CHAPTER IX.
Next morning life began as usual for the saddened household. Breakfast, which had once been so lively a meal, passed over in comparative silence. Mr. Charles, indeed, did what he could to talk to the stranger, making conversation about the news and the newspapers, with a vague hope of enlivening the party.
“I daresay, as an Englishman, you don’t know much about Scotch affairs, Mr. Fanshawe,” he said. “If we were an ill-conditioned people like the Irish now, we might lead Parliament a pretty dance; but as we find it more to our advantage to keep quiet and mind our own business, nobody puts themselves out of the way.”
“And then you are very well off, which Ireland is not,” said Fanshawe, who had Irish blood in his veins.
“I am not so sure about that. We have our grievances like other folk. Our affairs are thrust to the wall for every kind of nonsense. Who cares to come when it’s a Scotch night, or when Scotch affairs are to be discussed? A handful of Scotch members—”
“It is like everything else,” said Mr. Heriot, breaking in harshly; “even, if you come to that, who are our Scotch members? In the very next county one of our best men was turned out the other day, to make room for some English radical or other. They hire our houses, they shoot our moors, they clear the fish out of our rivers, they treat us like a hunting-ground. Our old habits are destroyed, our old families dying out—”
“Not so bad as that, not so bad as that,” said Mr. Charles, soothingly. “You see, Mr. Fanshawe, we’re proud, and we think a retired English tradesman, though an excellent man—a most excellent man, perhaps better than half the Lairds about—is out of his proper place in our old castles. But still they bring money into the country, no doubt about that, and it’s good for trade and all the rest of it. By the way, I see there’s been a great match at St. Andrews—did you notice, Thomas?—with Tom Morris in it. We must take you to St. Andrews, Mr. Fanshawe, to see golf. You cannot say you know Scotland unless you know golf. Bless my life, what a long time it is since I have been there—not once all last season. What did you say, Thomas?—that is a most unusual thing for me.”
“I said nothing,” said Mr. Heriot. “Go to your golf, whatever happens, Charlie. Golf over your best friend’s grave, if you like. What does it matter? He would never feel it, you may be sure.”
Poor Mr. Charles and his attempts at conversation were thus cut short wheresoever he turned his steps.
“I mean no disrespect,” he said, with a certain humility, looking anxiously at his brother, who sat throned in the irritability of his sorrow, strangely pale through the brownness of his country colour, or rather grey—with a veil over his countenance such as had never been seen on it before. His heavy eyebrows were curved over the eyes, which shone out fiery and red from under them, red with sleeplessness, and nervous irritation, and unshed tears.