"I suppose they were in a very different position when you used to know them?" said Torrance; "in a poor way enough—ready to make friends with whoever turned up?"
"It would be very bad policy on my part to say so," said John, "seeing that I was one of the nobodies to whom Lady Lindores, when she was Mrs Lindores, was extremely kind—as it seems to me she always is."
"Ah, kind! that's all very well: you weren't nobody—you were very eligible—in those days," said Torrance, with a laugh, for which John would have liked to knock him down; but there were various hindrances to this laudable wish. First, that it was John's own house, and civility forbade any aggression; and second, that Tinto was much bigger and stronger than the person whom, perhaps, he did not intend to insult—indeed there was no appearance that he meant to insult him at all. He was only a coarse and vulgar-minded man, speaking after his kind.
"The fact is, if you don't mind my saying so, I'm not very fond of my mamma-in-law," said Torrance. "Few men are, so far as I know: they put your wife up to all sorts of things. For my part, I think there's a sort of conspiracy among women, and mothers hand it down to their daughters. A man should always part his wife from her belongings when he can. She's a great deal better when she has nothing but him to look to. She sees then what's her interest—to please him and never mind the rest. Don't you think I'm complaining—Lady Car's an exception. You never catch her forgetting that she's Lady Caroline Torrance and has her place to fill. Doesn't she do it, too! She's the sort of woman, in one way, that's frightened at a fly—and on the other the queen wouldn't daunt her; that's the sort of woman I like. She's what you call a grand damm—and no mistake. Perhaps she was too young for that when you knew her; and had nothing then to stand on her dignity about."
Here John, able to endure no longer, rose hastily and threw open the window. "The weather gets warm," he said, "though it is so early, and vegetation is not so far behind in Scotland as we suppose."
"Behind! I should like to know in what we're behind!" cried his guest: and then his dark countenance reddened, and he burst into another laugh. "Perhaps you think I'm desperately Scotch," he said; "but that's a mistake. I'm as little prejudiced as anybody can be. I was at Oxford myself. I'm not one of your local men. The Earl would like me to take his way and follow his lead, as if I were a country bumpkin, you know. That's his opinion of every man that has stuck to his own country and not wandered abroad; and now he finds I have my own way of thinking, he doesn't half like it. We can think for ourselves down in the country just as well as the rest of you." After he had given vent to these sentiments, however, Torrance got up with a half-abashed laugh. "If you come over to Tinto, Lady Car and I will be glad to see you. We'll show you some things you can't see every day—though we are in an out-of-the-way corner, you're thinking," he said.
"I have already heard of the treasures of Tinto," said John, glad that there was something civil to say.
Pat Torrance nodded his head with much self-satisfaction. "Yes, we've got a thing or two," he said. "I'm not a connoisseur myself. I know they've cost a fortune—that's about all I'm qualified to judge of. But Lady Car knows all about them. You would think it was she and not I they belonged to by nature. But come and judge for yourself. I'm not a man to be suspicious of old friends."
And here he laughed once more, with obvious offensive meaning; but it took John some time to make out what that meaning could be. His visitor had been for some time gone, fortunately for all parties, before it burst upon him. He divined then, that it was he who was supposed to have been poor Carry's lover, and that her husband's object was the diabolical one of increasing her misery by the sight of the man whom she had loved and forsaken. Why had she forsaken Beaufort for this rude barnyard hero? Was it for the sake of his great house, which happily was not visible from Dalrulzian, but which dominated half the county with gingerbread battlements, and the flag that floated presumptuous as if the house were a prince's? Had Carry preferred mere wealth, weighed by such a master, to the congenial spirit of her former lover? It fretted the young man even to think of such a possibility. And the visitors had fretted him each in some special point. They neutralised the breadth of the external landscape with their narrow individuality and busy bustling little schemes. He went out to breathe an air more wholesome, to find refuge from that close pressure of things personal, and circumscribed local scenery, in the genial quietness and freshness of the air outside. How busy they all were in their own way, how intent upon their own plans, how full of suspicion and criticism of each other! Outside all was quiet—the evening wind breathing low, the birds in full chorus. John refreshed himself with a long walk, shaking off his discouragement and partial disgust. Peggy Burnet was at her door, eager to open the gate for him as he passed. She had just tied a blue handkerchief about the pot containing her "man's" tea, which her eldest child was about to carry. As he sauntered up the avenue, this child, a girl about ten, tied up so far as her shoulders were concerned in a small red-tartan shawl, but with uncovered head and bare legs and feet, overtook him, skimming along the road with her bundle. She admitted, holding down her head shyly, that she was little Peggy, and was carrying her father his tea. "He's up in the fir-wood on the top of the hill. He'll no' be back as long as it's light."
"But that is a long walk for you," said John.