“You put Mrs. Rowland on my traces,” said Eddy; “why did you do so, you
little witch? Wait till I find out some bad trick I can play you.”
“It has all turned out very well,” said Marion sedately. “I am not at
all sorry I did it. I knew that man was about something wrong. And you
should not know such people, Mr. Saumarez. I was bound to tell them
anything I knew.”
“Miss Rowland,” said Eddy, “your father is going to pay all my debts,
and send me out to California, or somewhere, to a ranch, to expiate all
my sins; and when I come back in three years or so, as a reward, if you
are not the Duchess of So-and-so, we may, if we please, marry.”
“Who may marry?” said Marion astonished.
“The only people whom I know who really suit each other,” said Eddy
calmly. “You and I.”
“You and--me,” cried Marion in great wrath. “You are just very impudent
to say so. Me marry you!--without ever being asked--without a word! In
three years or so! I just tell you I will do nothing of the kind.”
“That is exactly what I said. I said, if you think Marion will wait
three years for me! She will take the first Duke that offers, and she
will be one of the ornaments of Queen Victoria’s court long before I
come home.”
“I was not saying exactly that,” said Marion. “Where am I to get the
Duke? There are none but old bald-headed men.”
“An Earl then,” said Eddy. “There are always lively young Earls or
Viscounts in hand, more to be counted on than plain Eddy Saumarez, who
is nobody. That’s what I said to your father, Miss May. Why should you
wait for me? I told him I saw no reason.”
“Especially when I was never asked,” Marion said.
“Yes,” said Eddy. “You see how good I am at bottom, after all that has
happened. I said I would play you a nasty trick if I could find one, but
I haven’t. You should be grateful to me. I haven’t asked you--so far as
words go.”
“I don’t know,” said Marion with a little quiver in her lip, “how a
person can be asked except in words.”
“Don’t you?” he said, and then they gave each other a look, and burst
into mutual laughter, of the emotional kind.
They were walking down the slope of the bank towards the Clyde, under
trees now bare with the surly winds of winter. It was a dull November
afternoon, and everything was done in tints of grey; the skies in long
bands, here darker, there lighter, as the vapours were more or less
heavy, the opposite shore a tinge more solid than the long weltering
line of the water which had the ghost of a reflection in it, the points
standing out like black specks upon the grey, the wreaths of smoke
half-suspended in the still air over the town of Clydeside, putting in
an intermediate tone between the two. The edge of the great stream grew
a little lighter as it crept to their feet over the shallows, and broke
on the beach with a faint white line of foam.
“I will always maintain,” said Eddy, “that there never were two people
so fit to go together as you and I. We haven’t any wild admiration of
each other; we know each other’s deficiencies exactly; we don’t go in
for perfection, do we? But we suit, my little May, we suit down to the
ground. You would know what you had to expect in me, and I could keep
you in order.”
“You are just very impudent,” she said. “I never gave you any
encouragement, Mr. Saumarez, to think that I was willing to be--to do--I
mean anything of that kind.”
“Ah, Marion,” he said, “you may be as stern as you like, but I know I
would suit you better than that duke. You would get dreadfully tired of
being called your grace, and having him, a stupid fellow, always stuck
there opposite to you; but you would not get tired of me.”
“How do you know that? I am often just very tired of you,” said Marion.
“You think too much of yourself. We would not agree, not for two days
without a fight.”
“That is just what I say. There would be no _gêne_ between us, we know
each other so well. Don’t you think, after all, you would perhaps wait
for me, Marion, supposing the duke did not come? I never could pretend
to stand against him. Say you will, and I’ll do what your father says,
and go ranching: though most likely I shall break my neck the first
year, and then you will be free of your promise, May.”
“Why should you go ranching, as you call it, and what does it mean?”
“That’s what I don’t know. It means riding about after cows, but why I
can’t tell you. I know nothing in the world about cows. I scarcely know
one when I see it, but your father thinks it’s the right thing. I’ll go
if you’ll wait for me, May.”
“And what would you do, Eddy,” she said, stealing a little closer to
him, “if you didn’t go?”
“That’s more than I can tell you. But I’ll tell you what I’d do, May, if
old aunt Sarah would only die. I’d settle with the governor about
Gilston, and we’d furbish it up and live there. In the spring we’d have
a little turn in town, and in winter we’d hunt, and have the house full.
We should be as jolly as the day’s long, and nobody to interfere with
us. And I promise you, you’d go out of the room before Mrs. James
Rowland, though he is the great railway man. I could do that for you,
Marion, though I couldn’t make you Her Grace, you know.”
“Oh, be quiet, Eddy! and if your aunt Sarah doesn’t die?”
“Ah, there you pose me, May. I must either go back where the bad boys
go, to town, and sink or swim as I can, and farewell to my pretty
Marion; or else I must go and ranch, or whatever you call it, as your
father says.”
“It is strange,” said Marion very seriously, “that old people should
make such a point of going on living, when there are young ones that
want their money so very much--and when they know they have had their
day.”
“One may say it is inconsiderate,” said Eddy with a twinkle in his eye,
“but then the thing is, why should she take all that trouble for us? I
am sure we would take none for her: and here we are just back again,
Marion, where the four roads meet--Gilston or California, the ranch or
the--devil: that’s about what it is.”
“You had, perhaps, better go to the ranch, Eddy.”
“And you’ll wait for me, May!”
“Perhaps,” said the girl, with tears which were honest enough, in her
eyes. “If I don’t see somebody I like better,” she added with a laugh.
“Most likely,” said Eddy philosophically, “I shall break my neck the
first year--and then you need not hold to your promise. But don’t marry
any one under the rank of a marquis, for my credit, if you love me,
May.”
“Oh, we’ll see about that,” Marion said.
It was after she had come in from this conversation, and had thought it
all over in her own room, and made several calculations, that Marion
walked very sedately downstairs, and knocked at her father’s door. She
was slightly disconcerted when she saw that Mrs. Rowland was with him,
but, having quite distinctly made up her mind what she was going to do,
her confusion was slight and soon passed away. She did not sit down, but
stood by the writing table at which he was seated, leaning her hand upon
it, which was a token that she meant business, and did not intend to
waste words.
“Can I speak a word to you, papa?”
“As many as you please,” said Rowland. “Sit down, May; but if you are
coming to ask explanations----”
“Explanations?” she said with some surprise. “Oh, you will perhaps be
meaning about Archie? There is no occasion. I was always very clear
about that; and it was me that gave mamma the first hint, as she will
perhaps mind. I was coming to speak to you, papa, about what may perhaps
be my own affairs.”
“Shall I go away, Marion, and leave you alone with your father?”
“Oh, no, there is no need. You will be better here: for sometimes there
are times when a woman has more sense--I will not beat about the bush.
Why is it, papa, that Mr. Saumarez has to go away?”
“Oh, he has been telling you, has he? And do you mean to wait for him,
Marion?” said her father.
“That is a different question,” said Marion, with a toss of her head,
which was perhaps intended to toss away a little heat that had come to
her cheeks. “I would like to know, in the first place just as his
friend, papa, what end is going to be served by sending him away?”
“And what would your wisdom suggest instead?” said Mr. Rowland. “The end
to be served is to take him away from ill friends and connections, and
make him work--which is the best thing I know----”
“Work!” said Marion with a certain contempt; “and how would Eddy work
that does not know the way? Work is maybe very grand, and I am not sure
but I could do it myself if there was any need. And Archie might maybe
do it. And perhaps it would do _him_ good. But not Eddy; I’ve read in
books about that: if the half of the men out there work, the other half
just go all wrong. Boys are not all alike,” said Marion, with a little
wave of her hand, as if delivering a lecture on the subject; “the boys
at the Burn have that in them that they can just never be quiet--they’re
on the hill or out in the boat, or wrestling and throwing things at
each other, if there’s nothing else to do. But Eddy is not of that kind.
He would no more work out there than he would work here. He will go if
you make him, though I can not tell why he should do what you say. But
he will go just helpless, with no use of his hands, and he will fall
into the first net that’s spread for him. Oh, he’s clever enough!” cried
the girl, some angry moisture springing to her eyes; “he will see it is
a net: but he will go into it all the same: for what is he to do? He has
just about as much work in him as Roy and Dhu.”
“Then he’d better disappear off the face of the earth!” cried Rowland
angrily, “with other cumberers of the soil. A man like that has no right
to live.”
“His Maker would maybe know that best,” retorted Marion undismayed; “and
me, I’m willing to take him as he is. But I will not be a consenting
party,” the girl cried raising her voice, “to sending any person away to
his ruin. You think one way is just good for everybody all the same, as
if we were not made dark and fair, and big and little, to show the
difference! And I will not say I will wait for him, papa,” Marion added
more calmly, after a pause for breath. “For I might miss a very good
match in the time, and never get such a chance again; and he might never
come back, as I think most likely, and I would have nobody at all. So I
will not promise, for it would be bad for us both,--both him and me.”
“You little calculating cutty,” cried her father; “is this what you call
being in love with a man?”
“I never said a word on that subject,” said Marion. “I said I was
willing to take him as he is. And I suppose,” she said, coming down
suddenly from her oratorical platform to the calm tone of ordinary
affairs, “I suppose you will be meaning to give me some kind of a
fortune, more or less, when I’m married and go away.”
“I suppose so--to get rid of you,” said her father with a laugh.
“That was just what I meant,” said Marion seriously; “then what would
ail you, papa, to settle about Gilston, and just let him take up the way
of nature there? He could do what was wanted there.”
Rowland sprang from his seat in wrath and high indignation. “Preserve
the game and shoot it in the season, and play your idiotic games all the
summer----”
(“No, papa,” said Marion demurely, “we would be May and June in town.”)
“And hunt in the winter, and play the fool all the year round--on my
money, that I’ve worked hard for, every penny! I will see him--and
you--far enough first!”
“Papa,” said Marion, “I have been talking to Rosamond upon that subject,
and she thinks that men like you are under a great delusion. For she
says you are not an old man now, but just in your prime, and you’re
neither worn out nor a bit the worse. And she says she knows men that
have worked far far harder and actually have worn themselves out, and
never made any money at all. So that it’s not hard work, as you suppose,
but just that you’re awfully clever, and have had tremendous luck. Oh,
you can ask Rosamond what she means. It is not me; but that’s my opinion
too.”
To imagine a man more bewildered than Rowland, thus assailed in his very
stronghold by two “brats of girls,” as he himself said, who could know
nothing about the matter: yet subtly flattered all the same by the
statement that he was still in his prime and awfully clever, things
which no man, especially when he is _sur le retour_, objects to
hear--would have been impossible. He glared upon his little daughter,
standing dauntless, purling forth her iconoclastic remarks, and then he
gave a short laugh, or snort of angry contempt, and smote her lightly
(yet enough to make her shake from head to foot) on the shoulder, and
bade her stick to her own plea and her lad’s, and let other people speak
for themselves.
“Well,” said Marion, “I will just call her in, for she is in the hall,
and she will tell you herself: for I have said my say; and I hope you
will think it over, and come to a better judgment, papa.”
All this time Evelyn had been sitting silent by, supporting her head on
her hand. But, truth to tell, it was not the self-denial of a supporter
leaving her principal to fight for himself, but simple incompetence
which silenced Evelyn. With her head bent down, she had been doing her
best to master and conceal the laughter which was almost too much for
her. Mrs. Rowland was for once on Marion’s side; and the composure of
the little girl’s attack, and its radical character, startled the elder
woman. When Rowland sat down again by her side, with that snort of
dissipating and modified fury, she put her hand upon his arm, and raised
her face to him for a moment. And the good man was more bewildered than
ever to see the fun that was dancing in his wife’s eyes.
“James!” said Evelyn, her laugh bursting forth in spite of her; “she had
you there.”
“The little witch!” cried the bewildered man. He began to laugh too,
though he could scarcely have told why. And then Rowland raised his head
to find quite a different figure standing in front of him in the same
position which Marion had occupied a moment before, but half as tall
again as Marion, with head held high, and a slim, long hand leant upon
his table. She stood like Portia about to make her speech, a simile
which, it need not be said, did not occur to Rowland, but to Evelyn by
his side.
“You called me, Mr. Rowland,” Rosamond said.
“You are to tell him,” said Marion’s voice behind, “what you said about
work, Rosamond: for I’m only his own daughter, and he will not listen to
it from me.”
“You little cutty!” Rowland said again, under his breath.
“What did I say about work? it is the thing I wish for most,” said
Rosamond. “As soon as ever I am of age I am going in for it. My father
and people won’t let me now. I do not think they have any right to
interfere, but they do. Mabel Leighton, who is my dearest friend, is
going in for medicine; but I have no distinct turn, I am sorry to say.
But we think that something is certain to turn up.”
“So you are wanting to work, are you, Miss Rosamond? If it had been your
brother, it would have been more to the purpose: for women’s work is
but poorly paid. I never heard yet of one that made a fortune by her own
exertions,” Rowland said.
“A fortune?” said Rosamond. “No, we never thought of that. We thought we
could live on very little, two girls together. And Mabel has something
of her own, and we hoped that grandmamma, as she is all for work, might
make me a small allowance if she saw that I was in earnest. Lodgings are
not dear, if you don’t insist upon a fashionable quarter, and as we
shouldn’t care for meat, or anything expensive in the way of living----”
“Eh?” said Rowland surprised. “And do you think, my dear, you could make
money by saving off your meat?”
“Money! oh, we never thought of money, so long as we could get on, and
work.”
“And what would you work for, if I may inquire, if you had no thought of
money?” Rowland asked, almost dumb in face of this enigma, which was
beyond all his powers.
“I have said,” she exclaimed with a little impatience, “that
unfortunately I have no distinct vocation. Mabel is medical, luckily for
her. She has no difficulty. But there is always as much work as one can
set one’s face to in the East End.”
“But for what, for what? Give me an answer.”
“I allow,” said Rosamond, faltering slightly, “that it is a difficult
question. To be of a little use, we hope: though people say that the
results are not always so satisfactory as---- But at all events,” she
added, more cheerfully, “it is WORK. And that must always be the best
thing, whatever one may do.”
Rowland sat listening to all this, aghast. The lines of his ruddy
countenance grew limp, his lips fell a little apart. “I thought I was a
great one for work,” he said. But the words fell in a sort of apologetic
manner from his lips, and he did not add anything about a change of
opinion, which might have been supposed to be implied.
“Ah!” said Rosamond, “I know! in a different way: which chiefly means, I
believe, getting other people to work for you, and directing them, and
planning everything, and making money--like you, Mr. Rowland! who, in a
few years, without hurting yourself in the least, have got so much money
that you don’t know what to do with it. One sees that in the world. I
have heard of men--not like you, who are a great engineer and a genius,
everybody says--but mere nobodies, with shops and things, people one
would not like to touch--” Rosamond made a slight gesture of disgust, as
if she had drawn the folds of her dress away from contact with some
millionaire. “But that is not WORK,” said the girl, throwing back her
head. “I know people in society--well, perhaps not quite in society--who
have gone on working for a whole lifetime, gentlemen, yes, and women
too, working from morning to night, and even have been successful, yet
have never made money. So it is clear that work is not the thing to make
a fortune by. But I am of opinion that it is the first thing in the
world.”
Rowland once more blew forth with a snort from his nostrils the angry
breath. He felt sure there were arguments somewhere with which he could
confound this silly girl, and show her that to work was to rise in the
world, and make a fortune, and surround yourself with luxury, with the
certainty of a mathematical axiom. But he could not find them; and he
found himself instead saying in his mind, “If you have ordinary luck, if
you don’t play the fool,” and so forth, evidently adding the conditional
case from his own point of view. And the result was that he contented
himself with that snort and a strong expression of his opinion that
girls should marry, and look after their men’s houses, and not trouble
their heads about what was never intended for them.
He broke up the discussion after this, and led his wife forth by the
arm, taking her off to look at the view--Clyde coming in softly on the
beach, and all the world clad in those sober coats of grey. And standing
there an hour after, when the talk might have been supposed to have
evaporated, and the day was dying off into evening, he cried suddenly,
“Where would I have been without work? Not here with my lady-wife upon
the terrace at Rosmore!”
Evelyn did not say, what perhaps rose to her mind, “You might have been,
with a great deal harder work, a respectable foreman in the foundry, as
good a man, and as admirable an example of what labour and honest zeal
can do.” She did not say it, but her historian does for her. Mrs.
Rowland only pressed her husband’s arm, and said, “The young ones,
perhaps, are not without reason too.”
At all events, Mr. Rowland said no more of the ranch for Eddy, and in
due time, when the young pair were old enough, they married, and settled
at Gilston, which was relieved and rescued by Marion’s money, and
restored to its dignity as one of the finest places in the county,
where, if they did not perhaps live happy ever after, they were at least
a great deal better off than they deserved, and fulfilled all their own
prophecies, and suited each other--down to the ground, as Eddy said. Old
Aunt Sarah died in the course of time, and completed their prosperity.
And there was not a livelier house in England, nor a couple who enjoyed
their life more.
As for Archie, his complete development into a man, on a different level
from his father, with other aims, and an ambition which grew slowly with
his powers, cannot be here entered into. It would exceed the limits
permitted in these pages, and might touch upon graver problems than are
open to the historian of domestic life.
Rosamond has not yet married any more than he, and has had full
opportunities of testing the power of work and its results. Mabel
Leighton, of course, was soon drawn off from that eccentric career, and
is now a mother of children, much like what her own mother was before
her. But the further history of those two, if it is ever written, will
demand a new beginning and an extended page.
THE END.
PRINTED BY F. A. BROCKHAUS, LEIPZIG.