The visits of the Laird were somewhat less frequent; but he was fortunate in always finding Roderick awake, and, after the first few days following the relapse, eager to converse; and as the visits were repeated two or three times a week, an intimacy sprung up between the two men which had not existed before. The Laird was pleased to find what he had not hitherto looked for, a sound and mature judgment and abundant common sense where he had been wont to expect only pious good intentions and a youthful enthusiasm, beautiful and interesting enough but somewhat raw, and needing much of the pressure of time and circumstance to squeeze out the green and vapid whey of youth and inexperience. Roderick was equally surprised to find that the husk of hard dry business shrewdness, which he had hitherto looked upon as the man himself, was but the dried or hardened scars or cicatrices of rubs and bruises long since endured by a true and gentle nature, now healed and wholesome, and that beneath the somewhat repulsive exterior, there were rich stores of experience, charity and christian wisdom. Heretofore their intercourse had consisted in visits from Roderick to Auchlippie on parochial business; and on these occasions Mrs. Sangster in her character of Mother in Israel, high patroness and Lady Bountiful to the congregation, was always present. It might be Roderick who proposed the subject to be considered or it might be the Laird, but at the first opening Mrs. Sangster would take up her parable, and after that there was little opportunity for any one else to slip in a word even edgewise. She loved the sound of her own sweet voice better than any other music, and with a silent, perforce an attentive audience, her periods would swell and round themselves with evangelical commonplaces, and a general overflowing of conventional piety. When his lady opened her mouth on any subject, it was the Laird's practice to close his for good and all; that was his mode of fulfilling the apostolic precept to honour the weaker vessel. Had he spoken, he would have been compelled to distinguish and except, to rip up sophisms and show that the conclusion arrived at was not deducible from the premises stated, and endless altercation would have ensued. Wherefore, like a sensible man, he held his peace, and left his fair partner to discourse at her own sweet will. When, also, it became necessary for him to express his own views, he would do it in the dryest, clearest, and most concise form, leaving no room for question or debate from his better and more loquacious half. It was therefore as if for the first time that these two met and became acquainted in that sickroom; and the discovery each made of the other was an unexpected happiness to both. Timidly and doubtfully Roderick would sometimes bring the conversation round to Sophia, but it was in a diffident and uncertain way. He hungered to hear or talk of her, but as regarded his hopes and aspirations he felt bound to keep silence. His instinct of what was fitting withheld him from attempting to entangle his friend in his more genial moments, in any kind of promise or consent, so long as a breath, however groundless, hung over his reputation. It was true that the Laird did not believe a syllable to his disadvantage, but on that very account he felt so deeply indebted to him, when all the world beside had turned its back, that he could not take advantage of the old man's goodwill.
Whether the Laird saw more than Roderick put in words, it would not be easy to say; but it is certain that at that time an understanding sprung up between himself and his daughter which had not existed before. He had hitherto regarded her simply as a child, female child, belonging to his wife, and rather a dull one as that. It now first seemed to dawn on him that she was a woman, a distinct person, and his own daughter, and that it was in her to become the dearest companion of his life. What he may have known of her relations with her mother, incident to Roderick's letter, cannot be known, for he never told; but from the evening after the congregational council, when she plucked up courage to enter into conversation with him, and glean such news about the proceedings as she could ask or he communicate, they found they had entered upon new relations with each other. It may have been the Sangster element in her, of which her mother so loudly complained that engaged his sympathy so directly, or it may have been the incense of her feminine hero worship, seeing that he appeared to her so great, and strong, and good, in opposing himself singly to the universal prejudice, and manfully espousing the cause of worth and innocence maligned, but certainly from that day forth, father and daughter became fast friends and constant companions. Often she would accompany him in his walks to the village, and though she would not defy her mother by accompanying him to the Browns', still her father would carry messages to and fro between her and Mary, which brought assurance both to Roderick and herself that they were not parted. The old lady was the only party dissatisfied with these new combinations. She felt her authority slipping from her fingers. Her daughter had, she could not tell how, developed an independent personality of her own, and was evidently now held in allegiance to herself only by a sense of duty. The daughter was also establishing a hold on her father's regard, which her mother herself had long since allowed to pass from her, as costing too much trouble to retain; and Mrs. Sangster beheld already in prophetic vision, herself as a meek old lady seated by her work-table near the fire, while Sophia, the mistress of Auchlippie, ruled the roast! The meekness of her future rôle had not as yet, however, come to Mrs. Sangster. She fumed and fretted like a spirit in chains, and the mornings which mother and daughter spent together were by no means smooth or enjoyable for poor Sophia. Her mother's grievance being incapable of statement, the ebullitions thence arising could neither be foreseen nor assigned to any specific cause. The scandalous rumours relating to the Browns were retailed and enlarged on in a way that, but a few short weeks before, Mrs. Sangster would have been shocked to think she could indulge in before her carefully nurtured child; and Sophia, as her only defence, had to fall back on the paternal gift of silence. But that invariably drove her mother vanquished from the field, seeing that it takes two to fight, and with a parting shot at the dull dour blood of the Sangsters, she would seek relief in the privacy of her chamber from that sovereign remedy, 'a good cry.'
At the end of three weeks Roderick was found well enough to travel, and it was time that they should start, if, in those ante-railway days, they would avoid the delays, discomforts, and extra fatigue of bad roads. They took the stage coach as far as Dundee, where they would embark in the steamer for London. Thence there was railway westward, and with more staging, they would reach their destination.
It need scarcely be said that Eppie and the baby stood on the inn steps to watch the travellers drive away, and wish them 'God-speed.' Mary kissed them both, hoping a father might shortly be found for the little one, but grudgingly, for she deeply loved it herself. Kenneth was there, likewise, with regretful adieux and repetition of the already-made promises to write soon and often. So too was the Laird, and this time Sophy was on his arm, and Roderick thenceforth had at least one smile and handshake to treasure in his memory, unspoken answers to his letter of a month back, and tokens from which to bode hopefully of the future.
There were other onlookers, but they peered from windows, over averted shoulders, or from behind corners. The parishioners had begun to find out many differences between their new pastor and his predecessor. There were no alms now, for the new man had no money to give; and there was less sympathy, for he was a stranger in the parish, and likewise new to ministerial work. Shame kept them from coming forward; but when the guard blew his horn, the coachman tipped up his leaders with the whip, and the lumbering vehicle rolled up the eastern brae, every one felt that he had a friend the less left in Glen Effick.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
[DISCOMFITED].
Within the Post Office as well as in other places, there stood a group watching Roderick's departure, and among them, as might be supposed, was Joseph Smiley. It would have been a very unexpected event indeed that could have transpired in the village without his being there to see.
'I wuss we may na hae dune the laad some wrang,' sighed Angus Kilgour. 'He gangs like's he thocht nae shame, an' gin there cam few to bid him "Gude bi wi' ye," thae few war the first e'y land. See to the young Captain, hoo he's crackin' til Eppie an' the bairn 'at a' body said was merry-begotten. That looks like 's he didna think sae.'
'Hoot awa!' said Ebenezer, who had become a man of consequence through the prominent part he had taken in the minister hunt, and would tolerate no gainsaying. 'Hae na we scripter for't, Angus, 'at evil men an' seducers wax warse an' warse? An' think ye, 'at gin a chield was sae far left til himsel as yon puir laad maun hae been, he wad turn round that easy an' own til his fau't? Na, na! The De'il's a hard master 'at's aye wantin' mair service. An' as for puir Mester Brown, I'm sure I wuss him nae ill, but juist 'at he may be brocht til own til his transgressions. He's gangin' the gate o' thae wanderin' staars for whum is reserved the blackness o' darkness! I think naething o' yer young Captain comin' to see him awa. He's been danderin' round him ilka day sin' he fell out wi' his flock, or sin' they fand him out I suld say. He's juist a laad o' Belial 'at cares naething for the sauls o' hiz puir folk, (dizna he get a' the nails an' the pleughs an' the iron wark for the property doon by at Inverlyon?) an' he wants to pu' down the wa's o' Zion. He's juist like Tobiah the Ammonite 'at fashed Nehemiah langsyne, but it's no a tod like him rinnin' on the wa's o' our Jerusalem, 'at's gaun to kick them ower. An' as for the Laird comin' wi' his dochter, he's been sair left til himsel', but we a' ken he's pridefu' an' winna be direcket by puirer folk, an' that's what's made him sae camstairy. But I'm juist winnerin' 'at Mistress Sangster (an' sic a graand christian as she is!) lets him gang sic daftlike gates!'