“I might always call myself of the Ellangowan family, to be sure,” he said, with a laugh.
Now Lucy did not at all know what he meant by the Ellangowan family. She was not so deeply learned in her Scott as I hope every other girl who reads this page is, and she was not very quick, and perhaps would not have caught the meaning if she had been ever so familiar with “Guy Mannering.” She thought Ellangowan a very pretty name, and laid it up in her memory, and was pleased to think that Mr. Bertram had thus, as it were, produced his credentials and named his race. I don’t know whether Ralph also was of the same opinion. At all events they went on without further remark on this subject. The village lay just outside the park gates on the right side of a pretty, triangular bit of common, which was almost like a bit of the park, with little hollows in it filled with a wild growth of furze and hawthorn and blackberry, the long brambles arching over and touching the level grass. There was a pretty bit of greensward good for cricket and football, and of much consequence in the village history. The stars had come out in the sky, though it was still twilight when they emerged from the shadow of the trees to this more open spot; and there were lights in the cottage windows and in the larger shadow of the rectory, which showed behind the tall, slim spire of the church. It was a cheerful little knot of human life and interest under the trees, Nature, kindly but damp, mantling everything with greenness up to the very steps of the cottage doors, some of which were on the road itself without any interval of garden; and little irregular gleams of light indicating the scarcely visible houses. Lucy, however, did not lead the way toward the village. She went along the other side of the common toward a house more important than the cottages, which stood upon a little elevation, with a grassy bank and a few moderate-sized trees.
“Oh, she’s in Greenbank, this lady,” said Ralph. “I thought the old doctor was still there.”
“He died last year, after Charlie died at sea—didn’t you know? He never held up his head, Raaf, after Charlie died.”
“The more fool he; Charlie drained him of every penny, and was no credit to him in any way. He should have been sent about his business years ago. So far as concerned him, I always thought the doctor very weak.”
“Oh, Raaf, he was his only son!”
“What then? You think it’s only that sort of relationship that counts. The doctor knew as well as any one what a worthless fellow he was.”
“But he never held up his head again,” said Lucy, “after Charlie died.”
“That’s how nature confutes all your philosophy, Wradisley,” said the other man. “That is the true tragedy of it. Worthy or unworthy, what does it matter? Affection holds its own.”
“Oh, I’ve no philosophy,” said Ralph, “only common sense. So they sold the house! and I suppose the poor old doctor’s library and his curiosities, and everything he cared for? I never liked Carry. She would have no feeling for what he liked, poor old fellow. Not worth much, that museum of his—good things and bad things, all pell-mell. Of course she sold them all?”