If any one thinks that such events can come to pass in a house, and the
servants remain unaware of the movement and commotion, I can only say
that these persons are little acquainted either with human nature, or
the peculiar emotions and interests called forth by domestic service. As
certain members are kept in exercise by certain kinds of action, so
there are certain sets of mental and moral fibres that are moved by the
differing conditions of existence, and no one is more completely and
continuously in operation than those of interest, curiosity, and that
mixture of liking and opposition which naturally actuate one set of
human creatures towards the other set of human creatures who are
immediately over them, and control and occupy all their movements. It
gives something of the interest of a continual drama to life, to watch
the complicated play of human fate going on so near, in circumstances so
intimate that it is scarcely possible not to enter into a certain
partizanship, and take sides. Thus there were some of the servants who
were all for Mr. Archie, and had an instinctive certainty that he was
being unjustly treated and ill-used, and some who held for the master,
with a conviction that a young son was never to be trusted, and was apt
to go astray, as the sparks fly upward, by force of nature. Singularly
enough, though Mrs. Rowland was a considerate and kind mistress, good to
everybody, and taking a much greater interest in the members of her
household than either father or son, nobody took her side: partly
because she was, more or less, like themselves, a sort of spectator, not
one of the first actors in the drama; and still more because she was the
stepmother, and naturally, according to all traditions, a malignant
element doing harm to both. The items of fresh information which were
brought to the upper servants by Saunders, and which percolated through
the house by means of an observant footman, were eagerly seized by the
attendant crowd, and rapidly classified under fact or guess, according
to its kind, until the superstructure was very remarkable. Naturally,
the servants’ hall knew far better what Mr. Rowland was going to do than
he himself did, and had settled the career of Archie in every particular
before he had more than the most rudimentary idea of it himself.
It is a very poor and shabby thing to gossip with servants as to the
habits and peculiarities of their masters: nothing can be more true than
this. But it is very difficult for a lady not to hear, as she can
scarcely help hearing, the word dropt by her maid--or for a man to
arrest in time the revelation that falls from his attendant in respect
to the disturbed condition of a house. “How could there be much comfort
in the house, my lady, when there was a terrible scene in the middle of
the night, and poor Mr. Archie never in his bed at all, but gone out of
the house by break of day.” You have to be quick indeed, and very much
on your guard, to prevent the woman, as she stands behind you, from
letting loose such an expression as this before you can stop her. And
still less is a man able to check the valet who thinks it so very queer
that a gentleman should have arrived late on business, and come
scared-like into the ball-room all in his travelling things. “And they
do say, sir, that that’s why young Mr. Rowland has disappeared this
morning, though the house is full of company.” How can you restrain or
ignore these communications from the back-stairs? Consequent upon a
number of such communications was the resolution taken by everybody at
Rosmore to arrange their departure as early as possible on the second
day. All felt confused and troubled in the dreary rooms in the evening,
where there was nobody to lead the revels, and where the master of the
house scarcely took any pains to conceal the preoccupation of his mind.
Nobody could have known, except by the anxious glance she threw now and
then at her husband, by Mrs. Rowland’s bearing that anything was wrong,
and Marion was in her usual spirits, ready to do a little solid
flirtation (for the young men complained of Marion that she was far from
being light in hand) with any candidate: but Rowland gave so broken an
attention to what was going on, mingled in the conversation so abruptly,
and fell into such silences between, that it was easy to see how little
accomplished he was in the art of living, according to its highest
social sense. Whether it was that, or the hints from below stairs, which
had reached more or less every member of the party, it was certain that
it was a party very little at its ease. One or two of the bolder guests
asked directly for Archie, if he was expected home that evening, if he
was likely to be long detained by his business, etc.; the more timid did
not mention his name. “What is the best thing to do,” they asked each
other privately, “when there is trouble of that kind in a house?” Lady
Marchbanks, who was not generally supposed to be a very wise woman, here
spoke with authority out of the depths of a great experience, being a
woman with many brothers, sons, and nephews, and full of knowledge on
such points. “I always ask,” she said, “just as if I were sensible of
nothing--just as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a
young man to be suddenly called away on business, when it is well known
he has no business, and his father’s house full of guests. It’s the
kindest way,” Lady Marchbanks said, and she had occasion to know. But
they were all unanimous in finding reasons why they must depart next
morning after their delightful visit. Interesting as human complications
are to all spectators, there are few people who think it right to stay
on in manifest presence of trouble in the house.
There was one, however, who excelled himself in friendly devotion to his
hosts, and that was Eddy Saumarez, who took upon himself, only with far
greater ability than Archie could have shown, the work of the son of the
house. There was every appearance that it would have been a very dull
and embarrassing evening but for Eddy, who flung himself into the middle
of affairs like a hero. He sang, he talked, he arranged a rubber in one
corner, a game in another, of that semi-intellectual kind which is such
a blessed resource in a country-house, and has the happy effect of
making dull people think themselves clever. Eddy himself was too clever
not to be infinitely bored by such contrivances, but he forgot himself
and stood up like a hero, asking the most amusing questions and giving
the wittiest answers when it was his turn to be badgered, and keeping
the company in such a state of stimulation that even the heaviest grew
venturesome, and made themselves ridiculous with delight, for the
amusement of the rest. He even drew a smile from Rowland, who was too
restless for whist, but who came more than once within Eddy’s wilder
circle of merriment, and was cheated into a momentary forgetfulness.
When the party dispersed, having passed, instead of the dull hours they
had most of them anticipated, an unusually animated evening, Rowland
came up and laid his heavy hand on Eddy’s shoulder. The young man
started like a criminal, grew red and grew pale, and for once in his
life was so disconcerted that he had not a word to say. And yet
Rowland’s address was of the most flattering kind. “I can’t tell how
much I’m obliged to you,” his host said. “You’ve been the life of the
house since ever you came, Eddy, my man. And to-night I don’t know what
we should have done without you. My wife will tell you the same thing.
You’ve been the saving of us to-night. If ever I can serve you in
anything--Lord! I would have done that for her, on account of her
interest in you. But remember now, that on your own account, if I ever
can be of any service----”
Eddy shrank back from that touch. He would not meet Rowland’s eye. He
faltered in his answer, he that was always so ready. “I don’t deserve
that you should speak to me so,” he stammered out. “I--I’ve
done nothing, sir. All that I can ask is your forgiveness
for--for--inflicting so long a visit upon you.”
“Is that all?” said Rowland, with a laugh. “Then I hope you’ll make your
offence double, and give me twice as much to forgive you. Are you bound
for the smoking-room now?”
“Perhaps I had better go,” said Eddy, carefully watching the other’s
eyes.
“Do, my good lad. I had a disturbed night, and I’m out of the habit of
keeping late hours. I will not appear myself, if you are going--though I
dare say they will all go soon to their beds to-night.”
“Good night, sir,” said Eddy, “I hope you’ll sleep well.” There was
almost a tender tone in the youth’s voice.
“Oh, I’ll sleep well enough. I always sleep. Good night--and thank you
again, Eddy, for backing me up.”
As for Evelyn, she pressed his hand with a grateful look, and said also,
“Thank you, Eddy,” in a soft tone, which, for some reason or other,
seemed more than Eddy could bear. He almost tore his hand from hers, and
turned his back upon her as though she had insulted him, which filled
Mrs. Rowland with astonishment; but when there were so many things of
importance to think of, what did Eddy’s look matter? She was glad when
the girls too said good night, and left her alone with her husband--who,
however, was in no humour for conversation.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “I can always sleep, thank God. Evelyn, if
you ever write to that lad’s father----”
“I never do, James.”
“Well, you might, my dear. It would have been no offence to me. I’m not
one to sin against my mercies, as if I did not know when I had got a
good woman. But you might say the lad had been a real stand-by. When you
have a son, and the like of that can be said, it’s a pity that a man
should not have the satisfaction----” He broke off with a sigh, and
walked up and down the room with his hands deeply thrust into his
pockets, and then pulled the heavy curtains aside and looked out. It was
one of the windows under the colonnade just where the view was--the view
through the trees over the triumphant Clyde, with its towns and hills
beyond. There was a faint glimmer of light in sky and water, which
showed where the opening was. Ah! this, which had been the star of his
life for so many years--to what had it turned when it was granted to his
eager desire?
“James! there is nothing to prevent you from having that
satisfaction--yet.”
He looked at her and burst into a hoarse laugh--then, as she essayed to
speak again, stamped his foot on the carpet in impatience and hurried
away.
An hour later there was a knock at Rosamond’s door in the stillness of
the early withdrawal which last night’s dissipation had made general
throughout the house. Rosamond was sitting in her dressing-gown before
her fire--thinking of many things, and particularly of her father’s last
letter, which lay open upon the little table beside her.
“Stay as long as you can,” Mr. Saumarez said. “It’s the best chance you
can have at present to see a little society, and keep Eddy on the
straight.”
Rosamond was not happy, she could not have told why. It was not that
Archie was of any importance to her, but there is something in the
atmosphere of a disturbed and unhappy house, which reflects itself in
the consciousness of the most indifferent guest. She could not think
what he could have done. The offence of which his father had convicted
him the other day in the hall, of having refused money to a friend, was
of all reproaches in the world the most extraordinary to Rosamond. She
thought with a laugh that was irrestrainable, of what her own father’s
remark would have been, and the high tone of indignation he would have
assumed at the folly, nay the criminality, of throwing money away.
“Where do you expect to get more?” he would have asked with righteous
wrath, had his son been suspected of such a miserable weakness. But, to
do him justice, Eddy had no guilty inclinations that way. Curiously
enough, while Rosamond laughed with the surprised contempt, yet respect,
of the poor for Rowland’s liberality, which had, in spite of herself,
the aspect of “swagger” in the girl’s eyes--she felt, at the same time,
something of the same astonishment, mingled with disappointment, that
Archie should have laid himself open to such a reproach. “I should have
thought he would have given away--everything he had,” Rosamond said to
herself--not as praise, but as a characteristic feature of Archie’s
nature, as she conceived it--and she was disappointed that he had not
carried out her idea of him, notwithstanding that she believed such a
procedure to be folly of the deepest dye.
She was considerably startled by the knock at the door, and still more
by seeing Eddy in the silk smoking-suit, which was too thin for this
locality. It was perhaps that flimsy dress which made him look so
pinched and cold, and he came in with eager demonstration of his delight
at the sight of her fire.
“Mine’s gone out an hour ago,” he said, “let’s get a good warm before we
go to bed.”
“You have come from the smoking-room,” she said; “you will fill my room
with the smell of your cigarettes. I hate the smell of the paper worse
than the tobacco.”
“Oh, you’re always hating something,” said Eddy vaguely. And then he
added, standing with his back to the fire, looking down upon her in her
low chair--“It won’t matter how it smells, for to-morrow we ought to
go.”
“To go!” she cried in astonishment. “What new light have you got on the
subject? for I have heard nothing of this before.”
“Never mind what you’ve heard,” said Eddy. “Circumstances have
arisen--altogether beyond my control,” he added with a laugh at the
familiar words. “In short, if you must know it, Rose, I can’t stay here
any longer, and that is all there is about it,” he said.
“Do you mean now that Archie has got into disgrace? How has he got into
disgrace? I can’t think what he can have done.”
“I mean--that and other things. How should I know what he has done? Some
of his father’s fads. But in every way we’d better go: everybody is
going, and I’m dead-tired of the place. There is not a single thing to
do. We shot every bird on the hill to-day, and more--and after this
burst there won’t be a soul in the house for months. Probably they have
themselves visits to pay. I tell you we’d better go to-morrow, Rose.”
“They say nothing about visits to pay,” said Rosamond, bewildered. “Mrs.
Rowland said to-day she hoped we would stay as long as we pleased: and
father is of opinion that if we can hang on for another month--well, he
says so. It saves so much expense when the house is shut up.”
“But I tell you I am not going to do it,” said Eddy, “whatever the
governor chooses to say. You can if you please, but I shan’t. You may
stay altogether if you please. Marry Archie, it would not perhaps be
such a bad spec.; and become the daughter of the house.” He laughed, but
there was not much mirth in his laugh.
“You need not be insulting at least,” said his sister. “And as for the
daughter of the house--the less there is said on that subject the
better, if you are going away.”
“Why! do you think she would mind?” he asked. “Mind you, she is not so
simple as you think. I don’t believe she cares. If she did, that might
be a sort of a way: but mind what I say, Rose--that girl will not marry
anybody till she’s been at court and seen the world. She might like me a
little perhaps--but if she saw her way to anything better--as Heaven
knows she might do easily enough. Oh, I don’t make myself any illusions
on that subject! She would drop me like a shot.”
“As you would her,” said Rosamond, with an air of scorn.
“Precisely so; but unless I’m very far mistaken, we meet--that little
Glasgow girl and I, that am the fine flower of civilisation--on equal
ground.”
“So much the better for her if it is so,” said Rosamond.
“Am I saying anything different? only I don’t think there’s the least
occasion to be nervous about little May.”
There was a pause here, and for a moment or two nothing was said. A
little hot colour had come on Rosamond’s face. Was she perhaps asking
herself whether Archie was as easily to be let down as his sister, and
likely to emancipate himself as lightly? But on this subject, at least,
she never said a word. She broke silence at last by saying, with a
sigh--
“We have nowhere to go.”
“Nonsense: we have the house to go to. I don’t say it will be very
comfortable. Old Sarah is not a _cordon bleu_.”
“As if I cared about the cooking!”
“But I do,” said Eddy; “and the one that does will naturally have more
to suffer than the one that doesn’t; but thank heaven, there’s the
club--and I dare say we shall get on. The end of October is not so bad
in town. There’s always some theatre open--and a sort of people have
come back.”
“Nobody we know--and we have not a penny;--and father will be so angry
he will send us nothing. And they are so willing to have us here; why, I
heard Mr. Rowland say to you----”
“Never mind what you heard Rowland say,” said Eddy, almost sullenly.
“You can stay if you like. But I won’t, and I can’t stop here. Oh! it’s
been bad enough to-day! I wouldn’t go through another, not for----” Here
he stopped and broke forth into a laugh, which stopped again suddenly,
leaving him with a dark and clouded countenance--“a thousand pounds!”
“I don’t understand you, Eddy,” said Rosamond, with an anxious look.
“You have not been borrowing money? What do you mean by a thousand
pounds?”
“Do you think,” said Eddy with a short laugh, “that any one would lend
me a thousand pounds? That shows how little you girls know.”
“If I don’t know, it would be strange,” said Rosamond, with a sigh,
“seeing how dreadfully hard it has been to get money since ever I can
remember. And there is no telling with people like Mr. Rowland. Didn’t
you hear him coming down upon Archie for not giving his money to some
one who was ill? Fancy father talking like that to one of us!”
“The circumstances have no analogy,” said Eddy. “In the first place, we
have no money to give: and we want hundreds of things that money could
buy. Archie and fellows like him are quite different--they want nothing,
and they’ve got balances at their bankers; not that he has much of that,
poor beggar, after all.”
“What do you mean, Eddy?”
“Well, I mean he’s a good sort of fellow if he weren’t such a fool;--and
I could have thrown some light on his refusal, perhaps, if they had
asked me.”
“Oh, why didn’t you, Eddy!--when his father was so vexed and so severe.”
“It was none of my business,” said the young man. “And Archie is not a
fellow who likes to be interfered with. If I had suggested anything, he
would probably have turned upon me.”
“And what was it?” said Rosamond; “what was the light you could have
thrown?”
“Oh, I don’t mean to tell you,” cried Eddy; “you have nothing to do with
it that I can see. And it is of no use telling his father, for he’s in a
far deeper hole now. Poor old Archie--he is an ass, though, or he would
never have got into such a mess as he is in now. He never can strike a
blow in his own defence, and never will; but look here, Rose,” cried
Eddy, “all this jawing will make it no better; I am going to-morrow,
whatever you may choose to do. I can’t stop another night here.”
“You _must_ have something to do with it. I am sure you have something
on your conscience, Eddy. You have got a conscience somewhere, though
you pretend not. It is you that has got Archie into trouble!--you have
been tempting him and leading him away. That day in Glasgow! Ah, now I
see!”
“What do you see?” cried Eddy, contemptuously; but his sallow face
betrayed a sharp, sudden rising of colour. He did not look at her, but
kicked away a footstool with some vehemence, on which a moment before he
had rested his foot.
“Let’s hear!” he said, “what fine thing do you see?”
“You must have got--gambling, or something,” she said, feeling to her
heart the inadequacy of the words to express the great terror and
incoherent suggestion of evil that had come into her mind, she knew not
how.
“Gambling--with Archie!” her brother burst into a loud laugh. “One might
as well try to gamble with Ben Ros, or whatever that beast of a hill is
called. I broke all my toes going up him to-day. No, my dear Rose; you
will have to try again,” Eddy said.
She looked at him with eyes full of consternation and horror. It was
incredible to Rosamond that Archie should have done anything to merit
such condemnation: but it was not at all incredible to her that Eddy
should have got him into mischief. She looked at her brother as if she
could have burst through the envelope of his thoughts with her intent
and searching eyes.
“Eddy, I _know_ you have something to do with it,” she said.
“That proves nothing,” said Eddy; “you know what you think only.”
“I don’t know what I think! I think terrible things, but I can’t tell
what they are. Oh, Eddy, this was such a quiet house when we came into
it! They might not be very happy, but there was no harm. And Archie had
begun to please his father. I know he tried. And they have been very
kind to us--the ball last night was as much for us as for their own
children.”
“It was to get themselves into favour in the county--it was neither for
us nor for them.”
Rosamond was herself so much accustomed to measure everything in this
way, and to have it so measured, that she had no protest to make.
“But we had all the benefit,” she said. “We were made the chief along
with Marion and Archie. And Mr. Rowland has shown how much he thinks of
you, Eddy--he has made you his deputy.”
“Yes, to save himself trouble,” said Eddy; “to amuse his guests--is that
a great sign of kindness? It was kindness to himself. But if they had
been as kind as--whatever you please, what would that matter? I cannot
stand any more of it, and I am going away.”
“But you have no money,” she said.
“Oh yes; I have a little--enough to take us back to town, if you
please--and to get me a few chops at the club till the governor turns
up--who has a right to feed me at least until I come of age.”
“You must have got it out of Archie,” said Rosamond, her cheeks burning,
springing from her seat, and standing between him and the door, as if to
force an explanation. But Eddy only smiled.
“For a right down odious supposition--an idea that has neither sense nor
possibility in it, commend me to a girl and a sister! How could I get it
out of Archie? What had Archie to give? I think you must be taking leave
of your senses,” he said.
Was it so?--Was it merely a sympathetic sense of the trouble in the
house, and sorrow for Archie, whatever might be the cause of his
banishment? Or was it some sense of guilt, some feeling that it was he
who had led Archie away, and who ought to share in the penalty? But, to
tell the truth, Rosamond could not identify any of these fine feelings
with Eddy. He was not apt to feel compunctions: perhaps to take him at
his word was the safest way.