Bud: A Novel

“But it was very wrong; it was a kind of fib for you to talk about me having lots of lads in my time,” said Auntie Bell. “You do not know whether I had or not.”

Bud looked at her and saw a flush on her face. “I think,” said she, “the beaux must have been very stupid, then. But I guess there must have been one, Auntie Bell, and you have forgotten all about him.” And at that Miss Bell went hurriedly from the room with a pretence that she heard a pot boil over, and Ailie in a low voice told her niece all about Bell’s beau, deep drowned in the Indian Ocean.

For days after that the child was tender with her elder aunt, and made a splendid poem in blank verse upon the late Captain James Murray, which Bell was never to see, but Ailie treasured. For days was she angelic good. Her rages never came to fever heat. Her rebellions burned themselves out in her bosom. Nobly she struggled with long division and the grammar that she abominated; very meekly she took censure for copy-books blotted and words shamefully misspelled in Uncle Daniel’s study. Some way this love that she had thought a mere amusement, like shopping in Chicago, took a new complexion in her mind – became a dear and solemn thing, like her uncle’s Bible readings, when, on Sunday nights at worship in the parlor, he took his audience through the desert to the Promised Land, and the abandoned street was vocal with domestic psalm from the provost’s open window. She could not guess – how could she, the child? – that love has its variety. She thought there was but the one love in all the world – the same she felt herself for most things – a gladness and agreement with things as they were. And yet at times in her reading she got glimpses of love’s terror and empire, as in the stories of Othello and of Amy Robsart, and herself began to wish she had a lover. She thought at first of Uncle Dan; but he could not be serious, and she had never heard him sigh – in him was wanting some remove, some mystery. What she wanted was a lover on a milk-white steed, a prince who was “the flower o’ them a’,” as in Aunt Ailie’s song “Glenlogie”; and she could not imagine Uncle Dan with his spectacles on riding any kind of steed, though she felt it would be nice to have him with her when the real prince was there.

Do you think it unlikely that this child should have such dreams? Ah, then, you are not of her number, or you have forgotten. She never forgot. Many a time she told me in after years of how in the attic bower, with Footles snug at her feet, she conjured up the lad on the milk-white steed, not so much for himself alone, but that she might act the lady-love. And in those dreams she was tall and slender, sometimes proud, disdainful, wounding the poor wretch with sharp words and cold glances; or she was meek and languishing, sighing out her heart even in presence of his true-love gifts of candy and P. & A. MacGlashan’s penny tarts. She walked with him in gardens enchanted; they sailed at nights over calm, moonlit seas, and she would be playing the lute. She did not know what the lute was like; but it was the instrument of love, and had a dulcet sound, like the alto flutes in the burgh band.

But, of course, no fairy prince came wooing Daniel Dyce’s little niece, though men there were in the place – elderly and bald, with married daughters – who tried to buy her kisses for sixpences and sweets, and at last she felt vicariously the joys of love by conducting the affairs of Kate.

Kate had many wooers – that is the solace of her class. They liked her that she was genial and plump, with a flattering smile and a soft touch of the Gaelic accent that in the proper key and hour is the thing to break hearts. She twirled them all round her little finger, and Bud was soon to see this and to learn that the maid was still very far from the slopey side of thirty. But Kate, too, had her dreams – of some misty lad of the mind, with short, curled hair, clothes brass-buttoned, and a delicious smell of tar – something or other on a yacht. The name she had endowed him with was Charles. She made him up from passing visions of seamen on the quays, and of notions gleaned from her reading of penny novelettes.

One week-night Bud came on her in the kitchen dressed in her Sunday clothes and struggling with a spluttering pen.

“Are you at your lessons, too?” said the child. “You naughty Kate! there’s a horrid blot. No lady makes blots.”

“It wasn’t me, it was this devilish pen; besides, I’m not a lady,” said Kate, licking the latest blot with her tongue and grimacing. “What way do you spell weather?”

“W-e-t-h-e-r,” said Bud. “At least, I think that’s the way; but I’d best run and ask Aunt Ailie – she’s a speller from Spellerville.”

“Indeed and you’ll do nothing of the kind,” cried the maid, alarmed and reddening. “You’ll do nothing of the kind, Lennox, because – I’m writing to Charles.”

“A love-letter! Oh, I’ve got you with the goods on you!” exclaimed Bud, enchanted. “And what are you doing with your hurrah clothes on?”

“I like to put on my Sunday clothes when I’m writing Charles,” said the maid, a little put-about. “Do you think it’s kind of daft?”

“It’s not daft at all, it’s real cute of you; it’s what I do myself when I’m writing love-letters, for it makes me feel kind of grander. It’s just the same with poetry; I simply can’t make really poetry unless I have on a nice frock and my hands washed.”

“You write love-letters!” said the maid, astounded.

“Yes, you poor, perishing soul!” retorted Bud. “And you needn’t yelp. I’ve written scores of love-letters without stopping to take breath. Stop! stop!” she interrupted herself, and breathed an inward little prayer. “I mean that I write them – well, kind of write them – in my mind.” But this was a qualification beyond Kate’s comprehension.

“Then I wish you would give me a hand with this one,” said she, despairingly. “All the nice words are so hard to spell, and this is such a bad pen.”

“They’re all bad pens; they’re all devilish,” said Bud, from long experience. “But I’d love to help you write that letter. Let me see – pooh! it’s dreff’le bad, Kate. I can’t read a bit of it, almost.”

“I’m sure and neither can I,” said Kate, distressed.

“Then how in the world do you expect Charles to read it?” asked Bud.

“Oh, he’s – he’s a better scholar than me,” said Kate, complacently. “But you might write this one for me.”

Bud washed her hands, took a chair to the kitchen table, threw back her hair from her eyes, and eagerly entered into the office of love-letter-writer, “What will I say to him?” she asked.

“My dear, dear Charles,” said the maid, who at least knew so much.

“My adorable Charles,” said Bud, as an improvement, and down it went with the consent of the dictator.

“I’m keeping fine, and I’m very busy,” suggested Kate, upon deliberation. “The weather is capital here at present, and it is a good thing, for the farmers are busy with their hay.”

Bud sat back and stared at her in amazement. “Are you sure this is for a Charles?” she asked. “You might as well call him Sissy and talk frocks. Why, you must tell him how you love him.”

“Oh, I don’t like,” said Kate, confused. “It sounds so – so bold and impudent when you put it in the English and write it down. But please yourself; put down what you like and I’ll be dipping the pen for you.”

Bud was not slow to take the opportunity. For half an hour she sat at the kitchen table and searched her soul for fitting words that would convey Kate’s adoration. Once or twice the maid asked what she was writing, but all she said was: “Don’t worry, Kate. I’m right in the throes.” There were blots and there were erasions, but something like this did the epistle look when it was done:

“My adorable Charles, – I am writing this letter to let you know how much I truly love you. Oh Charles, dear, you are the Joy of my heart. I am thinking of you so often, often, till my Heart just aches. It is lovely wether here at present. Now I will tell you all about the Games. They took place in a park near here Friday and there was seventeen beautiful dances. They danced to give you spassums. One of them was a Noble youth. He was a Prince in his own write, under Spells for sevn years. When he danced, lo and behold he was the admiration of all Beholders. Alas? poor youth. When I say alas I mean that it was so sad being like that full of Spells in the flower of his youth. He looked at me so sad when he was dancing, and I was so glad. It was just like money from home. Dear Charles, I will tell you all about myself. I am full of goodness most the time for God loves good people. But sometimes I am not and I have a temper like two crost sticks when I must pray to be changed. The dancing gentleman truly loves me to destruction. He kissed my hand and hastily mountain his noble steed, galoped furiously away. Ah, the coarse of true love never did run smooth. Perhaps he will fall upon the forein plain. Dearest Charles – adorable – I must now tell you that I am being educated for my proper station in life. There is Geograpy, and penmanship with the right commas, and Long Division and conjunctives which I abominate. But my teacher, a sweet lady named Miss Alison Dyce, says they are all truly refining. Oh I am weary, weary, he cometh not. That is for you, darling Charles, my own. – Your true heart love, Kate MacNeill.”

“Is that all right?” asked Bud, anxiously.

“Yes; at least it ‘ll do fine,” said the maid, with that Highland politeness that is often so bad for business. “There’s not much about himself in it, but och! it ‘ll do fine. It’s as nice a letter as ever I saw: the lines are all that straight.”

“But there’s blots,” said Bud, regretfully. “There oughtn’t to be blots in a real love-letter.”

“Toots! just put a cross beside each of them, and write ‘this is a kiss,”’ said Kate, who must have had some previous experience. “You forgot to ask him how’s his health, as it leaves us at present.”

So Bud completed the letter as instructed. “Now for the envelope,” said she.

“I’ll put the address on it myself,” said Kate, confused. “He would be sure somebody else had been reading it if the address was not in my hand of write” – an odd excuse, whose absurdity escaped the child. So the maid put the letter in the bosom of her Sunday gown against her heart, where meanwhile dwelt the only Charles. It is, I sometimes think, where we should all deposit and retain our love-letters; for the lad and lass, as we must think of them, have no existence any more than poor Kate’s Charles.

Two days passed. Often in those two days would Bud come, asking anxiously if there was any answer yet from Charles. As often the maid of Colonsay reddened, and said with resignation there was not so much as the scrape of a pen. “He’ll be on the sea,” she explained at last, “and not near a post-office. Stop you till he gets near a post-office, and you’ll see the fine letter I’ll get.”

“I didn’t know he was a sailor,” said Bud. “Why, I calculated he was a Highland chieftain or a knight, or something like that. If I had known he was a sailor I’d have made that letter different. I’d have loaded it up to the nozzle with sloppy weather, and said, Oh, how sad I was – that’s you, Kate – to lie awake nights thinking about him out on the heaving billow. Is he a captain?”

“Yes,” said Kate, promptly. “A full captain in the summer-time. In the winter he just stays at home and helps on his mother’s farm. Not a cheep to your aunties about Charles, darling Lennox,” she added, anxiously. “They’re – they’re that particular!”

“I don’t think you’re a true love at all,” said Bud, reflecting on many interviews at the kitchen window and the back door. “Just think of the way you make goo-goo eyes at the letter-carrier and the butcher’s man and the ash-pit gentleman. What would Charles say?”

“Toots! I’m only putting by the time with them,” explained the maid. “It’s only a diversion. When I marry I will marry for my own conveniency, and the man for me is Charles.”

“What’s the name of his ship?” asked the child. “The Good Intent,” said Kate, who had known a skiff of the name in Colonsay. “A beautiful ship, with two yellow chimneys, and flags to the masthead.”

“That’s fine and fancy!” said Bud. “There was a gentleman who loved me to destruction, coming over on the ship from New York, and loaded me with candy. He was not the captain, but he had gold braid everywhere, and his name was George Sibley Purser. He promised he would marry me when I made a name for myself, but I ‘spect Mister J. S. Purser ‘ll go away and forget.”

“That’s just the way with them all,” said Kate.

“I don’t care, then,” said Bud. “I’m all right; I’m not kicking.”

Next day the breakfast in the house of Dyce was badly served, for Kate was wild to read a letter that the post had brought, and when she opened it, you may be sure Bud was at her shoulder. It said:

“Dearest Kate, – I love you truly and I am thinking of you most the time. Thank God we was all safed. Now I will tell you all about the Wreck. The sea was mountains high, and we had a cargo of spise and perils from Java on the left-hand side the map as you go to Australia. When the Pirite ship chased us we went down with all hands. But we constrickted a raft and sailed on and on till we had to draw lots who would drink the blood. Just right there a sailor cried ‘A sail, A sail, and sure enough it was a sail. And now I will tell you all about Naples. There is a monsterious mountain there, or cone which belches horrid flames and lavar. Once upon’ a time it belched all over a town by the name of Pompy and it is there till this very day. The bay of naples is the grandest in the world it is called the golden horn. Dearest Katherine, I am often on the mast at night. It is cold and shakey in that place and oh how the wind doth blow, but I ring a bell and say alls well which makes the saloon people truly glad. We had five stow-ways. One of them was a sweet fairhaired child from Liverpool, he was drove from home. But a good and beautious lady, one of the first new england families is going to adopt him and make him her only air. How beautiful and bright he stood as born to rule the storm. I weary for your letters darling Katherine. – Write soon to your true love till death, Charles.”

Kate struggled through this extraordinary epistle with astonishment. “Who in the world is it from?” she asked Bud.

“Charles, stupid,” said Bud, astonished that there should be any doubt about that point. “Didn’t I – didn’t we write him the other night? It was up to him to write back, wasn’t it?”

“Of course,” said Kate, very conscious of that letter still unposted, “but – but he doesn’t say Charles anything, just Charles. It’s a daft like thing not to give his name; it might be anybody. There’s my Charles, and there’s Charles Maclean from Oronsay – what way am I to know which of them it is?”

“It’ll be either or eyether,” said Bud. “Do you know Charles Maclean?”

“Of course I do,” said the maid. “He’s following the sea, and we were well acquaint.”

“Did he propose to you?” asked Bud.

“Well, he did not exactly propose,” admitted Kate, “but we sometimes went a walk together to the churchyard on a Sunday, and you know yourself what that means out in Colonsay. I’ll just keep the letter and think of it. It’s the nicest letter I ever got, and full of information. It’s Charles Maclean, I’ll warrant you, but he did not use to call me Katherine – he just said Kate and his face would be as red as anything. Fancy him going down with all hands! My heart is sore for him,” and the maid there and then transferred her devotion from the misty lad of her own imagination to Charles Maclean of Oronsay.

“You’ll help me to write him a letter back to-night,” she said.

“Yes, indeed, I’ll love to,” said the child, wearily. But by the time the night came on, and Wanton Wully rang his curfew bell, and the rooks came clanging home to the tall trees of the forest, she was beyond all interest in life or love.