Chapter XLVIII: Earlshope Is Invaded

Meanwhile the carriage had been driven to the gates of Earlshope. The lodgekeeper came out, and naturally opened the gates, although sufficiently surprised to see anybody arrive at such a time. When, at last, the landau arrived at the house, the occupants alighted. The housekeeper was already standing there, in front of the open door, glaring defiance.

The first of the two women walked up the stone steps in a slow and pompous fashion, and, with an air of mock-heroic gravity, produced a card, on which was printed Mrs. Smith Arnold.

"'Deed no!" said the housekeeper, rather incoherently.

Mrs. Arnold looked at her companion, and shrugged her shoulders.

"My good woman, I suppose you can't read. That is not a begging letter. It is a card. I have the permission of Lord Earlshope to look over the house: I don't mean to steal anything, but you may come with us wherever we go, if you please."

The housekeeper began to wax warm.

"Canna read! I can read weel aneugh; and what I say is, that not one step into this house will ye gang the day, his lordship's permission or no permission."

"What do you mean, woman?" said Mrs. Arnold, with an assumption of haughtiness.

"I mean what I say," said the Scotchwoman, doggedly. "And I havena been kept frae the kirk a' for nothing, as ye'll find out, gin ye attempt ony o' your fine airs wi' me."

These latter words were spoken rather hotly; and both the women who stood before her looked surprised. However, the so-called Mrs. Arnold picked up some temper, and merely exclaiming--"Oh, the creature's mad!" brushed past into the house, along with her companion. Lord Earlshope's plenipotentiary was at once stupefied and powerless. In order to avoid a public scandal on the Sabbath morning, she had sent the other servants to church, confident that her own authority would be sufficient to repulse any casual visitor. Now she found the house invaded by two strange women, and she was placed in an awkward dilemma. If she went through the house with them, she would condone their offence, and be unable to eject them; if she went for help to the lodge, they, in the meantime, might pillage and plunder in every direction. Eventually, after a moment of incensed hesitation, she followed them.

And gradually she perceived that they were not thieves. Indeed, Mrs. Smith Arnold betrayed a singular acquaintance with many objects in the house, particularly in a small drawing-room or morning-room which Lord Earlshope was scarcely ever known to enter.

"But where is my portrait?" she said.

"_Your_ portrait!" repeated the housekeeper, with all her indignation welling up again.

"Woman, you are an ass--a microcephalous idiot in fact; but you don't know it, and it is no matter. He might have brought my portrait here; it is a dull hole, and it might have cheered him. And this is the place he used to talk about with something like rapture! Good heavens! it is dismal as a church. Look at the deserted country and the bare shore and the black sea. What's the name of those mountains over there?"

"Ye had better ask them," said the housekeeper, "since ye can make free enough to come into a strange house, and talk as if everything belonged to ye!"

"And so it does--so it does; that is the joke of it. You would understand it if you were not such an ass, my good woman; but I am afraid you are a very stupid person."

"Are ye going to leave this house?" said the housekeeper, in a blaze of anger.

But the temper of the housekeeper was nothing to the sudden passion that shot into the black eyes of this woman, as she said--

"Don't talk to me! I tell you, don't talk to me, or I will dash a bottle of vitriol in your face, and blind you, blind you, blind you!"

Then she burst into an ironical laugh.

"What a fool you are--an ass--an idiot! You haven't got the brains of a slow-worm. My good woman, believe me, you are an ass!"

She began to turn over the things on the table--books, photographs, cards, and what not. The housekeeper started and listened. There was a sound of footsteps on the stair. In a minute or two, the Pensioner made his appearance at the door, tall and erect.

At the sight of this ally, all the housekeeper's courage and anger returned. She denounced the strangers as thieves and pick-pockets. She appealed to the Pensioner to help her. She conjured him to turn them out of the house.

"Sat is what I will do," observed Neil, advancing calmly, with the sort of deferential and yet firm air of the private soldier.

"Please, mem, will ye go, or will I pit ye out o' sa house?"

"Lay a finger on me, and I will set fire to the place, and burn you and it into cinders. Savages that you are--and idiots!"

"You will say what you please," observed Neil, who probably considered these phrases as rather feeble when compared with some that he knew in his native tongue; "but I mean to put ye both out o' sa house. I will not strike you--Cootness knaws; but I will jist tek ye up, one by one, and carry ye down sa stairs, and out into sa gairden, and leave ye there. Will ye go, or will ye not go?"

"Do you know who I am, you idiot?" cried the woman, with her face grown purple with passion.

Her companion laid her hand on her arm; she shook her off.

"I do not care," said the Pensioner.

"I am Lady Earlshope, you ignorant brutes and beasts!" she cried. "And I will have every one of you starved until a crow would not pick your eyes out, and I'll have you whipped, and starved, you ignorant hounds!"

"Lady Earlshope!" said the housekeeper, rather falling back.

The quieter of the two women again interposed and endeavoured to pacify her companion. She, indeed, seemed rather frightened. Eventually, however, she managed to get her infuriated mistress coaxed out of the room and down the stair; and as they were descending they nearly stumbled over a third person--the lodgekeeper, who, fancying that there was something amiss, had come along out of curiosity.

"Who are you?" she asked. "Oh, I remember. I suppose you have been listening. Well, you can go and tell your babbling neighbours of the reception Lady Earlshope met with in her own house."

And that is precisely what the man did. He had overheard much of the stormy scene in the drawing-room, and, being of a prudent disposition, did not wish to have anything to do with it. When the carriage drove off, he went quietly back to the lodge, leaving the housekeeper and the Pensioner under the delusion that they alone knew the relationship of this woman to Lord Earlshope. But the lodgekeeper revealed the secret, in an awe-stricken way, to his wife; who whispered it, in profound confidence, to one of the female servants; who subsequently told it to her mother in the village.

There it ran the round, with such exaggerations and comments as may be imagined; and if Coquette had been looked on rather askance from the moment of her coming to Airlie, this news placed her under the ban of a definite suspicion, and even horror. What were her relations with the drunken and passionate woman who had accosted her, in the open face of day, on that memorable Sabbath morning? What was the meaning of her intimacy with Lord Earlshope, and the cause of his visits to the Manse ever since she had come to live there?

Even the children caught the fever of distrust, and avoided Coquette. That would have been a bitter thing for her to bear, had she noticed it; but she was perhaps too much occupied then with her own sad thoughts. Nor was the Minister aware that his own conduct in harbouring this girl was forming the subject of serious remark in the village. The excuses made for him were in themselves accusations. He was withdrawn from worldly affairs. He was engrossed in his books. He was liable to be imposed on. All this was said; but none the less was it felt that the duty of looking sharply after the conduct of his household and the persons around him was specially incumbent on one whose business it was to see narrowly to the interests of the Church, and set an example to his Christian brethren.