Chapter II: To-Day—trouble

Winter came and passed away without anything happening to break the even tenor of existence. Spring came, and with spring the appearance of a new novel of Mr Collingwood Dawson. Having had a considerable share in its manufacture, I felt naturally anxious to know the result of its appearance. I had an encouraging note from Mrs Collingwood Dawson: ‘Much liked—goes off very well:’ and I saw from the advertisements in the papers that the notices of the press were generally favourable. At the head of them all was the following extract from the _Hebdomadal Review_: ‘High capacity—very good—many readers—enticing interest.’ Tributes of appreciation that were valuable from a periodical rarely given to praise overmuch any one unconnected with the house it represents.

Soon after I had another note from my employer: ‘I am coming over to confer with you on literary and other matters; please make all necessary arrangements. I shall be accompanied by a female friend, but not, alas, by Mr Collingwood Dawson!’

The steamer that plies the Lower Seine in the summer months, came puffing up the river one fine breezy morning, and dropped into a little boat that put off to meet her, two female passengers, a quantity of boxes, and a little white dog. I recognised my expected visitors, and hastened down to the landing-place to meet them. I explained that my house was not big enough to take them in; but that I had secured rooms at the hotel close by, and that my wife and I hoped to have as much of their society as they could give us.

After they had settled down in their new abode, Mrs Collingwood Dawson came over to see me, and was shewn into the pavilion.

‘I am in a good deal of doubt and difficulty,’ she said; ‘and I have come to ask your opinion and discuss matters with you. But as it is no use putting half-confidence in you, and your opinion will be of little good unless you know fully all the circumstances of the case, I mean to tell you everything; and will first begin, if you please, and if it does not bore you too much, with a little sketch of my life.’

I assured her that I should have great pleasure in listening to her, as anything connected with her was of interest to me.

‘I am,’ she began, ‘the daughter of an official of the old India House; and my father, who had held a good position there, and enjoyed a good income, left at his death no other provision for his widow and only child, myself, but the pensions to which we were entitled—a very handsome one indeed for my mother; and for myself some seventy pounds a year, which ceased at my marriage. He had been during his lifetime very fond of good society, especially literary society; and thus from early years I had been acquainted with many people who followed that profession. Consequently it is not surprising that I tried to add to an income sufficiently narrow by literary work, although I confess that I had no particular talent, and certainly no enthusiasm for the task, and met with little success. In this way I became acquainted with several publishers and many authors; among others was my first husband. He was a man of great intellectual power and force of will, but quite without any ballast of judgment or common-sense. Still I was very much enthralled by his influence, and he having formed a violent passion for me, insisted on marrying me. Young and ill-advised, I gave way to his impetuosity, and married we were. I soon had cause to repent the hasty step. He had been a man of most irregular habits; and after a brief period of devotion to me, he resumed them. Our household became a scene of constant jars and quarrels; he wearied out my life, and I must have wearied out his. The beautiful soul that I thought I had recognised as enshrined in his somewhat ill-formed and stunted figure, had no existence for me. He was malignant and detestable, utterly—most utterly.’

Her voice trembled with anger at the retrospect, whilst her eyes filled with indignant tears.

‘It was an ill-assorted match evidently,’ I said. ‘But why did you not agree to separate?’

‘I shrank from mentioning such a thing; with all his faults, I believed that he was still at the bottom devotedly attached to me. Besides, such a step is always distressing and compromising. No; I went on bearing my troubles, not silently indeed, for I have too much spirit, I confess, to make a meek and uncomplaining wife; but I bore them anyhow, although I confess that any affection I ever had for him had been lost in the embroilments of our married life. You may think that I was to blame, and that if there were a real attachment on his part towards me, I ought to have been able to manage him; but I tell you no! There was a certain malignity in his nature that made him spiteful and tormenting even to those whom he loved. Anyhow, life was a sorrowful burden to me whilst he was with me.’

She rose, looking quite overcome by the recital of her troubles. Her eyes were filled with tears; her hands trembled nervously, as she raised them to press the hair back from her forehead. I murmured a few words expressive of sympathy and good-will.

‘Well!’ she said, sitting down and wiping her eyes with a pretty embroidered handkerchief; ‘not to dwell upon my troubles. I was at last relieved from the hateful knot by his death—a death I believe he contrived in a way that should leave me in as cruel and doubtful a position as possible. He left home one day without giving me any intimation that he would stay away—that was his general practice—or leaving me any money to carry on the household expenses. And the next thing I heard of him was from a little village on the coast, that he had been drowned while bathing. I believe that he committed suicide. I ascertained that he had been informing himself most minutely of the set of the tides and currents about the coast, and with fiendish ingenuity had taken to the water at a time when the tide was certain to carry his body far out to sea.’

‘But what object could he have had in that, madam?’

‘Don’t you see? The pension which I had lost in marrying revived on my widowhood. But he had contrived that his body should never be found. In vain I applied to the authorities to renew my pension. There had been several cases of attempted personation and fraud about these pensions, and they utterly refused to renew mine without absolute proof of my husband’s death. This I was unable to afford to their satisfaction, his body never having been discovered. Still the circumstantial evidence was most strong, and I was advised to bring an action in the way of a petition of right. A circumstance, however, occurred,’ said the widow with a slight blush, ‘which rendered such a step unnecessary.’

‘Ah! I see,’ I cried; ‘you married again?’

‘Yes; and this time my venture was more fortunate. My second husband was an officer in the army, frank and free and brave. No young couple could have been happier. But alas! we were neither of us prudent in the management of our affairs. We had small means in the present, but great expectations, and we were too sanguine to think of the possibility of disappointment. Life became a series of feasts and fêtes. My husband sold out of the army, and we lived gaily enough on the proceeds of his commission, till that was all gone, and we saw ourselves brought to the verge of ruin. I must tell you that my husband was also of a literary turn, and wrote military sketches and so on, that brought in a little money, but nothing substantial.

‘We had one resource still left—the house in which we lived; it had been my mother’s, and at her death she left it to me. It was a pretty little house in the neighbourhood of St John’s Wood; but it was leasehold only, and the lease had not more than ten years to run. We had found it under these circumstances impossible to mortgage our interest. We might have sold the lease; and that with the furniture, which had also been my mother’s, would have realised five or six hundred pounds. But when that was gone, where should we look for shelter? Charles’s great expectations’——

‘Pardon me for interrupting you. You have mentioned your husband’s Christian name: it will make your narrative clearer if you tell me also his surname.’

‘Collingwood was his name—Charles Collingwood.’

‘And the name of the first one was Dawson?’

‘You have guessed rightly. To continue. Charles’s great expectations had all come to a bad end. A rich relative, who had brought him up for his heir, took a great dislike to me, and cut him out of his will, for no reason in the world but that he had married me, and that we were very poor. When he died, and we found this out, it seemed that the world had come to an end for us. What was to be done? Live in the most niggardly way we might, but we could not live on nothing. First we began to sell the less essential parts of our belongings. We lived on old china for three months; and then we began on our paintings. We had some good ones by English artists, which my father had left behind him, and these kept us for a while. But this was like burning the planks of the ship to keep the engines going. Charles had tried hard for employment in the meantime. For the governorship of a colony; for a consulship; the post of adjutant of militia; the same thing in a Volunteer regiment; for the chief-constableship of a large town; for the management of a brewery; and ever so many things besides. All of no use.

“We must take in washing,” said Charles; “and I will become a second Mantilini, and turn the mangle.”

‘Lodgers were our next thought, and that seemed more feasible. Then some one advised us to let our house furnished. We put an advertisement in the papers, and by great good luck we had an offer for the whole of the house at once. Six guineas a week for May, June, and July. We made up our minds to take cheap lodgings somewhere on the coast, and spend only half our weekly six guineas, which would thus last us six months instead of three. As we were packing up our belongings and storing away the packages in the lumber-room, Charles stumbled over a lot of old boxes, from which arose a cloud of dust.

“What are these old things?” he cried.

“I don’t know anything about them. They were my first husband’s books and papers.”

“Books, eh?” said Charles. “Let’s have a look at ’em;” and broke open one of the boxes. This, however, turned out to be full of packets of manuscripts. Charles made a wry face over them, but he took out a packet and began to read it. I went on with the work. I had everything to do then, I must tell you, for we had dismissed our servants, and lived in the house by ourselves with only a char-woman to help—quite in picnic style.

‘Well dinner-time came, and Charles, who was still up-stairs reading his manuscript, brought it down with him and laid it beside his plate, and went on again reading directly after dinner.

“I tell you what it is, old woman,” he said, as we went to bed, “I feel muddled with it all, and rather as if I’d been supping off pork chops and Welsh-rabbit; but there’s something in that fellow’s writings, only they are coarse, decidedly coarse.”

‘But I am tiring you,’ said Mrs Collingwood, looking up with a smile.

‘Not at all. I am highly interested. Go on, please.’

‘We went away to the sea-side, and Charles took several packets of manuscript with him to amuse him, as he said, during the long days.

“Do you know,” he said to me one evening, “I think one could make something out of these things. If we cut out the objectionable passages which I expect were in the way of their publication”——

“My dear Charles,” I said, “these were his religion, and he would not have touched a word for worlds to make them more acceptable.”

“And died a martyr to the faith, eh?” said Charles. “Well, I shan’t be so very particular. There’s enough for a three-volume novel here, and I shall expurgate it and try its luck.”

‘Charles was never much of a penman, but I was a neat quick writer, and thus the copying fell upon me. Charlie did the botching and patching, and dictated as I copied. But what a task it was! I am sure the mere writing of it was worth all we were destined to get for it, let alone the author’s work and our amendments. Then we got a lot of the most taking three-volume novels from the library, and counted the words and lines, so as to get ours about the right length. It was finished at last, just as our house became vacant; and as soon as we got back to town I took it to a publisher. It was agreed that I was to do all this part of the work, for my poor Charlie used to say that if anything happened to him, I should find the use of these habits of business.’ Here she paused.

I coughed doubtfully. My knowledge of human nature led me to attribute the arrangement to shyness and laziness on his part. I did not, however, venture to disturb Mrs Collingwood’s illusions.

She resumed: ‘To our surprise and joy, after a delay of not more than three or four months, we heard from the publishers accepting our novel. We did not get any large sum for it, it is true, but it was highly thought of, and was to be well advertised; and that was the chief point. Whenever the author was inquired for, I gave out that he was my husband, but that he was an invalid. Charlie really was poorly at the time,’ she said blushing. ‘Ah, you shake your head; but in these days, my dear M——, it is necessary to be _rusé_ as well as clever.’

‘But why not have given it out as the work of a deceased author?’

‘Ah, that would never have done! A publisher takes a first novel because he hopes for another and a better. Of what use is it to puff the one golden egg of a dead goose? No; we were right there—events have shewn it. Well, our novel was, as you know, a success. It went off like wild-fire, and our publishers fed the flame adroitly by issuing one edition after another—all of the same impression. All this time we were at work upon another, which also went down, although not so much relished as the first. I think we had purified it a little too much. Avoiding this error in a third, we again made a hit. Our fortune was now made and publishers were at our feet. But we were in this strait: we had come to an end of our finished works; all that were left now were mere sketches and outlines, many too vague, and others too extravagant to be of much use to us. Charles had good judgment and some critical power, but he had no creative faculty, neither had I. Happily we did not deceive ourselves on this point. The question to be solved was how to supply the want. To Charles the idea first suggested itself of trying to secure assistance from outside. It was quite evident that it would be useless to think of any person well known in the world of letters. We set ourselves to study the more obscure literature of the day.’

I bowed politely, but with some inward mortification.

‘Oh, don’t think _you_ are in question now,’ said the lady with an arch smile; ‘wait to the end of the story. My husband came home one day in a state of great excitement. He had in his pocket a copy of the _Weekly Dredger_, which contained an instalment of a serial story just commenced.

“Read that,” he cried. When I had finished: “Now, what do you think?”

‘But I was trembling all over with terror.

“What’s the matter?” he cried.

“O Charles!” I said, “if I did not know it was impossible, I should say that no one but my late husband could have written this.”

‘So strongly was I penetrated with this idea, that for a long time I forbade him to make any inquiry after the author. At last we were so pressed to supply another novel that I consented that he should make inquiries. The story in the _Weekly Dredger_, we found, had become so grotesque and bizarre, that finally the editor brought it to an abrupt close himself, refusing to take any more of it; and he made no difficulty whatever about telling our business agent in confidence the name of the writer. I must tell you we had found it necessary to employ an agent, Mr Smith, who has served us faithfully enough, but who was never permitted to see my husband. Well, Charles wrote cautiously to the author of this queer story, who, it seemed, lived in France; asking him to send specimens of his stories, and specifying the quantity required for possible publication, with his terms. We had in reply a pile of manuscript. Judge of the relief I felt when I found that the handwriting was quite unfamiliar to me. His terms were so low that we had no difficulty in undertaking to accept all his work. For some seventy pounds a year we secured everything he wrote. A great deal of the stuff was utterly useless to us, but every now and then he gave us the framework of a powerful story. Well, all of a sudden he turns sulky and refuses to send any more. Charlie would have found some one to supply his place, no doubt. But now I come to the great misfortune of my life’—with faltering voice—‘the death of my dear husband.’

‘Your husband dead!’ I cried, quite unprepared for the announcement.

‘Yes, he is dead; and unhappy me, I have not been able to mourn his loss except in secret and with precautions. The funeral even was conducted with as much caution as if he had been a felon, and we had been ashamed of having to own that he had belonged to us. And he was the kindest, most affectionate——

‘But it was his own wish,’ she went on after a pause. ‘He planned out everything. You see that although our writings—compilations should I call them?’ she said with a faint attempt at a smile—‘brought us in a nice income, yet we were pleasure-loving people, and had always been accustomed to plenty of society, and we had saved nothing out of it. We have two children, a boy at Rugby, and a daughter at an expensive school; and there is poor Charlie’s sister, the lady who accompanies me, and she has no one else to depend upon but me. Besides, as Charlie urged before he died: “_I_ am not Collingwood Dawson,” he said; “why should my death be the cause of his? Keep him alive, old woman, to be a support to you and the children and Lizzie.” Those were almost his last words, dear brave fellow!’ She rose and left the room, overcome by uncontrollable emotion.

My thoughts, after Mrs Collingwood quitted me, were rather of a serious turn. I reflected that my own interests were bound up in the same cause, and that my own livelihood hung very much upon keeping up Mr Collingwood Dawson as a going concern. It was too late to go back now. If I had gained experience I had lost connection. My own place had been filled up. Mr Collingwood Dawson had become as necessary to me as to the widow and her family. Still the idea of a person who never died, who enjoyed a sort of corporate existence, or like the living Buddha, transferred his identity from one body to another, a being who could go on writing novels and publishing them till the crack of doom, struck one with a kind of awe.

As a relief to the troubled current of my thoughts I took up a newspaper which Mrs Collingwood had brought with her. It was the _Hebdomadal Review_, the number containing the review of Collingwood Dawson’s last novel. I turned to the page with a kind of pleased excitement, for the short abstract that I had seen in the advertisement, as you have seen, was calculated to give me the impression that the critique was an appreciative one. It was so short that I have no scruple in giving it _in extenso_: ‘If it be necessary, and we suppose it is, that silly ill-educated people should be supplied with the morbid trash suited to their high capacity, there is no reason why Mr Collingwood Dawson should not cater for their wants. We can say of his novel that it is very good stuff of the kind. The pity is that there should be so many readers for this kind of stuff. We only hope that young ladies of the class who find Mr Dawson’s compilations acceptable, will not be unduly led away from the paramount claims of seam and gusset and band by the enticing interest of his story.’

Satire like this does not hit very hard, however, and my only feeling after the first disappointment was of amusement at the ingenuity that had been able to extract the sting from it and secure the latent honey. One word, however, seemed dangerous—‘compilations.’ Was it possible that the critic had discovered the composite nature of Mr Collingwood Dawson?

* * * * *

‘Can you lend me five pounds?’ said a gruff voice behind me. I turned and saw the squat figure of M. Houlot close to my chair.

It was an embarrassing question. There was nothing in M. Houlot’s appearance to invite confidence—at all events to the extent of five pounds. At the same time, M. Houlot had in my mind loomed into considerable importance, for since I had heard Mrs Collingwood’s story, I had identified him with the third portion of Mr Collingwood Dawson.

‘Oh, if it requires consideration, don’t think about it,’ said Houlot roughly. ‘I won’t trouble you.’

‘Stop a minute,’ I replied; ‘wait. I don’t know whether I have the money. I must ask my wife.’

‘Oh, you are one of the wretched slaves of a petticoat, are you?’ said Houlot with a rasping laugh. ‘I should have thought you had lived through _that_ stage of your development.’

‘As she will be the principal sufferer if the money should not be returned, she is entitled to a voice in the matter.’

‘Look here! If it comes to asking your wife, I’ll withdraw my request. I know what that means, well enough. But if you are afraid of not getting your money back, I’ll give you security.—What security? Why, manuscripts worth ten, twenty pounds. I should say, if I were some people—of priceless value.’

‘Ah!’ I said to myself, ‘there is Houlot, who has quarrelled with his bread-and-butter, and now he comes to me to borrow money to go on with. Would it not be better to send for Mrs Collingwood, to see if this is really the man who supplies her with her plots; and if so, to make the peace between them, and get him to continue the supply?’

Mrs Collingwood saved me the trouble of sending for her. I saw her coming across the garden to the pavilion. She was composed now and cheerful; she led one of my girls by the hand, and was telling her a story, I fancy, in which the child seemed uncommonly interested.

Houlot was standing leaning against the mantelpiece with his back to the doorway, and under his arm his stick, which he was rubbing with the point of his hook, as was his custom when vexed. I saw Mrs Collingwood coming in at the doorway—door and windows were wide open. All of a sudden her face whitened all over, and she tottered backwards. I ran to her assistance; but when I reached the garden, she had already disappeared within the house.

‘Am I a hobgoblin, that I frighten people?’ said Houlot savagely, coming to the door. ‘Where’s that woman who ran away?’

I made no reply; and he went on rubbing his stick with the iron hook, apparently in a very evil temper.

‘I want that money particularly. I want to go to England and expose this Collingwood Dawson, to strip him of his borrowed plumes, and shew the British public what a daw this fellow is whom they admire. Come; give me this five pounds, and let me go.’

‘I can’t say anything more to you just now,’ I replied. ‘I will let you know to-morrow.’

‘That will lose me two days; I want to start to-morrow.’

‘I can’t help it. I can’t let you have the money now.’

Houlot saw that I was in some flurry and confusion, and thought probably that I was afraid of him, and that by bullying me a little he should get what he wanted.

‘Come now!’ he cried; ‘go and get me that money. I know what I know, and I am not to be stopped for a paltry five-pound note.’

My reply was to shew him the door. He scowled at me, fingered his stick as if he had a mind to hit me, thought better of it seemingly, and went out growling inarticulately.

‘Where is he, that man?’ cried Mrs Collingwood meeting me in the doorway of the house, looking quite livid with fear. ‘What do you know of him? Where does he come from?’

‘He is your correspondent, the author of your plots.’

‘Ah, then is he my husband!’ she cried in a voice that, though low and subdued, was full of anguish. ‘What a wretched being am I, to have seen him!’

‘It would have been worse still had he seen you,’ I muttered. ‘Come, Mrs Collingwood—come into the garden, into the open air; you will be better there. Take my arm; keep up your heart; all will be well yet.’

‘Where is he? where is he?’ was all she could say.

‘He is gone; you are quite safe.’

We began to pace up and down the garden together, she wringing her hands and writhing with pain and emotion.

‘Do consider,’ I said, ‘that he has kept out of the way all these years, and that he is not likely to trouble you now.’

‘Oh! I can’t bear to think. The children—poor Charlie, what will become of us all?’

‘The children will take no harm,’ I said, ‘if you act prudently. All will be well; and your late husband is out of the reach of any trouble.’

‘Ah yes, poor Charlie! I wish I had died with him. Even now he may be reproaching me! How dreadful, dreadful it all is!’

I could not give her much consolation; for besides these troubles of the heart, other and less manageable difficulties I saw were impending.

At the first blush it was impossible to say what would become of us all in this imbroglio. Certainly if any one were entitled to be considered Collingwood Dawson, it was the man who had originated the works by which he had obtained his fame. On the other hand, he would never have had any success himself. No publisher would have looked twice at books which were so violent and coarse. All the labour and pains that had been taken in bringing his writings into an acceptable form, were they to go for nothing? And was it to be allowed that a man who had thrown off all ties and abandoned his place in the world, should resume them when other people had made them worth possessing? It seemed not; and yet the law would be on his side.

There was only one consoling feature in the position—the man had no money. He could not move without that; and if he had been able to obtain it from any other source, he would hardly have come to borrow from a stranger; but this was a very frail barrier after all. He might, if he were determined to get back to England, find his way to the nearest port, and get passed home by the consul as a distressed British subject. Why he had not gone over to England when he first discovered the use that had been made of his talents, was probably because he waited to complete some work he had in hand, which might serve as an introduction to the publishers, and a sort of voucher for his claim.

Was there, however, no possibility of mistake? Was it perfectly certain that this was the missing husband? Mrs Collingwood had no hope that there was any error. She knew him perfectly. It was impossible that there should be two such people in the world together, identical in mind and in person. That his handwriting had so completely changed, seemed to her unaccountable; but it did not move her faith in his identity. And an explanation was soon found for this; for he had lost his right hand since his flight, and consequently wrote with his left.

I said just now that I could give Mrs Collingwood no comfort; but there was one thing that bound us all together and insured sympathy between us: we were so to speak all in the same boat. Our livelihood depended upon keeping up the integrity of Collingwood Dawson.

A MOORLAND WEDDING.

It was in the month of June last year, when the days were about their longest, that the scattered dwellers in the upland parish of L—— were excited by the intimation of a marriage in one of their glens. Among a sparse population an event of this sort necessarily happens but rarely, and as a consequence when it does happen it comes attended by much more ‘pomp and circumstance’ than would otherwise accompany it. As an angel sent by some gracious fate, it stirs the stagnant pool of existence, and revives hearts that may have drooped through dreary days of solitude. The people who have participated in it are livelier in their talk and wear a blither aspect for days and weeks afterwards.

A breeze was blowing through the bright June sunlight, and the shadows of a few clouds were moving quietly across the hills, when about three o’clock in the afternoon I set out on foot for the scene of the marriage that has been referred to. The point from which I started lay upon the highest tract of cultivated land at the head of a prettily wooded valley, and I had to walk seven miles by mountain-side and glen before reaching the cottage that was my destination. For the first portion of the way there is an excellent cart-road—excellent for a hill-country whose pastoral-bred pedestrians do not greatly need roads; but after some three miles have been got over the traveller finds himself almost literally at large among the mountains, with but a feeble indication of a foot-track along the brow of a deep ravine, and a mountain stream below.

Continuing my course, the glen began to expand again, and its slopes to lose their covering of brushwood. A strip of level verdure, broadening as I ascended, stretched on each side of the water; and after following several windings of the stream without any change in the character of its banks, the moorland cottage that I was in search of lay before me.

The first thing I observed was an animated crowd of people streaming out of the door two and two, and setting off for an elevation that stood some distance to the right. On arriving at the cottage I learned that these were the bride’s people gone to meet the party of the bridegroom, and to take part in ‘running the broose,’ which is a foot-race among the young lads for the bride’s-maid’s handkerchief. Herself the goal, the bride’s-maid, fluttering in white and scarlet, had ascended to a knoll before the cottage, and some time afterwards held up a silk handkerchief to the eyes of the expectant runners.

I fancy there are few spectacles that produce in one’s mind a stronger sense of savage freedom than that of civilised human beings let loose, coatless, vestless, bonnetless, to race among the hills. In less than two minutes from their starting on the homeward race they had sunk out of view at the foot of the highest hill, and when they hailed in sight again, they were much more widely scattered than at the beginning. Two or three in the rear had already dropped out of the race; but those in the front seemed to be still running with energy and determination. Once or twice again we lost them in the hollows, and each time they reappeared we could notice that their number was gradually getting smaller; so that by the time the leader swept across the stream in front of us, all other competitors had given up the contest as hopeless. A cheer broke forth as he struggled up the knoll panting and bemired to clutch the coveted prize, which, with similar ones thus gained, I find it is a great ambition among the young men in some districts to accumulate. The winner of the ‘broose’ was a tall and finely formed youth of fair complexion; with clear blue eyes and well-cut features.

As soon as the stragglers had come forward, followed by the bridegroom and his man, amid tremendous cheering, the marriage ceremony was proceeded with in the kitchen. It was a long low-roofed apartment, with innumerable shoulders of mutton in all the stages towards ham, depending from the rafters. The bride was led out of an anteroom, resting on her father’s arm. He was a rather oldish man, with the history of a good many troubles plainly written upon his face. The bride was a broad-shouldered, brown-visaged, and gray-eyed maiden of about four-and-twenty; and her future husband, a loose-limbed, amiable-looking youth in a lavender necktie and fiery red hair, looked possibly a year or two younger. The service was performed by a Presbyterian clergyman, and was accordingly a short one. Immediately it was over there was a multitudinous shaking of hands with the happy couple. It was interesting to note the various phraseologies in which the numerous guests severally expressed their good wishes; all the degrees of feelings from that of ordinary regard to the most ebullient affection, being apparently represented.

While this process was going forward, the mother of the bride, a sallow-faced person with kindly black eyes, and gray hair smoothed neatly across her brow, took up a position by the fire to advance arrangements for the tea. You could see that the good woman was greatly excited and confused. Probably she had never had so many people under her humble roof before; and there were ‘grand folk’ among them too, the surrounding farmers and their families, for whose (comparatively) delicate palates she was quite unaccustomed to prepare food. Every now and then while proceeding with her duties, she would catch up the corner of her ample white apron, and wiping the perspiration from her forehead, would draw a long sigh, as of sadness or fatigue. The movements of the company around her seemed to attract her but little; all the evening she wore a preoccupied expression, and it was evident that she had within her mind a picture of her own, on which her thoughts were dwelling. But what the scene was that was calling her away from the merriment of the hour I possessed no means of ascertaining; and the reader is at liberty to fill up this blank in the narrative as best delights his fancy.

* * * * *

A portion of the company now seated itself at a heavily laden tea-table that was laid out in an adjoining chamber; and here let me remark that as Scottish weddings are celebrated in the afternoon or evening, the entertainment known by the English as the déjeûner, is unknown to their northern neighbours. But there are few such teas served in cities or even in Lowland dwellings as had been that night prepared for us. The result of a good week’s labour of several women in carrying, boiling, and baking, seemed to be placed upon the board. Let the reader remember that it was in Scotland that this wedding took place, and he will appreciate the bill of fare the better. It was by no means a much varied one, but the several articles had been provided in unlimited supply. Fresh baked scones lined each side of the table in castellated rows; platefuls of dark-coloured ‘braxy’ ham, cut from the mutton that hung on the rafters, stood in between them, with here and there a pile of thick cut, deeply buttered bread. There were also buns, ‘cookies,’ biscuits, and gimcracks, that must have been carried painfully over miles of moorland; and raised majestically at the head of the table was a little white bride-cake surmounted by a solitary flag.

When the company had crushed themselves into seats around the table, and were just going to operate upon the braxy, a big-boned, bleached-looking old man was furtively led on to the end of a bench that had been placed near the door. I soon discovered that, after the minister, this was for the time being the most important of the invited assembly. He was in fact no less a personage than the fiddler, and was, as he ought to have been, in keeping with the character of the traditionary musician, almost stone-blind. This Demodocus had been led hither from his dwelling five miles over the hills by a little boy, his grandson, who had fair hair, and wore faded velvet and corduroys. The heartiness with which the veteran musician laid in a store of victual against the labour of a long night’s fiddling, was a most refreshing sight. He was a long-faced, heavy-jawed man, and had rusty gray hair that fell unkempt upon a much worn velvet collar. A large scarlet cotton handkerchief was twisted carelessly about his neck, and came down in a loose fold upon his breast. He wore an aspect of silent passive misfortune; and as you looked at him it was difficult to imagine music dwelling in his soul, how much soever it might dwell in his fiddle.

As soon as the tea was ended, or rather this first instalment of it, he was guided to an elevated seat that had been prepared for him in a corner of the kitchen, where he began scraping and preluding with his fiddle. To many of the lads and lasses this was the first intimation of the musician’s presence; and it was the signal for a little preliminary coquetry with the eyes, while it lit up their honest faces with blushes and expectant smiles.

A Scottish wedding without a dance is next door to no wedding at all, so little time was lost in stepping to the floor. There were Scotch reels, country-dances, and polkas, and now and then a quadrille was decorously walked through by the two or three young farmers and their sweethearts. But unquestionably the Scotch reel was the favourite, and maintained the precedence throughout the whole of the entertainment. As most readers doubtless know, this is a lively and stirring dance, that permits a good deal of jumping and stamping, and is admirably adapted to the social requirements of a warm-hearted and excitable people. Whether its popularity in Scotland has anything to do with the Celtic origin of the inhabitants, I do not take upon me to suggest; but certain it is, that after seeing it performed, as on the present occasion, with all the vivacity that belongs to it, you would not think of associating it with a grave and solemn-minded race. To the uninitiated onlooker it is nothing but an indistinguishable confusion; in which he may observe that there is a great deal of bobbing with the head and shuffling with the feet, and that it is in nowise adapted to a staid person of fashion. Nevertheless it stood in high favour on the present occasion, and seemed to please abundantly the agile young persons who performed in it. What matter to them though it should be unfashionable! They had come to this wedding to enjoy themselves; and much as the horrid crew in ‘Alloway’s auld haunted kirk’ despised foreign cotillons, so did these children of hills and valleys stick to their native reels and country-dances.

After a time, when the music had begun to work in his soul, and he had been set athinking upon ‘the brave days of old,’ you would notice a reverend senior bravely leading out some gay and handsome maiden, and challenging another gray-headed veteran to face him in the dance. These exhibitions of pluck and spirit in the fathers uniformly evoked hearty plaudits from the company; and some one would call out to ‘Archie’ the fiddler, ‘to put his best foot foremost this time.’ Archie had by this time got worked into a state of considerable energy and enthusiasm, and was in some respects quite a different character from that of two hours ago at the tea-table. The colour had travelled back to his old withered cheek, and his features looked a deal more soft and flexible; his face and form seemed much more indicative of life; youth seemed to be coming back to him at the call of his own fiddle. It was interesting to observe as he became enthusiastic in his fiddling, how sympathetic was his every motion. How his rickety old legs crossed and bobbed up and down; the body in a tremble, and constant movement in the shoulders; while the head was perpetual motion, now hanging down upon his breast, now erect and turning on its socket, now thrown backwards, and such eyes as were in it—poor ‘ruined orbs’—directed restlessly towards the ceiling. Archie’s _tout ensemble_ was a visible embodiment of the doctrine that music incites to motion.

Music has charms to _stir_ the savage breast

no less than to ‘soothe’ it. Now and then the dancers would cease a while, and seated in benches round the room, would listen in silence to a song. A broad-faced, dull-eyed, young shepherd, with more energy than finish, sang _My Hielan’ Hills_, and a dark pawky little man recited out of a corner very slyly, _Rabbin Tamson’s Smiddy_. _The Laird o’ Cockpen_, _Why Left I my Hame?_ and _Willie brewed a Peck o’ Maut_, were also given; the last named being received with great enthusiasm. There was little culpable indulgence in whisky that I observed. This may have been owing to the judicious arrangements of the host for refreshing his guests during the evening with the national ‘toddy’ instead of the more potent undiluted spirit. Several times a tray was handed round, bearing piles of bread-and-cheese, and a large jug full of the resuscitating beverage; and though the latter in some cases was a little freely partaken of, there was no unseemly manifestation of its effects.

And thus, through the warm hours of that summer’s night, with lonely hills listening in their dreams, the wedding festival of the shepherd’s daughter glided merrily along. The sun had been already near two hours climbing up the east, and the pale morning light had once more shot its rays into many a glen and hollow, when these mountain merry-makers ceased their saturnalia. The evening before, they had assembled for the feast trim, fresh, rosy, and buoyant; and when the ‘garish day’ sent his mocking light through the narrow window-panes and shone upon the forms of the dancers, they looked rosy and buoyant still. The smoothness had departed from their hair and the aspect of freshness from their garments; frills and ribbons had been dragged awry; but the colour was as fresh in their cheeks, and their eyes were quite as lustrous as when eight hours before they had stamped and bobbed and ‘_hooch’d_’ through their first Scotch reel. The most of them would tramp their half-dozen miles and more back over the hills, and go through the usual labours of the day with hardly a symptom of fatigue.

When all had come out of the cottage, and immediately before the separation, about three-fourths of the party congregating on the little knoll before the door where the bride’s-maid had stood with the handkerchief on the previous evening, sent forth a long-drawn, far-reverberating cheer. Then followed a tumultuous shaking of hands, with many a kindly spoken farewell; and then finally they departed, each group on its own path, for their wide-scattered farms and cottages. Some days would pass during which the memory of the wedding would be continually in their thoughts, forming a mental picture that gave them solace in the midst of outward dreariness. But gradually the lines of the picture would lose their vividness, and it would be less frequently recurred to by the fancy, less fervently yearned after by the heart. Emotions that had been stirred by that night’s entertainment would after a while subside again; the old duties would present themselves anew, calling for the old labour and attention; and harmony would be again established between the inward life and the outward circumstances.

The newly married couple had arranged to stay at the cottage till the afternoon, and then to set out for their future home, which lay in the adjoining parish, and about ten miles away. That parish in its whole extent was high-lying and pastoral; and therefore the dwelling to which they were going would be in every way as lonely as the one from which they were departing. From what I had noticed of the bride’s mother, she would undoubtedly feel melancholy over the losing of her daughter, the last that had remained with her out of five; and I can think of her that afternoon, when the two young people had left her, slipping out to the door, and having shaded her eyes with her hand, taking a far look at them as they passed out of her sight among the hills. Then she would walk pensively back into her now dull-looking kitchen, and perhaps ponder with some sadness about becoming old. The bride and bridegroom would arrive at their abode in the gray hours of the evening, where some relative would be waiting to receive them. It would be such another cottage as the one we have been visiting; and there, in the wide wilderness, untamed nature on every side of them, they would settle down to await the domesticities that fate might send.

Is there not something almost awe-striking in the thought of civilised human beings settling down to face perhaps half a century of life in solitudes like these, all unconscious of the mighty pulse-beats of the world they dwell in? It is to be presumed that this red-haired Briton who has just led home his bride across ten miles of moorland, possesses a fair share of practical energy and some fragments of intellect; he has the faculty of loving his fellow-men and of gaining happiness, perhaps also wisdom, from hours of bright social intercourse. If he were now planted amid stimulating circumstances, a fine moral nature might possibly be developed by the time his years were through. But immured in this mountain fastness, away from human din, his mind will probably never be unfolded to the least self-conscious effort; and he will leave life at seventy little advanced in intellectual attainment on what he was at twenty-five. For although Nature is an open book, teeming over with wise and great lessons, it is only after toiling through initiatory stages of culture that we can intelligently read her book, or even believe that it exists. The unlettered shepherd nestling in her shaggy bosom, unless she has gifted him with genius, rarely dreams of the truths that she is symbolically publishing around him. And I think of the future life of him whose marriage we have been celebrating as something far different from that of a home-bred philosopher or poet. Performing his simple pastoral duties with honesty of purpose, I can still imagine his life to be monotonous, irksome, and stagnant; having in it many hours of idleness unillumined by neighbourly greetings or the mystic gleams of intelligent research. As he goes his rounds in summer-time, he will see the wide stillness of morning upon the hills; in winter he will have to battle with the fury of the storm. The gloaming will find him cultivating an unfruitful garden, or gathering hay out of morasses for his cow, or sitting over his peat-fire knitting homespun stockings or reading legends of the Covenanters. Now and then a distant neighbour, leading a life as lonely as himself, or some wandering angler, will drop in upon him, and be treated to a hospitable meal. But he will hardly see another face the whole year through, except perchance on Sunday—until the ‘clipping’ season comes round, when he will be called away, now in one direction now in another, to days of social labour.

Some day, let us hope, a wee body will appear upon his hearth—his own offspring, to be loved, nourished, and instructed; and then probably there will come another and another till a considerable family is grouped around him. The care and training of these children will be a kind of education to himself. The nursing of them will not fail to develop the womanliness of the wife. Let us hope that she may have much of a mother’s happiness and little of a mother’s sorrow, and that rosy health will be ever upon her hearth! May her boys grow up broad-shouldered and manly; may her girls be handsome, modest, and fair; and some day or other, a quarter of a century hence, may there be another moorland wedding, when those of us who have assisted at the present one, fiddler and dancers, writer and readers, shall be wearing away or perhaps gathered to ‘the land o’ the leal.’

EGG-CULTURE.

Why do we import seven or eight hundred million eggs every year, and pay two millions and a half sterling for them? The answer is, that the demand for eggs is steadily increasing, while the home produce is either lessening or stationary in amount.

Why the home supply does not advance with the increase of demand, is a question that calls for a little attention to the commercial aspects of farming. So many small holdings have been absorbed by large farms, that many a cottage housewife has been withdrawn from rural life who would otherwise have reared cottage poultry; neither the allotment-holder nor the artisan has range and space enough for rearing eggs to advantage.

In a trade journal called _The Grocer_, in which much information concerning the provision trades is given, the following remarks occur: ‘If a due attention to details were given in this country, the stock of fowls which roam about the farmyard and gather corn from the thrashing, instead of being a mere adjunct and perquisite of the servants, would return sufficient to discharge the rental of many a small holding. Such, we have understood, has been the case where the experiment has been fairly tried; and once this becomes an established notion, our own supplies will increase in a greater ratio than they do at present. According to a competent authority, at this time—what with improved native and imported varieties—we possess the best stock of egg-layers in the world. In no country is the management of our best poultry-yards excelled. These should serve as a model for the rest; to bring up the wholesale results to their true national importance, all we require is an extension of the taste for poultry-farming amongst those who earn their living on the land.’

The real new-laid eggs of home produce are comparatively few. Their excellence is best appreciated by obtaining them at country farmhouses. The small farmers who do not take nor send their eggs to open market sell them to country shopkeepers, or barter them for other commodities. Many cottagers contrive to keep a few fowls; and where there is no pig, these fowls act as scavengers, consuming the scraps of the family, the outside cabbage-leaves, peelings of boiled potatoes, &c.; if the fowls are supplied with a little corn, they will lay a good many eggs. This desultory mode of leaving poultry to find their food as best they may is, however, quite a mistake, and can never be adequately remunerative. Fowls, to pay, must be well looked after, and systematically fed and housed.

Ireland used to supply England with a considerable number of eggs, and perhaps may continue so to do; but statistical details of the trade between the two portions of the United Kingdom are not now published. About thirty years ago, fifty million eggs were annually shipped from Dublin alone to London and Liverpool, value about a hundred and twenty thousand pounds; the supply obtained from all Ireland very much exceeded this amount. Mr Weld, in his description of Roscommon about that period, noticed some of the features of the egg-trade in the rural districts of Ireland: ‘The eggs are collected from the cottages for several miles round by runners, boys nine years old and upwards, each of whom has a regular beat which he goes over daily, bearing back the produce of his toil carefully stored in a small hand-basket. I have frequently met with these boys on their rounds; and the caution necessary for bringing their brittle ware with safety seemed to have communicated an air of business and steadiness to their manner unusual to the ordinary volatile habits of children in Ireland.’

But as we have said, a large supply from abroad has become a necessity; and the characteristics of this supply are worth knowing; because they shew that the trade can be conducted profitably without having recourse to artificial incubation or hatching—a system which has at times had many advocates in England.

The importation of French eggs into this country has increased in an almost incredible degree, owing in part to the facilities afforded by the commercial treaty between England and France. It has risen from about a hundred and fifty million to six or seven hundred million eggs annually, since the year 1860; while the value per thousand has also increased, until at length our importers pay at least two millions and a half sterling for the yearly import. The eggs are brought over chiefly in steamers, and landed at Southampton, Folkestone, Arundel, Newhaven, and Shoreham.

The egg-culture in France is almost exclusively confined to small farmers, who carry it on in a vigorous and commercial spirit, chiefly in Burgundy, Normandy, and Picardy. Every village has its weekly market, to which farmers and their wives bring their produce, in preference to selling at the farmyard to itinerant dealers. A merchant will sometimes buy twenty thousand eggs at one market; he takes them to his warehouse, where they are sorted and packed, and possibly sent off the same day to Paris or to London. According to the conditions required by the buyers, the eggs are sometimes counted, sometimes ‘sized’ by passing them through a ring, sometimes bought in bulk. In many of the north-west districts of France, poultry villages send almost their whole supply of eggs to England, from Calais, Cherbourg, and Honfleur, packed in cases containing from six hundred to twelve hundred each. Nearly all continental countries producing sufficient eggs for their own supply, the export from France is almost entirely to England. It is found that the buckwheat districts are those in which most eggs are reared—possibly a useful hint to English rearers.

The production of eggs for market is one thing, and the hatching of them another. We do not here go into the question of hatching, though much that is interesting could be written on the subject. It is enough to say that all the ingenious plans that have been set on foot for the artificial hatching and rearing of poultry have broken down through the costliness of the arrangements and management. Those who have tried any of these plans have arrived at the conclusion that both eggs and poultry can only be produced on a cheap scale by farmers or cottagers. And this opinion stands to reason. About farmyards and cottages in rural districts, hens can pick up food that would otherwise be wasted. Besides, let it be kept in mind, that hens like to roam about scratching for seeds, worms, and particles of lime to furnish material out of which the shells of their eggs are formed. If kept in confinement, exceeding care is required to supply the creatures with such requisites as their maternal instincts seem to require. What we suggest is, that cottagers, farmers, and others possessing sufficient scope for keeping poultry, should go far more largely into the business of egg-culture than they do at present. Why should they allow the great egg-supply for this country to be in the hands of others? The answer, we fear, is, that our farming classes generally look down contemptuously on the supplying of eggs for market. It is too small an affair to invite consideration. Small! Two millions and a half of money annually carried off by the French. Is that a trade to be treated with indifference?

We hear much of women’s work, and of how young ladies should employ themselves. Here is something, at all events, for farmers’ wives and daughters to set their face to without the slightest derogation of rank or character. Let them take up in real earnest the culture of fowls, if only for the sake of the eggs which on a great and remunerative scale may be produced. Those farmers’ wives who already appropriate part of their leisure to this occupation deserve all honour; and we honour them accordingly.

LINES

TO A YOUNG LADY ON HER BIRTHDAY.

BY J. PITMAN (WHO DIED 1825).

Encircled thus by those you love,
May each successive Birthday prove
A source of new delight, nor cast
A single shade upon the past.

Thus ever may thy placid brow
And playful smile bespeak, as now
The peace that cheers thy gentle breast,
And bids thee still in hope be blest.

And thus may each revolving year
Still leave thy cheek without a tear;
Still Virtue strew thy flowery way
With sweets that never know decay.

* * * * *

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

* * * * *

_All Rights Reserved._