THE return of the united family to Rosmore was, it is scarcely necessary to say, scrutinised by many keen and eager eyes, all aware that there had been something wrong, all, or almost all, glad to see that the something had so soon come to nothing. Except that Archie was exceptionally shabby in his old clothes, and that he was deeply conscious of this fact, and accordingly kept as much as possible in the background, there was nothing to show that the party was anything more than the most ordinary party returning from some joint expedition. The people in the steamboat, however, allowed their knowledge to be revealed by effusive and unnecessary expressions of satisfaction in the return of Mr. Rowland and his wife and son, which were quite uncalled for, in view of the fact that neither of the former had been gone for more than a few days. “I can scarcely express to you the satisfaction I feel in seeing you back,” the minister said, with a significant grip of his wealthy parishioner’s hand; and Miss Eliza, who happened to be coming by the same boat, fell upon Evelyn with a shriek of joy. “I’ve not seen so delightful a sight for years as the sight of your bonny face, with all your belongings round you,” Miss Eliza said, holding out her left hand and a beaming smile to Archie. These signs of popular satisfaction were received by Mrs. Rowland not exactly with offence, but a little coldly, in view of the fact that nobody had any right, even by inference, to remark upon what was so entirely a family matter. But her husband, who was in great spirits, and inclined to make friends with all the world, received these effusive salutations with pleasure, and without enquiring how much they knew of the circumstances which made this home-coming remarkable. He was perhaps more used to the warmth of Scotch neighbours, and understood it better. At the pier the two girls were waiting, both of them curious and a little excited. Marion’s eyes were glittering like beads with a desire to know, and Rosamond, though she held up her head with her accustomed calm, and repressed all consciousness of anything unusual, betrayed in a slight dilation of her nostril, and momentary quiver of her lip, her share of the general excitement. She slipped aside from the carriage in order to leave the family undisturbed in their reunion, which was indeed a thing very little desired by any of its members: but was joined by Archie before she had gone far. He was too glad to escape from the sensation of the prodigal’s return, although more and more conscious of what he felt to be the chief feature about him—his exceedingly shabby coat.
“I am glad you have come home,” said Rosamond.
“So am I, more or less,” said Archie.
“I suppose you like the freedom of being away. But the more you are free to go, the more endurable the dullness should be. When one knows one can get quit of it at any moment, one does not mind.”
“I was not thinking of the dullness,” said Archie; “it has been the other way round with me. I suppose it’s contradiction. When you are shut out from your home, you take a longing for it. It’s through your brother somehow, I can’t tell how, that I’ve come back now.”
“Through Eddy!”
“I don’t know how; he has cleared up something. It is queer, isn’t it,” said Archie, with a laugh, “that a little beggar like that—I beg your pardon, Miss Saumarez, I forgot for the moment——”
“It is true enough,” said Rosamond, gravely. “He must look a little beggar to you. I beg to remark, however, Mr. Rowland, that you are not yourself very tall, nor perhaps of a commanding aspect, by nature.”
Archie could not accept this jibe as Eddy would have done. He grew graver still than Rosamond and became crimson. “It’s just a silly phrase,” he said, “that means nothing. Eddy’s far more commanding, as you say, than I am. I know the difference well enough: but it’s a little hard all the same to think that a man’s own father should take the word of a stranger rather than——”
“Oh, do you think there’s anything in that?” said Rosamond. “I don’t: in the first place, if you must speak for yourself, you’re a prejudiced witness, that’s what they say. And again, you know a man’s father—or a woman’s father either, for that matter—does always believe other people sooner than you. It has something to do with the constitution of human nature, I suppose,” she added with philosophical calm. “And then, perhaps, if you will allow me to say it, Eddy might know more than you.”
“About myself?” said Archie.
“About other people. Eddy knows a great deal about some kinds of life. I don’t say it is the best kinds. He knows the ways of a bad set. So that if it was anything wrong, he might be able to throw a light—It is a pity, but that is the turn he has taken,” said Rosamond. “He seems to find scamps more amusing than others. Perhaps they are, for anything I know. I have thought myself, that if you didn’t mind about being respectable and that sort of thing, which of course a girl must mind, that it might be perhaps more amusing. One never knows. Certainly society men are not amusing at all.”
“I should have thought,” said Archie, “you would have liked them best.”
“No,” said Rosamond dubiously, “the worst is, people are so hideously like each other. That’s why one longs after what’s disreputable or—anything out of the way. One hopes to light upon a new species somewhere. So far as I can see, however,” she added, “Eddy’s people are just as dull as the rest.”
Archie was quite unable to keep up the ball of this conversation. It flustered and made him uncomfortable. He was very certain that whatever could be said for himself (and he did not think that much could be said for him), nobody would venture to assert that he was amusing.
“I should have thought,” he said hesitating, “that a fellow you could trust to, that was of the kind that would never fail you whatever you wanted, and thought more of you a great deal than of himself, however awkward he might be, or uncouth, or that—”
“Oh,” said Rosamond, “if it’s moral qualities you are thinking of, the best thing perhaps to do would be to pick up the nearest curate and make a model of him.” Which perplexed Archie more and more: for though he knew little of curates, he had been brought up with a wholesome respect for the minister, yet did not perhaps think that dignitary exactly the person “to please a damsel’s eye.” He expressed the difficulty he had in carrying on the conversation by a hesitating and puzzled “O-oh!” but said little more. And those young persons walked the rest of the way to Rosmore in partial silence, broken by an occasional monologue from Rosamond, who did not dislike a good listener. And there is no doubt that Archie was admirable in this way.
The rest of the party were less happy, for it must be said, that though the conversation did not flourish, there was to Archie, and possibly also, more or less sympathetically, to Rosamond, a sort of vague pleasure in moving along by the side of a person so interesting, which, though quite vague, was wonderfully seductive, and made the woodland roads into enchanted ways, and gave every moment wings. The lad found himself in a charmed atmosphere when he was by her side. During the tremendous internal conflict through which he had passed, he had thought of Rosamond, not according to her own formula, as amusing, but as the opposite extreme to that lowest kind of existence, the highest point of interest, variety and stimulation, which life contained. And now he had stepped at once from the depths to the height. He did not mind what it was she was saying, nor even that he could not reply to her. As he walked along by her side, Archie was buoyed up as by heavenly airs. He trod not on common earth, but on something elastic and inspiring that made every step light. And though Rosamond would have been greatly surprised had she been accused of any such feeling for Archie, yet perhaps the sympathy of the exquisite elation in his being affected her more than she knew. But, as has been said, the rest of the party were less happy. Marion sat with her back to the horses, partly from choice, in order to have the others more at her mercy, and partly in supposed deference to Rowland, who liked to have his face turned in the direction in which he was going like many other energetic persons. She surveyed her father and his wife as from an eminence, commanding every look and movement. There is not a better point of vantage than the front seat of a carriage when you mean to cross-examine and reduce to helplessness the people opposite to you, who cannot escape.
“I am very glad, papa,” said Marion, “that you have got over your little tiff, and all come so nice and friendly home. I knew quite well that you and mamma would very soon make it up, but I was very anxious about Archie, who is a different question. And have you got any light about that cheque, or is it just the father falling on his neck, and the prodigal coming home?”
“The cheque?” said Rowland, in a low tone of astonishment, with an anxious glance at his wife.
“Oh, yes,” said Marion, in her clear notes, “you need not speak low, papa, as if that would do any good: for everybody knows just quite well what it all was about.”
“You seem to know more than I do, Marion,” said Rowland; “therefore, perhaps, you will be good enough to expound the matter to those, who have given you the information, in your own way.”
“Yes, papa,” said Marion, with charming docility: “but I could do that better,” she added, “if you would answer my question: for if it’s just your kindness, like the man in the parable, that’s one thing: but if it’s cleared up, that’s another—and I would like to know.”
“I am sure it will please Marion, James,” said Mrs. Rowland, “to be assured that it has been cleared up, and that both her hints to me and to you have been of use. I am not sure,” she said, with a laugh, “that Eddy was very grateful to you for suggesting that he would know.”
“Oh, you told him it was me!” said Marion. Her eyes, which were dancing in their sockets with curiosity and excitement, were clouded for a moment. “Well!” she said, after a pause, “I am not minding. It was quite true.” She put her hand on Mrs. Rowland’s knee, and leant forward eagerly. “Was it yon man?” she asked.
“What have you to do with it,” cried her father, “you little——! You never lifted a finger for your brother, so far as I know.”
“It would not have been becoming,” said Marion, with dignity, “if I had put myself forward. And how did I know that you would have liked it, papa? I just was determined that I would not commit myself: for if he had never come back it would always have been a comfort to you that you had one that made no fuss. But when mamma consulted me, I gave her the best advice I could, and when you consulted me, I just told you what I thought. And it appears,” said Marion, taking them in with an expressive glance, “that it has all been for the best.”
“It has been entirely for the best,” said Evelyn, “and you could not have done better for us if you had meant it.” Mrs. Rowland was but a woman, and she did not forgive her stepdaughter for the suggestion which had cost her husband so many troubled hours. They drew up to the door at this moment to the general relief, but Evelyn could not refrain from a final arrow. “You will be glad to know that nobody has come to any harm,” she said.
But Marion was not sensitive to that amiable dart. She clutched her stepmother’s dress to hold her back. “Was it yon man?” she said, “and did he get clear away after all?”
Evelyn stepped quickly out of the carriage and made no reply; but, as it happened, Marion’s unanswered question was of the greatest importance and advantage to the anxious household and deeply interested country-side. For, dropping into Saunders’ thirsty ears, like the proverbial water in the desert, it was by him shaped into the most satisfactory of conclusions to the much debated story. “It was that fellow in the bad coat,” he said, in the housekeeper’s room, as soon as he had superintended the taking in of tea. “I knew yon was the man.” Saunders was a little breathless, being a portly person, and having hurried in at the top of his speed to convey the news. “I must say Miss Marion has a great consideration for us in the other part of the house,” he added. “She asked the question just as I stood there, though I make no doubt she had ‘ad it all out afore that.” Mr. Saunders was a Scotsman by birth, but he had been in the best families, and slipped an h now and then just to show that he knew as well as any one how fine English was spoke.
And the news ran far and wide—to Rankin’s cottage, and to the Manse, and up the loch to the innumerable neighbours who had taken the profoundest interest in the story. A great many people, it turned out, had seen “yon man.” He had been observed on the lochside walking back with an ulster that was much too big for him, covering his badly-made evening coat. And all the inhabitants of the little cluster of cottages in one of which he had lived, had given Johnson up as the malefactor long ago—for had he not come in from the ball in the middle of the night, and thrown his things into his bag, and struggled off again in the ulster which was not his, over the hill to Kilrossie before it was light? At the head of the loch there was the most unfeigned satisfaction that it had proved to be “yon man.” And Archie was the subject of one prolonged ovation wherever he appeared. “I am as glad to see you back as if I had gotten a legacy,” Miss Eliza said, patting him on the back. “When I thought of the noise we were all making that night of the ball, and you, poor lad, with such trouble hanging over you, and nobody to know! But it’s all blown over now, and justice done, the Lord be praised.” The reader, better informed, knows that poor Johnson had met with anything but justice, but the opinion of the loch had happily no effect upon his equanimity, and indeed, if it could have been supposed to have had any effect, no doubt he deserved all the obloquy for something else, if not for that.
And it surprised nobody when Eddy Saumarez arrived one evening to finish his visit, as was said—that visit having been painfully cut short by the family trouble and false accusation of Archie, which his friend had been too sensitive to bear. Eddy had been a general favourite, and everybody was glad to see him, even Rankin, who received him very graciously, though with a flush upon his face, probably caused by too hot a fire. “I could accommodate you now with a puppy, if you were still in want of one,” Rankin said, fishing up a sprawling specimen of the Roy section from that nest in which he kept his nurslings warm; and he added, “I’m real glad to see you without yon spark. Ye’ll learn anither time not to try to get your fun out o’ me with a ficteetious philosopher: for I wadna be worth my salt as a philologist, not to say an observer o’ human nature, if I didna see through an ill-spoken ignoramus like yon.”
“Everybody is not like you, Rankin,” said Eddy; “all the rest swallowed him like gospel.”
“It is true,” said Rankin, “that everybody is no like me. I have maybe had advantages that are not of a common kind; but ye shouldna abuse the confidence o’ the weaker vessels. And ye never can tell at what corner ye may fall in with a man that is enlightened and that will see through your devices—at least in this country. I’m tauld there’s far less advanced intelligence in Southland pairts. Ay, that’s a fine little beast. I havena had a better since the one that went to the Princess, ye will maybe have heard o’ that—a real beauty, but he wasna appreciated. I hope you have mair sense than ever to have such a thing said of you.”
Thus Eddy’s absolution was sealed by his very accuser, and his reputation vindicated.
The scene in Rowland’s study was perhaps more difficult to get through. It was in answer to a telegram sent from Glasgow that Eddy, with some excitement, made up his mind to return to Rosmore. “Come and finish visit. Have much to say to you,” was Rowland’s message, which set Eddy’s pulses beating. For a moment a horrible thought gleamed through his mind that his confession was to be used against him, but this he soon dismissed as impossible. It was bad enough without that, and demanded an amount of courage which Eddy, though full of that quality, scarcely felt that he possessed. He was dumb when he found himself at last in the dreaded room where Archie had suffered for his fault. Eddy was a trifler born, and had the habit of taking everything lightly; his most tragic moment came between two jests—he could not have been serious for five minutes to save his life. But when he was ushered into Rowland’s room, and found himself face to face with the man whose name he had forged, whose money he had appropriated, whose heart, tough and middle-aged as it was, he had nearly broken, Eddy had not a word to say. He stood dumb before the judge who had voluntarily laid aside all power to punish him. Something rose in his throat which took away his voice. He could not have spoken had all the hopes of his life depended upon it. Happily this inability to articulate had more effect upon Rowland than the most voluble excuses could have had.
“Eddy,” he said, “I’ve sent for you, thinking I had a right. I have a grievance against you, and then, again, I have received a favour at your hands.”
Eddy made a gesture of deprecation, and tried to utter something, but could not.
“Yes,” said Rowland, gravely; “I’m not a man to make little of what you did. But when you put your life in my wife’s hands to save my son, you did me a greater service than any other man on earth could do: and you did in the circumstances all that a man could do.”
“It’s not capital now, sir,” said Eddy, finding his voice as his spirit began to come back to him.
“No, it’s not hanging,” said Rowland, with a slight smile; “but it’s ruin all the same. Now, look here.” He took the cheque from the envelope in which he had put it away, “and here.” He took from his pocket-book the guilty scrap of paper which Eddy had given to Evelyn. “Put these in the fire, and destroy them, and then we can talk.”
Eddy did what he was told with what scrupulous care it is unnecessary to describe, and poked the very films of the burned paper into the bottom of the fire. Then he turned to Mr. Rowland, his face reddened with the blaze, his eyes hot and scorched, his features working. He took the rich man’s hand and held it fast between his. “Tell me to do anything in the world,” he said, “whatever you please, and I’ll do it. I am your bond-slave, and will not call my soul my own unless you say I may.”
“Sit down, boy, and don’t talk nonsense,” said Rowland, himself considerably moved. “I am going to tell you to do several things, and I hope you will obey. But first, Eddy, if you were in such a terrible scrape, why were you such a little fool, when you had a man like me close at hand, not to come and ask for it. Would not that have been the wise way?”
“It would have been a very cheeky thing to do to come and ask a man, because he’s been kind to you, to give you a th—though, of course,” Eddy interrupted himself, in a low voice, “less might have done then.”
“A cheeky thing is better than a bad thing,” said Rowland sententiously. “Perhaps I might have been surprised: but now, my lad, let us get to the bottom of all this. If I take you in hand, I’ll have no half measures. How much do you want to clear you altogether, so that you shall be your own master when you come into your estate?”
“To clear me?” Eddy’s eyebrows went up altogether into his hair. “Well, sir,” he said, “that is a confusing question, for, you see, unlimited tick, that is to say, credit——”
“Don’t be a humbug, Eddy!”
“Well, I suppose you know what tick means,” the young man said, with a laugh, “not unlimited, by any means; though, to tell the truth, except for—I’m very nearly cleared.”
“Very nearly won’t do for me, neither will I have any exceptions; put them all down, every one, without any exceptions, and bring them to me. I’ll see you cleared: and now for what I want you to do.”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddy, putting his hands by his side with the air of a docile little schoolboy eager to obey.
It was all Rowland could do not to laugh, but he was scandalised at himself for his levity, and forbore.
“There is a choice of two or three things,” said Rowland. “You might go out to my overseer in India, and try what you can do on the railways. There is nothing succeeds so well there as a man who knows how to manage men.”
Eddy produced a little sickly smile, but he did not make any response.
“Or you might try ranching out in Canada or the Wild West: or the same kind of thing, though they only call it stock-keeping, in Australia: or—— It really does not matter what it is, if it’s good hard work. I make a stand upon that. Good, hard work,” said Mr. Rowland; “it’s the way of salvation for you spendthrift young men.”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddy again, with his schoolboy air, but in rueful tones.
“Man alive!” cried Rowland, “can’t you see what a grand thing it would be for you? your thoughts taken off all your follies and vanities, your hands full of something wholesome to do, yourself removed out of the way of temptation. What could you desire more?”
“Ah!” said Eddy, “I’m afraid I’d desire a different body and a different soul, only such trifles as these. I’m a product of corrupt civilization, I am not the thing that lives and thrives that way. Probably out there I should gravitate to a gambling saloon or a drinking bar.”
“You don’t drink, Eddy?” cried Rowland, with an alarmed countenance.
“No, I don’t drink—not now,” said Eddy, with sudden gravity; “but what I might do after six months of a cowboy’s life I don’t know.”
Rowland looked at him for some time with a baffled air. Then he tried his last coup. “My wife told me,” he said—“I hope she did not betray your confidence—that there was something about Marion.”
A sudden flush of colour went over Eddy’s face, and he began to move his foot nervously, as he did when he was excited.
“And that you had,” Rowland said, with an inflection of laughter in his voice not to be concealed, “a very just appreciation of her. Now, my man, without some such probation there could be no thought of my daughter, you must know.”
Eddy sat with his head bent, swinging his foot, and for a moment made no reply. At last he said, “How long, sir, do you mean the probation to last?”
“Let us say at a venture three years.”
“Three years!” said Eddy, with comic despair. “Mr. Rowland, I am very fond of Marion, though—and I shouldn’t wonder if she could fancy me. She has a poor opinion of me, but that needn’t matter. We could always get on together. But do you think, from what you know, that if somebody with a handle to his name turned up after the drawing-room, that Marion would wait for me out ranching in California for three years?”
In spite of himself, Rowland laughed. “I never could take upon myself to say, Eddy, what love might do.”
“No?” said Eddy, with his head on one side, and a look of interrogation. “I think I could take it upon myself,” he added. “We might be very fond of each other: and I, of course, would be out of the way of temptation out there; besides, I’m not the kind of man that falls much in love. But Marion: excuse me for talking so freely, sir, but you’ve put it to me. I should find Marion Lady Something-or-other, when I came back at the end of my three years.”
“Then you don’t think it worth your while?” Rowland said.
“I did not say that: whatever you say is worth the while. I’ll go if you press it; and if I don’t come back at all, it will be the less matter. But if you ask me, sir, frankly, I don’t think it’s good enough so far as Marion is concerned. She would never wait for a fellow out ranching. I don’t see why she should, for my part.”
“You are a cool loon,” said Rowland, half offended. “Perhaps you do not wish she should.”
“Well, she wouldn’t like it,” said Eddy. “I can’t help thinking of her as well as of myself. She’d take the young Duke, if he turned up, in any case. There isn’t an eligible young Duke, I believe, now,” he said thoughtfully, “but the next best. And she wouldn’t wait three years for me, oh no, though she might like me well enough. The three years system would make an end of that. I am very much obliged to you for holding out the chance; and I’ll take your advice for myself, Mr. Rowland, and go—wherever you decide. But we’re bound to think what’s best for her first, don’t you see? And I couldn’t give my consent to asking her to wait for three years. Dear me, no! not for me, as if I were a great catch or good for anything. It would scarcely be worth her while to stoop and pick me up if I were lying in her road. Why should she wait three years for me?”
“Eddy, you are a very queer fellow,” said Rowland; “I don’t know what to make of you. Tell me, now, if you were left entirely to yourself, what would you like to do.”
“I!” he said. Eddy swung his foot more and more, and sat reflecting for a minute or two. Then he burst into a laugh. “I suppose she enjoys her life as much as we do,” he said, “poor old soul! I was going to say there’s an old aunt of the governor’s, that must die sometime. If she would be so obliging as to do it now, and leave me her money, as she says she means to!—Then the governor would hand me over Gilston, which he hates, and Marion and I—But it’s all absurdity and a dream. The old aunt won’t die, why should she? and we—why there’s no we, that’s the best of it! and we are discussing a thing that will never be.”
Rowland walked about the room from end to end, as he sometimes did when he was forming a resolution. “So you think there’s nothing but Gilston for you, Eddy?” he said.
“I should be out of harm’s way,” said the lad, “and a place to fill—it might answer, but again it might not. But why should my old aunt die to please me? or Marion give up her Duke—or you take all this trouble—I am not worth it,” Eddy said.