connection.
And did it.
"Oh, I had forgotten Mr. Iverach!" she cried, running off towards the
house with a little gesture of despair; "what shall I do?"
"Give him his orders, too!" her father called after her, as the last
flutter of the new dress flashed through the twinkling poplars.
ADVENTURE XXVI.
R. S. V. P.
A great event happened in the back-kitchen of Bailie Holden. The
postman had brought a letter with a fine monogram—a very stiff, square
letter, for Miss Janet Urquhart. The table-maid, who considered herself
quite as good as a governess, examined it as though there must needs be
some mistake in the address. The housemaid turned it about and looked
at it endways and upside down, to see if there might not be another
name concealed somewhere. She rubbed it with her apron to see if the
top would come off and something be revealed beneath. The cook, into
whose hands the missive next passed, left a perfect tracing of her
thumb and fore-finger upon it, done in oils, and very well executed,
too.
In this condition it reached the back-kitchen at last, and the hands of
Janet of Inverness. As she took the letter in her little damp fingers,
she grew pale to the lips. What she feared, I cannot tell—probably only
the coming true of some of her dreams.
In a cluster round the door stood the housemaid, the table-maid, and
family cat—the one which went habitually on four legs, I mean. The cook
moved indignantly about the range, clattering tongs, pans, and other
instruments of music, as it is the immemorial use of all cooks when the
bird in the breast does not sing sweetly. She was, of course, quite
above curiosity as to what Janet's letter might contain.
"Likely it's an invitation!" sneered the housemaid.
"Aye, frae the police!" added the table-maid from the doorway. She was
plain, and Cleaver's boy never stopped to gossip with her. Not that
she cared or would have stood talking with the likes of him.
The cook banged the top of the range, like Tubal-cain when Naamah vexed
him in that original stithy, near by the city of Enoch in the land of
Nod.
Janet of Inverness opened the letter. Scarcely could she believe her
eyes. It was a formal invitation upon a beautifully written card, and
contained a wish on the part of Mr. Greg Tennant and Miss Tennant that
Miss Janet Urquhart would favour them with her company at Aurelia Villa
on the evening of Friday the 17th, at eight o'clock. R.S.V.P.
Janet sank into a seat speechless, still holding the invitation. The
table-maid came and looked over her shoulder.
"Goodness me!" she exclaimed, as she read the card.
"She's been tellin' the truth after a'," said the housemaid, who,
having some claims to beauty, was glad of Janet's good fortune, and
hoped that the like might happen to herself.
"I dinna believe a word o't!" said the cook indignantly. "I'se warrant
she wrote it hersel'!"
But Janet had not written it herself. She could not even bring herself
to write the answer, though she had received a sound School Board
education. But the three R's do not contemplate the answering of
invitations upon thick cardboard, ending "R.S.V.P." They stop at the
spelling of "trigonometry" and the solving of vulgar fractions.
In spite of her silks and satins and her vaunted experience, Janet did
not know the meaning of "R.S.V.P." But the housemaid had not brushed
clothes ten years for nothing.
"It means 'Reply shortly, very pleased'!" said she. Which, being
substantially correct, settled the question.
Nevertheless, poor Janet was in great perturbation. When Cleaver's boy
went to see her that evening before going on duty she showed him the
card.
"What shall I do?" she said. "I hae nothing fit to wear, and I am
feared to gang."
Cleaver's boy looked up at the ceiling of the back-kitchen, as he sat
on the edge of the sink, unconscious that there was a tap running
behind him and that the plug was in.
"There was that purple brocade ye telled me aboot, wi' the auld lace
and the pearls that belonged to your grandmither, the Earl's dochter,"
said James Annan, meditatively.
"O aye," said Janet. "Yes, of course there is that ane." But she did
not look happy.
"Or there is the plain white muslin wi' the crimson sash aboot the
waist, that the twa gentlemen were for stickin' are anither aboot, yon
nicht they quarrelled wha was to see ye hame."
"Aye," said Janet, piteously, "there's that ane too."
"An' what say ye," continued James Annan remorselessly, "to the yellow
sattin, trimmed wi' flounces o' glory-pidgeon roses and——?"
Cleaver's boy suddenly stopped. He had been feeling for some time a
growing coolness somewhere. But at this point the water in the sink ran
over on the floor, and he turned round to discover that he had been
sitting in a full trough of excellent Moorfoot water, with the spigot
running briskly down his back all the while.
"O James," cried Janet, pleased to get a chance to change the subject,
"what for did ye do that, James? And your new breeks, too!" she added,
with an expression of supreme pain.
"I didna do it for naething," remarked Cleaver's boy, tartly. "I didna
do it ava'. It was you that left the spigot rinnin and the plug in!" he
added, after a thoughtful pause, while he realised how cool a sitz-bath
can be, even on a summer evening, when one stands by an open window.
Now nothing is more provoking, when you are performing a high and noble
work in the reformation of another person's morals, than to have the
thread of your weighty discourse broken by something so ridiculous as
sitting down in a bucket of water. There was every reason why Cleaver's
boy should be annoyed.
But Janet broke out in a sobbing ecstacy of laughter, which irritated
her lover more even than her wrong-doing.
"I wonder at you," he said, "telling a' thae lees when ye haena a dress
to your back, forbye the alpaca that ye pit on on Sabbaths!"
It was a mistake, and Cleaver's boy knew it as soon as he had the words
out of his mouth.
Janet instantly stopped in the midst of her laughter.
"I would have you know," she said with dignity, "that I shall accept
the invitation. And I will never speak to you again. I'll thank you to
take yourself out of my presence, James Annan!"
"And out of Bailie Holden's back-kitchen!" continued her lover, whose
colour did not diminish with the growing coolness consequent upon
standing in a draught. Then as he went up the steps from the area he
cried, "Be sure and put on the brocade, Janet!"
It was an unbearable affront, for Janet had told her stories so often,
and with so much innocent feeling, that though, of course, she could
not quite believe them herself, she had nevertheless all the feelings
of an indignant moralist insulted and outraged in her tenderest
susceptibilities.
ADVENTURE XXVII.
JANET OF INVERNESS TASTES THE HERB BITTER-SWEET.
Janet duly arrived at the house of Mr. Robert Greg Tennant at the hour
named in the invitation. She had had a great struggle with herself, but
pride had ultimately triumphed. Her fellow-servants had given her no
peace. She had, indeed, to dress in her black alpaca. But, sure enough,
her hair had been done in the latest fashion by her only friend, the
girl with whom the cook had seen her walking, who was an assistant in a
hair-dresser's shop. It was so twisted and tortured that Janet felt "as
if she had slept on it the wrong way," as she expressed it to herself.
She passed and re-passed the end of the Avenue half-a-dozen times, but
her courage would not let her ring the bell of the corner house. For
there were lights in nearly every window, and a cab had just driven
away from the door.
Poor Janet's heart leapt within her, and she had half a mind to turn
homeward and confess that she had been romancing. But another cab
stopped before the gate, and through the open door she saw a glimpse of
lights and flowers that looked to her like Paradise—as she imagined it
from the hymn-singing at the Salvation Army meetings.
So as the last cabman came slowly out of the Avenue, Janet called to
him. The man was arranging his rugs about him for a long drive back to
his stand at the centre of the town.
"I'll give you a sixpence if you will turn about and drive me up to
that door you have just been at," said Janet.
"Done," said the man; "and good money for the job."
So, without betraying the least surprise or curiosity, the man turned
about his vehicle, and Janet tripped daintily inside. They drove up to
the door with prodigious rattle and ceremony. The cabman jumped from
his seat and rang the bell in form. When the door was opened, Janet
Urquhart paid the man his easily-earned sixpence. He touched his hat,
and she went leadenly up the steps.
A trim maid-servant was at the door, who evidently had received very
definite orders, for only the faintest curl of the nostril betrayed her
own opinion of the affair.
When Janet was shown into the cloak-room her troubles began. Should she
take off her hat, or not? She looked about to see if the ladies had
left their hats. None were to be seen. Yet she had never seen ladies in
the evening, except bareheaded. After long consideration she resolved
to keep her hat on. But when she was in the doorway to go up to the
drawing-room she saw a lady coming through the outer door with a shawl
of soft gauzy wool over her head.
Janet shrank back instantly and turned cold with the thought of her
escape. With trembling hands she took off her hat and pinned her veil
to it as she had once seen her mistress do. The lady came in, bustling
a little like one who knows she is late.
"It is cold to-night," she said affably to the shy girl standing in the
doorway, but without looking at her.
"Yes, ma'am," said Janet, and the next moment she could have bitten her
tongue out for the mistake.
"Oh, how I wish I had never come," she said a score of times to herself
as she went up the stairs.
But it was too late to turn back.
"What name?" said the daintily-capped maiden, with the curl of her
nostril a little more accentuated.
For a moment Janet was so taken aback that she could not even remember
her own name.
"Janet," she stammered; "Janet—from Bailie Holden's."
The maid's face broadened into a smile, at sight of which poor Janet's
lip quivered, and for a moment she thought that she must burst out
crying. Scarcely was she able to keep back the welling tears. But the
door was a little open, and she saw Miss Celie, whom she already knew
and loved. The sight of that pleasant face, dimpling and flashing all
over with bright kindness, reassured her.
"Say 'Janet Urquhart'!" she said, with a little faltering return of
assurance in her voice.
And the trim maid-servant, with a strong protest in her tone, announced
in accents of terrifying distinctness, "Miss Janet Urquhart."
Then she shut the door, and Janet was left standing aghast and
speechless in the bright humming place.
"I would not have done it," soliloquised the indignant maid outside,
"unless my place had depended on it."
But within Celie Tennant's drawing-room, poor silly little Janet of
Inverness was being most pleasantly and charmingly entertained by her
hostess. Celie had, in fact, asked only a few of her most intimate
friends, whom she could trust with the momentous secret of the loves
and sorrows of Cleaver's boy. The fascinating cousin from the tented
field was there, ready for love or war. But it was to Donald Iverach
that the principal work of the evening had been allotted.
It was he who first asked Janet to dance with him. It was he who sat
out with her after her desperate failure, for she had lacked the
courage to say that she had never learned to dance. It was he who found
her a handkerchief, when, with the bitterness of disappointment, the
tears at last would not keep down, but welled piteously up from the
underlips of Janet's blue and childish eyes. It was Mr. Donald Iverach
who took her down to supper, where she suffered agonies over the use
of fish-knives and the management of a plate upon her knees. It was he
who finally took her aside, and so fervidly pursued his wooing that,
had Janet Urquhart been mercenary, he might without doubt have had a
suit for breach of promise of marriage successfully brought against
him. So far did the wooing proceed, and so fervently persistent was
this wicked Junior Partner, that, bewildered and dazzled, poor Janet
found herself being pressed to name the happy day, and, what is more,
in some danger of doing it, too. As for the Junior Partner, that young
man was obviously excited, but seemed quite unconscious of the risks
he was running. Had the Senior Partner heard him, he would undoubtedly
have considered his son to be rapidly qualifying for a strait jacket.
But the infatuated youth held on his way. Janet and he were sitting in
a little alcove at the top of the stairs, cobwebbed with the latest
artistic Japonaiseries of the period.
"And now," urged the reckless youth, when he had sealed in due form the
silent acquiescence he had won, "let us go back and tell them all that
we are going to be married."
Mr. Donald Iverach was certainly quite mad. But Janet of Inverness was
madder still, for instead of accepting the very eligible young man with
modest reluctance, she burst out crying all at once without the least
warning, and ran downstairs, leaving Donald Iverach standing spellbound
looking after her. Down the stair and through the hall she ran. She
opened the door and flew out into the night, crying "James! James! I
want you, James!"
And the strangest part of the whole is that even as she opened the door
two dark forms separated at the outer gate.
"There noo, look you after her," said Cleg Kelly to Cleaver's boy.
And James Annan went as he was bidden. The girl's wild cry of "James!
James!" hushed into quite another way of saying the same words, when
she found herself clasped in the arms of Janet's boy—late Cleaver's.
For James Annan not only had the root of the matter in him by nature,
but, as we have seen, he was a lad of some little experience.
"What did I tell you, sir?" said Cleg to the Junior Partner, as they
stood together on the step, and looked after the pair who had vanished
into the darkness.
"It came out all right, I grant," said Mr. Donald Iverach, "but I want
no more games with pretty kitchen-maids. I will tell you what—for three
full minutes I thought she was going to take me!"
And the Junior Partner went down the street at the rate of five miles
an hour.
ADVENTURE XXVIII.
THE ENGINE-DRIVER WITH THE BEARD.
What James Annan said to little Janet of Inverness on the way home,
and what Janet of Inverness said to James Annan, I know. But since
it concerns only themselves, with themselves I will leave it. At all
events, it was no long season before they were at one. Miss Cecilia
Tennant's exact share in the plot is a harder matter to apportion.
But that she had a share in it far beyond the mere issuing of the
invitations is certain, for Mr. Donald Iverach was heard saying to the
arch-conspirator in the semi-privacy of the dusky angle of the stairs,
"But what I want to make out is, what I am to get out of it."
"Virtue is its own reward," replied Miss Celie, sententiously, "and,
besides, you make love to that sort of person so well, that it is
evident you must have had a great deal of practice."
"Now I call that a little hard on me," said the Junior Partner, who
felt that he had made a martyr of himself all the evening, and that he
had, indeed, narrowly escaped the sacrificial altar.
"Wait," he said threateningly, "till you want me to do anything else of
the kind for you."
Celie Tennant set her pretty head the least bit to the side. It could
not be called a cock, but it was the next thing to it. Next she pursed
her mouth till it looked like a cherry.
"You would do it just as quick if I asked you to do it all over again,"
said Celie Tennant, looking pins and needles at Donald Iverach, till
the very palms of his hands pingled.
The Junior Partner stamped his foot.
"Oh, hang it all!" he cried, "I believe that's the God's truth—I would."
That night as he walked home, the Junior Partner, who had no gifts for
the imparting of religious instruction, but who respected those who had
(especially if they were pretty), wondered what could make a Sunday
school teacher act in such a perverse manner. He could not understand
how it was that Celie Tennant, who upon occasion would weep over the
crushing of a fly, and who was all the time worrying her life out over
these young rascals of hers, could yet take pleasure in tormenting a
fellow-creature, and making his very existence a burden to him.
But when he came to think of it afterwards, he had to confess that on
the whole he rather liked it. In fact, that he would rather be made
unhappy by Celie Tennant than that anyone else should give him the
happiness of Paradise. He was a rankly foolish young man, and he would
have hugged his follies if this particular one would have permitted him.
The present chronicler has, be it understood, undertaken to relate the
adventures of Cleg's companions as well as those which immediately
concern the hero. But these adventures of Cleaver's boy and his Janet
of Inverness were not without direct bearing upon the fates of Cleg
and of his lost friends the Kavannahs. For it so happened that Duncan
Urquhart, the uncle of Janet of Inverness, came one night to see her
in the kitchen of Bailie Holden. The cook was pleased with him, for he
was a single man and well bearded; in fact, the very kind of man whom
all cooks adore. Housemaids, on the other hand, like clean-shaven or
moustached men, and as a rule prefer to catch them younger. And this is
the reason why cooks marry gardeners while housemaids marry coachmen.
While nurses, having had enough of children, live to a good old age
in picturesque cottages, with assured pensions and uncertain tempers,
eventually dying old maids. At least, so sayeth the philosopher.
Duncan Urquhart was not the chief of a clan. He was an engine-driver
in the goods department of the Greenock and South-Eastern Railway. In
the course of conversation the engine-driver, chiefly for the sake of
the applause of the cook, cast about him for moving tales of the iron
road on which his working hours were passed. He had settled in his
mind that the cook was a wonderful woman. She could, to his certain
knowledge, watch a roast, turn an omelette, taste a soup, and cast a
languishing glance over her shoulder at him, all at the same time. He
could not help thinking how excellent a thing it would be to come home
after a grimy run on the footplate. And then, having washed, sit down
in his own house to the soup, the omelette, and the joint, with (so
little did he know) as many of the languishing glances as he could wish
for, thrown in as a permanent asset of his home. So overcome was he
by the idea, that for the moment he forgot that matters had proceeded
even further with another cook in the town of Netherby, which formed
his alternate stopping-place. It was a pity, he sometimes thought (for
an instant only), that the laws of his country did not permit two such
homes to be set up, one at either end of his daily journeyings.
Now, as one good effect of Duncan Urquhart's visit to the kitchen of
Bailie Holden, the position of Janet of Inverness as kitchenmaid was
made a far more tolerable one. It is a thing strongly advisable, that
if the junior domestics of a house have presentable brothers or even
uncles, unmarried and eligible, they should make haste to produce them.
Janet of Inverness quite understood this. She knew, indeed, that
Duncan was to marry his cousin Mary in the Black Isle. But she was far
too wise a little girl to say anything about a family arrangement like
that. And then the cook always allowed her to walk in pleasanter places
for several days after the visits of her Uncle Duncan, who, as has been
said, was a handsome man with a beard, and in habit very well put on
and desirable.
But it is with Duncan's story that we have to do. Duncan had the
English of Inverness crossed with the dialect peculiar to the Greenock
and South-Eastern—a line whose engines are apple-green and gold, but
the speech of whose engineers is blue, with purple patches. Not that
Duncan swore before ladies, though Bailie Holden's cook would have
forgiven him because of his beard. It was indeed a habit she was
rather partial to, thinking it a mighty offset to the conversation of
bearded men. There was no denying that Duncan's speech was picturesque.
But Cleg could not help feeling that swearing of Duncan's sort was
altogether roundabout and unmanly. For himself, when he had need and
occasion, he simply said "Dam" and had done with it. Anything more
savoured of superfluity to a boy of his simple tastes.
Duncan the engine-driver was talking about feats of strength.
"In my young days," he said, "I could toss the caber with any man. The
Black Deil o' Dumfries tak' me, gin I couldna send a young tree birlin'
through the air as if it had been a bit spale board. But ye should see
Muckle Alick doon at Netherby Junction, where I pit up for the nicht.
He's the porter there on the passenger side. An' the mid steeple is no
better kenned for twenty miles round Netherby. Hands like the Day o'
Judgment comin' in a thunder-cloud—heart like a wee white-faced lammie
on the braes o' the Black Isle—that's Muckle Alick o' Netherby.
"As braid across the breast as if he was the gable end o' a bakehoose
coming linkin' doon the street its lane. Lord bless me, when the big
storm blew doon the distant signals last spring, I declare gin Muckle
Alick didna juist stand on the railway brig that sits end on to the
Market Hill, and signal in the trains wi' airms like the cross trees o'
a man-o'-war!
"I declare to conscience it's a Guid's truth!
"Aye, an' when that puir trembling chicken-hearted crowl, Tam Mac
Wheeble, that drives the Port Andrew passenger, stood still, wi' the
bull's-eyes o' his wee blue engine juist looking round the corner, an'
whistled and yelled for the proper signal, pretendin' that he didna
see Muckle Alick (him belongin' to anither kirk), Alick cried doon at
him off the brig, so that they could hear him half a mile, 'Ye donnert
U. P., come on wi' your auld steam-roller an' your ill-faured cargo o'
Irish drovers, or I'll come doon an' harl ye a' in mysel'!'
"Fac' as daith! I was there, talkin' to a nice bit lass that stands in
the Refresh'!
"You weakly toon-bred loons" (here Duncan Urquhart looked at Cleg and
Cleaver's boy) "thinks me a strong man. But Alick, though his shooders
are gettin' a wee bowed and his craw-black hair is noo but a birse o'
grey, could tak' half-a-dozen like me and daud our heads thegither
till we couldna speak. True as the 'Reason Annexed' to the Third
Commandment! I hae seen him wi' thae een that's in my head the noo!"
"Tell us mair," said Cleg, standing with his mouth open, for the
relation of feats of strength is every unlearned man's "Iliad." So
Duncan went on to tell mighty things of the wrath of Muckle Alick.
"But, lads, ye maun ken Alick is no a ramblin' wastrel like the rest
o' us. He's an elder amang the Cameronians. Haith! a weel-learned man
is Alick, an' guid company for a minister—or ony other man. And never
an ill word oot o' the mouth o' him. Na, no even when yince there was
twa trains at different platforms, an' the station-maister cried to
Alick to tak' the tickets frae baith o' them at the same time. 'Juist
tak' the Port Road train yoursel', gin ye are in sic a fidge!' quoth
Alick. An' it was the station-maister that swore—Alick was even mair
pleased-like than usual.
"But nae man ever saw Muckle Alick angry. The ill-set callants o' the
Clearin' Hoose tries whiles to provoke him. Alick, he says little—only
looks at them like a big sleepy dog when the pups are yelping. Then
after a while he says, 'Ye are like Tam Purdy's cat, when it ate the
herrin' he had for his breakfast the time he was askin' the blessin',
ye are "gettin' raither pet!"'
"And then, if they winna take a telling, Alick will grip them in his
loofs, gie them a shake and a daud thegither as if he was knockin' the
stour aff a couple o' books, syne stick their heads in a couple o' bags
o' Indian meal, an' leave them wi' their heels in the air. But Alick is
never oot o' temper. And ceevil—fresh kirned butter is no sweeter at
eighteenpence a pund!"
ADVENTURE XXIX.
MUCKLE ALICK'S BANNOCKBURN.