ARRANGEMENT AND PREPARATION.
The next morning, the first thing after breakfast, Mr. Sclater,
having reflected that Ginevra was under age and they must be careful,
resumed for the nonce, with considerable satisfaction, his office of
guardian, and holding no previous consultation with Gibbie, walked to
the cottage, and sought an interview with Mr. Galbraith, which the
latter accorded with a formality suitable to his idea of his own inborn
grandeur. But his assumption had no effect on nut-headed Mr. Sclater,
who, in this matter at all events, was at peace with his conscience.
“I have to inform you, Mr. Galbraith,” he began, “that Miss Galbraith--”
“Oh!” said the laird, “I beg your pardon; I was not aware it was my
daughter you wished to see.”
He rose and rang the bell. Mr. Sclater, annoyed at his manner, held his
peace.
“Tell your mistress,” said the laird, “that the Rev. Mr. Sclater wishes
to see her.”
The girl returned with a scared face, and the news that her mistress
was not in her room. The laird’s loose mouth dropped looser.
“Miss Galbraith did us the honour to sleep at our house last night,”
said Mr. Sclater deliberately.
“The devil!” cried the laird, relieved. “Why!--What!--Are you aware of
what you are saying, sir?”
“Perfectly; and of what I saw too. A blow looks bad on a lady’s face.”
“Good heavens! the little hussey dared to say I struck her?”
“She did not say so; but no one could fail to see some one had. If you
do not know who did it, I do.”
“Send her home instantly, or I will come and fetch her,” cried the
laird.
“Come and dine with us if you want to see her. For the present she
remains where she is. You want her to marry Fergus Duff; she prefers my
ward, Gilbert Galbraith, and I shall do my best for them.”
“She is under age,” said the laird.
“That fault will rectify itself as fast in my house as in yours,”
returned the minister. “If you invite the publicity of a legal action,
I will employ counsel, and wait the result.”
Mr. Sclater was not at all anxious to hasten the marriage; he would
much rather, in fact, have it put off, at least until Gibbie should
have taken his degree. The laird started up in a rage, but the room was
so small that he sat down again. The minister leaned back in his chair.
He was too much displeased with the laird’s behaviour to lighten the
matter for him by setting forth the advantages of having Sir Gibbie for
a son-in-law.
“Mr. Sclater,” said the laird at length, “I am shocked, unspeakably
shocked, at my daughter’s conduct. To leave the shelter of her father’s
roof, in the middle of the night, and--”
“About seven o’clock in the evening,” interjected Mr. Sclater.
“--and take refuge with strangers!” continued the laird.
“By no means strangers, Mr. Galbraith!” said the minister. “You drive
your daughter from your house, and are then shocked to find she has
taken refuge with friends!”
“She is an unnatural child. She knows well enough what I think of her,
and what reason she has given me so to think.”
“When a man happens to be alone in any opinion,” remarked the minister,
“even if the opinion should be of his own daughter, the probabilities
are he is wrong. Every one but yourself has the deepest regard for Miss
Galbraith.”
“She has always cultivated strangely objectionable friendships,” said
the laird.
“For my own part,” said the minister, as if heedless of the laird’s
last remark, “although I believe she has no dowry, and there are
reasons besides why the connection should not be desirable, I do not
know a lady I should prefer for a wife to my ward.”
The minister’s plain speaking was not without effect upon the laird.
It made him uncomfortable. It is only when the conscience is wide
awake and regnant that it can be appealed to without giving a cry for
response. Again he sat silent a while. Then gathering all the pomp and
stiffness at his command,
“Oblige me by informing my daughter,” he said, “that I request her, for
the sake of avoiding scandal, to return to her father’s house until she
is of age.”
“And in the mean time you undertake--”
“I undertake nothing,” shouted the laird, in his feeble, woolly, yet
harsh voice.
“Then I refuse to carry your message. I will be no bearer of that from
which, as soon as delivered, I should dissuade.”
“Allow me to ask, are you a minister of the gospel, and stir up a child
against her own father?”
“I am not here to bandy words with you, Mr. Galbraith. It is nothing
to me what you think of me. If you will engage not to urge your choice
upon Miss Galbraith, I think it probable she will at once return to
you. If not--”
“I will not force her inclinations,” said the laird. “She knows my
wish, and she ought to know the duty of a daughter.”
“I will tell her what you say,” answered the minister, and took his
departure.
When Gibbie heard, he was not at all satisfied with Mr. Sclater’s
interference to such result. He wished to marry Ginevra at once, in
order to take her from under the tyranny of her father. But he was
readily convinced it would be better, now things were understood, that
she should go back to him, and try once more to gain him. The same day
she did go back, and Gibbie took up his quarters at the minister’s.
Ginevra soon found that her father had not yielded the idea of having
his own way with her, but her spirits and courage were now so good,
that she was able not only to endure with less suffering, but to carry
herself quite differently. Much less afraid of him, she was the more
watchful to minister to his wants, dared a loving liberty now and then
in spite of his coldness, took his objurgations with something of the
gaiety of one who did not or would not believe he meant them, and when
he abused Gibbie, did not answer a word, knowing events alone could set
him right in his idea of him. Rejoiced that he had not laid hold of the
fact that Glashruach was Gibbie’s, she never mentioned the place to
him; for she shrunk with sharpest recoil from the humiliation of seeing
him, upon conviction, turn from Fergus to Gibbie: the kindest thing
they could do for him would be to marry against his will, and save him
from open tergiversation; for no one could then blame him, he would be
thoroughly pleased, and not having the opportunity of self-degradation,
would be saved the cause for self-contempt.
For some time Fergus kept on hoping. The laird, blinded by his own
wishes, and expecting Gibbie would soon do something to bring public
disgrace upon himself, did not tell him of his daughter’s determination
and self-engagement, while, for her part, Ginevra believed she
fulfilled her duty towards him in the endeavour to convince him by
her conduct that nothing could ever induce her to marry him. So the
remainder of the session passed--the laird urging his objections
against Gibbie, and growing extravagant in his praises of Fergus, while
Ginevra kept taking fresh courage, and being of good cheer. Gibbie went
to the cottage once or twice, but the laird made it so uncomfortable
for them, and Fergus was so rude, that they agreed it would be better
to content themselves with meeting when they had the chance.
At the end of the month Gibbie went home as usual, telling Ginevra he
must be present to superintend what was going on at Glashruach to get
the house ready for her, but saying nothing of what he was building
there. By the beginning of the winter, they had got the buttress-wall
finished and the coping on it, also the shell of the new house roofed
in, so that the carpenters had been at work all through the frost
and snow, and things had made great progress without any hurry; and
now, since the first day the weather had permitted, the masons were
at work again. The bridge was built, the wall of the old house broken
through, the turret carried aloft. The channel of the little burn they
had found completely blocked by a great stone at the farther edge of
the landslip; up to this stone they opened the channel, protecting it
by masonry against further slip, and by Gibbie’s directions left it
so--after boring the stone, which still turned every drop of the water
aside into the Glashburn, for a good charge of gunpowder. All the
hollow where the latter burn had carried away pine-wood and shrubbery,
gravel drive and lawn, had been planted, mostly with fir trees; and a
weir of strong masonry, a little way below the house, kept the water
back, so that it rose and spread, and formed a still pool just under
the house, reflecting it far beneath. If Ginevra pleased, Gibbie meant
to raise the weir, and have quite a little lake in the hollow. A new
approach had been contrived, and was nearly finished before Gibbie
returned to college.