The Green Ray/Chapter I
CHAPTER I.
THE BROTHERS SAM AND SIB.[edit]
“Betty!”
“Bess!”
“Betsey!”
One after another these names re-echoed through the hall of Helensburgh; it was the way the brothers Sam and Sib had of summoning their housekeeper.
But just now these diminutives had no more power of bringing forth the worthy dame than if her masters had bestowed on her her rightful title.
It was Partridge the factor, who, with his hat in his hand, made his appearance at the hall-door.
Addressing the two goodnatured-looking gentlemen seated in the embrasure of a bow-window in the front of the house, he said,—
“You were calling Dame Bess, masters, but she is not in the house.”
“Where is she, then, Partridge?”
“She has gone out with Miss Campbell for a walk in the park.”
Then, at a sign from his masters. Partridge gravely retired.
These gentlemen were the brothers Sam and Sib—christened Samuel and Sebastian—Miss Campbell's uncles, Scotchmen of the old school, and of an ancient Highland clan; they reckoned a hundred and twelve years between them, with only fifteen months' difference in age, Sam the elder, and Sib the younger.
To give a slight sketch of these paragons of honour, benevolence, and unselfishness, it need but be said that their whole lives had been consecrated to their niece. Her mother, their only sister, was left a widow a year after her marriage, and survived her husband a very short time. Sam and Sib were thus left sole guardians of the little orphan, who very soon became the one object of their thoughts and mutual affection.
For her sake they remained celibates, being of that number of estimable persons whose earthly career is one long course of self-denial. And does it not say much for them when the elder brother constituted himself father, and the younger one mother to the child, so that it came quite naturally to Helena to address them with,—
“Good morning, Papa Sam. How are you, Mamma Sib?”
And to whom can they better be compared, though not business-men, than to those two charitable merchants, so generous, united, and affectionate, the brothers Cheeryble, of London, the most worthy characters that ever emanated from the imagination of Dickens? It seems impossible to find a more exact likeness, and should the author be accused of borrowing their type from that chef-d'œuvre “Nicholas Nickleby,” no one can for a moment regret such an appropriation.
Sam and Sib Melville were united by their sister's marriage to the ancient family of Campbell.
They had been to the same college and sat in the same class, thus their ideas of things in general were much alike, and they expressed them in almost identical terms; the one could always finish the other's sentence with similar expressions and gestures. In short, these two beings might have been one, save for some slight difference in their physical constitutions; Sam was a little taller than Sib, and Sib a little stouter than Sam. They might easily have exchanged their grey hair without altering the character of their honest faces, stamped with the nobility of the descendants of the clan Melville.
Need it be added that in the cut of their clothes and the choice of the cloth their tastes were alike, except that—how can this slight difference be accounted for? —except that Sam seemed to prefer dark blue and Sib dark maroon.
In truth, who would not have been glad to know these two worthy gentlemen? Accustomed to tread the same path through life, most probably they would not be far apart when the final halt should come. These last pillars of the house of Melville were solid, and might for a long while yet support the old edifice of their race, which dated back as far as the fourteenth century—from the time of Robert Bruce and Wallace, that heroic period during which Scotland disputed her right of independence with England.
But because Sam and Sib Melville had no longer occasion to fight for the welfare of their country, because their lives were passed in the ease and affluence which fortune had bestowed upon them, they are not to be reproached with it, nor must it be thought that they had degenerated, for their benevolence alone carried out the generous traditions of their ancestors.
Now each of them enjoying good health, and without a single irregularity in their lives to reproach themselves with, were destined to become aged without growing old either in body or mind.
Perhaps they had one failing—who can boast of being perfect? This was a habit of embellishing their conversation with quotations borrowed from the celebrated master of Abbotsford, and more especially from the epic poems of Ossian, which they doted upon. But who could blame them for it in this land of Walter Scott and Fingal?
To put a finishing-stroke to the sketch, it must be remarked that they were great snuff-takers. Now every one knows that the sign of a tobacconist's shop all over the United Kingdom is more often than not a valiant Scotchman with a snuff-box in his hand, parading himself in his national costume. Very well, then, the brothers Melville might advantageously have figured as these signs, posted up over the shop windows. They took as much snuff, if not more than any one living north or south of the Tweed. But now for a characteristic detail, they had but one snuff-box between them—and an enormous one it was! This portable piece of furniture was continually being passed from one brother's pocket to the other's; it was a kind of link between them. As a matter of course, they both felt a desire to inhale the excellent narcotic powder at the same moment, were it ten times an hour. When one drew the snuff-box from the depths of his pocket, they were both ready for a good pinch; and if they sneezed, they did not forget the customary “God bless you!”
In short, these brothers were mere children in all that concerned the realities of life; knowing little enough of the practical things of this world, and of business affairs, either commercial or financial, absolutely nothing, nor did they make any pretence to such knowledge; in politics they were perhaps Jacobites at heart, still retaining some of the old prejudice against the reigning house of Hanover, dreaming perhaps of the last of the Stuarts, as a Frenchman might of the last of the Valois; in matters of sentiment they were still less learned.
The brothers had but one object in life, and that was to divine their niece's thoughts and wishes, to direct them aright, if necessary, and to develop them; finally, to marry her to an excellent young man of their choice, who could not do otherwise than make her happy.
So they thought—or rather to hear them speak, one might have supposed that they had found the very man on whom must devolve this agreeable duty.
“So Helena has gone out, Sib?”
“Yes, but it is just five o'clock, and it will not be long before she is home.”
“And when she comes in—”
“I think, Sam, it would be as well to have a serious talk with her.”
“In a few weeks the child will be eighteen.”
“The same age as Diana Vernon, Sam, Is she not just as charming as that adorable heroine of ‘Rob Roy’?”
“Yes, with her attractive ways—”
“Her bright intellect—”
“The originality of her ideas—”
“She reminds one more of Diana Vernon than of Flora MacIvor, the grand and stately heroine of ‘Waverley’!”
The brothers, proud of their national author, mentioned the names of several other heroines from the “Antiquary,” “Guy Mannering,” “The Fair Maid of Perth,” &c., but all to their thinking must yield the palm to Miss Campbell.
“It is a young rose-tree which has bloomed rather early, brother Sib, and which needs but—”
“A support. Now, I am tired of saying that the best support must be—”
“Must be a husband, decidedly; for he, like the prop, takes root in the same soil—”
“And naturally grows with the rose-tree which he protects.”
Between them the brothers had borrowed this metaphor from the “Complete Gardener.” Undoubtedly they were satisfied with it, for it brought a contented smile on each honest face. Sib opened the mutual snuff-box; daintily put in his fingers and then passed it to his brother, who, after taking a large pinch, deposited it in his pocket.
“So we are quite agreed, Sam.”
“As usual, Sib.”
“Even to the choice of the gardener?”
“How could any one be found more sympathetic, or likely to suit Helena, than this young savant who on several occasions has evinced sentiments so honourable—”
“And so sincere on his part—”
“It would be; difficult indeed, He is well educated, a graduate of the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh—”
“A physicist like Tyndall—”
“A chemist like Faraday—”
“Thoroughly conversant in every subject—”
“And no matter what question you put to him, never at a loss for an answer—”
“Descended from ah excellent Fifeshire family, and, besides, heir to an ample fortune—”
“Without taking into account his very agreeable personal appearance, at least to my thinking, even with his aluminium spectacles!”
Had the spectacles been of steel, nickel, or even of gold, the brothers would never have regarded them as a latent defect. 'Tis true these optical appendages suit young savants and give an air of discretion highly appropriate.
But was this graduate of the above-mentioned universities, this physicist and chemist, agreeable to Miss Campbell? If Miss Campbell were indeed like Diana Vernon, Diana Vernon, one knows, had no feelings beyond a very reserved friendship for her learned cousin Rashleigh, and never married him to the end of the story.
Good! but that need not make the brothers uneasy, and they brought all the experience of two old bachelors to bear upon the subject.
“They have met already once or twice, Sib, and our young friend did not seem insensible to Helena's beauty.”
“I should think not, indeed! If the divine Ossian had to celebrate her virtues, beauty, and grace, he would have called her Moina, that is to say, beloved of all—”
“Unless he had named her Fiona, Sib, the incomparable beauty of the Gaelic epoch!”
“Did he not picture our Helena when he wrote:—
“‘She left the hall of her secret sigh! She came in all her beauty,
like the moon from the cloud of the east—’”
“‘Loveliness was around her as light. Her steps were the music of songs.’”
Happily, the brothers here ended their quotations, and fell from the somewhat misty regions of the poets into the realms of reality.
“Surely,” said the one, “if Helena pleases our young savant, he cannot fail to please—”
“And if, on her part, Sam, she has not given as much attention as is due to the great qualities with which he is so liberally endowed by nature—”
“It is simply because we haye not yet told her it is time to think of getting married.”
“But when once we have turned her thoughts that way, whilst admitting that she may have some objection, if not to the husband, at least to matrimony—”
“She will not be long in giving her consent, Sam—”
“Like the excellent Benedick, who, after resisting for a long while—”
“Ended, at the conclusion of ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ by marrying Beatrice.”
This was how Miss Campbell's uncles arranged affairs, and the dénouement of their plan seemed to them as simple as that of Shakspere's comedy.
They rose with one accord, smiled knowingly at each other, and gleefully rubbed their hands. This marriage was a settled affair! What difficulty could arise? The young man had as good as asked their consent, the young girl would give her reply, as to which they need not trouble themselves for a moment. Everything was most desirable, and only the day remained to be fixed.
Indeed it should be a fine ceremony; it should take place at Glasgow, certainly not in the cathedral of St. Mungo, the only church in Scotland, except that of St. Magnus, that had been respected at the time of the Reformation. No! it was too large, and consequently too gloomy for a wedding which, according to the brothers' ideas, should be a brilliant display of youth, a beam of love! They would rather choose St. Andrew's, or St. Enoch's, or even St. George's, in the best part of the city.
The brothers went on developing their plans rather in the form of a monologue than a dialogue, for it was always the same train of ideas, expressed in the same way. As they talked they had before them a view of the beautiful trees in the park, where Miss Campbell was now walking, and the grassy slopes through which wound a bright stream, while overhead the sky was shrouded with a slight mist, which seems peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland. They did not look at each other, there was no need for it; but from time to time they grasped each other's hands, as though to keep up a communication of thought by means of some magnetic current.
Yes! it should be magnificent! They would do the thing handsomely. The poor of West George Street, if there were any—--and where are they not to be found?—should not be forgotten on this joyful occasion. If by chance Miss Campbell should wish that it might take place very quietly, and insisted on her uncles listening to her, they would know how to be firm with her for the first time in their lives; they would not yield on this point, nor any other. The guests at the bridal feast should quaff wine to their hearts' content, but with all due ceremony; and Sam's hand was held out simultaneously with Sib's, as though they were already exchanging the famous Scotch toast.
At this moment the hall-door was opened, and a young girl, with cheeks glowing with health after her rapid walk, appeared. In her hand she held a newspaper, and going up to the brothers, she honoured them with two kisses each.
“Good-morning Uncle Sam,” said she.
“Good-morning, dear child.”
“And how is Uncle Sib?”
“Wonderfully well, thank you, my dear.”
“Helena,” said Sam, “we have a little arrangement to make with you.”
“An arrangement! what arrangement? What have you two uncles been plotting together?” asked Miss Campbell, as she looked roguishly from one to the other.
“You know that young gentleman, Mr. Aristobulus Ursiclos?”
“Yes, I know him,”
“Do you like him?”
“Why should I not like him, uncle?”
“Well, after mature consideration, brother and I think of proposing him to you as a husband.”
“I marry? I!” exclaimed Miss Campbell, and her pretty lips parted with the most musical laughter that had ever resounded through the great hall.
“Do you not want to be married?” asked her Uncle Sam.
“Why should I?”
“Never?” inquired Sib.
“Never!” replied Miss Campbell, assuming a serious air, which her smiling lips quite contradicted. “Never, uncles—at least, not till I have seen—”
“Seen what?” cried the brothers.
“Until I have seen the Green Ray.”