Chapter II.

The centuries are turned as the pages of a book, and there stands at the gates of Glenmayne Priory a wizened little man dressed in tight black clothes with an ill-fitting lum-hat crammed over his ears. He carries a hump on his back and a leather satchel beneath his arm, and to judge by the dour lines about his mouth he is not the type to conjure ghosts nor heed the fine flavour of romance that clings forever to age-old stone and iron-studded oaken doors. One would say that such impalpable things, having no counterpart in the chink of coin or the scrawly signature on a banker's draft, would be beyond his ken; so it is idle to suppose that he would realise that his coming marked the anniversary of a highly romantic happening.

It was the two hundred and eightyninth anniversary, to be exact, of the day on which old Malcolm Lenzie, standing by these very gates, had watched two figures on horseback grow small with distance as they cantered side by side down the lowland road. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and his own son Robin; and presently, as they turned their horses from the main road into a cow-path that would take them by devious ways to Michael's Cross, old Lenzie raised a hand to shield his eyes from the level rays of the sun which by now was low in the western sky. As though in answer to his movement one of the figures half turned in the saddle and flung up an arm in farewell salute. It was a gesture comradely and full of confidence. But old Lenzie, weary with the day's excitement and uneasy in spirit had read something final, a foreboding of the fate, perhaps that in spite of her brave assurances to the contrary, awaited the Queen in England, and which had already ordained that she was never again to set foot in Scotland.

The road down which old Lenzie gazed that day ran undulating through pastures bright with spring grass; there was flowering may in the hedgrows and behind stone walls the tumbled white and pink foam of fruit trees in blossom. Glenmayne Priory had at once dominated and harmonised with the countryside in all its moods, greystone walls, built with an artist's care for background, had toned perfectly with bright spring colouring, mellow autumn tints and the low grey skies of winter. But now all that was changed, for, like the hulk of an old ship dreaming at her moorings in a busy harbour, the house in May, 1857, had become something of an anomaly.

On all sides chimneys reared gaunt outlines. Slag heaps, reeking black cones, darkened the brightest noons with sulphurous dust and smoke, and lining the road, fouled now with coaly slime, were drab little worker's dwellings. Hideous erections these, of grimy brick and plaster, devoid of all the things that make a home a delight; mere kennels, to house in their less useful moments the men, women and children who went daily to toil fourteen and sixteen hours a day in the pits, the shops, and at the looms of the great industrial district which during the past hundred years had been growing up steadily on the south bank of the Clyde.

Mr. McWhin, for that, if it may be read as the son of a gorse-bush, was the rather fitting name of the caller at Glenmayne Priory, tugged at the iron bell-handle beside the gate and waited without any sign of impatience for some five minutes before his summons was answered, for he occupied the time in pleasant thoughts of the old house's demolition. Glenmayne, with its adjacent land occupied a position which represented thousands of pounds as a building site for yet more tenements, factories, and smoke-belching chimneys.

Mr. McWhin had not progressed very far with his vandalistic speculations when the gate was opened and an old woman of forbidding aspect, who acted as factotum to the Lenzie household, demanded his business.

“To see Mr. Ardoch Lenzie,” he replied.

“What would ye be wanting with him? He is only just got back from London, and in no mood to entertain,” —she regarded Mr. McWhin disdainfully—“baillies.”

“My business is private,” Mr. McWhin answered precisely, “and,” relapsing a shade truculently into broader speech, “I ken fine he has been tae London tae bury his father—that's why I'm here.”

The old woman favoured him with a sour look, “I'll tell him,” she said and, carefully chaining the gate, left Mr. McWhin some minutes more to the enjoyment of his own company upon the roadway. Presently she returned and led him towards the library where, seated at a desk littered with documents, page 43 sat the new laird of Glenmayne, Ardoch Lenzie.

Ardoch, a man between thirty and thirty-five years of age, was a true son of his red-headed forebears, and he fixed Mr. McWhin with an uncompromisingly cold blue eye.

“What might your business be, sir?” he demanded when the old woman had left them. Mr. McWhin did not answer the question directly.

“I understand, Mr. Lenzie,” he said in his mincing, precise manner of speaking, “that you saw very little of your father during the last ten years or so of his life?”

Ardoch made an impatient gesture. “Possibly,” he replied, “I have managed the estate here since I came of age—my father lived in London.”

“In body perhaps,” Mr. McWhin smiled faintly, “in spirit he lived in ancient Babylon.”

“Be good enough to tell me what your business is,” Ardoch snapped, “I have a great many important matters to attend to.”

“Aye,” Mr McWhin returned smoothly, “I'll be coming to it fast enough. Your father was a grand scholar, Mr. Lenzie, and a charming gentleman, but he was a trifle careless, shall we say, about everyday affairs. You see he lived in a world of his own; a world of golden chariots and human sacrifices, a heathen, blasphemous world, but between you and me, a verra interesting one in spite of what the minister might say!”

“Many a time,” he continued holding up his hand, for Ardoch was about to interrupt him again, “I dined with him in a wee room overlooking Bloomsbury Square, and he would lay down knife and fork to fetch a piece of pottery like enough to an old broken flowerpot, but covered with scratchings such as a spider might ha’ made if it fell into an ink-well. ‘It's all there McWhin,’ he would say, ‘the key to the riddle o’ life, if we could only read it'!

“It seemed there was only part of these scratchings he could read, the parts about the horses and the kings with their jewels and the women's lips outlined wi’ scarlet paint. Oh aye,” Mr. McWhin chuckled, “he could tell about those things right enough, which perhaps was the reason why I was so lenient with him.”

“What do you mean.” Ardoch demanded, “lenient?”

“It takes money, Mr. Lenzie, to live in a world three thousand years old, even more it seems than it does to live in the present-day one. And those old flower-pots they dig up in Egypt or some such fantastic place, are mighty expensive to come by.”

“Do you mean my father borrowed money from you?” Ardoch's tone was scornful, for to be sure Mr. McWhin's appearance would not suggest any very great financial resources.

“Well,” Mr. McWhin fingered his scrubby chin, “often enough at the end of one of our evenings together he would mention the wicked prices he had to pay for things in London, and how this or that society wanted a subscription to dig up more flowerpots or whatnot, and after such a good dinner and such interesting talk I found it hard to refuse him.”

“How much altogether did you lend him?” Ardoch, anxious to be rid of his unwelcome visitor, dipped his pen in the ink and opened a book of blank cheques.

Mr. McWhin cleared his throat nervously, “The amounts were no’ large, Mr. Lenzie, not for a man like your father with this house and two hundred acres of valuable property behind him. But a scholar, a man whose thoughts are all in the past is apt to be careless about details of interest and such, compound interest ye understand, and the first of the loans was made over twelve years ago.”

“The amount, man, the amount!” Ardoch drummed impatiently on the desk top.

Mr. McWhin extracted a pair of steelrimmed spectacles from his pocket and adjusted them carefully over the bridge of his nose, then he opened his leather satchel and took from it a bundle of documents bound with black ribbon. Peering over the top of his spectacles he read from a slip of paper tucked beneath the ribbon.

The suavity was gone from his voice, his obsequious manner had become suddenly harsh and aggressive.

“The amount,” he said, “is eighteen thousand, seven hundred, and sixty-one pounds, eleven shillings.”

For a moment there was dead silence, then Ardoch leaped to his feet, overturning his chair with a crash.

“What the devil do you mean?” he shouted, “how dare you come to me with such a fabrication at a time like this?”

“It's no fabrication,” Mr. McWhin assured him calmly, “you'll find all the amounts there if you take the trouble to look.”

Ardoch caught up the papers and tore off the ribbon that bound them. For a moment he scanned them, and then faced Mr. McWhin again, his face dark with anger.

“Interest at fifteen per cent.!” he stormed, “what do you mean by such extortionate rates?”

“I was dealing wi’ a dreamy forgetful man,” Mr. McWhin replied.

Ardoch sat down with a mirthless laugh, “Well,” he said, “the farm is not paying, I have no such amount at call—how do you expect to collect your money?”

“Oh, I'm well covered.” Mr. McWhin turned once more to his leather satchel and took from it a further sheaf of papers. “Here,” he said, tapping them with a bony forefinger, “are deeds of mortgage over this house and property—shall I read them to you?”

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All Ardoch's instincts prompted him at this moment to show Mr. McWhin the door at the toe of his boot. Indeed he was half out of his chair to do so ere he realised that it was an impulse as vainly incongruous as if old Glenmayne Priory itself, awakening from the sleep of centuries to find the web of industrialism spread over and about it, had tried with an angry convulsion to rid the neighbourhood of the grimy tenements and foul air that polluted it.

He was caught. Five minutes’ perusal of the usurer's documents convinced him of that fact. Desperately he sought a way out, there were cousins and distant branches of the family who had in the past looked to Glenmayne as its head. They perhaps would be unwilling to see the old place pass into alien hands. They could—they must help. He demanded time from Mr. McWhin in which to arrange a settlement.

But Mr. McWhin shook his head. He had laid his plans a long time ago, and laid them well. For thirty-five years he had watched the city of Glasgow and its environs growing like a monstrous fungus over the countryside. Coal-pits, factories, and their attendant rows of grimy houses had overwhelmed a farm here, a village there. Someday, some time, the old house and green pastures of Glenmayne would be able to hold out no longer, and that day would be a very lucrative one for the man who, untrammelled by sentiment, owned the title to the estate. Not for many years, not until well after Mr. McWhin could hope to be alive, would the Lenzie family be likely of their own free will to relinquish their holdings. Land speculators in the past had received short shift at their hands; it would only be by chance that an outsider might obtain a title.

Chance had brought Mr. McWhin into contact with Gavin Lenzie, Ardoch's father. Gavin had been delicate from boyhood and spent the greater part of his early life in Italy where, living with his doting mother in a Florentine villa, he developed a passion for archaeological study, and grew up unpractical to a degree. When he succeeded to the Glenmayne estate at the age of fortyseven he had little taste for the northern climate or the hard work therein. He left the management of his affairs to agents, and as soon as his son was of age took himself off to live permanently in London.

Mr. McWhin had told Ardoch only half a truth when he spoke of the archaeologist's dinners and talks. It was he himself who had all but forced the loans, professing a deep interest in the Babylonian fragments and musty manuscripts. He had cultivated Gavin's friendship and gained his confidence at the same time that he had spun his web about him. Gavin had belonged to certain societies interested in the excavation of ancient ruins and tombs in Asia Minor, and Mr. McWhin had found it an easy matter to pass off loans for the furtherance of these activities as temporary obligements between gentlemen of kindred interests. The notes of hand which he received in return and which were subsequently made over into mortgages on Gavin's property, were, he declared with wellfeigned unconcern, a mere formality.

Thus it was that he gained little by little a hold over the whole Glenmayne estate and no part of it was redeemable by the sale of the treasures which were occasionally unearthed, for he had always taken care that the loans, though contracted in Gavin's name, were for the benefit of the societies. As for allowing Ardoch time to try and get outside assistance to clear the debt, he smiled wolfishly: all the payments were long overdue; he preferred to foreclose!

And now, as he rose from his chair, “I'll give you a month,” he said, “in which to make your arrangements. At the end of that time I shall expect to find Glenmayne Priory and its adjacent lands ready to be handed over to my agents!”