"I'm so busy, aunt, just now," said he, as he opened the door for her. Then he saw her into her carriage; and she drove away—a most perplexed and unhappy woman.
These rooms that Vincent had taken at the foot of Buckingham-street were right up at the top of the building; and commanded a spacious prospect of the river, the Embankment gardens, the bridges, the great dusky world of London lying all around, and the dome of St. Paul's rising dim and phantasmal in the east. They were bachelor chambers, that had doubtless seen many tenants (the name of one, George Brand, was still over the door, and Vincent did not think it worth while to change it), but the young man had no sooner entered into possession than he began a series of alterations and improvements that bachelor chambers did not seem to demand. Not in any hurry, however; nor perhaps with any fixed intent; it was a kind of amusement for this or that odd half-hour he could snatch from his multifarious duties. To begin with, he had the woodwork painted a deep Indian red, and the walls a pearly-blue grey: while the former colour was repeated in the Japanese window-curtains, and the latter by the great world outside, on the lambent moonlight nights, or sometimes in the awakening of the dawn, as he lay in a low easy-chair, and watched the vast, silent city coming out of its sleep. This top-floor was a very still place, except for the early chattering of the tree-sparrows, into whose nests, swaying on the branches just beneath him, he could have tossed a biscuit. And then his peregrinations through London, rapid though they were as a rule, occasionally brought him face-to-face with a bric-a-brac shop; and from time to time he picked up one thing or another, just as it happened to strike his fancy. Perhaps these modest purchases were just a trifle too elegant for a bachelor's apartments; the sitting-room away up in that lofty situation came to look rather like a boudoir; for example, there was a music-stand in rosewood and ormulu—a tall stand it was, as if for a violin player—which he himself never used. Pictures he could not afford; but books he could; and the volumes which were one by one added to those shelves were of a more graceful and literary stamp than you would have expected to find in the library of a young and busy member of Parliament. It was not a lordly palace of art, this humble suite of apartments in the neighbourhood of the Strand; but there was a prevailing air of selection and good taste; perhaps, one ought to say, of expectancy, also, in the presence of things not yet in use. Then the two large and low windows of the sitting-room were all surrounded with ivy, of long training; but besides that, there were flower-boxes; and at a moment's notice, and at small expense, these could be filled with potted geraniums, if one wished to be gay. And always outside was the varied panorama of the mighty city; the wide river and the bridges, the spires and the towers, the far masses of buildings becoming more and more spectral as they receded into the grey and wavering mist. Sometimes the rose and saffron of the dawn were there, ascending with a soft suffusion behind the purple dome of St. Paul's; sometimes there were blown and breezy days, with flying showers and watery gleams of sunlight; and sometimes the night lay blue and still and clear, the Surrey side in black and mysterious shadow, the white moon high in the south. These silent altitudes were a fine place for dreaming, after all the toil and moil of the working-hours were over; and a fine place for listening, too; sometimes, towards the morning, just as the leaves began to stir, you could fancy the wind was bringing a message with it—it seemed, coming from far away, to say something about Claire Fontaine.
CHAPTER VIII.
IN A NORTHERN VILLAGE.
But there were to be no three years of absence, still less of forgetfulness. One afternoon, on Vincent's going down to the House, he found a telegram along with his letters. He opened it mechanically, little thinking; but the next moment his eyes were staring with amazement. For these were the words he saw before him:—"Grandfather very ill; would like to see you. Maisrie Bethune, Crossmains, by Cupar." Then through his bewilderment there flashed the sudden thought: why, the lands of Balloray were up in that Fifeshire region!—had, then, the old man, tired of his world-wanderings, and feeling this illness coming upon him, had he at length crept home to die, perhaps as a final protest? And Maisrie was alone there, among strangers, with this weight of trouble fallen upon her. Why could not these intervening hours, and the long night, and the great distance, be at once annihilated?—he saw Maisrie waiting for him, with piteous eyes and outstretched hands.
He never could afterwards recall with any accuracy how he passed those hours: it all seemed a dream. And a dream it seemed next day, when he found himself in a dogcart, driving through a placid and smiling country, with the sweet summer air blowing all around him. He talked to the driver, to free his mind from anxious and futile forecasts. Crossmains, he was informed, was a small place. There was but the one inn in it—the Balloray Arms. Most likely, if two strangers were to arrive on a visit, they would put up at the inn; but very few people did go through—perhaps an occasional commercial traveller.
"And where is Balloray House—or Balloray Castle?" was the next question.
"Just in there, sir," said the man, with a jerk of his whip towards the woods past which they were driving.
And of course it was with a great interest and curiosity that Vincent looked out for this place of which he had heard so much. At present nothing could be seen but the high stone wall that surrounds so many Scotch estates; and, branching over that, a magnificent row of beeches; but by and bye they came to a clearing in the "policies"; and all at once the Castle appeared in sight—a tall, rectangular building, with a battlemented parapet and corner turrets, perched on a spacious and lofty plateau. It looked more modern than he had imagined to himself; but perhaps it had been recently renovated. From the flag-staff overtopping the highest of the turrets a flag idly dropped and swung in the blue of the summer sky: no doubt the proprietor was at home—in proud possession; while the old man who considered himself the rightful owner of the place was lying, perhaps stricken unto death, in some adjacent cottage or village inn. Then the woods closed round again; and the mansion of Balloray was lost from view.
Vincent was not in search of the picturesque, or he might have been disappointed with this village of Crossmains—which consisted of but one long and wide thoroughfare, bordered on each hand with a row of bare and mean-looking cottages and insignificant houses. When they drove up to the inn, he did not notice that it was a small, two-storied, drab-hued building of the most common-place appearance; that was not what he was thinking of at all; his heart was beating high with emotion—what wonder might not meet his eager gaze at any instant? And indeed he had hardly entered the little stone passage when Maisrie appeared before him; she had heard the vehicle arrive, and had quickly come down-stairs; and now she stood quite speechless—her trembling, warm hands clasped in his, her face upturned to him, her beautiful sad eyes all dimmed with tears, and yet having a kind of joy in them, too, and pride. She could not say a single word: he would have to understand that she was grateful to him for his instant response to her appeal. And perhaps there was more than gratitude; she seemed to hunger to look at him—for she had not seen him for so long a while: perhaps she had never thought to see him again.