SHE was a lucky lassie, this of ours, to have come home to her father's
Scotland on that New Year's Day, for there is no denying that it is not
always gay in Scotland, contrary land, that, whether we be deep down in
the waist of the world and afar from her, or lying on her breast,
chains us to her with links of iron and gold--stern tasks and happy days
remembered, ancient stories, austerity and freedom, cold weather on
moor and glen, warm hearths and burning hearts. She might have seen this
burgh first in its solemnity, on one of the winter days when it shivers
and weeps among its old memorials, and the wild geese cry more constant
over the house-tops, and the sodden gardens, lanes, wynds, and wells,
the clanging spirits of old citizens dead and gone, haunting the place
of their follies and their good times, their ridiculous ideals, their
mistaken ambitions, their broken plans. Ah, wild geese! wild geese! old
ghosts that cry to-night above my dwelling, I feel--I feel and know!
She might have come, the child, to days of fast, and sombre dark drugget
garments, dissonant harsh competing kettle bells, or spoiled harvests,
poor fishings, hungry hours. It was good for her, and it is the making
of my story, that she came not then, but with the pure white cheerful
snow, to ring the burgh bell in her childish escapade, and usher in with
merriment the New Year, and begin her new life happily in the Old World.
She woke at noon among the scented curtains, in linen sea-breeze
bleached, under the camceil roof that all children love, for it makes
a garret like the ancestral cave and in rainy weather they can hear the
pattering feet of foes above them. She heard the sound of John Taggart's
drum, and the fifing of “Happy we've been a' thegether,” and turning,
found upon her pillow a sleeping doll that woke whenever she raised it
up, and stared at her in wonderment.
“Oh!--Oh!--Oh! you roly-poly blonde!” cried the child in ecstasy,
hugging it to her bosom and covering it with kisses. “I'm as glad as
anything. Do you see the lovely little room? I'll tell you right here
what your name is: it's Alison; no, it's Bell; no, it's Alibel for your
two just lovely, lovely aunties.”
Up she rose, sleep banished, with a sense of cheerfulness and
expectation, nimbly dressed herself, and slid down the banisters to
tumble plump at the feet of her Auntie Bell in the lobby.
“Mercy on us! You'll break your neck; are you hurt?” cried Aunt Bell.
“I'm not kicking,” said the child, and the dog waved furiously a
gladsome tail. A log fire blazed and crackled and hissed in the parlor,
and Mr. Dyce tapped time with his fingers on a chair-back to an internal
hymn.
“My! ain't I the naughty girl to be snoozling away like a gopher in a
hole all day? Your clock's stopped, Uncle Dan.”
Mr. Dyce looked very guilty, and coughed, rubbing his chin. “You're a
noticing creature,” said he. “I declare it _has_ stopped. Well, well!”
and his sister Bell plainly enjoyed some amusing secret.
“Your uncle is always a little daft, my dear,” she said.
“I would rather be daft than dismal,” he retorted, cleaning his glasses.
“It's a singular thing that the clocks in our lobby and parlor always
stop on the New Year's Day, Lennox.”
“Bud; please, say Bud,” pleaded the little one. “Nobody ever calls me
Lennox 'cept when I'm doing something wrong and almost going to get a
whipping.”
“Very well, Bud, then. This clock gets something wrong with it every New
Year's Day, for your uncle, that man there, wants the folk who call
never to know the time so that they'll bide the longer.”
“Tuts!” said Uncle Dan, who had thought this was his own particular
recipe for joviality, and that they had never discovered it.
“You have come to a hospitable town, Bud,” said Ailie. “There are
convivial old gentlemen on the other side of the street who have got up
a petition to the magistrates to shut up the inn and the public-house in
the afternoon. They say it is in the interests of temperance, but it's
really to compel their convivial friends to visit themselves.”
“I signed it myself,” confessed Mr. Dyce, “and I'm only half convivial.
I'm not bragging; I might have been more convivial if it didn't so
easily give me an aching head. What's more cheerful than a crowd in the
house and the clash going? A fine fire, a good light, and turn about
at a story! The happiest time I ever had in my life was when I broke my
leg; so many folk called, it was like a month of New Year's Days. I was
born with a craving for company. Mother used to have a superstition that
if a knife or spoon dropped on the floor from the table it betokened a
visitor, and I used to drop them by the dozen. But, dear me! here's a
wean with a doll, and where in the world did she get it?”
Bud, with the doll under one arm and the dog tucked under the other,
laughed up in his face with shy perception.
“Oh, you funny man!” she exclaimed. “I guess you know all right who
put Alibel on my pillow. Why! I could have told you were a doll man:
I noticed you turning over the pennies in your pants' pocket, same as
poppa used when he saw any nice clean little girl like me, and he was
the dolliest man in all Chicago. Why, there was treasury days when he
just rained dolls.”
“That was William, sure enough,” said Mr. Dyce. “There's no need for
showing us _your_ strawberry mark. It was certainly William. If it had
only been dolls!”
“Her name's Alibel, for her two aunties,” said the child.
“Tuts!” said Mr. Dyce. “If I had thought you meant to honor them that
way I would have made her twins. But you see I did not know; it was a
delicate transaction as it was. I could not tell very well whether a
doll or a--a--or a fountain-pen would be the most appropriate present
for a ten-year-old niece from Chicago, and I risked the doll. I hope it
fits.”
“Like a halo! It's just sweet!” said the ecstatic maiden, and rescued
one of its limbs from the gorge of Footles.
It got about the town that to Dyces' house had come a wonderful American
child who talked language like a minister: the news was partly the news
of the mail-driver and Wully Oliver, but mostly the news of Kate, who,
from the moment Lennox had been taken from her presence and put to bed,
had dwelt upon the window-sashes, letting no one pass that side of the
street without her confidence.
“You never heard the like! No' the size of a shilling worth of
ha'pennies, and she came all the way by her lee-lone in the coach from
Chickagoo--that's in America. There's to be throng times in this house
now, I'm tellin' you, with brother William's wean.”
As the forenoon advanced Kate's intelligence grew more surprising: to
the new-comer were ascribed a score of characteristics such as had never
been seen in the town before. For one thing (would Kate assure them),
she could imitate Wully Oliver till you almost saw whiskers on her and
could smell the dram. She was thought to be a boy to start with, but
that was only their ignorance in Chickagoo, for the girl was really a
lassie, and had kists of lassie's clothes coming with the coach.
The Dyces' foreigner was such a grand sensation that it marred the
splendor of the afternoon band parade, though John Taggart was unusually
glorious, walking on the very backs of his heels, his nose in the
heavens, and his drumsticks soaring and circling over his head in a way
to make the spectators giddy. Instead of following the band till its
_répertoire_ was suddenly done at five minutes to twelve at the door of
Maggie White, the wine and spirit merchant, there were many that hung
about the street in the hope of seeing the American. They thought they
would know her at once by the color of her skin, which some said would
be yellow, and others maintained would be brown. A few less patient and
more privileged boldly visited the house of Dyce to make their New-Year
compliments and see the wonder for themselves.
The American had her eye on them.
She had her eye on the Sheriffs lady, who was so determinedly affable,
so pleased with everything the family of Dyce might say, do, or possess,
and only five times ventured to indicate there were others, by a mention
of “the dear Lady Anne--so nice, so simple, so unaffected, so amiable.”
On Miss Minto of the crimson cloak, who kept her deaf ear to the sisters
and her good one to their brother, and laughed heartily at all his
little jokes even before they were half made, or looked at him with
large, soft, melting eyes and her lips apart, which her glass had told
her was an aspect ravishing. The sisters smiled at each other when she
had gone and looked comically at Dan, but he, poor man, saw nothing, but
just that Mary Minto was a good deal fatter than she used to be.
On the doctor's two sisters, late come from a farm in the country,
marvellously at ease so long as the conversation abode in gossip about
the neighbors, but in a silent terror when it rose from persons to
ideas, as it once had done when Lady Anne had asked them what they
thought of didactic poetry, and one of them said it was a thing she was
very fond of, and then fell in a swound.
On the banker man, the teller, who was in hopeless love with Ailie, as
was plain from the way he devoted himself to Bell.
On Mr. Dyce's old retired partner, Mr. Cleland, who smelt of cloves and
did not care for tea.
On P. & A. MacGlashan, who had come in specially to see if the stranger
knew his brother Albert, who, he said, was “in a Somewhereville in
Manitoba.”
On the Provost and his lady, who were very old, and petted each other
when they thought themselves unobserved.
On the soft, kind, simple, content and happy ladies lately married.
On the others who would like to be.
Yes, Bud had her eye on them all. They never guessed how much they
entertained her as they genteelly sipped their tea, or wine, or ginger
cordial,--the women of them--or coughed a little too artificially over
the New-Year glass--the men.
“Wee Pawkie, that's what she is--just Wee Pawkie!” said the Provost when
he got out, and so far it summed up everything.
The ladies could not tear away home fast enough to see if they had not a
remnant of cloth that could be made into such a lovely dress as that of
Dyce's niece for one of their own children. “Mark my words!” they said;
“that child will be ruined between them. She's her father's image, and
he went and married a poor play-actress, and stayed a dozen years away
from Scotland, and never wrote home a line.”
So many people came to the house, plainly for no reason but to see the
new-comer, that Ailie at last made up her mind to satisfy all by
taking her out for a walk. The strange thing was that in the street the
populace displayed indifference or blindness. Bud might have seen no
more sign of interest in her than the hurried glance of a passer-by;
no step slowed to show that the most was being made of the opportunity.
There had been some women at their windows when she came out of the
house sturdily walking by Aunt Ailie's side, with her hands in her muff,
and her keen black eyes peeping from under the fur of her hood; but
these women drew in their heads immediately. Ailie, who knew her native
town, was conscious that from behind the curtains the scrutiny was keen.
She smiled to herself as she walked demurely down the street.
“Do you feel anything, Bud?” she asked.
Bud naturally failed to comprehend.
“You ought to feel something at your back; I'm ticklish all down the
back because of a hundred eyes.”
“I know,” said the astounding child. “They think we don't notice, but
I guess God sees them,” and yet she had apparently never glanced at the
windows herself, nor looked round to discover passers-by staring over
their shoulders at her aunt and her.
For a moment Ailie felt afraid. She dearly loved a quick perception, but
it was a gift, she felt, a niece might have too young.
“How in the world did you know that, Bud?” she asked.
“I just guessed they'd be doing it,” said Bud, “'cause it's what I would
do if I saw a little girl from Scotland walking down the lake front in
Chicago. Is it dreff'le rude, Aunt Ailie?”
“So they say, so they say,” said her aunt, looking straight forward,
with her shoulders back and her eyes level, flushing at the temples.
“But I'm afraid we can't help it. It's undignified--to be seen doing it.
I can see you're a real Dyce, Bud. The other people who are not Dyces
lose a great deal of fun. They must be very much bored with each other.
Do you know, child, I think you and I are going to be great friends--you
and I and Aunt Bell and Uncle Dan.”
“And the Mosaic dog,” added Bud with warmth. “I love that old dog so
much that I could--I could eat him. He's the becomingest dog! Why,
here he is!” And it was indeed Footles who hurled himself at them, a
rapturous mass of unkempt hair and convulsive barkings, having escaped
from the imprisonment of Kate's kitchen by climbing over her shoulders
and out across the window-sash.