“What responsibility?” said Archie, more and more astonished.
“Oh!” she cried, with a little stamp of her foot, “as if the like of you would ever understand!” She gave him a little indignant push from her in the impatience of her soul; but turned to him again after a moment’s interval. “I am not saying, mind,” said Marion, “that there is anything in it. There may be nothing in it. It may just pass over, and be of no consequence. I will maybe be in a much better position when I have gone to court, and have been seen in society and all that. But you should remember, Archie, that we’re just very new people. Papa is a new man. His name is known, but except for our money we are just nobody. Now mamma is different. I was angry at the time to think that papa had married again and brought in a grand lady that would look down upon you and me; but I’ve come to a different way of thinking now. I just study her and take a lesson by her, and I can see if we are to get on in the world that she is the one to help us most.”
“I don’t want her help,” cried Archie, “and if that’s what you call getting on in the world——”
“Oh,” cried Marion, with a sigh of impatience, “you are just like a bairn. To think that you cannot see for yourself, you that are a man! What are we to do if we don’t get into society? You would rather be back in the Sauchiehall Road, with your football and your friends, than in a grand house like this, with nobody that cares for you, and nothing that you can do.”
“May,” said the young man, sadly, “many a time I have thought that myself,—far rather! It was a kind of living, and this is none—to be waited on hand and foot when you’re not used to it, and feel like a fool, and have nothing to do. But that’s not all the harm it’s done. When I went back to the Sauchiehall Road, I was just as much out of place there! That’s ended: and the other is begun, and there’s no satisfaction anywhere. I will be faithful to Aunty Jane, poor body, that was so kind to us, while I have a breath to draw,” he exclaimed with energy. Then sinking into despondency, “But I cannot go back there, and I am out of place here; and there is no good that I can see in a world that’s all a vain show, both for the rich and the poor.”
“Well,” said Marion, with a certain satisfaction, “you see then, just as I do. We must get ourselves well into what we have, for we never can go back to what we were. And the only way that we can do it is by——” She broke off with a little laugh. “You can find it out for yourself, but you need not put a spoke into another person’s wheel. I am not saying that Eddy Saumarez will be of any consequence in the end. Maybe I will not care to know them after I have been to court. I will not commit myself, you may be sure. I will aye have a way of escape, if I should change my mind. But it was just silly beyond measure to give him a story about Aunty Jane. He will take her off, and make everybody laugh. You can see yourself how he makes fun, and takes everybody off. That is what amuses people, and makes them ask him. He could make it very funny about Aunty Jane. Oh, I know all they say, and I’m getting to understand. If you can tell them stories, and keep them laughing, it’s all they think of. And you to give him the occasion with poor Aunty Jane!”
“He had better not let me hear him say a word about Aunty Jane,” said Archie, between his closed teeth.
“Oh, he’ll not let you hear him,” said Marion. She was altogether unconscious of the fact that Eddy took herself off with perfect effect, so that even Mrs. Rowland had difficulty in looking severe enough.
Archie went to join the party in the smoking-room after this conversation, with more uneasiness than ever. He was not quite clear about his sister’s meaning. Marion was too far-seeing, too full of calculations for her brother. He had himself his own thoughts: but they were of a very different turn from hers. Rosamond Saumarez was to Archie a being of a different species from himself or any one belonging to him. It had not occurred to him that he could appropriate this beautiful lady, and make life more possible by her means. She was still upon her pedestal, a thing apart, a being to be remotely admired, scarcely even as yet worshipped: for in worship itself there is a certain appropriation, and his imagination had not gone so far as that, had not ventured to use any pronoun of possession, even with goddess attached to it. In no way had he imagined that she could ever be his, but always something beyond reach, as superior to him as heaven is to earth. The impression she produced upon him was subduing, rather than exciting. To think that there could be such a distance between him and any other human creature, as there was between him and Rosamond, doubled the mystery and awe of the world on the threshold of which he was standing, to the disturbed and unsatisfied mind of the boy-man, so rudely shaken out of all his old habitudes, so little at home in his new. At no time could Marion’s frank calculations of how she could help herself up the ascent she meant to climb, by grasping a chance hand, this man’s or another’s, as happened to suit her best, have been possible to her brother. He faintly apprehended what she meant, but found it so uncongenial that his mind declined to look into it. There are some who feel themselves forced, in the course of nature, to investigate, and come to the bottom of such questions; and there are some who shake themselves uneasily free of an examination which could end in nothing but pain.
Archie had no wish to think badly of Marion, to bring down the ideal of his sister: so he shook off the question of her meaning, and left it alone. There was not much pleasure to him in the sitting in the smoking-room, where he found his father and Eddy in full discussion, the latter bearing all the frais of the conversation, and making his host laugh with his lively descriptions and sketches. Archie was conscious that he presented a complete foil and contrast to Eddy, as he went in and seated himself a little in the background, notwithstanding the invitations of both the gentlemen to draw his chair nearer to the fire. He liked to skulk behind, Rowland thought angrily, with vexation, to himself—never could take his place simply, always kept behind backs. Perhaps young Saumarez was not any more than Archie the son he would have chosen. But yet what a difference there was!