‘The mouse helped the king of beasts in the fable, you see,’ said the lawyer.
The simile struck Crauford as a happy one. He began to regain his spirits. His personality had been almost unhinged by his recent experience, and it was a relief to feel it coming straight again, none the worse, apparently, for its shock.
Barclay noted this change with satisfaction, knowing that to reunite a man with his pride is to draw heavily on his gratitude, and, as Fordyce’s confidence grew, he spoke unreservedly; his companion made him feel more in his right attitude towards the world than anyone he had met for some time. Their common dislike of one man was exhilarating to both, and when, on seeing Fullarton emerge from the French window some time later, they rose and strolled towards the house, they felt that there was a bond between them almost amounting to friendship. At least that was Crauford’s feeling; Barclay might have omitted the qualifying word.
[CHAPTER XII
GRANNY TAKES A STRONG ATTITUDE]
IF an Englishman’s house is his castle, a Scotchman’s cottage is his fortress. The custom prevailing in England by which the upper and middle classes will walk, uninvited and unabashed, into a poor man’s abode has never been tolerated by the prouder dwellers north of the Tweed. Here, proximity does not imply familiarity. It is true that the Englishman, or more probably the Englishwoman, who thus invades the labouring man’s family will often do so on a charitable errand; but, unless the Scot is already on friendly terms with his superior neighbour, he neither desires his charity nor his company. Once invited into the house, his visit will at all times be welcomed; but the visitor will do well to remember, as he sits in the best chair at the hearth, that he does so by privilege alone. The ethics of this difference in custom are not understood by parochial England, though its results, one would think, are plain enough. Among the working classes of European nations the Scot is the man who stands most pre-eminently upon his own feet, and it is likely that the Millennium, when it dawns, will find him still doing the same thing.
When Granny Stirk, months before, had stood at her door, and cried, ‘Haste ye back, then,’ to Gilbert Speid, she meant what she said, and was taken at her word, for he returned some days after the roup, and his visit was the first of many. Her racy talk, her shrewd sense, and the masterly way in which she dominated her small world pleased him, and he guessed that her friendship, once given, would be a solid thing. He had accepted it, and he returned it. She made surprising confidences and asked very direct questions, in the spring evenings when the light was growing daily, and he would stroll out to her cottage for half an hour’s talk. She advised him lavishly on every subject, from underclothing to the choice of a wife and her subsequent treatment, and from these conversations he learned much of the temper and customs of those surrounding him.
In the seven months which had elapsed since his arrival he had learned to understand his poorer neighbours better than his richer ones. The atmosphere of the place was beginning to sink into him, and his tenants and labourers had decided that they liked him very well; for, though there were many things in him completely foreign to their ideas, they had taken these on trust in consideration of other merits which they recognised. But, with his equals, he still felt himself a stranger; there were few men of his own age among the neighbouring lairds, and those he had met were as local in character as the landscape. Not one had ever left his native country, or possessed much notion of anything outside its limits. He would have been glad to see more of Fullarton, but the elder man had an unaccountable reserve in his manner towards him which did not encourage any advance. Crauford Fordyce he found both ridiculous and irritating. The women to whom he had been introduced did not impress him in any way, and four only had entered his life—the Miss Robertsons, who were his relations; Lady Eliza, who by turns amused, interested, and repelled him; and Cecilia Raeburn, with whom he was in love. The two people most congenial to him were Granny Stirk and Captain Somerville.
Between himself and the sailor a cordial feeling had grown, as it will often grow between men whose horizon is wider than that of the society in which they live, and, though Somerville was almost old enough to be Speid’s grandfather, the imperishable youth that bubbled up in his heart kept it in touch with that wide world in which he had worked and fought, and which he still loved like a boy. The episode at the dovecot of Morphie had served to cement the friendship.
Jimmy Stirk also reckoned himself among Gilbert’s allies. Silent, sullen, fervid, his mind and energies concentrated upon the business of his day, he mentally contrasted every gentleman he met with the laird of Whanland, weighed him, and found him wanting. The brown horse, whose purchase had been such an event in his life, did his work well, and the boy expended a good deal more time upon his grooming than upon that of the mealy chestnut which shared the shed behind the cottage with the newcomer, and had once been its sole occupant. On finding himself owner of a more respectable-looking piece of horseflesh than he had ever thought to possess, he searched his mind for a name with which to ornament his property; it took him several days to decide that Rob Roy being, to his imagination, the most glorious hero ever created, he would christen the horse in his honour. His grandmother, systematically averse to new notions, cast scorn on what she called his ‘havers’; but as time went by, and she saw that no impression was made upon Jimmy, she ended in using the name as freely as if she had bestowed it herself.