Chapter XVI: The Dinner-Party

‘You’ll tak’ the high road,
And I’ll tak’ the low.’

On the greater occasions of the plays and balls, Eneas Mackinnon was given to lounging in the back of the box or about the door of the assembly. He had a sense that he was not wanted. He disliked to be conspicuous; he told himself that he was a detrimental, and accepted the situation with a half-haughty, half-despairing submission. At the home affairs he came out better. It was there that Claribel Drysdale gradually grew to see in him a hero of romance, the only romance that existed for her. She contrasted him favourably with some of the awkward, engrossed, or pretentious, presuming young Glasgow men. Eneas Mackinnon was never put out in his quietness. He had plenty of leisure, of which the ladies he knew, and Claribel Drysdale in particular, were welcome to avail themselves. He was not at every girl’s beck, yet he was ready to serve women in general in a way that was very agreeable, and he was quick to wait upon Claribel in a manner that had its fascination. He was for the most part at hand to ride, or skate, or walk, or dance with Lady Semple’s friends or his own. He was never missing where he could be of the least use to Claribel Drysdale.

Though Clary was formed to shine in the society she liked, she had not all the qualities which render women popular. Rich man’s daughter, and beautiful, quick-witted girl as she was, she had not been accustomed to command devotion at once unobtrusive, unfailing, and unexacting. Besides, the men whom commerce claimed, even the young men, were not always free to pay such homage. Eneas Mackinnon’s regimental duty was light and brief compared to the obligations of merchant and manufacturer. They were all due at their offices or works on some of the days of the week, if not on all. The most independent, irresponsible fellows of the number treated business engagements with great respect. It was a dogma of St. Mungo’s City, an article of the creed in which they had been brought up.

Eneas Mackinnon behaved in his proud, silent manner as if he were nobody, which somehow made him look so much more like somebody than the lads whose yachts, and shooting-boxes, and clubs were never out of the owners’ minds or off their tongues. He had none of these things, and still he seemed better without them. He never took advantage of any favour granted to him, neither blazoned it forth, nor made further advances on the strength of it, nor refused to vacate his place, on the least hint, to a better-endowed newcomer.

Lieutenant Mackinnon, poor, and helpless to better his position, had emphatically the stamp of one sort of gentleman on him--not only Dick Semple saw it and chose him out of all the other officers in their regiment for his friend: the brusquer young city men had a perception of the same attraction. They cultivated Mackinnon’s acquaintance, and paid him the compliment of looking up to him and copying him in a good many things; which was a wonder, seeing that he was next to penniless, and his admirers by no means steered clear of the rock of purse-pride in their walk and conversation.

Of course it was the finer spirits who were thus moved; the coarser mammon-worshippers sneered unmercifully at Mackinnon, and at the whole set of empty-pocketed young officers in the Barracks. The assailants did their best on all occasions to bring into strong relief the assailed’s lack of that gear which Glasgow fathers had picked up for their sons, about which the said sons puffed and blew, bragged and hectored.

Attacks of this nature provoked girls like Claribel Drysdale to stand up in defence of their partners, and become their determined partizans. Clary, with her unbounded regard for gentle breeding, began to get a little infatuated where the Lieutenant was concerned, to admire his very laziness, hopelessness, ponderousness, and powerlessness to remedy the misfortune of his circumstances. Though she was quite different, she sympathized all the more with what seemed his creed.

‘The world is all wrong, but I cannot set it right, and, indeed, I have not much confidence in the power of any man to set it right--an absence of conviction which leaves me languidly philosophic and gently indolent.’

This is the peculiar form of agnosticism held by young men of the Lieutenant Mackinnon type.

Auld Tam had little respect, but some pity, for young Mackinnon. The present proprietor of Drysdale Hall made it a point of honour to be hospitable towards the son of the former owner, not without a display of the improvements he, Tam Drysdale, had brought about.

‘Your father would not know the place again if he were to see it--eh, Mr. Mackinnon? You see there has been a considerable amount of capital invested both at the Haugh and the Hall, and capital can work wonders. These gates, now, cost hunders before they were out of the foundry. If you like to take a turn through the stables, or the cattle-sheds, or the greenhouses, or to go over to the bleaching-ground and the dyeing-rooms, you’ll see the extent of the improvements. But now, I mind, you were too young when you left to notice much; however, you can guess.’

Beyond this courtesy and flourish of trumpets, Tam had not the slightest desire to go.

It came upon Tam with the shock of an unpleasant surprise he could hardly realize for scorn, and yet was forced to believe, with angry alarm, that this son of Gavin Mackinnon’s--this officer lad without a penny, and with nothing but what appeared to Tam the fellow’s cool superciliousness to sustain him--was having the impudence to make up to Clary. Nay, if the truth were to be told, it was rather Clary who, in a maidenly way, was having the folly to make up to him, distinguishing him by her notice, lending him every encouragement. Clary! who was so proud, so wise, thought so much of herself, and looked so high.

The unpalatable idea thrust itself on Tam in the course of a dinner at Semple Barns. Lady Semple did not draw the strict line between the old and the young, the married and the single, in the matter of dinners, which was the rule in Tam’s circle. An invitation to dinner at Semple Barns was never limited to Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale. It always included Claribel; young Tam, if he could be had; even young Eppie sometimes, in spite of her not having come out elsewhere; and necessarily other young people to meet the young Drysdales.

Sir James’s health was failing. He had been a shrewd old man, with a few foibles and testy finicalities which caused him to dismiss whatever trod on his toes as ‘ridiklous, ridiklous.’ He had really appreciated Tam Drysdale’s broad commonsense and mother wit, and had enjoyed samples of them as a variety on the tone of the country gentlemen in the neighbourhood. But the host was no longer equal to protracted hospitalities. His guests knew it, and repaired in a body to the drawing-room within a quarter of an hour of the ladies quitting the table.

The elder men of the party had been confined to a neighbouring sheriff, who had far to drive, and started almost immediately; an old laird, who had little to say at any time, and had acquired a trick of falling asleep wherever he was; and Tam Drysdale. Sir James, on his part, conceived himself bound to devote whatever energy was left in him to the discomfited wife of the somnolent laird, who happened to be an old family friend.

Tam was by no means averse to the society of women, but he was not quite at home with Lady Semple and the Miss Vaughans, though he was one of her ladyship’s first favourites, for whose good opinion she was anxious. In fact, the spare little woman in the plain silk gown, with the grey hair under her small lace cap, laid herself out for his entertainment, and aired all her theories, or what he called, in his own mind, her fal-lals, in vain, for he still fought shy of her. He could not speak to his wife, content to sit with her hands in her lap and be shown an album, which she had seen twenty times before, by the more disengaged of the Miss Vaughans. He wished he were back at Drysdale Hall. He did not think young Eppie and young Tam had such a great loss in being absent, after all. Auld Tam took to watching the young people gathered round the piano, and speculating about them. Was he dreaming? Could he trust his eyes that Clary was singing to that polished stick Mackinnon; that she was looking to him to turn over her music, pick up her handkerchief and get her fan; that she was spending her strength in putting a little animation into the listless puppy?

There was nothing to find fault with in the manner of the deed. Clary had been well brought up, and was as modest as her mother. Auld Tam knew there were girls in the better classes who could not be depended on, but he thanked God he could never have that to say of his daughters--Eppie’s daughters. Still, that would not prevent Clary’s ‘throwing herself away like a fool’--Clary who had been so wise--too wise in the wisdom of the world, he had sometimes been tempted to suspect. She had always held her head high, and got a great deal of her own way, so that it would be hard to hold her in at this time of the day. Tam began to doubt whether it was not girls like Clary--self-sufficing, ambitious--who astonished their friends by their inconsistencies in the crowning acts of their lives. It was as if the girl had professed too much--as if nature, early trampled down, rose up when it was least expected, and revenged itself.

What did Lady Semple mean by not looking better after the young people committed to her charge? He recalled that Clary had gone in to dinner with Mackinnon, and had seemed well pleased with her partner. And there was that lad of her ladyship’s playing at some game of making pictures, with one of the English lasses, who was neither bonnie nor braw, and looked old enough to be his auntie; for all that, mischief might come to one or other from the close association. She might mistake his intentions, of which, doubtless, he had none to be mistaken; or he might be drawn into an entanglement which would hamper him all the days of his life. Why did Lady Semple not mind the lads and lasses instead of plaguing poor Sir Jeames to try the allotment system, persuading herself she had a knowledge of fat pigs, and pretending to spin?

If this was all the good that was to be got by Lady Semple’s making such a friend of Clary, auld Tam wished the girl had never seen the woman. No, his fine-looking, fine-mannered edicate lass, with a fair fortune, was not daidlin’, bletherin’ Gauvin Mackinnon’s son’s bargain, at any price.

Naturally Tam relieved his mind, whenever he was left alone with his wife, after their return, on the subject which had troubled him.

‘Mother, you are more in the way of spying such ferlies than I am. Such troke is for you, and not for me. There is a great deal of forgathering [meeting] between the young folk here and at Semple Barns just now. There is no harm in that, but it may be carried ower far and have vexing consequences. I’m half ashamed to speak out--it seems a wrang to Clary; but do you not fancy she’s leading on, without thinking, I dare say, that stupid, stuck-up chap of an offisher, Mackinnon? The couple are carrying on--in short, people will make remarks, and that must not be.’

In the beginning of this confidence Eppie blushed like a girl, her brown eyes twinkled, and her mouth pursed itself up with a mixture of importance and eager earnest.

‘Have you seen something between them, father?’ she asked, with a little excitement. ‘I did think that Clary was different to him from what she was to the other lads. But it might have been fancy. I had aye telled myself Clary would not be easy to get round, or would be won by grandeur, and not give her heart a chance, which would have been a sore pity, for when a woman’s heart is cauld, a’s cauld. Now, he has little to say for himself, and is a kind of drifted aboot chield--ye ken what I mean, Tam--letting himself be mastered and carried awa’ by circumstances; no like you, fechting every inch of the grund, and bund to come aff the conqueror. But I suppose it is all richt. You’re strong enough for twa, and we’ve enough for everybody. Clary will ken her own mind, if anybody will, and you will not be hard upon them, if it come to that; you’ll never stand in their way, and make two people--one of them your ain auldest dochter--meeserable? To think of Clary with a hoose of her ain! Only I’m thinking she’ll not have a hoose, just rooms in the Barracks with the other sodgers’ wives--well, to think of her following the drum may be stranger still. Eh! it will be queer to have a dochter the length of being married. It will be little Eppie next, and it mak’s you and me an auld couple, Tam,’ she said, looking up at him with wistful eyes.

‘Are you daft [mad], Eppie?’ cried Tam at last. ‘Are you clean daft? You may be auld, but you’ve your wisdom-teeth to cut yet. I tell you there is to be no word of sic havers. Mackinnon would be a most unsuitable man for Clary. I will not hear of sic folly.’

‘But if they’re in love, Tam?’ remonstrated Eppie, a little startled by his warmth, but still urging her plea as if it were irresistible. ‘You would not cross true love! And as to his not being fit for her, he’s a very personable lad; and though he’s a thocht canny, he’ll be the easier guided. Clary will take the reins wherever she is; she’s made to rule. And have you forgotten that his faither was the maister here when you were the man? There’s a sort of justice in another change of seats. It will be a Mackinnon coming back to the Haugh, as it was a Drysdale returning in your shoon.’

‘A fell odds in the return, and a very limping kind of justice,’ protested Tam indignantly. ‘Woman, you surely ken, if onybody kens, that I wrocht for my return, and earned it with the sweat o’ my broo. If a man’s ain wife smoors [smothers] his honour, I would not give muckle for’t at other hands. It was for a long time that Gauvin Mackinnon continued the maister, and me the man, and it would be the same with this son of his--long he would hold thegither ony sillar he might make out of me! And it’s that he’s seeking when he seeks Clary,’ the speaker declared bitterly. ‘The men of the Mackinnons may be gude for little else nowadays, but they’re gude arithmeticians when they mean marriage. It belongs to the kind.’

‘Eh! that’s not fair of you, Tam,’ interrupted Eppie, scandalized. ‘Clary’s a bonnie, strapping lass--I’ve seen that he thocht sae in the laddie’s een, mony a time, when he did not guess that I was so gleg [sharp]. You’ve no richt to belie him. But I did not mean to vex you,’ added Eppie earnestly, quick to rue a sharp word to her husband. ‘I never thocht of evening young Mackinnon to the like of you; but if he’s Clary’s fancy you would not pairt lovers.’

‘Yes, I would,’ maintained Tam doggedly; ‘and for that matter, true love can take care of itself. But it is, as you say, a fancy, and nothing but a fancy, bred of idleset [idleness], and over-indulgence. Clary does not ken what she would be at, and she does not ken what it is to live; so she makes sheep’s-eyes at this jackanapes, and she’ll be the first to thank me for saving her from him. As for him, it’s an instinct of self-preservation--an easy way of winning his living, say what you will of what you’ve seen in his een. Een have lied ere now to women, and before their Maker. So you’ll take heed, and look after the twa; and let there be no more of this nonsense--I will not have it!’

Eppie looked at him in silence, as he turned away. It was not for her to rise up in open opposition to her husband, though she could cross him firmly enough in the cause of the bairns, and for conscience’ sake. Such women as Eppie are always strong where conscience is concerned. She was her Tam’s wedded wife--his most loving wife to boot, but she was not his slave. However, in this case, apart from the question of love, she did not know that he was far wrong. She had never really taken very kindly to the whetheror-no lad of whom Clary approved, in spite of his good looks, and what some might hold his misfortunes. What she doubted was her ability to fulfil Tam’s behest. She had even her suspicion of his unqualified power in this light, and she told him her opinion honestly, as a true wife should.

‘You’re a clever man, Tam Drysdale,’ said Eppie, ‘and you’ve focht your battle and triumphed; but you’ve never bridled or saddled hearts, or set bounds to the sea, that you should say you will not have this, or you forbid that, as if you were lord of all. And Clary is as high-headed as you are high-handed; she has it from you, and we’ve made her what she is. Will she mind me? Yes, she will so far; for she’s a leddy, and so she cannot set her mither at nocht. And, of course, I can say, “You’ll not have these Vaughan lassies and the lads in their train here soon again, Clary. I have never contered [contradicted] you about going to Leddy Semple’s, but I maun conter you now. Me and your faither hold you’re a thocht too often there when Mr. Semple is at hame, and Mr. Mackinnon is keeping him company. And, on second thochts, Clary, I’ve given up the idea of taking you all to the club-ball. Your faither is not in the humour for me going more out at present.” Then she would stare, and maybe she would argue a bit, in a composed, half-laughing way, but she would end by saying, “Very well, mother; of course we’ll not go if you don’t wish it.” She would do nothing underhand, for I tell you Clary is a leddy--not a make-believe leddy in fine clothes; she’s a leddy like Leddy Semple and the Miss Vaughans. But would that be giving up the lad? My certie! if you kenned women, it would be mair like clinging to him from that moment, through thick and thin. It would not be as if she put her arms round my neck, and grat [wept] on my breast, as young Eppie might do, and cried, “You and my faither ken best, mother, and I’ll try and do your bidding; and if I fail, you’ll try to forgive me.” Na, na, Tam; you’re strong, but you canna boo [bend] wills, and put out the dawn of love, like the lowe of a candle between your finger and your thoomb, to meet your views,’

Young Tam had gone little to Barley Riggs lately. Perhaps he felt he had enough to do without visiting--perhaps he had not forgiven Athole for dismissing him and his offerings from the hall of the house in St. Mungo’s Square. Perhaps, with the perversity of human nature--one of the subtlest contradictions sinners have to strive against--he refused to give himself the comfort of Dr. Peter’s hearty approval. He was shamefaced over what looked like a recantation of his diatribes against social inequalities. He shrank from reading the cool congratulation, the sly malice, the happy carelessness in Athole’s bright eyes.

Dr. Peter and Athole talked of the young man many a time, though she grew involuntarily shyer of the subject than she had been. Dr. Peter thought it as well to leave young Tam to himself in these days of struggling self-mastery; and Athole began to fear the situation was changing somehow, and that her grave and sardonic companion, at older people’s revels, would be less himself, less comical in his youthful disdain and disgust than of old. For aught that she knew, he might begin to talk ‘shop’ like the rest--the most zealously of all, even as she had predicted that he would live to become the keenest trader, the most lavishly spending architect of another Drysdale Hall. He might mellow altogether, and wax brisk and lively. He might seek to outrival Mr. Rowland in story-telling, and herself in singing ‘Major Macpherson heaved a Sigh.’ He might ask her to dance a quadrille, or propose, when the summer came again, to join Clary’s tennis-party; and the proceeding would be as out of place as if Werther or Hamlet had executed the steps of a hornpipe, or suggested a game at battledoor and shuttlecock. She could not say that she would like the transformation; it would be a species of shock, and she grew absolutely apprehensive of it.

It was not at any dinner that Athole chanced to encounter young Tam for the first time after he was his father’s partner. Neither was it on a charitable errand like that which had united them in the interest of the Miss Mackinnons. It was not at Drysdale Hall or Barley Riggs. The meeting took place amidst business surroundings. Athole had gone to the works one day with a little packet of patterns, and made her way to the pattern-room, to find the man at the head of the department, her usual referee, absent. There was another referee in his place, young Tam Drysdale, looming big and solemn, his very moustache showing portentously, seated at the man’s desk, taking stock of the patterns, and qualifying himself for a pattern-furnisher.

Athole was herself again, to her own great satisfaction, in an instant, while young Tam, as he rose from his elevated seat, appeared undeniably confused and disturbed. Certainly she did not curtsey to him, but neither did she pay any heed to his overture to shake hands. She bowed sedately, and proceeded to do her errand at once. She unfolded her patterns, explained their designs, when these did not speak for themselves, asked his opinion of their merit, and whether he would have them, with the greatest propriety. She would have been a thousand times franker and more discursive to auld Tam.

When young Tam said of course, and that she was a better judge of such things than he was, she waved aside the simple truth with energy, as if it were the most fulsome compliment. The only approach she made to accepting the tribute, was suddenly to overwhelm him with a dissertation on patterns--so fluent, so thorough, that it took away his breath, and did not leave room for the introduction of a single word on other topics. She dismissed herself in the middle of the harangue, with her eyes sparkling, and at the same time a sort of ‘dare-to-come-with-me-to-the-door’ air, that nailed the young man to the spot on which he was standing.

But he was determined she should not get the better of him here. He consulted every available authority, drew elaborately, with the help of a pair of compasses, a calico pattern out of his head, as the fruit of his investigations, and sent it over to Barley Riggs, with a polite request that Miss Murray would try something in this style, which he had worked out, and should like to introduce into the works.

Athole returned the pattern in a quarter of an hour, with a civil note, proving in half-a-dozen lines that most of the curves were wrong, and mentioning that apparently colour had not come within the scope of the design.

When young Tam was initiating himself practically into the mysteries of the dye-vats, he had to wear a dyer’s suit, and his hands--sometimes even his face--were a sight to contemplate. As a rule, he changed his dress and did his best to wash himself at the works; but once or twice--once by an accident which overthrew his arrangements, and twice when a spirit of boyish bravado came over him--he walked home in the guise which Tintoret may have displayed when he was still a lad about his father’s dye-works, before he had taken up the palette and brushes of the prince of painters. In the dark December afternoon there was little light to distinguish what garb a man had donned. But at one point, where the road to the works joined the loaning which led to Barley Riggs, a lamp had been put up, and made a broad illumination in a circle, through which wayfarers had to go in passing the spot.

When young Tam, dressed in character, arrived at this stage of revelation on his homeward road, he was suddenly confronted by Athole Murray, who had strolled as far as the end of her own road to look out for her father returning from one of his medical rounds. Had young Tam got a glimpse of Athole a moment sooner, before he had himself entered the enchanted ring, which exposed all the horrible incongruity and fantasticalness of his coat--nay, his skin--of many colours, and if he could not have beaten a retreat down the path he had come up, in double-quick time, he would have been fool enough to risk his neck by attempting to scale, at a moment’s notice, the high wall belonging to the works.

Now, had auld Tam been the victim, he would have advanced with the courage and composure of a wise man, though one side of his nose had been orange and the other blue, and there had been a splash of vermilion on his chin. It would have made no difference, though his age had been reduced to young Tam’s, and it had been bonnie Eppie Mercer who had crossed his path when he was in this plight. His demeanour would have been much the same as it had been on the occasion of a little incident which had impressed his family. An enterprising mouse had invaded Drysdale Hall, penetrated to the dining-room, and actually ran up the foot of the master of the house, where he sat after dinner. There were screaming and scuttling on all sides. Young Eppie was on the top of the sideboard in as short a time as it takes to record the feat. Even Clary was moved to mount a chair. Mrs. Drysdale backed, in a hasty manner, from the table, drawing her skirts round her. Young Tam took up the poker. But auld Tam, with a robust superiority to all qualms of feeling, treated the aggressor simply as a ‘fellow-mortal.’ He sat where he was, gave his nether garments a shake, said in the easiest of tones, ‘Get awa’ with you, sir,’ and went on with what he had been saying previous to the episode.

Though Athole Murray was plainly dressed, she was invariably neat, with a dainty neatness which is not always attained by the height of extravagance. She was particularly so this afternoon, as she stood in her dark serge, with the little thin, white muslin apron she was fond of wearing fluttering in the wind, and over her head and shoulders a quilted hood of old dove’s-neck-coloured silk, which she put on when she visited her out-of-door pets.

‘Mr. Thomas Drysdale as the clown in the pantomime, three weeks before Christmas,’ she said, eyeing him from head to foot, taking in every daub and stain, and making the miserable man visibly conscious of the sum of them.

‘The performance has one merit--it is gratis,’ he said hurriedly; ‘and if you will stand aside, Miss Murray, so that I may not get you into a mess, it won’t be tedious.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind a stain or two,’ she said, in the most obliging manner. ‘I can always use salts of sorrel. I could recommend them honestly. But how did you get so many and such bright patches? Did any colour get on the cloth? You haven’t tumbled into the vats?’

‘No,’ he answered shortly; ‘but I’m a bungler--I always was, and always shall be; and there’s an end of it. Will you let me pass, Miss Murray, without giving yourself the trouble and annoyance of becoming further acquainted with the beastly condition I am in?’

‘Of course, but don’t be hard upon yourself: indeed, you do not always bungle--you have done the thing completely this time,’ she said, her eyes overflowing with laughter; ‘the doubt is, will it pay?’

‘It is no matter whether it pays or what it costs, if it ought to be done,’ he retorted, with his old lofty manner, and the odd figure vanished in the darkness.

Athole went back to the house into the parlour, and stood looking into the fire. The fun passed out of her face, and was replaced by a wistful gravity. Her father found her thus, and she turned and said to him, without any preamble, as if she were announcing a discovery she had just made:

‘Father, young Tam Drysdale is a fine fellow.’

‘Have you only found that out now, Athole?’ Dr. Peter replied, raising his eyebrows.

‘Well, he hides his head under a bushel of extravagance,’ she said, as an apology for her slowness; ‘I suppose all modern heroes are laughable. The penalty of looking ridiculous is what they must suffer for their spice of heroism. Don’t you think there is a grain of heroism in a man--especially a young man’s owning that he has been in the wrong, and eating his leek, so thoroughly as young Tam is doing?’

‘Yes; and what is more, it is heroism of the right, not the stagey, sort. It is not particularly picturesque, and if it has a flavour of self-martyrdom about it, let us be thankful it is common homely self-martyrdom, not martyrdom on stilts. The victim will not exalt himself over it.’

‘It would be a good deal finer, as well as less absurd, if the hero did not make wry faces,’ remarked Athole reflectively; ‘but one cannot have everything.’

It may have been by way of bringing about a hardly hoped-for perfection, and of serving as a wholesome discipline for young Tam in the interval, that Athole’s pungent mockery flourished as much as ever, in their casual intercourse, after this date.