She drew Marion forward with a vigorous hand, and placed the two side by side, confronting their father, who sat and gazed at them helplessly. Two well-grown, well-looking young creatures they were indeed. But Rowland gazed at them with a gradual dying out of all light from his face: his lip dropped, his eyes grew blank. What could he say? Nothing: there was little to find fault with, nothing that could be expressed in ordinary words. A sort of dread came over him as he looked at them, the boy and girl of whom he knew nothing; who had speculated on him, a being of whom they knew nothing, as to what he would do for them, send for them to India, which would be awful fun, or disappoint them of their lawful expectation of being his heirs. He might never have known what were their sentiments, and perhaps would have remained remorseful all his life, thinking himself to blame in not responding to their affection, but for this unintentional revelation. And now it astonished him to find himself in face of the two who had formed such clear opinions of their own as to what his duty was, and how he had deviated from it. They thought his duty was to take care of and provide for them—and he thought their duty was to regard their unknown father with affection and submission. And neither one nor the other had come true. He could not make any reply to their aunt’s appeal. He got up and went to the window, and walked about the little room, knocking against the furniture. “This is a pokey little place you are in,” he said, by way of getting rid of some of the vexation in his mind. “I could have wished that you had been in a better house.”
“It’s a very good house,” said Mrs. Brown. “This is just the femily parlour—but if ye’ll come up to the drawing-room, ye’ll see what a nice room it is. It’s just as pleasant a house as there is in Glasgow, if maybe no so big as in some of those new crescents and squares out on the Kelvin Road. But everybody knows that the Sauchiehall Road is one of the best pairts. What ails ye at the house? it is just a very good house, quite good enough for the bairns and me.”
Rowland could make no reply. He stood and stared blankly out of the window into the elderberry tree, and said no more.
CHAPTER XI.
“You will stay to your dinner?” Mrs. Brown said. The moment that these words, prompted by an inalienable Scotch hospitality, whose promptings are sometimes less than prudent, had left her lips, she reddened suddenly, and cast an alarmed look at Marion, who, for her part, was still standing contemplating her father, with a look in which a little defiance was concealed under a good deal of curiosity. The girl was considering how to approach and mollify this unknown parent, who, after all, was papa, the giver of all things, and upon whom was dependent the comfort, not to say grandeur, of life to come. It was a pity she had spoken so unadvisedly about his wife, but that, after all, was his own fault. Marion had some experience in novels, which supply so many precedents to the ignorant and young, and knew what a meeting between a father and his children ought to be. He ought to have taken them into his paternal arms. She, the girl, ought to have thrown herself upon his bosom in tears and rapture. He ought to have lifted his eyes to the skies or the ceiling, and have said: “Just like this was her mother when I saw her first!” None of these things had been done, and the girl was a little at fault. To look at his back as he stood at the window, evidently out of temper, discouraged and discouraging, was a thing that suggested no kind of original procedure to her mind. And she was consequently of no manner of comfort to her anxious aunt, who had instantly remembered that the midday dinner of the family was nothing but hotch-potch. And how was she to set down a rich man, who fared sumptuously every day, to a dinner of hotch-potch? Marion’s mind was occupied with much more important things. How was she to do away with the disadvantages of that first introduction, and make herself agreeable to papa? A girl in a novel, she began to think, would steal up to him and put her arm through his, where he stood looking out into the elderberry tree, and lean her head upon his shoulder, and perhaps say “Dear papa!” But Marion’s courage was not quite equal to that. As for Archie, he simply stood still and stared, too completely taken by surprise to make any movement whatever, contemplating his father’s back with unspoken disappointment and dismay.
“Weel,” said Mrs. Brown, after waiting in vain for a response, seizing dexterously the opportunity of escape; “I’ll just leave ye to make acquaintance with one another, for I have things to see to in the house; and Marion, you’ll just see that your papa has a glass of wine, for the dinner, as you’re aware, is no till two o’clock. I’ll send in the girl with the tray—she ought to have been here before now—and I’ll leave you two to entertain your papaw.”
Then there followed another rustling of the silken gown, and tinkle of the long gold chain, with its bunch of breloques, after which came another tinkle, that of glasses, as “the girl” brought in a tray with two decanters, a large plate of shortbread, and one of another kind of cake. The wax flowers had to be lifted from the centre of the table to make room for this, and the process occupied a little time and a good deal of commotion, of which Rowland was conscious with increasing irritation and annoyance. He began to feel, however, that the position was ridiculous, and that to stand at the window, with his back to the other occupants of the room, was certainly not to make the best of the situation in any way. He turned round accordingly, and threw himself into a chair, which rocked under him. The strangeness alike and familiarity of the scene were more bewildering to him than words could say. Mrs. Brown, in the wealth which he had supplied, had done all she could to be genteel, poor woman, according to her lights. The tray with the port and sherry was her best rendering of what a proper reception ought to be. In the foundry days it would no doubt have been a little whiskey and a bit of oatcake. The instinct was the same, but, according to all the good woman knew, this was the most lofty and cultured way of setting it forth.
“Will you take port wine or sherry wine, papa?” Marion said.
“I will take nothing, thank you. Shut the door, I beg. I want to speak to you, my dear.” He turned towards her, but his look stopped short at Archie—at Archie, the loutish lad whose lowering forehead was bent, over his mother’s honest blue eyes.
“I did wrong not to tell you at once who I was. I suppose I had some absurd idea that you might recognise me. To make up for this, I’ll forget all the foolish things you have said about my wife. As they arise from simple ignorance, and you have had unfortunately no acquaintance with ladies, I’ll look over all that, and well begin square.”