WORKING thus, furiously, at the task of love, which, in all it does
for the youth it cherishes, must ever be digging a grave for its own
delight, Bell could forget, for periods, that the days of Bud's presence
in their midst were numbered. Had she stopped her needle and shears a
moment and let her mind contemplate all the emptiness of a fortnight
hence, and the months and years thereafter, she would have broken down.
Ailie, knowing it, watched her anxiously, and kept the sewing briskly
going as if they wrought for a living in a factory, frightened to think
of her sister's desperate state when that last button, that the armies
talk about, was in its place.
But the days sped; one afternoon there was a final sweeping up of the
scraps in the temporary work-room, Bell searched her mind in vain to
think of anything further wanted, and, though there was still a week to
go, became appalled to find that the only thing of any moment to be done
'twixt now and Friday fortnight was to say good-bye.
No, stay! there was another thing to bring a little respite--the girl's
initials must be sewn upon her clothing. A trivial thing to mention, you
may think, but the very thought of it gave pleasure to the sisters, till
Bud herself, sent to Miss Minto's for a sample of the woven letters,
came back with only one--it was a W.
“Has the stupid body not got L's and D's?” asked Bell. “There's no use
here for W.” And Bud showed a countenance startled and ashamed.
“Oh, Auntie!” she cried. “I asked for W's. I quite forgot my name was
Lennox Dyce, for in all I'm thinking of about the school and Edinburgh,
I am Winifred Wallace.”
It was all that was needed to bring about her aunt's prostration. “I'm
far from well,” said she, and took to her bed, her first confession of
weakness in all the years that Dan or Ailie could remember. What ailed
her she could not tell, and they sent, without acquainting her, for Dr.
Brash. Hearing he was coming, she protested that she could not see the
man; that she was far too ill to be troubled by any doctor; but Dr.
Brash was not so easily to be denied.
“H'm!” said he, examining her; “you're system's badly down.”
“I never knew I had one,” said the lady, smiling wanly, with a touch of
Dan's rowan-jelly humor. “Women had no system in my young days to go up
or down; if they had they were ashamed to mention it. Nowadays it seems
as fashionable as what Kate, since she got her education, calls the
boil.”
“You have been worrying,” he went on, “a thing that's dreadfully
injudicious. H'm! worse than drink I say. Worry's the death of half my
patients; they never give my pills a chance. “And there was a twinkle
in his eyes which most of Dr. Brash's patients thought was far more
efficacious than his pills.
“What would I worry for?” said Miss Bell. “I'm sure I have every
blessing: goodness and mercy all my life.”
“Just so! Just so!” said Dr. Brash. “Goodness and--and, h'm!--mercy
sometimes take the form of a warning that it's time we kept to bed for a
week, and that's what I recommend you.”
“Mercy on me! Am I so far through as that?” she said, alarmed. “It's
something serious--I know by the cheerful face that you put on you.
Little did I think that I would drop off so soon. And just at the very
time when there's so much to do!”
“Pooh!” said Dr. Brash. “When you drop off, Miss Dyce, there'll be an
awful dunt, I'm telling you. God bless my soul, what do you think
a doctor's for but putting folk on their pins again! A week in
bed--and--h'm!--a bottle. Everything's in the bottle, mind you!”
“And there's the hands of the Almighty, too,” said Bell, who constantly
deplored the doctor was so poor a kirk attender, and not a bit in that
respect like the noble doctors in her sister's latest Scottish novels.
Dr. Brash went out of the room to find the rest of the household sorely
put about in the parlor: Lennox an object of woe, and praying hard to
herself with as much as she could remember of her uncle Dan's successful
supplication for herself when she had the pneumonia. To see the
cheerfulness of his countenance when he came in was like the sunburst on
a leaden sea. “Miss Bell's as sound as her namesake,” he assured them.
“There's been something on her mind”--with a flash of the eye, at once
arrested, towards Lennox--“and she has worked herself into a state of
nervous collapse. I've given her the best of tonics for her kind--the
dread of a week in bed--and I'll wager she'll be up by Saturday. The
main thing is to keep her cheerful, and I don't think that should be
very difficult.”
Bud there and then made up her mind that her own true love was Dr.
Brash, in spite of his nervous sisters and his funny waistcoats. Ailie
said if cheerfulness would do the thing she was ready for laughing-gas,
and the lawyer vowed he would rake the town for the very latest
chronicles of its never-ending fun.
But Bud was long before him on her mission of cheerfulness to the
bedroom of Auntie Bell. Did you ever see a douce Scotch lass who never
in her life had harbored the idea that her native hamlet was other than
the finest dwelling-place in all the world, and would be happy never to
put a foot outside it?--that was to be the rôle to-day. A sober little
lass, sitting in a wicker-chair whose faintest creak appeared to put her
in an agony--sitting incredibly long and still, and speaking Scotch
when spoken to, in the most careful undertone, with a particular kind of
smile that was her idea of judicious cheerfulness for a sick-room.
“Bairn!” cried her aunt at last, “if you sit much longer like that
you'll drive me crazy. What in the world's the matter with you?”
“Nothing, dear Auntie Bell,” said Bud, astonished. “You needn't tell me!
What was the doctor saying?”
“He said you were to be kept cheerful,” said Bud, “and I'm doing the
best I can--”
“Bless me, lass! do you think it's cheery to be sitting there with a
face like an old Geneva watch? I would sooner see you romping.”
But no, Bud could not romp that day, and when her uncle Dan came up
he found her reading aloud from Bell's favorite Gospel according to
John--her auntie's way of securing the cheerfulness required. He looked
at the pair, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders bent, and all the
joviality with which he had come carefully charged gave place for a
little to a graver sentiment. So had Ailie sat, a child, beside her
mother on her death-bed, and, reading John one day, found open some
new vista in her mind that made her there and then renounce her dearest
visions, and thirl herself forever to the home and him and Bell.
“Well, Dan,” said his sister, when the child was gone, “what have you
brought me? Is it the usual pound of grapes?”--for she was of the kind
whose most pious exercises never quench their sense of fun, and a gift
of grapes in our place is a doleful hint to folks bedridden; I think
they might as well bring in the stretching-board.
“A song-book would suit you better,” said the lawyer. “What do you
think's the matter with you? Worrying about that wean! Is this your
Christian resignation?”
“I am _not_ worrying, Dan,” she protested. “At least, not very much, and
I never was the one to make much noise about my Christianity.”
“You need to be pretty noisy with it nowadays to make folk believe you
mean it.”
“What did Dr. Brash say down the stair?” she asked. “Does he--does he
think I'm going to die?”
“Lord bless me,” cried her brother, “this is not the way that women die.
I never heard of you having a broken heart. You're missing all the usual
preliminaries, and you haven't even practised being ill. No, no, Bell;
it 'll be many a day, I hope, before you're pushing up the daisies, as
that vagabond Wanton Wully puts it.”
Bell sighed. “You're very joco,” said she--“you're aye cheery, whatever
happens.”
“So long as it doesn't happen to myself--that's philosophy; at least
it's Captain Consequence's. And if I'm cheery to-day it's by the
doctor's orders. He says you're to be kept from fretting even if we have
to hire the band.”
“Then I doubt I'm far, far through!” said Bell. “I'm booked for a better
land.” And at that the lawyer gave a chirruping little laugh, and said:
“Are you sure it's not for Brisbane?”
“What do you mean?” she asked him, marvellously interested for one who
talked of dying.
“It's a new one,” he explained. “I had it to-day from her ladyship's
captain. He was once on a ship that sailed to Australia, and half-way
out a passenger took very ill. 'That one's booked for heaven, anyway,'
Maclean said to the purser. 'No,' said the purser, who was busy;
'he's booked for Brisbane.' 'Then he would be a damned sight better in
heaven,' said Maclean. 'I have been twice in Brisbane, and I know.'”
Bell did her best to restrain a smile, but couldn't. “Oh, Dan!” said
she, “you're an awful man! You think there's nothing in this world to
daunten anybody.”
“Not if they happen to be Dyces,” said he. “A high heart and a humble
head--you remember father's motto? And here you're dauntened because
the young one's going only one or two hundred miles away for her own
advantage.”
“I'm not a bit dauntened,” said Miss Bell, with spirit. “It's not myself
I'm thinking of at all; it's her, poor thing! among strangers night
and day; damp sheets, maybe, and not a wiselike thing to eat. You would
never forgive yourself if she fell into a decline.”
“Ailie throve pretty well on their dieting,” he pointed out; “and if
she's going to fall into a decline, she's pretty long of starting.”
“But you mind they gave her sago pudding,” said Miss Bell; “and if
there's one thing Lennox cannot eat it's sago pudding. She says it is so
slippy, every spoonful disappears so sudden it gives her an awful start.
She says she might as well sup puddocks.” Dan smiled at the picture and
forced himself to silent patience.
“And they'll maybe let her sit up to all hours,” Bell proceeded. “You
know the way she fastens on a book at bedtime!”
“Well, well!” said he, emphatically. “If you're sure that things are to
be so bad as that, we'll not let her go at all,” and he slyly scanned
her countenance, to see, as he expected, that she was indignant at the
very thought of backing out, now that they had gone so far.
“You needn't start to talk nonsense,” said she; “of course she's going;
but oh, Dan! it's not the sheets, nor food, nor anything like that that
troubles me; it's the knowledge that she'll never be the same wee lass
again.”
“Tuts!” said Daniel Dyce, and cleaned some moisture from his spectacles.
“You're putting all the cheerful things I was going to say to you out
of my head. I'm off to business. Is there anything I can do for you? No?
Then remember, you're not to stir this week outside the blankets; these
are the orders of Dr. Brash. I have no doubt Ailie will do very well at
the housekeeping,” and he left her with a gleam of mischief in his eye.
The window of the bedroom was a little open; on one of the trees a
blackbird sang, and there came in the scent of apple-ringie and a
tempting splendor of sun. For twenty minutes the ailing body tried to
content herself with the thought of a household managed by Alison Dyce,
and then arose to see if Wully Oliver was not idling in the garden.
She saw him sitting on his barrow-trams, while Ailie walked among the
dahlias and chucked her favorites of them under their chins.
“William Oliver!” cried Miss Bell, indignantly, having thrown a Shetland
shawl about her; “is that all the work you can do in a day?”
He looked up at the window, and slowly put his pipe in his pocket.
“Well, m'em,” said he. “I dare say I could do more, but I never was much
of a hand for showing off.”