To Scotland and Love

Chapter One ~ 1880-1

chapter One ~ 1880Talbot Marsham looked round White’s Club.

He was saying ‘goodbye’ not only to the Club but also to its members, many of whom were his good friends.

He had always enjoyed going there, knowing that he would find half a dozen people with whom he had been at school.

There were also those who he had become friendly with either at University or later in his life.

But the Club that had meant so much to him and to so many of his contemporaries was becoming expensive.

And he knew that he could not afford the membership fee for the coming year.

‘I shall miss it,’ he thought to himself.

A friend came up and offered him a drink, which he accepted gratefully.

He knew that he could not buy himself one.

If he did, he would have to go hungry tonight and, as he was well aware, his rent was overdue.

He sat down in one of the Club’s most comfortable leather armchairs.

As he did so, he asked himself how things could have become so bad for him.

“You are looking depressed, Talbot,” his friend Henry Johnson remarked. “What is the matter?”

“Need you ask?” Talbot replied. “There is nothing new since I last saw you.”

“You mean that you are ‘down on your uppers’ again?” Henry asked. “Have a glass of champagne and then cheer up. I am sure that we can find an answer to your problems.”

“God knows what it can be,” Talbot replied miserably.

Henry had been a contemporary at Eton and, although he was not rich himself, his father was well off and he did not lack for anything he required.

“I can let you have a tenner,” Henry offered.

“I would be most grateful for half that,” Talbot answered. “But to be serious, Henry, this just cannot go on.”

‘Then you have been unable to find suitable employment of any sort?”

“I tried three different places only yesterday,” Talbot replied, “but you know as well as I do that the last thing they need are gentlemen who have no qualifications apart from a Public School education.”

“That is true,” Henry said. “I am very sure if I had to work that I would not know where to begin.”

Both men were aware that there were very few gentlemen since the Industrial Revolution who had gone into industry and had made their fortunes in coal, steel, railways and canals.

It was frowned on by their contemporaries and industry itself did not really want them.

In Social circles they talked scornfully of a man who was ‘in the City’.

This was despite the fact that for the first time in history the Prince of Wales patronised the Jewish financiers in London and made them his friends.

The majority of the aristocrats, however, thought it degrading and disgusting to work in any sense of the word.

Their sons were indeed well off, so they had nothing to do but to attend Race Meetings, watch Polo and gamble in the notorious gaming Clubs of St. James’s.

This, in some cases, had proved really disastrous, especially when the gamblers owned property and land in their large estates

Whole streets and squares changed hands over one turn of a card.

More than one young gentleman in the past had been forced to retire to the country when his pockets were empty and his father would no longer meet his gambling debts.

“The difficulty is,” Talbot said reflectively, ‘that, while Eton and Oxford educated us, I think extremely well, the knowledge that we have acquired is not saleable in the world as it is today.”

“I suppose it would have been more sensible if we had gone into a Regiment,” Henry said. “We did discuss it, you will remember, but then your father was against you going into a Scottish Regiment and your mother could not think of you being commissioned in an English one.”

This was indeed true and it was another complication in Talbot’s life.

His mother had been Lady Janet McCairn, daughter of the Earl of Cairnloch.

He was Chieftain of the Clan and lived in splendour in the far North of Scotland.

The Earl had acquired what amounted to an obsessive hatred of the English.

Therefore, when his eldest daughter desperately wanted to marry a Sassenach, he refused to contemplate such a mésalliance.

“If you marry this damned Englishman after the way the English have treated the Scots, then I will have nothing more to do with you and will not acknowledge you as my daughter!”

These were strong words, spoken with the authority that the Earl exerted over his Clan.

He never for a moment did he think that his daughter would defy him.

But Lady Janet had fallen in love.

*

Among the guests who had come to shoot grouse with one of their friends was Frederick Marsham.

He was the son of a well-known Statesman and considered an exceptional parti by those who had debutante daughters to marry off.

They had been paraded before him ever since he had left school.

At twenty-seven, however, he was still a bachelor simply because he had never fallen in love.

From the very moment he set eyes on Lady Janet he lost his heart completely.

She, according to her family, lost her head as the Earl had always been determined that a Sassenach should never cross the threshold of his Highland Castle.

When his daughter wished to marry one, it made her a leper as far as he was concerned.

The only thing that Lady Janet and Frederick Marsham could possibly do was to elope.

He had not carried her off at midnight in the usual romantic fashion to take her to be married over the anvil at Gretna Green just over the border into Scotland.

He had called on the Earl and told him politely that he wished to marry his daughter.

The Earl had then raged at him with a fury that would have struck one of the McCairn Clansmen like lightning and the victim would most certainly have collapsed under the force of it.

Frederick Marsham merely treated the man he wished to make his father-in-law with a quiet contempt.

Naturally this made the Earl even more furious than he was already.

“Surely, my Lord,” he argued, “you must be aware that your hatred of the English is completely out of date. I do admit that the Duke of Cumberland behaved abominably when he invaded Scotland. I admit that the Highland Clearances, which were attributed to English influence, caused a great deal of suffering to many of your people, but all that is now in the past and you cannot continue to loathe a country that is united with yours.”

That was exactly what the Earl did feel.

He told Frederick Marsham that if he did not leave his Castle immediately, he would have him thrown out by the servants.

Frederick Marsham behaved with considerable dignity.

He asked the Earl gently to reconsider his decision.

When the Earl replied only that he would curse him from the present until his dying day, did he accept the inevitable.

“I think, my Lord,” he said, “it is something that you will regret. I bid you good day and accept your decision never to enter your house again.”

He walked swiftly from the Chieftain’s Room and down the stairs.

Waiting for him in the hall was Lady Janet.

She had known only too well what would be the outcome of the interview between her father and the man she loved so deeply.

But Frederick had insisted that he should behave correctly so that he could not reproach himself in the future.

Now, as he came down the stairs, Lady Janet looked up at him.

She knew by the expression on his face that, as she had accurately anticipated, her father had refused to listen to anything that Frederick had to say to him.

Frederick put out his hand and she slipped hers into it.

He stopped still, looked at her lovely face turned to his and said,

“You are quite certain, my darling, that you are prepared to come with me? I think it is unlikely that your father will ever forgive you if you do.”

Lady Janet sighed.

“You know I cannot stay here without you,” she replied, “and unless we can be together, I have no – wish to go on – living.”

The way she spoke was simple and heartfelt and not in any way dramatic or rancorous.

Frederick knew that what she had just said came from her heart.

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“So be it,” he murmured.

His carriage was waiting outside and Lady Janet’s trunks were in the hall.

It took a little time before they could be strapped onto the carriage, but there was no sign of the Earl.

As they drove away from The Castle, Lady Janet did not look back.

Frederick’s arms were round her and he kissed her until the drive was left behind.

Then there was only the wild moorland around them.

Contrary to the expectation and determination of the McCairn family, the marriage was blissfully happy

Lady Janet produced a son, which was everything that Frederick Marsham wanted.

Unfortunately she had no more children, but they were content with their little boy who was a delight to his parents with fair hair and bright blue eyes.

Frederick did not object when she had wanted to call her son ‘Talbot’.

It was one of the family names that was ingrained in the history of Scotland.

After they were married in a small village Church there was never a word from the Earl or from any of the McCairn relations.

The only person who really knew that Lady Janet was greatly missing her kith and kin and Scotland itself, was her son, Talbot.

When he was young, she had related all the wild legends of the Highlands to him.

She had stirred his imagination with stories of the Scottish heroes who had been part of her own childhood.

Talbot, when he was somewhat older, realised, when she talked of her homeland, that there was a wistfulness in her voice.

He knew that however happy she was in England, one part of her heart would always belong to the land where she was born and grew up.

She was, however, very careful not to let her husband think that she was anything but extremely happy, which in fact she was.

When Frederick died three years ago, she had longed only to join him.

She totally believed that they would be together in Heaven as they had been on Earth.

It was after Frederick Marsham’s death that things became difficult.

His father had always been a rich man, but then he had in his old age made a number of unfortunate investments, which had swallowed up nearly all his capital.

His son unfortunately inherited little but debts and more debts.

Frederick had expected to own a comfortable estate in the country and to be able to live as his ancestors had lived.

But he found, when his father was dead, that the estate, which was in poor repair, had to be sold.

The proceeds from the house and its contents only just covered their outstanding debts.

What was worse was that Frederick himself had no income except what he received from his father and that was not very much.

He struggled, rather late in life, to find some other source of income, but had failed.

Fortunately, his son, Talbot, had already been educated at the best and most expensive school in England.

He had enjoyed his time at Oxford University enormously and had made a great number of good friends.

It had never occurred to Talbot to worry as to how his fees were paid.

He had never denied himself the clothes, books or horses that he particularly desired.

His father had been subjected to a bombshell when he had found himself penniless.

To Talbot, on his death, it was an unbelievable catastrophe.

“What are we going to live on, Mama?” he had asked his mother.

“I have just no idea, darling,” she replied. “Your father always looked after everything. I never asked him questions about where the money came from.”

Talbot discovered that in the two years before his father’s death, Frederick Marsham had used up every penny of the sale.

He had also incurred an overdraft from his bank, which had to be met.

The only fortunate thing was that Lady Janet possessed some very fine jewellery.

It had been given to her by her adoring husband from the first moment that they had run away together.