JACK.
“As I lay a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge,
Merrie sang the birde as she sat upon the spraye!
There came a noble knyghte,
With his hauberke shynynge brighte,
And his gallant heart was lyghte,
Free and gaye;
As I lay a-thynkynge, he rode upon his waye.”
INGOLDSBY.
Ruby always remembers the day that Jack came to the station.
It is the twenty-sixth day of December, the day after Christmas, and
Ruby, having busied herself about the house most of the morning, in her
usual small way, has gone down to the creek to do Fanny and Bluebell’s
washing.
There is no reason in the world why those young ladies’ washing should
not be undertaken in the privacy of the kitchen, save that Jenny, in
an inadvertent moment, has enlightened her young mistress as to the
primitive Highland way of doing washing, and has, moreover, shown her a
tiny wood-cut of the same, carefully preserved in her large-print Bible.
It is no matter to Ruby that the custom is now almost obsolete. The
main thing is that it is Scottish, and Scottish in every respect Ruby
has quite determined to be.
Fanny and Bluebell sit in upright waxen and wooden silence against a
stone, wrapped each in a morsel of calico, as most of their garments
are now immersed in water. Bluebell is a brunette of the wooden-jointed
species, warranted to outlive the hardest usage at the hands of her
young owner. She has lost the roses from her cheeks, the painted wig
from her head, one leg, and half an arm, in the struggle for existence;
but Bluebell is still good for a few years more wear. The painted wig
Ruby has restored from one of old Hans’ paint-pots when he renewed the
station outbuildings last summer; but the complexion and the limbs are
beyond her power. And what is the use of giving red cheeks to a doll
whose face is liable to be washed at least once a day?
Fanny, the waxen blonde, has fared but little better. Like Bluebell,
she is one-legged, and possesses a nose from which any pretensions to
wax have long been worn away by too diligent use of soap and water.
Her flaxen head of hair is her own, and so are her arms, albeit those
latter limbs are devoid of hands. Dolls have no easier a time of it in
the Australian bush than anywhere else.
It is not amiss, this hot December morning, to paddle one’s hands in
the cooling water, and feel that one is busily employed at the same
time. The sun beats down on the large white hat so diligently bent
above the running creek. Ruby, kneeling on a large boulder, is busily
engaged wringing out Bluebell’s pink calico dress, when a new idea
comes to her. She will “tramp” the clothes as they are doing in the
picture of the “Highland washing.”
Such an idea is truly delightful, and Ruby at once begins to put it
into practice by sitting down and unbuttoning her shoes. But the hand
unfastening the second button pauses, and the face beneath the large
white hat is uplifted, the brown eyes shining. The sound of horse’s
hoofs is coming nearer and nearer.
“It’s dad!” Ruby’s face is aglow now. “He’s come back earlier than he
thought.”
The washing is all forgotten, and flying feet make for the little side
garden-gate, where the rider is in a leisurely manner dismounting from
his horse.
“Oh, dad!” the little girl cries, then pauses, for surely this figure
is not her father’s. Ruby pulls down her hat, the better to see, and
looks up at him. He is giving his horse in charge to brown-faced Dick,
and, raising his hat, comes towards Ruby.
“Good morning,” he says politely, showing all his pretty even white
teeth in a smile. “This is Glengarry, is it not? I am on my way to the
coast, and was directed to Mr. Thorne’s as the nearest station.”
“Yes,” returns Ruby, half shyly, “this is Glengarry. Won’t you come in
and rest. Mamma is at home, though papa is away.”
Ruby knows quite what to do in the circumstances. Strangers do not come
often to Glengarry; but still they come sometimes.
“Thanks,” answers the young man.
He is of middle stature, with rather a tendency to stoop, and is of a
complexion which would be delicate were it not so sunburnt, with light
brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a smile which lights up his face like
sunlight as he speaks.
Ruby leads him along the verandah, where the flowering plants twine up
the pillars, and into the room with the shady blue blinds.
“It’s a gentleman, mamma,” Ruby gives as introduction. “He is on his
way to the coast.”
When Ruby has finished her washing, spread out all the small garments
to dry and bleach upon the grass, and returned to the house, she finds
the stranger still there. The mistress had said he was to wait over
dinner, so she learns from Jenny.
“Oh, there you are, Ruby!” her step-mother says as the little girl
comes into the room. “What did you run away for, child? Mr. Kirke
fancies you must have been shy of him.”
“Little girls often are,” says Mr. Kirke, with that smile which
illumines an otherwise plain face. “They think I’m cross.”
“_I_ don’t think so!” decides Ruby, suddenly. She is gazing up into
those other brown eyes above her, and is fascinated, as most others
are, by Jack Kirke’s face--a face stern in repose, and far from
beautiful, but lit up by a smile as bright as God’s own sunlight, and
as kind.
“_You_ don’t think so?” repeats the young man, with another smile for
the fair little face uplifted to his. He puts his arm round the child
as he speaks, and draws her towards him. “You are the little girl who
thinks such a lot of Scotland,” Jack Kirke says.
“How did you know?” Ruby questions, looking up with wide brown eyes.
“I rather think a little bird must have sung it to me as I came along,”
the stranger answers gravely. “Besides, I’m Scotch, so of course I
know.”
“Oh-h!” ejaculates Ruby, her eyes growing bigger then. “Tell me about
Scotland.”
So, with one arm round Ruby, the big brown eyes gazing up into the
honest ones above her, and the sunshine, mellowed by the down-drawn
blinds, flooding on the two brown heads, Jack Kirke tells the little
girl all about the unknown land of Scotland, and his birthplace, the
grey little seaport town of Greenock, on the beautiful river Clyde.
“You must come and see me if ever you come to Scotland, you know,
Ruby,” he tells her. “I’m on my way home now, and shall be jolly glad
to get there; for, after all, there’s no place like home, and no place
in all the world like bonnie Scotland.”
“Do you think that too?” Ruby cries delightedly. “That’s what mamma
always says, and Jenny. I don’t remember Scotland,” Ruby continues,
with a sigh; “but I dare say, if I did, I should say it too. And by
next Christmas I shall have seen it. Dad says, ‘God willing;’ but I
don’t see the good of that when we really are going to go. Do you, Mr.
Kirke?”
The sunlight is still flooding the room; but its radiance has died
away from Jack Kirke’s face, leaving it for the moment cold and stern.
Ruby is half frightened as she looks up at him. What has chased the
brightness from the face a moment ago so glad?
“When you are as old as dad and I you will be thankful if you can say
just that, little girl,” he says in a strange, strained voice.
Then Ruby knows that Mr. Kirke is sorry about something, though she
does not know what, and, child-like, seeks to comfort him in the grief
she does not know. She slips her small hand into his.
“I’m sorry too,” she whispers simply.
Again that flash of sunlight illumines the stern young face. The
child’s words of ready sympathy have fallen like summer rain into the
heart of the stranger far from home and friends, and the grief she does
not even understand is somehow lessened by her innocent words.
“Ruby,” he says suddenly, looking into the happy little face so near
his own, “I want you to do something for me. I want you to call me
Jack. Nobody has called me that since I left home, and it would make it
feel like old times to hear you say it. Don’t be afraid because I’m too
old. It isn’t so very long ago since I was young like you.”
“Jack,” whispers Ruby, almost shyly.
“Good little girl!” Jack Kirke says approvingly. A very beautiful light
is shining in his brown eyes, and he stoops suddenly and kisses the
wondering child. “I must send you out a Christmas present for that,”
Jack adds. “What is it to be, Ruby? A new doll?”
“You must excuse me, Mr. Kirke,” the lady of the house observes
apologetically as she comes back to the room. She has actually taken
the trouble to cross the quadrangle to assist Jenny in sundry small
matters connected with the midday meal. “I am sorry I had to leave you
for a little,” Mrs. Thorne goes on. “I hope Ruby has been entertaining
you.”
“Ruby is a hostess in herself,” Jack Kirke returns, laughing.
“Yes, and mamma!” cries Ruby. “I’m to go to see him in Scotland. Jack
says so, in Green--Green----I can’t remember the name of the place; but
it’s where they build ships, beside the river.”
“Ruby!” her step-mother remonstrates, horror-stricken. “Who’s Jack?”
“Him!” cries Ruby, triumphantly, a fat forefinger denoting her
new-found friend. “He said I was to call him Jack,” explains the little
girl. “Didn’t you, Jack?”
“Of course I did,” that young man says good-naturedly. “And promised to
send you a doll for doing it, the very best that Greenock or Glasgow
can supply.”
It is evident that the pair have vowed eternal friendship--a friendship
which only grows as the afternoon goes on.
When Mr. Thorne comes home he insists that the young Scotchman shall
stay the night, which Jack Kirke is nothing loth to do. Ruby even
does him the honour of introducing him to both her dolls and to her
bleaching green, and presents him with supreme dignity to Jenny as “Mr.
Kirke, a gentleman from Scotland.”
“I wish next Christmas wasn’t so far away, Jack,” Ruby says that
evening as they sit on the verandah. “It’s such a long time till ever
we see you again.”
“And yet you never saw me before this morning,” says the young man,
laughing. He is both pleased and flattered by the affection which the
little lady has seen fit to shower upon him. “And I dare say that by
this time to-morrow you will have forgotten that there is such a person
in existence,” Jack adds teasingly.
“We won’t ever forget you,” Ruby protests loyally. “Will we, mamma?
He’s just the nicest ‘stranger’ that ever came to Glengarry since we
came.”
“There’s a decided compliment for you, Mr. Kirke,” laughs Ruby’s
father. “I’m getting quite jealous of your attentions, little woman. It
is well you are not a little older, or Mr. Kirke might find them very
much too marked.”
The white moonlight is flooding the land when at length they retire to
rest. Ruby’s dreams are all of her new-found friend whom she is so soon
to lose, and when she is awakened by the sunlight of the newer morning
streaming in upon her face a rush of gladness and of sorrow strive
hard for mastery in her heart--gladness because Jack is still here,
sorrow because he is going away.
Her father is to ride so far with the traveller upon his way, and Ruby
stands with dim eyes at the garden-gate watching them start.
“Good-bye, little Ruby red,” Jack Kirke says as he stoops to kiss her.
“Remember next Christmas, and remember the new dolly I’m to send you
when I get home.”
“Good-bye, Jack,” Ruby whispers in a choked voice. “I’ll always
remember you; and, Jack, if there’s any other little girl in Scotland
you’ll perhaps like better than me, I’ll try not to mind _very_ much.”
Jack Kirke twirls his moustache and smiles. There _is_ another little
girl in the question, a little girl whom he has known all her life,
and who is all the world to her loyal-hearted lover. The only question
now at issue is as to whether Jack Kirke is all the world to the woman
whom, he has long since decided, like Geraint of old, is the “one maid”
for him.
Then the two riders pass out into the sunshine, Jack Kirke with a last
look back and a wave of the hand for the desolate little blue figure
left standing at the gate.
“Till next Christmas, Ruby!” his voice rings out cheerily, and then
they are gone, through a blaze of sunlight which shines none the
dimmer because Ruby sees it through a mist of tears.
It is her first remembered tasting of that most sorrowful of all words,
“Good-bye,” a good-bye none the less bitter that the “good morning”
came to her but in yesterday’s sunshine. It is not always those whom we
have known the longest whom we love the best.
Even the thought of the promised new doll fails to comfort the little
girl in this her first keenest sorrow of parting. For long she stands
at the gate, gazing out into the sunlight, which beats down hotly upon
her uncovered head.
“It’s only till next Christmas anyway,” Ruby murmurs with a shadowy
attempt at a smile. “And it won’t be so _very_ long to pass.”
She rubs her eyes with her hand as she speaks, and is almost surprised,
when she draws it away, to find a tear there.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]