MACDALY’S DREAM
“I wonder where MacDaly is?” queried Stargarde.
Vivienne was spending the day with her, and together they were walking
up and down the Pavilion courtyard. The brilliance of the afternoon
sunshine and the purity of the earth, where a thin veil of snow lay over
all deformities and unsightliness, had tempted them out of doors.
“Who is this MacDaly that you are so anxious to see?” asked Vivienne.
Stargarde laughed, then her face became grave. “He is a poor old soldier
who boasts continually that his father was a gentleman, though he
himself has sadly fallen from that estate.”
“And is he one of your _protégés_?”
“Yes; he lives over the washhouse,” said Stargarde with a motion of her
hand in the direction of a near brick building. “I sent him to town with
a note. I fear that he has gotten into trouble.”
“Does he drink?”
“At times he does. He meets old companions who tempt him to do so. I
feel a responsibility about him, for he used to be Colonel Armour’s
night-watchman at the warehouse. He was dismissed for some cause or
other many years ago, and he never ceases to mourn over it.”
Vivienne wondered why Stargarde should feel any responsibility for
Colonel Armour’s actions, but dismissed the thought from her mind on
reflecting that to Stargarde all men were brothers.
She put her hand through Stargarde’s arm and pressed it gently as they
walked up and down the path. “Do not worry about him. He will return.
Think what a glorious day this is.”
“Ah, yes,” said Stargarde, turning her face up toward the deep blue of
the sky. “It is a pleasure to live.”
“I love this clear frosty weather,” said Vivienne; “it is so much more
agreeable than the wind,” and she shrugged her shoulders inside her warm
jacket. “And you, dear Stargarde, are you sufficiently clad in that
short cloak?”
“Do I not look comfortable?” asked Stargarde mischievously.
They surveyed each other with amused glances. Both were very fair, there
was no doubt about it. Over their cheeks Jack Frost had drawn his
finger. They had the brilliant coloring, the light in the eye that comes
to those in perfect health.
“My blood is dancing in my veins,” said Stargarde; “and yours——”
“It dances also,” said Vivienne demurely.
“Then we will remain out a little longer,” said Stargarde; “as good as
the air may be in the house it is always better out of doors.”
“Please continue talking to me about your theories with regard to the
poor,” said Vivienne earnestly.
Stargarde pinched her cheek, then nothing loath entered upon a
discussion of various philanthropic schemes where Vivienne, she knew,
would follow her with interest. Occasionally, however, her glance
wandered to the washhouse, and Vivienne knew that she was thinking of
the ex-soldier.
MacDaly was not thinking of his kind patroness. He was lower down in the
town, just steering his way out of a low drinking shop, and in a slow
and interlaced fashion wandering down the street while he communed with
himself after the following manner: “If I were making an observation on
the subject ’twould be on the effect of the curiosity of the subject.
That whereas and however, in some human creatures, liquor flies to the
head, in sundry other and divers intelligent cases, it takes the
opposite direction and bewilders the feet. On the present occasion, my
head or head-piece, otherwise known as pate, noddle, or skull, is
perspicacious and discriminating—acute and high in tone as usual. I feel
that I could sing were there any one to hear,” and lifting up his voice
he began to warble discordantly and with a vainglorious and martial
accent:
“’Tis the flag of Old England.”
Pride will have a fall, and by reason of too much attention given to the
head, the feet got beyond control, and MacDaly shortly found himself in
the gutter.
Halifax people, no matter how great a fall of snow they have,
immediately begin to dig trenches through it in preparation for the thaw
which they know is sure to come. In one of these hollowed-out beds—no
unpleasant resting-place for a warmly clad man who had just come from a
heated saloon—Derrick Edward Fitz-James O’Grady MacDaly, old soldier,
Irish Nova Scotian, loafer, drunkard, lecturer, merrymaker, and
character well known about the town, reposed, till he was discovered by
two small boys who happened to be passing up the street.
“Hallo, here’s Skitanglebags,” said one of them, referring to him by his
accepted nickname, “drunk as an owl. Let’s muzzle him.”
“No; cork him,” suggested the other.
MacDaly, in his cool and comfortable bed, felt his soul revolting from
both of the two forms of torture proposed. He knew that the boys were
quite capable of either rolling and smothering him in the snow or of
stopping up his mouth, for they were at that age which La Fontaine says
is “without pity.”
“Gentlemen,” he piped up shrilly, “would either of you be knowing any
one that might for any reason be wanting a pup?”
True to the dog-trading instinct which has made Halifax vie with
Constantinople as an agreeable place of residence for the canine tribe,
the lads exclaimed in eager concert, “Have you got a pup?”
Yes; he had a pup, he said, and during a discussion of its merits he
cunningly persuaded the boys to assist him to his feet. Then with one on
each side of him, he ambled along the street nodding amiably to any
acquaintances he happened to meet and suppressing with difficulty his
strong desire to break forth into singing.
The two lads he was decoying home with him under pretence of wishing
them to see the pup that he described as surpassing in beauty all other
pups that had ever been offered for sale to them.
“What breed is it, Skitanglebags?” asked one of them.
“And what is the breed you might be wanting to have, if you’d not be
above mentioning it?” asked MacDaly guardedly.
“Bull terrier.”
“And you’ve named the name of the fathers and forefathers and
grandmothers and patriarchs of my dog’s tribe as far back as the records
go,” said MacDaly. “His pedigree is that long that my wall is fairly
covered with it, and it hangs down on the floor,” and he plunged into an
enumeration of the points of the dog. His head, jaws, ears, shoulders,
chest, feet, color, symmetry, and size, were minutely described, the
boys meanwhile listening with delighted ears, and forgiving him his
frequent lurches against them. They also kept a brisk lookout for
policemen, and when a dark coat with brass buttons was seen in the
distance, guided MacDaly into the doorway of some house, where they kept
him until the enemy had passed.
Long before they had reached the Pavilion the whisky that he had been
drinking began to mount to his brain, and he shocked and annoyed the
boys by his manner of conducting himself.
“Bother you,” said one of them, kicking him on the shins. “Keep off my
feet. You’re doing the ‘Dutch roll’ and the ‘inside edge’ all over the
place. You’re not on skates.”
“Oddsboddikins, what a glorious lady!” was MacDaly’s response. “Smart
and tricksy as a fresh-scraped carrot,” and hat in hand, he bowed so low
in admiration of a plain-featured, elderly woman who was passing, that
he was in imminent danger of losing his balance and falling prostrate at
her feet.
“I’ll send a policeman after you,” she retorted angrily, as she went by.
“Beauteous lady, sleek and pleasurable creature,” pleaded MacDaly,
looking after her, “be not repellent to thy servant. Thou art——”
His further speech was broken by the two boys, who, seizing him by the
arms, hurried him so rapidly around a corner and into a long street that
he had not breath enough to utter a word.
He proceeded along the street soberly enough, only taking off his cap to
each electric-light post, and to each of the unused iron gaslight
pillars, that still stud the streets of Halifax, till he came to a
church. There he persisted in sitting down on the steps and shedding a
few tears over his sins.
The boys at length drove him off, and he staggered along a few paces to
a small field between the church and the schoolhouse, and gazed between
the pickets of the fence.
“What are you looking for, Skitanglebags?” asked one of his escorts.
“A little mammiferous quadruped, my boy,” he replied, with tears
streaming down his cheeks. “A little thing with cloven hoofs and hollow
horns, a creature called a goat. Alas, I loved it, and it has been taken
hence.”
“Oh, drop that,” said the lads in chorus, and they again urged him
onward. “What would the goat do there in winter? There’s nothing but
snow in the field now.”
“I never loved a sweet gazelle,” MacDaly hummed lightly, leaning back on
his bearers, and allowing his long legs to somewhat precede him up the
hill. Opposite a schoolhouse he came to a dead halt. “Who comes here?
Stand easy, sir.”
Colonel Armour was walking along the street at a leisurely gait, a
single eyeglass in his eye, a handsome sealskin cap set on his gray
hair, his dark, heavy coat fitting him without a wrinkle. With his
straight, military figure, his handsome appearance, no greater contrast
to the weak-kneed drunkard advancing toward him could be imagined. He
stared slightly at MacDaly as he passed, but made no sign of
recognition.
Like some noxious reptile fascinated by a bird of fine appearance
MacDaly gazed at him. When Colonel Armour went by without quickening or
slackening his pace, MacDaly turned, and with eyes glued to the
retreating figure watched it out of sight. Then he stooped down, and
catching up some snow pressed it to his forehead.
“Let go my arms, boys,” he said, with some irritation. “I can walk now.
I’ve had a shock,” and he marched ahead of them without help, keeping
his feet well and only stumbling occasionally.
Silently they passed by one house after another, nearly all built in the
monotonous, square-roomed style of architecture that prevails in
Halifax, until they arrived before the Pavilion. The boys took MacDaly,
who was now partly over his shock, and was again walking unsteadily, in
through the gate to the washhouse where, entirely oblivious of them, he
was about mounting to his small apartment in the attic.
“The pup, Skitanglebags!” ejaculated one of them impatiently.
He stared at the boy in a confused manner, then as his promise came back
to him, muttered: “Yes, yes; the pup—I’ll try to find him. Follow me,
gentlemen.” Rolling his eyes about him as if seeking inspiration he
climbed the steps to the attic, closely followed by the boys.
“Why don’t you call him?” asked one of them. “What’s his name?”
“His name?” and MacDaly, nimble-witted as he was, could not for his life
call up on the instant the name of any of his former quadrupeds. “I call
him—I call him——” he responded.
His sentence was never finished. While speaking to the boys, his eye
fell on a small hole in the wall, through which he took surveys of the
courtyard. He still kept up some of the traditions of a long-ago brief
military experience. The washhouse was his fortress; the Pavilion
sometimes the camp of an enemy, sometimes the stronghold of an ally.
Just now there was a besieging force advancing upon him, consisting of
two ladies. With a face of dismay he watched Stargarde coming toward his
place of retreat. The figure of the young lady with her was not familiar
to him. MacDaly did not care particularly who she was; he did not look
at her until, as Stargarde pointed to the washhouse, the girl lifted her
head. Then he clapped his hand to his mouth to restrain a shrill cry—a
long unseen face had risen before him.
“Lord have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!” he gasped, and huddling
the two astonished boys together, he drove them into the small room
where he slept, and turning a wooden button on the door, forbade them on
the peril of their lives to move hand or foot till he should tell them
to do so.
“MacDaly, MacDaly—are you here?” came floating up to his room in
Stargarde’s clear voice.
Shivering violently, MacDaly clutched the shoulders of the
half-frightened, half-angry boys. “Whisht—whisht,” he said in a warning
undertone to them.
“Not home yet,” they heard her say to her companion. “I must send some
one to look for him.”
When the sound of their footsteps died away, the boys wrathfully
demanded an explanation from MacDaly, for they plainly saw that they had
been deceived in the matter of the pup.
Instead of an explanation they received a temperance lecture. Shocked
once more into partial sobriety, the miserable man, with the fumes of
liquor still on his breath, and with an earnestness that impressed the
boys in spite of their anger, begged and prayed them never to touch a
drop of anything stronger than water.
“It will be the ruin of you, my lads,” he said brushing the moisture
from his bleared eyes. “Swear by your fathers and mothers that you’ll
leave the cursed stuff alone. ’Twill make ye anything—thieves, liars,
and even murderers.”
The boys, more struck by his extraordinary ascent from foolishness and
frivolity to impassioned and clear language, than by the fervor of his
exhortations, shook off his persuasive hand and, assuring him that they
could take care of themselves, insisted upon their immediate release
from his room.
Not until Stargarde had crossed the veranda and entered her rooms did
MacDaly permit them to go. Then, with many adjurations to be quiet, they
were allowed to slip out from the washhouse and make their way back to
town.
After their departure MacDaly threw himself on his bed. He might at any
time be summoned to an interview with Stargarde and it would be well for
him to refresh himself by a nap.
In a few minutes he was snoring loudly and going over again in his
brutish sleep the tragic story of Étienne Delavigne, that had been
brought to his mind first by Colonel Armour, whose appearance never
failed to move him strongly, and secondly by the unexpected apparition
of the young French girl, who was so marvelously like her father.
In a troubled phantasmagoria Colonel Armour was before him—not the
Colonel Armour of to-day keeping up his ghastly fight with old age, but
the handsome middle-aged man of twenty years before. Stanton Armour was
there too, a bright-faced happy lad. Étienne Delavigne, their modest and
retiring bookkeeper, and Madeleine Delavigne, his shy, proud,
aristocratic wife, the pet of the Armour family. Then a horrid jumble
took place—the mild and gentle Étienne Delavigne was furiously angry
with the colonel, and a quarrel was taking place between the two of
which he, Derrick Edward Fitz-James O’Grady MacDaly was sole witness.
Delavigne was flung out of his employer’s office, the warehouse was on
fire, and the evil one appeared in person to seize the eavesdropping
MacDaly, who lay on his back rigid with terror.
While he was sleeping and dreaming a tall dark figure had come
noiselessly up the steps to his room, a hand was laid on his shoulder,
first lightly, then more heavily. MacDaly started up on his bed, bathed
in perspiration and trembling violently. A tongue of flame leaping up
from the dull fire showed him a brown face that in his first confusion
he imagined must belong to some evil spirit that had been sent for him.
He muttered, “Not ready, spirit,” put up a frantic prayer for
protection, and clutching at his bedclothes as if they would be an
anchor to hold him to earth, shrunk into as small a space as possible.
His visitor was Joe the Indian, who grinned in delight at MacDaly’s
terror. “Cunnel sendum,” he said in a sepulchral voice, and slipping
something that rustled under MacDaly’s chin, as he found it impossible
to lay hold of his hand, he withdrew as silently as he had come.
MacDaly’s terror was over. Springing up, he poked the fire, looked at
the denomination of his bill, and then proceeded to caper around the
room on the tips of his toes.