‘A YOUNG THING JUST COME FRAE HER MAMMY.’
As the party were approaching the main entrance, Tam, who was leading
the van, caught a glimpse of an under-gardener, whom he judged to be the
defaulter in some trifle amiss with the terrace that had just caught the
master’s orderly eye. Without ceremony, he turned aside to call the
culprit to account. In the meantime, Guy Horsburgh saw young Tam, who
had been over at the works, coming up the avenue, and waited to meet
him. Sir Hugo, thinking the others were close at his heels, entered by
the door which the servant had thrown open, and was shown by himself to
the picture-gallery.
Sir Hugo was not alone. One of the daughters of the house,
doubtless--though surely not the one he had seen before--had not gone to
dress, and was bending over a flower-stand, and so intent upon shifting
a pot that she did not notice anybody was there.
‘Allow me, Miss Drysdale,’ said Sir Hugo, who had too little
self-consciousness to feel uncomfortable on his own account, advancing
like the pink of courtesy that he was.
Young Eppie started, looked up with parted red lips, and dark eyes so
wide open that the long curling lashes ceased to veil them. So far from
having gone to dress, she had done nothing to repair the result of her
work since luncheon. Her fringe--oh! she could not tell what state her
fringe was in; but she did not believe there was a hair that she had not
pushed out of her eyes or tucked behind her ears half-a-dozen times.
Her hands were green and red from contact with the flower-pots. Her
morning gown was the oldest she possessed, and the one which had
received the worst usage; it was dragged to one side because Eppie had
just trodden on the hem and torn a portion of the skirt out of ‘the
gathers.’ All this when the ‘Allow me, Miss Drysdale,’ spoken by an
English tongue, confirmed, beyond the possibility of mistake, the
impression which her single startled glance had at once conveyed. This
strange young man, with his horrible ease, was the very Sir Hugo
Willoughby for whom everybody had been making such preparations. What
would Clary think! What would her father--nay, what would her mother
say, if they knew the plight in which their chief guest had found Eppie!
With a little half-stifled shriek of dismay which she could not
altogether repress, Eppie, obeying the first impulse, turned and fled
like the wind to the nearest door. In a moment she disappeared, as if no
such disordered young figure had disturbed the propriety of the
beautiful room. The only relic she had left behind was the very vestige
which had remained of Cinderella--one little slipper had dropped in the
flight.
Sir Hugo stood amazed--amused. Was this the behaviour of the young
Glasgow ladies when they were taken by surprise? But, ye gods! what a
beautiful young Hebe. He advanced a step, stooped, and picked up the
morocco slipper, regarding it critically. It was small enough to have
belonged to Cinderella, or Atalanta--if Atalanta had donned a slipper.
At the same time it was a good deal worn, and looked peeled and
discoloured, as if it had run over rough stones and damp grass, as well
as soft carpets. Finally, it had been thrust down at the heel in a
flagrantly slip-shod fashion, for which the wearer had been punished by
her loss. But, poor little thing, how frightened she had looked! Was
she kept in great order by strict dragons of mother and elder sisters?
That must have been an elder sister whom he had met several times, with
an air about her as if she could enforce good manners. Would the little
one be exposed and brought to book if she were found out? Should he not
screen her to the best of his ability? He put the disreputable small
slipper into his pocket, and laughed softly. It was the first personal
adventure which had happened to him since he came to Glasgow. It was the
first thing of the kind that had ever befallen him.
Presently the current of Sir Hugo’s meditations was arrested, and he was
recalled to ordinary life by the entrance of the other men, and the
appearance of Mrs. Drysdale, who had dressed early, because she knew the
picture-gallery would be shown, and she would be wanted while Tam
slipped away to dress. _She_ did not look much like a dragon, anyhow,
Sir Hugo reflected in parenthesis, as he was introduced to her, while he
knew from whom the little one had her lovely face. These Glasgow fellows
had the best of everything.
Mrs. Drysdale, on her side, leapt to the conclusion that, to be a fine
young English baronet, ‘Sir Hughie’ seemed an innocent lad enough--not
more alarming than Guy Horsburgh, who had been a schoolfellow of young
Tam’s.
Auld Tam was already turning to the pictures, ‘looking sharp,’ and eager
to get through with the job in hand--to introduce the visitor to the
Drysdale Hall collection, and witness his surprise and pleasure, before
the owner had to go.
‘I cannot promise you much, Sir Hugie. What can one man do? and it seems
only the other day I took to the trade. Young Tam, there, may gather
something worth a man’s coming to see. I have hardly an auld maister,
unless you can call this Keep--which is doubtful--and that Veroneese
fit representatives of the auld schules. To tell the truth, I have not a
great eye for their merits. Give me the modern artists that can draw,
whose colours are not all gone off to fiddle-broon.’
‘But there is your Grooze, Tam, and your Missoneer,’ Mrs. Drysdale
reminded her husband. ‘You’re surely forgetting them.’
‘No, mother, but they are not auld maisters, more by token Missoneer is
living, like Breeton--I’ve a great wark with Breeton--and Weelems, Sir
Hugie. I went out of my way and paid eight hunder doun for a canvas of
Breeton’s of no great size, as you’ll see in a moment; but, man, his
peasants are to the life. And there’s a Madame Broon here, that I like
in her work as well as any woman going. But I must be aff, not to keep
the dinner waiting. Mind, mother, the Milly, and do not forget the
Wilkie, and the Raeburn, for the honour of auld Scotland. But take care
you leave the gentlemen in time to change their feet [boots].’
Mrs. Drysdale did her best with such simplicity and goodwill, that she
defied criticism, either on her pronunciation or her art knowledge. Sir
Hugo listened with even more than the courtesy natural to him. Presently
he turned aside to a flower-stand.
‘You have rival colours here, Mrs. Drysdale. What a show of hyacinths
you must have! You beat my mother; and she is rather famous for her
hyacinths.’
‘It is very kind of you to say so, sir,’ Mrs. Drysdale acknowledged
gratefully. ‘But I know Scotland cannot compete with England in garden
flooers. We’ve to send to English nurseries for our best roses and
geraniums. But if you like our hyacinths, I wish you had been a little
later and seen our rerenunculeses. Tam--that’s Maister Drysdale--is very
prood of our rerenunculeses. They can do nothing to them at Barley
Riggs.’
‘Horsburgh, you wretched stickler for a syllable,’ Sir Hugo attacked his
friend when they were in the privacy of their rooms, ‘why did you nearly
break down at the “rerenunculeses”?’
‘I cannot tell,’ said Horsburgh, grinning again at the recollection.
‘She might as well have said “rhinoceroses,” when she was at it.’
‘You might have upset me,’ his companion continued to reproach the
offender with youthful severity; ‘and rather than have hurt the good
soul I would have swallowed all the ranunculuses in the world. Never
mind, I saw a vision before you came, in which I am glad you did not
share--you were not worthy of it.’
‘Claribel or Eppie, I take it. Well, they are both handsome enough
girls, in different styles, and they’ll have lots of tin.’
‘Handsome enough!’ echoed Sir Hugo indignantly, while he did not deign
to notice the mercenary reference to ‘tin.’
But he said no more.
In the meantime young Eppie was hiding her discomfited blushes in her
own room, where she not only blushed, but cried a little, she felt so
ashamed of herself and of the discredit she had brought on her family.
Then her sense, of which she was by no means destitute, came to her aid.
It was no such catastrophe after all. Very likely Sir Hugo had hardly
looked at her. She could not tell what he was like, or what he wore,
further than that he was slim and brown like Dr. Peter, yet with an
air--she supposed that of a court--which did not belong to Dr. Peter.
Sir Hugo, if it was Sir Hugo, must have taken off his overcoat, for he
had on a black coat and a white--was it a white or a black tie? she had
forgotten; and no doubt he had forgotten all about her by this time,
particularly as he must have seen she was not grown up. Then she
appeased her tender conscience by assuring herself that she would tell
mother all about it, the moment she came into the drawing-room.
She--Eppie--would not mind being scolded. Mother’s scolding was not hard
to bear--it was when she was vexed her young daughter could not stand
it.
At this stage of her reflections Eppie was able to turn with renewed
interest to her white ‘frock’--she called it frock, as her mother
did--and the pink ribands she was to wear with it, for the evening.
Clary came in dressed, to see what Eppie was going to make of herself,
and did not notice anything amiss with her sister. But Clary, from the
æsthetic height of one of her creamy tints, set off by filmy lace,
looked disparagingly at Eppie’s pure, clear pink ribands.
‘Child, I wish you would not always wear pink,’ objected Claribel.
‘Nicol will bring you some other trimming and put it on for you. I
should say some dim blue, or even maize or salmon colour, or pale coral
would be better.’
‘Thank you, Clary, but I prefer pink,’ said Eppie, with a mind of her
own.
‘You don’t know that the colour has gone out,’ Clary explained calmly,
from the stronghold of her superior information.
‘Have roses gone out?’ inquired Eppie quickly. Then she coloured, and
excused herself--‘Oh! Clary, I hope you do not think I’m prideful, and
mean that I am like a rose.’
‘Prideful! I wish you would not use such words,’ exclaimed Clary, more
in resigned despair than in active anger. ‘But whether you are like a
rose or not, you are too pink yourself to wear pink, especially when
nobody else is seen in the colour.’
‘Mother is seen,’ said Eppie, with girlish dignity, ‘and I wish to be
like her. There is nobody else in the whole world that I should care so
much to be like. But neither of us will ever look so well as mother.’
Clary shrugged her white shoulders, then she said good-naturedly:
‘I dare say you are right, if my mother would do herself justice. But
because she has an old-fashioned fancy, I do not see that is any reason
why you should adopt it.’
Eppie shook her head and closed her lips.
Claribel said, with a laugh:
‘I suppose you must please yourself, you spoilt child,’ and went away.
‘As if mother did not set [become] pink, which she wears to please
father,’ protested Eppie junior; ‘and if she sets it, I must set it too,
for I am a little like mother. Anyway, I’ll wear it to bear her
company.’
During dinner, Tam was bent not only on getting everybody to do honour
to the good fare, but to do the greater honour because of the expense
and trouble with which it had been brought there.
‘I believe the takes of salmon are not promising well this year, Sir
Hugie; every fish costs five pounds to this day. Let mother help you to
another slice, Leddy Semple. The lamb ought to be first-rate. Sir
Jeames, from what it fetches. No, we can do nothing to early peas and
petawties like these in the garden here, till the end of the month of
June, at the sunset; but go into the market and open your purse-strings,
and you may have sparrygrass and strawberries in Januar’.’
In vain young Tam, with a heightened colour, exerted himself to get up
dinner-table talk in a manner foreign to him, while Clary, in her
unruffled beauty, showed the greatest imperturbability. She was
impartially agreeable to Dick Semple and Eneas Mackinnon--between whom
she sat. At the same time she took approving note of every look and word
of Hugo’s, where he occupied the place of honour at her mother’s right
hand. Her observation of the latter was undisturbed by the uncertainty
of what Mrs. Drysdale might be saying to the Englishman. Clary’s good
opinion of herself and her claims helped her to be reasonable. It
enabled her to extend an amnesty to her relations for whatever offences
they might be guilty of, and to expect the rest of the world to be
equally indulgent. Not even the excitement of the aspiration she was
indulging, and the rivalry she proposed to enter upon--all in the most
maidenly way--could provoke her to lose her balance, or force her to
feel nervous, agitated, quickly vexed.
It was worse with auld Tam when the wine, on which he piqued himself,
came more to the front. This wine had been round the world, and that had
lain in other cellars than his, for more than a century. And here was
something from a bin which only he and another man in Glasgy could
import, at any sacrifice.
Sir Hugo had to explain, in self-defence--to save the semicircle of
glasses at his right hand from being filled with a frequency which only
Glasgow heads could stand unimpaired--that his mother had been
captivated with the information that the Prince Consort, when he first
came to England at the age of seventeen, had drunk nothing stronger than
water. She had taken to drinking water constantly, that her boy might be
reared as simply. The consequence was that though he had lived to know
what a college ‘wine’ meant, it was an acquired taste with him. He could
not in sincerity profess, though Mr. Drysdale might well be shocked at
his ignorance, that he, Sir Hugo, knew much more than the first
rudiments of the subject. He was afraid his mother had rashly imperilled
the chance of his ever becoming a good judge of wines.
Auld Tam stared a little, and it crossed his mind how many young Glasgow
men would hold their claim to be gentlemen irreparably injured by such
an admission as Sir Hugo had not hesitated to make, though he had
incurred his disqualification by following the example of a prince.
Then Tam allowed his better nature to come to the front, and be heard on
the question.
‘Your mither must be a good woman,’ he said magnanimously. ‘But if she
exercised the same strictness with regard to your victuals, I should
expect to find you confined to vegetables, like the new sect of
vegetarians, or content with bread and cheese instead of roast beef.’
‘Oh no! we were not anchorites,’ said Sir Hugo, laughing, ‘though my
mother does not care much what she eats, and she would have been annoyed
to see me set great store on my plate when I was a boy. I believe she
was tempted to regard schoolboys as a combination of ogres and
gourmands; but she always took care that her friends should not suffer
from her theories.’
‘This is very interesting,’ said Lady Semple. ‘I like men and women to
strike out original views.’
‘But unfortunately this is not original,’ said Sir Hugo carelessly. ‘It
merely means that my mother was a great admirer of the character of the
late Prince Consort. She set about trying if she could find anything: in
his training to account for the satisfactory result. She had the
presumption--which may be forgiven in a mother, I suppose--to seek to
graft that something on her son’s experience.’
‘You must have been a great thocht to your mither,’ said Mrs. Drysdale
simply.
‘I am afraid I was,’ said Sir Hugo, between jest and earnest; ‘an only
son generally is.’
‘You may say that; I ken it to my cost!’ exclaimed Mrs. Drysdale, with a
look at young Tam that awoke a laugh.
‘My impression is that the conversation is getting too personal--what do
you say, Mr. Tam Drysdale?’ Sir Hugo appealed to his fellow-sufferer.
‘My mother will tell you that only sons are either deils or daws,’ said
young Tam.
‘I have heard of the deil, and I am acquainted with the daw of Rheims,’
said Sir Hugo; ‘but what is he doing here? He is not so far removed from
a deil as to form a contrast--he is the incarnation of mischief.’
‘Oh! but he is a duffer in this instance,’ explained young Tam.
‘Well, folks may seek to fricht me as they like about Sir Hughie
Willoughby being sic a grand young gentleman,’ Mrs. Drysdale confided to
Lady Semple when the ladies repaired to the drawing-room. ‘I’ll never
heed another word they say I’m sure he’s quite hamely, speaking of his
leddy mither, not as “my leddy,” but “my mither,” as freely as my son
Tam might speak of me. I can never think ill of a young lad that is
ready to speak of his mither, Lady Semple.’
‘Think ill, my dear Mrs. Drysdale! why should you? You must think
nothing save good of Sir Hugo. I am sure he is most anxious to win your
favour.’
‘It is very good of you to say so, my leddy,’ said Eppie senior, with
smiling incredulity. ‘But what for should he care to have my favour? A
fine gentleman has more in his head. He was very pleasant all the
denner-time, I will say that for him; but I was not so besotted as not
to see he would have been the better of anither pairtner than an auld
wife. I kenned it was ane of the rules of gude company that he should
take me into the dining-room, but I grudged the needcessity for
him--‘deed did I. He would have been far better waured on one of the
young leddies that are ready to look sweet on him--and I dinna blame
them, for he’s a maist comely, civil-spoken lad.’
‘My dear Mrs. Drysdale,’ Lady Semple protested again, ‘you must not
depreciate yourself in this fashion. What are you thinking of? You must
not call yourself “an auld wife.” Why, you’ll be teaching Dick the
trick, to practise on me before I know what I’m about. I am sure you are
ever so many years younger than I am, and I can tell you I do not mean
to be set aside, in the light of an old woman, for a dozen years to
come.’
‘But the young folk maun have their day, and take our place,’ pleaded
Eppie’s soft voice. ‘What have we to do, Leddy Semple, but make room for
them, and prood to do it?’
‘Here is somebody that will not be made room for,’ said Lady Semple,
coming down on young Eppie, before she could spring from the hearth-rug,
on which she had been sitting basking in the glow of the fire--not
unwelcome in the chillness of the April evening--‘somebody in no hurry
to grow up and render her elders superannuated. Eppie, do you call your
mother an old woman?’
‘Mother old!’ cried Eppie, in mingled indignation and alarm, ‘she will
not be old till I am old myself; at least, not till I am thirty or
forty. Father is eight years older than mother, and he is only a
middle-aged man.’
‘Listen to her! That is right, child. I hope Dick will swear as
fervently by my youthfulness.’
The moment Sir Hugo entered the drawing-room, his eyes fell on young
Eppie, and he tried to get near her. She appeared to him a more
Hebe-like vision than before--twice as lovely as he had imagined her. In
vain Clary waited for him, keeping others at a distance. In vain Guy
Horsburgh, tired of the suavities of both the Miss Vaughans, sought
mischievously to draw his friend into their neighbourhood, so that Guy
might escape honourably from his station to more attractive quarters,
by bringing within reach of the arrows showered fruitlessly upon him a
more illustrious, perhaps more vulnerable, prey. In vain Athole Murray,
who was there without Dr. Peter, called away to a patient, was stirred
by young Tam’s discontent to glance with lively curiosity at Prince
Charming. _He_ only wanted to be introduced to young Eppie.
In the meantime the girl, with the weight of trouble on her mind for
what had happened before dinner, flitted about the room, to escape the
guest of the evening, in the style of a restless fairy. She was here and
there and everywhere, like an uncanny will-o’-the-wisp, telling herself,
all the time, that it was a very hard and perverse chance which made the
grand gentleman torment her by coming in her way.
At last her father arrested Eppie by putting his hand on her shoulder,
with the surprised exclamation:
‘Bairn! have you turned yourself into a bird, happing from branch to
branch?’ The next moment he wheeled her round face to face with the
enemy. ‘It is my little girl Eppie, Sir Hugie. Eppie, this is Sir Hugie
Willoughby,’ said auld Tam, in his singleness of heart.
There was no help for it. She could not run away again; she had to
behave as if she had been Clary. She heard the young man mutter
something of having had the pleasure of seeing Miss Eppie Drysdale
before. But it was a slip of the tongue. He did not say another word
which could betray the smallest inclination to expose her. He did not
even speak of pictures or flowers. He only asked her if she liked
yachting, and had ever spent two or three days at sea--idle questions,
evidently for the purpose of making conversation. They could have no
reference to the grievous scandal of his having found her, when it was
time for the guests to assemble in the picture-gallery, with dirty
hands, ‘towsy’ hair, and a torn frock, and of her having run off,
without waiting to beg his pardon, leaving such an old slipper behind
her.
As Eppie saw oblivion settling down on the scrape she had got into, she
began to recover her courage, to look Sir Hugo in the face, and to
think, like her mother, that he was not so grand, and not ‘fearsome’ at
all. He seemed younger than young Tam, and kind and merry. She was ready
to commit more solecisms by chattering to him of ‘Beardie,’ her
Newfoundland, ‘White Breeks,’ Barley Riggs and all the beasts there,
little deaf Willie Finlay, the Glasgow shops, and whatever else came
into her head, when she was prevented by somebody calling upon her to
sing.
For young Eppie’s gift of singing native ballads was already so decided,
and so well known, that where it was concerned, she had broken the
chrysalis of her nonage. She was accustomed to make such music wherever
it was in request--at home, at Barley Riggs, even at Semple Barns,
without thought or fear, as a matter of course. Clary would play the
accompaniments, and Eppie would sing, in her fresh, sweet, tuneful
voice, ‘Logan Braes,’ or ‘The bonnie, bonnie broom o’ Cowdenknowes,’ a
room full of people hanging on her notes, as on the carol of some
wonderful bird.
To-night she sang a quaint, old-fashioned ditty--which was a favourite
of auld Tam’s, and for that matter of young Eppie’s. It had some
appropriateness to those who knew the singer. It began with the wistful
appeal of a mother to her son--probably an only son, like Sir Hugo or
young Tam:
‘Whaur ha’e you been a’ day,
My boy Tammy?
Whaur ha’e you been a’ day,
My boy Tammy?’
Tammy, thus adjured, has the candour and tender tact to reply:
‘I’ve been by burn and flowery brae,
Meadow green and mountain grey,
Courtin’ o’ this young thing,
Just come frae her mammy.’
The mother, not unpropitiated, goes on to ask:
‘An’ whaur got ye that young thing,
My boy Tammy?
Whaur got ye that young thing,
My boy Tammy?’
To which the son gives answer:
‘I got her doon in yonder howe,
Smiling on a bonny knowe,
Herding ae wee lamb an’ ewe
For her puir mammy.’
Then he makes a frank statement of his wooing of ‘the young thing,’ with
her resistance to his suit and naïve assertion of the claims of his
powerful rival:
‘The smile gaed aff her bonnie face,
“I mauna leave my mammy;
She’s gi’en me meat, she’s gi’en me claes.
She’s been my comfort a’ my days;
My father’s death brocht monie waes--
I canna leave my mammy.”’
The difficulty is triumphantly overcome by the lover’s generosity:
‘“We’ll tak’ her hame and mak’ her fain,
My ain kind-hearted lammie;
We’ll gi’e her meat, we’ll gi’e her claes.
We’ll be her comfort a’ her days.”
The wee thing gi’es her hand, an’ says,
“There, gang an’ ask my mammy.”’
The little drama winds up with the approving question from the other
mother--large-hearted like her son:
‘Has she been to the kirk wi’ thee,
My boy Tammy?
Has she been to the kirk wi’ thee,
My boy Tammy?’
To which there is the glad, soft assurance:
‘She has been to the kirk wi’ me.
An’ the tear was in her e’e;
For oh! she’s but a young thing,
Just come frae her mammy.’
Mrs. Drysdale furtively wiped her eyes, auld Tam cleared his throat; Sir
Hugo listened like one entranced, and haunted Eppie till the party broke
up.
‘I did not know Willoughby was so fond of music,’ Guy Horsburgh turned
the matter over in his mind.
‘Talk of Sir Hugo not giving himself airs!’ said one of the Vaughan
sisters. ‘What do you call a young man’s neglecting grown-up people to
amuse himself with an unformed child, if such conduct cannot be classed
as airs?’
‘He’s making his way with the little one as one means of getting at
Claribel. I don’t know that it is necessary, and I did not think that
young men had been so modest nowadays, but it is refreshing that it is
so,’ Lady Semple settled dogmatically.
Claribel witnessed the first secession from the ranks of her admirers,
the first preference on the part of one of them for her younger sister,
with a shade of wonder, but with no other visible emotion, unless it
were a tinge of amusement. She was so completely mistress of herself
that she gave no sign of responding to the dog-like devotion of Eneas
Mackinnon stepping forward to fill once more the vacant place--from
which he had been at no distant date unceremoniously ousted--looking at
her with long, wistful looks. She only made an easy suggestion:
‘Will you help me with this portfolio, Mr. Mackinnon? There are some
water-colour sketches in it, which my father bought the other day, that
I should like to show to Lady Semple. Thanks. Do you care to see them
too? Oh, if you like.’
That night Clary, in her dressing-gown, went into her sister’s room,
where Eppie was combing her hair, with her eyes closing.
‘What is it, Clary?’ asked Eppie in surprise, starting round wide awake.
‘Is there anything the matter?’
‘Nothing at all,’ answered Clary lightly, and began talking and laughing
over the events of the evening--how people had looked and spoken, how
much improved Guy Horsburgh was. Then she asked what was Eppie’s
opinion of Sir Hugo, now that she had seen him.
Eppie was quite ready to give it. He was just like other people, she
thought, only a good deal nicer. Could it be possible that he had such a
wonderful old house, and was cousin to an earl, and might go to Court
and speak to the Queen?
‘Be spoken to by her, you mean,’ corrected Clary.
‘Well, isn’t it the same thing?’ asked unsophisticated Eppie. ‘I did not
have time to ask him about the Queen. I don’t think he would have minded
though I had. He looked as if he would be easier to live with than our
Tam--not that I would like to change Tam, though he is dorty sometimes,’
with sudden relenting towards her brother.
‘I don’t suppose Sir Hugo understands what “dorty” means,’ said Clary,
raising her eyebrows.
‘Oh! but you’re wrong, Clary,’ said Eppie very decidedly; ‘he told me
that he understood every word I sang. He had read Burns, and was fond of
Sir Walter. I was just going to ask him which was his favourite
character in the Waverley Novels, when Mr. Horsburgh came to say the
trap was at the door.’
‘You may have another opportunity of asking him,’ said Clary, a little
vaguely. ‘In the meantime, I came in to tell you that you sang your
best, and looked very well in your white and pink. I am not sure that
pink is not the most becoming colour for you, after all. But I should
like you to have a pink _crêpe de chine_, or something of that sort,
made by Madame Sophie. Pink and silver,’ repeated Clary, with the air of
a connoisseur; ‘I think that would suit you.’
‘Oh, Clary!’ was all that Eppie could say, for she was by no means
insensible to the promotion.
Clary’s dressmaker and pink _crêpe de chine_ and silver--the very idea
was a high compliment.
‘You see I am proud of my pretty little sister, though I don’t wish to
make her vain,’ said Clary, kissing Eppie with real affection, before
the elder lighted her candle and disappeared.
Eppie gasped. Clary proud of her! She lay awake for fully ten minutes
puzzling over the flattering problem. She had always known that Clary
liked her, in the light of their near relationship, though Clary
tormented her with plans for improvement, and made her furious by
proposing to send her away from home. Still Clary was sorry when
she--Eppie--was ill, and did her best for her, and proved to her that
her sister was fond of her in Clary’s quiet, self-occupied fashion. But
‘proud’ was a very different feeling--proud of little, Scotch-speaking,
blundering Eppie, with her lack of accomplishments!
Eppie felt bound in honour to tell Clary what had happened in the
picture-gallery. The girl took the next opportunity when she and Clary
happened to be in the garden together the following morning. But Clary
only laughed, and said:
‘Never mind--what could have put it into your head to run away? Don’t do
it again. On the contrary, you ought to learn to make the best of
yourself. But though it would not look well in me to be childish and
silly, I don’t believe either Sir Hugo or any other man will take it ill
on your part.’
Clary was not speaking sarcastically--she was in perfect good faith.
Eppie did not gasp again, but she lingered behind by the violet-bed,
letting Clary stroll on. In truth, Eppie was overcome by the delicious
consciousness of some attraction in her which disarmed hostility. She
knew she was like her mother, for everybody said so. Therefore she must
be a little bonnie, but she had never suspected that she was so bonnie
as Clary’s words seemed to imply. The discovery did not fill Eppie’s
head with nonsense, as her father and mother would have said: for she
began, after a moment’s innocent elation, to distrust the existence of
youthful beauty, and to seek to under-value it, if it were there. She
was well enough; she might be rather bonnie, inasmuch as she had a share
of mother’s looks; but for the rest, it was only a foolish fancy of
Clary’s, for which Eppie was much obliged to her sister, and would
always like her the better for it. _She_ was handsome, like a picture,
like a queen. Eppie would never look like that--not that it mattered
very much when beauty was only skin-deep, and people liked each other
just as well without it. Would father and mother care for her a grain
less though she were to be seized with small-pox to-morrow, and be left
a disfigured object for the rest of her days? There was Athole Murray.
Everybody said, and Eppie’s eyes told her, that Athole was plain, in
spite of her eyes, with a wide mouth and a dumpy nose; but then she was
so clever and nice; and Eppie shrewdly suspected, if nobody else did,
that young Tam would sooner have a pleasant word from Athole Murray’s
witty tongue than all the smiles of all the beauties in Glasgow.
The truth was, Clary had seen Eppie with another person’s eyes, and her
own were too reasonable to remain sealed in such a case. She had
received an enlightenment. It was the first tribute, little as Eppie
suspected it, to the possibility of her becoming Lady Willoughby of
Willoughby Court, or some equally distinguished person, and Clary was
ready to pay the tribute. There was nothing grudging or unmagnanimous in
the young woman’s pride.
‘Tam,’ Mrs. Eppie confided to her husband in the privacy of their
luxurious chamber, after she had sung the praises of Sir Hugo till she
had nearly sung auld Tam asleep, ‘did you not see that he was ta’en with
our bairn?’
‘What, Clary!’ cried Tam, rousing himself to the dawning glory of
becoming father-in-law to a baronet and squire of many acres.
‘No, Eppie; the lamb, who had no more thocht of what was in the lad’s
mind than when she was a wee thing playing round my knee.’
‘Then leave her without the thocht,’ said Tam gruffly. ‘For shame,
woman, to even a lassock like her to a lad of ony kind, aboon a’ to a
lad by richts no in her ain station--here the day, and awa’ the morn!
She’s not dreaming of lads, and you may catch her leal licht heart and
brush the bloom aff, like the dew from the gowans in the morning, and
break it before she’s weel in her teens.’
‘I never said I would breathe a word o’t to her, Tam; I would not be so
bold. A young lassie’s heart is like the kirk itsel’--no to be lichtly
entered,’ said Mrs. Drysdale reproachfully; ‘and what for should I seek
to promote sic a distinction for little Eppie? Lifted up and lonely, and
torn from a’ her frien’s; her that is friendly and fond of her ain folk!
You and me never to see her again, or ken richt how she’s farin’, unless
aince or twice in as mony years! All the same, the fine lad’s ta’en with
the bairn. You may tak’ my word for it, Tam.’
‘And all the same, you would gie her to him, and hae your reward in
kennin’ young Eppie a fine leddy, though everything were to happen as
you say.’
‘I would not stand in her road, Tam; nor would you,’ said Mother Eppie,
with spirit.
‘Have it any way you like then, and let me sleep,’ said auld Tam, with a
pretence at despair. ‘But mind, the felly’s going back to Cambridge in
little more than a week, and there’s small chance of our seeing his face
again, even if he had not uncles and aunties, and what not, to come
forrit and cry out at his demeaning himsel’ to think of matching his
title with a bleacher and dyer’s dochter.’
‘He’s coming back to see mair of Scotland and Glasgy in the Long
Vacation. I heard him say that mysel’; and he’s of age and his ain
maister, with a gude mither, that Leddy Semple says would never conter
him in onything he set his heart on, that was richt! And you ken, Tam,
you’re a man in a big way--no just a common bleacher and dyer; while
you’ve often telled me bleachin’ and dyein’ and calico-printin’ will
come to the front of the treds. You can gie your twa lasses muckle
tochers. No doubt I would be wae for my bonnie bairn to gang so far awa’
from me, where I could not see her sweet face ilka day of my life,
though she would never forget you and me, however we were sindered, for
a’ her grandeur--that I’ll come bund for. But, eh, Tam, to think of our
ain little Eppie being “my leddy”!’
‘Hoot, awa’ with you, big Eppie! you’re takin’ leave of your senses!’
Tam put an end to the conversation.
But though he was too much of a man to own it, the feminine ambition
tickled him mightily. He fell asleep and dreamt--now of saying an
eternal farewell to his darling--now of seeing her with a coronet on her
head (it was easy to change a baronet into a baron in a dream)--on her
way to a State ball at Buckingham Palace, or the opening of the House of
Lords, he was not sure which.