THE town's bell rang through the dark of the winter morning with queer
little jolts and pauses, as if Wanton Wully Oliver, the ringer, had been
jovial the night before. A blithe New-Year's-time bell; a droll, daft,
scatter-brained bell; it gave no horrid alarms, no solemn reminders that
commonly toll from steeples and make good-fellows melancholy to think
upon things undone, the brevity of days and years, the parting of good
company, but a cheery ditty--“boom, boom, ding-a-dong boom, boom ding,
hie, ding-dong,” infecting whoever heard it with a kind of foolish
gayety. The burgh town turned on its pillows, drew up its feet from the
bed-bottles, last night hot, now turned to chilly stone, rubbed its
eyes, and knew by that bell it was the daftest of the daft days come. It
cast a merry spell on the community; it tickled them even in their cosey
beds. “Wanton Wully's on the randan!” said the folk, and rose quickly,
and ran to pull aside screens and blinds to look out in the dark on
window-ledges cushioned deep in snow. The children hugged themselves
under the blankets, and told one another in whispers it was not a
porridge morning, no, nor Sunday, but a breakfast of shortbread, ham,
and eggs; and behold! a beautiful, loud drum, careless as 'twere a
reveille of hot, wild youths, began to beat in a distant lane. Behind
the house of Dyce, the lawyer, a cock that must have been young and
hearty crew like to burst; and at the stables of the post-office the man
who housed his horses after bringing the morning mail through night and
storm from a distant railway station sang a song:
“'A damsel possessed of great beauty
Stood near by her own father's gate:
The gallant hussars were on duty;
To view them this maiden did wait.
Their horses were capering and prancing,
Their accoutrements shone like a star;
From the plains they were quickly advancing--
She espied her own gallant hussard”
“Mercy on us, six o'clock!” cried Miss Dyce, with a startled jump from
her dreams to the floor of her bedroom. “Six o'clock on the New Year's
morning, and I'll warrant that randy Kate is sound asleep yet,” she
said, and quickly clad herself and went to the head of the stair
and cried, “Kate! Kate! are ye up yet, Kate? Are ye hearing me, Kate
MacNeill?”
From the cavern dark of the lower story there came back no answer.
She stood with a curious, twirly wooden candlestick in her hand in
the midst of a house that was dead dumb and desperate dark and smelled
deliciously of things to eat. Even herself, who had been at the making
of most of them the day before, and had, by God's grace, still much of
a child's appetite, could not but sniff with a childish satisfaction at
this air of a celestial grocery--of plum-puddings and currant-buns,
apples and oranges, cordials and spices, toffee and the angelic treacly
sweet we call Black Man--her face lit rosily by the candle low, a woman
small and soft and sappy, with the most wanton reddish hair, and a
briskness of body that showed no sign as yet of her accomplished years.
What they were I will never tell you; but this I'll say, that even if
they had been eighty she was the kind to cheerily dance a quadrille.
The daft bell, so plainly in the jovial mood of Wanton Wully Oliver,
infected her: she smiled to herself in a way she had when remembering
droll things or just for simple jollity, and whoever saw Bell Dyce smile
to herself had never the least doubt after that she was a darling. Over
the tenements of the town the song of the bell went rollicking, and in
its hiccoughing pauses went wonderfully another sound far, far removed
in spirit and suggestion--the clang of wild geese calling: the “honk,
honk” of the ganders and the challenge of their ladies come down adrift
in the snow from the bitter north.
But there was no answer from the maid in the kitchen. She had rolled
less deliberately than was usual from her blankets to the summons of
the six-o'clock bell, and already, with the kitchen window open,
her bounteous form surged over the two sashes that were always so
conveniently low and handy for a gossip with any friendly passer-by
on the pavement. She drank the air of the clean, chill morning dark, a
heady thing like old Tom Watson's autumn ale, full of the sentiment of
the daft days. She tilted an ear to catch the tune of the mail-boy's
song that now was echoing mellow from the cobwebbed gloom of the stable
stalls, and, making a snowball from the drift of the window-ledge,
she threw it, woman wise, aimlessly into the street with a pretence at
combat. The chill of the snow stung sweet in the hot palm of her, for
she was young and strong.
“Kate, you wretch!” cried a voice behind her. She drew in her head, to
find her mistress in the kitchen with the candlestick in her hand.
“Oh, m'em,” cried the maid, no way abashed, banging up the window and
hurriedly crushing her more ample parts under the final hooks and eyes
of her morning wrapper--“oh, m'em, what a start you gave me! I'm all in
a p-p-palpitation. I was just takin' one mouthful of air and thinkin' to
myself yonder in the Gaelic that it was time for me to be comin' in and
risin' right.”
“A happy New Year to you, Kate MacNeill,” said the mistress, taking her
hand.
“Just that, just that! and the same to you yourself, Miss Dyce. I'm
feeling fine; I'm that glad with everything,” said the maid, in some
confusion at this unusual relation with her mistress. She shook the
proffered hand rapidly from side to side as if it were an egg-switch.
“And see and get the fires on quick now, like a good lass. It would
never do to be starting the New Year late--it would be unlucky. I was
crying to you yonder from the stair-head, and wondering if you were ill,
that you did not answer me so quickly as you do for ordinar'.”
“Ill, Miss Dyce!” cried the maid, astounded. “Do you think I'm daft to
be ill on a New Year's Day?”
“After yon--after yon shortbread you ate yesterday I would not have
wondered much if you were,” said Miss Dyce, shaking her head solemnly.
“I'm not complaining, but, dear me! it was an awful lump; and
I thought it would be a bonny-like thing, too, if our first-foot had to
be the doctor.”
“Doctor! I declare to goodness I never had need of a doctor to me since
Dr. Macphee in Colonsay put me in order with oil and things after I had
the measles,” exclaimed the maid, as if mankind were like wag-at-the-wa'
clocks, and could be guaranteed to go right for years if you blew
through them with a pair of bellows or touched their works with an oily
feather.
“Never mind about the measles just now, Kate,” said Miss Dyce, with a
meaning look at the black-out fire.
“Neither I was mindin' them, m'em--I don't care a spittle for them; it's
so long ago I would not know them if I saw them; I was just--”
“But get your fire on. You know we have a lot to do to-day to get
everything nice and ready for my nephew who comes from America with the
four-o'clock coach.”
“America!” cried the maid, dropping a saucepan lid on the floor in her
astonishment. “My stars! Did I not think it was from Chickagoo?”
“And Chicago is in America, Kate,” said her mistress. “Is it? is it?
Mercy on me, how was Kate to know? I only got part of my education--up
to the place where you carry one and add ten. America! Dear me, just
fancy! The very place that I'm so keen to go to. If I had the money, and
was in America--”
It was a familiar theme; Kate had not got fully started on it when
her mistress fled from the kitchen and set briskly about her morning
affairs.
And gradually the household of Dyce, the lawyer, awoke wholly to a day
of unaccustomed stillness and sound, for the deep snow piled in the
street and hushed the traffic of wheel and hoof and shoe, but otherwise
the morning was cheerful with New-Year's-Day noise. For the bell-ringing
of Wanton Wully was scarcely done, died down in a kind of brazen
chuckle, and the “honk, honk” of the wild geese sped seaward over
gardens and back lanes--strange, wild music of the north, far-fetched
and undomestic--when the fife band shrilly tootled through the town to
the tune of “Hey, Johnny Cope, are Ye Waukin' Yet?” Ah, they were the
proud, proud men, their heads dizzy with glory and last night's wine,
their tread on air. John Taggart drummed--a mighty drummer, drunk or
sober, who so loved his instrument he sometimes went to bed with it
still fastened to his neck, and banged to-day like Banagher, who banged
furiously, never minding the tune much, but happy if so be that he made
noise enough. And the fifers were not long gone down the town, all with
the wrong step but Johnny Vicar, as his mother thought, when the snow
was trampled under the feet of playing children, and women ran out of
their houses, and crossed the street, some of them, I declare, to kiss
each other, for 'tis a fashion lately come, and most genteel, grown
wonderfully common in Scotland. Right down the middle of the town, with
two small flags in his hat and holly in the lapel of his coat, went
old Divine, the hawker, with a great barrow of pure gold, crying:
“Fine Venetian oranges! wha'll buy sweet Venetian oranges? Nane o' your
foreign trash. Oranges! Oranges!--rale New Year oranges, three a penny;
bloods, a bawbee each!” The shops opened just for an hour for fear
anybody might want anything, and many there were, you may be sure,
who did, for they had eaten and drunken everything provided the night
before--which we call hogmanay--and now there were currant-loaves and
sweety biscuits to buy; shortcake, sugar, and lemons, ginger cordial
for the boys and girls and United Presbyterians, boiled ham for country
cousins who might come unexpected, and P. & A. MacGlashan's threepenny
mutton-pies (twopence if you brought the ashet back), ordinarily only to
be had on fair-days and on Saturdays, and far renowned for value.
Miss Minto's Millinery and Manteau Emporium was discovered at daylight
to have magically outlined its doors and windows during the night
with garlands and festoons of spruce and holly, whereon the white rose
bloomed in snow; and Miss Minto herself, in a splendid crimson cloak
down to the heels and cheeks like cherries, was standing with mittens
and her five finger-rings on, in the middle door, saying in beautiful,
gentle English, “A happy New Year” to every one who passed--even to
George Jordon, the common cowherd, who was always a little funny in
his intellects, and, because his trousers were bell-mouthed and hid his
feet, could never remember whether he was going to his work or coming
from it, unless he consulted; the school-master. “The same to you,
m'em, excuse my hands,” said poor George, just touching the tips of her
fingers. Then, because he had been stopped and slewed a little from his
course, he just went back the way he had come.
Too late got up the red-faced sun, too late to laugh at Wanton Wully's
jovial bell, too late for Taggart's mighty drumming, but a jolly winter
sun--'twas all that was wanted among the chimneys to make the day
complete.
First of all to rise in Dyce's house, after the mistress and the maid,
was the master, Daniel Dyce himself.
And now I will tell you all about Daniel Dyce: it is that behind his
back he was known as Cheery Dan.
“Your bath is ready, Dan,” his sister had cried, and he rose and went
with chittering teeth to it, looked at it a moment, and put a hand in
the water. It was as cold as ice, because that water, drinking which men
never age, comes from high mountain bens.
“That for ye to-day!” said he to the bath, snapping his fingers. “I'll
see ye far enough first!” And contented himself with a slighter wash
than usual, and shaving. As he shaved he hummed all the time, as was his
habit, an ancient air of his boyhood; to-day it was
“' Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,'”
with not much tone but a great conviction--a tall, lean, clean-shaven
man of over fifty, with a fine, long nose, a ruddy cheek, keen, gray
eyes, and plenty of room in his clothes, the pockets of him so large
and open it was no wonder so many people tried, as it were, to put their
hands into them. And when he was dressed he did a droll thing, for from
one of his pockets he took what hereabouts we call a pea-sling, that to
the rest of the world is a catapult, and having shut one eye, and aimed
with the weapon, and snapped the rubber several times with amazing
gravity, he went up-stairs into an attic and laid it on a table at the
window with a pencilled note, in which he wrote:
“A New Year's Day Present for a Good Boy, from an Uncle who does not
like Cats.”
He looked round the little room that seemed very bright and cheerful,
for its window gazed over the garden to the east and to the valley where
was seen the King's highway. “Wonderful! wonderful!” he said to himself.
“They have made an extraordinary job of it. Very nice, indeed, but just
a shade ladylike. A stirring boy would prefer fewer fallals.” There
was little, indeed, to suggest the occupation of a stirring boy in that
attic, with its draped dressing-table in lilac print, its looking-glass
flounced in muslin and pink lover's-knots, its bower-like bed canopied
and curtained with green lawn, its shy scent of potpourri and lavender.
A framed text in crimson wools, the work of Bell Dyce when she was
in Miss Mushet's seminary, hung over the mantel-piece enjoining all
beholders to
“Watch and Pray”
Mr. Dyce put both hands into his trousers-pockets, bent a little, and
heaved in a sort of chirruping laughter. “Man's whole duty, according to
Bell Dyce,” he said, “'Watch and Pray'; but they do not need to have the
lesson before them continually yonder in Chicago, I'll warrant. Yon's
the place for watching, by all accounts, however it may be about the
prayer. 'Watch and Pray'--h'm! It should be Watch or Pray--it clearly
cannot be both at once with the world the way it is; you might as well
expect a man to eat pease-meal and whistle strathspeys at the same
time.”
He was humming “Star of Peace”--for the tune he started the morning
with usually lasted him all day--and standing in the middle of the
floor contemplating with amusement the lady-like adornment of the room
prepared for his Chicago nephew, when a light step fell on the attic
stairs, and a woman's voice cried: “Dan! Dan Dyce! Coo-ee!”
He did not answer.
She cried again after coming up a step or two more, but still he did not
answer. He slid behind one of the bed-curtains.