IN THE BALANCE.
The world went on much the same this autumn, though everything under the
sun was altered to Tam Drysdale, as he knew. The slight sprinkling of
grey, which had been all that had appeared formerly in his brown hair,
was on the road to become a heavy powdering of white.
A wistful light had crept into the happy eyes of the elder Eppie, which
were now so often resting, as she would have said, stowlins [by stealth]
on her husband. Her rampant prosperity was subdued by a hidden sorrow.
Something was wrong with her Tam which she could not divine; she only
knew that he did not come to her for consolation; so she supposed the
evil, whatever it might be, was beyond her power of alleviation, and she
was silently sorry, with a meek devoted woman’s unscorning, ungrudging
pity.
Mrs. Drysdale was not half so fine or nearly so ridiculous as she had
been. What did she care for finery when there was something amiss with
Tam? And as she ceased to pay heed to the good things of her position,
and the suitable deportment they called for from her, her vulgarity was
toned down, and she lost much of her self-consciousness and superficial
affectation. A new charm was added to her other attractions. Something
like the dawning of dignity--the dignity of indifference to the
accidents of circumstance, and of a soul occupied by higher
things--began to show itself in Eppie. But these were subtle signs, and
they were the sole indication that anything had happened; though they
might be indirectly felt, they were not distinctly recognised.
Drysdale Hall was, to all outward appearance, the same as it had ever
been since it was created by its present owner; and since young
Tam and Clary had grown up, bringing with them fresh life and
movement--animated, full of the thrills and throbs of passion in natures
endowed with the strength and ardour of their early prime, even while it
was most divergent and discordant where the general current was
concerned. And now a new figure in the second generation--young Eppie,
in her simplicity and sweetness, was hovering on the threshold of that
flight into the world which boys and girls must take sooner or later.
As the tides obey the moon, so do the lower strata of society answer to
the higher, though the distance between them is more or less great, and
there are no conspicuous points of union. Because Parliament is up, and
London deserted by the upper ten thousand in September, so those who are
not in Parliament, and have nobody connected with them affected by its
sitting and rising, choose that season when the daylight is beginning to
shorten and the moderate heat to cool, when wild flowers are mostly gone
and birds have ceased to sing, for their annual holiday and their
sojourn in the country. Rural resorts which have no call to answer to
the necessities of legislators become inundated with temporary residents
who have not even the excuse of being bandsters [binders of corn], or
theekers [thatchers] of stacks, or peripatetic owners of
thrashing-machines, and are callous to all the delights of June with her
long days and broomy braes, and July with her meridian heat, her
bluebells by the wayside, and her dog-roses in the hedgerows. But there
is one glory gilding the fall of the year, that exists alike for gentle
and simple of the more combative sex. It is not compelled by the
breaking-up of Parliament, the partial closing of Government offices,
the vacations of the law courts, though it does much in its turn to
compel these pauses in the business of the country. The name of this
potent charmer is ‘Sport,’ which reigns from the 12th of August to the
last hunt of the advancing spring. The enchantress is rampant in her
sway when the moors, the turnip-fields, the coverts, are possessed by an
army of men in shooting-jackets, with staghounds and pointers for their
allies, and the air is full of the bang of small artillery.
St. Mungo’s City is not an exception to the rest of the world, in the
desire to kill the beautiful wild creatures of the hills and the fields.
After Glasgow has poured her swarms ‘down the water,’ in early summer,
she sends fresh swarms of the wealthier grades to render the heather and
the stubble alive with more than deer and grouse, hares and pheasants.
Autumn always brought a pleasant excitement of company and gaiety to
Drysdale Hall, with crowded breakfast-tables, meetings at the scene of
action, open-air luncheons, frequent guests to dinner, little dances
when there were enough young people in the house. Doubtless the fashion
was borrowed from Semple Barns, where members of Parliament on the wing
did alight on occasion, and refresh their nervous systems, exhausted by
services to the nation, with tramping through briars and brambles,
leaping over ditches, and bringing down partridges.
Auld Tam commanded a little good shooting on his property, and he rented
a moor within two hours’ journey by railway, on which active men,
accustomed both to business and hunting hours, starting with the lark
and reaching their destination before the dew was dry on the red ling,
could traverse the ground, fill creditable bags, and be back to dinner
several times a week, from the 12th to the 1st, when prey nearer home
afforded the coveted pursuit without the sacrifice of a railway journey.
Tam Drysdale hardly took his gun in his hand this season, but in the
other direction young Tam allowed himself greater indulgence in the
natural propensity of the biped that can pull a trigger. The only
eccentricity he displayed was that he was quick to share moor and
shooting with any of his managers who had taken out licenses, and that
the son kept up the father’s practice in the disposal of the spoil of
his gun. Instead of sending the game to fetch a fair price in the
Glasgow poultry-shops, he despatched what did not find its way to the
Drysdale Hall larder, to Dr. Peter Murray for distribution among his
patients, or to the appreciative wives and families of bleachers and
dyers who would otherwise have had little chance of tasting hare or
pheasant that was honestly come by.
Young Tam was not left to cope with the fowls of the air and the hares
and the rabbits of the pasture single-handed, save for his subordinates
or his Glasgow acquaintance who could exchange a shooting with him.
Eneas Mackinnon, who was understood to be indebted to his friends for
such sport as he got, came over with Dick Semple whenever they were not
better employed elsewhere.
A far more brilliant ally arrived in good time. Sir Hugo Willoughby had
kept his word. He had reappeared just when he had said he would, and was
making himself more popular than ever by declining to herd with his kind
and by casting in his lot with the young Glasgow men. In fact, he kept
hovering in the immediate vicinity of St. Mungo’s City, with its roar of
traffic, its smoky abominations, its boisterous superfluity and
ostentation. He defied Guy Horsburgh, who began to look uneasy in the
office of bear-leader, which he had taken upon himself, to wile him, Sir
Hugo, to any distance--to induce him to take a yachting voyage to
Iceland or a walking tour in Ross or Sutherland--to try a bout of
deer-stalking in any of the deer forests, the tenants of which were
friends of his. He would not even go down with Guy to that Court in
Lincolnshire which he had often proposed to show to his friend, where
Lady Willoughby sat lonely in her castle hall, awaiting her truant son
in vain, and where preserves choke-full of all the lowland game which
could satisfy the heart of a man or the muzzle of a gun were wasting
their sweetness on the desert air, and calling loudly for an absent,
inconsiderate squire to diminish the _embarras des richesses_, else he
would have a host of farmers, his natural allies, rising up in open
rebellion against him. Not above a certain radius of miles would Sir
Hugo budge from Glasgow--Glasgow in August and September, not Glasgow
down-the-water, fresh with sea and mountain breezes, but Glasgow inland,
with her thick carpet of grimy dust and her black pall of filthy
smoke--Glasgow squalid, careworn, miserable, when the depression of
trade caused the fitful rattle of the machinery to sound eerie and
hollow as when slaves shake their chains, and the sweat of men’s brows
began to gather in the big drops of despair. There was nothing more
terrible to fear save the silence of death, when a great strike
testifies to the revolt of one class and the rending asunder of two.
It might have been that young Sir Hugo was so true a philosopher and so
promising a patriot that he was bent on becoming acquainted with all
shades of life in one of the great trade centres which he had elected to
study. But so far as this went, Sir Hugo turned his back on the city and
was engrossed with the wonders of his own young existence. At this time
he neither knew nor cared much for its sins and sorrows, cherishing a
sanguine hope that they would all cure themselves somehow, and be mended
by an alchemy with which he had nothing to do. It was the neighbourhood
of Glasgow, and not Glasgow itself, to which he was nailed. The
Horsburghs had their country-house not far from Drysdale Hall, and
though it was the most commonplace of modern dwellings, he was content
with it.
Be it said also that Sir Hugo had returned to his first love--to the
pursuit of the Cinderella who had fled from him in the Drysdale Hall
picture-gallery, the ‘young thing, just come frae her mammy,’ who had
sung to him in the Drysdale Hall drawing-room. He had called Athole
Murray charming, but he had forgotten her wit long before he saw her
face again. It was the recollection of young Eppie’s guileless
sweetness, combined with her spring-time loveliness, which he called
divine, that had taken fast hold of his mind.
Sir Hugo could not display these inclinations without causing a flutter
of marvel and speculation; but first when he came back auld Tam took no
further notice of the young man, about whom he had made such a fuss at
Easter, than if he had been an ordinary mortal. It seemed as if a
benumbing power was at work on the master of Drysdale Hall. He became
cold and passive to what would formerly have roused him to hot and
strong approbation or opposition. He made no more sign of displeasure at
the continued presence of Eneas Mackinnon at Drysdale Hall, than of
pleasure at the pertinacity with which Sir Hugo Willoughby seized every
opportunity of renewing his visits. Not the lifting of a finger, the
flicker of an eyelid, the raising of the voice, uttered an imperative
protest when young Tam showed again his exclusive preference for Barley
Riggs among the houses of his acquaintance, and, under pretext of
watching some chemical experiments conducted by Dr. Peter in his
laboratory, spent three evenings of the week there.
It was as if a dull indifference was settling down on auld Tam--a
strange insensibility to what had been wont to affect him in the
liveliest manner. His wife, who but for him would have been at the
height of a mother’s mingled pride and pain, quivering with excitement
like the youngest hero or heroine among them, whose fortune was hanging
in the balance, grew more and more puzzled, chilled, frightened, by
Tam’s want of sympathy, even of angry interest, in the affairs of his
children at what looked like a turning-point in their destiny.
Clary, who had braced herself for a contest--violent while it
lasted--had her whole ideas upset by finding that there was apparently
to be no altercation--she was to be let alone to go her own ways. It was
not an inspiriting change to a woman of her temperament, and she was the
next thing to piqued by it. If she had cared only for asserting her
will, and had not been thoroughly honest, with a capacity for
steadfastness where her affections were placed, she might have been
driven to give up Eneas Mackinnon.
As for Eneas, in spite of all the encouragement that a young proud woman
could give him, he had been tempted to hang back, in an agony of
mortified self-respect, sensitiveness and shame, from the inevitable
explanation and the almost equally inevitable accusation of presumption
and unworthy motives on his part, which the announcement to auld Tam
would call forth. Eneas, too, was dumbfounded, and in some degree
overwhelmed by the amnesty that was granted to him. Was he to go on
shooting Tam Drysdale’s partridges on the land which had belonged to
Eneas’s mother, eating auld Tam’s dinners--the usual end to the day’s
shootings--making love to his beautiful capable daughter, with her free
consent, under her father’s very nose, or was Eneas to fail Claribel and
withdraw at the last moment, vanquished by the strange trust put in him?
Young Tam was lordlier in his behaviour. He acted as if he did not see
that his father had any right to dispose of his son’s spare time or
modify his taste for this or that company. He made no bones of going
over to Barley Riggs. He did not condescend to the smallest concealment.
He had even the coolness to borrow his father’s lantern on a dark rainy
night, looking auld Tam in the face as the son proffered the request,
telling the owner where the light was to guide the willing feet that
scouted a carriage, and were ready to trudge through wind and rain to
reach their goal.
‘Tak’ the lantern, laddie. You’ll find it in the harness-room,’ said Tam
gruffly, but without boiling over, without even wincing, though he let
his head drop a little on his breast.
Was nothing else worth caring for so long as that thing hung over his
head? Might his children all come and go--they for whom he had striven,
who were as the apple of his eye, whom not so long ago he would fain
have curbed and bent to force them into other channels than those they
had formed for themselves, for the lad and lass’s good? Could they do as
they liked for anything their father cared, he was so hopeless and
heartless for them, for himself, for the whole world?
Dr. Peter, in wholesome unconsciousness, was as blind as ever; and all
that Athole Murray did was to laugh at young Tam till the tears came
into her own eyes, to twit him with his opinions and performances, to
shut herself up with her patterns, pets, and books, and excuse herself
from coming to see the retorts, disappointing both of the operators--to
keep away from Drysdale Hall and every other place where she was likely
to encounter the young man.
But Athole was beginning to meet her match. Tam the younger was fast
out-growing that sour effervescence of greenness and youth to which Dr.
Peter had once alluded. The junior partner in Drysdale and Son’s was
losing his self-consciousness and susceptibility. He was settling down
into calm, strong manhood, knowing what it wanted, and not to be easily
turned from seeking to supply its wants. Young Tam was ceasing to mind
Athole’s flouts. He had advanced so far as to smile at them--a little
grimly, perhaps, but still to smile and go on his way without being in
the slightest degree deterred by her bearing. He did not mean to show
it, but a certain quiet, far from unhappy masterfulness was stealing
into his looks and tones. She did not know that she betrayed it, but a
certain humility and nervousness, which were not altogether unhappy
either, though the unacknowledged restraint provoked and affronted her,
lurked under her most audacious sally and sharpest repartee.