The Ladies Lindores (Romance Classic). Mrs. Oliphant
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The change of position was so great, that it took away John's breath. In the days of their former acquaintance, there could not have been the smallest doubt which was the more important personage—young Lindores, who had nothing at all, or John Erskine, with a good estate which everybody accepted as much better than it was. But now he had gone down, and the other up. All this went through his mind ruefully, yet not without a sense of amusement in his own discomfiture. He had not much confidence in his own abilities or enlightenment, but it was not much to brag of that he had more of both than young Lindores. However, he had nothing to do in this sudden concatenation but to listen respectfully yet ruefully as the Earl went on, who seemed to have grasped him, present and future, in his hands.
"It is a wonderful comfort to be able to calculate upon you," he said. "My son-in-law—for of course you have heard of Carry's marriage—would have a great deal of influence if he chose to exert it; but he has his own notions—his own notions. You will understand, when you make his acquaintance, that though a sterling character, he has not had all the advantages that might have been wished, of acquaintance with men and knowledge of the world. But you, my dear Erskine, you know something of life. By the by," he said, as he rose to go away, "Lady Lindores charged me to engage you to come to us to-morrow. We are going away to town, but not for more than a month. The ladies insist that they must see you before they go. We all look forward to seeing a great deal of you," the Earl added, with that manner which was always so fascinating. "Between you and me, our dear neighbours are a set of prejudiced old rustics," he said, with a confidential smile, as he went out; "but it will be strange if you and I together cannot make them hear reason." Could anything be more flattering to a young man? And it was the father of Edith who grasped his hand thus warmly—who associated him with himself in a conjunction so flattering. John forgot the little wrench of theoretical disappointment—the ludicrous ease with which he had been made to give place to Rintoul. After all, something must be sacrificed, he allowed, to the heir of an important family—and the brother of Edith Lindores!
But this was not his last visitor on this eventful afternoon. The Earl had scarcely disappeared when Rolls once more threw open the door of the library, in which John usually sat, and announced with much solemnity Mr. Torrance of Tinto. The man whom the Earl, though vouching for him as "a sterling character," had allowed to be wanting in knowledge of the world, came striding in with that air of taking up all the space in the room and finding it too small for him, which wealth and a vulgar mind are so apt to give. That John should dislike him instinctively from the moment he set eyes upon him, was nothing remarkable; for was not he the owner of the most obnoxious house in the neighbourhood? the man to whom Carry Lindores had been sacrificed? John Erskine felt, as he rose to meet the new-comer, a sense of the shabbiness and smallness of his own house, such as, even in the first evening of disenchantment, had scarcely affected him so strongly before. When his visitor cast round him that bold glance of his big, projecting, light-blue eyes, John saw through them the insignificance of the place altogether, and the humility of his own position, with a mortification which he could scarcely subdue. Torrance was tall and strong—an immense frame of a man, with very black hair and dark complexion, and something insufferably insolent, audacious, cynical, in those large, light eyes, à fleur de tête. His insolence of nature was sufficiently evident; but what John did not see was the underlying sense of inferiority which his new visitor could not shake off, and which made him doubly and angrily arrogant, as it were, in his own defence. It galled him to recognise better manners and breeding than his own—breeding and manners which perhaps he had found out, as John did the inferiority of his surroundings, through another's eyes. But Torrance's greeting was made with great show of civility. He had heard much of John as a friend of the family at Lindores, he said.
"Not but what I should have called, anyhow," he explained, "though Tinto really belongs to the other side of the county, and Dalrulzian is rather out of the way for me; but still civility is civility, and in the country we're a kind of neighbours. I hope you like it, now you are here?"
"Pretty well," was all that John said.
"It's a nice little place. Of course you knew what it was—not one of the great country places; but it stands well, and it looks fine at a distance. Few places of its size look better when you're a good bit away."
This tried the young man's patience, but he did his best to smile. "It is well enough," he said; "I expected no better. It is not imposing like Tinto. Wherever one goes, it seems to me impossible to get out of sight of your big house."
"Yes, it's an eyesore to half the county; I'm well aware of that," said Torrance, with complacency. "There's far more of it than is any good to me. Lady Car—I hear you knew Lady Car before we were married," he said, fixing John almost threateningly with those light eyes—"fills it now and then; and when I was a bachelor, I've seen it pretty full in September; but in a general way it's too big, and a great trouble to keep up."
"I hope Lady Caroline is quite well?" John said, with formal gravity.
"She is well enough. She is never what you call quite well. Women get into a way of ailing, I think, just as men get into a way of drinking. You were surprised to hear she was married, I suppose?" he asked abruptly, with again the same threatening, offensive look, which made John's blood boil.
"I was surprised—as one is surprised by changes that have taken place years before one hears of them; otherwise it is no surprise to hear that a young lady has married. Of course," John added, with serious malice, "I had not the advantage of knowing you."
Torrance stared at him for a moment, as if doubtful whether to take offence or not. Then he uttered, opening capacious jaws, a fierce laugh.
"I am very easy to get on with, for those that know me," he said, "if that's what you mean. We're a model couple, Lady Car and I: everybody will tell you that. And I don't object to old friends, as some men do. Let them come, I always say. If the difference is not in favour of the present, it's a pity—that's all I say."
To this John, not knowing what answer to make, replied only with a little bow of forced politeness, and nothing more.
"I suppose they were in a very different position when you used to know them?" said Torrance; "in a poor way enough—ready to make friends with whoever turned up?"
"It would be very bad policy on my part to say so," said John, "seeing that I was one of the nobodies to whom Lady Lindores, when she was Mrs. Lindores, was extremely kind—as it seems to me she always is."
"Ah, kind! that's all very well: you weren't nobody—you were very eligible—in those days," said Torrance, with a laugh, for which John would have liked to knock him down; but there were various hindrances to this laudable wish. First, that it was John's own house, and civility forbade any aggression; and second, that Tinto was much bigger and stronger than the person whom, perhaps, he did not intend to insult—indeed there was no appearance that he meant to insult him at all. He was only a coarse and vulgar-minded man, speaking after his kind.
"The fact is, if you don't mind my saying so, I'm not very fond of my mamma-in-law," said Torrance. "Few men are, so far as I know: they put your wife up to all sorts of things. For my part, I think there's a sort of conspiracy among women, and mothers hand it down to their daughters. A man should always part his wife from her belongings when he can. She's a great deal better when she has nothing but him to look to. She sees then what's her interest—to please him and never mind the rest. Don't you think I'm complaining—Lady Car's an exception. You never catch her forgetting that she's Lady Caroline Torrance and has her place to fill. Doesn't she do it, too! She's the sort of woman, in one way, that's frightened at a fly—and on the other the queen wouldn't daunt her; that's the sort of woman I like. She's what you call a grand damm—and no mistake. Perhaps she was too young for that when you knew her; and had nothing then to stand on her dignity about."
Here John, able to endure no longer, rose hastily and threw open the window. "The weather gets warm," he said, "though it is so early, and vegetation is not so far behind in Scotland as we suppose."
"Behind! I should like to know in what we're behind!" cried his guest: and then his dark countenance reddened, and he burst into another laugh. "Perhaps you think I'm desperately Scotch," he said; "but that's a mistake. I'm as little prejudiced