NEXT morning, a rattle of pebbles thrown against the window, roused Marion, who was by nature an early riser, and who had been dressed for some time, though she had not gone downstairs. She opened the window, and saw Eddy below, making signs to her and pointing towards a path which led into the woods, across a broad stripe of sunshine. Eddy stood and basked in this light, making gestures, as if in adoration of the sun. He did not call to her, for in the clear morning air, his voice might have reached other ears than hers. But Marion called to him lightly, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” with no fear of any thing that could be said. She was not disturbed by the unceremonious character of his appeal to her attention. Marion’s antecedents made it a very natural thing, and no way to be reprehended, that a lad should call to his lass in this way. She ran downstairs, delighted with the summons, and joined him, almost hoping that Miss Marchbanks might see from her window and feel the superiority of the daughter of the house.
“What might you be wanting, rousing people when perhaps they were in their beds?” said Marion.
“You were not in your bed. I know you get up early. Let’s have a ramble,” said Eddy, “before any one knows.”
“Oh, is that all? but we can ramble wherever you please; and when the people are gone,” said Marion, with a sigh, “we’ll have it all to ourselves.”
“Do you wish that the people were not going, May?”
“I never said, sir, that you were to call me May.”
“No, but you did not prohibit it. I cannot call you Miss Marion, like the servants, or Miss Rowland, like young Marchbanks.”
As he assumed the tone of young Marchbanks when he said this, Marion received it with a burst of laughter. There was nothing particularly amusing in the tone or manners of young Marchbanks, but a mimic has always an easy triumph.
“Alas,” said Eddy, instantly changing his tone, and taking her hand to draw it through his arm, “though they were all going away this moment, it would not be much advantage to us, May, for I must go too, this very day.”
“You, going, Eddy!” this exclamation burst from her in spite of herself. She hastened to add, “Mr. Saumarez, I did not know you were going. Do you really—really mean—” the tears came into her eyes.
He had drawn her hand through his arm, and held it with his other hand. “I can’t stay longer,” he said. “How can I stay longer? There is Archie gone, who might be supposed my attraction: and I daren’t go and say to your father what my real attraction is.”
“Oh that is nothing to me,” said Marion, with a toss of her head, “about your real attraction. Nobody is asking you—you are just welcome to stay or—welcome to go: it is whatever you please.”
“You know very well,” he said, resisting her attempt to snatch away her hand, “that I would never go if I could help it, unless I could carry you off with me; if I could do that, I should not mind.”
“And you know very well,” said Marion, “that you will never do that.”
“I suppose I ought to know; but there are some things that one never can learn. When a man thinks of a girl night and day, he naturally feels that the girl might give a moment now and then to thoughts of him.”
“Oh, as for that,” said Marion, tossing her head, “I’ve had people that thought about me before now, but I never troubled my head to think of them.”
“You are as heartless as a stone,” said Eddy. “It is of no use speaking to you, for you are past feeling. One might as well fall in love with a picture, or a dummy in a milliner’s shop.”
“Dummy yourself!” cried Marion, highly indignant, giving him a shake with the hand that was on his arm.
And then they both burst out laughing together. As a matter of fact, though they understood each other extraordinarily well, and made no false representations of each other as lovers are in the habit of doing, there was a little love at bottom between this curious pair.
“Do you know what has been the row about Archie?” said Eddy, after a little pause.
“It’s something about money,” said Marion; “he has been spending his own money that was given him to spend—and he has not sent it to a poor student, as papa thought he would. But I would like to know why he should? The student should have stayed at home, and then his own people would have been obliged to help him. If Archie were to give up his money to all the poor students, what would be the use of giving him money at all. If I were in his place I am sure I would just give what I please, and keep a good share to myself. It is just ridiculous to give you money, and then say you are to give it away.”
“Is that the only reason?” said Eddy; “I thought there had been enough of that.”
“Oh I don’t know if it’s the only reason. I will go back to the house if it’s only Archie you want to hear about. You can ask Mrs. Rowland, she is your great friend, or Saunders, that looks so wise and knows everything. But for me, I am going back to the house.”
“I only ask,” said Eddy, tightening his hold on her hand, “to keep it off a little longer; for how am I to say good-bye—not knowing how we may meet again—for I know what’s in your thoughts, May. You think I’m well enough to play with while there’s nobody here, but when you come up to town and everybody is at your feet——”
“Oh such ridiculous nonsense,—everybody at my feet! who would be at my feet? no person! You speak as if I were a Duke’s daughter.”
“You are better than most Duke’s daughters. You will marry a Duke if you please, with that little saucy face of yours, and mints of money.”
“I hope I will not be married for my money,” said Marion: “though of course there’s something in that,” she added seriously. “I’ll not deny that it has to be reckoned with. Papa would not be pleased if all his work came to nothing, and I got just a nobody.”
“Like me,” said Eddy.
“I never said like you. There might be other things—Papa likes you, you see.”
“And you, May? Oh May, you little witch! I wish—I wish I only wanted to marry you for your money—then I should not feel it as I do now.”
“You wouldn’t like to marry me without my money,” Marion said.
“Wouldn’t I,—try me! though all the same I don’t know very well how we should live,” Eddy said.
“And I never said I would marry you at all—or any person,” said Marion. “Maybe I will never marry at all.”
“Oh that’s so likely!”
“Well it is not likely,” Marion admitted candidly, “but you never know what may happen. And,” she added, “if Archie is to be put out of his share, and everything come to me, then whether I liked it or not, I would have to think first what was doing most justice to papa.”
Eddy, in spite of his self-control, turned pale. “Archie,” he said, in a tone of horror, “put out of his share!”
Marion gave him a keen, investigating look. “When a man has two children,” she said, “and one of them flies in his face every time he can, and the other is very careful always to do her duty, whether it is pleasing herself or not, I would not wonder at anything, for my part. He might like the son best for the name and all that, but if the lassie would do him most justice? I am not saying if it would be a good thing or not. But the man might see that in the one there would be no credit, but plenty in the other. I am thinking of it just in a general way,” Marion said.
“Then good-bye to me,” said Eddy, “if you were to be a great heiress—and Archie! Good life!” he let her hand go, and, cold though the morning air was, wiped the moisture from his forehead. “I’d better take a header into the loch and be done with it,” he said.
“You will not do that, Mr. Eddy, for you like yourself best: though perhaps you may like Archie a little—or, perhaps, me.”
“Perhaps even you!” cried Eddy. “Perhaps I do, or I shouldn’t have stayed down here in the north for a month with nothing to do. You are a dreadful little thing to talk quietly of tossing me over after all that has passed, like an old glove. And to take Archie’s place, as if it were nothing, as if it were the most natural thing in the world!”
“And is it not?” said Marion. “I never would have done a thing to harm Archie. It is none of my doing; but if it opens papa’s eyes, and makes him ask who will do him the most credit—him, that would never be anything but a common lad at the best, or me, that might be at the Queen’s court, and do him great justice.”
Eddy clapped his hands together, with a quick laugh. “Marry the Duke,” he said.
“Well,” said Marion, with dignity, “and if I did that? What more would it be than I would deserve, and doing great justice to papa!”
Eddy stood for a moment looking at her, with a curious mixture of pain which was quite new to him, in being thus left out of Marion’s cold-blooded philosophy, and of cynical amusement, tempered by wonder at the progress this very young and apparently simple person had made in the mystery of worldliness. He had the sensation, too, of having done it all, of having wrought that ruin to Archie which might place Archie’s sister in a position to balk his own plans and humiliate himself. He had meant to have the upper hand himself in all the arrangements between them. He had meant, indeed, this very morning to bind her by a quasi engagement, while leaving himself free for whatever eventualities might come. But Marion, with these cool, matter-of-fact dispositions, had turned the tables upon Eddy. And he was discomposed besides to find that it actually hurt him. He, the accomplished man of the world that he was, so infinitely above Marion in experience and knowledge! it gave him a confused pang which he could not understand, to find that he was no more to her than half-an-hour before he had believed her to be to him. He was more or less stunned by that sensation, which was unexpected, and stood vaguely gazing at her, coming to himself before he could reply. “I don’t find much place for me in all this,” he said, ruefully. He could have laughed at his own discomfiture if he had not been so ridiculously wounded and sore.
It was perhaps a sign that she was not very sure of herself, but she did not look at him, which also took away one of Eddy’s weapons. She walked on quite calmly by his side, looking straight before her, neither to the right hand nor the left.
“What was your place in it, Mr. Eddy?” she said, “except just as a friend: and there is no difference in that. You’re still a friend—unless you have changed your mind.”
“May! you are a little witch! you’re a—Come, you know this is all nonsense,” said Eddy; “I never pretended to be a friend.”
“Well, perhaps you never were—to Archie, at least,” said Marion.
“What do you know about Archie? What have I done to Archie? I never intended—I never thought of harming him: I could swear it,” cried Eddy, in great excitement; “never! never! I’ve done a heap of wrong things,” he put up his hand to his throat with a gasp as for breath, “I’ve done enough to—sink me for ever. I know I have: you needn’t say anything with your little set face that I was silly enough to care for. But I never meant to ruin Archie, nor harm him, never! I’ll go to your father, and tell him——”
“What will you tell him?” cried Marion, to whom nothing but her own share in Eddy’s expressions seemed of any importance. “That we’ve perhaps been very silly, you and me?—but you the most, for I was never meaning what you thought. I am not a person to let myself go,” said the girl, folding her hands. “I was just willing to be very friendly—but no more. All the rest was just—your fun. I thought you cared for nothing but fun. And I’m not averse to that myself,” she said, turning her face to his with the provoking and saucy smile which Eddy had so completely understood, yet which—was it possible—he had fallen a victim to all the same. It was Marion who had the upper hand. She was not averse to the fun, but she did not mean to compromise her future for Eddy, any more than Eddy up to this moment had intended to do for her. But Marion thought it best now to conciliate him, that he might not rush off and compromise matters by making proposals to her father, which was all she thought of. As for those wild words about Archie, Marion did not even pretend to inquire what they meant.
He went to Mrs. Rowland as soon as he could get a chance after the leave-taking of so many of her guests. “You will have to shake hands with me, too, presently,” he said. “I am going off to-night.”
“You, Eddy?” Evelyn’s face grew longer and graver with a certain dismay. “I was calculating upon you to keep us cheerful,” she said. “Why must you go?”
“I have so many reasons I couldn’t tell you all. In the first place I must, which perhaps will do: like the fool that had a hundred reasons for not saluting—but first of all because he had neither powder nor shot.”
“What is the must?” said Evelyn, “your father perhaps coming back——”
“Oh, I know,” said Eddy, “that the governor would refuse you nothing, Mrs. Rowland—though I am next to nothing in his estimation, to be sure. No, there’s other reasons, pecuniary and otherwise.”
“I am afraid, Eddy, you are a very reckless boy.”
“Rather,” he said, with an uneasy and embarrassed laugh; “but I am going to turn over a new leaf, and not be so any more.”
A tender impulse moved the woman, who had a faint underlying recollection which she could not quite quench, though she was ashamed of it, that she might have been Eddy’s mother. “I am not very rich in my own person,” she said, “though my husband is: but if there is anything, Eddy, that I could do, or James either, I am sure——”
“Oh, good heavens!” cried Eddy, under his breath. “Don’t, for pity’s sake, say such a thing to me,” he cried. “You don’t know how it hurts—what an unutterable cad it makes me feel.”
“Why?” she asked, with a smile; but she did not pursue the subject. “I wish you could stay a little longer. If Archie does not come home in a day or two, my husband will sadly want some one to cheer him. I wish you could stay.”
“Is Archie coming home in a day or two?”
“I don’t know,” she said, faltering. “I can’t tell—I hope so with all my heart. I need not try to hide from you, Eddy, that his father and he—have had a disagreement.”
“Mrs. Rowland, don’t think me impertinent: can you tell me what it was about?”
“It is their secret, not mine,” she said; then with a troubled smile, “You know what fathers and sons most generally disagree about?”
“Money,” he said, with so disturbed a look, that Mrs. Rowland felt in her heart she had been unjust in thinking Eddy callous to anything that did not concern himself.
“My husband—is too suspicious. I believe in him, poor boy. I hope time,” she said, with a sigh, “will clear it up and bring everything right.”
It gave her pleasure to think better of Eddy after that interview. The boy, after all, she thought, must have a heart.
But he was not like himself: his face, which was usually so full of fun and mischief, was clouded and unhappy. When it was understood, though not without a struggle, that he must go that evening—and even Mr. Rowland resisted it with a certain terror (though he was very glad at the same time to get all the strangers out of the way) of being left alone with his trouble and his wife and daughter, who could so ill soothe it—Eddy’s aspect startled everybody. He seemed, he who was so easy-minded, to be troubled by some doubt, and unable to make up his mind what he ought to do. A dozen times during the afternoon he was seen to cross the hall towards the library, where Rowland had shut himself up. But his courage failed him by the time he reached the door. Marion, who kept her eyes upon his movements, knew, she flattered herself, perfectly what Eddy meant. He wanted to lay his hopes before her father, to find out whether his consent was possible, to lay a sort of embargo upon herself before she was even seen in society, or had her chance. Marion had quite made up her mind what to say in case she should be called in to the library and questioned on the subject. She would say that she was not a person averse to a little fun when it presented itself. But that as for serious meaning, she never had thought there was anything in it. Marion did not at all dislike the idea of being called in, and having to say this; and she was not angry with Eddy for the supposed appeal against her cruelty, which she believed him about to make. She did not want him to be permanently dismissed, either, nor was she unwilling that her father should be warned as to future contingencies, for, after all, there was no telling how things might turn out.
The question was solved so far as Eddy was concerned by the sudden exit of Rowland from his room, just as the young man was summing up all his courage to enter it.
“Are you ready, my boy?” Rowland said; “your things packed—since you will go? for the steamboat, you know, will wait for no man. Come out, and take a turn with me.”
They walked together across the lawn to the spot where the trees opened and the Clyde below the bank weltered, gray in the afternoon light—a composition of neutral tones. Rowland said nothing for a minute. He stood looking at his favourite view, and then he gave vent to a long and deep sigh.
“Here’s a lesson for you, Eddy, my man,” he said. “For as many years as you’ve been in being I’ve coveted this bonnie house, and that view among the trees. And a proud man I was when I got them—proud; and everybody ready to take up my parable and say, ‘See what a man’s exertions, when he has set his heart upon a thing, will do.’ Oh, laddie, the vanity of riches! I have not had them half a year nor near it. And now I would give the half of my substance I had never come nigh the place or heard its name.”
“I am very sorry,” said Eddy; “but had the place anything to do with it? Would things have gone better if you had not been here?”
Rowland gave him a quick look, and stopped in what he seemed about to say. Then he resumed after a moment.
“That’s true too; you are right in what you say. It has nothing to do with the place, or any place. It was fixed, I suppose, before the beginning of the earth, that so it was to be.”
“Mr. Rowland,” said Eddy, “I’ve been wanting to say something, and I have never had the chance—that is, I am frightened to say it in case you should think it impudent or—presuming. When Archie refused the money to that poor beggar, I ought to have spoken: I was a wretched coward; it was because he had given all his money—to me.”
“Ah!” cried the father, with a slight start; “he had given his money—to you?” He had almost forgot, in the strain and stress of the other question, which was so much more important, what this meant about the poor beggar whom Archie had refused.
“Every penny,” said Eddy, with considerable emotion. If that avowal would only do, if it would be enough without any other! “He found me down on my luck about some bets and things, and he immediately offered to help me. I had not the courage to tell you when you spoke to him—that night; and he, like the fine fellow he is——”
“Ah!” said Rowland again; and then he gripped Eddy’s slight hand, and wrung it till the lad thought the blood must come. “And you’re a fine fellow,” he said, “to stand up for him you think your friend.”
A cold dew came out on Eddy’s brow: oh how miserable, what a caitiff he felt—a fine fellow—he! If the man only knew!
“But,” said Rowland, “if that had been all! I had forgotten that offence. Thank you, though, for speaking. If I can find any ground for a more favourable judgment, I’ll remember what you have said. Let’s think of your own affairs: if you will allow me to speak—so recent a friend; but my wife knew you before you were born.” He stopped to laugh at this jest, but in reality to recover a little from his embarrassment “My lad, you spoke of bets. You shouldn’t bet, a young fellow of your age.”
A gleam of mischievous light shot from Eddy’s eyes.
“I am aware of that, sir,” he said, with much humility; “and if you knew all the good resolutions I have made——”
“Never mind making them: you can’t keep them. Just do it, and don’t amuse yourself with saying you will do it. From all I can learn, your family is not rich, and you will have a place to keep up. Mind, that’s a great responsibility. You must eschew betting as you would eschew the devil.”
“I’ll try, sir, to get the better of them both,” said Eddy, much relieved by this change of subject.
“I hope you’ll continue in that mind; and recollect this: you have been very friendly and pleasant in this house at a time when I was scarcely my own man, and took the entertainment on your shoulders, and were just the life and soul—— If I can give you a day in harvest, as the country folks say, another time—” He smote Eddy on the shoulders a genial blow, but it made his slight figure quiver. “You may not understand that homely form of speech; but if I can serve you, my boy, at a pinch—— I never grudge anything I can do for a man that’s served me in time of need. What’s the matter with you, boy? are you ill?”
“No,” said Eddy, after a pause. “No—I’m not ill; it was only something in my throat. You’re too good, sir. I can’t look you in the face when I think——”
“Well, well,” said Rowland. It pleases a man to make an impression—to bring repentance to a careless soul. “You must just never do it again, as the children say. It’s a bad thing from beginning to end: even gambling in business I never could agree with. Honest work, that’s the only salvation—in this world. Don’t forget what I’ve said. And now we’ll go in to the ladies, who are waiting to give you your tea, and purr over you. For the steamboat will wait for no man, and you should leave here when we see her starting from the head of the loch.”
They went in together with a wonderful look of friendship, and there were curious signs of emotion in Eddy’s face. Had he spoken to papa? Marion asked herself. If he had done so, it was clear that the answer had not been unfavourable; but in that case, why was Eddy in so dreadful a hurry to get away?