CHAPTER XXXITWICE MARRIED
Now I have never to this day been able to make up my mind whether the Lady Kirkpatrick was really stirred with such anger as she pretended, whether she was only more than a little mad, or if all was done merely to break down Irma’s reserve by playing on her anger and pride.
If the last was the cause of my lady’s strange behaviour to us, it was shiningly successful.
“We will not go a step to find my Lady Frances,” said Irma when we were outside; “if she be so full of all the wisdoms, she would very likely try to separate us.”
And certainly it was noways my business to make any objections. So, hardly crediting my happiness, I went southwards over the Bridges, with Irma by my side, my heart beating so rarely that I declare I could hardly bethink me of a minister to make me sure of Irma before she had time to change her mind. As was usual at that hour at the Surgeon’s Hall, we met Freddy Esquillant coming from the direction of Simon Square. Him I sent off as quickly as he could to Rankeillor Street for Amelia Craven. I felt that this was no less than Amelia’s due, for many a time and oft must she have been wearied with my sighs and complaints—very suitable to the condition of a lover, but mightily wearisome to the listener.
Irma said nothing. She seemed to be walking in a dream, and hardly noticed Freddy—or yet the errand upon which I sent him.
It came to me that, as the matter was of thesuddenest, Amelia Craven might help us to find a small house of our own where we might set up our household gods—that is, when we got any.
An unexpected encounter preceded the one expected. I was marching along to our rendezvous with Freddy and Amelia at the crossing from Archers’ Hall to the Sciennes, when all of a sudden whom should we meet right in the face but my rosy-cheeked, bunchy little employer—my Lord Advocate in person, all shining as if he had been polished, his face smiling and smirking like a newly-oiled picture, and on his arm, but towering above him, a thin, dusky-skinned woman, plainly dressed, and with an enormous bonnet on her head, obviously of her own manufacture—a sort of tangle of black, brown and green which really had to be seen to be believed.
“Aha!” cried my Lord Advocate; “whither away, young sir? Shirking the proofs, eh, my lad? And may I have the honour to be presented to your sister from the country—for so, by her fresh looks, I divine the young lady to be.”
“If you will wait a few minutes till we can find a minister, I will say, ‘This, sir, is my wedded wife,’” I declared manfully.
“And is the young lady of the same mind?” quoth my Lord, with a quick, gleg slyness.
“I am, sir—if the business concerns you!” said Irma, looking straight at him.
“What, and dare you say that you will take a man like this for your wedded husband?” he demanded, with the swift up-and-down play of his bushy brows which was habitual to him.
“I see not what business it is of yours,” Irma answered, as sharply, “but I do take him for my husband.”
“There!” cried the lawyer, pulling out his snuffbox and tapping it vehemently, “it is done. I have performed my first marriage, and all the General Assembly, or the Gretna Green Welder himself, could not have done it neater or made a better job. Declaration before witnesses being sufficient in the eye of the law of Scotland, I declare you two man and wife!”
Irma looked distressed.
“But I do not feel in the least married,” she said; “I must have a minister!”
“You can have all the ministers in Edinburgh, my lass, but you have been duly wedded already in the presence of the first legal authority of your kingdom, not to mention that of the Lady Frances Kirkpatrick——”
“My aunt Frances, after all!” cried Irma, suddenly flushing.
“Who may you be?” said the tall lady, with the face like sculptured gingerbread.
“Whowasshe, you mean, my Lady Frances?” said the Advocate blandly, helping himself to a pinch of snuff. “I can tell you who she is—Mrs. Duncan MacAlpine, wife of my private assistant and the sub-editor of theUniversal Review.”
It was the first time he had given me that title, which pleased me, and led me to hope that he meant to accompany the honour by a rise in salary.
“I am—I was—Irma Sobieski Maitland,” the answer was rather halting and faint, for Irma was easily touched, and it was only when much provoked that she put on her “No-one-shall-touch-me-with-impunity” air.
“If the bride be at all uneasy in her mind,” said the Lord Advocate, “here we are at Mr. Dean’s door. I dare say he will step down-stairs into the chapel andput on his surplice. From what I judge of the lady’s family, she will probably have as little confidence in a Presbyterian minister as in a Presbyterian Lord Advocate!”
Freddy and Amelia were waiting across the street. I beckoned to them, and they crossed reluctantly, seeing us talking with my Lord Advocate, whom, of course, all the world of Edinburgh knew. I was not long in making the introductions.
“Miss Craven, late of Yorkshire, and Mr. Frederick Esquillant, assistant to Professor Greg at the College.”
“Any more declarations before witnesses to-day?” said my Lord, looking quaintly at them. “Ah—the crop is not ripe yet. Well, well—we must be content for one day.”
And he vanished into a wide, steeply-gabled house, standing crushed between higher “lands.”
“The Dean will officiate, never fear,” said Lady Frances. “So you have been staying with my sister, and of course she turned you out. Well, she sent you to me, I’ll wager, and you were on your way. You could not have done better than come direct to me.”
“Indeed it was quite an accident,” said Irma, who never would take credit for what she had not deserved; “you see, I did not know you, and I thought that one like my Lady Kirkpatrick was quite enough——”
“Hush, hush,” said the tall brown woman; “perhaps she means better than you give her credit for. She is a rich woman, and can afford to pay for her whimsies. Be sure she meant some kindness. But, at any rate, here comes the Advocate with our good Dean.”
We mounted into a curiously arranged house. At first one saw nothing but flights on flights of stairs,range above range apparently going steeply up to the second floor, without any first floor rooms at all.
Mr. Dean was a handsome old man with white hair, and he took our hands most kindly.
“My friend here,” he said, smiling at my Lord Advocate, “tells me that he has not left very much for me to do from a legal point of view. But I look upon marriage as a sacrament, and though the bridegroom is not, as I hear, of our communion, I have no difficulty in acceding to the request of my Lord—especially since our good Lady Frances has deigned to be present as a near relative of the bride.”
He called something into a sort of stone tube. Then bidding us to be seated, he went into another room to array himself in his surplice, from which, presently, he came out, holding a service-book in his hand.
We followed him down-stairs—I with Lady Frances on my arm, the Lord Advocate preceding us with Irma, whom he was to give away. He appeared to take quite a boyish interest in the whole affair, from which I augured the best for our future.
We were rather hampered at the turning of the stair, and had to drop into single file again, when Irma clutched suddenly at my hand, and in the single moment we had together in the dusk, she whispered, “Oh, I am so glad!”
Lady Frances told me as we passed into the little half-underground chapel, low and barrel-shaped as to the roof, with the candles ready alight on the altar, that all this secrecy had come down from the time when the service according to the Episcopal form had been strictly forbidden in Edinburgh—at least in any open way.
I cannot describe what followed. I must have stood like a dummy, muttering over what I was promptedto say. But the responses came to Irma’s lips as if she had many times rehearsed them—which perhaps was the case—I know now that she had always kept her father’s King Edward prayer-book, and read it when alone. We stood by the rails of what I now know to have been the altar. All about was hung with deep crimson, and the heavy curtains were looped back with golden cord. A kind of glory shone behind the altar, in the midst of which appeared, in Hebrew letters, the name of God. Irma, who was far more self-possessed than I, found time to wonder and even to ask me what it meant. And I, translating freely (for I had picked up somewhat of that language from Freddy Esquillant), said, “Thou, God, seest me.”
Which, at any rate, if not exactly correct, was true and apt enough.
“Well, are you well married now, babes?” said the Advocate, and I tried to answer him as we made our way to the vestry—I stumbling and self-abased, Irma with the certainty and calmness of a widow at least thrice removed from the first bashfulness of a bride.
We signed the register, in which (the Advocate took care to inform us) were some very distinguished names indeed. Which, however, was entirely the same to me.
Then as I thanked Mr. Dean for his kindness, not daring to offer any poor fee, the Advocate chatted with Amelia Craven with great delicacy and understanding, inquiring chiefly as to Freddy’s attainments and prospects.
But what was my surprise when, as soon as we were on the cobble stones, the Lady Frances turned sharply upon Irma, and said, quite in the style of my Lady Kirkpatrick, “And now, Irma Maitland, since your husband has no house or any place to take you to,you had better come to my house in the Sciennes till he can make proper arrangements. It is not at all suitable that a Maitland should be on a common stair like a travelling tinker looking for lodgings.”
Hearing which the neat, shining, dimpling little Advocate turned his bright eyes from one to the other of us, and tapped his tortoise-shell snuffbox with a kind of elvish joy. It was clear that we were better than many stage-plays to him.
As for Irma, she looked at me, but now sweetly and innocently, as if asking for counsel, not haughty or disdainful as had been her wont. The accusation of poverty touched me, and I was on the point of telling her to choose for herself, that I would find her a house as soon as possible, when Amelia Craven thrust herself forward.
Up to this point she had kept silent, a little awed by the great folk, or perhaps by the church, with the red hangings and twinkling, mysterious candles on the altar.
“I do not know a great deal,” she said, “but this I do know, that a wife’s place is with her husband—and especially when the ‘love, honour and obey’ is hardly out of her mouth. She shall come home to my mother’s with me, even if Duncan MacAlpine there has not enough sense to bid her.”
Upon which the Advocate strove (or at least appeared to strive) to please everybody and put everybody in the right. It was perhaps natural that, till arrangements were completed, so young a bride should remain with her family. But, on the other hand, young people could not begin too soon to face the inevitable trials of life. The feelings of the young lady who had expressed her mind in so lively a manner—Miss—Miss—ah yes, Craven—Miss AmeliaCraven—did her all honour. It only remained to hear the decision of—of (a smirk, several dimples and a prolonged tapping on the lid of his snuffbox)—Mistress Duncan MacAlpine.
“I will go with my husband,” said Irma simply.
“There’s for you, Frances!” cried the Advocate, turning to his companion with a little teasing “hee-hee” of laughter, almost like the neigh of a horse; “there spoke all the woman.”
But Lady Frances had very deliberately turned about and was walking, without the least greeting or farewell, in the direction of her own house of Sciennes.
“There goes a Kirkpatrick,” said the Advocate, tapping his box cynically; “cry with them, they will hunt your enemies till they drop. Cry off with them, and it’s little you will see of them but the back of their hand.”
He touched my Irma on her soft cheek with the tips of his fingers. “And I wish, for your goodman’s sake,” he said, “that this little lady’s qualities do not run in the female line.”
“I hope,” said Irma, “that I shall always have grace to obey my husband.”
“Graces you have—overly many of them, as it is easy to see,” quoth the gallant Advocate, taking off his hat and bowing low, “but it is seldom indeed that ladies use either Grace or their graces for such a purpose!”
CHAPTER XXXIITHE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE MEADOWS
Irma and I had a great seeking for the little house, great enough for two, with such convenience as, at the time, could be called modern, and yet within reach of our very moderate means. First of all Freddy and I had gone to the Nun’s House to ask for Irma’s box and accoutrement. These made no great burden. Nevertheless, we borrowed a little “hurley,” or handcart, from the baker’s girl opposite, who certainly bore no malice. I had our marriage lines in my pocket, lest any should deny my rights. But though we did not see the Lady Kirkpatrick, the goods were all corded and placed ready behind the door of the porter’s lodge. We had them on the “hurley” in a minute. The Lady Frances passed in as we were carrying out the brass-bound trunk of Irma’s that had been my grandmother’s. She went by as if she had not seen us, her curiously mahogany face more of thepunchinellotype than ever—yet somehow I could not feel but that most of this anger was assumed. These women had shown Irma no kindness, indeed had never troubled themselves about her existence, all the long time she had stayed at Heathknowes. Why, then, begin so suddenly to play upon the sounding strings of family and long descent?
Indeed, we two thought but little more about the matter. Our minds were fully enough occupied. The wonder of those new days—the unexpected, unforeseen glory of the earth—the sudden sweetness of love,unbelievable, hardly yet realized, overwhelmed and confounded us.
And, more than all, there was the search for a house. The Advocate met me every day with his queer smile, but though he put my salary on a more secure basis, and arranged that in future I should be paid by the printer and not by himself, the sum total of my income was not materially altered.
“What’s enough for one is abundance for two!” was his motto. And the aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became one learned in the law.
“I began the same way myself,” he said, “and though I have a bigger house now and serving men in kneebreeks and powder in their hair, I never go by that cottage out by Comely Bank without a ‘pitter-patter’ of my sinful old heart!”
He thought for a while, and then added, “Aye, aye—there’s no way for young folk to start life like being poor and learning to hain on the gowns and the broadcloth! What matter the trimmings, when ye have one another?”
As to the house, it was naturally Irma who did most of the searching. For me, I had to be early at the secretary’s office, and often late at the printer’s. But there was always some time in the day that I had to myself—could I only foresee it before I left home in the morning. “Home” was, so far, at Mrs. Craven’s, where the good Amelia had given us up her chamber, and Freddy rose an hour earlier, so that his wall-press bed might be closed and the “room” made ready for Irma’s breakfast parlour.
All the three begged that we might stay on. We were, they declared with one voice, not putting themto the smallest inconvenience. But I knew different, and besides, I had a constant and consuming desire for a house of mine own, however small.
Ever since I first knew Irma, a dream had haunted me. In days long past it had come, when I was only an awkward laddie gazing after her on the Eden Valley meadows. Often it had returned to me during the tedious silences of three years—when, quite against the proverb, love had grown by feeding upon itself.
And my dream was this.
I was in a great city, harassed by many duties, troubled by enemies open and concealed. There was the drear emptiness of poverty in my pocket, present anxiety in my heart, and little hope in the outlook. But I had work—I did not know in my dream what that work was—only that it sufficed to keep body and soul together, but after it was done I was weak and weary, a kind of unsatisfied despondency gnawing at my heart.
Then I got loose for an hour or so from my unknown tasks. My path lay across a kind of open place into which many narrow streets ran, while some dived away into the lower deeps of the city. People went their ways as I was doing mine, dejected and sad. But always, as I crossed toward the opening of a wide new street, where against the sky were tall scaffoldings and men busy with hod and mortar, I saw Irma coming towards me. She was neat and youthful, but dressed poorly in plain things—homespun, and in my dream, I judged, also home-made.
I saw her afar off, and the heart within me gave a great leap. She came towards me smiling, and lo! I seemed to stand still and worship the lithe carriage and elastic step. The world grew all sweet and gay. The lift above became blue and high. The sun shoneno longer grey and brown, but smiling and brilliant—as—as the face of Irma.
Strangely enough she did not greet me nor hold out her hand as acquaintances do. She came straight up to me as if the encounter were the merest matter-of-course, while as I stood there, with the hunger and the wretchedness all gone out of me, the weariness and misery melted in the grace of that radiant smile, she uttered just these words, “I have found the Little House Round the Corner!”
Now I will tell of a strange thing—so strange that I have consulted Irma about it, whether I should write it down here or keep it just for ourselves.
And she said, “It is true—so why not set it down?” Well, this is what happened. One day I had arranged to meet Irma at the corner of the quaint little village of Laurieston, which, as all the world knows, looks down on the saughs of the Meadows and out upon the slopes of Bruntsfield where, among the whins, the city golfers lose their balls.
At that time, as all the world knows, there was undertaken a certain work of opening out that part of the ancient wall which runs westward from Bristo Port at the head of the Potter Row. Some great old houses had gone down, and I mind well that I was greatly attracted by the first view of the Greyfriars Kirk that ever I had from that quarter. (It was soon lost again behind new constructions, but for a time it was worth seeing, with its ancient “through” stones, and the Martyrs’ Monument showing its bossy head over the low wall.)
So much taken up with this was I, that I did not notice the altered aspect of the place. Yet I looked about me like one who is suddenly confronted by something very familiar. There was the wide space.There were the narrow streets I knew so well. Yonder was the Candlemaker Row diving down into the bowels of the earth. Away towards the Greyfriars were the tall “lands” which the masons were pulling down. Nearer were men climbing up ladders with hods on their shoulders. Highest of all, against the blue sky, naked as a new gibbet, stood out the framework of a crane.
It was the very place of my dream. I knew it well enough, indeed, but never until that day it had looked so. And there, coming smiling down the midst, easily as one might down the aisle of an empty church, was Irma herself, as plain and poor in habiliment as my dream, but smiling—ah, with a smile that turned all my heart to water, so dear it was. It was good of God to let us love each other like that—and be poor.
And as she came nearer, she did not hold out her hand, nor greet me—but when she was quite close she said, exactly as in the dream, “I have found the Little House round the Corner!” Yet she had never heard of my dream before.
That this is true, we do solemnly bear witness, each for our own parts, thereof, and hereto append our names—
Duncan MacAlpine.Irma MacAlpine.
Irma had found it, indeed, but as I judged at the first sight of the house, it was bound to be too expensive for our purses. I immediately decided that something must be wrong somewhere, when I heard that we could have this pleasant cottage with its scrap of garden, long and narrow certainly, but full of shade and song of birds, for the inconsiderable rent of ten pounds a year. We thought of many dangers andinconveniences, but Irma was infinitely relieved when it came out to be only ghosts. Servants, it appeared, could not be got to stay.
“Is that all?” said Irma scornfully. “Well, then, I don’t mean to keep any servants, and as for ghosts, Louis and I have lived in a big house in a wood full of them from cellar to roof-tree! You let ghosts alone, they will let you alone! ‘Freits follow them that look for them!”
CHAPTER XXXIIIAND THE DOOR WAS SHUT
We were poor, very poor indeed in these days. Irma had many a wrinkled brow and many an anxious heart over the weekly expenses—so much to be set aside for rent, so much for mysterious things called taxes—which, seeing no immediate good arise from them, my little rebel hated with all her heart, and devised all sorts of schemes to evade.
But every week there was the joy of a victory won. Untoward circumstances had been vanquished—the butcher, the baker had been settled with or—done without. For sometimes Amelia Craven came to give us a day’s baking, and an array of fragrant scones and girdle-cakes, which I was taken into the kitchen to see on my return home, gave us the assurance of not having to starve for many days yet.
I was glad, too, for it was my busy season, and I had to be much from home. There was, indeed, a certain nondescript Mistress McGrier, who came to help with the heavier duties of the house. She was the daughter of one janitor at the college, the wife of yet another (presently suspended for gross dereliction of duty), and she did some charing to earn an honest penny. But there was little human to be found about her. Whisky, poor food, neglect, and actual ill treatment had left her mind after the pattern of her countenance, mostly blank. Yet I was not sorry when she stayed, especially as the autumnal days shortened, till near the time of my return. Mrs. McGrier frankly tarried for her tea, and her conversation was notenlivening, since she could talk of little save her sorrows as a wife, and how she was trusting to some one in the office (meaning me) for the future reinstatement of her erring janitor.
Sometimes, on Sundays, she would bring him, as it were framed and glazed to a painful pitch of perfection. His red hair was plastered with pomatum, identical with that which had been used upon his boots. Janitor McGrier had been a soldier, and always moved as if to words of command unheard to other mortals. If he had only two yards to go, he started as if from the halt. His pale blue eyes were fixed in his head, and he chewed steadily at lozenges of peppermint or cinnamon to hide the perfume of the glass of “enlivener” with which his wife had bribed him as an argument for submitting to get up and be dressed.
It was only on such show occasions that Mrs. McGrier was voluble. And that, solely, because “Pathrick” said nothing. Even as I remembered him in the days of his pride at the door of the Greek classroom, Pathrick had always possessed the shut mouth, the watery, appealing eye, and the indicative thumb which answered the question of a novice only with a quick jerk in the requisite direction.
I think Pathrick sometimes conceived dark suspicions that I had changed Irma in the intervals of his visits. You see, this small witch had but two dresses that were any way respectable—that is to say, street-going or Sabbath-keeping. But then she had naturally such an instinct of arrangement that a scrap of ribbon, or the lace scarf my grandmother had given her, made so great a difference that she seemed to have an entire wardrobe at her command. No doubt a woman would have picked out the fundamental sameness at a glance.But it did very well for men, who only care for the effect.
Even the Advocate would look in on his way to or from the Sciennes for a cup of tea from Irma. And in our little parlour he would sit and rap on his snuffbox, talking all the while, and forgetting to go till it was dark—as gentle and human as any common man.
When Freddy and Amelia Craven came in he would give the student advice about his work, or ask Amelia when she was going to call in his assistance to get married—which was his idea of jocularity, and, I must admit, also, that of Amelia. Indeed, we were wonderfully glad to see him, and he brightened many a dull afternoon for Irma.
Sometimes, if I got away early, I would find him already installed, his hat stuck on his gold-headed cane in the corner—as it were, all his high authority laid aside, while he regarded with moist eyes the work-basket in which Irma kept her interminable scraplets of white things which I would not have meddled with the tip of one of my fingers, but which the Advocate turned over with an ancient familiarity, humming a tune all the while—a tune, however, apt to break off suddenly with a “Humph,” and an appeal to the much-enduring lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox.
But I think the dearest and best remembered of all these early experiences happened one winter’s evening in the midst of the press and bustle which always attended the opening of the autumn session. The winter number of theUniversalwas almost due, and we were backward, having had to wait for the copy of an important contributor, whose communication, in the present state of affairs, might even overturn a policy—or, at least, in the opinion of the Advocate, could not be done without. I need not say that thearticle in question represented his own views with remarkable exactitude, and he looked to it to further his rising influence in London. As he grew greater, he was more often in the south, and we saw less and less of him. On the other hand, the practical work of theReviewfell more and more upon me.
So this night, as I say, I was late, and on turning out into the south-going street which leads past the Surgeons’ Hall and St. Patrick’s Square—my mind being busy with an extra article which I must write to give our readers the necessary number of sheets—for the first and certainly for the last time in my life I continued my train of thought without remembering either that I was a married man, or that my little Irma must be tired waiting for me.
In mitigation of sentence I can only urge the day-long preoccupations in which I had been plunged, and the article, suddenly become necessary, which I must begin to write instanter. But at any rate, excuse or no excuse, it is certain that I woke from my daydream to find myself in Rankeillor Street, almost at the foot of the old Craven stairs which, as a bachelor, I had climbed so often.
Then, with a sudden shamed leap of the heart and a plunge of the hand into my breeches pocket for my door key, I turned about. I had forgotten, though only for a moment, the little wife working among her cloud of feathery linen and trimmings, and the little white house round the corner above the Meadows. You may guess whether or no I hurried along between ash “backets” of the most unparklike Gifford Park, how sharply I turned and scudded along Hope Park, dodging the clothes’ posts to the right, from which prudent housewives had removed the ropes with the deepening of the twilight.
The dark surface of the Meadows spread suddenly before me in an amplitude of bleakness. A thin, sleety scuff of passing snow-cloud beat in my face. A tall man wrapped in a cloak edged suspiciously nearer as if to take stock of me, but my haste, and perhaps a certain wildness in the disorder of my dress and hat made him think better of it—that is, if indeed he ever thought ill of it—and with a muttered “Good-e’en to ye,” he passed upon his way.
I could see it now. The light in the window, the two candles that were always set at the elbow of the busy little housewife, the supper, frugal but well-considered, simmering on the hob, the table spread white and dainty, with knives and forks of silver (the Advocate’s gift) laid out in order.
Then all the warm and loving things that sleep in the breast of a man rose up within me. The long, weary day was forgotten. The article I must write was shoved into a corner out of the way. For this one hour, in spite of whistling wintry winds and scouring sleet-drifts, the little light yonder in the window was sufficient.
Two farthing dips, a hearth fire, and a loving heart! Earth had nothing more to give, and my spirit seemed glorified within me. I had a curious feeling of melting within me, which was by no means a desire to weep, but rather as if all the vital parts of the man I was had been suddenly turned to warm water. I cannot tell if any one has ever felt the like before, but certainly I did that night, and “warm water” comes as near to the real thing as I can find words to express.
It seemed an age while I was crossing the short, stubbly grass of the Meadows. The light within beaconed redder and warmer. On the window-blind I saw a gracious silhouette. Then there was theputting aside the edge of the blind with exploring finger—sure sign that my little wife had been regarding the clock and finding me a little late in getting home.
As I ran up the short path to the gate I blew into my key. The latch of the garden-gate clicked in the blast which swept across from the Blackfords. But there at last before me was the door. The key glided, well-accustomed, into its place, not rattling, but with the slide of long-polished and intimate steel—soft, like silk on silk.
But the key never turned. The door opened, seemingly of itself, and, gloriously loving, a candle held high in her hand, her full, white house-gown sweeping to her feet, the little wife stood waiting.
I said nothing about the overplus of work that had filled my head as I turned from the high, bleak portals of the University—nothing of how, all unknowing, my traitor feet had carried me to the stairway in Rankeillor Street—nothing of the long way, or the suspicious man in the cloak, of the blast and the bent and the sting of the sleet in my face.
I was at home, just she and I—the two of us alone. And upon us two the door was shut.
CHAPTER XXXIVA VISIT FROM BOYD CONNOWAY
“I wonder,” said Irma one Saturday morning when, by a happy accident, I had no pressing need to go from home, so could stay and linger over breakfast with my little wife like a Christian, “I wonder what that man is doing down there? He has been sitting on the step outside our gate ever since it was light, and he looks as if he were taking root there!”
I made but one bound from the table to the window. For I remembered the cloaked man who had crossed me in the Meadows the other night. Also my inbred, almost instinctive curiosity as to the purposes and antecedents of lurking folk of all kinds, pricked me. We were easy enough to get on with in Eden Valley once you knew us, but our attitude towards strangers was distinctly hostile.
This man was muffled to the nose in a cloak, and might very well have been my inquiring friend of the other night. But when I had opened the door and marched with the firm ringing steps of a master down the paven walk towards the gate, the face I saw turned to my approach, altered my mood in a second.
“Why, Boyd Connoway,” I cried, “who would have thought of seeing you here? What are you doing in Edinburgh? But first come in—there is a friend here who will be glad to see you!”
“Eh, Mr. Duncan, but I am not sure that I dare venture. ’Tis no more than decent I am, and the young lady, your wife—oh, but though to see her sweet face would be a treat for poor Boyd Connoway,what might she not be sayin’ about me dirtying her carpets, the craitur? And as for sittin’ in her fine arm-chairs——”
“Come your ways in, Boyd,” I cried. “Have you had any breakfast? No—then you are just in time! And you will find that our chairs are only wood, and you would not hurt our fine carpets, not if you danced on them with clogs!”
“D’ye tell me, now?” said Boyd, much relieved. “Sure, and it’s a told tale through the whole parish that you are livin’ in the very lap of luxury—with nothing in the world to do for it but just make scratch-scratches on paper with a quill-pen!”
By this time Irma was at the door, hiding herself a little, for she had still the morning apron on—that in which she had been helping Mrs. Pathrick. But she was greatly delighted to see Boyd, who, if the truth must be told, made his best service like an Irishman and a gentleman—for, as he said, “Even five-and-thirty years of Galloway had not wiped the sclate of his manners!”
Now Boyd was always a favourite with Irma, and I fear that she was fonder of him than she ought to have been, instead of pitying his hard-driven Bridget—just because Bridget had not his beautiful manners. Presently, as his mouth ceased to fill and empty itself so wonderfully expeditiously, Boyd began to talk.
“As to what fetched me, Miss Irma,” he said, in answer to questions, “faith, I walked all the road, taking many a house on the way where kenned folk dwelt. Here were pigs to kill and cure. And I killed and cured them. Farther on there were floors to lay, and I laid them, or fish-hooks to busk, and I busked them.”
I put a question here.
“Oh, Bridget,” he said, shrugging his shoulders with a wearied air, “Bridget doesn’t know when she’s well off. Och, the craitur! It began with the night of the September Fair. Now, it is known to all the countryside that Boyd Connoway is no drinker. He will sit and talk, as is just and sociable, but nothing more. No, Miss Irma. And so I told Bridget. But it so chanced that Fair Monday was a stormy day, which is the most temptatious for poor lads in from the country, with only two holidays in the year, most of them. And what with the new watch and the councilmen being so strict against disorder—why, I could not let a dog get into trouble if I could help it. So I spent the most of the night seeing them home out of harm’s way—and if ever there was a work of necessity and mercy, that was.
“But Bridget, she thought different, and declared that I had never so much as thought of her and the childer all day, but left her at the wash-tub, while they, the poor craiturs, were poppin’ out and in of the stalls and crawlin’ under the slatting canvas of the shows, as happy as larks, having their fun all for nothing, and double rations of it when they were caught, cuffed, and chased out. Well, Bridget kept it up on me so long and got so worked up that she would not have a bite ready for me when I came home tired and weary, bidding me go and eat my meat where I had worked my work. So it seemed a good time for me to be off somewhere for my health. But—such was my consideration, that not to leave Bridget in distress I went asking about till I got her the washin’ at General Johnstone’s—the minister’s she had before—so there was Bridget well provided for, Miss Irma—and here am I, Boyd Connoway, a free man on my travels!”
We asked news of friends and acquaintances—the usual Galloway round of questions.
“Faith,” said Boyd, “but there’s just one cry among them—when are ye coming down to let us have a look at your treasure, Mister Duncan? Sure, it’s selfish ye are, now, to keep her all this long time to yourself! The little chap’s holidays! Ah, true for you. We had forgotten him. And ye are sure that he is well done to, and safely lodged where they have put him, Miss Irma?”
“If you bide a minute or two, Boyd,” said Irma, smiling, well-pleased, “you may very likely have the chance of judging for yourself. For it is almost his time to be here, for to-day is a holiday!”
In fact, it was not a quarter of an hour before a shout, the triumphal opening of the outer gate with a rush and a clang, and a merciless pounding on the front door announced the arrival of Sir Louis. He had grown out of all knowledge, declared the visitor, “but no doubt the young gentleman had forgotten old Boyd Connoway.”
“Oh, no,” said Louis; “come and show me some more cat’s cradles; I know two more ‘liftings’ already than any boy in the school. Butyoucan do at least a dozen!”
And so, with the woven string about his long clever fingers, Louis watched the deft and sure manipulation of Boyd Connoway as he “lifted” and wove, changing the pattern indefinitely. For the time being the village “do-nothing”—in the sense that he was the busiest man in the place about other folk’s business—was merely another boy at Louis’s school. And as he worked, he talked, delightfully, easily, dramatically. He made the old life of Eden Valley pass before us. We heard the brisk tongue of my grandmother fromthe kitchen, that of Aunt Jen ruling as much of the roost as was permitted to her, but constantly made aware of herself by her mother’s dominating personality.
With equal facility he recalled my father in his classes, looking out for collegers to do him credit, my mother passing silently along her retired household ways, Agnes Anne dividing her time between helping her mother in the house, and teaching the classes for which I used to be responsible in the school.
It was a memorable day in the little house above the Meadows. Louis played with Boyd Connoway all the time, learning infinite new tricks with string, with knife-blades, perfecting himself in the art of making fly-hooks, of kite manufacture, and the art of lighting a fire.
He had presented to him Boyd’s spare “sulphur” box, in which were tinder, flint and steel, matches dipped in brimstone, and a pair of short thick candles which could be set one at a time in a socket formed by the box itself, the raised lid sheltering the flame from the wind.
Never was a happier boy. And when the Advocate looked in, the surprising boyishness of Boyd rubbed off even on him. We did not inform our old friend of the high place which “the Advocate” held in the judicial hierarchy of his country. For we knew well that nothing Boyd said in our house would ever be used as evidence against him.
But no doubt my lord gained a great deal of useful information as to the habits of smugglers, their cargoes, destinations, ports of call and sympathizers. Boyd crowned his performances by inviting the Advocate down to undertake the defence of the next set of smugglers tried at the assizes, a task which the Advocateaccepted with apparent gratitude and humility. For from the little man’s snuff-taking and easy-going, idling ways, Boyd had taken him for a briefless advocate.
“Faith, sir, come to Galloway,” he cried open-heartedly—“there’s the place to provide work for the like of you lads. And it’s Boyd Connoway will introduce you to all the excise-case defendants from Annan Port to Loch Ryan. It’s him that knows every man and mother’s son of them! And who, if ye plaise, has a better right?”
CHAPTER XXXVTHE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
“The strongest mental tonic in the world is solitude, but it takes a strong mind, fully equipped with thoughts, aims, work, to support it long without suffering. But once a man has made his best companion of his own mind, he has learned the secret of living.”
So I had written in an essay on Senancour during the days when the little white house was but a dream, and Irma had never come to me across the cleared space in front of Greyfriars Kirk amid the thud of mallets and the “chip” of trowels. But Irma taught me better things. She knew when to be silent. She understood, also, when speech would slacken the tension of the mind. As I sat writing by the soft glow of the lamp I could hear the rustle of her house-dress, the sharp, almost inaudible,tick-tickof her needle, and the soft sound as she smoothed out her seam. Little things that happen to everybody, but—well, I for one had never noticed them before.
It seemed as if this period of contentment would always continue. The present was so good that, save a little additional in the way of income, I asked for no better.
But one day the Advocate rudely shook my equanimity.
“You must have some of your family—some good woman—to be with Irma. Write at once!”
I could only look at him in amazement.
“Why, Irma is very well,” I said; “she never looked better in her life.”
“My boy,” said the Advocate, laying his hand gently on my arm, “I have loved a wife, and I have lost a wife who loved me; I do not wish to stand by and let you do the same for the want of a friend’s word. Write to-night!”
And he turned on his heel and marched off. At twenty steps’ distance he turned. “Duncan,” he said, “we will need all your time at theReview; you had better give up the Secretary’s office. I have spoken to Morrison about it. I shall be so much in London for a year or two that you will be practically in charge. We will get a smart young colleger to take your place.”
That night I wrote to my Aunt Janet. It was after Irma, fatigued more easily than was usual with her, had gone to bed. Four days afterwards, I was looking over some manuscript sheets which that day had to go to the printer. Mistress Pathrick, who had just arrived to prepare the breakfast (I had lit the kitchen fire when I got up), burst in upon me with the announcement that there was “sic a gathering o’ folk” at the door, and a “great muckle owld woman coming in!”
I hastened down, and there in the little lobby stood—my grandmother. She was arrayed in her oldest black bombazine. A travel-crushed beaver bonnet was clapped tightly on her head. The black velvet band about her white hair had slipped down and now crossed her brow transversely a little above one bushy eyebrow, giving an inconceivably rakish appearance to her face. She held a small urchin, evidently from the Grassmarket or the Cowgate, firmly by the cuff of his ragged jacket. She was threatening him with her great blue umbrella.
“If ye hae led me astray, ye skirmishing blastie, I’ll let ye ken the weight o’ this!”
The youth was guarding himself with one hand and declaring alternately that, “This is the hoose, mem,” and, “I want my saxpence!”
A little behind two sturdy porters, laden with a box apiece, blocked up the doorway, and loomed large across the garden.
“Eh, Duncan, but this is an awesome place,” cried my grandmother. “So many folk, and it’s pay this, and so much for that! It’s a fair disgrace. There’s no man in Eden Valley that wadna hae been pleased to gie me a lift from the coach wi’ my bit boxes. But here, certes, it’s sae muckle for liftin’ them up and sae muckle more for settin’ them doon, and to crown a’ a saxpence to a laddie for showin’ me the road to your house! It’s a terrible difference to Heathknowes, laddie. Now, I wadna wonder if ye hae to pay for your very firewood!”
I assured her that we had neither peat nor woodcutting privileges on the Meadows, and to change the subject asked her if she would not go up and see Irma.
“A’ in guid time,” she said. “I hae a word or two to ask ye first, laddie. No that muckle is to be expected o’ a man that wad write to puir Janet Lyon instead o’ tome, Duncan MacAlpine!”
As I did not volunteer anything, she exclaimed, stamping her foot, “Dinna stand there glowering at me. Man alive, Duncan lad, ye can hae no idea how like an eediot ye can look when ye put your mind to it!”
I had been reared in the knowledge that it was a vain thing to argue with my grandmother, so I listened patiently to all she had to say, and I answered, to the best of my ability, all the questions she asked. Most she seemed to have no need to ask at all, for she knew the answers before they were out of my mouth,and paid no attention to my words when I did get in a word.
“Humph, you are stupider than most men, and that’s saying no trifle!” was her comment when all was finished.
I asked Mary Lyon if there was nothing I could do to assist her—help with her unpacking, or any trifle like that.
“Aye, there is,” she answered, with her old verve, “get out o’ the house, man, and leave me to my work while you do yours.”
I took my hat, the cane which the Advocate had given me, and with them my way to the office of theUniversal Review.I had a busy day, which perhaps was as well, for all the time my mind was wandering disconsolate about the little white house above the Meadows.
I returned to find all well, my supper laid in the kitchen and the contents of grandmother’s trunks apparently filling the rest of the house. Irma gave me a little, perfunctory kiss; said, “Oh, if you could only——!” and so vanished to where my grandmother was unfolding still more things and other treasures to the rustle of fine tissue paper, and the gasps and little hand-clappings of Irma.
Those who know my grandmother do not need to be told that she took possession of our house and all that was therein, of Irma so completely that practically I was only allowed to bid my wife “Good-morning” under the strictest supervision, and of Mistress Pathrick—who, after one sole taste of my grandmother’s tongue, had retired defeated with the muttered criticism that “that tongue o’ the auld leddy’s could ding a’ the Luckenbooths—aye, and the West Bow as weel.” However, once subjected, she proved a kindlyand a willing slave. I have, however, my suspicions that in these days Mr. Pathrick McGrier, ex-janitor of the Latin classroom, had but a poor time of it so far as the preparation of his meals went, and as to housekeeping she was simply not there.
For she slept now under the stairs in a lair she had rigged up for herself, which she said was “rale comfortable,” but certainly to the unaccustomed had an air of great stuffiness.
But I need not write at large what, after all, is no unique experience. One night, upon my grandmother’s pressing invitation, I walked out on Bruntsfield Links, and kicked stones into the golfers’ holes for something to do. It was full moon, I remember, and away to the north the city slept while St. Giles jangled fitfully. I had come there to be away from the little white house, where Irma was passing through the first peril of great waters which makes women’s faces different ever after—a few harder, most softer, none ever the same.
Ten times I came near, stumbling on the short turf, my feet numb and uncertain beneath me, my limbs flageolating, and my heart rent with a man’s helplessness. I called upon God as I had not done in my life before. I had been like many men—so long as I could help myself, I saw no great reason for troubling the Almighty who had already so much on His hands. But now I could do nothing. I had an appalling sense of impotence. So I remembered that He was All-powerful, and just because I had never asked anything with true fervour before, He would the more surely give this to me. So at least I argued as I prayed.
And, sure enough, the very next time I coasted the northern shore of the Meadows, as near as I dared,there came one running towards me, clear in the moonlight—Mistress Pathrick it was and no other.
“A laddie—a fine laddie!” she panted, waving both her hands in her enthusiasm.
“And Irma?” I cried, for that did not interest me at that moment, no, not a pennyworth.
“A bhoy—as foine a bhoy——”
“Tell me, how is Irma?” I shouted—“quick!”
“Wud turn the scale at eleven, divil a ounce less——”
“Woman, tell me how is my wife!” I thundered, lifting up my hands, “or I’ll twist your foolish neck!”
“Keep us!” said Mrs. Pathrick, “why, how should she be? Did ye expect she would be up and bating the carpets?”
In half-a-dozen springs, as it seemed, I was within the gate. Then the clear, shrill wail with which a new soul prisoned in an unfamiliar body trumpets its discontent with the vanities of this world stopped me dead. Scarce knowing what I did, I took off my boots. I trod softly.
There was a hush now in the house—a sudden stoppage of that shrill bugle-note. I came upon my grandmother, as it seemed, moulding a little ruddy bundle, with as much apparent ease and absence of fuss as if it had been a pat of butter in the dairy at home.
And when she put my firstborn son into my arms, I had no high thoughts. I trembled, indeed, but it was with fear lest I should drop him.
Presently his nurse took him again, grumbling at the innate and incurable handlessness of men. Could I see Irma? Certainly not. What would I be doing, disturbing the poor thing? Very likely she was asleep. Oh, I had promised to go, had I? Well,she had nothing to do with that. But Irma would be expecting me! Oh, as to that, lad, lad, do not trouble yourself. She will be resting in a peace like the peace of the Lord, as you might know, if ever a man could know anything about such things.
Just for a minute? Well, then—a minute, and no more. Mind, she, Mary Lyon, would be at the door. I was not to speak even.
As I went in, Irma lifted her arms a little way and then let them fall. There was a kind of shiny dew on her face, little but chill to the touch of my lips. And, ah, how wistful her smile!
“Your ... little ... girl,” she whispered, “has deserved ... well ... of her country. I hope he will be brave ... like his father. I prayed all might be well ... for your sake, my dear. His name is to be Duncan.... Yes, Duncan Louis Maitland!”
I had been kneeling at the bedside, kneeling and, well—perhaps sobbing. But at that moment I felt a hand on my collar. The next I was on my feet, and so, with only one glimpse of Irma’s smile at my fate, I found myself outside the room.
“What was it I telled ye?—Not to excite her! Was it no?”
And Mary Lyon showed me the way down to the kitchen, which I had forgotten, where, on condition of not making a noise, I was to be permitted for the present to abide.
“But mind you,” she added, threateningly, “not a foot-sole are ye to set on thae stairs withoot my permission. Or, my certes, lad, but ye will hear aboot it!”
Decidedly I was a man under authority. The extraordinary thing was that I was cautioned to make no noise, and there in the next room was that redimp yelling the roof off, yet neither of his female relatives seemed to mind in the least, though his remarks interfered very seriously with the article on “Irrigation Systems of Southern Europe,” which I was working up for theUniversal.
But when was a mere man (and breadwinner) considered at such times?
In all truly Christian and charitable cities refuges should be built for temporarily dispossessed, homeless, and hungry heads of families.