JEAN, A PORTRAIT
She was remarkable in the first place because she never rode in a perambulator like other children; either she walked—on bare, shapely, pink feet—or her own personal attendant, Elspeth (a very tall woman indeed), carried her in a plaid slung over one of her broad shoulders. Elspeth despised the “bit barrows” of the other nurses, and was quite strong enough to have carried Jean’s mother as well as Jean. “She will go barefoot,” Elspeth would say, “till she iss seven, and when she iss a woman she will walk like a queen, and not like a hen!”
Jean, if possible, went bareheaded as well as “barefoot,” and perhaps that is the reason why her hair is so abundant, so curly, so full of golden light that in the sunshine it almost makes you blink. Moreover, her eyes are big and blue. Sunshine and rain, and kind fresh winds have tinted her face with the loveliest warm browns and pinks; she is not yet five years old, and she can dance the sword dance! It is really a great sight to see Jean’s pink feet twinkling in and out between two unsheathed swords of her father’s, and he is a proud man.
Yet there never was such a “girly” girl as Jean.
She has an enormous family of dolls—for her adorers all bring dolls, andtheyare as the sands of the sea in number—she takes a motherly interest in them all, both dolls and adorers, but her inseparable companion is one “Tammy,” an ancient and dirty-faced rag soldier; with arms and legs resembling elongated sausages, a square body, no feet, and a head shaped like a breakfast “bap.” Not an attractive personality to the uninitiated, but he and Jean were as Ruth and Naomi. It is something of a sorrow to her that the exigencies of Tammy’s figure do not admit of a kilt, just as she puzzled all last summer in sorrowful surprise that her father never once donned the uniform she so admires.
Jean’s people live at a house on the Terrace, which has at the back a shady old-fashioned garden with a big square lawn in the centre. There Jean’s brothers, Colin and Andrew, played cricket, while Jean fielded or drilled her dolls under the trees. In the evening, after dinner, there would be a sound of men’s voices and an occasional thrum of the banjo under those same trees, and a cheerful clink of glasses, while men with brown faces and trim, well-set heads laughed and rejoiced in a coolness that concealed no malaria.
Jean’s father had a reprehensible habit of bringing her, wrapped in a blanket, out into the garden at ten o’clock at night, when she would be handed about from knee to knee like a superior sort of refreshment. To be fetched out of bed in thisfashion would have been upsetting to some children, but Jean, with an adorable sleepy smile, would make herself agreeable for half an hour or so, and when carried back and tucked into bed—always by her father—fell asleep again directly, and never seemed a scrap the worse. On such occasions she was always expected to sing. She never sang anything but Scottish songs—mournful or martial, mostly Jacobite, and her repertory was enormous. While other children were learning “Little Jack Horner,” or “Hey diddle diddle!” Jean, thanks to Elspeth, learned “Hey Johnny Cope,” or “Cam’ ye by Athol,” and her voice was as the voice of Katherine of France, “broken music,” for her voice was music, and her English broken. Sometimes a belated passer-by would wait outside to listen in wonder to someone singing in the clearest baby voice:
Sing Hey, my bra’ John Hielandman,Sing Ho, my bra’ John Hielandman,
Sing Hey, my bra’ John Hielandman,Sing Ho, my bra’ John Hielandman,
Sing Hey, my bra’ John Hielandman,
Sing Ho, my bra’ John Hielandman,
and at the end of each refrain she always kissed her father, for there was no one in the world to match with him in Jean’s eyes. She absolutely declined to sing the last verse after that day upon which she discovered what “hanging” meant, Colin and Andrew having suspended Tammy from the apple tree. At times, Jean could raise her voice otherwise than in song, and on that occasion the whole Terrace resounded with her shrieks.
Next door there dwelt a very grumpy gentleman. With that easy confidence in a neighbor’sneighborliness generally manifested by people who have lived much abroad, Jean’s father, on taking up his quarters, had written asking permission to put some wire-netting on the top of the party wall to prevent cricket balls going over. To his immense surprise he received a curt and discourteous refusal, which terminated in a warning to the effect that, if balls did come over, there they would have to stay, as the writer would in no circumstances have boys running in and out of his house, and there was no back entrance. Of course balls went over; but Colin and Andrew found an unexpected ally in Mr. Knagg’s housekeeper, who threw the balls back again without consulting him; and Mr. Knagg felt rather aggrieved that, as yet, he had found no cause for complaint. Complaint in some form or other was as the breath of life to him; he had gone to law with so many of his fellow-townsmen that his society was no longer sought after, and his exceedingly clean steps were untrodden by strangers. He intended at first to complain that the banjo-playing in the garden disturbed him at his studies, when he happened to hear Jean sing “This iss no my plaid,” and somehow he gave up the idea.
Colin and Andrew possessed a “mashie” each, and a game of “putting golf.” It was reserved for Sunday afternoons as being of a quiet and decorous nature.
But one Sunday afternoon Andrew forgot to “putt,” and gave his ball a drive that lifted it high over the wall into the next garden. Now, thewall was too high to climb; besides, the fear of Mr. Knagg was upon them, and the housekeeper was out—they had seen her go. They had only two balls, and it was yet a long two hours off teatime. Father and mother were both out. They retired to consult Jean under the trees.
“If he wasn’t such an old beast, I’d go and ask for it myself,” growled Andrew.
“You wouldn’t get it if you did,” said Colin the practical.
“Why shouldn’t Jean go? He’d give it to her,” suggested Andrew, who had noted the weakness of his sex where Jean was concerned.
“Of course he would. You must go, Jean. Hurry up!”
“What, all on my lonely?” exclaimed Jean in pained astonishment.
“Oh, we’ll come with you to the door and ring the bell for you, and then cut away before he can open it. Then you ask him nicely. Come on, Jean!”
She seldom long opposed her brothers. She had what Elspeth called a “tender head,” and strongly objected to having her hair pulled. Between them they marched her up the flagged path to Mr. Knagg’s front door, rang loudly, and departed precipitately.
Maighda, the great deerhound who shared with Elspeth the guardianship of Jean, rose from amidst the company of dolls, where she had been reposing, and walking gravely into the front garden, jumped the iron fence, and joined Jean at the top of the steps.
Jean clasped Tammy firmly with one arm and coiled the other round Maighda’s neck as the door opened rather noisily to disclose an irate-looking little gentleman in gold-rimmedpince-nez.
“If you please,” began Jean, in a still, small voice, “there iss a wee ball-y wass putted into your garden—will I get it?”
Mr. Knagg stood staring at his strange visitors, while Jean rubbed one pink foot over the other and Maighda sniffed at him dubiously. Tammy, with his customary reserve, betrayed no emotion whatever.
“Come!” said Mr. Knagg shortly, holding out his hand. As Jean disappeared Colin and Andrew flew into the back garden and swarmed up an apple tree, whence they surveyed their sister’s proceedings with interest.
“Wonder why men are so much decenter to girls than to us?” mused Andrew.
“Oh, well; his housekeeper likes us best, anyway. Everyone’s got their cranks.”
“Fore,” cried a clear little voice, and the ball fell with a soft “plop” at the foot of the apple tree.
“She throws very well for a girl,” said Colin as he dropped onto the grass. “Let’s finish the game.”
“What do you mean by ‘fore’?” asked Mr. Knagg.
“Heads, you know,” said Jean; but her host was more puzzled than ever, for he had not even a bowing acquaintance with the royal and ancientgame. They stared at each other in silence for a minute, then Jean, remembering that one of the most important precepts of her clan was to accept no service without rendering some return, said shyly: “Will I sing you a song?”
“Pray do!” exclaimed Mr. Knagg; and his eyeglasses flew off his nose, he frowned so hard.
“My love’s in Germanie—send him hame! send him hame! My love’s in Germanie—send him hame!” Jean only sang three verses. Elspeth never taught her the last two, and when the last notes full of longing had died away, she added cheerfully: “But he iss at home just now.”
“Who is?”
“My father. Nearly all my songs iss about father.”
“Really!” ejaculated Mr. Knagg, and blew his nose noisily. “So that’s Scotch?”
“All my songs iss Scottish. I promised Elspeth, and I will know them all some day. Goot-bye!” and Jean, settling Tammy more comfortably on her arm, prepared to depart. As she spoke she had lifted her face to be kissed, and Mr. Knagg kissed her.
“He iss a dull man,” said Jean confidentially to Colin; “but he was douce enough to me.”
The man in question sat in his favorite chair and read his Sunday newspaper upside down. It was thirty-five years since he had kissed a child!
Colin and Andrew were at school, father and mother had gone out in the dog-cart, taking Maighda with them for the run, Elspeth was ironingfrocks, and Jean entertaining Tammy and all the dolls at tea on the lawn. Suddenly she threw back her head and listened—no one had such quick ears as Jean—the color rushed to her face, and she scampered across the grass, round by the side of the house, and out at the garden gate; bareheaded, with flying rosy feet, she raced to the end of the terrace, and as she ran the sound which so excited her grew louder. It was the pipes!
Would she find “the regiment,” she wondered? Had it come to show what Elspeth called “this wee stuck-up bit towney” what real John Hielandman were like? Jean pictured the frowning castle and windy Esplanade, the steep, stony street, flanked by tall grey houses, down which “the regiment” “in tartan plaid and philabeg” swept with swinging steps. That was the setting in which she knew her father’s men. How would they look in this trim Southern town? And would she dare to stop them to ask after her friends?
No, it was not a march the piper was playing, and very soon she discovered that there was no regiment—only a solitary piper playing the “Keel Row,” with a crowd of unkempt children following him.
Jean pushed in among the children, who made way for this hatless, shoeless person in some astonishment.
“He iss not the ‘Forty-second,’ nor the ‘Gordons,’ nor the ‘Seaforth,’” said Jean to herself, “and why will he wear two tartans?” Then, pulling at the piper’s kilt, she cried shrilly, above theskirl of the pipes: “Can you play ‘Oran an Aoig’?”
The piper took the chanter out of his mouth, and smiled down at the eager, upturned face, asking: “Wot, my dear?”
“‘Oran an Aoig,’” repeated Jean eagerly.
“Sorry I cawn’t oblige you, but I never ’eard tell of that toon,” and the “Keel Row” sounded with renewed and aggressive vigor.
Jean loosed her hold of the kilt and turned to go. There was something uncanny in the speech of this piper, and as she looked more closely, a certain incongruity in his uniform which chilled and disappointed her. The children, however, having recovered from their surprise at her sudden appearance in their midst, decided to have some fun with Jean, and she speedily discovered that to be the only shoeless person in a heavily shod crowd is to be in a most unpleasant minority. Also, she had never been alone in the street before.
Mr. Knagg heard the pipes on his way home to lunch, and having the greatest abhorrence of all street noises, holding that they were, every one, “disturbing to the peace of His Majesty’s lieges,” was hurrying across the road to expostulate with the perpetrator of this new outrage upon his ears, when he caught sight of a familiar shining in the very middle of that rabble of children. He laid about him with his white cotton umbrella, presently emerged from the crowd, bearing a very tearful Jean in his arms, and hailed a cab. The cab and the dog-cart drove up to Jean’s door atthe same moment. Mr. Knagg left Jean on the pavement and stalked into his house.
“I said he was a douce man,” sobbed Jean, in the safe shelter of her father’s arms; “but it wass a pittence piper, not one of ours at all.” They say that she felt the deception even more than the bruises on her toes. Her father never managed to thank Mr. Knagg though he called three times.
“Of course the master’s gone to the war with the regiment. He only got six months’ leave, after all, and Miss Jean talks and sings about him all day long, and the mistress just listens. But she says if Master Colin and Master Andrew were older, she’d send them, too; for there’s aye been some of our family for the men to follow.” Elspeth left Mr. Knagg’s housekeeper standing at the wire fence, for she “never encouraged clash.”
In the wintry days her neighbors saw less of Jean, as play in the garden was impossible. But even then the pink feet splashed bravely through the puddles and over the wet stones.
One evening about six, just as Mr. Knagg was turning into the Terrace, a newspaper boy, shouting with raucous voice, proclaimed: “Serious British Reverse!” “’Ighland regiment trapped and cut to pieces!” The old gentleman darted across the road, crying: “Stop that infernal din, and I’ll buy every rag you’ve got! Don’t come down here again, mind!”
He hurried down the Terrace with a great bundle of pink papers under his arm. Just outsidehis own house he paused and looked up. Jean’s nursery window was open at the top, the curtains were not drawn, and the room was full of rosy light. Suddenly a child’s voice soared into the stillness:
He’s as brave as brave can be;Send him hame, send him hame!He’s as brave as brave can be;Send him hame!
He’s as brave as brave can be;Send him hame, send him hame!He’s as brave as brave can be;Send him hame!
He’s as brave as brave can be;
Send him hame, send him hame!
He’s as brave as brave can be;
Send him hame!
Mr. Knagg took off his hat and bent his head.