Mrs. Brown raised her hand to dismiss the subject with a certain natural pride. But though she would not discuss it with Marion, in whose calculations affection was not taken into account, it was not without a certain comfort that she adopted this conclusion. No, he would not do a shabby thing. It had never been his character. Even when he was a working man, Jims Rowland had never been shabby. He might be a wee hard to them that offended him, but shabby—no. There was comfort in that. So that perhaps, after all, Marion’s matter-of-fact consolation was practically of more importance than her brother’s feeling. “She’s no an ill creature after all,” Mrs. Brown said to herself.
The “body” was fortunately done in time, and the dress put on with much satisfaction when Tuesday came, which proved to be, fortunately, a fine day—a day on which a white dress was not inappropriate. Mrs. Brown wept plentifully as the young pair left her. To them it was only a “ploy,” but to her it was the parting—the end of her brighter life. She looked after them with maternal pride, proud of their good looks and their best clothes, and even the new boxes that were piled upon the top of the cab. She might have been invited to go down with them to break the parting a little. He might have thought of a little thing like that, not to treat her just as if she were an old nurse, to be dismissed when they were done with her. Jane looked after them with streaming eyes. They were not thinking that it was good-bye: they had left half of their things behind: they were coming back—oh, very often, and certainly in a day or two, they both said. It was only a ploy to them. And so well as they looked, two young things that anybody might be proud of. She thought of Rowland’s triumph in showing them to his wife, and how astonished that proud lady would be to see the two, just so lady-like and so gentleman-like! That was Mrs. Brown’s view of the case, and it gave her consolation in the middle of her woe.
The young people were surprised that their appearance in the boat and at the pier, where they landed, was not the subject of any demonstration. If their father had been received as a person of importance, how much more should they who were not elderly or old-fashioned like him, but in all the triumph of their youth—his heirs, to whom everything would eventually belong. There was, however, only the dog-cart, no more, waiting for them at the pier, with Sandy the groom, who was too friendly by half, and not nearly so much impressed as he ought to have been with their importance. They spent an hour or two by themselves, which would have hung very heavy on their hands had not Archie darted down to see the dogs, and Marion employed herself in arranging her “things” in her room, which was nearly as large as the whole area of the house in Sauchiehall Road. And then the important moment came. The dog-cart had been good enough for them, but it was not good enough for Mrs. Rowland, and it was in the great new resplendent landau that Marion solemnly drove down, all alone, and looking important enough to fill the whole carriage, to meet the lady whom she called mamma.
CHAPTER XX.
Evelyn came fully up to her husband’s expectations, which were not small, in the way of admiration. She had not, indeed, been thinking much about the beauty of the country, her mind being fully occupied by matters more important, so that the Clyde, and the loch, and Rosmore, burst upon her more or less as a surprise. She delighted Rowland, whose whole being was on the watch to see what she would say, by her exclamations. “What a beautiful situation! What a lovely view the people must have who live there. What is—Oh!” She broke off abruptly, seeing the flush of pleasure and broad smile of happiness which came over his face. “So that is Rosmore,” she added: “I can see it in your face!”
“Ay, that’s just Rosmore,” he said, with a thickness in his voice; “and this is just the spot, if this confounded boat would stand still for a moment, where I have watched for it appearing since ever I was a lad, and wished and wondered if it would ever be mine.” He put his arm through hers, as he had a way of doing, and held her close—“And now it is mine; and you are mine, Evelyn, that was still more unlikely by far.”
“You must not flatter me by comparing me to that beautiful place; and I pray God you may be very happy in it now you have got it. It is certainly an ideal place.”
“Is it not?” cried Rowland, delighted. It is to be feared that he did not at that moment remember his poor homely Mary, who had been with him so often when he watched for the opening in the trees, and worshipped his idol afar off. “Toots, nonsense,” Mary had said, with a laugh at his absurdity, so many times. He did not think of her, but Evelyn did, with a curious tenderness for the simple little woman who, probably, by this time would have developed into a stout and matter-of-fact matron, and disappointed her husband as much as his children had done, although the love between them had been as true and full of natural poetry as any, dans les temps. Evelyn was quite aware of her husband’s shortcomings, and that there were various superficial failures in him which justified the superficial judgment that he was “not a gentleman,” that most damning of English criticism; but she knew at the same time how it was that the fact of his son not appearing a gentleman was the source of grief to him, and how critical his eyes would be, and how exacting his demands in this respect. Poor little Mary! Perhaps it was as well that she had died in the far-off poetical time. Evelyn felt a little moisture in the corner of her eye, and made a promise in her heart to the wife of James Rowland from the foundry, who was so different from James Rowland, the great railway man from India. “I will do what I can for them, Mary!” was what Evelyn said. Her husband saw the little glimmer on her eyelash, and pressed her arm with fond delight and pride. “I can never be thankful enough,” he said, “Evelyn, for the way you enter into your rough husband’s feelings—my bonnie lady of Rosmore!” That was the very foundry lad who spoke, the very poet of the ironworks whose imagination ran in the ways of iron and steel, and who had attained for himself so incalculable a triumph—everything, and more than everything, that heart could desire—Rosmore, and its bonnie lady! His emotion touched his wife, not displeased—as what woman would be?—to feel herself the very crown of his acquisition; yet her heart went back all the more to poor Mary, whose arm he had probably held in the same way while he glowered with adoration at the white colonnade from the deck of this very steamboat (if steamboats live so long), and who had said, “Toots, Jims, what nonsense!” with her Glasgow accent, thinking that in that particular her husband, who was so clever and soon might rise to be foreman, was little better than a fool.
After this ecstatic moment was over, they both fell into silence, a little anxious for the approaching meeting: he for what she would think of his children: she for what the children would turn out to be. She had begun to doubt a little whether the son would be an unkempt lad in a kilt, like the nephew with whom Mrs. Reuben Butler, once of that same parish, had made disastrous acquaintance. The shabby young men about Glasgow and Greenock had not been of the kind of the Whistler, as indeed, on second thoughts, her reason convinced her Archie was not the least likely to be: nor would Marion probably have the red hair and the short tartan frock, which had been her first idea of what was the probable appearance of the girl with whom Rowland had been so much disappointed. The sight in the distance of a white and a dark speck on the Rosmore pier, as the boat crossed the shining loch, brought Rowland’s heart to his mouth and made him almost incapable of speech. “Yon will be them,” he said with a parched mouth, gripping her arm. And Evelyn did not feel disposed to say anything, or to remark upon the beauty of the hills, though they lighted up in all their purple hollows, and threw out all their blue peaks, as if to catch her attention. Nature has a wonderful charm, if there is not some human emotion before her to pre-occupy both heart and eye. The range of mountains at the head of the loch were after all not of half so much importance as the little white figure on the pier head, of which scarcely the first fact of its existence was as yet perceptible, or the taller one that already seemed to sway and lounge with idle limbs beside her. Evelyn kept her eyes fixed upon them as she drew nearer and nearer, and gradually a feeling of relief stole into her heart. There was nothing so very alarming that James should have made such a fuss! “My dear James,” she said turning to him, “I suppose you did it for a joke: your Marion is a dear little girl.” He pressed her arm close, but he could not say anything: his middle-aged heart was beating. “Archie I must study more at leisure, but he looks very nice too,” she added with more of an effort. Perhaps, after all, the boy would have been better in a kilt, with his hair over his eyes, like the Whistler in the “Heart of Midlothian.” She looked on breathless as the steamboat drew to the pier. Certainly they would rush on board to greet their father, to bring him home in triumph, even if they were less anxious to make her acquaintance; but Marion and Archie did not budge an inch. They stood there, on the defensive, a little defiant, staring, waiting till they were spoken to; and in the bustle of the arrival, the haste of the transference from the quickly departing steamboat to the land, with all the baggage which Rowland, with his habits of personal superintendence did not think the maid and man whom they had brought able to deal with, Evelyn found herself flung upon the two without any introduction. She put out her hand to her step-daughter. “You are Marion, I am sure,” she said, drawing the girl towards her and kissing her on both cheeks. “I am very glad to see you, my dear.”
“And so am I—to see you—mamma,” said the girl reddening and staring. The name felt to Evelyn like a stone flung in her face.