CHAPTER III.
GRAHAM.
Early on the following morning, Cuthbert Charteris, after a long walk from his uncle’s house, presented himself at Harry Muir’s door. The street was very still and Sabbath-like. Some young workmen, in suits of snowy moleskin, stood grouped about the corner of the Cowcaddens, enjoying the sunshine, and some few who were of the more respectable Church-going class, and could not spend the after-part of the day in such a manner, were returning from early walks. There were very few shadows, however, to break the quiet undisturbed sunshine of the usually crowded street.
The blinds were all drawn down in Mrs. Rodger’s respectable house—all except one in the little parlour of the Muirs. The outer door stood ajar—it was generally so during the day—and as Cuthbert proceeded up the stairs, the grave doleful voice of some one reading aloud struck on his ear. This, and the closely-veiled windows, made him somewhat apprehensive—and he quickened his pace in solicitude for the sufferer.
The door of the house was opened to him by a little slipshod pseudo-Irish girl, who held the very unenviable situation of servant to Mrs. Rodger. The door opened into a large airy lobby, at the further end of which was Harry Muir’s little parlour; but Cuthbert’s attention was drawn to another open door, through which he had a glimpse of a large kitchen, with various figures, in strange dishabille, pursuing various occupations in it—one engaged about her toilette—one preparing breakfast—and another trying to smooth out with her hands the obstinate wrinkles of a green silk gown. They were talking without restraint, and moving about continually, while, at a large deal table near the window, with her back turned to the open door, sat a tall old woman, in a widow’s cap, with a volume of sermons in her hand, reading aloud. The voice was most funereal and monotonous, the apartment darkened by the blind which quite covered the window. One of the daughters caught a glimpse of the stranger, and hastily closed the door. Cuthbert turned to the little parlour with a puzzled smile.
The room was small, and furnished with a faded carpet, an old sofa, half-a-dozen ponderous mahogany chairs, and the cradle which Cuthbert had rocked the previous night. The little table was covered with a white table-cloth, and glancing with cups and saucers; and by the side of the little clear fire the kettle was singing merrily. Rose, in her Sabbath dress of brown merino, stood at the window with the baby. Martha, newly relieved from her long night’s vigil in the sick room, was cutting bread and butter at the table; and in the arm-chair, with great enjoyment of the dignity, sat Violet, her attention divided between the psalm she was learning, and the little handsome feet in their snowy-white woollen stockings and patent-leather shoes, which she daintily rested upon the fender. As Cuthbert entered the room, the young wife looked out from the door of the inner apartment, with her finger on her lip, to telegraph that Harry had fallen asleep. They were all of that sanguine mood and temperament which springs up new with the light of the morning, and even on the pale dark face of Martha there were hopeful smiles.
“The surgeon has been here already,” she said, “and Harry is not suffering so much as we feared he should. The symptoms are all favourable, and we may hope that it will have no ill results: the doctor says that he will not be lame, poor fellow; and now, Mr. Charteris, we have to thank you for preparing us so gently last night for the accident. It was very kind—very kind—to take so disagreeable an office on yourself, and not to leave it to your cousins.”
“I can assure you they were sincerely grieved,” said Cuthbert, “and are very anxious about your brother.”
“They are only lads,” said Martha, quietly, “and have not the consideration. We could not trust youths like them, as we can trust a more mature judgment. For our own sakes, I am very glad, Mr. Charteris, that you saw poor Harry’s accident, and the cause of it—poor Harry!”
Cuthbert Charteris was very much interested—so much so, that it did not occur to him what a very unsuitable time he had chosen for his visit—nor that the teapot on one side of the old-fashioned grate was beginning to puff a faint intimation that it had been left there too long, and that the kettle on the other was boiling away. It was very nearly ten o’clock, and, in a few minutes, the Church-going bells would ring forth their summons. Rose began to look embarrassed, and to dread being too late for Church; but the gentleman was talking to the baby and to Martha, and steadily kept his place.
At last Rose, listening in terror for the first notes of the bell, shyly suggested to Martha that, perhaps, Mr. Charteris had not breakfasted.
But Mr. Charteris had breakfasted; and as Martha lifted the puffing teapot from the place which was too hot for it, and bade Violet lay down her psalm-book, and began to fill the cups, Mr. Charteris drew his seat into the window, and kept possession. He had settled himself already quite on the footing of an old friend, and began to feel it very pleasant to sit there, looking out on the fresh wintry sunshine, and the clean humble families who began to set out in little bands for the far-away old parish Churches of Glasgow—not choosing to content themselves with the Chapel-of-ease, politely called St. George’s-in-the-Fields—profanely, the Black Quarry. There were a few such in this immediate neighbourhood, who went to the Barony, and the Tron and High Churches, as old residenters, and rather looked down upon the new. To look out on these—the mechanic father and thrifty mother, and group of home-spun children, embellished, perhaps, with a well-dressed daughter, working in the mills, and making money—and to look in again upon the little bright breakfast-table, and the three sisters—the mature, grave, elder woman—the Rose, in the flush of her fairest years, half-blown—the little, shy, dark-eyed child—Mr. Charteris felt himself very comfortable.
They had to speak very low, for Agnes stole to the door of the inner room now and then, to lay her finger on her lips again, and telegraph the urgent necessity for silence—and speaking in half whispers makes even indifferent conversation look confidential. The friendship waxed apace—very rarely did such a man as Charteris come within sight or knowledge of this family. The atmosphere of commerce is rarely literary—in their class they had read of the fully equipped intellectual man, but had met him never.
They themselves were of an order peculiar to no class, but scattered through all; without any education worth speaking of, except the two plain indispensable faculties of reading and writing, Harry Muir and his sisters, knowing nothing of the world, had unconsciously reached at and attained the higher society which the world of books and imagination opens to delicate minds. They were not aware that their own taste was unusually refined, or their own intellect more cultivated than their fellows, but they were at once sensible of Cuthbert’s superiority, and hailed it with eager regard—not without a little involuntary pride either, to find that this, almost the most highly cultivated person they had ever met, was, after all, only equal to themselves.
There are the bells, echoing one after another, through the now populous streets. Mrs. McGarvie, from the little shop below, has locked her door, and issues forth, with her good man, who is a rope-maker and deacon of his trade, to the Barony Kirk, with Rab, her large good-humoured red-haired son, and her little pretty daughter Ellen, a worker in the mill, following in her train; and with great dignity, in green silk gowns and tippets of fur, Miss Jeanie and Miss Aggie Rodger sail from the door, bound for the Relief Meeting-house, while Rose Muir ties on Violet’s neat bonnet, and arranges her little cloak, and glides away herself to complete her own dress, wondering, with a little flutter, what Mr. Charteris will do now.
Mr. Charteris very speedily decided the question, for he stood waiting, with his hat in his hand, when Rose entered the parlour, cloaked and bonneted. Mr. Charteris had never heard Dr. Jamieson. He thought, if the young ladies would permit him, he should be glad to walk with them to the Church.
And the young ladies did permit him, with much shy good will, and Mr. Charteris listened to Dr. Jamieson’s fine voice and polished sentences with great edification. The Doctor was a man in his prime, bland and dignified, and knew all the economics of sermon-writing, and that famous art of domestic wisdom which makes a little go a great way; nevertheless, Mr. Charteris turned back some distance on the road, when the service was ended, to animadvert upon the Doctor, and to get up a very pretty little controversy with Rose, who, as in duty bound, refused to hear a word in detriment of her minister, so that the discussion carried Mr. Charteris back again to the very door, and gave him another prospect of the Misses Rodger’s green silk gowns, at sight of which, raising his hat, to the great admiration of Violet, Mr. Charteris turned reluctantly away.