The Miss Robertsons’ garden formed a kind of oasis in the mass of mean and crowded houses which lay between the High Street and the docks; for the populous part of Kaims, where the sailors, dockmen, and fishing-people lived, stretched on every side. A wide grass-plot, which centred in a wooden seat, crept close under the drawing-room windows, and from this a few steps ran down to the walled enclosure in which flower and kitchen garden were combined. The gate at their foot was overhung by an old jessamine plant which hid the stone lintel in a shower of white stars. Round the walls were beds of simple flowering plants, made with no pretence of art or arrangement, and dug by some long-forgotten gardener who had died unsuspicious of the oppressive niceties which would, in later times, be brought into his trade. Mignonette loaded the air with its keen sweetness, pansies lifted their falsely-innocent faces, sweet-williams were as thick as a velvet-pile carpet in shades of red and white, the phlox swayed stiffly to the breeze, and convolvulus minor, most old-fashioned of flowers, seemed to have sprung off all the Dresden bowls and plates on which it had ever been painted, and assembled itself in a corner alongside the lilies of the valley. The whole of the middle part of the place was filled with apple-trees, and the earth at their feet was planted with polyanthus and hen-and-chicken daisies. At the foot of the garden a fringe of white and purple lilacs stood by the gravel path, and beyond these, outside the walls, a timber-merchant’s yard made the air noisy with the whirring of saws working ceaselessly all the week.
But to-day everything was quiet, and the Miss Robertsons sat in their drawing-room expecting their company.
The Edinburgh coach reached Kaims late on Saturday nights, and those who expected mails or parcels were obliged to wait for them until Sunday morning, when, from half-past one to two o’clock, the mail-office was opened, and its contents handed out to the owners. Church and kirk were alike over at the time of distribution, and the only inconvenience to people who had come in from the country was the long wait they had to endure after their respective services had ended, till the moment at which the office doors were unlocked. From time immemorial the Miss Robertsons had opened their house to their friends between church hour and mail hour, and this weekly reception was attended by such county neighbours as lived within reasonable distance of the town, and did not attend the country kirks. Their carriages and servants would be sent to wait until the office should open, while they themselves would go to spend the interval with the old ladies.
Like moss on an ancient wall, a certain etiquette had grown over these occasions, from which no one who visited at the house in the close would have had the courage or the ill-manners to depart. Miss Hersey, who had virtually assumed the position of elder sister, would sit directly in the centre of the sofa, and, to the vacant places on either side of her, the two ladies whose rank or whose intimacy with herself entitled them to the privilege, would be conducted. She was thinking to-day of the time when Clementina Speid had sat for the first time at her right hand and looked down upon the lilies of the valley. Their scent was coming up now.
The drawing-room was full on a fine Sunday, and Miss Caroline, who generally retired to a little chair at the wall, would smile contentedly on her guests, throwing, from time to time, some mild echo of her sister’s words into the talk around her. When all who could reasonably be expected had arrived, Miss Hersey would turn to the husband of the lady occupying the place of honour, and, in the silence which the well-known action invariably created, would desire him to play the host.
‘Mr. Speid, will you pour out the wine?’
Sunday upon Sunday the words had been unaltered; then, for thirty years, a different name. But now it was the same again, and Gilbert, like his predecessor, would, having performed his office, place Miss Hersey’s wineglass on the table with the mother-of-pearl pagodas.
It was nearing one o’clock before the marble-painted entrance-hall echoed to the knocker, but, as one raindrop brings many, its first summons was the beginning of a succession of others, and the drawing-room held a good many people when Gilbert arrived. Two somewhat aggressive-looking matrons were enthroned upon the sofa, a group of men had collected in the middle of the room, and a couple or so of young people were chattering by themselves. Miss Caroline on her chair listened to the halting remarks of a boy just verging on manhood, who seemed much embarrassed by his position, and who cast covert and hopeless glances towards his own kind near the window.
Robert Fullarton was standing silent by the mantelpiece looking out over the garden as Miss Hersey had done, and thinking of the same things; but whereas, with her, the remembrance was occasional, with him it was constant. He had hardly missed his Sunday visit once since the Sunday of which he thought, except when he was absent from home. It was a kind of painful comfort to him to see the objects which had surrounded her and which had never changed since that day. He came back into the present at the sound of Miss Hersey’s voice.
‘You have not brought your nephew with you,’ she said, motioning him to a chair near her.