The Interloper
_New 6s. Novels_
THE ISLAND PHARISEES
By JOHN GALSWORTHY
THE MAGNETIC NORTH
By ELIZABETH ROBINS
URIAH THE HITTITE
By WOLF WYLLARDE
THE MONEY GOD
By J. P. BLAKE
LOVE THE FIDDLER
By LLOYD OSBOURNE
THE STORY OF SUSAN
By MRS. HENRY DUDENEY
THE RELENTLESS CITY
By E. F. BENSON
THE MASTERFOLK
By HALDANE MACFALL
THE JEWEL OF SEVEN STARS
By BRAM STOKER
THE EVIL EYE
By DANIEL WOODROFFE
THE WEB
By FREDERICK TREVOR HILL
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN,
20 and 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
The Interloper
By
Violet Jacob
(Mrs. Arthur Jacob)
Author of ‘The Sheep-Stealers’
London
William Heinemann
1904
This Edition enjoys copyright in all countries signatory to the Berne
Treaty, and is not to be imported into the United States of America
TO
AN UNDYING MEMORY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
BEFORE proceeding with this story I must apologize for a striking
inaccuracy which it contains. I have represented the educated
characters as speaking, but for certain turns of phrase, the ordinary
English which is now universal. But, in Scotland, in the very early
nineteenth century, gentle and simple alike kept a national distinction
of language, and remnants of it lingered in the conversation, as I
remember it, of the two venerable and unique old ladies from whom the
characters of Miss Hersey Robertson and her sister are taken. They
called it ‘Court Scots.’
For the assistance of that tender person, the General Reader, I have
ignored it.
V. J.
1903
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE HEIR 1
II. AT GARVIEKIRK 14
III. FRIENDSHIP 24
IV. JIMMY 36
V. THE STRIFE OF TONGUES 49
VI. THE DOVECOTE OF MORPHIE 59
VII. THE LOOKING-GLASS 73
VIII. THE HOUSE IN THE CLOSE 81
IX. ON FOOT AND ON WHEELS 91
X. KING COPHETUA’S CORRESPONDENCE 101
XI. THE MOUSE AND THE LION 111
XII. GRANNIE TAKES A STRONG ATTITUDE 117
XIII. PLAIN SPEAKING 127
XIV. STORM AND BROWN SILK 140
XV. THE THIRD VOICE 150
XVI. BETWEEN LADY ELIZA AND CECILIA 160
XVII. CECILIA PAYS HER DEBTS 168
XVIII. THE BOX WITH THE LAUREL-WREATH 177
BOOK II
XIX. SIX MONTHS 186
XX. ROCKET 194
XXI. THE BROKEN LINK 205
XXII. CECILIA SEES THE WILD GEESE 215
XXIII. AN EMPTY HOUSE 225
XXIV. A ROYAL VISIT 234
XXV. MRS. SOMERVILLE HAS SCRUPLES 241
XXVI. ALEXANDER BARCLAY DOES HIS BEST 251
XXVII. THE SKY FALLS ON GILBERT 257
XXVIII. AGNETA ON THE UNEXPECTED 269
XXIX. THE QUEEN OF THE CADGERS TAKES THE ROAD 275
XXX. MORPHIE KIRK 286
EPILOGUE 298
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
THE HEIR
HALF-WAY up the east coast of Scotland, the estuary of the North Lour
cuts a wide cleft in an edge of the Lowlands, and flows into the North
Sea among the sands and salmon nets.
The river winds in large curves through the shingles and green patches
where cattle graze, overhung by woods of beech and birch, and pursuing
its course through a country in full cultivation--a country of large
fields; where rolling woods, purple in the shadow, stretch north
towards the blue Grampians.
A bridge of eight arches spans the water before it runs out to sea, the
bank on its further side rising into a line of plough-fields crowning
the cliffs, where flights of gulls follow the ploughman, and hover in
his track over the upturned earth. As the turnpike runs down to the
bridge, it curls round the policies of a harled white house which has
stood for some two hundred years a little way in from the road, a tall
house with dead-looking windows and slates on which the lichen has
fastened. A clump of beech-trees presses round it on two sides, and, in
their bare branches, rooks’ nests make patches against the late autumn
skies.
Inside the mansion of Whanland--for such is its name--on a December
afternoon in the first year of the nineteenth century, two men were
talking in the fading light. The room which they occupied was panelled
with wood, polished and somewhat light-coloured, and had two arched
alcoves, one on either side of the chimney-piece. These were filled
with books whose goodly backs gave a proper solemnity to the place. The
windows were narrow and high, and looked out to the beeches. A faint
sound of the sea came droning in from the sand-hills which flanked the
shore, and were distant but the space of a few fields.
The elder of the two men was a person who had reached that convenient
time of life when a gentleman may attend to his creature comforts
without the risk of being blamed for it. He was well-dressed and his
face was free from any obvious fault. He produced, indeed, a worse
effect than his merits warranted, for his hair, which had the
misfortune to look as though it were dyed, was, in reality, of a
natural colour. Nothing in his appearance hinted at the fact that he
was the family lawyer--or ‘man of business,’ as it is called in
Scotland--of the young man who stood on the hearthrug, nor did his
manner suggest that they had met that day for the first time.
He sat looking up at Gilbert Speid[1] with considerable interest.
Though he was not one to whom the finer details of another’s
personality were apparent, he was yet observant in the commoner way. It
did not escape him that his companion was shy, but he did not suspect
that it was with the shyness of one, who, though well accustomed to the
company of his kind, had no intimacies. A few hours ago, when starting
to meet him at Whanland, he had told himself that his task would be
easy, and he meant to be friendly, both from inclination and policy,
with the strange laird, who was a stranger to his inheritance. But
though he had been received with politeness a little different from the
amenity of anyone he had known before, he felt that he was still far
from the defences of the young man’s mind. As to Gilbert’s outward
appearance, though it could hardly be called handsome, the lawyer was
inclined to admire it. He was rather tall, and had a manner of carrying
himself which was noticeable, not from affectation, but because he was
a very finished swordsman, and had a precision of gesture and movement
not entirely common. He did not speak with the same intonation as the
gentry with whom it was Alexander Barclay’s happiness to be acquainted,
professionally or otherwise, for, though a Scot on both sides of his
family, he had spent most of his youth abroad, and principally in
Spain. His head was extremely well set and his face gave an impression
of bone--well-balanced bone; it was a face, rather heavy, and singularly
impassive, though the eyes looked out with an extraordinary curiosity
on life. It seemed, to judge from them, as though he were always on the
verge of speaking, and Barclay caught himself pausing once or twice for
the expected words. But they seldom came and Gilbert’s mouth remained
closed, less from determination to silence than from settled habit.
[1] Pronounced Speed.
It was in the forenoon that Gilbert Speid had arrived at Whanland to
find Barclay awaiting him on the doorstep; and the two men had walked
round the house and garden and under the beech-trees, stopping at
points from which there was any view to be had over the surrounding
country. They had strolled up a field parallel with the road which ran
from the nearest town of Kaims to join the highway at the bridge. There
Gilbert had taken in every detail, standing at an angle of a fence and
looking down on the river as it wound from the hazy distance of bare
woods.
‘And my property ends here?’ he asked, turning from the fascinating
scene to his companion.
‘At the bend of the Lour, Mr. Speid; just where you see the white
cottage.’
‘I am glad that some of that river is mine,’ said Gilbert, after a long
pause.
Barclay laughed with great heartiness, and rubbed his hands one over
the other.
‘Very satisfactory,’ he said, as they went on--‘an excellent state of
things.’
When they returned to the house they found a stack of papers which the
lawyer had brought to be examined, and Speid, though a little oppressed
by the load of dormant responsibility it represented, sat gravely down,
determined to do all that was expected of him. It was past three
o’clock when Barclay pulled out his watch and inquired when he had
breakfasted, for his own sensations were reminding him that he himself
had done so at a very early hour.
Gilbert went to the bell, but, as he stood with the rope in his hand,
he remembered that he had no idea of the resources of the house, and
did not even know whether there were any available servant whose duty
it was to answer it. His companion sat looking at him with a
half-smile, and he coloured as he saw it.
When the door opened, a person peered in whom he dimly recollected
seeing on his arrival in the group which had gathered to unload his
post-chaise. He was a small, elderly man, whose large head shone with
polished baldness. He was pale, and had the pose and expression we are
accustomed to connect--perhaps unjustly--with field-preachers, and his
rounded brow hung like the eaves of a house over a mild but impudent
eye. His was the type of face to be seen bawling over a psalm-book at
some sensational religious meeting, a face not to be regarded too long
nor too earnestly, lest its owner should be spurred by the look into
some insolent familiarity. He stood on the threshold looking from Speid
to Barclay, as though uncertain which of the two he should address.
It took Gilbert a minute to think of what he had wanted; for he was
accustomed to the well-trained service of his father’s house, and the
newcomer matched nothing that had a place in his experience.
‘What is it?’ inquired the man at the door.
‘Is there any dinner--anything that we can have to eat? You must forgive
me, sir; but you see how it is. I am strange here, and I foolishly sent
no orders.’
‘I engaged a cook for you and it is hardly possible that she has made
no preparation. Surely there is something in the kitchen, Macquean?’
‘I’ll away down an’ see,’ said the man, disappearing.
‘Who is that?’ asked Gilbert, to whom the loss of a dinner seemed less
extraordinary than the possession of such a servant.
‘His name is Mungo Macquean. He has had charge of the house for a great
part of the time that it has stood empty. He is a good creature, Mr.
Speid, though uncouth--very uncouth.’
In a few minutes the door opened again to admit Macquean’s head.
‘There’s a chicken she’ll roast to ye, an’ there’s brose. An’ a’m to
tell her, are ye for pancakes?’
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Gilbert. ‘Mr. Barclay, when shall it be?’
‘The sooner the better, I think,’ said the other hopefully.
‘Then we will dine at once,’ said Gilbert.
Macquean’s mouth widened and he stared at his master.
‘You’ll get it at five,’ he said, as he withdrew his head.
The lawyer’s face fell.
‘I suppose it cannot be ready before then,’ he said, with a sigh.
The two drew up rather disconsolately to the fireside. The younger
man’s eyes wandered round the room and lit upon one of those
oil-paintings typical of the time, representing a coach-horse,
dock-tailed, round-barrelled, and with a wonderfully long rein.
‘That is the only picture I have noticed in the house,’ he observed.
‘Are there no more--no portraits, I mean?’
‘To be sure there are,’ replied Barclay, ‘but they have been put in the
garret, which we forgot to visit in our walk round. We will go up and
see them if you wish. They are handsomely framed and will make a
suitable show when we get them up on the walls.’
The garret was approached by a steep wooden stair, and, as they stood
among the strange collection it contained in the way of furniture and
cobwebs, Speid saw that the one vacant space of wall supported a row of
pictures, which stood on the floor like culprits, their faces to the
wainscot. Barclay began to turn them round. It irked the young man to
see his fat hands twisting the canvases about, and flicking the dust
from the row of faces which he regarded with a curious stirring of
feeling. Nothing passed lightly over Gilbert.
He was relieved when his companion, whose heart was in the kitchen, and
who was looking with some petulance at the dust which had fallen on his
coat from the beams above, proposed to go down and push forward the
preparations for dinner.
Speid stood absorbed before the line of vanished personalities which
had helped to determine his existence, and they returned his look with
all the intelligent and self-conscious gravity of eighteenth-century
portraiture. Only one in the row differed in character from the others,
and he took up the picture and carried it to the light. It represented
a lady whose figure was cut by the oval frame just below the waist. Her
hands were crossed in front of her, and her elbows brought into line
with her sides, as were those of the other Speid ancestresses; there
was something straight and virginal in her pose. Never had Gilbert seen
such conventionality of attitude joined to so much levity of
expression. She wore a mountain of chestnut hair piled high on her head
and curling down one side of her neck. Her open bodice of warm cream
colour suggested a bust rather fuller than might be expected from the
youthful and upright stiffness of her carriage, and, over her arm, hung
an India muslin spotted scarf, which had apparently slipped down round
her waist. Her eyes were soft in shade and hard in actual glance, bold,
bright, scornful, under strongly marked brows. The mouth was very red,
and the upper lip fine; the lower lip protruded, and drooped a little
in the middle. Her head was half turned to meet the spectator.
Her appearance interested him, and he searched the canvas for an
inscription. Turning it round, he saw a paper stuck upon the back and
covered with writing: ‘_Clementina Speid, daughter of John Lauder,
Esq., of Netherkails, and Marie La Vallance, his wife._ 1767.’
The lady was his mother; and the portrait had been painted just after
her marriage, three years before his own birth.
Never in his life had he seen any likeness of her. His father had not
once mentioned her name in his hearing, and, as a little boy, he had
been given by his nurses to understand that she existed somewhere in
that mysterious and enormous category of things about which
well-brought-up children were not supposed to inquire. There was a
certain fitness in thus meeting her unknown face as he entered Whanland
for the first time since he left it in the early months of his infancy.
She had been here all the time, waiting for him in the dust and
darkness. As he set the picture against the wall her eyes looked at him
with a secret intelligence. That he had nothing to thank her for was a
fact which he had gathered as soon as he grew old enough to draw
deductions for himself; but, all the same, he now felt an unaccountable
sympathy with her, not as his mother--for such a relationship had never
existed for him--but as a human being. He went to the little window
under the slope of the roof and looked out over the fields. On the
shore the sea lay, far and sad, as if seen through the wrong end of a
telescope. The even, dreary sound came through a crack in the two
little panes of glass. He turned back to the picture, though he could
hardly see it in the strengthening dusk; her personality seemed to
pervade the place with a brave, unavailing brightness. It struck him
that, in that game of life which had ended in her death, there had been
her stake too. But it was a point of view which he felt sure no other
being he had known had ever considered.
Mr. Barclay’s voice calling to him on the staircase brought him back
from the labyrinth of thought. He hurried out of the garret to find him
on the landing, rather short of breath after his ascent.
‘The Misses Robertson are below, Mr. Speid; they have driven out from
Kaims to bid you welcome. I have left them in the library.’
‘The Misses Robertson?’
‘Miss Hersey and Miss Caroline Robertson; your cousins. The ladies
will not be long before they find you out, you see. They might have
allowed you a little more law, all the same. But women are made
inquisitive--especially the old ones.’
‘I think it vastly kind,’ said Speid shortly. ‘I remember now that my
father spoke of them.’
As they entered the library, two small figures rose from their chairs
and came forward, one a little in front of the other.
The sisters were both much under middle height, and dressed exactly
alike; it was only on their faces that the very great difference in
them was visible. There was an appealing dignity in the full
acknowledgment of her seventy years which Miss Hersey carried in her
person. She had never had the smallest pretension to either intellect
or attraction, but her plain, thin face, with its one beauty of gray
hair rolled high above her forehead, was full of a dignity innocent,
remote, and entirely natural, that has gone out of the modern world.
Miss Caroline, who was slightly her senior, was frankly ugly and
foolish-looking; and something fine, delicate, and persuasive that lay
in her sister’s countenance had, in hers, been omitted. Their only
likeness was in the benignity that pervaded them and in the inevitable
family resemblance that is developed with age. The fashion of their
dresses, though in no way grotesque, had been obsolete for several
years.
‘Welcome, Mr. Speid,’ said Miss Hersey, holding out a gentle, bony
hand. ‘Caroline, here is Mr. Speid.’
It was no slight effort which the two feeble old ladies had made in
coming to do him honour, for they had about them the strangeness which
hangs round very aged people when some unaccustomed act takes them out
of their own surroundings, and he longed to thank them, or to say
something which should express his sense of it. But Barclay’s proximity
held him down. Their greeting made him disagreeably aware of the
lawyer’s presence; and his incongruity as he stood behind him was like
a cold draught blowing on his back. He made a hurried murmur of
civility, then, as he glanced again at Miss Hersey’s face, he suddenly
set his heels together, and, bending over her hand, held it to his
lips.
She was old enough to look as if she had never been young, but seventy
years do not rob a woman, who has ever been a woman, of everything; she
felt like a queen as she touched her kinsman’s bent head lightly with
her withered fingers.
‘Welcome, Gilbert,’ she said again. ‘God bless you, my dear!’
‘We knew your father,’ said the old lady, when chairs had been brought,
and she and her sister installed, one on either side of the fireplace.
‘We knew your father,’ echoed Miss Caroline, smiling vaguely.
‘I do not remember that he was like you,’ said Miss Hersey, ‘but he was
a very handsome man. He brought your mother to see us immediately after
he was married.’
‘You’ll have to keep up the custom,’ observed Mr. Barclay jocosely.
‘How soon are we to look for the happy event, Mr. Speid? There will be
no difficulty among the young ladies here, I’m thinking.’
‘My cousin will do any lady honour that he asks, Mr. Barclay, and it is
likely he will be particular,’ said Miss Hersey, drawing herself up.
‘He should be particular,’ said Miss Caroline, catching gently at the
last word.
‘Your mother was a sweet creature,’ continued the younger sister. ‘He
brought her to our house. It was on a Sunday after the church was out.
I mind her sitting by me on the sofy at the window. You’ll mind it,
too, Caroline.’
‘A sweet creature indeed; a sweet creature,’ murmured Miss Caroline.
‘She was so pleased with the lilies of the valley in the garden, and I
asked Robert Fullarton to go out and pull some for her. Poor thing! it
is a sad-like place she is buried in, Gilbert.’
‘I have never seen it, ma’am,’ said Speid.
‘It’s at Garviekirk. The kirkyard is on the shore, away along the sands
from the mouth of the river. Your father wished it that way, but I
could never understand it.’
‘I shall be very pleased to show you the road there,’ broke in Barclay.
‘It was a bitter day,’ continued Miss Robertson. ‘I wondered your
father did not get his death o’ cold, standing there without his hat.
He spoke to no one, not even to Robert Fullarton who was so well
acquainted with him. And when the gentlemen who had come to the burying
arrived at the gate of Whanland, he just bade them a good-day and went
in. There was not one that was brought in to take a glass of wine. I
never saw him after; he went to England.’
While her sister was speaking, Miss Caroline held her peace. Her chin
shook as she turned her eyes with dim benevolence from one to the
other. At seventy-two, she seemed ten years older than Miss Hersey.
Gilbert could not but ask his cousins to stay and dine with him and
they assented very readily. When, at last, dinner was brought, he and
Mr. Barclay handed them to the table. There was enough and to spare
upon it, in spite of Macquean’s doubts; and Miss Hersey, seated beside
him, was gently exultant in the sense of kinship. It was a strange
party.
Gilbert, who had never sat at the head of his own table before, looked
round with a feeling of detachment. It seemed to him that he was acting
in a play and that his three guests, whom, a few hours before, he had
never seen, were as unreal as everything else. The environment of this
coming life was closing in on him and he could not meet its forces as
easily as a more elastic nature would have met them. He accepted change
with as little equanimity as a woman, in spite of the many changes of
his past, because he knew that both duty and temperament would compel
him to take up life, and live it with every nerve alongside the lives
running parallel with his own. He could see that he had pleased Miss
Hersey and he was glad, as he had a respect for ties of blood imbibed
from the atmosphere of ceremonious Spain. He was glad to find something
that had definite connection with himself and the silent house he had
entered; with its wind-blown beech-trees and the face upstairs in the
dust of the garret.
When dinner was over, the Miss Robertsons sent out for the hired coach
and pair which they had considered indispensable to the occasion. When
they had taken their leave, Gilbert stood and watched the lights of the
vehicle disappearing down the road to Kaims. Their departure relieved
him, for their presence made him dislike Barclay. Their extreme
simplicity might border on the absurd, but it made the lawyer’s
exaggerated politenesses and well-to-do complacency look more offensive
than they actually were.
It was quite dark as he turned back, and Barclay, who was a man much in
request in his own circle, was anxious to get home to the town, where
he proposed to enjoy a bottle with some friends. He looked forward
keenly to discussing the new-comer over it.
Before he went to bed, Speid strolled out into the damp night. He set
his face towards the sea, and the small stir of air there was blew
chill upon his cheek. Beyond a couple of fields a great light was
flaring, throwing up the blunt end of some farm buildings through which
he had passed that morning in his walk with Barclay. Figures were
flitting across the shine; and the hum of human voices rose above a
faint roar that was coming in from the waste of sea beyond the
sand-hills. He strode across the paling, and made towards the light.
When he reached the place he found that a bonfire was shooting bravely
upward, and the glow which it threw on the walls of the whitewashed
dwelling-house was turning it into a rosy pink. The black forms of
twenty or thirty persons, men and women--the former much in the
majority--were crowding and gyrating round the blaze. Some were feeding
it with logs and stacks of brushwood; a few of the younger ones were
dancing and posturing solemnly; and one, who had made a discreet
retirement from the burning mass, was sitting in an open doorway with
an empty bottle on the threshold beside him. Some children looked down
on the throng from an upper window of the house. The revel was
apparently in an advanced stage.
The noise was tremendous. Under cover of it, and of the deep shadows
thrown by the bonfire, Gilbert slipped into a dark angle and stood to
watch the scene. The men were the principal dancers, and a knot of
heavy carter-lads were shuffling opposite to each other in a kind of
sentimental abandonment. Each had one hand on his hip and one held
conscientiously aloft. Now and then they turned round with the slow
motion of joints on the spit. One was singing gutturally in time to his
feet; but his words were unintelligible to Speid.
He soon discovered that the rejoicings were in honour of his own
arrival and the knowledge made him the more inclined to keep his
hiding-place. He could see Macquean raking at the pile, the flame
playing over his round forehead and unrefined face. He looked greatly
unsuited to the occasion, as he did to any outdoor event.
All at once a little wizened woman looked in his own direction.
‘Yonder’s him!’ she cried, as she extended a direct forefinger on his
shelter.
A shout rose from the revellers. Even the man in the doorway turned his
head, a thing he had not been able to do for some time.
‘Heh! the laird! the laird!’
‘Yon’s him. Come awa’, laird, an’ let’s get a sicht o’ ye!’
‘Here’s to ye, laird!’
‘Laird! laird! What’ll I get if I run through the fire?’
‘Ye’ll get a pair o’ burned boots!’ roared the man in the doorway with
sudden warmth.
Speid came out from the shadow. He had not bargained for this. Silence
fell at once upon the assembly, and it occurred to him that he would do
well to say a few words to these, his new dependents. He paused, not
knowing how to address them.
‘Friends,’ he began at last, ‘I see that you mean this--this display as
a kind welcome to me.’
‘Just that,’ observed a voice in the crowd.
‘I know very little about Whanland, and I do not even know your names.
But I shall hope to be friendly with you all. I mean to live here and
to try my best to do well by everybody. I hope I have your good
wishes.’
‘Ye’ll hae that!’ cried the voice; and a man, far gone in intoxication,
who had absently filled the tin mug he had drained with small stones,
rattled it in accompaniment to the approving noise which followed these
words.
‘I thank you all,’ said the young man, as it subsided.
Then he turned and went up the fields to the house.
And that was how Gilbert Speid came back to Whanland.