IF Molyneux, the actor, was to blame for sending this child of ten on
her journey into Scotland without convoy, how much worse was his offence
that he sent no hint of her character to the house of Dyce? She was like
the carpet-bag George Jordon found at the inn door one day without a
name on it, and, saying, “There's nothing like thrift in a family,” took
home immediately, to lament over for a week because he had not the key
to open it. There should have been a key to Lennox Brenton Dyce, but
Molyneux, a man of post-cards and curt and cryptic epistles generally,
never thought of that, so that it took some days for the folk she came
among to pick the lock. There was fun in the process, it cannot be
denied, but that was because the Dyces were the Dyces; had they been
many another folk she might have been a mystery for years, and in the
long-run spoiled completely. Her mother had been a thousand women in
her time--heroines good and evil, fairies, princesses, paupers, maidens,
mothers, shy and bold, plain or beautiful, young or old, as the play of
the week demanded--a play-actress, in a word. And now she was dead
and buried, the bright, white lights on her no more, the music and the
cheering done. But not all dead and buried, for some of her was in her
child.
Bud was born a mimic. I tell you this at once, because so many
inconsistencies will be found in her I should otherwise look foolish to
present her portrait for a piece of veritable life. Not a mimic of voice
and manner only, but a mimic of people's minds, so that for long--until
the climax came that was to change her when she found herself--she was
the echo and reflection of the last person she spoke with. She borrowed
minds and gestures as later she borrowed Grandma Buntain's pelerine and
bonnet. She could be all men and all women except the plainly dull or
wicked--but only on each occasion for a little while; by-and-by she was
herself again.
And so it was that for a day or two she played with the phrase and
accent of Wanton Wully Oliver, or startled her aunts with an unconscious
rendering of Kate's Highland accent, her “My stars!” and “Mercy me's!”
and “My wee hens!”
The daft days (as we call New Year time) passed--the days of careless
merriment, that were but the start of Bud's daft days, that last with
all of us for years if we are lucky. The town was settling down; the
schools were opening on Han'sel Monday, and Bud was going--not to the
grammar-school after all, but to the Pigeons' Seminary. Have patience,
and by-and-by I will tell about the Pigeons.
Bell had been appalled to find the child, at the age of ten, apparently
incredibly neglected in her education.
“Of course you would be at some sort of school yonder in America?” she
had said at an early opportunity, not hoping for much, but ready to
learn of some hedge-row academy in spite of all the papers said of Yales
and Harvards and the like.
“No, I never was at school; I was just going when father died,” said
Bud, sitting on a sofa wrapped in a cloak of Ailie's, feeling extremely
tall and beautiful and old.
“What! Do you sit there and tell me they did not send you to school?”
cried her aunt, so stunned that the child delighted in her power to
startle and amaze. “That's America for you! Ten years old and not the
length of your alphabets!--it's what one might expect from a heathen
land of niggers, and lynchers, and presidents. I was the best sewer and
speller in Miss Mushet's long before I was ten. My lassie, let me tell
you you have come to a country where you'll get your education! We would
make you take it at its best if we had to live on meal. Look at your
auntie Ailie--French and German, and a hand like copperplate; it's a
treat to see her at the old scrutoire, no way put-about, composing.
Just goes at it like lightning! I do declare if your uncle Dan was
done, Ailie could carry on the business, all except the aliments and
sequestrations. It beats all! Ten years old and not to know the ABC!”
“Oh, but I do,” said Bud, quickly. “I learned the alphabet off the
play-bills--the big G's first, because there's so many Greats and Grand?
and Gorgeouses in them. And then Mrs. Molyneux used to let me try to
read Jim's press notices. She read them first every morning sitting up
in bed at breakfast, and said, 'My! wasn't he a great man?' and then
she'd cry a little, 'cause he never got justice from the managers, for
they were all mean and jealous of him. Then she'd spray herself with the
peau d'espagne and eat a cracker. And the best papers there was in the
land said the part of the butler in the second act was well filled by
Mr. Jim Molyneux; or among others in a fine cast were J. Molyneux, Ralph
Devereux, and O. G. Tarpoll.”
“I don't know what you're talking about, my poor wee whitterick; but
it's all haivers,” said Miss Bell. “Can you spell?”
“If the words are not too big, or silly ones where it's 'ei' or 'ie' and
you have to guess,” said Bud.
“Spell cat.”
Bud stared at her incredulously.
“Spell cat,” repeated her aunt.
“K-a-t-t,” said Bud (oh, naughty Bud!).
“Mercy!” cried Bell, with horrified hands in the air. “Off you pack
to-morrow to the seminary. I wouldn't wonder if you did not know a
single word of the Shorter Catechism. Perhaps they have not such a thing
in that awful heathen land you came from?”
Bud could honestly say she had never heard of the Shorter Catechism.
“My poor, neglected bairn,” said her aunt, piteously, “you're sitting
there in the dark with no conviction of sin, and nothing bothering you,
and you might be dead to-morrow! Mind this, that 'Man's chief end is to
glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.' Say that.”
'“Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever,'”
repeated Bud, obediently, rolling her r's and looking solemn like her
aunt.
“Did you ever hear of Robert Bruce, him that watched the spiders?”
Here, too, the naughty Bud protested ignorance.
“He was the savior of his country,” said Bell. “Mind that!”
“Why, auntie, I thought it was George Washington,” said Bud, surprised.
“I guess if you're looking for a little wee stupid, it's me.”
“We're talking about Scotland,” said Miss Bell, severely. “He saved
Scotland. It was well worth while! Can you do your sums?”
“I can _not_,” said Bud, emphatically. “I hate them.” Miss Bell said not
a word more; she was too distressed at such confessed benightedness;
but she went out of the parlor to search for Ailie. Bud forgot she
was beautiful and tall and old in Ailie's cloak; she was repeating to
herself “Man's chief end” with rolling r's, and firmly fixing in her
memory the fact that Robert Bruce, not George Washington, was the savior
of his country and watched spiders.
Ailie was out, and so her sister found no ear for her bewailings over
the child's neglected education till Mr. Dyce came in humming the tune
of the day--“Sweet Afton”--to change his hat for one more becoming to
a sitting of the sheriff's court. He was searching for his good one
in what he was used to call “the piety press,” for there was hung his
Sunday clothes, when Bell distressfully informed him that the child
could not so much as spell cat.
“Nonsense! I don't believe it,” said he. “That would be very unlike our
William.”
“It's true--I tried her myself!” said Bell. “She was never at a school;
isn't it just deplorable?”
“H'm!” said Mr. Dyce, “it depends on the way you look at it, Bell.”
“She does not know a word of her catechism, nor the name of Robert
Bruce, and says she hates counting.”
“Hates counting!” repeated Mr. Dyce, wonderfully cheering up; “that's
hopeful; it reminds me of myself. Forbye its gey like Brother William.
His way of counting was 'one pound, ten shillings in my pocket, two
pounds that I'm owing some one, and ten shillings I get to-morrow--
that's five pounds I have; what will I buy you now?' The worst of
arithmetic is that it leaves nothing to the imagination. Two and two's
four and you're done with it; there's no scope for either fun or fancy
as there might be if the two and two went courting in the dark and
swapped their partners by an accident.”
“I wish you would go in and speak to her,” said Bell, distressed still,
“and tell her what a lot she has to learn.”
“What, me!” cried Uncle Dan; “excuse my grammar,” and he laughed. “It's
an imprudent kind of mission for a man with all his knowledge in little
patches. I have a lot to learn, myself, Bell; it takes me all my time to
keep the folk I meet from finding out the fact.”
But he went in humming, Bell behind him, and found the child still
practising “Man's chief end,” so engrossed in the exercise she never
heard him enter. He crept behind her, and put his hands over her eyes.
“Guess who,” said he, in a shrill falsetto.
“It's Robert Bruce,” said Bud, without moving.
“No--cold--cold!--guess again,” said her uncle, growling like Giant
Blunderbore.
“I'll mention no names,” said she, “but it's mighty like Uncle Dan.”
He stood in front of her and put on a serious face. “What's this I am
hearing, Miss Lennox,” said he, “about a little girl who doesn't know a
lot of things nice little girls ought to know?”
“'Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever,'”
repeated Bud, reflectively. “I've got that all right, but what does it
mean?”
“What does it mean?” said Mr. Dyce, a bit taken aback. “You tell her,
Bell; what does it mean? I must not be late for the court.”
“You're far cleverer than I am,” said Bell. “Tell her yourself.”
“It means,” said Daniel Dyce, the lawyer, seating himself on the sofa
beside his niece, “that man in himself is a gey poor soul, no' worth
a pin, though he's apt to think the world was made for his personal
satisfaction. At the best he's but an instrument--a harp of a thousand
strings God bends to hear in His leisure. He made that harp--the heart
and mind of man--when He was in a happy hour. Strings hale and strings
broken, strings slack or tight, there are all kinds of them; the best we
can do's to be taut and trembling for the gladness of God who loves fine
music, and set the stars themselves to singing from the very day He
put them birling in the void. To glorify's to wonder and adore, and who
keeps the wondering, humble heart, the adoring eye, is to God pleasing
exceedingly. Sing, lassie, sing, sing, sing, inside ye, even if ye are
as timmer as a cask. God knows I have not much of a voice myself, but
I'm full of nobler airs than ever crossed my rusty thrapple. To be
grateful always, and glad things are no worse, is a good song to start
the morning.”
“Ah, but sin, Dan, sin!” said Bell, sighing, for she always feared her
own light-heartedness. “We may be too joco.”
“Say ye so?” he cried, turning to his sister with a flame upon his
visage. “By the heavens above us, no! Sin might have been eternal; each
abominable thought might have kept in our minds, constant day and
night from the moment that it bred there; the theft we did might keep
everlastingly our hand in our neighbor's kist as in a trap; the knife
we thrust with might have kept us thrusting forever and forever. But
no--God's good! sleep comes, and the clean morning, and the morning is
Christ, and every moment of time is a new opportunity to amend. It is
not sin that is eternal, it is righteousness and peace. Joco! We cannot
be too joco, having our inheritance.”
He stopped suddenly, warned by a glance of his sister's, and turned to
look in his niece's face to find bewilderment there. The mood that was
not often published by Dan Dyce left him in a flash, and he laughed and
put his arms round her.
“I hope you're a lot wiser for my sermon, Bud,” said he. “I can see you
have pins and needles worse than under the Reverend Mr. Frazer on the
Front. What's the American for haivers--for foolish speeches?”
“Hot air,” said Bud, promptly.
“Good!” said Dan Dyce, rubbing his hands together. “What I'm saying may
seem just hot air to you, but it's meant. You do not know the Shorter
Catechism; never mind; there's a lot of it I'm afraid I do not know
myself; but the whole of it is in that first answer to 'Man's chief
end.' Reading and writing, and all the rest of it, are of less
importance, but I'll not deny they're gey and handy. You're no Dyce if
you don't master them easily enough.”
He kissed her and got gayly up and turned to go. “Now,” said he,
“for the law, seeing we're done with the gospels. I'm a conveyancing
lawyer--though you'll not know what that means--so mind me in your
prayers.”
Bell went out into the lobby after him, leaving Bud in a curious frame
of mind, for “Man's chief end,” and Bruce's spider, and the word “joco,”
all tumbled about in her, demanding mastery.
“Little help I got from you, Dan!” said Bell to her brother. “You never
even tried her with a multiplication table.”
“What's seven times nine?” he asked her, with his fingers on the handle
of the outer door, his eyes mockingly mischievous.
She flushed and laughed, and pushed him on the shoulder. “Go away with
you!” said she. “Fine you ken I could never mind seven times!”
“No Dyce ever could,” said he--“excepting Ailie. Get her to put the
little creature through her tests. If she's not able to spell cat at ten
she'll be an astounding woman by the time she's twenty.”
The end of it was that Aunt Ailie, whenever she came in, upon Bell's
report went over the street to Rodger's shop and made a purchase. As
she hurried back with it, bareheaded, in a cool drizzle of rain that
jewelled her wonderful hair, she felt like a child herself again. The
banker-man saw her from his lodging as she flew across the street with
sparkling eyes and eager lips, the roses on her cheeks, and was sure,
foolish man! that she had been for a new novel or maybe a cosmetic,
since in Rodger's shop they sell books and balms and ointments. She made
the quiet street magnificent for a second--a poor wee second, and then,
for him, the sun went down. The tap of the knocker on the door she
closed behind her struck him on the heart. You may guess, good women, if
you like, that at the end of the book the banker-man is to marry Ailie,
but you'll be wrong; she was not thinking of the man at all at all--she
had more to do, she was hurrying to open the gate of gold to her little
niece.
“I've brought you something wonderful,” said she to the child--“better
than dolls, better than my cloak, better than everything; guess what it
is.”
Bud wrinkled her brows. “Ah, dear!” she sighed, “we may be too joco! And
I'm to sing, sing, sing, even if I'm as--timmer as a cask, and Robert
Bruce is the savior of his country.” She marched across the room,
trailing Ailie's cloak with her, in an absurd caricature of Bell's brisk
manner. Yet not so much the actress engrossed in her performance, but
what she tried to get a glimpse of what her aunt concealed.
“You need not try to see it,” said Ailie, smiling, with the secret in
her breast. “You must honestly guess.”
“Better'n dolls and candies; oh, my!” said Bud. “I hope it's not the
Shorter Catechism,” she concluded, looking so grave that her aunt
laughed.
“It's not the Catechism,” said Ailie; “try again. Oh, but you'll never
guess! It's a key.”
“A key?'' repeated Bud, plainly cast down.
“A gold key,” said her aunt.
“What for?” asked Bud.
Ailie sat herself down on the floor and drew the child upon her knees.
She had a way of doing that which made her look like a lass in her
teens; indeed, it was most pleasing if the banker-man could just have
seen it! “A gold key,” she repeated, lovingly, in Bud's ear. “A key to
a garden--the loveliest garden, with flowers that last the whole year
round. You can pluck and pluck at them and they're never a single one
the less. Better than sweet-pease! But that's not all, there's a big
garden-party to be at it--”
“My! I guess I'll put on my best glad rags,” said Bud. “_And_ the hat
with pink.” Then a fear came to her face. “Why, Aunt Ailie, you can't
have a garden-party this time of the year,” and she looked at the
window down whose panes the rain was now streaming.
“This garden-party goes on all the time,” said Ailie. “Who cares about
the weather? Only very old people; not you and I. I'll introduce you to
a lot of nice people--Di Vernon, and--you don't happen to know a lady
called Di Vernon, do you, Bud?”
“I wouldn't know her if she was handed to me on a plate with parsley
trimmings,” said Bud, promptly.
“--Di Vernon, then, and Effie Deans, and Little Nell, and the
Marchioness; and Richard Swivefler, and Tom Pinch, and the Cranford
folks, and Juliet Capulet--”
“She must belong to one of the first families,” said Bud. “I have a kind
of idea that I have heard of her.”
“And Mr. Falstaff--such a naughty man, but nice, too! And Rosalind.”
“Rosalind!” cried Bud. “You mean Rosalind in 'As You Like It?”'
Ailie stared at her with astonishment. “You amazing child!” said she,
“who told you about 'As You Like It'?”
“Nobody told me; I just read about her when Jim was learning the part of
Charles the Wrestler he played on six 'secutive nights in the Waldorf.”
“Read it!” exclaimed her aunt. “You mean he or Mrs. Molyneux read it to
you.”
“No, I read it myself,” said Bud.
“'Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp?
Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court.”
She threw Aunt Ailie's cloak over one shoulder, put forth a ridiculously
little leg with an air of the playhouse, and made the gestures of Jim
Molyneux.
“I thought you couldn't read,” said Ailie. “You little fraud! You made
Aunt Bell think you couldn't spell cat.”
“Oh, Queen of Sheba! did she think I was in earnest?” cried Bud. “I was
just pretending. I'm apt to be pretending pretty often; why, Kate thinks
I make Works. I can read anything; I've read books that big it gave you
cramp. I s'pose you were only making believe about that garden, and you
haven't any key at all, but I don't mind; I'm not kicking.”
Ailie put her hand to her bosom and revealed the Twopenny she had
bought to be the key to the wonderful garden of letters--the slim
little gray-paper-covered primer in which she had learned her own first
lessons. She held it up between her finger and thumb that Bud might read
its title on the cover. Bud understood immediately and laughed, but not
quite at her ease for once.
“I'm dre'ffle sorry, Aunt Ailie,” she said. “It was wicked to pretend
just like that, and put you to a lot of trouble. Father wouldn't have
liked that.”
“Oh, I'm not kicking,” said Ailie, borrowing her phrase to put her at
her ease again. “I'm too glad you're not so far behind as Aunt Bell
imagined. So you like books? Capital! And Shakespeare no less! What do
you like best, now?'”
“Poetry,” said Bud. “Particularly the bits I don't understand, but just
about almost. I can't bear to stop and dally with too easy poetry; once
I know it all plain and there's no more to it, I--I--I love to amble on.
I--why! I make poetry myself.”
“Really?” said Ailie, with twinkling eyes.
“Sort of poetry,” said Bud. “Not so good as 'As You Like It'--not
'nearly' so good, of course! I have loads of really, really poetry
inside me, but it sticks at the bends and then I get bits that fit, made
by somebody else, and wish I had been spry and said them first. Other
times I'm the real Winifred Wallace.”
“Winifred Wallace?” said Aunt Ailie, inquiringly.
“Winifred Wallace,” repeated Bud, composedly. “I'm her. It's my--it's my
poetry name. 'Bud Dyce' wouldn't be any use for the magazines; it's not
dinky enough.”
“Bless me, child, you don't tell me you write poetry for the magazines?”
said her astonished aunt.
“No,” said Bud, “but I'll be pretty liable to when I'm old enough to
wear specs. That's if I don't go on the stage.”
“On the stage!” exclaimed Ailie, full of wild alarm.
“Yes,” said the child. “Mrs. Molyneux said I was a born actress.”
“I wonder, I wonder,” said Aunt Ailie, staring into vacancy.