“You must excuse me as a stranger,” he said, “if I don’t quite know what side you regard as the—right side.”
His friend looked at him with a sarcastic gaze—a look John felt which set him down not only as devoid of ordinary intelligence, but of common feeling. “It’s clear to see you are not of that way of thinking,” he said.
As he uttered this contemptuous verdict they came opposite to a gate, guarded by a pretty thatched cottage which did duty for a lodge. John felt his heart give a jump, notwithstanding the abashed yet amused sensation with which he felt himself put down. It was the gate of Dalrulzian: he remembered it as if he had left it yesterday. A woman came to the gate and looked out, shielding her eyes with her hand from the level afternoon sun that shone into them. “Have you seen anything of our young master, John Tamson?” she said. “I’m aye thinking it’s him every sound I hear.”
“There’s the road,” said the rural politician, briefly addressing John; then he turned to the woman at the gate. “If it’s no him, I reckon it’s a friend. Ye had better pit your questions here,” he said.
“John Thomson,” said John, with some vague gleam of recollection. “Are you one of the farmers?” The man looked at him with angry, the woman with astonished, eyes.
“My freend,” said John Thomson, indignantly, “I wouldna wonder but you have plenty of book-learning; but you’re an ignorant young fop for a’ that, if you were twenty times the laird’s freend.”
John for his part was too much startled and amused to be angry. “Am I an ignorant young fop?” he said. “Well, it is possible—but why in this particular case—”
“Noo, noo,” said the woman, who left the lodge, coming forward with her hands spread out, and a tone of anxious conciliation. “Dear bless me! what are you bickering about? He’s no a farmer, but he’s just as decent a man—nobody better thought of for miles about. And, John Tamson, I’m astonished at you! Can you no let the young gentleman have his joke without taking offence like this, that was never meent?”
“I like nae such jokes,” said John Tamson, angrily; and he went off swinging down the road at a great pace. John stood looking after him for a moment greatly perplexed. The man did not touch his hat nor the woman curtsey as they certainly would have done at Milton Magna. He passed her mechanically without thinking of her, and went in at his own gate—not thinking of that either, though it was an event in his life. This little occurrence had given an impulse in another direction to his thoughts.
But the woman of the lodge called after him. She had made a slightly surprised objection to his entrance, which he did not notice in his preoccupation. “Sir, sir!” she cried—“you’re welcome to walk up the avenue, which is a bonnie walk; but you’ll find nobody in the house. The young laird, if it was him you was wanting to see, is expected every minute; but there’s no signs of him as yet—and he canna come now till the four o’clock train.”
“Thank you. I’ll walk up the avenue,” said John, and then he turned back. “Why did you think I was making a joke? and why was your friend offended when I asked if he was one of the farmers?—it was no insult, I hope.”
“He’s a very decent man, sir,” said the woman; “but I wouldna just take it upon me to say that he was my freend.”
“That’s not the question!” cried John, exasperated—and he felt some gibe about Scotch caution trembling on the tip of his tongue; but he remembered in time that he was himself a Scot and among his own people, and he held that unruly member still.
“Weel, sir,” said the woman, “if ye will ken—but, bless me! it’s easy to see for yourself. The farmers about here are just as well put on and mounted and a’ that as you are. John Tamson! he’s a very decent man, as good as any of them—but he’s just the joiner after a’, and a cotter’s son. He thought you were making a fool of him, and he’s not a man to be made a fool o’. We’re no so civil-like—nor may be so humble-minded, for anything I can tell—as the English, sir. Baith the Cornel and his lady used to tell me that.”
It was with a mixture of irritation and amusement that John pursued his way after this little encounter. And an uncomfortable sensation, a chill, seemed to creep over his mind, and arrest his pleasurable expectations as he went on. The avenue was not so fine a thing as its name implied. It was not lined with noble trees, nor did it sweep across a green universe of parks and lawns like many he had known. It led instead up the slope of the hill, through shrubberies which were not more than copsewood in some places, and under lightly arching trees not grand enough or thick enough to afford continuous shade. And yet it was sweet in the brightness of the spring tints, the half-clothed branches relieved against that variable yet smiling sky, the birds in full-throated chorus, singing welcome with a hundred voices—no nightingales there, but whole tribes of the “mavis and the merle,” north-country birds and kindly. His heart and mind were touched alike with that half-pathetic pleasure, that mixture of vague recollections and forgetfulness, with which we meet the half-remembered faces, and put out our hands
