“Well, Neil, if you ask me,” said Miss Eelen, “I would have taken the first word, and given ye my opinion if I had thought it would be of any use; but it’s just heaven’s truth; and farewell to the credit of Drumcarro when it’s kent there are two young women, marriageable and at an age to come forward, and not there. It is just the truth. It will be said—for that matter it is said already—that ye’re so poor or so mean that ye grudge the poor things a decent gown, and keep them out of every chance. I would not have said a word if you had not asked me, but that’s just what folk say.”
Drumcarro got up hastily from his chair and paced about the room, and he swore an oath or two below his breath that relieved his feelings. There was a great deal more in Miss Eelen’s eyes. The “auld slave-driver” knew that his name did not stand high among his peers, and his imagination was keen enough to supply the details of the gossip of which his cousin gave so pleasant a summary. “Ye may tell them then,” he said, “with many thanks to you for your candid opinion, that Drumcarro’s lassies, when he pleases, can just show with the best, and that I’ll thole no slight to my name, any more than I would were I chief of this whole country as my forbears were. And that’s what ye can tell your gossips, Eelen, the next time ye ask them to a dish of tea—no’ to say you’re a Douglas yourself and should have more regard for your own flesh and blood.”
“Bless me!” cried Miss Eelen, “the man’s just like a tempest, up in a moment. Na, Drumcarro, I always gave ye credit if but your pride was touched. And it’s just what I would have wished, for I was keen for a sight of the ploy mysel’ but too old to go for my own pleasure. You will just send them and their finery over to me in the gig, and I’ll see to all the rest. Bless me, to think of the feeling that comes out when ye least expect it. I was aye convinced that if once your pride was touched. And who knows what may come of it? There’s plenty of grand visitors at the Castle—a sight of them’s as good as a king’s court”
“I hope a man will come of it, to one or the other of them,” Drumcarro said.
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. Douglas himself went to the ball at the Castle. He was of opinion that when a thing is to be done, it is never so well done as when you do it in your own person, and like most other people of similar sentiments, he trusted nobody. Miss Eelen, as one of the race, was no doubt on the whole in the interests of the family, but Drumcarro felt that even she was not to be trusted with so delicate a matter as the securing of “a man” for Mary or Kirsteen. It was better that he should be on the spot himself to strike when the iron was hot, and let no opportunity slip. It is true that his costume was far from being in the latest fashion; but to this he was supremely indifferent, scarcely taking it into the most cursory consideration. If he went in sackcloth he would no less be a Douglas, the representative of the old line upon whose pedigree there was neither shadow nor break. He was very confident that he could not appear anywhere without an instant recognition of his claims. Those of the Duke himself were in no way superior: that potentate was richer, he had the luck to have always been on the winning side, and had secured titles and honours when the Douglases had attainder and confiscation—but Douglas was Douglas when the Duke’s first forbear was but a paidling lairdie with not a dozen men to his name. Such at least was the conviction of Drumcarro; and he marched to the Castle in his one pair of black silk stockings—with his narrow country notions strangely crossed by the traditions of the slave-driving period, with all his intense narrow personal ambitions and grudges, and not an idea beyond the aggrandisement of his family—in the full consciousness of equality (if not superiority) to the best there, the statesman Duke, the great landowners and personages who had come from far and near. Such a conviction sometimes gives great nobleness and dignity to the simple mind, but Drumcarro’s pride was not of this elevating kind. It made him shoulder his way to the front with rising rage against all the insignificant crowd that got before him, jostle as he might; it did not give him the consolatory assurance that where he was, there must be the most dignified place. It must be allowed, however, in defence of his attitude, that to feel yourself thrust aside into a crowd of nobodies when you know your place to be with the best, is trying. Some people succeed in bearing it with a smile, but the smile is seldom warm or of a genial character. And Drumcarro, at the bottom of the room, struggling to get forward, seeing the fine company at the other end, and invariably, persistently, he scarcely knew how, put back among the crowd, was not capable of that superlative amiability. The surprise of it partially subdued him for a time, and Miss Eelen’s exertions, who got him by the arm, and endeavoured to make him hear reason.
“Drumcarro! bless the man—can ye not be content where ye are? Yon’s just the visitors, chiefly from England and foreign parts—earls and dukes, and such like.”
“Confound the earls and the dukes! what’s their titles and their visitors to me? The Douglases have held their own and more for as many hundred years——”
“Whisht, whisht, for mercy’s sake! Lord, ye’ll have all the folk staring as if we were some ferly. Everybody knows who the Douglases were; but man, mind the way of the world that ye are just as much affected by as any person. Riches and titles take the crown of the causeway. We have to put up with it whether we like it or no. You’re fond of money and moneyed folk yourself——”
“Haud your fuilish tongue, ye know nothing about it,” said Drumcarro. But then he felt that he had gone too far. “I’m so used to my wife I forget who I’m speaking to. You’ll excuse me, Eelen?”