AT CASTLE WEELSET
Francie’s anger had died down a good deal by the time he reached home.
He was, as his father’s friend had just said, by no means a bad sort of
fellow, only he was full of himself, and therefore of little use to
anybody. His mother and he, when not actually at strife, were
constantly on the edge of a quarrel. The two must have their own way,
each of them. Francie’s way was sometimes good, his mother’s sometimes
not bad, but both were usually selfish. The boy had fits of generosity,
the woman never, except toward her son. If she thought of something to
please him, good and well! if he wanted anything of her, it would never
do! The idea must be her own, or meet with no favour. If she imagined
her son desired a thing, she felt it one she never could grant, and
told him so: thereafter Francis would not rest until he had compassed
the thing. Sudden division and high words would follow, with
speechlessness on the mother’s part in the rear, which might last for
days. Becoming all at once tired of it, she would in the morning appear
at breakfast looking as if nothing had ever come between them, and they
would be the best of friends for a few days, or perhaps a week, seldom
longer. Some fresh discord, nowise different in character from the
preceding, would arise between them, and the same weary round be
tramped again, each always in the right, and the other in the wrong.
Every time they made it up, their relation seemed unimpaired, but it
was hardly possible things should go on thus and not at length quite
estrange their hearts.
In matters of display, to which Francis had much tendency, his mother’s
own vanity led her to indulge and spoil him, for, being hers, she was
always pleased he should look his best. On his real self she neither
had nor sought any influence. Insubordination or arrogance in him, her
dignity unslighted, actually pleased her: she liked him to show his
spirit: was it not a mark of his breeding?
She was a tall and rather stout woman, with a pretty, small-featured,
regular face, and a thin nose with the nostrils pinched.
Castle Weelset was not much of a castle: to an ancient round tower,
discomfortably habitable, had been added in the last century a rather
large, defensible house. It stood on the edge of a gorge, crowning one
of its stony hills of no great height. With scarce a tree to shelter
it, the situation was very cold in winter, and it required a hardy
breeding to live there in comfort. There was little of a garden, and
the stables were somewhat ruinous. For the former fact the climate
almost sufficiently accounted, and for the latter, a long period of
comparative poverty.
The young laird did not like farming, and had no love for books: in
this interval between school and college, he found very little to
occupy him, and not much to amuse him. Had Kirsty and her family proved
as encouraging as he had expected, he would have made use of his new
pony almost only to ride to Corbyknowe in the morning and back to the
castle at night.
His mother knew old Barclay, as she called him, well enough--that is,
not at all, and had never shown him any cordiality, anything, indeed,
better than condescension. To treat him like a gentleman, even when he
sat at her own table, she would have counted absurd. He had never been
to the castle since the day after her husband’s funeral, when she
received him with such emphasized superiority that he felt he could not
go again without running the risk either of having his influence with
the boy ruined, or giving occasion to a nature not without generosity
to take David’s part against his mother. Thenceforward, therefore, he
contented himself with giving Francis invariable welcome, and doing
what he could to make his visits pleasant. Chiefly, on such not
infrequent occasions, the boy delighted in drawing from his father’s
friend what tales about his father, and adventures of their campaigns
together, he had to tell; and in this way David’s wife and children
heard many things about himself which would not otherwise have reached
them. Naturally, Kirsty and Francie grew to be good friends; and after
they went to the parish school, there were few days indeed on which
they did not walk at least as far homeward together as the midway
divergence of their roads permitted. It was not wonderful, therefore,
that at length Francis should be, or should fancy himself in love with
Kirsty. But I believe all the time he thought of marrying her as a
heroic deed, in raising the girl his mother despised to share the lofty
position he and that foolish mother imagined him to occupy. The
anticipation of opposition from his mother naturally strengthened his
determination; of opposition on the part of Kirsty, he had not dreamed.
He took it as of course that, the moment he stated his intention,
Kirsty would be charmed, her mother more than pleased, and the stern
old soldier overwhelmed with the honour of alliance with the son of his
colonel. I do not doubt, however, that he had an affection for Kirsty
far deeper and better than his notion of their relations to each other
would indicate. Although it was mainly his pride that suffered in his
humiliating dismissal, he had, I am sure, a genuine heartache as he
galloped home. When he reached the castle, he left his pony to go where
he would, and rushed to his room. There, locking the door that his
mother might not enter, he threw himself on his bed in the luxurious
consciousness of a much-wronged lover. An uneducated country girl, for
as such he regarded her, had cast from her, not without insult, his
splendidly generous offer of himself!
Poor king Cophetua did not, however, shed many tears for the loss of
his recusant beggar-maid. By and by he forgot everything, found he had
gone to sleep, and, endeavouring to weep again, did not succeed.
He grew hungry soon, and went down to see what was to be had. It was
long past the usual hour for dinner, but Mrs. Gordon had not seen him
return, and had had it put back--so to make the most of an opportunity
of quarrel not to be neglected by a conscientious mother. She let it
slide nevertheless.
‘Gracious, you’ve been crying!’ she exclaimed, the moment she saw him.
Now certainly Francis had not cried much; his eyes were,
notwithstanding, a little red.
He had not yet learned to lie, but he might then have made his first
essay had he had a fib at his tongue’s end; as he had not, he gloomed
deeper, and made no answer.
‘You’ve been fighting!’ said his mother.
‘I haena,’ he returned with rude indignation. ‘Gien I had been, div ye
think I wud hae grutten?’
‘You forget yourself, laird!’ remarked Mrs. Gordon, more annoyed with
his Scotch than the tone of it. ‘I would have you remember I am
mistress of the house!’
‘Till I marry, mother!’ rejoined her son.
‘Oblige me in the meantime,’ she answered, ‘by leaving vulgar language
outside it.’
Francis was silent; and his mother, content with her victory, and in
her own untruthfulness of nature believing he had indeed been fighting
and had had the worse of it, said no more, but began to pity and pet
him. A pot of his favourite jam presently consoled the love-wounded
hero--in the acceptance of which consolation he showed himself far less
unworthy than many a grown man, similarly circumstanced, in the choice
of his.