It was at this moment that a loud summons came to the door. It startled them all, and Agnes and her mother had a brief but earnest discussion as to whether the applicants should be admitted. Marjory paid but little attention for the first moment. She drew her shawl round her, and wiped the traces of tears from her eyes, and rose to go away before the visitors, if there were visitors, should appear. But her attention was roused when she heard what voice it was which asked admittance when the knocking had remained for some time unheeded.
“Is there any one in? Open the door, open the door!” said the new-comer.
It was Mr. Charles. A murmur of other voices with him came in like a faint chorus; and once more quickly and eagerly came the knocking at the door.
CHAPTER XVI.
Mr. Charles had been seated all alone in the library of his house, a room which confused him much, seeing that it was a library, full of books, such as they were, yet not his, nor like anything that could have been his. Had he been condemned to sit much in this room, it would have been impossible for him to rest without remodelling and changing it; but thanks to golf and the club, he was not tempted to remain for too long a time at one sitting. This day, however, accident, which interferes with golf as much as with other things, had broken up one of the most promising matches ever arranged, and left Mr. Charles disconsolate. He came home to seek Marjory, and found Marjory gone; even little Milly had her own engagements; and he was thus left to himself. It gave him a realization of the time which might come, if Marjory were to marry, for instance, and he childless, daughterless, with nobody to make any house feel like home, might be left to the cold comfort of George’s Square. He did not like the idea. He sat down in the library, as we have said, with a statistical work before him—dry reading, but he felt still more dry. He was out of his element, absent from his favourite surroundings, alone; and everything was against him. How could he tell if he should ever again find himself comfortably established in his sunny old tower, in the room which he had garnished and arranged so carefully with all the accumulations of his life? “These young women” were about to pull down his old tower about his ears; or if they could be stopped in that, here was this other story, this strange marriage of Tom’s, this peasant aspiring to the name of Heriot, with her child, who would bring into the old house the unknown qualities of some nameless race. And Marjory, with her head full of this nonsense, leaving him just at the moment he wanted her most, to mix herself up with such a business! And Fanshawe, an English ne’er-do-weel—Tom’s friend, no doubt, and not a bad fellow, but far from the sort of person to match with Marjory—brought into it, head and shoulders! No wonder Mr. Charles was put out. The statistical book, too, indulged in statements about Fife which made every drop of blood in his body boil separately; statements which he could not absolutely contradict, yet which he felt were untrue, and would not have believed had an angel from Heaven proclaimed them. He was reading something particularly offensive about the fishers of the East Neuk itself, and fuming over it, when the maid came to the door to say that some one outside was asking for Miss Heriot.
“They’re awfu’ disappointed to hear she’s no in,” said the woman. “They have the look of decent folk, as if they had come a long way. Maybe you would see them, Sir, and no disappoint the poor bodies? Miss Heriot is aye awfu’ polite and ceevil to poor folk.”
“Miss Heriot, I hope, is polite to everybody,” said Mr. Charles. “You may show them in if their business is urgent. But stop; if it’s only charity, or that sort of thing—”
“Eh, no, Sir; they’re no folk to want charity,” said the woman, dismayed at the suggestion.
And, half unwillingly, half pleased to get quit of himself and his loneliness, and the statistics, Mr. Charles closed his book, and prepared to receive the strangers. There was a little controversy at the door, as he could hear, as to which should enter first, which was quite audible. The woman would have yielded the pas to her lord; but while her modesty was slightly artificial, that of the man was perfectly genuine in its unalloyed loutishness.
“Gang you in, gang you in first; you’ve aye a word ready, right or wrong; and me, I canna speak,” the bass voice grumbled, as the little struggle ended in the most natural way, and the wife appeared at the door.