Chapter VI: Earlshope

How fair, and fresh, and green looked the grounds of Earlshope on the next day, when Mr. Cassilis and Coquette drew near. The warm sun had come out again, and the air was sweet with the scent of the wet trees. Masses of white cloud still came up from the south, sweeping over the dark, clear blue of the sky; and the peaks of Arran, set far amid the sea, were pale and faint in a haze of silver light.

Coquette was merry-hearted. The sunshine seemed to please her as it pleased the butterflies and the bees that were again abroad. As she went down the moorland path, she laughed and chatted with the Minister, and was constantly, out of pure lightness of spirit, breaking into exclamations in her native tongue--on which she would suddenly recall herself with a pout of impatience and resume her odd and quaint English talk.

The Whaup had been ill-tempered on setting forth; but the sunlight and the bright life around him thawed his sulkiness, and he became merely mischievous. His brothers perceived his mood, and kept out of his way. He was in the humour for rough practical jokes; and no one of them wished to be tripped up and sent into the red-coloured "burn" that still ran down between the moor and the road to the little stream in the hollow.

When they had passed the keeper's lodge, and gone under a winding avenue of trees, they came in sight of the big stone building and the bright green lawn in front of it. They also saw their host seated beside a stone lion, smoking a cigar, and watching the operations of a lad who, mounted on the pedestal of a statue of Venus, was busily engaged in giving that modest but scantily clad young woman a coating of white paint.

"Did you ever see anything so curious?" he said, when he had bade them welcome. "Look at the rude indifference with which he comes over her nose, and gives her a slap on the cheek, and tickles her neck with his brush! I have been wondering what she would do if she were to come alive--whether she would scream and run away, or rise up in indignant silence, or give him a sound box on the ears."

"If she were to come alive," said Coquette, "he would be made blind with fear, and she would fly up into the heavens."

"_Et procul in tenuem ex oculis evanuit auram_," said the Minister, graciously, with a smile. He had not aired so much Latin for years.

They had a walk round the grounds, skirting the not very extensive park, before they turned into the garden. Here everything was heavy with perfume in the sweet, warm air. They went into the hothouses and vineries; and Lord Earlshope found a bunch of muscatel grapes ripe enough to be cut for Coquette. No sooner had she placed one between her lips than she cried out--

"Oh, how like to the vine! I have not tasted----"

She looked at the Minister, and hastily stopped her speech.

"You have not tasted muscatel grapes in this country," said Lord Earlshope, coming to her relief; and he looked at her with a peculiar smile, as much as to say "I know you meant wine."

The boys preferring to remain in the garden (the Whaup walked off by himself into the park, under pretence of seeking a peculiar species of _Potentilla_, Lord Earlshope led his two principal guests back to the house, and proceeded to show them its curiosities in the way of pictures, old armour, old furniture, and the like. Coquette got so familiarised to his voice and look that she forgot he was but a distant acquaintance. She did not know that she stared at him while he was talking, or that she spoke to him with a pleasant carelessness which was oddly out of keeping with the Minister's grave and formal courtesy. She was not even aware that she was taking note of his appearance; and that, after they had left, she would be able to recall every lineament in his face as well as every tone of his voice.

Lord Earlshope was a fair-haired, gentlemanly-looking young man of some twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age. He was rather over the middle height, slimly built, and inclined to lounge carelessly. The expression of his eyes, which were large, grey, and clear, varied singularly--at one time being full of a critical and somewhat cold scrutiny, and at other times pensive and distant. He said he had no politics and no prejudices--unless a very definite belief in "blood" could be considered a prejudice.

"It is no superstition with me," he said, with apparent carelessness, to the Minister, as the latter was examining a strange old family tree hung up in the library. "I merely think it imprudent for a man of good family to marry out of his own class. I have seen the experiment made by some of my own acquaintances; and, as a rule, the result has been disastrous.... Disastrous, yes," he went on slowly, with a curious look coming over his face. "Yes, indeed, a disaster----"

But at this moment Coquette came back from the bookshelves, with a large thin quarto in her hands.

"Look what I have found," she said. "A volume of old chants."

"It is treasure-trove," said Lord Earlshope, with his face lightening at her approach. "I had no idea there was such a book in the place. Shall we go and try some of them? You know you promised to give me your opinion of the organ I have had fitted up."

"I did not promise it, but I will do it," said Coquette.

He led the way down-stairs to the drawing-room, which they had not yet visited. The tall chamber-organ, a handsome and richly decorated instrument, stood in a recess, and therefore did not seem so cumbrous as it might otherwise have done.

"The defect of the organ," said Lord Earlshope, as he placed the music for her, "is that the operation of blowing the bellows is performed in sight of the public. You see, I must fix in this handle, and work it while you are playing."

"You must get a screen," she said, "and put a servant there."

"While you are playing," he said, "I could not let anybody else assist you even in so rude a fashion."

Coquette laughed and sat down. Presently, the solemn tones of the organ were pealing out a rich and beautiful chant--full of the quaint and impressive harmonies which the monks of old pondered over and elaborated. If Mr. Cassilis was troubled by a suspicion that this noble music was of distinctly Roman Catholic or idolatrous origin, that doubt became a certainty when, at the end of the chant, there came a long and wailing "Amen!" rolled out by the organ's deep voice.

"You play excellently--you must be familiar with organ playing," said Lord Earlshope. "It is not every one who knows the piano who can perform on an organ."

"At home the old _curé_ used to let me play in the church," she said--with her eyes grown suddenly distant and sad. She had remembered that her home no longer lay away down there in the south, where life seemed so pleasant.

"Come," said Lord Earlshope, "I hear Sandy about to ring the bell for luncheon. Shall we go into the room at once, or wait for the boys?"?

"They will have their luncheon off your fruit trees, I am afraid," said Mr. Cassilis.

Nevertheless, the boys were sent for, and arrived, looking rather afraid. The Whaup was not with them; no one knew whither he had gone.

Lord Earlshope's household was far from being an extensive one; and Mr. Cassilis' boys found themselves waited on by two maid-servants who were well known to them as having been made the subject of many tricks; while Sandy, his lordship's valet, butler, courier, and general factotum--a tall and redheaded Scotchman, who, by reason of his foreign travels, had acquired a profound contempt for everything in his own country--approach Miss Cassilis with a lofty air, and, standing behind her at some little distance from the table, extended a bottle of Chablis so as to reach her glass.

"Miss Cassilis," said Lord Earlshope, "what wine will remind you most of the Loire?"?

It had been her own thought, and she looked up with a quick and grateful smile.

"My father left me a fair assortment of Bordeaux wines----" he said.

"But no _vin ordinaire_?" she interposed, with another bright glance.

"I must go myself to get you that," he answered, laughing, "Sandy does not know how to manufacture it."

Before she could protest he had left the room, and in a few minutes he had returned with a bottle in his hand, and with the air of a conjuror on his face. He himself filled her glass, and Coquette drank a little of it.

"Ah!" she cried, clasping her hands, "I think I can hear old Nannette talking outside, and the river running underneath us; it is like being at home--as if I were at home again!"

She fondled the glass as if it were a magical talisman that had transported her over the sea, and would have to bring her back.

"I must taste some of that wizard wine," said the Minister, with a humorous smile--and the boys stared with wonder to hear their father talking about drinking wine.

"Pray don't, Mr. Cassilis," said their host, with a laugh. "It is merely some new and rough claret to which I added a little water--the nearest approximation to _vin ordinaire_ I could think of. Since your niece is so pleased with the Earlshope vintage, I think I must ask you to let me send her a supply to the Manse. It is quite impossible you can get it elsewhere, as I keep the recipe in my own hands."

"And this is French bread!" said Coquette, startled out of her good manners by perceiving before her a long, narrow, brown loaf.

"Have I been so fortunate as to create another surprise?" said Lord Earlshope. "I telegraphed for that bread to Glasgow, if I must tell you all my housekeeping secrets."

It soon became clear that the indolent young man, having nothing better to do, had laid his plans to get a thoroughly French repast prepared for Coquette. Every little dish that was offered her--the red mullet, the bit of fowl, the dry boiled beef and thick sauce, the plate of salad--was another wonder and another reminiscence of the south. Why, it was only a few days since she had arrived in Scotland, and yet it seemed ages since she had sat down to such another pretty French breakfast as this practically was. She sipped her _vin ordinaire_, and toyed with the various dishes that were offered her--accepting all, and taking a little bit of each for the very pleasure of "thinking back"--with such evident delight that even Mr. Cassilis smiled benignantly. The boys at the Manse--like other boys in Scotland--had been taught that it was extremely ignominious to experience or exhibit any enjoyment in the vulgar delights of eating and drinking; but surely in the pleased surprise with which Coquette regarded the French table around her, there was little of the sensuous satisfaction of the gourmand.

She was altogether delighted with this visit to Earlshope. As they went back to the Manse, she was in the most cheerful of moods, and fairly fascinated the grave Minister with her quaint, broken talk. She never ceased to speak of the place--of its grounds, its gardens, its books, and what not--even to the brightness of the atmosphere around it; until Mr. Cassilis asked her if she thought the sky was blue only over Earlshope.

"But I hope he will not send the wine--it was a--what you call it?--joke, was it not?" she said.

"A joke, of course," said Mr. Cassilis. "We are very proud in this country, and do not take presents from rich people."

"But I am not of your country," she said, with a laugh. "If he sends his stupid _vin ordinaire_, he sends it to me; and I will not drink it--you shall drink it all. Did he say he is coming over to see you soon?"?

"Well, no," replied the Minister; "but since the ice is broken, nothing is more likely."

The phrase about the ice puzzled Coquette much: when it had been explained to her, they had already reached the Manse. But where was the Whaup? Nobody had seen him.