There are few things in human affairs more curious than the structure of
what is called society, wherever it is met with, whether in the most
primitive of its developments or on the higher levels. The perpetual
recurrence of a circle within which the sayings and doings of certain
individuals are more important than anything else in earth or heaven,
and where the conversation persistently rolls back, whatever may be its
starting-point, to what this or that little knot of people are doing, to
the eccentricities of one and the banalities of another, to some
favourite individual scene of tragedy or comedy which forms the centre
of the moral landscape--is always apparent to the observer, whether his
observations are made in Kamtchatka or in London, among washerwomen or
princesses. But under no circumstances is this so evident as to a
new-comer in a region where all the people know each other. The novelty
and freshness of his impressions perhaps make him congratulate himself
for a moment that now at last he has got into a society fresh and
original, with features of its own; but half-a-dozen meetings are enough
to prove to him that he has only got into another round, a circle as
little extended, as much shut up in its own ring, as all the rest. This
was what John Erskine found, with a little amusement and a little
disgust, almost as soon as he got settled in his unknown home. Any
addition to their society was interesting to the country folks,
especially in May, when there is not much doing--when those who can
indulge themselves in the pleasures of the season have gone to London,
and those who cannot are bound to bring forth their philosophy and prove
that they enjoy the country in the early summer, even though there is
nothing to do. But a young man unencumbered and alone, with all his life
before him, and all his connections to form, is perhaps of all others
the most interesting human creature who can come into a new sphere. All
the world is curious about him--both those whose lives he may influence,
and those to whom he can contribute nothing but the interest, perhaps of
a new drama, perhaps only of a new face. He who will enact his own story
publicly before the eyes of his neighbours, falling in love, wooing,
marrying, or, still better, carrying on these processes with
interruptions of non-success and threatenings of postponement, what a
godsend he is! and perhaps scarcely less he who brings in darker
elements into the placid tenor of the general history, and ruins himself
for our instruction, while we all look on with bated breath. To the
country-side in general, John Erskine, while as yet unknown, was a new
hero. He was the beginning of a romance with all the more fascination in
it that the most interested spectator for a long time could form but
little idea how it was to turn. As soon as he was known to be at home,
his neighbours came down upon him from all quarters with friendly
greetings, invitations, offers of kindness on all sides. The first to
appear was Sir James Montgomery, a sunburnt and cheerful old soldier,
whose small estate of Chiefswood "marched" on one side with Dalrulzian,
and who was disposed to be very friendly. He came in beaming with smiles
over all his brown jovial countenance, and holding out a large cordial
hand.
"Well, young man, so this is you at last. You're heartily welcome home.
I've been long away myself, and you've never been here, but we're old
neighbours for all that, and I take it upon me to call myself an old
friend."
"You are very kind," John said, suffering his hand to be engulfed in
that kind, warm, capacious grasp. The old soldier held him at arm's
length for a moment, looking at him with friendly eyes.
"I remember your grandfather well," he said; "not so much of your
father, for he came to man's estate, and died, poor lad, when I was
away; but I see some features of the old man in you, my young friend,
and I'm glad to see them. You'll seldom meet with a better man than your
grandfather. He was very kind to me as a young lad at the time I got my
commission. They were ill able to afford my outfit at home, and I'm much
mistaken if old Dalrulzian did not lend a helping hand; so mind you, my
lad, if young Dalrulzian should ever want one--a day in harvest, as the
proverb goes----"
"You are very kind, sir," said John Erskine again: he was touched, but
half amused as well. It seemed so unlikely that he should require the
old general's helping hand. And then they talked of the country, and of
their previous lives and diverse experiences. Sir James was one of those
primitive men, much more usual a generation ago than now, whose
knowledge of life, which to his own thinking was profound and extensive,
left out the greater part of what in our days is known as life at all.
He knew Scotland and India, and nothing more. He was great in expedients
for dealing with the natives on one hand, and full of a hundred stories
of village humour, fun, and pawkiness on the other. To hear him laugh
over one of these anecdotes till the tears stood in his clear, warm blue
eyes, which were untouched by any dimness of time, was worth all the
witticisms ever printed; and to see him bend his fine old brows over the
characteristics of his old subjects in India, and the ameliorations of
character produced by British rule, firmness, and justice, was better
than philosophy. But with that which young John Erskine knew as life he
had no acquaintance. Save his own country and the distant East, the
globe was wrapped in dimness to him. He had passed through London often,
and had even transacted business at the Horse Guards, though an Indian
officer in those days had little to do with that centre of military
authority; but he had a mingled awe and horror of "town," and thought of
the Continent as of a region of temptation where the devil was far more
apparent than in other places, and sought whom he might devour with much
more openness and less hindrance than at home. And when our young man,
who flattered himself a little on his knowledge of society and the
world, as he understood the phrase, unfolded himself before the innocent
patriarch, their amazement at each other was mutual. Old Sir James
contemplated John in his knowledge with something of the same amused
respect which John on his side felt for him in his ignorance. To each
there was in the other a mixture of a boy and a sage, which made them
each to each half absurd and half wonderful. An old fellow, who must
have seen so much to have seen so little! and a mere bit of a lad, Sir
James said to himself, who knew nothing about India or anything serious,
yet had seen a vast deal, and had very just notions, and spoke like a
man of the world when you came to talk to him! It was thus the senior
who did most justice to the junior, as is usually the case.
"I am afraid," Sir James said, "that you'll find our country-side but
dull after all you've seen. We're pleased with ourselves, as most
ignorant people are; we think we're good enough company on the whole,
but music, or the play, or art, or that kind of thing, you'll find us
wanting in. I'm afraid they find us very wanting at Lindores; but as for
a kind welcome, whenever you like and however you like, and a good
Scotch dinner, and sometimes a dance, if that will content you in the
way of company----"
"I should be hard to please if that would not content me," said John. "I
hope you will give me the chance."
"That we will--that we will," said Sir James, heartily; and then he
added, "we have no young people about us--Lady Montgomery and me. Our
two children are as far from children now as their father and mother.
They are both in India, and their families grown up and gone out to
them. So we have nothing young of our own about the house; but don't go
too fast, we're not without attraction. In a week, I think, we're
expecting a visitor that will make the place bright--Miss
Barrington--Nora Barrington; you'll have heard of her by this time.
She's a great favourite in the country. We are all keen to have her and
to keep her. I'm not afraid that a young man will find us dull when
we've Nora in the house."
Here John, who had become suspicious of the name of this girl whom
everybody insisted on recommending to him, eagerly protested that he
should want no foreign attraction to the house in which the kind old
general was.
"Foreign! No, she's not foreign," said Sir James; "far from that. A
bonnie English girl, which, after a bonnie Scotch lassie, is by far the
best thing going. We must stand up for our own first," said the old
soldier, laughing; "but nothing foreign--nothing foreign: if you want
that, you'll have to go to Lindores."
John felt--he could scarcely tell why--slightly irritated by these
references to Lindores. He said, somewhat elaborately, "They are the
only people I really know in the county. I met them long ago--on the
Continent."
"Ah!--ay; that's just what I say--for anything foreign, you'll have to
go to the Castle," said Sir James, a little doubtfully. "But," he added,
after a moment's pause, "I hope you'll take to us and your own country,
and need no 'foreign aid of ornament,' eh? You must forgive me. I'm an
old fellow, and old-fashioned. In my time it used to be thought that
your French and Italians were--well, no better than they should be.
Germans, they tell me, are a more solid race; but I know little
difference--I know little difference. You'll say that's my ignorance,"
said this man of prejudice, beaming upon his companion with a smile in
which there was a little deprecation, but a great deal of simple
confidence. It was impossible not to condone the errors of a censor so
innocent.
"If you knew them, you would not only see a great deal of difference,
but I think you would like them a great deal better than you suppose,"
John said.
"Very likely--very likely," cried Sir James. It occurred to him suddenly
that if his young friend had indeed, poor lad, been brought up among
those "foreign cattle," an unfavourable opinion of them might hurt his
feelings; and this was the last thing the old man would have done--even
to a foreigner in person, much less to a son of the soil temporarily
seduced by the wiles of strangers. And then he repeated his formula
about being an old fellow and old-fashioned. "And you'll mind to expect
nothing but broad Scotch at Chiefswood," he cried, laughing and waving
his hand as he rode away, after the hearty invitation with which every
visitor ended. "You'll get the other at Lindores."
And the door had scarcely closed upon this new acquaintance when the
Earl made his appearance, with the smile of an old friend, quite willing
to acknowledge old relationships, but not too familiar or enthusiastic
in his claim. He was no longer the languid gentleman he had been in the
old wandering days, but had the fresh colour and active step of a man
who lived much out of doors. "The scene is very different," he said,
with kindness but dignity. "We are all changed more or less; but the
sentiments are the same." He said this with something of the air of a
prince graciously renewing acquaintance with a friend of his exile. "I
hope we shall see you often at the Castle. We are your nearest
neighbours; and when you have been as long here as we have, you will
have learned to shudder at the words. But it is a relief to think it is
you who will now fill that _rôle_." Could a benevolent nobleman say
more? And it was only after a good deal of friendly talk that Lord
Lindores began to speak of the county business, and the advantage it
would be to him to have support in his attempts to put things on a
better footing.
"Nothing can be more _arriéré_," he said. "We are behind in everything;
and the prejudices I have to struggle with are inconceivable. I shall
have you now, I hope, on my side: we are, I believe, of the same
politics."
"I scarcely know what my politics are," said John. "Some one told me the
other day that the Erskines are always on the right side; and, if you
will not be disgusted, I am obliged to confess that I don't know what
was meant. I know what it would be at Milton Magna. I imagine dimly just
the opposite here."
The Earl smiled benignly on the young inquirer. "The Erskines have
always been Liberal," he said. "I know there is no counting upon you
young men. You generally go too far on one side or the other: if you are
not Tories, you are Radicals. My Liberalism, _bien entendu_, does not go
that length--no Radicalism, no revolutionary sentiments. In short, at
present my politics mean county hospitals and drainage more than
anything else." Then he paused, and added somewhat abruptly, "I don't
know if you ever thought of Parliament--as a career for yourself?"
At this John's pulses gave a sudden jump, and the blood rushed to his
cheeks. Had he thought of it? He could scarcely tell. As something he
might come to, when he had learned the claims of life upon him, and the
circumstances of the country, which as yet he barely knew--as an object
to look forward to, something that might ennoble his future and afford
him the finest occupation that a man can have, a share in the government
of his country--yes; no doubt he had thought of it--at a time when he
thought more highly of Dalrulzian and of his own pretensions. But the
demand was very sudden, and he had all the modesty of youth.
"Parliament!" he faltered forth. "I--don't know that I have thought of
it. I fear I know too little of politics--I have too little
experience----" And here he paused, expecting nothing less than that he
should be kindly urged to think better of it, and persuaded that it was
his duty to serve his generation so.
"Ah," said the Earl, "you give me just the assurance I wanted. I need
not hesitate to tell you, in that case, that my great desire is to push
Rintoul for the county. If you had thought of it yourself, it would have
been a different matter; but otherwise everything points to him,--his
position, our circumstances as the natural leaders, and the excellent
chance he would have with all parties--better than any one else, I
believe. You could be of the utmost use to us, Erskine, if it does not
interfere with any plans of your own."
Now John had no plans; but this sudden check, after the sudden
suggestion which roused all his ambition, was too much like a dash of
cold water in his face to be pleasant to him. But he had time to
collect himself while Lord Lindores was speaking, and to call up a sort
of smile of assent, though it gave him a twinge of ludicrous pain. It
was poetic justice. He had faltered and said No, in order to be
encouraged and made to say Yes, and his vanity and false modesty, he
thought, had got their reward. And all this for Rintoul! He remembered
Rintoul well enough when he was not Rintoul at all, but Robin
Lindores--a poor little lieutenant in a marching regiment. And now he
was in the Guards, and the heir of an earldom. The change of position
was so great, that it took away John's breath. In the days of their
former acquaintance, there could not have been the smallest doubt which
was the more important personage--young Lindores, who had nothing at
all, or John Erskine, with a good estate which everybody accepted as
much better than it was. But now he had gone down, and the other up. All
this went through his mind ruefully, yet not without a sense of
amusement in his own discomfiture. He had not much confidence in his own
abilities or enlightenment, but it was not much to brag of that he had
more of both than young Lindores. However, he had nothing to do in this
sudden concatenation but to listen respectfully yet ruefully as the Earl
went on, who seemed to have grasped him, present and future, in his
hands.
"It is a wonderful comfort to be able to calculate upon you," he said.
"My son-in-law--for of course you have heard of Carry's marriage--would
have a great deal of influence if he chose to exert it; but he has his
own notions--his own notions. You will understand, when you make his
acquaintance, that though a sterling character, he has not had all the
advantages that might have been wished, of acquaintance with men and
knowledge of the world. But you, my dear Erskine, you know something of
life. By the by," he said, as he rose to go away, "Lady Lindores charged
me to engage you to come to us to-morrow. We are going away to town, but
not for more than a month. The ladies insist that they must see you
before they go. We all look forward to seeing a great deal of you," the
Earl added, with that manner which was always so fascinating. "Between
you and me, our dear neighbours are a set of prejudiced old rustics," he
said, with a confidential smile, as he went out; "but it will be strange
if you and I together cannot make them hear reason." Could anything be
more flattering to a young man? And it was the father of Edith who
grasped his hand thus warmly--who associated him with himself in a
conjunction so flattering. John forgot the little wrench of theoretical
disappointment--the ludicrous ease with which he had been made to give
place to Rintoul. After all, something must be sacrificed, he allowed,
to the heir of an important family--and the brother of Edith Lindores!
But this was not his last visitor on this eventful afternoon. The Earl
had scarcely disappeared when Rolls once more threw open the door of the
library, in which John usually sat, and announced with much solemnity Mr
Torrance of Tinto. The man whom the Earl, though vouching for him as "a
sterling character," had allowed to be wanting in knowledge of the
world, came striding in with that air of taking up all the space in the
room and finding it too small for him, which wealth and a vulgar mind
are so apt to give. That John should dislike him instinctively from the
moment he set eyes upon him, was nothing remarkable; for was not he the
owner of the most obnoxious house in the neighbourhood? the man to whom
Carry Lindores had been sacrificed? John Erskine felt, as he rose to
meet the new-comer, a sense of the shabbiness and smallness of his own
house, such as, even in the first evening of disenchantment, had
scarcely affected him so strongly before. When his visitor cast round
him that bold glance of his big, projecting, light-blue eyes, John saw
through them the insignificance of the place altogether, and the
humility of his own position, with a mortification which he could
scarcely subdue. Torrance was tall and strong--an immense frame of a
man, with very black hair and dark complexion, and something
insufferably insolent, audacious, cynical, in those large, light eyes,
_à fleur de tête_. His insolence of nature was sufficiently evident; but
what John did not see was the underlying sense of inferiority which his
new visitor could not shake off, and which made him doubly and angrily
arrogant, as it were, in his own defence. It galled him to recognise
better manners and breeding than his own--breeding and manners which
perhaps he had found out, as John did the inferiority of his
surroundings, through another's eyes. But Torrance's greeting was made
with great show of civility. He had heard much of John as a friend of
the family at Lindores, he said.
"Not but what I should have called, anyhow," he explained, "though Tinto
really belongs to the other side of the county, and Dalrulzian is rather
out of the way for me; but still civility is civility, and in the
country we're a kind of neighbours. I hope you like it, now you are
here?"
"Pretty well," was all that John said.
"It's a nice little place. Of course you knew what it was--not one of
the great country places; but it stands well, and it looks fine at a
distance. Few places of its size look better when you're a good bit
away."
This tried the young man's patience, but he did his best to smile. "It
is well enough," he said; "I expected no better. It is not imposing like
Tinto. Wherever one goes, it seems to me impossible to get out of sight
of your big house."
"Yes, it's an eyesore to half the county; I'm well aware of that," said
Torrance, with complacency. "There's far more of it than is any good to
me. Lady Car--I hear you knew Lady Car before we were married," he said,
fixing John almost threateningly with those light eyes--"fills it now
and then; and when I was a bachelor, I've seen it pretty full in
September; but in a general way it's too big, and a great trouble to
keep up."
"I hope Lady Caroline is quite well?" John said, with formal gravity.
"She is well enough. She is never what you call quite well. Women get
into a way of ailing, I think, just as men get into a way of drinking.
You were surprised to hear she was married, I suppose?" he asked
abruptly, with again the same threatening, offensive look, which made
John's blood boil.
"I was surprised--as one is surprised by changes that have taken place
years before one hears of them; otherwise it is no surprise to hear that
a young lady has married. Of course," John added, with serious malice,
"I had not the advantage of knowing you."
Torrance stared at him for a moment, as if doubtful whether to take
offence or not. Then he uttered, opening capacious jaws, a fierce
laugh.
"I am very easy to get on with, for those that know me," he said, "if
that's what you mean. We're a model couple, Lady Car and I: everybody
will tell you that. And I don't object to old friends, as some men do.
Let them come, I always say. If the difference is not in favour of the
present, it's a pity--that's all I say."
To this John, not knowing what answer to make, replied only with a
little bow of forced politeness, and nothing more.
"I suppose they were in a very different position when you used to know
them?" said Torrance; "in a poor way enough--ready to make friends with
whoever turned up?"
"It would be very bad policy on my part to say so," said John, "seeing
that I was one of the nobodies to whom Lady Lindores, when she was Mrs
Lindores, was extremely kind--as it seems to me she always is."
"Ah, kind! that's all very well: you weren't nobody--you were very
eligible--in those days," said Torrance, with a laugh, for which John
would have liked to knock him down; but there were various hindrances to
this laudable wish. First, that it was John's own house, and civility
forbade any aggression; and second, that Tinto was much bigger and
stronger than the person whom, perhaps, he did not intend to
insult--indeed there was no appearance that he meant to insult him at
all. He was only a coarse and vulgar-minded man, speaking after his
kind.
"The fact is, if you don't mind my saying so, I'm not very fond of my
mamma-in-law," said Torrance. "Few men are, so far as I know: they put
your wife up to all sorts of things. For my part, I think there's a sort
of conspiracy among women, and mothers hand it down to their daughters.
A man should always part his wife from her belongings when he can. She's
a great deal better when she has nothing but him to look to. She sees
then what's her interest--to please him and never mind the rest. Don't
you think I'm complaining--Lady Car's an exception. You never catch
_her_ forgetting that she's Lady Caroline Torrance and has her place to
fill. Doesn't she do it, too! She's the sort of woman, in one way,
that's frightened at a fly--and on the other the queen wouldn't daunt
her; that's the sort of woman I like. She's what you call a grand
damm--and no mistake. Perhaps she was too young for that when you knew
her; and had nothing then to stand on her dignity about."
Here John, able to endure no longer, rose hastily and threw open the
window. "The weather gets warm," he said, "though it is so early, and
vegetation is not so far behind in Scotland as we suppose."
"Behind! I should like to know in what we're behind!" cried his guest:
and then his dark countenance reddened, and he burst into another laugh.
"Perhaps you think I'm desperately Scotch," he said; "but that's a
mistake. I'm as little prejudiced as anybody can be. I was at Oxford
myself. I'm not one of your local men. The Earl would like me to take
his way and follow his lead, as if I were a country bumpkin, you know.
That's his opinion of every man that has stuck to his own country and
not wandered abroad; and now he finds I have my own way of thinking, he
doesn't half like it. We can think for ourselves down in the country
just as well as the rest of you." After he had given vent to these
sentiments, however, Torrance got up with a half-abashed laugh. "If you
come over to Tinto, Lady Car and I will be glad to see you. We'll show
you some things you can't see every day--though we are in an
out-of-the-way corner, you're thinking," he said.
"I have already heard of the treasures of Tinto," said John, glad that
there was something civil to say.
Pat Torrance nodded his head with much self-satisfaction. "Yes, we've
got a thing or two," he said. "I'm not a connoisseur myself. I know
they've cost a fortune--that's about all I'm qualified to judge of. But
Lady Car knows all about them. You would think it was she and not I they
belonged to by nature. But come and judge for yourself. I'm not a man
to be suspicious of old friends."
And here he laughed once more, with obvious offensive meaning; but it
took John some time to make out what that meaning could be. His visitor
had been for some time gone, fortunately for all parties, before it
burst upon him. He divined then, that it was he who was supposed to have
been poor Carry's lover, and that her husband's object was the
diabolical one of increasing her misery by the sight of the man whom she
had loved and forsaken. Why had she forsaken Beaufort for this rude
barnyard hero? Was it for the sake of his great house, which happily was
not visible from Dalrulzian, but which dominated half the county with
gingerbread battlements, and the flag that floated presumptuous as if
the house were a prince's? Had Carry preferred mere wealth, weighed by
such a master, to the congenial spirit of her former lover? It fretted
the young man even to think of such a possibility. And the visitors had
fretted him each in some special point. They neutralised the breadth of
the external landscape with their narrow individuality and busy bustling
little schemes. He went out to breathe an air more wholesome, to find
refuge from that close pressure of things personal, and circumscribed
local scenery, in the genial quietness and freshness of the air outside.
How busy they all were in their own way, how intent upon their own
plans, how full of suspicion and criticism of each other! Outside all
was quiet--the evening wind breathing low, the birds in full chorus.
John refreshed himself with a long walk, shaking off his discouragement
and partial disgust. Peggy Burnet was at her door, eager to open the
gate for him as he passed. She had just tied a blue handkerchief about
the pot containing her "man's" tea, which her eldest child was about to
carry. As he sauntered up the avenue, this child, a girl about ten, tied
up so far as her shoulders were concerned in a small red-tartan shawl,
but with uncovered head and bare legs and feet, overtook him, skimming
along the road with her bundle. She admitted, holding down her head
shyly, that she was little Peggy, and was carrying her father his tea.
"He's up in the fir-wood on the top of the hill. He'll no' be back as
long as it's light."
"But that is a long walk for you," said John.
"It's no' twa miles, and I'm fond, fond to get into the woods," said
Peggy. She said "wudds," and there was a curious sing-song in the speech
to John's unaccustomed ears. When she went on she did not curtsey to him
as a well-conditioned English child would have done, but gave him a
merry nod of her flaxen head, which was rough with curls, and sped away
noiseless and swift, the red shawl over her shoulders, which was
carefully knotted round her waist and made a bunch of her small person,
showing far off through the early greenness of the brushwood. When she
had gone on a little, she began to sing like a bird, her sweet young
voice rising on the air as if it had wings. It was an endless song that
Peggy sang, like that of Wordsworth's reaper--
"Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending."
It went winding along, a viewless voice, beyond the house, along the
slopes, away into the paleness of the hill-top, where the tall
pine-trunks stood up like columns against the light. It was like the
fresh scent of those same pines--like the aromatic peat-smoke in the
air--a something native to the place, which put the troubles and the
passions he had stumbled against out of the mind of the young laird. He
was reconciled somehow to Scotland and to nature by little Peggy's love
for the "wudds," and the clear ringing melody of her endless song.