A Family Consultation.
A few days after, various members of the family arrived at the Castle
Farm, with the intention of deciding what was to be done. An arrangement
had been partially made with a young farmer of the district, who was
ready to enter upon the remainder of the lease, and whom the factor on
the part of the Duke was ready to accept as replacing Mrs. Murray in the
responsibilities of the tenancy. This, of course, everybody felt was the
natural step to be taken, and it left the final question as to how the
old lady herself was to be disposed of, clear and unembarrassed. Even
Edgar himself was not sufficiently Quixotic to suppose that Mrs.
Murray’s feelings and pride should be so far consulted as to keep up the
farm for her amusement, while she was no longer able to manage its
manifold concerns.
Mr. and Mrs. Campbell arrived first in their gig, which was seated for
four persons, and which, indeed, Mr. Campbell called a phaeton. Their
horse was a good steady, sober-minded brown horse, quite free from any
imaginativeness or eccentricity, plump and sleek, and well-groomed; and
the whole turnout had an appearance of comfort and well-being. They
brought with them a young man whom Edgar had not yet seen, a Dr. Charles
Murray, from the East-country, the son of Mrs. Murray’s eldest son, who
had arrived that morning by the steamboat at Loch Arroch Head. From
Greenock by the same conveyance--but not in Mr. Campbell’s gig--came
James Murray, another of the old lady’s sons, who was “a provision
merchant” in that town, dealing largely in hams and cheeses, and full of
that reverential respect for money which is common with his kind. Lastly
there arrived from Kildarton on the other side of Loch Long, a lady who
had taken the opportunity, as she explained to Edgar, of indulging her
young people with a picnic, which they were to hold in a little wooded
dell, round the corner of the stubble field, facing Loch Long, while she
came on to join the family party, and decide upon her mother’s destiny.
This was Mrs. MacKell, Mrs. Murray’s youngest daughter, a good-looking,
high-complexioned woman of forty-five, the wife of a Glasgow “merchant”
(the phrase is wide, and allows of many gradations), who had been living
in sea-side quarters, or, as her husband insisted on expressing it, “at
the saut water,” in the pleasant sea-bathing village of Kildarton,
opposite the mouth of Loch Arroch. The boat which deposited her at the
little landing-place belonging to the Castle Farm, was a heavy boat of
the district, filled with a bright-coloured and animated party, and
provided with the baskets and hampers necessary for their party of
pleasure. Mrs. MacKell stood on the bank, waving her hand to them as
they hoisted the sail and floated back again round the yellow edge of
the stubble field.
“Mind you keep your warm haps on, girls, and don’t wet your feet,” she
called to them; “and oh, Andrew, my man, for mercy’s sake take care of
that awful sail!”
This adjuration was replied to by a burst of laughter in many voices,
and a “Never fear, mother,” from Andrew; but Mrs. MacKell shook her
good-looking head as she accepted Edgar’s hand to ascend the slope. All
the kindred regarded Edgar with a mixture of curiosity and awe, and it
was, perhaps, a slight nervous shyness in respect to this stranger, so
aristocratical-looking, as Mrs. MacKell expressed herself, which gave a
little additional loudness and apparent gaiety to that excellent woman’s
first address.
“I’m always afraid of those sails. They’re very uncanny sort of things
when a person does not quite understand the nature of our lochs. I
suppose, Mr. Edgar, you’re in that case?” said Mrs. MacKell, looking at
him with an ingratiating smile.
He was her nephew, there could be no doubt of it, and she had a right to
talk to him familiarly; but at the same time he was a fine gentleman and
a stranger, and made an impression upon her mind which was but
inadequately counter-balanced by any self-assurances that he was “just
an orphan lad--no better--not to say a great deal worse off than our own
bairns.” Such representations did not affect the question as they ought
to have done, when this strange personage, “no better, not to say a
great deal worse” than themselves, stood with his smile which made them
slightly uncomfortable, before them. It was the most open and genial
smile, and in former times Edgar had been supposed a great deal too much
disposed to place himself on a level with all sorts of people; but
now-a-days his look embarrassed his humble relations. There was a
certain amusement in it, which bore no reference to them, which was
entirely at himself, and the quaintly novel position in which he found
himself, but which nevertheless affected them, nobody could have told
why. He was not laughing at them, respectablest of people. They could
not take offence, neither could they divine what he was laughing at; but
the curious, whimsical, and often rueful amusement which mingled with
many much less agreeable feelings, somehow made itself felt and produced
an effect upon which he had never calculated. It was something they did
not understand, and this consciousness partially irritated, partially
awed these good people, who felt that the new man in their midst was a
being beyond their comprehension. They respected his history and his
previous position, though with a little of that characteristic contempt
which mingles so strangely in Scotland with many old prejudices in
favour of rank and family; they respected more honestly and entirely his
little property, the scraps of his former high estate which made him
still independent; but above all they now respected, though with some
irritation, what seemed to them the unfathomableness of his character,
the lurking smile in his eyes. It confirmed the superiority which
imagination already acknowledged.
“I have not had much experience of the lochs,” said Edgar, following
with his eyes the clumsy but gay boat, with its cargo of laughter, and
frankly gay, if somewhat loud, merry-making.
Mrs. MacKell saw his look and was gratified.
“You’ll not know which are your cousins among so many,” she said; “and,
indeed, the girls have been plaguing me to write over and ask you to
come. They were all away back in Glasgow when my mother took ill, and
just came down last week on my account. It’s late for sea-bathing
quarters in Scotland; and, indeed, when they took it into their heads
about this pic-nic, I just raged at them. A pic-nic in October, and on
the loch! But when children set their hearts on a thing the mother’s aye
made to give way; and they had to be kept quiet, you see, while my
mother was ill, not knowing how it might end.”
“That is true,” said Edgar; “otherwise, so far as my poor grandmother is
concerned, this cannot be called a very joyful occasion.”
“I don’t see that for my part,” cried Mrs. MacKell, feeling herself
attacked, and responding with instant readiness. “Dear me! if I were in
my mother’s position, to see all my children about me, all that remain,
would aye be a joyful occasion, whatever was the cause; and what better
could she do at her age than go up the loch to my sister Jean’s
comfortable house, where she would be much made of, and have all her old
friends about her? My mother has been a good mother. I have not a word
to say against that; but she’s always been a proud woman, awfully proud,
holding her head as high as the Duchess, and making everybody stand
about. I’ll not say but what it has been very good for us, for we’ve
never fallen among the common sort. But still, you know, unless where
there’s siller that sort of thing cannot be kept up. Of course, I would
like it better,” added Mrs. MacKell, “to have my mother near, where I
could send the bairns--excuse me for using the words of the place.”
“Oh, I like the words,” said Edgar, with a laugh, which he could not
quite restrain--better than the sentiments, he would have said.
“Where I could send any of my young folk that happened to be looking
white, at any moment,” she went on; “far different from what I could do
with Jean, who has the assurance to tell me she always invites her
friends when she wants them, though her son has his dinner with us every
Sunday of his life during the Session! Therefore it’s clear what my
interest is. But you see, Mr. Edgar,” she continued, softening, “you
have the ways of a rich man. You never think of the difficulties. Oh!
Charles, is that you? I’m glad to see you looking so well; and how are
things going in the East country? and how is your sister Marg’ret, and
little Bell? If my young folk had known you were here, they would have
wanted you away with them in the boat. But I must go ben and see my
mother before all the folk come in. I suppose you are going to look
over the farm, and the beasts, with the rest.”
The young doctor--upon whom as a man of his own age, and one more like
the people he had been accustomed to than those he now found around him,
Edgar had looked, with more interest than any of his other relations had
called from him--came up to him now with a face overcast with care.
“May I speak to you about this painful subject,” he said, “before the
others come in?”
“Why a painful subject?” asked Edgar, with a smile, which was half
tremulous with feeling, and half indignant, too proud for sympathy.
“It may not be so to you,” said the young man. “She brought us up, every
one of my family; but what can I do? I have a brother in Australia, too
far off to help, and another a clerk in London. As for me, I have the
charge of my eldest sister, who is a widow with a child. You don’t know
what a hard fight it is for a young medical man struggling to make his
way.”
“No, not yet,” said Edgar, with a smile.
“Not yet? How can you know? If I were to take my grandmother home with
me, which I would do gladly, she would be far from everything that she
knows and cares for--in a new place, among strangers. Her whole life
would be broken up. And I could not take Jeanie,” the young man added,
with a thrill of still greater pain in his voice. “There would be other
dangers. What can we do? I cannot bear to think that she must leave this
place. But I have so little power to help, and consequently so little
voice in the matter.”
“I have not very much,” said Edgar; “but yet enough, I think, to decide
this question. And so long as I have a shilling, she shall not be driven
away from her home. On that I have made up my mind.”
His new cousin looked at him with admiration--then with a sigh:
“What a thing money is,” he said; “ever so little of it. You can take a
high hand with them, having something; but I, to whom Robert Campbell
and Mr. MacKell have both lent money to set me going--”
Edgar held out his hand to his companion.
“When this is settled I shall be in the same position,” he said; “worse,
for you have a profession, and I have none. You must teach me how I can
best work for daily bread.”
“You are joking,” said the young doctor, with a smile.
Like the others, he could not believe that Edgar, once so rich, could
ever be entirely poor; and that he should denude himself altogether of
his living for the sake of the old mother, whom they were all quite
ready to help--in reason, was an idea impossible to be comprehended, and
which nobody believed for a moment. He said nothing in reply, and the
two stood together before the door waiting for the other men of the
party, who were looking over “the beasts” and farm implements, and
calculating how much they would bring.
James Murray, the provision merchant, was the typical Scotchman of
fiction and drama--a dry, yellow man, with keen grey eyes, surrounded by
many puckers, scrubby sandy hair, and a constant regard for his own
interest. The result had been but indifferent, for he was the poorest of
the family, always in difficulties, and making the sparest of livings by
means of tremendous combinations of skill and thought sufficient to have
made the most fabulous fortune--only fortune had never come his way. He
had been poking the cows in the ribs, and inspecting the joints of every
plough and harrow as if his life depended upon them. As he came forward
to join the others, he put down in the note-book which he held in his
hand, the different sums which he supposed they would bring. Altogether,
it was a piece of business which pleased him. If he had ever had any
sentimental feeling towards his old home, that was over many a long year
ago; and that his mother, when she could no longer manage the farm,
should give it up, and be happy and thankful to find a corner at her
daughter’s fireside, was to him the most natural thing in life. The only
thing that disturbed him, was the impossibility of making her seek a
composition with her creditors, and thus saving something “for an
emergency.”
“James has aye an eye to what may come after,” Mr. Campbell said, with
his peculiar humour, and a laugh which made Edgar long to pitch him into
the loch; “he’s thinking of the succession. Not that I’m opposed to
compounding with the creditors in such a case. She’s well-known for an
honest woman that’s paid her way, and held up her head with the best,
and we all respect her, and many of us would have no objection to make a
bit small sacrifice. I’m one myself, and I can speak. But your mother is
a woman that has always had a great deal of her own way.”
“More than was good for her,” said James Murray, shaking his head.
“She’s as obstinate as an auld mule when she takes a notion. She’s been
mistress and mair these forty year, and like a women, she’ll hear no
reason. Twelve or fifteen shillings in the pound is a very fine
composition, and touches no man’s credit, besides leaving an old wife
something in her pocket to win respect.”
“And to leave behind her,” said Campbell, laughing and slapping his
brother-in-law on the back.
This was at the door of the farm-house, where they lingered a moment
before going in. The loud laugh of the one and testy exclamation of the
other, sounded in through the open windows of the parlour, where the
mistress of the house sat with her daughters; probably the entire
conversation had reached them in the same way. But of that no one took
any thought. This meeting and family consultation was rather “a ploy”
than otherwise to all the party. They liked the outing, the inspection,
the sense of superiority involved. The sons and the daughters were
intent upon making their mother hear reason and putting all nonsense out
of her head. She had been foolish in these last years of her life. She
had brought up Tom’s bairns, for instance, in a ridiculous way. It was
all very well for Robert Campbell’s son, who was able to afford it, to
be sent to College, but what right had Charlie Murray to be made a
gentleman of at the expense of all the rest? To be sure his uncles and
aunts were somewhat proud of him now that the process was completed, and
liked to speak of “my nephew the doctor;” but still it was a thing that
a grandmother, all whose descendants had an equal right to her favours,
had no title to do.
“My bairns are just as near in blood, and have just as good a right to a
share of what’s going; and when you think how many there are of them,
and the fight we have had to give them all they require,” Mrs. MacKell
said to Mrs. Campbell.
“Many or few,” said Mrs. Campbell to Mrs. MacKell, “we have all a right
to our share. I’ve yet to learn that being one of ten bairns gives more
claim than being an only child. Johnnie ought to be as much to his
grandmother as any grand-bairn she has--as much as Charlie Murray that
has cost her hundreds. But she never spent a pound note on my Johnnie
all his life.”
“There have been plenty pound-notes spent on him,” said the younger
sister, “but we need not quarrel, for neither yours nor mine will get
anything from their grandmother now. But I hope the men will stand fast,
and not yield to any fancies. My mother’s always been a good mother to
us, but very injudicious with these children. There’s Jeanie, now,
never taught to do a hand’s turn, but encouraged in all her fancies.”
“I would like to buy in the china,” said Mrs. Campbell. “Auld china is
very much thought of now-a-days. I hear the Duchess drinks her tea out
of nothing else, and the dafter-like the better. You’ll be surprised
when you see how many odds and ends there are about the house, that
would make a very good show if they were rightly set out.”
“My mother has some good things too, if all the corners were cleared,
that are of no use to her, but that would come in very well for the
girls,” said Mrs. MacKell; and with these kind and reverential thoughts
they met their mother, who perhaps also--who knows?--had in her day been
covetous of things that would come in for the girls. This was the easy
and cheerful view which the family took of the circumstances altogether.
Not one of them intended to be unkind. They were all quite determined
that she should “want for nothing;” but still it was, on the whole,
rather “a ploy” and pleasant expedition, this family assembly, which had
been convened for the purpose of dethroning its head.