XIV
A man may know his own boots when hesees them, and yet not recognise his own joke.
A man may know his own boots when hesees them, and yet not recognise his own joke.
A man may know his own boots when hesees them, and yet not recognise his own joke.
A man may know his own boots when he
sees them, and yet not recognise his own joke.
Dianadid everything that was asked of her as tenant of Glenbossie and more. She loved the Minister’s wife, her soft voice and gentle manner, and when she asked Diana to come to the Sale, to be held in the schools, Diana said, of course she would come, and on the appointed day she went down to the schools with her pockets full of Uncle Marcus’s money, and on her way she passed old women whom she loved for the mutches they wore, and for the smiles within them. Every one had a soft word for her and a smile. When she got to the schools she did not stop to wonder why so many people were gathered together outside the door. They made way for her, and she went in and she bought all the shirts and all the socks: praised the making of them—and wondered at their strength and their softness—the softness of the socks and strength of the shirts. She bought other things, less useful, and perhaps not strictly beautiful, but she paid for them all right royally.
As she was the only person there she bought everything she could lay hands on, rememberingthe soft voice and the gentle manner of the Minister’s wife. One or two stall-holders, she remembered afterwards, did protest faintly: but she thought they were only afraid she was being too generous.
Having bought most things she rested from her labours, and walking to the window looked out, and saw sailing down upon the schoolhouse a party consisting of a very small, but very important-looking mother, and a charming-looking daughter and several other people, and she knew them to be the Scott party. Very important people were the Scotts—very important was their party. It was trimmed with white heather. The men wore kilts and the women the next best things. They all wore tartan stockings and some—some men, bonnets.
Diana’s heart began to fail. The Minister was at the door to meet the Scott party and he welcomed Mrs. Scott and them all with great ceremony, and Mrs. Scott smiled upon him and said how delighted she was to open the bazaar.
The Minister consulted his watch in answer to her question, “Was she late?” and it was found she was not late.
“Not late, perhaps,” thought Diana, “but everything was sold!”
After the opening of the Sale with prayer, Mrs.Scott proclaimed it ready for buyers and she hoped that people would buy as many things as they could, and spend as much money as they—had—no, not that; but as much as they could spare! The crowd that had gathered outside now filled the hall.
The first shirt Mrs. Scott lost her heart to was sold, and the next. And the socks? Yes, sold!
Then Diana went round to all the stall-holders and assured them she had bought nothing—they might keep the money, but the things must be sold again. “Let me have afterwards what Mrs. Scott doesn’t want,” she said. Mrs. Scott thanked Diana for coming, said she remembered her so well, at the—whose ball, was it? She told her Ralph St. Jermyn was coming to stay with them. “But I must do my duty. Have you found anything to buy? It is so kind of you. There will be lots for us all.” And she went on her way buying all the things Diana had already bought. It was a very good way of selling from the stall-holders’ point of view, and they had never made so much before at any sale in Loch Bossie, and in Scotland they make more by bazaars than in any other country in the world.
Diana made her escape so soon as she could, greatly to the disappointment of some of the Scott party, and she vowed to Uncle Marcus she would never go to another sale so long as she lived. Heasked her at what time she had gone, and she said at three o’clock—why?
He said he had only wondered because the Sale was to be opened at half-past three by Mrs. Scott.
“She must never know,” said Diana.
“Never!” agreed Uncle Marcus, and he put out his hand for the change (there are very few men who don’t ask for change) and he did not express that pleasure he ought to have experienced when he realized how greatly the Sale had benefitted by the officiousness of his niece.
When the parcel came from the bazaar for Diana there were within it neither the socks she had promised Pillar, nor the shirts longed for by John and Sandy, but only those things Mrs. Scott and others had not been requiring.
Two egg-cosies in tartan cloth.
One piano-key-cover in dark brown serge, worked in yellow silks.
One tea-cosy crocheted in string, lined with red sateen.
One shoe-bag in brown holland and bound with green braid.
One crazy patchwork cushion cover.
One bib.
One turkey twill bedspread—
“I should like to see the things you bought,” said Uncle Marcus.
“You shall see them all this evening,” said Diana softly.
“I hope you didn’t buy any rubbish. I hate money wasted. Stockings and shirts are always useful.”
Then Diana persuaded Pillar to lay out all Mr. Maitland’s clothes on the bed, chairs, and tables in one of the spare bedrooms after dinner, and Pillar, because Miss Diana asked him to do it—did it.
“Particularly his boots, miss, you want, his shooting-clothes, and his shirts? Yes, miss.”
“How many pairs of boots are there?” she asked.
Pillar pondered, and when he gave the number of pairs—“approximately, miss”—Diana said six of them would do.
And at half-past nine that night Diana told Uncle Marcus the things were all ready, laid out, in the spare room. She put out her hand inviting him to come, and he followed her upstairs and came into the room and saw spread upon the tables, bed, and chairs, things he must least have expected to see.
“Boots?” he asked, “theseboots?” He took one up; looked at it, and put it down again. From that to another pair—from the boots he went to tweed coats, knickerbockers, trousers. “Was this as one would meet old friends?” thought Diana—“without one smile?”
From the blue shirt to the pink striped one, went Marcus; from the mauve silk one to the black-and-white striped one. From shirts to pyjamas; he had never thought he had so many, or such good ones. Back to the boots. He was perfectly serious and Diana wondered of what he was thinking? “You look very serious,” she said.
“It is very serious,” he answered. “You got a lot for your money, that’s all I can say—the rest of the matter I must put into the hands of the police.”
“Police?” asked Diana.
“My dear child, it’s clearly a case of stealing. Some one has sold my clothes, and although the money may be given to the poor it won’t do.” And he went—bound, Diana was sure, for the Police Station.
She was so distressed that it was more than the respectfully tender heart of Pillar could stand, and he told her, begging her pardon, that Mr. Maitland had been “in the know,” as it were. “You told him?” she asked, surprised and indignant.
“Well, miss, I couldn’t have done it without his leave.”
But the joke was spoilt! Not entirely, said Pillar, there was no reason he should know she knew. There was generally the other side to a joke.
“You mean,” said Diana, “that I must let Mr.Maitland think that I am very much distressed—that I believe about the policeman?”
“Let things go their own way, miss. It’s safest with jokes—certainly where single gentlemen—of a certain age—are concerned.”
And she let things go their own way, and this is the way they naturally went. Uncle Marcus went downstairs looking very serious, and Diana followed him a few minutes later, looking very distressed.
He sat down at his table to write to the police.
“Don’t!” she said, and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“My dear child, I must. It cannot be left as it is.”
“What do you suspect—whodo you suspect?” she asked.
“I suspect that my things have been sold by some one to some one—else, and by some means or other they found their way to the bazaar, and by some strange chance you bought them.”
Diana said, being the niece of her uncle, it was only natural that she should know good boots when she saw them.
This appeared to soften Uncle Marcus towards Diana, but in no other way was he to be moved.
“You don’t suspect—Pillar?” she said softly. She was anxious to find out the way the joke was going—she thought it had got lost.
Marcus paused—it was a serious thing to say, even in fun—“I have reason to doubt him,” he admitted.
Then up spake Diana: her eyes shining, her cheeks ablaze. She recounted—Marcus couldn’t have done it better himself—in fact she had got it all from him—the many and varied perfections of Pillar. His most excellent qualities—she had them all at her finger’s ends. As she talked Marcus’s heart warmed afresh towards the man he would as soon have suspected as himself of stealing—but Diana? Was she going to allow him to send for the policeman? Would she carry her joke to that extremity? He knew the note would go no further than Pillar: but she did not know that.
“Unless you can throw some light on the matter, this letter must go.” And he wrote the letter, pausing between the words, blackening the down strokes, rounding thee’s; still Diana said nothing, and Uncle Marcus gave his letter to Pillar to send at once. Whereupon Diana burst into tears and left the room.
Outside the door there were no tears to be wiped away, but there was much to be done. She had to find a policeman; not so difficult that as it sounded. It only meant going so far as the next lodge and borrowing the first young man she could find; and off she went, having told a housemaid to lock herbedroom door on the outside, and take the key away.
“Then if Uncle Marcus comes to comfort me,” she thought, “he will find the door locked.”
Uncle Marcus sat and waited. He made up his mind to wait five minutes. He could not let any woman cry for longer. They were fearfully long minutes. But they passed and he went upstairs. He knocked at the door. There was no answer, for by that time Diana was halfway to the next lodge.
“Diana?” Still no answer.
He waited. He heard her sob—was sure of it—confound the joke—“Diana!” No answer.
By this time Diana was at the next lodge; and was in the very act of coaching a young man—only too ready to be coached in anything by Diana, whom he had worshipped from afar the whole of one morning; from the other side of the river, to be exact—and he was perfectly willing to be a policeman if it made her happy.
“Can you talk Scotch?” she asked.
“Do you mean Gaelic?”
“Yes; if you can do that, it’s better still, because Uncle Marcus ‘has not’ Gaelic.” He could talk Gaelic, and he understood English. He laughed: in his present mood this seemed a good joke, and Diana laughed, too, which showed she was kind: then she asked, “How did Scotch policemen dress?”The young man was sure—in blue. Diana decided he must wear a mackintosh. Uncle Marcus would be much too agitated to see anything: the mere sight of a policeman would be paralyzing to one of his temperament. The young man asked if Mr. Maitland would be likely to see the joke.
“Jokes are difficult things to deal with,” admitted Diana. “There are better jokes than those we don’t see: and there are none so good as those we see. It gives Uncle Marcus a way out.”
Down the road walked Diana with the policeman to be, while Uncle Marcus pleaded, through a locked door, with a Diana not there. Then he grew stuffy and offended as he always did in time, being of so affectionate and sensitive a nature, and he went downstairs to the smoking-room, muttering to himself that if she didn’t want to, he didn’t, and so on. He took up his “Scotsman.” How often had he found a refuge behind its generous pages, and he had only just taken up his position of offended dignity when the door opened and Pillar announced the arrival of the policeman.
“Idiot!” said Mr. Maitland, meaning Pillar, of course, and in walked the policeman.
“Just one moment,” said Marcus, jumping up; “I must ask some one something before we go any further.” And he went upstairs, two steps at a time, to Diana’s room, and found her door stilllocked. He tried it again and again, which took time: and while he was upstairs the real policeman happened to call for a subscription to a most deserving charity (the news of the generosity of the Glenbossie tenant had spread abroad like wild fire) and the pseudo-policeman retired in favour of the real thing, in the cause of charity.
When Mr. Maitland came down he did not notice the change—a policeman is a policeman to the law-abiding citizen, whether in a mackintosh or not.
“I am afraid there has been some mistake,” he began, careful to seat himself back to the light: that much he had learned from much reading—in his youth—of detective stories. The policeman politely remarked that we were all liable—as human creatures—to make mistakes. Which axiom, pronounced in broad Scotch—of all accents the most comforting—sounded the kindest and most cheerful, as well as the most Christian, thing Marcus had heard for many a long day. Of course the policeman spoke generally, knowing nothing of any particular mistake. Mr. Maitland hastened to say he was sorry he had troubled him, and the policeman very naturally said the trouble was to be Mr. Maitland’s. Marcus felt that acutely: there was no need to remind him of it.
“Now about the note—” began Marcus. Andthe genial policeman said: One would do, although he would not be refusing more, if Mr. Maitland should be feeling so disposed—and he put out his capacious hand.
Then Mr. Maitland grasped the fact that the honest policeman was open to a bribe, and he pressed into his hand a larger number of notes than the honest policeman had ever hoped to hold—in the cause of charity. It was a good charity and deserving—whatever! And the policeman left the presence of Mr. Maitland a happy man; and the other policeman left the presence of Diana a most unhappy man—deeply and, he believed, hopelessly in love.
When Marcus, making a final attempt, knocked at Diana’s door, he found it unlocked and a smothered voice told him to come in.
He went in. Diana was hidden under the bedclothes; she emerged at his urgent request. “Diana, my child, I am so sorry.”
He looked at her: she was one of those happy women, he thought, who can cry without its leaving any disfiguring trace.
“It was only my joke writing to the policeman,” he said, smiling as though asking pity for his simplicity.
“And it was only mine in sending for him.”
“Yousent for him?”
Diana nodded.
“But think of what Pillar must have thought!”
“Pillar knew—” said Diana; then, seeing Uncle Marcus’s look of astonishment, explained. “Pillar would no more think of sending for a policeman without asking me than he would think of spreading out your clothes without asking you—he is wonderful!—Pillar!”
Uncle Marcus looked at Diana—if her hair had been done in one pigtail instead of two, and her eyes had not been so innocent and truthful in their appeal, he would have been very, very angry. As it was he looked so kind that she ventured: “Mine wasn’t a real—policeman.”
“Not a real policeman? Then who was he?”
“Just a man staying at the Lodge up the river.”
“And I gave him ten pounds!”
“No, darling; that was to the real policeman who happened to come for a subscription. We changed policemen while you were upstairs asking my advice. You were upstairs with me while I was downstairs with two policemen: it all sounds rather muddling, but it’s really quite simple.”
“What an ass he must have thought me!” said Marcus, thinking of the real policeman.
“Oh, no; he just thought you were the English tenant of Glenbossie, that’s all.”
Marcus got up and, walking about the room,came to a standstill before a pile of things on the top of a chest of drawers. “What are these abominations?” he asked.
“The things I bought at the bazaar,” said Diana, disappearing under the bedclothes.
When Mrs. Scott met Marcus she said: “It was so good of him to subscribe so largely to their cottage hospital.” And Marcus said: “Not at all!”