CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE COLONEL'S YARN.
The next morning brought Mona a budget of letters on the subject of Lucy's visit to the Riviera. Lady Munro had risen to the occasion magnificently. "If your friend is in the least like you," she wrote, "I shall be only too glad to have her as a companion for Evelyn. I have written to ask her to be my guest for a month, and the sooner she comes the better."
"I have only known you for a few years," wrote Lucy, "and I seem to have grown tired of saying that I don't know how to thank you. It will be nuts for me to go to Cannes, without feeling that my father is living on hasty-pudding at home; and it will be a great thing to be with people like the Munros; but if they expect that I am going to live up to your level, I shall simply give up the ghost at once. I have written to assure them that I am an utter and unmitigated fraud; but do you tell them the same, in case there should be bloodshed on my arrival.
"As for your dear letter and enclosure, I handed them straight over to Father, and asked him what I was to do. He read the letter twice through carefully, and then gave me back—the bank-note only! 'Keep it,' he said briefly; and I fancied—I say I fancied—that there was a suspicious dimness about his eyes. You have indeed made straight tracks for the Pater's heart, Mistress Mona, if he allows his daughter to accept twenty pounds from you.
"Allowing for all the expenses of the journey, I find I can afford two gowns and a hat, and much anxious thought the selection has given me, I assure you. One thing I have absolutely settled on,—a pale sea-green Liberty silk, with suggestions of foam; and when I decided on that, I came simultaneously to another decision, that life is worth living after all.
"I only wish I felt perfectly sure that you could afford it, darling. You told me you were getting nothing new for yourself this winter, &c., &c."
Finally, there was a little note from Mr Reynolds to his "elder daughter,"—a note in no way remarkable for originality, yet full of that personal, life-giving influence which is worth a thousand brilliant aphorisms.
Mona was very busy in the shop that morning, but in her spare minutes she contrived to write a letter to Lucy.
"I do not wish to put you in an awkward position," she wrote, "but I think you have sufficient ingenuity and resource to keep me out of difficulties also. You know that when I promised to go to my cousin, I had not even seen the Munros. I met them immediately afterwards: and our intimacy has ripened so rapidly that I should not now think it right to take an important step in life without at least letting them know. I mean to tell them ultimately about my winter in Borrowness; but nothing they could say would alter my opinion of my obligation to remain here, and I think I am justified in wishing to avoid useless friction in the meantime. You can imagine what the situation would be, if Sir Douglas were to appear in the shop some fine morning, and demand my instant return to civilised life. He is quite capable of doing it, and I am very anxious if possible to avoid such a clumsy dénouement. You will see at a glance how inartistic it would be.
"You will tell me that it is absolutely impossible to conceal the truth, but I do not think you will find it so when you get to Cannes. It is very doubtful whether you will see Sir Douglas at all,—he is looking forward so much to the pheasant-shooting; and Lady Munro is not the person to ask questions except in a general sort of way. She exists far too gracefully for that. You can honestly say, if needful, that I am very busy, but that I have not yet returned to town; I don't think you will find it necessary to say even that.
"But show me up a thousand times over rather than sail nearer the wind than your conscience approves. I merely state the position, and I know you will appreciate my difficulty quite as fully as I do myself.
"Please don't have the smallest scruple about accepting the money. When I told you I was 'on the rocks,' I did not mean it in the sense in which a young man about town would use the expression. My debts did not amount to more than twenty or thirty pounds. All things in life are relative, you see. I spent nothing in Norway, and my cousin will not hear of my paying for my board here. She is kind enough to say that, even pecuniarily, she is richer since I came. Of course I do not want any more gowns; I go nowhere, and see no one. Doris tells me she is studying medicine—by proxy. I am glad to think that I shall be shining in society this winter—also by proxy. I hope I may have the good fortune to see you in your new rôle of mermaid before the run is over. I am sure it will be a very successful one.
"Please give your father my most dutiful love, and tell him that I will answer his kind note in a day or two."
The writing of this letter, together with a few grateful lines to Lady Munro, occupied all Mona's spare time before dinner; and as soon as the unbeautiful meal was over, she set off at last to the Colonel's wood.
"If the scale has turned against me, Matilda Cookson will not go to Castle Maclean," she reflected. "If it has turned in my favour, it will do her no harm to look for me in vain."
She had to walk in to Kirkstoun, and then strike up country for two or three miles; but before she had proceeded far on her way, she met Mr Brown.
"So you have got back," he said, looking very shy and uncomfortable.
"Yes, I have been back for some days."
"How is Miss Simpson?"
"She is very well, thank you."
"Were you going anywhere in particular?"
"I am going to Barntoun Wood, but don't let me take you out of your way," she said.
He did not answer, but walked by her side into town.
"Do you take ill with the smell of tobacco?" he asked, taking his pipe from his pocket.
"Not in the least."
"Have you been doing any more botanising?"
"I have not had time. Thank you so much for sending me that box of treasures. Some of them interested me greatly."
"I thought you would like them. Will you be able to come again some day, and hunt for yourself?"
"Is not it getting too late in the year?"
"Not for the mosses and lichens and sea-weeds. Have you gone into them at all?"
"Not a bit. They must be extremely interesting, but very difficult."
"Oh, you get hold of the thread in time, especially with the mosses. The Algæ and Fungi are a tremendous subject of course. One can only work a bit on the borders of it. But if you care to come for a few more rambles, I could soon show you the commonest things we have, and a few of the rarer ones."
"I should like it immensely. Could your sister come with us?"
"Oh yes; she was not really tired that day. It was just that her boot was too tight. I had a laugh at her when we got home."
"Well, I suppose we part company here. I am going out to Colonel Lawrence's."
"I am not doing anything particular this afternoon. I could walk out with you."
The words were commonplace, but something in his manner startled Mona.
As regarded the gift of utterance, Mr Brown was not many degrees removed from the dumb creation. He could discuss a cashmere with the traveller, a right-of-way with a fellow-townsman, or a bit of local gossip with his sisters. He could talk botany to a clever young woman, and he could blurt out in honest English the fact that he wanted her to be his wife; but of love-making as an art, of the delicate crescendo by which women are won in spite of themselves, he was as ignorant as a child. It was natural and easy to his mind to make one giant stride from botany to marriage; and it never occurred to him that the woman might require a few of those stepping-stones which developing passion usually creates for the lover, and which savoir vivre teaches the man of the world to place deliberately.
"Thank you very much," said Mona; "but I could not think of troubling you. I am well used to going about alone." She held out her hand, but, as he did not immediately take it, she bowed cordially, and left him helplessly watching her retreating figure.
She passed the museum, and, leaving the town behind her, walked out among the fields. Most of the corn had been gathered in, but a few stooks still remained here and there to break the monotony of the stubble-grown acres. Trees in that district were so rare that one scraggy sycamore by the roadside had been christened Balmarnie Tree, and served as an important landmark; while, for many miles around, the Colonel's tiny wood stood out as a feature of the landscape, the little freestone cottage peeping from beneath the dark shade of the pines like a rabbit from its burrow.
"It seems to me, my dear," she said to herself, "that you are rather a goose. Are you only seventeen, may I ask, that you should be alarmed by a conversation from Ollendorf? But all the same, if Miss Brown's shoe pinches her next time, my shoe shall pinch me too."
She passed Wester and Easter Barntoun, the two large farms that constituted the greater part of the estate: and then a quarter of an hour's walk brought her to Barntoun Wood. A few small cottar-houses stood within a stone's-throw of the gate, but the place seemed curiously lonely to be the chosen home of an old man of the world. Yet there could be no doubt that it was a gentleman's residence. A well-trained beech hedge surmounted the low stone dyke, from whose moss-grown crannies sprang a forest of polypody, and a few graceful fronds of wild maidenhair. The carriage-drive was smooth and well kept, but, on leaving it, one plunged at once into the shade of the trees, with generations of pine-needles under foot, and the weird cooing of wood-pigeons above one's head. Mona longed to explore those mysterious recesses, but there was no time for that to-day. She walked straight up to the house and knocked.
She was met in the doorway by the quaintest old man she had ever beheld. His clean-shaven face was a network of wrinkles, and he wore a nut-brown wig surmounted by a red night-cap.
"Who are you?" he asked abruptly.
"I am Mona Maclean." Some curious impulse prompted her to add, for the first time during her stay at Borrowness, not "Miss Simpson's cousin," but, "Gordon Maclean's daughter."
He seized her almost roughly by the shoulder, and turned her face to the light.
"By Gad, so you are!" he exclaimed, "though you are not so bonny as your mother was before you. But come in, come in; and tell me all about it."
He opened the door of an old-fashioned, smoke-seasoned parlour, and Mona went in.
"But I did not mean to disturb you," she said. "I came to see Jenny."
"Tut, tut, sit down, sit down! Jenny, damn ye, come and put a spunk to this fire. There's a young lady here."
The old woman came in, bobbing to Mona as she passed. She was not at all surprised to see Miss Simpson's assistant in her master's parlour. One of Jenny's chief qualifications for her post of housekeeper was the fact that she had long ceased to speculate about the Colonel's vagaries.
"I wonder what I have got that I can offer you?" said the old man meditatively. He unlocked a small sideboard, produced from it some rather mouldy sweet biscuits, and poured out a glass of wine.
"That's lady's wine," he said, "so you need not be afraid of it. It's not what I drink myself." He laughed, and, helping himself to a small glass of whisky, he looked across at his visitor.
"Here's to old times and Gordon Maclean!" he said, "the finest fellow that ever kept open house at Rangoon," and he tossed off the whisky at a gulp.
Mona drank the toast, and smiled through a sudden and blinding mist of tears. It was meat and drink to her to hear her father's praise even on lips like these.
"Come, come, don't fret," said the Colonel kindly. "He was a fine fellow, as I say, but I think he knew the way to heaven all the same."
"I am quite sure of that."
"That's right, that's right. Where are you stopping—the Towers?—Balnamora?"
"No, no; I am staying at Borrowness, with my cousin Miss Simpson."
He stared at her blankly.
"Miss Simpson?" he said, "Rachel Simpson!" His jaw dropped, and, throwing back his head on the top of his chair, he burst into an unpleasant laugh.
"Your father was a rich man, though he died young," he said, recovering himself suddenly. "He must have left you a tidy little portion."
"So he did," said Mona. "Things were sadly mismanaged after his death; but in the end I got what was quite sufficient for me."
"You have had a good education?—learned to sing, and parley-voo, and"—he ran his fingers awkwardly up and down the table—"this sort of thing?"
Mona laughed. "Yes," she said, "I have learned all that."
He puffed away at his pipe for a time in silence.
"Why are you not with the Munros?" he said abruptly. "With Munro's eye for a pretty young woman, too!"
"The Munros took me to Norway this summer. Sir Douglas is kindness itself, and so is Lady Munro; but Miss Simpson is my cousin."
He laughed again, the same discordant laugh.
"Drink your wine, Miss Maclean," he said, "and I will spin you a bit of a yarn. Maybe some of it will be news to you.
"A great many years before you were bora, my grandfather was the laird of all this property. Your father's people, the Macleans, were tenants on the estate—respectable, well-to-do tenants, in a small way. Your grandfather was a remarkable man, cut out for success from his cradle,—always at the top of his class at school, don't you know? always keen to know what made the wheels go round, always ready to touch his hat to the ladies. His only brother, Sandy, was a ne'er-do-weel who never came to anything, but your grandfather soon became a rich man. There were two sisters, and each took after one of the brothers, so to say. Margaret was a fine, strapping, fair-spoken wench; Ann was a poor fusionless thing, who married the first man that asked her. Margaret never married. The best grain often stands.
"Your grandfather had, let me see, three children—two boys and a girl. A boy and girl died. It was a sad story—you'll know all about it?—fine healthy children, too! But your father was a chip of the old block. He had a first-rate education, and then he went to India and made a great name for himself. I never knew a man like him. People opened their hearts and homes to him wherever he went. Not a door that was closed to him, and yet he never forgot an old friend. Well, the first time he came home, like the gentleman he was, he must needs look up his people here. Most of them were dead. Sandy had gone to Australia; there were only Ann's children, Rachel Simpson and her sister Jane. Jane had married a small shopkeeper, and had a boy and girl of her own. They were very poor, so he made each of them a yearly allowance.
"Well, he was visiting with his young wife at a house not a hundred miles from here, and the two of them were the life of the party. I know all about it, because I came to stay at the house myself a day or two before they left. After they had gone—after they had gone, mark ye!—who should come to call at the house in all their war-paint but Rachel Simpson and her sister! And, by Jove! they were a queerish couple. Rachel had notions of her own about dress in those days, I can tell you."
Mona blushed crimson. No one who knew Rachel could have much doubt that the story was true.
"They announced themselves as 'Gordon Maclean's cousins,' and of course they were civilly received; but the footman got orders that if they called again his mistress was not at home. I had a pretty good inkling that Maclean was providing them with funds, so I thought it only right to tip him a wink. He took it amazingly well—he was a good fellow!—but I believe he gave his fair cousins pretty plainly to understand that, though he was willing to share his money, his friends were his own till he chose to introduce them. I never heard of their playing that little game again, for, after all, the funds were of even more importance than the high connections. But they never forgave your father. They always thought that he might have pulled them up the ladder with him—ha, ha, ha! a pretty fair weight they would have been!"
Mona did not laugh. Nothing could make the least difference now, but she did wish she had heard this story before.
"You did not know old Simpy in your father's time?"
Mona hesitated. She was half inclined to resent the insulting diminutive, but what was the use? The Colonel took liberties with every one, and perhaps he could tell her more.
"No," she said. "I vaguely knew that I had a cousin, but I never thought much about it till she wrote to me a few years ago."
"The deuce she did! To borrow money, I'll be bound. That nephew of hers was a regular sink for money, till he and his mother died. But Simpy should be quite a millionaire now. She has the income your father settled on her. and a little money besides—let alone the shop! She is not sponging on you now, I hope?"
"Oh no," said Mona warmly. "On the contrary, I am staying here as her guest."
He burst out laughing again.
"Rather you than me!" he said. "But well you may; it is all your father's money, first or last."
Mona rose to go.
"I am glad you have told me all this," she said, "though it is rather depressing."
"Depressing? Hoot, havers! It will teach you how to treat Rachel Simpson for the future. I have a likeness of your father and mother here. Would you like to see it?"
"Very much indeed. It may be one I have never seen."
He took up a shabby old album, and turned his back while he found the place; but a page must have slipped over by accident in his shaky old hands, for when Mona looked she beheld only a vision of long white legs and flying gauzy petticoats.
"Damnation!" shouted the old man, and snatching the book away, he hastily corrected his mistake.
It was all right this time. No living faces were so familiar to Mona as were those of the earnest, capable man, and the beautiful, queenly woman in the photograph.
"I have never seen this before," she said. "It is very good."
"I'll leave it to you in my will, eh? It will be worth as much as most of my legacies."
"If everything you leave is as much valued as that will be, your legatees will have much to be grateful for."
The old face furrowed up into a broad smile. "Well," he said, "I start for London to-night, but I hope we may meet again. I'll send Jenny in to see you. We are good comrades, she and I—we never enquire into each other's affairs."
Mona found it rather difficult to give her full attention to Jenny's letters, interesting and characteristic as these were. One was addressed to a sailor brother; another to Maggie, and the latter was not at all unlike a quaint paraphrase of Polonius's advice to his son. The poor woman's mind was apparently ill at ease about the child of her old age.
"I suld hae keepit her by me," she said. "She's ower young tae fend for hersel'; but it was a guid place, an' she was that keen tae gang, puir bit thing!"
"I do think it would be well if you could get her a good place somewhere in the neighbourhood," said Mona; "and I should not think it would be difficult."
"Ay, but she maun bide her year. It's an ill beginning tae shift ere the twel'month's oot. We maun e'en thole."
But Jenny forgot her forebodings in her admiration of Mona's handwriting.
"I can maist read it mysel'," she said. "Ye write lood oot, like the print i' the big Bible.”