CHAPTER IVTHE SECRETIVENESS OF MAUSEA boy and a dog together will go,You may jail them, or chain them: They will have it so.Anon.Mause was the bobtailed sheep-dog that lived in a kennel at the side of the house nearest the back door, to keep guard. Like Miss Esperance and Mr. Wycherly and Elsa, she was not in her first youth; and when the children came Miss Esperance was nervously apprehensive as to the old dog's conduct. Would she be jealous and growl at them, or perhaps even fly out at them from her kennel as she did at the village boys if they ventured into the garden for any illegitimate purpose? A good watch-dog was Mause, with more discrimination in her vigilance than is displayed by most dogs. She never barked at poor old Mistress Dobie, who would come humbly to the back door for her bi-weekly handful of meal and a screw of snuff, who looked a very scarecrow of shabbiness, and tapped with her staff as she walked: but Mause did bark, and bark loudly, only pausing every now and then to growl thunderously, at the very grand gentleman who tried to sell Elsa an inferior sewing-machine on the hire system. And when he returned a few weeks later with Bibles, Mause nearly broke her chain in her frantic attempts to reach him. The poor dog was kept chained up for the greater part of the day, which is never improving to the canine temper even when, as in this case, the chain is a long one. Miss Esperance let her run by the pony trap whenever she drove into Edinburgh, but this was by no means every day, and Elsa rather grudged poor Mause even these occasional absences, and generally put the chains on both doors when she had gone."A watch-dog sud be there to guard the hoose," said Elsa, "and no gang stravaigin aff for hoors at a stretch."Mr. Wycherly took Mause for a walk whenever he went for one himself, and she greatly enjoyed these excursions, which were, however, but fleeting joys; for Mr. Wycherly's walks were by no means prolonged. That he should go for walks at all was, in the eyes of the villagers of Burnhead, but another sign of his general futility and "genty ways," like his bath and the wooden feet in three pieces that he liked kept in his boots, "just as if he was feart some ither body sud wear them." Besides, what could a man who hardly ever stirred abroad want with six pairs of boots? The folk in the village pitied Elsa that she had to give in to such havers.On rare occasions Mause managed to sneak into the house with Mr. Wycherly and secrete herself in his room: but he did not encourage these clandestine visits, for when Elsa discovered her—as she invariably did—she drove the poor beast forth with much contumely; and Mr. Wycherly was haunted for hours afterward by the reproach in the eyes of Mause that he had not the courage to take her part.Yet Mause was fond of Elsa, and in her heart of hearts Elsa loved Mause. She would far sooner have gone without her own meals than have omitted the plate of broken biscuit and bones that she carried twice daily to the kennel. Every day she filled the dog's tin with fresh water, and she brushed the thick, shaggy coat as religiously and even more vigorously than she brushed Mr. Wycherly's clothes. It grieved her rather that the latter, like Mause, wore the same coat week-days and Sundays.Mause was meekness and gentleness itself with the dwellers at Remote, but outsiders gave her a very different character, and the Reverend Peter Gloag even went so far as to remonstrate with Miss Esperance for keeping such a savage brute about the place. Not that Mause had ever actually bitten even a man selling sewing-machines, but she had a way of barking and bouncing, of growling and gyrating at the full length of her chain, that was decidedly alarming; and if she happened to be loose, her swift rush to the gate at the sound of a strange foot-step was disconcerting in the extreme. What would she say to the children?"If she's ill-natured with them, she'll have to go, poor beastie," Miss Esperance had said, as they drove from the station with the two tired, cross, little boys on that first day. "She's a dear, faithful animal, but I could not let such wee things be frightened."However, the fears of Miss Esperance were groundless. From the first moment that she beheld the little boys, Mause took them under her protection. Perhaps it was that neither of the children showed the slightest fear of the great, clumsy, shaggy beast, but greeted her with joyful outcries, instantly demanding her release from that harassing chain. The right kind of dog and the right kind of child are friends always, by some immutable, inscrutable law of attraction. It seemed almost as if Mause mistook Montagu and Edmund for the puppies which had been her pride some five years before. And the baby certainly did his very best to confirm her in her mistake. Like a puppy, he had a fondness for carrying off numerous and inconceivably incongruous articles from places where they ought to be to distant parts of the garden, where he would be found surrounded by a selection of improvised playthings, while Mause sat by regarding the work of destruction with her tongue hanging out, and an expression of maternal pride upon her broad and blurry countenance.When the children played in the garden their first thought was that Mause must play too. "She must be very lonely in that little wooden house," Montagu said pleadingly. "She would be so happy with us, and we do want her so." And Edmund roared and refused to be comforted unless his "big bow-wow" might go with him whenever Robina took him out in his perambulator.There was a little plot of shaven grass in the garden at Remote, and on this Edmund and Mause and Montagu spent many an hour at play, while Robina sat by demurely knitting at a stocking. It was Edmund's habit when he fell down (a somewhat frequent occurrence that did not disturb him in the least unless he happened to fall on "something scratchful") to grasp firmly in each little hand a handful of the dog's thick hair, and by this means pull himself up to his feet again. Mause bore it stoically, and generally turned her patient face that she might lick the small, fat hands that hurt her. And by the time the children had been a month at Remote Manse was only chained up at night.One hot afternoon in late September Mr. Wycherly had taken Montagu for a walk to a wood, near where there was a tiny tributary of the bigger burn from which the village took its name. So narrow was this stream that Montagu could jump over it: and it was one of his greatest joys to be taken there and to leap solemnly from one side to the other during a whole afternoon, provided that at each effort his audience made some suitably admirative remark.Robina's patience failed her after about three demonstrations of Montagu's saltatory prowess, but Mr. Wycherly would take his seat at the foot of a big tree, and with tireless interest notice every jump, finding something new and congratulatory to say after each fresh effort.Robina, Edmund and Mause remained at home: baby and dog disporting themselves upon the little square of turf, while Robina sat in the shade doing the mending. Elsa was busy in the house and Miss Esperance had gone to a sewing meeting at the manse.At the foot of the garden was a low stone wall, and beyond that wall a lane. From that lane presently there came a sound of light-hearted whistling as Sandie, the flesher, his empty butcher's tray borne lightly on his shoulder, returned from the delivery of meat at the "Big Hoose."Sandie, the flesher, could see over the wall, and he beheld Robina sitting under the alder tree. He thought her fair to look upon, and his whistling ceased. Robina gave one hasty glance back at the house. Elsa was making scones and would be far too busy to look out of the window just then: besides, one could see very little from the kitchen window save the raspberry canes, as Robina was sadly aware. Edmund and Mause were engaged in an intricate game of ball. They alone knew the rules, but they appeared to find it of absorbing interest. Once more Robina looked back at the house, and then flew down to the bottom of the garden to speak to Sandie.We all know that there are minutes that seem as hours, and hours that slip by as a single moment of time. Robina's conversation with Sandie was somewhat prolonged, but doubtless for them it passed even as the twinkling of an eye.When at last she tore herself away from Sandie's blandishments and returned hot-footed to her charge, baby and dog were gone. The worsted ball and the mending lay on the grass, and perfect quiet reigned in the garden of Remote."He'll be in mischief somewhere," she said to herself. "The wee Turk!"For it was only when he was in mischief that the continual flow of Edmund's conversation ceased, and he was traced by his silences rather than by his sounds.Warily did Robina search through every nook and corner of that garden: behind raspberry canes, between gooseberry bushes, even among the cabbages, but nowhere was there any sign of either child or dog. The girl's heart sank. Edmund had probably gone back to the house and Elsa had just kept him that she might the better come down on his young nurse for her carelessness. Robina well knew the awful "radgin" that awaited her if this were the case. It was just possible that the baby had toddled round to the front and was playing among the flower beds, doing damage in exactly inverse ratio to his size and weight. As she passed the open kitchen window Robina looked in: a great gust of hot air laden with the clean, good smell of newly made scones met her. Elsa was over at the fire giving the scones, still on the griddle, an occasional poke with her gnarled old finger. Edmund most certainly was not there. Robina's spirits rose. She might escape the "radgin" after all. She ran round to the front, but there was no baby here either; the tidy little garden with its gay flower beds on either side of the broad central path lay peaceful and deserted in the cool shadow thrown by the house itself. She noticed that the green gate was unlatched and she began to feel anxious, and not wholly on her own account. Where could that baby have got to, and where in all the world was Mause?Robina hurried to the back garden again and went over every inch of ground, with no more success than the first time.She was now very frightened indeed. She hunted in the stable, she looked in the loft, she even took all the tools out of the tool-house lest Edmund might be secreted behind them; but it was all useless, baby and dog had completely vanished.All this searching had taken some time. The afternoon began to wane, it would soon be tea time. Miss Esperance would return from her sewing meeting, and even as it was, Robina heard Mr. Wycherly and Montagu come into the house.She rushed to Elsa in the kitchen, where that worthy woman was arranging her last batch of scones round the top of the wire seive to cool."The wee boy's lost!" cried Robina desperately. "I can find him nowhere and no place, and the dug's awa' too."Mr. Wycherly and Montagu heard the loud excited voices in the kitchen, and for the first time in all the years he had spent with Miss Esperance Mr. Wycherly entered the domain sacred to Elsa. He questioned Robina very gently and quietly, but could obtain no information that threw any light upon Edmund's mysterious disappearance.They searched the house thoroughly, but with no success, and all four had gone out to look once more in the garden when Montagu exclaimed, "Why Mause is here, in her kennel, and she's not chained up."The kennel was a large one, but Mause also was large and effectually blocked the doorway."We'd better take her with us," said Mr. Wycherly, who was preparing to scour the village. "She'll find him sooner than any of us."But to their astonishment Mause did not come to call. She refused to budge, and if any one came near her except Montagu she growled ominously and showed her teeth, a thing she had never done to members of her own household in the whole of her existence.By this time Miss Esperance had returned and was gravely disquieted by the news that met her, most of all by the fact that Mause should have deserted Edmund and that she should be so surly in her temper."I can't think what can have come over the dog," cried poor Miss Esperance. "Don't go near her, Montagu, my son. I just wish she was on the chain.""I'll put the chain on her, auntie; I'm not afraid," cried Montagu, breaking from his aunt's detaining hand; and sure enough, Mause made not the smallest objection, but licked Montagu's hand, and gazed with speaking, pathetic eyes at the group around the kennel, although she would allow no one to approach her except the little boy."The gate was unlatched when we came in," said Mr. Wycherly. "I noticed that. I think he must have strayed into the village, and we'll probably find him in one of the cottages. What I cannot understand is that Mause should have left him.""Mebbe some gaun-aboot-body's ta'en him," wailed Robina, "and drove the dug awa'.""Hoot fie!" cried Elsa, indignantly. "They gaun-aboot-bodies has plenty bairns o' their ain wi'oot nain o' oor's.""The burn's gey and deep up the rod," sobbed Robina, who was determined to take the gloomiest view of things.Miss Esperance looked at Mr. Wycherly, and both were very pale. "Elsa and I will go into the village," she said tremulously. "Will you, dear friend, go—the other way? You would be of more use if—anything——"Miss Esperance paused, unable to voice the dreadful fear that possessed her.Montagu had sat down on the ground beside Mause, facing the kennel, with his arm round her shaggy neck; he leant his head against her, for he felt that she was in some sort of disgrace, and needed comforting. A sudden shaft of sunlight shone full on the pretty group. "Why, he's in there all the time," Montagu cried excitedly. "I can see him; he's fast asleep in Mause's kennel, and that's why she wouldn't come out."The shrill voice woke the baby, who stirred, rolled over, and finally crawled out from his hiding-place, flushed and tumbled with little beads of perspiration all over his nose. Mause politely making way for him the instant he showed a desire to come out.As he scrambled to his feet he beheld Mr. Wycherly, and gave his usual cry of "Man! Uppie, uppie!" and was somewhat bewildered by the effusion with which that same man caught him up in his arms. Miss Esperance grasped his fat legs and wept over them; Robina and Elsa caught at any possible portion of his clothing and wept over that. In fact, they all more or less hung on to Mr. Wycherly in their excitement, while the cause of all this enthusiasm blinked his sleepy eyes and wondered what it was all about. Mause ran round and round in a circle, hanging out her tongue and giving occasional short, sharp barks, expressive of approval.Presently, when the women let go of him, Edmund bent down to scratch one of his fat pink legs. "I fink," he said majestically, "vat a fee has bited me."Mause looked apologetic, and licked the spot.CHAPTER VROBINAJenny rade tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan,Jenny rade tae Cowtstan upon a barra'pin O!An' aye as she wallopit, she wallopit, she wallopit,An' aye as she wallopit, she aye fell ahin' O!Old Song.For Robina, it was a distinct rise in the social scale to have taken service with Miss Esperance. Any lass could get a place at the term in Edinburgh, but only one lass in the whole village could have been chosen to look after the little newcomers at Remote.In the village Miss Esperance was familiarly known as "the wee leddy": and in the eyes of Burnhead the fact that she lived in an extremely small house with one old servant, and did a large portion of the household work herself, in no way detracted from her dignity. In Burnhead, too, there were people who remembered her father, the Admiral—"a gran' man yon! A radgy man whiles, mind ye, but a rale man. When he gave ye a glass he aye looket the ither way and left ye to help yersen—eh, but he was a gran' man yon!"Lady Alicia had described Robina as "douce," and that young woman fully acted up to this reputation during her first weeks at Remote. She trembled and cringed before Elsa. She dropped whatever she happened to be holding if suddenly addressed by Miss Esperance, while in the presence of Mr. Wycherly extreme shyness lent to her appearance an expression of such abject imbecility as caused that gentleman to demand anxiously of her mistress whether she thought it was safe to allow Robina to take the children for walks.Once outside the walls of Remote, however, Robina's whole attitude changed. She bridled: she minced: she was positively swollen with pride in the importance of her position; and when she condescended to exchange remarks with such neighbours as she met, her demeanour was distant and haughty. No sooner had she set forth with Edmund in the perambulator and Montagu trotting by her side, than she at once radiated an atmosphere of "say nothing to nobody" so forbidding as to discourage all attempts at sociability except on the part of the boldest. Everybody wanted to see the little boys, who were, themselves, most friendly and approachable and always ready to respond to the overtures of kindly neighbours.A comely lass was Robina, sturdy and thickset, but with the exquisite colouring often to be found among the Lowland Scottish peasantry; and of late her rosy cheeks had bloomed to a deeper rose, while her forehead and chin and neck were white as the elder flower growing against the wall at the bottom of the garden. Very blue eyes had Robina, and thick, wavy hair—red hair that would escape from its tight braids in frivolous little curls at the nape of her neck and round her ears. From far away, Sandie, the flesher, would espy that brilliant hair burning like a lamp, and wheresoever that beacon shone there would Sandie be fain to follow. He escorted her from her home to Remote in the early morning, and was generally waiting at a safe distance from Remote to walk home with her in the evening. So devoted was he, that Robina had as yet made an exception in his favour, and in spite of her exalted position treated him with moderate friendliness.The day that Edmund was lost she had got off comparatively lightly. The household at Remote was so excited over finding the baby in Mause's kennel that they all forgot to inquire till some time afterwards, how in the world he had got there without the knowledge of his nurse. Robina did not consider it necessary to mention her conversation with Sandie, and beyond a moderate amount of cavilling on the part of Elsa, very little had been said.One afternoon, during the same week, she took the small boys for a walk along the highroad leading to Edinburgh; and as she, with stately mien, was pushing the perambulator on the pathway, a young man, driving a light spring cart, overtook her and pulled up and hailed her with the inquiry, "Well, Robiny, hoo's a' wi' ye the day?"Robina stopped and pretended to be absorbed in settling Edmund in his perambulator; for the moment the baby spied the trap, he began to wriggle out of the strap that bound him in his seat, waving his arms and shouting, "Me go 'ide in caht.""I would like a ride, too," Montagu remarked in his usual deliberate fashion, and he smiled up at Sandie engagingly.Sandie saw the little boy and smiled back broadly, but he was mostly looking at Robina."Is they wee things Piskeys tae?" Sandie asked, nodding his head toward the children."Na, na," Robina replied, shaking her head emphatically, "there's noan o' the wee leddy's flesh and blood's Piskeys, I'se warrant. They'll gang tae the kirk wi' their auntie like ither Christian folk.""What's a Piskey?" asked Montagu of the inquiring mind."I'm no very sure," the girl said slowly. "It's a new-fangled kin' o' kirk—is't no?" she added, looking up at Sandie.Sandie grinned broadly and drew himself up. "I once went into one o' they kirks in Edinbory—" he said with the air of one who has passed through many strange adventures, "on a Sabbath evening," he continued hastily, as Robina looked disapproving. "I gang no place else than oor ain kirk in the mornin'.""And what like was it?" asked Robina, somewhat reassured by this assertion of orthodoxy."Dod' an' it's more than I can say. Ye was aye hoppin' up an' sittin' doon, wi' a wee thing singin' here an' a wee bit prayin' there, an' a wee sma' readin'. Ma certy! there was sae monny preeleeminaries 'at I never thocht we'd reach the sairmon. An' when we did it was just as scampit as a' the rest. An' what wi' human hymns an men i' their sarks jumpin' up here an' there, it was mair like play-actin' than a kirk. Nae mair Piskeys for me, I can tell ye!""But what is a Piskey?" Montagu again demanded."The auld gentleman wha' lives wi' us is a Piskey, so I've heard," Robina said in a low voice."I can well believe that," Sandie remarked meaningly, and tapped his forehead."Me go jive in caht!" Edmund exclaimed for about the thirtieth time, this time with an ominous warning of tears in his voice.Sandie looked up the road and down the road. There was not a soul in sight."Wull I gie them a wee bit hurrl?" he asked Robina."The wee stoot yen couldna' sit wi'oot some person to hold him," Robina said irresolutely, "an' I daurna' let them oot o' my sight. Mine's is a poseetion o' great responsibeelity." And once more she lifted the struggling Edmund back into his seat, from which he instantly wriggled so that he was hung up under the arms by the strap."Pit the pram inside yon gate," suggested the ready Sandie, "and come tae. No harm'll happen it, an' I'll gie ye a bit hurrl doon the rod.""Me go jive in caht!" Edmund shouted joyfully, and held out his arms to Sandie. Edmund looked upon mankind in general as a means specially provided for his quick transit from place to place. "Uppie! Uppie!" the baby cried impatiently."Let the bairn have his hurrl," pleaded Sandie.Montagu as yet found it somewhat difficult to follow the Scots tongue, but he realised that Sandie was inviting them to go for a drive, and forthwith declared his own intention of accepting the invitation without Robina if she declined to avail herself of it.Finally the perambulator was put inside a field, well out of sight. The two small boys were lifted into the cart, where Robina, with much display of white-stockinged substantial ankles, followed them. Away went the butcher's cart with four "precious souls and all agog" seated abreast upon the wooden seat. Robina firmly clutched the "wee stoot yen" who chattered incessantly, giving the loudest expression to his satisfaction.They had gone about half a mile along the Edinburgh road when a gray bobtailed sheepdog was seen trotting along towards them, followed by a small pony tub driven by an old lady."Megsty me!" Robina exclaimed in great consternation, "if yon's no the wee leddy hersel', and I thocht she was up at the hoose. Turn man, turn! and get back afore she comes."Sandie tried to turn, but "Moggie," the butcher's mare, knew that she was on the homeward way and had no wish to defer her arrival. Moggie was fresh and frisky and very obstinate, and the more Sandie tried to turn her the more did she back into the side of the road, finally starting to rear and plunge, with an occasional rattle of hoofs on the splash-board.Robina screamed with terror, and had it not been that the four on the seat were a pretty tight fit, the little boys would undoubtedly have been thrown out.Miss Esperance was jogging slowly homeward in her little pony tub with only a village boy in attendance. She generally picked up some stray urchin as she drove through Burnhead to hold the pony while she paid visits or did her shopping. As she drew nearer she perceived Moggie's antics, and pulled up."That seems a very restive horse," she remarked anxiously. "I hope the young man is able to manage it, for I see he has children in the cart. It would be terrible to have a collision. I think, Davie, you had better get out and hold Jock's head—and I," added the intrepid little lady, "will go and speak to that horse and see if I can catch hold of its head."Davie looked at her admiringly. "It's the flesher's mare, Moggie," he murmured shyly, "an' she's awfu' flechty. Tak heed, mem, that she does na fell ye."Miss Esperance carefully descended from her little trap and walked towards the mare who was getting a little tired of fighting with Sandie, although she had no intention of giving in. Sandie had a firm hand, but he did not dare to beat his steed while Robina and the children were in the cart. He sawed at Moggie's mouth and roared directions at her, and was so busily engaged in trying to get her round that he did not see the little old lady till she was close upon him, then he nearly dropped his reins in his consternation, and was stricken absolutely dumb.This was just what Miss Esperance wanted. All her life she had been used to horses, and she stepped up to the sweating, trembling, plunging mare, laid a small, firm hand fearlessly upon her bridle, and spoke so soothingly and gently that Moggie ceased to plunge and in a few minutes was standing quiet, though trembling, with the cart still blocking the road."Which way do you want her to go and I'll turn her for you," she called to Sandie."Hewants to go home, Aunt Espa'nce, but we don't. We'd much rather go on. D'you mind if we go on for a little more drive?"And the amazed Miss Esperance looked up to perceive her great-nephews and Robina perched up in Sandie's cart.Sandie was crimson and confused: Robina, pale and tearful: the little boys bright-eyed and rosy with excitement."Robina!" Miss Esperance ejaculated, in deepest displeasure. "What are you doing there with the children? Come down at once while the horse is quiet."Hastily and ungracefully Robina scrambled out of the cart and the little boys were handed down by Sandie, both deeply disappointed that their "hurrl" had come to this untimely end. Edmund was not one to conceal his feelings at any time, and he forthwith began to roar so lustily that further discussion was impossible, especially as Mause considered it incumbent upon her to bark loudly in joy at this unexpected reunion.Miss Esperance packed all three into her pony tub, dismissing Davie to walk home and bring the perambulator.Moggie was the only one who scored, for she was driven off without delay in the direction she had all along wanted to go, and she went like the wind."What," asked Montagu of his aunt some days later, "is a Piskey?"Miss Esperance drew her delicate eyebrows together. "Where have you heard the word?" she inquired in her turn."Robina said Mr. Wycherly's a Piskey, and I want to know what it is.""Robina," said Miss Esperance, "is rather apt to talk about things she does not understand. 'Piskey,' my dear Montagu, is a vulgar way of saying Episcopalian, and the English form of worship is called by that name in Scotland. I beg that you will not let me hear the word, 'Piskey,' again.""I think it's rather a nice little word," Montagu retorted; "short and cheerful-sounding. I suppose we're Presbeys?""Abbreviations," said Miss Esperance, "are nearly always foolish and often in bad taste. I have never heard of a Presbey in my life.""Piskey and Presbey were two pretty men," Montagu murmured dreamily, with a hazy recollection of some nursery rhyme, "though I think Piskey's far prettier than Presbey, just like Mr. Wycherly's prettier than Mr. Gloag.""That will do, Montagu.""D'you love Sandie, Aunt Esp'ance?" Montagu asked with an abrupt change of subject."Certainly not," Miss Esperance answered hastily, "though I believe him to be a well-doing young man on the whole.""I love him," said Montagu, "but we don't see him very often now. Robina's taken the huff at him—he told me so. It's a pity isn't it?""The less Robina sees of Sandie, the more likely is she to attend to her duties," Miss Esperance remarked austerely. Then suddenly, her whole face beaming, she added softly, as though to herself, "The lassie's full young for that sort of thing yet awhile."If Robina had escaped lightly when Edmund was lost, Nemesis was by no means leaden-footed as regarded her latest escapade. She very nearly lost her situation, and only by the combined and reiterated entreaties of herself and her mother was Miss Esperance prevailed upon to give the girl another trial. Therefore did Robina, with the unreason of her sex, lay the whole blame upon Sandie; and considered that he, and he alone, was responsible for the mistrustful attitude of the authorities with regard to her. She declined to speak to him or even to look at him for a whole fortnight. Morning and evening she passed him by, till at last he threatened that if she remained so obdurate he would forsake the church of his fathers and become a Piskey. Then, and only then, did Robina relent. "I couldna hae that on my conscience," she reflected. But all the same, although she condescended to speak to Sandie "whiles," he found that he had to do most of his wooing all over again; and Robina would smile to herself from time to time as she reflected that "it's an ill wind blows nobody good."Robina was one of those who believed that what a man wants he will ask for over and over again; and that the harder a thing is to obtain the more it is valued. So she was very niggardly in the matter of her favours to Sandie, and her work prospered in consequence.CHAPTER VITHE AWAKENING OF MR. WYCHERLYAy; you would gaze on a wind-shaken treeBy the hour, nor count time lost.PARACELSUS.Montagu's education was taken in hand at once, and a very curious course of instruction it proved to be. Mr. Wycherly taught him to read, and to read Latin at the same time that he learned to read English. He also, which Montagu very much preferred, told him endless stories, historical and mythological, and in illustration thereof gave him for himself his own two precious oblong folios of Flaxman's "Compositions," on the very first birthday the little boy spent with Miss Esperance. These books were for Montagu the only nursery picture books he knew, and Ulysses and Hector were as real and familiar to him as "Jack the Giant Killer" or "Bluebeard" to the ordinary child. He treasured them and treated them always with the greatest care and tenderness. They were the one possession he declined to share with Edmund, who was careless, and tore things, to whom wide margins and spacious pages made no appeal. He pored over the pictures for hours at a time, arriving at a very clear conception of the beauty of pure line.When the children first came Mr. Wycherly might have been seen, during all such time as those energetic young people left to him, immersed in the study of a serviceable sheepskin volume, the Wrexham edition of Roger Ascham's "Schoolmaster," making notes on the margins of the same, and marking such passages as seemed to him especially applicable to the matter under consideration.Years after the owner's death Montagu found and read the wise old book, and realised how humbly and patiently Mr. Wycherly had set himself to follow out whatever he considered most valuable in the teaching of one whose mental attitude toward youth was certainly centuries in advance of his age. On the flyleaf he had written in his small, delicate handwriting: "In all my life, if I have done but little harm, I have done no good or useful thing. God help me that I may do this thing well," and Montagu, with an almost rapturous remembrance of his teaching, could testify that the prayer had not been made in vain.It was no doubt a good thing for Montagu that his tutor had such a common-sense standard of teaching always before him, for Mr. Wycherly's own inclination was apt to draw him away from the grind of grammar to discourse with enthusiasm on the beauties and solemnities of the authors he so loved. Montagu was quick and receptive, with considerable power of concentration, and because he loved his teacher, he speedily grew to love the subjects that he taught, so that he might truly have said with Lady Jane Grey: "My book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me."Mr. Wycherly's sitting-room was much the largest in the little house. It was on the first floor and of a cheerful aspect, having two windows facing east and south, respectively. Here, for Montagu's own special use, were placed a little square oak table with stout, stumpy legs, of a solid steadiness that even the most fidgety of little boys could not shake, and a three-legged stool that had once served Elsa as a milking-stool. These were set sideways in the window looking on to the kitchen garden, as being a view less likely to distract the learner than that of the other, from which one beheld the front garden with the green railings, and the village street with all its possible excitements. The little table possessed a drawer with bright handles, and in this drawer Montagu kept his own exercise books, his pen with the pebble handle that Elsa had given him, his box of pencils, and every scrap of paper suitable for drawing on, that he could collect—generally half sheets torn off letters by the careful hand of Miss Esperance. The table itself, in imitation of Mr. Wycherly's, was piled with books, but they were in orderly piles, and never set open, one on the top of the other, as was the older scholar's habit.There was another reason why Mr. Wycherly chose that window for Montagu: the morning sun shone straight through it, and the scholar, always something of a stranger in this chill north, craved all the sunshine he could get for the child. He liked to lean back in his own deep-seated revolving chair, set by the big knee-hole table in the centre of the room, and watch the little stooping figure in the patch of sunshine in the window, laboriously tracing the Greek characters so neatly and carefully. A large-eyed thin-faced boy was Montagu, somewhat sallow, with the round shoulders got during those early studies which he never lost in later life.It was not only during lessons that Montagu sat at his little table: long hours did he spend there on wet days while the wind howled round the little house like a hungry wolf, and the rain battered on the panes like shot—making drawings for himself of the battle in the "great harbour of Syracuse," which he had read about in Thomas Hobbes's translation. For Mr. Wycherly's shelves abounded in translations as well as in the "original texts," and although, like most translators, he disagreed with all accepted renderings, yet he encouraged Montagu's use of them, perhaps that he, himself, might the better, by-and-by, point out where he considered that they failed.These drawings were afterwards bestowed upon Edmund, who would listen to Montagu's classic stories when they dealt with battles or ships, but who otherwise infinitely preferred Elsa's more homely legends regarding the doings of "Cockie Lockie and Henny Penny."But there was more than the garden to be seen from Montagu's window: far away, sharp against the sky line, lay the lion back of Arthur's Seat, and whenever Montagu raised his eyes from his work to look out, it was there that they rested. And inasmuch as at that time the Odyssey and its hero filled all his thoughts, the great gaunt hill became for him actually that Ithaca long sought and longed for by the many-counselled one: till every sight of it would thrill him with a sense of personal possession and delighted recognition.Sometimes Montagu, looking back into the room, would find his old friend watching him, and the little boy would nod gaily without speaking, smiling the while the confident, comrade smile of childhood, and thinking that, failing Achilles, he would like to look like Mr. Wycherly when he was old.There is always something pleasantly surprising in the conjunction of white hair and very dark eyes and eyebrows, and in Mr. Wycherly's case the expression of the dark eyes was extremely gentle, the features sharply cut and refined, the whole face of that clean-shaven, regular, aristocratic type, which the Reverend Peter Gloag—half in admiration, half in derision—described as so "intensely Oxfordish.""He has got such a tidy face," Montagu said to his aunt one day."My dear, Mr. Wycherly is always considered a man of great personal attractions," she replied, rather shocked at his choice of an adjective."Yes, aunt, dear, I know, but it's a tidy sort of handsomeness; not a bit like Noah and Jacob and those hairy prophets in the parlour."The walls of his aunt's sitting-room were adorned by many engravings illustrative of the Scriptures, and Montagu, fresh from the study of his beloved Flaxman, would compare these bearded Hebrew prophets, so hampered by heavy draperies, with his airily attired and clean-limbed Greeks, always to the advantage of the latter. Yet he was forced to acknowledge to himself that his adored Mr. Wycherly resembled them equally little both in appearance and manner of life: for nothing could savour less of the adventurous than his existence. So Montagu "put the question by" as one to be answered in that wonderful, grown-up time that children think will solve so many riddles. Mr. Wycherly was immensely happy in this new work and approached his task with a certain tender reverence, rare among teachers, for he agreed with wise old Roger Ascham in thinking that "the pure, clean wit of a sweet, young babe is like the newest wax, most able to receive the best and fairest printing, and like a new bright silver dish never occupied to receive and keep clean any good thing that is put in it."One morning in early October, Montagu was sitting, as usual, at his little table copying the Greek alphabet, while Mr. Wycherly sat watching him with pleased, dreamy eyes. As the little boy completed his task he raised his head with a sigh of satisfaction and happened to look down into the garden."Do you think?" he suddenly asked Mr. Wycherly, "I might go out and help Aunt Esperance dig the potatoes? The ground seems so heavy this morning."Mr. Wycherly rose hastily, crossed over to Montagu's window and looked out."Good God!" he exclaimed, and fled from the room.Much astonished at this outburst from his usually serene tutor, Montagu tore downstairs after him.What Mr. Wycherly had seen to cause him such consternation was what he might have seen any time during the last fifteen years—namely, the tiny, stooping figure of Miss Esperance digging the potatoes for the day's dinner. But if it ever happened that he did look out he had never chanced to look down into the homely garden below, or if he had his eyes were holden, and he was wrapped in his dreams. So that he beheld only the things of the spirit, nor did he know how often the palms of those little hands, so ready to help others, were hard and blistered by their labours.Since the days when he ran shouting along the towing path at Oxford Mr. Wycherly had never run as he ran that morning to the potato patch at Remote. Montagu was hard put to it to catch him, but just managed it, and they arrived together before the astonished eyes of Miss Esperance, who saw them coming in such hot haste, and rested on her spade in fear and trembling as to what could have happened.When Mr. Wycherly did reach her he could not speak, so breathless was he: but he looked beseechingly at her and gently took the spade out of her hands."Why?" he gasped, "Why?" His face worked strangely and he could say nothing more. Montagu stood watching him with solemn, puzzled eyes.But Miss Esperance understood. "You have come to help me," she said gently, "that is very kind of you. Montagu! away and get your wee spade and dig too."The little boy needed no second bidding, and flew to the tool-house. Mr. Wycherly hadn't the faintest notion how to dig potatoes. He had never held a spade in his hands before, and held this much as a nervous person unaccustomed to firearms might hold a loaded gun. He looked helplessly at Miss Esperance, and still the lines were deep about his mouth and his eyes full of that new, dumb pain."Watch Montagu!" she whispered reassuringly, "he's a famous digger."Between them they dug quite a lot of potatoes, and Mr. Wycherly, himself, carried the heavy basket to Elsa at the back door. She took it from him without comment of any kind, but when he had gone round through the garden to get into the house by the front, she looked into the basket, exclaiming, "Now what put sic' a whigmalerie as this in his head?" And it seemed as if the potatoes must have thrown some light upon the question, for in another minute she said softly, "Yon's no a bad buddy."When Montagu went back to his lessons he found his tutor, with earthy hands clasped behind him, restlessly pacing up and down his room."I think you've done enough this morning," said Mr. Wycherly. "You'd better go out and play while it is so fine and nice.""It's not twelve o'clock yet," Montagu objected, "and I generally do lessons till twelve.""We shall have plenty of wet days by-and-by," Mr. Wycherly answered. "Go out now, and make the most of it while it is fine.""But Robina and Edmund's gone, and Aunt Esperance is busy—won't you come?""Yes, I'll come." But yet Mr. Wycherly made no move to get ready."I've washed my hands," Montagu remarked virtuously.Mr. Wycherly started, unclasped his hands and held them out in front of him. "I fear," he said sadly, "that nothing will wash mine." A remark which puzzled Montagu extremely, for in a few minutes Mr. Wycherly returned from his bedroom with perfectly clean hands.It was a very silent walk at first, and what conversation there was Montagu made. At last he grew rather tired of this one-sided intercourse and gave his companion's hand a tug as he demanded: "Are you asleep, that you don't never answer?"Mr. Wycherly started. "No, my dear son," he said very gently; "I think that I am just beginning to be awake.""Will you talk to me then, like you generally do, and tell me things? Shall we go on about Jason? I do love stories where people do things."Mr. Wycherly stood still in the middle of the road, and looked down into the little eager face uplifted to his. "You are right, Montagu," he said very gravely; "it is of little use to think things if you don't do them." And then it seemed as though Mr. Wycherly gave himself a mental shake, for he devoted his whole attention to Montagu for the rest of their walk.Mr. Wycherly's early dinner was served in his own room, but he always supped downstairs with Miss Esperance at seven o'clock. He was the most unpunctual of mortals, and when he first came, infuriated Elsa by sometimes forgetting to eat any lunch at all. But when he discovered that these lapses really distressed Miss Esperance, he schooled himself to keep as nearly as possible to the appointed hours. He was never late for supper, for that would have been discourteous to Miss Esperance, and he was incapable of discourtesy; but he did allow himself a certain amount of laxity with regard to lunch. As for breakfast—ever since the coming of the children he had been a model of punctuality, for they woke him up so uncommonly early.When he entered his room after the walk with Montagu, he found his lunch all ready set on the round table in the middle of the room. This table was sacred to meals, and he was not permitted to pile it with books and papers. Hence, he was wont to regard its oaken emptiness between whiles with a wistful envy. It was so much good space wasted. His lunch was always very nicely laid, and to-day there was cold beef, thin dainty slices adorned with parsley by Elsa's careful hand, and beside the beef stood a covered vegetable dish. Mr. Wycherly sat down at the table, poured out a glass of ale from the little Toby jug set at his right hand and mechanically lifted the cover of the dish. Potatoes were in that dish, and at the sight of them he rose hastily from the table. He went over to his big, knee-hole desk, and sitting down in front of it said aloud: "And all these years she has been digging potatoes for me!"Like a tired schoolboy he leaned forward, his arms upon his desk, laid his head down on them, and the room was very still.When Elsa went in to take away the dishes, he had gone out: but his lunch was untouched. She shook her head ominously, and went and turned down his bed, though it was only early afternoon.Mr. Wycherly walked and walked till he was quite worn out. He got back to the house about four o'clock, crawled up to his room, and sank quite exhausted into his big chair by the window. All afternoon Elsa had been watching for him, and three minutes after his return she followed him upstairs bearing a little tray on which were set a cup of tea and a plate of most tempting-looking scones. She didn't even knock at his door, but went straight in, pushed the round table up to his elbow and laid the little tray upon it. She took up her stand at the window with her back to Mr. Wycherly, remarking fiercely: "From this place I'll not stir till you've taken that tea."She did not even add the usual tardy "sir," and Mr. Wycherly was so startled that he never noticed the omission. He drank the tea, and ate two scones, and all the time Elsa stood with her back to him looking out of the window.Presently he touched her on the arm. "I am very much obliged to you, Elsa," he said. "I think I must have forgotten to eat as much lunch as usual, I was so extremely tired, but I feel much refreshed now."Elsa grunted something quite inaudible, took the tray off the table, and, still with averted head, stumped out of the room.But the fates had not done with Mr. Wycherly that day. As he and Miss Esperance sat down to supper, Montagu, who for some reason was rather later than usual in going to bed, came in to say good night to them. He first kissed his aunt, who sat at one end of the table, then went to kiss Mr. Wycherly who sat at the other. Having said good night, of course he lingered, leant confidingly against his tutor, and in the universal fashion of children who would fain put off the evil hour of bed, remarked detachedly: "You've got chops. Aunt Esperance has only got an egg. Don't you like chops, Aunt Esperance? I do, much better than eggs."Mr. Wycherly dropped back in his chair, looking painfully distressed. For a moment there was a dreadful pause, but the beautiful breeding of Miss Esperance stood her in good stead even then."Do you know," she exclaimed, as though a sudden thought had struck her, "I feel unusually hungry to-night. I think I will defy my doctor for once, and take a chop after all, Mr. Wycherly."And Miss Esperance handed up her little plate for the chop which Mr. Wycherly joyfully placed upon it. But now came another difficulty. Miss Esperance, who had eaten a boiled egg at this hour nearly every night for some twenty years, had no fork."Montagu, my son," she said cheerfully, "run and ask Elsa for a fork for me."No man ever existed who cared less about eating than Mr. Wycherly. Whatsoever was set before him, that he ate meekly and without comment—if he remembered. He always offered to help Miss Esperance from whatever dish was set before him at supper, and she as invariably refused it. It would have seemed to him an unwarrantable piece of interference even so indirectly to criticise her housekeeping as to suggest what she should eat. But to-day there had occurred something which had entirely shaken him out of his usual patient acquiescence in existing conditions: so that, when Montagu pointed out that his fare was so much better than that of Miss Esperance, he was seized by a new anguish of self-reproach. Had he, all these years, been living luxuriously?—that is how poor Mr. Wycherly put it to himself—while she, who with her frail little hands had pulled him forcibly back from the abyss into which he was so surely slipping, had she been living sparely, and he never even noticed whether she had enough to eat? In his misery he was ready to accuse himself of having starved Miss Esperance that he might go full-fed himself.It was rather a silent meal. Miss Esperance did her best to start topics of interest, but his response, though never lacking in urbane attention, was somewhat half-hearted and depressed.When he had gone upstairs to his own room, Miss Esperance waited with the little bell, which summoned Elsa, still in her hand till that good woman appeared, when she asked anxiously: "Elsa, do you know if anything has occurred to upset Mr. Wycherly? He is not looking at all well to-night."Elsa shook her head. "I dinna ken, mem, what it'll be, but he never touched his denner, and when he came back this afternoon he looked like he'd been greetin' and greetin' sair."Elsa paused; Miss Esperance made no answer, but stood still, looking at the lamp on the table, lost in thought."It's no the old thing," Elsa added suddenly, lowering her voice.Miss Esperance put out her hand as if warding off a blow. "Of course not," she exclaimed. "I am surprised, Elsa, that you should so far forget yourself as to refer, to—that time—so long ago, so entirely passed."The little lady seemed in some subtle fashion to withdraw herself to an immense distance from the homely serving-woman who stood fingering her apron and saying nothing. She knew that she had offended her mistress, and when Miss Esperance was offended, she, usually the gentlest and friendliest of women, became quite unapproachable. She left the room with her usual noiseless tread, and for a good five minutes after she had gone Elsa stood where she was, still fingering her apron and wondering what she could do to make amends.
CHAPTER IV
THE SECRETIVENESS OF MAUSE
A boy and a dog together will go,You may jail them, or chain them: They will have it so.Anon.
A boy and a dog together will go,You may jail them, or chain them: They will have it so.Anon.
A boy and a dog together will go,
You may jail them, or chain them: They will have it so.
Anon.
Anon.
Mause was the bobtailed sheep-dog that lived in a kennel at the side of the house nearest the back door, to keep guard. Like Miss Esperance and Mr. Wycherly and Elsa, she was not in her first youth; and when the children came Miss Esperance was nervously apprehensive as to the old dog's conduct. Would she be jealous and growl at them, or perhaps even fly out at them from her kennel as she did at the village boys if they ventured into the garden for any illegitimate purpose? A good watch-dog was Mause, with more discrimination in her vigilance than is displayed by most dogs. She never barked at poor old Mistress Dobie, who would come humbly to the back door for her bi-weekly handful of meal and a screw of snuff, who looked a very scarecrow of shabbiness, and tapped with her staff as she walked: but Mause did bark, and bark loudly, only pausing every now and then to growl thunderously, at the very grand gentleman who tried to sell Elsa an inferior sewing-machine on the hire system. And when he returned a few weeks later with Bibles, Mause nearly broke her chain in her frantic attempts to reach him. The poor dog was kept chained up for the greater part of the day, which is never improving to the canine temper even when, as in this case, the chain is a long one. Miss Esperance let her run by the pony trap whenever she drove into Edinburgh, but this was by no means every day, and Elsa rather grudged poor Mause even these occasional absences, and generally put the chains on both doors when she had gone.
"A watch-dog sud be there to guard the hoose," said Elsa, "and no gang stravaigin aff for hoors at a stretch."
Mr. Wycherly took Mause for a walk whenever he went for one himself, and she greatly enjoyed these excursions, which were, however, but fleeting joys; for Mr. Wycherly's walks were by no means prolonged. That he should go for walks at all was, in the eyes of the villagers of Burnhead, but another sign of his general futility and "genty ways," like his bath and the wooden feet in three pieces that he liked kept in his boots, "just as if he was feart some ither body sud wear them." Besides, what could a man who hardly ever stirred abroad want with six pairs of boots? The folk in the village pitied Elsa that she had to give in to such havers.
On rare occasions Mause managed to sneak into the house with Mr. Wycherly and secrete herself in his room: but he did not encourage these clandestine visits, for when Elsa discovered her—as she invariably did—she drove the poor beast forth with much contumely; and Mr. Wycherly was haunted for hours afterward by the reproach in the eyes of Mause that he had not the courage to take her part.
Yet Mause was fond of Elsa, and in her heart of hearts Elsa loved Mause. She would far sooner have gone without her own meals than have omitted the plate of broken biscuit and bones that she carried twice daily to the kennel. Every day she filled the dog's tin with fresh water, and she brushed the thick, shaggy coat as religiously and even more vigorously than she brushed Mr. Wycherly's clothes. It grieved her rather that the latter, like Mause, wore the same coat week-days and Sundays.
Mause was meekness and gentleness itself with the dwellers at Remote, but outsiders gave her a very different character, and the Reverend Peter Gloag even went so far as to remonstrate with Miss Esperance for keeping such a savage brute about the place. Not that Mause had ever actually bitten even a man selling sewing-machines, but she had a way of barking and bouncing, of growling and gyrating at the full length of her chain, that was decidedly alarming; and if she happened to be loose, her swift rush to the gate at the sound of a strange foot-step was disconcerting in the extreme. What would she say to the children?
"If she's ill-natured with them, she'll have to go, poor beastie," Miss Esperance had said, as they drove from the station with the two tired, cross, little boys on that first day. "She's a dear, faithful animal, but I could not let such wee things be frightened."
However, the fears of Miss Esperance were groundless. From the first moment that she beheld the little boys, Mause took them under her protection. Perhaps it was that neither of the children showed the slightest fear of the great, clumsy, shaggy beast, but greeted her with joyful outcries, instantly demanding her release from that harassing chain. The right kind of dog and the right kind of child are friends always, by some immutable, inscrutable law of attraction. It seemed almost as if Mause mistook Montagu and Edmund for the puppies which had been her pride some five years before. And the baby certainly did his very best to confirm her in her mistake. Like a puppy, he had a fondness for carrying off numerous and inconceivably incongruous articles from places where they ought to be to distant parts of the garden, where he would be found surrounded by a selection of improvised playthings, while Mause sat by regarding the work of destruction with her tongue hanging out, and an expression of maternal pride upon her broad and blurry countenance.
When the children played in the garden their first thought was that Mause must play too. "She must be very lonely in that little wooden house," Montagu said pleadingly. "She would be so happy with us, and we do want her so." And Edmund roared and refused to be comforted unless his "big bow-wow" might go with him whenever Robina took him out in his perambulator.
There was a little plot of shaven grass in the garden at Remote, and on this Edmund and Mause and Montagu spent many an hour at play, while Robina sat by demurely knitting at a stocking. It was Edmund's habit when he fell down (a somewhat frequent occurrence that did not disturb him in the least unless he happened to fall on "something scratchful") to grasp firmly in each little hand a handful of the dog's thick hair, and by this means pull himself up to his feet again. Mause bore it stoically, and generally turned her patient face that she might lick the small, fat hands that hurt her. And by the time the children had been a month at Remote Manse was only chained up at night.
One hot afternoon in late September Mr. Wycherly had taken Montagu for a walk to a wood, near where there was a tiny tributary of the bigger burn from which the village took its name. So narrow was this stream that Montagu could jump over it: and it was one of his greatest joys to be taken there and to leap solemnly from one side to the other during a whole afternoon, provided that at each effort his audience made some suitably admirative remark.
Robina's patience failed her after about three demonstrations of Montagu's saltatory prowess, but Mr. Wycherly would take his seat at the foot of a big tree, and with tireless interest notice every jump, finding something new and congratulatory to say after each fresh effort.
Robina, Edmund and Mause remained at home: baby and dog disporting themselves upon the little square of turf, while Robina sat in the shade doing the mending. Elsa was busy in the house and Miss Esperance had gone to a sewing meeting at the manse.
At the foot of the garden was a low stone wall, and beyond that wall a lane. From that lane presently there came a sound of light-hearted whistling as Sandie, the flesher, his empty butcher's tray borne lightly on his shoulder, returned from the delivery of meat at the "Big Hoose."
Sandie, the flesher, could see over the wall, and he beheld Robina sitting under the alder tree. He thought her fair to look upon, and his whistling ceased. Robina gave one hasty glance back at the house. Elsa was making scones and would be far too busy to look out of the window just then: besides, one could see very little from the kitchen window save the raspberry canes, as Robina was sadly aware. Edmund and Mause were engaged in an intricate game of ball. They alone knew the rules, but they appeared to find it of absorbing interest. Once more Robina looked back at the house, and then flew down to the bottom of the garden to speak to Sandie.
We all know that there are minutes that seem as hours, and hours that slip by as a single moment of time. Robina's conversation with Sandie was somewhat prolonged, but doubtless for them it passed even as the twinkling of an eye.
When at last she tore herself away from Sandie's blandishments and returned hot-footed to her charge, baby and dog were gone. The worsted ball and the mending lay on the grass, and perfect quiet reigned in the garden of Remote.
"He'll be in mischief somewhere," she said to herself. "The wee Turk!"
For it was only when he was in mischief that the continual flow of Edmund's conversation ceased, and he was traced by his silences rather than by his sounds.
Warily did Robina search through every nook and corner of that garden: behind raspberry canes, between gooseberry bushes, even among the cabbages, but nowhere was there any sign of either child or dog. The girl's heart sank. Edmund had probably gone back to the house and Elsa had just kept him that she might the better come down on his young nurse for her carelessness. Robina well knew the awful "radgin" that awaited her if this were the case. It was just possible that the baby had toddled round to the front and was playing among the flower beds, doing damage in exactly inverse ratio to his size and weight. As she passed the open kitchen window Robina looked in: a great gust of hot air laden with the clean, good smell of newly made scones met her. Elsa was over at the fire giving the scones, still on the griddle, an occasional poke with her gnarled old finger. Edmund most certainly was not there. Robina's spirits rose. She might escape the "radgin" after all. She ran round to the front, but there was no baby here either; the tidy little garden with its gay flower beds on either side of the broad central path lay peaceful and deserted in the cool shadow thrown by the house itself. She noticed that the green gate was unlatched and she began to feel anxious, and not wholly on her own account. Where could that baby have got to, and where in all the world was Mause?
Robina hurried to the back garden again and went over every inch of ground, with no more success than the first time.
She was now very frightened indeed. She hunted in the stable, she looked in the loft, she even took all the tools out of the tool-house lest Edmund might be secreted behind them; but it was all useless, baby and dog had completely vanished.
All this searching had taken some time. The afternoon began to wane, it would soon be tea time. Miss Esperance would return from her sewing meeting, and even as it was, Robina heard Mr. Wycherly and Montagu come into the house.
She rushed to Elsa in the kitchen, where that worthy woman was arranging her last batch of scones round the top of the wire seive to cool.
"The wee boy's lost!" cried Robina desperately. "I can find him nowhere and no place, and the dug's awa' too."
Mr. Wycherly and Montagu heard the loud excited voices in the kitchen, and for the first time in all the years he had spent with Miss Esperance Mr. Wycherly entered the domain sacred to Elsa. He questioned Robina very gently and quietly, but could obtain no information that threw any light upon Edmund's mysterious disappearance.
They searched the house thoroughly, but with no success, and all four had gone out to look once more in the garden when Montagu exclaimed, "Why Mause is here, in her kennel, and she's not chained up."
The kennel was a large one, but Mause also was large and effectually blocked the doorway.
"We'd better take her with us," said Mr. Wycherly, who was preparing to scour the village. "She'll find him sooner than any of us."
But to their astonishment Mause did not come to call. She refused to budge, and if any one came near her except Montagu she growled ominously and showed her teeth, a thing she had never done to members of her own household in the whole of her existence.
By this time Miss Esperance had returned and was gravely disquieted by the news that met her, most of all by the fact that Mause should have deserted Edmund and that she should be so surly in her temper.
"I can't think what can have come over the dog," cried poor Miss Esperance. "Don't go near her, Montagu, my son. I just wish she was on the chain."
"I'll put the chain on her, auntie; I'm not afraid," cried Montagu, breaking from his aunt's detaining hand; and sure enough, Mause made not the smallest objection, but licked Montagu's hand, and gazed with speaking, pathetic eyes at the group around the kennel, although she would allow no one to approach her except the little boy.
"The gate was unlatched when we came in," said Mr. Wycherly. "I noticed that. I think he must have strayed into the village, and we'll probably find him in one of the cottages. What I cannot understand is that Mause should have left him."
"Mebbe some gaun-aboot-body's ta'en him," wailed Robina, "and drove the dug awa'."
"Hoot fie!" cried Elsa, indignantly. "They gaun-aboot-bodies has plenty bairns o' their ain wi'oot nain o' oor's."
"The burn's gey and deep up the rod," sobbed Robina, who was determined to take the gloomiest view of things.
Miss Esperance looked at Mr. Wycherly, and both were very pale. "Elsa and I will go into the village," she said tremulously. "Will you, dear friend, go—the other way? You would be of more use if—anything——"
Miss Esperance paused, unable to voice the dreadful fear that possessed her.
Montagu had sat down on the ground beside Mause, facing the kennel, with his arm round her shaggy neck; he leant his head against her, for he felt that she was in some sort of disgrace, and needed comforting. A sudden shaft of sunlight shone full on the pretty group. "Why, he's in there all the time," Montagu cried excitedly. "I can see him; he's fast asleep in Mause's kennel, and that's why she wouldn't come out."
The shrill voice woke the baby, who stirred, rolled over, and finally crawled out from his hiding-place, flushed and tumbled with little beads of perspiration all over his nose. Mause politely making way for him the instant he showed a desire to come out.
As he scrambled to his feet he beheld Mr. Wycherly, and gave his usual cry of "Man! Uppie, uppie!" and was somewhat bewildered by the effusion with which that same man caught him up in his arms. Miss Esperance grasped his fat legs and wept over them; Robina and Elsa caught at any possible portion of his clothing and wept over that. In fact, they all more or less hung on to Mr. Wycherly in their excitement, while the cause of all this enthusiasm blinked his sleepy eyes and wondered what it was all about. Mause ran round and round in a circle, hanging out her tongue and giving occasional short, sharp barks, expressive of approval.
Presently, when the women let go of him, Edmund bent down to scratch one of his fat pink legs. "I fink," he said majestically, "vat a fee has bited me."
Mause looked apologetic, and licked the spot.
CHAPTER V
ROBINA
Jenny rade tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan,Jenny rade tae Cowtstan upon a barra'pin O!An' aye as she wallopit, she wallopit, she wallopit,An' aye as she wallopit, she aye fell ahin' O!Old Song.
Jenny rade tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan,Jenny rade tae Cowtstan upon a barra'pin O!An' aye as she wallopit, she wallopit, she wallopit,An' aye as she wallopit, she aye fell ahin' O!Old Song.
Jenny rade tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan,
Jenny rade tae Cowtstan upon a barra'pin O!
An' aye as she wallopit, she wallopit, she wallopit,
An' aye as she wallopit, she aye fell ahin' O!
Old Song.
Old Song.
For Robina, it was a distinct rise in the social scale to have taken service with Miss Esperance. Any lass could get a place at the term in Edinburgh, but only one lass in the whole village could have been chosen to look after the little newcomers at Remote.
In the village Miss Esperance was familiarly known as "the wee leddy": and in the eyes of Burnhead the fact that she lived in an extremely small house with one old servant, and did a large portion of the household work herself, in no way detracted from her dignity. In Burnhead, too, there were people who remembered her father, the Admiral—"a gran' man yon! A radgy man whiles, mind ye, but a rale man. When he gave ye a glass he aye looket the ither way and left ye to help yersen—eh, but he was a gran' man yon!"
Lady Alicia had described Robina as "douce," and that young woman fully acted up to this reputation during her first weeks at Remote. She trembled and cringed before Elsa. She dropped whatever she happened to be holding if suddenly addressed by Miss Esperance, while in the presence of Mr. Wycherly extreme shyness lent to her appearance an expression of such abject imbecility as caused that gentleman to demand anxiously of her mistress whether she thought it was safe to allow Robina to take the children for walks.
Once outside the walls of Remote, however, Robina's whole attitude changed. She bridled: she minced: she was positively swollen with pride in the importance of her position; and when she condescended to exchange remarks with such neighbours as she met, her demeanour was distant and haughty. No sooner had she set forth with Edmund in the perambulator and Montagu trotting by her side, than she at once radiated an atmosphere of "say nothing to nobody" so forbidding as to discourage all attempts at sociability except on the part of the boldest. Everybody wanted to see the little boys, who were, themselves, most friendly and approachable and always ready to respond to the overtures of kindly neighbours.
A comely lass was Robina, sturdy and thickset, but with the exquisite colouring often to be found among the Lowland Scottish peasantry; and of late her rosy cheeks had bloomed to a deeper rose, while her forehead and chin and neck were white as the elder flower growing against the wall at the bottom of the garden. Very blue eyes had Robina, and thick, wavy hair—red hair that would escape from its tight braids in frivolous little curls at the nape of her neck and round her ears. From far away, Sandie, the flesher, would espy that brilliant hair burning like a lamp, and wheresoever that beacon shone there would Sandie be fain to follow. He escorted her from her home to Remote in the early morning, and was generally waiting at a safe distance from Remote to walk home with her in the evening. So devoted was he, that Robina had as yet made an exception in his favour, and in spite of her exalted position treated him with moderate friendliness.
The day that Edmund was lost she had got off comparatively lightly. The household at Remote was so excited over finding the baby in Mause's kennel that they all forgot to inquire till some time afterwards, how in the world he had got there without the knowledge of his nurse. Robina did not consider it necessary to mention her conversation with Sandie, and beyond a moderate amount of cavilling on the part of Elsa, very little had been said.
One afternoon, during the same week, she took the small boys for a walk along the highroad leading to Edinburgh; and as she, with stately mien, was pushing the perambulator on the pathway, a young man, driving a light spring cart, overtook her and pulled up and hailed her with the inquiry, "Well, Robiny, hoo's a' wi' ye the day?"
Robina stopped and pretended to be absorbed in settling Edmund in his perambulator; for the moment the baby spied the trap, he began to wriggle out of the strap that bound him in his seat, waving his arms and shouting, "Me go 'ide in caht."
"I would like a ride, too," Montagu remarked in his usual deliberate fashion, and he smiled up at Sandie engagingly.
Sandie saw the little boy and smiled back broadly, but he was mostly looking at Robina.
"Is they wee things Piskeys tae?" Sandie asked, nodding his head toward the children.
"Na, na," Robina replied, shaking her head emphatically, "there's noan o' the wee leddy's flesh and blood's Piskeys, I'se warrant. They'll gang tae the kirk wi' their auntie like ither Christian folk."
"What's a Piskey?" asked Montagu of the inquiring mind.
"I'm no very sure," the girl said slowly. "It's a new-fangled kin' o' kirk—is't no?" she added, looking up at Sandie.
Sandie grinned broadly and drew himself up. "I once went into one o' they kirks in Edinbory—" he said with the air of one who has passed through many strange adventures, "on a Sabbath evening," he continued hastily, as Robina looked disapproving. "I gang no place else than oor ain kirk in the mornin'."
"And what like was it?" asked Robina, somewhat reassured by this assertion of orthodoxy.
"Dod' an' it's more than I can say. Ye was aye hoppin' up an' sittin' doon, wi' a wee thing singin' here an' a wee bit prayin' there, an' a wee sma' readin'. Ma certy! there was sae monny preeleeminaries 'at I never thocht we'd reach the sairmon. An' when we did it was just as scampit as a' the rest. An' what wi' human hymns an men i' their sarks jumpin' up here an' there, it was mair like play-actin' than a kirk. Nae mair Piskeys for me, I can tell ye!"
"But what is a Piskey?" Montagu again demanded.
"The auld gentleman wha' lives wi' us is a Piskey, so I've heard," Robina said in a low voice.
"I can well believe that," Sandie remarked meaningly, and tapped his forehead.
"Me go jive in caht!" Edmund exclaimed for about the thirtieth time, this time with an ominous warning of tears in his voice.
Sandie looked up the road and down the road. There was not a soul in sight.
"Wull I gie them a wee bit hurrl?" he asked Robina.
"The wee stoot yen couldna' sit wi'oot some person to hold him," Robina said irresolutely, "an' I daurna' let them oot o' my sight. Mine's is a poseetion o' great responsibeelity." And once more she lifted the struggling Edmund back into his seat, from which he instantly wriggled so that he was hung up under the arms by the strap.
"Pit the pram inside yon gate," suggested the ready Sandie, "and come tae. No harm'll happen it, an' I'll gie ye a bit hurrl doon the rod."
"Me go jive in caht!" Edmund shouted joyfully, and held out his arms to Sandie. Edmund looked upon mankind in general as a means specially provided for his quick transit from place to place. "Uppie! Uppie!" the baby cried impatiently.
"Let the bairn have his hurrl," pleaded Sandie.
Montagu as yet found it somewhat difficult to follow the Scots tongue, but he realised that Sandie was inviting them to go for a drive, and forthwith declared his own intention of accepting the invitation without Robina if she declined to avail herself of it.
Finally the perambulator was put inside a field, well out of sight. The two small boys were lifted into the cart, where Robina, with much display of white-stockinged substantial ankles, followed them. Away went the butcher's cart with four "precious souls and all agog" seated abreast upon the wooden seat. Robina firmly clutched the "wee stoot yen" who chattered incessantly, giving the loudest expression to his satisfaction.
They had gone about half a mile along the Edinburgh road when a gray bobtailed sheepdog was seen trotting along towards them, followed by a small pony tub driven by an old lady.
"Megsty me!" Robina exclaimed in great consternation, "if yon's no the wee leddy hersel', and I thocht she was up at the hoose. Turn man, turn! and get back afore she comes."
Sandie tried to turn, but "Moggie," the butcher's mare, knew that she was on the homeward way and had no wish to defer her arrival. Moggie was fresh and frisky and very obstinate, and the more Sandie tried to turn her the more did she back into the side of the road, finally starting to rear and plunge, with an occasional rattle of hoofs on the splash-board.
Robina screamed with terror, and had it not been that the four on the seat were a pretty tight fit, the little boys would undoubtedly have been thrown out.
Miss Esperance was jogging slowly homeward in her little pony tub with only a village boy in attendance. She generally picked up some stray urchin as she drove through Burnhead to hold the pony while she paid visits or did her shopping. As she drew nearer she perceived Moggie's antics, and pulled up.
"That seems a very restive horse," she remarked anxiously. "I hope the young man is able to manage it, for I see he has children in the cart. It would be terrible to have a collision. I think, Davie, you had better get out and hold Jock's head—and I," added the intrepid little lady, "will go and speak to that horse and see if I can catch hold of its head."
Davie looked at her admiringly. "It's the flesher's mare, Moggie," he murmured shyly, "an' she's awfu' flechty. Tak heed, mem, that she does na fell ye."
Miss Esperance carefully descended from her little trap and walked towards the mare who was getting a little tired of fighting with Sandie, although she had no intention of giving in. Sandie had a firm hand, but he did not dare to beat his steed while Robina and the children were in the cart. He sawed at Moggie's mouth and roared directions at her, and was so busily engaged in trying to get her round that he did not see the little old lady till she was close upon him, then he nearly dropped his reins in his consternation, and was stricken absolutely dumb.
This was just what Miss Esperance wanted. All her life she had been used to horses, and she stepped up to the sweating, trembling, plunging mare, laid a small, firm hand fearlessly upon her bridle, and spoke so soothingly and gently that Moggie ceased to plunge and in a few minutes was standing quiet, though trembling, with the cart still blocking the road.
"Which way do you want her to go and I'll turn her for you," she called to Sandie.
"Hewants to go home, Aunt Espa'nce, but we don't. We'd much rather go on. D'you mind if we go on for a little more drive?"
And the amazed Miss Esperance looked up to perceive her great-nephews and Robina perched up in Sandie's cart.
Sandie was crimson and confused: Robina, pale and tearful: the little boys bright-eyed and rosy with excitement.
"Robina!" Miss Esperance ejaculated, in deepest displeasure. "What are you doing there with the children? Come down at once while the horse is quiet."
Hastily and ungracefully Robina scrambled out of the cart and the little boys were handed down by Sandie, both deeply disappointed that their "hurrl" had come to this untimely end. Edmund was not one to conceal his feelings at any time, and he forthwith began to roar so lustily that further discussion was impossible, especially as Mause considered it incumbent upon her to bark loudly in joy at this unexpected reunion.
Miss Esperance packed all three into her pony tub, dismissing Davie to walk home and bring the perambulator.
Moggie was the only one who scored, for she was driven off without delay in the direction she had all along wanted to go, and she went like the wind.
"What," asked Montagu of his aunt some days later, "is a Piskey?"
Miss Esperance drew her delicate eyebrows together. "Where have you heard the word?" she inquired in her turn.
"Robina said Mr. Wycherly's a Piskey, and I want to know what it is."
"Robina," said Miss Esperance, "is rather apt to talk about things she does not understand. 'Piskey,' my dear Montagu, is a vulgar way of saying Episcopalian, and the English form of worship is called by that name in Scotland. I beg that you will not let me hear the word, 'Piskey,' again."
"I think it's rather a nice little word," Montagu retorted; "short and cheerful-sounding. I suppose we're Presbeys?"
"Abbreviations," said Miss Esperance, "are nearly always foolish and often in bad taste. I have never heard of a Presbey in my life."
"Piskey and Presbey were two pretty men," Montagu murmured dreamily, with a hazy recollection of some nursery rhyme, "though I think Piskey's far prettier than Presbey, just like Mr. Wycherly's prettier than Mr. Gloag."
"That will do, Montagu."
"D'you love Sandie, Aunt Esp'ance?" Montagu asked with an abrupt change of subject.
"Certainly not," Miss Esperance answered hastily, "though I believe him to be a well-doing young man on the whole."
"I love him," said Montagu, "but we don't see him very often now. Robina's taken the huff at him—he told me so. It's a pity isn't it?"
"The less Robina sees of Sandie, the more likely is she to attend to her duties," Miss Esperance remarked austerely. Then suddenly, her whole face beaming, she added softly, as though to herself, "The lassie's full young for that sort of thing yet awhile."
If Robina had escaped lightly when Edmund was lost, Nemesis was by no means leaden-footed as regarded her latest escapade. She very nearly lost her situation, and only by the combined and reiterated entreaties of herself and her mother was Miss Esperance prevailed upon to give the girl another trial. Therefore did Robina, with the unreason of her sex, lay the whole blame upon Sandie; and considered that he, and he alone, was responsible for the mistrustful attitude of the authorities with regard to her. She declined to speak to him or even to look at him for a whole fortnight. Morning and evening she passed him by, till at last he threatened that if she remained so obdurate he would forsake the church of his fathers and become a Piskey. Then, and only then, did Robina relent. "I couldna hae that on my conscience," she reflected. But all the same, although she condescended to speak to Sandie "whiles," he found that he had to do most of his wooing all over again; and Robina would smile to herself from time to time as she reflected that "it's an ill wind blows nobody good."
Robina was one of those who believed that what a man wants he will ask for over and over again; and that the harder a thing is to obtain the more it is valued. So she was very niggardly in the matter of her favours to Sandie, and her work prospered in consequence.
CHAPTER VI
THE AWAKENING OF MR. WYCHERLY
Ay; you would gaze on a wind-shaken treeBy the hour, nor count time lost.PARACELSUS.
Ay; you would gaze on a wind-shaken treeBy the hour, nor count time lost.PARACELSUS.
Ay; you would gaze on a wind-shaken tree
By the hour, nor count time lost.
PARACELSUS.
PARACELSUS.
Montagu's education was taken in hand at once, and a very curious course of instruction it proved to be. Mr. Wycherly taught him to read, and to read Latin at the same time that he learned to read English. He also, which Montagu very much preferred, told him endless stories, historical and mythological, and in illustration thereof gave him for himself his own two precious oblong folios of Flaxman's "Compositions," on the very first birthday the little boy spent with Miss Esperance. These books were for Montagu the only nursery picture books he knew, and Ulysses and Hector were as real and familiar to him as "Jack the Giant Killer" or "Bluebeard" to the ordinary child. He treasured them and treated them always with the greatest care and tenderness. They were the one possession he declined to share with Edmund, who was careless, and tore things, to whom wide margins and spacious pages made no appeal. He pored over the pictures for hours at a time, arriving at a very clear conception of the beauty of pure line.
When the children first came Mr. Wycherly might have been seen, during all such time as those energetic young people left to him, immersed in the study of a serviceable sheepskin volume, the Wrexham edition of Roger Ascham's "Schoolmaster," making notes on the margins of the same, and marking such passages as seemed to him especially applicable to the matter under consideration.
Years after the owner's death Montagu found and read the wise old book, and realised how humbly and patiently Mr. Wycherly had set himself to follow out whatever he considered most valuable in the teaching of one whose mental attitude toward youth was certainly centuries in advance of his age. On the flyleaf he had written in his small, delicate handwriting: "In all my life, if I have done but little harm, I have done no good or useful thing. God help me that I may do this thing well," and Montagu, with an almost rapturous remembrance of his teaching, could testify that the prayer had not been made in vain.
It was no doubt a good thing for Montagu that his tutor had such a common-sense standard of teaching always before him, for Mr. Wycherly's own inclination was apt to draw him away from the grind of grammar to discourse with enthusiasm on the beauties and solemnities of the authors he so loved. Montagu was quick and receptive, with considerable power of concentration, and because he loved his teacher, he speedily grew to love the subjects that he taught, so that he might truly have said with Lady Jane Grey: "My book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me."
Mr. Wycherly's sitting-room was much the largest in the little house. It was on the first floor and of a cheerful aspect, having two windows facing east and south, respectively. Here, for Montagu's own special use, were placed a little square oak table with stout, stumpy legs, of a solid steadiness that even the most fidgety of little boys could not shake, and a three-legged stool that had once served Elsa as a milking-stool. These were set sideways in the window looking on to the kitchen garden, as being a view less likely to distract the learner than that of the other, from which one beheld the front garden with the green railings, and the village street with all its possible excitements. The little table possessed a drawer with bright handles, and in this drawer Montagu kept his own exercise books, his pen with the pebble handle that Elsa had given him, his box of pencils, and every scrap of paper suitable for drawing on, that he could collect—generally half sheets torn off letters by the careful hand of Miss Esperance. The table itself, in imitation of Mr. Wycherly's, was piled with books, but they were in orderly piles, and never set open, one on the top of the other, as was the older scholar's habit.
There was another reason why Mr. Wycherly chose that window for Montagu: the morning sun shone straight through it, and the scholar, always something of a stranger in this chill north, craved all the sunshine he could get for the child. He liked to lean back in his own deep-seated revolving chair, set by the big knee-hole table in the centre of the room, and watch the little stooping figure in the patch of sunshine in the window, laboriously tracing the Greek characters so neatly and carefully. A large-eyed thin-faced boy was Montagu, somewhat sallow, with the round shoulders got during those early studies which he never lost in later life.
It was not only during lessons that Montagu sat at his little table: long hours did he spend there on wet days while the wind howled round the little house like a hungry wolf, and the rain battered on the panes like shot—making drawings for himself of the battle in the "great harbour of Syracuse," which he had read about in Thomas Hobbes's translation. For Mr. Wycherly's shelves abounded in translations as well as in the "original texts," and although, like most translators, he disagreed with all accepted renderings, yet he encouraged Montagu's use of them, perhaps that he, himself, might the better, by-and-by, point out where he considered that they failed.
These drawings were afterwards bestowed upon Edmund, who would listen to Montagu's classic stories when they dealt with battles or ships, but who otherwise infinitely preferred Elsa's more homely legends regarding the doings of "Cockie Lockie and Henny Penny."
But there was more than the garden to be seen from Montagu's window: far away, sharp against the sky line, lay the lion back of Arthur's Seat, and whenever Montagu raised his eyes from his work to look out, it was there that they rested. And inasmuch as at that time the Odyssey and its hero filled all his thoughts, the great gaunt hill became for him actually that Ithaca long sought and longed for by the many-counselled one: till every sight of it would thrill him with a sense of personal possession and delighted recognition.
Sometimes Montagu, looking back into the room, would find his old friend watching him, and the little boy would nod gaily without speaking, smiling the while the confident, comrade smile of childhood, and thinking that, failing Achilles, he would like to look like Mr. Wycherly when he was old.
There is always something pleasantly surprising in the conjunction of white hair and very dark eyes and eyebrows, and in Mr. Wycherly's case the expression of the dark eyes was extremely gentle, the features sharply cut and refined, the whole face of that clean-shaven, regular, aristocratic type, which the Reverend Peter Gloag—half in admiration, half in derision—described as so "intensely Oxfordish."
"He has got such a tidy face," Montagu said to his aunt one day.
"My dear, Mr. Wycherly is always considered a man of great personal attractions," she replied, rather shocked at his choice of an adjective.
"Yes, aunt, dear, I know, but it's a tidy sort of handsomeness; not a bit like Noah and Jacob and those hairy prophets in the parlour."
The walls of his aunt's sitting-room were adorned by many engravings illustrative of the Scriptures, and Montagu, fresh from the study of his beloved Flaxman, would compare these bearded Hebrew prophets, so hampered by heavy draperies, with his airily attired and clean-limbed Greeks, always to the advantage of the latter. Yet he was forced to acknowledge to himself that his adored Mr. Wycherly resembled them equally little both in appearance and manner of life: for nothing could savour less of the adventurous than his existence. So Montagu "put the question by" as one to be answered in that wonderful, grown-up time that children think will solve so many riddles. Mr. Wycherly was immensely happy in this new work and approached his task with a certain tender reverence, rare among teachers, for he agreed with wise old Roger Ascham in thinking that "the pure, clean wit of a sweet, young babe is like the newest wax, most able to receive the best and fairest printing, and like a new bright silver dish never occupied to receive and keep clean any good thing that is put in it."
One morning in early October, Montagu was sitting, as usual, at his little table copying the Greek alphabet, while Mr. Wycherly sat watching him with pleased, dreamy eyes. As the little boy completed his task he raised his head with a sigh of satisfaction and happened to look down into the garden.
"Do you think?" he suddenly asked Mr. Wycherly, "I might go out and help Aunt Esperance dig the potatoes? The ground seems so heavy this morning."
Mr. Wycherly rose hastily, crossed over to Montagu's window and looked out.
"Good God!" he exclaimed, and fled from the room.
Much astonished at this outburst from his usually serene tutor, Montagu tore downstairs after him.
What Mr. Wycherly had seen to cause him such consternation was what he might have seen any time during the last fifteen years—namely, the tiny, stooping figure of Miss Esperance digging the potatoes for the day's dinner. But if it ever happened that he did look out he had never chanced to look down into the homely garden below, or if he had his eyes were holden, and he was wrapped in his dreams. So that he beheld only the things of the spirit, nor did he know how often the palms of those little hands, so ready to help others, were hard and blistered by their labours.
Since the days when he ran shouting along the towing path at Oxford Mr. Wycherly had never run as he ran that morning to the potato patch at Remote. Montagu was hard put to it to catch him, but just managed it, and they arrived together before the astonished eyes of Miss Esperance, who saw them coming in such hot haste, and rested on her spade in fear and trembling as to what could have happened.
When Mr. Wycherly did reach her he could not speak, so breathless was he: but he looked beseechingly at her and gently took the spade out of her hands.
"Why?" he gasped, "Why?" His face worked strangely and he could say nothing more. Montagu stood watching him with solemn, puzzled eyes.
But Miss Esperance understood. "You have come to help me," she said gently, "that is very kind of you. Montagu! away and get your wee spade and dig too."
The little boy needed no second bidding, and flew to the tool-house. Mr. Wycherly hadn't the faintest notion how to dig potatoes. He had never held a spade in his hands before, and held this much as a nervous person unaccustomed to firearms might hold a loaded gun. He looked helplessly at Miss Esperance, and still the lines were deep about his mouth and his eyes full of that new, dumb pain.
"Watch Montagu!" she whispered reassuringly, "he's a famous digger."
Between them they dug quite a lot of potatoes, and Mr. Wycherly, himself, carried the heavy basket to Elsa at the back door. She took it from him without comment of any kind, but when he had gone round through the garden to get into the house by the front, she looked into the basket, exclaiming, "Now what put sic' a whigmalerie as this in his head?" And it seemed as if the potatoes must have thrown some light upon the question, for in another minute she said softly, "Yon's no a bad buddy."
When Montagu went back to his lessons he found his tutor, with earthy hands clasped behind him, restlessly pacing up and down his room.
"I think you've done enough this morning," said Mr. Wycherly. "You'd better go out and play while it is so fine and nice."
"It's not twelve o'clock yet," Montagu objected, "and I generally do lessons till twelve."
"We shall have plenty of wet days by-and-by," Mr. Wycherly answered. "Go out now, and make the most of it while it is fine."
"But Robina and Edmund's gone, and Aunt Esperance is busy—won't you come?"
"Yes, I'll come." But yet Mr. Wycherly made no move to get ready.
"I've washed my hands," Montagu remarked virtuously.
Mr. Wycherly started, unclasped his hands and held them out in front of him. "I fear," he said sadly, "that nothing will wash mine." A remark which puzzled Montagu extremely, for in a few minutes Mr. Wycherly returned from his bedroom with perfectly clean hands.
It was a very silent walk at first, and what conversation there was Montagu made. At last he grew rather tired of this one-sided intercourse and gave his companion's hand a tug as he demanded: "Are you asleep, that you don't never answer?"
Mr. Wycherly started. "No, my dear son," he said very gently; "I think that I am just beginning to be awake."
"Will you talk to me then, like you generally do, and tell me things? Shall we go on about Jason? I do love stories where people do things."
Mr. Wycherly stood still in the middle of the road, and looked down into the little eager face uplifted to his. "You are right, Montagu," he said very gravely; "it is of little use to think things if you don't do them." And then it seemed as though Mr. Wycherly gave himself a mental shake, for he devoted his whole attention to Montagu for the rest of their walk.
Mr. Wycherly's early dinner was served in his own room, but he always supped downstairs with Miss Esperance at seven o'clock. He was the most unpunctual of mortals, and when he first came, infuriated Elsa by sometimes forgetting to eat any lunch at all. But when he discovered that these lapses really distressed Miss Esperance, he schooled himself to keep as nearly as possible to the appointed hours. He was never late for supper, for that would have been discourteous to Miss Esperance, and he was incapable of discourtesy; but he did allow himself a certain amount of laxity with regard to lunch. As for breakfast—ever since the coming of the children he had been a model of punctuality, for they woke him up so uncommonly early.
When he entered his room after the walk with Montagu, he found his lunch all ready set on the round table in the middle of the room. This table was sacred to meals, and he was not permitted to pile it with books and papers. Hence, he was wont to regard its oaken emptiness between whiles with a wistful envy. It was so much good space wasted. His lunch was always very nicely laid, and to-day there was cold beef, thin dainty slices adorned with parsley by Elsa's careful hand, and beside the beef stood a covered vegetable dish. Mr. Wycherly sat down at the table, poured out a glass of ale from the little Toby jug set at his right hand and mechanically lifted the cover of the dish. Potatoes were in that dish, and at the sight of them he rose hastily from the table. He went over to his big, knee-hole desk, and sitting down in front of it said aloud: "And all these years she has been digging potatoes for me!"
Like a tired schoolboy he leaned forward, his arms upon his desk, laid his head down on them, and the room was very still.
When Elsa went in to take away the dishes, he had gone out: but his lunch was untouched. She shook her head ominously, and went and turned down his bed, though it was only early afternoon.
Mr. Wycherly walked and walked till he was quite worn out. He got back to the house about four o'clock, crawled up to his room, and sank quite exhausted into his big chair by the window. All afternoon Elsa had been watching for him, and three minutes after his return she followed him upstairs bearing a little tray on which were set a cup of tea and a plate of most tempting-looking scones. She didn't even knock at his door, but went straight in, pushed the round table up to his elbow and laid the little tray upon it. She took up her stand at the window with her back to Mr. Wycherly, remarking fiercely: "From this place I'll not stir till you've taken that tea."
She did not even add the usual tardy "sir," and Mr. Wycherly was so startled that he never noticed the omission. He drank the tea, and ate two scones, and all the time Elsa stood with her back to him looking out of the window.
Presently he touched her on the arm. "I am very much obliged to you, Elsa," he said. "I think I must have forgotten to eat as much lunch as usual, I was so extremely tired, but I feel much refreshed now."
Elsa grunted something quite inaudible, took the tray off the table, and, still with averted head, stumped out of the room.
But the fates had not done with Mr. Wycherly that day. As he and Miss Esperance sat down to supper, Montagu, who for some reason was rather later than usual in going to bed, came in to say good night to them. He first kissed his aunt, who sat at one end of the table, then went to kiss Mr. Wycherly who sat at the other. Having said good night, of course he lingered, leant confidingly against his tutor, and in the universal fashion of children who would fain put off the evil hour of bed, remarked detachedly: "You've got chops. Aunt Esperance has only got an egg. Don't you like chops, Aunt Esperance? I do, much better than eggs."
Mr. Wycherly dropped back in his chair, looking painfully distressed. For a moment there was a dreadful pause, but the beautiful breeding of Miss Esperance stood her in good stead even then.
"Do you know," she exclaimed, as though a sudden thought had struck her, "I feel unusually hungry to-night. I think I will defy my doctor for once, and take a chop after all, Mr. Wycherly."
And Miss Esperance handed up her little plate for the chop which Mr. Wycherly joyfully placed upon it. But now came another difficulty. Miss Esperance, who had eaten a boiled egg at this hour nearly every night for some twenty years, had no fork.
"Montagu, my son," she said cheerfully, "run and ask Elsa for a fork for me."
No man ever existed who cared less about eating than Mr. Wycherly. Whatsoever was set before him, that he ate meekly and without comment—if he remembered. He always offered to help Miss Esperance from whatever dish was set before him at supper, and she as invariably refused it. It would have seemed to him an unwarrantable piece of interference even so indirectly to criticise her housekeeping as to suggest what she should eat. But to-day there had occurred something which had entirely shaken him out of his usual patient acquiescence in existing conditions: so that, when Montagu pointed out that his fare was so much better than that of Miss Esperance, he was seized by a new anguish of self-reproach. Had he, all these years, been living luxuriously?—that is how poor Mr. Wycherly put it to himself—while she, who with her frail little hands had pulled him forcibly back from the abyss into which he was so surely slipping, had she been living sparely, and he never even noticed whether she had enough to eat? In his misery he was ready to accuse himself of having starved Miss Esperance that he might go full-fed himself.
It was rather a silent meal. Miss Esperance did her best to start topics of interest, but his response, though never lacking in urbane attention, was somewhat half-hearted and depressed.
When he had gone upstairs to his own room, Miss Esperance waited with the little bell, which summoned Elsa, still in her hand till that good woman appeared, when she asked anxiously: "Elsa, do you know if anything has occurred to upset Mr. Wycherly? He is not looking at all well to-night."
Elsa shook her head. "I dinna ken, mem, what it'll be, but he never touched his denner, and when he came back this afternoon he looked like he'd been greetin' and greetin' sair."
Elsa paused; Miss Esperance made no answer, but stood still, looking at the lamp on the table, lost in thought.
"It's no the old thing," Elsa added suddenly, lowering her voice.
Miss Esperance put out her hand as if warding off a blow. "Of course not," she exclaimed. "I am surprised, Elsa, that you should so far forget yourself as to refer, to—that time—so long ago, so entirely passed."
The little lady seemed in some subtle fashion to withdraw herself to an immense distance from the homely serving-woman who stood fingering her apron and saying nothing. She knew that she had offended her mistress, and when Miss Esperance was offended, she, usually the gentlest and friendliest of women, became quite unapproachable. She left the room with her usual noiseless tread, and for a good five minutes after she had gone Elsa stood where she was, still fingering her apron and wondering what she could do to make amends.