CHAPTER XLV.
Archie made, as he thought, but one step down the stairs: he fell into the little passage, which led to the parlour, like a thunderbolt. “Aunt Jane, it is Mrs. Rowland,” he cried.
“And if it is Mrs. Rowland,” said Jane, “who is she to come here as if the place belonged to her? which it dis not, nor ever will, were she the queen o’ the whole land.”
“Archie,” said the voice of Evelyn from beyond the stout, full form that stood like a solid barrier between him and his father’s wife; “ask your aunt kindly to let me in. I have been travelling all night, and I bring you good news; but I am very tired. Please to let me in.”
Mrs. Brown was rent by conflicting sentiments. To resist such an entreaty is as hard for a Scotswoman of her class as for an Arab in the desert. The claims of hospitality are as urgent with one as with the other. She did not know how to refuse, to keep a tired woman, appealing to her, at arm’s length. Further, thoughts of fresh tea to be masked, and eggs to be boiled, flashed into her mind across the sullen background of enmity which made her stand fast in stubborn resistance. It was a sin against her house to close the door, to oppose the entrance of the stranger. She had never done such a thing, scarcely even to the gangrel body who was not to be trusted in the neighbourhood of a silver spoon, before, and the necessity hurt her. But to let in this fine lady, this proud woman, this stranger and alien person, who had (presumably) hunted Archie from his father’s house—— Oh, no, no!
“There are plenty hotels in Glasgow where the leddy can go,” she said, standing firm. “Ye can go with her, ye fool that ye are, and be beguiled by her flattering tongue, for anything I care.”
“May not I come in?” said Evelyn, with great surprise. “I have been hoping all night for a little rest and a welcome. You surely will not refuse me half-an-hour’s rest, if I promise to go away in half-an-hour?” She smiled and looked at Archie, whose anxious face appeared over Mrs. Brown’s shoulder. “I did not know,” she said, “that your aunt had any objection to me.”
“Ainy objection!” cried Mrs. Brown, “when you have just made his life a burden to him, and ruined all his prospects, poor lad, and closed the doors o’ his father’s house!”
“But I have not done that,” said Mrs. Rowland, surprised. “You are making a great mistake, surely. His prospects are not ruined, nor are his father’s doors closed against him, as he knows. But now,” she said, tears of weakness coming into her eyes, “they are thrown open as if with the sound of a trumpet. Archie, thank God that it is all cleared up and found out. Will you not let me in to tell him how it has been discovered and his honour cleared? Don’t you care for his honour and good name, you who have been a mother to him—more than for anything else in the world?”
“I never doubted either one or the other,” said Mrs. Brown; “it will be nae discovery to me.”