TAM DRYSDALE AT DRYSDALE HALL.
This was not one of the days when any of Tam Drysdale’s womankind were
in the town with the carriage, laying an obligation on him to make his
way to them; for he did not care that they should come to him, unless
they walked to the office and accompanied him on foot to the private
corner at which he was to sink Tam Drysdale the city man, and take up
Tam Drysdale the proprietor of Drysdale Hall and of its sundry
equipages, who was bound to show himself sometimes in the second
character. On the present occasion he could drive out to his country
house in the modest state which, as a matter of personal propriety and
taste, he preferred--starting from the office door, not without a
little commotion within and a little flourish without, nodding to the
various acquaintances he met, and looking about him like a man at his
ease.
Tam had driven along that road almost every lawful day for a number of
years. He knew and noticed all the landmarks both in town and country.
He was at leisure to observe them, for although, like most countrymen,
in whatever station they have been reared, he could drive, the practice
did not recommend itself to him, as it would have lent itself to a
younger, more self-conscious or more restless man. He liked his own
particular groom, a steady old countryman like himself, to drive. The
master was on the best terms with the servant, unless when Simpson, for
the sake of his horse, his honour, or the principle of the thing, like
his master, felt bound to cry out against a bad habit of Tam Drysdale’s.
This was a practice of letting the children that he passed twice every
day on the road, going to and from the parish school, hang on behind the
dogcart during the slow progress of the horse, after it had slackened
its pace to accomplish the ascent of a hill which was in convenient
proximity to the children’s village.
‘Sir, it’s what no ae beast in a thousand would put up wi,’ remonstrated
Simpson, every time, looking grimly over his shoulder, and fingering his
whip with the strongest inclination to lash out behind, though he was a
man and a father when he did not happen to be touched in a professional
quarter. ‘What will folk think of our driving wi’ sic a tail at our
heels? It’s not respectable. Forbye, these bairns will go to the
mischief some day, through being let tak’ such unwarrantable liberties
with a gentleman’s dugcart and horse.’
‘And driver,’ added Tam Drysdale, with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘Do you no
mind, Simpson, how grand sic a ride was lang syne? How it tasted all the
sweeter because there was the risk of a backward cut across your
fingers and your face, and you left dancing with the pain of the worst
pawmy you ever got, in the middle of the road. I cannot find it in my
heart to deprive the puir bit things of the pleasure. There, be aff,
bairns!’ he admonished his tail, as the curricle reached the brow of the
hill. ‘The horse will be awa’ again like a fire-flaucht in a couple o’
minutes, and ha’e some of you down in the stour, wi’ broken banes, if ye
dinna tak’ care.’
The dull, grey spring day cleared up when the heavy pall of city smoke
was left behind, and the sun shone in a blue sky, dappled with white
clouds over a green country--a fair morsel which had escaped the pits
and blast furnaces that honeycomb and blacken the earth, and burn with a
red glare throughout the night, for many a mile around Glasgow. Here was
left a remnant of the orchards and woods which once made the whole of
Clyde’s banks ‘bonnie.’ The humid air that comes on the wings of the
west wind promoted verdure, and rendered the spring vegetation early and
luxuriant beyond any standard it attained on the bleak east coast.
But it was not a spot given up to Pallas and Pomona. Their province was
not uninvaded. Tam Drysdale’s works were within a mile of his house, or
hall as he had chosen to call it; but whatever their offences, they were
mild by comparison with those of the coal and iron plagues. The stretch
of meadows devoted to bleaching glistened white in the spring sunshine,
as if strewn and silvered with millions of gowans. The dyeing and
printing operations either did not include all the chemical abominations
of St. Rollax’s, or dispersed them over so large an area that they were
little felt. They might colour with a sanguine hue, for the most part,
the water of Aytoun--the tributary of the Clyde on which the works were
built--and poison the fishes, at least so anglers complained; but the
compounds did not impregnate the air with hideous odours, or disfigure
the landscape with blights.
Indeed, as Tam Drysdale drew near the house he had made for himself,
just as Geordie Dunlap had been figuratively the architect of his ‘bien’
house at Pollokshields, Tam held up his head and snuffed the air with a
great increase of satisfaction. The fields and hedgerows on each side of
the road were part of the inheritance to which, though it had belonged
to his forefathers, he had _not_ succeeded by ordinary succession from
his father and his father’s cousin, the old laird of the land and owner
of the dye-works. What was far better in Tam’s eyes, he had won them
back by the sweat of his brow and the wit of his brain, and valuing them
by the cost of the acquisition, he did not believe there were fields or
hedgerows like them in Lanark--nay, in broad Scotland. The cattle and
sheep in the pastures, the horses in the furrows, were his. It is
doubtful whether he did not also claim the crows in the air. If the
office in Glasgow was a spot to which his mind went out, for which he
started with a will, to be in the swing of business, Drysdale Hall, down
to every clod of its clay and stone of its walls, was the pride of his
heart, like his wife Eppie and his son Tam. The latter, though he
thwarted and galled his father because he was his son, his only son, his
might and the beginning of his strength, ‘the excellency of dignity and
the excellency of power,’ however contumacious he might prove, came
nearer to Tam’s heart than either of his daughters--even than his young
pet Eppie.
It is hard, after all, to say whether a man loves more profoundly, with
a more passionate attachment, the paternal acres which have belonged to
his race from time immemorial, on which he first saw the light, that
have been associated with every act of his life, or the land which he
has bought by the hard toil of his youth and manhood, the fruits of
which are the fruits of his own labours, the reward of his
self-devotion. Drysdale Haugh had in some measure both of these claims
on Tam Drysdale.
Drysdale Hall had only escaped being a huge staring pile of white
masonry from the circumstance that Tam, proud as he was to have built up
a house, was also proud, with the Scotch hankering after gentle birth,
that the place had belonged to Drysdales long before it had come into
the hands of Mackinnons or Murrays, and that these Drysdales had not
simply been respectable yeomen-farmers--they had been enterprising
enough to erect dye-works on their property, and they had been
undeniably ‘sib’ to his less flourishing branch of the Drysdales. For
this reason Tam had spared the old farmhouse of Drysdale Haugh, and left
it the nucleus of the new building, rendering it more incongruous
certainly, but less raw and purely aggressive.
The farmhouse had been, and was still, a two-storied building of
substantial freestone, with a heavy stone porch, the whole grown over
with ivy, which, luckily, its present proprietor had spared, not so much
from a sense of its beauty, as because of its memories, especially one
tender recollection linked with it. He had been held up by his mother to
see his first bird’s-nest under the glossy, dark-green leaves on a
Sunday evening, one of the rare occasions when the poor relative had
been invited to visit the rich. To this ivied centre, with its small
windows and narrow door, no longer suitable for a main entrance, Tam had
tacked on two spacious wings fit to fly away with the body of the house
between them. The hall, with its big door, was in one of these wings;
the other ran out in a long one-storied building which was, in fact,
Tam’s picture-gallery, where he stored the specimens of art he had
taken pains and delight in collecting.
Originally the farmhouse stood in a little garden on the edge of a
stackyard, built, for winnowing purposes, on the side of a hill. Garden
and stackyard, with the old farm-offices, had alike disappeared, and the
ground was converted into a really fine terrace, commanding not only
Tam’s snow-white bleach-fields, but much of the adjoining country. The
hillside, which had been transformed into the terrace, had descended
naturally into a little wooded den that remained enclosed in the
grounds, and served for a short avenue. A somewhat perking porter’s
lodge, guarding gorgeously wrought iron gates, led from the high-road
into the carriage-drive that now ran through the den, and terminated
with a broad sweep on the terrace. Nature had done something for Tam’s
mansion; and his architect had availed himself of nature in a
praise-worthy manner.
On the opposite side of the house were the gardens and greenhouses, of
some extent, maintained with a sovereign disregard of expense. Beyond
the gardens lay the stables, coach-house, kennels, and servants’ offices
generally; and there, whatever drainage, ventilation, encaustic tiles,
and every recent invention could do for the comfort and well-being of
man and beast, was done thoroughly, to the credit of Tam Drysdale and
his myrmidons--be they builders, grooms, or grieves.
So perfect was the smooth order in every department, where money, freely
used without abuse, served to oil the wheels of the domestic machine,
that the Drysdale Hall farm-offices, like the Drysdale Haugh Works,
figured as models for men to copy. Strangers would bring introductions,
and request to be taken over the place. Sir James Semple, of Semple
Barns, who was Tam Drysdale’s next neighbour, and on the best terms with
him, brought three-fourths of his visitors to wonder and admire.
As Tam Drysdale drove along the terrace, at the well-known sound of his
wheels, greetings met him from two different quarters, with a swiftness
suggestive of the pleasant explanation that he had been watched and
waited for.
In the porch of the old part of the house, which now sheltered a side
door, there suddenly stood, framed by the ivy and rose boughs, which
were only sending out green shoots as yet, Eppie the elder, Eppie the
matron. Mrs. Drysdale was already dressed for dinner, like a rose in
full bloom, in her rich dark silk, and always with fluttering lace and
pink ribands about her head and throat--unless when she went into
company, and replaced the ribands by flowers, dew-dropped with diamonds.
She was persuaded that they ‘set’ her, and that Tam liked her with pink
bows and strings, such as she had worn in her Sunday bonnet (she called
it ‘hat,’ though it was no hat), long before the days that she put on
caps, when he had come to the kirk where her family worshipped, to meet
and court her in the face of the congregation--like an honest man--as
well as to pray to his Maker like a good Christian.
Mistress Eppie was buxom and bonnie still, of a type of
beauty--dark-haired, dark-eyed, white-skinned, with summer roses on the
cheeks, and teeth white as milk, between ripe red lips--which, if not
peculiar to Clydeside, is oftener met there than elsewhere. It belongs
to strapping lasses who are matches for stalwart men, though in this
case the wife was not more strapping than the husband was stalwart; both
had missed the superior stature which is the frequent accompaniment of
their style of good looks. Mrs. Drysdale was accustomed to say, with
apologetic regret, that her Tam and herself were but ‘sma’ bouket’ (of
short stature), matched with many of their compeers. Husband and wife
were alike in this respect, as in many another. If the type has little
of what is purely intellectual or spiritual, it has, as has been said
with regard to Tam Drysdale’s comely person, a great deal that is
wholesome and full of health and vigour, that will endure, and, what is
more, will retain much of its attractiveness after the black or auburn
hair is grey, and the fresh, firm cheek withered and shrunken in its
wintry red.
Mrs. Drysdale came out to meet her husband, as she had come, unless
necessity was laid upon her to be elsewhere, ever since the two had
become one. She had done it when Tam had taken her first to a
four-roomed house in a village street, when she had but to cross the
threshold into the hallan, to greet the young working-man trudging home
after his day’s toil. She had known the sound of his foot then, as she
knew the sound of his horse’s feet to-day. She never failed him when she
had a grand staircase and a long corridor to traverse, instead of a
doorstep to cross. He was still the light of her eyes, whom it was as
natural for her to hail, as it is for the newly-awakened sleeper, after
the hours of darkness have passed, to turn instinctively to catch the
first stray beams of light. A contented and happy woman in most
respects, as she found herself, it was still her night when Tam was up
in Glasgow at his office, or even over at his bleach-fields and
dye-works; her day when he came home with the sunset or the starlight to
her and the bairns, to be theirs till the next morning rose and called
him forth to play his man’s part of making a great business, earning a
heap of money, and being a prince among his fellows. And she was sure
that Tam was glad to see her standing there, the first to welcome him,
though in his proud, shy, Scotch way he said no more than, ‘Well, are
you there, mother?’--as if he ever expected her to be elsewhere!--‘What
have you all been about the day?’
The pink bows and ends of her ribands were a little too much like a
reflected glow from her cheeks, brighter and less delicate than of yore.
Her dress had a tendency to rustle. There was an excess of trimness
about it in every plait and pucker. She was too smart. The very apron
which she wore, though she was dressed for dinner, was embroidered in
silks all over, and she had too many and too costly rings on her plump
white fingers.
She had somehow managed, with misdirected ambition, to give an
undesirable varnish to the native Doric of her tongue, which, in robbing
it of its simple rusticity, lent it a false lustre that by no means
improved its quality. She shared with her husband a positively
exasperating exuberance of satisfaction with their acquisitions and
surroundings, so as to tempt the world into seeking to lower the
couple, were it only by an inch, from their pinnacle of self-conceit. It
served as a mortifying reminder to their friends that Mr. and Mrs.
Drysdale, in spite of their many virtues, were made of common clay after
all: for if man and wife had been composed of finer, rarer stuff, they
would have understood for themselves that a man’s life does not consist
in the things he possesses; they would have known that wealth can do no
more than confer the lower gratifications, and would have ceased to be
infatuatedly elated by their outward prosperity.
The other person, who opened a French window on the ground-floor of the
new part of the building, and came skipping out of it, the faster to
reach and greet Tam Drysdale on his arrival, was likewise a woman. She
also had been wonderfully constant in her attentions since she had been
able to toddle, with or without her mother or nurse’s consent, into
dangerous proximity to the horse’s feet, sidling up to the dogcart,
standing confidently, her little face one broad grin, which cast out the
smallest conception of fear of repulse, till she should have her reward.
It was to get the whip, twice as long as herself, to hold, or to be
caught up and tossed in strong arms, placed in the seat of honour, and
driven up and down the terrace, shrieking with delight at the promotion.
This was Eppie the younger, who had grown from a lovely child to a slim
and beautiful girl of sixteen--such a juvenile copy of her mother in
hair, eyes, complexion, teeth, smile, in her very fondness for soft
pink, like the colour of her own cheeks--that the striking likeness
between the mature matron and the slender lass became almost comical in
the points of agreement and of difference in the two versions of the
same original.
Little Eppie, in the changed circumstances into which she fitted, had
even caught up something of the broad Scotch which--varnished or
unvarnished--fell, as a matter of course, from the elder lips, but
sounded so quaintly on the younger. Eppie’s brother and sister were free
from this lingering distinction. Mrs. Drysdale could pride herself on
the fact that her son, young Tam, and her elder daughter, Clary, spoke
as if they were reading out of a printed book. Young Tam did so from
sheer earnestness; Claribel from set purpose, in all moods. It was not
so in Eppie’s case; and with traces of the speech she had inherited a
portion of the rustic tastes in which the heads of the house now only
indulged as a relaxation--a private relaxation. To eat oat-cake and
drink buttermilk, when they might have had the richest of plum-cake and
the dryest of champagne; to sup on new potatoes and salt herrings, when
the eaters might have dined at the same hour on turbot and turkey, or
salmon and lamb, were treats to Eppie no less than to her father and
mother--only the girl, if she had got her own way, would not have taken
them surreptitiously.
There were other enjoyments for which Eppie had an hereditary
inclination, though the knowledge of them could only have come to her by
hearsay. She would have liked to work in the harvest-field, to seek and
find hens’ nests and bring in the eggs, to carry home every sick chicken
and deserted lamb she could come across, and become its foster-mother.
She would have liked to milk the cows, and in default of so high and
hopeless an attainment, she haunted the dairy to skim the milk in the
basins and press the whey from the curd in the cheese-tubs. She would,
if there had been any chance of her gaining permission, have sought to
ride her pony bare-backed, and tried to groom him with her own little
hands.
Claribel cared for none of these practices any more than if she had been
born a duchess; indeed, the chance was that if she had been her Grace,
she would have looked at them longingly, as Princess Elizabeth looked at
the milkmaid carrying her pails.
If Claribel Drysdale suffered herself to feel aggrieved by any of the
manifold contradictions in the bearing of the family, it was by her
younger sister Eppie’s perverse disposition ‘to run wild,’ as Claribel
called it emphatically, in aping primitive sayings and doings which were
all very well, or at least excusable, in her father and mother, who were
elderly, and had been more plainly brought up. Claribel would never
allow herself to approach nearer to the hole whence she had been dug
than such a vague phrase as this. But it was wrong as well as absurd in
Eppie--such folly would damage her prospects if she were let alone--her
conduct might even prove injurious to the fortunes of the rest of the
family.
As it had happened, this was one of the instances in which Claribel’s
power failed. Her mother, to whom she was polite, sometimes even
affectionate, stood greatly in awe of her elder daughter, still more so
than of her son Tam. Claribel had also an odd double influence over her
father. He respected in her the education and tastes which were beyond
him: and he felt bound to support her, in the career which he had opened
up for her, by removing, as far as possible, every hindrance out of her
path. Altogether, Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale might have been worked upon to
the painful extent of denying themselves a good deal of Eppie’s society,
checking her in the very expressions and practices she had learnt
through love for them and sympathy with them, and sending her away to
the finishing school of which Clary so often spoke.
But Eppie was a tower of strength in herself. She proved too much for
them here. She had no more fear of her sister Clary than their brother
young Tam had. She laughed at and defied her. Clary was all very well
sometimes, when Eppie had toothache and Clary nursed her, or when Clary
was in a communicative mood, and chose to give the details of her
parties; then she was ‘a dear,’ and quite nice and amusing. At other
times she was ‘prideful and upsetting,’ and had little time or attention
to spare for home. But in neither case was she ever to come between
Eppie and her father and mother. She would not yield her consent to
being sent away from her happy home, Drysdale Hall, neither would her
father and mother have the heart to force her.
Why, what would they do without her? Who would bring father his slippers
and his posy? Who would cut his hair and read the newspapers to him? Who
would be mother’s companion when father was at business, help her to
give her orders, and see the stores weighed out, and be her little
‘prentice housekeeper? No doubt Clary pretended there was no need for
mother to keep house when Mrs. Wood was so clever and experienced, and
had been housekeeper as well as cook to Lady Semple’s brother--as if
mother could live without a house to keep, although there were twenty
Mrs. Woods to do it for her! Who would walk to the gardens and the
washing-green with mother, and gather the lavender, and pull and shell
the peas, and fold the clothes, as she was fond of doing; and surely
mother could please herself, and do what she chose, else where was the
good of her being married to father, a rich man, Eppie would like to
know?
Why, mother would feel quite lonesome and eerie in a great big house
like Drysdale Hall, though Tam and Clary were both ‘to the fore.’ Little
good they were--Tam buried in his books and papers, and Clary away with
her grand friends. Mother must have her silly little daughter Eppie to
sit and sew beside her, and get her to tell stories about the
sewing-school and the singing-school mother attended when she was
young; and how she had sold her mother’s butter and cheese so well that
she had been granted a quarter at the dressmaking, where she had been
clever, and picked up enough of the trade to make all Tam and Clary’s
frocks when the children were little, which was more than Clary, with
her accomplishments, could do for herself, now that she was big.
Eppie did not hesitate to assert that she would rather learn dressmaking
from mother, and perhaps some day make a gown which mother herself would
be proud to wear, and to say, ‘My daughter Eppie made it for me,’ than
jabber all the French which mademoiselle could stuff into her. For Eppie
had possessed governesses, both native and foreign, and it was from no
want of such polite literature as they could impart that she had
developed an out-of-date rusticity and homeliness.
In the end, Eppie’s own strenuous, indignant, tender will, coinciding
with her parents’ secret strong inclinations, carried the day against
the wishes of ‘Madam,’ as Eppie and her mother--the latter with bated
breath and sundry twinges of her tender conscience and pricks of her
soft heart--were sometimes driven to call Clary.