Mr. Rowland, when his children left him, was left with a very
uncomfortable prick of thought, a sort of thorn lacerating the skin, so
to speak, of his mind. The suggestion which had been thrown at him as
the Spanish bullfighters throw their ornamented darts, stuck as they do,
and kept up an irritating smart, though it was not, he said, to himself
of the least importance. No society! He came out to the colonnade in the
intervals of his anxious work of supervision, and looked round him
wistfully. He walked indeed all round the house, looking out in every
direction. Towards the west there were visible, by glimpses among the
trees, some houses of the village of Kilrossie, a high roof or two, and
the white spire of the newly built church; to the east, on the other
side of the loch, another village-town extended along the edge of the
gleaming water, shining in the sunshine. Plenty of human habitations,
fellow-creatures on every side: but society! Wealth has a very curious
effect upon the mind in this respect. The people who came to the
handsome houses at Kilrossie for the bathing season were many of them
much superior to James Rowland in birth and education, and quite equal
to him in intelligence, except in his own particular sphere; yet this
man who had been only a man in a foundry when those good people were
enjoying the advantages of the saut water, and all the luxuries of
comparative wealth, would now have felt himself humiliated had he been
obliged to accept the society of the good people at Kilrossie as all he
might hope to attain. Their neighbourhood was rather a trouble than an
enlivenment to his mental vision. And the county people, who had their
“places” scattered about at intervals, were in many cases neither so
well off, nor so intelligent as these: and they would look down upon the
railway man, while the others would regard him with respect. There was
no possibility of doubt as to which of the two he would be most
comfortable with. And yet he slurred them over cursorily as if they were
not there, and sighed into the sweet vacant air which contained no
loftier indication of society. How proud he would have been to have
known the Kilrossie people fifteen years ago--how it would have elated
him to be asked under their roof! and now their presence irritated him
as a set of imposters who perhaps would thrust themselves upon him in
the guise of society: that was not the society for which he cared.
The prick of the banderilla discharged by Marion’s trifling little hand
was in him all day: and in the afternoon when he had done everything he
could, and given all his orders about the arrangement of the furniture,
he too went out to take a walk and to spy out the nakedness of the land.
He did not go into the woods as his children had done, nor would the
dogs have had any charm for him. He went down to the village, where
there certainly was no society except in the one house which held modest
sway over the cluster of whitewashed and red-tiled cottages--the manse,
where the minister represented, if not the wealthier yet the educated
portion of the community, and might at least furnish information, if
nothing else, as to the prospects and possibilities of the place. In
spite of himself Rowland’s discouragement reflected itself in his
countenance, making him, as so often happens, look angry and
discontented. There was something even in the way in which his heel
spurned the gravel, making it fly behind him, which betrayed the
unsatisfied state of his mind. He had scarcely emerged from his own gate
when he met the minister in person, who turned with him and walked along
the country road by his side with great complaisance, partly because he
was glad to meet any one on that not much frequented road, and partly
because it was a good thing to make a friend of the inhabitant of “The
House.” The shower which had caught Marion and Archie at Rankin’s
cottage, made the two gentlemen pause for a few moments but no more
under the shade of an overhanging tree. A shower is too common a thing
in that country to disturb any one. It discharged its harmless volley,
and then cleared away with rapidity as if the sportive angel who had
that brief job in hand was glad on the whole to get it over; which is
very often the way with the sky officials in that particular in the west
of Scotland. The cloud blew away in a second, dispersing what was left
of it in floating rags of white, which fled towards the hills, leaving
the sky radiant over Peterston on the other side of the loch, and the
loch itself as blue, reflecting the sky, as was that capricious
firmament itself--for the moment. The road ran inland, with fields of
wheat between it and the margin of the shining water, beyond which rose
the low banks of the loch, and further off a background of mountains. If
it was not quite equal to the great “view” of Rosmore House, this
prospect was at least very fine, soft and clear, in all the harmony of a
blueness and whiteness such as a rainy climate confers; and Mr. Rowland
too, like his daughter, was comforted by the singing of the birds, which
all burst forth again with unusual energy after the subduing influence
of the shower. He said, “It is certainly a beautiful place,” as he
paused for a moment to look over the green field at the little steamers
which seemed to hang suspended in the beatific air, one on the surface
of the water, one reflected below.
“Yes, it is a lovely place,” said the minister with a sigh.
He was a middle-aged man dressed in careful clerical fashion like an
Anglican priest--a costume new and rather distressing to Rowland, no
such thing having been thought of in his early days before he left
Scotland. At that period a white tie (or neckcloth, to use the proper
phraseology) rather limp, and a black coat often shabby, were all that
were thought of as necessary. But Mr. Dean, which was the name of the
minister of Rosmore, liked to be called a clergyman rather than a
minister, and would not at all have objected to hold the ecclesiastical
rank which is denoted by his name. He was of the new school. He had a
harmonium in his church, and a choir which chanted the psalms. He was
very advanced, and his wife still more so. He shook his head a little as
he made this reply. Yes, it was a lovely place--but--this latter word
was inferred and not said.
“I want to ask you,” said Rowland, by no means reassured by this, “about
the society.”
Mr. Dean now shrugged his shoulders a little. “You have perhaps heard of
the chapter about snakes in Ireland,” he said.
“I have always understood there weren’t any.” It is a very unjustifiable
thing to cut in this way a quotation out of another person’s mouth. Mr.
Dean was a little disconcerted, as was natural. “Well,” he said, “that’s
just the thing, there is none. I answer the same to your question: there
is no society. I hope that Chamberlayne did not bring you here on false
pretences.”
“I cannot remember that I asked him anything about it, nor would it have
made any difference if I had. Society or not, it’s always this place
I’ve set my heart upon. But what do you do and the other people in the
place?”
“Well,” said Mr. Dean, with a glance at his companion’s face, “the
House, as we all call it, has been our great resource. Lady Jean--you
must hear her quoted everywhere, and, I dare say, are sick of her
name.”
“No; I have not heard her quoted.” He remembered that he had not cared
anything about it, who was quoted, his whole heart being fixed upon the
house.
“She’s very good company,” said the minister. “She was always our
resource. And sometimes the Earl was here. I don’t want to speak evil of
dignities, but his lordship was perhaps less of an acquisition. And they
had visitors from time to time. That’s the great thing,” Mr. Dean added
with perhaps just a touch of condescension to the simplicity of the
millionaire, “in the country. You just fill the house, and one amuses
the other. My wife and I have seen a great many interesting people in
that way, which was a little compensation to us for being buried here.
You will come in and take a cup of tea. This is the nearest way.”
The Manse garden was on the slope of the hillside, but the Manse itself
was tucked in below, in what was supposed to be a sheltered position,
out of the way of all sunshine, or other impertinent invasions. It
surprised Mr. Rowland to see several pony carriages about, and to hear a
noise of talk coming out into the garden all perfumed with sweetpeas and
roses. He looked at the minister with an inquiring air.
“Oh, I don’t call this society,” said Mr. Dean, “though perhaps you will
be of a different opinion,” he added. He was a little supercilious in
his tone to the railway man, who was a rich person and no more; not that
the minister had any inclination to break any tie that might be formed
with “the House.” He was not himself fond of tea parties, and his
expression had made it plain that dinners were chiefly to be found, if
anywhere, at Rosmore.
“I have inveigled Mr. Rowland in for a cup of tea. I did not know you
had guests.”
“Dear me, Henry!” said Mrs. Dean; “of course you knew. It’s my day:
everybody in the parish knows, if you don’t. But I am very glad to see
Mr. Rowland; he has just come at the very nick of time. I was saying to
Mrs. Wedderburn, so much depends on who is at the House.”
“It is just the centre of everything,” said a fat lady who was thus
referred to. She gave Mr. Rowland a little bow, half rising from her
chair. “We all defer to the House,” she added with an ingratiating smile
to which Rowland answered as best he could with a bow which was as
deferential as hers was condescending. There were a dozen of people or
more in the room, which was not very large, and hot with the fumes of
tea. There were two or three matronly persons like Mrs. Wedderburn, and
a few who were younger, and two men who were making themselves useful
and handing the tea and the cake. There were also some queerly dressed,
middle-aged ladies, of the class to which Scotch society owes so much,
the rural single woman, individual and strong-minded: and there were
some with a great air of fashion and the consciousness of fine clothes.
These last Rowland set down, and justly, as sea-bathers from Kilrossie.
One of the others was the minister’s wife from the next parish, also
unmistakeable. His name caused a little rustle of interest among them,
as he made his bow all round.
“I’m sure you’re very welcome among us,” said another lady rising up
from the window where she sat. “Since we cannot have our dear Lady Jean,
we’re well content to have a tenant that is creditable and a well-known
name. You are just new from India, and our climate will be a great
change to ye, at least for the first.”
“Oh, I am well accustomed to the climate,” said Rowland. “I don’t think
that will trouble me much.”
“You’re really then a west-country man to begin with? so we’ve heard;
but Mrs. Rowland, I’m afraid, will not be so used to it. Nor perhaps
your young folk. You’ll think me bold,” added his interrogator, “but we
hear there are young folk?”
“My wife is not Scotch,” said Rowland; “but the difference between
Rosmore and an English county is not so very great.” He longed to say
who she was--one of the oldest families--but the same pride which
suggested this statement held him back.
“Oh,” said the ladies, two or three together; and then Mrs. Dean,
bringing him his cup of tea, took up the parole.
“You’ll soon learn the weakness of a country neighbourhood, Mr. Rowland.
We never rest till we’re at the bottom of everything. We had heard it
was a lady from India that was to be the mistress of ‘the Hoose.’”
And now his opportunity arrived. “I will give you all the information in
my power,” he said smiling. “My wife was a Miss Ferrars of Langley
Ferrars, a very old family--Leicestershire people. She is a lady from
India just as I am a man from India. We arrived about a fortnight ago.
Is there anything else I can satisfy the ladies about?”
He knew of old that there was no such way of discomfiting the curious as
to proclaim your own story, whatever it might be. And he had recovered
his spirit, which Marion and Archie had subdued. Society at the station
had endeavoured to keep him in his place, but in vain. Even the attachés
and aid-de-camps had not been able to manage that. He was a little
amused at the thought of this little rural tea party questioning him,
sitting upon his claims to be considered one of them.--One of them! His
suppressed sense of the absurdity of this gave a gleam of mischief to
his eyes, and quite restored him to his own self-opinion, which had been
so rudely interfered with of late. He stood with his back to the
fireplace, which, even when there is no fire, is a commanding attitude
for a man, and regarded them all with a smile.
“We are all looking forward to calling,” said fat Mrs. Wedderburn, who
did not like the trouble of much talking, yet evidently felt that it lay
with her to inaugurate every subject.
“That we are,” said his other questioner, who was called Miss Eliza by
the other ladies. “I’m just a very pushing person, and ye’ll excuse me.
Is it true, Mr. Rowland, what the folk say, that from a boy ye had set
your heart on Rosmore House?”
“Quite true,” he said promptly, “when I seemed to have as much chance
of it as of the moon. They say there’s nothing like boding of a golden
gown--for you see there I am--”
“It’s a wonderful encouragement to the young,” said Miss Eliza. “The
minister should put it into one of the papers he’s aye writing. Did ye
not know that our minister was a leeterary character? Oh, that he is!
and a real prop to the constitution; for though he may not be always so
in the pulpit, he’s real sound in politics--that’s what I always say.”
“Miss Eliza,” said the other clergyman, “you must not raise a _fama_
about a reverend brother. We’re all sound till we’re proved otherwise,
and Presbytery proceedings are against the spirit of the time.”
“Oh,” said Miss Eliza, “Mr. Dean knows well what I think. There’s no man
I like so well to hear, but his views are whiles very papistical. He
would just like to be the bishop and more. He’s no sound for Presbytery.
He would like vestments and that kind of thing, and incense, perhaps,
for anything I can tell. I would not wonder but he would put on a white
surplice, if that is what they call it, if he could get one over his
decent black gown.”
“I was an Episcopalian before I married Mr. Wedderburn,” said the fat
lady. “I do not regret it, for Mr. Dean knows we are all uncommonly well
pleased with him. And a surplice would become him very well.”
“It’s a very becoming thing,” said another of the ladies. “We’re very
glad to come to hear Mr. Dean, but we’re all Episcopalians when we’re at
home.”
“It’s the fashion,” said Mrs. Wedderburn, folding her fat hands.
“I’ve no desire to enter into that question. I’m saying nothing but that
the minister is no very sound on certain points. I’ve said it to his
face, and he just laughs, as you see. But, bless me! this conversation
has wandered far from where it began, for I was asking Mr. Rowland, in
the interests of all the nieces and the nephews, whether he had not, as
we’ve been informed, some young folk.”
Rowland had dropped out of the talk a little, and had forgotten that he
was being cross-examined. He woke up suddenly at this question with a
start. The lingering smile disappeared from his mouth. He put up
shutters at all his windows, so to speak. The light went out in his
eyes. “Yes,” he said in a voice which he felt to be as dull as his
countenance was blank; “I have a son and a daughter.”
“That was just what I heard,” said Miss Eliza with triumph. “We have
usually some young folk staying with us up at the Burn. My sister and
me, we are overrun with nieces and nephews. It’s just a plague. There is
scarcely a boat but brings one at the least. I hope your two will come
and see them. There is aye something going on; a game at that tennis, or
whatever they call it, or a party on the water, or a climb up the hills.
If they will just not stand upon ceremony, but come any day----”
“When they are here,” said Rowland stolidly; “as yet they are not here.
The house will not be ready for a week or more.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. We thought--there were so many waggons coming
and going, and the dog-cart out at the pier.”
“I hope you don’t think,” he said, “that I would take home my wife
either in a waggon or a dog-cart?”
The ladies looked at each other, and there came a faint “oh!” that
universal British interjection which answers to every emergency--from
some unidentified person. But a sort of awe stole over the party. Who
was this lady that could not be taken home in a dog-cart? Lady Jean had
been driven from the pier in a dog-cart many and many a day. Did the
woman who had married this foundry lad from Glesco, this railway man,
that had made his fortune in India, did she think herself better than
Lady Jean?
Mr. Rowland walked away through his own woods, much amused by this
incident generally. They were not his own woods: they were the Earl’s
woods, which was a reflection very unpleasant to him. If money could
smooth over the difficulty, they should be his own woods still before he
was done with them; and in the meantime he had a long lease, and a
strong determination to call them his own. He looked at every tree, and
put a mental mark upon it, to prove to himself that he was right. There
was a great silver fir, an unusually fine tree, near the gates, at which
he paused, saying to himself, “this is not mine,” with an assumption
that all the rest were, which was strange in such a sensible man; but
his mind had a little twist in it so far as Rosmore was concerned. He
smiled at the little society of the place with a sense of superiority,
at which they would have been extremely indignant. The Miss Elizas of
the peninsula were nothing to him, and their gracious intention of
calling upon his wife, gave him such a feeling of the ridiculous, that
he laughed aloud as he went on. Call upon Evelyn! Mr. Rowland had
perhaps as exaggerated an idea of Evelyn’s claims as the village people
had a humble one. They had heard that she was a governess whom he had
picked up in India; and he was of opinion that she was a very high-born
lady, as good as the Queen. He chuckled to himself as he realised how
she would look amid the ladies who came to Kilrossie for the
sea-bathing, and the ladies of the parish: Miss Eliza with her big rusty
hat and shawl, and the two ministers’ wives. Evelyn with the look of a
princess, and her beautiful dresses, that were like nothing else in the
world, which her mere putting them on gave the air of royal robes to!
This was his way of looking at the matter, which probably would not have
been at all the way of the county ladies, who had a general idea what
was the fashion, though they did not take the trouble to adopt it. But
to Mr. Rowland whatever Evelyn wore was the fashion, and it was she, he
felt, who ought to be everybody’s model, to dress after, as far as it
was in vain flesh and blood to follow such an ideal. Lady Jean herself
would be but a rural dowdy in presence of Evelyn. He thought of the
impression she would make. The startled “oh!” of wonder which would
burst from all their lips when she was first seen. It would be something
altogether new to them to see such a lady! It restored him to his
natural spirits and self-confidence to think of this; indeed, his pride
in his wife was the very apex of Rowland’s self-esteem and proud sense
of having acquired everything that man could hope to acquire, and all by
his own exertions and good judgment. He reflected to himself with
satisfaction that he had owed nothing to anybody; that it was all his
own doing, not only his success in life, _i. e._, the fortune he had
made, but all those still more dazzling successes, which he could not
have got had not the fortune been made. Nobody, for instance, had ever
suggested Rosmore to him: no benevolent teacher, or other guide of
youth, had pointed out to him the house with the white colonnade as an
inspiring object and stimulus to ambition. Himself alone had been his
counsellor. Nor had anybody indicated to him at the Station the pale and
graceful woman who was Mrs. Stanhope’s dependent and poor friend. He had
for himself found out and chosen both the wife and the house. This
triumphant thought returning to his mind wiped out the impression of the
morning, and even the recollection that he had gone out to hunt for
society, and had--found it! He remembered this a little later with a
sense that it was the best joke in the world. He had found it! Mrs. Dean
had a “day,” as if she lived in a novel or Mayfair; and the neighbouring
gentry and the sea-bathers, when they came in force, elated her soul as
if they had been all out of the peerage. He wondered, with a laugh to
himself, what Evelyn would say to Miss Eliza and the fat Mrs.
Wedderburn, and went back to Rosmore in high glee, really oblivious for
a time of the two “difficulties,” the irreconcilable portion of his new
life, whom he had left there.