Those first ten 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 someone 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 that 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 by, 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 pony 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."< p> "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 sha'n'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 everyone 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 Leviathian 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, 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 nor yet fother, nor nowt for bedding down. And wha's to tent the pownie? There's mair in keeping a pownie than your leddyship thinks. It'll be a matter of auchteen and saxpence 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, me 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 prices 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, ance across the hillside, 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 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.