As he went along and watched the rider in front, he could not guess at her identity, having nothing to give him the smallest clue to it; he was a good deal attracted by her original appearance, and was thinking that he would ask Miss Robertson, when he next waited on her, to enlighten him, when she put the mare to a trot and soon disappeared round an angle of the cliff.
The clouds were low; and the gleam of sunshine which had enlivened the day was merging itself into a general expectation of coming wet. Gilbert buttoned up his coat and put his best foot forward, with the exhilaration of a man who feels the youth in his veins warring pleasantly with outward circumstances. He was young and strong; the fascination of the place he had just left, and the curious readiness of his rather complicated mind to dwell on it, and on the past of which it spoke, ran up, so to speak, against the active perfection of his body. He took off his hat and carried it, swinging along with his small head bare, and taking deep breaths of the healthy salt which blew to him over miles of open water from Jutland opposite. The horse he had seen had excited him. So far, he had been kept busy with the things pertaining to his new position, but, interesting as they were, it occurred to him that he was tired of them. Now he could give himself the pleasure of filling his stable. He had never lacked money, for his father had made him a respectable allowance, but, now that he was his own master, with complete control of his finance, he would be content with nothing but the best.
He thought of his two parents, one lying behind him in that God-forgotten spot by the North Sea and the other under the cypresses in Granada, where he had seen him laid barely three months ago. It would have seemed less incongruous had the woman been left with the sun and orange-trees and blue skies, and the man at the foot of the impenetrable cliffs. But it was the initial trouble: they had been mismated, misplaced, each with the other, and one with her surroundings.
For two centuries the Speids of Whanland had been settled in this corner of the Eastern Lowlands, and, though the property had diminished and was now scarcely more than half its original size, the name carried to initiated ears a suggestion of sound breeding, good physique, and unchangeable custom, with a smack of the polite arts brought into the family by a collateral who had been distinguished as a man of letters in the reign of George I. The brides of the direct line had generally possessed high looks, and been selected from those families which once formed the strength of provincial Scotland, the ancient and untitled county gentry. From its ranks came the succession of wits, lawyers, divines, and men of the King’s service, which, though known only in a limited circle, formed a society in the Scottish capital that for brilliancy of talent and richness of personality has never been surpassed.
The late laird, James Speid, had run contrary to the family custom of mating early and was nearing forty when he set out, with no slight stir, for Netherkails, in the county of Perth, to ask Mr. Lauder, a gentleman with whom he had an acquaintance, for the hand of his daughter, Clementina. He had met this lady at the house of a neighbour and decided to pay his addresses to her; for, besides having a small fortune, not enough to allure a penniless man, but enough to be useful to the wife of one of his circumstance, she was so attractive as to disturb him very seriously. He found only one obstacle to the despatch of his business, which was that Clementina herself was not inclined towards him, and told him so with a civility that did not allay his vexation; and he returned to Whanland more silent than ever—for he was a stern man—to find the putting of Miss Lauder from his mind a harder matter than he had supposed.
But, in a few weeks, a letter came from Netherkails, not from the lady, but from her father, assuring him that his daughter had altered her mind, and that, if he were still constant to the devotion he had described, there was no impediment in his way. Mr. Speid, whose inclination pointed like a finger-post to Netherkails, was now confronted by his pride, which stood, an armed giant, straddling the road to bar his progress. But, after a stout tussle between man and monster, the wheels of the family chariot rolled over the enemy’s fallen body; and the victor, taking with him in a shagreen case a pearl necklace which had belonged to his mother, brought back Clementina, who was wearing it upon her lovely neck.
Whatever may have been the history of her change of mind, Mrs. Speid accepted her responsibilities with a suitable face and an apparent pleasure in the interest she aroused as a bride of more than common good looks. Her coach was well appointed, her dresses of the best; her husband, both publicly and in private, was precise in his courtesy and esteem, and there was nothing left to be desired but some sympathy of nature. At thirty-eight he was, at heart, an elderly man, while his wife, at twenty-seven, was a very young woman. The fact that he never became aware of the incongruity was the rock on which their ship went to pieces.
After three years of marriage Gilbert was born. Clementina’s health had been precarious for months, and she all but paid for the child’s life with her own. On the day that she left her bed, a couch was placed at the window facing seaward, and she lay looking down the fields to the shore. No one knew what occurred, but, that evening, there was a great cry in the house and the servants, rushing up, met Mr. Speid coming down the stairs and looking as if he did not see them. They found their mistress in a terrible state of excitement and distress and carried her back to her bed, where she became so ill that the doctor was fetched. By the time he arrived she was in a delirium; and, two days after, she died without having recognised anyone.
When the funeral was over James Speid discharged his servants, gave orders for the sale of his horses, shut up his house, and departed for England, taking the child with him under the charge of a young Scotchwoman. In a short time he crossed over to Belgium, dismissed the nurse, and handed over little Gilbert to be brought up by a peasant woman near the vigilant eye of a pasteur with whom he had been friendly in former days. Being an only son, Mr. Speid had none but distant relations, and, as he was not a man of sociable character, there was no person who might naturally come forward to take the child. He spent a year in travel and settled finally in Spain, where the boy, when he had reached his fifth birthday, joined him.
Thus Gilbert was cut off from all intercourse with his native country, growing up with the sons of a neighbouring Spanish nobleman as his companions. When, at last, he went to school in England, he met no one who knew anything about him, and, all mention of his mother’s name having been strictly forbidden at his home, he reached manhood in complete ignorance of everything connected with his father’s married life. The servants, being foreign, and possessing no channel through which they could hear anything to explain the prohibition, made many guesses, and, from scraps of their talk overheard by the boy, he discovered that there was some mystery connected with him. It was a great deal in his mind, but, as he grew older, a certain delicacy of feeling forbade his risking the discovery of anything to the detriment of the mother whose very likeness he had never seen. His father, though indifferent to him, endeavoured to be just, and was careful in giving him the obvious advantages of life. He grew up active and manly, plunging with zest into the interests and amusements of his boyhood’s companions. He was a good horseman, a superb swordsman, and, his natural gravity assimilating with something in the Spanish character, he was popular. Mr. Speid made no demands upon his affection, the two men respecting each other without any approach to intimacy, and, when the day came on which Gilbert stood and looked down at the stern, dead face, though his grief was almost impersonal, he felt in every fibre that he owed him a debt he could only repay by the immediate putting into effect of his wishes. Mr. Speid had, during his illness, informed him that he was heir to the property of Whanland, and that he desired him to return to Scotland and devote himself conscientiously to it.