The Indian Uncle [A novel.] By Leslie Keith

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BY LESLIE KEITH AUTHOR OF ' LISDETH,' 'A TROUBLESOME PAIR,' *A HURRICANE IN PETTICOATS,' ETC. LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON gublisluvs in ©rbinarj) to ijer -jaajwtji «u (Quttn 1896 [All rights reserved) This story appeared originally in 'The Leisure Hour.' CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE i. mistress and maid - - - - i ii. mr. andrew - - - 13 iii. in lovers' loan - - - '33 iv. the traveller returns - - "55 v. ann makes a discovery - - 70 vi. speculations - - - 93 vii. making acquaintance - - - 108 viii. 'savory bydand' - - - - 124 ix. the dinner-party - - - - 1.39 x. mrs. thomas - - - - - 1 58 xi. checkmate - - - - - 174 xii. grizel shows her hand - - - 191 xiii. an old story retold - 204 xiv. the tormentor - - - - 22 2 xv. two encounters - - - 234 xvi. adam's vigils ----- CONTENTS VI CHAPTER PAGE XVII.

SAVORY'S CHANCE - - - 263 XVIII. MALLY'S LAST MOVE - - 284 XIX. BEHIND THE SCREEN - - - 296 XX. JEANS VICTORY - - 307 XXI. EXIT MALLY - - - 318 XXII. LOOKING BACKWARDS - - - -

Chapter I. Mistress

and maid. In the middle of a great tent-bed an old lady sat erect. The light of the April morning shining through the red damask curtains warmed the ivory pallor of her cheeks, and brought back a flush of youth to the face that had been beautiful in its day, and had still in old age a great charm and grace. A letter, written upon thin paper, and bearing a foreign stamp, lay on her knee ; she looked at it examiningly, and, opening it, carefully read it without spectacles. Katherine Gordon — who had been Katherine Noble sixty years or more ago, when as a noted Edinburgh belle she had turned the heads of all the young sparks as she I walked in Princes Street wearing a sprigged Ayrshire muslin and a purple velvet pelisse — was proud of many things, and among them of her eyesight. For at eighty few people can read a man's careless scrawl as easily as this old lady skipped over the lines of the letter before her, and that behind the curtains that, drawn close, made a little chamber of the vast bed — a dim seclusion in which she sat straight as a dart without even a pillow to support her spine.

Her back, which never craved sofa or easy-chair, was another source of great gratifi cation to her, but the thing of which she was most proud was her right to sign herself Katherine Gordon, and to claim kinship with that ancient house. The letter on her lap was from one of the clan ; hence her keen interest in it. To her, drawing back the curtains with a brisk hand and letting in a flood of yellow light, presently came another old woman, little younger than herself, but plumper, ampler, redder, as if time had passed her by, finding in the coarser material less scope for those fine touches that had chiselled the face of her mistress till it resembled an exquisite ivory MISTEESS ANE MAID 3 carving. To her the letter was handed, and she read it — a pair of honest spectacles drawn from her pocket and set astride her nose — with an equal interest, if with less ease than her mistress.

Presently her satisfaction broke loose : 'We'll hae to set oor best fit forrit noo,' she said, her voice cheerful and elated. ' I said to mysel', when I saw Postie linkin' round the corner, " There's news for us the day." I can aye tell by the way he cocks his ee at the hoose.' 'To hear you speak,' said the old lady dis dainfully, ' one would think a Gordon had never seen the outside of a letter before — and Postie here every day of his life !' ' 'Deed, an' he's here ower aften, if it's thir hempies ben the hoose an' their jo's your mind's dwelling on, mem, but ye ken as weel as me it's no once in the year we get a scart o' the pen frae Adam Gordon in Indy. And to think he suld be sending hame a friend o' his to the auld hoose ! Sirce me, but I wuss it had been the lad' Adam himsel'. It's time he shook the dust o' that black heathen country aff his heels an' settled down wi' his ain kith an' kin.

The man's nae bairn. He's but ten year younger than the shirra, an' he'll no see saxty again, for a' he wears a tousie red wig that micht set a haflin laddie.' ' Ye know too much, Ann Lauder.' ' Hoot, I ken nae mair than yersel', mem, an' no that muckle, seeing ye were woman grown when I was but a lassie, but I mind the day Adam Gordon cam' into this weary world as though it was but yesterday. Thir auld airms were the first to haud him, and when I opened the bit shawlie roond his pow to tak' a keek at the bairnie, there were his twa muckle black een glancing up at me like tea-dishes. " Eh, but ye're a mettlesome lad," says I, "an' ye'll be a credit to the Gordons yet," whilk ye micht say was in the nature o' prophecy, mem, for there's nae gainsaying that oor Adam's the muckle man o' the faimily noo.' ' That's fine hearing for me, and it ill sets your tongue, Ann Lauder, that served the best of masters for fifty years and more. ' 'Weel, I'm no denying that the auld maister was a braw man, an' a clever lawyer, an' a o-uid citizen, but ye see he was nae but a paper lord when a's said an' dune, an' for a' he was Bas- MISTRESS AND MAID 5 sendean, you're but Mistress Gordon to the day o' your death.

I'm no the one to despise titles when they're honestly come by, though the Gordons dinna need ony handles to lift their name afore folk, an', as ye ken fine, I'm all for subjection in the woman — in reason — but I've nae broo o' a man setting himsel' aboon the woman that's gien hersel' to him, hert an' gear an' a' — Lord Bassendean an' Mistress Gordon ! It's no respectable, say what ye like !' 'Ye impudent woman! It's easy seen why ye were left hinging on the bough !' ' 'Deed, it wasna for want o' the wale o' the men ; but I hadna your taste, mem, for gangin' in harness.' The speakers were Ann Lauder, servant, friend, adviser, rebuker, controller of the Gordon household, and her mistress, the widow of a late judge of the Court of Session ; and both of them had spent most of their long lives in the Scottish capital.

It was an Edinburgh of an older day they knew in their declining years — the Edinburgh of fifty years ago, which had neither Presbyterian nor Episcopalian cathedral, nor medical school, nor suburban railway, nor tramcar ; an Edinburgh when gentility still housed itself in George Square ; when the old thorns in the Lovers' Loan made a blossoming pathway from north to south, linking the few scattered country houses to the town ; when stately yellow chariots drawn by big white horses were still to be seen in the spacious leisurely streets, and sturdy citizens could walk from one of its borders to the other upon their own feet. Katherine Gordon could look back, indeed, on many changes since she had come as a bride from the north to settle in the gray city ; but these were as nothings to the innovations that have taken place since her day, sweeping aside the old landmarks, and turning the douce, sober town into a great centre of bustling activity.

Perhaps there are no such old women now as the mistress and maid who lived in the family house on the best side of George Square — the side that then looked out upon the green meadows, the big, unkempt, citizen playground ; for character had elbow-room in those days, and oddnesses had freedom to develop. Be tween them, at least, they briskly ruled the family, settled its affairs, intermeddled with MISTRESS AND MAID 7 kindly benevolence, counselled its sons and daughters, kept the younger folk in their places, in the time-honoured fashion that prevailed before obedient parents were invented. Ann Lauder, born in the old house of Bas sendean while yet that remnant of a once goodly lowland property remained to the Gordons, identified during all her life with their interests, their sorrows, their ups and downs — mostly downs — in fortune's scales, was almost as great a power as the head of the house, and scarce even the sheriff himself, grown man as he was, and gray under that red wig, would have dared to dispute any decree of hers.

That time is gone by, too — that good old time when faithful labour, and honest zeal, and affections matured through long years of mutual kindness, gave the servant a right to a voice in all that concerned 'oor folk,' as Ann Lauder would have put it, and made her advice and counsel to be both sought and respected, ln love of, and pride in, the Gordons Ann yielded not a whit to her mistress, nor, it must be con fessed, in freedom of utterance, when she held that to be needful. It was the bond that had united these two strong, shrewd old women for more than seventy years, and would hold them to the end, though scarce a day passed that one side or other did not threaten a disruption of the long partnership. These little differences of opinion were as salt and spice to the daily life of both ; they enlivened the dull hours in the sober old George Square house when none of the family happened to require reproof or guidance ; each would have found existence as wersh as saltless porridge had an everlasting truce been proclaimed between them. ' What's the guid Scots tongue gien a body for if it's no' to speak oot yer mind ?' Ann would ask cheerfully. ' If ye're to be aye mim-mou'd an' saft spoken ye micht as weel hae had the mischanter to be born ayont the Border.

Thae clippit-tongued English hae but ae language for a' thing under the sun.' In this her mistress fully concurred, though she herself came from Inverness, where the speech even of the common folk has a soft and dainty turn, so that nursemaids and the upper class of servants were coveted from that county by mistresses anxious to cultivate a oenteel accent in their children. But to Katherine Noble her own people were as nothing, while MISTRESS AND MAID 9 the Gordons were all in all. She loved the sound of the old rough tongue as they had spoken it when they lived contentedly in the closes of the hill-built town, long before the first reluctant pioneer was bribed with a re mission of taxes to lay the first stone of the new. Wherefore Ann Lauder had a freedom and license of utterance that would not have gone unrebuked in a younger or less tried and trusted servant. ' He'll hae a name till himsel'.

What's this they ca' him ?' Ann asked presently. Mrs. Gordon made a pretence of turning over the thin Indian letter, though she already knew it by heart. ' There, see for yourself,' she said, after allowing a decent interval for search. ' Andrew Menteith — make what ye can of it. He'll be a cadet of the younger branch, I'm thinking ; they were given to roving ways.' ' Aweel, gin he's a freend o' oor Adam's, it's no the wrang side o' the bannock he'll get here !' ' Adam ! i\dam !' cried the old lady testily' ' to hear ye, one would think there was nobody fit to hold a candle to him. I would have ye mind, woman, that Adam Gordon is no bairn of mine that you should make such a work with him and his friends.' ' Na, I ken that fine. He's the son of your guid man's brither, the sailor that was drooned at sea ; but ye gied the bit laddie house-room an' bite an' sup when he was faitherless an' mitherless baith, an' he was like ane o' oor ain to me that nursed, an' flyted at, an' fleeched them a'.' 1 That's a' by with forty years and more.' ' Ay, that it is, an' there's a deal happened sin'-syne,' said the old woman with a sigh ; ' an' yon wee black-haired tyke that I skelpit every nicht o' his life has gathered mair guids an' gear than a' the Gordons pit thegither !

But a Gordon's a Gordon yet ; it's a grand name, though there's little to the tail o't, and we maun e'en do oor best for the honour o' the hoose. I'll set thae idle hizzies to soop oot the spare chamber the morie mornin' an' air the napery, an' gin ye gie me the key o' the oak kist, I'll hae thae auld tankards rubbit up.' ' Hoots, havers, woman ! Do ye think the man can flee from London, and me never so much as put pen to paper to say he's welcome ?' MLS TRESS AND MAID 11 ' But ye'll do it the day ?' said Ann coaxingly; 'ye'll do it the noo? I'll clear the table in a jiffy — there's a guid hour afore the breakfast can be ready ; it's no chappit nine.' ' There's no such hurry,' said the old lady calmly. ' I'll e'en get up and dress now. The letter can wait.' ' I see,' said Ann craftily, with apparent cheerful acquiescence, ' ye're waiting to hear Mr. Andrew's mind on 't.' ' And what for should I take the opinion of my son Andrew as to who is to set foot over my doorstep ?' cried the dame in sudden wrath. ' Am I mistress in my own house, or am I not ?

Tell me that, Ann Lauder.' ' I aye thocht ye had a wull o' yer ain,' said Ann demurely ; ' but there's nae tellin'. Whiles when fowk get up in years ' 'If ye cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, Ann Lauder, you and me must part,' said the old lady, with a drawn-up neck, and an accent of frosty dignity which presently gave way to impatience. ' Reach me the pen, and away to your work this meenit ; I've more to do than to put off time with the likes of you.' Ann obeyed with wonderful meekness. She fetched the massive brass-bound desk that had belonged to the late judge, Lord Bassendean, the ink-bottle, and a new-cut quill, and laid them out conveniently to her mistress's hand ; but when she left the room there was a smile of triumph on her broad countenance. In the battle of wills it is often craft that wins, and for once Ann was content with a silent victory. s 13

Chapter II. Mr

ANDREW. The family over whom this intrepid old lady reigned consisted originally of three sons, of whom one was at this time dead. There was the eldest, Thomas, the sheriff, already men tioned, whose duties required him to live in the north, and who paid his mother two visits annually — at New Year and at Midsummer. He did not often bring his wife with him to Edinburgh. She was something of an invalid, and did not receive much sympathy from a lady of eighty who thought people need neither ache nor ail unless they chose. Of his two sons, the elder was at sea, and the younger had a year before this date gone to seek his fortune in America. Over this branch of the family, therefore, she could not exercise much influence, though she expected to be kept informed of all that concerned it in the weekly letter that it was part of Mrs. Thomas Gordon's duties to write.

Close to her own doors — on the other side of the same square, indeed — lived Andrew, a widower with two daughters. It may have been noticed that this was the only one of her former nurslings to whom Ann Lauder permitted the prefix, and those who knew her would readily have guessed by this little sign that she loved him the least. Indeed, Andrew had not many attractive qualities. A Writer to the Signet in a city already over stocked with lawyers, he was not very for tunate, and he made his want of success an excuse for an exceeding parsimoniousness. He looked at both sides of a shilling, and would fain have spent only sixpence even then. Accustomed to the lavish openhandedness that had impoverished the Gordons and kept them poor, Ann Lauder had an indignant contempt for Andrew's pinchings and scrapings.

The old lady, too, had her sly jests at her son's expense, so that Mr. Andrew's virtuous practice of thrift met with little recognition ; but neither the granny nor the old nurse could shut her heart to the pretty twin girls who called Mr. Andrew father. They lectured but they loved them — those bonny young things, taking even their restricted life easily with the lighthearted carelessness of their race. Not for nothine o were Grizel and Jean born of the 'gay Gordons.' Alexander, the youngest son, had died some dozen years before this chronicle opens, com mending his young wife to his mother's care. Now, a woman who has never had daughters of her own is not the more likely on that account to love her daughters-in-law, and Mrs. Gordon was no exception to this general rule. Upon light-headed, frivolous-minded Mrs. Alec her yoke lay heavily, and the younger widow could only rebel and writhe in secret, being dependent on her mother-in-law's bounty for the clothes she wore and the roof that covered her.

It was a poor enough roof in her esteem, the topmost flat in Buccleugh Place, and she hated to be compelled to wear black long after her thoughts about ' poor dear Alec ' had ceased to have even a tinge of gray in them ; but the indigent must submit to many unpleasant things. Beyond these, her immediate kindred, there were several cousins in nearer or more distant degrees of affinity who owned allegiance to the old lady — such as Tom Skinner, a Gordon on his mother's side, a gay, middle-aged bachelor with a large waistcoat and an expansive smile, who dined from home on most evenings of his life ; and Miss Martha Proudie, also a Gordon by descent, who had a standing engagement to seat herself at Mrs. Gordon's table on Sunday between sermons, and who was always pressed to take a second helping of pudding.

For Miss Martha did not get pudding every day at home. Well, then, might Ann Lauder boast that Adam, the scapegrace of the nursery, was now the big man of the family — Adam, who had gone to India when it was the custom for people to exile themselves for the larger part of a life, and not to dream of coming home without a fortune, even if a liver were the price to be paid for it. For it was a matter of common rumour that Adam Gordon could buv up the whole of his clan, and scarcely find him self the poorer. The drawing-room in George Square held many tokens that Adam had not forgotten the home of his childhood ; black wood furniture £ curiously carved, and calling for much exercise of the feather-broom ; beaten silver, copper bowls, grotesque pottery — these hints of bar baric splendour lent a quaintness to the room otherwise given over to the late Georgian ugliness, and made a fitting settingfor the charming figure of the house-mistress, dressed in black satin, while the dusky fragrance of sandal-wood seemed an incense burned in her honour.

She looked at these gifts from the far East as she sat in a straight-backed chair, her small, thin hands with the lace ruffles crossed in her lap, and they sent her thoughts back to the past when Adam was a little boy in a blue tunic and white duck trousers, and his largest adventure had lain in playing truant from school ; yet she was not too much engrossed to keep an eye on the clock, now close on the stroke of half-past four. Half-past four was the hour when Mr. Andrew was in the habit of paying his daily visit to his mother, and she would not readily have forgiven him the disrespect of being late. But Mr. Andrew was a man wedded to custom. At twenty minutes past four he left the office situated in the basement of his dwelling-house (it saved a rent), ten minutes later he was in his mother's drawing-room, and at the stroke of five he was drumming his fingers on his own dining-room tablecloth, taking furtive peeps under the dish -cover at the diminutive joint, and otherwise impatiently passing the time until his daughters should join him.

Five o'clock was then the fashion able hour at which to dine, and though human ingenuity could scarce seemingly have hit on a less convenient, it had its merits in the eyes of the frugal-minded. In Mr. Andrew's case it obviated the necessity of lunching, and if you ate with moderate heartiness it also saved your pocket a supper. Suppers induce un canny dreams. Punctually at the chiming of the clock Mr. Andrew was at his mother's side and shaking her slowly and solemnly by the little hand. There was no kissing in that household, unless it were a reserved peck on the forehead or cheek on a birth or marriage day or other serious occasion ; and, truth to tell, though the dainty old lady looked delightfully kissable, Mr. Andrew did not. He had gray whiskers. and a long— a very long— upper lip, that did not seem made to smile ; and he was altogether too large, too solid, too solemn to take any liberties with. ' Well, Andrew, my son, and what is the news to-day ?' This was how the interview always opened.

Then Andrew unfolded his budget. It was a little one, concerning very little and very local matters, but it was unfailingly interesting to the listener. The loyal burgher who went to Paris and came home exclaiming, ' Gie me Peebles for pleesure,' exhibited the true char acteristic spirit of the Scot, which is provincial first and national afterwards. Inform Ann Lauder that the King of France was dead, and she would have exclaimed : 'Hoot awa! Tell's wha's gotten the ca' to the Tron Kirk ?' This momentous question was discussed among others. Mrs. Gordon was a zealous upholder of the Church, and her only quarrel with Martha Proudie arose from that timid spinster's obstinate clinging to the U.P.'s. The candidate she favoured was likely to win, and this softened her mood, which had been inclined to asperity. 'He's the right man,' she exclaimed em phatically, 'and a guid minister to sit under.' ' They've raised the stipend,' said Mr. Andrew. ' They would never have got him but for that.' 'Ay,' said the old lady, with a flickering smile, ' that's the way to convince a man that he's called to a higher sphere of usefulness.' ' It's a great inducement,' said Andrew, who had little humour, ' especially when a man has a family.

And what's your news, mother ?' he asked, after a pause, feeling that his turn as listener had arrived. 'What would ye say to a visitor from India?' Andrew gave a great start. ' Not Adam Gordon ?' ' No, but a friend of his — his greatest friend, he says.' ' So Adam has written ! And what's the man's name ? Menteith ? Andrew Menteith ? Which of them will that be, now ?' He grew quite animated. 'There was a Menteith at Bruce's school — I mind him fine — a big hector ing, bullying lad, that Adam stood up to and licked in the playground.' ' That'll be the one,' said the old lady readily. 'It's a sound friendship that's built on a licking. ' Did Adam ever mention him before ?' ' Never, that I mind of; but India is not just next door that I should be knowing all Adam's neighbours, and him not writing me once in the year.

But you'll see this Menteith for yourself — he's in London now ; he'll be here as quick as the coach can bring him.' ' Here — you are going to have him here — in this house ?' ' That you would soon know if you fell in with Ann Lauder — what with the scrubbing and the polishing and the better polishing, the house is a perfect Shirra Muir. I'm glad to be ben here, away from the clash of weemen's tongues.' ' It will be a heavy expense,' said Mr. Andrew, with a serious lip. ' I'm told they make a great work with eating and drinking in India.' 'Aye, it'll be an expense,' the old lady ac quiesced ; 'but I'll look to my family to share it. You'll be giving him a dinner yourself, Andrew, for Adam's sake, if no' for your own.' Her bright eyes twinkled. ' It's incumbent on you, the only son near at hand, to help your old mother to keep up the honour of the house which has ever had a name for hospitality.

You'll ask your friend the Lord Advocate and a half-dozen of his cronies to meet him ; the sheriff would come if you dropped him a line, and Ellen, too, if she can leave the meagrims behind for once — and there's your own two lasses, and Mrs. Alec that cannot be left out, more's the pity. And I would step over my self, though it's seldom I leave my own fireside. But it's no' every day you give a feast, Andrew, my man, and I would not put an affront on you by staying away.' Mr. Andrew wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. He was making a little mental calcula tion while she spoke. Fourteen people he had totted up — fourteen grown people — and half of them strangers accustomed to good cheer, who could not be put off with a cut of cod and a sirloin. He groaned within himself as he thought of the baked meats and the wines he would be expected to provide— and all for a Menteith, whom he could have licked at school if his fancy had lain, as Adam's did, in the direction of combat. ' It's over soon to be settling anything, isn't it ?' he said uneasily. ' The man's not here yet, and maybe when you see him you'll not take to him.' ' Maybe no ; but he'll get his meat and his drink for all that, and the best of them, too.' ' It's not as if it was Adam,' Mr. Andrew continued. ' No,' she interrupted, with a malicious sparkle in her blue eyes ; ' if it was Adam you would think he could be doing with the scrag end of mutton and yesterday's broth warmed up again.

"You're one of the family, Adam," you would be saying ; "you'll take us as you find us — no ceremony and a welcome to what's going." But these ways will no' do when it's a stranger — a braw man that comes commended by a Gordon, who lippens to his family to show respect to his friend. You had better engage the black waiter from Veitch's, and if this Menteith has his own body servant — they tell me they need a deal of waiting on in India — he'll be bringing him over to stand behind his chair. He'll be black, too, I'm thinking, and him and Veitch's Sam can foregather. They'll be wanting their meat, too ; but they can dine off the leavings, when their betters are served.' Worse and worse. Not only was he to feast an exacting multitude upstairs — the Lord Advo cate, forsooth — but such pickings and remnants as might have served to eke out the week's housekeeping were to be devoured by two lazy, idle varlets, who would claim a fee for their services besides.

Mr. Andrew knew that he would have to give in. When had he ever succeeded in rebellion ? But he made one more effort at escape. 'The girls are very young,' he said, 'and they're, so to say, without any experience of society. I've never encouraged them to go gallivanting as some young lasses do that would be better at home. It's serious work giving dinners with no mistress at the head of the house. I'm afraid they would be affronting you, mother, before the stranger.' ' You needn't be feared,' said the old lady briskly. ' If they're young, Ann Lauder and me have old heads on our shoulders. Rather than that you should be put about — as you say, two bairns like Jean and Grizel would be making mistakes— I'll take the fash of ordering the dinner myself, and seeing it laid, too. No, no, ye needn't be thanking me,' she protested cheerfully, as Mr. Andrew moved in helpless impotence upon his chair. ' Who should you look to but your own mother ?