pretty hard, but you must behave as if you were, and that's where the
good training comes in. No one can box properly who is in a rage. It
would be good for you to learn."
"Will Edmund learn?"
"Certainly, if you do; but he needs it less than you."
Montagu felt rather aggrieved. His guardian's approval was very dear to
him, and Mr. Wycherly had never even indirectly referred to his
encounter with Jamie Brown until this moment. The little boy did not
enjoy the cold water thus thrown upon his exploit. He had felt more or
less of a hero ever since, and here was Mr. Wycherly suggesting that he
should be taught to "fight properly," and that he needed such tuition
much more than Edmund, who was not nearly so well-behaved in general as
he. Montagu was puzzled; but he was accustomed to take most things that
his guardian said wholly upon trust, and being really humble-minded he
came to the sorrowful conclusion that in some way he had not acquitted
himself quite perfectly in his battle with Jamie Brown.
He was, however, dreadfully puzzled why anyone should care to fight for
the mere pleasure of fighting, and that his guardian, most gentle and
peace-loving of men, should suggest such unpleasing occupation as being
both necessary and beneficial was quite incomprehensible. The coming of
the Colonel was shorn of some of its splendour of anticipation in
consequence.
At last tea-time arrived and with it the Colonel. He, too, rode over,
but, to the great disappointment of the little boys, he was not in
uniform as they had expected. It is true he wore beautiful breeches and
gaiters: but he hadn't a weapon of any kind except a crop, nor did he
wear a helmet, which grieved Edmund unspeakably.
All the same he was a kind and jolly gentleman. He had known Admiral
Bethune and Miss Esperance when he was young; and, like the honest
soldier he was, did not forget people who had been kind to him; he had
also been friendly with poor Archie Bethune, and was interested in
seeing his little sons: and there was also just a spice of curiosity in
his visit. He had heard of Mr. Wycherly; of the curious charge
undertaken by Miss Esperance; of the way that charge had, in his turn,
undertaken the joint guardianship of her great-nephews.
What did the Colonel expect to see?
It would be hard to define. He had formed a hazy conception of some
weak-minded man: amiable, incompetent, wholly lacking in those manly
attributes that the Colonel considered essential. He wondered greatly
what sort of training these little boys could have with such strange
protectors: an old lady--a delightful old lady Colonel Dundas would have
been the first to grant--and this eccentric, ineffectual recluse who was
known to have made such a hopeless fiasco of his own life.
As he rode over to Remote the Colonel shook his head sorrowfully from
time to time while he murmured to himself, "Poor little chaps!"
Not until they were all seated at the tea-table and Robina rang the bell
outside did Mr. Wycherly come down.
As he came into the room the Colonel looked a little startled. He rose
and shook hands cordially, and then proceeded to readjust his ideas.
This was not at all what he had expected. A handsome man himself, he
was quite ready to recognise good looks and, above all, distinction in
another man; and Mr. Wycherly's was, even by the Colonel's standard, a
striking personality.
It is impossible to dream perpetually when your companions for many
hours out of each day are two exceedingly lively small boys with
inquiring minds. Mr. Wycherly's expression had lost much of its
vagueness; and although it was still a great effort for him to brace
himself to meet strangers, he did it for the sake of the little boys and
Miss Esperance. He did not want them to feel that he was in any way
singular. What other people felt was a matter of the greatest
indifference to him, and this gave his manner a certain poise and
confidence that had been wholly wanting during his first years at
Remote.
All the time during tea, while Colonel Dundas was consuming quantities
of Elsa's thrice-excellent scones and conversing pleasantly with his
hosts, something in the back of his brain kept reiterating, "I've been
confoundedly misinformed about this man." And he found himself mentally
accusing vague rumour of a pack of lies: "Making me think the fellow a
sort of village idiot, while all the time he's a scholar and a
gentleman--I'd like to know who was responsible for it in the first
place."
After tea the Colonel asked if he might smoke a cigar in the garden,
when it was found to be raining.
No one had ever smoked at Remote, and Mr. Wycherly felt rather nervous
in offering his room for that purpose. But Miss Esperance pressed the
Colonel to go and have his smoke there, and sent him up alone with Mr.
Wycherly, while she, greatly to their indignation, detained the little
boys with her.
"You'll come down and have a chat with us when you've finished your
smoke, Malcolm?" she said cheerfully. So it came about that Mr.
Wycherly actually entertained a man of about his own age and social
standing in his room at Remote.
They seemed to have plenty to say, and the Colonel's big, jolly laugh
rang out from time to time.
When he came down he took a small boy on each knee and poked fun at
them: till, finally, out of a perfect farrago of nonsense, they
elucidated the fact that they were to go over to Pier's Hill twice a
week to be drilled and instructed in the noble art of self-defence: and
that the Colonel would himself write to London that very night for the
two smallest pairs of boxing-gloves made.
"Did Guardie ask you about it?" Montagu inquired anxiously.
"Will my soldier teach us?" Edmund demanded at the same instant.
"Who will take us?" both asked at once, and before the Colonel could
disentangle the questions his horse was brought round by a lad engaged
for the purpose that very afternoon. And the weather was discovered to
be perfectly fine.
The whole family turned out to see him mount and ride off, for Montagu
had rushed upstairs to fetch Mr. Wycherly, that he might not miss this
entrancing spectacle.
The Colonel, as he reached the corner, looked back at the little group
standing by the green gate and waved his hat to them: and for just a
minute after the landscape seemed a little blurred.
"There are more ways than one of making men," he said to a brother
officer at mess that night. "It's the quaintest household, but upon my
soul, I'm not at all sure that those two capital little chaps are not
rather to be envied."
The Colonel was not familiar with the writings of a certain monk of
Flanders, or he might have remembered that it is love alone that "maketh
light all that is burthensome and equally bears all that is unequal."
*CHAPTER XVII*
*MR. WYCHERLY GOES INTO SOCIETY*
Where is the man who has the power and skill
To stem the torrent of a woman's will?
While Mr. Gloag was away upon his holiday a strange minister and his
wife came to look after the congregation at Burnhead. The inhabitants
regarded them with more or less suspicion, for they came from a big
town, and their ways were unaccustomed.
Mr. Dewar, the visiting minister, was mild and inoffensive, with no
strongly marked characteristic of any sort; but Mrs. Dewar, a large,
bustling lady of resolute character and little tact, succeeded during
her first week in offending the majority of the leading members of the
congregation.
Lady Alicia frankly avowed that "she couldn't endure the woman"; Miss
Esperance said nothing; the Misses Moffat were encouraged by Lady
Alicia's plain-speaking to go so far as to remark that Mrs. Dewar was
very different from "our late dear Mrs. Gloag," while the village women
in confabulation at their respective doors pronounced the newcomer to be
"a leddy-buddy," which to the initiated subtly conveyed their opinion
that she was not quite a lady.
Still, she was eager to do her duty in this small, benighted backwater,
and she "visited" with zeal and frequency.
Her second visit to Remote was paid at a time when Mr. Wycherly happened
to have gone downstairs to ask Miss Esperance a question; and Mrs. Dewar
was shown into the parlour before he could escape. And even had such
flight been possible, Miss Esperance held up a small, imploring hand as
Robina announced the lady's name, which would have kept Mr. Wycherly at
her side to face the wives of twenty ministers.
Mrs. Dewar was charmed. She had wanted all along to meet Mr. Wycherly,
and she opened the conversation at once by shaking a large kid-gloved
forefinger at him, remarking with ponderous jocosity:
"I didn't see you in the church last Sabbath--and how was that?"
Mr. Wycherly glanced despairingly at Miss Esperance, and she came to the
rescue by remarking: "Mr. Wycherly is not a member of our church, Mrs.
Dewar; he is an Episcopalian."
"Ah, but nevertheless," Mrs. Dewar persisted, "I think he should come
and hear Mr. Dewar preach while he has the opportunity. It isn't often
at a little place like this you get a man from such an important
charge."
"I am sure Burnhead is very fortunate," murmured the ever-courteous Mr.
Wycherly.
"You may well say that," the lady replied, highly satisfied, "and I must
say that the place seems to me to be in great need of a little moral and
intellectual quickening. Of course, poor Mr. Gloag has been much
handicapped in his work by that poor invalid wife of his."
Miss Esperance always sat up very straight in her chair, but during Mrs.
Dewar's speech her little figure attained to a positively awe-inspiring
frigidity of displeasure, and Mr. Wycherly looked anxiously at their
visitor as though he feared she might be turned into a pillar of salt
there and then.
"On the contrary," Miss Esperance remarked, and her very voice seemed to
have withdrawn itself to some inaccessible altitude, "by the death of
his wife, dear Mr. Gloag has been deprived of such a perfect helpmeet as
is seldom given to man. You must certainly have been strangely
misinformed, Mrs. Dewar, to have acquired such a very mistaken
conception of the true circumstances."
For a moment Mr. Wycherly felt almost sorry for Mrs. Dewar, but although
she could not fail to be conscious that she had, in vulgar phrase, "put
her foot in it," she was too thick-skinned and complacent to be crushed.
"I'm sure," she said, making an effort to speak pleasantly, "I'm very
glad to hear what you say; but really there does seem to be a sad lack
of what my husband calls Spiritual Freemasonry among the congregation
here, and naturally one judges more or less of the Shepherd by his
sheep."
"I fear," said Miss Esperance, "that it is exceedingly unsafe to do so
in the majority of cases; including, surely, the fundamental Example
from which your analogy is drawn."
There was a dreadful pause. Poor Mr. Wycherly was hot all over. "If
they are going to talk theology," he thought to himself desperately, "I
shall be compelled to escape by the window."
"You must, Mrs. Dewar," he exclaimed recklessly, and then coloured
furiously for his voice sounded so loud, "you must find it very
agreeable to pass a week or two in the country at this time of year."
"We always go to the country every year," Mrs. Dewar rejoined rather
huffily, "but generally to the sea, it is so much better for the
children. We came here this year solely to oblige Mr. Gloag," and the
many bugles on Mrs. Dewar's stiff mantle chimed in concert, as though in
approbation of this amiability.
"That was very good of you," said Mr. Wycherly. "I am sure he badly
needed a holiday. I don't think he has been out of the village for more
than a night or two for over ten years."
"That's where he makes a great mistake. My husband always says that a
man grows stagnant unless he gets frequent change of scene and society.
What you tell me explains much of the spiritual torpor we deplore in
this village."
"I don't know what you would say to me, Mrs. Dewar; I should be afraid
to confess to you how many years it is since I have been out of this
village--a great many, I assure you."
"Doubtless you are engaged in various intellectual pursuits which help
to pass the time," Mrs. Dewar remarked graciously, and she smiled upon
Mr. Wycherly--all women did when they got the chance--and during the
rest of her somewhat prolonged visit she addressed her remarks almost
exclusively to him: ignoring Miss Esperance, who sat still and straight
in her high-backed chair with a look of considerable amusement in her
kind old eyes.
Mr. Wycherly accompanied Mrs. Dewar to the gate and held it open for her
to pass out.
"You must come and see us at the Manse," she remarked
condescendingly--then confidentially: "I fear you must find it sadly
lonely and uncongenial living here with only that old lady for company."
"Pardon me," said Mr. Wycherly, "most people are only too inclined to
envy me the great, the very great privileges that I enjoy."
And Mrs. Dewar had to learn that it was not only Miss Esperance who
could surround herself with an atmosphere of almost unapproachable
aloofness. She concluded her farewell with some haste, and Mr. Wycherly
walked slowly back to the house.
Montagu met him in the doorway. "Who was that lady, Guardie?" he
inquired eagerly. "She stayed an awful time. Who is she?"
"God made her, and therefore let her pass for a woman," said Mr.
Wycherly dreamily.
Montagu stared at him in astonishment, then pursued him indoors to find
out exactly what he meant by this cryptic speech; but for once Mr.
Wycherly's explanations were both elusive and unsatisfactory.
Next day Miss Esperance invaded Mr. Wycherly's room right in the middle
of lessons. She held an open note in her hand; a note written on pink
paper, with scalloped edges.
"I am sorry to interrupt you," she said, "but here is an invitation from
Miss Maggie Moffat, asking us both to take tea with them on Friday at
five. May I accept for you?"
Mr. Wycherly, who had risen at her entrance, was standing behind his
loaded desk.
"Oh, dear Miss Esperance, pray don't!" he exclaimed piteously. "You
know I never go out anywhere--and to a tea-party--I shouldn't know how
to behave. Pray, thank the Misses Moffat and say that I never go
anywhere--it is most kind of them--but----!
"I'd go if I were you," Montagu suggested, sprawling over his table and
sucking the handle of his pen; "they have awfully good sorts of cakes,
full of squashy stuff that runs out over your fingers. My! but it is
good."
"If it required anything to confirm me in my refusal," Mr. Wycherly
said, smiling at Miss Esperance, "such perilous cakes as those Montagu
describes would do it."
"It would please them very much if you would go," Miss Esperance said
persuasively; "we shouldn't stay more than an hour."
Mr. Wycherly wrinkled up his forehead in the greatest perplexity: "But I
never go anywhere," he said again.
"And why not?" Miss Esperance asked boldly. "If it were almost anybody
else, I would not press you, but they are so sensitive. If you don't go
they will think it is because you are proud, and don't think them good
enough."
"Me! Proud!" ejaculated poor Mr. Wycherly. "But this is dreadful."
"They stopped us one day," remarked the pen-sucking Montagu, "and asked
if you were not very stand-off, and Edmund said it was bosh, and you
were nothing of the sort, and that if they just came and played
handy-pandy with you, they'd soon see."
"Well," said Miss Esperance, tapping the letter, "what am I to say?"
"O, say Guardie's much obliged and he'll be very pleased to come, and
that we'll be very pleased to come, too," suggested Montagu, who
appreciated tea at the Misses Moffat's.
"I did not ask you, Montagu," Miss Esperance remarked with dignity.
"Well, dear friend, may I say you will go with me?"
"Do you _wish_ me to go, Miss Esperance?" groaned Mr. Wycherly.
"I don't wish you to do anything intensely disagreeable to yourself,
but, if you did go, it would assuredly give great pleasure to them--and
to me----"
"Then I will go," said Mr. Wycherly; and he said it with all the
resolution of a man determined to do or die.
The Misses Moffat were greatly flustered, for Mr. and Mrs. Dewar were
also to be of the party, and to entertain two gentlemen at once was an
unheard-of plunge into the wildest dissipation.
They paid innumerable visits of inspection to their little dining-room,
where the tea-table, laid early in the afternoon, positively groaned
under its load of dainties. No less than four different kinds of jam
gleamed jewel-like, each in a cut-glass dish, at the four corners of the
table: while cookies, soda scones, dropped scones, short bread, and the
cream cakes, so appreciated by Montagu, were piled up in abundance on
the various plates. In the centre of the table was a large _epergne_
arranged with flowers by Miss Jeanie's artistic hands. These
preparations all completed, there yet remained the arrangement of the
guests at table.
"You see, me dear," said Miss Maggie, anxiously, "we must ask Mr. Dewar
to take the foot of the table because he's the minister, and will ask
the blessing. But the question is, where'll we put Mr. Wycherly?
Because, you see, whoever sits by Mr. Wycherly will get a gentleman on
either side, which doesn't seem quite fair somehow. If we put him on my
right hand and give him Mrs. Dewar for a partner, then she'll be seated
next her husband, and that doesn't seem quite correct; and yet, if we
put Miss Esperance Bethune there, that's not right, either, and her
seeing him every day."
"Don't you think," Miss Jeanie suggested, "that he'd better sit on your
right hand and Mrs. Dewar on your left, with Miss Bethune between Mr.
and Mrs. Dewar, and I'll separate the gentlemen?"
"We mustn't think of ourselves on occasions like these," Miss Maggie
said, with just a tinge of reproof in her voice; "it's not a matter to
be settled hastily."
"Well, there's not many ways we can sit unless you give up having Mr.
Dewar at the bottom of the table," Miss Jeanie responded sharply.
"That," Miss Maggie replied solemnly, "is a necessity--because of the
blessing."
So, after all, Miss Jeanie had it her way.
Mr. Wycherly had assuredly never been at a similar tea-party.
At the very beginning of the meal his polite commonplaces to Miss Maggie
were drowned by the minister's voice, as with uplifted hand he asked a
lengthy blessing. Mr. Wycherly was rather startled, but he bent his
head decorously, and when it was over continued his sentence where he
had broken off.
Mrs. Dewar was so odiously patronising to the Misses Moffat that Mr.
Wycherly unconsciously ranged himself on their side, devoting himself to
the entertainment of Miss Maggie, so that she became hopelessly
flustered and forgot to ask Mrs. Dewar if she would take some more
tea--an omission pointed out by the neglected lady with some asperity.
Mr. Wycherly filled the soul of Miss Jeanie with rapture by telling her
how Montagu and Edmund were consumed with envy because they were not
invited. When tea was over and they repaired to the front parlour he
looked anxiously at Miss Esperance. Surely the stipulated hour must be
up. The Misses Moffat were quite endurable: kind and simple and almost
pathetic in their tremulous eagerness to please. But Mrs. Dewar was
getting on his nerves, and she insisted on addressing her conversation
to him as though she were on much more familiar terms with him than the
rest of the party, a dreadful supposition not to be borne for an
instant.
"Perhaps," said Miss Maggie, beaming upon her guests, "the gentlemen
would like a game of draughts."
Mr. Wycherly's heart went down into his boots. Some years ago he would
truthfully have said he didn't play draughts; since then, however, Mr.
Gloag had taught him that he, in his turn, might teach the little boys;
and Mr. Wycherly was scrupulously accurate in all his statements.
Miss Esperance came to the rescue. "I fear," said she, "that we must be
going. We promised the children that we would be home by about six."
Miss Esperance never made any plan that she did not intend to carry out,
and five minutes later she and Mr. Wycherly were on their way home. The
little boys were waiting for them at the gate and volunteered to take
Mr. Wycherly for a walk.
Miss Esperance stood looking after them and her eyes were fond and
proud. Old Elsa came out to ask her mistress something about the supper
and joined her at the gate, and she, too, looked after the trio marching
down the road, Mr. Wycherly, as usual, in the middle, with a small boy
hanging on to either hand.
"He's awfu' kind to they bairns," said Elsa. "They've wauken'd him up
extraordinar'. He's no' the same gentleman he was afore they came."
"_He_ is exactly the same, Elsa," Miss Esperance said gently.
"Circumstances have changed, and God in His great mercy has seen fit to
call out the many beautiful qualities with which He has endowed His
servant. But Mr. Wycherly is not changed."
Elsa's face softened, as it always did when she looked at her mistress.
"I'm thinkin', mem," she said, "that though the Lord has seen fit to do
much, He made you His instrument."
Gradually by slow degrees, but daily more and more, was Mr. Wycherly
shaken out of his groove. It was he who took the little boys twice a
week to be drilled at Pier's Hill; when Mr. Gloag came back, he even
went occasionally to the Manse to play chess with him because Miss
Esperance declared the minister to be so lonely. And, more wonderful
still, that winter he made two or three journeys to Shrewsbury to confer
with Mr. Woodhouse and see after his affairs in person, leaving Montagu
in charge of Miss Esperance and the household.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*MONTAGU AND HIS AUNT*
In a space of shining and fragrant clarity you have a vision of marble
columns and stately cities, of men august in single-heartedness and
strength, and women comely and simple and superb as goddesses; and with
a music of leaves and winds and waters, of plunging ships and clanging
armours, of girls at song and kindly gods discoursing, the sunny-eyed
heroic age is revealed in all its nobleness, in all its majesty, its
candour, and its charm.--W. E. HENLEY.
It happened that Elsa died quite suddenly while Mr. Wycherly was away
upon one of these journeys, and Miss Esperance would not let him be
told, lest he should--as he most assuredly would--hasten home to her
assistance. It was a very cold spring, and Miss Esperance drove into
Edinburgh to make arrangements for Elsa's funeral, in pouring rain and
in the teeth of a cutting east wind. She caught a bad cold, but being
naturally very upset at the time and having a great deal to see to, she
took but little care of herself, and was laid aside with a sharp attack
of bronchitis before Robina had realised that there was anything the
matter.
Robina, with the best intentions in life, was no nurse. She worried
Miss Esperance, and yet that decided little lady would have no stranger
in the house. So it ended in Montagu--who was then nearly twelve years
old--doing everything for her, deftly, quietly, and with the gentle
skill so often developed by dreamy people when they are roused to
action.
During his aunt's illness the little boy slept in a large cupboard off
her bedroom; and that he might the better be able to attend to her wants
through the night, and yet not entirely lose his sleep (as he did during
the first night he was on duty), he tied one end of a long string round
his big toe and the other round his patient's wrist, and if Miss
Esperance wanted the fire made up, or fresh poultices, or the "jelly
drink" she was too weak to reach for herself, she would give the string
a gentle pull, and Montagu, who was a light sleeper, was by her side in
a moment, quick to hear her faintest whisper.