Chapter XL: A Nice Calculation

Dr. Peter had _carte blanche_ to dine at Drysdale Hall on every day of the year. If his plate was not always laid for him, it was ready to be brought when he wanted it. He might even come in at any stage of the dinner, and in spite of his protestations have the soup and fish recalled for his special benefit, while the rest of the company waited cheerfully, and the success of the other courses was risked without a groan, so heartily was he welcomed. But he had certainly never contemplated breaking bread with Tam Drysdale this day.

The truth is, there are more things than business which will not tarry till a man has his way. Among these matters are the physical ills that flesh is heir to. The popular poor man’s doctor, in a crowded district, is pretty sure to be intercepted and turned aside from his goal, at the very time that he is most anxious to avoid interruption and keep faith with himself. Dr. Peter durst not defer his errand to another day, and so he brought it to the dinner-table at Drysdale Hall, where he found the little pleasant stir and excitement which betokens a happy family event on the eve of its fulfilment. The very servants were sensible that something of the kind was going on. Though Mr. Mackinnon had dined frequently of late with the Drysdales, the subordinates had an impression that this off-hand dinner was not like the other dinners, but was a prelude to enlarged family gatherings without end.

There were bright faces round the table, among which Claribel’s showed a calm superiority to girlish tremors, while the Lieutenant’s was equally free from all save an air of relief, and a mild basking in the rays of his sun.

Young Tam’s looked the most pre-occupied face, with an occasional knit of the brows as if he had mental nuts to crack.

The atmosphere round auld Tam was that of rest for the time, not of warfare over; for he knew the battle was to re-commence to-morrow, a tough enough contest still, to render it doubtful to which side victory might incline. But when had auld Tam shrunk from a tussle with fortune, or when had he feared to be beaten unless where he was hedged about with such fatal casualties and inopportune disasters that no man could have overcome them? But the hedge was broken down, and the rough way made clear again, and what man could do he would, with his son Tam fighting by his side. Only to-day, Tam Drysdale had a breathing-space to recover from the weariness which had threatened to be deadly. It was rapidly passing away before the first breath of open air, light, and liberty, when a man speaks out what ought to have been proclaimed on the housetop, but has lain hidden in secret places; when he consents to pay his penalty like a man, and reviving heart and hope answer instantly to the proper treatment of the disease, as the steel to the magnet, as the green earth to the sun and rain.

Dr. Peter did not know what to make of the scene. How could auld Tam sit like a patriarch crowned with honour and well-doing, considering what was on his conscience? How had he the face, the heart to entertain his victim? Nay, it was plain that Tam Drysdale intended to perpetrate a further piece of iniquity by allowing Eneas Mackinnon to marry Claribel, by making him one of the family, a sharer in their prosperity and adversity, in order to shut his mouth if there was ever any suspicion of the truth.

Did young Tam know anything of the unpardonable tampering with law and justice? Could he have been suborned and seduced into crooked paths? He was more silent and glummer than in his hobbledehoy days. He looked harassed, almost careworn. Here was another stab to Dr. Peter, for he had been fond of that lad, fonder than he knew. Young Tam too! Dr. Peter’s righteous soul sickened with repugnance and shame. Auld Tam noticed that his friend was not himself, and, as Athole had done in the morning, pressed him with sympathetic inquiries after patients who were in a better case than their doctor was.

If Dr. Peter had but retained sufficient faith in auld Tam and in his Maker, a good many hours of wretchedness and useless mortification would have been saved. Peter Murray might have known that Tam Drysdale’s long life of reverence and integrity would not go for nothing, that it is not such as he who make shipwreck of conscience and character, and trample religion and morals under foot, midway in their career. He might have guessed that if auld Tam slipped and fell, it would only be to rise again and mount to greater heights, though it were through the valley of humiliation.

If Dr. Peter had but known it, when he was seen to pass the dining-room window, auld Tam’s eyes had sparkled with eager satisfaction. He had murmured to his son:

‘It’s like a play, Tam, ilka player dropping in at the precise moment to fit into the performance, to hear what concerns him, and act his part in the drammy.’

He was in reality burning for the ladies to be gone, to leave him and the two young men and Dr. Peter, who had his interest in the business--with regard to which he was about to be enlightened--to go into it afresh. The opening it up to young Tam had been like the letting out of waters, and auld Tam, having liberated the flood, was not disposed to try the vain experiment of damming it up again. For that matter, he laboured under a fit of reaction, with its tendency to rush from one extreme to another, to shout in the market-place what he had hitherto refrained from whispering in the ear.

At Tam Drysdale’s first word a load was lifted from Dr. Peter’s mind--the horrible load of being compelled to call a friend to account for a miserable departure from duty--and if he would not turn from the error of his ways to denounce him to the world. It was as if he had awakened in an instant from a bad dream, when a whole phantasmagoria of evil motives and unrighteous deeds vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Dr. Peter was ready to thank God and take courage; nay more, to feel affronted because he had done his friend a wrong which it would be impossible to repair by immediately owning it. To tell auld Tam what Dr. Peter had thought of him for the better part of a day would be to add insult to injury. In all their future intercourse there would always be a confidence, shyly withheld on the one side, though auld Tam admitted frankly on the other:

‘I was sorely tempet, Peter, if you will believe me, to hide all knowledge of Gavin Mackinnon’s contract. You could never credit how I was tempet, God help me! I dinna ken at this moment how the balance might have turned, if it had not been that the twa Eppies were as true as steel, and that I felt that I could not look my laddie Tam in the face again if I gaed for the rest of my life with a lee in my richt hand.’

It was Dr. Peter’s punishment for his want of faith that he had to remain silent, hanging his fine head somewhat at this appeal. He would never mention on what errand he had come so opportunely to Drysdale Hall that evening.

Later on Dr. Peter cut his knot of the thread in the tangled web without difficulty:

‘You can demand back from me my father’s share in the purchase-money you paid for the works. Good. Then I can come upon your future son-in-law--is it not so, Tam?--for his father’s having misled mine as to the legality of the sale. In addition, I can try to prove that you owe me a share of your profits during these intervening years, in proportion to my father’s share in the concern, and to the state of the works and business when you got them; and you can retaliate by showing that you found the plant falling to pieces, and the dyeing trade at Drysdale Haugh on its last legs--a ticklish contention, which might be very profitable to the lawyers engaged in it, but for the rest of the people who had to do with the suit, I take it the thing would be about square to begin with.’

Sir Hugo Willoughby and Guy Horsburgh looked in during the evening--to complete the _dramatis personæ_, auld Tam kept telling himself, though only Sir Hugo had an interest, and that an indirect one, in the question which was so momentous to the master of Drysdale Hall. The young gentleman had paid his court to little Eppie, believing her to be a rich man’s daughter. Sir Hugo’s lady-mother--and doubtless the rest of his great relations would follow her example--had consented to put up with the origin of Eppie and her fortune; but what if the fortune disappeared, and the bonnie lass had only her face to depend upon for their favour? What if her father, in place of being honoured in the city, had been covered with disgrace--a man who had held land and works without a warrant, and had so recklessly traded with them that he had ended in becoming bankrupt, to the ruin of many better men than himself? Sir Hugo had still a risk to run, but he might take his chance. He would no longer be able to say that he had been beguiled into an alliance with Eppie Drysdale and with trade under false pretences.

Auld Tam felt so convinced that everything was leading up to a _dénouement_, he took an opportunity to speak a few words aside to his last visitor.

‘I’ll give you your answer to-morrow, Sir Hugie, if that will please you. I grant you’ve been patient, and I thank you for it, to what must have seemed to you rank tyranny and a speerit of contradiction. But you’ll ken better before you’re mony hours aulder. I’ll lay my reasons before you, and you’ll admit I had cause for what I did.’

‘I have no doubt, sir, you acted for the best,’ said Sir Hugo, with the most anxious deference, trembling lest he should spoil the propitious moment by any false step. ‘I am sure your reasons are excellent, if only you will entertain---- ’

‘Your proposal, and give you my younger dochter,’ auld Tam finished the sentence. ‘Some things are worth waiting for, and the desire of your heart and a gude wife are among them. Can you blame me that I’m loth to lose her? You’ve some notion of what kind of dochter she’s been, and let me tell you, Sir Hugie, that’s the best assurance of the wife she’ll mak’ to him that gets her--I do not say to you, for there’s mony a slip ‘tween the cup and the lip. If she’s sweet to you, what do you think she maun be to me, who dandled her in my arms--the bonniest and best of weans [babies] from her cradle. How do you think Drysdale Hall will look to me and mother when there’s ne’er a young lass to set it out and keep it cheery? You young fellies that come seeking your own ends think little of the blank you leave behind you when you carry the day.’

‘Forgive me, sir, I do think of it,’ protested Sir Hugo. ‘I know that I am selfish, and that I ask far more than I deserve; but if there is anything I can do---- ’

‘Mak’ her happy, man,’ said auld Tam, ‘if she’s ever yours, for there are some craws to be pu’d yet between you and me. Mind that it was your will to raise her to your state--if so be she is raised. I’ve no fear but that she’ll make a gentle leddy, for she’s that already. Then if you’re gude to her, as a man should be to the mate he has chosen out of all the world, her mother and me will bless and not ban you.’

There was a little music and a great deal of talk in the warmth and brightness--for auld Tam went clean against the modern vagary of fashion which prefers semi-darkness to light--and in the flowery fragrance of the Drysdale Hall drawing-room.

Mrs. Drysdale would have willingly foregone her nightly game of bézique, but Eppie would not suffer the omission. Perhaps she had a premonition that her mother would soon have to relinquish that and many another kindly custom dear from old use and wont, doubly dear from mother love. The sole change young Eppie would consent to make was that Sir Hugo might join the game; and in order not to render the privilege too peculiar, she invited his friend Guy Horsburgh to be the fourth in the quartette--a piece of good breeding on account of which Sir Hugo, with all his virtues, was not above being piqued for the twentieth part of a minute.

Clary was at the piano playing occasionally, with Eneas Mackinnon to turn over her music and talk to her in the intervals.

Auld Tam and Dr. Peter sat on a couch, saying little, simply enjoying the smiling peace of the scene. Tam Drysdale leant back, and had his arms crossed above his head in an easy unconventional attitude, while he stared fitfully into the fire. No contrast could be greater than the air the room presented to the agitated conversation between the father and the son on the terrace in the afternoon, or the breathless explanation with Eneas Mackinnon in the business-room afterwards.

After the storm comes the calm, but one never knows when a bomb-shell may not fall and burst amidst the most tranquil surroundings.

The author of the disturbance on this occasion was young Tam, who had been sitting buried in an easy-chair, busy with a paper and pencil, as if he were torturing himself and his neighbours by working out a succession of double acrostics. Suddenly he rose with a flushed face and generally excited mien. He walked across to his father, holding up the sum of his calculations.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘when your father’s cousin Drysdale, of Drysdale Haugh, died in Scotland, and his niece by marriage and adoption, Mrs. Craig, died at Calcutta---- ’

Tam put the speaker away with a half-peremptory, half-reproachful gesture.

‘Hooly [stop]! Tam, we’ve had enough of this for one day. Mind, the upshot of the story is not so new to some of us as to you. It must be gone into again presently, and every blessed thing sifted to the bottom. There’s no help for that. But I think it is neither judicious nor altogether ceevil to Lieutenant Mackinnon yonder, who has behaved like a perfect gentleman, for you, while in his company--though he’s no heeding--to keep hammering on at the unfortunate transaction in which his father and mother were the maist to blame, and to rake up the slender nature of the connection between his grandmother and auld Drysdale.’

‘But I must speak, and the sooner the better,’ cried young Tam, not even troubling in his excitement to modulate his voice. ‘If the matter be gone into, as it certainly will if I have a voice in it, it cannot be done on mistaken premises. There is something else wrong which must be seen to instantly. You know the period of time that intervened between the deaths of the uncle and niece.’

‘It was some twa hours,’ said auld Tam, slowly and in a stupefied way, for the events of the day were proving too much for him, while Dr. Peter sat bolt upright and looked all alive. Then auld Tam shook himself up and spoke more definitely; ‘auld Drysdale died here--that is, at Drysdale Haugh--when the knock was chappin’ twal’, on the 11th of June, as I’ve heard tell. Mrs. Craig died on the same day, at Calcutta, at twa in the afternoon--twa hours later; and I’ve been assured that twa minutes langer breath for her would have been enough to constitute her infant her heir.’

‘Ay, but I am prepared to show that the advantage is all on the other side. The question is not one of law, but of science, and nobody has seen it in that light. Allowance has not been made for the difference of time in different longitudes. As you count hours by the earth’s course round the sun, Mrs. Craig died about an hour and a half before instead of two hours after her uncle.’

‘Gude preserve us!’ exclaimed Tam, while Dr. Peter started to his feet with an ear-piercing ‘Whew!’ that caused Eneas Mackinnon at the piano to raise his eyebrows, Clary beside him to shrug her shoulders, and the whole bézique party to pause and look round for an instant.

‘You dinna mean it,’ said auld Tam almost piteously. ‘Is it so?’ He turned helplessly to Dr. Peter. ‘Are the tables turned? Was I so lang kept out of my ain? Have I been twice wranged and never the wrangdoer?’

‘I make little doubt of it. I believe young Tam is right, but I must go over the calculation for myself--it is easy enough--if you will give me a minute. To think the difference of hemispheres never occurred to the lawyers who administered the will! You see what it is to have a son a student--the first in his class in mathematics. Chemistry is not everything, eh, Tam?’

‘I wish he had spoken suner,’ said auld Tam, with a groan over the anguish from which he might have been spared.

‘The calculation never occurred to me any more than to the lawyers who sat upon the will,’ said young Tam modestly. ‘The astronomical reckoning is, as Dr. Peter says, plain and simple enough. Every schoolboy is taught to make it, though he may not be able to put the knowledge into practice at a moment’s notice. I did not think of the old will, which I never saw till to-day.’

‘Ca’ him here,’ said Tam, indicating the ‘offisher lad.’ ‘I’ll do to him as I would be done by.’

But Eneas Mackinnon did not receive the last news as he had received the first. He reddened violently at the idea of his mother’s having entered upon and disposed of an inheritance which was never hers. He recoiled from the prospect of being made out auld Tam’s debtor to an overwhelmingly hopeless extent, instead of Tam’s being proved his--Eneas’s--debtor to an amount which the young man’s generosity and his love for Claribel rendered easily redeemable. His pride and his good feeling had been alike flattered by the power, rare with him, of granting an amnesty and dispensing favours. His slow-working intellect could not readily grasp the astronomical calculation, easy as it was, which was said to overturn the will. Fortune, if not the Drysdales, appeared to be playing strange tricks upon him. It was a return to the old story, and something worse. He was reduced, in the course of a few hours, to his former detested condition of genteel poverty and absence of any chance of independence and moderate prosperity. Added to it, he was already loaded with huge money obligations to auld Tam Drysdale, which Eneas could no more think of retrieving, in the natural term of his life, than he could look forward to receiving the baton of a field-marshal. Auld Tam was wise in his generation. He might not essay what was equivalent to the vain task of taking breeches from a breechless Highlander. He might cancel Eneas’s mountain-load of obligations, but neither the obligations nor the cancelling formed a fitting preparation dim recollection of another extraordinary factor in this medley of law and justice.

‘I’ve a notion,’ he said, ‘that if property is held for the space of forty years or thereabouts, by other than the rightful owners, through some mischance--like this of mistaken time--then a law called ‘the law of proscription’ steps in and bestows the property on the holder, forbidding a restoration to rightful heirs that leaps over more than one generation. It is upwards of forty years since Mrs. Craig’s child’s title to Drysdale Haugh was made out, and that title has never been challenged, to the best of my knowledge, till now. On the other hand, Mrs. Mackinnon did not keep the place in her possession for much more than half the specified time. She sold it to the lawful heir. I cannot tell what to make of it, Tam; it beats me.’

It was Clary who settled the question when she came over and asked what they were all talking over so earnestly, and was told as well as so complicated a story could be conveyed in a few words. She thought a little, and then gave her decision without hesitation:

‘Let well alone, let matters be as they are: my father could not, if he wished it, exact from Mr. Mackinnon a forfeit which no officer without a large private fortune could pretend to pay. And what could Mr. Mackinnon make of the Drysdale Haugh works, if the law were to decree them to him, while the farm without the dyeing and calico-printing would not, in the present state of agriculture, support the old farmhouse, if it could be restored, stripped of the modern mansion. Let everything remain as it is. I take it for granted,’ she ended, looking up with a little smile at Eneas, ‘the law will not put us all in prison, as it did your aunts in St. Mungo’s Square, because we decline to avail ourselves of its costs and surprises and delays.’

While successions were thus bandied, fortunes turned upside down, and lives reversed, the bézique-players, in utter undim recollection of another extraordinary factor in this medley of law and justice.

‘I’ve a notion,’ he said, ‘that if property is held for the space of forty years or thereabouts, by other than the rightful owners, through some mischance--like this of mistaken time--then a law called ‘the law of proscription’ steps in and bestows the property on the holder, forbidding a restoration to rightful heirs that leaps over more than one generation. It is upwards of forty years since Mrs. Craig’s child’s title to Drysdale Haugh was made out, and that title has never been challenged, to the best of my knowledge, till now. On the other hand, Mrs. Mackinnon did not keep the place in her possession for much more than half the specified time. She sold it to the lawful heir. I cannot tell what to make of it, Tam; it beats me.’

It was Clary who settled the question when she came over and asked what they were all talking over so earnestly, and was told as well as so complicated a story could be conveyed in a few words. She thought a little, and then gave her decision without hesitation:

‘Let well alone, let matters be as they are: my father could not, if he wished it, exact from Mr. Mackinnon a forfeit which no officer without a large private fortune could pretend to pay. And what could Mr. Mackinnon make of the Drysdale Haugh works, if the law were to decree them to him, while the farm without the dyeing and calico-printing would not, in the present state of agriculture, support the old farmhouse, if it could be restored, stripped of the modern mansion. Let everything remain as it is. I take it for granted,’ she ended, looking up with a little smile at Eneas, ‘the law will not put us all in prison, as it did your aunts in St. Mungo’s Square, because we decline to avail ourselves of its costs and surprises and delays.’

While successions were thus bandied, fortunes turned upside down, and lives reversed, the bézique-players, in utter unconsciousness of what was going on in the same room, proceeded with their play--shuffling and dealing their cards, pairing their couples, running up their rows of figures. It was as if the four were typical players, engaged in the same game of life which was being enacted in another form, without their knowledge, by their side, and that the counters in reality were human heads and hearts.