Ah, these are memories only! memories only! for Cample Cleugh and Capel Linn are lost to me with my boyhood. No more am I the strong, able-bodied lover of the open, moving with firm, sure step among scenes which a master's touch has made immortal; but a poor, crippled, pain-racked invalid, as parochial in feeling as in outlook, sitting in an easy-chair by an attic fire, watching through a rain-washed window-pane a scene which fills me with forebodings and touches my heart to the very quick.
Down there in the courtyard, where the water in the imperfect pavement is lying in muddy pools, Tom Jardine, hatless, coatless, and regardless of the splashing rain, is walking to and fro like a lion in his cage. His face is set and white, his finger-tips clenched in the palm of his hand, and there is an anxious, troubled expression in his eye which recalls memories of unfortunate, harassed clients. For a moment he stands with feet apart and eyes dolefully fixed on the wet, sloppy flagstones. A door quietly opens, a tiny, smiling-faced figure darts through the rain, and in an instant two round, bare, chubby arms are encircling his knee, and a fair, curly head is nestling against his thigh. But there is no fatherly response to the loving embrace, no reply to the childish prattle. With a jerky wrench Tom frees himself from the wee, cuddling arms, and two wide-opened, surprised blue eyes follow him as again, in thoughtful measured tread, he walks up and down and up and down. Then red dimpled knuckles are pressed into these blue eyes, a sob breaks from a wounded little heart, and Tom comes to a sudden halt. In an instant his clouded face is wreathed in smiles and beams with loving solicitude. Bending down, he lifts the sobbing morsel; and as he disappears through the kitchen doorway with the precious burden in his strong arms and his hungry lips pressed against a soft red cheek, I say to myself, with a heavy, welling heart, 'Tom, you surely have your troubles, but as surely you have the antidote.'
CHAPTER V
Of late I have noticed that Betty, in the course of our frequent cracks, has with considerable tact and adroitness turned the topic of our conversation into channels matrimonial and domestic. I know full well that my state of celibacy is to her a subject of wonderment and speculation; but, though other cases similar to my own have been commented upon—threshed to chaff, I may say—she has never, until to-day, come to close quarters, and vested the matter with any direct personal application. How she manœuvred and worked her way round was distinctly characteristic, but not worth detailing; and I shall not readily forget the surprise, and, I might say, incredulity, with which she received my assertion that I had never married for the very simple reason that I had never been in love.
With her head thoughtfully to one side, she plied her needles assiduously. 'Ye're—let me see noo, ye'll be'–
'Thirty next birthday, Betty,' I promptly answered.
'Ay, imphm! Ye're quite richt; ye're juist exactly that, an' nae mair. Lovan me, imphm!' and she laughed and looked toward me. 'And, eh! d'ye mean to tell me—seriously noo—that ye're here at this time o' day withoot havin' met ony young leddy ye could mak' your wife?'
She was probing very near the quick, and I puffed vigorously at my pipe. 'Seriously and truthfully, Betty, I haven't yet met the woman I could marry.'
'Gosh me! that is maist extraordinar', Maister Weelum, an' you within a cat's jump o' thirty. It's almost inconceivable! It strikes me ye havena been lookin' aboot ye very eidently, for it's no' as if there was a scarcity o' womenfolk. There's aye routh to pick an' choose frae; at least, if there's no' in Edinbro, there's plenty in Thornhill. It may happen, though, that ye're ower parteecular, or it may be ye're lookin' oot for yin wi' a towsy tocher. Ministers an' lawyers, they tell me, ha'e a wonderfu' penetration in sniffin' oot siller, an' the faculty o' placin' their he'rt where the handy lies.'
'That may be, Betty; but I must be an exception to this rule among lawyers, for I can assure you monetary considerations would never influence me. More than that, Betty, I don't consider my case altogether hopeless, although I am nearly thirty. There's luck in leisure, and you mustn't forget that you can't command love. It has to come of its own free-will—unasked, as it were; and when it comes, rest assured it won't be a case of pounds, shillings, and pence with me. The fact is, Betty, I'm waiting.'
'Faith, ye're richt there; an' let me tell ye this, Maister Weelum, if ye wait much langer ye'll be gray-heided.'
'Yes, yes, Betty; but I mean I'm waiting for a particular young lady.'
'Oh, I see! Then ye ken o' yin?'
'Well, yes'–
'An' ye're waitin' on her growin' up, watchin' her as ye wad watch a Newton pippin ripenin'?'
'No, no! Betty, you misunderstand me. I know of a young lady; but—well, the truth is, I haven't met her yet—at least not in the flesh. Now, now, Betty, don't laugh at me till I explain.'
'Oh, Maister Weelum! I'll no' laugh. It strikes me it's mair a matter o' greetin'. But never mind; ca' your gird.'
'Well, Betty, to make a long story short, a few years ago I had a dream, and in that dream I saw a face and heard a voice—a woman's face and a woman's voice. I was very much impressed at the time, and that face has haunted me ever since. Among my friends I am not considered, in the generally accepted sense of the term, a woman's man. Strenuous work, facing hard matter-of-fact events, glimpses into the matrimonial tragedies of not a few lives, and the toll in time and thought which a growing business exacts have to an extent blighted the growth of the sentimentality which usually creeps into a man's heart between twenty and thirty. Somehow I have allowed matters to drift—to shape their own ends, or, as you would say, to work out their own salvation—in the full assurance, however, and with the hope strong within me, that some day the lady of my dream will come into my life, that I will again see that face and hear that voice. So far I have waited in vain; but I am not discouraged, for I feel my fate lies in my dream, and, as I say, I am waiting still.'
Betty resumed her knitting, for her needles had been idle while I was speaking.
'Imphm!' she said at length; 'an' that's hoo the land lies! Fancy that noo, a great, big, wiselike man like you hankerin' after the face o' a woman ye had seen when ye were sleepin', an' a' the time withoot a doot lettin' chances slip by ye o' catchin' what ye micht ha'e gruppit. Hoots! hoots! Maister Weelum, that's surely a senseless ploy. Mair than that, I've nae brew o' dreams, although I confess that there's much in Scripture hinges on them. They were the makin' o' Joseph, a loupin'-on-stane to Daniel, an' a godsend to the prophets on mair than ae occasion. There's nae gettin' away frae it; but for a' that, as I say, I've nae brew o' them. I mind aince o' dreamin' that I was sittin' doon to my tea, an' that I was eatin' the best bit o' boiled ham that ever I tasted in a' my life; an' the next mornin'—the very next mornin', Maister Weelum—my soo dee'd. Anither time—it was on a Setterday nicht, I mind—I dreamed that the kitchen lum was on fire; an' on the Sunday mornin', when I keekit up to see that it was a' richt, a young doo tummelt doon an' nearly frichtened the life oot o' me. An' there was Peggy Rae—Mrs Wallace, ye ken—a real nice, God-fearin' woman she is, an' a regular attender o' the prayer meetin's—weel, three times in ae nicht she dreamed that an auld auntie o' hers had come hame frae Ameriky an' gi'en her the present o' three hunner pounds; an' what think ye, Maister Weelum, she wasna weel through wi' her breakfast when her mither-in-law—an auld, Godless, totterin' heathen she was—was brocht to her door in a cairt, took to her bed in Peggy's wee back-room, an' was the plague o' her life for weel on for a dizzen years. Na, na, Maister Weelum; dreams are queer, contrary, unchancy things to sweer by. Tak' my advice, forget a' aboot your dream-leddy, as ye ca' her; cast your e'e aboot on what ye can see an' grup, an', losh me! a faceable-lookin' man like you needna grapple lang. But I'm daft, sittin' clatterin' here an' the tatties at the sypein'. Tak' tent o' what I say, though, Maister Weelum, for ye're nearin' that time o' life when an unmarried man stammers into a rut that he's no' easy got oot o'.'
Betty's warning gave me food for reflection for long after she left me—so much so, indeed, that as I quietly strolled along the Cundy road an hour or two afterwards, in the early afternoon, every chaffinch sang not to me but at me, and the burden of his song seemed to be, 'Tak' tent, tak' tent, and mind, do mind, the rut, rut, rut.'
In the sunshine too, amid nature in all its reality and activity, dreams and visions seemed strangely far away and unimportant. In my little room, with all its haunting associations, the story of my dream-lady had a becoming setting and an uncommonly substantial foundation. But here, with the breeze playing among the shimmering leaves of the gnarled poplars, the merry song of the birds in the plantation, and the sunshine lying on the white parallel-tracked road, it seemed more of an illusion, something very unreal and fanciful, and I actually blushed that I, a solid, stolid man of thirty, should have narrated such a story with so much gravity, and pinned to it a significance so personal and material.
Absorbed in thought, I ambled along, heedless alike of time or distance, until at length, with surprise at my strength and staying-power, I noted that I had walked almost to the Nithbank Wood. I felt neither tired nor inconvenienced; and when I considered that I had been only a month or two under Dr Grierson's care, I felt I had accomplished a very wonderful feat indeed. True, I had rested all the forenoon, and even now I was heavily supporting myself on two stout hazel staffs; yet never since my accident had I walked so far without fatigue, and I felt relieved and elated beyond words.
I halted for a little in the grateful shade of a spreading lime, feasting my eyes on scenery dear and familiar to me since boyhood—the little round wood at the Cundy foot, every tree in which I had climbed in quest of young squirrels; the clump of geans at Holmhill, whose wild purple-brown fruit was sweeter far than any coddled garden cherries; the sweep of the Nith at the Ellers, where I had so often 'dooked' and fished; and the mossy, wild-thyme carpeted 'howmes'—our playground of long ago. The murmuring Nith recalled to me the Auld Gillfit, with its gray-blue pebbled beach and its banks of upstanding raspberry-bushes and twisting, prickly brambles, and with extraordinary intensity the desire sprang up within me to view its charms once more.
Buoyed up by pleasurable anticipations, forgetful of my weakness and the uneven, rutted slope, I opened the little wicket, and, without misgiving, entered the wood.
Through the green, quivering foliage I caught glimpses here and there of rippling, dancing wavelets, nodding brown-headed segg grasses, and patches of shimmering, sunlit sands. With eyes strained to catch each well-known feature, I stumblingly descended the rugged bank, and very soon, more by luck than careful guidance, I reached my goal. A hedge of waving willows screened from me the Cundy stream; but its joyous rhythmic ripple, as it washed its sandy, pebbled bed, sounded in my ear like the crooning song my mother used to sing when I lay on her knee as a child.
This was the dear old spot, the bank where we lay after our 'dook,' baking our naked bodies in the sun's warm rays; here the little sandy isle where we played at pirates and castaways, cooking a guddled yellow trout over a 'smeeky' green-wood fire, and washing it down with lukewarm water from the stream; there, through the arches' span, the Doctor's Tarn, where the grayling used to lie; and, away beyond, the quiet grassy uplands of the Keir and the gray-green hills of Glencairn fading into the horizon.
Seating myself on the sun-browned turf, I lit my pipe. How long I sat I cannot say, for I was lost in reverie, and, truth to tell, just a little fatigued by my unusual exertions. Suddenly, however, it came to me that I wasn't alone. This fact was first proclaimed by a curling wreath of smoke on the other side of the willows. Then the aroma of a well-seasoned havana greeted my nostrils, and I rose to my feet to reconnoitre.
Walking a little upstream, I came to an opening in the willow-hedge, and there, on a sand-knoll at the foot of the bank, sat a man—a clergyman, judging by his dress; while a little in front of him, and almost on the water's edge, was a tall young lady standing before an easel. I saw the man in profile—elderly and gray-bearded he was; but the lady's back was turned to me, and she was much engrossed with her canvas.
I must have walked very noiselessly, as neither of them seemed aware of my presence; and this I counted strange, since I had made no attempt at stealthiness, and they were so near me that I could almost have touched them. I stood for a minute silent and undecided whether or not to make my presence known.
Before I could make up my mind, the artist ceased work, and, stepping a few feet to her right, studied the effect from the altered standpoint. This gave me the much-desired opportunity of seeing the picture, and I noted with peculiar pleasure that it was part of the view in which I had just been revelling. And the subject, difficult and ideal though it was, had been touched by no unworthy, amateurish hand. The old red-sandstone bridge, mellowed in a soft western light, was a centre round which much broad, skilful, loving work was evidenced. Oil was her medium—rather an unusual one, I thought, for a lady; and in the brief glance I got I noticed she had imparted to her canvas the true atmosphere, and that it contained in colour, drawing, and composition the essentials of really good work.
Her clergyman companion closed his book, relit his cigar, and consulted his watch. 'Much as I expect of this picture as a big draw at my bazaar, and anxious as I am to take it back with me to-morrow to Laurieston, I'm afraid I must call you to a halt. It's almost five o'clock.'
'Just one wee, wee minute,' the artist pleaded in a singularly sweet voice, which seemed to me far away, yet strangely familiar.
A few deft, bold touches, the while her small head critically swayed from one side to the other.
'Finis! finis!' she called at length; 'and I'm sorry to part with it, as I love this subject.'
With a face flushed with success, she turned to her companion. Then her eyes met mine, and I stood breathless and transfixed, for I had heard the voice, and was looking into the face, of my dream-lady!
The fact that I was in the presence of one who had mysteriously influenced me for the last ten years, one whom I had seen in my dreams but never met, thrilled me through and through, and I felt bewildered and benumbed. Had I been in normal health, doubtless I should have boldly faced a situation so psychologically strange and alluring; but in my present enfeebled condition I had no craving for the occult and romantic, and when I was freed from the spell of my dream-lady's eyes my first impulse was to retrace my steps and immediately regain the highroad.
I turned at once, in my haste struck my heel against one of my staffs, and fell heavily on the sloping pathway. My tweed hat fell from my head and rolled away down the bank, but I made no effort to recover it. With extreme difficulty I rose to my feet, and, gripping my two staffs in a strong grasp, started again to reach the crest of the wooded brow.
One of the peculiar effects of my accident is that I cannot raise my body on my toes. When going upstairs I have to turn sideways, and in an awkward, laboured fashion lift one foot over the other; and in negotiating this ascent, in which the same muscles were called into action, I had to take a zigzag course which demanded great caution and care, as there was no pathway, and the surface was treacherous and uneven.
I stood for a moment before I entered on my arduous undertaking, irresolute and hesitating, swayed by two conflicting impulses. Here was the fulfilment of my dream. Down there, a little beyond the hedge of willows, stood one the memory of whose sweet, pensive face had haunted me for years; whose living presence I had prayed for, yearned for; and whose influence, unconsciously exerted, had dominated my being and kept me unscathed in the midst of many temptations. It was the culmination of ten years' expectancy and waiting. A series of remarkable coincidences and strange providential workings had matured, and here was I spurning a friendly interposition of the Fates, and fleeing away as if I were a cowardly, shamefaced culprit. Why should I act so? Why should I not face the situation and await this flow in the tide of my affairs?
Then in thought I traversed the long, dreary road which during the past years I had walked alone. Hastily I reviewed the picture I had often conjured up of what our meeting would be, the contemplation of which had yielded me so much sacred, secret pleasure. Strange, I had always painted her as I had seen her a minute ago, even to the detail of pose and attitude. She—well, she was just my dream-lady, faithful in every respect to my imaginings; and in this picture, in response to her inviting smile of recognition, I was by her side, strong in body, resolute of will, sure of having at last met my affinity.
Strong in body! Resolute of will! Was I? Ah, the humiliation of the truth! Why, as I stood there, I was tottering on my feet like an octogenarian, convulsively clutching two hazel staffs for support, and so irresolute that I could scarce form an idea of what my next move would be. What a metamorphosis! what a pitiful spectacle!—an object surely for sympathy, but not likely to inspire love or admiration. No, no, she must not see me thus; and, quickly disposing of all other considerations, I turned my back upon fate and commenced the ascent.
Painfully I dragged myself along. Never once did I look backward, for I soon found that I had essayed a task requiring all my concentrated attention. Urged on by a consuming desire to get away, I at first made wonderful progress. But as the minutes passed, and the ascent became steeper, I felt my will-power diminishing, my strength gradually growing less, and my knack of happily negotiating ruts and obstacles deserting me at every step. Once I lost my balance and slipped down the slope; but I clutched the dried tufted grass with a frenzied hand, and crawled up on my knees to where my hazel had dropped. Again I started, and again I fell, this time losing grip of both my staffs and also any confidence in myself that was left. Flushed and breathless, I rose to my knees, and with feverish energy began to crawl uphill.
But my haste was my undoing, for with it my caution disappeared. Twice the wisps of grass by which I hauled myself broke in my hand, and I slipped down, each time losing any little headway I had made. Again I slipped. Then despair took hold of me, and, with limbs exhausted and relaxed, and eyes moistened by thoughts of weakness and acknowledged defeat, I sank to the ground.
For a few minutes I lay oblivious to everything around me. Then the sound of approaching footsteps and snatches of faintly audible conversation recalled me; and wearily and painfully I raised myself to a half-reclining, half-sitting position, with my back turned to the direction whence the sounds proceeded.
'Yes, it's a very decent hat,' said a voice which I recognised as that of the clergyman; 'a very decent, serviceable hat indeed; and I dare say it may as well be restored to its owner, though the drunken scamp deserves little consideration.'
'Oh, surely he's not drunk, Mr Edmondstone?'
'Most assuredly he is,' replied the cleric. 'While you were busy on your canvas he was doubtless lying somewhere hereabouts, sleeping off the effects. Believe me, no man would stagger about a braeface as he did unless he were under the influence of drink.'
'Dearie me, Mr Edmondstone! dearie me! are you not forgetting? Faith, Hope, Charity; and the greatest of these is Charity. Charity of judgment is beautiful, Mr Edmondstone. You are—or at least you should be—preaching that every Sunday. But in this case, whatever you presume, I, at all events, will maintain it was no drunken look he gave me. I admit his movements were suspicious; but—well, we'll soon find out. Please hand me his hat.'
'What! You surely don't mean to tell me you are going to speak to him?'
'Certainly. Why shouldn't I? Either you or I shall have to give him his hat; and–Sh! sh! I'm afraid he's hearing all we are saying.'
My dream-lady was quite right. I hadn't missed a single word that had passed; and—passive, but with the hot blood mounting my neck and cheek—I had without protest allowed the charge of drunkenness to be made against me. I felt too weak and humiliated to make any defence. What mattered it to me, after all, what they thought, so long as they kept at a distance from me and left me to my own resources? They might have passed me, and I would have made no sign that I was aware of their presence; but when I heard my dream-lady's decision to be the bearer of my old tweed hat I started violently and looked keenly toward her. With my chin resting on my tired, lacerated hands, I watched her carefully picking her steps along the tangled incline. The fact that there was no escaping an interview was borne home to me so forcibly that it led to speedy resignation, which not only relieved my pent-up feelings, but also enabled me to observe her dispassionately, and study, without bias, her face and form. What my estimate was I cannot tell, or, rather, I will not tell; but when she reached me, with a flushed face, a half-frightened, half-defiant look in her eye, and my old tweed hat in her hand, I felt she had been aware of my critical scrutiny and resented it, although my opinion, favourable or otherwise, was to her of no consequence whatever.
'Thank you very much for bringing my hat to me,' I said awkwardly; 'and thank you still more for your belief in my sobriety.'
She looked at me for a minute, the while all evidence of fear or distrust vanished from her face. Then she smiled—smiled a true smile, with parted lips that disclosed two rows of pearly teeth, and soft fringed eyes that showed in their depths trust in humanity and joy of life.
'Oh, please don't thank me for either,' she said, in a low, sweet-toned voice. 'Your hat is too good to lose. It is no trouble to return it; and as for the other—eh—matter—well'—and she looked round about her on the russet woods, the peaceful fields, and away to the west where the faint sunset glow was suffused along the Glencairn hills—'I could not bring my mind to associate such glories as these with any state so mean and degrading; and I'm glad—yes, I'm glad—that I was right.'
I bowed in silent gratitude.
'I don't want to appear inquisitive,' she continued; 'but would you mind telling me why you acted so peculiarly in zigzagging up this incline instead of taking the path by the boundary beech-hedge? And, oh dear, dear! your hands are bleeding! Have you no handkerchief? See, here is one;' and she pleadingly held out a dainty piece of lace cambric which I could easily have put inside my watch-case.
Refusing her kind offer with thanks, I produced a sonsy specimen of Betty's laundry-work, which I rolled round my right-hand thumb. 'It is more than kind of you to interest yourself in a stranger,' I said without looking up. 'The fact is, I haven't been feeling very fit lately. The effects of a nasty accident have kept me too much indoors; but to-day, feeling a little stronger than usual, I extended my walk, and very foolishly determined to visit a particular spot here which, through boyish associations, is very dear to me. As it happened, I found you occupying it; and not wishing to disturb you in your work, and eager to regain the highway, I over-exerted myself, lost my footing, my patience, courage, and my two sticks, and—and here I am! But I've got my second wind now. I'll rest here just a little longer, and everything will be all right.'
'Dearie me,' she said, and she caught a straying tress of dark hair and tucked it securely underneath her tam-o'-shanter, 'how very easily one may be deceived by appearances! Mr Edmondstone thought you were—well, you know; and I thought you had seen a ghost. I'm very sorry to know of your illness, and it is lucky, after all, that we were about. If you feel sufficiently rested, my friend and I will assist you up to the wicket.'
She offered her good services with such an ingratiating, confident air, anticipating neither denial nor protest, that I was downright sorry to say her nay.
'No, no,' I said nervously, and I am afraid ungraciously; 'I shall manage all right by myself. Thank you all the same. But there is one kind action you might do on my behalf. Down there, below that little knoll, and somewhere in the long grass, are my two hazels. I—I lost grip of them somehow. They rolled down, and I couldn't very well reach them again. Once I have them in my hands I'll feel myself again. Would you mind getting them for me?'
'Certainly,' she said with alacrity; and, slip-sliding down the few yards of irregular turf, she soon returned with my hazels. 'Are you quite sure now that I can be of no further service to you?' she asked, as she handed them to me.
God knows there was much she could do for me, and I yearned to tell her so; but I felt her presence beginning to dominate me; and as I was strangely out of humour with myself, and utterly incapable of acting the part I had in my day-dreams anticipated, I made haste to call up what remnant of will-power I had left.
'You have been exceedingly kind to me, a stranger,' I stammered. 'Believe me, I appreciate what you have done, and—good-afternoon.' And in confusion I raised my hat.
She looked inquiringly at me for a moment, and I saw speech trembling on her lip; but with a little effort she checked it. Then, with a smile and a slight inclination of her head, she walked slowly, and I imagined thoughtfully, toward her companion. I heard the wicket opening on its creaking hinges, and clicking as it closed in its iron fastening. Voices in animated conversation became fainter and fainter, rhythmic sounds of footsteps died away into silence, and I lay back on the bank among the brown wispy grass and the red autumn leaves with a joy and thankfulness in my heart I had never experienced before. And my joy was not born of the knowledge that my dream lady was a reality. Somehow, I had never doubted that. Rather was it that I had convinced myself that she possessed all the virtues and qualities with which I had vested her; and that, short as our interview had been, and commonplace as our conversation had proved, there was pervading it all the feeling, peculiar and indefinable, that what had taken place was merely a prelude to something more satisfying, a foretaste of greater happiness in store. What mattered it that I didn't know her name or where she had gone? Sufficient to me to know I was being guided aright, that the Fates were with me, and that by degrees the curtain would be drawn aside and my way made clear.
The birds trilled sweetly the last lingering notes of their lullaby, the Cundy stream crooned lovingly a song I had never heard before, and the glamour of the gloaming took possession of my soul.