James Rowland, tenant of Rosmore, with a name known over India, and his money in all manner of lucky investments, and Evelyn Ferrars for his wife, thought of all this with a curious strain of sensation. He was in many respects an imaginative man. He could realise it all as distinctly as if he saw it before him. He knew the kind of man he would himself have been—perhaps a better man than he was now—a straightforward, honourable man, limited in his horizon, but as trustworthy, as honest and true as a man could be. And he would have known all the real good there was in his children then, and they would have been free of the vulgarities and meanness they had acquired by their false position and mistaken training. It was very startling to think how different, how altered everything might have been. Was he thankful that poor Mary had died? That which had been such a blow to him, driving him out of the country, had been the foundation of all his fortune. It had been the most important event, the turning point in his life. He would never have seen Evelyn, or would have contemplated her afar off as a fine lady, a being to be admired or made light of, but neither understood nor known. How his head went round and round!
It was naturally the same subject that suggested itself to his mind when he woke next morning to a new day, a day not like the last in which everything was unassured, but one in which certainty had taken the place of doubt, and he had no longer vague and exciting possibilities to think of, but only how to nourish and adapt the drawbacks which he knew. These cost him thought enough, all the more that the practical part of the matter had now to be determined, and every decision of life was so close to him that the sense of perspective failed, and it was impossible to realise the relative importance of things: how he should manage to satisfy their Aunt Jane, being for the moment of as great consequence as how he should order the course of their future existence.
He was received in Sauchiehall Road with great eagerness, Archie hurrying to open the door for him, while both Mrs. Brown and Marion appeared at the window as soon as his step was heard, full of nods and becks and wreathed smiles. Mrs. Brown wore another and different “silk,” one that was brocaded, or flowered, as she called it, the foundation being brown and the flowers in various brilliant colours; and Marion had put on the trinkets he had bought to please her on the previous day in addition to those she had worn before, so that she too tinkled as she walked. Rowland received their salutations with as much heartiness as was possible. But he was scarcely prepared for the questions with which Marion assailed him, dumbly backed up by Archie from behind, with his mother’s eyes pleading for every indulgence. “Oh you’re walking, papa?” the girl cried with disappointment, “I thought you would have come in the carriage.”
“It would be a great nuisance for me to have always to move about in a carriage,” he said. “Besides I can’t say that I am proud to be seen behind such horses, a pair of old screws from a hotel.”
“Oh, you’re not pleased with them! I thought they were beautiful,” said Marion, “and they go so splendidly—far far better than a cab or a geeg. We were making up in our minds where we were to go to-day.”
“Where you were to go?”
“To show you everything, papa,” said Marion. “You must see all the sights now that you are here. Archie and me were thinking——”
“I knew the sights,” he said interrupting her, “before you were born—but if you want the carriage, Archie can go and order it and take you where you please—I have many things to consult your aunt about.”
“To consult—Aunty!” Marion opened her eyes wide, and elevated her brow, but this impertinence did not disconcert Mrs. Brown—
“They just take their fun out of me,” she said, with a broad smile; “they think I’m a’ of the old fashion, and ken naething. And deed it’s true. They’re far beyond me with their new fangled ways. But ye see your papaw is no altogether of your way of thinking, Mey.”