JOCK'S INHERITANCE
MARIE LAING wrote and asked Orris and her husband up to town for a
week. She lived in a small house in Kensington Gore. She told Orris
frankly why she wanted them both.
"You've been married in such a hole-and-corner style that your friends
in town are wondering what your husband is like. And I want them to see
that you have married a gentleman and one who can hold his own with
any. I think it is his due to be recognized by your relatives. I shall
give one or two quiet dinners and invite some of your old friends.
Don't lose sight of us, for I tell you that we expect to be entertained
by you later on. You must not seclude yourself in the country and get
out of touch with civilization."
At first Orris thought she would keep this letter to herself, but she
had been so accustomed to tell Jock everything that she put it into his
hand.
"We can afford to laugh at Marie and her fussiness," she said, "but all
the same, I think we'd better go. I should like to have a week in town."
A dark flush mounted to Jock's cheeks as he read the letter; then he
tossed it back to her.
"I don't see myself being dragged up to town to be shown off like a
tame monkey," he said hotly.
"Oh, Jock, don't be so foolish! I wish I had not shown you the letter.
We can afford to laugh at her. But at the same time, I should like to
accept the invitation."
"Then you can accept it, but don't include me."
"I should not think of going without you."
They were facing each other now. Orris with a worried pleading look in
her eyes, but with determination about her lips; Jock with grim-set
mouth, and shoulders set taut and square, a sign of extreme obstinacy.
"You will not come if I ask you?" Orris said.
"Not if you go down on your knees to me," Jock snapped out.
And then very quietly, without another word, Orris left the room.
She went upstairs to her little sitting-room, and there, sitting in a
low chair by the window, she cupped her chin in her hands and pondered
over the situation.
Jock should not shut her away from her old acquaintances and friends.
It would neither be right nor kind to do so. And it would be wrong to
encourage him to shut himself away from his own kind. He might develop
into a tyrant or a crank. Orris had seen both types amongst country
squires, and she dreaded such a possibility for her husband. She
considered that it was not a question of her own liking, so much as
that it would be bad for both of them if they never left their country
house, and if Jock refused to be friendly with any of her relatives.
Yet how could she compel him to come with her against his will?
An hour passed, and still she sat there. The letter had come by the
evening post. It was the hour that she generally sat with Jock in the
smoking-room, between tea and dinner, but she felt that she could not
go down to-night. She wondered if he would come and seek her, but he
did not. She did not meet him again till dinnertime.
For the first time since their marriage, there was restraint between
them. Orris talked cheerfully of different matters that interested them
both locally, and Jock responded with a slight effort.
She went into the drawing-room afterwards and Jock shut himself up in
the smoking-room.
About ten o'clock, with a weary sigh, Orris put aside the book she had
been trying to read and resolved to go to bed. Then, as she was moving
towards the door, Jock came in.
"We've got to have this out before we go to bed," he said.
"Come and sit down, then," said Orris very quietly.
Jock looked at her sharply.
"You've been crying," he said.
"A few tears," Orris said, striving to keep her lips from quivering.
"You see, Jock, this is my first experience of your anger. And you are
so rarely angry with anyone that I feel it all the more."
Jock stood over her on the hearthrug. He would not sit down.
"I've a raging hot temper when roused," he said; "and I'm proud, and
I won't be made into a puppet and have to talk and dance for the
edification of your cousin Dugald and other empty-headed noodles of his
kin."
"Now, Jock, is that kind or just?"
He was silent. Then he burst forth:
"I wish I did not love you so much. It saps away all my determination
and will." He was down on his knees by her now and his arms were round
her. "Do you want this so much, sweetheart?"
Orris felt inclined to make an unconditional surrender, but her
commonsense and right judgment saved her.
"Jock, dear, when I married you, I never knew that it would entail my
giving up all my relations and friends. We are so sure of each other's
love that jealousy cannot find room in either of our hearts. You know
that I enjoy nothing without you. To go to London so soon after our
marriage and leave you down here would evoke criticism from all I know.
If you love me, make this sacrifice for me. I know your dislike to
town, but it is only for a week. And oh, Jock, my dearest, I will be
frank, I am so proud of my husband that I want my relations to know him
and appreciate him."
"Don't flatter. I'll come with you. I have tackled hard jobs in my life
and this will be the toughest. But I won't have you shed tears on my
account." And he kissed her as if he could not let her go.
Orris said no more, but as they went upstairs together she murmured:
"I hope the next time it will be I that make the sacrifice, and not
you, dearest."
They went to town and nothing happened to mar their visit there. Jock
met two old friends, one—a Colonel Stacy, who had been at Oxford at the
same college with him, and who was a great friend of Marie Laing's.
The other was a Lord Denver, who had recently come into his title and
property, and who had lived for two years with Jock at his farm in New
Zealand. Both were delighted to see Jock again, and Orris was glad that
their friendship had prevented him from feeling dull or lonely.
He did his best to make himself pleasant to his wife's friends, but
after two dinners, three receptions, and two afternoon teas, he told
Orris that he had done his duty and would go out no more.
She and he did a little sight-seeing together, and attended a service
in Westminster Abbey, which Orris loved.
They did not see Reyne, as she was abroad with her mother, and Dugald
had gone over to Paris. He did not wish to see Orris in the company of
her husband.
When the day came for them to leave for home, Jock was as light-hearted
as a boy.
"Give me the country," he said to Marie; "you're all frittering away
your time and spending money like water without having anything to show
for it. I can imagine girls and boys jigging round, but there are men
and women well on the way to seventy who are as keen as the young ones
on amusement."
Marie laughed at him.
"You earnest backwoodsman," she said; "if we make gods of our pleasure,
you make them of your work! We use our brains more than you do.
Agricultural labour exercises muscles, not brains."
"I beg to differ. If you were to drop in to a country inn on market day
and hear a few farmers talking, it would make you sit up and teach you
a bit."
"Oh," said Orris, laughing, "you will never understand each other, so
don't argue any more."
They came home, but before they reached their gates they heard sad
news. Mr. Preston had been carried home unconscious from the fields
with a bad heart attack, and he was sinking fast.
"I must go to them," Jock said; and he went off to the farm at once.
Orris would have liked to accompany him, but she was afraid of
intruding at a time when perhaps wife and husband wanted to be alone
together.
It was late at night before Jock came back. He was very grave.
"He has gone," he said to Orris, when she met him in the hall, "and
I've lost one of my best friends here."
"How is Mrs. Preston?"
"Wonderful, as she always is. I'm glad I went. He knew me—and said
good-bye. And then he took his wife's hand.
"'Twon't be long before you come to me,' he whispered to her.
"And she looked at him with her brave smiling eyes. 'Ask God to make
the time short,' she said.
"And he nodded, and then he murmured: 'A good wife from the Lord.'
"I came away, for Dane arrived, but I waited till his visit was over,
and he came down just as Preston had breathed his last."
Orris's eyes were full of tears.
"I don't know how Mrs. Preston will live without him, but I know she
will be comforted."
It was rather a sad home-coming, but when Orris met Mrs. Preston she
found her resigned and calm.
"It's only a short time," she said; "and I 'know' he's happy, so how
can I mourn?"
Jock had been left executor and trustee. He was over at the farm a
good deal after the funeral had taken place. Mr. Preston had expressed
a wish that Jock should take over the farm and work it with his.
Mrs. Preston had enough to keep on the house and live there. She was
pleased to have Jock still about the place, and he was as tender and
considerate as a son might have been.
A fortnight after their return, Jock and Orris were on the terrace
together. It was a lovely evening. The garden below them was full of
the fragrance of late spring flowers. In the distance, a red sun was
sinking behind the pine woods. Pippa had just left them and gone up to
bed. She had been telling Jock a wonderful Norwegian legend that Miss
Raynor had been relating to her.
"And so," she ended, "the king brought the peasant girl into the palace
and made her his queen. And he made a big feast and told all his people
that God had given her to him, and so she was to be called Queen
Theodora, the gift of God. Did God give Aunt Ollie to you, Uncle Jock?"
"He did, indeed," said Jock, with deep feeling. He sat on silently with
Orris after she had left them.
Orris was gazing at the fair scene in front of her.
"It is a beautiful inheritance, Jock," she said at last.
He looked up at her.
"Yes," he answered. "But you remind me continually that I am only a
steward. The possession which I prize most is beside me. I was thinking
of old Preston's words this morning. I knew they came from the Bible,
so I hunted them up. 'Houses and possessions' we are told, come from
our 'fathers.' A good wife, or a 'prudent,' as it puts it, 'comes from
the Lord.' Pippa was perfectly right in her deduction just now. My
inheritance from men is a matter of indifference to me. My inheritance
from the Lord is my all in all."
And Orris, as she turned to meet his ardent tender gaze, could but pray
that she might never fail or disappoint him.