“We are never so late as that,” cried Elsie, indignantly.
“You will be to-day, if you do not hurry,” he said, jumping up himself and leading the way.
And it was quite true, Elsie could not but allow to herself, that the minister’s family were sometimes late. It had originated in the days when there were so many little ones to get ready; and then, as Mrs. Buchanan said, it was a great temptation living so near the church. You felt that in a minute you could be there; and then you put off your time, so that in the end, the bell had stopped ringing, and you had to troop in with a rash, which was evidently a very bad example to the people. And they did look up with that expression on their faces, as if it were they who were the examples! But the fact that Rodie was right, did not make what he said more agreeable. It acted rather the contrary way. She had wished for his sympathy, for his support of her own recollections, perhaps for surer rectification of her impressions; and she found nothing but high disapproval, and the suggestion that she was capable of splitting upon papa. This reproach broke Elsie’s heart. Nothing would have induced her to betray her father. She would have shielded him with her own life, she would have defended him had he been in such danger, for instance, as people, and especially ministers, were long ago, in Claverhouse’s time—or dug out with her nails a place to hide him in, like Grizel Home. But to fathom the present mystery, and remember exactly what he said, and find out what it meant, had not seemed to her to be anything against him. That it was none of her business, had not occurred to her. And she did not for the moment perceive any better sense in Rodie. She thought he was only perverse, as he so often was now, contrary to whatever she might say, going against her. And she was very sure it was no enthusiasm for punctuality, or for going to church, which made him hasten on before to the house, where his Sunday hat, carefully brushed, was on the hall-table, waiting for him. That was a thing that mother liked to do with her own hands.
The thought of Rodie in such constant opposition and rebellion, overshadowed her through all the early service, and it was not really till the middle of the sermon that a sudden perception caught her mind. Was that what Rodie meant? “He may be a foozle, but I will never split on him.” But papa was no foozle. What was he? A good kind man, doing nobody any wrong. There was nothing to say against him, nothing for his children to betray. Even Elsie’s half-developed mind was conscious of other circumstances, of children whose father might have something to betray. And, in that dreadful case, what would one do? Oh, decline to hear, decline to know of anything that could be betrayed, shut your ears to every whisper, believe not even himself to his own undoing! This idea leapt into her mind in the middle of the sermon. There was nothing in the sermon to make her think of that. It was not Mr. Buchanan who was preaching, but the other minister, his colleague, who did not preach very good sermons, not like father’s! And Elsie’s attention wandered in spite of herself. And then, all in a moment, this thought leapt into her mind. In these circumstances, so different from her own, that would have been the only thing for a child to do. Oh, never to listen to a word against him, not even if it came from himself. Elsie’s quick mind sprang responsive to this thought. This was far finer, far higher than her desire to remember, to fathom what he had meant. And from whence was it that this thought had come? From Rodie, her brother, the boy whom she had been accusing in her mind, not only of forsaking her, but of becoming more rough, more coarse, less open to fine thoughts. This perception surprised Elsie so, that it was all she could do, not to jump up in her place, to clap her hands, to cry out: “It was Rodie.” And she who had never known that Rodie was capable of that! while all St. Rule’s, and the world besides, had conceived the opinion of him that he was a foolish callant. Elsie’s heart swelled full of triumph in Rodie. “He may be a foozle”—no, no, he was no foozle—well did Rodie know that. But was not Elsie’s curiosity a tacit insult to papa, as suggesting that he might have been committing himself, averring something that was wrong? Elsie would have condemned herself to all the pangs of conscience, to all the reproaches against the ungrateful child, who in her heart was believing her father guilty of some unknown criminality, if it had not been that her heart was flooded with sudden delight, the enchantment of a great discovery that Rodie had chosen the better part. There was a true generosity in her, notwithstanding her many foolishnesses. That sudden flash of respect for Rodie, and happy discovery that in this one thing at least he was more faithful than she, consoled her for appearing to herself by comparison in a less favourable light.
And the effect was, that she was silenced even to herself. She put no more questions to Rodie, she tried to put out of her own mind her personal recollections, and every attempt to understand. Did not Rodie say it was not their business, that it did not matter to them what papa said? Elsie could not put away her curiosity out of her heart, but she bowed her head to Rodie’s action. After all, what a grand discovery it was that Rodie should be the one to see what was right.
CHAPTER XI.
THE GROWING UP OF THE BAIRNS.
This was the last incident in the secret history of the Buchanan family for the moment. The sudden, painful, and unexpected crisis which had arisen on Marion’s wedding day ceased almost as suddenly as it arose. The Mowbrays, after staying a short time in St. Rule’s, departed to more genial climes, and places in which more amusement was to be found—for though even so long ago, St. Rule’s had become a sort of watering-place, where people came in the summer, it was not in the least a place of organised pleasure, or where there was any whirl of gaiety; nothing could be more deeply disapproved of than a whirl of gaiety in these days.
There were no hotels and few lodgings of the usual watering-place kind. People who came hired houses and transported themselves and all their families, resuming all their usual habits with the sole difference that the men of the family, instead of going out upon their usual avocations every day, went out to golf instead: which was then a diversion practised only in certain centres of its own, where most of the people could play—a thing entirely changed nowadays, as everybody is aware, when it is to be found everywhere, and practised by everybody, the most of whom do not know how to play.
Mrs. Mowbray did not find the place at all to her mind. Mr. Anderson’s house, to which her son had succeeded, was old-fashioned, with furniture of the last century, and large rooms, filled with the silence and calm of years. Instead of being surrounded by “grounds,” which were the only genteel setting for a gentleman’s house, it had the ruins of the cathedral on one hand, and on the other the High Street. The picturesque was not studied in those days: unless it might be the namby-pamby picturesque, such as flourished in books of beauty, keepsakes, and albums, when what was supposed to be Italian scenery was set forth in steel engravings, and fine ladies at Venetian windows listened to the guitars of their lovers rising from gondolas out of moonlit lakes. To look out on the long, broad, sunny High Street, with, perhaps, the figure of a piper in the distance, against the glow of the sunset, or a wandering group, with an unhappy and melancholy dancing bear—was very vulgar to the middle-class fine lady, a species appropriate to that period, and which now has died away; and, to look out, on the other hand, upon the soaring spring of a broken arch in the ruins, gave Mrs. Mowbray the vapours, or the blues, or whatever else that elegant malady was called. We should say nerves, in these later days, but, at the beginning of the century, nerves had scarcely yet been invented.
For all these reasons, Mrs. Mowbray did not stay long in St. Rule’s—she complained loudly of everything she found there, of the house, and the society which had paid her so little attention: and of the climate, and the golf which Frank had yielded to the fascination of, staying out all day, and keeping her in constant anxiety! but, above all, she complained of the income left by old Mr. Anderson, which was so much less than they expected, and which all her efforts could not increase. She said so much about this, as to make the life of good Mr. Morrison, the man of business, a burden to him: and at the same time to throw upon the most respectable inhabitants of St. Rule’s a sort of cloud or shadow, or suspicion of indebtedness which disturbed the equanimity of the town. “She thinks we all borrowed money from old Anderson,” the gentlemen said with laughter in many a dining-room. But there were a few others, like Mr. Buchanan, who did not like the joke.