V.—OUR BOY
THE boy must have had a father, and some day he may be a father himself, but in the meantime he is absolutely different from anything else on the face of the earth. He is a race by himself, a special creation that cannot be traced, for who would venture to liken his ways to the respectability of his father, or who would ever connect him with the grave and decorous man which he is to be. By-and-by, say in thirty years, he will preside at a meeting for the prevention of cruelty to animals, or make enthusiastic speeches for the conversion of black people, or get in a white heat about the danger of explosives in the house, or be exceedingly careful about the rate of driving. Meanwhile he watches two dogs settle their political differences with keen interest, and would consider it unsportsmanlike to interfere if they were fairly matched, and the sight of a black man is to him a subject of unfailing and practical amusement, if he can blow himself and a brother up with gunpowder, he feels that time has not been lost, and it is to him a chief delight—although stolen—to travel round at early morn with the milkman, and being foolishly allowed to drive, to take every corner on one wheel. He is skilful in arranging a waterfall which comes into operation by the opening of a door; he keeps a menagerie of pets, unsightly in appearance, and extremely offensive in smell in his bedroom. He has an inexhaustible repertory of tricks for any servant with whom he has quarrelled, and it is his pleasure to come downstairs on the bannisters, and if any one is looking to make believe that he is going to fall off and dash himself to destruction three floors below. His father is aghast at him, and uses the strongest language regarding his escapades; he wonders how it came to pass that such a boy should turn up in his home, and considers him what gardeners would call “a sport” or unaccountable eccentricity in the family. He is sure that he never did such things when he was a boy, and would be very indignant if you insinuated he had simply been a prophecy of his son. According to his conversation you would imagine that his early life had been distinguished by unbroken and spotless propriety, and his son himself would not believe for a moment that the pater had ever been guilty of his own exploits. The Boy is therefore lonely in his home, cut off from the past and the future; he is apt to be misunderstood and even (in an extreme case) censured, and his sufferings as a creature of a foreign race with all the powers of government against him would be intolerable had he not such a joy in living, and were he not sustained in everything he does by a quite unaffected sense of innocence, and the proud consciousness of honourable martyrdom.
As wild animals are best studied in their native states, and are much restricted in the captivity of a cage, so the Boy is not seen at his best in a middle-class home where he is sadly fettered by vain customs (although it is wonderful how even there he can realize himself). When you want to understand what manner of creature he is, you must see him on the street. And the boy in exedsis, and de profundis too, is a message-boy.
Concluding that his son has had enough of the Board School, and learning from his master that there was not the remotest chance he would ever reach a higher standard, his father brings him some morning to a respectable tradesman, and persuades the unsuspecting man to take him as message-boy. Nothing could exceed the modesty and demure appearance of the Boy, and the only fear is that he be too timid and too simple for his duty—that he may be run over by a cab or bullied upon the streets. Carefully washed by his mother, and with his hair nicely brushed, in a plain but untorn suit of clothes, and a cap set decently on his head, he is a beautiful sight, and he listens to his father's instructions to do what he is told, and his master's commandment that he is not to meddle with anything in the shop, in respectful and engaging silence. His father departs with a warning look, and his master gives him an easy errand, and the Boy goes out to begin life in a hard, unfriendly world, while one pities his tender youth.
The Boy has started with a considerable capital of knowledge, gathered at school, and in a few weeks he is free of the streets—a full-grown citizen in his own kingdom, and, if you please, we will watch him for an hour. His master has given him some fish, and charged him as he values his life to deliver them at once at No. 29, Rose Terrace, and the boy departs with conscientious purpose. Half way to his destination he sees in the far distance the butcher's boy, who also has been sent in hot haste to some house where the cook is demanding the raw material for luncheon. They signal to one another with clear, penetrating, unintelligible cries like savages across a desert, and the result is that the two messengers rendezvous at the corner of Rose Terrace. What they talk about no person can tell, for their speech is their own, but by-and-by under the influence of, no doubt informing, conversation, they relax from there austere labours and lay down their baskets. A minute later they are playing marbles with undivided minds, and might be playing pitch and toss were they not afraid of a policeman coming round the corner. It is nothing to them, gay, irresponsible children of nature, that two cooks are making two kitchens unbearable with their indignation, for the boy has learned to receive complaints with imperturbable gravity and ingenious falsehood. Life for him is a succession of pleasures, slightly chastened by work and foolish impatience. As they play, a dog who has been watching them from afar with keen interest, and thoroughly understands their ways, creeps near with cautious cunning, and seizing the chance of a moment when the butcher's boy has won a “streaky” from the fishmonger, dashes in and seizes the leg of mutton. If he had been less ambitious and taken a chop, he would have succeeded, and then the boy would have explained that the chop had been lost in a street accident in which he was almost killed, but a leg of mutton is heavy to lift and a boy is only less alert than a dog. The spoil is barely over the edge of the basket, and the dog has not yet tasted its sweetness, before the boy gives a yell so shrill and fearsome that it raises the very hair on the dog's back, and the thief bolts in terror without his prey. The boy picks up the mutton, dusts it on his trousers, puts it back in the basket, gives the fishmonger a playful punch on the side of the head, to which that worthy responds with an attempted kick, and the two friends depart in opposite directions, whistling, with a light heart and an undisturbed conscience.
If any one imagines that the boy will now hurry with his fish, he does not understand the nature of the race and its freedom from enslaving rule. A few yards down Rose Terrace he comes upon the grocer's boy and the two unearth a chemist's boy, and our boy produces a penny dreadful, much tom and very fishy, but which contains the picture of a battle swimming in blood, and the three sit down for its enjoyment. When they have fairly exhausted their literature the boy receives his fee, as the keeper of a circulating library, by being allowed to dip his finger carefully wetted before into a bag of moist sugar, and to keep all that he can take out, and the grocer's boy is able to close up the bag so skilfully that the cook will never know that it has been opened. From the chemist he receives a still more enjoyable because much more perilous reward, for he is allowed to put his mouth to the spout of a syphon and, if he can endure, to take what comes—and that is the reason why syphons are never perfectly full. It occurs to the chemist at this moment that he was told to lose no time in delivering some medicines, and so he departs reluctantly; the conference breaks up, and it seems as if nothing remained for the boy but to deliver the fish. Still you never know what may happen, and as at that moment he catches sight of a motor-car, it seems a mere duty to hurry back to the top of the terrace to see whether it will break down. It does of course, for otherwise one could hardly believe it to be a motor-car, and the boy under what he would consider a call of providence, hastens to offer assistance. Other boys arrive from different quarters, interested, sympathetic, obliging, willing to co-operate with the irritated motor-man in every possible way. They remain with him twenty-five minutes till he starts again, and then three of them accompany him on a back seat, not because they were invited, but because they feel they are needed. And then the boy goes back to Rose Terrace and delivers the fish, stating with calm dignity, that he had just been sent from the shop and had run all the way.
Things are said to him at the house by the cook, who is not an absolute fool, and things may be said to him by his master at the shop, who has some knowledge of boys, but no injurious reflection of any kind affects the boy. With a mind at leisure from itself he is able to send his empty basket spinning along the street after a lady's poodle, and to accompany this attention with a yell that will keep the pampered pet on the run for a couple of streets to the fierce indignation of its mistress. And the chances are that he will foregather with an Italian monkey boy, and although the one knows no Italian and the other knows no English, they will have pleasant fellowship together, because both are boys, and in return for being allowed to have the monkey on his shoulder, and seeing it run up a waterpipe, he will give the Italian half an apple which comes out of his pocket with two marbles and a knife attached to it. If he be overtaken by a drenching shower, he covers his head and shoulders with his empty basket, sticks his hands in his pockets, and goes on his way singing in the highest of spirits, but if the day be warm he travels on the steps of a'bus when the conductor is on the roof, or on a lorry, if the driver be not surly. If it be winter time, and there be ice on the streets, he does his best, with the assistance of his friends, to make a slide, and if the police interfere, with whom he is on terms of honourable warfare, he contents himself with snowballing some prudish-looking youth, who is out for a walk with his mother. All the same he is not without his ambitions in the world, and he carries sacred ideals in the secret of his heart. He would give all that he possesses,—five lurid and very tattered books, a penknife with four blades (two broken), nineteen marbles (three glass), and a pair of white mice—to be the driver of a butcher's cart. The boy is a savage, and although you may cover him with a thin veneer of civilization he remains a savage. There is a high-class school for little boys in my district, and those at a distance are driven home in cabs that they may not get wet in winter weather and may not be over-fatigued. A cab is passing at this moment with four boys, who have invited two friends to join them, and it is raining heavily. Two boys are on the box seat with the driver, and have thoughtfully left their topcoats inside in case they might get spoiled. There is a boy with his head out at either window addressing opprobrious remarks to those on the box-seat, for which insults one of them has just lost his cap, the other two are fighting furiously in the bottom of the cab, and will come out an abject spectacle. For you may train a dog to walk on its hind legs, and you may tame a tiger, but you cannot take the boyness out of a boy.
VI.—A RESIDUARY
I
EXCEPTIONS may be allowed in theory, at least, but the rule stands impregnable in reason and practice, that a wife should have the absolute control of the household, and that no male person should meddle, even as an irresponsible critic, with the servant department. There are limits to the subjection of the gentler sex which reserves the right to choose its acts of homage to the titular head of the family. Can anything be prettier, for instance, than the deference which women of very pronounced character will show to their husbands in some affairs? “Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have taken a stall at your charming bazaar, but my husband absolutely forbids me, and you know what a tyrant he is about my health,” or “You really must not ask my opinion about the Eastern Question, for I am shockingly ignorant of politics, but my husband knows everything, and I have heard him say that the Government has been very weak.” It would not, however, be wise for this favoured man to trespass too far on the almost Oriental deference of his wife, or hastily to suppose that because his word was useful in saving her from the drudgery of an unfashionable bazaar or the weary drone of a conversational bore, his was a universal infallibility. This sweet spirit of passive obedience will not continue if a rash man should differ from the house manager on the technical merits of a servant, for he will then be told that his views on all such matters are less than nothing and vanity.
No man knows, nor ever expects to know, what women talk about after they have left the dining-room in stately procession and secluded themselves in the parliament of the drawing-room; but it may be guessed that the conference, among other things, reviews the incredible folly of mankind in the sphere of household affairs. How it will not give the head of the family one minute's serious concern that the cook feeds her kinsfolk with tit-bits in the kitchen, provided that his toast be crisp and his favourite dish well cooked. How he would any day give a certificate of character to the housemaid, if he were allowed to perpetrate such an absurdity, simply and solely on the ground that his bath was ready every morning, and his shaving-water hot, while he did not know, nor seem to care, that the dust was lying thick in hidden corners. How he would excuse the waitress having a miscellaneous circle of admirers, provided she did not loiter at the table and was ingenious in saving him from unwelcome callers. They compare notes on the trials of household government; they comfort one another with sympathy; they revel in tales of male innocence and helplessness, till they are amazed that men should be capable of even such light duties as fall on them in their daily callings, and are prepared to receive them kindly as they enter the room with much diffidence and make an appeal by their very simplicity to a woman's protecting care.
John Leslie was devoted to his very pretty and very managing wife, and had learned wisdom, so that he never meddled, but always waited till his advice was invited. Like other wise husbands, he could read his wife's face, and he saw that afternoon, two days before Christmas, as soon as he entered the drawing-room, that there had been trouble in the household. His kiss was received without response; her cheeks had the suggestion of a flush; her lips were tightly drawn; and there was a light in her eyes which meant defiance. She stated with emphasis, in reply to a daily inquiry, that she was perfectly well, and that everything had gone well that day. When she inquired why he should suppose that anything was wrong, he knew that it had been a black storm, and that the end thereof was not yet.
“By the way, Flo,”—and Leslie congratulated himself on avoiding every hidden rock,—“I've completed my list of Christmas presents, and I flatter myself on one downright success, which suggests that I have original genius.”
“Do you mean the picture of Soundbergh School for Jack?” said Mrs. Leslie coldly. “I daresay he will be pleased, although I don't believe that boys care very much for anything except for games and gingerbread cakes; they are simply barbarians”; and as Leslie knew that his wife had been ransacking London to get a natty portable camera wherewith Jack might take bits of scenery, his worst-weather guess seemed to be confirmed.
“No, no, that was obvious, and I believe Jack will be fearfully proud of his picture,” replied Leslie bravely; “but I was at my wit's end to know what to get for old Margaret. You see, I used to give her pincushions and works of art from the Thames Tunnel when I was a little chap, and I bought her boas and gay-coloured handkerchiefs when I came up at Christmas from Oxford, and you know since she left the old home and settled with us eighteen years ago we have exhausted the whole catalogue.”
“You have, at least”; and having no clue, Leslie was amazed at his wife's indifference to the factotum and ruler of the household, whom the junior servants were obliged to call Mrs. Hoskins—“Mrs.” being a title of dignity, not of marriage—or Cook at the lowest, and who was called everything by her old boy John Leslie and his son Jack, from Maggie to Magsibus, and answered to anything by which her two masters chose to name her.
“Oh, you have been as keen as any one in the family about Magsy's present,”—and Leslie still clung to hope,—“but I've walked out before you all. What do you think of a first-class likeness of Spurgeon in an oak frame, with his autograph? You know how she goes on about him, and reads his sermons. It 'ill be hung in the place of honour in the kitchen, with burnished tin and brass dishes on either side. Now, confess, haven't I scored?”
“If you propose to put your picture on her table on Christmas morning, I fear you will be a day late, for Margaret has given up her place, and asked to be allowed to leave to-morrow: she wants to bid Jack good-bye before she goes,” and Mrs. Leslie's voice was iced to twenty degrees below freezing.
“What do you mean?” cried Leslie, aghast, for in all his dark imaginations he had never anticipated this catastrophe. “Maggie! our Meg! leaving at a day's notice! It's too absurd! You've... had a quarrel, I suppose, but that won't, come to anything. Christmas is the time for... making up.”
“You do not know much about household management, John,” Mrs. Leslie explained with much dignity. “Mistresses don't quarrel with servants, however much provoked they may be. If I have to find fault, I make a rule of doing so quickly and civilly, and I allow no reply. It was Margaret flung up her place with very unbecoming language; and you may be sure this time there will be no 'making up,' as you call it.
“What happened, Florence?” said John Leslie, with a note in his voice which a woman never treats with disrespect. “You know I do not interfere between you and the young servants, but Margaret has been with us since we married, and before that was for sixteen years in my father's house. We cannot part lightly; did she speak discourteously to you?”
“I do not know what a man may call discourtesy, but Margaret informed me that either she or the housemaid must leave, and that the sooner the housemaid went the better for the house.”
“But I thought that the housemaid was a Baptist too, and that Margaret and she got on capitally, and rather looked down on the waitress because she was a Methodist.”
“So they did for a time, till they found out that they were different kinds of Baptists, just imagine! They had such arguments in the kitchen that Lucy has had to sit in her pantry, and last evening Margaret called the housemaid a 'contracted Baptist,' and she said Margaret was a 'loose Baptist.' So Margaret told me that if she was a 'loose Baptist,' it was not good for the housemaid to stay in the house with her; and if I preferred a woman like that, she would go at once, and so she is going.” “When men break on theology in the smoking-room,” remarked Leslie, “the wise go to bed at once, and two women—and one of them old Margaret—on the distinctions among the Baptist denomination must be beyond words and endurance. It is natural that places should be given up, but not necessary that the offer should be accepted. What did you say to Margaret, Florence?”
“That she had secured the dismissal of five servants already within three years: one because she was High Church; a second because she was no Church; that big housemaid from Devon for no reason I could discover except that she ate too much, as if we grudged food; the last waitress because she did not work enough, as if that concerned her; and the one before because she had a lover Margaret did not approve, and that I did not propose to lose a good housemaid because she was not the same sort of Baptist as Margaret.
“It is very nice and romantic to talk about the old family servant,” continued Mrs. Leslie with a vibrant voice, “and I hope that I have not been ungrateful to Margaret, but people forget what a mistress has to suffer from the 'old family servant,' and I tell you, John, that I can endure Margaret's dictation no longer. She must leave, or... I must”; and when his wife swept out of the room to dress for dinner, Leslie knew that they had come to a crisis in family life.
II
“How are you, mummy?” and Jack burst in upon the delighted household gathered in the hall with a trail of loosely packed luggage behind him, and a pair of skates he had forgotten to pack altogether, round his neck. “I say, that's a ripping dress you have on. Cusack, our house 'pre,' says yours is the prettiest photo he ever saw. You're looking fit, pater, but you must come a trot with me, or you'll have a pot soon. Jolly journey? Should rather think so! dressed old Swallow up in a rug, and laid him out on a seat; people thought he had small-pox, and wouldn't come in; four of us had the place to ourselves all the way: foxey, wasn't it? Cold, not a bit. We shoved every hot-water pan in below the seats, and the chaps put more in at every stop, till we had eight in full blast.
“Look out, cabby, and be kind to that hamper with my best china. What is it? Oh, that's some really decent booze for the festivities—three dozen Ripon stone ginger; and there's a dozen among my shirts. Can't get that tipple in the South. How are you, Lucy and Mary? I've got a pair of spiffing caps for you; do for church if you like. But where is the youthful Marguerite? She used to be always dodging round, pretending that she was just passing by accident. Dinner ready? All right; I'm pretty keen, too. Tell Magsibus I'll be down after dessert with a brimming bowl of stone ginger.
“Hello, old lady! As you didn't come up to welcome the returning prodigal at the door, he's come down to give you his blessing. It's all right, Mag, I was only fooling. You daren't have taken your eye off that pudding one minute, I know. It was A 1; best thing you ever did, and awfully good to have it for the first night.
“That gingerbread you sent took the cup this term, and no second. Fellows offered to do my lines for me, and sucked up to me no end just to get a slice. Ain't that the tin up there you make it in? Chap next study had a thing he called gingerbread—feeblest show you ever saw—burnt crust outside and wet dough inside.
“There's the old brass jam-pan, Peg, ain't it? Do you remember when Billy Poole and I used to help at the boiling, and get the skim for our share? Billy's won a scholarship at Cambridge; youngest chap to take it, and is a howling Greek swell, but you bet he hasn't forgot that hot jam. Not he; was asking for you last week. I'll get him here next autumn before he goes up, and we'll have a jam blow-out.... What's wrong, Magsy?
“Don't blub. Tell me who's been hitting you. Is it those two young fools? The mater will soon settle their hash. Here's my handkerchief. There, now you're all right, ar'n't you?”
“It's really silly of me, Master Jack, and I ought to be ashamed of myself, at my age too, but it was you speaking of next year. I thought perhaps your mother had told you that... I am leaving tomorrow.”
“Going to leave us and your home?” and Jack sat down on the kitchen table in stark amazement. “Where would you go to, Magsy? Why, you nursed me when I was a kid, and you knew the pater when he was a fellow at school. Why, you couldn't get on without us, and, look here, this circus can't be worked without you.
“If you don't feel fit for the cooking,—and it must be a beastly stew over the fire,—mother'ill get another hand, and you'll just order her round and have a good time.” But Margaret sat with sad, despairing eyes, looking straight before her, and making no sign.
“You couldn't do it, Magsibus,” and the lad came over and put his arm round her; “it would be too mean. Didn't you promise to wait and start house with me, the same as you did with father? and now you calmly announce that you are going to set up for yourself, and be a lady. Oh, you treacherous, wicked woman!”
“Master Jack, I have not a relative living, and I couldn't go to another place—I've been too long with one family—four-and-thirty years—and I don't know what I'll do without the sight of you, for my heart has no portion outside this house on earth; but I must go, I cannot do otherwise, I must go.
“You see, I'm getting old, dear, and I've been so long here that I forget it's not my own house—God knows that I would die for you all—and I have a temper, and I shall be... a trouble and not a help. Your mother has been a good mistress to me, and been kinder to me than I have been to her. I'll pray for you all as long as I live, and I would like to... see you sometimes; but I must go, Master Jack, I must go.”
III
“It seems to me, Flo,” and Leslie stretched out his legs in the warmth, “the chief good of easy circumstances is being able to afford a wood fire in one's bedroom,—that and books. Do you remember that evil-smelling oil-stove in our little house at Islington? By the way, did I tell you that I ran out one afternoon last week, when I had an hour to spare, and paid an outside visit to our first home. It looked rather forlorn, and so small and shabby.”
“It was the dearest little house when we lived in it, John,” and Mrs. Leslie saw wonderful things in the firelight; “and when you were at the office I used to go from room to room, arranging and dusting and admiring.”
“Yes, but you also had the most toothsome evening meals ready at eight p.m. for a struggling colonial broker, and used to dress perfectly, and did it all on next to nothing.”
“Two hundred and twenty-two pounds five shillings and threepence—that, sir, was the first year's income. Don't you remember making up the book, and finding we had thirty pounds over; but, then, Jack, we had... a perfect servant.”
“Poor Margaret! what an interest she took in our daring enterprise! By the way, your memory is better than mine, wife: didn't we tell her how the balance stood, and she was the best pleased of the three?”
“'Praise God!' she cried, 'I knew, Mr. John, you did right to trust and to marry, and some day I'll see you in a big house, if God will'; and then you told her to bring up her missionary box and you gave her a sovereign, and when she put it in, her hand was shaking for joy. Her temper has got masterful since she grew old, and she is aggravating; but I know she's a good woman.”
“Yes, Meg wouldn't have left us if we had been down on our luck: I believe she would have seen us through and gone without wages”; and Leslie spoke with the tone of one hazarding a wild speculation.
“You believe, John!” clever women are sometimes befooled. “Why, have you forgotten that winter when you lost so heavily, and it looked as if we would have to go into rooms, how Margaret wanted to go out cooking to help the family, and she would have done it had not things taken a turn? Whatever be her faults,—and she has been provoking,—she is a loyal soul.”
“Well, we only had one bad illness, Flo, and I'll never forget the mornings when I came from my lodgings and stood on the street, and you told me what kind of night Jack had had, and the days when I toiled at the office, and you fought scarlet fever at home. You were a brave woman—without a nurse, too.”
“Without what—for shame, John!—when Maggie sat up all night and worked all day, and was so clever that the doctor said she had saved Jack's life—well, perhaps be admitted that I helped, but she did more than I could—I would rather have let twenty housemaids go than see Maggie leave, John, if she had given me the chance.”
“Margaret always had a temper, Flo, even in the old days when I was a boy, and now she's fairly roused.”
“It isn't temper at all now, John, or I would not be so vexed: it's her goodness which will drive her out in the end, and she'll never know one day of happiness again. She told me to-night that she was sure that there would always be trouble between her and the other servants, and as she had tried to serve us well when she was younger she would not make our home unhappy in her old age. Jack pleaded with her, and I—I nearly cried; she was quite affected, too, but she is immovable.”
“Well, we can do no more, and you mustn't blame yourself, Flo: it has just been a smash; and if she does go, we must see that she be made comfortable in her last years. But I wish old Margaret were not leaving us on Christmas Eve. Jack is very sick about it, and I rather suspect that he was crying when I looked into his room just now; but he pretended to be asleep, and I couldn't insult a fellow in the fifth form with remarks.”
IV
When the Leslies set up house, eighteen years before, Margaret received them on their return from their ten days' wedding tour in the Lake District, and she was careful to ask in the evening whether Mr. John would like prayers before or after breakfast next morning. She also produced a book of family prayers, which she had purchased in anticipation of the sole difficulty which is understood to prevent the majority of male householders from having worship in their homes, and asked her young master and mistress to accept it from her. So it came to pass that owing to Margaret there were always morning prayers at the Leslies'; and in observance of a custom begun when there were just the three in the little house of Islington, fighting the battle of life together, the chapter was read round, each person taking one verse in turn. To-night Leslie divided his time between short snatches of sleep, when he dreamt of funerals in which Margaret departed sitting beside the driver of the hearse, while a mourning coach followed with her luggage on the roof, and long periods of wakefulness when he regarded next morning's prayers with dismay. Was there a special prayer for a servant leaving her household after eighteen—no, thirty-four years' faithful duty; and if there was not, could he weave in a couple of sentences among the petitions? At half-past six he was certain that he could not, and was ashamed at the thought that with that well worn prayer-book of Margaret's before him he would allow her to depart without a benediction, when he was visited quite suddenly, he declares, with the most brilliant inspiration of his life. He leaped from bed and lit the gas in hot haste, as poets are said to do when the missing word to rhyme with Timbuctoo flashes upon the mind.
“Florence, please tell me something”; and Mrs. Leslie saw her husband standing by her bed in poorly concealed excitement. “Where are those words that were sung at the sacred concert: 'Intreat me not to leave thee'? I want to know at once; never mind why. Ruth? Thanks so much,” and the noise he made in his bath was audible through the wall, and was that of a man in hot haste.
When Mrs. Leslie came down, her husband had a marker in the Bible projecting six inches, and was checking certain calculations on a sheet of paper with much care.
“Morning, Jack—slept well—not very? That's right, I mean I'm very sorry, must have been the pudding. Not there, for any sake; sit here, and, let me see—Florence, where are you wandering to? Take this chair. Six, seven, eight... seventeen, yes, that's Margaret. Now ring the bell.” And Mrs. Leslie could only look at Leslie in silence, while Jack felt that the firmament was being shaken that day, and one catastrophe more did not matter.
“We shall read,” said the head of the household in a shaky voice, “from—eh—the—eh—Book of Ruth, the first chapter and the sixth verse”; and as soon as his wife saw the passage she understood, and so did Margaret.
Round the circle went the verses—Leslie very nervous lest he should have miscalculated—till Jack read:
“'And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'”
Then it came to Margaret, and she began bravely, but soon weakened: “Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried... the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death... part...”
“Let us pray,” said Leslie; and it is his fixed belief that, having lost the place, he read the prayer for the close of the year and making an attempt to right himself landed in a thanksgiving for the gift of a new-born child; but nobody is certain and nobody cared.
“I ought to go,” said Margaret, standing very white by the sideboard after the other servants had left the room, “and it would be better for you all, whom I love, that I should go; but... I cannot, I can...”
“Dear old Magsibus,” and Jack had her round the waist before she could say “not” again, or even explain, as she did afterwards, how good a woman the housemaid was, and how much she would miss her; and as Mrs. Leslie thought of the days they had been together, the saving the lad from death and many another deed of loyal, ungrudging service, she did that which was contrary to every rule of household discipline. But Leslie could not have seen his wife kiss Margaret, for his back was turned, and he was studying the snow-covered garden with rapt attention.
VII.—A RACONTEUR
YOU must excuse me the gaucherie of a compliment,” I said to Bevan in the smoking-room, after a very pleasant dinner, “but you have never been more brilliant. Five stories, and each a success, is surely a record even in your experience.”
“It is very good of you to appreciate my poor efforts so highly. I felt it a distinct risk to attempt five in one evening—six is the farthest limit sanctioned by any raconteur of standing. You can always distinguish an artist from a mere amateur by his severe reserve. He knows that an anecdote is a liqueur, and he offers it seldom; but the other pours out his stuff like vin ordinaire, which it is, as a rule, the mere dregs of the vine. Did you ever notice how a man will come back from Scotland in autumn, and bore companies of unoffending people with a flood of what he considers humorous Scottish stories? It is one of the brutalities of conversation. What irritates me is not that the material is Scottish, for there are many northern stories with a fine flavour; it is the fellow's utter ignorance of the two great principles of our art.”
“Which are?”
“Selection and preparation,” said Bevan, with decision. “One must first get good stuff, and then work it into shape. It is amazing how much is offered and how little is of any use. People are constantly bringing me situations that they think excellent, and are quite disappointed when I tell them they are impossible for the purposes of art. Nothing can be done with them, although of course another artist in a different line might use them. Now I have passed several 'bits' on to Brown-Johnes, who delivers popular lectures. The platform story is scene-painting, the after-dinner miniature.”
“May I ask whether you are ever taken in, as it were, with your material, and find it 'give' after it has been manufactured, like rotten yarn or unseasoned wood?”
“Rarely; one's eye gets to be trained so that you know a promising subject at sight, but then comes the labour. I've heard a man bore a dinner-table to the yawning point with a story that had some excellent points in it, but he had taken no trouble, perhaps had no insight.”
“And you succeeded with it...?”
“It is, in my humble judgment, as good a story of its kind now as you would wish to hear, and it bears improvement, which is a good sign. A really high-class story will take years to perfect, just as I am told by clergymen that a sermon only begins to go after it has been preached twenty times.”
“You have been working on that Shakespeare bit, by the way; I noticed at least one new touch this evening which was excellent.”
“Now that is very gratifying,” and Bevan was evidently pleased; “it is a great satisfaction to have one's work appreciated in an intelligent manner; perhaps you are the only one present who saw any difference.
“What I think I like best”—and he tapped his snuff-box in a meditative way—“is to get an old, decayed, hopeless story, and restore it. Breaking out a window here, adding a porch there, opening up a room, and touching up the walls—it is marvellous what can be done. Besides new drains,” he added, with significance, “the sanitary state of some of those old stories is awful. You feel the atmosphere at the door—quite intolerable, and indeed dangerous.”
“Then you do not think that indecency...?”
“No, nor profanity. Both are bad art; they are cheap expedients, like strong sauces to cover bad cooking. It sounds like boasting, but I have redeemed one or two very unpleasant tales, which otherwise had been uninhabitable, if I may trifle again with my little figure, and now are charming.”
“You rather lean, one would gather, to old tales, while some of the younger men are terrified of telling a 'chestnut,' always prefacing, 'This must be well known, but it is new to me; say at once if you have heard it.'”
“Most humiliating, and quite unworthy of an artist. Heard it before!” and the old gentleman was full of scorn. “Imagine a painter apologizing for having taken a bend of the Thames or a Highland glen some man had used before. Of course, if one makes a copy of a picture and exhibits it as his own, that is fraud, and the work is certain to be poor. One must respect another artist's labour, which is the ground of his copyright. But if one makes a 'bit' of life as old as Aristophanes or Horace his own, by passing it through his own fancy and turning it out in his own style, then it is ever new. Then there is the telling! There are musicians who can compose, but who cannot play, and vice versâ. So with our art, there are story-tellers and story-makers. The former can suffer no wrong, for they are self-protected, but the latter have never been protected as they deserve in the fruit of their brains. You will see at once that, if I am right, the ownership of an anecdote is quite beyond dispute. The original material is really for the most part common property, and usually very poor property—prairie land, in fact. Personal rights come in when one has put capital into the land, has cleared and ploughed and sown it; then it's his own, and he is entitled to fence it, and he cannot be dispossessed except on fair terms.”
“Which would be?”
“Well, that depends. He might sell to an editor, or he might give the use of it to a friend. Personally, as an artist of now thirty years' standing, I do not part with my work; it may be an old-fashioned prejudice, but I don't like to let it go to the public.”
“But to a friend?”
“Of course that is different; still, how few can be trusted. Now I once gave Higginbotham a very nice little thing of French extraction, but not too subtle, with just enough body to suit our palate. He beard me tell it three times in exactly the same form, and I pledged him to make no changes, for his hand is heavy. Would you believe me?”—and my friend sat up in his indignation—“he gave it in my presence—but that did not matter—and left out the best point, which I now think he had never seen. Life has various trials in store for us as times go on,” and Bevan leant back again. “Some are greater, some are less, but among our minor vexations I know none like sitting at one end of a table and making talk with your partner, while a rank amateur at the other end mangles one of your pet anecdotes.”
“Torture, I should think; but isn't it rather trying when people miss the point altogether or ask stupid questions?”
“Artists must take their chance of that, and one is careful; besides, I've distinctly enjoyed such remarks,” and he looked quite genial. “It's like a painter hearing the people criticize the pictures on a free day. Once or twice I've got a very happy addition to a story in that way. After all, the main end of a raconteur must be to give pleasure. Yes”—and he began to glow—“no art is wholesome which lives for itself or for a professional class. Art must be a criticism of life and an aid to better living. No one can tell how much story-telling has contributed to the brightness and elevation of life. How? By correcting foibles, by explaining human nature, by destroying cant, by infusing good humour, by diminishing scandal, by—but I remind myself that a raconteur ought never to be excited or eloquent. He may, however, be a philanthropist, as it would appear. Do you know,” with a tone of great delight, “that I was once asked by a physician to call upon one of his patients, a mutual friend, and spend an hour with him, as a... tonic, in fact. It was after influenza, and the convalescent began by asking me whether I would distribute a sum of money among the poor. 'I'm not sure what I'm dying of; either peritonitis or pneumonia, but I'm glad to see you, Bevan, and you will do this little kindness for me'—those were his affecting words. 'Certainly,' I said, and that led me to give him a trifle from Devonshire—excellent place for stories—which seemed to interest him. I only told four stories—for he was rather weak, having had a slight touch of bronchitis—and he is pleased still to thank me,” and Bevan nodded with much satisfaction.
As I looked at him, so filled with the pride of his art, the time seemed to have come for a question that had long been in my mind. But it was necessary to be careful.
“What, may I ask, Mr. Bevan, do you feel about the matter of... well, you won't misunderstand me... of accuracy?”
“You mean whether is there any difference between giving evidence in a witness-box and relating an anecdote. Everything. The one is a land surveyor's plan, and must be correct to an inch. The other is a picture, and must interpret nature. The one is a matter of fact, the other a work of art. Imagine the folly”—and the good man rose to his feet—“if one should demand to know whether the figures in a historical painting stood exactly so and were dressed in those particular colours; we should think the man mad. A story is a miniature novel, shot through with humour, a morsel of the irony of things, a tiny comedy, and for it there is but one rule of judgment—does it represent the spirit of life?”
“What then do you think of one who should certify an anecdote as a fact?”
“That he did not know his craft, for if the tale has no merit, then it is little compensation to tell us it happened; if it has merit, we are sure it ought to have happened.”
“And if one should interrupt a raconteur as he approached his point, and should inquire whether the thing be true?”
“I am a merciful man,” said the venerable artist, “but my conviction is that he ought to be shot.”
VIII.—WITH UNLEAVENED BREAD
RABBI SAUNDERSON, minister of Kilbogie, had been the preacher on the fast day before Carmichaele's first sacrament in the Glen, and, under the full conviction that he had only been searching out his own sins, the old man had gone through the hearts of the congregation as with the candle of the Lord, till Donald Menzies, who had all along suspected that he was little better than a hypocrite, was now fully persuaded that for him to take the sacrament would be to eat and drink condemnation to himself, and Lauchlan Campbell was amazed to discover that a mere Lowland Scot like the rabbi was as mighty a preacher of the law as the chief of the Highland host. The rabbi had been very tender withal, so that the people were not only humbled, but also moved with the honest desire after better things.
Although it was a bitter day, and the snow was deep upon the ground, the rabbi would not remain over-night with Carmichael. Down in Kilbogie an old man near fourscore years of age was dying, and was not assured of the way everlasting, and the rabbi must needs go back through the snow that he might sit by his bedside and guide his feet into the paths of peace. All that night the rabbi wrestled with God that it might be His good pleasure to save this man even at the eleventh hour; and it was one of the few joys that visited the rabbi in his anxious ministry, that, before the grey light of a winter morning came into that lowly room, this aged sinner of Kilbogie had placed himself within the covenant of grace.
While he was ministering the promises in that cottage, and fighting a strong battle for an immortal soul, Carmichael had sent away his dogs, and was sitting alone in the low-roofed study of the Free Kirk manse, with the curtains drawn and the wood fire lighting up the room—for he had put out the lamp—but leaving shadows in the corners where there were no books, and where occasionally the red paper loomed forth like blood.
As the rabbi preached that day, the buoyancy and self-confidence of youth had been severely chastened, and sitting in the manse pew, curtained off from the congregation, the conscience of the young minister had grown tender. It was a fearful charge to lay on any man, and he only four-and-twenty years of age, the care of human souls; and what manner of man must he be who should minister unto them after a spiritual sort the body and blood of Jesus Christ? How true must be his soul, and how clean his hands! For surely, if any man would be damned in this world, and in that which is to come, it would be the man who dispensed the sacrament unworthily.
As he sat in the firelight the room seemed to turn into a place of judgment. Round the walls were the saints of the Church Catholic, and St. Augustine questioned him closely regarding the evil imagination of youthful days, and Thomas à Kempis reproached him because he had so often flinched in the way of the holy cross. Scottish worthies whose lives he had often read, and whose sayings had been often quoted from the pulpit, sat in judgment upon him as to his own personal faith and to his own ends in the ministry. Samuel Rutherford, with his passionate letters, reproached him for his coldness towards Christ; and MacCheyne's life, closed in early manhood, and filled with an unceasing hunger for the salvation of human souls, condemned him for his easy walk and conversation; and Leighton, the gentlest of all the Scotch saints, made him ashamed of bitter words and resentful feelings. And from the walls the face of his mother's minister regarded him with wistful regret, and seemed to plead with him to return to his first love and the simplicity of his mother's faith.
The roof hung heavy over his head, and the walls took a deeper red, while the burning logs reminded him of the consuming fire. An owl hooted outside—a weird and mournful cry—and to the mind of a Celt like Carmichael it seemed to be a warning to set his house in order. He crossed to the window, which faced west, and commanded a long stretch of Glen, and, standing within the curtain, he looked out upon the clear winter night. How pure was the snow, putting all other white to shame! How merciless the cold light of the moon, that flung into relief the tiniest branches of the trees! “Holiness be-cometh thine house, O Lord, for ever.” And he was a minister of the Word and sacrament! The people had been called unto repentance, but he needed most of all the contrite heart. The people had been commanded to confess their sins; it were time that he began.
He knelt at his table, bending his head over the very place where he wrote his sermons, and as he prayed before God the sins of early years came up before him, and passed as in a woful procession—ghosts which had risen from their graves, in which they had long been hid beneath the green grass and the flowers. There remained nothing for him but to acknowledge them one by one with shame and confusion of face, and behold! as he did so, and humbled himself before the Lord, they vanished from his sight till he hoped that the last of them had come and gone. When it seemed to him as if one had lingered behind the rest, and desired to see him quite alone, and when the shroud fell down, he looked into the face of one who had been his friend in college days, and then he knew that all which had gone before was only a preparation, and this was now his testing time.
It was a mighty college to which Carmichael had belonged, and the men thereof had been lifted high above their fellows, and among them all there had been none so superior as this man who was once his friend. Some he looked down upon because they were uncouth in manner; and some because they were deficient in scholarship; and others, who were neither ill-bred nor unlearned, he would have nothing to do with because they had not the note of culture, but were Philistine in their ideas of art and in their ignorance of “precious” literature.
In spite of all this foolishness, the root of the matter was in Frederick Harris. No man had a keener sense of honour, no man was more ready to help a fellow-student, none worked harder in the mission of the college, none lived a simpler life. Yet because he was without doubt a superior person, even beyond all other superior persons—and the college was greatly blessed with this high order of beings—certain men were blind to his excellences, and cherished a dull feeling of resentment against him; and there were times when Carmichael dared to laugh at him, whereat Harris was very indignant, and reproached him for vulgar frivolity.
One day a leaflet was found in every class-room of the college, and in the dining-hall, and in the gymnasium, and in every other room—even, it is said, in the Senate-room itself. Its title was, A Mighty Young Man, and it was a merciless description of Harris in verse, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, in all his ways and words—coarse and insulting, but incisive and clever. He was late in entering the Hebrew class-room that morning, and was soon conscious that the students were interested in other things besides the authorship of the Pentateuch. Opposite him lay the poem, and, after he had read the first verse, his face turned to a fiery red, and then he left the class-room with much dignity.
It had been better for himself, and it would have saved much sorrow to Carmichael, if Harris had treated the poem with indifference; but, like many other people who allow themselves the luxury of despising their fellow-creatures, he was morbidly sensitive when his fellow-creatures turned on him. For some reason, known only to himself, he concluded that Carmichael had written the poem, and demanded an apology with threats; and Carmichael, who had thought the thing in very poor taste, and would have been willing to laugh at it along with Harris, was furious that he should have been supposed guilty of such a breach of friendship. So, being a Celt, who acts by impulse rather than by reason, he told Harris in the Common Hall that, if he supposed that he had written the sheet, he was at liberty to do so, and need not expect either a denial or an apology.
They never spoke again, nor met except in a public place, and when Carmichael was ordained minister in the Glen, Harris joined a mission settlement in one of the lowest quarters of a southern city.
From time to time Carmichael read greedily of his heroic service, and the power which he was acquiring—for he had never been haughty with poor people, but ever with them most gentle and humble. Again and again it had been laid on Carmichael to write to his old friend, and express regret for his pride, and assure him of his innocence in the matter of the squib, but he thought that Harris ought first to write to him, and then, if he did, Carmichael meant to telegraph, and invite his friend to come up to the Glen, where they would renew the fellowship of former days. But Harris gave no sign, and Carmichael had no need to telegraph.
Carmichael rose from his knees, and opened a drawer in his writing-table, and from below a mass of college papers took out a photograph. The firelight was enough to show the features, and memory did the rest. They had once shared rooms together, and a more considerate chum no man could have. They had gone on more than one walking tour together, and never once had Harris lost his temper; they had done work together in a mission school, and on occasion Harris had been ready to do Carmichael's as well as his own; they had also prayed together, and there was no pride in Harris when he prayed.
What were his faults, after all? A certain fastidiousness of intellect, and an unfortunate mannerism, and a very innocent form of self-approbation, and an instinctive shrinking from rough-mannered men—nothing more. There was in him no impurity, nor selfishness, nor meanness, nor trickiness, nor jealousy, nor evil temper. And this was the man—his friend also—to whom he had refused to give the satisfaction of an explanation, and whom he had made to suffer bitterly during his last college term. And just because Harris was of porcelain ware, and not common delf, would he suffer the more.
He had refused to forgive this man his trespass, which was his first transgression against him, and now that he thought of it, hardly to be called a transgression. How could he ask God to forgive him his own trespasses? and if he neither forgave nor was forgiven, how dare he minister the sacrament unto his people? He would write that night, and humble himself before his friend, and beseech him for a message, however brief, that would lift the load from off his heart before he broke bread in the sacrament.
Then it came to his mind that no letter could reach that southern town till Saturday morning, and therefore no answer come to him till Monday, and meanwhile who would give the people the sacrament, and how could he communicate himself? For his own sin, his foolish pride and fiery temper, would fence the holy table and hinder his approach. He must telegraph, and an impression took hold upon his heart that there must be no delay. The clock in the lobby—an eight-day clock that had come from his mother's house, and seemed to him a kind of censor of his doings—struck three, for the hours had flown in the place of judgment, and now the impression began to deepen that there was not an hour to be lost. He must telegraph, and as the office at Kilbogie would be open at five o'clock to dispatch a mail, they would send a wire for him. It would be heavy walking through the snow, but the moon was still up, and two hours were more than enough.
As he picked his way carefully where the snow had covered the ditches, or turned the flank of a drift, he was ever grudging the lost time, and ever the foreboding was deeper in his heart that he might be too late, not for the opening of Kilbogie post-office, but for something else—he knew not what. So bravely had he struggled through the snow that it was still a quarter to five when he passed along sleeping Kilbogie; and so eager was he by this time that he roused the friendly postmaster, and induced him by all kinds of pleas, speaking as if it were life and death, to open communication with Muirtown, where there was always a clerk on duty, and to send on to that southern city the message he had been composing as he came down through the snow and the woods:
“It was not I. I could not have done it. Forgive my silence, and send a message before Sunday, for it is my first sacrament in Drumtochty.
“Your affectionate friend,
“John Carmichael.”
It was still dark when he reached the manse again, and before he fell asleep he prayed that the telegram might not be too late, but as he prayed, he asked himself what he meant, and could not answer. For the Celt has warnings other men do not receive, and hears sounds they do not hear.
It was noon next day, the Saturday before the sacrament, and almost time for the arrival of the preacher, before he awoke, and then he had not awaked unless the housekeeper had brought him this telegram from “Mistress Harris, St. Andrew's Settlement, Mutford, E.”:
“My son Frederick died this morning at eight o'clock of malignant fever. He was conscious at the end, and we read your telegram to him. He sent this message: 'Long ago I knew it was not you, and I ought to have written. Forgive me, as I have forgiven you. My last prayer is for a blessing upon you and your people in the sacrament to-morrow. God be with you till we meet at the marriage supper of the Lamb!'”
The text which Carmichael took for his action sermon on the morrow was, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them who trespass against us,” and he declared the forgiveness of sins with such irresistible grace that Donald Menzies twice said “Amen” aloud, and there are people who will remember that day unto the ages of ages.