MRS. BROWN did not come to Rosmore, though she received a letter from Mrs. Rowland which dissolved her at the first moment of reading in tears and gratitude, but which afterwards she began to fear must have “some motive,” though it was difficult to imagine what. For why should the lady be so kind to her? she asked herself. There are a great many good people in the world, and especially women, who are haunted with this idea of a “motive,” and cannot shake themselves free of it. Jane was herself an innocent person enough, acting upon impulse continually. But all the more was she anxious to investigate the supposed mysterious meaning and suggestion of self-interest which could have dictated Evelyn’s kind and simple letter. “I should have wished that you had come with the children to settle them in their new home, where, of course, there will always be a room for you, their affectionate guardian, who have been a mother to them; but at least I hope you will come now, and that you will approve of all my arrangements for them.” It was difficult to find anything in this that could be objected to, and Jane wept over it at first, as has been said; but then her habitual distrust came in. “What will the woman be wanting with me? It will be to give herself credit with Jims, and throw a’ the blame on me—but I’ll no fa’ into the snare,” she said to herself, falling into it instantly, if snare it was. When Archie appeared in the afternoon to fetch her, she shook her head. “Na, na, I’m no gaun—no a fit. It’s just some plan for exposing your poor mammaw’s family, and letting him see we’re no to be evened to her. No, no, I will never set my fit within Rosmore.”
Archie himself, though he had gone to Glasgow on Mrs. Rowland’s gentle compulsion to escort his aunt, was not perhaps very anxious that she should come. Though he was full of affection for her, it is to be feared that already the cold eye of the butler had worked its effect upon Archie. He felt himself grow red and a cold dew come over his forehead when he thought of that functionary holding his silver dish at Mrs. Brown’s elbow. What unutterable things would be in his eye! Archie felt that Morris looked at himself with a pitying wonder. What, then, would he feel for Mrs. Brown? Therefore he was not disposed to press the matter. As for Mrs. Rowland, the lively prejudice with which he had met her, had been kept up with difficulty in her presence, and he could throw no light on the motive she could have in asking Mrs. Brown. There was, alas, no difficulty whatever in proving to the most casual observer that Mr. Rowland’s family, which in this case was Mrs. Brown’s family, could not in any way be “evened” to the new wife who was supreme at Rosmore. To bring Mrs. Brown to make that doubly sure was a work of supererogation. Archie did not say this to his aunt, but with a burning sense of disadvantages which he had never suspected before he felt it in his own breast.
“And how is Mey getting on?” said Jane, when this question was decided.
“Oh, well enough. She is just copying everything she sees, like a little parrot, as she is.”
“There’s no harm in that,” said Jane, “for I suppose the leddy’s real well-bred and a’ that. It would be nothing but that he marriet her for. He was aye an ambitious man, Jims Rowland. But eh! he’s a good-hearted man—just ower good. I got a letter from him this morning, and he says the allowance will just go on, and I’m to keep the house, and make myself comfortable.”
Jane’s ready tears flowed forth upon this argument. “It’s awfu’ kind,” she sobbed; “I wouldna say a word against one of them, nor do a thing to vex him. If he had been my ain brother, he couldna have been more kind—I’m just at my ease for life; and if you could tell me ony thing I could do to please him——”
“Maybe it would please him,” said Archie doubtfully, “if you were to come to Rosmore.”
“Na, na, I’ll no do that—just to graitify that prideful woman. But ye can tell him that I want the house for his, and that whatever use can be made of it to send things to, or to come for a night’s lodging instead of one of thae dear hotels—it will be ready. There will be beds ready, and linen aired ready to put on, night and day,” said Mrs. Brown in the fervour of her gratitude. “And ye can say to her, Archie, that I’m very much obliged, but that I have not sleepit out of my own house for years, which is just the real truth, as ye can certify, though maybe it’s no just the reason in the present case; and ye may say I will be glad to see her if she comes to Gleskie—which is no perhaps exactly the case, but we maun be ceevil. Mind ye must always be ceevil, whatever happens. It would give her a grand hold upon ye, if ye were ever wanting in respec’.”
“I’ve no reason to think she’s wanting any hold upon me,” said Archie, with a little irritation.
“Eh!” said his aunt, holding up a warning finger, “she’s laying her spell on you too! I’ll no go near her, or she might make a fool o’ me. It’s easy enough to make a fool o’ me. I just greet at a kind word—I canna help mysel’. When I got her letter wi’ a’ its fine words, I just grat till I was blin’; but then I asked myself what for should she be that ceevil to me?”
“It was maybe only for kindness after all,” said Archie.
“Dinna you be a born idiot to trust in that. Na, na, it’s no without a motive, take my word for it,” Jane said.
It was hard, however, for the closest observer to find out what the motive could be. Evelyn had no small effort to make to overcome her own natural objections to the society of the two young people, one of whom studied her like a pattern book, while the other eyed her from his corner with a hostility scantily veiled by that attempt to be “ceevil” which his aunt had enjoined upon him. Archie’s attitude, however, was on the whole less trying than that of Marion, who studied and copied Mrs. Rowland’s manners, her tone, as far as she could master it, her little tricks of gesture, till Evelyn became ridiculous to herself; which is a very curious experience. When she saw little Marion with her slight person throw back her head as Evelyn was aware she had herself the habit of doing, and drop her hand by her side, which was another peculiarity, swaying it slightly as she walked, a trick for which Evelyn had suffered much in her youth, the laugh which burst from her in spite of herself was not pleasant. Evelyn was tall, while Marion was little; she was forty, and Marion was eighteen. She belonged a little, she was aware, to a bye-gone school, which had been stately rather than piquant, and Marion’s infantile prettiness was adapted to a quite different principle. It was ludicrous to watch growing and increasing day by day the travesty of herself which was before her eyes in her husband’s little girl. Sometimes her impatience with the copy was so great that the woman’s instincts of outraged personality were upon her, and she could have seized and shaken the folly out of the little flatterer and imitator. But I need not say that this was the merest flutter of nerves on Evelyn’s part, and that she never really departed from her rôle of patience. The worst of it was that James began gradually to perceive, and not only to perceive, but regard with delight, this imitation process. “I really think she is growing a little like you, Evelyn!” he said, when his wife had been driven nearly to an end of her toleration, and it was all she could do to keep from her countenance a contraction—which Marion would probably have reproduced next day, to the confusion of all concerned.
In this way, however, a great superficial improvement was notable in the girl. She learned in an inconceivably short time how to manage all the circumstances of her changed life, adapting herself to everything as one to the manner born. No temptation of being respectful to the butler ever came to Marion. She treated him and the rest of the fine servants as if they were cabbages; which was her rendering of the easy and genial indifference with which Mrs. Rowland received the services she had never been accustomed to consider extraordinary. Evelyn’s manner to the maid in her room, though she might not say a word to her, was the easy composure of a woman perfectly considerate and friendly, and ready on any occasion to show her natural interest in the fellow-creature so near to her, both by word and deed. But Marion’s indifference went the length of insult, though she had no intention of anything but to follow exactly her stepmother’s example. The demeanour of the one was just that kind of quiet familiar affability and ease which characterises a relationship in which there is no desire, on the part of the superior at least, for any more demonstration than is felt, or unnecessary intercourse; but Marion’s was a kind of brutality by which the inferior was made to feel as if she had no existence at all except as a ministrant to certain wants. Thus the little girl achieved that polish of the Tartar, which, when scratched, shows the savage through.
Archie was not at all of this kind. And sometimes when Evelyn looked up suddenly and found him with his averted head, shoulder turned the side she was sitting on, and blank of dull opposition, she felt it almost a relief. Now and then some sentiment on her part, something quite unthought of which she said or did, and which probably had no connection whatever with himself, would make him look full at her with those eyes which Rowland had called his mother’s eyes—the honest soft blue, not too profound, but clear as the sky, in which at least the perception of the heart was not wanting, whether it was accompanied or not by any higher light of the spirit. What Archie knew or did not know it was difficult to say, for he never spoke when he could help it, and then chiefly in answer to questions which were seldom of an intellectual kind. Something had been said at first about the University, or rather, as both Archie and his father called it, “the College,” which meant, as Evelyn came slowly to understand, the same thing—only so far different that Glasgow or Edinburgh was the University meant, and not Oxford or Cambridge. That his son should go to “the College” had been Rowland’s intent, but the idea seemed to drop all the more completely, of course, that it was the summer vacation, and nothing could be done for the moment. Archie, however, instead of exerting himself like Marion to acquire a new, if it should happen to be a fictitious standing ground, remained a sort of unknown quantity in his father’s house. With all the efforts she could make Evelyn did not succeed in forming anything but the most slight acquaintance with her stepson, and neither (which was more extraordinary still) did his father attain to more than an acquaintance. Sometimes Archie would be drawn into an expression of opinion on a political subject, which naturally was, as a rule, in opposition to his father, and at once crushed by him; upon which the boy with not unnatural wrath returned into his shell more closely than before. One time, indeed, Evelyn had found herself on the very verge of attaining his confidence, or so at least she thought. It was on the day—momentous day—when Rankin judged the two little dogs to be sufficiently mature to be sent home to their master. They were brought up to the great door, which was at one end of the colonnade. Nothing more amusing could be than the two little bundles of fur and fun deposited at her feet by Sandy the groom, who was delighted with his errand, though a little discomposed to find nobody but “the mistress.”
“They’ll be for the young gentleman,” he said shamefaced.
“What delightful little things,” said Evelyn, who, like all well-conditioned persons, loved dogs. “Go and find Mr. Archibald, Sandy. I’ll take care of them till he comes.”
When Archie appeared in great haste and for once glowing with pleasure, he found her seated in the centre of a great rug on the floor of the hall with the two little dogs in convulsions of delight beside her, barking, biting, rolling and struggling upon the soft carpet, and undaunted with the something so unknown to them—a lady in a soft silken dress to play with. Perhaps the little things recognised only this of Evelyn’s many excellences, that she wore an exceptionally soft gown—not like Jenny Rankin’s rough homespun. Dogs are very susceptible to this superiority of texture.
“Come and look at your doggies, Archie,” she said without looking up. “I have taken possession of them, or they have taken possession of me. Where did you find such delights? There is nothing so nice as a puppy, except a baby perhaps—and you, I know, would not appreciate that.”
“Why would I not appreciate that?” said Archie roughly (being thereto moved by suggestions from Aunty Jane.)
Mrs. Rowland gave a glance up at the clouded countenance of the sullen boy, surprised but saying nothing, and he ended as he generally did when alone with her, by feeling ashamed of himself.
“They’re Rankin’s doggies—a particular breed,” he added more civilly than usual to make up. “He’s the old gamekeeper, and he’s given himself up to dogues ever since his accident.”
This was quite a long speech for Archie to make.
“He has given himself up to it with great success,” said Evelyn. “You must take me to see him. These are just at the most delightful stage. I said there was nothing so nice except a baby. But kittens are almost as nice before they grow to be cats.”
“They cannot be so nice,” said Archie, “because they do grow to be cats; and these will be dogues when they’re grown up.”
Evelyn pondered a little over this dogmatic proposition before she answered: “You put it in an original way, but I think I agree with you, Archie. And what are these little things called—or have they got names—or shall we confer some on the spot?”
“Rankin hasn’t much imagination: he calls them just Roy and Dhu—that means red and black in Gaelic. But you spell the last D-h-u.”
“Roy and Dhu are very good names,” said Evelyn. “I would keep to them, I think: they sound well even if Rankin has not much imagination.”
“He has a great deal of Gaelic,” said Archie: “he writes things in papers about poetry and stuff. He discourses to me sometimes, but I never mind.”
“Then you don’t care for poetry and stuff?”
“How should I, in Gaelic, which I don’t understand?” The conversation, however, was thus getting upon general topics, which Archie eschewed, and he suddenly awoke to the danger of being drawn into a tête-à-tête with his stepmother. “The dogues will be spoiling your dress, and a bother to you.”
“I have never confessed to your father,” she said, “that I am very fond of dogs. I don’t think he likes them. Suppose you and I set up a little kennel of our own. You will want dogs for the shooting when the time comes, and I have not seen one about the place.”
“No, there are none. Gilmour—that’s the gamekeeper—has two or three. He says there’s a good deal of shooting,” said Archie, led out of himself by the interest of this subject, about which he had gleaned a little further information. It excited and charmed the lad, for he was full of eagerness to do things like other young men of his age, but afraid to show his ignorance to begin with.
“Your father has not said much about it. He is not a shooting man, you know. You will have to go out with the gamekeeper and bring us our first grouse.”
“I’ll not bring in many grouse,” he said almost under his breath.
“You are not a good shot? Never mind: you are young enough to mend that. The great thing is to keep cool and not get flurried, I believe.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose lassies”—he corrected himself quickly with a violent blush—“ladies know much about it.”
“Perhaps not,” said Evelyn, “but my father was one of the best shots in Northamptonshire. It is not a very great distinction,” she added with a smile. “I could quite forgive a man for not shooting at all.”
“It’s no a crime,” said Archie, as if to himself, and with a tone of defiance.
“Oh no, quite the reverse—neither one way nor another. I think,” she added with a little hesitation, “that your father, though he does not shoot himself, would be pleased if you showed a little enthusiasm about it. Forgive me for saying so. It is worth while taking a little trouble to please him, he cares so much—”
“Not for me,” said Archie, setting his pale face within his high collar like a rock.
“Oh, you silly boy!—more for you in that way than for any living creature. And very naturally, for are not you his heir—his successor—to represent him in anything he does not do himself?”
“For pride, then,” said Archie, throwing down rather roughly upon the rug one of the dogs with which he was playing, “not for anything else.”
“Oh, poor little doggie,” said Evelyn, seeing it inexpedient to continue this subject, and then she added more lightly, “What are they to be called then, Archie? Roy and Dhu?”
“Whatever you like,” cried the young man. “I care nothing for them now: they are just little brutes that fawn on anybody. You may call them Red and Black, if you like, like the cards. I don’t care if I never saw them more.”
And he turned upon his heel and strode away. But these were words too dignified and tragical to suit with Archie’s appearance, which was not that of the hero of romance who grandly does those things. To turn on your heel and stride away, you ought to be six feet at least, with chest and shoulders to match. Archie was about five feet six, stooped, and was badly dressed. He had not yielded to any soft compulsion on this point, as Marion had done so easily. He had begun to perceive it himself, nay, he could see that the youngest footman’s cut of livery suit was better than his. But he clung to his old suit all the same.
The shooting which Mr. Rowland had taken along with Rosmore was not very great—a few grouse on the hillside, a few partridges late in the season, some pheasants as tame as poultry in those delightful woods which were so pleasant to wander in (when your shoes were thick and you did not mind the damp), but not sufficient to entertain many birds. I don’t know how rich men generally who have made their money, and have not been used to those luxuries, arrange about the shooting in the fine “places” which they buy and retire to when their portion is made—whether they fall naturally into the habit of it, and shoot like the other gentlemen, or whether it is a matter that lies heavy on their mind. It certainly lay very heavy on the mind of Archie, who was too shy to acknowledge that he knew nothing about that mode of exercise, and therefore went out with the keeper when the dreadful moment came in great perturbation, not frightened, indeed, for his gun, or for shooting himself, which would have been a certain deliverance, but for cutting a ridiculous figure in the eyes of Roderick, the gamekeeper, who talked to him, the inexperienced Glasgow boy, as he would have talked to any young gentleman who had been accustomed to the moors from his cradle. Archie did not reflect that Roderick knew perfectly where he had come from and how he had been bred, and that this assumption that he knew all about it was indeed pure ridicule on the keeper’s part, which would have been completely divested of its sting if the lad had possessed sufficient courage to say that he was a novice. But he did not, and the consequence was a few days of utter humiliation and weariness, after which Archie became painfully capable of shooting within a few yards of the bird, and once actually brought down a rabbit, to his great exultation yet remorse. Poor rabbit, what had it done to have its freedom and its life thus cut short? But the lad durst no more express this sentiment than he durst say that he had never fired a gun in his life before that terrible Twelfth when he went out for the first time on the hillside and barked his unaccustomed shins, and made his arms ache and his head swim with the fatiguing, sickening, hopeless day. Rowland had been warned that there was no game to be had which would justify him in inviting company. “Me and the young gentleman—twa guns—we will want nae mair—just enough to keep up a bit supply for the hoose,” Roderick said, with a twinkle in his eye. And as Archie made no protest, his father thought that somehow or other the boy who had never had anything to do all his life must know how to manage his gun.
There were some ideas of going out to the hill with luncheon, which Evelyn, however, seeing the terror and despair at once in the lad’s eyes, discouraged.
“No,” she said, “men only pretend to like it when there’s a party: they never like it when they mean serious work.”
“Do you ever desire work, Archie?” said his father, “Come in with a good bag, there’s a good fellow.”
“If I might speak a word, sir,” said Roderick, “the finest fallow in the world will no bring up a cheeper if there’s nane to come.”
“Well, well, start early, and good luck to you,” said Rowland.
And they all came out to meet the pair returning in the afternoon, Archie more dead than alive, with his hands blistered and his shins scratched, and the look of absolute exhaustion on his face, but somehow with a bird or two in his bag which he was not conscious of, still less of how they got there.
“Ou ay, there’s aye a hare or twa,” said the gamekeeper; “but it was very warm on the hill, and Mr. Archibald is not used to the work, as few gentlemen are the first day. I’ll take your gun, sir, and I’ll take your bag, and the ladies will give ye a lift hame.”
Archie obeyed, and clambered into the carriage, the most dilapidated sportsman, perhaps, that the evening of the twelfth ever saw.
“Well, sir, had ye good sport?” said his father, feeling a glow of pride in the performances of the boy.
“Oh, I don’t know if you call that good sport,” the lad said with a gasp.
But this was set down to modesty, or fatigue, or crossness, which unfortunately had grown of late to be a recognised quality of Archie. And Mr. Rowland himself took down a brace of grouse to the Manse next morning, a proud father handing out “my son’s birds,” as if Archie had been the finest shot in the world. But this was not Archie’s fault, who knew nothing of the transaction. He managed to be able to carry his gun like other feeble sportsmen after that terrible initiation. Thus both Mr. Rowland’s children learned to adapt themselves to the duties of their new sphere.