"And so I am going to marry Colonel Goff, Jack, and be the Countess of
Carfax, and you'll do as I say--you'll make-believe with me. I'd so
hate to have Aunt Lucretia know now."
"I'll go on as if it were I," I said bitterly. "I'd do anything for you,
Eloise--and--and I do hope you'll be happy yet."
She shook her head: "Jack, you do not know me--that kind of happiness
that I have craved all my life is not for me, and it is so hard that it
should be, for I have always had such beautiful dreams of that kind of
happiness--I, who could love so if I only might--I who wish it so, to be
widowed of it all my life."
"I could make you if you'd only wait--give me a chance to prove mine--to
make you love me, Eloise."
"It is too late. O, Jack, you deserve better of me than this; you do
not deserve so poor return as this make-believe--a make-belief--only
this--a little sisterly kiss," and she held up her face in the starlight
to mine.
But I sat silent. My heart--it would not take such a make-believe
tribute.
I rose from our seat. "Good night, Eloise, I wish now that I had stayed
in Germany," I said as I walked in.
"Jack, come back, don't be angry with me. I've done the best I could."
I saw her turn defiantly, like one who, receiving a hurt, fights back.
I left her sitting under the trees.
*CHAPTER VII*
*THE CHIMES OF THE WISTERIA*
I was up and out the next morning before Aunt Lucretia or any of the
servants. I wanted to get to the dairy in time to see Tammas milk. I
longed to see his whitewashed cottage and the clean, stone dairy under
the hill, near the spring.
I walked through the lot where the Jersey herd had lain the night
before, leaving shimmering shapes of themselves impressed in the hollow
mold of blue grass, crushed and shining for lack of dew. Nearby was the
brood-mare paddock, sloping downward to the meadow. Beyond, the
tree-covered hills.
It was a perfect picture; the sun flushing the green of the hills, the
air damp and tainted with the earth-odor of early day. But I had not
beaten Tammas nor Marget, his good wife; nobody ever beat them up, not
even the cows. He was calling them to the barn in the same way as of
old, in the voice that I had heard ever since I could remember. He
stood squarely in the barn door, blocky and bowed of legs, his broad
Scotch face split wide across with a big, kindly mouth from which came,
like the deep tones of a cathedral's bell down the valley: "Coom,
lassies--coom, noo!"
Like children called into supper they obeyed; silver grays, fawns,
chocolates, red-fawns and pied, crumpled of horns and slim of tail,
marching solemnly down. One, a three-year old heifer, with her first
calf, answered him like a school girl, whirling half around in awkward
romp and elephantine effort to kick up her stiff heels even as she had
seen the standard-bred filly do!
How restful and natural Tammas's cottage looked! I could see Marget
bestirring herself for greater cleanliness of an already over-clean
cottage. She was humming, and I guessed it was one of her old kirk
hymns or maybe Bobbie Burns. For it was Marget who could read Bobbie
Burns! How rich and grand the lines came in her broad dialect! I was a
child when she had begun to read Bobbie Burns to me; and though I knew
not what she said I hung upon her numbers, and a queer, fine feeling
swept over me. I was nearly grown before I learned the dialect myself,
from hearing them talk to each other, and knew the greatness of Bobbie
Burns in the original.
Tammas and Marget were good people, as genuine as the rocksalt they gave
the herd to lick, hiding it in the deep grasses of the meadow, where the
thirsty cows would come upon it in unexpected places. Once when I found
a cube of it, gleaming in the grass for the cows, I thought how much
their own lives were like that pure cube of comfort, doing their work in
kindliness and obscurity. Then the clamoring tongues of the beagles
thrilled me as of old, as the game little fellows came down the slope of
the hill. They had followed me from the house and struck the trail of
an early stray rabbit. Across the hills they went, their little piping
tongues echoing slowly as they nosed along.
For many years Tammas and Marget had run my Aunt's dairy in the hollow
where the great stream came tumbling down from the hills. I looked at
it there in the valley, and I tasted again in anticipation the cottage
cheese, the buttermilk, and the Scotch rye bread.
Now I saw Marget bestirring herself and again up the valley I heard the
call, "_Coom, lassies, coom, noo!_"
In changing their home, Tammas and Marget had changed little else. Even
after twenty-five years of life at The Home Stretch they still spoke to
each other in their native tongue, though to others they often spoke
English with their broad brogue. Even then, Scotch words would break in
on their English with the suddenness and sweep of a tidal wave flowing
in from the firth. Though they could speak English purely, and were well
read in their way, their earnestness might always be gauged by the
number of Scotch words which crept into their talk.
Marget had not yet seen me. I went up the path to the little cottage
porch, over which wisteria, in full bloom, hung in purple bunches, and
whorls of clustering chimes. As I stood there listening, I seemed to
hear their chimes, for the odor of the wisteria is a chime of memory. I
heard the melody of other days, faint and yet so clear, memories that
were almost legendary, of the little boy, motherless, and who had never
seen his father, always a nature-worshiper, and a tree-lover; of his
Aunt Lucretia; of his adopted sister, Eloise; of his fighting old
grandsire, who had been the right hand to Stonewall Jackson when he
swept clean the valley of the Shenandoah; and of these two good Scotch
people who had taken him to their hearts even as their own. Here had he
dreamed and grown up, loving them and the things they loved, and his
dreams had been of writing, of poetry, of music; and not of war, as his
grandsire had wished. Young as he was he had seen war with clear eyes.
How it took the bravest and the best,--and left the weaklings to
reproduce themselves. It reversed all the laws of Nature. If Nature
had done the same thing for the flowers, not a larkspur purpling the
meadows in blossoming ladders, not a wild lupine in whorls of stars, not
a nodding head of clover blossom, not a stone-crop of the early spring,
nor the flushes of wild hepatica would have survived to-day.
Dog fennel alone would inherit the earth!
Marget, her keen black eyes lighting up with that joy I knew so well,
came to meet me. She seized my hands in both of hers, and shouted to
Tammas: "Tammas, whaur are ye, Tammas? Come quick an' see whit I hae to
show ye!"
"Weel, weel, I'm comin', wumman," said Tammas, wobbling up in his great
awkward way, his broad mouth smiling. He grasped both my hands in his.
"It's Jack, oor Jack! Whit wey did ye no' tell me ye were here? Eh,
Marget, but jist see whit a man oor Jack is!"
I felt Marget's keen eyes sweep over me. "Ay, Tammas, but is na he a wee
bit shilpit like? I dinna like to see him sae pale like."
I laughed. "Oh, Marget, you and Tammas, come, you make me think of the
lecture room and the discipline of the German drill-master. I smell
those Scotch scones right there upon the table, and the cottage cheese,
I haven't had any for four years."
"Oh," laughed Marget, "he's jist like he aye was, oor laddie. His
appetite and his heart were aye the biggest pairts o' him. Eh, but I'm
that glad tae see ye laddie, if ever I kissed ony that was o' the male
gender, it's you I'd be kissing. Come on ben."
They led me in, Marget holding my hand and beaming up into my face.
"Wha ever wad hae thocht it, oor wee Jack," she kept saying proudly to
Tammas.
"Wheest," said Tammas, vainly trying to say one thing and mean another,
"Wheest wumman, it's Mr. Jack noo."
For answer I stopped and looked at him with feigned pain, and Marget
clapped her hands and laughed.
"Where is Elsie?" I said, suddenly remembering. "Has she grown any?"
I thought Tammas's smile would spread over the rest of him when I asked
for his granddaughter.
"Has she grown any? My, my! Why listen, Jack, 'tis four years since
you saw her--she was twelve then--our little lassie, and four years make
a deal o' difference in a lassie."
"She has jist gane oot to the dairy to get some cream for breakfast,"
said Marget. "See, yonder she comes. Look an' tell me if she's the
same," and Marget pointed with a smile.
I saw a tall girl coming down the little path, carrying a pitcher of
cream in one hand and twirling a Scotch sunbonnet in the other. Her
dark red-brown hair fell in two school girl braids down her back. Her
every line showed gentleness of breeding; and her beauty of face was
really wonderful.
"She's jist pat on ane o' her low necked morning gowns, an' she's that
thin that they show ower muckle o' her neck," said Marget
apologetically.
"She is lovely," I said; "you should have named her Annie Laurie," and I
hummed the old song:
"Her cheek is like the snow drift,
Her neck is like the swan."
"Dae ye really think she is that bonnie?" Tammas smiled, pleased that I
should have compared her to Annie Laurie.
"It is not exactly beauty so much, Tammas," I said; "it is something
like royalty. She looks like some Greek nymph of the woods that has
stepped out of a water lily."
Marget was smiling at my praise.
"Ay, but it's jist as ye say, Jack," said Tammas. "Oor lassie looks
that way." He stopped and his voice dropped. "An' her bonnie mother,
oor daughter,--it is that like her that Elsie is,--aye, the very twin
star o' oor ain bairn, Marget."
"Look," said Marget, "dae you ken I canna mak her wear her shoes yet,
when there's nobody aboot, and the pools o' the spring sae inviting.
Look ye, if ever there was a child," and she laughed, pulling Tammas and
me to the door to see better.
Elsie had stopped, and sat down on the grass above the pool, her pitcher
beside her, and was splashing her feet in the water.
"She may be grown, Tammas, but she is the same child I've known always.
I remember the funny little thing when she was two years old."
"Three," corrected Marget, "that was when we took her after the passing
of oor bonnie lassie."
"And how she loved to follow me around like a kitten."
I had never asked Tammas and Marget for Elsie's history. I knew it had
been sad to them.
"I did not tell you about her. I did not tell you, lad, it was all too
sad," said Marget, as if guessing my thoughts, "but noo that it is so
long ago and you have grown, you and Elsie, I think it only fair that we
tell you only a bit of it, so that you may not misjudge her, nor us,"
and she looked inquiringly at Tammas.
Tammas nodded.
"She was oor only daughter," she said, "we never saw him. He stole oor
lassie when she lookit jist as ye see yon ane, and nae aulder, an'
because she wasna' o' his station, his graun' folk scorned her and her
bairn. Aye, but he was true, tho', standing up for oor lassie
till--till. Weel, there was a tragedy, an' he had to flee for his life.
He gaed to the war somewhere--we never saw him--an' we dinna ken. Then
she died, and syne we cam' here wi' Elsie."
I saw the tears start into her eyes. "E-lsie, E-lsie, here's our Mr.
Jack come back," she called.
Instantly there was a flutter of feet withdrawn from the pool. The
pitcher was left on the bank, and the hat also. She came running, her
blue eyes smiling at me, quite unembarrassed, and even singularly calm.
She came up, put both her hands into mine, and her blue eyes flashed at
me.
"Kiss him," laughed Marget, "it's oor ain Mr. Jack."
She instantly obeyed, touching me lightly on one cheek. Then in an
earnest little voice she said, "Mr. Jack, I'm so glad you have come
home. How I have missed you these four years!"
"If I had dreamed that you had grown to be so beautiful," I said
teasingly, "I'd have come home sooner."
She glanced at me quickly and seriously. "Oh, I've forgotten my cream
and it's time for breakfast," she said hastily, and ran back down the
path.
"I should say so, Marget," I said. "How hungry I am!"
"It's good to be here again," I added, as I sat down to the little
table; "and, Tammas, there is Elsie back with the cream. Put on some of
that clotted cream in the pot, cream thick, for it is a long lost
brother that I've been separated from."
"Ay, but the cottage cheese. Don't forget that is your appetizer,"
cried Marget authoritatively, as she pushed a great saucer, flaked up to
white foaminess, toward me.
For answer I fell to.
"Hold!" cried Tammas, his hand going up and the great fun-loving mouth
changing to quick solemnity. Often as a boy I had seen his hand raised
most unexpectedly, and never had I failed to obey. My head bent. Then
Tammas, his great knotted hand uplifted, prayed in Scotch, as was his
wont:
"'Oh, Thou wha kindly dost provide,
For every creature's want!
We bless Thee, God o' Nature wide,
For a' Thy goodness lent:
An' gin it please Thee, heavenly guide,
May never waur be sent;
But whether granted or denied,
Lord, bless us wi' content!'
And to-day thanks be added, greatest of all, that our Jackie is with us
again. Amen!"
"Amen," chimed in Marget.
I looked over the table at the Scotch scones, the poached eggs, the
funny little cuts of butter, miniature loaves of it pressed and
decorated. "I see you've got the same bill of fare, Marget," I said.
"Well," she answered, falling again into English, "we are two old people
set in our ways, and it seems to suit us."
"Noo, if you'd only told us you were coming," said Tammas, trying to
speak ironically, "I'd 'a had some o' thae auld things ye're sae fond
o', Jackie, such as sliced Indian turnips like ye got up in the lodge of
the rocks on the hill yon day," and he laughed as he recalled the
burning my lips got from the raw turnip.
I laughed. "Tammas, it must not go back to Aunt Lucretia that I ate my
first breakfast with you."
"It's a mile to the hoose," said Marget, "an it's only sax o'clock, sae
there's a graun' excuse for ye to eat anither breakfast, when ye gang
back." She smiled with that funny little smile I had known of old when
she wanted one to know that she was meaning the opposite, but was too
Scotch to express it.
"Weel, we winna say onything about it," said Tammas. "Jackie, lad, if
ye've got onything like ye're auld appetite, ye'll be ready for anither
at the hoose when ye get back. Dae ye mind hoo ye used to dae that when
ye were jist oor wee laddie, running aboot the dairy an' dipping your
fingers on the sly in oor cream pots?"
So I let him launch into his favorite subject, the cows, and the
wonderful record they had made since I left. Of Gladys Gaily, who had
made her pound of butter from less than five pounds of milk.
"Aye, lad, 'tis the ould Top Sawyer bluid that's doing it," he said
proudly. And that I would find it all in the last "Butter Tests of
Jersey Cows." Several of my old friends had died and one--"Ou, but it
hurts me sadly, my boy, to tell it--Gladys Gaily, herself, has passed
with that milk fever. Aye, but it takes only the rich ones."
*CHAPTER VIII*
*THE STONE-CROP*