CHAPTER XX
They were very glad to see him, – very kind to him – impossible to be kinder; ready to enter into all their experiences of town, and to find out who were the people he knew among their friends, and to discuss all their amusements and occupations. Perhaps the fact that there were few people with whom they could discuss these proceedings had something to do with it; for the county in general went little to town, and was jealous and easily offended by the superior privileges of others. But this was a cynical view to take of the friendly effusion of the ladies when John paid them the visit which he thought he had timed religiously, so as neither to be too early, as presuming on the intimacy they had accorded him, nor too late, as showing any indifference to it. No such calculation was in the cordial greeting he received from Lady Lindores. "You are a great deal too timid, Mr Erskine," she said. "No, it is not a fault for a young man, – but you know what I mean. You would not come to meet us though you were there, and you have let two days pass without coming to see us. Fie! As your aunt Barbara says, you should have more confidence in your friends."
Was it possible to be more encouraging, more delightful than this? and then they plunged into the inevitable personalities which are so offensive to outsiders, but which people with any mutual knowledge of a certain restricted society are scarcely able to refrain from. "You know the Setons. There have been great changes among them. Two of the girls are married. To whom? Well, I scarcely remember. Yes, to be sure. Sir Percy Faraway married the eldest, and they went off to California on their wedding-trip. And Charley is with his regiment at Cabul. Old Lady Seton, the grandmother – you know that delightful old lady – is – " and so on, and so on. The county people thought, with strong disapproval, that for intelligent people like the Lindores, who gave themselves airs on this score, it was both frivolous and derogatory to talk so much about individuals; but John, who knew the individuals, was not so critical.
"Rintoul has come with us," said Lady Lindores. "He has paused on the way to pay a little visit; but we expect him this evening. He will stay only a very short time; but he is coming back again in August, when the house will be full."
John made a little bow, and no reply. He did not care for the intelligence. Rintoul, he felt instinctively, would be no friend to him. And in the little contrariety produced by this, he, too, brought forth his piece of news. "I heard of one of your visitors – Lord Millefleurs. He was my fag at Eton, and the drollest little fellow. How has he grown up? I have not seen him since the Eton days."
"He is droll still – like a little fat robin-redbreast," said Edith, with a laugh.
Lady Lindores checked her daughter with a look. "He is – odd," she said, "but very original and – entertaining." She had begun in her heart to feel that something was worth sacrificing to the chance of seeing Edith a duchess. "They say he has been a kind of prodigal – but a very virtuous one, – wandering over the world to see life, as he calls it – a very different thing from what many of you young men call life, Mr Erskine."
John felt nettled, he did not quite know why. "I am glad to know Millefleurs has become so interesting," he said. "The only thing that now gives him interest to me is that I hear Beaufort – you will perhaps recollect Beaufort, Lady Lindores – "
The two ladies started a little, then gave each other a mutually warning look. "Indeed I remember Mr Beaufort very well," said Lady Lindores, shaking her head, – "very well. We have seen him – seen a good deal of him lately. He is perhaps coming here."
"But we hope not," said Edith, under her breath.
"Edith, you must not say anything so unkind."
"Oh, mamma, what is the use of pretending to Mr Erskine? either he knows already, or he will be sure to find it out."
"There is nothing to find out," said Lady Lindores, hastily; and then her countenance melted, and she turned to John, holding out her hand. "You are an old friend – and I am sure you are a true friend, Mr Erskine."
"I am sure I am true," he said.
"Yes, I know it – I know it! Mr Erskine, there was – something between Carry and Mr Beaufort. You guessed it even if you did not know? But afterwards it became impossible. Her father objected – as he had a good right to object. And now you know everything is changed. We women, who take all these things so much to heart – we don't want Mr Beaufort to come here. We think it might be painful. Lord Lindores, who probably has never given the subject another thought, has invited him to come with Lord Millefleurs. You know he is acting as a sort of – best friend to Lord Millefleurs."
"I must tell you now on my side that I have heard from Beaufort," said John. "He wrote to me asking to come to Dalrulzian, if it was decided that he should come North at all. I answered him that I did not think he had better come. Pardon me, there was no betrayal. He did not explain – nor did I explain. I could not; it was a mere – intuition with me. I can scarcely tell even what induced me to do it. I thought he would find everything so different, and get no pleasure out of it. I told him he might come to Dalrulzian whenever he liked; but I think I showed him that it would be better not to do so. So that is all I know of it, Lady Lindores."
She looked somewhat anxiously in his face. Was that all he knew? Edith, who had been a keen spectator of the latter part of this conversation, shook her head slightly, with a faint incredulous smile; but Lady Lindores saw no reason to doubt him. She answered with a little excitement and agitation. "You were quite right, Mr Erskine – no pleasure, especially to him. He could not but feel the difference, indeed. Thanks for your kind and sensible advice to him. I hope he will take it. Naturally we had a delicacy – " And here she looked again at her daughter, who made no reply. Edith had in some points more insight than her mother, and she had been reading John's meaning in his looks, while his other listener considered his words only. Edith thought enough had been made of Beaufort. She changed the immediate subject with a laugh, which provoked Lady Lindores.
"Will Lord Millefleurs," she said, "be permitted, do you think, mother, to come by himself? Is it safe to allow him to run about by himself? He is a dangerous little person, and one never knows what is the next wild thing he may do."
"You are speaking very disrespectfully of Lord Millefleurs," said Lady Lindores, provoked.
"I never intended to be respectful." Edith said. But her mother was really annoyed, and put a summary conclusion to the talk. She was angry because her daughter's opinions had not changed, as her own, all imperceptibly and within herself, had done. Lady Lindores had gone through a great deal on account of the little Marquis, whom she had persisted so long in thinking a nice boy. Rintoul's sermons had become almost beyond endurance before they left London, and even her husband had intimated to her that she was treating a very important suitor far too lightly. It is hard for a sympathetic woman to remain uninfluenced, even when she disapproves of them, by the sentiments expressed around her. Millefleurs had become of additional importance in her eyes unconsciously, unwillingly almost, with every word that was said. And when she had no longer his plump little figure before her eyes – when he was left behind, and his amusing personal peculiarities were veiled over by distance – she ceased to have the relief of that laugh which had always hitherto delivered her from too grave a consideration of this subject. The idea of paying court to any man (much less a fat boy!), in order to secure him as a husband for Edith, was revolting to her mind; but worried and troubled as she was on the subject, Lady Lindores fell, first, into the snare of feeling, with relief, that to escape from further persecution of the same kind was an advantage worth a sacrifice; and second, that Millefleurs, if he was fat, was good and true, and that to be a duchess was something when all that could be said was said against it. For, to be sure, the season in town had its influences, and she was more susceptible to the attractions of greatness, wealth, and high title before it than after. Indeed he was not the husband she would have desired for her child; and she wanted – imprudent woman! – no husband at all for her child, who was the chief consolation left to her in the world. Still, if Edith must marry, as Rintoul said – if she must marry to increase the family importance and influence, which was what Lord Lindores had insisted upon in respect to that pitiful sacrifice at Tinto – why then, influence, wealth, greatness, everything, were united in the little person of Millefleurs, who was, besides, a very nice boy, and amused Edith, and would never harm any woman. This was the conclusion to which a thousand harassing lectures and remonstrances had brought her. She had not said a word of the change, which had worked imperceptibly, and chiefly in the long sleepless night of the railway journey, to Edith; and yet, with natural inconsistency, she was vexed and annoyed that Edith should still laugh, as they had so often laughed together, at little Millefleurs. And both Edith and John, though his suspicions were not yet aroused on this subject, felt the keenness of irritation and vexed dissatisfaction in her tone. He withdrew soon after – for even the merest insinuation of a family jar is painful to an outsider – but not before Lord Lindores had come in, with much friendliness, to beg him to come back to dinner, and engage his immediate aid in the scheme which had already brought our young man some trouble. "I want you to meet Rintoul," said the Earl. "I want you both to make your appearance at Dunearn next week at the county meeting. I am going to produce those plans I spoke to you about, and I hope to move them to some definite step. We shall have a strong opposition, and the more support I can calculate on the better. Rintoul has no gift of speech; he'll say his say in his solid, straightforward, positive sort of manner. But the Scotch are proud of good speaking. I don't know what your gifts may be in that way."
"Oh, nil," said John.
"If you were a Frenchman, I should take you at your word; but in England there's no telling. A young man has but one formula. If he is a natural orator, he gives just the same answer as if he can't put two words together. That is what we call our national modesty. I wish for the moment you were as vain as a Frenchman, Erskine – then I should know the facts of the case. I daresay you speak very well – you have the looks of it; and it will be a great thing for me if you will second and stand by Rintoul. If he muddles his statement – which is quite likely, for the boy is as ignorant as a pig – you must set him right, and laugh a little at the defects of English education: that pleases a Scotch audience."
"I think," said Lady Lindores, "that you are putting a great deal upon Mr Erskine."
"Am I?" said her husband; "but it is in a good cause."
Perhaps this was too lightly said. John took his leave with a half-mortified, half-humorous consciousness that he was to have about the person of this young nobleman something like the same post enjoyed by Beaufort in respect to Millefleurs, but with neither present emolument nor prospect of promotion. And he felt sure that he should not like the fellow, John said to himself. Nevertheless seven o'clock (they kept early hours in the country) saw him walking lightly, as no man ever walked to a disagreeable appointment, towards the Castle. Impossible to thread those shrubberies, to cross those lawns, without a rising of the heart. "Doors where my heart was wont to beat." Nowhere else in the world did he hasten with the same step, did he feel the very neighbourhood of the place affect his pulses in the same way. It was the home to which his thoughts went before him, imagining many happinesses which perhaps did not come, but which always might come – which lived there, to be tasted one time or another. This occupation with the affairs of Lindores, with the new-comer, and the Earl's schemes, and so many secondary subjects, prevented him from entering into the questions which had so deeply discouraged him on the night of their return. He did not ask himself what he had to expect, what he had to do with them. He had a great deal to do with them in the meantime, and that by their own desire.
But John's instinct had not been at fault in respect to Rintoul. They met as a gamekeeper and poacher might meet, if persons of these classes had an indifferent meeting-ground in polite society, like their masters. A mutual scrutiny and suspicion were in their eyes. John, the more generous of the two, made up his mind to nothing save an instinctive hostility to the heir of the house, and a conviction that Rintoul would stand in his way, though he scarcely knew how. But Rintoul, on his side, being what his mother called positive and practical in the highest degree, had no hesitation whatever in deciding upon John's meaning and motives. They were each so much preoccupied in this hostile sense with each other, that Lord Lindores's exhortations after dinner, as to the part he expected both to play, were received with small appreciation. Rintoul yawned visibly, and asked his father whether it was in reason to expect a fellow to plunge into business the moment he got home. John's natural desire to say something conciliatory to the father thus contradicted by his son, which is the instinct of every spectator, was strengthened by his opposition to the special son in question; but even he could not cast off his personality enough to embrace an abstract subject at such a moment: and the two young men escaped, by the only mutual impulse they seemed likely to feel, to the ladies, leaving Lord Lindores to take his share of the vexation and disappointment which visit most mortals impartially in their time. The ladies were out upon the lawn, which lay under the windows of the drawing-room, and from which, as from most places in the neighbourhood, a wide expanse of landscape, culminating in the house of Tinto with its red flag, was visible. The house of Tinto was to the Lindores family that culminating-point of human care, the one evil that heightens all others, which is almost invariable in family experiences. Here their one prevailing pain, the one trouble that would not allow itself to be forgotten; and sometimes they felt the very sight of the scene to be intolerable. But quiet was in the air of the lingering endless night, so sweet, so unearthly, so long continued, making the hours like days.
"Ah, to be sure, that's Tinto," said Rintoul; "what a fine place it is, to be sure! Carry ought to be proud of such a place. And how do all the squires and squireens – or the lairds, I suppose I should say, for local colour, – how do they like his red flag? There ought to be plenty of hatred and malice on that score."
"Nobody hates or bears malice to our Carry, that I can hear of," said his mother, with a reproving glance. Her eye caught that of John, and she blushed almost violently – for was not he the representative of the squires and squireens?
"But Torrance and Carry are one flesh," said Rintoul.
"I ought to speak on the subject, as I am the only representative of the accused," said John, with an attempt at a lighter tone; but it was not very successful, and there was a sense of possible commotion in the air, like the approach of a thunderstorm, which the women were far too sensitive not to feel – and they threw themselves into the breach, as was natural. When John took his leave, as the lingering daylight still lasted, they strolled with him through the shrubberies, accompanying him towards the gate. It was Lady Lindores herself who took the initiative in this, as her son thought, extraordinary condescension. Rintoul followed, keeping his sister walking by his side, with indignant surprise painted all over him. "Do you mean to say you do this every time that fellow is here?" he asked, wrathfully. "We have never been out of doors before when Mr Erskine has gone away," cried Edith, equally angry, in self-defence. Meanwhile the voices of the others, who were in advance, went on peacefully: they talked, unconscious of criticism, while the brother and sister listened. John had begun to tell Lady Lindores of the entertainments he meant to give. He avowed that they had been planned by Rolls, though his first intention had been to keep this fact to himself; but the humour of it overcame him. He could not refrain from communicating so amusing a circumstance to the kind woman, who never misunderstood, and who received all his confidences with maternal pleasure. He was pleased to hear her laugh, and not displeased to lay open the condition of his household to her, and the humours of the old servants, in whose hands he was still a boy. "It is, don't you think, a judicious despotism on the whole?" he said. The sound of her laugh was delightful in his ears, even though a more sensitive narrator might have thought the laugh to be directed against himself.
"It is a delightful despotism," said Lady Lindores; "and as we shall benefit by it in the present case, I entirely approve of Rolls. But I think, perhaps, if I were you, I would not unfold the whole matter to Miss Barbara. Your aunt is born a great lady, Mr Erskine. She might take it as quite right and within the duty of an old retainer; but again, she might take a different view. For my part, I entirely approve. It is exactly the right thing to do."
"You are always so kind," said John, gratefully; "and perhaps you will advise me in matters that are beyond my prime minister's sphere."
"Rolls and I!" she said, laughing; "it is not often a young man has such a pair of counsellors." Her laugh was so fresh and genuine that it sounded like the laugh of youth. Her children behind her had their curiosity greatly excited: Edith with a little wonder, to think what John could be saying to amuse her mother so much; Rintoul with high indignation, to see in what favour this country neighbour was held.
"What does my mother mean?" he said, grumbling in Edith's ear. "She will turn that fellow's head. I never knew anything so out of place. One would think, to see you with him, that he was – why, your dearest friend, your, – I don't know what to say."
"Perhaps you had better not say anything, in case it should be something disagreeable," said Edith, with a sudden flush of colour. "Mr Erskine is our nearest neighbour – and I hope my mother, at least, does not want any guidance from you."
"Oh, doesn't she, though!" murmured Rintoul in his moustache. To his own consciousness his mother was the member of his family who stood the most in need of his guidance. He thought her the most imprudent woman he had ever come across, paying no attention to her children's prospects. They went on thus till they came to the gate, where the Countess of Lindores was actually to be seen by the woman at the lodge, or by any passing wayfarer, in her dinner-dress, with nothing but a lace cap on her head – and Edith, in her white robes and shining hair – saying good-bye to this rustic neighbour, this insidious squire! Rintoul could not for some time relieve his soul as he wished. He was compelled to shake hands too, in a surly way; and it was not till Edith had left them that he permitted himself to make, as he said, a few remarks to his mother. She was lingering outside, for it was still daylight though it was night.
"Mother," said Rintoul, solemnly, "I see it's all exactly as I feared. You have let that fellow Erskine get to be a sort of tame cat about the house."
"After?" said his mother, with a smile.
"After! well, that's as you choose. But of this you may be sure, mother, my father won't stand it. It will only make trouble in the house. He won't let Edith throw herself away. You had better put a stop to it while you are able. I suspected it from the first moment I knew that Erskine was here."
"You are very wise, Rintoul," said his mother, with grieved displeasure, all the pain and disenchantment which she had managed to put aside and forget coming back into her troubled eyes.
"I don't know if I'm very wise; but I know something of the world," said the son, who was so much better instructed than she was; "and I know, when one has charge of a girl, one oughtn't to allow her to throw herself away."
"Carry is supposed not to have thrown herself away," said the indignant mother, with a glance towards that centre of her saddest thoughts, the arrogant front and false battlements of Tinto, faintly gleaming like royal Windsor itself in the mists of distance. This was all in contradiction to the changed state of her mind towards Millefleurs and the gradual leaning towards a great marriage for Edith which had come over her. But we are never more hot in defence of our own side than when we have begun to veer towards the other; and Rintoul's lectures had been for a long time more than his mother could endure.
"No, Carry cannot be said to have thrown herself away," he said thoughtfully, stroking that moustache which looked so young, while its owner was so wise and politic. "Carry should remember," he said, after a pause, "that she's an individual, but the family comprises many people – heaps of her descendants will be grateful to her, you know. And if the fellow is unbearable, why, a woman has always got it in her own hands to make his life a burden to him. Why is she so absurdly domestic? They have quantities of money, and there are plenty of brutes in society to keep him in countenance. She ought to come to town and see people, and enjoy herself. What is the good of living like a cabbage here?"
"If you will persuade Carry to emancipate herself a little – to think of herself a little – I will forgive you all your worldly-mindedness," said his mother, with a smile.
"I will try," he said; "and as for my worldly-mindedness, as you call it, how is a fellow to get on in the world, I should like to know? It isn't by money I'll ever push my way. I must look out for other ways and means."
"Does that mean an heiress, Rintoul?"
His mother was half laughing, half serious. But there was no laughter in Rintoul's countenance. The corners of his mouth were drawn down. His eyes were as solemn as if the matter in question had been life or death.
"You may be sure I'll do my duty to the family, whether I like it or not," he said, with heroic gravity. "I don't mean to recommend other people to do what I'll not do myself."
But Rintoul sighed. He was heroic, indeed, but he was human. A breath of soft recollections came over him. He, too, had entertained other thoughts – he had allowed himself to be beguiled to gentler visions. But when the voice of duty bade, he felt that he had it in him to be superior to all weaknesses. Come an heiress of sufficient pretensions to be worthy of the son of Lindores, and he would buckle his manhood to him, and marry her without wincing. His duty he was at all times ready to do; but yet to the softer part of life, to the dreams of a youth unawakened to such stern purposes of heroism, he might yet be permitted to give a sigh.
John Erskine was the very opposite of this predestined martyr. He felt no weight of family responsibility upon him. All that he wished was – a good wish enough, if it had not been altogether beyond possibility of fulfilment – that the last lord of Lindores had lived to be a patriarch, and had been succeeded by his son in the course of nature. What a difference that would have made to everybody concerned! But our young man did all he could to keep definite plans and hopes out of his mind. He preferred to get the good of each day as it came. If he thought too much of them, he felt a dismal certainty that disappointments would follow. He preferred that his present existence should flow au jour le jour.