Chapter XXXIII: A Drowning Man’s Straws

It was none of the persons chiefly concerned, but a mere looker-on, who, without in the least understanding the case, awoke auld Tam from his lethargy, and gave his troubled mind a new bias.

Lady Semple, with her natural versatility, had long ago renounced her projects for Claribel as the destined Lady Willoughby. Lady Semple had, not without reason, made up her mind instead that Claribel Drysdale ought to marry Mr. Mackinnon. Her father could not really disapprove of the poor match for his elder daughter, else he would not have allowed her to come prominently forward, as she had come, to the help of the unfortunate old ladies. Nothing would warrant such compromising conduct in a young lady except an attachment, of which, indeed, her ladyship had not been without her suspicions at an earlier date, to be speedily followed by the announcement of an engagement to the grand-nephew.

Lady Semple went on to argue the matter in all its bearings. It was a magnificent instance of mercantile liberality and generosity in a man whom she had always admired and esteemed, whom she was proud to call her friend as well as her neighbour. It would be a splendid thing for Dick’s friend--an interposition of Providence on his behalf and the making of him. And it was quite a romance on Claribel’s part. Lady Semple herself was not romantic, but when wealthy parents countenanced romance the principal objection to it was removed, and the most prudent third person might follow suit without compunction.

Lady Semple would certainly stand by Claribel when she was Mrs. Mackinnon, both for the sake of Dick and his friend, and because of her ladyship’s regard for the young lady. There would be no loss of prestige for her, since the poorest officer’s wife would rank with the daughter of the richest dyer and cotton-printer any day; and Mr. Drysdale’s money would not come amiss, though unluckily promotion was no longer to be bought. The thinker meant unluckily only in this instance; she was an advanced Liberal in politics, and had been almost as anxious for the abolition of the purchase system as for vote by ballot, though she knew it would be a blow to a number of her nephews. Dick was an only son, and he would soon leave the army; he had only adopted it _pour passer le temps_, and because all men were the better of being trained to a profession--she would say a trade, if she had her way.

The Mackinnons--Mr. Mackinnon and his wife--would probably continue in the army; but if her father settled a regular income upon her, as a man of his sense and kindness was sure to do, it would not signify much although he never got beyond the rank of a captain or major. She did not suppose he would pass higher by merit, though he was a thoroughly good fellow, fit to be a general where a man’s tone rather than his talent was concerned. He would make a good steady husband. She had always been glad that Dick had chosen such a safe friend. Claribel would see the world with her husband’s regiment, in which she would be a great force; though it was bad form now to talk of the belle of a regiment--all that had gone out with promotion by purchase and idle young men with their practical jokes, pigeon-shooting, and regimental balls. It was out of date even in fast novels. Officers had now their work to do if they wished to get on like other men, which was much better for them. But Claribel would not be tied down. She would have the opportunity of learning at first hand a variety of things which she, Lady Semple, had missed mastering. She was tempted to envy her young friend.

What would Sir Hugo do? Oh, Sir Hugo had found out that for himself, and it was the most delightful solution possible of the difficulty. He would woo and win young Eppie--the simplest, most artless of little girls. She was so young, that she could be easily trained, while her transference to polite circles would have a thousand times more novelty and charm than Claribel’s transplantation could have had. It would be a genuine romance--though Lady Semple was not in the least romantic, any more than Eppie was a beggar-maid. Still, Sir Hugo was a King Cophetua in his way, and only the knowledge of what a dear daughter the young girl, who was devoted to her own good rustic mother, would make to darling unworldly Lady Willoughby, with her widowed life and her devotion to her son, could fully reconcile Lady Semple to the _mésalliance_.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale need not be left alone. That Trojan of a son of theirs--who had resisted her ladyship’s blandishments and those of the Vaughan girls, who had given in to his father by going into business--had become, as she had heard, auld Tam’s right hand. He ought to bring over that independent, original Miss Murray, the daughter of clever, innocent Dr. Peter. She was a girl whom Lady Semple was dying to know better. She might be of the greatest assistance to her ladyship in getting up her Rational Dress Association. Athole would prove a fair substitute for the loss of Claribel to her friend, as well as for the double loss of Claribel and Eppie to their parents.

Having arrived at this triumphant conclusion, Lady Semple felt so sure of her ground that she could not imagine herself making mischief by putting in her oar. She first tried a series of broad hints to Mrs. Drysdale. But Mrs. Eppie was so engrossed with the prospect of the fulfilment of her dreams, so distracted between freshly awakened tenderness for Clary, trembling exultation over young Eppie, vexation with young Tam, and trouble about auld Tam, that, candid woman though she was, it seemed impossible to draw an admission from her, as a step towards offering her friendly congratulations.

Thus foiled, Lady Semple, in her high satisfaction, ventured to have recourse to auld Tam.

It was one evening when the whole _dramatis personæ_ of Lady Semple’s genteel comedy were together in the old-fashioned drawing-room at Semple Barns. So most of them had been on a previous evening, when Tam Drysdale’s eyes had been opened to the enormity of a penniless officer of the Mackinnon stock having rendered himself so agreeable to Clary that he had melted her pride and disordered her understanding, and when her father had scowled on the couple, and angrily told his wife that he would not have such doings.

The summer had done Sir James good, and he was able to meet company. He had quite a knot of old friends--from London, from Edinburgh (where the Court of Session was up, like the Parliament in London), from India, helping Dick to dispose of the birds. Lady Semple had her neighbours and friends to meet the greater strangers: the Drysdales--the whole of them on this occasion; Dr. Peter and Athole Murray, whom her hostess was so desirous of cultivating; Sir Hugo Willoughby, with Guy Horsburgh; Eneas Mackinnon, with the son of the house.

Lady Semple was an accomplished hostess, but her skill was wasted this evening, for her guests gave her little trouble; they arranged themselves according to their own wishes, and hers, without an effort. The old friends mustered round Sir James’s card-table, which he could again enjoy, enlivening the pauses during the deals by reminiscences of the past, extracts from their intermediate experience, anticipations of the next day’s sport.

Round games for young people were exploded, but there had been an attempt to try the last play of thought-reading, which had only broken down because nobody seemed to care to have his or her thought read; everybody seemed to be more anxious to ascertain his or her neighbour’s.

Eneas Mackinnon wanted to learn what Claribel Drysdale was thinking as she inspected the condition of that oddest of sentimental souvenirs--a hair album, which Lady Semple had once set up.

Sir Hugo Willoughby desired to penetrate what had been young Eppie’s fancies as the liquid notes of her voice, which she had been pouring forth at the piano, near which he was hovering, died away. A few moments ago she had silenced the whole murmur of sound. The great roomful of old and young, grave and gay, married and single, men and women of the world, and men and women whom nothing would make worldly, had listened breathlessly to the expression of the simple faith of a homely, hard-working breadwinner for some poor family:

‘When Jock and Jean and Janetie,
Are up and gotten lear,
They’ll help to mak’ the boatie row,
And lighten a’ our care.
Then weel may the boatie row,
And better may it speed,
And weel may the boatie row
That wins the bairnies’ breed.’

But surely even Eppie, with the clear mirror of her innocent mind unruffled by a cloud of passion, must have a conception of the time when Jock and Jean and Janetie were not only up and had ‘gotten lear,’ but entertained dreams and a life of their own apart from the visions and the life of the most loving of parents--when the children were in train to fulfil the Bible prophecy, that a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife.

Young Tam sought to realize what Athole Murray meant when she told with such merry eloquence to Dr. Peter, in the younger man’s hearing, her determination to set agoing a _Haus Chronik_, such as she had read of in a German book. It was to be a Home Chronicle of which the pages stood for the years of her life. She would put the leading scene of the year by means of pencil and brush on the appointed page. For instance, her father’s being thrown by Lady Fair when the train went across Aytoun Brig; or herself finding the old iron pot in the garden, which had formed such a delicious study of rusty-brown ever since. Another incident might be Jeannie’s refusing the baker’s man at the kitchen-door; because if Jeannie had said ‘Yes, if you please,’ the domestic economy of Barley Riggs would have sustained a severe shock. Oh! he need not think that nobody would understand her compositions, or be the wiser for them, because she was to write in old characters--now her handwriting was fairly readable in modern, so it need not be wholly illegible in old characters--the details of that annual great event, so that he who ran could read and be instructed.

Would Jeannie and the baker’s man be the only couple who were to figure in the Barley Riggs Home Chronicle, if it ever had a being save in Athole’s busy brain? and must the scene always be a dismissal?

Mrs. Drysdale also was looking across at her husband, as if to ask him the reason why he drew apart from the other elderly man present, and stood with his hands behind his back gazing, not on the card-table, but on vacancy.

The husband and wife did not look so much _au fait_ to each other’s minds as they had once looked to a comical extent, or so inclined to refer to each other. The change might easily be when there was such an inroad of exciting elements into their family life, on which it was just possible the couple might hold different views.

Anyhow, matrimonial confidences were not desirable in general company; so Lady Semple adroitly got rid of the matron by sending Dick to pay her a little attention, and herself tried to ‘tackle’ auld Tam. She went up to him as he moved on, until he stood before a picture of Dick Semple when a boy on his pony, which the critic had contemplated a hundred times.

Lady Semple made the portrait the text of her remarks. ‘Do you see any resemblance still, Mr. Drysdale? Oh, these boys and girls, how they run away from us, and how hard it is for us fathers and mothers to be left behind!’

‘Mr. Dick is not going to run away from you, mem.’

Tam gave the general observation an individual application with stupid literalness.

‘Oh no! not Dick--not yet awhile, I hope,’ said his mother hastily; ‘though he no longer thinks his father’s word law, and his mother’s praise does not send him to bed as happy as a king--and it will come to that soon--that other going away from us, and settling in life on his own account, which seems to sunder so many ties. Yet what would you have, Mr. Drysdale?’ continued her ladyship, unconsciously adopting the same line of argument which Mrs. Drysdale had formerly used; ‘we cannot stand in our children’s way. We cannot stay with them always, so why should we seek to keep them with us? It is better--though it is not altogether pleasant, is it?--that they should leave us. But where everybody is agreed, where everything is more than suitable,’ murmured Lady Semple, ‘where the whole arrangements are simply charming, and there is so much to rejoice at, to be truly thankful for, I can only wish you joy, my dear sir.’

Tam looked up amazed, uncertain, when, as if they were passing before him in a panorama, the groups around him caught his eye in quick succession. His glance roamed from one to another, comprehensively, conclusively. There was a twitch of his eyebrows, he compressed his lips and thrust his chin a little forward in his eagerness to see what was happening. His eyes were still a little dazzled, but they were no longer incapable of receiving a vivid impression. He had shaken off the brown study which had engrossed him; a new idea had come to him; he was full of it and of how it might help him in his strait. But he only said to Lady Semple:

‘Not so fast, my leddy, mem--joy is not to be wished every day; we keep it for great occasions.’

‘But you own it is only a question of time. Oh, I must wish you much joy, Mr. Drysdale!’ cried Lady Semple, enchanted to find herself, as she supposed, correct in what she had conjectured, inclined to look upon the contemplated result as accomplished, feeling as if she had made all these marriages, and that each marriage was in its own way a feat to be proud of. But she had the discretion not to urge Tam further, and to leave him to digest in peace the meal she had provided for him.

It was a meal, under the circumstances. Lieutenant Mackinnon and Clary! Auld Tam remembered what he had thought of that connection before, but now all the reasons against it were more than annulled. If he gave Clary to young Mackinnon, with the fortune that he might yet hope to bestow, supposing that he were left to grapple with, overcome, and outlive the bad times, without the horrible necessity of having to give back Drysdale Haugh to Mackinnon, with such fines and forfeits in addition as would have shaken the prosperity of the best-established firm in Glasgow--would it not compensate, not for inadvertently depriving him of his mother’s property, which might well be forgiven, but for the iniquity of retaining it, after he--auld Tam--knew full well it was none of his? What would ‘the offisher lad’ have more than the girl he loved, or ought to love, from his pretensions--and Clary was a fine lass, ‘handsome and edicate,’ a lass to act for herself and him too, a boon to any man, far more than a match for the stick of a lad she had set her fancy on? And what would the like of young Mackinnon do with Drysdale Haugh if he got it? Make a mess of it, as his father had done before him; waste all that auld Tam had brought the place to; pull down everything that he had built up, and be glad in the end to rid himself of the inheritance, and sell it to some poor, ambitious chiel who could put his hand to the plough like one whom auld Tam had known, as Gavin Mackinnon had sold it.

But Mackinnon and Clary were not the only couple. There was young Tam hanging like a bee about a flower on that ‘braw, clever, ill-faured lass,’ Athole Murray. Well, the Murrays were mixed up with the old transaction, which loomed so largely in Tam’s mind that it blotted out every other. The Murrays had to do with the selling of the works to Tam Drysdale, in spite of the marriage contract which held them for the issue of Margaret Craig. Tam had been hammering his brains all these weeks, in vain, to determine how much or how little the Murrays were involved, and what he had to answer for to them. Dr. Peter’s father, Gavin Mackinnon’s partner, had been concerned with him in the sale, not of the farm, which had belonged to Mrs. Mackinnon, but of the buildings and plant used in the business, and the business itself, in which he was a partner. Could Murray’s descendants also come on Tam for their share in the profits of the dyeing and calico-printing since the sale? On the other hand, could not Tam require from the Murrays their proportion of the purchase-money, which they in their turn might claim from the Mackinnons, since the Murrays also had been misled in the disposal of the business?

It was a complication of interests and injuries which Tam could not unravel. The strong head, which had worked out so many calculations without a throb, ached with the strain. But this he seemed to foresee clearly, that if the matter were laid before Dr. Peter, that upright and uncompromising soul would never rest till he had sifted it to the bottom, and apportioned to every man his due, though in the process a great business might be frittered away, and the capital which the present crisis in trade ought to have appropriated to itself would only be rescued from the wreck, to be parted into fractions of which nobody would be the better except a set of lawyers. Dr. Peter would count any loss in the name of strict integrity well lost.

But if young Tam were ‘yoked’ with Athole Murray, might not that flea be left to stick in the wall, without any further qualms of conscience? Athole’s promotion to be the wife of as fine a fellow as ever lived, the future head of a great business, would far outweigh any debatable advantage the Murrays might gain--not that Tam imagined Dr. Peter greedy of an advantage--by joining with young Mackinnon in compelling Tam to make restitution. And Dr. Peter was a man and a father--his lassie’s welfare must be something, must be a great deal to him; if it would not altogether shut his truth-speaking mouth, it must render him more lenient, more manageable, should the real state of the case ever come to light.

Then the marriage would make Tam’s lad happy, would atone to him for the loss of his father; for it was one of the most bitter drops infused into auld Tam’s full cup, in the tremendous change which had suddenly darkened the broad sunshine of his prosperity, and rendered all his good things worthless to him, to be forced to comprehend that, having found his son, it was only to lose him again. There had been till recently many business confidences between them, in which auld Tam had been proud to think that his hands were clean, and that he had not to soil young Tam’s by the contact. He had never dabbled in business ruses which could not bear repetition to uncorrupted ears. But here was an affair which could not stand being looked into, which must remain a secret, and rise up as a barrier between the father and his son for the term of their lives. Very likely, if the story chanced to be approached--and what secret was not approached sooner or later?--it would demand more sacrifices from him of deliberate, habitual deception and brazen falsehood to maintain the central lie. How could he look young Tam in the face if it were so, when the father had begun already in his misery to skulk away from one of the creatures he loved best in the world? And he had a full-hearted, despairing conviction that young Tam, hot-headed as he had been, independent as he was, would miss his father’s friendship, little worth as it was--would want a perfect mate in a wife, the desire of his heart, to make up to him for the snapping of the primitive tie which, when it is of true metal, is of the consistency of iron.

Last of all, there was Tam Drysdale’s youngest child, his bonnie bairn Eppie, with the splendid prospect of marrying Sir Hugo Willoughby, and being removed far beyond the range of commercial storms, safely landed among the aristocracy, in the august shadow of the Throne itself, as Tam dreamed. If he could only hold out till that achievement was accomplished, till little Eppie’s grand fortune was secured, and her mother left to her care, for young Eppie would never see her mother suffer, then he could be content to die--not in peace--this was not a question of peace, but stubborn and silent. For what had auld Tam done that he should demolish his name and fame and ruin his children to enrich Gavin Mackinnon’s son? But he would enrich Gavin Mackinnon’s son, and what more could be required of him?