The Eustace Diamonds (27 page)

After lunch Lizzie invited Miss Macnulty to sit at the open window of the drawing-room and look out upon the ‘glittering waves'. In giving Miss Macnulty her due, we must acknowledge that, though she owned no actual cleverness herself, had no cultivated
tastes, read but little, and that little of a colourless kind, and thought nothing of her hours but that she might get rid of them and live – yet she had a certain power of insight, and could see a thing. Lizzie Eustace was utterly powerless to impose upon her. Such as Lizzie was, Miss Macnulty was willing to put up with her and accept her bread. The people whom she had known had been either worthless – as had been her own father, or cruel – like Lady Linlithgow, or false – as was Lady Eustace. Miss Macnulty knew that worthlessness, cruelty, and falseness had to be endured by such as she. And she could bear them without caring much about them; – not condemning them, even within her own heart, very heavily. But she was strangely deficient in this – that she could not call these qualities by other names, even to the owners of them. She was unable to pretend to believe Lizzie's rhapsodies. It was hardly conscience or a grand spirit of truth that actuated her, as much as a want of the courage needed for lying. She had not had the face to call old Lady Linlithgow kind, and therefore old Lady Linlithgow had turned her out of the house. When Lady Eustace called on her for sympathy, she had not courage enough to dare to attempt the bit of acting which would be necessary for sympathetic expression. She was like a dog or a child, and was unable not to be true. Lizzie was longing for a little mock sympathy – was longing to show off her Shelley, and was very kind to Miss Macnulty when she got the poor lady into the recess of the window. ‘This is nice; – is it not?' she said, as she spread her hand out through the open space towards the ‘wide expanse of glittering waves'.

‘Very nice – only it glares so,' said Miss Macnulty.

‘Ah, I love the full warmth of the real summer. With me it always seems that the sun is needed to bring to true ripeness the fruit of the heart.' Nevertheless she had been much troubled both by the heat and by the midges when she tried to sit on the stone. ‘I always think of those few glorious days which I passed with my darling Florian at Naples; – days too glorious because they were so few.' Now Miss Macnulty knew some of the history of those days and of their glory – and knew also how the widow had borne her loss.

‘I suppose the bay of Naples is fine,' she said.

‘It is not only the bay. There are scenes there which ravish you, only it is necessary that there should be someone with you that can understand you. “Soul of Ianthe!”' she said, meaning to apostrophise that of the deceased Sir Florian. ‘You have read “Queen Mab”?'

‘I don't know that I ever did. If I have, I have forgotten it'

‘Ah – you should read it. I know nothing in the English language that brings home to one so often one's own best feelings and aspirations. “It stands all beautiful in naked purity,”' she continued, still alluding to poor Sir Florian's soul, ‘ “Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace. Each stain of earthliness has passed away.” I can see him now in all his manly beauty, as we used to sit together by the hour, looking over the waters. Oh, Julia, the thing itself has gone – the earthly reality; but the memory of it will live for ever!'

‘He was a very handsome man, certainly,' said Miss Macnulty, finding herself forced to say something.

‘I see him now,' she went on, still gazing out upon the shining water, ‘ “It reassumed its native dignity, and stood Primeval amid ruin.” Is not that a glorious idea, gloriously worded?' She had forgotten one word and used a wrong epithet; but it sounded just as well. Primeval seemed to her to be a very poetical word.

‘To tell the truth,' said Miss Macnulty, ‘I never understand poetry when it is quoted, unless I happen to know the passage beforehand. I think I'll go away from this, for the light is too much for my poor old eyes,' Certainly Miss Macnulty had fallen into a profession for which she was not suited.

Those ten first days of August went very slowly with Lady Eustace. ‘Queen Mab' got itself poked away, and was heard of no more. But there were other books. A huge box full of novels had come down, and Miss Macnulty was a great devourer of novels. If Lady Eustace would talk to her about the sorrows of the poorest heroine that ever saw her lover murdered before her
eyes, and then come to life again with ten thousand pounds a year – for a period of three weeks, or till another heroine, who had herself been murdered obliterated the former horrors from her plastic mind – Miss Macnulty could discuss the catastrophe with the keenest interest. And Lizzie finding herself to be, as she told herself, unstrung, fell also into novel-reading. She had intended during this vacant time to master the ‘Fairy Queen;' but the ‘Fairy Queen' fared even worse than ‘Queen Mab;' – and the studies of Portray Castle were confined to novels. For poor Macnulty, if she could only be left alone, this was well enough. To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods. But it was not so with Lady Eustace. She asked much more than that, and was now thoroughly discontented with her own idleness. She was sure that she could have read Spenser from sunrise to sundown, with no other break than an hour or two given to Shelley – if only there had been some one to sympathise with her in her readings. But there was no one, and she was very cross. Then there came a letter to her from her cousin – which for that morning brought some life back to the castle. ‘I have seen Lord Fawn,' said the letter, ‘and I have also seen Mr Camperdown. As it would be very hard to explain what took place at these interviews by letter, and as I shall be at Portray Castle on the 20th – I will not make the attempt. We shall go down by the night train, and I will get over to you as soon as I have dressed and had my breakfast. I suppose I can find some kind of a pony for the journey. The “we” consists of myself, and my friend, Mr Herriot – a man whom I think you will like, if you will condescend to see him, though he is a barrister like myself. You need express no immediate condescension in his favour, as I shall of course come over alone on Wednesday morning. Yours always affectionately, F.G.'

The letter she received on the Sunday morning, and as the Wednesday named for Frank's coming was the next Wednesday, and was close at hand, she was in rather a better humour than she had displayed since the poets had failed her. ‘What a blessing it will be,' she said, ‘to have somebody to speak to!'

This was not complimentary, but Miss Macnulty did not want
compliments. ‘Yes, indeed,' she said. ‘Of course you will be glad to see your cousin.'

‘I shall be glad to see anything in the shape of a man. I declare I have felt almost inclined to ask the minister from Craigie to elope with me.'

‘He has got seven children,' said Miss Macnulty.

‘Yes, poor man, and a wife, and not more than enough to live upon. I daresay he would have come. By-the-bye, I wonder whether there's a pony about the place.'

‘A pony!' Miss Macnulty of course supposed that it was needed for the purpose of the suggested elopement.

‘Yes; – I suppose you know what a pony is? Of course there ought to be a shooting party at the cottage for these men. My poor head has so many things to work upon that I had forgotten it; and you're never any good at thinking of things.'

‘I didn't know that gentlemen wanted ponies for shooting.'

‘I wonder what you do know? Of course there must be a pony.'

‘I suppose you'll want two?'

‘No, I shan't. You don't suppose that men always go riding about. But I want one. What had I better do?' Miss Macnulty suggested that Gowran should be consulted. Now, Gowran was the steward and bailiff and manager and factotum about the place, who bought a cow or sold one if occasion required, and saw that nobody stole anything, and who knew the boundaries of the farms, and all about the tenants, and looked after the pipes when frost came, and was an honest, domineering, hard – working, intelligent Scotchman, who had been brought up to love the Eustaces, and who hated his present mistress with all his heart. He did not leave her service, having an idea in his mind that it was now the great duty of his life to save Portray from her ravages. Lizzie fully returned the compliment of the hatred, and was determined to rid herself of Andy Gowran's services as soon as possible. He had been called Andy by the late Sir Florian, and though every one else about the place called him Mr Gowran, Lady Eustace thought it became her, as the man's mistress, to treat him as he had been treated by the late master. So she called him Andy. But she was resolved to get rid of him – as soon as she
should dare. There were things which it was essential that somebody about the place should know, and no one knew them but Mr Gowran. Every servant in the castle might rob her, were it not for the protection afforded by Mr Gowran. In that affair of the garden it was Mr Gowran who had enabled her to conquer the horticultural Leviathan who had oppressed her, and who, in point of wages, had been a much bigger man than Mr Gowran himself. She trusted Mr Gowran, and hated him – whereas Mr Gowran hated her, and did not trust her. ‘I believe you think that nothing can be done at Portray except by that man,' said Lady Eustace.

‘He'll know how much you ought to pay for the pony.'

‘Yes – and get some brute not fit for my cousin to ride, on purpose, perhaps, to break his neck.'

‘Then I should ask Mr Macallum, the postmaster of Troon, for I have seen three or four very quiet looking ponies standing in the carts at his door.'

‘Macnulty, if there ever was an idiot you are one!' said Lady Eustace, throwing up her hands. ‘To think that I should get a pony for my cousin Frank out of one of the mail carts.'

‘I daresay I am an idiot,' said Miss Macnulty resuming her novel.

Lady Eustace was, of course, obliged to have recourse to Gowran, to whom she applied on the Monday morning. Not even Lizzie Eustace, on behalf of her cousin Frank, would have dared to disturb Mr Gowran with considerations respecting a pony on the Sabbath. On the Monday morning she found Mr Gowran superintending four boys and three old women, who were making a bit of her ladyship's hay on the ground above the castle. The ground about the castle was poor and exposed, and her ladyship's hay was apt to be late. ‘Andy,' she said, I shall want to get a pony for the gentlemen who are coming to the Cottage. It must be there by Tuesday evening.'

‘A pownie, my leddie?'

‘Yes; – a pony. I suppose a pony may be purchased in Ayrshire – though of all places in the world it seems to have the fewest of the comforts of life.'

‘Them as find it like that, my leddie, needn't bide there.'

‘Never mind. You will have the kindness to have a pony purchased and put into the stables of the Cottage on the Tuesday afternoon. There are stables, no doubt.'

‘Oh, ay – there's shelter, na doubt, for mair pownies than they'll ride. When the Cottage was biggit,
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my leddie, there was nae cause for sparing nowt.' Andy Gowran was continually throwing her comparative poverty in poor Lizzie's teeth, and there was nothing he could do which displeased her more.

‘And I needn't spare my cousin the use of a pony,' she said grandiloquently, but feeling as she did so that she was exposing herself before the man. ‘You'll have the goodness to procure one for him on Tuesday.'

‘But there ain't aits no yet fother, nor nowt for bedding down. And wha's to tent the pownie?
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There's mair in keeping a pownie than your leddyship thinks. It'll be a matter of auchteen and sax-pence a week – will a pownie.' Mr Gowran, as he expressed his prudential scruples, put a very strong emphasis indeed on the sixpence.

‘Very well. Let it be so.'

‘And there'll be the beastie to buy, my leddie. He'll be – a lump of money, my leddie. Pownies ain't to be had for nowt in Ayrshire, as was ance, my leddie.'

‘Of course I must pay for him.'

‘He'll be a matter of – ten pound, my leddie.'

‘Very well.'

‘Or may be – twal; just as likely.' And Mr Gowran shook his head at his mistress in a most uncomfortable way. It was not surprising that she should hate him.

‘You must give the proper price, – of course.'

‘There ain't no proper price for pownies – as there is for jew'ls and sich like.' If this was intended for sarcasm upon Lady Eustace in regard to her diamonds, Mr Gowran ought to have been dismissed on the spot. In such a case no English jury would have given him his current wages. ‘And he'll be to sell again, my leddie?'

‘We shall see about that afterwards.'

‘Ye'll never let him eat his head off there a' the winter! He'll be to sell. And the gentles'll ride him, may be, arise across the hill-side, out and back. As to the grouse, they can't cotch them with the pownie, for there ain't none to cotch.' There had been two keepers on the mountains – men who were paid five or six shillings a week to look after the game in addition to their other callings, and one of these had been sent away, actually in obedience to Gowran's advice; so that this blow was cruel and unmanly. He made it, too, as severe as he could by another shake of his head.

‘Do you mean to tell me that my cousin cannot be supplied with an animal to ride upon?'

‘My leddie, I've said nowt o' the kind. There ain't no useful animal as I kens the name and nature of as he can't have in Ayrshire – for paying for it, my leddie; horse, pownie, or ass, just whichever you please, my leddie. But there'll be a seddle –'

‘A what?'

There can be no doubt that Gowran purposely slurred the word so that his mistress should not understand him. ‘Seddles don't come for nowt, my leddie, though it be in Ayrshire.'

‘I don't understand what it is that you say, Andy.'

‘A seddle, my leddie' – said he, shouting the word at her at the top of his voice – ‘and a briddle. I suppose as your leddyship's cousin don't ride bareback up in Lunnon?'

‘Of course there must be the necessary horse-furniture,' said Lady Eustace, retiring to the castle. Andy Gowran had certainly ill-used her, and she swore that she would have revenge. Nor when she was informed on the Tuesday that an adequate pony had been hired for eighteen pence a day, saddle, bridle, groom, and all included, was her heart at all softened towards Mr Gowran.