“Yes,” she said, not so fervent even now; “but not this year. I can take Marion next spring.”
He laughed so that he almost cried. “And I suppose I shall have to get myself up in some ridiculous costume or other to go with you—me and little Mey—a pair of guys—before the Queen!”
CHAPTER XIX.
This sudden glimpse into her husband’s deeper nature which it was so easy to lose sight of in his genial and easy exterior, touched Evelyn more than words could say. She entered into his profound discontent with the tenderest sympathy, a little appalled by it indeed, and by the prospect of struggling in her own person with the two grown-up children, who were so much more difficult a problem at the age they had now reached than had they been younger. She contemplated the prospect with no little dismay. The words of his faltering disclosure, “little, common, foolish,” were of all others the words most difficult to reconcile with any higher or generous quality. The only thing that seemed to have broken the shock to James was that the boy had his mother’s eyes. But what, Evelyn said to herself with a little shudder, would the mother herself have appeared to Rowland now, if she had been living all these years stagnant in their old world, growing fat and prosaic, while he had gained so many new experiences? And how much might his disappointment have to do with herself, and that faculty of seeing things through other eyes which comes with sympathy and close intercourse. He might not have required so much from his little Marion, poor child, if it had not been for Evelyn. So much the greater, then, was her responsibility who had accustomed him to a different standard, and so unintentionally brought to him an acute pang. Evelyn said to herself that, however desillusioné her husband might be, she must try to keep a motherly glamour in her own eyes. She must endeavour to suffer long and be kind, to think no evil—neither to be disgusted nor discouraged. It was perhaps partly her fault. She must take it upon her own shoulders and refuse to see anything that was undesirable to be seen. But it was very difficult for her to form any just idea of what was the special trouble which she had to expect—even of how the littleness and commonness would show themselves. She thought of a wild girl speaking broad Scotch, a young man with sinewy limbs, and perhaps (forgive her ignorance) a kilt, speaking the language which in books is put into the lips of the Celt. They were not Celts, she knew, and Glasgow was not a place for gillies and wild Highlanders. But of the gillies and wild Highlanders she did know a little, though of Glasgow, nothing, no more than if it had been in the South Seas. She tried to compose the imagination which painted a highly coloured tableau, full of red hair and freckles, and a wonderful primitive speech. Always, she felt she must recollect, James might have judged them less severely but for herself, though she in her own person would be the last to throw any cold shade upon them. It is needless to say that this new light shed an illumination that was much less tempting upon the house of which he was so proud, and which her discriminating judgment soon made out, according to the graphic description of Marion, to be chiefly “a view.” She had learned to recognise the imposing object it must be from the Clyde steamer after the description which her husband had given her so often, and from the same source she recognised the corresponding view from the colonnade upon the Clyde and the passing boats. These were the chief things he had told her—and no society, and that unkempt, uncultured two. In her innermost retirement Evelyn shuddered a little at what was before her.
It was not a very pleasant prospect, especially with Rosamond’s clear eyes observing everything in the interior, and carrying back her report to the world. However, all this had to be faced courageously. She had undertaken the burden, and she must fit it to her back. No one could help her with it, nor was it fit that she should desire to elude it. It was henceforward her work in the world, and to comfort her husband in his discontentment; to charm it away; to persuade him that things were better than he thought; and, lastly and chiefly, to make them so, was her occupation, the trust she had received. She did not confess either to him or any one the alarm it gave her. She laughed him quietly out of his depression. “You will see things will arrange themselves,” she said. But it must be confessed that when Evelyn set out, surrounded by every luxury, with a railway director to hand her into a special carriage, and all the officials, great and small, bowing down before the great Indian railway man, she was disposed to think all this honour and glory something like a farce, considering what she was going to. Had she travelled in the simplest way, nobody taking any notice, with the humblest quiet house awaiting her, without these “complications,” how much more light-hearted would she have been! But fortunately James liked the attention of the railway people: a King’s Cross director was an important functionary in his eyes. The inspectors and porters to him were like the regiment to a military man. It was agreeable to have the recognition that he was somebody, that his life had not been spent in vain.
Meanwhile, the news of the approaching arrival had a very great effect in Sauchiehall Road, whither Mr. Rowland had written directing that Marion and Archie should proceed to Rosmore on Tuesday, to be there when he arrived with his wife. “You can go down in the morning,” he wrote, “and tell the housekeeper we shall be at home for dinner. Nothing more than this will be needed, she will know what to do. You can occupy the rooms you preferred when you were at Rosmore with me, but with this reservation, that Mrs. Rowland may make other arrangements when she comes.” This perhaps was not a very judicious way of presenting his wife to his children, but few men are judicious in this particular. He intended that they should understand at once that Evelyn was sovereign mistress of the house.
“Mrs. Rowland,” said Aunty Jane, “and the housekeeper!” her voice sank below her breath in apparent awe, but this was only the cloak of other emotions. “Oh, the ingratitude,” she cried, “of men—though many and many a time has he thankit me for being so good to you bairns, that have been like my ain. And now he has gotten a housekeeper, and never even offered me the place: there is nae gratitude in men.”
“You the place—of the housekeeper? She’s just a servant,” said Marion.
“And what am I but just a servant? I’ve been ane, ye needna deny’t, to you: it’s been aye your pleasure that has been followed, no mine: and I was a servant lass before I was married, and thought no shame. No: I have nane of your silly pride about words. A housekeeper with a good wage and a good house behind her, and the command of all the orders, is a very responsible person. He might at least have given me the offer, and I would have thought it no discredit. It would have been a grand provision for me at my age.”
“I would never have consented,” said Archie, for once taking the first word. “A servant in my father’s house!”