But she had said Scotland, which would be the best of all: and then suddenly had appeared before his eyes a vision of a house which he had often looked at when he went down the Clyde upon a holiday, or when there was some work at Greenock which he was entrusted with, as sometimes happened. Who can tell what visions of this kind steal into the brains of the working men in their noisy excursions, or the foundry lads with their sweethearts? Oftenest it is a cottage, perhaps a little cockney villa on the edge of a loch. “I’d like to tak’ ye there,” said with glowing eyes and all the ardour of youthful dreams: or, “Eh, man, if there was a bit housie like yon ahint ye, to gang back to when ye were past work,”—such speeches are common in the mouths of the excursionists, who live and die, and are contented enough, in the high “lands” and common stairs of the huge dull town. But James Rowland had been more ambitious. What he had remarked most had been a house, with a white colonnade round it, standing up on a green knoll at the end of a peninsula which overlooked the Clyde. There was one special spot from which he remembered to have watched for it, through the opening in the trees, not saying anything to any one, not even to Mary, but watching till it became visible—not a villa, nor a cottage, but a great house, with beautiful woods round it, and soft green lawns sloping downwards towards the noble river-sea, which just there flowed out into the opening of a loch. It suddenly came before him in a moment while he walked through the cantonments towards his own lodging in the arid enceinte of the Station. Such a contrast! He felt as if he were again standing on the deck of the river steamboat, watching for the white walls, the pillars of the colonnade, as they appeared through the trees. He knew exactly at what moment the trees would stand aside, ranged into groups and lines, and the house would come into sight. He thought that if he had been blind, he would yet have known exactly when that opening came.
That was the place for him! His heart gave a leap, almost as it had done when Evelyn Ferrars had given him her hand. It was the next thing almost—the fulfilment of a dream older by far than his knowledge of Evelyn Ferrars. Rosmore! To think that he should come to that; that it should be possible for him, the lad who had watched it so often coming in sight, to call it his own! But it was not yet sure by any means whether he would ever call it his own. He was rich enough to buy it, to improve it, to fit it up as it never had been fitted up before, but whether he would get it or not, remained still to be seen. The owner would have to be tempted with a fancy price, more money than it was worth or could bring: for the owner was a great personage, a man who was not to be supposed ready to offer one of his places to a chance buyer. Rowland did not mind the fancy price, and he enjoyed the thought of the diplomacy that would be required, and all the advances and retirings. It would be a home fit for her. She would bring the best people round her wherever she was. It should be hers, that home of his dreams, settled on her—her dower house—when he was out of the way: but he did not wish to think of being out of the way. He preferred to think of happiness and dignity and rest in that stately yet modest place, not too grand, quite simple indeed, not like the castellated absurdities of the Glasgow merchants. Among houses, it was like her among women, the most unpretending, the most sincere, everyway the best!
And, then, with a sudden prick of his heart, he remembered the children. Oh, the children! To think that they could be so old as that, and that it had remained for her to find it out! Twenty! It was not possible little Archie could be that age. What a little chubby fellow he was, with a face as round as an apple, and little rosy cheeks—so like Mary, her very image. It had always been pleasanter to think of him like that, than to identify the little scrubby boy in the photographs poor Jane kept sending; or the lean lad who, he now remembered, had appeared on the last one. He had torn it up, as certainly a libel on his son, not at all the kind of picture which he could have wished to set up on his chimney-piece, and point out complacently to visitors as “my boy.” He remembered this incident of the photograph perfectly now, and that he refused angrily to accept that as a portrait of Archie. “The photograph you sent me was a mistake, I suppose,” he had written to his sister-in-law; “it is quite impossible it could be my boy;” and he forgot what explanation she made. He was not, indeed, very attentive to her letters. He glanced at them to see that the children were well, but he had seldom patience to read all the four pages. Jane’s style and her handwriting, and the very look of her letters had been vexatious to him for many years past. They suggested having been written on a kitchen table with a pen that was greasy. The very outside of them coming in the bag along with his business letters and his invitations gave Rowland a little shock. He preferred that other people should not see him receive these queer missives, the very envelopes of which looked common, not like the others. Now it occurred to him, with a pang, that it was no mistake, that the unwashed-looking lad, with the vulgar, ill-cut clothes was probably his son after all. The idea was horrible to him, but he was glad for one thing that he had torn the photograph up, and could not be made to produce it to show Evelyn what manner of youth Archie was—if he was like that! And then the baby, whom he had always thought of as the baby, with all the tenderness that belonged to the name. Tenderness! but something else as well—indifference, forgetfulness—or he could never have been so blind, and suffered them to grow up like that. It was a very tormenting and uncomfortable thought, and Rowland was anxious to shake it off. He said to himself that photographs never do justice to the subject; that perhaps the boy might be a fine boy for all that: and finally contrived to elude the whole disagreeable subject by saying to himself how clever it was of her to have made that out about their age! What a clever woman she was; not learned, or that sort of thing, but knowing so much, and so perfect in her manner, and such a true native-born lady. This was her grand quality above all. She said just the right thing, at the right time, never compromising any one, hurting nobody’s feelings. He was himself rather given to treading on people’s toes, and making afterwards the astonishing discovery that they felt it, even though he had meant no harm. But she never did anything like that. She would know how to manage that business about the children, and he had a happy persuasion that everything would go right in her hands.
CHAPTER IV.