CHAPTER V.
[JULIA].
When Captain John joined the family at dinner that day, it was with feelings of more than his wonted self-content. He had returned from his fishing only the hour before, and had brought with him the two finest salmon that had been caught that season. The game-keepers and retainers had admired them as in duty bound, but theirs was the admiration that pleases only faute de mieux, seeing that it can be counted on, while to-day his nephew, his old rival in field sports, was present to join in the applause.
They sat down, a party of five, the three gentlemen already described, Lady Caroline, and her kinswoman Miss Finlayson. Lady Caroline was the great lady of the neighbourhood. She was tall and dignified, with a thorough appreciation of her own importance; also she was somewhat indolent, and therefore disposed to be good-natured and condescending, whenever her superiority was quietly acquiesced in. She spent a few weeks each summer in London with her husband, but these visits were yearly becoming shorter. There were so many persons of more consequence than herself, and she found herself so much in the position of one in a crowd, that she felt as if losing her sense of personal identity, became depressed, and hurried home never to return, or would have done so had it not been for Miss Finlayson, her judicious young friend, who never once presumed to advise or direct, but who yet could influence her in opposition to her own inclination, to remain in town to the end of the season, to return again the next year, and to do any thing else the said Miss Finlayson might desire.
Miss Finlayson was a young lady of five or six-and-twenty, and of slender fortune and accommodating disposition, who could converse or keep silence, read, write, play or sing, laugh or cry in sympathy with the mood of her protectress. In person as in manner she can only be described negatively. She was quite what a young lady should be at all points, or at least, when you come to particularize, nothing that she should not be. Had Madame Contour, her London dressmaker, sent home her person and demeanour, as well as her admirably fitting draperies, she would have been very much as she was. Her figure was tall and well-proportioned, waist small, bust a little flat, easily amenable to the touch of art, arms slender but well rounded and charmingly white, hands and feet adapted to the smallest and daintiest of gloves and slippers. Her complexion was pale but clear, lips thin, mouth long, nose slightly aquiline, eyes somewhat pale, forehead too high, but with the dark hair drawn well over the temples, and long ringlets descending nearly to the waist. Altogether a pale but not unpleasing vision, and what Madame Contour would have called 'very ladylike.' She had come to Inchbracken three years before, on a cousinly visit of a fortnight; but Lady Caroline had found her so delightful and invaluable a companion that she had been induced to prolong her stay from month to month, till at length, after prolonged entreaties, she had consented to sacrifice what she called her independence, and make Inchbracken her home.
Her insight into the character of those about her was unusually distinct, and the tact with which she applied the knowledge so acquired thoroughly artistic. With the General she was all grateful deference and modest trust; hanging on his lips for any occasional oracles of wisdom that chance might issue, but very careful not to bore him with her presence or conversation unsought, and ever ready with a light for his cigar when his own matchbox was mislaid, as it generally was. With Captain John she was gay, always ready with a flippant repartee whenever he attempted to gibe, but still upon her guard. There was a twinkle in the old gentleman's eye whenever they engaged in a passage of arms, which suggested that he too had some of the insight on which she depended so much in playing the game of life. With Lady Caroline, as already said, she was self-adaptive and sympathetic, and yet to all appearance spontaneously so, and without ever sinking her own individuality, or permitting herself to be taken for granted like a dependent. Besides amusing, she contrived to relieve her of many small burdens and domestic cares, and so became altogether indispensable to her indolent kinswoman. She interfered in nothing, and yet there was no part of the household machine that did not run smoother when lubricated by her good offices. The housekeeper, the head gardener, even my lady's own woman came in time to solicit in an emergency the favourable intervention of this best natured of all young ladies, and always with the best results.
Lady Caroline found at length that she need neither think nor act, save when she felt inclined, and she declared with fervour, that Julia Finlayson was as good as a daughter of her own. That amiable person was quite content that it should be so, and indeed was most willing that Lady Caroline should have a full legal claim on her filial duty. By some deft manipulation of circumstances, the idea of her becoming a daughter-in-law had been suggested to her ladyship's mind, while the dear disinterested Julia stood immaculate from every suspicion of scheming, and, strange as it may seem, Lady Caroline was disposed to acquiesce. Her Kenneth, she said, would never make a great marriage, and if he would bring home a nobody, there was none she would more willingly take to her mother's heart than 'poor Julia.' The adjective is not exactly an enthusiastic one, but narrow circumstances had taught Miss Finlayson philosophy, and she did not look to gather grapes off thorns. If the thorns would only consent not to scratch till she had made good her hold, she knew she could pick them off at her leisure afterwards; and then for a crackling blaze under the pot! It would be 'poor thorns' then! But meanwhile, to acquire a mother-in-law, that lady's consent is by no means the essential or only step. 'First catch your hare,' or the pot will be empty, and the thorns to crackle under it will never be required. Though the damsel sit expectant and willing in her bower, what matter, if the wooer comes not? and so far Kenneth had shown no desire to approach Julia's bower in wooer's guise. Most callous of men, and most indifferent of cousins, he had passed under all the battery of charms and accomplishments, and never known. In all cousinliness he had taught her to fish, and to row on the loch. When she admitted a curiosity as to men's pursuits and a liking for tobacco smoke, he had welcomed her to the smoking-room, where she felt inclined to study Bell's Life, and also to the billiard room, where, in fact, he made her a very tolerable player, but that was all,--he felt to her only as if she had been a very little brother, and wondered what she meant by so many dainty affectations, and why she should bother to do so many things he shrewdly suspected she did not like. As to her clever little leadings, feints, and fencings colloquial, they were so much good brain-power thrown away, and might have been spoken in French or Sanscrit for any idea they conveyed to him. In fact she was altogether too sophisticated and utterly fine for this country-bred swain, and besides, she was always there.
If you had partridge every day for breakfast, partridge for dinner, and partridge again at supper, how long would you continue to relish that dainty food? And so probably in the case of a healthy young man with plenty of social opportunities, a permanent residence under the same roof does not afford the sportswoman the best opportunity to bag her game. So many weapons and devices become useless after a trial or two. What can be the efficacy of a parting glance, for instance, if the glancer has only gone behind the rose-bush at the other end of the garden? And how can one recall a last tête à tête, when the partner in it sits in an adjoining chamber, ready to resume? And how can imagination and memory ever come into play, with the fair object always in full view? Miss Finlayson was not only too sophisticated, but she was always there, and so, simple Mary Brown, though probably not so handsome according to Madam Contour's standard, and certainly less clever and accomplished, had taken possession of the young man's affections, and kept them, in spite of all the wiles of the syren.
All this, however, had come to an end two years ago when Kenneth, after long leave and quarters in the nearest garrison town, was ordered with his regiment to Gibraltar. In the meantime Mary Brown had become involved in the disgrace into which every well regulated mind in the Inchbracken circle considered that her brother had sunk. In fact she had so completely fallen out of their world that she need not be considered further, except to keep her out. Wherefore Julia made haste to welcome Kenneth's return, with all the warmth of a cousin, and to intimate as far as a well-bred damsel may, that she was capable, perhaps, of even warmer feelings.
The conversation at dinner that evening ran much on Captain John's successful angling. The appearance of his largest salmon at table gave the ladies an opportunity to join in the applause, which every male inhabitant of the house and offices had already offered.