IT was a saying of Daniel Dyce's that all the world is under one's own
waistcoat. We have a way of spaeing fortunes in the North, when young,
in which we count the waistcoat buttons from top to bottom, and say:
“Tinker,
Tailor,
Soldier,
Sailor,
Rich man,
Poor man,
Prodigal,
Or Thief?”
Whichever name falls upon the last button tells what is your destiny,
and after the county corps has been round our way recruiting, I see
our school-boys with all their waistcoat buttons but three at the
top amissing. Dan Dyce had a different formula: he said, “Luckiness,
Leisure, Ill or Well, Good World, Bad World, Heaven or Hell?”
“Not Heaven, Dan!” said Bell. “The other place I'll admit, for whiles
I'm in a furious temper over some trifle;” to which he would answer,
“Woman! the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
So, I think sometimes, all that's worth while in the world is in this
little burgh, except a string-quartette and a place called Florence I
have long been wishing to see if ever I have the money. In this small
town is every week as much of tragedy and comedy and farce as would make
a complete novel full of laughter and tears, that would sell in a jiffy.
I have started, myself, a score of them--all the essential inspiration
got from plain folk passing my window, or from hearing a sentence
dropped among women gossiping round a well. Many a winter night I come
in with a fine catch of tales picked up in the by-going, as we say,
and light the candles in a hurry, and make a gallant dash at “Captain
Consequence. Chapter I.” or “A Wild Inheritance. Part I. The Astounding
Mary.” Only the lavishness of the material hampers me: when I'm at
“Captain Consequence” (which would be a splendid sombre story of an ill
life, if I ever got beyond Chapter I. and the old scamp's fondness for
his mother), my wife runs in with something warm to drink, and tells me
Jonathan Campbell's goat has broken into the minister's garden, and then
I'm off the key for villany; there's a shilling book in Jonathan's goat
herself.
But this time I'm determined to stick by the fortunes of the Dyce
family, now that I have got myself inside their door. I hope we are
friends of that household, dearer to me than the dwellings of kings (not
that I have cognizance of many). I hope that no matter how often or how
early we rap at the brass knocker, or how timidly, Kate will come, and
in one breath say, “What is't? Come in!” We may hear, when we're in,
people passing in the street, and the wild geese call--wild geese, wild
geese! this time I will not follow where you tempt to where are only
silence and dream--the autumn and the summer days may cry us out to
garden and wood, but if I can manage it I will lock the door on the
inside, and shut us snugly in with Daniel Dyce and his household, and it
will be well with us then. Yes, yes, it will be well with us then.
The wild-goose cry, heard in the nights, beyond her comprehension, was
all that Bud Dyce found foreign in that home. All else was natural and
familiar and friendly, for all else she knew was love. But she feared
at first the “honk, honk” of the lone wild things that burdened her with
wonder and awe. Lying in her attic bower at night, they seemed to her
like sore mistaken wanderers, wind-driven, lost; and so they are, I
know. Hans Andersen and Grimm for her had given to their kind a forlorn
and fearsome meaning. But Kate MacNeill had helped, to some degree,
these childish apprehensions.
The Highland maid had brought from Colonsay a flesh that crept in
darkness, a brain with a fantastic maggot in it; she declared to
goodness, and to Bud sometimes, that she had no life of it with ghosts
in her small back room. But Bud was not to let on to her aunties. Forbye
it was only for Kate they came, the ghosts; did Bud not hear them last
night? Geese! No, not geese, Kate knew different, and if the thing
lasted much longer she would stay no more in this town; she would stay
nowhere, she would just go back to Colonsay. Not that Colonsay was
better; there were often ghosts in Colonsay--in the winter-time, and
then it behooved you to run like the mischief, or have a fine strong
lad with you for your convoy. If there were no ghosts in America it
was because it cost too much to go there on the steamers. Harken to
yon--“Honk, honk!”--did ever you hear the like of it? Who with their
wits about them in weather like that would like to be a ghost? And loud
above the wind that rocked the burgh in the cradle of the hills, loud
above the beating rain, the creak of doors and rap of shutters in that
old house, Bud and Kate together in the kitchen heard again the “honk,
honk!” of the geese. Then it was for the child that she missed the
mighty certainty of Chicago, that Scotland somehow to her mind seemed an
old unhappy place, in the night of which went passing Duncan, murdered
in his sleep, and David Rizzio with the daggers in his breast, and Helen
of Kirk-connel Lee. The nights but rarely brought any fear for her in
spite of poor Kate's ghosts, since the warmth and light and love of the
household filled every corner of lobby and stair, and went to bed with
her. When she had said her prayer the geese might cry, the timbers of
the old house crack, Bud was lapped in the love of God and man, and
tranquil. But the mornings dauntened her often when she wakened to the
sound of the six-o'clock bell. She would feel, when it ceased, as if all
virtue were out of last night's love and prayer. Then all Scotland and
its curious scraps of history as she had picked it up weighed on her
spirit for a time; the house was dead and empty; not ghost nor goose
made her eerie, but mankind's old inexplicable alarms. How deep and from
what distant shores comes childhood's wild surmise! There was nothing
to harm her, she knew, but the strangeness of the dawn and a craving for
life made her at these times the awakener of the other dwellers in the
house of Dyce.
She would get out of bed and go next door to the room of Ailie, and
creep in bed beside her to kiss her for a little from her dreams. To the
aunt these morning visitations were precious: she would take the bairn
to her bosom and fall asleep with sighs of content, the immaculate
mother. Bud herself could not sleep then for watching the revelation of
her lovely auntie in the dawn--the cloud on the pillow, that turned to
masses of hazel hair, the cheeks and lips that seemed to redden like
flowers as the day dawned, the nook of her bosom, the pulse of her brow.
Other mornings Wanton Wully's bell would send her in to Bell, who would
give her the warm hollow of her own place in the blankets, while she
herself got up to dress briskly for the day's affairs. “Just you lie
down there, pet, and sleepy-baw,” she would say, tying her coats with
trim tight knots. “You will not grow up a fine, tall, strong girl like
your Auntie Ailie if you do not take your sleep when you can get it. The
morning is only for done old wives like me that have things to do and
don't grudge doing them.”
She would chatter away to Bud as she dressed, a garrulous auntie this,
two things always for her text--the pride of Scotland, and the virtue of
duty done. A body, she would say, was sometimes liable to weary of the
same things to be done each day, the same tasks even-on, fires and food
and cleansing, though the mind might dwell on great deeds desirable to
be accomplished, but pleasure never came till the thing was done that
was the first to hand, even if it was only darning a stocking. What was
Bud going to be when she grew up? Bud guessed she wasn't going to be
anything but just a lady. Ah, yes, but even ladies had to do something
wise-like; there was Ailie--to go no farther--who could have managed
a business though her darning was but lumpy. Even for a lady there was
nothing nobler than the making of her own bed; besides the doctors said
it was remarkably efficacious for the figure.
Bud, snug in her auntie's blankets, only her nose and her bright bead
eyes showing in the light of the twirly wooden candlestick, guessed Mrs.
Molyneux was the quickest woman to get through work ever she saw: why!
she just waved it to one side and went out to shop or lunch with Jim.
A look of pity for Mrs. Molyneux, the misguided, would come to Bell's
face, but for those folk in America she never had a word of criticism in
the presence of the child. All she could say was America was different.
America was not Scotland. And Scotland was not England, though in many
places they called Scotch things English.
Jim used to say, speaking of father, that a Scotsman was a kind of
superior Englishman.
Bell wished to goodness she could see the man--he must have been a
clever one!
Other mornings again would the child softly open her uncle's door and he
would get a terrible fright, crying “Robbers! but you'll get nothing. I
have my watch in my boots, and my money in my mouth.”
She would creep beside him, and in these early hours began her
education. She was learning Ailie's calm and curiosity and ambition, she
was learning Bell's ideas of duty and the ancient glory of her adopted
land; from her uncle she was learning many things, of which the least
that seemed useful at the time was the Lord's Prayer in Latin. _Pater
noster qui es in coelis_--that and a few hundred of Trayner's Latin
maxims was nearly all of the classic tongue that survived with the
lawyer from student days. It was just as good and effective a prayer in
English, he admitted, but somehow, whiles, the language was so old it
brought you into closer grips with the original. Some mornings she would
hum to him coon songs heard in her former home; and if he was in trim he
himself would sing some psalm to the tune of Coleshill, French, Bangor,
or Tor-wood. His favorite was Torwood; it mourned so--mourned so! Or at
other times a song like “Mary Morison.”
“What are you bumming away at up there the pair of you?” Bell would cry,
coming to the stair-foot. “If you sing before breakfast, you'll greet
before night!”
“Don't she like singing in the morning?” Bud asked, nestling beside him,
and he laughed.
“It's an old freit--an old superstition,” said he, “that it's unlucky to
begin the day too blithely. It must have been a doctor that started it,
but you would wonder at the number of good and douce Scots folk, plain
bodies like ourselves, that have the notion in their mind from infancy,
and never venture a cheep or chirrup before the day's well aired.”
“My stars, ain't she Scotch, Auntie Bell!” said Bud. “So was father.
He would sing any time; he would sing if it broke a tooth; but he was
pretty Scotch other ways. Once he wore a pair of kilts to a Cale--to a
Caledonian club.”
“I don't keep a kilt myself,” said her uncle. “The thing's not strictly
necessary unless you're English and have a Hielan' shooting.”
“Auntie Bell is the genuine Scotch stuff, I guess!”
“There's no concealing the fact that she is,” her uncle admitted. “She's
so Scotch that I am afraid she's apt to think of God as a countryman of
her own.” And there were the hours that Ailie gave with delight to Bud's
more orthodox tuition. The back room that was called Dan's study,
because he sometimes took a nap there after dinner, became a schoolroom.
There was a Mercator's map of the world on the wall, and another of
Europe, that of themselves gave the place the right academy aspect. With
imagination, a map, and _The Golden Treasury_ you might have as good as
a college education, according to Ailie. They went long voyages together
on Mercator; saw marvellous places; shivered at the poles or languished
4 in torrid plains, sometimes before Kate could ring the bell for
breakfast. There seemed no spot in the world that this clever auntie had
not some knowledge of. How eagerly they crossed continents, how
ingeniously they planned routes! For the lengths of rivers, the heights
of mountains, the values of exports, and all the trivial passing facts
that mar the great game of geography for many childish minds, they had
small consideration; what they gathered in their travels were sounds,
colors, scenes, weather, and the look of races. What adventures they
had! as when, pursued by elephants and tigers, they sped in a flash from
Bengal to the Isle of Venice, and saw the green slime of the sea on her
steeping palaces. Yes, the world is all for the folk of imagination.
'Love maps and you will never be too old or too poor to travel,' was
Ailie's motto. She found a hero or a heroine for every spot upon
Mercator, and nourished so the child in noble admirations.
You might think it would always be the same pupil and the same teacher,
but no, they sometimes changed places. If Ailie taught Bud her own
love for the lyrics that are the best work of men in their hours of
exaltation, Bud sent Ailie back to her Shakespeare, and sweet were the
days they spent in Arden or Prospero's Isle.
It was well with them then; it was well with the woman and the child,
and they were happy.