SOME ODD FURNISHINGS AND A HONEYMOON
Aunt Jannet Harvey's wardrobe was rapidly approaching completion.
She and Jean had had a busy six weeks. They had neither of them ever
been quite so busy in all their lives before, and the curious thing was
that it seemed to agree with them mightily, and they, both one and the
other, had visibly renewed their youth under the demands made upon them.
Aunt Jannet developed new and surprising traits of character every day;
and as for Jean, the days were not half long enough for the joy of life
that lay in wait for each one as it came.
She and Kenneth Blair had been quietly married by special licence a
month ago, and the sight of their faces, wherever they had been since,
had brought new ideals and new possibilities of life to all who looked
upon them--all except the cynics and philosophers of Jean's former
world, of course.
"Quite so!" said they. "But just wait till the bloom is off the
honeymoon, and she finds herself all alone with her little tin god
among the savages! Then she'll find out what's what and sigh for the
vanished fleshpots and fripperies."
But there were no signs of incipient sighing about Mrs. Kenneth Blair
at present, anyway. She had always been sweet and charming, with a
wistful eagerness in her face that filled you with a desire to do for
her any mortal thing she might require at your hands. There was still
something of that about her, but it was almost hidden now beneath the
radiant happiness which enveloped her.
She had urged Blair to a speedy wedding--where no urging whatever was
needed--for the delight of spending their last weeks at home, in the
house where most of her life had been passed. She had had long and
peremptory interviews with her lawyers, making wise provision for all
possible eventualities, so far as it was possible to foresee them. It
was not till she was half-way across to the other side of the world
that the aunties in Greenock, and old Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish, and
several other old friends, learned what she had been up to, and then
she was well out of their reach.
[Illustration: She had long and peremptory interviews with her lawyers.]
And every day since, she and her husband had been out in the
market-place with open purse and very definite ideas as to their
requirements, and the things they had bought were very extraordinary
and about as different from the usual purchases of newly-married
couples as they possibly could be.
_Item_.--One 300-ton auxiliary schooner, built to Class 17 A.1., by
Scott & Sons, Greenock; dimensions 143 O.A.; 23-1/2 ft. beam; 13 ft.
draught; 7 ft. headroom, etc. A handsome, roomy boat, stoutly built
for comfort and long voyages to the order of a financial magnate, whose
health unfortunately broke down before she was quite ready for him, and
forced him to seek more genial climatic, and other conditions, in
Argentina.
Mr. and Mrs. Blair ran up to Greenock to inspect her, found her exactly
to their liking, settled the matter in five minutes in the office
inside the big gates, christened her the _Torch_ with a hastily
procured bottle of champagne, gave orders for the duplication of every
piece of machinery she contained; walked out of the big gates
ship-owners, and dropped in on the astonished aunties in Brisbane
Street and announced that they had come for a cup of tea and to stop
one night.
They stopped more than one night, however, for after tea Blair walked
in to see the Rev. Archibald for a last talk and a pipe of peace. And
when the Rev. Archibald recovered wind and wits from the rapid details
Blair gave him of the work he was engaged on, he at once offered to
find him a crew through some of the members of his church. Blair
desired nothing better, and in five minutes the maid of the Manse was
skipping through the dripping streets with kilted skirts to summon to
instant conference some nearer members who might be able to advise in
the matter. He laid his plans before them, told them to a hair the
kind of men he required both for officers and crew, and went back to
Brisbane Street in due course, comfortably assured in his own mind that
within two days the _Torch_ would be fitted with a crew worthy of her
and the work for which she was destined.
Next day the ship-owners went out for a walk, and did not return till
close on tea-time.
They had been on their honeymoon trip: past the cemetery gates, up the
brae between the brown stone houses, past the pond, up the cinder path,
and along that glorious walk, with the swift brown water of the Cut
swirling past to its appointed work in mills and town, on the one side;
and on the other, across the brimming firth, the everlasting hills,
grey and green and purple and black, as the sunshine chased the shadows
to their hiding-places in the glens; the full sea welling about their
feet, now green, now blue; and the sky overhead bluest blue after the
rain, with piles of snowy cloud passing along in solemn silence like a
procession of the chariots of God.
They did not speak much, hardly a word, but walked hand in hand like a
pair of country lovers, till they came to where a flat stone lay
alongside the beginnings of a cabin.
And there they stopped; and looking into one another's faces by a
common impulse, put their arms round one another's necks and kissed,
with brimming hearts, and eyes that saw none of the glories around
because of the glory within them, which was too much for either sight
or sound.
The happy tears were running down Jean's cheeks, but they were
swallowed up in reminiscent smiles as her husband seated her gently on
one projecting rock and himself on the other.
"This is my twelfth birthday," he began; and when Miss Inquisitive
looked at him out of her sweet brown eyes, still soft from their recent
shower, he explained: "To all intents and purposes my life began that
day I met you here, though there had been a previous troubled life in
which my dear father gave me all he had to give--the desire to learn."
"And I am about two years old," she said, smiling; and when she saw
that he did not understand, explained:
"After meeting you again that second time in the church, when you
hardly recognised me----"
"I knew you the moment I looked into your eyes."
"I came up here the next day--I did not know why, but something drew
me, and I came. And I sat down here on this stone, and saw you sitting
on that stone munching oatcake and cheese, and thought what a greedy
little pig I was not to have made you take some of my sandwiches----"
"You couldn't have made me. I wouldn't have touched one for----"
"I know. But I ought to have made you, all the same. And then I
thought of you as you were now--that is, then, you know--and what a
great, big, strong soul and body you had become, and what great things
you were going to do, and how you had got your heart's desire. And
then I thought of myself, and the little I had done with all my
opportunities. And after that you insisted on coming into my thoughts
at all times, and I could not get rid of you. And then you sailed, and
I knew I should never see you again, and life felt hollow and hopeless.
And then I saw in the papers about your being murdered. And then you
came home, and--here we are. And oh, Ken! it is almost too good to be
true."
"Not a bit of it, my dear; it is only just beginning."
Then he drew out two parcels from his pockets, and hers contained some
neat little sandwiches and cookies with jam inside, and his contained
oatcakes and cheese.
And, being in a raised mood, she laughed till she cried at his oatcakes
and cheese, and then insisted on dividing up equally all round, and
vowed that his fare was quite as good as her own.
"Of course it is," he said. "I knew that all the time. A boy on the
hillsides who can't enjoy oatcakes and cheese would deserve to go
empty."
When they had eaten, they still sat looking out over the water at the
hills and lochs opposite. In all likelihood they would never see that
fairest of scenes again, and they could not have too much of it.
And after they had sat a long time in silence, Blair, leaning forward
with his arms on his knees and his eyes drinking in great draughts of
delight, said, suddenly--but slowly, as though the words had to be
called, or recalled, from afar, and said them, not to her or for her,
but to and for something quite outside them both--said them, in fact,
as though he were impelled to say them, and could not help himself--
"The hills of God stand fast and sure."
The words described those hills opposite exactly. Then a pause, and
presently--
"His mighty promises endure
For ever and for evermore."
Then he fell silent again, and thoughtful, and presently--
"His Mercy is a boundless sea,
For ever flowing, full and free."
She saw it there before her just as he saw it. And after another
pause--
"Through Time into Eternity."
She looked at him quietly and questioningly, but his gaze was fixed
absorbedly on the opposite shore. It seemed almost as if he had
forgotten her for the moment. She was content to watch him and to
listen to him--
"And as the wide blue sky above,
Encircling us where'er we move."
There it was above them. The chariots had passed away. The sky was
unflecked blue--
"So is His all-enfolding Love."
Then came a longer pause, and she thought he had ended, but she would
not speak. And presently he began again--
"For these, Thy gifts, we thank Thee, Lord!
Hills, sea, and sky, take up the word,
And thank Thee!--thank Thee!--thank Thee, Lord."
He sat still, gazing out intently at the hills and the sea and the sky,
and sat so long without a word that at last she spoke.
"Whose is that, Ken? Surely he must have sat just here, and seen just
that."
He turned slowly to her, as though he found it difficult to leave those
wonders beyond.
"I really do not know, dear.... They seemed to come of their own
accord from somewhere. But whether I recalled them from somewhere
else, or whether they came hot from the anvil, I do not know. I do not
think I ever made a line of poetry in my life. There has been always
so much else to be done."
"I think you must have made them," she said.
Then, in turn, she had her own amusing little monologue. For she began
suddenly telling off the lochs and hills, just as he had named them to
her that other day--"Loch Goil, Loch Long, Ben More, Ben Lomond, The
Cobbler, Ben Ihme, Holy Loch!"
"We shall often think of them when the prospect is a very different
one," he said quietly. "You never regret all that you are going to
leave behind you, Jean?"
"Never for one moment, dear. I am taking with me, and going to, so
very much more than I leave behind, that my heart is full of gladness,"
she said. "There is not room for the smallest shadow of a shadow of
regret."
And they joined hands again and went on along the windings of the path,
in and out of the curves and dimples of the mountain's breast, till the
bold peaks of Arran rose purple in the distance, and they came to the
Sheils Farm.
Blair's kinsfolk had long since left the place. He just took a look
round the familiar byres and stables, and poked his head into a room
whence a fresh-complexioned dairy-maid, in short blue skirts and bare
feet, was busily chasing hens. He came out with a reminiscent smile on
his face, and they turned down the hill towards Inverkip. He led her
by the short cuts his boyish feet had known so well; past the old
burying-ground, where the body-snatchers plied their gruesome trade and
the village folk sat up night after night to protect their dead; past
the gates of Ardgowan to the sea. And so along the shore road, with
the waves splashing up among the boulders on one side, and the dark
policies on the other, and the great trees meeting overhead; past the
sturdy white pillar of the Cloch into Ashton, and so at last home. A
honeymoon trip which neither of them ever forgot as long as they lived.
"Well, you two," said Aunt Jannet, when they came in. "We began to
think you'd given us the slip and gone across the border without saying
goodbye."
"We've been a long round," said Blair, "about----"
"About twelve years," said Jean.
"Then you must be starving. We expected you'd come home ravenous, and
provided accordingly."
"We've been living on the fat of the land," laughed Jean; but they both
fell to all the same, and proved beyond doubt that high thought and
good living were by no means incompatible.