The Daft Days
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Mr Molyneux found himself so much at home among them, he was loth to go, expressing his contempt for a mode of transit to the railway that took two hours to nineteen miles; but Bell, defensive even of her country’s coaches, told him he was haivering, – that any greater speed than that was simply tempting Providence. He praised the Lord there was no Providence to be tempted inside Sandy Hook, and that he knew Beef Kings who hurled themselves across the landscape at the rate of a mile a minute. The fact inspired no admiration in Miss Bell: she wondered at the misguided wretches scudding like that regardless of their lives, and them with so much money.
Before he left he called at the Pigeons’ Seminary to say good-bye to the little teachers, and sipped tea, – a British institution which he told them was as deleterious as the High Ball of his native land. High Ball – what was a High Ball? asked Miss Amelia, scenting a nice new phrase; but he could only vaguely indicate that it was something made of rye and soda. Then she understood – it was a teetotal drink men took in clubs, a kind of barley-water. The tea gratified him less than the confidence of the twins, who told him they had taken what he said about the – about the shameful article so much to heart, that they had given it for a razor-strop to one George Jordon.
“Bully for you!” cried Mr Molyneux delighted. “But I’d have liked that tawse some, myself, for my wife’s mighty keen on curios. She’s got a sitting-room full of Navaho things: scalpin’-knives, tomahawks, and other brutal bric-a-brac, and an early British strap would tickle her to death.”
Well, he was gone: the coachman’s horn had scarcely ceased to echo beyond the arches, when Miss Bell had thrown herself into the task of preparing for Bud’s change in life.
What school was she to go to in Edinburgh? – Ailie knew: there was none better than the one she had gone to herself.
When did it open? – Ailie knew: in a fortnight.
What, exactly, would she need? – Ailie knew that too: she had in the escritoire a list of things made up already.
“It seems to me,” said Miss Bell suspiciously, “you’re desperately well informed on all that appertains to this sudden necessity. How long has it been in your mind?”
“For a twelvemonth at least,” answered Ailie boldly. “How long has it been in your own?”
“H’m!” said Bell. “About as long, but I refused to harbour it; and – and now that the thing’s decided on, Ailie Dyce, I hope you’re not going to stand there arguing away about it all day long, when there’s so much to do.”
Surely there was never another house so throng, so bustling, so feverish in anxiety, as this one was for the next fortnight. The upper and the lower Dyce Academy took holiday; Kate’s education stopped with a sudden gasp at a dreadful hill called Popocatepetl, and she said she did not care a button, since Captain Maclean (no longer Charles to any one except himself and Bud in the more confidential moments) said the main things needed in a sailor’s wife were health, hope, and temper and a few good-laying hens. Miss Minto was engaged upon Bud’s grandest garments, running out and in next door herself with inch-tapes over her shoulders and a mouthful of pins, and banging up against the lawyer in his lobby to her great distress of mind. And Bell had in the seamstress, ’Lizbeth Ann, to help her and Ailie with the rest. Mercator sulked neglected on the wall of Mr Dyce’s study, which was strewn with basting-threads and snippets of selvedge and lining till it looked like a tailor’s shop, and Bud and Footles played on the floor of it with that content which neither youth nor dogs can find in chambers trim and orderly. Even Kate was called in to help these hurried operations – they termed it the making of Bud’s trousseau. In the garden birds were calling, calling; far sweeter in the women’s ears were the snip-snip of scissors and the whir of the sewing-machine; needle arms went back and forth like fiddle-bows in an orchestra, and from webs of cloth and linen came forth garments whose variety intoxicated her who was to wear them. I’m thinking Daniel Dyce lived simply then, with rather makeshift dinners, but I’m certain, knowing him well, he did not care, since his share in the great adventure was to correspond with Edinburgh, and pave the way there for the young adventurer’s invasion.
He would keek in at the door on them as he passed to his office, and Ailie would cry, “Avaunt, man! here woman reigns.”
“It’s a pleasant change,” he would say. “I would sooner have them rain than storm.”
“You’re as bad as Geordie Jordon,” said Miss Bell, biting thread with that zest which always makes me think her sex at some time must have lived on cotton, – “you’re as bad as Geordie Jordon, you cannot see a keyhole but your eye begins to water.”
If it had indeed been Bud’s trousseau, the town folk could not have displayed more interest. Ladies came each day to see how things progressed, and recommend a heavier lining or another row of the insertion. Even Lady Anne came one afternoon to see the trousseau, being interested, as she slyly said, in such things for private reasons of her own, and dubious about the rival claims of ivory or pure white. So she said; but she came, no doubt, to assure Miss Lennox that her captain was a great success.
“I knew he’d be!” said Bud complacently. “That man’s so beautiful and good, he’s fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“So are you – you rogue!” said Lady Anne, gathering her in her arms, without a bit of awkwardness, to the great astonishment of ’Lizbeth Ann, who thought that titled folk were not a bit like that – perhaps had not the proper sort of arms for it. Yes, “So are you – you rogue!” said Lady Anne.
“No, I’m not,” said the child. “Leastways only sometimes. Most the time I’m a born limb, but then again I’m nearly always trying to be better, and that’s what counts, I guess.”
“And you’re going away to leave us,” said Lady Anne, whereon a strange thing happened, for the joyous child, who was to get her heart’s desire and such lovely garments, burst into tears, and ran from the room to hide herself upstairs in the attic bower, whose windows looked to a highway that seemed hateful through her tears. Her ladyship went off distressed, but Bell, as one rejoicing, said, “I always told you, Ailie – William’s heart!”
But Bud’s tears were transient: she was soon back among the snippets where Ailie briskly plied the sewing-machine, and sang the kind of cheerful songs that alone will go to the time of pedalling, and so give proof that the age of mechanism is the merry age, if we have the happy ear for music. And Bud, though she tired so soon of hems, could help another way that busy convocation, for she could sit tucked up in Uncle Dan’s snoozing chair and read ‘Pickwick’ to the women till the maid of Colonsay was in the mood to take the Bardell body by the hair of the head and shake her for her brazenness to the poor wee man. Or the child would dance as taught by the lady of the Vaudeville, or start at Ailie’s bidding (Bell a little dubious) to declaim a bit of “Hamlet” or “Macbeth,” till ’Lizbeth Ann saw ghosts and let her nerves get the better of her, and there was nothing for it but a cheery cup of tea all round. Indeed, I must confess, a somewhat common company! I could almost wish for the sake of my story they were more genteel, and dined at half-past seven, and talked in low hushed tones of Bach and Botticelli.
But, oh! they were happy days – at least, so far as all outward symptoms went: it might indeed have been a real trousseau, and not the garments for the wedding of a maiden and the world. How often in the later years did Winifred Wallace, reading to me her own applause in newspapers, stop to sigh and tell me how she once was really happy – happy to the inward core, feeling the dumb applause of four women in a country chamber, when the world was all before her, and her heart was young.
CHAPTER XXVI
Working thus, furiously, at the task of love, which, in all it does for the youth it cherishes, must ever be digging a grave for its own delight, Bell could forget, for periods, that the days of Bud’s presence in their midst were numbered. Had she stopped her needle and shears a moment, and let her mind contemplate all the emptiness of a fortnight hence and the months and years thereafter, she would have broken down. Ailie, knowing it, watched her anxiously, and kept the sewing briskly going as if they wrought for a living in a factory, frightened to think of her sister’s desperate state when that last button, that the Armies talk about, was in its place.
But the days sped: one afternoon there was a final sweeping up of the scraps in the temporary workroom, Bell searched her mind in vain to think of anything further wanted, and, though there were still two weeks to go, became appalled to find that the only thing of any moment to be done ’twixt now and Friday fortnight was to say Good-bye!
No, stay! There was another thing to bring a little respite – the girl’s initials must be sewn upon her clothing. A trivial thing to mention, you may think, but the very thought of it gave pleasure to the sisters, till Bud herself, sent to Miss Minto’s for a sample of the woven letters, came back with only one – it was a W.
“Has the stupid body not got L’s and D’s?” asked Bell. “There’s no use here for W.” And Bud showed a countenance startled and ashamed.
“Oh, Auntie!” she cried, “I asked for W’s. I quite forgot my name was Lennox Dyce, for in all I’m thinking of about the school and Edinburgh, I am Winifred Wallace.”
It was all that was needed to bring about her aunt’s prostration! “I’m far from well,” said she, and took to her bed, her first confession of weakness in all the years that Dan or Ailie could remember. What ailed her she could not tell, and they sent, without acquainting her, for Dr Brash. Hearing he was coming, she protested that she could not see the man – that she was far too ill to be troubled by any doctor; but Dr Brash was not so easily to be denied.
“H’m!” said he, examining her. “Your system’s badly down.”
“I never knew I had one,” said the lady, smiling wanly, with a touch of Dan’s rowan-jelly humour. “Women had no system in my young days to go up or down: if they had, they were ashamed to mention it. Nowadays, it seems as fashionable as what Kate, since she got her education, calls the boil.”
“You have been worrying,” he went on, – “a thing that’s dreadfully injudicious. H’m! worse than drink, I say. Worry’s the death of half my patients; they never give my pills a chance,” and there was a twinkle in his eyes which most of Dr Brash’s patients thought was far more efficacious than his pills.
“What would I worry for?” said Miss Bell. “I’m sure I have every blessing; goodness and mercy all my life.”
“Just so! just so!” said Dr Brash. “Goodness and – and, h’m – mercy sometimes take the form of a warning that it’s time we kept to bed for a week, and that’s what I recommend you.”
“Mercy on me! Am I so far through as that?” she said, alarmed. “It’s something serious, – I know by the cheerful face that you put on you. Little did I think that I would drop off so soon. And just at the very time when there’s so much to do!”
“Pooh!” said Dr Brash. “When you drop off, Miss Dyce, there’ll be an awful dunt, I’m telling you! God bless my soul, what do you think a doctor’s for but putting folk on their pins again! A week in bed – and – h’m! – a bottle. Everything’s in the bottle, mind you!”
“And there’s the hands of the Almighty too,” said Bell, who constantly deplored the doctor was so poor a Kirk attender, and not a bit in that respect like the noble doctors in her sister’s latest Scottish novels.
Dr Brash went out of the room, to find the rest of the household sorely put about in the parlour, Lennox an object of woe, and praying hard to herself with as much as she could remember of her Uncle Dan’s successful supplication for herself when she had the pneumonia. To see the cheerfulness of his countenance when he came in was like the sun-burst on a leaden sea. “Miss Bell’s as sound as her namesake,” he assured them. “There’s been something on her mind” – with a flash of the eye, at once arrested, towards Lennox, – “and she has worked herself into a state of nervous collapse. I’ve given her the best of tonics for her kind, – the dread of a week in bed, – and I’ll wager she’ll be up by Saturday. The main thing is to keep her cheerful, and I don’t think that should be very difficult.”
Bud there and then made up her mind that her own true love was Dr Brash, in spite of his nervous sisters and his funny waistcoats. Ailie said if cheerfulness would do the thing she was ready for laughing-gas, and the lawyer vowed he would rake the town for the very latest chronicles of its never-ending fun.
But Bud was long before him on her mission of cheerfulness to the bedroom of Auntie Bell. Did you ever see a douce Scotch lass who never in her life had harboured the idea that her native hamlet was other than the finest dwelling-place in all the world, and would be happy never to put a foot outside it? – that was to be the rôle to-day. A sober little lass, sitting in a wicker-chair whose faintest creak appeared to put her in an agony – sitting incredibly long and still, and speaking Scotch when spoken to, in the most careful undertone, with a particular kind of smile that was her idea of judicious cheerfulness for a sick-room.
“Bairn!” cried her aunt at last, “if you sit much longer like that you’ll drive me crazy. What in the world’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing, dear Auntie Bell,” said Bud, astonished.
“You needn’t tell me! What was the Doctor saying?”
“He said you were to be kept cheerful,” said Bud, “and I’m doing the best I can – ”
“Bless me, lass! do you think it’s cheery to be sitting there with a face like a Geneva watch? I would sooner see you romping.”
But no, Bud could not romp that day, and when her Uncle Dan came up he found her reading aloud from Bell’s favourite Gospel according to John – her auntie’s way of securing the cheerfulness required. He looked at the pair, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders bent, and all the joviality with which he had come carefully charged gave place for a little to a graver sentiment. So had Ailie sat, a child, beside her mother on her death-bed, and, reading John one day, found open some new vista in her mind that made her there and then renounce her dearest visions, and thirl herself for ever to the home and him and Bell.
“Well, Dan,” said his sister, when the child was gone, “what have you brought me? Is it the usual pound of grapes?” – for she was of the kind whose most pious exercises never quench their sense of fun, and a gift of grapes in our place is a doleful hint to folks bedridden: I think they sometimes might as well bring in the stretching-board.
“A song-book would suit you better,” said the lawyer. “What do you think’s the matter with you? Worrying about that wean! Is this your Christian resignation?”
“I am not worrying, Dan,” she protested. “At least, not very much, and I never was the one to make much noise about my Christianity.”
“You need to be pretty noisy with it nowadays to make folk believe you mean it.”
“What did Dr Brash say down the stair?” she asked. “Does he – does he think I’m going to die?”
“Lord bless me!” cried her brother, “this is not the way that women die. I never heard of you having a broken heart. You’re missing all the usual preliminaries, and you haven’t even practised being ill. No, no, Bell; it’ll be many a day, I hope, before you’re pushing up the daisies, as that vagabond Wanton Wully puts it.”
Bell sighed. “You’re very joco’,” said she; “you’re aye cheery, whatever happens.”
“So long as it doesn’t happen to myself – that’s philosophy; at least it’s Captain Consequence’s. And if I’m cheery to-day it’s by the Doctor’s orders. He says you’re to be kept from fretting, even if we have to hire the band.”
“Then I doubt I’m far far through!” said Bell; “I’m booked for a better land,” – and at that the lawyer gave a chirruping little laugh, and said, “Are you sure it’s not for Brisbane?”
“What do you mean?” she asked him, marvellously interested for one who talked of dying.
“It’s a new one,” he exclaimed. “I had it to-day from her ladyship’s Captain. He was once on a ship that sailed to Australia, and half-way out a passenger took very ill. ‘That one’s booked for heaven, anyway,’ Maclean said to the purser. ‘No,’ said the purser, who was busy, ‘he’s booked for Brisbane.’ ‘Then he would be a D. sight better in heaven,’ said Maclean; ‘I have been twice in Brisbane, and I know.’”
Bell did her best to restrain a smile, but couldn’t. “Oh, Dan!” said she, “you’re an awful man! You think there’s nothing in this world to daunten anybody.”
“Not if they happen to be Dyces,” said he. “A high heart and a humble head – you remember father’s motto? And here you’re dauntened because the young one’s going only one or two hundred miles away for her own advantage.”
“I’m not a bit dauntened,” said Miss Bell with spirit. “It’s not myself I’m thinking of at all – it’s her, poor thing! among strangers night and day; damp sheets, maybe, and not a wise-like thing to eat. You would never forgive yourself if she fell into a decline.”
“Ailie throve pretty well on their dieting,” he pointed out; “and if she’s going to fall into a decline, she’s pretty long of starting.”
“But you mind they gave her sago pudding,” said Miss Bell; “and if there’s one thing Lennox cannot eat, it’s sago pudding. She says it is so slippy, every spoonful disappears so sudden it gives her an awful start. She says she might as well sup puddocks.”
Dan smiled at the picture and forced himself to silent patience.
“And they’ll maybe let her sit up to all hours,” Bell proceeded. “You know the way she fastens on a book at bed-time!”
“Well, well!” said he emphatically. “If you’re sure that things are to be so bad as that, we’ll not let her go at all,” and he slyly scanned her countenance to see, as he expected, that she was indignant at the very thought of backing out now that they had gone so far.
“You needn’t start to talk nonsense,” said she; “of course she’s going. But oh, Dan! it’s not the sheets, nor food, nor anything like that, that troubles me; it’s the knowledge that she’ll never be the same wee lass again.”
“Tuts!” said Daniel Dyce, and cleaned some moisture from his spectacles; “you’re putting all the cheerful things I was going to say to you out of my head. I’m off to business; is there anything I can do for you? No. Then, remember, you’re not to stir this week outside the blankets; these are the orders of Dr Brash. I have no doubt Ailie will do very well at the house-keeping,” and he left her with a gleam of mischief in his eye.
The window of the bedroom was a little open; on one of the trees a blackbird sang, and there came in the scent of apple-ringie and a tempting splendour of sun. For twenty minutes the ailing lady tried to content herself with the thought of a household managed by Alison Dyce, and then arose to see if Wully Oliver was not idling in the garden. She saw him sitting on his barrow-trams, while Ailie walked among the dahlias, and chucked her favourites of them under their chins.
“William Oliver!” cried Miss Bell indignantly, having thrown a Shetland shawl about her; “is that all the work you can do in a day?”
He looked up at the window and slowly put his pipe in his pocket.
“Well, m’em,” said he, “I daresay I could do more, but I never was much of a hand for showing off.”
CHAPTER XXVII
When Miss Bell rose, as she did in a day or two, bantered into a speedy convalescence by Ailie and Dan, it was to mark Bud’s future holidays on the calendar, and count the months in such a cunning way that she cheated the year of a whole one, by arguing to herself that the child would be gone a fortnight before they really missed her, and as good as home again whenever she started packing to return. And Edinburgh, when one was reasonable and came to think of it, was not so very awful: the Miss Birds were there, in the next street to the school where Bud was bound for, so if anything should happen, – a fire, for instance – fires were desperately common just now in the newspapers, and ordinary commonsense suggested a whole clothes-rope for the tying up of the young adventurer’s boxes; or if Bud should happen to be really hungry between her usual meals – a common thing with growing bairns, – the Birds were the very ones to make her welcome. It was many a year since Bell had been in Edinburgh, – she had not been there since mother died, – she was determined that, if she had the money and was spared till Martinmas, she should make a jaunt of it and see the shops: it was very doubtful if Miss Minto wasn’t often lamentably out of date with many of her fashions.
“Oh, you vain woman!” cried Ailie to her; “will nothing but the very latest satisfy you?”
Bud was to be sure and write once every week, on any day but Saturday, for if her letters came on Sunday they would be tempted to call at the post-office for them, like Captain Consequence, instead of waiting till the Monday morning. And if she had a cold or any threatening of quinsy, she was to fly for her very life to the hoarhound mixture, put a stocking round her neck, and go to bed. Above all, was she to mind and take her porridge every morning, and to say her prayers.
“I’ll take porridge to beat the band,” Bud promised, “even – even if I have to shut my eyes all through.”
“In a cautious moderation,” recommended Uncle Dan. “I think myself oatmeal is far too rich a diet for the blood. I have it from Captain Consequence that there’s nothing for breakfast like curried kidney and a chop to follow. But I hope you’ll understand that, apart from the carnal appetites, the main thing is to scoop in all the prizes. I’ll be dreadfully disappointed if you come back disgraced, with anything less of them than the full of a cart. That, I believe, is the only proof of a liberal Scottish education. In Ailie’s story-books it’s all the good, industrious, and deserving pupils who get everything. Of course, if you take all the prizes somebody’s sure to want, – but, tuts! I would never let that consideration vex me – it’s their own look-out. If you don’t take prizes, either in the school or in the open competition of the world, how are folk to know they should respect you?”
“You must have been a wonderfully successful student in your day,” said Ailie mischievously. “Where are all your medals?”
Dan laughed. “It’s ill to say,” said he, “for the clever lads who won them when I wasn’t looking have been so modest ever since that they’ve clean dropped out of sight. I never won anything myself in all my life that called for competition – except the bottom of the class! When it came to competitions, and I could see the other fellows’ faces, I was always far too tired or well disposed to them to give them a disappointment which they seemingly couldn’t stand so well as myself. But then I’m not like Bud here. I hadn’t a shrewd old uncle egging me on. So you must be keen on the prizes, Bud. Of course there’s wisdom too, but that comes later, – there’s no hurry for it. Prizes, prizes – remember the prizes: the more you win, the more, I suppose, I’ll admire you.”
“And if I don’t win any, Uncle Dan?” said Bud slyly, knowing very well the nature of his fun.
“Then, I suppose, I’ll have to praise the Lord if you keep your health, and just continue loving you,” said the lawyer. “I admit that if you’re anyway addicted to the prizes, you’ll be the first of your name that was so. In that same school in Edinburgh your Auntie Ailie’s quarterly reports had always ‘Conduct – Good,’ and ‘Mathematics – Fairly moderate.’ We half expected she was coming back an awful dilly; but if she did, she made a secret of it. I forgave her the ‘Fairly moderate’ myself, seeing she had learned one thing – how to sing. I hope you’ll learn to sing, Bud, in French, or German, or Italian – anything but Scotch. Our old Scotch songs, I’m told, are not what’s called artistic.”
“The sweetest in the world!” cried Auntie Bell. “I wonder to hear you haivering.”
“I’m afraid you’re not a judge of music,” said the brother. “Scotch songs are very common – everybody knows them. There’s no art in them, there’s only heart – a trifling kind of quality. If you happen to hear me singing ‘Annie Laurie’ or ‘Afton Water’ after you come home, Bud, be sure and check me. I want to be no discredit to you.”