UNCLE GAINSWOOD.

The character we are about to pourtray, though not an uncommon one, is a task alike difficult and distasteful.

    Mr. Gideon Gainswood, Writer to the Signet and Notary Public, was a good example of those coarse-looking local notorieties, who, painted in accurate black, yearly figure, in kit-cat size, on the walls of the Royal Scottish Academy. His figure was sturdy, and his hands and feet were as those of a hodman, which, perhaps, his more worthy grandfather had been in his time. His features were of a harsh Scottish type; a cunning and sardonic turn of mind had puckered in minute wrinkles the skin near his cold-grey, ferret-like eyes, which seemed to focus on all he addressed. He had coarse hair of a sandy brown, now well grizzled in his fiftieth year; grey leg-of-mutton whiskers, and a thin-lipped, cruel-looking mouth, the jaw of a bull-dog, and a nose that can only be denominated as a large pug. He seldom laughed; then only from the teeth outwards, and these, being yellow, contrasted unfavourably with the scrupulously white neck-tie, which he was never seen without in his double capacity of a professional man and Elder of the kirk.

Yet he was only one of the legion,—

   a typical female who is the bugbear—the modern Gyre Carlin—of "the genteel" classes in Scotland, especially in her capital, thereby restraining all honesty of action and inducing an amount of timidity and snobbery that to a stranger seems astounding.

   He certainly had the reputation of being an able lawyer and most upright Elder—"a sly fox—a sharp fellow," some ill-natured people averred; "one who took deuced good care not to be found out," whatever that might mean. His chief weakness, besides unsatiable avarice, was that desire, so peculiar to the middle-class Scotsman and Frenchman, to figure on platforms at public meetings and see their names duly recorded in the provincial prints. As a general rule, the learned professions in Scotland now contribute almost nothing to the literature of the country, but Mr. Gainswood had emitted an annotated edition of "A Shove Heavenward for Heavy-doupit Sinners," which won him some fame, and added to the religious reputation he had won for himself, by perpetually quoting Scripture—more than we shall do for him. And texts therefrom—not illuminated, as such savoured of Popery and Episcopacy, but in fair black roman letters—were hung all over his house, which was one of the handsomest in the city.

  He observed the seventh day with a rigidity that was edifying to behold. Under the management of Mrs. Elspat McBriar, cold dinners ever graced the Sunday board, for as a writer has it, "spite may be permissible on Sabbath, though hot potatoes and novels are not," as poor Dove sighed to think, when, after three years in France, she came home to all this sort of thing.

  How such a man came to have a daughter so good and artless, and, more than all, so exquisitely ladylike as Dove, was passing strange, and one of those idiosyncracies of nature "which," as Dundreary says, "no fellow can understand."

 Though it suited him never to say so, the Colonel's fond and romantic idea of buying back Avon-na-gillian, spending the last of his days where its bluff rocks met the vast waves of the Atlantic, and being laid finally under some old pine trees where generations of the Clan Lamond lay, he considered "especial bosh," as he had no sympathy with any such "old world" speculations.

  He always deemed the scheme an impracticable one; and, sooth to say, were the real truth known, for sundry cogent and secret reasons of his own, it would have proved far from unwelcome, had tidings come, that his brother-in-law were cut off in India by death in any fashion, fever, battle, or the assassin's steel, and never came home at all, as he hoped to do ere Gillian was twenty-one; yet he never addressed a letter to the confiding old soldier, without preluding it with "D.V.," as he did those to all his clients.

  To such a creature as this, and such as he may prove to be, there are, no doubt—even in his profession—good and bright exceptions; yet in the "College of Justice," as it is historically or jocularly called, they are often far apart; and he was one of the representative men of a pretty numerous class of religious pretenders that are to be found in all phases of life.

  We have said that, secretly, Mr. Gainswood more than disliked his nephew, yet for the love of his cousin the young fellow was unwearying, and left nothing undone to please him; but so absorbed was the lawyer in his own matters, so little did he seem aware that such an emotion—"folly," he would have termed it—as love existed, that when a wealthy client, the old Laird of Torduff, with whom he was familiar, a sturdy, red-faced old gentleman in a black cutaway coat, top-boots, and corded breeches, ventured to hint at that which poor Mrs. McBriar dared not do, the real state of matters, as they were supposed to be between the cousins, and to offer laughingly his congratulations thereon, the scales fell suddenly from the malicious-like eyes of Gainswood, and he really was, as he asserted himself to be, never more surprised in the whole course of his life.

"What else could you expect, man?" asked Torduff, twirling and untwirling the lash of his hunting-whip.

"It is a complication on which I did not calculate—a mistake I could not foresee, when I undertook the care—the guardianship of my late wife's nephew," said Gainswood, as if half speaking to himself.

"They are a likely and a handsome couple, and all who know and see them say it will be an excellent match."

"The devil they do!" nearly escaped the Elder. "Excellent match for whom?" he asked, with his bushy brows knit and his thin lips set.

"Why, the Colonel's son, of course," stammered the other; "he is a fine manly fellow—young, of course; but I approve of young marriages."

"I don't—marry in haste and repent at leisure."

"No," replied Torduff, testily; "our Scot's proverb says, 'Marry for love and work for siller.'"

"He who marries my daughter shall have no need to work; besides, the relationship is too near, and I have other thoughts for Dove."

 "Then, I am sorry to hear it. Come, come, Gainswood, don't be hard on the young folks," rejoined the cheery old country gentleman; "you have made up a jolly big bank-book by this time."

  "My dear sir, the grace of God is enough for me," said Gainswood, suddenly relapsing into his pious whine; "I am one of those who take no heed to gather up riches—those of this world, at least."

"Well, I hope I have done no mischief in telling you the on dit—I had it from my own girls," added Torduff, buttoning his riding gloves; "but you go so seldom to places of amusement that you don't know what goes on even in our little world here. And now I am off to the club—good morning."

"Good morning, my dear sir—good morning."

  With a serene smile, great empressement, and a warm shake of the hand, he bowed his client out; then, stamping his heel on the floor, he threw himself into his leathern easy chair with a very unmistakeable—well, interjection on his tongue; clenched his coarse hands, and glared with a savage expression at a certain green box on the iron frame close by—a box containing his correspondence with Colonel Lamond, and all that related to him, and muttered,—

 "On one hand, I cannot send Gillian away, and on the other, this sort of thing cannot go on longer; at any day his father may come upon me, and what am I to do then? This upsets all my plans—the plans of years!"

He ground his yellow teeth, with fury purpling in his face, and his eyes wandered vacantly on the scenery beyond the tall windows of his room, without seeming to see it.

  The sun of the summer afternoon was shining then in all his beauty above the woody undulations of the Corstorphine Hills, and on all that lay between, white-walled villas, green woodlands, and waving thickets, a scene both varied and charming; but the sordid creature saw it not; his whole thoughts were intent on his own schemes, on what he had heard, and the contents of the green box.

 So—so! matters must have gone far indeed, between these young folks at home, when others saw plainly that to which he had been blind, and were coupling their names together, as an engaged pair.

  So full was he of his own dark thoughts and of his schemes, that some minutes elapsed before he saw one of his clerks, a mere boy, an unpaid drudge, who had timidly approached him from an outer-room, and was silently regarding him with wonder; and certes! at that particular time, Mr. Gideon Gainswood would not have made a pleasant picture; so here now was a helpless object on which to expend the vials of his wrath.

Knitting his brows more deeply, he demanded, in a voice of thunder,—

"Did you fee-fund those papers in Graball's process, at the Register-house, at the time I told you?"

"You told me too late, sir," replied the little lad, trembling from head to heel.

"Too late—you young whelp!"

Though not blessed with much patience, it was seldom that he exhibited himself in this unchristian fashion.

"Sir, it was a Box-day," urged the lad; "when the office closes at two o'clock, and so—so—I thought——"

"What business have you to think? Leave my office, Macquillan, this instant, and let me see you no more!"

He was a knowing young fellow, Macquillan, who kept a copy of "The Shove Heavenward" on his desk, though some lighter literature was often in the recesses thereof; but the former availed him not now. What could it all mean?

  He felt himself ruined by this dismissal—ruined without knowing why, and slunk away in utter bewilderment, to weep his heart out on his mother's shoulder in some sordid quarter of the city; and a month from that time found the poor little quill-driver making more noise in the world than he ever expected to do, by beating a drum in Her Majesty's Black Watch.

  A sudden thought seized Mr. Gainswood, and he sharply summoned Gillian Lamond, but that young gentleman had left the office early, and assuming his hat and gloves, the former walked sullenly home, when, to Dove's surprise, he presented himself in the drawing-room just as she was having afternoon tea, an hour before his usual time, and near her stood Gillian, suddenly busying himself with a periodical and paper-knife.

  "Here is your tea, papa dear—this is an unexpected treat," said the girl, turning up her soft and beautiful face to his, the expression of which was smoothed now and inscrutable to all but his daughter.

"You know I never take tea, Dove, especially at this time of the day, nor can I understand any but fools taking it at the really usual dinner hour," he replied, gruffly. "You left your desk betimes, Gillian," he added.

"Only to bring Dove this magazine."

"And do you mean to return?"

"If you will excuse me, uncle—"

 "Do, papa, dear, we are going for a walk," urged Dove in her softest tone, and with a determination not to perceive that he was annoyed; for she had a quick apprehension, and detected something, she knew not what, in the eyes of her father, as he feigned to interest himself behind a newspaper; but the eyes dealt—that which she had more than once detected of late—a dark and unpleasant glance at the unconscious Gillian.

  They were unusually silent in his presence to-day, he thought, and this was not what they were wont to be. Gillian was hovering near Dove, and a charming picture the girl made, framed in, as it were, by the drapery of a lofty window, through which a flood of sunshine seemed to enshrine her, edging her auburn hair with burnished gold, as she sat upon her ottoman, sipping and toying with her teaspoon in the prettiest way in the world, and shyly smiling to her lover from time to time.

   Mr. Gainswood watched them narrowly and gloomily. Dove had finished her tea, and Gillian hastened to place her cup on the nearest gueridon table. Simple and usual though this small piece of attention, he could perceive an upward and downward glance exchanged between the two—a glance full of tenderness and secret understanding—together with a touch of the hand almost swift as light, and these seemed quite confirmation of what Torduff said, and of his own suddenly awakened fears.

Now, whatever were his secret plans and aspirations, Gideon Gainswood was a man of rapid decision, and when Dove, rising, said,

"Now, Gillian, for our walk—we shall keep papa from his paper."

"Stop," said he; "a word with you, Gillian, in my own room."

  The gentlemen retired together, and all that followed was singularly brief, as compared with the importance of all that hinged on the interview. The faintest suspicion of what was about to be referred to, occurred to Gillian Lamond and filled him with confusion, anxiety, and a general emotion of dread. These were no way lessened when Mr. Gainswood, while eyeing him very gravely, said somewhat abruptly,

"This sort of thing between you and Dove cannot go on longer!"

"What sort of thing?" stammered Gillian, scarcely knowing what to say.

"Do not repeat my words, please; you know perfectly well what I mean, but perhaps not that people—gossips—are already coupling your names together."

  Gillian coloured deeply and then grew very pale. Was this the beginning of a black ending? and was the bright dawn of love, that but a short time before had come in so sweetly, to have a sunset of cloud and storm?

"Dear uncle," he urged, "then is it possible that you, so clever and sharp, have been the last—the very last to see—"

"What?"

"How much we love each other?"

"Fiddlesticks!"

"Do you disapprove of it?" asked Gillian, almost trembling under the other's cold grey eyes.

"I do," was the snappish rejoinder.

"Uncle!"

"I do—till we have your father's full sanction."

"Oh, sir, we are sure of that; but have we yours?"

  Gideon Gainswood paused and played with his eye-glass, for though well versed in duplicity and every art and phrase thereof, the present situation was—to him—a peculiar one. He gave Gillian an indescribable glance—unless that it seemed a threatening one—yet said in a voice like a gasp,

"Yes—you have my sanction."

 "God bless you, dearest uncle, for these words!" exclaimed the impulsive young man, as he strove to take one of the other's hands in his; but his "dearest uncle" deliberately placed them both behind his back, and said, briefly and almost sternly—strangely so—

"I shall write to-night to your father, the Colonel, and if he approves, there is nothing more to be said in the matter—the Record will be closed."

 With this professional phrase, he added a wave of the hand, as much as to say the conversation was ended. The man's whole manner was singular; in the fulness of his gushing joy, Gillian took no heed of it then; but there came a time when he was to recall it with sorrow and dread. He was about to speak again, when Mr. Gainswood said,

"Dove will be ready now; go for your walk and leave me."

"What can be meant by this coldness?" thought Gillian; "what by those abrupt changes of manner?"

  "Oh, what happiness to us, darling," exclaimed Dove, when he had breathlessly told her all, and she clung to his arm when they set forth for their walk, after he had with difficulty restrained her from rushing back to embrace and weep on the breast of her "dearest papa," who seemed in no mood for such ebullition; "but how did it all come about?"

"I can scarcely tell—I care not to inquire, or to think of aught but that you are to be mine—mine for ever, Dove—dearest Dove!"

  Yet Gillian was perplexed by the manner of his intended father-in-law; and still more would he have been so, as to what that personage meant, had he heard him, while sitting at his desk, and dipping his pen in a bottle of copying ink—for the letter to the Colonel was to be duly copied—muttering between his set teeth,

  "In this act I do but make the best of it! It is not what I intended to do—and not what I may do yet. But, after all, it might be worse—it might be worse! If Lachlan Lamond ever comes home, he must be merciful to me, for the sake of his son, if not for Dove's sake."

  Merciful for what? But the lawyer muttered to himself, while with many a low interjection—many a pause of doubt, and fierce, stealthy glances at nothing, he penned the promised letter to Colonel Lamond, then far away in Central India.