Red Rowans Part 29

"I canna think why they pit sic'can a big seal to a letter. Will there be something on it that shoudna be broken?"

"Not that I can see," replied Mrs. Vane, taking it up carelessly.

"Only the name, 'Scriven and Plead'--lawyers, Peggy--for there below is W. S. Glasgow. It is what people call a lawyer's letter, I expect."

"An' what will that be about?"

"Heaps of things. I couldn't say without reading it; shall I?" But Peggy's claw-like hand shot forth in quick negation.

"I'll no be troubling you. I thocht, maybe, ye micht hae had experience o' such things."

"So I have, Peggy. Sometimes they are wills, and sometimes they are money."

"Aye!" interrupted the old woman, with a sinister chuckle, "but when they're written to bit pauper bodies like me?"

"Then they are generally questions," replied Mrs. Vane, and though she spoke easily she was conscious of a certain agitation of mind.

"Agreeable or disagreeable. Something to help a lawyer in tracing somebody, or finding out some secret."

Peggy lay back on her pillows with a sort of groan. "'Tis only the pain, ma'am," she explained, then paused awhile; "I was thinkin' maybe 'twas that. An' if you coudna answer them, what then?"

"Nothing; they can't make you; only it is impossible to tell if you can or cannot till you know the questions."

"But if I canna know them without breaking a covenant? I might just let the letter bide, maybe?"

Mrs. Vane hesitated an instant to run over the pros and cons hastily.

There was some secret, that was evident, and though the letter might not be concerned with it, on the other hand it might. Peggy was disinclined to trust it to her on the instant, but might think better of it by and bye; anyhow, the first thing to ensure was that no one else should have the chance.

"In that case, of course, you should, as you say, let it be. If it is really important they will write again, and then it would be worth while considering the matter. In the meanwhile, as a perfect stranger, I should advise your setting it aside."

Peggy looked at her admiringly. "It's a fine thing to hae deceesion o'

character, and me just fas.h.i.+ng myself about it."

"Shall I put it away for you in a safe place?" asked her visitor, as the old lady proceeded to put the letter back under the pillow.

"It's safe eneuch there," she retorted sardonically. "I'll no move till they lift me to my coffin, an' that will no be far, for it's to stand on the table whaur the tea is setten oot. I've planned it a' ye see wi' Janet, and there's twa bottles o' gude whiskey wi' the deid claes in the bottom drawer. Ye canna expec' sinfu' man tae sit wi' a corp without spirits."

Despite the humour of the thought, which at another time would have outweighed the grimness, Mrs. Vane s.h.i.+vered. It seemed to her as if old Peggy were a corp already in that dim box bed, where she lay so still, only her angry eyes and twitching fingers showing sign of life.

It was a relief to hear the grumbling voice again.

"Weel, yon's settled, thanks to you, an' I'll no be kep' lingerin' in the deid thraw about papers that, for a' I ken, wad be as weel in the fire. O, ma'am! ye dinna ken what it feels like to think o' bein'

called to the Throne, an' no bein' able to stir for the weight o' yer sins. For a broken word is as heavy as lead ye ken."

"Why should you talk of being called, Peggy," protested Mrs. Vane, uneasily. "You are no worse than you were." But here in her nervousness she forgot her tact, and the old woman was in arms at once. "Maybe ye ken better nor me, ma'am, that's only tholing the pain alone in the night watches."

"Then you should get some of the neighbours to sit up."

"Neebors!" interrupted Peggy, with an eldritch laugh. "They'll have eneuch to do in settin' up wi' my corp; sae let them sleep on now an'

take _their_ rest."

Mrs. Vane s.h.i.+vered again, and, a sudden distaste to the whole business coming over her, made an excuse to escape; yet when, almost at the threshold, she met Marjory and Dr. Kennedy on their way to Peggy's entertainment, she paused with the lightest of laughs to tell them that the old woman was in one of her worst moods, and would make their hair stand on end. For her part she had had her fill of horrors, and intended to shock Mrs. Woodward by asking for a spoonful of brandy in her tea! It was a relief to joke over it for the time, even though in her heart she knew that she would have a _mauvais quart d'heure_ sooner or later; most likely later, when the time came for sleep and she would have to seek the aid of that bottle of chloral--for Mrs.

Vane's mind was fragile as her body, and could not stand any great strain. She could handle the reins deftly, and drive her team gaily along the turnpike road, but she had never driven across country. So it was a further relief to meet the butler in the hall carrying a fresh teapot of tea into the drawing-room, while the footman followed decorously bearing eight cups on a tray. Lady Hooker, the former functionary replied, in answer to her inquiries, had driven over from the Forest to see her ladys.h.i.+p in a _char-a-banc_, with seven other ladies, some children, and a piper playing on the box. He added the last item in tones of tolerant contempt, born of a dispute downstairs as to whether the musician should have his tea in the housekeeper's room or the servants' hall; the womenkind, dazzled by his gorgeous array, favouring the former, the menkind the latter, on the ground that fine feathers did not make fine birds, and that without them he was only Roderick the gillie's brother and a "hignorant 'ighland beast" to boot.

Lady George's face relaxed even at the sight of another woman, seeing that that other was Mrs. Vane; for as she said afterwards, "It is nearly twenty miles, you know, and a bad road, so the horses were bound to have an hour's rest, and it requires a dreadful expenditure of tissue to make tea last an hour; yet, if you don't, you have to put on your boots in a hurry and begin the conservatories and the garden, which no one wants to see in the least. Really, in the country, it would be a charity to have a room where people could wait until the horses came round, or rather, till the coachman got tired of flirting with the maids, for in the end it comes to that, you know."

To tell truth, there was cause for Lady George's welcome of reinforcements, for, despite the fact that the hall positively reeked of mackintoshes, the drawing-room was redolent of the shower-proof mantles worn by a bevy of ladies of the type so common on Mr.

McBrayne's steamers; ladies whose conception of the Highlands and islands might be likened to a volume of Scott bound in waterproof!

"We brought our sandwiches for lunch with us," explained one in reply to Mrs. Vane's commonplace about the long drive; "and dear Lady Hooker said we might rely on Highland hospitality for tea; and really it was exquisite, a dream of beauty, and so interesting, too! Dear Lady Hooker says that a portion of Waverley was really written in this neighbourhood."

"I hope they were not the opening ones, then," remarked Mrs. Vane, carelessly. "They always make me inclined to agree for the time with the man who said it was a pity Sir Walter wrote in such small print."

A perfectly bovine silence fell on her group, broken, however, by a determined voice from over the way:

"I agree with you absolutely, at least, as absolutely as the limitations of human life allow. There is a lack of spiritual insight in Sir Walter, a want of emotional instinct, an almost brutal content with things as they are. His style is doubtless good, but personally I confess to being unable to appreciate it fully. Even on a second reading I find the story distracts my mind."

The speaker was a slim, rather elegant-looking girl, with an odd mixture of eagerness and stolidity on her face.

"She writes a great deal," said Mrs. Vane's next-door neighbour in an undertone of gratification, as if she gained a certain distinction by being of the same party.

"Only a hundred brace!" came Lady Hooker's voice, compa.s.sionately.

"That's very poor, scarcely worth writing for--but then, you don't rent the place, of course; that makes the difference. Sir Joseph doesn't go in for grouse, of course; he is a deer man. But we couldn't get on under five hundred brace for the table, we really couldn't.

Cooks are so extravagant. You will hardly believe it, Lady Temple, but my Glasgow beef bill last week was over nine pounds, and we had three sheep besides, and--how many deer was it, Miss Jones? Six? Yes, six deer."

"That seems enough even for Noah's Ark or a menagerie," said Mrs.

Vane, sympathetically, and Lady George gave her a grateful smile.

"But then, of course, the servants won't touch venison," went on Lady Hooker, contentedly; "though really it makes very fair clear soup--it does, indeed. Even Sir Joseph does not object; and he is so particular. When we had the Marquis of Steyne's place in Ross-s.h.i.+re----"

"Ah! there are the children," said Lady George, with a sigh of relief.

"I thought, Lady Hooker, that my little boy and girl--oh, nurse! I did not intend Master Blasius----"

But nurse apparently had other views--possibly that of hearing the pipes downstairs--for she feigned not to hear, and set Blazes down on his feet with that final "jug" behind to his smock frock which is the usual parting admonition to behave nicely.

"Eve, my darling! Adam, my love! go and shake hands' with your little visitors," said Lady George, keeping an apprehensive eye on Blazes, who, with his legs very far apart, was clacking the whip he had brought down with him, and making extraordinary cluckings in the roof of his mouth, like a whole bevy of broody hens, in which occupation, what with his close-cropped hair and white smock, he looked a carter to the life. "Really, nurse!" she continued nervously; "I think, perhaps, it would be better. He is so much younger than the others, you see, Lady Hooker."

But nurse was not to be put off with this subterfuge, and as she happened to be keeping company with the carrier, she felt outraged by the palpable suspicion. "Indeed, your ladys.h.i.+p," she said, in an indignant whisper, "it is only the man as drives the ferry cart, and 'e is most respectable!"

So it appeared, for beyond the usual "_ger'up_" Blasius' vocabulary was, if anything, too endearing. So much so, that Lady George suggested that since the children had had their tea, she thought it would be nice for them to play on the lawn. She would ring for the nursemaid to keep an eye on them, not that it would be necessary, since she could trust darling Adam and Eve not to get into mischief anywhere--out of Paradise. But here a difficulty presented itself. One little girl, a very pretty child dressed in white serge and fur, refused to go, and stood burying her face in the window curtain, and digging the toe of one shoe into the carpet after the manner of children who have made up their minds to give trouble.

"She isn't my girl," came Lady Hooker's loud voice. "Sir Joseph wouldn't tolerate that sort of thing, he is so particular. When we had the Duke's place in Sutherland----"

"Cressida, my sweet!" said the auth.o.r.ess, plaintively; "if you can possibly wish to go, do wish; it would be so much more convenient for dear little mother. I never coerce her, on principle, Lady George--she is the only tie I have to life."

"Separated from her husband," put in Mrs. Vane's next-door neighbour, in the same self-complacent whisper. "It is quite the proper thing when you write, you know."

"That is what Lady George says also," broke in Mrs. Woodward, a little spitefully. "And I tell her that children were made to obey their parents----"

"Should be made to obey them, you mean, dear Mrs. Woodward,"

interrupted her hostess, rising to the bait; "but, as I say, it depends upon experience. You may have found it necessary with--with yours, but mine----"