“Papa!” said Marion in dismay. The butler was just going out of the room followed by his attendant footman. She watched him till he was quite gone, and the door softly closed behind him. Then she said in a lower tone, “I have always read that the servants know more about you than you know yourselves, and I took care to say very little about the MacColls; for though they are well-off, they are not—in our position, papa.”
“Oh May!” said Archie in consternation.
It was the comic side of this speech which first struck her father. He laughed once more loud and long. “You will soon be quite fit for a society lady,” he said. But immediately fell into absolute gravity again, with a face blank as wood; discouraging and repressive, had Marion been sensitive. It was very amusing, but one does not desire to be so amused by one’s own child.
“I was thinking chiefly,” Marion resumed with dignity, “of mamma. She will expect some society, and there will be none; just the Manse, and a house or two like that, scarcely genteel, not in Our Position. We might do very well, Archie and me, though it would be dull; but she will be expecting to go out to her dinner, and to be asked to parties, and show off all her grand gowns. And there will be nobody. And not even a shop to go to, to spend an hour in an afternoon. And you cannot always be looking at the view. It is mamma that I am thinking about,” Marion said.
He did not again bid her not to speak of Evelyn so; for was it not the best thing he could hope for, that his child should think of his wife as of a mother? but his heart revolted all the same, and the girl’s commonplace prettiness, her little assured speech, even the undeniable sense that there was in her remarks, sense of the most prosaic kind, yet genuine enough in its way, exasperated him. He said dryly, “I think I can take my wife in my own hand.”
“Yes,” said Marion; “but maybe it will be a great disappointment to her, when she knows that it is so bonnie a place and all that and then comes here, so far away, and finds that there is nothing but the view.”
Sense! undeniably it was sense, in its petty, miserable way; and what if it might be true? After all, he had only known Evelyn on one side of her character. She was much superior to himself in a hundred ways. She had the habits of a life very different from his, the habits of good society, of knowing “the best people.” Rowland himself, in his rough practical way, had not a very profound admiration for the best people. There were even more bores among them, he thought, than among the most simple, and their views were not more elevated. But then Evelyn knew no other life than theirs, and to bring her down here to an unbroken solitude, or to the society of the sea-bathers, the people who came for “the salt water,” might perhaps be a dangerous experiment. A cold shiver ran over him, while his daughter prattled on in her cool precocious wisdom. How could he tell that she would be sufficiently compensated by “the view” as to forget everything else, or that she would be able to bear from morning to night the unbroken enjoyment of his own society, and of Marion and Archie? His mind went away into a close consideration of her previous life as far as he knew it. The society at the Station was perhaps not very choice, but it was abundant. The people there knew people whom she knew, were acquainted with her own antecedents, and the kind of life to which she had been accustomed, a life which he himself did not know much about, much less his daughter and his son. A woman brought up in a great country house, overflowing with company, such as people in humbler positions know only by books, accustomed to go up to town for the season, to make rounds of visits, etc., etc.—would not she perhaps expect all that to begin over again after the period of her humiliation was over, when she had become the wife of a rich man? And if instead she found herself seated opposite to him for life, with his two children only to diversify the scene, though it was in a beautiful house with a beautiful view! how would Evelyn bear it? Nothing but a view! The little monkey! the little wretch! Rowland in his heart was still a man of the people, and he would have liked to take Marion by the shoulders and give her a shake. And yet, probably, she was right.
CHAPTER XIV.
There were a great many hours to be got through still before the evening steamer which would take them across the loch on their way back to Glasgow. And after the luncheon was over, Archie and Marion did not know what to do with themselves. They went out together and walked about the grounds, not without a feeling of elation now and then as they looked back upon the great house with all its velvet lawns, and the commotion of furnishing and arranging which was going on. There were carts unlading at the door which had come all the way from Glasgow, round the head of the loch, a very roundabout way, with delicate furniture which could not bear the transfer from railway to steamboat, and with the great boxes containing Mr. Rowland’s curiosities; the Indian carpets, curtains, shawls, carved ebony, inlaid ivory, and other wonderful things. Had the young people been aware what were the content of these boxes, they would no doubt have felt that some amusement was possible in the unpacking of them. But, indeed, I doubt whether Marion’s interest would have held out long unless there had been pickings—a bracelet, or a brooch, or an Indian chain among the more curious matters to indemnify her for time lost over the carpets or even the shawls, which, as altogether “out of the fashion” (so far as Marion knew) would have had no interest to the girl. But they did not have this source of entertainment, for they were totally unaware what was in the boxes which Marion thought probably contained napery, a kind of wealth not without interest yet scarcely exciting. They stood about for a time in front of the door watching the unpacking of the big chests and crates until that amusement palled. And then they went round to look at the stables, in which as yet there were only two horses, one of which had brought them up with the dog-cart from the ferry. Archie examined this animal, and the rough and useful pony which acted as a sort of four-legged messenger, with an assumption of knowing all about horses, which was very superficial and imperfect, and did not at all deceive the groom who was in charge, and to whom one glance at the young master had been enough. But Marion did not even pretend an interest which she did not feel, and soon went out yawning and stood at the door, half-despising, half-advising her brother. She felt a little ill-used that there was no carriage which she could order out as she had done with delight, the carriage from the hotel. There would be carriages to come, no doubt, but they would not be for her, and Marion knew that she herself must relapse into a very secondary place. She called to Archie, while he was improving his mind by questions to the groom, with great impatience, “Are you going to stay there all day? with nothing to see,” said Marion. And then she broke in upon the conversation, yawning largely, “Is there anything here to see?” The groom informed them of certain points which were considered interesting by visitors, the Chieftain’s Jump, and the Hanging Hill, where there was a “graun point o’ view.” “Oh, I’m not caring about the view,” said the girl pettishly, “but we’ll go and see the Chief’s Jump. It’ll always be something to do.” It proved, however, not very much to do, and the young lady was disappointed. “It’s only a rock,” she said with much impatience; “is there nothing, nothing to see in this dull place?” The groom was a native of the parish, and he was naturally offended. “It’s a great deal thought of,” he said, “the family—that is the real family—the Earl when he’s doun, and the young ladies, brings a’ the veesitors here. It’s a historical objeck as well as real romantic in itsel.”
“I am not caring for historical things: and I don’t call that romantic,” said Marion.