EARLSHOPE.
How fair, and fresh, and green looked the grounds of Earlshope on the
next day, when Mr. Cassilis and Coquette drew near. The warm sun had
come out again, and the air was sweet with the scent of the wet
trees. Masses of white cloud still came up from the south, sweeping
over the dark, clear blue of the sky; and the peaks of Arran, set far
amid the sea, were pale and faint in a haze of silver light.
Coquette was merry-hearted. The sunshine seemed to please her as it
pleased the butterflies and the bees that were again abroad. As she
went down the moorland path, she laughed and chatted with the
Minister, and was constantly, out of pure lightness of spirit,
breaking into exclamations in her native tongue--on which she would
suddenly recall herself with a pout of impatience and resume her odd
and quaint English talk.
The Whaup had been ill-tempered on setting forth; but the sunlight
and the bright life around him thawed his sulkiness, and he became
merely mischievous. His brothers perceived his mood, and kept out of
his way. He was in the humour for rough practical jokes; and no one
of them wished to be tripped up and sent into the red-coloured "burn"
that still ran down between the moor and the road to the little
stream in the hollow.
When they had passed the keeper's lodge, and gone under a winding
avenue of trees, they came in sight of the big stone building and the
bright green lawn in front of it. They also saw their host seated
beside a stone lion, smoking a cigar, and watching the operations of
a lad who, mounted on the pedestal of a statue of Venus, was busily
engaged in giving that modest but scantily clad young woman a coating
of white paint.
"Did you ever see anything so curious?" he said, when he had bade
them welcome. "Look at the rude indifference with which he comes
over her nose, and gives her a slap on the cheek, and tickles her
neck with his brush! I have been wondering what she would do if she
were to come alive--whether she would scream and run away, or rise up
in indignant silence, or give him a sound box on the ears."
"If she were to come alive," said Coquette, "he would be made blind
with fear, and she would fly up into the heavens."
"_Et procul in tenuem ex oculis evanuit auram_," said the Minister,
graciously, with a smile. He had not aired so much Latin for years.
They had a walk round the grounds, skirting the not very extensive
park, before they turned into the garden. Here everything was heavy
with perfume in the sweet, warm air. They went into the hothouses
and vineries; and Lord Earlshope found a bunch of muscatel grapes
ripe enough to be cut for Coquette. No sooner had she placed one
between her lips than she cried out--
"Oh, how like to the vine! I have not tasted----"
She looked at the Minister, and hastily stopped her speech.
"You have not tasted muscatel grapes in this country," said Lord
Earlshope, coming to her relief; and he looked at her with a peculiar
smile, as much as to say "I know you meant wine."
The boys preferring to remain in the garden (the Whaup walked off by
himself into the park, under pretence of seeking a peculiar species
of _Potentilla_, Lord Earlshope led his two principal guests back to
the house, and proceeded to show them its curiosities in the way of
pictures, old armour, old furniture, and the like. Coquette got so
familiarised to his voice and look that she forgot he was but a
distant acquaintance. She did not know that she stared at him while
he was talking, or that she spoke to him with a pleasant carelessness
which was oddly out of keeping with the Minister's grave and formal
courtesy. She was not even aware that she was taking note of his
appearance; and that, after they had left, she would be able to
recall every lineament in his face as well as every tone of his voice.
Lord Earlshope was a fair-haired, gentlemanly-looking young man of
some twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age. He was rather over the
middle height, slimly built, and inclined to lounge carelessly. The
expression of his eyes, which were large, grey, and clear, varied
singularly--at one time being full of a critical and somewhat cold
scrutiny, and at other times pensive and distant. He said he had no
politics and no prejudices--unless a very definite belief in "blood"
could be considered a prejudice.
"It is no superstition with me," he said, with apparent carelessness,
to the Minister, as the latter was examining a strange old family
tree hung up in the library. "I merely think it imprudent for a man
of good family to marry out of his own class. I have seen the
experiment made by some of my own acquaintances; and, as a rule, the
result has been disastrous.... Disastrous, yes," he went on slowly,
with a curious look coming over his face. "Yes, indeed, a
disaster----"
But at this moment Coquette came back from the bookshelves, with a
large thin quarto in her hands.
"Look what I have found," she said. "A volume of old chants."
"It is treasure-trove," said Lord Earlshope, with his face lightening
at her approach. "I had no idea there was such a book in the place.
Shall we go and try some of them? You know you promised to give me
your opinion of the organ I have had fitted up."
"I did not promise it, but I will do it," said Coquette.
He led the way down-stairs to the drawing-room, which they had not
yet visited. The tall chamber-organ, a handsome and richly decorated
instrument, stood in a recess, and therefore did not seem so cumbrous
as it might otherwise have done.
"The defect of the organ," said Lord Earlshope, as he placed the
music for her, "is that the operation of blowing the bellows is
performed in sight of the public. You see, I must fix in this
handle, and work it while you are playing."
"You must get a screen," she said, "and put a servant there."
"While you are playing," he said, "I could not let anybody else
assist you even in so rude a fashion."
Coquette laughed and sat down. Presently, the solemn tones of the
organ were pealing out a rich and beautiful chant--full of the quaint
and impressive harmonies which the monks of old pondered over and
elaborated. If Mr. Cassilis was troubled by a suspicion that this
noble music was of distinctly Roman Catholic or idolatrous origin,
that doubt became a certainty when, at the end of the chant, there
came a long and wailing "Amen!" rolled out by the organ's deep voice.
"You play excellently--you must be familiar with organ playing," said
Lord Earlshope. "It is not every one who knows the piano who can
perform on an organ."
"At home the old _curé_ used to let me play in the church," she
said--with her eyes grown suddenly distant and sad. She had
remembered that her home no longer lay away down there in the south,
where life seemed so pleasant.
"Come," said Lord Earlshope, "I hear Sandy about to ring the bell for
luncheon. Shall we go into the room at once, or wait for the boys?"?
"They will have their luncheon off your fruit trees, I am afraid,"
said Mr. Cassilis.
Nevertheless, the boys were sent for, and arrived, looking rather
afraid. The Whaup was not with them; no one knew whither he had gone.
Lord Earlshope's household was far from being an extensive one; and
Mr. Cassilis' boys found themselves waited on by two maid-servants
who were well known to them as having been made the subject of many
tricks; while Sandy, his lordship's valet, butler, courier, and
general factotum--a tall and redheaded Scotchman, who, by reason of
his foreign travels, had acquired a profound contempt for everything
in his own country--approach Miss Cassilis with a lofty air, and,
standing behind her at some little distance from the table, extended
a bottle of Chablis so as to reach her glass.
"Miss Cassilis," said Lord Earlshope, "what wine will remind you most
of the Loire?"?
It had been her own thought, and she looked up with a quick and
grateful smile.
"My father left me a fair assortment of Bordeaux wines----" he said.
"But no _vin ordinaire_?" she interposed, with another bright glance.
"I must go myself to get you that," he answered, laughing, "Sandy
does not know how to manufacture it."
Before she could protest he had left the room, and in a few minutes
he had returned with a bottle in his hand, and with the air of a
conjuror on his face. He himself filled her glass, and Coquette
drank a little of it.
"Ah!" she cried, clasping her hands, "I think I can hear old Nannette
talking outside, and the river running underneath us; it is like
being at home--as if I were at home again!"
She fondled the glass as if it were a magical talisman that had
transported her over the sea, and would have to bring her back.
"I must taste some of that wizard wine," said the Minister, with a
humorous smile--and the boys stared with wonder to hear their father
talking about drinking wine.
"Pray don't, Mr. Cassilis," said their host, with a laugh. "It is
merely some new and rough claret to which I added a little water--the
nearest approximation to _vin ordinaire_ I could think of. Since
your niece is so pleased with the Earlshope vintage, I think I must
ask you to let me send her a supply to the Manse. It is quite
impossible you can get it elsewhere, as I keep the recipe in my own
hands."
"And this is French bread!" said Coquette, startled out of her good
manners by perceiving before her a long, narrow, brown loaf.
"Have I been so fortunate as to create another surprise?" said Lord
Earlshope. "I telegraphed for that bread to Glasgow, if I must tell
you all my housekeeping secrets."
It soon became clear that the indolent young man, having nothing
better to do, had laid his plans to get a thoroughly French repast
prepared for Coquette. Every little dish that was offered her--the
red mullet, the bit of fowl, the dry boiled beef and thick sauce, the
plate of salad--was another wonder and another reminiscence of the
south. Why, it was only a few days since she had arrived in
Scotland, and yet it seemed ages since she had sat down to such
another pretty French breakfast as this practically was. She sipped
her _vin ordinaire_, and toyed with the various dishes that were
offered her--accepting all, and taking a little bit of each for the
very pleasure of "thinking back"--with such evident delight that even
Mr. Cassilis smiled benignantly. The boys at the Manse--like other
boys in Scotland--had been taught that it was extremely ignominious
to experience or exhibit any enjoyment in the vulgar delights of
eating and drinking; but surely in the pleased surprise with which
Coquette regarded the French table around her, there was little of
the sensuous satisfaction of the gourmand.
She was altogether delighted with this visit to Earlshope. As they
went back to the Manse, she was in the most cheerful of moods, and
fairly fascinated the grave Minister with her quaint, broken talk.
She never ceased to speak of the place--of its grounds, its gardens,
its books, and what not--even to the brightness of the atmosphere
around it; until Mr. Cassilis asked her if she thought the sky was
blue only over Earlshope.
"But I hope he will not send the wine--it was a--what you call
it?--joke, was it not?" she said.
"A joke, of course," said Mr. Cassilis. "We are very proud in this
country, and do not take presents from rich people."
"But I am not of your country," she said, with a laugh. "If he sends
his stupid _vin ordinaire_, he sends it to me; and I will not drink
it--you shall drink it all. Did he say he is coming over to see you
soon?"?
"Well, no," replied the Minister; "but since the ice is broken,
nothing is more likely."
The phrase about the ice puzzled Coquette much: when it had been
explained to her, they had already reached the Manse. But where was
the Whaup? Nobody had seen him.