The Daft Days

CHAPTER XX

“Katerin!” she said, coming into the kitchen with a handful of paper cuttings, and, hearing her, the maid’s face blenched.

“I declare I never broke an article the day!” she cried protestingly, well accustomed to that formal address when there had been an accident among her crockery.

“I wasn’t charging you,” said her mistress. “Dear me! it must be an awful thing a guilty conscience! I was thinking to give you – and maybe Lennox, if she would not mind – a lesson or two in cookery. It’s a needful thing in a house with anything of a family. You know what men are!”

“Fine that!” said Kate. “They’re always thinking what they’ll put in their intervals, the greedy deevils! beg your pardon, but it’s not a swear in the Gaelic.”

“There’s only one Devil in any language, Kate,” said Miss Bell. “‘How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!’ And I am glad to think he is oftener on our foolish tongues than in our hearts. I have always been going to give you a cookery-book – ”

“A cookery-book!” cried the maid. “Many a time I saw one out in Colonsay: for the minister’s wife had one they called Meg Dods, that was borrowed for every wedding. But it was never much use to us, for it started everything with ‘Take a clean dish,’ or ‘Mince a remains of chicken,’ and neither of them was very handy out in the isle of Colonsay.”

Miss Bell laid out her cuttings on the dresser – a mighty pile of recipes for soups and stews, puddings and cakes, sweetmeats, and cordial wines that could be made deliciously from elder and mulberry, if hereabouts we had such fruits to make them with. She had been gathering these scraps for many years, for the household column was her favourite part of the paper after she was done with the bits that showed how Scotsmen up in London were at the head of everything, or did some doughty deed on the field of war. She hoarded her cuttings as a miser hoards his notes, but never could find the rich sultana cake that took nine eggs, when it was wanted, but only the plain one costing about one-and-six. Sometimes Ailie would, in mischief, offer to look through the packet for recipes rich and rare that had been mentioned; they were certainly there (for Bell had read them gloatingly aloud when she cut them out), but Bell would never let her do it, always saying, “Tuts! never mind; Dan likes this one better, and the other may be very nice in print but it’s too rich to be wholesome, and it costs a bonny penny. You can read in the papers any day there’s nothing better for the health than simple dieting.” So it was that Mr Dyce had some monotony in his meals, but luckily was a man who never minded that, liking simple old friends best in his bill-of-fare as in his boots and coats and personal acquaintances. Sometimes he would quiz her about her favourite literature, pretending a gourmet’s interest for her first attempt at something beyond the ordinary, but never relished any the less her unvarying famous kale and simple entremets, keeping his highest praise for her remarkable breakfasts. “I don’t know whether you’re improving or whether I am getting used to it,” he would say, “but that’s fish! if you please, Miss Bell.”

“Try another scone, Dan,” she would urge, to hide the confusion that his praise created. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”

“No, not hungry,” would he reply, “but, thank Providence, I’m greedy – pass the plate.”

Bell was busy at her cookery lesson, making her cuttings fill the part of the book that was still to buy, doing all she could to make Bud see how noble was a proper crimpy paste, though her lesson was cunningly designed to look like one for Kate alone. Her sleeves were rolled up, and the flour was flying, when a rat-tat came to the door. They looked up from their entrancing occupation, and there, in front, was the castle carriage!

Miss Bell made moan. “Mercy on us! That’ll be Lady Anne, and Ailie out, and I cannot go to speak to anybody, for I’m such a ticket. Run to the door, dear, and take her into the parlour, and keep her there till I am ready. Don’t forget to say ‘My Lady,’ – No, don’t say ‘My Lady,’ for the Dyces are of old, and as good as their neighbours, but say ‘Your Ladyship’; not too often, but only now and then, to let her see you know it.”

Bud went to the door and let in Lady Anne, leading her composedly to the parlour.

“Aunt Ailie’s out,” she said, “and Aunt Bell is such a ticket. But she’s coming in a minute, your – your – your – ” Bud paused for a second, a little put about. “I forget which it was I was to say. It was either ‘Your Ladyship’ or ‘My Lady.’ You’re not my lady, really, and you’re not your own, hardly, seeing you’re promised to Colonel George. Please tell me which is right, Lady Anne.”

“Who told you it was Colonel George, my dear?” asked Lady Anne, sitting down on the proffered chair and putting her arms around the child.

“Oh, it’s just the clash of the parish,” said my little Scot who once was Yankee. “And everybody’s so glad.”

“Are they, indeed?” said Lady Anne, blushing in her pleasure. “That is exceedingly kind of them. I always thought our own people the nicest and kindest in the world.”

“That’s just it!” said Bud cheerfully. “Everybody everywhere is just what one is oneself, – so Aunt Ailie says; and I s’pose it’s because you’re – Oh! I was going to say something about you, but I’ll let you guess. What lovely weather! I hope your papa is well? And Mr Jones?”

“Thank you; papa is very well indeed,” said Lady Anne. “And Mr Jones – ” She hung upon the name with some dubiety.

“The coachman, you know,” said Bud placidly. “He’s a perfectly lovely man: so fat and smiley. He smiles so much his face is all in gathers. So kind to his horses too, and waves his whip at me every time he passes. Once he gave me a ride on the dickey: it was gorgeous. Do you often get a ride on the dickey, Lady Anne?”

“Never!” said Lady Anne, with a clever little sigh. “Many a time I have wished I could get one, but they always kept me inside the carriage. I don’t seem to have had much luck all my life till – till – till lately.”

“Did Mr Jones never take you on his knee and tell you the story of the Welsh giants?”

“No,” said Lady Anne, solemnly shaking her head.

“Then you’re too big now. What a pity! Seems to me there isn’t such a much in being a big L Lady after all. I thought you’d have everything of the very best. You have no idea what funny ideas we had in America about dukes and lords and ladies in the old country. Why, I expected I’d be bound to hate them when I got here, because they’d be so proud and haughty and tyrannical. But I don’t hate them one little bit; they don’t do anybody any harm more’n if they were knockabout artistes. I suppose the Queen herself ’d not crowd a body off the sidewalk if you met her there. She’d be just as apt to say ‘What ho! little girl. Pip! pip!’ and smile, for Auntie Bell is always reading in the newspapers snappy little pars. about the nice things the Royal family do, just the same as if they weren’t royal a bit.”

“Yes, I sometimes see those touching domestic incidents,” said her ladyship. “You mean such things as the Prince helping the cripple boy to find his crutch? They make me almost cry.”

“I wouldn’t wet a lash, if I were you,” said Bud. “That’s just the Press: like as not there’s nothing behind it but the agent in advance.”

“Agent in advance?” said Lady Anne, perplexed.

“Yes. He’s bound to boom the show somehow: so Jim Molyneux said, and he knew most things, did Jim.”

“You wicked Republican!” cried her ladyship, hugging the child the closer to her.

“I’m not a Republican,” protested Bud. “I’m truly Scotch, same as father was, and Auntie Bell is – that’s good enough for me. I’d just love to be a My Lady myself, it must be so nice and – and fairy. Why! it’s about the only fairy thing left anywhere, I guess. There’s nothing really to it; it’s not being richer nor powerfuller nor more tyrannical than anybody else, but it’s – it’s – it’s – I dunno ’zactly what it is, but it’s something – it – it’s romantic, that’s what it is, to be a King, or a Duke, or a My Lady. The fun of it is all inside you, like poetry. I hope, My Lady Anne, you ’preciate your privileges! You must ’preciate your privileges always, Auntie Bell says, and praise the Lord without ceasing, and have a thankful heart.”

“I assure you I do,” replied her ladyship.

“That’s right,” said Bud encouragingly. “It’s simply splendid to be a really Lady with a big L without having to play it to yourself. I’ve been one as Winifred Wallace quite often; with Auntie Ailie’s fur jacket and picture-hat on I’d sit and sit, and feel so composed and grand in the rocker, and let on it was Mr Jones’s carriage, and bow sweetly to Footles who’d be a poor man passing to his work, and mighty proud to have me notice him. I’d be sort of haughty, but not ’bominable haughty, ’cause Auntie Bell says there’s nothing beats a humble and a contrite heart. But then you see something would happen to spoil everything; Kate would laugh, or Auntie Bell would pop in and cry ‘Mercy on me, child, play-acting again! Put away that jacket instantly.’ Then I’d know I was only letting on to be a really Lady; but with you it’s different – all the time you’re It. Auntie Bell says so, and she knows everything.”

“It really looks as if she did,” said her ladyship, “for I’ve called to see her to-day about a sailor.”

“A sailor!” Bud exclaimed, with wild surmise.

“Yes. He wants to be captain of my yacht, and he refers me to Miss Dyce, for all the world as if he were a housemaid.”

“I’m so glad,” cried Bud. “For it was I who advised him to, and I’m – I’m the referee.”

“You!”

“Yes; it was Kate’s letter, and she – and we – and I said there was a rumour you wanted a captain, and he should apply, saying if you wanted to know just what a clean, good, brave sailor he was you should ask Kate MacNeill or Miss Dyce, and I’m the Miss Dyce this time, and you’re – why, you’re really visiting me!”

Lady Anne laughed. “Really, Miss Lennox,” she said, “you’re a wonderful diplomatist. I must get the Earl to put you in the service. I believe there’s a pretty decent salary goes to our representative in the United States.”

“But don’t laugh at me, Lady Anne,” pleaded Bud earnestly. “I’m dre’ffle set on having Charles off the cargo boats, where he’s thrown away. You don’t know how Kate loves him, and she hasn’t seen him – not for years and years. You know yourself what it is to be so far away from anybody you love. He’d just fit your yacht like a glove – he’s so educated, having been on the yachts and with the gentry round the world. He’s got everything nice about him you’d look for in a sailor – big brown eyes so beautiful there’s only Gaelic words I don’t know, but that sound like somebody breaking glass, to describe how sweet they are. And the whitest teeth! When he walks, he walks so straight and hits the ground so hard you’d think he owned the land.”

“It seems to me,” said Lady Anne, “that you couldn’t be more enthusiastic about your protégé if you loved him yourself.”

“So I do,” said Bud, with the utmost frankness. “But there’s really nothing between us. He’s meant for Kate. She’s got heaps of beaux, but he’s her steady. I gave him up to her for good on Hallowe’en, and she’s so happy.”

Bell had thrown off her cooking-apron and cleaned her hands, and ran up the stairs to see that her hair was trim, for though she loved a Lady for the sake of Scotland’s history, she someway felt in the presence of Lady Anne the awe she had as a child for Barbara Mushet. That Ailie in such company should be, on the other hand, so composed, and sometimes even comical, was a marvel she never could get over. “I never feared the face of earl or man,” she would say, “but I’m scared for a titled lady.”

When she came down to the parlour the visitor was rising to go.

“Oh, Miss Dyce,” said she, “I’m so glad to see you, though my visit this time’s really to Miss Lennox. I wished to consult her about a captain for my little yacht.”

“Miss Lennox!” exclaimed Miss Bell, shaking hands, and with a look of apprehension at her amazing niece.

“Yes,” said Lady Anne; “she has recommended a man who seems in all respects quite suitable, if he happens to know a little about sailing; and I’m going to write to him to come and see me.”

At that, I must confess it, Lennox for once forgot her manners and darted from the parlour to tell Kate the glorious news.

“Kate, you randy!” she cried, bursting into the kitchen —

“I’ve fixed it up for Charles; he’s to be the captain.” The servant danced on the floor in a speechless transport, and Bud danced too.

CHAPTER XXI

Too slow, far too slow, passed the lengthening days. Kate was bedded by nine to make them shorter by an hour or two, but what she took from the foot of the day she tacked to the head of it, as Paddy in the story eked his blanket, and she was up in the mornings long before Wanton Wully rang the six-hours’ bell. The elder Dyces – saving Ailie, who knew all about it, hearing it from Bud in passionate whispers as they lay together in one bed in the brightening morns of May – might think summer’s coming was what made the household glad, Kate sing like the laverock, and Lennox so happy and so good, but it was the thought of Charles. “Dear me! you’ve surely taken a desperate fancy for Prince Charlie songs,” would Miss Bell remark to Bud and the maid of Colonsay. “Is there not another ditty in the ballant?” and they would glance at each other guiltily but never let on.

– Bud composed that one in a jiffy sitting one day at the kitchen window, and of all the noble Jacobite measures Kate liked it best, “it was so clever, and so desperate like the thing!” Such a daft disease is love! To the woman whose recollection of the mariner was got from olden Sabbath walks ’tween churches in the windy isle, among the mossy tombs, and to Bud, who had never seen him, but had made for herself a portrait blent of the youth so gay and gallant Kate described, and of George Sibley Purser, and of dark ear-ringed men of the sea that in “The Tempest” cry “Heigh, my hearts! cheerily, cheerily, cheerily, my hearts! yare, yare,” the prospect of his presence was a giddy joy.

And after all the rascal came without warning, to be for a day and a night within sound of Kate’s minstrelsy without her knowing it, for he lodged, an ardent but uncertain man, on the other side of the garden-wall, little thinking himself the cause and object of these musical mornings. Bud found him out – that clever one! who was surely come from America to set all the Old World right, – she found him at the launching of the Wave.

Lady Anne’s yacht dozed like a hedgehog under leaves through the winter months below the beeches on what we call the hard – on the bank of the river under Jocka’s house, where the water’s brackish, and the launching of her was always of the nature of a festival, for the Earl’s men were there, John Taggart’s band, with “A life on the Ocean Wave” between each passage of the jar of old Tom Watson’s home-made ale – not tipsy lads but jovial, and even the children of the schools, for it happened on a Saturday.

Bud and Footles went with each other and the rest of the bairns, unknown to their people, for in adventures such as these the child delighted, and was wisely never interdicted.

The man who directed the launch was a stranger in a foreign-looking soft slouch hat – Charles plain to identify in every feature, in the big brown searching eyes that only Gaelic could do justice to, and his walk so steeve and steady, his lovely beard, his tread on the hard as if he owned the land, his voice on the deck as if he were the master of the sea. She stood apart and watched him, fascinated, and could not leave even when the work was done and the band was home-returning, charming the road round the bay with “Peggy Baxter’s Quickstep.” He saw her lingering, smiled on her, and beckoned on her to cross the gangway that led to the yacht from the little jetty.

“Well, wee lady,” said he, with one big hand on her head and another on the dog, “is this the first of my crew at a quay-head jump? Sign on at once and I’ll make a sailor of you.”

“Oh, please,” said she, looking up in his face, too anxious to enter into his humour, “are you our Kate’s Charles?”

“Kate!” said he, reflecting, with a hand in his beard, through which his white teeth shone. “There’s such a wheen of Kates here and there, and all of them fine, fine gyurls! Still-and-on, if yours is like most of her name that I’m acquaint with, I’m the very man for her; and my name, indeed, is what you might be calling Charles. In fact,” – in a burst of confidence, seating himself on a water-breaker, – “my Christian name is Charles – Charlie, for short among the gentry. You are not speaking, by any chance, of one called Kate MacNeill?” he added, showing some red in the tan of his countenance.

“Of course I am,” said Bud reproachfully. “Oh, men! men! As if there could be any other! I hope to goodness you love her same as you said you did, and haven’t been – been carrying-on with any other Kates for a diversion. I’m Lennox Dyce. Your Kate stays with me and Uncle Dan, and Auntie Bell, and Auntie Ailie, and this sweet little dog by the name of Footles. She’s so jolly! My! won’t she be tickled to know you’ve come? And – and how’s the world, Captain Charles?”

“The world?” he said, aback, looking at her curiously as she seated herself beside him on a hatch.

“Yes, the world, you know – the places you were in,” with a wave of the hand that seemed to mean the universe.

– No, that’s Kate’s favourite geography lesson, ’cause she can sing it. I mean Rotterdam, and Santander, and Bilbao – all the lovely places on the map where a letter takes four days and a twopence-ha’penny stamp, and’s mighty apt to smell of rope.”

“Oh, them!” said he, with the warmth of recollection, “they’re not so bad – in fact, they’re just A1. It’s the like of there you see life and spend the money.”

“Have you been in Italy?” asked Bud. “I’d love to see that old Italy – for the sake of Romeo and Juliet, you know, and my dear, dear Portia.”

“I know,” said Charles. “Allow me! Perfect beauties, all fine, fine gyurls; but I don’t think very much of dagoes. I have slept in their sailors’ homes, and never hear Italy mentioned but I feel I want to scratch myself.”

“Dagoes!” cried Bud; “that’s what Jim called them. Have you been in America?”

“Have I been in America? I should think I have,” said he emphatically, “The Lakes. It’s yonder you get value – two dollars a-day and everywhere respected like a perfect gentleman. Men’s not mice out yonder in America.”

“Then you maybe have been in Chicago?” cried Bud, her face filled with a happy expectation as she pressed the dog in her arms till its fringe mixed with her own wild curls.

“Chicago?” said the Captain. “Allow me! Many a time. You’ll maybe not believe it, but it was there I bought this hat.”

“Oh!” cried Bud, with the tears in her eyes and speechless for a moment, “I – I – could just hug that hat. Won’t you please let me – let me pat it?’

“Pat away,” said Captain Charles, laughing, and took it off with the sweep of a cavalier that was in itself a compliment. “You know yon place – Chicago?” he asked, as she patted his headgear fondly and returned it to him. For a little her mind was far away from the deck of Lady Anne’s yacht, her eyes on the ripple of the tide, her nostrils full, and her little bosom heaving.

“You were there?” he asked again.

“Chicago’s where I lived,” she said. “That was mother’s place,” and into his ear she poured a sudden flood of reminiscence – of her father and mother, and the travelling days and lodging-houses, and Mr and Mrs Molyneux, and the graves in the far-off cemetery. The very thought of them all made her again American in accent and in phrase. He listened, understanding, feeling the vexation of that far-sundering by the sea as only a sailor can, and clapped her on the shoulder, and looking at him she saw that in his eyes which made her love him more than ever.

“Oh my!” she said bravely, “here I’m talking away to you about myself, and I’m no more account than a rabbit under these present circumstances, Captain Charles, and all the time you’re just pining to know all about your Kate.”

The Captain tugged his beard and reddened again. “A fine, fine gyurl!” said he. “I hope – I hope she’s pretty well.”

“She’s fine,” said Bud, nodding her head gravely. “You bet Kate can walk now without taking hold. Why, there’s never anything wrong with her ’cepting now and then the croodles, and they’re not anything lingering.”

“There was a kind of a rumour that she was at times a trifle delicate,” said Charles. “In fact, it was herself who told me, in her letters.”

Bud blushed. This was one of the few details of her correspondence on which she and Kate had differed. It had been her idea that an invalidish hint at intervals produced a nice and tender solicitude in the roving sailor, and she had, at times, credited the maid with some of Mrs Molyneux’s old complaints, a little modified and more romantic, though Kate herself maintained that illness in a woman under eighty was looked upon as anything but natural or interesting in Colonsay.

“It was nothing but – but love,” she said now, confronted with the consequence of her imaginative cunning. “You know what love is, Captain Charles? A powerfully weakening thing, though I don’t think it would hurt anybody if they wouldn’t take it so much to heart.”

“I’m glad to hear it’s only – only what you mention,” said Charles, much relieved. “I thought it might be something inward, and that maybe she was working too hard at her education.”

“Oh, she’s not taking her education so bad as all that,” Bud assured him. “She isn’t wasting to a shadow sitting up nights with a wet towel on her head soaking in the poets and figuring sums. All she wanted was to be sort of middling smart, but nothing gaudy.”

Captain Charles looked sideway keenly at the child as she sat beside him, half afraid himself of the irony he had experienced among her countrymen, but saw it was not here. Indeed it never was in Lennox Dyce, for all her days she had the sweet engaging self-unconsciousness no training can command; frankness, fearlessness, and respect for all her fellows – the gifts that will never fail to make the proper friends. She talked so composedly that he was compelled to frankness himself on a subject no money could have made him speak about to any one a week ago.

“Between you and me and the mast,” said he, “I’m feared Kate has got far too clever for the like of me, and that’s the way I have not called on her.”

“Then you’d best look pretty spry,” said Bud, pointing a monitory finger at him; “for there’s beaux all over the place that’s wearing their Sunday clothes week-days, and washing their faces night and morning, hankering to tag on to her, and she’ll maybe tire of standing out in the cold for you. I wouldn’t be skeered, Cap’, if I was you; she’s not too clever for or’nary use; she’s nicer than ever she was that time you used to walk with her in Colonsay.” Bud was beginning to be alarmed at the misgivings to which her own imaginings had given rise.

“If you saw her letters,” said Charles gloomily. “Poetry and foreign princes. One of them great at the dancing! He kissed her hand. He would never have ventured a thing like that if she hadn’t given him encouragement.”

“Just diversion,” said Bud consolingly. “She was only – she was only putting by the time; and she often says she’ll only marry for her own conveniency, and the man for her is – well, you know, Captain Charles.”

“There was a Russian army officer,” proceeded the seaman, still suffering a jealous doubt.

“But he’s dead. He’s deader ’n canned beans. Mr Wanton gied him – gied him the BAGGONET. There wasn’t really anything in it anyway. Kate didn’t care for him the tiniest bit, and I guess it was a great relief.”

“Then she’s learning the piano,” said the Captain; “that’s not like a working gyurl. And she talked in one of her letters about sitting on Uncle Dan’s knee.”