EARLSHOPE IS INVADED.
Meanwhile the carriage had been driven to the gates of Earlshope.
The lodgekeeper came out, and naturally opened the gates, although
sufficiently surprised to see anybody arrive at such a time. When,
at last, the landau arrived at the house, the occupants alighted.
The housekeeper was already standing there, in front of the open
door, glaring defiance.
The first of the two women walked up the stone steps in a slow and
pompous fashion, and, with an air of mock-heroic gravity, produced a
card, on which was printed Mrs. Smith Arnold.
"'Deed no!" said the housekeeper, rather incoherently.
Mrs. Arnold looked at her companion, and shrugged her shoulders.
"My good woman, I suppose you can't read. That is not a begging
letter. It is a card. I have the permission of Lord Earlshope to
look over the house: I don't mean to steal anything, but you may come
with us wherever we go, if you please."
The housekeeper began to wax warm.
"Canna read! I can read weel aneugh; and what I say is, that not one
step into this house will ye gang the day, his lordship's permission
or no permission."
"What do you mean, woman?" said Mrs. Arnold, with an assumption of
haughtiness.
"I mean what I say," said the Scotchwoman, doggedly. "And I havena
been kept frae the kirk a' for nothing, as ye'll find out, gin ye
attempt ony o' your fine airs wi' me."
These latter words were spoken rather hotly; and both the women who
stood before her looked surprised. However, the so-called Mrs.
Arnold picked up some temper, and merely exclaiming--"Oh, the
creature's mad!" brushed past into the house, along with her
companion. Lord Earlshope's plenipotentiary was at once stupefied
and powerless. In order to avoid a public scandal on the Sabbath
morning, she had sent the other servants to church, confident that
her own authority would be sufficient to repulse any casual visitor.
Now she found the house invaded by two strange women, and she was
placed in an awkward dilemma. If she went through the house with
them, she would condone their offence, and be unable to eject them;
if she went for help to the lodge, they, in the meantime, might
pillage and plunder in every direction. Eventually, after a moment
of incensed hesitation, she followed them.
And gradually she perceived that they were not thieves. Indeed, Mrs.
Smith Arnold betrayed a singular acquaintance with many objects in
the house, particularly in a small drawing-room or morning-room which
Lord Earlshope was scarcely ever known to enter.
"But where is my portrait?" she said.
"_Your_ portrait!" repeated the housekeeper, with all her indignation
welling up again.
"Woman, you are an ass--a microcephalous idiot in fact; but you don't
know it, and it is no matter. He might have brought my portrait
here; it is a dull hole, and it might have cheered him. And this is
the place he used to talk about with something like rapture! Good
heavens! it is dismal as a church. Look at the deserted country and
the bare shore and the black sea. What's the name of those mountains
over there?"
"Ye had better ask them," said the housekeeper, "since ye can make
free enough to come into a strange house, and talk as if everything
belonged to ye!"
"And so it does--so it does; that is the joke of it. You would
understand it if you were not such an ass, my good woman; but I am
afraid you are a very stupid person."
"Are ye going to leave this house?" said the housekeeper, in a blaze
of anger.
But the temper of the housekeeper was nothing to the sudden passion
that shot into the black eyes of this woman, as she said--
"Don't talk to me! I tell you, don't talk to me, or I will dash a
bottle of vitriol in your face, and blind you, blind you, blind you!"
Then she burst into an ironical laugh.
"What a fool you are--an ass--an idiot! You haven't got the brains
of a slow-worm. My good woman, believe me, you are an ass!"
She began to turn over the things on the table--books, photographs,
cards, and what not. The housekeeper started and listened. There
was a sound of footsteps on the stair. In a minute or two, the
Pensioner made his appearance at the door, tall and erect.
At the sight of this ally, all the housekeeper's courage and anger
returned. She denounced the strangers as thieves and pick-pockets.
She appealed to the Pensioner to help her. She conjured him to turn
them out of the house.
"Sat is what I will do," observed Neil, advancing calmly, with the
sort of deferential and yet firm air of the private soldier.
"Please, mem, will ye go, or will I pit ye out o' sa house?"
"Lay a finger on me, and I will set fire to the place, and burn you
and it into cinders. Savages that you are--and idiots!"
"You will say what you please," observed Neil, who probably
considered these phrases as rather feeble when compared with some
that he knew in his native tongue; "but I mean to put ye both out o'
sa house. I will not strike you--Cootness knaws; but I will jist tek
ye up, one by one, and carry ye down sa stairs, and out into sa
gairden, and leave ye there. Will ye go, or will ye not go?"
"Do you know who I am, you idiot?" cried the woman, with her face
grown purple with passion.
Her companion laid her hand on her arm; she shook her off.
"I do not care," said the Pensioner.
"I am Lady Earlshope, you ignorant brutes and beasts!" she cried.
"And I will have every one of you starved until a crow would not pick
your eyes out, and I'll have you whipped, and starved, you ignorant
hounds!"
"Lady Earlshope!" said the housekeeper, rather falling back.
The quieter of the two women again interposed and endeavoured to
pacify her companion. She, indeed, seemed rather frightened.
Eventually, however, she managed to get her infuriated mistress
coaxed out of the room and down the stair; and as they were
descending they nearly stumbled over a third person--the lodgekeeper,
who, fancying that there was something amiss, had come along out of
curiosity.
"Who are you?" she asked. "Oh, I remember. I suppose you have been
listening. Well, you can go and tell your babbling neighbours of the
reception Lady Earlshope met with in her own house."
And that is precisely what the man did. He had overheard much of the
stormy scene in the drawing-room, and, being of a prudent
disposition, did not wish to have anything to do with it. When the
carriage drove off, he went quietly back to the lodge, leaving the
housekeeper and the Pensioner under the delusion that they alone knew
the relationship of this woman to Lord Earlshope. But the
lodgekeeper revealed the secret, in an awe-stricken way, to his wife;
who whispered it, in profound confidence, to one of the female
servants; who subsequently told it to her mother in the village.
There it ran the round, with such exaggerations and comments as may
be imagined; and if Coquette had been looked on rather askance from
the moment of her coming to Airlie, this news placed her under the
ban of a definite suspicion, and even horror. What were her
relations with the drunken and passionate woman who had accosted her,
in the open face of day, on that memorable Sabbath morning? What was
the meaning of her intimacy with Lord Earlshope, and the cause of his
visits to the Manse ever since she had come to live there?
Even the children caught the fever of distrust, and avoided Coquette.
That would have been a bitter thing for her to bear, had she noticed
it; but she was perhaps too much occupied then with her own sad
thoughts. Nor was the Minister aware that his own conduct in
harbouring this girl was forming the subject of serious remark in the
village. The excuses made for him were in themselves accusations.
He was withdrawn from worldly affairs. He was engrossed in his
books. He was liable to be imposed on. All this was said; but none
the less was it felt that the duty of looking sharply after the
conduct of his household and the persons around him was specially
incumbent on one whose business it was to see narrowly to the
interests of the Church, and set an example to his Christian brethren.