Mr Alexander Pringle, however, never once thought of this when he established his tabernacle there. This gentleman was an advocate, to use the Scotch term—the cosmopolitan and universal term, instead of the utterly conventional and unmeaning appellation of barrister common to the English alone—at the Scotch bar. His father before him had been a W.S., or Writer to the Signet—a title of which I confess myself unable to explain the exact formal meaning. How these comparatively unimportant people came to be the heirs-at-law, failing the Rosses, of the barony of Eskside, I need not tell. Pringle is a name which bears no distinction in its mere sound like Howard or Seymour; but notwithstanding, it is what is called in Scotland “a good name;” and this branch of the Pringles were direct descendants from one of the Eskside barons. When Dick Ross’s misfortunes happened, and his wife forsook him, Mr Alexander Pringle, then himself recently married, producing heirs at a rate which would have frightened any political economist, and possessing a wife far too virtuous ever to think of running away from him, became all at once a person of consequence. He felt it himself more than any one, yet all society (especially in Moray Place) had felt it. By this time he had a very pretty little family, seven boys and one girl, all healthy, vigorous, and showing every appearance of long and prosperous life.
Fear not, dear reader! I do not mean to follow in this history the fortunes of Sandy, Willie, Jamie, Val, Bob, Tom, and Ben. They were excellent fellows, and eventually received an admirable education at the Edinburgh Academy; but I dare not enter upon the chronicle of such a race of giants. Val was born about the time that Richard Ross’s children disappeared, and the Pringles christened the baby Valentine Ross, feeling that this might be a comfort to the old lord, whose “name-son” had thus mysteriously disappeared. Mr Pringle spoke of the event as an “inscrutable dispensation,” and lamented his cousin’s strange misfortunes to everybody he encountered. But dreadful as the misfortune was, it made him several inches higher, and threw a wavering and uncertain glimmer of possible fortune to come over the unconscious heads of Sandy, Willie, Val, and the rest. They cared very little, but their father cared much, and was very wide awake, and constantly on the watch for every new event that might happen on Eskside. The seven years of quiet, during which nothing was heard of Richard’s children, ripened his hopes to such an extent that he almost felt himself the next in succession; for a mild dilettante like Dick Ross, who always lived abroad, did not seem an obstacle worth counting. Perhaps he was in consequence a little less careful of his practice at the bar; for this tantalising shadow of a coronet had an effect upon his being which was scarcely justified by the circumstances. But at all events, though they managed to keep up their establishment in Moray Place, and to give the boys a good education, the Pringles did not advance in prosperity and comfort as they ought to have done, considering how well-connected they were, and the “good abilities” of the head of the house. Though he would sometimes foolishly show a disregard for the punctilios of the law in his own person, and was now and then outwitted in an argument, yet Mr Pringle was understood to be an excellent lawyer; and he had a certain gift of lucidity in stating an argument which found him favour alike in the eyes of clients and of judges. Had he been a little more energetic, probably he would have already begun to run the course of legal preferment in Scotland. He was Sheriff of the county in which his little property lay; and at one time no man had a better chance of rising to the rank of Solicitor-General or even Lord Advocate, and of finally settling as Lord Pringle or Lord Dalrulzian (the name of his property) upon the judicial bench. But his progress was arrested by this shadow of a possible promotion with which his profession would have nothing to do. Lord Dalrulzian might be a sufficiently delightful title if no more substantial dignity was to be had, but Lord Eskside was higher; and the man’s imagination went off wildly after the hereditary barony, leaving the reward of legal eminence far in the background. Gradually he had built himself up with the thought of this advancement; and though they were by no means rich enough to afford it, nothing but his wife’s persistent holding back would have kept him from sending Sandy, his eldest boy, to Eton, by way of preparing him for his possible dignity. For the days when boys were sent from far and near to the High School of Edinburgh are over; and it is now the Scottish parent’s pride to make English schoolboys of his sons, and to eliminate from the speech of his daughters all trace of their native accent. Mrs Pringle, however, was prudent enough to withstand her husband’s desire. “What would he do at Eton?” she said. “Learn English? If he’s not content with the English you and I speak, it’s a pity; and as for manners, he behaves himself very well in company as it is, and you’ll never convince me that ill-mannered louts will be made into gentlemen by a year or two at a public school. You may send him if you like, Alexander—you’re the master—but you will get no countenance from me.” When a well-conditioned husband is told that he is the master there is an end of him. Mr Pringle was not made of hard enough material to resist so strong an opposition; and then it would have cost a great deal of money. “Well, my dear, we’ll talk it over another time,” he said, and put off the final decision indefinitely; which was a virtual giving in without the necessity of acknowledging defeat.
After all this gradually growing satisfaction and confidence in his own prospects, it is almost impossible to describe the tremendous effect which the news of Richard’s return, and of the strange events which had taken place at Rosscraig, had upon the presumptive heir. He spoke not a word to any one for the first two days, but went about his business moodily, like a man under the shadow of some deadly cloud. The first shock was terrible, and scarcely less terrible was the excitement with which he listened to every rumour that reached him, piecing the bits of news together. For a week he neglected his business; forsook, except when his attendance was compulsory, the Parliament House; and, if he could have had his will, would have done nothing all day but discuss the astounding tale, which at first he declared to be entire fiction, a made-up story, and pretended to laugh at. He hung about his dressing-room door in the morning, while his wife finished her toilet, talking of it through the doorway; he hovered round the breakfast-table, after he had finished his meal, neglecting his ‘Scotsman’; he was continually appearing in the drawing-room when Mrs Pringle did not want him, and “deaved her,” as she said, with this eternal subject. To no one else could he speak with freedom; but this sweet privilege of wifehood, instead of being an unmingled good, often becomes, in the imperfection of all created things, a bore to the happy being who is thus elevated into the ideal position of her spouse’s alter ego. Mrs Pringle was not sentimental, and she soon got heartily sick of the subject. She would have cheerfully sold, at any time, for a new dinner dress—a thing she was pretty generally in want of—all her chances, which she had no faith in, of ever becoming Lady Eskside.
“Don’t you think, Alexander,” she said, having been driven beyond endurance by his rejection of a proposed match at golf on Musselburgh Links—a thing which proved the profound gravity of the crisis,—-“don’t you think that the best thing you could do would be to take the coach and go out to Lasswade, and inquire for yourself? Take Violet with you—a little fresh air would do her good; and if you were to talk this over with somebody who knows about it, instead of with me, that know nothing more than yourself——”
“Go—to Lasswade!” said Mr Pringle—“that is a step that never occurred to me. No; I have not been invited to Rosscraig to meet Dick, and it would look very strange if I were to go where nobody is wanting me. If you think, indeed, that Vi would be better for a little change—— But no; Lord Eskside would not like it—there would be an undignified look about it—an underhand look; still, if you think an expedition would be good for Vi——”
It was thus that under pressure of personal anxiety a man maundered and hesitated who could give very sound advice to his clients, and could speak very much to the purpose before the Lords of Session. Mrs Pringle knew all this, and did not despise her husband. She felt that she herself was wiser in their own practical concerns than he was, but gave him full credit for all his other advantages, and for that ability in his profession which did not always make itself apparent at home. And she had a great many things to do on this particular afternoon, and was driven nearly out of her senses, she allowed afterwards, by this eternal discussion about Dick Boss’s children and the succession to Eskside.
“Do you remember,” she said, exercising her ingenuity, with as little waste of words as possible—for the mother of seven sons, not to speak of one little daughter besides, who is not rich enough to keep a great many servants, has not much time to waste in talk—“that little cottage at the Hewan, which I was always so fond of? The children are fond of it too. As you are off your match, and have the afternoon to spare, go away down and see if the Hewan is let, and whether we can have it for the summer.”
“But, my dear, it is not half big enough for us,” Mr Pringle began.
His wife turned upon him a momentary look of impatience. “What does it matter whether it’s big or little, when you want to see what is going on?” she said. “Take the child with you, and ask about it. It would be fine to have such a place, to send Vi when the heat gets too much for her.” These last words were spoken in perfect good faith, for people in Edinburgh keep up a fiction of believing that the heat is too much for them—as if they were in London or Paris, or anywhere else, where people love a yearly change.
“So it would,” said Mr Pringle; “and you could go out yourself sometimes and spend a long day. It would do you good, my dear. I think I will go.”