still almost hot, as it often is in autumn in the north. Even Mr.
Wycherly, who was always cold, admitted that the weather had remained
agreeably mild. And when Lady Alicia came, and partly by means of
bluster and partly by reason of prolonged petitioning, succeeded in
carrying off Miss Esperance to dine at the Big House, Mr. Wycherly
seconded her efforts nobly. She had asked Mr. Wycherly, too, but he
never went anywhere, and on this occasion he had pointed out that his
presence made it perfectly safe for Miss Esperance to leave the
children. He would sit with his door open, so that he would hear the
faintest sound in the children's room, he would go and see them last
thing--"and hear them their prayers," Miss Esperance anxiously
interpolated--he would do everything that Miss Esperance usually did.
"Now there's nothing whatever can happen to those children," said Lady
Alicia, as they drove away. "They're both looking as brown and bonny as
they can well look, and once they're in their beds, they'll just sleep
the round of the clock. As for you, my dear, you've hardly been out of
the house since they came, and it's very bad for you."
As a rule the children did sleep the round of the clock, but on this
particular evening, although they went to sleep directly they were
"bedded," as Robina put it, and she had gone home for the night, while
Elsa had retired to the back door for a gossip with the minister's maid,
Edmund took it into his head to wake up.
Mr. Wycherly was sitting in his arm-chair reading "Marius the
Epicurean." It was one of his many imperfections, in the eyes of the
inhabitants of Burnhead, that he was known to revel in the works of "yon
man, Pater." The very name seemed redolent of papistry, even if the man
himself did not happen to be a papist, and it was known that the
Reverend Peter Gloag did not approve of his writings. In an English
village nobody would have concerned himself as to what anybody read--the
amount of reading done at all being quite a negligible quantity--but in
a Scottish village, where the cobbler probably reads the "Saturday
Review" and the works of Carlyle are as household words, people regard
the reading of their neighbours.
The light from the lamp fell full on Mr. Wycherly's white hair and
regular, scholarly profile; and the figure in the chair made a pleasant
picture of erudite repose. There was something clear-cut and delicately
finished about everything connected with Mr. Wycherly's appearance. One
long, slim hand with exquisitely tended nails held his book; the other
kept up a noiseless rhythmic beat upon the arm of his chair.
Suddenly he heard a little sound, an indescribable small sound as of
some soft body moving. He laid down his book and leant forward to
listen. Again he heard it, and with it a request for "'Obina." It was
not a cry; it was rather a curious, tentative flinging of the word into
space to see what would happen.
The children's door was closed but not fastened, Mr. Wycherly's was wide
open, and he immediately hurried across the landing to the children's
room. The light from his lamp exactly opposite to their door, shone in
as he pushed it open, showing a fair, curly head and a pair of bright
eyes appearing above the side of the cot. Montagu was still fast
asleep.
"Lie down, my child," Mr. Wycherly whispered, "it is night time, you
must go to sleep again."
"No," said Edmund firmly but kindly, "you must take me."
Mr. Wycherly looked at the wide-awake mutinous person in the cot, then
he looked at the peacefully sleeping Montagu in the big four-post bed.
To engage in argument with Edmund meant the inevitable waking of his
brother. For there would be tears; perhaps loud outcries which would
bring Elsa, scornful and capable, to his assistance.
It is to be feared that in some respects Mr. Wycherly was a weak man.
He would do anything to avoid a disturbance, almost anything to avoid an
argument. Small wonder, then, that he was despised in Burnhead, where
argument flourished as the green bay tree and was the chief object of
social intercourse.
He wrapped Edmund in his quilt, carried him across to the study, and sat
down in his big chair with the deliciously warm, naughty bundle on his
knee. Edmund blinked at the bright light, wriggled his arms out of the
enwrapping counterpane, and remarked "Bikky" in a tone whose subtly
seductive combination of command and supplication Mr. Wycherly never
could resist. The children had not been three months in the house
without teaching him to keep a store of biscuits in his cupboard. When
Edmund was duly supplied, he leant his head luxuriously against Mr.
Wycherly's shoulder, saying sleepily, "Say, deah man--say anysing."
This was gracious of Edmund, and Mr. Wycherly had already discovered
that when the baby was sleepy he did not cavil even at Latin verse. Mr.
Wycherly had a singularly musical voice; and as he "said," the biscuit
dropped from Edmund's hand and his head lay heavy on the kind shoulder
that supported it. As the reciter reached the lines: "Dulce ridentem
Lalagen amabo, Dulce loquentem," he discovered, to his joy, that Edmund
was asleep. Softly he repeated the musical last two lines again,
smiling down at the little figure in his arms. But it was not of Lalage
that Mr. Wycherly was thinking.
He succeeded in putting Edmund into bed without waking him, and just as
he had got back to his study he heard Miss Esperance come in.
Softly he closed the door so that it only stood open a little way, and
seated himself once more in his favourite chair. If all was quiet it
was quite unlikely Miss Esperance would come to speak to him that night.
She would go straight to her little bedroom next that of the children.
He heard her door shut. Mr. Wycherly rubbed his hands together quite
gleefully. "I really am learning how to manage those children," he
said.
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE SECRETIVENESS OF MAUSE*
A boy and a dog together will go,
You may jail them, or chain them: They will have it so.
Anon.
Mause was the bobtailed sheep-dog that lived in a kennel at the side of
the house nearest the back door, to keep guard. Like Miss Esperance and
Mr. Wycherly and Elsa, she was not in her first youth; and when the
children came Miss Esperance was nervously apprehensive as to the old
dog's conduct. Would she be jealous and growl at them, or perhaps even
fly out at them from her kennel as she did at the village boys if they
ventured into the garden for any illegitimate purpose? A good watch-dog
was Mause, with more discrimination in her vigilance than is displayed
by most dogs. She never barked at poor old Mistress Dobie, who would
come humbly to the back door for her bi-weekly handful of meal and a
screw of snuff, who looked a very scarecrow of shabbiness, and tapped
with her staff as she walked: but Mause did bark, and bark loudly, only
pausing every now and then to growl thunderously, at the very grand
gentleman who tried to sell Elsa an inferior sewing-machine on the hire
system. And when he returned a few weeks later with Bibles, Mause
nearly broke her chain in her frantic attempts to reach him. The poor
dog was kept chained up for the greater part of the day, which is never
improving to the canine temper even when, as in this case, the chain is
a long one. Miss Esperance let her run by the pony trap whenever she
drove into Edinburgh, but this was by no means every day, and Elsa
rather grudged poor Mause even these occasional absences, and generally
put the chains on both doors when she had gone.
"A watch-dog sud be there to guard the hoose," said Elsa, "and no gang
stravaigin aff for hoors at a stretch."
Mr. Wycherly took Mause for a walk whenever he went for one himself, and
she greatly enjoyed these excursions, which were, however, but fleeting
joys; for Mr. Wycherly's walks were by no means prolonged. That he
should go for walks at all was, in the eyes of the villagers of
Burnhead, but another sign of his general futility and "genty ways,"
like his bath and the wooden feet in three pieces that he liked kept in
his boots, "just as if he was feart some ither body sud wear them."
Besides, what could a man who hardly ever stirred abroad want with six
pairs of boots? The folk in the village pitied Elsa that she had to give
in to such havers.
On rare occasions Mause managed to sneak into the house with Mr.
Wycherly and secrete herself in his room: but he did not encourage these
clandestine visits, for when Elsa discovered her--as she invariably
did--she drove the poor beast forth with much contumely; and Mr.
Wycherly was haunted for hours afterward by the reproach in the eyes of
Mause that he had not the courage to take her part.
Yet Mause was fond of Elsa, and in her heart of hearts Elsa loved Mause.
She would far sooner have gone without her own meals than have omitted
the plate of broken biscuit and bones that she carried twice daily to
the kennel. Every day she filled the dog's tin with fresh water, and
she brushed the thick, shaggy coat as religiously and even more
vigorously than she brushed Mr. Wycherly's clothes. It grieved her
rather that the latter, like Mause, wore the same coat week-days and
Sundays.
Mause was meekness and gentleness itself with the dwellers at Remote,
but outsiders gave her a very different character, and the Reverend
Peter Gloag even went so far as to remonstrate with Miss Esperance for
keeping such a savage brute about the place. Not that Mause had ever
actually bitten even a man selling sewing-machines, but she had a way of
barking and bouncing, of growling and gyrating at the full length of her
chain, that was decidedly alarming; and if she happened to be loose, her
swift rush to the gate at the sound of a strange foot-step was
disconcerting in the extreme. What would she say to the children?
"If she's ill-natured with them, she'll have to go, poor beastie," Miss
Esperance had said, as they drove from the station with the two tired,
cross, little boys on that first day. "She's a dear, faithful animal,
but I could not let such wee things be frightened."
However, the fears of Miss Esperance were groundless. From the first
moment that she beheld the little boys, Mause took them under her
protection. Perhaps it was that neither of the children showed the
slightest fear of the great, clumsy, shaggy beast, but greeted her with
joyful outcries, instantly demanding her release from that harassing
chain. The right kind of dog and the right kind of child are friends
always, by some immutable, inscrutable law of attraction. It seemed
almost as if Mause mistook Montagu and Edmund for the puppies which had
been her pride some five years before. And the baby certainly did his
very best to confirm her in her mistake. Like a puppy, he had a
fondness for carrying off numerous and inconceivably incongruous
articles from places where they ought to be to distant parts of the
garden, where he would be found surrounded by a selection of improvised
playthings, while Mause sat by regarding the work of destruction with
her tongue hanging out, and an expression of maternal pride upon her
broad and blurry countenance.
When the children played in the garden their first thought was that
Mause must play too. "She must be very lonely in that little wooden
house," Montagu said pleadingly. "She would be so happy with us, and we
do want her so." And Edmund roared and refused to be comforted unless
his "big bow-wow" might go with him whenever Robina took him out in his
perambulator.
There was a little plot of shaven grass in the garden at Remote, and on
this Edmund and Mause and Montagu spent many an hour at play, while
Robina sat by demurely knitting at a stocking. It was Edmund's habit
when he fell down (a somewhat frequent occurrence that did not disturb
him in the least unless he happened to fall on "something scratchful")
to grasp firmly in each little hand a handful of the dog's thick hair,
and by this means pull himself up to his feet again. Mause bore it
stoically, and generally turned her patient face that she might lick the
small, fat hands that hurt her. And by the time the children had been a
month at Remote Manse was only chained up at night.
One hot afternoon in late September Mr. Wycherly had taken Montagu for a
walk to a wood, near where there was a tiny tributary of the bigger burn
from which the village took its name. So narrow was this stream that
Montagu could jump over it: and it was one of his greatest joys to be
taken there and to leap solemnly from one side to the other during a
whole afternoon, provided that at each effort his audience made some
suitably admirative remark.
Robina's patience failed her after about three demonstrations of
Montagu's saltatory prowess, but Mr. Wycherly would take his seat at the
foot of a big tree, and with tireless interest notice every jump,
finding something new and congratulatory to say after each fresh effort.
Robina, Edmund and Mause remained at home: baby and dog disporting
themselves upon the little square of turf, while Robina sat in the shade
doing the mending. Elsa was busy in the house and Miss Esperance had
gone to a sewing meeting at the manse.
At the foot of the garden was a low stone wall, and beyond that wall a
lane. From that lane presently there came a sound of light-hearted
whistling as Sandie, the flesher, his empty butcher's tray borne lightly
on his shoulder, returned from the delivery of meat at the "Big Hoose."
Sandie, the flesher, could see over the wall, and he beheld Robina
sitting under the alder tree. He thought her fair to look upon, and his
whistling ceased. Robina gave one hasty glance back at the house. Elsa
was making scones and would be far too busy to look out of the window
just then: besides, one could see very little from the kitchen window
save the raspberry canes, as Robina was sadly aware. Edmund and Mause
were engaged in an intricate game of ball. They alone knew the rules,
but they appeared to find it of absorbing interest. Once more Robina
looked back at the house, and then flew down to the bottom of the garden
to speak to Sandie.
We all know that there are minutes that seem as hours, and hours that
slip by as a single moment of time. Robina's conversation with Sandie
was somewhat prolonged, but doubtless for them it passed even as the
twinkling of an eye.
When at last she tore herself away from Sandie's blandishments and
returned hot-footed to her charge, baby and dog were gone. The worsted
ball and the mending lay on the grass, and perfect quiet reigned in the
garden of Remote.
"He'll be in mischief somewhere," she said to herself. "The wee Turk!"
For it was only when he was in mischief that the continual flow of
Edmund's conversation ceased, and he was traced by his silences rather
than by his sounds.
Warily did Robina search through every nook and corner of that garden:
behind raspberry canes, between gooseberry bushes, even among the
cabbages, but nowhere was there any sign of either child or dog. The
girl's heart sank. Edmund had probably gone back to the house and Elsa
had just kept him that she might the better come down on his young nurse
for her carelessness. Robina well knew the awful "radgin" that awaited
her if this were the case. It was just possible that the baby had
toddled round to the front and was playing among the flower beds, doing
damage in exactly inverse ratio to his size and weight. As she passed
the open kitchen window Robina looked in: a great gust of hot air laden
with the clean, good smell of newly made scones met her. Elsa was over
at the fire giving the scones, still on the griddle, an occasional poke
with her gnarled old finger. Edmund most certainly was not there.
Robina's spirits rose. She might escape the "radgin" after all. She
ran round to the front, but there was no baby here either; the tidy
little garden with its gay flower beds on either side of the broad
central path lay peaceful and deserted in the cool shadow thrown by the
house itself. She noticed that the green gate was unlatched and she
began to feel anxious, and not wholly on her own account. Where could
that baby have got to, and where in all the world was Mause?
Robina hurried to the back garden again and went over every inch of
ground, with no more success than the first time.
She was now very frightened indeed. She hunted in the stable, she
looked in the loft, she even took all the tools out of the tool-house
lest Edmund might be secreted behind them; but it was all useless, baby
and dog had completely vanished.
All this searching had taken some time. The afternoon began to wane, it
would soon be tea time. Miss Esperance would return from her sewing
meeting, and even as it was, Robina heard Mr. Wycherly and Montagu come
into the house.
She rushed to Elsa in the kitchen, where that worthy woman was arranging
her last batch of scones round the top of the wire seive to cool.
"The wee boy's lost!" cried Robina desperately. "I can find him nowhere
and no place, and the dug's awa' too."
Mr. Wycherly and Montagu heard the loud excited voices in the kitchen,
and for the first time in all the years he had spent with Miss Esperance
Mr. Wycherly entered the domain sacred to Elsa. He questioned Robina
very gently and quietly, but could obtain no information that threw any
light upon Edmund's mysterious disappearance.
They searched the house thoroughly, but with no success, and all four
had gone out to look once more in the garden when Montagu exclaimed,
"Why Mause is here, in her kennel, and she's not chained up."
The kennel was a large one, but Mause also was large and effectually
blocked the doorway.
"We'd better take her with us," said Mr. Wycherly, who was preparing to
scour the village. "She'll find him sooner than any of us."
But to their astonishment Mause did not come to call. She refused to
budge, and if any one came near her except Montagu she growled ominously
and showed her teeth, a thing she had never done to members of her own
household in the whole of her existence.
By this time Miss Esperance had returned and was gravely disquieted by
the news that met her, most of all by the fact that Mause should have
deserted Edmund and that she should be so surly in her temper.
"I can't think what can have come over the dog," cried poor Miss
Esperance. "Don't go near her, Montagu, my son. I just wish she was on
the chain."
"I'll put the chain on her, auntie; I'm not afraid," cried Montagu,
breaking from his aunt's detaining hand; and sure enough, Mause made not
the smallest objection, but licked Montagu's hand, and gazed with
speaking, pathetic eyes at the group around the kennel, although she
would allow no one to approach her except the little boy.
"The gate was unlatched when we came in," said Mr. Wycherly. "I noticed
that. I think he must have strayed into the village, and we'll probably
find him in one of the cottages. What I cannot understand is that Mause
should have left him."
"Mebbe some gaun-aboot-body's ta'en him," wailed Robina, "and drove the
dug awa'."
"Hoot fie!" cried Elsa, indignantly. "They gaun-aboot-bodies has plenty
bairns o' their ain wi'oot nain o' oor's."
"The burn's gey and deep up the rod," sobbed Robina, who was determined
to take the gloomiest view of things.
Miss Esperance looked at Mr. Wycherly, and both were very pale. "Elsa
and I will go into the village," she said tremulously. "Will you, dear
friend, go--the other way? You would be of more use if--anything----"
Miss Esperance paused, unable to voice the dreadful fear that possessed
her.
Montagu had sat down on the ground beside Mause, facing the kennel, with
his arm round her shaggy neck; he leant his head against her, for he
felt that she was in some sort of disgrace, and needed comforting. A
sudden shaft of sunlight shone full on the pretty group. "Why, he's in
there all the time," Montagu cried excitedly. "I can see him; he's fast
asleep in Mause's kennel, and that's why she wouldn't come out."
The shrill voice woke the baby, who stirred, rolled over, and finally
crawled out from his hiding-place, flushed and tumbled with little beads
of perspiration all over his nose. Mause politely making way for him
the instant he showed a desire to come out.
As he scrambled to his feet he beheld Mr. Wycherly, and gave his usual
cry of "Man! Uppie, uppie!" and was somewhat bewildered by the effusion
with which that same man caught him up in his arms. Miss Esperance
grasped his fat legs and wept over them; Robina and Elsa caught at any
possible portion of his clothing and wept over that. In fact, they all
more or less hung on to Mr. Wycherly in their excitement, while the
cause of all this enthusiasm blinked his sleepy eyes and wondered what
it was all about. Mause ran round and round in a circle, hanging out
her tongue and giving occasional short, sharp barks, expressive of
approval.
Presently, when the women let go of him, Edmund bent down to scratch one
of his fat pink legs. "I fink," he said majestically, "vat a fee has
bited me."
Mause looked apologetic, and licked the spot.
*CHAPTER V*
*ROBINA*
Jenny rade tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan, tae Cowtstan,
Jenny rade tae Cowtstan upon a barra'pin O!
An' aye as she wallopit, she wallopit, she wallopit,
An' aye as she wallopit, she aye fell ahin' O!
_Old Song_.
For Robina, it was a distinct rise in the social scale to have taken
service with Miss Esperance. Any lass could get a place at the term in
Edinburgh, but only one lass in the whole village could have been chosen
to look after the little newcomers at Remote.
In the village Miss Esperance was familiarly known as "the wee leddy":
and in the eyes of Burnhead the fact that she lived in an extremely
small house with one old servant, and did a large portion of the
household work herself, in no way detracted from her dignity. In
Burnhead, too, there were people who remembered her father, the
Admiral--"a gran' man yon! A radgy man whiles, mind ye, but a rale man.
When he gave ye a glass he aye looket the ither way and left ye to help
yersen--eh, but he was a gran' man yon!"
Lady Alicia had described Robina as "douce," and that young woman fully
acted up to this reputation during her first weeks at Remote. She
trembled and cringed before Elsa. She dropped whatever she happened to
be holding if suddenly addressed by Miss Esperance, while in the
presence of Mr. Wycherly extreme shyness lent to her appearance an
expression of such abject imbecility as caused that gentleman to demand
anxiously of her mistress whether she thought it was safe to allow
Robina to take the children for walks.
Once outside the walls of Remote, however, Robina's whole attitude
changed. She bridled: she minced: she was positively swollen with pride
in the importance of her position; and when she condescended to exchange
remarks with such neighbours as she met, her demeanour was distant and
haughty. No sooner had she set forth with Edmund in the perambulator
and Montagu trotting by her side, than she at once radiated an
atmosphere of "say nothing to nobody" so forbidding as to discourage all
attempts at sociability except on the part of the boldest. Everybody
wanted to see the little boys, who were, themselves, most friendly and
approachable and always ready to respond to the overtures of kindly
neighbours.
A comely lass was Robina, sturdy and thickset, but with the exquisite
colouring often to be found among the Lowland Scottish peasantry; and of
late her rosy cheeks had bloomed to a deeper rose, while her forehead
and chin and neck were white as the elder flower growing against the
wall at the bottom of the garden. Very blue eyes had Robina, and thick,
wavy hair--red hair that would escape from its tight braids in frivolous
little curls at the nape of her neck and round her ears. From far away,
Sandie, the flesher, would espy that brilliant hair burning like a lamp,
and wheresoever that beacon shone there would Sandie be fain to follow.
He escorted her from her home to Remote in the early morning, and was
generally waiting at a safe distance from Remote to walk home with her
in the evening. So devoted was he, that Robina had as yet made an
exception in his favour, and in spite of her exalted position treated
him with moderate friendliness.