BUT the Dyces never really knew how great and serious was the charge
bequeathed to them in their brother William's daughter till they saw it
all one night in March in the light of a dozen penny candles.
Lennox had come from a world that's lit by electricity, and for weeks
she was sustained in wonder and amusement by the paraffine lamps of
Daniel Dyce's dwelling. They were, she was sure, the oldest kind of
light in all the world--Aladdin-lights that gleamed of old on caverns
of gems--till Kate on this particular evening came into the kitchen
with the week-end groceries. It was a stormy season--the year of the big
winds; moanings were at the windows, sobbings in the chimney-heads, and
the street was swept by spindrift rain. Bell and Ailie and their brother
sat in the parlor, silent, playing cards with a dummy hand, and Bud,
with Footles in her lap, behind the winter dikes on which clothes dried
before the kitchen fire, crouched on the fender with a Shakespeare,
where almost breathlessly she read the great, the glorious Macbeth.
“My stars, what a night!” said Kate. “The way them slates and
chimney-cans are flying! It must be the antinuptial gales. I thought
every minute would by my next. Oh, towns! towns! Stop you till I get
back to Colonsay, and I'll not leave it in a hurry, I'll assure you.”
She threw a parcel on the kitchen dresser, and turned to the light a
round and rosy face that streamed with clean, cooling rain, her hair in
tangles on her temples and her eyes sparkling with the light of youth
and adventure--for to tell the truth she had been flirting at the door a
while, in spite of all the rain, with some admirer.
Bud was the sort of child whose fingers itch in the presence of unopened
parcels--in a moment the string was untied from the week-end groceries.
“Candles!” she cried. “Well, that beats the band! I've seen 'em in
windows. What in the world are you going to do with candles? One, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve--oh,
Laura, ain't we grand!”
“What would we do with them but burn them?” said the maid; “we'll use
them in the washing-house,” and then she sank into a chair. “Mercy on
me, I declare I'm dying!” she exclaimed, in a different key, and Bud
looked round and saw Kate's face had grown of a sudden very pale.
“Oh, dear! what is the matter?” she asked, her eyes large, innocent, and
anxious.
“Pains,” moaned the maid. “Pains inside me and all over me, and
shiverings down the spine of the back. Oh, it's a sore thing pain,
especially when it's bad! But don't--don't say a word to the mustress;
I'm not that old, and maybe I'll get better.”
“Try pain-killer,” recommended Bud. “And if I was you I'd start just
here and say a prayer. Butt right in and I'll not listen.”
“Pain-killer!--what in all the world's pain-killer? I never heard of
it. And the only prayer I know is 'My Father which art' in Gaelic, and
there's nothing in it about pains in the spine of the back. No, no! I'll
just have to take a table-spoonful of something or other three times
a day, the way I did when the doctor put me right in Colonsay. Perhaps
it's just a chill, but oh! I'm sorrowful, sorrowful!” and Kate, the
color coming slowly back to her, wept softly to herself, rocking in the
kitchen chair. It was sometimes by those odd hysterics that she paid for
her elations with the lads.
“I know what's wrong with you,” said Bud, briskly, in the manner of Mrs.
Molyneux. “It's just the croodles. Bless you, you poor, perishing soul!
I take the croodles myself when it's a night like this and I'm alone.
The croodles ain't the least wee bit deadly; you can put them away by
hustling at your work, or banging an old piano, or reading a story, or
playing that you're somebody else--Well, I declare, I think I could cure
you right now with these twelve candles, far better than you'd do by
shooting drugs into yourself.”
“I never took a single candle in all my life,” said Kate, “far less
twelve, and I'll die first.”
“Silly!” exclaimed Bud. “You'd think to hear you speak you were a
starving Esquimau. I don't want you to eat the candles. Wait a minute.”
She ran lightly up-stairs and was gone for ten minutes.
Kate's color all revived; she forgot her croodles in the spirit of
anticipation that the child had roused. “Oh, but she's the clever one
that!” she said to herself, drying the rain and tears from her face and
starting to nibble a biscuit. “She knows as much as two ministers, and
still she's not a bit proud. Some day she'll do something desperate.”
When Bud came back she startled the maid by her appearance, for she had
clad herself, for the first time in Scotland, with a long, thin, copious
dancing-gown, in which a lady of the vaudeville, a friend of Mrs.
Molyneux's, had taught her dancing.
“Ain't this dandy?” she said, closing the kitchen door, and there was a
glow upon her countenance and a movement of her body that, to the maid's
eyes, made her look a little woman. “Ain't this bully? Don't you stand
there looking like a dying Welsh rabbit, but help me light them candles
for the foot-lights. Why, I knew there was some use for these old
candles first time I set eyes on them; they made me think of something
I couldn't 'zactly think of--made me kind of gay, you know, just as if
I was going to the theatre. They're only candles, but there's twelve
lights to them all at once, and now you'll see some fun.”
“What in the world are you going to do, lassie?” asked the maid.
“I'm going to be a Gorgeous Entertainment; I'm going to be the Greatest
Agg-Aggregation of Historic Talent now touring the Middle West. I'm
Mademoiselle Winifred Wallace, of Madison Square Theatre, New York,
positively appearing here for one night only. I'm the whole company, and
the stage manager, and the band, and the boys that throw the bouquets.
Biff! I'm checked high; all you've got to do is to sit there with your
poor croodles and feel them melt away. Let's light the foot-lights.”
There was a row of old brass bedroom candlesticks on the kitchen shelf
that were seldom used now in the house of Dyce, though their polish was
the glory of Miss Bell's heart. The child kilted up her gown, jumped on
a chair, and took them down with the help of Kate. She stuck in each
a candle, and ranged them in a semicircle on the floor, then lit the
candles and took her place behind them.
“Put out the lamp!” she said to Kate, in the common voice of actors'
tragedy.
“Indeed and I'll do nothing of the kind,” said the maid. “If your auntie
Bell comes in she'll--she'll skin me alive for letting you play
such cantrips with her candles. Forbye, you're going to do something
desperate, something that's not canny, and I must have the lamp behind
me or I'll lose my wits.”
“Woman, put out the light!” repeated Bud, with an imperious, pointing
finger, and, trembling, Kate turned down the lamp upon the wall and
blew down the chimney in the very way Miss Dyce was always warning her
against. She gasped at the sudden change the loss of the light made--at
the sense of something idolatrous and bewitched in the arc of flames
on her kitchen floor, each blown inward from the draught of a rattling
window.
“If it is _buidseachas_--if it is witchcraft of any kind you are on
for, I'll not have it,” said Kate, firmly. “I never saw the like of this
since the old woman in Pennyland put the curse on the Colonsay factor,
and she had only seven candles. Dear, _dear_ Lennox, do not do anything
desperate; do not be carrying on, for you are frightening me out of my
judgment. I'm--I'm maybe better now; I took a bite at a biscuit; indeed,
I'm quite better; it was nothing but the cold--and a lad out there that
tried to kiss me.”
Bud paid no heed, but plucked up the edges of her skirt in out-stretched
hands and glided into the last dance she had learned from the vaudeville
lady, humming softly to herself an appropriate tune. The candles warmly
lit her neck, her ears, her tilted nostrils; her brow was high in
shadow. First she rose on tiptoe and made her feet to twitter on the
flags, then swayed and swung a little body that seemed to hang in
air. The white silk swept around and over her--wings with no noise of
flapping feather, or swirled in sea-shell coils, that rose in a ripple
from her ankles and swelled in wide, circling waves above her head,
revealing her in glimpses like some creature born of foam on fairy
beaches and holding the command of tempest winds. Ah, dear me! many and
many a time I saw her dance just so in her daft days before the chill
of wisdom and reflection came her way; she was a passion disembodied,
an aspiration realized, a happy morning thought, a vapor, a perfume
of flowers, for her attire had lain in lavender. She was the spirit
of spring, as I have felt it long ago in little woods, or seen it in
pictures, or heard it in songs; she was an ecstasy, she was a dream.
The dog gave a growl of astonishment, then lay his length on the
hearth-rug, his nose between his paws, his eyes fixed on her. “I'll not
have it,” said the maid, piteously. “At least I'll not stand much of it,
for it's not canny to be carrying on like that in a Christian dwelling.
I never did the like of that in all my life.”
“_Every_ move a picture,” said the child, and still danced on, with
the moan of the wind outside for a bass to her low-hummed melody. Her
stretching folds flew high, till she seemed miraculous tall, and to the
servant's fancy might have touched the low ceiling; then she sank--and
sank--and sank till her forehead touched the floor, and she was a flower
fallen, the wind no more to stir its petals, the rain no more to glisten
on its leaves. 'Twas as if she shrivelled and died there, and Kate gave
one little cry that reached the players of cards in the parlor.
“Hush! what noise was that?” said Ailie, lifting her head.
“It would be Kate clumping across the kitchen floor in the Gaelic
language,” said Mr. Dyce, pushing his specs up on his brow.
“Nothing but the wind,” said Bell. “What did you say was trump?”--for
that was the kind of player she was.
“It was not the wind, it was a cry; I'm sure I heard a cry. I hope
there's nothing wrong with the little one,” said Ailie, with a throbbing
heart, and she threw her cards on the table and went out. She came back
in a moment, her face betraying her excitement, her voice demanding
silence.
“Of all the wonders!” said she. “Just step this way, people, to the
pantry.”
They rose and followed her. The pantry was all darkness. Through its
partly open door that led into the kitchen they saw their child in the
crescent of the candles, though she could not see them, as no more
could Kate, whose chair was turned the other way. They stood in silence
watching the strange performance, each with different feelings, but all
with eeriness, silent people of the placid, old, half-rustic world that
lives forever with realities and seldom sees the passions counterfeited.
Bud had risen, her dark hair looking unnaturally black above her brow,
and, her dancing done, she was facing the dog and the servant, the only
audience of whose presence she was aware.
“Toots!” said the maid, relieved that all seemed over, “that's nothing
in the way of dancing; you should see them dancing Gillie-Callum
over-bye in Colonsay! There's a dancer so strong there that he breaks
the very boards.”
Bud looked at her, and yet not wholly at her--through her--with burning
eyes.
“Hush!” she said, trembling. “Do you not hear something?” and at that
moment, high over the town went the “honk, honk” of the wild geese.
“Devil the thing but geeses!” said the maid, whose blood had curdled
for a second. The rain swept like a broom along the street, the gutters
bubbled, the shutters rapped, far above the dwelling went the sound of
the flying geese.
“Oh, hush, woman, hush!” implored the child, her hands over her ears,
her figure cowering.
“It's only the geeses. What a start you gave me!” said the maid again.
“No, no,” said Bud.
“'Methought, I heard a voice cry,
“Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
... sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast--' ”
“What do you mean?” cried Kate.
“Still it cried, 'Sleep no more!' to all the house: Glamis hath murder'd
sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no
more.”
The child filled each phrase with a travesty of passion; she had seen
the part enacted. It was not, to be sure, a great performance. Some
words were strangely mutilated; but it was a child, and she had more
than a child's command of passion--she had feeling, she had heart.
“I cannot look at you!” exclaimed Kate. “You are not canny, but oh! you
are--you are majestic! There was never the like of it in all the isles.”
Bell, in the darkness of the pantry, wept silently at some sense of
sin in this play-acting on a Saturday night; her brother held her arm
tightly. Ailie felt a vague unrest and discontent with herself, a touch
of envy and of shame.
“Please collect the bouquets,” said the child, seating herself on the
floor with her knees tucked high in her gown. “Are the croodles all
gone?”
“It did me a lot of good, yon dancing,” said Kate. “Did you put yon
words about Macbeth sleep no more together yourself?”
“Yes,” said Bud, and then repented. “No,” she added, hurriedly,
“that's a fib; please, God, give me a true tongue. It was made by
Shakespeare--dear old Will!”
“I'm sure I never heard of the man in all my life before; but he must
have been a bad one.”
“Why, Kate, you are as fresh as the mountain breeze,” said Bud. “He was
Great! He was born at Stratford-on-Avon, a poor boy, and went to London
and held horses outside the theatre door, and then wrote plays so grand
that only the best can act them. He was--he was not for an age, but all
the time.”
She had borrowed the lesson as well as the manner of Auntie Ailie, who
smiled in the dark of the pantry at this glib rendering of herself.
“Oh, I should love to play Rosalind,” continued the child. “I should
love to play _everything_. When I am big, and really Winifred Wallace, I
will go all over the world and put away people's croodles same as I did
yours, Kate, and they will love me; and I will make them feel real good,
and sometimes cry--for that is beautiful, too. I will never rest, but go
on, and on, and on; and everywhere everybody will know about me--even in
the tiny minstrel towns where they have no or'nary luck but just coon
shows, for it's in these places croodles must be most catching. I'll go
there and play for nothing, just to show them what a dear soul Rosalind
was. I want to grow fast, fast! I want to be tall like my auntie Ailie,
and lovely like my dear auntie Ailie, and clever like my sweet, sweet
aunt Ailie.”
“She's big enough and bonny enough, and clever enough in some things,”
said the maid; “but can she sew like her sister?--tell me that!”
“Sew!” exclaimed the child, with a frown. “I _hate_ sewing. I guess
Auntie Ailie's like me, and feels sick when she starts a hem and sees
how long it is, and all to be gone over with small stitches.”
“Indeed, indeed I do,” whispered Ailie in the pantry, and she was
trembling. She told me later how she felt--of her conviction then that
for her the years of opportunity were gone, the golden years that had
slipped past in the little burgh town without a chance for her to grasp
their offerings. She told me of her resolution there and then that this
child, at least, should have its freedom to expand.
Bud crept to the end of the crescent of her footlights and blew out the
candles slowly one by one. The last she left a-light a little longer,
and, crouched upon the floor, she gazed with large, dreaming eyes into
its flame as if she read there.
“It is over now,” said Mr. Dyce, in a whisper, to his sisters, and with
his hands on their shoulders led them back into the parlor.