‘Charlie,’ said he, ‘I hope t’ou’ll let nae daffing nor ploys about this marriage o’ thine tak up thy attention frae the shop; for business maun be minded; and I’m thinking t’ou had as weel be making up a bit balance-sheet, that I may see how the counts stand between us.’
This touched an irksome recollection, and recalled to mind the observation which his father had made on the occasion of Fatherlans’ ruin, with respect to the hazards of taking into partnership a man with the prospect of a family.
‘I hope,’ was his reply, ‘that it is not your intention, sir, to close accounts with me?’
‘No, Charlie, no,’ was his answer.—‘I’ll maybe mak things better for thee—t’ou’ll no be out o’ the need o’t. But atween hands mak up the balance-sheet, and come doun on Saturday wi’ thy wife to Grippy, and we’ll hae some discourse anent it.’
With these words, the old man and Walter again went on towards the Cross, leaving Charles standing perplexed, and unable to divine the source and motives of his father’s behaviour. It seemed altogether so unaccountable, that for a moment he thought of going back to Mr. Keelevin to ask him concerning the settlements; but a sense of propriety restrained him, and he thought it alike indelicate and dishonourable to pry into an affair which was so evidently concealed from him. But this restraint, and these considerations, did not in any degree tend to allay the anxiety which the mysteriousness of his father’s conduct had so keenly excited; so that, when he returned home to Isabella, he appeared absent and thoughtful, which she attributed to some disappointment in his expectations,—an idea the more natural to her, as she had, from the visit on Sunday, been haunted with an apprehension that there was something unsound in the reconciliation.
Upon being questioned as to the cause of his altered spirits, Charles could give no feasible reason for the change. He described what had passed, he mentioned what his father had said, and he communicated the invitation, in all which there was nothing that the mind could lay hold of, nor aught to justify his strange and indescribable apprehension, if that feeling might be called an apprehension, to which his imagination could attach no danger, nor conjure up any thing to be feared. On the contrary, so far from having reason to suspect that evil was meditated against him, he had received a positive assurance that his circumstances would probably receive an immediate improvement; but for all that, there had been, in the reserve of the old man’s manner, and in the vagueness of his promises, a something which sounded hollowly to his hope, and deprived him of confidence in the anticipations he had cherished.
While Isabella and he were sitting together conversing on the subject, the old Leddy Plealands came in, anxious to hear what had been done, having previously been informed of the intended settlements, but not of their nature and objects. In her character, as we have already intimated, there was a considerable vein, if not of romantic sentiment, unquestionably of morbid sensibility. She disliked her son-in-law from the first moment in which she saw him; and this dislike had made her so averse to his company, that, although their connexion was now nearly of four-and-twenty years’ standing, she had still but a very imperfect notion of his character. She regarded him as one of the most sordid of men, without being aware that avarice with him was but an agent in the pursuit of that ancestral phantom which he worshipped as the chief, almost the only, good in life; and, therefore, could neither imagine any possible ground for supposing, that, after being reconciled, he could intend his first-born any injury, nor sympathize with the anxieties which her young friends freely confessed both felt, while she could not but deplore the unsatisfactory state of their immediate situation.
In the meantime, Walter and his father were walking homeward. The old man held no communion with his son; but now and then he rebuked him for halloing at birds in the hedges, or chasing butterflies, a sport so unbecoming his years.
In their way they had occasion to pass the end of the path which led to Kilmarkeckle, where Miss Bodle, the heiress, resided with her father.
‘Watty,’ said Grippy to his son, ‘gae thy ways hame by thysel, and tell thy mither that am gaun up to the Kilmarkeckle to hae some discourse wi’ Mr. Bodle, so that she need na weary if I dinna come hame to my dinner.’