Chapter VIII: Part II: Children of Last Century (3)

However, he played in the garden for a while; but it was rather a small garden, and he grew tired of being a “third son” all by himself, with no one to admire him, so he came in again and climbed the steep little staircase. Finding the door of his mother’s room open, he went in. The dressing-table faced the door, and the first thing he saw was a pair of Pussy’s slippers standing in front of it. They had tall curly heels and buckles, such as she loved, and he remembered how, even with the tall heels, she did not reach to daddy’s shoulder. Somehow the sight of those slippers made him want her so dreadfully that he couldn’t stay in the room or in the garden. He went out into the road to walk and walk until he should come to Yorkshire, where daddy was laid up in the house of a bachelor friend with whom he had gone to shoot.

It was a very straight road, with a trim path by the side. By and by he came to some big gates. There was a little house inside them, all covered with purple clematis. The gate stood open, and as Bunchy was rather tired of the neat, straight road, he turned in, and went down a very broad gravel path. A little way inside the gate stood two little churches, one on each side of the path; beyond them, as far as Bunchy could see, it was all garden. There were flowering shrubs, and trees, and lots of grass, but it was unlike any garden he had ever seen before, for it was full of little mounds, and there were crosses, and slabs of stone, and marble angels dotted about among the mounds.

He turned down a side-path to investigate further in this strange garden. Nobody was in sight, and he wandered on by himself till, turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a man.

The man was dressed in black, and was sitting on a big stone slab--a very grew old slab; but close at his feet there was one of those curious mounds that puzzled Bunchy, and although this one had no grass upon it, you could hardly see the brown earth, for it was almost covered with scattered flowers--all of one kind.

Bunchy knew the flower by sight, for Pussy always wore a bit in her tam-o’-shanter when she came back from Scotland. The man did not move as Bunchy came up to him. The little boy regarded him with grave brown eyes, and something in his expression made Bunchy sure that the man was sorry.

Now, in Bunchy’s house, when people are sorry, Pussy talks about something else, and she does it so beautifully that they straightway forget their sorrow in the interest of her remarks. Bunchy felt that he ought to talk about something else to this man who looked so sorry; but how can you change a subject when no subject has been broached?

So the child went up to the sorry man and lifted his tam-o’-shanter, saying politely:

“Can you, please, tell me whose garden this is?”

Now it is an easy thing to take off a tam-o’-shanter, but when you try to put it on again it has a shabby way of curling up and sitting on the top of your head so insecurely that it topples off again directly. Pussy generally put Bunchy’s on again for him, and as she wasn’t there he left the matter alone and held it in his hand. The man started a little as Bunchy spoke, then he said slowly:

“I think it is God’s garden.”

Bunchy was not surprised. He felt that he knew God very well indeed. When you say prayers morning and evening, and know that there is a benevolent Somebody somewhere, who gives you your home, and your parents, and your little white bed, who likes you to be truthful and courteous, and to have clean hands at meals, it is quite natural to hear that this benevolent Person has a garden. All nice people ought to have gardens, so Bunchy said:

“Why does God have so many little rockeries in His garden? Why are there all these stones, and figures, and little mounds?”

“When people die they are buried in this garden, and their friends put up the crosses and stones----”

“And angels?” interrupted Bunchy admiringly; and as he looked up in the man’s face he noticed that his eyes were very kind, but that there were big black shadows round them, and their lids looked red and heavy.

“They put up the crosses, and stones, and angels to show where their friends are sleeping,” continued the tall man.

“Then it’s a funeral,” said Bunchy solemnly, and there was silence.

The man looked sorrier than ever, and Bunchy felt that now was the time to talk of something else, so he said:

“Can you tell me the nearest way to Yorkshire?”

The man seemed to give himself a shake, as though he were trying to wake up. He held out his hand to Bunchy, who placed his own in it confidingly; then he drew the child toward him and set him on his knee, asking:

“Why do you want to go to Yorkshire, old chap?”

“Because Pussy is there and I am so lonely,” Bunchy’s voice broke. “I went into her room, and I saw her shoes--the ones with the curly heels--and they made me want her so bad. They’re such tall heels.”

“She had such little feet,” murmured the man.

And Bunchy saw that he had gone to sleep again, so he sat very still for a minute or two, then he said mournfully:

“I’m so lonely!”

“So am I,” said the man. “My Pussy has gone to sleep. She is not coming back any more. She is sleeping under the heather here.”

Bunchy felt the man’s shoulder heave as he leant against him, but he said nothing. He felt that this was not a time to talk of something else; this sorryness was something beyond him; so he stroked the man’s face with a soft, sticky little hand, and the corners of his mouth drooped, but he did not feel quite so lonely.

The man seemed to like the feel of the little hand, for he bent his head, and, laying his cheek against Bunchy’s, said in a queer broken voice:

“How is it that you understand, you quaint little boy?”

“Sorry people always understand, and I feel to love you! Will you come to Yorkshire too? We should be such nice company.”

The man seemed to consider; then he said:

“It’s a long way. I’m afraid we shouldn’t get there by candle-light. You’d be very tired, and your shoes would be quite worn out.”

“Couldn’t you carry me a bit sometimes? Daddy does when I’m very tired.”

“Well, I might do that; but even then we shouldn’t get there to-day. How is it you are here all alone?”

The man seemed waking up, and waited quite anxiously for Bunchy’s answer.

“Well, you see, Nana was busy sewing, and I was lonely wivout Pussy, so I thought I’d walk to Yorkshire just to see her.”

“Suppose you come to lunch with me instead. It’s not so far as Yorkshire; still, it’s a good way, and we’ll go and tell Nana you’re coming, then she won’t be anxious. I don’t think Pussy would like you to walk all that way to-day. She’ll come back as soon as she can, you may be quite sure. Will you come? We’d be nice company, as you say.”

Bunchy looked up into the man’s eyes; then he slid off his knee, saying:

“I’ll come, thank you.”

The man got up off the big flat stone and held out his hand to Bunchy; but the little boy had knelt down by the mound all covered with heather. He stooped his curly head and kissed the flowers, saying in his sweet child’s voice:

“Good-bye, man’s Pussy! I hope you are happy in God’s garden.”

Then he took the man’s hand and they walked away together.

But the man had gone to sleep again, for he said:

“Nay! And though all men, seeing, had pity on me, she would not see.”

LITTLE SHOES

The Vicarage stands at the bottom of the market place, inside high walls and entered by wooden gates which generally stand open. Thus the passer-by can, for a moment, feast his eyes upon the perfect garden within.

The Vicaress was dead-heading her roses. She does this carefully every summer afternoon just after lunch. She had reached the bush of cabbage roses close to the gate, and her long lath basket lay on the drive beside her.

The market place was empty and still; nobody was shopping, for all the world rested preparatory to attending the Earl’s garden-party later on. Road and houses alike glared white in the hot June sunshine, while in contrast the Vicarage garden seemed doubly cool and shady. The yew hedge just inside the gates threw long green shadows on drive and lawn. Such a lawn it was! Plantains or dandelions were a thing unknown. Other lawns might get brown or worn in a drought, but the Vicarage lawn was watered every night by a specially constructed hose, that the beauty of its velvet turf might never vary. The Vicar was wont to excuse his exceeding pride in his lawn by quoting: “The green hath two pleasures: the one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the midst.” It was a sunken lawn surrounded by smoothly shaven banks and reached by broad stone steps.

The Vicar and like-minded clerics occasionally played bowls upon it; but to think of lawn tennis or croquet in connection with such grass were little short of sacrilege.

Presently the Vicaress became aware that a woman stood in the doorway, a woman carrying a baby, while a little girl of some three years clung to her skirts.

They stood gazing wistfully into the garden. As both mother and child wore red kerchiefs instead of hats, the Vicaress looked for the inevitable organ, but could not see it.

As she strongly disapproved of indiscriminate charity she shook her head at them, saying: “We never give at the door!”

Wearily shifting the baby to her other arm, the woman answered, with a touch of gentle dignity: “I have not ask the senora for money, but if she permit that we rest on the seat in the shade; we do no harm.”

Her voice was soft, and her English refined by its foreign accent. The Vicaress pointed to a rustic seat under the yews, saying: “You may certainly come in and rest.” Then she continued to deadhead the cabbage rose--it was an untidy bush that cabbage rose.

As the child toddled past her to climb into the seat the Vicaress noticed that the little feet made red marks on the gravel. The woman pointed to them with an apologetic shrug: “The little Zita she wear out her shoes, her feet bleed. The senora has a pair of old shoes of her children? Yes?”

The Vicaress shook her head, and a spasm of pain crossed her face. There were no children at the Vicarage now. But shoes? Yes! there were shoes. She bent down to look at the ragged little feet, and very gently took off Zita’s shoes. “Her feet must be washed,” she announced. “Will she come with me?”

Zita shook her curls out of her eyes, but on further inspection of the senora declined to budge. “Then I must bring the water here,” said the Vicaress, marching away to fetch it.

She was a tall, thin woman, with keen grey eyes and a lined, hard face, framed in hair that Nature had intended to break into fluffy rings of sunlight round her brow. But the Vicaress coerced her hair with some abomination that kept it flat and close to her head. It was only when a shaft of sunlight struck the tight braid at the back that one realized it was of the true Titian color. She went up the wide oak staircase into her cool, sweet-scented bedroom, where the _Gloire de Dijon_ roses nodded into the windows. Stopping in front of a big Chippendale wardrobe, she pulled out one of the deep drawers.

“I can’t bear to do it!” she murmured, “but I never give money, and her little feet were cut and bleeding.”

In that drawer lay many pairs of half-worn little shoes--shoes that had pattered gaily down the Vicarage stairs and danced across the sacred lawn. Her eyes were very soft as she chose out a pair of little strap shoes and some woollen socks. Had the Murillo cherub, chattering in her sweet jargon of Pyrenean Spanish under the shade of the yew trees, seen the face of the Vicaress just then, she would not have refused to go with her. But the Vicaress kept what Mr. Barrie tenderly calls her “soft face” for solitary places. The best that people could say of her was, that if her manner was hard her deeds were often kindly. She filled a basin with warm water and went through the silent house into the garden again. Zita laughed and showed her white teeth as she dabbled her feet in the water, becoming quite friendly; then the Vicaress dried her brown legs and arrayed her in the new shoes and socks. On the party being regaled with Vicarage cake and milk, the mother informed her hostess that they purposed to go on to Gloucester that day--a fifteen-mile walk.

“Have you no money to go by train?” asked the Vicaress.

“Oh, no, senora! My ’usban’ sell ze ice cream there, he cannot send me large money.”

“But you can’t get there to-night; where will you sleep?”

The woman shrugged her shoulders, turning her unoccupied hand outward with an expressive gesture. “In the hedge, senora, it is cool and dry.”

“But the children?”

“Oh, zay sleep--and Zita, she walk well till her foots come to ze ground.” Then turning to the child she said something rapidly in Spanish, adding: “She sing for you, senora, you so kind for her.”

“_A la puerta del cielos, venden zapatos_,” crooned Zita in her funny little nasal chant, and sang the lullaby right through.

“What is it all about?” demanded her hostess with a queer little catch in her voice.

“Senora! it is that zay sell shoes at ze doorway of heaven, to ze ragged little angels who have none!”

The woman rose, and shouldering the brown baby, prepared to depart. But the baby, who approved of Vicarage cake, choked alarmingly, and delayed matters for a while.

The baby’s equanimity restored, they bade their hostess farewell. They had not gone very far, however, when hearing hasty footsteps behind them, they turned. It was the Vicaress. She thrust something into little Zita’s hand, exclaiming breathlessly: “I wish you to go by train; it is not safe for such babies to be out all night!” Then she turned and fairly ran home.

An hour later, as she stood in front of her looking-glass, smoothing her hair till it looked like a yellow skull-cap, she said to herself: “To pay for a person’s railway journey is not indiscriminate charity!” and her eyes grew tender as she thought of the little shoes.

“PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN”

“You sent for me, mother?”

“Yes, child; I sent for you to say good-bye. I am going away for some time.” The woman spoke deliberately in the monotonous voice of one giving a piece of information tedious to give.

Angus did not express any surprise, or regret. The nine years he had spent with his mother had not helped him to know her. Without in the least understanding wherein lay her strange aloofness, he was conscious that he was supremely uninteresting to her. He wondered why it should be so, and his honest boyish soul was sometimes troubled. But children submit readily to the inevitable, and Angus had his compensations.

Vera Warden looked at her son with more interest than was usual with her. He was certainly a handsome lad, tall and well built, with blue eyes that were both kind and honest. She had been long in making her decision. Now that it was made she did not regret: she only wondered if, somehow, she had missed something that more commonplace women find easily.

“Angus, dear, you must take care of father. You and your father are so much alike--understand each other so well--that it will be easy for you. You must be especially good to him, now.”

There was a curious little catch in Vera’s voice as she said the “now.”

“Why are you going, mother?” questioned Angus, feeling that here was something even more puzzling than usual in his mother’s manner. “When are you coming back? Father will miss you.”

“Will he?” asked Vera wistfully. “And you, Angus, will you miss me at all?”

Angus was profoundly astonished. He would like to have kissed his mother just as he kissed dad, but he did not dare. He only grew red, and fidgeted awkwardly, as he answered: “Of course I shall miss you, mother--at meals.”

It was not greed that prompted the child’s definition, but the fact that he seldom saw his mother, except at breakfast and lunch.

Vera Warden did not care for children, and said so--frequently.

The carriage came to the door, good-bye being said without much emotion on either side. As she was driven out of the big stone gates, Vera gave herself a little shake, saying: “And now for life!”

* * * * *

An hour later Thomas Warden returned from a fishing expedition on the other side of the Dale. The oak trees in the avenue had burst into gold-green leaf. The big chestnut on the lawn--the only chestnut on the estate--was covered with cones of pinky blossom. The May sunset touched the grim grey house with rosy light, and Thomas Warden felt a welcome in it all.

Laying down his rods and fishing-baskets in the hall, he went straight to his study. There on his blotting-book lay the letter he had both dreaded and expected.

His sunburnt face looked grey as he took it up. He sat down heavily; then, with shaking hands, opened the letter and read:

“I have burnt my boats; there is no going back. I warned you that
it would come to this: that I would bear the monotony no longer. I
have given you ten years of my life--the ten best years. Now I owe it
to myself to live--it may be ten years more--but anyway, to _live_.
Marriage and maternity have, for me, proved uninteresting; but I have
endured them for your sake, and for the sake of the boy--while he was
quite young. Had he been in any way an unusual boy I might have found
life more tolerable. To develop his mind would have been an interest
for me; he might have shared, in some degree, my aspirations after
a fuller intellectual life. But he is a healthy, handsome, quite
commonplace boy, who will grow into what you would call ‘an honest,
God-fearing man’ without my help. He has an excellent governess, and
your good mother will doubtless come frequently to worship you both.
I wish I could free you of me altogether, and that you could marry
again and be happy. But you are not the sort of man to bear with
equanimity any sort of scandal or publicity, and you have my promise
that the life I lead shall be such as can give you no cause for
offence other than the fact that I lead it away from you. For your
never-failing courtesy and kindness I thank you. Believe me, I shall
always have the sincerest affection and respect for you. The fact
remains, however, that I cannot lead your life, and you can lead no
other. Let us then separate, and go our different ways in peace.

“In every conventional and actual sense, I am and will be your
faithful wife,

“VERA WARDEN.”

There was nothing in the letter that she had not said to him, many times, during the last six months.

Now, she had actually carried out her so often announced intention, and was gone; and the realization stunned him. He felt cold and numbed. The roar of the beck, in which he had stood all morning, was in his ears, and he gazed out into the gathering twilight, seeing nothing--only conscious that it was dark and chill everywhere.

There was a knock at the door, and a servant came in, saying: “Please, sir, Master Angus is ready, and would like you to come to him, if you are not too tired.”

Dragging himself out of his chair, he passed his hand across his dazed, strained eyes. Then he went out of the room and up the wide old staircase to his dressing-room, where Angus slept.

“I’ve got a new nightsuit, dad, just like yours. Look--pocket and trowsies, and all!” exclaimed the child, displaying the latter garments with great pride. “Miss Taylor had them made for me in York. Aren’t they nice?”

“Yes, my boy, yes--very!” but the voice was absent, and Angus felt that there was a something lacking, something that he generally found there.

The child felt frightened. Was dad, too, going to hold himself “aloof”? Would he, too, take to looking over people’s heads, and answering in a far-away voice? The thought was one full of omen.

Angus gazed into his father’s face, as he sat wearily on the edge of the little bed. The child, if commonplace, was quick to understand those who loved him. In a moment he acquitted his father, and came and knelt beside him, rubbing his curly head against his knees. He said his prayer with devoutly folded hands, as Grannie had taught him. Then, climbing into Warden’s arms, put his own round his neck.

“Shall I sing my psalm, dad? Or are you too tired?”

His father held him very close. “Sing it, laddie. Sing Grannie’s psalm.”

Grannie was Scotch. When she came she taught Angus the psalms in metre. She taught him other things that he learned more easily than the psalms; chief among them a great love and trust in her, and through her, for everything Scotch.

Shortbread was Scotch, and it was good. Scones were Scotch, and they were good, especially with currants. Edinburgh rock was excellent; therefore the psalms, too, were probably superior in the Scotch version. Angus learned all Grannie’s favorites, the first of which was the twenty-third:

My table thou hast furnished,
In presence of my foes.

The child always pictured a long table, covered with a fair white cloth, and plentifully plenished with plates piled high with scones and shortbread. He wondered what “foes” were, for he hadn’t any; he thought they must be the servants who handed round the plates.

“Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me.” The sad, patient tune Grannie had taught him sounded almost triumphant, as the child’s strong treble voice rang out. When he had finished, his father leant his head against the little rounded shoulder, and there was silence save for the man’s quick breathing.

“Good-night, dad!” said Angus at last, turning himself to see his father’s face.

Thomas Warden rose hastily; he laid the boy in his little white bed, kissed him, and blessed him, and went down and sat in the study again. But a man cannot dine in his fishing boots; so he went upstairs, had a bath, and while he dressed, Angus discoursed cheerfully to him through the half-open door.

* * * * *

The silence was unbearable; it was so lonely. Thomas Warden could not sleep. He got up and walked about his room. Only one o’clock! The night had hardly begun.

The moon shone brilliantly, but the wind blew shrewdly through the open casement. May nights are cold in the North country.

He went into the dressing-room and looked at Angus. “If she had only loved the boy--if she had only loved the boy.” He could have forgiven her all the rest. A just and tolerant man, he knew his own limitations. He granted to the full his wife’s intellectual superiority; but she might have loved the boy.

“Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me.” Why did those lines ring in his head? and then, there always followed the sentence in his wife’s letter: “I cannot live your life, and you can live no other.”

It was true: _he_ could live no other. But the boy--why did she not love the boy?

He drew up the blind, and the mellow moonlight fell on the sleeping child. Surely he was a goodly child, so comely, and kindly, and honest. As he looked at the boy his heart went out to him. He did not stoop and kiss him as a woman would have done; he reverenced too much this fair sleep which wrapped him round. He went back to his own room and got a pillow. Then, laying his long length on the floor beside the little bed, and with the child’s psalm still sounding in his ears, he too slept.

The room was flooded with moonlight when Angus awoke. There was a sound of regular and heavy breathing. Angus felt puzzled; puzzled, but not in the least afraid. Such breathing must come from a man, or a dog; from men and dogs the child had experienced nothing but kindness.

He sat up, and listening, looked about to see where the sound came from. He shook his hair back from his forehead, and rubbed his eyes. Yes! he was not mistaken, it _was_ his father who lay there on the floor beside his bed.

Angus rose softly, and touched his father’s bare feet; they were very cold. “Poor dad,” he said to himself--“and him so tired!”

Then suddenly he remembered his mother’s words: “You must take care of father.” It was bad to sleep without a covering, Grannie had told him that. He pulled his little quilt off his bed, and laid it lightly on his father. To his delight the sleeping figure never stirred, but the quilt was short, and Thomas Warden was long--by no amount of stretching would it cover both his shoulders and his feet--poor cold feet! Then Angus was seized by an inspiration, which even his mother could not have called quite commonplace. He lay down at his father’s feet, and unbuttoning the jacket of the new sleeping suit, he cuddled up so that the cold feet rested on his own warm breast. Then he, too, fell asleep.

The kindly moon shone in upon them, and it was very still.

When Thomas Warden awoke the moonlight had changed to pearly dawn. He was no longer cold, and when he realized why, he was no longer lonely.

A THROW BACK

Nana had at last gone out and left the coast clear. Kit seized her little brother’s hand, and they sped down the long passage to the red baize door which swung heavily but did not latch, shutting off the nursery quarters from the house.

Kit was a person of dramatic instincts, and as they ran down the passage she quoted in a deep and awful voice, “The tiger is a fearful beast, He comes when you expect him least.” Addison gazed fearfully over his shoulder, and ran at the top of his speed.

At last by a mighty effort they pushed open the heavy red door, and the staircase and the house lay before them for exploration. It was a very wide staircase, black and shiny and slippery, and as they went down their little feet made a pattering noise which seemed to echo and multiply in the silent house. Kit turned and said, “Hush!” in a reproving voice to Addison, who was, like Agag, walking delicately, on the banister side. “I can’t hush any more than I’m doing!” he replied in an injured tone. “I must put my feet down firm or I’d skate!”

“Come on!” said Kit. “Let’s go and see if Jakes is in the dining-room, and he’ll tell us what’s for lunch.”

They crossed the stone-flagged hall, and Kit opened the dining-room door and marched boldly in. There was no one there; the big room was wrapped in silence, and Addison felt very small and timid as he stood on the threshold. Not so Kit; she walked boldly up to the table, which was laid. There was a great deal of old silver on the table, and many flowers; but its appearance was evidently most displeasing to Kit, for she exclaimed angrily:

“Look here, Addison, just look here! Jakes has only laid lunch for _one_!”

Even the mild and gentle Addison was roused to something like indignation at this tremendous intelligence. To have breakfast and tea in the nursery is an understood thing; but lunch--whoever heard of a well-conducted child having lunch anywhere but in the dining-room, once he or she could hold a spoon and fork? It was abominable; it had to be seen into at once.

Kit gave an indignant sniff, saying: “I know it isn’t Jakes; it’s Nana. She’d go and say we could have lunch with her till Miss Mercer came; but I’ll go and speak to grandpapa at once; it’s a shame; I won’t stand it. Come on!”

The obedient Addison trotted after Kit across the hall with some alacrity. He hadn’t seen much of grandpapa; but what he had seen he liked. How still the old house was, no sound to be heard but the drip, drip of the rain on the ivy outside the windows and the sizzle and fiz of the big logs in the great stone fireplace.

The children looked upon “Nanas” and their like as necessary evils. They divided mankind into two classes, which they called respectively “the dears” and “the deafs.” To the “dears” belonged father and mother, all father’s friends and most of mother’s; Gaffer and all Gaffer’s servants; orderlies--particularly orderlies--and grooms. To the “deafs” belonged nurses, governesses, cross gardeners, and a great many young ladies who wore smart frocks and were affectionate in public. These latter were called “deafs” not because of any defect in their aural arrangements, but simply because the children considered them incapable of discussing anything interesting. “Stupid people!” Kit was wont to observe, “who ask you how old you are, and who fetch stale cake out of tin boxes, and one’s got to eat it for politeness’ sake. Oh, I hate deafs!”

When Kit reached the study door she knocked, but there was no answer. “Mother says he never hears if he’s writing,” she whispered. “Let’s go in--come on!” So she turned the handle of the door and went in. Grandfather was writing. His great knee-hole table was piled with open books, and he had on his gold-rimmed spectacles. He never looked up as Kit shut the door softly behind her. For one thing, doors never creaked in grandfather’s house.

The children stood inside the door and waited, but he never looked up. “Come on,” said Kit, as, holding Addison by the hand, they walked leisurely across the room, till she stood close by their grandfather; then she said in a loud and cheerful voice:

“Good-morning, Gaffer; we’ve come to see you!”

“We’ve come to see you!” echoed the ever-obedient Addison. Grandfather was fond of old-fashioned things, and the name “Gaffer” was so delightfully inappropriate that he encouraged the children to use it when they spoke to him.

“Oh, you’ve come, have you?” he said, taking off his spectacles and turning himself in his heavy revolving chair toward the children. “And how are you, my dears? Did you sleep well after your long journey?”

It did not take long to install a child on each knee. Addison gazed at him in adoring silence, but Kit hastened to unbosom herself of her wrongs. “I’ve come to complain!” she began with dignity. “They’ve only laid lunch for you in the dining-room. Now I know you’d like our company. Mother said we were to keep you company--will you give orders about it?”

Gaffer seemed duly impressed, as he said: “I will give orders at once. Of course you are to have lunch with me while you are here. It’s a pity it’s so wet for your first day, but it’s nice to think that those dear people are going further and further away from the fogs and damp. It will do mother so much good to be in a warm climate, and you must try not to feel dull without them.”

“I wish they’d taken me!” said Kit. “I love hotels!” Gaffer looked at her and laughed: “What a traveled little person you are! I never slept in a hotel till I was seventeen.”

“Ah, but that’s long ago. People go about more now, and, you see, we have to go with the regiment.”

“To go with the regiment,” echoed Addison.

Kit conversed affably with her grandfather for some time; she told him who were her favorite officers, and which her favorite puddings. She carefully explained that, as she was four years older than Addison, she went to bed an hour later, and that she intended to spend that hour in her grandfather’s society. She expressed her approval of the study as a room, but thought it was a pity that, owing to the large number of books, there was no space for any pictures on the walls. Addison stared about him in solemn silence, till at last Gaffer suggested that, as he had got to write to mother, they had better go back to the nursery till lunchtime. Then they trotted across the room together, but when they reached the door and Kit had gone out, Addison raced back and stood by his grandfather’s chair, whispering breathlessly: “Will you let me see some of the books some day--wivout Kit?” There was a passionate eagerness in the question which startled Gaffer. He looked down at the imploring, upturned face.

And then “a strange thing happened.” It was no longer Addison, his namesake, that he saw; it was himself. Himself of sixty years ago. There he stood, the quaint, serious-eyed boy, whose portrait hung in his dead wife’s dressing-room. The boy who longed for books, and who had asked the same question of a scholar in an Oxford library, on a long-forgotten morning all those years ago. With a sudden rush of gratitude he remembered how the question had been answered, and though his smile was very pleasant, his voice was a trifle husky as he said:

“Assuredly!”

“Wivout Kit?” persistently questioned the little boy.

“Without Kit, I promise,” repeated Gaffer. Then he and Addison shook hands, and Addison followed Kit.

She was waiting in the hall. “What did you say to Gaffer?” she asked inquisitively, but Addison shook his head. He could keep his own counsel even when coerced by pinches.

At lunch Gaffer inquired: “Addison, can you read?”

“Not well!” answered Kit. “He can’t read well; he’s only doing ‘sequel,’ and he’s six. He’s very backward!”

“I asked Addison, my dear,” said Gaffer, in gently reproving tones.

Addison blushed and held down his head; then he said: “I don’t like what I read; it’s so uninteresting. They ask such silly questions, over and over again.”

“He knows heaps of poetry!” said Kit magnanimously. “He can learn anything when he’s heard it once, and he knows pages of verses, and psalms, and that, but he’s no good on horseback. He’s got no nerve. Dad says he’ll never be any good across country! And he’s afraid of the dark!”

“Are you not nervous?” asked Gaffer.

“Me nervous!” said Kit with great scorn. “I can ride dad’s chargers!”

“Ah, you’re like your mother,” said Gaffer, smiling at her. “Now I, I was never any good across country; but yet I haven’t found that it has alienated my friends, or done me any great damage in life. Has Addison begun Latin?”

“Oh, no; Miss Mercer doesn’t teach Latin, and he’s far too backward in other things to begin.”

“I began Greek when I was his age,” said Gaffer dreamily; “but there’s no reason why Addison should not begin Latin. He shall begin it with me.”

Addison flushed up to the roots of his hair; then he scrambled off his seat--a most unheard-of proceeding in the middle of lunch--and ran round to his grandfather. He threw himself upon him, exclaiming: “I love you; oh, how I love you!”

Kit regarded him with astonished eyes. That Addison, who never kissed anybody but mother, who was so undemonstrative, so slow to show feeling, should behave in this extraordinary manner, because he was told he might have Latin lessons, was to her incomprehensible; and Gaffer seemed to approve, for he lifted Addison on to his knee, and said in such a queer voice: “I think we’re rather of a kidney, you and I; we’re going to understand each other uncommonly well,” and Addison sat enthroned on Gaffer’s knee all the rest of lunch, and shared his cheese. Kit felt injured.

When Gaffer went back to his study he sat down before the fire, and he pondered for a long time over his queer little grandson. Then he gave his shoulders a shake and sighed: “I was a disappointment to my father, and he’ll be a disappointment--he is a disappointment--poor little chap, to his. He is unaccountably like me.”

A lonely child was Addison. The fact that he was always called Addison from the time he ceased to be baby was proof enough. A child who is understood gets a nickname. Kit had fifty. Addison was always called by his baptismal name. It was Gaffer’s name, and Gaffer’s grandfather had been called after a gentleman who wrote poetry and things. Little Addison knew that much, and he wondered if the writings of that far-away Mr. Addison were more interesting than “Step by Step.” Addison was called an “old-fashioned child”; he was not very sure precisely what that was, but that it was something a child ought not to be, he was convinced. Kit was pretty, very pretty; so the officers said, not infrequently to Kit herself. Kit was never afraid of anything by day or by night. Kit always spoke the truth; Addison had been known to prevaricate when he was frightened, and he was often frightened--at nothing at all, Kit said.

But the worst and most unforgivable thing about Addison was this: he had no wish to be a soldier--and said so. The sound of a pop-gun caused his heart to thump against his breast in an unpleasantly violent manner, and a review was to him a prolonged agony that made him ill for days.

His mother--whom he worshipped--and who loved him tenderly, was quite unconscious of his many sufferings. She was absolutely devoid of nerves herself, and thought that Addison would grow out of his “delicacy,” as she called it. She was proud of his remarkable resemblance to her father, whom she admired above all mortal men--but she was disappointed; and poor Addison, with the quick intuition of childhood, was perfectly aware of it--at his being what her husband called “such a Molly.”

So it came about that Kit was always brought forward, and Addison kept in the background--to his own satisfaction certainly, but very much to the detriment of Kit.

Edinburgh, where the regiment was stationed, was too cold for mother, and dad obtained leave to take her to the Riviera for the worst months; so Kit and Addison were sent to Gaffer, and for Addison it was the turning-point of his life.

To most people, their initiation into the accidence of the Latin language is not a very happy recollection. To Addison it is a recollection little short of rapturous.

To him the first pages of a Latin grammar call up the picture of a large, old-fashioned room, flooded with a mellow light like that of the sun through a veil of yellowing beeches. There is a goodly smell in the room, the smell of dressed and well-kept leather. The walls are lined with books, books bound in calf and russet-colored Russia, and in the middle of the room stands a knee-hole table both deep and wide. It, too, is covered with books; but here they lie open, one upon the other, a crowd of witnesses to the tastes of the owner of the room. That gracious owner! Addison’s eyes grow dim as he thinks of the spare upright figure seated in the revolving chair; the keen scholarly face and noble white head. He hears again the kind, cultivated voice ever ready to answer questions, to answer them so fully and so beautifully, with such a tender sympathy for the eager childish questioner. And then Addison goes down on his mental knees and thanks his God that as yet he had brought no look of sorrow into those kind eyes, but many a look of pride and joy.

Is there not one shelf in that library devoted to Addison’s prizes? And the row is lengthening by leaps and bounds. Yet they wonder at Winchester why he should be so fond of classics.

THE INTERVENTION OF THE DUKE

I

ENTER WIGGINS

The Reverend Andrew Methven stood at his study window gazing out to sea. The sea was very blue, the sands yellow and smooth, but it was not the sea that the Reverend Andrew saw.

Elgo, on the Fife coast, is growing fashionable. In summer every house is let, and there are sometimes as many as fifty bathers at once in the bay. At Elgo the bathers usually wear blue serge, adorned it may be by red or white braid. Pale blue silk with white facings and short sleeves is not the usual uniform. It impressed the Reverend Andrew, and consequently he stood and stared. Moreover, the wearer of this wonderful creation--he felt it was a “creation,” though he had never heard the word so used--came out of the house next door to the Manse, the house being that of his most worthy parishioner, Mrs. Urquhart, Baker and Confectioner, who let her rooms during the summer months.

Elgo streets are somewhat one-sided, the town being built upon the cliff with a railing near the outer edge for the protection of the unwary.

The vision in pale blue silk tripped down the steep steps cut in the rocks, and ran across the sands. She was followed by a small thin boy, whose freckled face was broad and good-natured. On the sands they took hands and danced into the water together.

The vision was tall and slim, with wonderful arms that flashed white in the June sunshine, and the minister remarked that she could swim magnificently. The little naked boy splashed after her, looking like a terrier as he shook the water from his crop of curly hair.

The minister’s window was open, and across the sunlit sands came the sound of a woman’s voice, crying: “Come on, Wiggins, get on my back, and I’ll swim with you to the Cock’s-tail Rocks!”

The Reverend Andrew swung his telescope into position; he had the grace to blush as he did so, but none the less did he eagerly follow that swimmer by its aid. She did it, there and back; then she and the small boy ran dripping over the sands and vanished through Mrs. Urquhart’s side door.

An hour later the minister (he was the Free Kirk minister really; there is an Established Church in Elgo, but as its pews are empty and its incumbent of small account, he was “the minister” to Elgo) strolled into Mrs. Urquhart’s shop to buy cookies. Mrs. Urquhart herself bustled forward to serve him.

“You’ve let your rooms, I see, Mrs. Urquhart! And early in the season, too!”

“Yes, sir! I’ve let my rooms, and to my own young lady that I was nurse to; you’ll mind my telling you of Sir John Penberthy and his bonny family. Well, Mrs. Burton is just my Miss Mary, married and widowed too, poor lamb, and she and Master Wiggins have come all the way from London to be with me, and it’s proud I am to have them!” Mrs. Urquhart paused breathless.

The minister murmured something sympathetic, and taking up his bag of cookies strode back to the Manse. “Mary, mother of names,” he thought, as he turned over the information he had received. “Widowed! She doesn’t wear much mourning anyway!” as he thought of the blue silk bathing-dress. Then he said with a sigh, “She is very beautiful!” and sat him down to write his Sunday sermon.

In the afternoon he met Wiggins on the beach: that gentleman was digging while a French _bonne_ kept guard in the rear.

“Do you like Elgo?” asked the minister. He had a kindly way with children; he was rather childlike himself, and they knew it.

“Awfully,” answered Wiggins, patting his castle walls, and barely looking up.

“Have you ever been to the sea before?”

“Oh, dear, yes; haven’t you?”

“I live here,” said the minister, rather discomposed by this exceedingly cool child.

“I wish I did!” sighed Wiggins. “I hate Kensington.”

“Ah, that’s London! I’ve never been there,” said the minister simply. “I wish I had.”

“It’s not a very nice place. There’s gardens and busses, and sometimes we ride in a hansom, and you always have to wear your shoes and generally gloves, it’s beastly.” Wiggins spoke bitterly, as one who had tasted the hollow shams of Kensington.

The minister sat down on the sand.

“Isn’t there a museum there, and an Art Gallery?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, but you mayn’t touch anything, and you have to wear your hat!”

“You seem to object to clothing,” remarked the minister.

“Don’t you?” responded this discomposing child.

“Well, no, I can’t say I do. It’s warm, and----”

“Oh, it’s warm enough in Kensington, if that’s what you want!” and Wiggins turned to dig a fresh channel from his castle to the sea.

“M’sieu Wiggins, il faut aller à la maison pour le thé. Faites vos adieux à M’sieu le Curé!” and Madeleine, the pretty French _bonne_, folded up her crochet, and rose.

But Wiggins was smitten with deafness, and waded deeper into the water, with a seraphically unconscious look.

Madeleine went down to the water’s edge, where she discoursed volubly for about five minutes. The minister sat watching; he wondered why French people speak so fast, and whether Wiggins understood. He evidently did, for he answered derisively, and sat down suddenly in the water. Then he came out, and grinning at the minister, remarked gleefully as he took his dripping way homeward:

“That’s the third pair to-day, soon shan’t have any left to wear. What a rux!”

“So that’s a London child!” mused the minister. “He’s a fine frank lad; I must call upon his mother.”

II

A NEW ATMOSPHERE

But the days went on, and the minister did not call. He was a sociable fellow, much beloved by his fisher folk, and by such summer visitors as knew him. Elgo was his first “charge.” Had he been small, instead of six-foot-three, he would doubtless long ago have been dubbed “The Little Minister,” after Mr. Barrie’s immortal hero, for he was young as a minister can be.

He did not call on Mrs. Burton because he had conceived for her an extravagant admiration, or rather adoration. He met her constantly on the beach and in the village street, and on these occasions gravely lifted his hat. Had he followed his impulse, he would have gone down on his knees and begged leave to kiss her feet. We do not follow our impulses in these matters nowadays, and Mary Burton never wondered why he did not call, for she thought about him not at all.

She did not go to church that first Sunday, but played with Wiggins on the beach all the morning. Mrs. Urquhart was scandalized and suggested the Episcopalian church at Pittenweem; but Mary only put her arms round her old nurse and laughingly promised to come and sit in her pew next Sunday.

The minister progressed in his friendship with Wiggins; while Mary was scouring the country on her bicycle, Wiggins and his new friend played on the beach or fished for poddlies from the rocks.

Madeleine with the inevitable crochet sat on the beach and beamed at them.

“You’re a Presbyterian, aren’t you?” asked Wiggins abruptly of the minister one afternoon.

“Yes, I’m a member of the Free Kirk.”

“Oh, you’re Free Kirk, and Madeleine’s a Roman Catholic, and mother and me is Pagans!”

“Pagans?” echoed the minister in astonished tones.

“Well, mother says so. It means that you love the sun, and the sea, and bare feet and meringues and music-halls and things!”

“Pagans, music-halls!” The minister gazed in horror at the unconscious but breathless Wiggins. “Do you mean to say,” he asked solemnly, “that you do not know anything about our Saviour who died for us?”

Wiggins turned and looked at him with something of reproachful scorn on his broad freckled face; then he said slowly: “Of course, I know, but we never talk about _that_ to strangers, mother and me. It is bad form, like the people who give you tracts in busses.”

“I beg your pardon, I misunderstood,” said the minister.

They were silent for a few minutes, during which the minister digested this, to him, new view of confessing your faith before men.

Although he himself never gave tracts either in busses or anywhere else, he had certainly in a sort of hazy fashion considered that to do so was praiseworthy, if mistaken.

“There’s mother!” announced Wiggins suddenly. “Let’s come and talk to her.”

The minister scrambled to his feet, and in another moment he had shaken hands with Mrs. Burton, and they all sat down on the beach together.

Wiggins did most of the talking, and then it began to rain.

“Will you come in and have a cup of tea with Wiggins and me?” asked Mrs. Burton.

The minister felt that no words at all expressed the rapture with which this proposal filled him.

Mrs. Urquhart’s parlor looked so different that afternoon. Many photographs stood on the mantelpiece, books other than albums or Family Bibles were scattered on the table, papers and magazines strewed the horsehair sofa, while on the mantelpiece among the photographs and the little vases full of roses were the ends of many half-smoked cigarettes. Another shock was in store for the minister.

They had tea; he drank three cups and ate endless scones in order to prolong the meal. To sit opposite to Mary and watch her white, heavily ringed hands flit in and out among the cups as she made tea was a wonderful thing. To listen to her as she praised Elgo, and Scotland generally, in her soft Southern voice was wonderful; but most wonderful of all was to gaze at her unrebuked, to drink in the beauty of her face, to note the gracious line of cheek and chin as she turned her head, and lose himself in the depths of her eyes, brown as the trout stream beyond Glen Dynoch. When at last some small consciousness of material things awoke in him and he rose to go, Mary reached to the chimneypiece for a slim tin box.

“Will you have a cigarette?” she asked. “Dear Mrs. Urquhart forgives my evil habits, and pretends she thinks that I smoke for asthma. I don’t look asthmatical, do I?”

“Thank you,” faltered the minister. “I do not smoke now--I gave it up after my student days, just as I gave up drinking anything, for the sake of my people. I daresay it was useless, but I thought it was right--then.”

He spoke diffidently, humbly, half expecting a flash of amused scorn in her, such as he not infrequently encountered in Wiggins. But Mary held out her hand, saying softly:

“I am sure it was right then, and is now; but don’t judge me hardly, for I have no flock to influence. My boys will smoke, anyhow, when they are big.”

“It is kind of you not to laugh at me,” he said, and with that took his leave.

Mary lit her cigarette and smoked thoughtfully for some time. Wiggins was once more searching for treasure on his beloved beach. She sat at the open window and watched the boats come in. Presently she rang the bell for Mrs. Urquhart. When that good lady appeared, breathless from her ascent of the steep little stairs, Mary pushed her into an armchair and sat down at her feet, with her head against the old woman’s knees.

“Amuse me, nursey; tell me about your minister. Where does he come from? How is it that, without having been anywhere or seen anything, he is such a perfect gentleman, and why--oh, why is he a Free Church minister?”