Inchbracken Part 11

'Ah! Those mill owners are tremendous people. And is he nice?'

'Really I don't know--That is a matter of taste.'

'Well, does he please your taste, Miss Precision?'

'I find him very polite and attentive, more so indeed than I care for.

I think fussy people are apt to put me out, and it seems difficult to converse with him. I suppose my being Scotch prevents my knowing the things he talks best about.'

'And has Miss Sophia made an impression, do you think? Or is she impressed herself?'

'Indeed I don't know.'

'Ah! forgive me. I am so forgetful, but you know I mean no harm. I remember now, there is some _tendresse_ between your brother and her.

She certainly is handsome, and I hope he will get her if he wishes it, though, _entre nous_, she always struck me as a dull girl. Like a wedding cake, only good to look at.'

Here Briggs knocked and entered, with a bundle of white roses, each flus.h.i.+ng into pinkish creaminess at the heart.

'With Captain Drysdale's compliments for Miss Brown.'

'Poor Colewort!' cried Julia, with just a thrill of viciousness in her voice, 'there go his hopes of a prize at the flower show next week! I know he has been nursing that rose for weeks past. For all that, Miss Brown, they will go nicely with your black gown, so I shall leave you now to embellish yourself with the poor man's broken hopes--Pathetic sentiment that? Ha! ha!'

CHAPTER XIII.

_A HARBOUR OF REFUGE_.

Roderick having bestowed his companion safely in the s.h.i.+eling of Stephen Boague, did not linger. He started at once down the glen by the path beaten by the shepherd and his family. Down a glen, over a mountain shoulder, across rolling upland, zig-zagging between marsh and peat bog, at length coming out on the road, and in course of time gaining the inn from which they had started in the forenoon. There was no lifting or clearing away of the mist, it had thickened rather, and filled the air with a diffused drizzling spray, which settled drenchingly on every thing, trickling down rock and herbage, soaking into clothing and ground, till like sponge, they were distended with moisture.

He was wet already, as well as more or less bruised, battered, and foot-sore from his late experience, therefore the drizzle did not add materially to his discomfort, besides, the ferment in his mind made him insensible to bodily pains. He had heard from Mrs. Sangster's own lips when apparent danger had momentarily removed the restraints of civilized life, and her native egotistic worldliness and greed for once spoke out for themselves, that she was contemplating a match between Sophia and Wallowby. His Sophia, for whom like another Jacob earning his Rachel, he had laboured and borne so long. He had not gone out each morning for fourteen years, it is true, driving the cattle before him on the pastures of Auchlippie; but these are not the days in which human life is measured by centuries. Out of what the insurance companies would call his presumption of life, he had bestowed a far larger percentage on Sophia, than were the fourteen years devoted by the patriarch to winning his bride, not to mention difference in intensity. Notwithstanding the beauty of the sacred episode, one cannot but suspect some coolness, along with the much patience required to watch the beloved object drifting from the bright bloom of girlhood into the sun-burnt maturity of thirty summers, and still keep waiting to work out the bargain. Roderick had been working out his bridal on the other line, not ministering to the greed of a grasping father-in-law, but submitting to whims, exactions, and pretensions innumerable from the coa.r.s.e-fibred mother of his charmer.

How she had taken upon her to regulate his orthodoxy!--had sat in judgment on all that he did! reproved and exhorted him! and how he had borne it all, and attributed it to ignorant good intentions, for the love of Sophia! Sophia, whom he had picked blaeberries for in childhood, and wors.h.i.+pped openly ever since.

And had he not been given fair encouragement too? When he returned from Edinburgh for his college vacations, had he not always met a special welcome there, and received invitations to come and stay as frequently as even he could desire? And since then, had he not become in every respect what this most fickle of mothers the most approved?

Had he not cast aside the offer of a good manse and stipend, and come forth with the faithful to suffer tribulation for righteousness' sake?

Had he not been zealous, and showed his desire to spend and be spent in the cause of truth? True, he had obeyed the command of conscience, and not of Mrs. Sangster in all this; but his line of conduct had been the one she belauded as most n.o.ble and holy, and she had already, in the earlier time, let him clearly see that personally she approved him, and had given him every facility for becoming intimate with her girl. And now without the pretence of falling out or complaint against him, she was deliberately contemplating to marry her to another man.

Was ever such treachery, fickleness, worldly-mindedness, and all that is worst?

Poor young man! It _was_ bad treatment looked at from _his_ point of view,--it was black, and deserving of all the hard names he applied to it; but then there are more points of view than one, and who shall decide which is to prevail over the others? His was the suitor's point of view, but there is also that of the sought, and likewise that of her family. A family can wed its flower and pride but once, and it is neither unnatural nor improper that it should try to do its best, which, speaking in the general, means to secure a rich husband for the girl. The most mercenary will admit that riches do not necessarily bring happiness, but the moral point is whether happiness is possible without them. Many have doubted whether happiness is compatible with poverty, but no one has ventured to a.s.sert that the poverty is an element in the happiness.

Therefore, friend Roderick, there is something to be said on the side of the old woman. It is not to _your_ interests she can be held bound, further than the truth and justice due to all our fellow creatures require, but to her daughter's. As to how the case may appear from the daughter's point of view, you have no right to say, or even to think, as you have never put it in her power to tell you, and a maiden may not divulge the secret of her preferences unasked. She has encouraged you, you say? But how? Answered you civilly when you spoke to her?

Could a lady do less? Has not been averse to your company? Why should she be? Could she civilly have shown a distaste for it? And supposing she felt no distaste, but rather liked it? Must a woman be prepared to marry any man whose company she finds pleasurable, or less irksome than solitude? You never spoke the word, my friend, that would have called her to speak for herself, and therefore you have no right to complain; though I grant that Mrs. Sangster may have been inconsiderate and fickle, and may be mercenary. Still, if when she extended her encouragement, you did not tender your proposal, and thereby nail her, she must be allowed to change her mind if she desires. As to Sophia herself, the probability is, that her affections are, and will remain, in an amorphous form, or let us say in solution, until such time as her relatives provide her with a husband round whom they may properly crystallize, as they no doubt will, and she will prove a pattern wife and mother. I fear, however, that as regards the nucleus round which her affections are to gather, as in the case of sugar (another sweet substance), any stick will answer quite well.

Love is blind, and young love headstrong, therefore it is little wonder if these cold-blooded reflections did not occur to Roderick. He fretted and fumed as he walked along, and was thoroughly miserable, while the moisture dripped steadily from his hat brim, and meandered in little brooks down his neck.

Eventually he reached the inn, and bade the landlord send out a gig or tax-cart at once, to bring in Mrs. Sangster. The landlady came forward, officious to welcome a guest, and eager to show hospitality to her minister.

'Wae's me, sir, but ye _are_ drouket! Past a' kennin', ye micht hae been soomin' e'y loch, forby climbin' the craig. Stap in by, aside the twa gentlemen, an' warm yersel'. An' I'se bring ye a drap toddy to het yer insides, an' syne ye'll gang to yer bed, an' I'se toast yer breeks afore the kitchen fire. Lord pity me! the man's as blae as a corp about the gills--clean fus.h.i.+onless an' forfuchan wi' cauld an' weet!

Gude grant he bena taeh doon wi' a fivver o' tap o't. Ye'll be for yer denner, sir, whan Mrs. Sangster comes in? But that winna be for twa hours yet; sae gang tae yer bed, sir, ey now, an' I'se see to dryin'

yer claes.'

Roderick entered the room where sat Peter Sangster and his friend. A roaring fire of wood billets and peat blazed on the hearth, each had a smoking tumbler at his elbow, and soothed himself with a pipe. There was a steaminess and a flavour of broadcloth and shoe leather diffused about the apartment, but it was evident the gentlemen themselves were nearly dried, and subsiding into a sort of drowsy comfort under the united influence of warmth, toddy, and tobacco.

'Ahoy! Sir preacher! Turned up at last? and what have you done with my mother?'

'She is safe in a s.h.i.+eling up one of the cross glens, and I have already ordered a gig to be sent for her. You may expect her in little more than an hour. We very nearly got lost on the hill in consequence of waiting to look for an eye-gla.s.s she had dropped. When that was found, you had gone out of hearing, and we found ourselves alone.

Eventually we had recourse to the old device of following running water, and a pretty course it led us, over slippery rock faces, and into pools of ice-cold water. Your mother thought she was drowned more than once, and at last gave up all hope of getting home alive, and but that she could hear the barking of dogs and the cries of children a little way below, she would have collapsed altogether.'

'Hm,' said Peter, 'I can imagine--I am glad it was you and not me! The old lady is apt to cut up rough under difficulty. However I had my own troubles. See my coat! Split right up the middle and only held together by the collar and the two pins which Mrs. Tuppeny here has tagged it together with. I have to sit bolt upright, or they run into me like skewers whenever I lean back. Perhaps they are skewers.'

'Ha!' broke in Wallowby, 'we heard a screach overhead, and when I looked up, there were a pair of boot heels within a foot of my eye, the legs belonging to them were only dimly visible, and whatever was above that was out of sight in the mist. The guide got hold of one, I took the other, while Miss Sophia stood well to the one side. Then we said one, two, three, and gave a pull together. There was a crack of rending broad-cloth and oh! such an unearthly howl. He must have fancied he was being dragged down into the pit of darkness. Eh, Peter?

and there stood my gentleman clutching his fingers into the cravats of his two preservers and panting like a steamboat!--Pretty exhibition of nerves, my fine fellow!--What will they say at the club when they hear of it?'

'You shut up! for a clumsy blunderbuss! You nearly dislocated my hip joint with your idiotic wrenching, and then wonder that I cried out!'

'What has become of Miss Sophia?' asked Roderick.

'Tea and bed upstairs,' replied Wallowby with a guffaw; 'the landlady marched her up stairs to bed first thing, like a naughty child who had wet her frock, and I heard her say, she would dry her coats for her.

What are coats by the way? Scottice for garters? I know what breeks are.'

'Here's a lad speerin' for Mistress Sangster, gentlemen,' said Mrs.

Tuppeny opening the door and pus.h.i.+ng in a damp and touselled-looking youth, who grasped his dripping 'Tam o' Shanter' tightly in both hands.

'I was to speer for Mistress Sangster hersel.'

'She has not come in yet, but I am her son.'

'An' there's Master Brown, the young leddy's brither,' added Mrs.

Tuppeny, 'I'm thinkin' it'll be a' richt.'

'A weel, sir, General Drysdale sends his compliments to Mistress Sangster---- He sends his compliments' (and he looked into the crown of his hat as though he expected to find them there) 'an' he's taen the leeberty o' bringin' Miss Brown hame wi' him til Inchbracken, to dry hersel', an' he'll tak her hame the morn. He fand her e'y glen, down by fornent the Herder's Scaur, a' weel an' droukit like, an' for fear she suld tak the cauld, he juist on wi' her til a pownie, an'

they're gane skelpin' hame til Inchbracken.'

'Very kind of General Drysdale,' said Roderick, giving the messenger a s.h.i.+lling. 'Here! Mrs. Tuppeny, give him a jorum of your toddy! He looks as wet as any of us.'

'An it's yer pleasure, sir, I'se gie him a gude drink o' yill---- c.o.c.k the like o' _him_ wi' the best Glenlivet! An' I'm no for giein' toddy to thae hafflin callants, no ways; they dinna need it, an' it's an ill trick to learn them. The weet's nae harm tae cottar folks' bairns, they're aye plouterin' e'y burns, an' it juist keeps them caller. But say the word, sir, an' he's hae the yill!' and so saying she pulled the messenger out before her and closed the door.

'I can't say much for your sister's politeness, Brown,' said Peter.

'When a lady accepts a man's escort, she is bound to stick to it, I should say, and not go off with the first stranger who rides up in the mist, without even a word of apology or farewell. I don't see why she could not have stuck by me.'

'And broken her neck down that precipice where you so nearly stuck fast yourself?' said Roderick. 'Your hands seem to have been full enough taking care of yourself. I think one may without presumption or profanity regard General Drysdale's opportune appearance as providential.'

'But it wasn't General Drysdale's opportune appearance! It was that stuck-up puppy his son.'

'And a far more ominous appearance for your peace, too, my boy,' said Wallowby with a chuckle. 'But grin and bear it, old man. You will only be laughed at if you get mad.'

Mrs. Tuppeny looked in again.

'Mister Brown! yer room's ready up the stair. Come awa, sir, an' tak aff yer claes, an' I'se dry them for ye. Ye'll get yer death, sir, an'