“It’s the fashion,” said Mrs. Wedderburn, folding her fat hands.
“I’ve no desire to enter into that question. I’m saying nothing but that the minister is no very sound on certain points. I’ve said it to his face, and he just laughs, as you see. But, bless me! this conversation has wandered far from where it began, for I was asking Mr. Rowland, in the interests of all the nieces and the nephews, whether he had not, as we’ve been informed, some young folk.”
Rowland had dropped out of the talk a little, and had forgotten that he was being cross-examined. He woke up suddenly at this question with a start. The lingering smile disappeared from his mouth. He put up shutters at all his windows, so to speak. The light went out in his eyes. “Yes,” he said in a voice which he felt to be as dull as his countenance was blank; “I have a son and a daughter.”
“That was just what I heard,” said Miss Eliza with triumph. “We have usually some young folk staying with us up at the Burn. My sister and me, we are overrun with nieces and nephews. It’s just a plague. There is scarcely a boat but brings one at the least. I hope your two will come and see them. There is aye something going on; a game at that tennis, or whatever they call it, or a party on the water, or a climb up the hills. If they will just not stand upon ceremony, but come any day——”
“When they are here,” said Rowland stolidly; “as yet they are not here. The house will not be ready for a week or more.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. We thought—there were so many waggons coming and going, and the dog-cart out at the pier.”
“I hope you don’t think,” he said, “that I would take home my wife either in a waggon or a dog-cart?”
The ladies looked at each other, and there came a faint “oh!” that universal British interjection which answers to every emergency—from some unidentified person. But a sort of awe stole over the party. Who was this lady that could not be taken home in a dog-cart? Lady Jean had been driven from the pier in a dog-cart many and many a day. Did the woman who had married this foundry lad from Glesco, this railway man, that had made his fortune in India, did she think herself better than Lady Jean?
Mr. Rowland walked away through his own woods, much amused by this incident generally. They were not his own woods: they were the Earl’s woods, which was a reflection very unpleasant to him. If money could smooth over the difficulty, they should be his own woods still before he was done with them; and in the meantime he had a long lease, and a strong determination to call them his own. He looked at every tree, and put a mental mark upon it, to prove to himself that he was right. There was a great silver fir, an unusually fine tree, near the gates, at which he paused, saying to himself, “this is not mine,” with an assumption that all the rest were, which was strange in such a sensible man; but his mind had a little twist in it so far as Rosmore was concerned. He smiled at the little society of the place with a sense of superiority, at which they would have been extremely indignant. The Miss Elizas of the peninsula were nothing to him, and their gracious intention of calling upon his wife, gave him such a feeling of the ridiculous, that he laughed aloud as he went on. Call upon Evelyn! Mr. Rowland had perhaps as exaggerated an idea of Evelyn’s claims as the village people had a humble one. They had heard that she was a governess whom he had picked up in India; and he was of opinion that she was a very high-born lady, as good as the Queen. He chuckled to himself as he realised how she would look amid the ladies who came to Kilrossie for the sea-bathing, and the ladies of the parish: Miss Eliza with her big rusty hat and shawl, and the two ministers’ wives. Evelyn with the look of a princess, and her beautiful dresses, that were like nothing else in the world, which her mere putting them on gave the air of royal robes to! This was his way of looking at the matter, which probably would not have been at all the way of the county ladies, who had a general idea what was the fashion, though they did not take the trouble to adopt it. But to Mr. Rowland whatever Evelyn wore was the fashion, and it was she, he felt, who ought to be everybody’s model, to dress after, as far as it was in vain flesh and blood to follow such an ideal. Lady Jean herself would be but a rural dowdy in presence of Evelyn. He thought of the impression she would make. The startled “oh!” of wonder which would burst from all their lips when she was first seen. It would be something altogether new to them to see such a lady! It restored him to his natural spirits and self-confidence to think of this; indeed, his pride in his wife was the very apex of Rowland’s self-esteem and proud sense of having acquired everything that man could hope to acquire, and all by his own exertions and good judgment. He reflected to himself with satisfaction that he had owed nothing to anybody; that it was all his own doing, not only his success in life, i. e., the fortune he had made, but all those still more dazzling successes, which he could not have got had not the fortune been made. Nobody, for instance, had ever suggested Rosmore to him: no benevolent teacher, or other guide of youth, had pointed out to him the house with the white colonnade as an inspiring object and stimulus to ambition. Himself alone had been his counsellor. Nor had anybody indicated to him at the Station the pale and graceful woman who was Mrs. Stanhope’s dependent and poor friend. He had for himself found out and chosen both the wife and the house. This triumphant thought returning to his mind wiped out the impression of the morning, and even the recollection that he had gone out to hunt for society, and had—found it! He remembered this a little later with a sense that it was the best joke in the world. He had found it! Mrs. Dean had a “day,” as if she lived in a novel or Mayfair; and the neighbouring gentry and the sea-bathers, when they came in force, elated her soul as if they had been all out of the peerage. He wondered, with a laugh to himself, what Evelyn would say to Miss Eliza and the fat Mrs. Wedderburn, and went back to Rosmore in high glee, really oblivious for a time of the two “difficulties,” the irreconcilable portion of his new life, whom he had left there.