving that there were not only as wealthy citizens,
but as good men and educated gentlemen within its bounds, as were to be
found in or out of any city in Christendom.
Sir Hugo had not been a week in Glasgow before his volunteered
recantation out-stripped the mark. He out-Heroded Herod, and went far
ahead of Guy Horsburgh in his extravagant regard for Glasgow. There was
no enterprise like Glasgow enterprise; there were no manufactures like
Glasgow manufactures; no men and women like those of Glasgow, wherever
the light of day shone.
It was only ordinary gratitude in Glasgow, especially young Glasgow, to
make an idol of Sir Hugo in return, to say there never had been a
‘Prince Charming’ like him. He was so perfect a gentleman, so
good-looking. He was a little of a thread-paper as yet, but that defect
was mending daily since he had attained his majority; besides, the
slimness stood out in agreeable relief to the early tendency to heavy
weights and large outlines on the part of the city men. And nobody could
refuse to grant that Sir Hugo’s clear olive skin, high nose, open
forehead and peaked chin became him exceedingly. He was clever,
pleasant, and high-bred. In short, he had only one fault; he was too
easily pleased, too much inclined to be everybody’s body--so that his
conquest, if he were conquered in a special sense, would argue rather a
piece of good luck, a happy accident, than a decided choice where he was
concerned, and a triumphant victory for his conqueror. But could there
ever be a smaller spot on the sun?
The commotion occasioned by the advent of Sir Hugo Willoughby disturbed
the equanimity of even so self-controlled a young lady as Claribel
Drysdale. She was conscious of a wish to be introduced to the stranger.
She studied her toilet as other Glasgow girls--competitors for his ready
smiles--studied theirs. She was gratified by receiving his tribute of
admiration. She listened complacently to the little meaning suggestions
and half-veiled prophecies of her friend, Lady Semple.
Her ladyship had suddenly developed a capacity for match-making on
Caribel’s account. It was a shame to her--Lady Semple--the matron told
herself, never to have done anything of this kind on Claribel Drysdale’s
behalf before. But then Lady Semple knew that Claribel looked high,
while, on the other hand, it was not every gentleman in her ladyship’s
circle who would care to have Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale, much as Lady Semple
herself liked them in their own place, for _beau père_ and _belle mère_.
However, Sir Hugo was young, and good-natured, and much in love with
Glasgow already, and Lady Semple did not think Lady Willoughby--the
dowager in prospect--would make any serious objection, particularly as
Claribel Drysdale ought to have quite a handsome fortune, and was in all
respects decidedly presentable. Lady Willoughby was too kind and
reasonable, and too devoted to her son to form an insurmountable
obstacle.
Of course Claribel would not have done for Dick, even if the Honourable
Lilias had been out of the question, with the whole Drysdale clan, and
all that was objectionable in their rusticity continually turning up.
But it was a far cry to Willoughby Court; and if any of the Drysdales,
except Claribel, ever found their way there, as certainly they ought to
do at some time, seeing they were quite respectable people, it would
simply be as birds of passage.
Yes, the match might do very well, though it would not in any
circumstances have suited Dick, who had never thought of it. It might
be the very thing for Sir Hugo, who, from all Lady Semple could hear,
was too impulsive and heedless. He would be all the better for a wife
like Clary Drysdale to look after him. She would make him an excellent
wife, of whom any man in any position might he proud; and Lady Semple
would be very glad to help Claribel to such a position--it would be a
graceful act. Her ladyship had found her young friend a great
acquisition at Semple Barns. She was exceedingly sensible, and had
wonderful powers of adaptation and _savoir faire_.
Lady Semple knew she was standing in her own light, for she would miss
Claribel when she was gone; but no selfish consideration ought to be
suffered to spoil a young girl’s brilliant prospects. The Vaughan girls
need not be disappointed, for it could not be expected that Sir Hugo
would think of either of them. They were too old, had no beauty to
signify, and no fortune, while their style, which might weigh with city
men, was nothing to him.
Claribel Drysdale was proud and delicate-minded. She made no unbecoming
advances to Sir Hugo. She vouchsafed him no further encouragement than
she allowed to other men beyond the range of merchants and
manufacturers; but she consented to meet him wherever he was to be met.
She smiled graciously on his acceptance of an invitation to dine at
Drysdale Hall, which auld Tam, not to be outdone by his neighbours, had
sent Sir Hugo after calling on him. Clary’s smile was in spite of the
consideration, which none of the family realized as she comprehended it,
that there were halls and halls; that is to say, that Drysdale Hall and
Willoughby Court should not be mentioned in the same breath.
In all this Claribel had lost sight of Eneas Mackinnon. He had slipped
out of her thoughts, had been superseded by the glamour surrounding
another man, who promised to fulfil the desire of the girl’s heart, the
dream of her youth. Perhaps it may be said, small blame to her for it,
so instantaneously, without any sign of resistance, did the Lieutenant
acquiesce in her decision, and withdraw from the faintest approach to
competition with his well-endowed rival. Only a shade more weariness in
his weary, handsome face, and the dying out of a spark of hope--it had
never been more than a spark--in his hopeless, not unkindly eyes,
betokened any sense of a change in her manner, and a change in the world
to him. But, after all, Claribel, with the exception of young Tam, was
the least moved of any in the house by the coming of Sir Hugo.
Auld Tam had grown accustomed to ‘Sir Jeames’ as a neighbour and friend;
but a fine young English baronet, said to be cousin to an earl, was a
guest deserving first-rate entertainment at Drysdale Hall. It was worth
while showing to him its unapproachable advantages, and the best of
everything which money--its master’s earning--could procure for him.
Therefore, Tam was exacting and disposed to be fussy about the feast. He
interfered in the matter of the dinner, to the disgust of the trained
cook and housekeeper who had been foisted on Mrs. Drysdale. He ordered
and counter-ordered--sent out emissaries from Glasgow with the
delicacies which were not in season, and then supplanted them by other
messengers with more cates which would not go with the first. During the
whole time, the man himself would have preferred green kail to turtle
soup, and a ‘kipped herring’ to turbot. He changed the wines more than
once, putting himself out and overturning the arrangement of his cellar.
He fidgeted about the decanting and non-decanting of the bottles, their
heating and cooling, with the necessity for keeping the different
vintages distinct.
Mrs. Drysdale’s fine temper was as nearly ruffled as it could be. Tam
might have had a little consideration for her, she said to herself. He
might have thought the burden of the dinner was on her, not on him; that
it was trial enough for her to face more fine folk, after she had grown
accustomed to ‘Sir Jeames’ and Lady Semple, without making her miserable
beforehand. She did not know what had come over Tam. He had got his own
way with young Tam, and it was flying in the face of a kind Providence
not to be content. She feared prosperity was wasting her Tam. She could
have found it in her heart to hate this Sir Hughie--or whatever he might
be called--who caused so much trouble.
But the next moment auld Eppie was sharing young Eppie’s joyous
excitement about the grand young Englishman. They were deep in a happy
consultation as to what flowers the two could coax from the
head-gardener--almost as formidable a subordinate as Mrs. Wood--to
adorn, according to the women’s pretty devices, not only the
drawing-room and the dinner-table, but the picture-gallery, to which Tam
always took his cherished guests before or after dinner, as the light
suited. The two were like an elder and a younger sister as they ran
about, for the bonnie, buxom matron was still light and active,
disposing pots of ferns and azaleas, jonquils, hyacinths, and heaths,
wherever the pair imagined pots could be set to advantage. If auld Tam
could have seen his wife and daughter just then, all his small
difficulties would have vanished, everything would have appeared right
in a moment.
Young Eppie did not dispute the fiat which had originally come from
Clary, that since she--Eppie--was not to be sent to school, she could
not appear at dinner when there was company at Drysdale Hall till she
had attained the mature age of eighteen. Eppie, like her mother, was a
reasonable, submissive being, unless when her affections made her stand
at bay. She was perfectly well pleased only to be seen in the
drawing-room with the tea and coffee, where, she said, Sir James and
Lady Semple would speak to her, and maybe Mr. Horsburgh and ‘Captain
Mackinnon,’ for she had seen them before, with any of the other ladies
and gentlemen she knew. But she did not expect to be introduced to Sir
Hugo Willoughby, for Clary would want him to hand her cup and turn over
her music; besides, if he were so very grand, she--Eppie--could not tell
what to say to him; she would be frightened out of her wits.
Guy Horsburgh, knowing something of the host and his ways, made an
appointment with Tam at his office, and asked him to drive out the two
young men to Drysdale Hall in time to see the stables and offices, which
were in Sir Hugo’s line.
Naturally, Tam complied with excellent grace, and he had been enabled to
discourse, _con amore_, on his outward possessions for three-quarters
of an hour before the gentleman entered the house.
Sir Hugo had listened, admired, been interested, been bored, been
tolerant, felt that a great deal of trouble was being taken on his
account; and thought that Horsburgh had brought it on them, for he
himself hated to give trouble. Sir Hugo wished that he had not to
suspect the old gentleman--Tam, in his prime, seemed a veteran to the
lad, little over twenty--was not blowing his own trumpet. But very
likely his cattle and so forth were his hobby. It was not only soldiers
and sailors, but men of every calling--tinkers and tailors, too, he
dared say--who delighted to turn Cincinnatus when they got the
opportunity. He supposed farm-buildings and stables were in his line,
but he would rather have seen the dye-works; only, if he had to be shown
by demonstration that there were no such vats in the country as the
Drysdale Hall vats, and had each appraised at its proper value--well,
it was a trifle tedious, begging the old gentleman’s pardon, and he
would not broach the subject, but would hold everybody excused for the
omission.
CHAPTER XX.
‘A YOUNG THING JUST COME FRAE HER MAMMY.’
As the party were approaching the main entrance, Tam, who was leading
the van, caught a glimpse of an under-gardener, whom he judged to be the
defaulter in some trifle amiss with the terrace that had just caught the
master’s orderly eye. Without ceremony, he turned aside to call the
culprit to account. In the meantime, Guy Horsburgh saw young Tam, who
had been over at the works, coming up the avenue, and waited to meet
him. Sir Hugo, thinking the others were close at his heels, entered by
the door which the servant had thrown open, and was shown by himself to
the picture-gallery.
Sir Hugo was not alone. One of the daughters of the house,
doubtless--though surely not the one he had seen before--had not gone to
dress, and was bending over a flower-stand, and so intent upon shifting
a pot that she did not notice anybody was there.
‘Allow me, Miss Drysdale,’ said Sir Hugo, who had too little
self-consciousness to feel uncomfortable on his own account, advancing
like the pink of courtesy that he was.
Young Eppie started, looked up with parted red lips, and dark eyes so
wide open that the long curling lashes ceased to veil them. So far from
having gone to dress, she had done nothing to repair the result of her
work since luncheon. Her fringe--oh! she could not tell what state her
fringe was in; but she did not believe there was a hair that she had not
pushed out of her eyes or tucked behind her ears half-a-dozen times.
Her hands were green and red from contact with the flower-pots. Her
morning gown was the oldest she possessed, and the one which had
received the worst usage; it was dragged to one side because Eppie had
just trodden on the hem and torn a portion of the skirt out of ‘the
gathers.’ All this when the ‘Allow me, Miss Drysdale,’ spoken by an
English tongue, confirmed, beyond the possibility of mistake, the
impression which her single startled glance had at once conveyed. This
strange young man, with his horrible ease, was the very Sir Hugo
Willoughby for whom everybody had been making such preparations. What
would Clary think! What would her father--nay, what would her mother
say, if they knew the plight in which their chief guest had found Eppie!
With a little half-stifled shriek of dismay which she could not
altogether repress, Eppie, obeying the first impulse, turned and fled
like the wind to the nearest door. In a moment she disappeared, as if no
such disordered young figure had disturbed the propriety of the
beautiful room. The only relic she had left behind was the very vestige
which had remained of Cinderella--one little slipper had dropped in the
flight.
Sir Hugo stood amazed--amused. Was this the behaviour of the young
Glasgow ladies when they were taken by surprise? But, ye gods! what a
beautiful young Hebe. He advanced a step, stooped, and picked up the
morocco slipper, regarding it critically. It was small enough to have
belonged to Cinderella, or Atalanta--if Atalanta had donned a slipper.
At the same time it was a good deal worn, and looked peeled and
discoloured, as if it had run over rough stones and damp grass, as well
as soft carpets. Finally, it had been thrust down at the heel in a
flagrantly slip-shod fashion, for which the wearer had been punished by
her loss. But, poor little thing, how frightened she had looked! Was
she kept in great order by strict dragons of mother and elder sisters?
That must have been an elder sister whom he had met several times, with
an air about her as if she could enforce good manners. Would the little
one be exposed and brought to book if she were found out? Should he not
screen her to the best of his ability? He put the disreputable small
slipper into his pocket, and laughed softly. It was the first personal
adventure which had happened to him since he came to Glasgow. It was the
first thing of the kind that had ever befallen him.
Presently the current of Sir Hugo’s meditations was arrested, and he was
recalled to ordinary life by the entrance of the other men, and the
appearance of Mrs. Drysdale, who had dressed early, because she knew the
picture-gallery would be shown, and she would be wanted while Tam
slipped away to dress. _She_ did not look much like a dragon, anyhow,
Sir Hugo reflected in parenthesis, as he was introduced to her, while he
knew from whom the little one had her lovely face. These Glasgow fellows
had the best of everything.
Mrs. Drysdale, on her side, leapt to the conclusion that, to be a fine
young English baronet, ‘Sir Hughie’ seemed an innocent lad enough--not
more alarming than Guy Horsburgh, who had been a schoolfellow of young
Tam’s.
Auld Tam was already turning to the pictures, ‘looking sharp,’ and eager
to get through with the job in hand--to introduce the visitor to the
Drysdale Hall collection, and witness his surprise and pleasure, before
the owner had to go.
‘I cannot promise you much, Sir Hugie. What can one man do? and it seems
only the other day I took to the trade. Young Tam, there, may gather
something worth a man’s coming to see. I have hardly an auld maister,
unless you can call this Keep--which is doubtful--and that Veroneese
fit representatives of the auld schules. To tell the truth, I have not a
great eye for their merits. Give me the modern artists that can draw,
whose colours are not all gone off to fiddle-broon.’
‘But there is your Grooze, Tam, and your Missoneer,’ Mrs. Drysdale
reminded her husband. ‘You’re surely forgetting them.’
‘No, mother, but they are not auld maisters, more by token Missoneer is
living, like Breeton--I’ve a great wark with Breeton--and Weelems, Sir
Hugie. I went out of my way and paid eight hunder doun for a canvas of
Breeton’s of no great size, as you’ll see in a moment; but, man, his
peasants are to the life. And there’s a Madame Broon here, that I like
in her work as well as any woman going. But I must be aff, not to keep
the dinner waiting. Mind, mother, the Milly, and do not forget the
Wilkie, and the Raeburn, for the honour of auld Scotland. But take care
you leave the gentlemen in time to change their feet [boots].’
Mrs. Drysdale did her best with such simplicity and goodwill, that she
defied criticism, either on her pronunciation or her art knowledge. Sir
Hugo listened with even more than the courtesy natural to him. Presently
he turned aside to a flower-stand.
‘You have rival colours here, Mrs. Drysdale. What a show of hyacinths
you must have! You beat my mother; and she is rather famous for her
hyacinths.’
‘It is very kind of you to say so, sir,’ Mrs. Drysdale acknowledged
gratefully. ‘But I know Scotland cannot compete with England in garden
flooers. We’ve to send to English nurseries for our best roses and
geraniums. But if you like our hyacinths, I wish you had been a little
later and seen our rerenunculeses. Tam--that’s Maister Drysdale--is very
prood of our rerenunculeses. They can do nothing to them at Barley
Riggs.’
‘Horsburgh, you wretched stickler for a syllable,’ Sir Hugo attacked his
friend when they were in the privacy of their rooms, ‘why did you nearly
break down at the “rerenunculeses”?’
‘I cannot tell,’ said Horsburgh, grinning again at the recollection.
‘She might as well have said “rhinoceroses,” when she was at it.’
‘You might have upset me,’ his companion continued to reproach the
offender with youthful severity; ‘and rather than have hurt the good
soul I would have swallowed all the ranunculuses in the world. Never
mind, I saw a vision before you came, in which I am glad you did not
share--you were not worthy of it.’
‘Claribel or Eppie, I take it. Well, they are both handsome enough
girls, in different styles, and they’ll have lots of tin.’
‘Handsome enough!’ echoed Sir Hugo indignantly, while he did not deign
to notice the mercenary reference to ‘tin.’
But he said no more.
In the meantime young Eppie was hiding her discomfited blushes in her
own room, where she not only blushed, but cried a little, she felt so
ashamed of herself and of the discredit she had brought on her family.
Then her sense, of which she was by no means destitute, came to her aid.
It was no such catastrophe after all. Very likely Sir Hugo had hardly
looked at her. She could not tell what he was like, or what he wore,
further than that he was slim and brown like Dr. Peter, yet with an
air--she supposed that of a court--which did not belong to Dr. Peter.
Sir Hugo, if it was Sir Hugo, must have taken off his overcoat, for he
had on a black coat and a white--was it a white or a black tie? she had
forgotten; and no doubt he had forgotten all about her by this time,
particularly as he must have seen she was not grown up. Then she
appeased her tender conscience by assuring herself that she would tell
mother all about it, the moment she came into the drawing-room.
She--Eppie--would not mind being scolded. Mother’s scolding was not hard
to bear--it was when she was vexed her young daughter could not stand
it.
At this stage of her reflections Eppie was able to turn with renewed
interest to her white ‘frock’--she called it frock, as her mother
did--and the pink ribands she was to wear with it, for the evening.
Clary came in dressed, to see what Eppie was going to make of herself,
and did not notice anything amiss with her sister. But Clary, from the
æsthetic height of one of her creamy tints, set off by filmy lace,
looked disparagingly at Eppie’s pure, clear pink ribands.
‘Child, I wish you would not always wear pink,’ objected Claribel.
‘Nicol will bring you some other trimming and put it on for you. I
should say some dim blue, or even maize or salmon colour, or pale coral
would be better.’
‘Thank you, Clary, but I prefer pink,’ said Eppie, with a mind of her
own.
‘You don’t know that the colour has gone out,’ Clary explained calmly,
from the stronghold of her superior information.
‘Have roses gone out?’ inquired Eppie quickly. Then she coloured, and
excused herself--‘Oh! Clary, I hope you do not think I’m prideful, and
mean that I am like a rose.’
‘Prideful! I wish you would not use such words,’ exclaimed Clary, more
in resigned despair than in active anger. ‘But whether you are like a
rose or not, you are too pink yourself to wear pink, especially when
nobody else is seen in the colour.’
‘Mother is seen,’ said Eppie, with girlish dignity, ‘and I wish to be
like her. There is nobody else in the whole world that I should care so
much to be like. But neither of us will ever look so well as mother.’
Clary shrugged her white shoulders, then she said good-naturedly:
‘I dare say you are right, if my mother would do herself justice. But
because she has an old-fashioned fancy, I do not see that is any reason
why you should adopt it.’
Eppie shook her head and closed her lips.
Claribel said, with a laugh:
‘I suppose you must please yourself, you spoilt child,’ and went away.
‘As if mother did not set [become] pink, which she wears to please
father,’ protested Eppie junior; ‘and if she sets it, I must set it too,
for I am a little like mother. Anyway, I’ll wear it to bear her
company.’
During dinner, Tam was bent not only on getting everybody to do honour
to the good fare, but to do the greater honour because of the expense
and trouble with which it had been brought there.
‘I believe the takes of salmon are not promising well this year, Sir
Hugie; every fish costs five pounds to this day. Let mother help you to
another slice, Leddy Semple. The lamb ought to be first-rate. Sir
Jeames, from what it fetches. No, we can do nothing to early peas and
petawties like these in the garden here, till the end of the month of
June, at the sunset; but go into the market and open your purse-strings,
and you may have sparrygrass and strawberries in Januar’.’
In vain young Tam, with a heightened colour, exerted himself to get up
dinner-table talk in a manner foreign to him, while Clary, in her
unruffled beauty, showed the greatest imperturbability. She was
impartially agreeable to Dick Semple and Eneas Mackinnon--between whom
she sat. At the same time she took approving note of every look and word
of Hugo’s, where he occupied the place of honour at her mother’s right
hand. Her observation of the latter was undisturbed by the uncertainty
of what Mrs. Drysdale might be saying to the Englishman. Clary’s good
opinion of herself and her claims helped her to be reasonable. It
enabled her to extend an amnesty to her relations for whatever offences
they might be guilty of, and to expect the rest of the world to be
equally indulgent. Not even the excitement of the aspiration she was
indulging, and the rivalry she proposed to enter upon--all in the most
maidenly way--could provoke her to lose her balance, or force her to
feel nervous, agitated, quickly vexed.
It was worse with auld Tam when the wine, on which he piqued himself,
came more to the front. This wine had been round the world, and that had
lain in other cellars than his, for more than a century. And here was
something from a bin which only he and another man in Glasgy could
import, at any sacrifice.
Sir Hugo had to explain, in self-defence--to save the semicircle of
glasses at his right hand from being filled with a frequency which only
Glasgow heads could stand unimpaired--that his mother had been
captivated with the information that the Prince Consort, when he first
came to England at the age of seventeen, had drunk nothing stronger than
water. She had taken to drinking water constantly, that her boy might be
reared as simply. The consequence was that though he had lived to know
what a college ‘wine’ meant, it was an acquired taste with him. He could
not in sincerity profess, though Mr. Drysdale might well be shocked at
his ignorance, that he, Sir Hugo, knew much more than the first
rudiments of the subject. He was afraid his mother had rashly imperilled
the chance of his ever becoming a good judge of wines.
Auld Tam stared a little, and it crossed his mind how many young Glasgow
men would hold their claim to be gentlemen irreparably injured by such
an admission as Sir Hugo had not hesitated to make, though he had
incurred his disqualification by following the example of a prince.
Then Tam allowed his better nature to come to the front, and be heard on
the question.
‘Your mither must be a good woman,’ he said magnanimously. ‘But if she
exercised the same strictness with regard to your victuals, I should
expect to find you confined to vegetables, like the new sect of
vegetarians, or content with bread and cheese instead of roast beef.’
‘Oh no! we were not anchorites,’ said Sir Hugo, laughing, ‘though my
mother does not care much what she eats, and she would have been annoyed
to see me set great store on my plate when I was a boy. I believe she
was tempted to regard schoolboys as a combination of ogres and
gourmands; but she always took care that her friends should not suffer
from her theories.’
‘This is very interesting,’ said Lady Semple. ‘I like men and women to
strike out original views.’
‘But unfortunately this is not original,’ said Sir Hugo carelessly. ‘It
merely means that my mother was a great admirer of the character of the
late Prince Consort. She set about trying if she could find anything: in
his training to account for the satisfactory result. She had the
presumption--which may be forgiven in a mother, I suppose--to seek to
graft that something on her son’s experience.’
‘You must have been a great thocht to your mither,’ said Mrs. Drysdale
simply.
‘I am afraid I was,’ said Sir Hugo, between jest and earnest; ‘an only
son generally is.’
‘You may say that; I ken it to my cost!’ exclaimed Mrs. Drysdale, with a
look at young Tam that awoke a laugh.
‘My impression is that the conversation is getting too personal--what do
you say, Mr. Tam Drysdale?’ Sir Hugo appealed to his fellow-sufferer.
‘My mother will tell you that only sons are either deils or daws,’ said
young Tam.
‘I have heard of the deil, and I am acquainted with the daw of Rheims,’
said Sir Hugo; ‘but what is he doing here? He is not so far removed from
a deil as to form a contrast--he is the incarnation of mischief.’
‘Oh! but he is a duffer in this instance,’ explained young Tam.
‘Well, folks may seek to fricht me as they like about Sir Hughie
Willoughby being sic a grand young gentleman,’ Mrs. Drysdale confided to
Lady Semple when the ladies repaired to the drawing-room. ‘I’ll never
heed another word they say I’m sure he’s quite hamely, speaking of his
leddy mither, not as “my leddy,” but “my mither,” as freely as my son
Tam might speak of me. I can never think ill of a young lad that is
ready to speak of his mither, Lady Semple.’
‘Think ill, my dear Mrs. Drysdale! why should you? You must think
nothing save good of Sir Hugo. I am sure he is most anxious to win your
favour.’
‘It is very good of you to say so, my leddy,’ said Eppie senior, with
smiling incredulity. ‘But what for should he care to have my favour? A
fine gentleman has more in his head. He was very pleasant all the
denner-time, I will say that for him; but I was not so besotted as not
to see he would have been the better of anither pairtner than an auld
wife. I kenned it was ane of the rules of gude company that he should
take me into the dining-room, but I grudged the needcessity for
him--‘deed did I. He would have been far better waured on one of the
young leddies that are ready to look sweet on him--and I dinna blame
them, for he’s a maist comely, civil-spoken lad.’
‘My dear Mrs. Drysdale,’ Lady Semple protested again, ‘you must not
depreciate yourself in this fashion. What are you thinking of? You must
not call yourself “an auld wife.” Why, you’ll be teaching Dick the
trick, to practise on me before I know what I’m about. I am sure you are
ever so many years younger than I am, and I can tell you I do not mean
to be set aside, in the light of an old woman, for a dozen years to
come.’
‘But the young folk maun have their day, and take our place,’ pleaded
Eppie’s soft voice. ‘What have we to do, Leddy Semple, but make room for
them, and prood to do it?’
‘Here is somebody that will not be made room for,’ said Lady Semple,
coming down on young Eppie, before she could spring from the hearth-rug,
on which she had been sitting basking in the glow of the fire--not
unwelcome in the chillness of the April evening--‘somebody in no hurry
to grow up and render her elders superannuated. Eppie, do you call your
mother an old woman?’
‘Mother old!’ cried Eppie, in mingled indignation and alarm, ‘she will
not be old till I am old myself; at least, not till I am thirty or
forty. Father is eight years older than mother, and he is only a
middle-aged man.’
‘Listen to her! That is right, child. I hope Dick will swear as
fervently by my youthfulness.’
The moment Sir Hugo entered the drawing-room, his eyes fell on young
Eppie, and he tried to get near her. She appeared to him a more
Hebe-like vision than before--twice as lovely as he had imagined her. In
vain Clary waited for him, keeping others at a distance. In vain Guy
Horsburgh, tired of the suavities of both the Miss Vaughans, sought
mischievously to draw his friend into their neighbourhood, so that Guy
might escape honourably from his station to more attractive quarters,
by bringing within reach of the arrows showered fruitlessly upon him a
more illustrious, perhaps more vulnerable, prey. In vain Athole Murray,
who was there without Dr. Peter, called away to a patient, was stirred
by young Tam’s discontent to glance with lively curiosity at Prince
Charming. _He_ only wanted to be introduced to young Eppie.
In the meantime the girl, with the weight of trouble on her mind for
what had happened before dinner, flitted about the room, to escape the
guest of the evening, in the style of a restless fairy. She was here and
there and everywhere, like an uncanny will-o’-the-wisp, telling herself,
all the time, that it was a very hard and perverse chance which made the
grand gentleman torment her by coming in her way.
At last her father arrested Eppie by putting his hand on her shoulder,
with the surprised exclamation:
‘Bairn! have you turned yourself into a bird, happing from branch to
branch?’ The next moment he wheeled her round face to face with the
enemy. ‘It is my little girl Eppie, Sir Hugie. Eppie, this is Sir Hugie
Willoughby,’ said auld Tam, in his singleness of heart.
There was no help for it. She could not run away again; she had to
behave as if she had been Clary. She heard the young man mutter
something of having had the pleasure of seeing Miss Eppie Drysdale
before. But it was a slip of the tongue. He did not say another word
which could betray the smallest inclination to expose her. He did not
even speak of pictures or flowers. He only asked her if she liked
yachting, and had ever spent two or three days at sea--idle questions,
evidently for the purpose of making conversation. They could have no
reference to the grievous scandal of his having found her, when it was
time for the guests to assemble in the picture-gallery, with dirty
hands, ‘towsy’ hair, and a torn frock, and of her having run off,
without waiting to beg his pardon, leaving such an old slipper behind
her.
As Eppie saw oblivion settling down on the scrape she had got into, she
began to recover her courage, to look Sir Hugo in the face, and to
think, like her mother, that he was not so grand, and not ‘fearsome’ at
all. He seemed younger than young Tam, and kind and merry. She was ready
to commit more solecisms by chattering to him of ‘Beardie,’ her
Newfoundland, ‘White Breeks,’ Barley Riggs and all the beasts there,
little deaf Willie Finlay, the Glasgow shops, and whatever else came
into her head, when she was prevented by somebody calling upon her to
sing.
For young Eppie’s gift of singing native ballads was already so decided,
and so well known, that where it was concerned, she had broken the
chrysalis of her nonage. She was accustomed to make such music wherever
it was in request--at home, at Barley Riggs, even at Semple Barns,
without thought or fear, as a matter of course. Clary would play the
accompaniments, and Eppie would sing, in her fresh, sweet, tuneful
voice, ‘Logan Braes,’ or ‘The bonnie, bonnie broom o’ Cowdenknowes,’ a
room full of people hanging on her notes, as on the carol of some
wonderful bird.
To-night she sang a quaint, old-fashioned ditty--which was a favourite
of auld Tam’s, and for that matter of young Eppie’s. It had some
appropriateness to those who knew the singer. It began with the wistful
appeal of a mother to her son--probably an only son, like Sir Hugo or
young Tam:
‘Whaur ha’e you been a’ day,
My boy Tammy?
Whaur ha’e you been a’ day,
My boy Tammy?’
Tammy, thus adjured, has the candour and tender tact to reply:
‘I’ve been by burn and flowery brae,
Meadow green and mountain grey,
Courtin’ o’ this young thing,
Just come frae her mammy.’
The mother, not unpropitiated, goes on to ask:
‘An’ whaur got ye that young thing,
My boy Tammy?
Whaur got ye that young thing,
My boy Tammy?’
To which the son gives answer:
‘I got her doon in yonder howe,
Smiling on a bonny knowe,
Herding ae wee lamb an’ ewe
For her puir mammy.’
Then he makes a frank statement of his wooing of ‘the young thing,’ with
her resistance to his suit and naïve assertion of the claims of his
powerful rival:
‘The smile gaed aff her bonnie face,
“I mauna leave my mammy;
She’s gi’en me meat, she’s gi’en me claes.
She’s been my comfort a’ my days;
My father’s death brocht monie waes--
I canna leave my mammy.”’
The difficulty is triumphantly overcome by the lover’s generosity:
‘“We’ll tak’ her hame and mak’ her fain,
My ain kind-hearted lammie;
We’ll gi’e her meat, we’ll gi’e her claes.
We’ll be her comfort a’ her days.”
The wee thing gi’es her hand, an’ says,
“There, gang an’ ask my mammy.”’
The little drama winds up with the approving question from the other
mother--large-hearted like her son:
‘Has she been to the kirk wi’ thee,
My boy Tammy?
Has she been to the kirk wi’ thee,
My boy Tammy?’
To which there is the glad, soft assurance:
‘She has been to the kirk wi’ me.
An’ the tear was in her e’e;
For oh! she’s but a young thing,
Just come frae her mammy.’
Mrs. Drysdale furtively wiped her eyes, auld Tam cleared his throat; Sir
Hugo listened like one entranced, and haunted Eppie till the party broke
up.
‘I did not know Willoughby was so fond of music,’ Guy Horsburgh turned
the matter over in his mind.
‘Talk of Sir Hugo not giving himself airs!’ said one of the Vaughan
sisters. ‘What do you call a young man’s neglecting grown-up people to
amuse himself with an unformed child, if such conduct cannot be classed
as airs?’
‘He’s making his way with the little one as one means of getting at
Claribel. I don’t know that it is necessary, and I did not think that
young men had been so modest nowadays, but it is refreshing that it is
so,’ Lady Semple settled dogmatically.
Claribel witnessed the first secession from the ranks of her admirers,
the first preference on the part of one of them for her younger sister,
with a shade of wonder, but with no other visible emotion, unless it
were a tinge of amusement. She was so completely mistress of herself
that she gave no sign of responding to the dog-like devotion of Eneas
Mackinnon stepping forward to fill once more the vacant place--from
which he had been at no distant date unceremoniously ousted--looking at
her with long, wistful looks. She only made an easy suggestion:
‘Will you help me with this portfolio, Mr. Mackinnon? There are some
water-colour sketches in it, which my father bought the other day, that
I should like to show to Lady Semple. Thanks. Do you care to see them
too? Oh, if you like.’
That night Clary, in her dressing-gown, went into her sister’s room,
where Eppie was combing her hair, with her eyes closing.
‘What is it, Clary?’ asked Eppie in surprise, starting round wide awake.
‘Is there anything the matter?’
‘Nothing at all,’ answered Clary lightly, and began talking and laughing
over the events of the evening--how people had looked and spoken, how
much improved Guy Horsburgh was. Then she asked what was Eppie’s
opinion of Sir Hugo, now that she had seen him.
Eppie was quite ready to give it. He was just like other people, she
thought, only a good deal nicer. Could it be possible that he had such a
wonderful old house, and was cousin to an earl, and might go to Court
and speak to the Queen?
‘Be spoken to by her, you mean,’ corrected Clary.
‘Well, isn’t it the same thing?’ asked unsophisticated Eppie. ‘I did not
have time to ask him about the Queen. I don’t think he would have minded
though I had. He looked as if he would be easier to live with than our
Tam--not that I would like to change Tam, though he is dorty sometimes,’
with sudden relenting towards her brother.
‘I don’t suppose Sir Hugo understands what “dorty” means,’ said Clary,
raising her eyebrows.
‘Oh! but you’re wrong, Clary,’ said Eppie very decidedly; ‘he told me
that he understood every word I sang. He had read Burns, and was fond of
Sir Walter. I was just going to ask him which was his favourite
character in the Waverley Novels, when Mr. Horsburgh came to say the
trap was at the door.’
‘You may have another opportunity of asking him,’ said Clary, a little
vaguely. ‘In the meantime, I came in to tell you that you sang your
best, and looked very well in your white and pink. I am not sure that
pink is not the most becoming colour for you, after all. But I should
like you to have a pink _crêpe de chine_, or something of that sort,
made by Madame Sophie. Pink and silver,’ repeated Clary, with the air of
a connoisseur; ‘I think that would suit you.’
‘Oh, Clary!’ was all that Eppie could say, for she was by no means
insensible to the promotion.
Clary’s dressmaker and pink _crêpe de chine_ and silver--the very idea
was a high compliment.
‘You see I am proud of my pretty little sister, though I don’t wish to
make her vain,’ said Clary, kissing Eppie with real affection, before
the elder lighted her candle and disappeared.
Eppie gasped. Clary proud of her! She lay awake for fully ten minutes
puzzling over the flattering problem. She had always known that Clary
liked her, in the light of their near relationship, though Clary
tormented her with plans for improvement, and made her furious by
proposing to send her away from home. Still Clary was sorry when
she--Eppie--was ill, and did her best for her, and proved to her that
her sister was fond of her in Clary’s quiet, self-occupied fashion. But
‘proud’ was a very different feeling--proud of little, Scotch-speaking,
blundering Eppie, with her lack of accomplishments!
Eppie felt bound in honour to tell Clary what had happened in the
picture-gallery. The girl took the next opportunity when she and Clary
happened to be in the garden together the following morning. But Clary
only laughed, and said:
‘Never mind--what could have put it into your head to run away? Don’t do
it again. On the contrary, you ought to learn to make the best of
yourself. But though it would not look well in me to be childish and
silly, I don’t believe either Sir Hugo or any other man will take it ill
on your part.’
Clary was not speaking sarcastically--she was in perfect good faith.
Eppie did not gasp again, but she lingered behind by the violet-bed,
letting Clary stroll on. In truth, Eppie was overcome by the delicious
consciousness of some attraction in her which disarmed hostility. She
knew she was like her mother, for everybody said so. Therefore she must
be a little bonnie, but she had never suspected that she was so bonnie
as Clary’s words seemed to imply. The discovery did not fill Eppie’s
head with nonsense, as her father and mother would have said: for she
began, after a moment’s innocent elation, to distrust the existence of
youthful beauty, and to seek to under-value it, if it were there. She
was well enough; she might be rather bonnie, inasmuch as she had a share
of mother’s looks; but for the rest, it was only a foolish fancy of
Clary’s, for which Eppie was much obliged to her sister, and would
always like her the better for it. _She_ was handsome, like a picture,
like a queen. Eppie would never look like that--not that it mattered
very much when beauty was only skin-deep, and people liked each other
just as well without it. Would father and mother care for her a grain
less though she were to be seized with small-pox to-morrow, and be left
a disfigured object for the rest of her days? There was Athole Murray.
Everybody said, and Eppie’s eyes told her, that Athole was plain, in
spite of her eyes, with a wide mouth and a dumpy nose; but then she was
so clever and nice; and Eppie shrewdly suspected, if nobody else did,
that young Tam would sooner have a pleasant word from Athole Murray’s
witty tongue than all the smiles of all the beauties in Glasgow.
The truth was, Clary had seen Eppie with another person’s eyes, and her
own were too reasonable to remain sealed in such a case. She had
received an enlightenment. It was the first tribute, little as Eppie
suspected it, to the possibility of her becoming Lady Willoughby of
Willoughby Court, or some equally distinguished person, and Clary was
ready to pay the tribute. There was nothing grudging or unmagnanimous in
the young woman’s pride.
‘Tam,’ Mrs. Eppie confided to her husband in the privacy of their
luxurious chamber, after she had sung the praises of Sir Hugo till she
had nearly sung auld Tam asleep, ‘did you not see that he was ta’en with
our bairn?’
‘What, Clary!’ cried Tam, rousing himself to the dawning glory of
becoming father-in-law to a baronet and squire of many acres.
‘No, Eppie; the lamb, who had no more thocht of what was in the lad’s
mind than when she was a wee thing playing round my knee.’
‘Then leave her without the thocht,’ said Tam gruffly. ‘For shame,
woman, to even a lassock like her to a lad of ony kind, aboon a’ to a
lad by richts no in her ain station--here the day, and awa’ the morn!
She’s not dreaming of lads, and you may catch her leal licht heart and
brush the bloom aff, like the dew from the gowans in the morning, and
break it before she’s weel in her teens.’
‘I never said I would breathe a word o’t to her, Tam; I would not be so
bold. A young lassie’s heart is like the kirk itsel’--no to be lichtly
entered,’ said Mrs. Drysdale reproachfully; ‘and what for should I seek
to promote sic a distinction for little Eppie? Lifted up and lonely, and
torn from a’ her frien’s; her that is friendly and fond of her ain folk!
You and me never to see her again, or ken richt how she’s farin’, unless
aince or twice in as mony years! All the same, the fine lad’s ta’en with
the bairn. You may tak’ my word for it, Tam.’
‘And all the same, you would gie her to him, and hae your reward in
kennin’ young Eppie a fine leddy, though everything were to happen as
you say.’
‘I would not stand in her road, Tam; nor would you,’ said Mother Eppie,
with spirit.
‘Have it any way you like then, and let me sleep,’ said auld Tam, with a
pretence at despair. ‘But mind, the felly’s going back to Cambridge in
little more than a week, and there’s small chance of our seeing his face
again, even if he had not uncles and aunties, and what not, to come
forrit and cry out at his demeaning himsel’ to think of matching his
title with a bleacher and dyer’s dochter.’
‘He’s coming back to see mair of Scotland and Glasgy in the Long
Vacation. I heard him say that mysel’; and he’s of age and his ain
maister, with a gude mither, that Leddy Semple says would never conter
him in onything he set his heart on, that was richt! And you ken, Tam,
you’re a man in a big way--no just a common bleacher and dyer; while
you’ve often telled me bleachin’ and dyein’ and calico-printin’ will
come to the front of the treds. You can gie your twa lasses muckle
tochers. No doubt I would be wae for my bonnie bairn to gang so far awa’
from me, where I could not see her sweet face ilka day of my life,
though she would never forget you and me, however we were sindered, for
a’ her grandeur--that I’ll come bund for. But, eh, Tam, to think of our
ain little Eppie being “my leddy”!’
‘Hoot, awa’ with you, big Eppie! you’re takin’ leave of your senses!’
Tam put an end to the conversation.
But though he was too much of a man to own it, the feminine ambition
tickled him mightily. He fell asleep and dreamt--now of saying an
eternal farewell to his darling--now of seeing her with a coronet on her
head (it was easy to change a baronet into a baron in a dream)--on her
way to a State ball at Buckingham Palace, or the opening of the House of
Lords, he was not sure which.
CHAPTER XXI.
SIR HUGO DRAWN BY ‘LE GRAND SIMPLE.’
Before Sir Hugo quitted Glasgow and returned to Cambridge, he rode out
and paid a call at Drysdale Hall, instead of leaving his card. But he
was not shown into the picture-gallery. No Cinderella was about the
drawing-room or the hall. Indeed, he was unfortunate in missing both of
the daughters of the house, who were in Glasgow. He only saw Mrs.
Drysdale, and his solitary small consolation was in earnestly
recommending himself to that friendly woman.
During this conversation. Sir Hugo caught at the casual mention of a
lecture on Health, to be given by Dr. Peter Murray to the work-people at
Drysdale Haugh, at which some of the members of their employer’s family
were to be present. He was not familiar with any lectures except
university lectures. He had never been at a lecture to operatives. He
had heard of Dr. Peter Murray as an original--not a mute, but a
comparatively inglorious--man of learning and science.
The young Englishman worried Guy Horsburgh into taking him to listen to
what Guy was persuaded was not in Sir Hugo’s line; anyhow, Sir Hugo was
punished for his pains. The lecture was clever and well delivered, as
well as homely and practical. Moreover, the operatives came to hear it.
Among them was Lady Semple, whose last hobby was hygiene. But the
deputation from Drysdale Hall consisted of auld Tam and young Tam, who
had got up the lecture, and Mrs. Drysdale, who accompanied her husband
from pure love of his company, and because she owed Athole Murray a
visit.
After all, the scene of Dr. Peter’s lecture was not a likely place in
which to meet Clary and Eppie. But in spite of the unreasonableness of
his expectations, Sir Hugo felt a good deal disgusted by their
nonfulfilment, and for a time put up his back at the whole affair, in a
manner that would have tended to impair his universal popularity, had
not his genial temper recovered itself before it was too late. Then, in
the revulsion of feeling, he began to admire the lecture, the lecturer,
the audience of respectable, hard-headed, sound-hearted working men and
women almost as extravagantly as he had admired everything in Glasgow.
And the young man was positively enchanted with Barley Riggs, to which
he and his friend Horsburgh went, on the hospitable invitation of Dr.
Peter, to have a cup of tea with Lady Semple and the Drysdales at Miss
Murray’s tea-table, before they returned home to dinner.
Sir Hugo had no particular thirst for tea, but the enthusiastic side of
his temperament was caught by the new surroundings. He had only twice
before made the acquaintance of establishments equally plain and simple,
and at the same time bearing unmistakable marks of culture--once when he
was at school in Germany, and once in the house of a professor at
Harvard, which he had visited during a tour in America the previous
summer. In each case he had fallen violently in love with the example.
What appeared to Sir Hugo the quaint homeliness, together with the real
refinement, and in the case of Barley Riggs, the little foreign touches
which showed that a man had travelled afar and yet kept faithful to his
first love, seized hold of his impulsive fancy, just as Eppie Drysdale’s
rusticity and exquisite sweetness had captivated the same rampant
imagination.
Sir Hugo persuaded himself that _le grand simple_ was his _beau idéal_,
that he cared little for the local standing and antiquarian glory of
Willoughby Court--at least, that if he were not Sir Hugo, he would be a
young Dr. Peter, and that, on the whole, he would prefer to be a Dr.
Peter. He was sure that he would like, above all things, to have such a
study, parlour, and living-room as that at Barley Riggs, to be waited on
by a single rosy-cheeked maid-servant, to go and come when he chose, to
be refreshed by tea and a poached egg, or a slice of mutton ham, instead
of a dinner of half a dozen courses. The notion belonged to the
attributes which had rendered Sir Hugo, ten years before, the most eager
young mock Robinson Crusoe that ever sprang from a high civilization. He
was very boyish still, in spite of his easy good-breeding and his having
come into his kingdom. What young Eppie Drysdale called ‘the heap of
beasts’ at Barley Riggs was as fascinating to him as to her. It was
night, and they were most of them in their sheds and roosts; but a few
streamed forth--sidling, fluttering, barking, mewing, twittering--to
hail their owners. Sir Hugo would have liked to provide himself with Dr.
Peter’s lantern and go round on a tour of inspection. The lovely
moonlight in some respects supplied the place of the lantern, and shone
white on the wealth of spring flowers and on the cribs and perches of
the animals.
There must be something subtle and intoxicating in moonlight; if not in
all moonlight, in special kinds, such as that which shone on Barley
Riggs this night, and got into the brains of all the younger persons
present, so that Dr. Peter could hardly keep them in order. They would
not rest at Athole’s tea-table, nor could its mistress be said to do
much to detain them. She fulfilled her duties, certainly, but when they
were done she was on the wing like the others, not to lose the
moonlight; as if moonlight were not cheap and common--almost as much so
as sunshine--to be had on so many fine nights a month, the whole year
round, during all the years of all the centuries. No doubt there were
favourable conditions which were not always available, such as weather
unusually balmy for a Scotch spring, a pleasant garden to wander in, a
group of young people--three young men and two girls, for Athole had a
Glasgow girl visiting her--thrown together by chance, and suddenly
developing undreamed-of elements of good fellowship. When these
extraordinary advantages did occur, perhaps it was well to improve the
occasion. It might have been the fact of having been caged up with the
rest of the assembly for an hour in a schoolroom, listening to a lecture
of any kind, and then let loose like so many school-children. It might
have been latent impulses stirring young hearts. Whatever the reason,
these older boys and girls, all of them, including young Tam, were gay
and unrestrained. They made much merry movement and noise as they
tramped and flitted about the garden; stooped to examine and insist upon
the points of flowers and vegetables; were mad enough to seek for birds’
nests by the moonbeams, and disturbed the domestic privacy of two broods
of ducks and chickens and a litter of puppies, to expatiate and dispute
on the rival merits of the flabby, woolly specimens.
At length, the quieter company within doors--Dr. Peter, Lady Semple,
auld Tam, and Mrs. Drysdale--were brought to the door to see what the
commotion was about, whether treasure-trove had turned up in the garden,
or treason was being plotted in the usually peaceful domain.
Athole Murray, Sir Hugo, and young Tam were the ringleaders. Athole’s
friend and Guy Horsburgh were merely serving as echoes. Athole was
marching between her two squires, and was bantering them impartially.
Did Sir Hugo really approve of the moon? Had he ever gone a-hunting by
its light? Had he shot a wandering calf for a stag royal? Was Mr. Tom
prepared to treat moonlight as a colour, and to bring it out in
chemicals? There were moonlight beads, why not moonlight calicoes? Might
she be allowed to draw the pattern, and call it the lunatic design?
Both the young men were answering her in the same vein, and young Tam
was speaking as briskly and with as much idle glee as Sir Hugo spoke;
the moonlight had touched and transformed him. For the moment he was as
unthinking and unheeding as a young man need be. The inequalities of
life had ceased to exist for him. He was impervious to his own lack of
desert and hopelessness of attaining his ends. He feared nothing, and
anticipated nothing.
Snatches of the senseless gaiety, which was getting slightly wild,
reached the listeners, and coming from certain sources bewildered the
hearers. Mrs. Drysdale, especially, was much exercised by what she saw
and heard, and confided her perplexity to its natural recipient on the
drive homeward.
‘I have always had a regard for that lassie of Dr. Peter’s,’ she began
slowly; ‘for one thing, she’s a mitherless lassie, and she has played
her part well, and been a gude housekeeper and a gude dochter to her
father--honest man. I have aye thought her a fine lassie, beyond the
common, with her management, and industry, and sense, though maybe Dr.
Peter has spoiled her with learnin’; yet she’s not conceited. I never
reckoned her anythin’ but modest and unaffected, and as gude company as
if she had never opened a book. But, weel-a-wat she’s no bonnie--a
blecket thing with a muckle mouth. What a fine lad and grand gentleman
like Sir Hughie can see in her, to daff [jest] with her as he war doin’
the night, passes my comprehension.’
‘Every man to his mind,’ said Tam a little stiffly. ‘But your new
friend Sir Hugie seems to have a variety of minds. However, he’s
welcome. Nobody will object.’
‘Oh, I pay little heed to a lad, whatever his rank, bein’ led awa’ by a
bit of funnin’ with a lass, and enjoyin’ it at his age,’ said Mrs.
Drysdale quickly. ‘More by token, there was nobody he liked better
standin’ by; and I’m willin’ to make every allowance for a lassie such
as Athole Murray--a clever lassie with a quick tongue that lives alane
with an auld man, hooever fond she may be of him, and is fain to get her
head out with her kind, whiles. But what troubles me is that she has the
face to laugh at oor Tam, who is so far aboon her in his solidity and
superiority, as if he had been ony triflin’ lad like Sir Hughie.’
‘If you noticed so much as that, mother,’ said Tam with decision, ‘you
might have gone farther and seen that the felly did not find faut with
bein’ laughed at by her; he was carryin’ her on as if the joke were
marry to his banes.’
‘It would hae been a pity in him to condescend to be wrathful,’ said
Eppie, holding her head high; ‘but she should mind what she’s about, and
no’ take sic liberties--they are no’ becomin’ in a young lass.’
‘And so should he mind,’ corrected Tam, holding the scales more evenly
between the offending parties, and speaking sharply, ‘for this will
never do.’
‘What will never do, Tam?’ cried Eppie, in a high key of mingled
indignation and derision. ‘Have you gane gyte [lost your senses]? Do you
think for a moment that oor Tam, who has but to wag his finger to have
the bonniest, brawest lassie, with the biggest tocher in Glasgy, could
be in earnest in makin’ up to a plain-lookin’, ill-dressed lassie like
Athole Murray?’
‘You women think owre muckle of looks and claes [dress],’ protested Tam.
‘Well, it’s the first time I’ve heard you men cast laith at them,’
declared Eppie sarcastically.
‘Onyway,’ cried Tam, ‘there’s mair roads to a man’s heart than by his
een--and mair roads to please them in, too, than by lily skins and red
cheeks, strecht noses and wee mous--though these are all gude things of
their kind. I’m no’ disputin’ it. I’m the last man that should dispute
it--eh, Eppie, my doo! But I dare say if it were examined into, men like
Tam are as often caught by their lugs [ears] as by their een, and you’ll
own that lassie has a tongue that would wile a bird from a tree.’
‘I own naething of the sort,’ said Mother Eppie, fairly nettled; ‘a
tongue that would clip cloots [cut cloth], if that is what you mean. I
never heard sic nonsense as you’ve been speakin’ the nicht, Tam.’
‘I expected you to say sae,’ said Tam composedly; ‘yet not five minutes
syne you were praising the lass to the masthead--you began by not
findin’ words gude enough to wale upon her. And you were richt,’ said
Tam, with sudden emphasis. ‘She’s a perfect leddy--as my auld friend,
whom I’m proud to call sae, Dr. Peter, is every inch a gentleman; she’s
a lass among a thousand. Dod! when I think of what she did for the auld
Miss Mackinnons, I could find it in my heart not only to waur [spend]
Tam upon her, but to count him not half gude enough for her, and a happy
and honoured man if he could get her.’
‘Tam, oor Tam!’ gasped poor Mrs. Drysdale, overcome by the infatuation
of another of her men-folk. ‘But you never thocht enough of my fine
sedate lad. The lassie’s weel enough, forbye she has not a mither. I
never said an ill word of her; but you’re clean daft about her--a
black-a-viced [dark complexioned] thing. I would not give a five-pound
note for every steek [stitch] in her possession.’
‘You need not fash your head, Eppie, my woman,’ said Tam more soberly.
‘If a man lives in the world, he has to use the world’s measurements. I
ken what folk would think and say. For all Athole Murray’s gudeness and
cleverness, and though she’s a leddy born and bred, they would hold her
as little better than a millhand or a bleacher--a plain-headed,
insignificant-looking lass, without a penny, that drew patterns for the
pattern-shop. They would say that young Tam had demeaned himself,
instead of risin’ a step higher in the world. Na, na; it will not do.
Whether young Tam and her are wooin’ Scotch fashion, or waging war,
there must be an end of it. She’s a gude dochter, and a word to Dr.
Peter would be enough, as I would let the chiel, who’ll never have done
with his maggots [whims], ken on the deafest side of his head. But I
want no unpleasantness with an old friend that I can help. The folly may
blow over, or die a natural death of itself; or the lassie, who has wit
enough to see round a corner, may put an end to it by havin’ no more to
say to the perverse beggar.’
‘Athole Murray no more to say to young Tam!’ echoed young Tam’s mother
almost faintly, in her horror at the supposition. She was unable to add
any more stinging suggestion than what was summed up in Miss Janet
Mackinnon’s favourite protest, ‘Set her up!’
Lady Semple had her version of the garden scene, which she confided to
the pages of her diary.
‘That boy, Sir Hugo, does need somebody to look after him. I wish
Claribel Drysdale would be quick in taking him in hand, or she may lose
her chance, and there may be other losses. Is he falling in love all
round, as an introduction to a grand passion for Claribel? These
introductions are not always to be trusted. It was all very well to pay
his devoirs to the little sister, and ensure her being on his side, but
what has Miss Murray got to do with it? There is something piquante
about that girl--the dangerous fascination which enables some plain
women to get the better of all the pretty ones. I am not sure that if
she cared she might not be a greater social success than Claribel--more
original, racier. But the thing is not to be thought of for a moment.
The plain daughter of a country doctor, without the ghost of a fortune!
It would be using poor dear Lady Willoughby quite too badly to entertain
the idea for a second--indeed, not to take strong steps to guard against
it, if it were not that Sir Hugo is going back to his tutor in a week at
the latest. (I wish the man joy of his charge; such romantic boys are
nearly as bad as _mauvais sujets_; I am glad Dick’s romance has taken a
different form.) Besides, Dr. Peter Murray is the soul of honour; there
is nothing to be feared from him; on the contrary, if he dreamed of such
an absurdity, I do believe he would be the first to put a stop to it.’
It was true that Dr. Peter took Athole to task--very gently, however,
and in a few words--before the night was over.
‘My dear, I think you let your spirits run away with you. In the first
place, you ought to have stayed in the house and entertained the married
ladies. Then one of them was Lady Semple, and though she sets little
store on her rank, in a general way, that is no reason why we should do
the same. You ought to have kept Annie [Athole’s visitor] with you, and
left the lads to divert themselves as they liked in the moonlit garden.
There was no great harm done, but it was not like you to be so---- ’
‘So “royd”’ [foolishly gay].
Athole took the word out of his mouth, using one of the Doric
expressions which the Drysdale Haugh mothers applied to their riotous
children. She shook her head and smiled a little, while her face was
pale, as if the reflection of the moonlight was still upon it.
‘I don’t know what came over me. I suppose I wanted a “rallyie”
[frolic], as girls like Jeannie say in self-defence. It was ill-judged
and ill-bred. I shall take care it does not happen again; but one has
such a desire sometimes to cast care--which means decorum in this
instance--to the winds, let one’s spirits loose, and give the reins to
the impulse of the moment--in fact, to be carried away like a mad
creature for five minutes--when one is pretty sure to be brought up by
some scrape, and feel sorry and ashamed for the next twenty-four hours.’
As for the two men who had matched Athole, one of them, young Tam, was
not well out of her presence before he suffered a collapse.
Sir Hugo held out longer. ‘Miss Murray is simply charming,’ he told Guy
Horsburgh with effusion, provoking Guy to cry, ‘Hold, enough!
Willoughby, we’ll have you in ecstasies with my grandmother next.’
CHAPTER XXII.
RORY OF THE SHELTIES COME ALIVE AGAIN.
Sir Hugo Willoughby had gone back to Cambridge, vowing fervently to
return in the course of the summer. The injustice done to him was that
everybody did not treat his vows as they deserved, but called to mind
the cynical assertion that promises are, like pie-crust, made to be
broken.
The Drysdales’ set in Glasgow, with Drysdale Hall and Semple Barns, had
returned to their normal interests. The individual who, in the end, was
the least disturbed by the advent of Sir Hugo, who had most nearly
forgotten him, was young Eppie. She was more occupied with the annual
transfer of the family for the month of June, from Drysdale Hall to
‘Glasgow down the water,’ with the daily visits to the pier to see her
father go and come, the mornings when she was to wile him away from
Glasgow, that he might spend them with her and her mother on the Clyde;
the evenings when she was to coax him to take out Beardie to scour the
hills or the sands. Her mind was more engrossed with a Newhaven
fishwife’s costume of pink and white and dark blue, which Clary had
actually encouraged her to get, and with the sea-mew’s wing which young
Tam had given to her. These shining attractions were enough to supersede
all the grand young English squires and baronets that had ever existed
for young Eppie yet.
Trade was undergoing a shrinking process after its tremendous expansion.
The horizon was already clouding over for many of the speculators. Auld
Tam was not without a premonition that he also had been over-daring, and
too splendidly far-reaching in his schemes. He might need all his
resources before the ends met. Still he had no fear. He would weather
the back-draught of the tide, when the high waters of prosperity had
ebbed to the lowest mark of adversity--that as a matter of course; he
would also ride triumphantly, as he had always done, over every
obstacle.
No, auld Tam’s troubles at this time were still born in the bosom of his
family. Young Tam, though he went on steadily enough with the business,
and began to be an efficient aid to his father, disappointed him all the
more by continuing to keep out of society, and to do all his visiting at
Barley Riggs, as if that were the sole house he cared to visit. Auld Tam
could not find that his son received any encouragement beyond the merest
friendly hospitality. Indeed, Athole was not even ostensibly friendly.
Perhaps it would have been safer if she had been a calm matter-of-fact
friend, rather than a jesting foe--not always so much in jest that
there was not a spice of wayward earnestness in her hostility. As for
Dr. Peter, in the innocence of his heart, he suspected no ulterior
motive; and auld Tam hated to be the man to open his friend’s eyes and
to reveal himself in a new character, that of the tyrannical parent and
hardened man of the world. Claribel, too, was fretting her father. After
the brief interlude of Sir Hugo’s passing across the stage, when she had
turned round and paused, in a waiting attitude, for what fortune might
bring her, she had gone back--not so much into receiving Eneas
Mackinnon’s attentions, for he did not take it upon him to pay her
attentions which he could not vindicate by a statement of his prospects
next day--but by the accepting of his mute allegiance. She was getting
herself associated with him, talked of in connection with him. Lady
Semple was beginning to look grave, to forbid Dick to bring his friend
so constantly to Semple Barns if Claribel was there, and to give them
separate partners at dinner.
The fact that Tam had helped the old Miss Mackinnons in their strait,
only served to incense him further with their grand-nephew, for having
the consummate audacity, while he passed for the most modest of men, to
dangle after Clary, constitute himself her dumb waiter, the peg for her
opera-cloak or shawl, the fetcher and carrier of her bouquet and fan,
the runner of her errands, the trainer of her dog, the consulting
physician of her horse. It was not that auld Tam had not the justice to
admit that young Mackinnon’s position, in the absence of money, crippled
him cruelly from doing anything worth speaking of either for his aunts
or for himself. But it was the fact that in such desperate circumstances
he had the assurance and selfishness to admire Clary, and get round a
sensible, high-spirited girl like her, until he was tempting her to
peril her brilliant prospects, which enraged her father. If she did not
take care she would find that she had gone too far to stop without
incurring the accusation of being a flirt and a jilt, and there were few
reputations a woman could earn that appeared more odious in her father’s
eyes.
But to interfere in the affairs of a girl so calm, so much the mistress
of herself and the situation as Clary was, in order to tell her one or
two wholesome truths, was an exercise of a father’s duties almost as
repugnant to Tam as he found the obligation of hinting to Dr. Peter that
Tam’s son went too often to Barley Riggs, and ought not to be encouraged
in such a waste of time. Fancy Clary’s large, rather light eyes, the
most defective feature in her face, fixed on her father’s with a
mesmerizing effect, while he, and not she, was the agitated person!
Imagine her voice, in slightly ironical accents, telling him in the
spirit, if not in the letter, that she was quite able to take care of
herself, he need not trouble his head about her--she knew perfectly
well what she was doing!
One May evening, just before dinner, Tam was in the business-room which
he had got fitted up for himself at Drysdale Hall. It was a very
different place from his office in Glasgow or his office at Drysdale
Haugh Works. The common use to which it was put was that of interviewing
and paying the wages of domestic servants; but beyond this, it indicated
Drysdale Hall to be a landed estate, and the master of Drysdale Hall a
laird. Tam, like most traders who have acquired land, had, as has been
said, a special pride in his fields and in all that related to them. He
relished playing at laird and farmer, and was nearly as bent on heading
the markets and agricultural shows with his crops and cattle, as on
witching the world by his dyes and printing. His business-room was
supplied with samples of seeds and grain, while the walls were hung
round with such illustrations of succulent roots, and reaping and
sowing machines, and such likenesses of fat cattle as one sees at
railway stations in agricultural counties. A spud, with which Tam
sometimes armed himself on the rare occasions when he spent an idle
morning at home, stood in a corner.
Tam would sit among these suggestive touches, as a Justice of the Peace,
in addition to being the master of Drysdale Hall, and dispense law after
the fashion of Sir Thomas Lucy. But he was decidedly popular both as a
laird and a magistrate--to an extent far more than is usual in a
self-made man. A sense of his accessibility which prosperity had not
diminished, of his freedom from assumption and pretence which existed
side by side with his simple--one is tempted to say honest--vanity, of
his inflexible fairness and human-hearted kindliness, more than
outweighed the grudge at his rise in life and magnificent success.
As a result of his popularity, Tam was subjected to intrusions from
other persons than policemen, poachers, and county depredators
generally. He was apt to be called upon to arbitrate _ex officio_
between his humbler neighbours in the country, as between his bigger
neighbours in the town. He had no doubt that he was required to judge
between such a pair of brethren when two men of the lower class, but
sufficiently unlike each other in most things, were shown into his
sanctum, unattended by any member of the rural police, on the evening in
question. Both men were Highlanders, but it was a few minutes before Tam
recognised the able-bodied fellow to be Sir James Semple’s dog-man. The
other, a miserable scarecrow, with a wild eye, shambled as he walked,
and lugged under the arm of his faded tartan coat a battered knapsack.
‘Well, lads, what complaint have you to ludge, or advice to seek, the
nicht?’ asked Tam courteously. ‘Stop, are you not one of Sir Jeames’s
folk? I thocht so. Are they all well at Semple Barns? Now, what have
you to say?’
‘It’s no me that has onything to say, Mr. Drysdale,’ said the voluble
Sandy Macnab, immediately becoming spokesman. ‘It is this cratur that
Bawby Sed, the trailin’, clashin’ [gadding, gossiping] sorry--nae thanks
to her for the job--threw on my hands mair than a year syne. He’s been
in Gartnavel since then, but in his wuts or oot o’ his wuts, which were
but cat’s wuts to begin wi’---- ’
‘You may keep a ceevil tongue in your head,’ said Tam indignantly; ‘you
have not sic a grip o’ your ain wuts that you should cast in his teeth
that his have been to seek since yours came back to you.’
‘No offence,’ said Sandy, showing the example. ‘But if you only kenned,
your honour, how I’m tried with the vermin--you may glower [stare] but
he’s no better--you would not fash for his feelin’s. He has nae feelin’s
that I can find, and he does not follow a word I say, unless it be
about the ae blether that’s gotten into the daft pow [head] o’ him.’
It appeared as if Sandy were right, for not a trace of consciousness of
the unceremonious remarks made upon him crossed the ugly, foxy, yet
vacant face--from which almost every gleam of anything higher than the
cunning of an animal had disappeared. Tam Drysdale glanced at the man
with a mixture of pity and repugnance.
‘What can I do?’ asked Tam, in perplexity. ‘Why hae you brought the
miserable chiel to me?’
‘Weel, the long and the short of it is, that in his wuts or out of his
wuts, as I was sayin’, he has gone on maunderin’ [droning] about
Drysdale Haugh, in connection with ane Mackinnon.’
‘Stay!’ said auld Tam; ‘where did I hear some story of the kind? I mind
now; and it was about a man in Gartnavel, too.’
‘A’ richt, sir. But see how the wild een o’ the cratur are lichtin’ up,
an’ he’s clutchin’ at the kistie under his oxter [arm]. So long as he
was in Gartnavel he micht maunder as he liked; it would a’ gang to the
general account--nobody would listen to the drivel; but now that he’s
discharged cured--a fell-like cure, when he’s ten times sillier than
before--I thocht it behoved me to communicate wi’ you or Captain
Mackinnon. It micht concern a gentleman’s credit to give the laddie a
hearing--though it is only some havers about seeing--selling would be
liker the word--a wheen [few] auld papers he brocht with him frae the
Hielants. He never trusted me wi’ them, though I’ve been the best friend
he has had for mony a day. It was not with his wull that the boxie was
left with me when he was taken to the asylum. They are not muckle worth
whatever, not as if there had been a gude dug-cure or a famous mash for
horses among them: spun-out marriage lines and a wull forty or fifty
years back--that’s the head and tail of them, I believe,’ ended Sandy,
with considerable scorn, betraying as he spoke a suspicious familiarity
with the contents of the knapsack which had been committed to his
keeping.
Rory of the Shelties made his voice be heard at last, with the startling
effect of a Brutus giving forth the sentiments of a man.
‘The papers are mine,’ he said with shrill assertion. ‘They were given
to me by auld Morag, her ain grannie, and she telled me to take care of
them, and I have taken care--there might be a fortune in them, and the
fortune is mine, every penny. Make an offer, Mackinnon of Drysdale
Haugh, and be quick aboot it, for I’ve been heckled [cross-examined] and
hunted, and shut up in a prison. I’m thinkin’ long of the Islands, and I
want to see the last of that big brute Macnab.’
‘Oh, the ungrateful demented blackgaird!’ cried Sandy, in righteous
wrath. ‘I can hardly keep my hands aff him.’
Tam interposed, speaking severely.
‘It would hae better become a reasonable being, and been a greater
kindness to your afflicted countryman, to have seen him on board one of
the Hielant boats, where he could have begged his passage north. My
man,’ turning soothingly to Rory, ‘there is no person of the name and
style you mention here. Drysdale Haugh is mine, but I’m not a Mackinnon.
The son of the Mackinnon you seem to be seekin’--the father has been
dead for more than a score of years--is an offisher lad at the Barracks;
but he has nothing to do with Drysdale Haugh,’ explained Tam with
decision, ‘as I have nothing to do with the Mackinnons; however, you may
seek him out and hear what he says.’
‘It was Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh that auld Morag kenned,’ persisted
Rory doggedly. ‘She gave me the names, and I’ll stick to them.’
‘You may stick to what you like, but I’m afraid it cannot be here.’
Auld Tam began to lose his patience.
‘Ane of the papers is about a Drysdale, though,’ said Sandy,
unblushingly revealing more unaccounted-for knowledge. ‘That is the
reason I lugget the sinner here, and no to the Barracks; but for that
matter we need not have gone so far, since Captain Mackinnon’s that
thrang [intimate] with our young gentleman he’s seldom awa’ frae Semple
Barns.’
‘The deil thank you for as officious a scoondrel as he is a doited
[stupid] ane,’ thought Tam; but he said aloud, with some
alacrity--‘Let’s see the Drysdale paper. It may have reference to the
auld master here. If so, I have a better right to it than any Mackinnon
of them.’
‘Open your wallet, Rory!’ commanded Sandy Macnab.
‘Mak’ an offer, Mackinnon!’ yelled Rory.
‘Hout! you thrawn taed [toad], I doubt it’s ill-gotten gear at the best.
What call have you to mak’ terms, affrontin’ me and tantaleezin’ a
gentleman?’ and without further preamble Sandy made a spring upon the
feeble defender of his property, pinned him to his seat with one hand,
and with the other snatched the old knapsack, which fell on the floor,
bursting open, and scattering the papers which were its contents.
Rory bit, scratched, and spat like a wild cat, but remained helpless in
his assailant’s powerful grasp.
‘Hooly [hold], Macnab!’ cried Tam, and started up.
As he did so, the toe of his shoe turned over one of the bones of
contention, and he saw and read the address, written in a large imposing
hand, still legible, though the ink had faded, and there was the dirt of
an intervening generation on the card, ‘Gavin Mackinnon, Esq., King’s
Arms Inn, North Uist.’
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CONTENTS OF THE KNAPSACK.
‘Come, this must be seen to,’ said Tam half reluctantly, half roughly,
for he felt that though he might have to act in his character of
magistrate, personally he had got enough of the Mackinnons. He had no
inclination to mix himself up in what was the business of the fellow who
was Clary’s foolish fancy, whom her father had begun to regard as his
natural enemy. The probabilities flashed upon Tam as he reflected for an
instant: ‘Gavin Mackinnon was a great stravaiger [wanderer] after sport.
He may have carried that article with a change of linen; he was a
particular man in his dress, forgettin’ what else had been stowed awa’
in the bag, and then left it behind him. It was like the pompous,
careless puppy; and now it has fallen to my lot to claim the papers in
the name of their proper owner, if, indeed, one of them be not my ain
concern.’
Opposite Tam, Sandy Macnab was still holding back his man, and enjoining
him to ‘bide still for a senseless dug,’ or he might be had up for
contempt of a magistrate, and committed as a vagrant and thief. The
asylum was one thing and the county gaol another, as Rory might find to
his cost.
Tam Drysdale, in search of a further clue, picked up a loose single
sheet of paper which looked as if it had been wrapped round the other
papers. It had a line or two written on it in the clear round text which
belonged to the parish school of former days: ‘Left behind by a Lowland
gentleman, whose name appears to have been Gavin Mackinnon, but whose
further address is unknown at the King’s Arms Inn, North Uist. It is
probable that the property, which may be of value to the owner, will be
called for.’ Then followed a date of a quarter of a century back.
Whether the Morag who had been the grandmother of Rory, and had in
course of time passed on to him the lost luggage, was a managing
kinswoman of the innkeeper retired from business, or an acquisitive
elderly chambermaid picking up what she could find--stowing it away in
case it should come handy to herself at some future day, and ending by
brooding on the unacknowledged possession till she hugely magnified its
importance--Rory was never likely to tell, and there was no other person
to explain.
‘I cannot say that I approve of your mode of conductin’ business, Sandy
Macnab,’ said Tam sternly. ‘You may be taken up for assault if you do
not take care. I would bid you let go your grip this minute, if you had
to do with a reasonable being; as it is, it will be on your head if you
treat him like a cowardly brute when you see him off the premises,
which I must ask you to do. I’ll keep the papers. So far as I can judge,
they are of little moment to anybody--which you’ve seen already, I doubt
not. But whether that cratur is a born natural, or a raging madman, he
has nothing to do with auld deeds--on the face of them.’ As he spoke,
Tam picked up two separate folded-up sheets of yellowing parchment.
‘They must not be left in his hands. Stay! he seems to have been deluded
into the belief that they were worth money, which he would receive when
he delivered them up in the proper quarter. He had no warrant whatever
for detaining them; but as I understand he travelled south with them, to
his ain loss of time and trouble, he may be entitled morally, if not
legally, to some sma’ compensation.’
‘That’s just what I’ve been thinking, Mr. Drysdale,’ chimed in Sandy,
glib and unabashed, as Rory of the Shelties, exhausted by the fruitless
conflict, leant back panting and glaring in the clutch of the other son
of the Gael. ‘I kenned fine the scartipikin [scarecrow] had neither airt
nor pairt in the papers in the kistie that he was so full o’. But he
cam’ with them sooth, there can be nae question of that; so I brocht him
here to deliver up his booty with his ain hands, and get what reward or
punishment was his due.’
‘There’s a five-pound note--and mind, Macnab, you’re answerable for what
becomes o’t,’ said Tam, handing over the money, at which Rory, making a
desperate effort, caught with his bony fingers.
‘Is it gude paper?’ he demanded breathlessly; ‘will it buy back Morag’s
cruivie [croft]?’
‘Hoots! ye maunna back-spear [cross-question] a gentleman, or look a
gift-horse in the mooth; ye’ve come off real weel when you micht be laid
up in jile for keepin’ back papers that’s no your ain,’ Sandy assured
his compatriot cheerfully. ‘Out with your leather pouch, you ill-bred
deil’s buckie [devil’s shell], and thank his honour--it’s little thanks
ye gie a body--and come your wa’s without mair trouble; I’m sure ye’ve
gien a hantle mair, since I kenned you first, than you’re a’ worth.’
‘There’s a couple of half-crowns to you, Sandy Macnab,’ said Tam, on
second thoughts. ‘I believe you’ve not done so ill by this poor wretch.
It would be well, if consistent with your duty to Sir Jeames, that you
should see him on board ane of the Hielant boats before his pockets are
picked and he’s left to die on the streets.’
‘Mony thanks--I’m your man, Mr. Drysdale. I’ll be in Glasgy for mair
medicine for the pups, that have ta’en the distemper, the day after the
morn at farrest. I’ll put the body into the hands of Nicol MacNicol, a
steward, who is a friend of mine that gangs as far as the Lewis.
Gude-day, sir!’ and Sandy marched off with his unruly _protégé_.
Tam was left alone to inspect the papers which had come by a curious
chance into his possession. The first, which Sandy had called ‘spun-out
marriage lines,’ was, as Tam had taken for granted, the very marriage
contract, the disappearance of which had been such a puzzle to the Miss
Mackinnons. It was the deed drawn up jointly by David Milne and William
Dalgleish, according to which Gavin Mackinnon and Margaret Craig had
agreed that her property should be settled upon her. All that Tam
Drysdale knew was that she set the agreement aside, by granting her
husband and his partner power to sell both land and works, when Tam
bought them for an old song, compared to what they would fetch now. The
bargain had been made a year or two before Mrs. Mackinnon died, like her
mother, in giving birth to her only child, the same supercilious
‘offisher lad’ who had become a thorn in Tam’s flesh.
Tam regarded the deed as so much waste-paper, and merely glanced at it
to see that he had been right in his conjecture of its purport. He had
little sentiment to spare for the different circumstances in which it
had been executed. He had never associated much feeling with Gavin
Mackinnon and his wife, who had not, indeed, been sentimental persons.
All that Tam Drysdale thought, as he folded up the document, was--
‘Weel, Gauvin Mackinnon was never crouse [self-satisfied] when I kenned
him; he had not the spunk [spirit] in him to be crouse, though he could
blaw and give himself airs in his slow, lazy way. But if he ever were
crouse, it must have been the nicht he signed that paper, and, without a
penny belongin’ to him, prepared to marry the heiress of Drysdale Haugh,
and give her back her ain with a swagger, while he set himself to
mismanage for her, and play ducks and drakes with her gudes. Puir woman!
she had the worst of the bargain. The son--confoond him for a fine
gentleman of an offisher, who disdains to put himself forrit!--seems up
to the same trick, as auld as the hills and as shabby as a worn
saxpence. Before I sorned [lived] on ony woman I would cast aff my coat
and break stanes at the side of the road. But he’ll not get in his hand
if I can help it--not though Clary were so far left to hersel’--a lassie
with Clary’s wit! But in that case he’ll tak’ her as she stands, she’ll
not get a farthing of mine; she can follow the drum if that be her will,
only young Tam, who may need the sillar, and little Eppie, who would
never cross her father, will be the gainers. But it cannot be; Clary’s
not a fule, though she’s high-headed, to fling hersel’ awa’ on a great
pithless lump--just because he has the richt to put on the Queen’s
regimentals, which, nowadays, neither he nor his brother offishers have
the speerit to wear, and is made welcome to straik [stretch] his lang
legs beneath sic a table as that at Semple Barns. No, it canna be.’
It was an annoyance to Tam that he should be burdened, even to the small
extent of having to keep this old marriage contract, till he could hand
it over to the person for whom he had so little esteem, who had the best
right to it. Tam might be safely depended upon to take prompt steps to
ascertain whether young Mackinnon was at Semple Barns, where he stayed
so often, or when he was expected there, in order to get rid of the
trust.
Tam Drysdale turned with much more interest to what proved the will of
his namesake, the original owner of the Drysdale Haugh farm and works.
The two papers had no doubt been brought together at the time of the
drawing out of the marriage contract, in the office of one or other of
the lawyers, and had eventually been lost in company by Gavin
Mackinnon’s notorious incompetence.
The loss need not have been hopeless, if the Miss Mackinnons had but
known it. Copies of the deeds would have been found in the proper
places. But small blame to Miss Janet for her ignorance, since Tam
Drysdale--a good business man, for whom the law had a certain
fascination--shared her lack of information on these points.
Tam examined the will carefully, but without much speculation how it had
come there, and whether it was the sole indication of the dead man’s
pleasure in the disposal of his property. He had no reason to doubt what
had been his father’s cousin’s meaning, and it would have taken a
powerful reason to shake his broad acquiescence in all that had
happened. If he read the settlement slowly, every word, it was from a
motive quite apart from any eager desire or vague impulse to dispute its
authority. Early associations were rising thick and fast, and filling
his mind. He recalled the old man, homely and a little harsh, but not
unrighteous or altogether untender, when his mother had sometimes
received permission to take her boy to the farmhouse. He had not been
without little relentings and kindnesses to Tam and his mother, though
he had openly and indignantly condemned the husband and father who had
wasted his little patrimony and sunk to the lowest social grade,
dragging down his wife and child in the process. Neither had old
Drysdale ever concealed his intention of leaving his goods past his
Drysdale cousins to his late wife’s niece, Mrs. Craig, in India. He had
talked openly of the arrangement as one he had entered into when he took
home the lass-bairn and fancied she would be the solace of his old age.
He had been mistaken, but he had made the stipulation, and it was not
for him to break his part of the bargain, while the poor, credulous
lass, who must drink as she had brewed, might want all the help that he
could give her. It was for young Tam--auld Tam was young Tam in these
days--who was a brisk, sturdy laddie, to work, to redeem what his father
had lost. It was the discipline which might save the son from going the
same road; for anything else--such as gifting the chap who had begun the
world a working lad with gear he had never earned--would have been in
these austere eyes to send him straight to destruction.
And Tam had never greatly grudged the alienation of the property, for
which he had always been prepared, though the moment he had seen the
possibility he had worked hard to recover it. But it gave him a thrill
now, though he was not a superstitious man, to handle and study the
document, as nearly as possible on the spot where it had been devised.
He could conjure up the circumstances--the old man sitting solitary, but
without visible weakness, nay, stiff, upright, and determined, in his
bare parlour; the complacent lawyer from the town waiting his
instructions; a tolerable bottle of wine--not the sour stuff the Miss
Mackinnons treasured, but good wine of its kind, ordered for the old
man’s infirmities--or two rummers of toddy and a plate with a cut lemon
standing between the couple.
Tam remembered to have heard a characteristic anecdote of his namesake’s
scorn of insincerity and of covert acts to obtain by favour what had not
been justified by right, or by work done for the coveted reward.
The old man had taken it into his head that his doctor, in addition to
his claim for the fee of which he was certain, had surreptitious views
on the sick man’s estate, and desired to figure as a legatee in his
will. On the last night that the medical man visited his patient, whose
hours were numbered, the undaunted invalid suddenly asked for the
physician’s cane, which was furnished with a cord and tassel. The sick
man, amidst the wondering, half-scared looks of the watchers, raised
himself in bed and asked for a penknife and a bit of narrow black riband
which happened to be lying near. With feeble hands he cut away the cord
and tassel, laced the riband through the hole in the wood, tied it in a
little bow, and then handed the stick back to its owner, with a formal
inclination of the head, saying: ‘There, sir, are both your murnins and
your legacy.’ Within a few hours from perpetrating the grim jest, the
jester departed this life.
Tam wondered what his kinsman would have thought if he could have seen
the result of his will. Surely he must have approved and been proud of
the achievements of his descendant. Tam straightened himself, got up and
took a turn across his business-room with something of the peacock strut
which, alas! sometimes distinguished him. He thought of the greatly
enlarged and improved works, the immensely extended trade, the honour
in the commercial world, the field added to field, the grand house, the
friendship of such men as Sir James and Sir Hugo Willoughby, the
position of Tam’s family when it had been thought that little Eppie
might end by being ‘my leddy,’ and contrasted all these changes with the
limited and clumsy materials of the past, the small reputation, the
plain farmhouse, and its almost sordid domestic economy.
Blood was thicker than water. Though Tam’s cousin had once on a day been
fond as a father of his dead wife’s niece, the girl he had brought up,
she had disappointed him, and he had never got over his rooted dislike
to Jock Craig. Old Drysdale had not so much as made mention of any
children of the marriage in dictating the deed. It was but an accident,
after all, the fact that Mrs. Craig had survived her uncle by a few
hours, which had stood between Tam’s father, despised reprobate as he
had been, and the inheritance of Drysdale Haugh.
Tam himself had never before fully realized how close the run had been,
how narrow the escape of Mrs. Craig’s infant daughter from the
forfeiture of her mother’s succession. It would have made a difference.
He would have been saved from a youth of toil and hardship, for he would
very soon have come into his father’s shoes.
The poor prodigal from whom Tam had drawn his being, though his physique
was from his mother, had been near his last gasp when fortune dealt him
the final blow, which none could say had been undeserved. Not even the
strong stimulant of unexpected good fortune would have prolonged his
life for many months, or given him time to squander the larger
inheritance as he had squandered the smaller. Tam would have come into
it almost intact. He might have been able to educate himself while he
was yet young, to spare himself many a drudging day and weary night.
But looking back calmly over the gulf of years, with the mountains of
difficulty well past, the man decided it was better as it had been. He
had profited by the warfare he had undergone--it had made twice the man
of him that he might have been otherwise. It was more honourable to have
hewed out the fortune which he honestly thought so great and enviable,
than to have derived even a part of it from the gift of another. Tam
held his head the higher for the thought. At the same time he would not
return the will which had so strangely found its way to him unsought,
till he saw a clear obligation to relinquish it. Surely it was more his
property than that of any Mackinnon of them, whose name did not even
occur in its pages. When it came to the question, it was not probable
that anybody, be he a Mackinnon or a stranger, would wrangle with Tam
for the possession of an old deed which had taken effect and been
overturned by Tam’s own purchase, more than twenty years before.
With regard to the marriage contract, it was clearly young Mackinnon’s.
But the next day Tam ascertained that Mr. Mackinnon was not at Semple
Barns, and that he was not expected there soon, for the good reason that
he and Dick Semple had gone in a friend’s yacht to Norway. Their present
address was unattainable, and by the time they returned, the Drysdales
would have gone with the rest of the world to the coast. The matter was
of little consequence. Any unnecessary intercourse between Tam and the
young man, while Tam’s feelings towards him were what has been stated,
would be, to say the least, the reverse of agreeable. The matter might
stand over. The paper was safer in Tam’s desk than it had been for many
a day. Altogether it seemed the natural and proper course to wait till
the two men came in contact again, in the ordinary intercourse, at
Semple Barns or elsewhere, before telling the story and committing Guy
Mackinnon’s marriage contract to the keeping of his son.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE DEATH OF FENTON OF STRATHDIVIE.
It was the height of summer, when the most of the inhabitants of Glasgow
and its neighbourhood, who had the opportunity, had taken refuge by the
water, which is, somehow, the natural element of every true Glaswegian,
man or woman, high or low.
The Drysdales were at Lochgoilhead, the Semples of Semple Barns at Oban.
Dr. Peter Murray had got a medical substitute to take his post for a
fortnight, and was spending the minister’s holiday to his heart’s
content with Athole, scrambling after ferns and sea-anemones in Arran.
Young Eppie was wearing her Newhaven fishwife’s costume, and looking
the loveliest and daintiest little fishwife that ever trod an Arcadian
shore. She was learning to spout ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter,’ without much
anxiety as to whether Loch Goyle could be the same ‘dark and stormy
water’ which Campbell meant. But there was no Sir Hugo to gaze on the
nymph and hang on the accents of the Clydesdale tongue. He had not yet
turned up in the course of the Long Vacation. Guy Horsburgh alleged that
his friend could not help himself--his heart was in the right
place--that is, in Glasgow and its dependencies; but his tutor and his
mother had set their hearts on his completing his college course with
some credit, and to do so he must give a few weeks to a certain
reading-party, which meant work, in Derbyshire. But Derbyshire, or any
other shire in the United Kingdom, was little more than a bow-shot off,
from which, when he had made the necessary sacrifice, Sir Hugo was
certain to present himself within the given number of hours. That might
or might not be. There are plenty of allurements for such golden lads as
Sir Hugo.
A little fickleness may be excused in them, especially when they are
hardly more than major. Some rumour of threatened danger might have
reached his friends. They might have taken the alarm, and be moving
heaven and earth successfully to keep him in their own circle. If it
were so, nobody would object, as Tam Drysdale had said; and least of all
young Eppie, who had done all but forget that such a grand young
gentleman as an English baronet had ever crossed her blithe path, caught
her unawares, caused her to think shame, and made up for it by being
good-natured in admiring her singing. Eppie was as happy as usual--as
happy as the day was long. She was still at the most joyous
age--fancy-free and untouched by care. None missed a recreant lover,
whether by compulsion or his own free will, less than she did.
For inevitably there were more defaulters than Sir Hugo. Lochgoilhead,
Arran, and Oban may not look far apart on the map, and in the summer
season steamboats churn the water of the river continually with so
little pause and stay, that the throb of the engines, the grey and white
wreaths of the smoke and steam, the foam-bells on the track, are never
absent, any more than the near and far shadows of the hills from the
landscape. To think of getting out of sight and sound of these
harbingers of universal movement, is to imagine that one can sit on
certain green lawns, and count a dozen without catching a glimpse of a
white butterfly specking the sunny blue air. Still Lochgoilhead, Arran,
and Oban are too far apart for the exchange of morning or evening calls.
The ‘runs’ of the steamboats do not always answer particular
requirements, but keep crossing each other and cutting off the dwellers
on one point of the mainland or on one island from the dwellers on
another, in the most perplexing and exasperating manner. In truth, the
service of steamboats is kept for families coming once for all and
taking up their summer quarters, with periodical returns to the city, or
for tourists and touring, not for visitors and visiting. These last
social features are reserved for settled life in town or
country-houses--not nomadic life on the coast. When, in addition to this
reservation, some men have business engagements, such as young Tam had,
only letting them out of Glasgow at the last moment, once or twice a
week, with an obligation to report themselves first to their own people;
or when officers have regimental duty, such as was binding on Eneas
Mackinnon; and when there are not frank, hospitable invitations sent
beforehand for gay bachelors to come down in the end of the week and
stay over Sunday in Arran or at Lochgoilhead, the most ardent lover may
be safely defied to dance attendance on the object of his affections.
And young Tam was not ardent in pursuing a perverse young woman who was
constantly fleeing from him and mocking him. He had his wayward moods
like hers; often he set his teeth and said he would have nothing more to
do with her, that he despised himself for going after her; not that he
meant anything by it--oh no! It was merely regard for Dr. Peter and a
determination not to be driven away by her snubs and laughter.
Eneas Mackinnon was not ardent in a hopeless chase which he felt was
madness. He made up his mind half-a-dozen times a day to withdraw even
from the passive attentions and silent love-making which were all he
could presume to offer. But on every occasion that Claribel sailed
across his path, he was drawn by the fascination of her strength and
sufficiency for what she cared for, as much as by her beauty, to break
his resolution and let himself be dashed afresh against the rocks of
fortune.
Altogether Clary and Athole, who had never confided in each other, never
consulted together, who found themselves two young women abandoned
largely to their own company, or the society of their nearest relations,
needed all Clary’s _sang froid_ and Athole’s gaiety of heart and
devotion to her father, to bear their desertion with anything like the
unaffected philosophy and cheerfulness which young Eppie displayed in
similar circumstances.
The young ladies paid for their superior rank and refinement, and had
less of good fellowship during their holiday than their sisters in the
grade beneath them. These lower middle-class girls, not coy or
capricious, managed to secure their brief spell of liberty from their
situations as nursery governesses, in shops, and milliners’
establishments, at the same time that the young clerks and shopmen, in
their train, obtained their breathing-space. All rushed down, with the
other members of their families, to Hunter’s Quay, or Sandbank, or Kirn,
and were never apart. These primitive young people spent the long summer
day till far on in the dusk of the summer night, mostly on the water, in
such jovial play--such chattering, singing, laughing, flirting,
quarrelling, and agreeing again, as made the very hills of Cowal ring,
and formed enough recreation to last through all the working-hours, till
the depths of winter, and the daft days--stretching from Hogmanay to
Handsel Monday--came again.
There were multitudes, however, who never quitted the dingy precincts of
the city. Among these were the Miss Mackinnons. Dr. Peter and Athole had
done their best, in vain, to persuade the sisters to go out and keep
house at Barley Riggs, in the absence of the owners, as a favour to
them. But no invitation to Drysdale Hall had come to the old ladies
this year. The omission had drawn forth sundry expressions of surprise
from Dr. Peter; and when Athole had hinted at an explanation, he had
stared, reddened, and said plainly it was a shabby piece of retaliation,
such as he would not easily have believed Tam Drysdale guilty of.
Then Athole pointed out that she was aware the Drysdale Hall baskets of
fruit, vegetables, and dairy produce continued to come, as they had done
for a year, to St. Mungo’s Square; but Miss Janet began to look
dubiously at them, and to ask sharply if there was no card or note among
the contents. On this second piece of information, Dr. Peter shook his
head, and remarked emphatically _that_ would not do.
The Miss Mackinnons’ excuse for not going out of Glasgow was that Miss
Mackinnon was so frail, she was better at home. It had become a
‘thought’ to take her even the short distance to Barley Riggs in a close
carriage.
But in place of remaining quiet and composed, like fixtures, in their
own house, there was an air of restlessness and expectation about the
sisters, from the youngest to the eldest. It could hardly be accounted
for by the fact which Miss Bethia had disclosed to Athole Murray. The
elder lady had said, with a wistful, frightened look in her eyes, that
ill news travelled fast, and they were not easy in their minds about a
friend who had been long ailing and was likely to leave them this
summer.
Sure enough, the Miss Mackinnons had learnt from some quarter that
Fenton of Strathdivie, after many a false alarm, was on his death-bed at
last.
The expectant heirs did not speak much to each other of what they had
been looking forward to all these years, of what was never out of their
thoughts. The Miss Mackinnons were simple women when it comes to that.
The subject was too awful--too ghastly--the feverish counting of the
failing sands of a human creature’s existence in this world, the
breathless waiting till his breath went out, by women--two of them
considerably older than the sufferer--that they might join together in
parting their portion of the dead man’s possessions, was not an
experience to be lightly alluded to.
Miss Janet would say abruptly there was ‘a het glaff [warm air] off the
plain-stanes.’ Such warm weather must be very trying--even in the
country, where there were grass and cornfields--to sick folk, who could
not be expected to stand its exhausting effects.
Miss Bethia would reply below her breath to the vague allusion--‘I
wonder how _he_ is; sair spent, puir man, I doubt not.’
And Miss Mackinnon, narrowly watching her sister’s eyes, would hastily
utter the imperious appeal, ‘Have you heard word?’
For weeks Miss Janet or Miss Bethia had anticipated the coming of the
postman on his morning rounds. One or other of the sisters had stolen
out when the ringing of the door-bells grew nearer, and been found on
the door-step as the man of letters approached, waved a polite but
indifferent negative, and passed on in his circuit of the Square,
chuckling to himself when his back was turned, and saying, ‘The auld
lasses’ day for love-letters is surely gone by.’
It was in the forenoon, however, that Miss Bethia, returning from
marketing, and not noticing any change on the outside of the house,
stumbled as she entered out of the broad sunshine with which the opened
front door had flooded the hall, into the dining-room, where all the
blinds were drawn down. She stopped on the threshold with a mingled
shiver and thrill, as she saw through the gloom Miss Janet, sitting
erect and pale, opposite Miss Mackinnon, who was crouching a little, as
if from cold, on a summer day, while on the table between them lay two
black-edged letters unopened.
‘We are waiting for you, Betheye,’ said Miss Janet solemnly.
‘Oh, gie me a minute, Janet,’ implored Miss Bethia, dropping into a
chair, and speaking as if her own execution were approaching. ‘When did
it happen? What is the upshot? I hope none of us will fent. Had we not
better have burnt feather and smelling-salts in readiness?’
‘And the doctor, and the minister--I was gaun to say the lawyer, but we
have not had a man of business for the last twal years,’ said Miss
Janet, provoked to sarcasm. ‘You were aye a frichted hen, Betheye; but
we’re not of the fentin’ kind. As to what has happened, and the upshot,
I’m gaun to see. I take it for granted that I hae baith your
permissions.’
And with that Miss Janet stretched forward a wrinkled hand, that only
shook slightly, and appropriated the letters.
The first was a mere intimation of the death.
‘Strathdivie, 15th July.
‘Mr. Archibald Fenton died here this morning at half-past three
o’clock.’
Miss Janet read the announcement without faltering, then handed the card
for Miss Mackinnon’s satisfaction.
‘Eh! sirs!’ exclaimed Miss Bethia, by way of decent lamentation. ‘Eh!
sirs!’ she repeated after a moment’s pause, not without a little guilty
consciousness of hypocrisy. ‘The news will take nobody by surprise. He
suffered a deal of sickness, poor felly, but now he’s at his rest.’ It
was a statement, not a prayer, yet the assertion, in a softened tone,
was somewhat equivalent to the Roman Catholics’ petition, ‘_Requiescat
in pace_.’
Miss Janet was already opening the second letter, and drawing herself up
when she saw it was from a lawyer’s office; but, as a matter of course,
the only fresh intelligence it conveyed, in addition to communicating
the fact of Fenton of Strathdivie’s death, in slightly different words,
amounted to no more than that the funeral was to be from Strathdivie on
the following Thursday, and that the reading of the will would take
place on the return of the mourners from the churchyard.
‘That means that we are invited to attend as interested parties,’ said
Miss Janet, in a tone of triumph, forgetting the melancholy occasion of
the invitation.
‘What will we do?’ asked Miss Bethia helplessly, fanning herself with a
corner of her pocket-handkerchief, and feeling instinctively as she did
so the impropriety of its not being broad-hemmed.
‘What will we do? We’ll gang, of course,’ said Miss Janet, both asking a
question and answering it with the utmost decision. ‘We’re no daft to
hang back and decline to claim our legacy, that was left to us in the
first place by our great-grandfather when his dochter Jean took her
tocher to Fenton of Strathdivie.’
‘But how can we gang?’ retorted Miss Bethia, in her matter-of-factness,
still full of doubts and difficulties.
‘On our feet and in the trains to be sure,’ said Miss Janet impatiently.
‘But the murnins.’
‘You cannot have forgotten, Betheye,’ Miss Janet reminded her sister
severely, ‘that every stitch we’ve bocht for the last four years has
been black, in expectation of this ca’? As for crape and weepers, we’ll
surely get credit for them till the will’s administered.’
‘Oh, Janet, you’re makin’ cock-sure,’ said Miss Bethia in a timorous
voice, oddly at variance with the masculine word she had used.
‘And what for no?’ demanded Miss Janet, with all her old audacious
spirit. ‘Are we not come of the blude of our ain great-grandfather? Did
not his dochter Jean marry Fenton of Strathdivie? and failin’ the
Fentons, was not a share of Strathdivie cleared from debt by her
portion to come back to the Mackinnons? It’s as plain as a pikestaff.’
‘And what are we to do with Meye?’ Miss Bethia started another obstacle.
‘You may ask hersel’,’ suggested Miss Janet, still with unshaken
confidence. ‘I think I ken her answer beforehand.’
‘Meye,’ Miss Janet wrote, ‘I say we should start the morn for
Strathdivie--what do you think?’
‘I’ll go,’ replied Miss Mackinnon, without a second’s hesitation.
‘Hear to her, Betheye,’ said Miss Janet, with a mixture of pride and
reproach, ‘and her weel up among her seventies, and as deaf as a
door-nail, and has not had a breath of wind blow on her this year. Are
you not ashamed of yoursel’?’
‘I would do onything,’ said Miss Bethia meekly; ‘but should we not wait
for the Lieutenant? It is his business as well as ours. He micht gang in
our stead; or if that would not serve, he micht be our convoy and
protection.’
‘We’ll wait nane,’ said Miss Janet, in her high-handed way. ‘How are we
to write and hear word back again in time from Oban? He was not to be at
the Barracks for a week. If we do not gang when we’re bidden, how do we
ken that some other claimant may not slip into our shoon? Legacies do
not go a-begging. There will be plenty of corbies and gleds [ravens and
kites] to pike for Fenton of Strathdivie’s leavin’s.’
‘That’s the very reason we should be careful,’ said Miss Bethia eagerly,
‘not to rin into terrible expense without assurance.’
‘What do you ca’ assurance, Betheye Mackinnon? You may do what you like,
but for mysel’ I ken I do not come into an inheritance ilka day. I would
go to Strathdivie though I were to walk berfit [bare-footed] every step
of the gate, though I were to beg my way from farm-toon to farm-toon.
You’ll say next that we have not waited long, and that we have no need
o’ the siller.’ She ended almost fiercely in her exasperation. Then she
began again: ‘I believe you’re feared like a bairn--you’re fingie
[coward] enough of travellin’ to a house where a coffin and a corp’ are
lyin’--a woman of your years! As if they could harm you; as if our
presence were not the last mark of respect to him that’s awa’; as if,
gin he were to hant us, he couldna as lief come here as gang
yonder--here, where we’re bund to admit his wa’ga’in’ [departure] has
been sair wearied for.’
‘Oh! Janet, haud your tongue, for mercy’s sake, and let us do what you
judge best! I never wanted to gang conter to you,’ cried Miss Bethia,
collapsing utterly before these scornful reproaches and gruesome
threats.
Accordingly the Miss Mackinnons prepared for an extraordinary exodus on
the following day. First, they set their house in order, toiling for the
next six hours, putting aside and locking up everything that could be
locked up, and packing a trunk in common. They found an old washerwoman,
and placed her in charge of the bare walls and the tables and chairs,
loading her with instructions for the careful preservation of other
people’s property. Not content with this, the old ladies charged the
policeman on the beat, the postman, and a mechanic they knew, who
crossed St. Mungo’s Square as he went to and from his day’s work, to
have an eye on Jenny in her employers’ interests.
Then, giddy with excitement, and all but spent with fatigue, the
indefatigable old women turned again to the packing of the common trunk.
Miss Bethia especially brought to it all manner of incongruous articles
of apparel that would have filled half a dozen trunks. She excused
herself for this bulky plaid, or that old gown or bonnet, which had not
been seen for years, on the plea that the travellers could not tell how
long they would stay. Strathdivie was in a moorland district, and they
might feel the change of climate in the country; and while it was
necessary to prepare for seeing company, particularly at a time like
this, ladies might also wear up such old dresses as their owners could
not appear in so long as they remained in town.
It was well that exhaustion brought some amount of sleep, though the
sleepers’ dreams could not but have been uncanny.
By dawn of day the whole party were again astir, preparing to start for
the railway station an hour before the train was due. Miss Janet, who
had all the practical ability that was now to be found among the
sisters, had borrowed a time-table and copied out the stages of the
journey.
A certain sense of awe, very different from any former experience on
leaving home, was lent to the departure, from the indefinite duration of
the stay at Strathdivie--together with what were to the women the
tremendous issues involved in the visit. The starting took place early
in the morning, before even Miss Janet’s and Miss Bethia’s time of
rising. It was as if they were fleeing, unknown to the sleepers around
them, from the long reign of poverty and privation by which they had
been well-nigh overborne, as if the news were too good to be true, and
something terrible must befall the maiden ladies on their strange
journey to the house of the dead. He had never invited them to be his
guests during his lifetime--he had, indeed, as was shrewdly suspected,
nourished a strong, not unnatural, prejudice against those Mackinnons he
had known. It was, Miss Bethia said to herself with a sob in her throat,
as if they might never come back to the house in which they had been
born, where they had dwelt from youth to age, which they had never
failed to honour. It was dear to them from many causes--from their
intimate familiarity with every flower on the wall-papers, every crack
in the ceilings--from such joys as had come to them--from the sufferings
they had bravely faced under its roof. It was their own house and their
father’s house, which they were to bequeath to Eneas.
Miss Janet’s daring expenditure had not reached the pitch of calling a
cab. The grey morning was only mildly threatening rain, as it so often
does in the humid west, and had not settled down into steady wet. St.
Mungo’s Square was not above ten minutes’ walk from the particular
railway station where there were trains which led, by several changes
and a corresponding number of halts, to within a quarter of a mile of
Strathdivie.
The ladies went on foot, Miss Janet giving her arm to Miss Mackinnon,
and a porter--by whom Miss Bethia was appointed to walk that she might
keep her eye upon him without a moment’s intermission--shouldering the
trunk.
Emile Souvestre in one of his tales has an account of two sisters who
had led a peculiarly simple and retired life, having been, from the
force of circumstances, kept not only in drudgery, but in tutelage, till
they were far advanced in middle age. Then they were suddenly set free,
and began doubtfully to look about them, and take the holidays which the
women had missed in their youth. The graceful and not unsubtle French
writer--whom it is the fashion to set aside, because of his modesty and
purity, for the hurried perusal of heedless schoolgirls--describes with
delicate touches and fine sympathy the tender pathos of the
situation--the clinging helplessness of the pair who should long ago
have been the helpers of others--the stammering timidity of the
grey-headed women who ought by rights to have faced the world half a
century before.
There was some parallel between this case and that of the Miss
Mackinnons when they set out for Strathdivie in order to come into
their kingdom. True, there was no trace of timidity where Miss Janet was
concerned, and the explanation was rather that powers which had once
existed had fallen into disuse, and former knowledge had become
forgotten, than that the Scotch ladies had never gone abroad among their
contemporaries, or mingled with the world on their own account. On the
other hand, the nature of this errand, so different from the mere
pursuit of pleasure late in the day by the French sisters, was, in
itself, tragical and overpowering.
The three ladies had a look of blinking owls, as the Miss Mackinnons
stood on the platform, keeping guard over their trunk, waiting for their
train, while they interfered with the traffic, got in the way of the
porters and other passengers, and were more than once heartily
anathematized. Even Miss Janet made mistakes, dropped tickets,
miscounted her money, and entered into hopeless altercations, trotting
backward and forward as fast as her stiffened limbs would let her, till
she was thoroughly put out and agitated.
When the group were seated in a third-class carriage--for they were not
yet in possession of the reversion of Jean Mackinnon’s tocher--- various
rough jests and not too civil remarks were made by the by-standers on
‘the party out of the ark that had ta’en the road, forgetting that they
had left Noehey behind them.’ Happily the jeering personalities fell as
flat on Miss Janet’s and Miss Bethia’s hearing ears, as on the sealed
organs of Miss Mackinnon, seated between the two, for the better
execution of any pantomime that might convey to her what was passing
beyond her range of vision. The younger sisters never dreamt that the
talk applied to themselves.
‘Wha are they speaking about, Janet?’ asked Miss Bethia calmly.
‘Dear kens,’ answered Miss Janet, with the same coolness. ‘But I dinna
heed; I’ve a great deal to think about, Betheye.’
‘Nae doubt, Janet,’ and the subject dropped.
The complete imperturbability of the objects of the ridicule not only
blunted the words, it gradually shut the mouths of the thoughtless
mockers.
CHAPTER XXV.
STRATHDIVIE.
It was afternoon when the Miss Mackinnons were set down, sorely wearied,
at the roadside station which was the nearest to Strathdivie. Happily,
the day still kept ‘up,’ in country phrase; but it was grey and still,
as was the scantily-populated moorland country which the travellers had
reached. They had left the black country round Glasgow behind them; but
they had come to a region which needed all the summer sunshine to render
it cheerful--a peaty, boggy, clayey district--where land had been
brought in from the waste with much labour that seemed wasted, for when
all was done the grass looked sour and the corn dropsical. Yet the
prevailing colours of the landscape would have delighted an art student,
since they hovered between the olive-brown of moss, the sombre green of
rushes, and the blue-green of late oats in a sparse and unthrifty
condition. Brickfields with their clay hillocks and smoking kilns, rows
on rows of half-dried bricks, and piles of broken and crumbling-down
bricks, like ungainly masses of sordid ruins, were the most flourishing
form of industry. Strathdivie was in sight, a discoloured, tall and
narrow last-century house, reminding the gazer of a gaunt face foul with
weeping, half hidden in a neglected fir-wood. Fenton of Strathdivie had
not possessed spirit or ability, for long years back, to keep his
surroundings trim and fair to see.
This was the paradise the Miss Mackinnons had sighed for. But the sight
of it did not daunt them--at least not Miss Janet--more than a second.
‘It is an auld-fashioned pairt, without ony nonsense,’ said that
indomitable woman; ‘and auld-fashioned farmin’ aye paid. I dare say
these brickfields have been Archie Fenton’s--they say there’s no such
flourishin’ trade now as the buildin’ trade, and that there is a grand
profit got out o’ drain-tiles. I wouldna wonder though he has doobled
his capital, and that there is plenty of stouchrie [stowed away goods]
in the auld hoose.’
‘He’s had to leave it a’,’ said Miss Bethia, mentioning the undeniable
truth in a low, grave tone, that sought instinctively to subdue the loud
excited key, verging on exultation, in which Miss Janet spoke.
‘Would you have had him tak’ it wi’ him? I call that a very haythen
notion,’ Miss Janet retorted successfully.
The most serious difficulty which presented itself was that there had
been a miscalculation of the strength of Miss Mackinnon. She was
trembling in every limb. Certainly she could not walk even the short
distance to Strathdivie, if her journey to claim her legacy were not to
prove her death. After an anxious consultation with the station-master,
it was found that a cart with a straw-stuffed sack could be had from the
small wayside inn opposite the station. In this primitive conveyance,
sitting all three elevated on their uncomfortable perch, tired and
faint, for they had long ago eaten the few biscuits they had brought to
break their fast, the descendants of the Virginian Mackinnons drove up
to the goal of their hopes.
The rough paddock, the neglected flower-border, the walled-in garden
where the mossy wall was conspicuously broken and out of repair, the
pigeon-house, which was tottering to its fall, so that no prudent pigeon
would abide within its crazy shelter; the dead trees left within sight
of the windows; the old, empty dog-kennel, adorned by a rusty chain,
kicked over, and lying rotting in a damp corner, were unfashionable
enough in their untidiness to please Miss Janet, and appeal to her
enthusiasm; but whether the tokens were those of sluttish plenty, or of
narrowing means growing squalid in despair, remained to be proved.
Mr. Fenton had been without near relations, or, indeed, kindred in any
degree, dwelling under his roof. He had been taken care of in his latter
days by a couple of old servants--a man and his wife, who, in their very
fidelity, looked with jealous suspicion on all invaders of the dead
man’s domains, where his retainers had long ruled paramount.
The woman, who was the housekeeper, in a black cap and plaid shawl,
opened the door, that creaked inhospitably on its hinges, as if it had
grown rusty from the rarity of its opening, in answer to the challenge
of the Miss Mackinnons’ young carter rudely rapping with his whip on one
of the panels. He horrified his freight, who were not in time to stop
him with the stern remonstrance, ‘Man, are you forgetting there’s death
in the house?’--a reminder that he was disturbing the quiet of that
within which was greater than the presence of kings, before which all
must bow.
The housekeeper, with blinking eyes and a tightly closed mouth, offered
a passive resistance to the strangers, though Miss Janet immediately
recovered her confidence, and made a bold approach to the citadel. She
announced herself and her sisters as the late Mr. Fenton’s Glasgow
cousins, who were come to Strathdivie as a matter of course, to be in
the house when the master was carried out of it, and to ‘take charge of
things’ after he was gone, in consideration of what was due both to him
and to themselves.
Mrs. Todd, the housekeeper, stood there like stone, filling up the gap
made by the half-open door, not yielding an inch to Miss Janet’s
intrepid advance, simply asking with sharp significance where was the
ladies’ authority for requiring her to admit them to her master’s house?
She did not even say her late master, thus acknowledging that his rule,
which he had delegated to her and her husband, was an affair of the
past, and that others might now be entitled to lay down the law where he
had once given his orders. He must be fairly ‘in the mools’ (earth)
before such a reversal of matters took place, and she would know the
reason why before she consented to it.
It seemed doubtful whether the Miss Mackinnons could make good their
entrance, even after unseemly contention; whether they would not find
the door shut in their astounded faces, and the old travellers turned
back on the inhospitable wilds--that is, thrown with their small purse
on the deficient accommodation of the station inn--as Miss Janet would
have said, ‘Fell-like quarters for maiden leddies!’
Fortunately this catastrophe was avoided. There was already shut up in
the most convenient room, with an open desk and a few papers before him,
an elderly experienced country lawyer. He was well known to Mrs. Todd,
and had established his right to be there. He had been Mr. Fenton’s man
of business, and was appointed to conduct the funeral. He was the same
lawyer who had written to the Miss Mackinnons with the news of the
death. Mrs. Todd obeyed him all the more implicitly since, clever woman
though she was for her station and opportunities, she had a vague idea
that the joint legacy which she counted on for herself and her husband
depended on ‘the writer’s’ goodwill.
Thus, when Mr. Mair, attracted to the window by the rumble of wheels,
bustled out, introduced himself to the Miss Mackinnons, handed them from
their cart, and directed, with no lack of the necessary authority, that
they should be taken in and made comfortable, Mrs. Todd submitted with a
decent show of civility. But all the more because of the compulsion to
change her bearing, the enmity pretty sure to have arisen between her
and the new-comers was established.
It was a restrained enmity as yet, however, even where Miss Janet was
concerned. She was a little subdued now that she had come into the near
neighbourhood of death, and she and her sisters were too tired and
disturbed generally not to avail themselves thankfully of the
refreshment and rest afforded them--however grudgingly. The plausible
writer-body was willing to receive them, and that was a good sign. Who
would mind a sour servant? Auld bachelors like poor Archie Fenton aye
spoilt servants, who went on trading upon former privileges.
It would have been well if the Miss Mackinnons had been troubled with no
further _arrière pensées_ than belonged either to Mrs. Todd’s
churlishness or her forced politeness. The sisters were not imaginative
women. Their minds did not wander off to the days of the dead man’s
youth and his high hope, to the hour of his birth in that very house,
where his entrance into the world had doubtless been hailed with pride
and joy, equal to the exultation with which they, his remote kinswomen,
had hailed the arrival among them of their grand-nephew, Eneas. They did
not ask what had become of all the shattered dreams which had come into
existence since then, and whether this lonely end were the fitting
conclusion to the blithe beginning of more than threescore years before.
The Miss Mackinnons would have said that they were Christian women, and
it was the Lord’s will; and, if anything more was to be added, they
trusted Archie Fenton had gone to ‘a better place.’
Yet the sisters could not get rid of the wonder of what he who was lying
motionless within four oaken boards in the best bedroom would have
thought of their being here in what had been his house. Mrs. Todd had
not failed to point out a closed door, with grim attention, as the
ladies passed with trembling feet and bated breath. ‘That is where the
master is lying,’ Mrs. Todd had said. He was no longer master; still,
what would he have thought--nay, what did he think now, if thought
remained to him? But surely he was in a position to acknowledge their
right when he had joined the great company in which his and their
forbears mingled--among them that very Jean Mackinnon who had brought
her tocher to Strathdivie, whose half-washed-out name Miss Janet
detected with an irrepressible thrill of delight on the towel which she
got to dry her hands. Another member of that company was Jean’s father,
the haughty Virginian merchant that had made ‘a’ Glasgow trimle at the
wag of his finger.’ Well, he might be in regions where men had ceased to
tremble before a fellow-creature. Still, not even in another world could
it be believed that he was wholly unmoved by the fate of the descendants
for whom he had provided so carefully, looking forward, as it had
happened, ‘well on for a hundred years.’
‘Yes,’ Miss Janet assented fervently, glancing round on the coarse,
clumsy, and shabby, rather than quaintly grotesque, antiquely-solid or
richly-wrought furniture--on the faded out-of-date drugget protecting
the hideous red and green carpets--the blackened portraits of gaunt or
plethoric, hard or heavy-featured men and women on the wall--on the
absence of all that was fresh, bright, open-minded, and cheerful.
Strathdivie was all her fancy had painted it, and it was like coming to
another home to be there. She wrote her sensations to Miss Mackinnon,
who responded to them, though with less effusion.
Nevertheless, it was a somewhat ghastly home-coming. The absence of
almost all personal acquaintance with the deceased, and of anything like
grief for his loss, together with what had been the inevitable reckoning
on his death beforehand, lent a peculiar character to the situation, in
which, when the conditions had to do with any feminine nature less
unconquerable than Miss Janet’s, intolerable restlessness and nameless
terror were apt to usurp the foreground. Miss Bethia, even Miss
Mackinnon, though her feelings were more shut up within herself, might
well have been forgiven for starting nervously every time the door
opened. In truth, Miss Bethia woke up half a dozen times during the
night, in spite of the negus which Mr. Mair had considerately brewed and
sent up for the ladies, her hair standing on end, in a bath of
perspiration, fighting with a nightmare, that Fenton of Strathdivie had
come out of his coffin in the chamber below, mounted the stairs and
entered her room to ask, as his servant had done for him, but with an
awful face and gesture, what the Miss Mackinnons were seeking there.
To the relief of Miss Bethia, if not of Miss Janet and Miss Mackinnon,
who saw no occasion for the appearance of rival claimants on the scene,
a few gentlemen, distant relations of the Fentons of Strathdivie,
straggled in to occupy the vacant bedrooms and represent various
branches of the family at the funeral and the reading of the will. But
the nearest of kin and in affection, as had always been understood, were
unavoidably absent. These were first cousins on the mother’s side, who
had been brought up with the late laird, and had been his intimate
associates all his life, till they had emigrated to New Zealand several
years back. Thus, the persons who had most reason to mourn the last of
this line of Fentons would not so much as hear of his death for many a
week, far less have it in their power to attend his funeral. It was a
still greater comfort to Miss Bethia, and she believed in her heart to
her sisters, though she did not dare to express her conviction, to wear
their long-prepared mourning, and peep behind the closed window-blinds
at the solemn procession which conducted Fenton of Strathdivie by a
bleak moorland road to his long home. But the poor woman could hardly
appreciate the advantage of having one burden lifted from her mind,
because of the fever of expectation into which she and the remaining
Miss Mackinnons were thrown with regard to the removal of another and a
lifelong weight by the reading of the will, which was to take place on
the return of the so-called mourners.
There was no question of what Jean Mackinnon’s marriage settlement had
ordained, but some uncomprehended, undefined power was supposed to
remain in the hands of the Fenton who was to return the loan which his
house had enjoyed for generations. Besides, the law had many a quirk and
quibble, and was proverbially unchancy. Though Miss Janet would not
allow it to be breathed for an instant, Miss Bethia had a quaking fear
in her sinking heart that there was still the risk of a miserable slip
between the cup and the lip, and that she and her sisters might not
only have made fools of themselves, they might be irretrievably
ruined--it was so easy to ruin the last of the Virginian Mackinnons--in
the little hold they had recovered of the world by favour of Tam
Drysdale and Dr. Peter Murray. The sisters might be rouped out of house
and hold, and the family mansion in St. Mungo’s Square lost to Eneas
through the fruitless journey to Strathdivie, because Miss Janet had
been so strong-willed and high-handed.
In spite of not admitting a doubt of the result, Miss Janet’s sense of
honour could hardly restrain her, in the dreary, torturing interval of
waiting, from taking the law into her own hands, setting about an
instant search for the will and mastering its contents, without the help
of Mr. Mair or any other official. Why not, when that clause in Jean
Mackinnon’s marriage contract had still to be fulfilled? But, even if
the temptation had proved too strong to be resisted, in the absence of
all the other connections of the family, who, being men, had gone in
the van of the friends and neighbours to the churchyard, the depredation
would have been circumvented by Mrs. Todd, who kept a vigilant watch
over the brow-beating, interfering ‘auld maid,’ dogging her footsteps,
and never losing sight of her. The former custodian of Strathdivie
intercepted and baffled poor Miss Janet at every point, when she sought
to indemnify herself for the horrible delay by roaming through the house
and making a mental inventory of all it contained, including audacious,
not surreptitious, efforts to open closed cupboards and locked drawers.
‘That muckle, loud-tongued woman--I hate the very sicht of her, and I
ken the puir maister would have hated it too--is no honest.’ Mrs. Todd
was guilty of a gross libel on the lady to one of the undertaker’s men
engaged to wait at the dinner which was to follow the funeral.
Miss Janet was perfectly honest, but it would have been difficult to
say to what Jean Mackinnon’s marriage settlement did not extend in the
eyes of her descendants, unless it were the servants’ trunks in their
room, or the strangers’ wraps on the hall-table.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE READING OF THE WILL--JEAN MACKINNON’S TOCHER.
At last the black-coated company came back from their melancholy errand,
like soldiers, who on similar occasions exchange the ‘Dead March in
Saul’ for ‘The Roast Beef of Old England,’ interchanging ordinary talk
and gossip all the more briskly for its temporary suspension, even
laughing a little at passing jests, in undertones. The party filed into
the study--by courtesy--where they found the three big-boned,
hoary-headed Miss Mackinnons in their places before the others, seated
in three chairs ranged in a row, as on the sack in the cart which had
brought the sisters to the fateful door of Strathdivie. But they were
not the only women present--considerably to Miss Janet’s disgust, Mrs.
Todd came in with her husband, and seated herself near the door
unforbidden by the lawyer, who was the master of the ceremonies, as he
took the chair at the head of the table and produced from the desk at
his elbow a paper with black seals, proceeding to read the document with
due gravity and emphasis.
The will took most of the people there by surprise--not because it
showed Archie Fenton to have been growing more and more an impoverished
man. All present, with the exception of the Miss Mackinnons, had used
their faculties of observation and become acquainted with that fact. The
astonishment was roused by the information that he had not clutched what
remained to him of this world’s goods to his last moment; on the
contrary, he had used such power as the law gave him to strip himself
beforehand of the bulk of his property by executing a deed of gift in
favour of his cousins in New Zealand--thus putting them at once in
possession of what he had destined for them, and saving them the payment
of legacy-duty. When Archie Fenton had set his house in order betimes,
relieving a sensitive, nervous mind, and doing his best to make a dying
bed easier, he had also bought an annuity which provided for his
remaining wants, and spared him the trouble of disposing of the capital
laid down in the purchase. There were only two reservations to the
course, which had, perhaps, as much selfishness as justice or generosity
in it. The first had to do with a moderate bequest to his servants. The
second referred to the claim which the descendants of the Virginian
Mackinnons had on a portion of his estate.
With some elaboration, the late Fenton of Strathdivie detailed by the
lips of the lawyer the amount of the claim, the manner in which the
money had been originally laid out, the casualties which had befallen
it from time to time, the legal opinion which he had troubled himself to
get to certify his exemption from the necessity of refunding these
losses--the most of them occurring before his day--the whole suggesting
forcibly the tyrannical and vexatious character which the provision for
the Mackinnons had ultimately assumed. In the end Fenton, with a
vindictive length of memory which the nearness of death had not cut
short, indemnified himself as far as possible for the annoyance he had
suffered, by exercising the right of choice which had been left to him,
in apportioning, as he saw fit, the two hundred and seventy pounds to
which Jean Mackinnon’s tocher had dwindled away. To May and Janet
Mackinnon, the elder daughters of the late Gavin Mackinnon, of St.
Mungo’s Square, Glasgow, who, on account of their years, were not likely
to derive much benefit from the legacy--a clause framed to deal a double
blow to the unfortunate legatees--twenty pounds each. To Elizabeth or
Bethia Mackinnon, third daughter of the said Gavin Mackinnon, whom the
testator had never seen, whose forward greed had not therefore offended
him, whom he judged of an age better suited to profit by any reversion
of property--two hundred and thirty pounds.
Miss Janet listened with eyes that glittered like Miss Mackinnon’s. Miss
Bethia’s mouth gaped helplessly.
The next thing which happened was that, without a moment’s hesitation,
Miss Janet stated plainly to the assembled company:
‘It’s a shamefu’ cheat. Jean Mackinnon’s marriage portion maun have been
liker ten than twa thousand, let alane hunders; somebody is answerable
for the defalcation.’
‘Mem, compose yourself, I beg,’ said the lawyer, at whom she glared,
speaking with the maddening coolness and politeness of a practised hand
in such circumstances.
The audience, which had gathered there without much hope of pecuniary
gain, and on that very account found themselves in an easy, disengaged
frame of mind, were ready, in the absence of any other source of
excitement, to welcome the diversion of listening to an angry woman
mulcted of what she believed her due, and, according to a woman’s
notions, insulted to boot. And not many insulted and aggrieved
expectants, even of the female sex, spoke their minds with the
refreshing plainness which Miss Janet Mackinnon had already displayed.
‘We are willing to make allowance for ruffled feelings’--Mr. Mair again
attempted to throw oil on the troubled waters in the storm which had
arisen--‘but I would warn you, mem, against making vague accusations. It
is hard to say to whom your words refer. If it is to the late Mr.
Fenton--who has vouchsafed a candid explanation of misadventures over
which he had no control, and who, as you have heard, took counsel more
than once to satisfy himself that he could not be held responsible for
them--although there is a good rule “_de mortuis nil nisi bonum_,” I do
not pretend that your speech is actionable. But if you have any other
person in your mind, I can only repeat to you my advice to be more
careful of what you say.’
‘What do I care for your advice ony mair than for your writer’s Latin?’
cried Miss Janet defiantly. ‘You insult the memory of auld Eneas
Mackinnon, who, when he was in the body, would have garred [made] every
notary-public among you stand about, by lettin’ it be said for an
instant that his dochter’s tocher was a paltry twa or three hunder!’
‘Mem, it was two thousand in the beginning--nobody disputes it. But it
was badly invested in the sourest land in all the three Wards; the
more’s the pity for your sake.’
‘Wha are you peetyin’? Leddies who are Mackinnons dinna crave pity from
men of business. Keep yours till it is asked for. What I insist on is
that Jean Mackinnon’s tocher had mair chance of being ten than twa
thousand.’
‘And what I say, mem, is that the law takes no account of chances,
hardly of probabilities. Can you produce documents to substantiate your
statement?’ demanded Mr. Mair with inflexible gravity, intended to
rebuke the twinkling eyes around him.
‘I daur say no!’ said Miss Janet, unabashed. ‘The Bible says riches have
wings and tak’ to flicht, but I think lawyers’ papers maun have as long
legs as cowardly loons of sodgers in a retreat. What is the use of wulls
and contracts, such as my late nephew Gauvin’s marriage contract, when
they vanish like smoke the moment they are wanted?’
‘I have not heard of the casualty,’ said Mr. Mair drily; ‘but I thought
the office in Edinburgh was a provision against such accidents.’
‘The Coort of Session!’ exclaimed Miss Janet disdainfully,
misunderstanding his meaning. ‘He or she maun be daft, indeed, wha has
recoorse to that refuge. I’ve had enough to encounter in my day from
lawyers’ gab, but a coortfu’ o’ them---- ’
‘I’m not sure that one woman would not be a match for them all,’
muttered Mr. Mair. Then he said in a louder key: ‘I regret, mem, that
you have been misinformed--I must say it, with regard to your legacy
from Strathdivie, but, at least, it has not failed your family
altogether. Suffer me to tell you I am not sure that my friend, the late
Mr. Fenton, might not have successfully contested your claim, and
refused to acknowledge it in his will.’
‘Oh, Janet,’ broke in Miss Bethia, in desperation, ‘say nae mair, lest
we lose what we’ve got. A bird in the hand, ye ken, is worth twa in the
buss. Twa hunder and seventy pounds is a gude lump of money, and you
are sensible that the only tidin’s we could ever pick up about Jean
Mackinnon’s gear, was that it had maist melted awa’, though you would
not hear a word to that effect.’
‘Haud your tongue, Betheye!’ said Miss Janet angrily. ‘And what did the
man mean by treatin’ Meye and me as gin we were superannuate? She’s
glowerin’ at me for word, but somebody else maun write it down for her
to read--I have not the heart. Archie Fenton maun hae been daft and no
fit to mak’ a wull. Even if we had been as auld as the hills, could he
not trust us to hand over our shares, when we were done wi’ them, to
Betheye--our ain sister?’
‘There is something to be said there,’ admitted Mr. Mair. ‘You have
ground for complaint on that score. But a lawyer can only act on his
instructions, and I must bear witness that Mr. Fenton was in his sound
mind when he caused that deed to be drawn up, and when he signed it.
Why, it was two years ago, when he was in little worse health than was
customary with him.’
‘The wull is a whole hatterell [collection] of mistakes,’ said Miss
Janet doggedly. ‘He maun have confused our names, and our standin’ in
the family.’
‘By no means, mem; you forget that he gives both correctly, and that he
mentions Miss Bethia as the third daughter.’
‘I wudna believe it, though you were to preach it doon my throat,’
maintained Miss Janet.
In such a case there was no more to be said; but the announcement that
dinner was on the table was welcome as putting an end to the discussion.
Then Miss Janet gave way by a hair’s-breadth. In place of taking
possession of what she wanted as her simple right, she asked Mr. Mair if
he had any objection to leave the will, to be looked over by the
sisters, and read by Miss Mackinnon.
‘No objection in the world,’ said the lawyer, courteous by nature, and
really willing, as he had been during the whole affair, to do the poor
old ladies any service in his power. But it was not business-like for
such papers to lie about, so he entrusted Miss Janet with the key of the
desk, which contained nothing else of any consequence.
According to old usage in Scotland, the women of the family were not
present at the dinner after the funeral--a withdrawal on their part
doubtless due in the past to the wild orgies which, like Irish wakes,
were wont to establish the respectable standing as well as the
hospitable practice of the house, and at once to commemorate the worth
of the dead and solace the grief of the male relatives among the living.
Such ghastly orgies had long since passed away, but the peculiar reserve
which forbade the attendance of women at funerals still made ladies, as
a rule, keep their rooms in what was supposed to be the depth of their
sorrow. Maiden ladies like the Miss Mackinnons were the last to change
old customs.
The three sisters sat still in the room where the will had been read,
and after the last man had shut the door behind him, looked in each
other’s faces. That is, Miss Mackinnon and Miss Janet looked, for poor
Miss Bethia, in her innocence, was unable to meet the eyes of the
others. She turned away, while Miss Janet did not wait to take
possession of the will, but wrote its purport on the slate which had
been provided for the enlightenment of Miss Mackinnon. She expressed
herself in a feeble version of Miss Janet’s passion that it was a cheat
and ‘havers.’
During the explanation Mrs. Todd came into the room, with a tray for the
ladies, and cast a lynx-eye on the desk with the key in it.
The injured women ate and drank--where would have been the gain in
letting good food be lost? Miss Bethia had felt as if every morsel she
ate must choke her. But the hotch-potch, roast fowl, and pancakes, which
did credit to Mrs. Todd’s plain but efficient cookery, were not without
a solacing influence, neither were the glasses of Madeira which Mr. Mair
had taken care should be added to the meal. What the ladies would have
called the generous fare restored some strength to their shaken frames,
and with strength came a little reasonableness.
Two hundred and seventy pounds _was_ a lump of money. In spite of what
might have seemed grasping and avaricious in their natures, the Miss
Mackinnons had no right sense of the value of money, any more than if
they had been children. The ladies had been poor and growing poorer all
their lives. They had even known abject poverty. It was not wonderful
that they felt inclined to exaggerate the amount of shillings and pence
in two hundred and seventy pounds, and to think they would never come to
an end. The sisters had been startled and deeply mortified, in the
middle of their extravagant fancies, by the first sound of what the
legacy had dwindled to. After they had got accustomed to the truth, and
had begun to realize that it was inevitable; after they had found time
to recall what Miss Bethia had already remembered, of whispers of the
diminution of the property--not listened to when breathed long before in
the Miss Mackinnons’ hearing--a change came over the spirit of their
dreams. They commenced to say to themselves that a little thing was
better than nothing--a great deal better--that it was not little after
all. For two hundred and seventy pounds was a lump of money; enough,
with what the sisters had enjoyed lately, to secure them from want all
the days of their lives; nay, even to enable them to make a ‘hochie’
(hidden treasure) for the Lieutenant. With the wonderful adaptability of
human nature--above all, of woman’s nature--the Miss Mackinnons,
including Miss Janet, were remoulding their plans, and reconciling
themselves to hundreds instead of thousands, and twos instead of tens.
It was no longer the sum itself, it was the heinous injustice and
inequality of the division of it, which continued to trouble the ladies.
Yet ‘it was not lost that a friend got,’ and, in their honest family
affection, it was possible they would end by not only facing the fact,
but by accepting it without a grudge against the favoured individual.
END OF VOL. II.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
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