“The picter! in a present!” Mrs. Glen stood for a moment taken by surprise, and a little bewildered by the suddenness of the suggestion. “I’m no that sure but what it’s a good notion,” she said, slowly; “them that dinna ken might say it was throwing good money after bad; but I’m no that sure. In a present? What might you get for that now if you were to sell it? for there’s plenty folk, I hear, that are fuilish enough to give good solid siller for a wheen scarts upon paper.” She had the most exalted idea of her son’s skill, and secretly admired his work with enthusiasm—with all the naïve appreciation of a “picture” which is natural to the uninstructed but not dull understanding—though she would not have betrayed her admiration for the world.
“What might I get for it?” said Rob, looking critically yet complacently, with his head a little upon one side, at the finished drawing. “Well—if I were known, if I had got a connection among the picture-dealers, perhaps—let us say twenty pounds.”
“Twenty pound!” (she drew a long breath of awe and wonder); “and you’ll go and give that light-headed lassie, in a present, a thing that might bring you in twenty pound!”
Rob did not explain that the bringing in of twenty pounds was an extremely problematical event. He got up with a little thrill of excitement and easy superficial feeling. “I would give her,” he said, “just to hear from her—just to have her back again—just to have her hand in mine— I would give her everything I have in the world!”
“Ay, ay, my bonnie man,” said his mother, impressed for the moment by this little flourish of trumpets. But she added, “And it would not be that hard to do it, if she’ll only return you back your compliment, Rob, and do as muckle for you!”
This was how the sending of the picture “in a present” was decided upon, as a touching, if dumb appeal, to Margaret’s recollection—not to say as “laying her under an obligation,” which it would be necessary to take some notice of; for both mother and son fully appreciated this side of the question, which also forced itself at once upon Mrs. Bellingham’s practical and sensible eyes. Mrs. Glen, for her part, entertained a secret hope that Margaret would have sense enough to see the necessity of giving not only thanks and renewed affection, but perhaps something else “in a present,” which would make a not inadequate balance to Rob’s gift. This was how things were managed by all reasonable people, that neither side might be “under an obligation” of too serious a character. But she was wise enough to say nothing of this to her son, though it is just possible that the thought may have glanced across his mind too. And about the letter which he sent immediately afterward, through Bell, and which produced such results for Margaret, Rob, on his side, said nothing at all.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Bell had left Earl’s-hall when the house was dismantled, a melancholy operation, which was proceeded with soon after the departure of the ladies. Old Sir Ludovic’s library was sent over to Edinburgh, where the greater part had been sold and dispersed. It was, in its way, a valuable library, containing many rare editions and old works of price, a costly taste, which the present Sir Ludovic did not share. Whatever was done with the old house, his wife and he agreed that to get rid of the books would be always an advantage. If they kept it, the long room must be either divided into two, or at least arranged, for the comfort of the family, in a manner impossible at present while it was blocked up with shelves in every corner, and a succession of heavy bookcases.
In these innocent regions it was not necessary to keep servants in charge of an empty house out of alarm for the safety of its contents. Is it not the simple custom, even of householders in Edinburgh, secure in the honesty of their population, to lock their doors for all precaution, and leave emptiness to take care of itself? There was not much fear for Earl’s-hall. If Aubrey Bellingham had known, indeed, that the various “bits” of china that he admired, and the old dresses in the “aumie” in the high room, and the bits of forlorn old tapestry that wantoned in the wind, were thus left without any protection, it is very possible that he might have organized a gang of æsthetic cracksmen to seize upon those treasures; but they were not in danger from any one in Fife.
Bell and John, or rather, to speak correctly, John and Bell, taking with them their brown cow and all the chickens, removed into a cottage which they had acquired some years before, on the road to the Kirkton, with one or two fields attached to it, and a neat little barn, byre, and poultry-yard. This had been for a long time past the object of their hopes, their Land of Promise, to which they looked forward as their recompense for years of long labor; and it was pleasant, there could be no doubt, to establish the brown cow in the byre and see her “like my leddy in her drawin’-room,” Bell said, making herself comfortable in her new habitation. But it is a very different thing to have only “a but and a ben,” when you have been virtual mistress of a fine old house like Earl’s-hall; and although Bell had always prided herself upon her willingness “to turn her hand to anything,” it did not quite please her to do all the little sweepings and dustings, and fulfil every duty of her little ménage, after having Jeanie under her, to whom she could refer all the rougher work which did not please herself. But above all, it was hard upon Bell that she had no longer “the family” to occupy her thoughts, to call forth her criticisms, and rouse her temper now and then, and give her a never-failing subject of interest and animadversion. Bell had a daughter of her own, who had been married as long as she could remember, it appeared to the old woman, and who had no children to give her mother a new hold upon life; and when she had finished her work and sat down in the evening “outside the door,” but with a totally different prospect from that she had been familiar with so long, Bell would talk to any neighbor that chanced to pass that way, and paused to cheer her up—about “my family” and even about “my ladies,” though they were the same whom she had talked of a little while ago with nothing but the definite article to distinguish them, and of whom she had never been fond, though they had risen so much in her estimation now, and she generally concluded the audience by a sudden relapse into crying on the subject of “my Miss Margaret” which filled the Kirkton half with pity for “the poor old body that had been so long in one place, and couldna bide to be parted from them,” and half with indignation that she should “think mair o’ a young lady that wasna a drap’s blood to her, than of her ain.” Mrs. Dreghorn, Bell’s daughter, who kept the “grocery shop” in the “laigh toun,” was strongly of this opinion. “My mother thinks nothing o’ me in comparison with her Miss Margret—aye her Miss Margret!” said this good woman; but as Mrs. Dreghorn was forty, it may perhaps be allowed to be a different sentiment which Margaret called forth, from that steady-going affection on equal, or nearly equal terms, which subsisted between herself and her mother. Bell could not speak of her child without a moistening of the eyes. “My bonnie bairn!” she was never tired of talking of her, and of the letters Margaret wrote to her; Bell was perhaps the only one of Margaret’s correspondents of whom she was not at all afraid.