"But such marriages cannot be binding!"

"Indeed they are. You have surely heard of the Scotch laws?"

"I have been told that any one can marry people in Scotland. I have heard that the simple declaration of saying you take each other for man and wife const.i.tutes a marriage."

"Yes; if said before a witness. Would you like to try it, Maria?"

The colour mantled to her face as she bent over her drawing. She smiled at the joke, simply shaking her head by way of answer. And Mr. George G.o.dolphin went off laughing, lighting another cigar as he talked.

Overtaking Charlotte Pain just as Margery came up, he accosted the latter.

"How grand you are, Margery! What's agate?"

"Grand!" returned Margery. "Who says it? What is there grand about me?"

"That shawl displays as many colours as a kaleidoscope. We thought it was a rainbow coming along. Did it arrive in an express parcel last night from Paisley?"

"It isn't me that has money to spend upon parcels!" retorted Margery. "I have too many claims dragging my purse at both ends, for that."

A faithful servant was Margery, in spite of her hard features, and her stern speech. Scant of ceremony she had always been, and scant of ceremony she would remain. In fact, she was given to treating the younger branches of the G.o.dolphins, Mr. George included, very much as she had treated them when they were children. They knew her sterling worth, and did not quarrel with her severe manners.

"When you have half a dozen kin pulling at you, 'I want this!' from one, and 'I want that!' from another, and the same cry running through all, it isn't much money you can keep to spend on shawls," resumed Margery.

"I was a fool to come here; that's what I was! When the master said to me, 'You had better come with us, Margery,' I ought to have answered, 'No, Sir George, I'm better away.'"

"Well, what is the grievance, Margery?" George asked, while Charlotte Pain turned from one to the other in curiosity.

"Why, they are on at me for money, that's what it is, Mr. George. My lady sent for me this morning to say she intended to call and see Selina to-day. Of course I knew what it meant--that I was to go and give them a hint to have things tidy--for, if there's one thing my lady won't do, it is to put her foot into a pigsty. So I threw on my shawl, that you are laughing at, and went. There was nothing the matter with the place, for a wonder; but there was with them. Selina, she's in bed, ill--and if she frets as she's fretting now, she won't get out of it in a hurry. Why did she marry the fellow? It does make me so vexed!"

"What has she to fret about?" continued George.

"What does she always have to fret about?" retorted Margery. "His laziness, and the children's ill-doings. They go roaming about the country, here, there, and everywhere, after work, as they say, after places; and then they get into trouble and untold worry, and come home or send home for money to help them out of it! One of them, Nick--and a good name for him, say I!--must be off into Wales to those relations of Bray's; and he has been at some mischief there, and is in prison for it, and is now committed for trial. And the old woman has walked all the way here to get funds from them, to pay for his defence. The news has half killed Selina."

"I said she was a Welshwoman," interrupted Charlotte Pain. "She was smoking, was she not, Margery?"

"She's smoking a filthy short pipe," wrathfully returned Margery. "But for that, I should have said she was a decent body--although it's next to impossible to understand her tongue. She puts in ten words of Welsh to two of English. Of course they have no money to furnish for it; it wouldn't be them, if they had; so they are wanting to get it out of me.

Fifteen or twenty pounds! My word! They'd like me to end my days in the workhouse."

"You might turn a deaf ear, Margery," said George.

"I know I might; and many a hundred times have I vowed I would,"

returned Margery. "But there's she in her bed, poor thing, sobbing and moaning, and asking if Nick is to be quite abandoned. The worse a lad turns out, the more a mother clings to him--as it seems to me. Let me be here, or let me be at Ashlydyat, I have no peace for their wants. By word of mouth or by letter they are on at me for ever."

"If 'Nick' has a father, why can he not supply him?" asked Charlotte.

"It's a sensible question, Miss Pain," said the woman. "Nick's father is one of those stinging-nettles that only enc.u.mber the world, doing no good for themselves nor for anybody else. 'Minister' Bray, indeed! it ought to be something else, I think. Many a one has had cause to rue the hour that he 'ministered' for them!"

"How does he minister?--what do you mean?" wondered Charlotte.

"He marries folks; that's his ne'er-do-well occupation, Miss Pain. Give him a five-shilling piece, and he'd marry a boy to his grandmother. I'm Scotch by birth--though it's not much that I have lived in the land--but, I do say, that to suffer such laws to stand good, is a sin and a shame. Two foolish children--and many of those that go to him are no better--stand before him for a half-minute, and he p.r.o.nounces them to be man and wife! And man and wife they are, and must remain so, till the grave takes one of them: whatever their repentance may be when they wake up from their folly. It's just one of the blights upon bonny Scotland."

Margery, with no ceremonious leave-taking, turned at the last words, and continued her way. George G.o.dolphin smiled at the blank expression displayed on Charlotte Pain's countenance. Had Margery talked in Welsh, as did the old woman with the pipe, she could not have less understood her.

"You require the key, Charlotte," said he. "Shall I give it to you?

Margery was my mother's maid, as you may have heard. Her sister, Selina, was maid to the present Lady G.o.dolphin: not of late years: long and long before she ever knew my father. It appears the girl, Selina, was a favourite with her mistress; but she left her, in spite of opposition from all quarters, to marry Mr. Sandy Bray. And has, there's no doubt, been rueing it ever since. There are several children, of an age now to be out in the world; but you heard Margery's account of them. I fear they do pull unconscionably at poor Margery's purse-strings."

"Why does she let them do so?" asked Charlotte.

Mr. George opened his penknife and ran the point of it through his cigar, ere he answered. "Margery has a soft place in her heart. As I believe most of us have--if our friends could but give us credit for it."

"How strange the two sisters should live, the one with your father's first wife, the other with his second!" exclaimed Charlotte, when she had given a few moments to thought. "Were they acquainted with each other?--the ladies."

"Not in the least. They never saw each other. I believe it was through these women being sisters that my father became acquainted with the present Lady G.o.dolphin. He was in Scotland with Janet, visiting my mother's family; and Margery, who was with them, brought Janet to that very house, there, to see her sister. Mrs. Campbell--as she was, then--happened to have gone there that day: and that's how the whole thing arose. People say there's a fatality in all things. One would think it must be so. Until that day, Mrs. Campbell had not been in the house for two or three years, and would not be likely to go into it again for two or three more."

"Is Bray a _mauvais sujet_?"

George lifted his eyebrows. "I don't know that there's much against him, except his incorrigible laziness: that's bad enough when a man has children to keep. Work he will not. Beyond the odds and ends that he gets by the exercise of what he is pleased to call his trade, the fellow earns nothing. Lady G.o.dolphin is charitable to the wife; and poor Margery, as she says, finds her purse drawn at both ends."

"I wondered why Margery came to Scotland," observed Charlotte, "not being Lady G.o.dolphin's maid. What _is_ Margery's capacity in your family? I have never been able to find out."

"It might puzzle herself to tell you what it is, now. After my mother's death, she waited on my sisters: but when they left Ashlydyat, Margery declined to follow them. She would not leave Sir George. She is excessively attached to him, almost as much so as she was to my mother.

That quitting Ashlydyat, ourselves first, and then my father, was a blow to Margery," George added in a dreamy tone. "She has never been the same since."

"It was Margery, was it not, who attended upon Sir George in his long illness?"

"I do not know what he would have done without her," spoke George G.o.dolphin in a tone that betrayed its own grat.i.tude. "In sickness she is invaluable: certainly not to be replaced, where she is attached. Lady G.o.dolphin, though in her heart I do not fancy she likes Margery, respects her for her worth."

"I cannot say I like her," said Charlotte Pain. "Her manners are too independent. I have heard her order you about very cavalierly."

"And you will hear her again," said George G.o.dolphin. "She exercised great authority over us when we were children, and she looks upon us as children still. Her years have grown with ours, and there is always the same distance as to age between us. I speak of the younger amongst us: to Thomas and Janet she is ever the respectful servant; in a measure also to Bessy: of myself and Cecil she considers herself partial mistress."

"If they are so poor as to drain Margery of her money, how is it they can live in that house and pay its rent?" inquired Charlotte, looking towards the building.

"It is Bray's own. The land, belonging to it, has been mortgaged three deep long ago. He might have been in a tolerably good position, had he chosen to make the most of his chances: he was not born a peasant."

"Who is this?" exclaimed Charlotte.

A tall, slouching man, with red hair and heavy shoulders, was advancing towards them from the house. George turned to look.

"That is Bray himself. Look at the lazy fellow! You may tell his temperament from his gait."

George G.o.dolphin was right. The man was not walking along, but sauntering; turning to either side and bending his head as if flowers lay in his path and he wished to look at them: his hands in his pockets, his appearance anything but fresh and neat. They watched him come up. He touched his hat then, and accosted Mr. George G.o.dolphin.

"My service to ye, sir. I didna know you were in these parts."

"So you are still in the land of the living, Bray!" was Mr. George's response. "How is business?"

"Dull as a d.y.k.e," returned Bray. "Times are bad. I've hardly took a crown in the last three months, sir. I shall have to emigrate, if this is to go on."

"I fear you would scarcely find another country so tolerant to your peculiar calling, Bray," said George, some mockery in his tone. "And what would the neighbourhood do without you? It must resign itself to single blessedness."