Mrs. Murray listened to all this with grave patience and forbearance. She smiled faintly at her daughter’s petulance, and shook her head. “Bairns,” she said, gently, “I guided my own concerns before you were born.” It was the only reproof she attempted to administer, and it was followed by a pause, during which the sound of knives and forks was very audible, each individual of the party plying his as for a wager, in the sudden stillness which each affronted person thought it doubly incumbent on him and her to keep up. Mrs. Murray looked round upon them all with a smile, which gradually softened into suppressed but genial humour. “I hope you are all making a good dinner,” she said.
The afternoon after this passed as a Sunday afternoon often passes in a family gathering. They all stood a little on their defence, but, with a keen appreciation of the fact, that the mother, whom they all intended to advise and lecture, had certainly got the upper hand, and had been on the verge of laughing at them, if she had not actually done so, were prudent, and committed themselves no further. They all went out after dinner to see the site where the new farm-house was to be built, and to speculate on the way in which young Glen would manage the farm, and whether he would succeed better than its previous occupant. The women of the party visited “the beasts,” as the men had done before dinner, and the men strolled out to the fields, and weighed in their hands the damp ears of corn, and shook their heads over the length of the straw, and pointed out to each other how badly the fields were arranged, and how the crops had been repeated year after year. “It’s time it was all in other hands,” they said to each other. As for Dr. Charles, he avoided the other members of the party—the uncles who might ask for the money they had lent him, and the aunts who might inquire with an undue closeness of criticism into his proceedings and those of his sister. He sat and talked with his grandmother in the parlour, answering her questions, and making conversation with her in a way which was somewhat formal. In short, it was very like a Sunday afternoon—and the sense of being in their best clothes, and having nothing to do, and being, as it were, bound over to keep the peace, was very wearisome to all these good people. The little excitement of pulling to pieces, so to speak, the house which had sheltered and reared them, was over, and thus a certain flat of disappointment and everyday monotony mingled with the sense of something unusual which was in their meeting. Their purpose was foiled altogether, and the business manqué, yet they could not but profess pleasure in the unexpected turn that things had taken. It was very like a Sunday afternoon.
And it is impossible to tell what a relief it was to all, when the big fishing-boat came heavily round the corner with the picnic party, and Jeanie, in her plain brown frock, ran down to the landing to bid her cousins come into tea. There were some six or seven in the boat, slightly damp and limp, but in high spirits; three of whom were girls, much more gaily dressed than Jeanie, yet with a certain general resemblance to her. They all rushed fluttering in their gay ribbons up to the farm-house, glad of the novelty, and threw themselves upon “Granny,” whom they admired without the criticism in which their mother indulged less than her brothers and sisters. They did not take much notice of Jeanie, but Dr. Charles was full of interest for them, and the unknown Edgar, who was still more emphatically “a gentleman,” excited their intensest curiosity. “Where is he? which is him?” they whispered to each other; and when Bell, the youngest, exclaimed with disappointment, that he was just like Charlie Murray, and nothing particular after all, her two elder sisters snubbed her at once. “If you cannot see the difference you should hold your tongue,” said Jeanie MacKell, who called herself Jane, and had been to a school in England, crowning glory of a Scotch girl on her promotion. “Not but what Charles is very nice-looking, and quite a gentleman,” said Margaret, more meekly, who was the second daughter. The presence of these girls, and of the young men in attendance upon them, to wit Andrew, their brother, and two friends of his own class, young men for whom natural good looks did not do so much as for the young women, and who were, perhaps, better educated, without being half so presentable—made the tea-table much merrier and less embarrassed than the dinner had been. The MacKells ended by being all enthralled by Edgar, whose better manners told upon them, (as a higher tone always tells upon women,) whose superiority to their former attendants was clear as daylight, and who was not stiff and afraid to commit himself like Charles Murray; “quite a gentleman,” though they all held the latter to be. As for Edgar himself, he was so heartily thankful for the relief afforded by this in-road of fresh guests, that he was willing to think the very best of his cousins, and to give them credit—that is the female part of them—for being the best of the family he had yet seen. He walked with them to their boat, and put them in, when sunset warned them to cross the loch without delay, and laughingly excused himself from accepting their eager invitations, only on the ground that “business” demanded his departure on the next day. Mrs. MacKell took him aside before she embarked, and shook his hand with tears gathering in her eyes.
“I could not say anything before them all,” she said, with an emotion which was partly real; “but I’ll never forget what you’ve done for my mother—and oh, what a comfort it is to me to think I leave her in her ain old house! God bless you for it!”
“Good-bye,” said Edgar, cheerily, and he stood on the banks and watched the boat with a smile. True feeling enough, perhaps, and yet how oddly mingled! He laughed to himself as he went back to the house with an uneasy, mingling of pain and shame.
CHAPTER VII.
Gentility.
Charles Murray did not return to the Campbells’ house for the night as he had originally intended. The relatives were all out of sorts with each other, and inclined to quarrel among themselves in consequence of the universal discomfiture which had come upon them, not from each others’ hands, but from the stranger in their midst. And as it was quite possible that Campbell, being sore and irritable, might avenge himself by certain inquiries into Dr. Charles’s affairs, the young man thought it wiser on the whole to keep out of his way. And the grandmother’s house was common property. Although only a few hours before they had all made up their minds that it was to be no longer hers, and that she thenceforward was to be their dependent, the moment that she became again certain of being mistress in her own house, that very moment all her family returned to their ancient conviction that they had a right to its shelter and succour under all and every kind of circumstances.
James Murray went away arranging in his own mind that he would send his youngest daughter “across” before the winter came on, “to get her strength up.” “One bairn makes little difference in the way of meals, and she can bring some tea and sugar in a present,” he said to himself; while Dr. Charles evidenced still more instantaneously the family opinion by saying at once that he should stay where he was till to-morrow.
“It seems much more natural to be here than in any other house,” he said caressingly to his grandmother.
She smiled, but she made no reply. Even, she liked it, for the position of a superior dispensing favours had been natural to her all her life, and the power to retain this position was not one of the least advantages that Edgar’s liberality gave her. But even while she liked it, she saw through the much less noble sentiment of her descendants, and a passing pang mingled with her pleasure. She said nothing to Dr. Charles; but when Edgar gave her his arm for the brief evening walk which she took before going to rest, she made to him a curious apology for the rest. Charles was standing on the loch-side looking out, half-jealous that it was Edgar who naturally took charge of the old mother, and half glad to escape out of Edgar’s way.