PART II CHILDREN OF LAST CENTURY (continued 2)

Paralyzed with terror, she stood staring at the vision. A tall man it was—she was sure it was a man, and no ghost—clad in curious flowing robes of soft whitey flannel, falling to his feet in innumerable folds, while in his hand he held what Maggie took to be some instrument of torture. It was a butterfly net; but Maggie did not know this, for people did not catch many butterflies in Commercial Street, Leith.

The whole dreadful truth flashed upon her. This was one of the monks! Had she not read in a guide to the neighborhood that “The Dominican Priory of the Annunciation is a large and handsome building; here candidates for the priesthood pursue a course of study in divinity and philosophy. It is under the government of a Prior.” This, then, must be one of the priests, and having been very well brought up in the strictest sect of the Free Kirk, she was sure that if only he succeeded in “catching her,” she would be put to unspeakable tortures, or forced to recant her faith.

Had she not with her own eyes seen her mother hastily slam the door of their flat in the face of a woman wearing a queer head-dress and long cloak, who had come to beg for money?

“I’ll ha’e none o’ they Papishes here!” her mother exclaimed angrily, and then—for it was just before Maggie came south—“and you, Maggie, if you see ony o’ them when you’re wi’ your aunty, just turn and flee. I’m told there’s a whole clamjamfray o’ them there, an’ ye can never tell what they Jesuits will be at.”

So, having found her breath sufficiently to give a wild cry, Maggie turned and fled.

The queer white man, who, as she afterward remembered, looked astonished, called something after her. But Maggie’s heart was thumping in her ears to the exclusion of every other sound, and she ran blindly on till one treacherous little foot, more used to pavements than rough forest ground, gave under her with a horrid wrench, and she fell forward in a terrified little heap just as she reached a footpath leading she knew not whither.

There she lay shivering with pain and fear, with her eyes shut, for she heard the soft swish of long garments through the undergrowth. Then a shadow fell upon her, and she was lifted up into a pair of strong arms, while a voice that even her excited imagination could not construe as unkindly exclaimed:

“I do believe I frightened you, and I’m awfully sorry. I don’t suppose you ever saw such a funny frock before!”

There was something human and disarming about the “awfully” and “funny frock”; moreover, the owner of the voice did not hold her as though she were a captive. He sat down at the foot of the big tree whose gnarled roots had tripped Maggie up, and set her on his knee. Besides, the voluminous flannel garment had a most reassuring and workaday smell of soap. But she could not bring herself to open her eyes just yet. She screwed them and her courage up very tight, and whispered:

“I’ll no recant! Ye may burn me, but I’ll no recant!”

The big, queer man threw back his head and laughed, and his laugh was even more inspiring of confidence than his speaking voice. But he pulled himself up short in the very middle of his laugh to ask:

“I say, though, did you hurt yourself when you fell?”

Maggie opened her eyes the tiniest little bit, and for the first time saw this queer man’s face. It was a kind face, a handsome face, with large merry brown eyes and an exceedingly straight nose. His mouth was well cut and firm, and when he smiled as he did then, he showed two rows of admirably white and even teeth. And the good smell of soap was in no way deceptive, for there was about this queer man’s appearance a radiant cleanliness that was by no means merely physical. All this did Maggie gravely take in through half-shut eyes, and though the pain in her ankle was horrible, and her heart still danced a sort of breakdown against her ribs, she was no longer afraid—only very, very curious.

The queer tall man, looking down at the face resting against his arm, noticed that it was small and white, with long-lashed closed eyes set rather far apart, and that the little freckles looked pathetically prominent across the thin small nose; and even as Maggie was comforted by the good smell of clean flannel, so he recognized approvingly that he held in his arms a very clean little girl, even though her pinafore was patched and her shoes worn at the toes.

“Are you hurt, you poor mite?” he asked again.

For answer Maggie stuck out the painful foot, and behold! there was a big lump on the ankle, and it looked twice as big as the other one.

“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish!” cried the queer man. “You’ve sprained your ankle.”

As he spoke he set Maggie on the ground beside him very gently, and diving into the folds of his habit produced a large handkerchief, which he proceeded to tear into strips. Then, very gently and deftly, he bandaged up the poor swollen foot. By this time Maggie’s blue eyes were wide open, and as he stooped over her foot she found time to wonder why he wore such “a wee, wee roond cappie” on the back of his head. The pain was bad, but she tried hard not to flinch, and when it was all done and the bandage fastened with a little pebble brooch that she had worn at her neck, he said gaily:

“And now to carry you home, for that foot must have hot fomentations as soon as possible.”

Here, however, Maggie demurred. “I can walk fine,” she announced with great dignity, and tried; but it was no use—she couldn’t even stand, the pain was so bad.

So the “papist man” picked her up in his arms and set off toward the village.

Now, Maggie was just a little anxious at this, for she had wandered a good way into the park, and the path he took seemed quite unfamiliar.

With unprecedented courage she took hold of his chin with her hand and turned his face that she could see it.

“You’re sure you’re no takin’ me to your convent?” she asked gravely, as one who begs to know the worst at once. She still had fleeting visions of a dungeon followed by stake and faggots if she proved leal to the faith of her fathers.

“My dear child, they wouldn’t have you there. We don’t allow any women to come in—not even little girls—where I live.”

Maggie was silent for a minute; then, because every Scotsman, woman, or child loves an argument, and a theological argument best of all, she said slowly:

“But you worship a woman—images of a woman.”

“Ah, that’s rather different. I don’t think we’ll discuss that, because, you see, we look at everything from rather different points of view. How’s that poor foot of yours? You’re a regular Spartan to bear pain. Am I carrying you comfortably?”

Here was another facer for Maggie; he did not want “to discuss that.”

“I thought,” she said, “that you liked to burn everybody wha’ didna ’gree wi’ you—when ye got the chance,” she added.

“Oh, we’re not quite so black as we’re painted, and the world is big enough for us all nowadays, even though there are so many more people in it. Isn’t that a good thing?”

Maggie’s honest little heart yearned over this mistaken man, who carried little girls so tenderly, who seemed so kind and gay.

“I wish that you were no a papish,” she said softly, “for I’m sorely afraid that ye’ll no win Heaven if you worship graven images.”

The papist in question stopped short in the middle of the woodland path. The sunlight shining through the leaves painted fantastic patterns on his white draperies, and his eyes were very kind as he said gently:

“Don’t you think there will be even more room in Heaven than there is here for all sorts of people, provided they are kind, and brave, and honest, and do their best?”

And Maggie agreed that it might be possible, and was something comforted. By and by he asked her what the nice song was that she had been singing when he first met her, and she sang it again for him all through, till he, too, learned the tune; then she taught him the words, and although his Scotch left much to be desired, they made a very considerable noise between them, and the woods resounded to the strains of “Dance, Kitty Bairdie.”

“They monks seem different to the ordinary sort,” said Maggie that night, when, after much fomentation of the injured ankle, her aunt tucked her into bed.

“They’re just harmless haverals,” said her aunt indulgently; but Maggie “added a wee thing” onto her prayers, and whispered under the bed-clothes:

“Please make room for yon clean man at—any—rate.”

COMRADES

He was called Bunchy because, when a very little boy, his clothes would bunch; the tiny petticoats were short for their width, and everything stuck out all round him like a frill.

Now that he was five, and wore breeches with four little buttons at the knee, the name still stuck to him, though it was no longer appropriate.

Bunchy was lonely.

If Pussy had been there it would have been very different; but she had been sent for quite suddenly to go and nurse dad, who had incontinently fallen ill with influenza just three days after mother (Bunchy always called her Pussy), Nana, and he had settled down for a fortnight’s holiday in a Cotteswold village.

It was a delightful village! It had a green with noisy geese upon it, a stream that gurgled and splashed and told fairy tales on sleepy September afternoons, and real woods surrounded it.

The cottage where Pussy had taken rooms was ever so pretty, and had a garden full of currant-bushes and celery.

For three days they had a lovely time. They sought giants in the woods, finding squirrels instead—which were prettier and only less exciting; they paddled their feet in the stream and caught minnows in a bottle; they pretended that the geese on the green were “Trolls,” and routed them with great slaughter; and they had found mushrooms before breakfast in a neighboring field.

Then Pussy had to go away, and for Bunchy the face of Nature was changed and clouded. Only Nana was left, and, although very kind, she was not an exciting companion. She knew nothing of giants, and seemed to care very little about Trolls. Moreover, on this particular morning she sat indoors making a cotton dress, and told Bunchy to “run and play in the garden like a good little boy, and not worry.” How can people, he thought, sit in a room and sew when all the beautiful out-of-doors seems clamoring for them to come and admire it?

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:

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?”

“And what for no, my dearie? He’s an excellent, well-doing young man. You should hear him preach; it’s just wonderfu’. His father’s a doctor near Aberdeen; bein’ douce people they are—a large young family, and all doing well. He was at the college in Edinburgh, and passed very high. But it’s no his learning that we care about, it’s his kind, friendly ways. He’d take his turn nursing a body that’s sick just like one of the family; and he’s just a wonderful way with young men. To be sure, he’s young himself—only just twenty-six—but he’s not a bit bumptious or puffed up, like many young men. He’s greatly set up with Master Wiggins; they’re grand friends.”

“He has been very kind to Wiggins. I’ll ask him to dinner. Will you cook me a very nice dinner, nursey dear, on Thursday evening?”

“He’ll no come then, my dearie, for it’s prayer-meeting night. I just wish you’d go yourself.”

“I’ve never been to a prayer-meeting. What’s it like? What happens?”

“It’s just beautiful, my dearie; and the gentry go too. Mrs. Braid, of Elgo House, she always goes.”

Mary made a little face. “She called upon me yesterday. I didn’t find her very exciting. I’ve got to dine there to-night, so I suppose I must dress. You might send Madeleine to do my hair. Dear nursey, I’d far rather stay with you than go to Elgo House.”

III “ALL SECRET SHADOWS AND MYSTIC SIGHTS”

Dinner parties at Elgo House were not, as a rule, exciting. The conversation generally vibrated between the harvest prospects and the game prospects, with somewhat numerous flashes of silence, during which each guest madly racked his brain for a fresh topic of conversation, only to fall back finally upon the weather.

Andrew Methven did not expect to enjoy himself much on that particular evening. His presence at Elgo House was something of an anomaly, for the family were “established” by conviction, yet Mrs. Braid attended the Free Kirk because she liked Andrew’s sermons.

He felt rather as though he were poaching on his neighbor’s preserves when he went there. He liked his brother cleric (as he liked most people), who, if old and somewhat dull, was kindly and human. So long as his evening pipe and toddy were forthcoming with regularity the “established” minister recked little if he preached to empty benches. Andrew Methven felt the blood rush to his face as on entering the Braids’ drawing-room he heard that voice which had been ringing in his ears ever since his parting with Mary that afternoon.

Daylight lasts long in the North Country, and there were no candles needed at Elgo House for dinner. Mary sat opposite the minister, and had he been given to cursing he would have cursed the tall epergne of fruit that hid her from his sight, especially as the majority of her remarks were addressed to him.

The only other guests were an elderly colonel and his wife, who were staying at the hotel. The colonel, whenever he looked at or spoke to Mary, seemed by his very atmosphere to ejaculate “Monstrous fine woman,” and Andrew felt an insane desire to choke him there and then in his own high white collar.

Dinner over, they all strolled into the garden, and then that happened which made an epoch in Andrew Methven’s life.

When they had all duly admired the roses and the goodly promise of peaches on the south wall, someone brought a guitar out of the house and Mary sat down to sing.

Her dress, some soft transparent blackness over white, faded into the shadows among which she sat. Somehow it reminded Andrew of the silver birch trees in the copse beyond. She bent her head as she tuned the guitar, and the throb of the strings seemed an appropriate background to the sweetness of her profile. Vision and sound became indissolubly mixed. Andrew could never afterward separate Mary’s face from her voice, and both were irresistibly a part of the beech copse seen dimly in the evening light. The whole making a picture, subtle, detached, vivid; an experience in which all the senses bore an equal part and were indistinguishable.

Mary’s voice was a big, soft contralto, as unlike the usual “drawing-room voice” as it is possible to be, and she sang seriously. She gave her message to the four winds to be carried where they listed. She sang to the scented night, to the distant sea, to the flowers and the moonlight: not to the little handful of human beings, whose chairs creaked as they sat, and who, saving one, only realized that she was a beautiful woman who had a fine voice.

They thanked her when she had finished, all but Andrew, who, white-faced and dumb, gazed into the deepening shadows as he stood by Mary’s chair.

“It’s really most extraordinary to be able to sit out at night in June in Scotland, is it not?” said the colonel’s wife in his ear. He started, looking at her stupidly. “A very absent young man!” she said to herself.

Truly he was absent, for he had been in heaven.

Mary, too, was silent, softly beating out a faint melody on her guitar as it lay across her knees.

Suddenly she looked up at Andrew, saying under her breath: “The rest may reason and welcome, ’tis we musicians know!”

“The rest” did not hear, or hearing did not understand; but Andrew said: “Thank God!”

The colonel’s voice was heard declaring that it was “deucedly chilly,” and everybody made a move to go indoors, except Andrew, who, pleading work, fled down the drive, only to walk for miles aimlessly in a direction leading further and further from the Manse.

Had he but known it, that walk was symbolical of the rest of his life. When he did get home his rather ancient “evening shoes” were quit worn out.

IV THE EDUCATION OF THE MINISTER

“The Duke is coming at the end of the month,” announced Wiggins to the minister, as they anchored and fished for poddlies in the bay.

“What Duke?”

“My brother; he’s at school at Leamington; he’s going to Eton in three years. He’s ten, four years older nor me.” Wiggins was a model of conciseness in the way he imparted information.

“Why do you call him the Duke?” asked the minister in rather an abstracted voice; he was watching a tall lady on the distant links.

“’Cause he is one; his name’s Marmaduke, and he is a tremenjous Duke; they all say so.”

“Who are they?”

“Oh, mother, and uncles, and boys, and people.”

“Is he like you?”

“Not a bit; he’s handsome; he’s exactly like mother.”

The minister smiled. Was Mary handsome? he wondered. For many days now he had forgotten to take her beauty into account. He never compared her with other women. She was not to him more beautiful, not more clever, not more kind than other women; she was simply what that Frenchman said of his lady—she was mieux femme. There was no one else.

“Are you very fond of your brother?” asked the minister, forcing himself to attend to Wiggins.

“I’m glad he goes to school,” replied that gentleman guardedly. “He rather bangs me about.”

“Is Wiggins a family name?” abruptly demanded the minister.

“You are a jokey man,” said Wiggins admiringly. “Why, it’s because of my hair they call me that; my name’s Tregenna—‘Tre, Pol, and Pen,’ you know. Mother’s Cornish.”

At this moment Wiggins had a bite, therefore excitement reigned for the next five minutes, and even the advent of the Duke was forgotten.

Did Mary Burton know what she was doing when she admitted this obscure Free Kirk minister to friendship and intimacy? Did she realize how contact with her kindness, her simplicity, her gentlehood, was making him every day more hopelessly her slave? In after years, when he walked in darkness, with a hunger that nothing appeased, Andrew would ask himself this question, and whichever way he answered it he blessed her. He no more thought of blaming her than the sailor thinks of tracing the storm to the evening star.

“She shall have worship of me,” he said in those early days of wonder and happiness. “She still has worship of me,” he said after years of unsatisfied longing and ceaseless pain.

There was a song that Mary used to sing, a song he loved, written by a man for whom and for whose writings in those youthful opinionated days Andrew felt a hatred that was almost fear. Yet the song dominated him, and in after years he would repeat it to himself with a curious fierce sense of possession.

Again across the silence he would hear Mary’s voice; again would he see against the evening sky her delicate pale profile and the little head weighted with its coils of shadowy hair; accompanying it all, the soft plash of the waves as they rolled over the sands beneath her window and the sharp salt wind which sighed foreboding things.

“No! I won’t sing any more to-night; let us talk,” said Mary.

The weather had turned unkindly, a bright fire flickered on the hearth, while the rain outside drove and pattered against the rattling windows. The minister had come in “for some music” as had become his habit during the last weeks, but, Mary was in no mood to sing, so she laid the guitar aside.

“You told me that you intended to criticize my sermon of yesterday,” said Andrew deferentially. “I gather that you altogether disagree with me.”

Mary lit a cigarette and smiled at him, her own indulgent smile, which always softened the severity of her remarks. “Yes, I think your view is narrow, and in some respects unjust. Of course, I know it is the kind of sermon that is popular; and it is certainly kind to the novelists to abuse them from the pulpit—it increases the sale of their books so enormously. But that was hardly your object, was it?”

“I do not know what was my object, unless it were to deliver a message that I felt had been entrusted to me. I do feel strongly on this question. It seems to me so pitiful that people should waste their time in reading injurious trash, when all the time there waits in silent patience the great company of the Immortals.”

“I like Schumann’s view best. He says, ‘Reverence what is old, but have a warm heart also for what is new.’ Much that is new is true, and beautiful, and helpful.”

Mary leant forward, looking eagerly through a little cloud of smoke at the minister.

He shook his head. “A great deal is hopelessly false, and ugly and lowering.”

“I think you overrate the influence of bad books,” said Mary. “It is only the great books that live; a meretricious book may have a few months’ popularity, and then no one reads it any more, it is forgotten as absolutely as we forget the smell of decaying cabbage when we have passed the rubbish heaps.”

“But surely you will allow that there is a great badness as well as a great goodness. Look at those Frenchmen; you cannot say their work is good, but it certainly will live, because it is great.”

The minister spoke earnestly. He hated that she should think him narrow; but he had the courage of his opinions.

Mary was silent for a minute, then she looked at him and smiled, saying frankly:

“That is true; but I believe that in all genius there must be something of goodness. We are all going to heaven, and De Maupassant is going too.”

“I would like to think they are all going, but it seems to me some of them have much to answer for. Influence is an awful responsibility. I believe it is the one thing for which we shall have to give the strictest account.”

Mary looked grave. “Do you think that people always realize when they have influence?”

“No, not always; they do not certainly realize the extent of their influence. You, for instance, were you less noble-minded, might do incalculable harm, for you never think about the effect you produce at all.”

“Oh, please don’t be so seriously complimentary,” she exclaimed. “To pose as ‘a good influence’ would be too dreadful! I should feel like seven curates rolled into one. Confess now, though, that you always thought a liking for cigarettes was the sign in a woman of moral obliquity, now, didn’t you?”

Andrew blushed. “I have seen very little, and known few interesting people,” he said modestly; “none from your world.”

“How far we are getting from your sermon on modern literature; that is what we were going to talk about.”

“I spoke as I felt; I daresay I am wrong, but I can’t feel wrong yet. It may be that I overestimate the influence of books; but you see, in my case, books have been the only great influences I have known—until lately,” he added softly.

Mary looked into the fire in silence for a few minutes, then she said: “Never judge a man by one book any more than you would judge him by one single act, but be grateful when you come across any piece of work that you like. It always seems to me that we render so little gratitude to the people who give us so much pleasure, and it must be sad for them.”

She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire, and stood up, holding out her hand.

“I must send you away, for it’s half-past ten, and we are early folk here.”

Andrew bowed over the fair kind hand, and went back to his study at the Manse. Here there was no fire, no genial smell of smoke, everything was orderly, cold, and dull. Andrew sat down by his writing-table, and laid his head down on his arms. Truly the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

A sleepless night is interminable at six-and-twenty. At forty, one takes it as something that has to be got through, probably with the aid of chloral.

V MARY

There are people who can stir up the worst that is in us; that strange, inherent moral obliquity, which few are so happy as to be without, but which most of us bury under our strivings after things lovely and of good report. When success crowns the efforts of these moral dredgers, and they are generally as successful as they are persevering, they stand aside, apparently aghast, and proceed to cry “shame” noisily upon our depravity. These are they who “compound for sins they are inclined to” by damning, not “those they have no mind to,” but such sins as at the time they happen to be tired of.

There are others, thank God for it, with whom intercourse is a sort of festival, not merely because their own outlook is so generous and kindly, but because they rouse what is best in one’s self. One leaves such friends—they are friends if you have met them once—strong and gay and full of belief in the infinite possibilities of life.

Mary Burton was of this latter class. She made no great sacrifices, she enjoyed her life thoroughly, taking eagerly all pleasure that came in her way; but her temper was generous, her mind broad, and because she herself could not understand meanness, she never suspected others. She was seldom disappointed. It is the narrow little soul who so constantly encounters other narrow souls. The simple, kindly people meet with simplicity and kindness.

Perhaps the fact that their outlook was so similar proved the great bond between Mary and the minister of Elgo. Their upbringing and environment were so absolutely dissimilar, their views of life so unlike, yet beyond it all and through it all sounded the same note, dominating the discords and making harmony.

“He’s such a lovable good fellow,” Mary would say to herself. “One forgives him for always using shall and will in the wrong places, and for denying himself everything that some people think makes life endurable.”

“She is so kind and gracious, so dignified without being haughty, so absolute an aristocrat in all her beautiful ways; she is a princess. What does it matter if she does smoke and read French novels? If she does it, it must be right for her.” So argued the minister, though he kept his own sturdy Scottish opinion with regard to the unwholesomeness for ordinary digestions of some of the literature which Mary affected.

So the days went on and these two lovable good people saw more and more of one another, worshipper and worshipped, and although the parties mainly concerned preserved the ostrich-like blindness of people in their condition, the “summer visitors” of Elgo and the parish itself took a lively interest in their doings and waited with a somewhat impatient expectation of the climax.

One thing struck Andrew Methven as curious: in all their many conversations Mary had never mentioned her husband. She talked frankly of her father and her brothers, of the people she had met in India, and of those she was in the habit of meeting in London, but of her husband, never. Andrew found himself wondering what manner of man Captain Burton had been; but it never occurred to him to try to find out anything about Mary or her surroundings. He never spoke of her to anyone, and winced if anyone spoke of her to him. About his own family and his own “past,” if so uneventful life can be said to have a past, he was most frank.

“My people are what you would call ‘nice middle-class’ people, perhaps a little fonder of books than their sort are in England, but you have never met anybody of that kind except me, and you would not find them congenial.”

Mary made a little face. “I’m sure I never spoke of anybody as a ‘nice middle-class person,’ I shouldn’t be such a snob, and I have met all sorts of people—people you would think Bohemian and terrible!”

“I should like to meet literary people,” said Andrew wistfully, “but I suppose I never shall.”

“Oh, yes, you will, and you won’t find them any more interesting than your Fifeshire fisher folk. Epigrams pall upon you when they form the staple commodity of conversation. The somewhat dingy journalist, who has a trick of smart talking and who poses to himself as everything he is not, is just as great a bore as the respectable city clerk who lives at Hornsey and expatiates upon its advantages. You must not mistake cleverness for genius. The one is often merely the result of environment and atmosphere. The other nearly always appears in unlikely and seemingly impossible places. You know what Swinburne says: ‘There is only one thing we may reverence, and that is genius. There is only one thing we may worship, and that is goodness.’”

“It seems to me,” said Andrew thoughtfully, “that you reverse it. You reverence goodness and worship genius!”

“Perhaps I do, certainly and perhaps fortunately, the one is much rarer than the other. The best things in life are the commonest. There are flowers, and children, and love, and friendship for everybody, if they will have them.”

“And death and disillusion.”

“You, turning pessimist, Padre mio! This will never do. You are too serious—far too serious. I prescribe a course of Anthony Hope immediately. I have the ‘Dolly Dialogues’ with me, and you must force yourself to appreciate them. It’s plain you have met with little real tragedy in your life, or you would be more cheerful.”

“Have you a tragic past, that you are always gay?”

Mary shivered, but she did not answer. She called to Wiggins to come out of the water, for it was growing cold.

The minister scourged himself for four hours afterward, for he noticed that she was pale, and that there were shadows under her brown eyes. What had he said?

VI MARY’S HUSBAND

Mary had gone to play golf at St. Andrews. The minister called on Mrs. Urquhart anent some parish matters and she detained him, rather against his will, to talk of Mary and her perfections. She never spoke of her except as “My Miss Mary,” and it was apt to bewilder the uninitiated. Suddenly she asked the minister:

“Does she ever talk to you of the wee girlie who was killed?”

“What wee girlie? Never!”

“Eh, it was just an awful thing. Sit down, Mr. Methven, and I’ll tell you.”

“But, Mrs. Urquhart, do you think if it is so sad, and if she—Mrs. Burton never told me herself—that she would like——”

“Tuts, sir! It’s nothing disgraceful; it’s just fearfully sad. Ye can only admire her the more for her courage. Well, as I was saying, she had a wee girlie just three years old when they all came home from India on long leave. Master Wiggins was the baby, and Miss Molly was the bonniest creature you ever saw. The Captain—a fine, free-handed gentleman he was, if a wee thing wild—was just wrapped up in her, the boys were nowhere; and he would aye go and fetch her out o’ her cot every evening after dinner and play, and nothing Miss Mary could say would stop him. Well, that August they had taken a house down in Cornwall to be near Miss Mary’s father. And one evening Miss Mary had gone to dine with an old aunt some miles off, and the Captain and a gentleman staying dined alone. It is thought that the Captain may have taken rather much champagne—he did whiles—but anyway he went and got Miss Molly out of bed and wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out-of-doors. It was no use for the nurse to say anything—he was a masterful gentleman, and brooked no interference. The other gentleman had gone to write letters in the study. Well, Miss Mary came home about ten, and of course went straight up to the night nursery. The little boys were both in bed asleep, but Miss Molly’s cot was empty, and the nurse told her the Captain had not brought her up to bed yet. Miss Mary was rather indignant, for she thought it so bad for the child, and went down to fetch her. But the Captain was not in the study, and the other gentleman had not seen him since dinner. He seemed rather alarmed when he heard that Miss Molly was missing, and everybody went out to search the garden, for they were nowhere in the house. They sought and sought, and nothing could they find. Then Miss Mary sent the grooms out with lanterns, and she and the gentleman took the carriage lamps and went down to the foot of the garden where the cliff went sharp down to the sea. There was a steep path cut in the cliff, and down this they went. At the bottom, lying on the hard rock, they found the Captain, with Miss Molly in his arms quite dead, and his back was broken. He lived for three days, and he died with his hand in my dear lady’s. She never spoke one word of reproach; but he didn’t need it, poor man; his grief was terrible to see, they say. He must have stumbled and fallen sheer over. It’s six years ago now; my young lady was only three-and-twenty. Eh, it was a heavy sorrow for a young thing like that!”

Mrs. Urquhart’s voice broke, and she stopped. The minister was very white, he held out his hand to her, but did not speak. The Scotch understand each other. They have realized this great truth—that some things are unsayable. The minister held good Mrs. Urquhart’s hand in both his for two silent minutes, then he took his hat and went his way.

“He’s a grand young man yon!” said Mrs. Urquhart to herself, “he’ll make it up till her.”

But the young man in question felt that he was further off than ever from his divinity. The wall of unshared experience is high and impassable; we may break it down in places, but it stretches its gaunt length along life’s highway and we each of us must keep to our own side.

VII “BESIDE THE IDLE SUMMER SEA”

“I rather like that minister person,” said the Duke to Wiggins in his most patronizing voice, “he seems a decent chap.”

“He is,” ejaculated Wiggins with immense conviction; “he’s a splendid chap—a bit Scotchy, you know, but he’s awfully kind.”

“The mater likes him too, doesn’t she?”

“Oh, yes. He’s always with us, you see, living next door and that. He knows all the best places to fish, and he can build the most splendid castles with moats and secret passages and no end!”

The Duke turned his handsome head and smiled indulgently at Wiggins. “I bet he can’t shoot or play cricket much, or ride anything but a bike. You can’t remember father, Wiggins; he was a soldier, you know, and he used to say: ‘Ride straight, shoot straight, and speak the truth, and you’ll be a gentleman, sonny.’ An officer and a gentleman. I remember though it’s so long ago.”

The Duke’s eyes grew soft. He had loved that big handsome father of his with the uncomprehending, admiring love of a little-noticed child. The little daughter had been everything to Captain Burton, yet the Duke cherished his memory and rendered him a devotion greater than that he gave to the mother who understood him; a devotion which Mary took care should never be disturbed by any word of hers.

As Captain Burton lay dying he had lifted his weak arms and dragged her head down close to his face.

“Don’t tell the boys,” he whispered. “Let them think the best of me. Duke is a fine chap; he’ll make it up to you. I’ve been a beast and a fool, but I always loved you, Mary. Promise you won’t tell the boys.”

And Mary promised.

The Duke was a singularly handsome boy, with grave, beautiful manners. He never looked untidy or slovenly. Like his mother, he wore his clothes in such a way that he always seemed better and more suitably dressed than other people. He was rather a silent person, but gave one the impression that he was silent from choice, not because he had nothing to say.

He was very unmistakably a member of the “classes,” and though exceedingly urbane and gracious to what he was pleased to call mentally his “inferiors,” he was so because it would be ungentlemanly to be otherwise.

He would gravely assist a fishwife to raise her heavy creel to her shoulders, and lift his cap to her with a Hyde Park flourish when she started on her way. But he did so because he considered it the duty of a gentleman to assist women—not as Wiggins would have done, from a friendly interest in that particular fishwife. Slim, tall, and aristocratic, with oval face, straight nose, and big brown eyes, the Duke was a noticeable boy anywhere, and Mary was immensely proud of him.

He was good at most games, and quick to learn. He ferreted out a pony in the next village and rode about the country, to the admiration of the natives. He golfed on the gentlemen’s links and played a very good game for his age. He went fishing with the minister and Wiggins, and he bicycled with his mother.

Since the advent of her eldest boy, it seemed to the minister that there was a certain remoteness about Mary. Certainly her time was very much taken up. The Duke required other amusements than those afforded by the beach, a bucket, and a wooden spade. He expected and received the constant companionship of his mother. On several occasions the minister was allowed to join their bicycling expeditions. To watch Mary bicycle was a never-ending wonder to him. She never seemed to go fast; it was only when you rode after her that you found she was hard to catch. The minister always wondered why her skirts never seemed to bunch and blow as did those of other women. He knew nothing of tailors as a great artistic power, but he was keenly alive to the result of their labors in the grace and symmetry of her appearance.

The Duke also was a constant surprise, but for him the minister’s frank admiration was tempered by a subtle but searching discomfort in his society.

“Do you know,” he said ruefully one day to Mary, “that the Duke makes me conscious of my boots, and the lack of trees to keep them on? I never thought of it before, but I am sure now that it has been a serious omission.”

“The Duke is the descendant of generations of dandies, and has all the faults and the good qualities that belong to the class. In many respects the dandy is a limited person both for good and evil; certain social solecisms are, of course, impossible to him, but he generally is lacking in imagination. The Duke, for instance, is less sympathetic than Wiggins, but he is harder on himself also.”

“Can a woman be a dandy?” inquired the minister in a tone of grave interest.

Mary laughed. “Every woman of the world is more or less a dandy, but she takes the position less seriously than does a man. If in some directions our sense of proportion is undeveloped, it has arrived at perfection in matters of clothes.”

“I’m glad I can only wear one sort of clothes; it saves so much trouble, and I should be certain to get the wrong ones.”

“I think you would. Be thankful for your uniform; it is becoming!”

“It’s very hot and uncomfortable in summer. I almost feel I could echo Wiggins in his abuse of clothing.”

“Why don’t you wear flannels?”

“I do for tennis, but one can’t call on one’s parishioners in flannels; they’d think it casual and disrespectful.”

“So they would. Well, you must dree your weird!” Mary spoke lightly, but for the minister her last words had an ominous sound.

Presently they all halted “to give the bicycles a feed” as the Duke put it—the fact being that they had arrived at the foot of what was for Fife a very steep hill. The day was hot, and they had six more miles to do before they reached the East Neuk, whither they were escorting the Duke. Grass and the shade of trees looked inviting. Mary and the minister decided to rest, but the energetic Duke went off on an exploring expedition in an adjacent wood.

The minister and Mary sat quite silent for some minutes; then Mary said slowly:

“Mrs. Urquhart told you of my great trouble six years ago. I am glad. I wanted you to know, and I wanted you to know that I am glad.” Her voice was very soft, her eyes were bent on the grass.