Rowland’s ideas of the absence of society in his new home were
confounded by the number of visits his wife received within the first
six weeks of their stay at Rosmore. It had, I have no doubt, been noised
abroad that the wife of the great railway man was, in the loose but
convenient phraseology of the time, “a lady,” and that there was
therefore no appreciable peril to the gentility of her caller, from
making her acquaintance. Lady Jean, of course, was one of the first to
call upon her brother’s tenant. Her arrival was attended by
circumstances of which James Rowland could never think afterwards
without shame and humiliation. Indeed it all but happened to him to turn
the little shabby old lady who was trudging through the woods in short
petticoats and a waterproof to the kitchen door as the natural entrance.
Lady Jean was a little woman of about fifty, who had long ceased to
take the least pride in her appearance, or to care what people thought
on the subject. This last presumption was of course quite unnecessary in
the parish of Rosmore, where everybody knew who she was, and where, had
she gone about in cloth of gold, it would have made no particular
difference. She wore tweed accordingly with the most reckless
indifference to quality (I believe the quality was generally good--it
came in bales from Romans and Paterson, which the Glasgow shopkeepers
thought disloyal to them, and unpatriotic)--one society gown after
another being manufactured for her as need arose; and she was fond of
giving a gown-piece to any girl that might strike her fancy, walked
well, and was, as she expressed it in pregnant Scotch, “purpose-like.”
This is not to say that Lady Jean could not be every inch the Earl’s
sister when occasion demanded, and strike terror into the Radical
multitude, or that she did not possess, and occasionally wear, a
wardrobe more fitted to her condition.
Her arrival at Rosmore had nearly led to disastrous effects, as I have
said. For when Mr. Rowland saw the little old lady nimbly climbing the
hill, with the tweed petticoats reaching to her ankles, and her hat
bearing traces of encounters with several showers, he had not a doubt in
his mind that she was a friend of the housekeeper or some of the
servants. He had said “Hi!” and he was hurrying along partly out of
kindness, for the way to the servants’ entrance was shorter than the one
which swept round to the front of the house, when he saw Archie meet and
pause to answer the old lady’s questions. His father, deeply critical,
yet not so critical as he would have been had he known who the visitor
was, saw his son turn and accompany her, taking off his hat, which
Rowland thought unnecessary (though to be over civil was always better
than being rude) not to the servants’ door, but up to the left hand, to
the front of the house. He had another “Hi!” on his very lips, but
stopped, thinking he might as well leave it to Archie, no great harm
being possible. If the housekeeper’s friend did get admission at the
great door, what then? He gave a regretful thought to the evident fact
that Archie was more at home with the old lady than he was with people
in his own position. Mr. Rowland shook his head sadly over this, and
said to himself that it was in the boy’s blood, and that he would never
make a gentleman: yet comforted himself next moment and justified Archie
by declaring to himself with some warmth that he had a better opinion of
a lad when he was civil to those who had but little claim to the
civility of their neighbours.
Consequent upon this, however, a little curiosity about this old lady
came into Rowland’s mind. She was perhaps some ancient sempstress--some
old pensioner of “the family,” which was a title only accorded by the
public in general to the Clydesdale family, not to the interlopers at
present at the house. The old person was very nimble, whoever she was,
and she had “neat feet,” Mr. Rowland remarked, who had always an eye for
a good point in a woman--very neat feet--shod with strong, purpose-like
shoes. If Marion would only learn to have shoes like that instead of
the things like paper she went about in. He went on very much at his
leisure, following till the old lady disappeared under the colonnade. It
would do her good to get a glimpse of the hall with its Indian carpets
and wonderful hangings. It’s fine to show a poor old body like that once
in a way what wealth can do. It would be a thing for her to make a great
gossip about in the village when she got home. Mr. Rowland was still
smiling with the pleasure of this benevolent view when he saw Archie
come out again. “Who is that old dame you were showing in? I’m glad to
see you so civil,” said the father.
“Civil!” said the young man. And then he added with his usual look of
suppressed indignation, “I’m surprised you did not know her: it is Lady
Jean.”
“Lady Jean!!” But a thousand notes of admiration could not express the
dismay of Rowland when he found out that he had very nearly called out
“Hi!” to Lady Jean.
Lady Jean was greatly pleased with Mrs. Rowland, whom she described as
“probably a little too English for this place--but very well meaning,
and a gentlewoman. It appears I once knew her grandmother,” said Lady
Jean. This, so far as the point was concerned, was as good as a patent
of nobility. Her grandmother!--it added the charm of antiquity to all
the rest--though, indeed, Lady Jean was not more than a dozen years
older than Mrs. Rowland. Evelyn had besought the Earl’s sister to let
her take charge of “the poor” in the village, which gave Lady Jean
occasion for a lecture, which pleased her. “But I must ask you not to
call them the poor. They are neighbours not so well off in this world’s
goods as we are. ‘Poor folk’ is an allowable phrase, meaning a large
class; and it is mostly neighbourly kindness, not charity, that you will
be called on to give. Something off your own table to the sick and
ailing--that’s a fashion of speaking--something off your housekeeper’s
table, not French dishes, will be the best, and a helping hand with the
schooling, and a kind thought of the old people. That is what you want
here.”
“But that is very much what is wanted everywhere,” Evelyn said.
“Very true, but there are Scotch susceptibilities which you must
respect,” said Lady Jean. She liked to make this explanation, and then
to laugh at it, with a twinkle in her eye.
But her conclusion was that Mrs. Rowland was a most creditable person.
“Rich, oh richer than anybody has a right to be--but not much the worse,
considering--just a well-looking, well-mannered gentlewoman.”
Nothing could be more satisfactory than this report. It ran up the loch
and across the mountains. The Duchess heard of it in her quarters among
the hills. It flew east to another duchess on the lowland side. Of
course I need not say to people who know the country which was the one
duchess and which the other. In the course of time they both called,
which was a prodigious distinction: and so did all the smaller gentry,
and some of those great Glasgow potentates who build themselves new
castles upon the banks of the Clyde. Some of them were very fine
gentlemen indeed, but they were “mixed,” and some were only “Glasgow
builders” of a kind quite unknown to Evelyn. One whose carriage would
have made a sensation in Hyde Park, even in the days of hammercloth,
with two powdered footmen behind, had the manners still of the
blacksmith he had originally been. Mr. Rowland rather liked these
personages, especially the old gentleman who had been a blacksmith. He
stood up in a group with two or three of them who represented among them
heaven knows how many millions, and thrust his hands into his pockets
and talked investments and money. Why should not people talk money who
have more of that than of anything else? Painters talk of their
pictures, and literary men of their books. Why not millionaires of that
which makes them so? Rowland was very intelligent, and he liked to talk
upon money subjects; but an occasional laying of the heads together with
a few other rich men over the subject of money was refreshing to him, as
it is refreshing to an artist after long deprivation to find himself
once more among his own kind.
With all this flash of fine society, however, which so soon made an end
of Rowland’s fears, it is astounding how much in the foreground of the
picture was Miss Eliza, briefly described as “of the Burn,” in the
nomenclature of the parish. What Miss Eliza’s surname was, and what was
implied by the designation “of the Burn,” it was really quite
unnecessary to add. The same surname is so very general in Scotch west
country parishes, that it confers little distinction in itself. Miss
Eliza came to call in a little wickerwork carriage, called a
clothes-basket by her friends, with a russet pony to draw it and equally
russet groom or stable-boy to look after the vehicle when she made a
call. Miss Eliza drove the pony herself, with Colin generally behind, to
whom she threw a word occasionally when a longer time than usual elapsed
without meeting anybody on the road: but as the kind woman knew
everybody, from the fishwife who came over with her creels from
Kilrossie during the season of the saut water, up to the Earl himself,
when he happened to be seen in those regions, or even the Duchess, who
was a still more rare visitor, there was but little time for her to
entertain Colin with a special remark. “How do you do the day?” she said
with a wave of her whip in salutation of her friends. “How’s a’ with
you, David? I hope the hoast is better, and that you like the
lozenges.--Good morning, Mrs. Dean, and isn’t it just a pleasure to see
such a fine day: grand for the hay, as I have been saying all the way
down the loch, fifty times if I’ve said it once. I’m hoping they’ll get
it all well carted in at Rowanson, and a fine heavy crop it is, just a
pleasure to see.--Eh, is that you, Lizzie, with your basket? It’s awfu’
heavy for you, my poor lass, and you not got up your strength yet. Climb
up beside Colin: I’ll take ye a bittie of the way.--Good day to ye,
minister. Ye see I’ve got Lizzie Chalmers in the basket. Ye must just
give her a good talking to, for she’s come out before she has got up her
strength. Would you like any of her fish at the Manse? I would call and
leave them on my way back, with pleasure, and it would aye be something
for her to take home. I will have some of the herrings and the little
haddies myself, though the haddies are not equal to the Fife haddies,
and the herrings are not so good as Loch Fyne. Oh yes, I am just going
to Rosmore. I hear she’s just an uncommon nice person, and a credit to
the loch-side.--Dear me, there’s Lady Jean. It’s a sight for sore eyes
to see you now, and a sore trouble to think you’re in the parish no
longer, and I can scarcely offer to give you a lift when I have Lizzie
Chalmers in the cart. Isn’t she just a very presentable sort of person?
I’m meaning the new lady at the house, no Lizzie: we all know everything
there is to know about her. And I hope his lordship is quite well, and
you are not finding Ardnachrean damp.--Dear, bless me, there is the
doctor, and I want to ask him about young Rankin, and make him speak his
mind to Lizzie there. Good-day to you all, good-day.”
If it may be suggested that a country lady driving her own machine could
scarcely be likely to meet so much company on a country road, I must say
in my own defence that it was the same day on which Lady Jean had paid
her visit to Mrs. Rowland, which accounted for her; and as for the usual
inhabitants of Rosmore, from the minister down to old David, they were
all to be met with in the afternoon, within a few hundred yards. Lizzie
Chalmers, it is true, was from Kilrossie, and did not come every day,
but she was the only one of the party with the exception of Lady Jean
who was not to be met with about the same hour on the same road every
day.
“Is he any better, doctor?” said Miss Eliza, coming down upon the doctor
with a little rush of the russet pony, prompted by a smarter than
ordinary flourish of the whip. “Yes, I was afraid it was his own fault,
the foolish fellow. Men are just idiots rushing upon destruction, and
him so sensible when he is _himself_. There is Lizzie Chalmers, behind
me in the basket, just as silly in another way, coming out with her
heavy creel before she is well over her trouble. I would wish you to
speak very seriously to her, doctor. You must just lay me out my
herrings and haddies, and the codfish for the manse, it will make your
creel the lighter. And Colin, fill you that long basket with grass to
make a nice caller bed for the fish.--And here we are at the gate of
Rosmore, and to take you further would just be to take you out of your
way. Help her out, Colin, and you can put out the biggest codfish--if
it’s too much for them, I’ll make them a present of it, and they can
send the rest to that ne’er-do-weel’s poor wife, poor thing. And Lizzie,
my woman, here’s another shilling for you. Stay at home and look after
the bairns, and don’t come out to-morrow. Now, Rufus, on you go, my man.
It’s a stiff brae, and I know you don’t like it; but we’ll just make
Colin get out and run. Come away, my bonnie man,” said Miss Eliza, with
a chirrup, as she slanted the pony’s head towards the brae. Having no
one else to speak to, she talked to Rufus, who was very well used to it,
and responded by little shakings of his head and jinglings of his
harness. “Come away,” she added, meaning “go on”; “It’s a stey brae, but
ye must just go at it with a stout heart, and it will be over in a
moment. Come away, my bonnie man! Just jump in to Colin, and not let him
cool after that fine burst, for I like to come in at the door with a
dash, and Rufus can do it if he likes. Now down with ye again, and give
a good peal to the bell.--Will Mrs. Rowland be in this afternoon?” she
added, with a sweep of the whip towards the footman at the door. Then
Miss Eliza got down a little more dexterously than an inexperienced
spectator would have looked for. She went into Rosmore in the same
cheerful manner, talking all the way. The footman, it is true, was
English, and an unknown quantity, but even to him Miss Eliza found
something to say.
“They will be in, both Mrs. Rowland and the young lady? That is very
lucky for me, for in a fine day like this most people are on the road.
They will be using the long drawing-room with the view? Well, I do not
blame them: it is best, though Lady Jean used to keep it for
company.--Who will ye say? Oh, there is my card, that is the most
sensible way.--My dear Mrs. Rowland, I am very glad to make your
acquaintance. We have heard just everything that is good of you, and I
have been most anxious to welcome you to the parish. And this is Miss
Rowland? Dear me, how delighted all the young folk will be to hear of
such an addition. And now that you have got settled down a little, I
hope you like the house?”
“The house is delightful,” said Evelyn, “and so are the views. My
husband prepared me for the beauty of the country, but he said very
little about the excellence inside.”
“He would know but little,” said Miss Eliza. “They’re not noticing about
houses, the men folk. And as for the views, we have been settled here
this forty years since we came quite young creatures ourselves; but I’ve
never tired of this. I’ve never got indifferent, as you generally do,
with what you’ve seen every day: it’s just as new to me now as it was at
the first.”
“It is a beautiful country,” said Evelyn civilly.
“Is it not--just a blessed country! Eh, if the people were but equal.
‘Every prospect pleases,’ you remember the hymn says, ‘and only man--’
No, no, I will not say that man is vile: that is a great deal too
strong. What I complain of in very religious folk is that they are
censuring their neighbours, when perhaps, if the truth was known, their
neighbours--But we must not pursue that subject. Man is not vile, but
he’s not so satisfying as the everlasting hills.”
“Oh,” said Marion, with the little fictitious intonation which copied
Evelyn’s, “but men are more amusing than the mountains.” She herself was
not by any means so amusing in her diction since she had become an echo
of Mrs. Rowland in her gesture and voice.
“The young ladies,” said Miss Eliza with a laugh, “are mostly of that
opinion, and I should not say nay, for I have not less than six nephews
coming to-morrow for tennis, and everything that they can find that is
diverting. They are either at the college, for there’s a summer session
in the scientific classes, or else they’re in offices, and they come
down to us on Saturday to play. I hope you’ll come up to the Burn, you
and your brother, to meet my young men. There will be a view or two as
well. And after the diversion there will be a kind of supper, and then
they will see you home.”
Marion did not know how to act in such an emergency, but it was
understood that the invitation was accepted. And Miss Eliza returned
after half-an-hour’s talking, full of the genius of the mistress of the
house, and the wealth of its fitting up. “There would need to be
something very sustaining in the sense of good old blood in your veins,
and a family that has existed for generations,” she said, “for if I was
Lady Jean, I could not bear to see how the house is changed, just by the
railway man. For it was always a bare, cauldrife sort of house. I used
to feel that there were not carpets enough on the floor, nor coals
enough in the grate. Now it’s just all blazing and shining with
warmth--curtains that just clothe the place, and pictures on the walls,
and grand carpets that your foot sinks in. It may not be such good
taste, but it is far more comfortable. And Mrs. Rowland is a most
personable woman, and him a very good sort of a man.”
“And the daughter, Aunt Eliza?” cried the miss, to whom this was the
most interesting part of all.
“The daughter--well she’s just a young lady like the rest. I asked her
to come to-morrow, and you can judge for yourself,” Miss Eliza said.
The minister and his wife formed a still more interesting part of the
immediate society of the little place, and puzzled Evelyn, who had been
brought up in the somewhat narrow creed of her country to ignore
everything but “the Church,” and to look with small respect upon
dissenters in general as a community of uneducated people. She did not
at all know what to make of the trim and well dressed pair who called
upon her, he in garments almost more sacerdotal than if he had been a
priest of All Saints, Elizabeth Street, and she with the fashionable cut
of her dress shadowed by the inevitable mackintosh. This was the Scotch
minister whom she had met with in pictures in a very different aspect,
but of whom she knew nothing in real life except that she had a puzzled
comprehension that he did not belong to “the Church,” but yet was--what
was he?--a kind of vicar or rector after another fashion, like yet quite
unlike the vicars and rectors whom she knew. Mrs. Rowland had her
limitations like others, and did not know what to think. But she was, as
ever, charmingly polite, and did her best to please these bewildering
neighbours. She apologised for not having yet been to church, giving
some excuse of tiredness or headache. As a matter of fact the headache
had been a result of the same bewilderment which made her so curious and
so unassured about the position of Mr. Dean. A Scottish gentlewoman in
England would have had no such ignorance; which is a curious fact, and
one, perhaps, which proves the superiority of the wealthier and more
remote ecclesiastical economy.
“I dare say,” said Mrs. Dean, “that you were not sure if you should come
to our church. There is an Episcopalian Chapel in Kilrossie. As you are
English, Mrs. Rowland, it’s perhaps there you should go.”
“Indeed, I cannot say,” said Evelyn, “I have never gone anywhere but to
the parish church--but--I don’t quite understand--”
“We both understand perfectly,” said Mrs. Dean, “that you would miss the
ritual and your beautiful prayer-book. We have a great sympathy for
that. There is nothing in the prayer-book, I am sure, that would be a
stumbling-block to my husband, and he sometimes takes a collect just
straight out of it without any kind of clipping or trimming. There is a
great movement in Scotland, which perhaps you are not acquainted with,
to improve the baldness of our services, and make them more generally
attractive. We have a harmonium,” Mrs. Dean said with pride, “and I am
happy to say that our choir is beginning to chant just extraordinarily
well. You will see no such terrible difference as maybe you think.”
Evelyn held her peace, being more and more bewildered with every word.
She wondered what Mrs. Reuben Butler, _née_ Jeanie Dean, who was once
the minister’s wife of this parish, would have thought of this
statement. She only bowed in reply, not being for her own part at all
qualified to speak.
“Alexander will explain to you far better than I can, and you will find
no intolerance in him. He perhaps agrees better with you,” she added,
with a smile, “than with the old-fashioned folk who insist upon keeping
up all the difference.--Alexander, Mrs. Rowland would like you to
explain the way we’re trying to bridge over the debateable land between
our establishment and the other. Just come here. I will change places
with you.” The good wife, with these words, rose and took a chair beside
Rowland, to whom her husband had been talking, which was very
self-denying on the part of the minister’s wife, there being nothing at
all novel in the gentleman of the house, whereas there was a great deal
that was novel in the lady, and therefore interesting. She relinquished
the post to the minister, who was perhaps better able to expound--was he
better able to expound?--the problem of that ecclesiastical movement in
Scotland which is so much more puzzling to unsophisticated English
understandings, prepared for polemics and opposition, than the good old
conventional figure of the Presbyterian Calvinist, which is a primitive
type that everybody knows.
“I don’t know what there is to explain,” said Mr. Dean, taking, nothing
loth, the chair his wife had vacated: he too preferred the mistress to
the master of the house. “Our services--but then Mrs. Rowland will
understand them better when she has seen them.”
“Oh, I was very tired after my long journey--and I had a headache.”
“She was not out of her bed,” replied Rowland, as if his wife were being
blamed.
“I am sure,” said Mr. Dean, “that if I was Mrs. Rowland, I should not go
through the tedious drawl of the old-fashioned Scotch church on any
account, or listen to a sermon an hour long, which is what some of our
neighbouring clergymen still indulge in. But it is modified in Rosmore
church, and I promise you you shall not have more of me than twenty
minutes. We have very decent music, thanks to my wife. In short, for a
country service in an out-of-the-way place like this, I’m glad to think
that we are making it much more attractive.”
“Attractive?” Evelyn said, more bewildered than ever. “To whom were they
intended to be attractive? To the persons to whom they were addressed?”
“It is in no way necessary,” said the minister, “that music and
everything that is pleasant should be appropriated by one body. We can
take up our inheritance in that way just as fitly as the Episcopalians.
I am not a bigoted Presbyterian,” he said, “even in the way of Church
government, which is really the only peculiar part of our economy. I
think it is just as good as the other. I don’t think that either of them
is divinely appointed. I am used to presbytery, you are used to
bishops--very well. We need not go to loggerheads about that. I know a
bishop or two, and I’ve always found them very friendly, without being
inclined to bow down to kiss the pastoral ring any more than the papal
toe.”
“You are not so peaceably inclined when you come home from a Presbytery
meeting, Alexander,” said the wife of his bosom. “For my part I am
rather fond of the lawn sleeves. I think equality of ministers is just
as great nonsense as equality generally. Don’t you think so, Mr.
Rowland? When young Lord Rosmore says to me we are all born equal, I
just say to him, Bah! As if anybody in his senses would put my husband
and Johnny Shanks at the head of the loch upon the same level! You will
remember Johnny Shanks? just a nobody; whereas Alexander----”
“My wife,” said Mr. Dean, while this was going on, “likes the decorative
side. Lawn sleeves and gaitered legs take her fancy. But if there is one
thing convenient in our simplicity, it is that we are saved all the
millinery questions. And that, I think, goes for a great deal.”
Evelyn had never been ecclesiastically minded, and was but vaguely aware
what the millinery question meant. As for the rest, though she was an
intelligent woman, these two people might as well have talked Hebrew to
her: there was no understanding in her mind.