THE luncheon on the hill-side would have been probably as successful as these parties ever are, had it not been for one incident. In the train of the little pony cart, which carried the food, and which had to be led over the rougher parts by Sandy the groom, there appeared a stranger whom Mrs. Rowland and her visitors had seen at two or three corners on the way, so long as it was possible to drive: supposed a tourist—which was a being very little esteemed at Rosmore, where tourists were divided into two sections, one labelled as being “from Glasgow,” who was at once the most innocent and the most objectionable; while the other, in the slang of the district, was called B.T. or British tourist, and was presumably “from the south,” a flattering appellation which means England in these regions. This man had been persistently making his way with much toil, but apparent inoffensiveness to the top of the hill, and the ladies had not interfered with his freedom. I may say, however (which is a view not perhaps popularly taken), that there are two ways of regarding the indiscriminate presence of tourists everywhere as exemplified in the question of foot-paths. The tourist ought to know that wherever he appears he is objectionable to the natives of a country, save to those who sell him provisions, and take him in to lodge; and that his undesired presence upon private property, is regarded by all who possess any, whether it be a grass plot or a hillside, with unmitigated aversion. It is at least as hard for the proprietor to put up with him, as it is for him to be shut out from one particular view—which is no better than other views which are to be procured on other people’s property, or even from the highroad. If it were then fully understood that there was a hardship on both sides, it might be easier to come to an understanding. Mrs. Rowland and the young ladies regarded the figure of the tourist toiling upwards with natural hostility. “What right has any man on our hill!” Marion said; and there was one occasion on which Rosamond had actually extended a foot, with the intention of jumping out of the pony carriage and warning off the intruder.
“I do not mind in the least telling him that he is on private property, if you wish it, Mrs. Rowland.”
“My dear, though it is private property, it is only the wild side of a mountain,” said Evelyn; “the poor man is doing harm to nothing but our feelings.”
“If he was to be shot,” said the persistent Marion, “we would be blamed for not warning him.”
Perhaps Mrs. Rowland thought it would not be a bad thing if the stranger was shot (very slightly), as the best way of proving the peril of such unauthorised wanderings. But she said nothing and drove on, until the path was lost in the moor, and the ladies had to get out and walk.
It was too much of a good thing, however, they all felt, when the same man was seen to reappear, following closely in the footsteps of Sandy, who led the pony with the luncheon. They had reached by this time the appointed spot on the hill, which was high above the loch, a sort of natural platform, where a circle of grass broke the darker surface of the heather and underwood. Great bushes of high-growing ling, with the faded bells all stiffened into russet upon them, stood round this oasis, which was kept green, and in a wet season something more than green, by the burn, which made half a circuit round it, leaping downwards from little ridge to ridge of its course. All around among the heather grew the sweet gale, or bog-myrtle, sending up a grateful sweetness when any one crushed a self-sacrificing plant. The sky was of the triumphant yet not too well assured brightness, which is peculiar to Highland skies—a sort of heavenly triumph over difficulties, chastened by the sense that the conquered clouds may blow back at any moment. Deep down, the loch lay like a blue mirror, with all the little clouds floating upon it like boats, in reflections, among the grey willows and the yellow autumnal foliage. Was the grass so velvet, mossy, and beautiful of this little circle—slightly wet, perhaps boggy, “saft,” as Sandy said? Far from us be the thought: besides it was heaped with shawls and plaids, and what did it matter? The only members of the party who thought of the view were Evelyn and Rosamond. The others were satiated with views. And what did Eddy and Marion care for anything but their eternal war of words, their little mutual rudenesses and compliments? About Archie’s sentiments nobody knew. Sometimes he turned his back to the loch, sometimes would be seen with his eyes intent, as if he were watching something on the opposite side.
“Oh!” said Marion suddenly, with a long-drawn breath, “there is that man again!”
“What man?”
They had all been seated on the dry ridge of the ling, rustling and stiff with its dessicated flowers, above the less trustworthy level of the grass, and were watching with interest the broken hobble of the cart with the baskets, over the uneven ground.
“Roderick will tell him—” said Mrs. Rowland, “and persuade him to go away.”
“Ay will I, mem,” said the gamekeeper, jocund but grim. “I’ll persuade him—in the drawing of a breath.”
Here an exclamation from Eddy startled everybody. “Oh, hold on!” was all the young man said; but his tone had an expression which somehow roused the attention of every one. He made a spring among the heather towards the objectionable visitor. “Is it you, Johnson? I thought you were gone,” he was heard to say. And then it appeared that he had something private to add to the intruder, for he drew him away under the shelter of the clump of rowan trees, which lent an illumination of red berries to the scene.
The luncheon had been spread out, and everything was ready to begin upon when Eddy, certainly under the circumstances the most useful member of the party, came back. He was slowly followed by the tourist, and bore a somewhat embarrassed look. “Mrs. Rowland, may I introduce a friend of mine, Johnson of—St. Chad’s?” His countenance had been full of perplexity, but in the momentary pause which preceded the utterance of the last words, he suddenly recovered himself. “Distinguished don,” he added, “no end of a scholar. Came up here for a reading party; but some of them have not arrived yet.”
Mr. Johnson did not come up to Evelyn’s ideas of a distinguished don; but Mrs. Rowland was aware that appearances are often deceptive in the case of such great personages, and it did not occur to her that October was an unlikely moment for a reading party. She was perhaps the only one who attached any significance at all to the words. She begged Mr. Johnson to find a seat for himself, and share their luncheon. He was an insignificant person, with furtive eyes and a sallow complexion, clothed in the usual tweeds. “I am sure, madam, I am much obliged to you,” he said; which was somewhat startling; but dons are often very old-fashioned, as Evelyn was aware.
The conversation went on as if he were not there. He was a taciturn person, but gave a great and concentrated attention to the basket. To see him eating and drinking recalled to Evelyn stories which everybody in her youth had been fond of telling to the disadvantage of the dons.
“You have very little in your bag. I would have killed more myself,” said Marion.
“Ah, I dare say,” Eddy replied; “you’ve no heart and no conscience, and what would you care what you killed? A man or two in the bag would have made it much heavier.”
“As if I would take the trouble to shoot men!”
“And a woman can’t be tried for manslaughter,” said Eddy: and they both laughed as if, except their own rather poor fun, there was nothing that was of any interest in the world.
Rosamond kept her stately pose, her lofty manner of treating the subject under discussion, but she was perhaps scarcely more elevated in her aim. “Can you tell me the names of the mountains, now?” she said, with an emphasis which only Archie understood.
And he woke up from that self-absorbed dullness which was the aspect he presented in general, and pointed out to her peak after peak, not without an occasional glance at Roderick in the background, who gave him a nod back again over the young lady’s head. Evelyn looked on, perceiving all these little details with an unembarrassed attention. It was seldom she was so free to observe what was going on about her: the business of a large household, to which she was yet unaccustomed, the calls of her husband upon her attention, the cares of the mistress of the house to keep everything going, had lessened her possibilities of observation. But the position of an elder woman in the midst of a little company of this description is sometimes almost uncomfortably free. There is no pretence made of any particular regard to her amusement, and she is allowed to observe at her leisure. Evelyn perceived, with a little alarm, the position of affairs. Was it perhaps accidental—a mere fortuitous conjunction of the two who most attracted each other? Was it perhaps a plan, a scheme? She had been so long out of the world of social scheming that she had forgotten its ways. She observed for a little with a half benign amusement the skirmishing of Marion and Eddy, the little onslaughts and withdrawals, provocations not much more refined than a milkmaid’s jibes, responses not in better taste. Mrs. Rowland had not thought much of the “style” of Edward Saumarez, the younger, from the beginning—an old-fashioned word, which in the language of the present day would mean that she thought him “bad form.” Words change, and so do all forms of expression, but the actual fact does not alter. As she mentally compared this commonplace young man whose manners she thought bad and whose person was so entirely without distinction, with his father—the love of her own youth, the handsome, distinguished, courtly Saumarez of another day, a sudden rush of painful feeling came over Evelyn. Was this what he intended? Was it to be so done that she herself should seem the schemer, the matchmaker, promoting the advantage of his son and daughter above that of her husband’s children? Nobody remarked how Evelyn was looking, or inquired what it was that gave occasion for that sudden flush and paleness. Was this what it meant—his eagerness to connect his children with her, that she should invite them, assume the responsibility of them? Evelyn saw everything that might have been is his mind as with the flash of a sudden light. He had jilted her, but she had never ceased to care for him, people would say; as witness the results. Had she not thrown her husband’s boy and girl, inexperienced, suspecting nothing, made of money, into the grip of those clever Saumarez?
Evelyn got up from her seat in the horror of the thought that thus came into her mind, and with the sensation that she must do something at once to put an end to it. But nobody even remarked her movement, and she sat down again with a pant of baffled eagerness. Rosamond and Archie sat with their backs to her, full of their own subject: the dull boy was awakening under that siren’s touch; while Marion and Eddy kept up a deafening chatter about something much more interesting than the mountains or waters—themselves; each moving on the lines that answered best. Was the plan laid out in all its details? Had they come with their constructions to captivate these two homely Rowlands before the other harpies had so much as got note of them, to anticipate all competition? It was just such a heartless scheme as he might have conceived in his unsoftened, unchastened suffering. And Madeline Leighton’s words came back upon Evelyn’s mind with a sudden horror: “He will compromise you, if he can, with your husband.” How angry she had been, thinking only of the ordinary sense of these words. Ah! here was another sense—a sense she had never dreamt of! If Eddy Saumarez with his bad little record, his short story of as much folly as could be crammed into a life of twenty, asked Marion’s father for her hand and fortune—and Archie, with the power of sullen opposition which was in him, proclaimed his intention of marrying Rosamond, to whom would her husband turn as the cause of these premature engagements? Who would be blamed by the world? Would any one believe that she had not thought of such a contingency? Would James——James, whose soul trusted in her? Oh, villain and traitor! was this his way of punishing her for having escaped from his influence, for the late happiness that had made her so much better off than he was? Madeline’s warning had not been strong enough or clear enough to save her. Evelyn clasped her hands in her lap till the pressure hurt her, and looked on helpless at the work which was going so briskly on at her side, the work which she would be believed to have planned—with eyes which could scarcely endure the sight.
“I have always observed,” Rosamond was saying, with the air of a sage, “that the more you take an interest in anything, the more amused you are. Everything is tiresome when you don’t take an interest. My father is an instance. He is never out of his chair: he can’t do anything without Rogers, not even raise himself up. You would think he had a dreadful life: but he has not: he watches the people, and knows everything that happens. I am a little like that myself. Now Eddy has no such interest in anything. He likes horses and billiards and that sort of thing, and bad company generally.” Rosamond gave a glance behind at Eddy’s acquaintance, who was making a perfectly good luncheon, and keeping up a furtive observation of everybody round him. “I don’t like,” she said, “the looks of that man. Do you think he belongs to any college? I don’t.”
“He is not like the college men I have seen,” Archie ventured to say.
“No, of course he is not: he is more like a scout out on a holiday.—As you are so kind as to pay some attention to what I say, Mr. Rowland, please remember that Eddy is not at all to be relied upon. He would think it was quite a good joke to bring in a man like that. Don’t let him, whatever you do, have an invitation to the ball.”
“If your brother asks for it—” said Archie.
“Never mind my brother: you will do a great deal better if you trust me,” said Rosamond. There was a little pause, and then a murmur from Archie, which Evelyn could not hear; but she drew her own conclusions. It was: “And am I not doing that with all my heart!”
“Oh!” Rosamond said, elevating her eyebrows slightly, casting for almost the first time a glance down upon him. It seemed to give her some surprise, not unmingled with apprehension, and she drew a little further off from the heather, and caught a branch of the gale, as if disturbed for once in her composure. The scent of it, as the girl crushed it in her hand, rose to Mrs. Rowland and remained in her consciousness ever after as something associated with anxiety and care.
Meanwhile Marion and Eddy were chatting so continuously, sometimes in confidential whispers, sometimes with outbursts of sound and laughter, that no one could be any the wiser as to what they said. “He is no more a don than I am,” Eddy was confessing; “it was the first thing I could think of to give him a countenance. There never was a more villainous one than he has by nature. No, I won’t tell you what he is: he’s mixed up with all sorts of people. What a lark to have him asked to the ball! Do you think she would do it? To introduce him everywhere as Johnson of Chad’s, and see how he would behave! I shall not let you dance with him though, or any nice girl I know.”
“Oh, I would dance with him if he asked me,” said Marion. “If you think that I would be guided by you!”
“I know more about that than you do,” said Eddy. “You shan’t, I can tell you: for one thing, I mean to dance with you myself all the night. We go so well together, you and I. And I know how to square the chaperons—especially with her. She won’t dare to say anything against me.”
“If you think that I would let her interfere!” said Marion; “but you are not to get things all your own way. I’ll just dance with whom I please—and maybe not with you at all.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Eddy.
“Yes, we’ll see about it,” cried the girl, and then there was a great laugh, as if this had been the wittiest observation in the world.
If Evelyn did not hear this, she saw it, with all the advantages of spectatorship seeing more in the game than the actors themselves were aware of, probably more (which is the drawback of spectatorship), than had any existence. Would James think she was in the plot? Would he believe it was of her invention, or that she had carried it out consciously for the advantage of the others? In her first hurried discovery of this aspect of affairs, it did not occur to Evelyn that James was a man of an old-fashioned type, who believed in true love, and might sympathize with his children if they were impressed by such an influence, more than with any wise counsel or hesitation as to means. She herself, whatever her sentiments might be, belonged to a world more moved by conventional laws. She thought that she saw him with reproach in his face, looking at her as he never had done, severely, reproachfully—he to whom she owed so much, not only wealth and consideration, but tenderness and kindness, and absolute trust—Trust! that was the greatest of all: and he would think that she had betrayed him.
Mr. Johnson, so-called of St. Chad’s, finished the substantial part of his banquet about this moment, and with a glance at the pastry which was visible, laid out upon the white cloth, stirred a little in his nest of heather, making the long spikes of the ling rustle, and calling forth again that pungent sweetness of the gale. Mrs. Rowland, to whom incivility was impossible, and who, though doubtful, still felt it more comprehensible that a distinguished don might be of evil appearance than that Eddy Saumarez could have told her a lie, turned towards him to see what were his wants. He was not without an ambition to shine in polite conversation, and Evelyn’s was not the aspect to discourage such attempts. He said, waving his hand as if to include the whole party, “This is a very cheerful way, if you will let me say so, of meeting for the first time.”
“Yes?” said Evelyn, interrogatively.
“It’s a beautiful scene,” said the stranger, “and the pie was excellent. What a nice way for ladies to join in sport, when the men’s tired and ready to be tumbled over at the first shot—ha, ha,—as seems to be the case, ma’am, in your vicinity.”
“Sir?” said Mrs. Rowland.
“I don’t want to give offence,” said Johnson of St. Chad’s, “but I should say, if ever there was one, that there is a case.” He indicated with his eyebrows the chatting pair, too busy to pay attention to their neighbours, on Mrs. Rowland’s other side.
“A case? I do not really know what you mean,” she said hurriedly.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the man, “if I remark what I oughtn’t. These sort of things are generally remarked—but some people takes them very serious,” he added, nodding his head confidentially.
“Takes them serious!” If this was a college don, he had certainly a very strange way of speaking.
“I think you are mistaken,” said Mrs. Rowland, “I don’t know of anything that is going on—except luncheon. May I offer you some of these, as your friend is too busy to see that you have what you want.”
“Ah, he is a fellow that knows what he wants,” said the don admiringly, “and doesn’t trouble himself what other people thinks. Thank you very much, I’ll take some grateful—” he added “ly,” after he had drawn a breath, making a little choke over the word—“gratefully, that’s what I mean. A man gets out of his manners never seeing a lady for—a whole term sometimes,” he said.
Was he a college don? More and more puzzled was poor Evelyn, who could believe in anything rather than that she had been told what was not true. But whatever it was, she felt that it was better not to leave this person to his false ideas in respect to the young people. “Perhaps I ought to tell you,” she said, “that you are making a mistake. There is no case, if that means an—engagement, or anything of that sort. My son and daughter are very young, and so are their friends. They are boys and girls together—no one, on either side, would hear of anything of the kind.”
“Oh!” said the man, who was certainly not a gentleman, whatever else he might be. He put down his plate and gave a keen look across Mrs. Rowland to Eddy, who was far too much engaged to notice anything. “Oh!” he said again; then after a pause: “I’m an old hand,” he added, “it may be you that are mistaken, ma’am, and not me.”
Mrs. Rowland did not think proper to say more. One way or other it must, she thought, be a matter of entire indifference to this disreputable looking stranger what were the circumstances of Eddy Saumarez. She rose from her throne of heather, taking no further notice of the visitor, and disturbing the party altogether, to the resentment of everybody. “I have only just begun to have my lunch,” said Marion—and “Is it really time to be going?” Rosamond asked with a fine tone of surprise. The young men said little; but their faces showed their feelings. “That is the worst of it,” said Eddy, in an audible whisper, “a chaperon is sure to spoil sport. She doesn’t mean any harm, but she does it by instinct.” And of the two pairs no one budged. Evelyn was alone among these young conspirators, and the vulgar commentator who had sought to make himself agreeable by putting her terrors into words. She wandered a little further upon the hillside, and gathered a handful of the white Grass of Parnassus, and the little blue orchid which is to be found on these hills, to give herself a countenance, not knowing how to act or what to do; whether to speak to her husband or to endeavour in her own person to divide the bonds which had grown up so fast. But how could she do this? What did they care for what she said, these independent young people? What hold had she over them, one way or another? And yet it would be said that she had been the chief actor in everything, that it was she who had thrown them together; she who had plotted to throw James Rowland’s wealth into the hands and house of the Saumarez. The thought was intolerable; her whole mind cried out against it, protesting that it was not to be borne; but how was she to free herself from this knot in which she was enveloped? What was she to do?