“I am nobody’s but yours,” he said, “and, Jeanie, you need not try to deceive me. You never were but mine.”
“But that’s nae reason,” she cried, wildly, “to come and make a fool of me to my face, Rob Glen. Oh, go, go to them you belong to! I thought I might have said farewell to you without another word; but even that canna be.”
“There will never be farewell said between you and me, Jeanie,” said Rob, seriously, “never from this moment till death does us part.”
When Rob Glen, stung at once by the kindness and severity of which he had been the object, took this sudden resolution, and with a wild dash of energy, and without a pause, thus carried it out, Randal was left alone upon the country road, all strange and unfamiliar to him, but with which he seemed all at once to have formed so many associations, with two or three hours at his disposal. He stood and watched the train till it was out of sight, idly, with the most singular sense of leisure in opposition to that hurry and rush. From the moment when Rob had dashed up the bank, Randal had felt no longer in any hurry or anxiety about the train. It did not matter if he lost his train—nothing, indeed, seemed to matter very much for the moment. He saw the carriage that contained Rob rush out of sight while he was standing in the same place: if he chose to spend an hour in the same place, thinking over the causes which had carried Rob away, what would it matter? He had plenty of time for that or anything else—no hurry or care—the whole afternoon before him. Would it not be better, more civil to go back, and pay his respects at the Grange as he ought? He had rushed into the house like a savage, and rushed out again without a word to say for himself. Evidently this was not the way to treat ladies to whom he owed the utmost respect. He would go back. He turned accordingly, and went back; still at the most perfect leisure. Plenty of time; no hurry one way or another.
He had not gone far, however, before he met a curiously-matched pair coming up along the road together—Mrs. Glen talking loudly and angrily, Sir Ludovic walking beside her, sometimes saying a word, but for the most part passive, listening, and taking no notice. Randal heard her long before he saw the pair on the windings of the road. Mrs. Glen did not know whether to abuse or defend her son. She did both by turns. “A fine son, to leave me, that has aye thought far ower muckle of him, to find my way home as best I can, after making a fool of himself and a’ belanging to him! But where was he to gang, poor lad? abused on a’ hands—even by those that led him into his trouble,” she cried. There was no pause in her angry monologue. And, indeed, the poor woman, in her great Paisley shawl, with the hot sun playing upon her head, her temper exasperated, her body fatigued, her hopes baffled, might have something forgiven to her. “Gentry!” she cried, as she began to ascend the slope which led to the station, and which Randal was coming down; “a great deal the gentry have done for my family or me! Beguiled my Rob, the cleverest lad in a’ Fife, till he’s made a fool o’ himself and ruined a’ his prospects; and brought me trailing after him to a country where there’s nae kindness nor hospitality—among people that never offer you so much as a stool to rest your weary limbs upon, or a cup o’ tea to refresh you. Eh! if that’s gentry, I would rather have the colliers’ wives or the fisher bodies in Fife, let alone a good farm-house, and that’s my ain.”
“Mrs. Glen,” said Sir Ludovic, “I am sure my sisters would have wished you to rest and refresh yourself.”
“Ay, among their servant-women, no doubt—if I would have bowed myself to that. I’ve paid rent to the Leslies for the last thirty years—nae doubt but they durstna have refused me a cup of tea; but I would have you to ken, Sir Ludovic, though you’re a Sir, and I’m a plain farmer, that the like o’ your servant-women are nae neebors for me.”
“My good woman!”
“I’m nae good woman to be misca’ed by ane of your race! Good woman, quo’ he! as I would say to some gangrel body. You’re sair mistaken, Sir Ludovic, if that’s what you think of the like of me, that has paid you rent, as I was saying, and held up my head with any in the parish, and given my bairns as good an education as you or yours could set your face to. If ye think, after a’ that I’ve put up with, that I’m to take a ‘good woman’ from the laird, as if I wasna to the full as guid a tenant as he is a landlord, or maybe mair to lippen to.”
“Would you have me say ‘ill woman?’” said Sir Ludovic, with momentary peevishness, yet with a gleam of humor. “You are quite right, Mrs. Glen; you are better off, being a tenant, than I am as a landlord. The Leslies never were rich, that I heard tell of; and if we were proud, it never was to our neighbors, the people on our own land.”