KATERIN!” she said, coming into the kitchen with a handful of paper cuttings, and, hearing her, the maid's face blanched.
“I declare I never broke an article the day!” she cried, protestingly, well accustomed to that formal address when there had been an accident among her crockery.
“I wasn't charging you,” said her mistress. “Dear me! it must be an awful thing, a guilty conscience! I was thinking to give you—and maybe Lennox, if she would not mind—a lesson or two in cookery. It's a needful thing in a house with anything of a family. You know what men are!”
“Fine that!” said Kate. “They're always thinking what they'll put in their intervals, the greedy deevils!—beg your pardon, but it's not a swear in the Gaelic.”
“There's only one devil in any language, Kate,” said Miss Bell. “'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!' And I am glad to think he is oftener on our foolish tongues than in our hearts. I have always been going to give you a cookery-book.”
“A cookery-book!” cried the maid. “Many a time I saw one out in Colonsay; for the minister's wife had one they called Meg Dods, that was borrowed for every wedding. But it was never much use to us, for it started everything with, 'Take a clean dish,' or 'Mince a remains of chicken,' and neither of them was very handy out in the isle of Colonsay.”
Miss Bell laid out her cuttings on the dresser—a mighty pile of recipes for soups and stews, puddings and cakes, sweetmeats, and cordial wines that could be made deliciously from elder and mulberry, if hereabouts we had such fruits to make them with. She had been gathering these scraps for many years, for the household column was her favorite part of the paper after she was done with the bits that showed how Scotsmen up in London were at the head of everything or did some doughty deed on the field of war. She hoarded her cuttings as a miser hoards his notes, but never could find the rich Sultana cake that took nine eggs when it was wanted, but only the plain one costing about one-and-six. Sometimes Ailie would, in mischief, offer to look through the packet for recipes rich and rare that had been mentioned; they were certainly there (for Bell had read them gloatingly aloud when she cut them out), but Bell would never let her do it, always saying, “Tuts! never mind; Dan likes this one better, and the other may be very nice in print but it's too rich to be wholesome, and it costs a bonny penny. You can read in the papers any day there's nothing better for the health than simple dieting.” So it was that Mr. Dyce had some monotony in his meals, but luckily was a man who never minded that, liking simple, old friends best in his bill of fare as in his boots and coats and personal acquaintances. Sometimes he would quiz her about her favorite literature, pretending a gourmet's interest for her first attempt at something beyond the ordinary, but never relished any the less her unvarying famous kale and simple entremets, keeping his highest praise for her remarkable breakfasts. “I don't know whether you're improving or whether I am getting used to it,” he would say, “but that's fish! if you please, Miss Bell.”
“Try another scone, Dan,” she would urge, to hide the confusion that his praise created. “I'm sure you're hungry.”
“No, not hungry,” would he reply, “but, thank Providence, I'm greedy—pass the plate.”
Bell was busy at her cookery lesson, making her cuttings fill the part of the book that was still to buy, doing all she could to make Bud see how noble was a proper crimpy paste, though her lesson was cunningly designed to look like one for Kate alone. Her sleeves were rolled up, and the flour was flying, when a rat-tat came to the door. They looked up from their entrancing occupation, and there, in front, was the castle carriage!
Miss Bell made moan. “Mercy on us! That 'll be Lady Anne, and Ailie out, and I cannot go to speak to anybody, for I'm such a ticket. Run to the door, dear, and take her into the parlor, and keep her there till I am ready. Don't forget to say 'My lady'—No, don't say 'My lady,' for the Dyces are of old, and as good as their neighbors, but say 'Your ladyship'—not too often, but only now and then, to let her see you know it.”
Bud went to the door and let in Lady Anne, leading her composedly to the parlor.
“Aunt Ailie's out,” she said, “and Aunt Bell issucha ticket. But she's coming in a minute, your—your—your—” Bud paused for a second, a little embarrassed.
“I forget which it was I was to say. It was either 'Your ladyship' or 'My lady.' You're notmylady, really, and you're not your own, hardly, seeing you're promised to Colonel George. Please tell me which is right, Lady Anne.”
“Who told you it was Colonel George, my dear?” asked Lady Anne, sitting down on the proffered chair and putting her arms around the child.
“Oh, it's just the clash of the parish,” said my little Scot, who once was Yankee. “And everybody's so glad.”
“Are they, indeed?” said Lady Anne, blushing in her pleasure. “That is exceedingly kind of them. I always thought our own people the nicest and kindest in the world.”
“That's just it,” said Bud, cheerfully. “Everybody everywhere is just what one is one's self—so Aunt Ailie says; and I s'pose it's because you're—Oh, I was going to say something about you, but I'll let you guess. What lovely weather! I hope your papa is well? And Mr. Jones?”
“Thank you; papa is very well, indeed,” said Lady Anne. “And Mr. Jones—” She hung upon the name with some dubiety.
“The coachman, you know,” said Bud, placidly. “He's a perfectly lovely man, so fat and smiley. He smiles so much his face is all in gathers. So kind to his horses, too, and waves his whip at me every time he passes. Once he gave me a ride on the dickey; it was gorgeous. Do you often get a ride on the dickey, Lady Anne?”
“Never!” said Lady Anne, with a clever little sigh. “Many a time I have wished I could get one, but they always kept me inside the carriage. I don't seem to have had much luck all my life till—till—till lately.”
“Did Mr. Jones never take you on his knee and tell you the story of the Welsh giants?”
“No,” said Lady Anne, solemnly shaking her head. “Then you're too big now. What a pity! Seems to me there isn't such a much in being a big L lady, after all. I thought you'd have everything of the very best. You have no idea what funny ideas we had in America about dukes and lords and ladies in the old country. Why, I expected I'd be bound to hate them when I got here, because they'd be so proud and haughty and tyrannical. But I don't hate them one little bit; they don't do anybody any harm more'n if they were knockabout artistes. I suppose the queen herself 'd not crowd a body off the sidewalk if you met her there. She'd be just as apt to say, 'What ho! little girl, pip! pip!' and smile, for Auntie Bell is always reading in the newspapers snappy little parts, about the nice things the royal family do, just the same as if they weren't royal a bit.”
“Yes, I sometimes see those touching domestic incidents,” said her ladyship. “You mean such things as the prince helping the cripple boy to find his crutch? They make me almost cry.”
“I wouldn't wet a lash, if I were you,” said Bud. “That's just the press; like as not there's nothing behind it but the agent in advance.”
“Agent in advance?” said Lady Anne, perplexed. “Yes. He's bound to boom the show somehow—so Jim Molyneux said, and he knew most things, did Jim.”
“You wicked republican!” cried her ladyship, hugging the child the closer to her.
“I'm not a republican,” protested Bud. “I'm truly Scotch, same as father was and Auntie Bell is—that's good enough for me. I'd justloveto be a my lady myself, it must be so nice and—and fairy. Why, it's about the only fairy thing left anywhere, I guess.
“There's nothing really to it; it's not being richer nor powerfuller nor more tyrannical than anybody else, but it's—it's—it's—I dunno 'zactly what it is, but it's something—it—it's romantic, that's what it is, to be a king or a duke or a my lady. The fun of it is all inside you, like poetry. I hope, my lady Anne, you 'preciate your privileges! You must 'preciate your privileges always, Auntie Bell says, and praise the Lord without ceasing, and have a thankful heart.”
“I assure you I do,” replied her ladyship.
“That's right,” said Bud, encouragingly. “It's simply splendid to be a really lady with a big L without having to play it to yourself. I've been one as Winifred Wallace quite often; with Auntie Ailie's fur jacket and picture-hat on I'd sit and sit, and feel so composed and grand in the rocker, and let on it was Mr. Jones's carriage, and bow sweetly to Footles, who'd be a poor man passing to his work, and mighty proud to have me notice him. I'd be sort of haughty but not 'bominable haughty, cause Auntie Bell says there's nothing beats a humble and a contrite heart. But then, you see, something would happen to spoil everything: Kate would laugh, or Auntie Bell would pop in and cry: 'Mercy on me, child, play-acting again! Put away that jacket instantly.' Then I'd know I was only letting on to be a really lady; but with you it's different—all the time you're It. Auntie Bell says so, and she knows everything.”
“It really looks as if she did,” said her ladyship, “for I've called to see her to-day about a sailor.”
“A sailor!” Bud exclaimed, with wild surmise. “Yes. He wants to be captain of my yacht, and he refers me to Miss Dyce, for all the world as if he were a housemaid.”
“I'msoglad,” cried Bud, “for it was I who advised him to, and I'm—I'm the referee.”
“You?”
“Yes; it was Kate's letter, and she—and we—and I said there was a rumor you wanted a captain, and he should apply, saying if you wanted to know just what a clean, good, brave sailor he was you should ask Kate MacNeill or Miss Dyce, and I'm the Miss Dyce this time, and you're—why, you're really visiting me!”
Lady Anne laughed. “Really, Miss Lennox,” she said, “you're a wonderful diplomatist. I must get the Earl to put you in the service. I believe there's a pretty decent salary goes to our representative in the United States.”
“But don't laugh at me, Lady Anne,” pleaded Bud, earnestly. “I'm dre'ffle set on having Charles off the cargo-boats, where he's thrown away. You don't know how Kate loves him, and she hasn't seen him—not for years and years. You know yourself what it is to be so far away from anybody you love. He'd just fit your yacht like a glove—he's so educated, having been on the yachts and with the gentry round the world. He's got everything nice about him you'd look for in a sailor—big, brown eyes, so beautiful there's only Gaelic words I don't know, but that sound like somebody breaking glass, to describe how sweet they are. And the whitest teeth! When he walks, he walks so straight and hits the ground so hard you'd think he owned the land.”
“It seems to me,” said Lady Anne, “that you couldn't be more enthusiastic about your protégé if you loved him yourself.”
“So I do,” said Bud, with the utmost frankness.
“But there's really nothing between us. He's meant for Kate. She's got heaps of beaux, but he's her steady. I gave him up to her for good on Hallowe'en, and she's so happy.”
Bell had thrown off her cooking-apron and cleaned her hands, and ran up the stairs to see that her hair was trim, for, though she loved a lady for the sake of Scotland's history, she someway felt in the presence of Lady Anne the awe she had as a child for Barbara Mushet. That Ailie in such company should be, on the other hand, so composed, and sometimes even comical, was a marvel she never could get over. “I never feared the face of earl or man,” she would say, “but I'm scared for a titled lady.”
When she came down to the parlor the visitor was rising to go.
“Oh, Miss Dyce,” said she, “I'm so glad to see you, though my visit this time's really to Miss Lennox. I wished to consult her about a captain for my little yacht.”
“Miss Lennox!” exclaimed Miss Bell, shaking hands, and with a look of apprehension at her amazing niece.
“Yes,” said Lady Anne; “she has recommended a man who seems in all respects quite suitable, if he happens to know a little about sailing, and I'm going to write to him to come and see me.”
At that, I must confess it, Lennox for once forgot her manners and darted from the parlor to tell Kate the glorious news.
“Kate, you randy!” she cried, bursting into the kitchen, “I've fixed it up for Charles; he's to be the captain.”
The servant danced on the floor in a speechless transport, and Bud danced, too.
TOO slow, far too slow, passed the lengthening days. Kate was bedded by nine to make them shorter by an hour or two, but what she took from the foot of the day she tacked to the head of it, as Paddy in the story eked his blanket, and she was up in the mornings long before Wanton Wully rang the six-hours' bell. The elder Dyces—saving Ailie, who knew all about it, hearing it from Bud in passionate whispers as they lay together in one bed in the brightening moms of May—might think summer's coming was what made the household glad, Kate sing like the laverock, and Lennox so happy and so good, but it was the thought of Charles. “You've surely taken a desperate fancy for Prince Charlie songs,” said Miss Bell to Bud and the maid of Colonsay. “Is there not another ditty in the ballant?” and they would glance at each other guiltily, but never let on.
“Come o'er the stream, Charlie, dear Charlie, brave Charlie, Come o'er the stream, Charlie, and I'll be Maclean.”
Bud composed that one in a jiffy, sitting one day at the kitchen window, and of all the noble Jacobite measures Kate liked it best, “it was so clever, and so desperate like the thing!” Such a daft disease is love! To the woman whose recollection of the mariner was got from olden Sabbath walks 'tween churches in the windy isle, among the mossy tombs, and to Bud, who had never seen him, but had made for herself a portrait blent of the youth so gay and gallant Kate described, and of George Sibley Purser, and of dark, ear-ringed men of the sea that in “The Tempest” cry, “Heigh, my hearts! cheerily, cheerily, cheerily, my hearts! yare, yare,” the prospect of his presence was a giddy joy.
And after all the rascal came without warning, to be for a day and a night within sound of Kate's minstrelsy without her knowing it, for he lodged, an ardent but uncertain man, on the other side of the garden wall, little thinking himself the cause and object of these musical mornings. Bud found him out—that clever one! who was surely come from America to set all the Old World right—she found him at the launching of theWave.
Lady Anne's yacht dozed like a hedgehog under leaves through the winter months below the beeches on what we call the hard—on the bank of the river under Jocka's house, where the water's brackish, and the launching of her was always of the nature of a festival, for the Earl's men were there, John Taggart's band, with “A Life on the Ocean Wave” between each passage of the jar of old Tom Watson's home-made ale—not tipsy lads but jovial, and even the children of the schools, for it happened on a Saturday.
Bud and Footles went with each other and the rest of the bairns, unknown to their people, for in adventures such as these the child delighted, and was wisely never interdicted.
The man who directed the launch was a stranger in a foreign-looking, soft slouch hat—Charles plain to identify in every feature, in the big, brown, searching eyes that only Gaelic could do justice to, and his walk so steeve and steady, his lovely beard, his tread on the hard as if he owned the land, his voice on the deck as if he were the master of the sea. She stood apart and watched him, fascinated, and could not leave even when the work was done and the band was home-returning, charming the road round the bay with “Peggy Baxter's Quickstep.” He saw her lingering, smiled on her, and beckoned on her to cross the gangway that led to the yacht from the little jetty.
“Well, wee lady,” said he, with one big hand on her head and another on the dog, “is this the first of my crew at a quay-head jump? Sign on at once and I'll make a sailor of you.”
“Oh, please,” said she, looking up in his face, too anxious to enter into his humor, “are you our Kate's Charles?”
“Kate!” said he, reflecting, with a hand in his beard, through which his white teeth shone. “There's such a wheen of Kates here and there, and all of them fine, fine gyurls! Still-and-on, if yours is like most of her name that I'm acquaint with, I'm the very man for her; and my name, indeed, is what you might be calling Charles. In fact”—in a burst of confidence, seating himself on a water-breaker—“my Christian name is Charles—Charlie, for short, among the gentry. You are not speaking, by any chance, of one called Kate MacNeill?” he added, showing some red in the tan of his countenance.
“Of course I am,” said Bud, reproachfully. “Oh, men! men! As if there could be any other! I hope to goodness you love her same as you said you did, and haven't been—been carrying on with any other Kates for a diversion. I'm Lennox Dyce. Your Kate stays with me and Uncle Dan, and Auntie Bell and Auntie Ailie, and this sweet little dog by the name of Footles. She's so jolly! My, won't she be tickled to know you've come! And—and how's the world, Captain Charles?”
“The world?” he said, aback, looking at her curiously as she seated herself beside him on a hatch.
“Yes, the world, you know—the places you were in,” with a wave of the hand that seemed to mean the universe.
“'Edinburgh, Leith,Portobello, Musselburgh,andDalkeith?'
—No, that's Kate's favorite geography lesson, 'cause she can sing it. I mean Rotterdam and Santander and Bilbao—all the lovely places on the map where a letter takes four days and a twopence-ha'penny stamp, and's mighty apt to smell of rope.”
“Oh, them!” said he, with the warmth of recollection; “they're not so bad—in fact, they're just A1. It's the like of there you see life and spend the money.”
“Have you been in Italy?” asked Bud. “I'd love to see that old Italy— for the sake of Romeo and Juliet, you know, and my dear, dear Portia.”
“Iknow,” said Charles. “Allow me! Perfect beauties, all fine, fine gyurls; but I don't think very much of dagoes. I have slept in their sailors' homes, and never hear Italy mentioned but I feel I want to scratch myself.”
“Dagoes!” cried Bud; “that's what Jim called them. Have you been in America?”
“Have I been in America? I should think I have,” said he, emphatically. “The Lakes. It's yonder you get value—two dollars a day and everywhere respected like a gentleman. Men's not mice out yonder in America.”
“Then you maybe have been in Chicago?” cried Bud, her face filled with a happy expectation as she pressed the dog in her arms till its fringe mixed with her own wild curls.
“Chicago?” said the Captain. “Allow me! Many a time. You'll maybe not believe it, but it was there I bought this hat.”
“Oh!” cried Bud, with the tears in her eyes, and speechless for a moment, “I—I—could just hug that hat. Won't you please let me—let me pat it?”
“Pat away,” said Captain Charles, laughing, and took it off with the sweep of a cavalier that was in itself a compliment. “You know yon place—Chicago?'' he asked, as she patted his headgear fondly and returned it to him. For a little her mind was far away from the deck of Lady Anne's yacht, her eyes on the ripple of the tide, her nostrils full, and her little bosom heaving.
“You were there?” he asked again.
“Chicago's where I lived,” she said. “That was mother's place,” and into his ear she poured a sudden flood of reminiscence—of her father and mother, and the travelling days and lodging-houses, and Mr. and Mrs. Molyneux, and the graves in the far-off cemetery. The very thought of them all made her again American in accent and in phrase. He listened, understanding, feeling the vexation of that far-sundering by the sea as only a sailor can, and clapped her on the shoulder, and looking at him she saw that in his eyes which made her love him more than ever. “Oh, my!” she said, bravely, “here I'm talking away to you about myself and I'm no more account than a rabbit under these present circumstances, Captain Charles, and all the time you're just pining to know all about your Kate.”
The Captain tugged his beard and reddened again. “A fine, fine gyurl!” said he. “I hope—I hope she's pretty well.”
“She's fine,” said Bud, nodding her head gravely. “You bet Kate can walk now without taking hold. Why, there's never anything wrong with her 'cepting now and then the croodles, and they're not anything lingering.”
“There was a kind of a rumor that she was at times a trifle delicate,” said Charles. “In fact, it was herself who told me, in her letters.”
Bud blushed. This was one of the few details of her correspondence on which she and Kate had differed. It had been her idea that an invalidish hint at intervals produced a nice and tender solicitude in the roving sailor, and she had, at times, credited the maid with some of Mrs. Molyneux's old complaints, a little modified and more romantic, though Kate herself maintained that illness in a woman under eighty was looked upon as anything but natural or interesting in Colonsay!
“It was nothing but—but love,” she said now, confronted with the consequence of her imaginative cunning. “You know what love is, Captain Charles! A powerfully weakening thing, though I don't think it would hurt anybody if they wouldn't take it so much to heart.”
“I'm glad to hear it's only—only what you mention,” said Charles, much relieved. “I thought it might be something inward, and that maybe she was working too hard at her education.”
“Oh, she's not taking her education so bad as all that,” Bud assured him. “She isn't wasting to a shadow sitting up nights with a wet towel on her head soaking in the poets and figuring sums. All she wanted was to be sort of middling smart, but nothing gaudy.”
Captain Charles looked sideways keenly at the child as she sat beside him, half afraid himself of the irony he had experienced among her countrymen, but saw it was not here. Indeed, it never was in Lennox Dyce, for all her days she had the sweet, engaging self-unconsciousness no training can command: frankness, fearlessness, and respect for all her fellows—the gifts that will never fail to make the proper friends. She talked so composedly that he was compelled to frankness himself on a subject no money could have made him speak about to any one a week ago.
“Between you and me and the mast,” said he, “I'm feared Kate has got far too clever for the like of me, and that's the way I have not called on her.”
“Then you'd best look pretty spry,” said Bud, pointing a monitory finger at him, “for there's beaux all over the place that's wearing their Sunday clothes week-days, and washing their faces night and morning, hankering to tag on to her, and she'll maybe tire of standing out in the cold for you. I wouldn't be skeered, Cap', if I was you; she's not too clever for or'nary use; she's nicer than ever she was that time you used to walk with her in Colonsay.” Bud was beginning to be alarmed at the misgivings to which her own imaginings had given rise.
“If you saw her letters,” said Charles, gloomily. “Poetry and foreign princes. One of them great at the dancing! He kissed her hand. He would never have ventured a thing like that if she hadn't given him encouragement.”
“Just diversion,” said Bud, consolingly. “She was only—she was only putting by the time; and she often says she'll only marry for her own conveniency, and the man for her is—well,youknow, Captain Charles.” “There was a Russian army officer,” proceeded the seaman, still suffering a jealous doubt.
“But he's dead. He's deader 'n canned beans. Mr. Wanton gied him—gied him thebaggonet. There wasn't really anything in it, anyway. Kate didn't care for him the tiniest bit, and I guess it was a great relief.”
“Then she's learning the piano,” said the Captain; “that's not like a working-gyurl. And she talked in one of her letters about sitting on Uncle Dan's knee.” Bud dropped the dog at her feet and burst into laughter; in that instance she had certainly badly jumbled the identities.
“It's nothing to laugh at,” said the Captain, tugging his beard. “It's not at all becoming in a decent gyurl; and it's not like the Kate I knew in Colonsay.” Bud saw the time had come for a full confession. “Captain Charles,” she said, when she recovered herself, “it—it wasn't Kate said that at all; it was another girl called Winifred Wallace. You see, Kate is always so busy doing useful things—suchsoup! and—and a-washing every Monday, and taking her education, and the pens were all so dev—so—so stupid, that she simply had to get some one to help her write those letters; and that's why Winifred Wallace gave a hand and messed things up a bit, I guess. Where the letters talked solemn sense about the weather and the bad fishing and bits about Oronsay, and where they told you to be sure and change your stockings when you came down-stairs from the mast out the wet, and where they said you were the very, very one she loved, that was Kate; but when there was a lot of dinky talk about princes and Russian army officers and slabs of poetry, that was just Winifred Wallace putting on lugs and showing off. No, it wasn't all showing off; it was because she kind of loved you herself. You see, she didn't have any beau of her own, Mr. Charles, and—and she thought it wouldn't be depriving Kate of anything to pretend, for Kate said there was no depravity in it.”
“Who's Winifred Wallace?” asked the surprised sailor.
“I'm all the Winifred Wallace there is,” said Bud, penitently. “It's my poetry name—it's my other me. I can do a heap of things when I'm Winifred I can't do when I'm plain Bud, or else I'd laugh at myself enough to hurt, I'm so mad. Are you angry, Mr. Charles?”
“Och! just Charles to you,” said the sailor. “Never heed the honors. I'm not angry a bit. Allow me! In fact, I'm glad to find the prince and the piano and the poetry were all nonsense.”
“I thought that poetry pretty middling myself,” admitted Bud, but in a hesitating way that made her look very guilty.
“The poetry,” said he, quickly, “was splendid. There was nothing wrong with it that I could see; but I'm glad it wasn't Kate's—for she's a fine, fine gyurl, and brought up most respectable.”
“Yes,” said Bud, “she's better 'n any poetry. You must feel gay because you are going to marry her.”
“I'm not so sure of her marrying me. She maybe wouldn't have me.”
“But she can't help it!” cried Bud. “She's bound to, for the witch-lady fixed it on Hallowe'en. Only, I hope you won't marry her for years and years. Why, Auntie Bell'd go crazy if you took away our Kate; for good girls ain't so easy to get nowadays as they used to be when they had three pound ten in the half-year, and nailed their trunks down to the floor of a new place when they got it, for fear they might be bounced. I'd be vexed I helped do anything if you married her for a long while. Besides, you'd be sorry yourself, for her education is not quite done; she's only up to compound multiplication and the Tudor kings. You'd just be sick sorry.”
“Would I?”
“Course you would! That's love. Before one marries it's hunkydory—it's fairy all the time—but after that it's the same old face at breakfast, Mr. Cleland says, and simply putting up with each other. Oh, love's a wonderful thing, Charles; it's the Great Thing; but sometimes I say, 'Give me Uncle Dan!' Promise you'll not go marrying Kate right off.”
The sailor roared with laughter. “Lord!” said he, “if I wait too long I'll be wanting to marry yourself, for you're a dangerous gyurl.”
“But I'm never going to marry,” said Bud. “I want to go right on loving everybody, and don't yearn for any particular man tagging on to me.”
“I never heard so much about love in English all my life,” said Charles, “though it's common enough, and quite respectable in Gaelic. Do you—do you love myself?”
“Course I do!” said Bud, cuddling Footles. “Then,” said he, firmly, “the sooner I sign on with Kate the better, for you're a dangerous gyurl.”
So they went down the road together, planning ways of early foregatherings with Kate, and you may be sure Bud's way was cunningest.
WHEN Kate that afternoon was told her hour was come, and that to-morrow she must meet her destined mariner, she fell into a chair, threw her apron over her head, and cried and laughed horribly turn about—the victim of hysteria that was half from fear and half from a bliss too deep and unexpected.
“Mercy on me!” she exclaimed. “Now he'll find out everything, and what a stupid one I am. All my education's clean gone out of my head; I'm sure I couldn't spell an article. I canna even mind the ninth commandment, let alone the Reasons Annexed, and as for grammar, whether it's 'Give the book to Bud and me,' or 'Give the book to Bud and I,' is more than I could tell you if my very life depended on it. Oh, Lennox, now we're going to catch it! Are you certain sure he said to-morrow?”
Bud gazed at her disdainfully and stamped her foot. “Stop that, Kate MacNeill!” she commanded. “You mustn't act so silly. He's as skeered of you as you can be of him. He'd have been here Friday before the morning milk if he didn't think you'd be the sort to back him into a corner and ask him questions about ancient Greece and Rome. Seems to me love makes some folk idiotic; land's sake! I'm mighty glad it always leaves me calm as a plate of pumpkin-pie.”
“Is—is—he looking tremendously genteel and wellput-on?” asked the maid of Colonsay, with anxious lines on her forehead. “Is he—is he as nice as I said he was?”
“He was everything you said—except the Gaelic. I knew he couldn't be so bad as that sounded that you said about his eyes. I—I never saw a more becoming man. If I had known just how noble he looked, I'd have sent him stacks of poetry,” whereat Kate moaned again, rocked herself in her chair most piteously, and swore she could never have the impudence to see him till she had her new frock from the dressmaker's.
“He'll be thinking I'm refined and quite the lady,” she said, “and I'm just the same plain Kate I was in Colonsay, and him a regular captain! It was all your fault, with your fancy letters. Oh, Lennox Dyce, I think I hate you, just—lend me your hanky; mine's all wet with greeting.”
“If you weren't so big and temper wasn't sinful, I'd shake you!” said Bud, producing her handkerchief. “You were just on your last legs for a sailor, and you'd never have put a hand on one if I didn't write these letters. And now, when the sweetest sailor in the land is brought to your door-step, you don't 'preciate your privileges and have a grateful heart, but turn round and yelp at me. I tell you, Kate MacNeill, sailors are mighty scarce and sassy in a little place like this, and none too easy picked up, and 'stead of sitting there, with a smut on your nose and tidemarks on your eyebrows, mourning, you'd best arise and shine, or somebody with their wits about them 'll snap him up. I'd do it myself if it wouldn't be not honorable to you.”
“Oh, if I just had another week or two's geography!” said Kate, dolefully.
Bud had to laugh—she could not help herself; and the more she laughed, the more tragic grew the servant's face.
“Seems to me,” said Bud, “that I've got to run this loving business all along the line; you don't know the least thing about it after g-o, go. Why, Kate, I'm telling you Charles is afraid of you more than you are of him. He thought you'd be that educated you'd wear specs, and stand quite stiff talking poetry all the time, and I had to tell him every dinky bit in these letters were written by me.”
“Then that's worse!” cried the servant, more distressed than ever. “For he'll think I canna write myself, and I can write like fury if you only give me a decent pen and don't bother me.”
“No fears!” said Bud; “I made that all right. I said you were too busy housekeeping, and I guess it's more a housekeeper than a school-marm Charles needs. Anyhow, he's so much in love with you, he'd marry you if you were a deaf-mute; he's plumb head over heels, and it's up to you, as a sensible girl, not to conceal that you like him some yourself.”
“I'll not know what to say to him,” said Kate, “and he always was so clever; half the time I couldna understand him if it wasn't for his eyes.”
“Well, he'll know what to say to you, I guess, if all the signs are right. Charles is not so shy as all that—love-making is where he lives, and he made goo-goo eyes at myself without an introduction. You'd fancy, to hear you, he was a school inspector, and he's only just an or'nary lover thinking of the happy days you used to have in Colonsay. If I was you I'd not let on I was anything but what I really was; I'd be natural; yes, that's what I'd be, for being natural's the deadliest thing below the canopy to make folk love you. Don't pretend, but just be the same Kate MacNeill to him you are to me. Just you listen to him, and now and then look at him, and don't think of a darned thing—I mean don't think of a blessed thing but how nice he is, and he'll be so pleased and so content he'll not even ask you to spell cat.”
“Content!” cried Kate, with conviction. “Not him! Fine I ken him! He'll want to kiss me, as sure as God's in heaven—beg your pardon.”
“I expect that's not a thing you should say to me,” said Bud, blushing deeply.
“But I begged your pardon,” said the maid.
“I don't mean that about God in heaven, that's right—so He is, or where wouldwebe?—what I meant was about the kissing. I'm old enough for love, but I'm not old enough for you to be talking to me about kissing, I guess Auntie Ailie wouldn't like to have you talk to me about a thing like that, and Auntie Bell, she'd be furious—it's too advanced.”
“What time am I to see him?” asked Kate.
“In the morning. If you go out to the garden just after breakfast, and whistle, he'll look over the wall.”
“The morning!” cried the maid, aghast. “I couldn't face him in the morning. Who ever heard of such a thing? Now you have gone away and spoiled everything! I could hardly have all my wits about me even if it was only gloaming.”
Bud sighed despairingly. “Oh, you don't understand, Kate,” said she. “He wanted it to be the evening, too, but I said you weren't a miserable pair of owls, and the best time for anything is the morning. Uncle Dan says the first half-hour in the morning is worth three hours at any other time of the day, for when you've said your prayers, and had a good bath, and a clean shave, and your boots new on—no slippers nor slithery dressing-gowns—the peace of God and—and—and the assurance of strength and righteousness descends upon you so that you—you—you can tackle wild-cats. I feel so brash and brave myself in the morning I could skip the hills like a goat. It's simplygotto be the morning, Kate MacNeill. That's when you look your very best, if you care to take a little trouble, and don't simply just slouch through, and I'm set on having you see him first time over the garden wall. That's the only way to fix the thing up romantic, seeing we haven't any balcony. You'll go out and stand against the blossom of the cherry-tree, and hold a basket of flowers and parsley, and when he peeks over and sees you looming out the picture, I tell you he'll be tickled to death. That's the way Shakespeare 'd fix it, and he knew.”
“I don't think much of Shakespeare,” said Kate. “Fancy yon Igoa!”
“Iago, you mean. Well, what about him?”
“The wickedness of him; such a lot of lies!”
“Pooh!” said Bud. “He was only for the effect. Of course there never really was such a mean, wicked man as that Iago—there couldn't be—but Shakespeare made him just so's you'd like the nice folk all the more by thinking what they might have been if God had let Himself go.”
That night Kate was abed by eight. Vainly the town cried for her—the cheerful passage of feet on the pavement, and a tinkler piper at the Cross, and she knew how bright was the street, with the late-lit windows of the shops, and how intoxicating was the atmosphere of Saturday in the dark, but having said her Lord's Prayer in Gaelic, and “Now I lay me down to sleep” in English, she covered her head with the blankets and thought of the coming day with joy and apprehension, until she fell asleep.
In the morning Miss Bell had no sooner gone up to the making of beds, that was her Sabbath care to save the servant-maid from too much sin, and Ailie to her weekly reading with the invalid Duncan Gill, than Bud flew into the kitchen to make Kate ready for her tryst. Never in this world were breakfast dishes sooner cleaned and dried than by that eager pair; no sooner were they done than Kate had her chest-lid up, and had dived, head foremost, among her Sunday finery.
“What's that?” asked Bud. “You're not going to put on glad rags, are you?” For out there came a blue gown, fondled tenderly.
“Of course I am,” said Kate. “It's either that or my print for it, and a print wrapper would not be the thing at all to meet—meet the Captain in; he'll be expecting me to be truly refined.”
“I think he'd like the wrapper better,” said Bud, gravely. “The blue gown's very nice—but it's not Kate, somehow; do you know, I think it's Auntie Ailie up to about the waist, and the banker's cook in the lacey bits above that, and it don't make you refined a bit. It's not what you put on that makes you refined, it's things you can't take off. You have no idea how sweet you look in that print, Kate, with your cap and apron. You look better in them than if you wore the latest yell of fashion. I'd want to marry you myself if I was a captain and saw you dressed like that; but if you had on your Sunday gown I'd—I'd bite my lip and go home and ask advice from mother.”
Kate put past the blue gown, not very willingly, but she had learned by now that in some things Bud had better judgment than herself. She washed and dried her face till it shone like a polished apple, put on Bud's choice of a cap and streamered apron, and was about to take a generous dash of Florida Water when she found her hand restrained.
“I'd have no scent,” said Bud. “I like scent myself, some, and I just dote on our Florida Water, but Auntie Ailie says the scent of clean water, sun, and air, is the sweetest a body can have about one, and any other kind's as rude as Keating's Powder.”
“He'll be expecting the Florida Water,” said Kate, “seeing that it was himself that sent it.”
“It don't amount to a hill of beans,” said Bud; “you can wear our locket, and that 'll please him.” Kate went with a palpitating heart through the scullery, out into the garden, with a basket in her hand, a pleasing and expansive figure. Bud would have liked to watch her, but a sense of delicacy prevented, and she stood at the kitchen window looking resolutely into the street. On his way down the stairs Mr. Dyce was humming the Hundredth Psalm; outside the shops were shuttered, and the harmony of the morning hymn came from the baker's open windows. A few folk passed in their Sunday clothes, at a deliberate pace, to differentiate it from the secular hurry of other days. Soon the church bell would ring for the Sabbath-school, and Bud must be ready. Remembering it, a sense of some impiety took possession of her—worldly trysts in back gardens on the Sabbath were not what Aunt Bell would much approve of. Had they met yet? How did Charles look? What did Kate say?
“Mercy on me!” cried the maid, bursting in through the scullery. “Did you say I was to whistle?”
“Of course,” said Bud, and then looked horrified “Oh, Kate,” said she, in a whisper, “I was so keen on the vain things of this wicked world I quite forgot it was the Lord's Day; of course you can't go whistling on Sunday.”
“That's what I was just thinking to myself,” said the maid, not very heartily. “But I thought I would ask you. It wouldn't need to be a time, but—but of course it would be awful wicked—forbye Miss Dyce would be sure to hear me, and she's that particular.”
“No, you can't whistle; you daren't,” said Bud. “It'd be dre'ffle wicked. But how'd it do to throw a stone? Not a rock, you know, but a nice little quiet wee white Sunday pebble? You might like as not be throwing it at Rodger's cats, and that would be a work of necessity and mercy, for these cruel cats are just death on birds.”
“But there's not a single cat there,” explained the maid.
“Never mind,” said Bud. “You can heave the pebble over the wall so that it 'll be a warning to them not to come poaching in our garden; there's sure to be some on the other side just about to get on the wall; and if Charles happens to be there, can you help that?” and Kate retired again.
There was a pause, and then a sound of laughter. For ten minutes Bud waited in an agony of curiosity, that was at last too much for her, and she ventured to look out at the scullery window—to see Charles chasing his adored one down the walk, between the bleaching-green and the gooseberries. Kate was making for the sanctuary of her kitchen, her face aflame and all her streamers flying, but was caught before she entered.
“I told you!” said she, as she came in panting. “We hadn't said twenty words when he wanted to kiss me.”
“Why! was that the reason you ran?” asked Bud, astonished.
“Ye—yes,” said the maid.
“Seems to me it's not very encouraging to Charles, then.”
“Yes, but—but I wasn't running all my might,” said Kate.
TA-RAN-TA-RA! Ta-ran-ta-ra!
The world is coming for Lennox Dyce, the greedy, greedy world, youth's first and worst beguiler, that promises so much, but at the best has only bubbles to give, which borrow for a moment the splendor of the sin, then burst in the hands that grasp them—the world that will have only our bravest and most clever bairns, and takes them all from us one by one. I have seen them go—scores of them, boys and girls, their foreheads high, and the sun on their faces, and never one came back. Now and then returned to the burgh, in the course of years, a man or woman who bore a well-known name and could recall old stories, but they were not the same, and even if they were not disillusioned, there was that in their flushed prosperity which ill made up for the bright young spirits quelled.
Ta-ran-ta-ra! Ta-ran-ta-ra!
Yes, the world is coming, sure enough—on black and yellow wheels, with a guard red-coated who bugles through the glen. It is coming behind black horses, with thundering hoofs and foam-flecked harness, between bare hills, by gurgling burms and lime-washed shepherd dwellings, or in the shadow of the woods that simply stand where they are placed by God and wait. It comes in a fur-collared coat—though it is autumn weather—and in a tall silk hat, and looks amused at the harmless country it has come to render discontent.
Ta-ran-ta-ra! Ta-ran-ta-ra!
Go back, world! go back, and leave the little lass among her dreams, with hearts that love and cherish. Go back, with your false flowers and your gems of paste. Go back, world, that for every ecstasy exacts a pang!
There were three passengers on the coach—the man with the fur collar who sat on the box beside the driver, and the Misses Duff behind. I am sorry now that once I thought to make you smile at the pigeon hens, for to-day I'm in more Christian humor and my heart warms to them, seeing them come safely home from their flight afar from their doo-cot, since they it was who taught me first to make these symbols on the paper, and at their worst they were but a little stupid, like the most of us at times, and always with the best intent. They had been to Edinburgh; they had been gone two weeks—their first adventure in a dozen years. Miss Jean was happy, bringing back with her a new crochet pattern, a book of Views, a tooth gold-filled (she was so proud and spoke of it so often that it is not rude to mention it), and a glow of art she had got from an afternoon tea in a picture-gallery full of works in oil. Amelia's spoils were a phrase that lasted her for years—it was that Edinburgh was “redolent of Robert Louis”—the boast that she had heard the great MacCaskill preach, and got a lesson in the searing of harmless woods with heated pokers. Such are the rewards of travel; I have come home myself with as little for my time and money.
But between them they had brought back something else—something to whisper about lest the man in front should hear, and two or three times to look at as it by in an innocent roll beside the purse in Miss Amelia's reticule. It might have been a serpent in its coils, so timidly they glanced in at it, and snapped the bag shut with a kind of shudder.
“At least it's not a very large one,” whispered Miss Jean, with the old excuse of the unhappy lass who did the deadly sin.
“No,” said her sister, “it may, indeed, be called quite—quite diminutive. The other he showed us was so horribly large and—and vulgar, the very look of it made me almost faint. But oh! I wish we could have dispensed with the horrid necessity. After twe—after so many years it looks like a confession of weakness. I hope there will be no unpleasant talk about it.”
“But you may be sure there will, Amelia Duff,” said her sister. “They'll cast up Barbara Mushet to us; she will always be the perfect teacher—”
“The paragon of all the virtues.”
“And it is such a gossiping place!”
“Indeed it is,” said Miss Amelia. “It is always redolent of—of scandal.”
“I wish you had never thought of it,” said Miss Jean, with a sigh and a vicious little shake of the reticule. “I am not blaming you, remember, 'Melia; if we are doing wrong the blame of it is equally between us, except perhaps a little more for me, for Ididthink the big one was better value for the money. And yet it made me grue, it looked so—so dastardly.”
“Jean,” said her sister, solemnly, “if you had taken the big one I would have marched out of the shop affronted. If it made you grue, it made me shudder. Even with the small one, did you notice how the man looked at us? I thought he felt ashamed to be selling such a thing; perhaps he has a family. He said they were not very often asked for. I assure you I felt very small, the way he said it.”
Once more they bent their douce-brown hats together over the reticule and looked timidly in on the object of their shames and fears. “Well, there it is, and it can't be helped,” said Miss Jean at last, despairingly. “Let us hope and trust there will not be too frequent need for it, for, I assure you, I have neither the strength nor inclination.” She snapped the bag shut again, and, glancing up, saw the man with the fur collar looking over his shoulder at them.
“Strikes me, ladies,” he said, “the stage-coach, as an easy mark for the highwaymen who used to permeate these parts, must have been a pretty merry proposition; they'd be apt to stub their toes on it if they came sauntering up behind. John here”—with an inclination of his head towards the driver—“tells me he's on schedule time, and I allow he's making plenty fuss clicking his palate, but I feel I want to get out and heave rocks at his cattle so's they'd get a better gait on 'em.”
Miss Jean was incapable of utterance; she was still too much afraid of a stranger who, though gallantly helping them to the top of the coach at Maryfield, could casually address herself and Miss Amelia as “dears,” thrust cigars on the guard and driver, and call them John and George at the very first encounter.
“We—we think this is fairly fast,” Miss Amelia ventured, surprised at her own temerity. “It's nineteen miles in two hours, and if it's not so fast as a railway train it lets you enjoy the scenery. It is very much admired, our scenery, it's so—it's so characteristic.”
“Sure!” said the stranger, “it's pretty tidy scenery as scenery goes, and scenery's my forte. But I'd have thought that John here'd have all this part of Caledonia stem and wild so much by heart he'd want to rush it and get to where the houses are; but most the time his horses go so slow they step on their own feet at every stride.”
“Possibly the coach is a novelty to you,” suggested Miss Amelia, made wondrous brave by two weeks' wild adventuring in Edinburgh. “I—I take you for an American.”
“So did my wife, and she knew, for she belonged out mother's place,” said the stranger, laughing. “You've guessed right, first time. No, the coach is no novelty to me; I've been up against a few in various places. If I'm short of patience and want more go just at present, it's because I'm full of a good joke on an old friend I'm going to meet at the end of these obsequies.”
“Obsequies?” repeated Miss Amelia, with surprise, and he laughed again.
“At the end of the trip,” he explained. “This particular friend is not expecting me, because I hadn't a post-card, hate a letter, and don't seem to have been within shout of a telegraph-office since I left Edinburgh this morning.”
“We have just come from Edinburgh ourselves,” Miss Jean chimed in.
“So!” said the stranger, throwing his arm over the back of his seat to enter more comfortably into the conversation. “It's picturesque. Pretty peaceful, too. But it's liable to be a little shy of the Thespian muse. I didn't know more than Cooper's cow about Edinburgh when I got there last Sunday fortnight; but I've gone perusing around a bit since; and say, my! she's fine and old! I wasn't half a day in the city when I found out that when it came to the real legit. Queen Mary was the king-pin of the outfit in Edinburgh. Before I came to this country I couldn't just place Mary; sometimes she was Bloody and sometimes she was Bonnie, but I suppose I must have mixed her up with some no-account English queen of the same name.”
“Edinburgh,” said Miss Amelia, “is redolent of Mary Queen of Scots—and Robert Louis.”
“It just is!” he said. “There's a little bedroom she had in the castle yonder, no bigger than a Chicago bath-room. Why, there's hardly room for a nightmare in it; a skittish nightmare 'd kick the transom out. There doesn't seem to be a single dramatic line in the whole play that Mary didn't have to herself. She was the entire cast, and the spot-light was on her for the abduction scene, the child-widow scene, the murder, the battle, and the last tag at Fotheringay. Three husbands and a lot of flirtations that didn't come to anything, her portrait everywhere, and the newspapers tracking her up like Old Sleuth from that day to this! I guess Queen Lizzie put her feet in it when she killed Mary—for Mary's the star-line in history, and Lizzie's mainly celebrated for spoiling a good Prince Albert coat on Walter Raleigh.”
He spoke so fast, he used such curious words and idioms which the Misses Duff had never heard before nor read in books, that they were sure again he was a dreadful person. With a sudden thought of warnings to “Beware of Pickpockets” she had seen in Edinburgh, Miss Amelia clutched so hard at the chain of the reticule which held their purse as well as their mystery that it broke, and the bag fell over the side of the coach and, bursting open, scattered its contents on the road unobserved by the guard, whose bugle at the moment was loudly flourishing for the special delectation of a girl at work in a neighboring cornfield.
“Hold hard, John,” said the American, and before the coach had quite stopped he was down on the highway recovering the little teacher's property.
The serpent had unwound its coils; it lay revealed in all its hideousness—a teacher's tawse!
At such a sad exposure its owners could have wept. They had never dreamed a tawse could look so vulgar and forbidding as it looked when thus exposed to the eye of man on the king's highway.
“Oh, thank you so much,” said Miss Jean. “It is so kind of you.”
“Exceedingly kind, courteous beyond measure—we are more than obliged to you,” cooed Miss Amelia, with a face like a sunset as she rolled the leather up with nervous fingers.
“Got children, ma'am,” asked the American, seriously, as the coach proceeded on its way.
Miss Amelia Duff made the best joke of her life without meaning it. “Twenty-seven,” said she, with an air of great gratitude, and the stranger smiled.
“School-ma'am. Now that's good, that is; it puts me in mind of home, for I appreciate school-ma'ams so heartily that about as soon as I got out of the school myself I married one. I've never done throwing bouquets at myself about it ever since, but I'm sorry for the mites she could have been giving a good time to as well as their education, if it hadn't been that she's so much mixed up with me. What made me ask about children was that—that mediaeval animator. I haven't seen one for years and years, not since old Deacon Springfield found me astray in his orchard one night and hiking for a short-cut home. I thought they'd been abolished by the treaty of Berlin.”
Miss Amelia thrust it hurriedly into the reticule. “We have never used one all our life,” she said, “but now we fear we have to, and, as you see, it's quite thin, it's quite a little one.”
“So it is,” said the stranger, solemnly. “It's thin, it's translucent, you might say; but I guess the kiddies are pretty little, too, and won't be able to make any allowance for the fact that you could have had a larger size if you wanted. It may be light on the fingers and mighty heavy on the feelings.”
“That's what you said,” whispered Miss Amelia to her sister.
“As moral suasion, belting don't cut ice,” went on the American. “It's generally only a safety-valve for a wrothy, grown-up person with a temper and a child that can't hit back.”
“That's whatyousaid,” whispered Miss Jean to Miss Amelia, and never did two people look more miserably guilty.
“What beats me,” said the stranger, “is that you should have got along without it so far and think it necessary now.”
“Perhaps—perhaps we won't use it,” said Miss Jean. “Except as—as a sort of symbol,” added her sister. “We would never have dreamed of it if the children nowadays were not so different from what they used to be.”
“I guess folks been saying that quite awhile,” said the American. “Children never were like what they used to be. I reckons old Mother Nature spits on her hands and makes a fresh start with each baby, and never turns out two alike. That's why it's fun to sit and watch 'em bloom. Pretty delicate blooms, too! Don't bear much pawing; just give them a bit of shelter when the weather's cold, a prop to lean against if they're leggy and the wind's high, and see that the fertilizer is the proper brand. Whether they're going to turn out like the picture on the packet or just only weeds depends on the seedsman.”
“Oh, youdon'tunderstand how rebellious they can be!” cried Miss Amelia, with feeling. “And they haven't the old deference to their elders that they used to have; they're growing bold and independent.”
“Depends on the elders, I suppose. Over here I think you folks think children come into the world just to please grown-ups, and do what they're told without any thinking. In America it's looked at the other way about: the children are considerably more important than their elders, and the notion don't do any harm to either, far as I can see. As for your rebels, ma'am, I'd cherish 'em; rebellion's like a rash, it's better out than in.”
Ta-ran-ta-ra! The bugle broke upon their conversation; the coach emerged from the wood and dashed downhill, and, wheeling through the arches, drew up at the inn.
The American helped the ladies to alight, took off his hat, bade them good-day, and turned to speak to his friend the driver, when a hand was placed on his sleeve and a child with a dog at her feet looked up in his face.
“Jim! Why, Jim Molyneux!” cried Bud.