A Holiday in Bed and Other Sketches Part 5

Half a century ago Mr. McDiarmid, a Scotch journalist of repute, loosened the tongue of a Springfield priest with a bowl of toddy. The result was as if the sluice had been lifted bodily from a dam, and stories (like the whisky) flowed like water. One over-curious _paterfamilias_ there was who excused his visit to the village of weddings on the ground that he wished to introduce to the priest a daughter who might one day require his services. "And sure enough," old Elliot, who entered into partnership with Simon Lang, crowed to his toddy-ladle, "I had her back with a younger man in the matter of three months!" There lives, too, in Springfield's memory the tale of the father who bolted with an elderly spinster, and returning to England pa.s.sed his daughter and her lover on the way. Dark and wintry was the night, the two coaches rattled by, and next morning four persons who had gone wrong opened the eyes of astonishment.

When David Lang was asked during Wakefield's trial how much he had been paid for discharging the duties of priest, he replied pleasantly, "20 or 30, or perhaps 40; I cannot say to a few pounds." This was pretty well, but there are authenticated cases in which 100 was paid. The priests had no fixed fee, and charged according to circ.u.mstances. If business was slack and the bridegroom not pressing, they lowered their charges, but where the bribed post-boys told them of high rank, hot pursuit, and heavy purses, they squeezed their dupes remorselessly. It is told of Joseph Paisley that when on his death-bed he heard the familiar rumble of coaches into the village, he shook death from him, ordered the runaways to approach his presence, married three couples from his bed, and gave up the ghost with three hundred pounds in his palsied hands. Beattie at the toll-bar, on the other hand, did not scorn silver fees, and as occasion warranted the priests have doubtless ranged in their charges from half-a-crown and a gla.s.s of whisky to a hundred pounds.

Though the toll-bar only at rare intervals got wealthy pairs into its clutches, Murray had not been long installed in office when pockets crammed with fees made him waddle as heavily as a duck. Fifty marriages a month was no uncommon occurrence at Gretna at that time, and it was then that the mansion was built which still stands about a hundred yards on the English side of the Sark. The toll-keeper, to whom it owes its existence, erected it for a hotel that would rival Gretna Hall, and prove irresistible to the couples who, on getting married on the Scotch side, would have to pa.s.s it on their return journey. But the alterations in the Marriage Laws marred the new hotel's chances, and Murray found that he had over-reached himself. Perhaps one reason why he no longer prospered was because he pursued a n.i.g.g.ardly policy with the postillions, ostlers, and other rapscallions who demanded a share of the booty. The Langs knew what they were about far too well to quarrel with the post-boys, and stories are still current in Springfield of these faithful youths tumbling their employers into the road rather than take them to a "blacksmith" with whom they did not deal.

There is no hope for Gretna. Springfield was and is the great glory of its inhabitants. Here ran the great wall of Adrian, the scene of many a tough fight in the days of stone weapons and skin-clad Picts. The Debatable Land, sung by Trouvere and Troubadour, is to-day but a sodden moss, in which no King Arthur strides fearfully away from the "grim lady" of the bogs; and moss-troopers, grim and gaunt and terrible, no longer whirl with lighted firebrands into England. With a thousand stars the placid moon lies long drawn out and drowned at the bottom of the Solway, without a lovesick maid to shed a tear; the chariots that once rattled and flashed along the now silent road were turned into firewood decades ago, and the runaways, from a Prince of Capua to a beggar-maid, are rotten and forgotten.

MY FAVORITE AUTh.o.r.eSS.

Just out of the four-mile radius--to give the cabby his chance--is a sleepy lane, lent by the country to the town, and we have only to open a little gate off it to find ourselves in an old-fashioned garden. The house, with its many quaint windows, across which evergreens spread their open fingers as a child makes believe to shroud his eyes, has a literary look--at least, so it seems to me, but perhaps this is because I know the auth.o.r.ess who is at this moment advancing down the walk to meet me.

She has hastily laid aside her hoop, and crosses the gra.s.s with the dignity that becomes a woman of letters. Her hair falls over her forehead in an attractive way, and she is just the proper height for an auth.o.r.ess. The face, so open that one can watch the process of thinking out a new novel in it, from start to finish, is at times a little careworn, as if it found the world weighty, but at present there is a gracious smile on it, and she greets me heartily with one hand, while the other strays to her neck, to make sure that her lace collar is lying nicely. It would be idle to pretend that she is much more than eight years old, "but then Maurice is only six."

Like most literary people who put their friends into books, she is very modest, and it never seems to strike her that I would come all this way to see her.

"Mamma is out," she says simply, "but she will be back soon; and papa is at a meeting, but he will be back soon, too."

I know what meeting her papa is at. He is crazed with admiration for Stanley, and can speak of nothing but the Emin Relief Expedition. While he is away proposing that Stanley should get the freedom of Hampstead, now is my opportunity to interview the auth.o.r.ess.

"Won't you come into the house?"

I accompany the auth.o.r.ess to the house, while we chat pleasantly on literary topics.

"Oh, there is Maurice, silly boy!"

Maurice is too busy shooting arrows into the next garden to pay much attention to me; and the auth.o.r.ess smiles at him good-naturedly.

"I hope you'll stay to dinner," he says to me, "because then we'll have two kinds of pudding."

The auth.o.r.ess and I give each other a look which means that children will be children, and then we go indoors.

"Are you not going to play any more?" cries Maurice to the auth.o.r.ess.

She blushes a little.

"I was playing with him," she explains, "to keep him out of mischief till mamma comes back."

In the drawing-room we talk for a time of ordinary matters--of the allowances one must make for a child like Maurice, for instance--and gradually we drift to the subject of literature. I know literary people sufficiently well to be aware that they will talk freely--almost too freely--of their work if approached in the proper spirit.

"Are you busy just now?" I ask, with a.s.sumed carelessness, and as if I had not been preparing the question since I heard papa was out.

She looks at me, suspiciously, as authors usually do when asked such a question. They are not certain whether you are really sympathetic.

However, she reads honesty in my eyes.

"Oh, well, I am doing a little thing." (They always say this.)

"A story or an article?"

"A story."

"I hope it will be good."

"I don't know. I don't like it much." (This is another thing they say, and then they wait for you to express incredulity.)

"I have no doubt it will be a fine thing. Have you given it a name?"

"Oh, yes; I always write the name. Sometimes I don't write any more."

As she was in a confidential mood this seemed an excellent chance for getting her views on some of the vexed literary questions of the day.

For instance, everybody seems to be more interested in hearing during what hours of the day an author writes than in reading his book.

"Do you work best in the early part of the day or at night?"

"I write my stories just before tea."

"That surprises me. Most writers, I have been told, get through a good deal of work in the morning."

"Oh, but I go to school as soon as breakfast is over."

"And you don't write at night?"

"No; nurse always turns the gas down."

I had read somewhere that among the novelist's greatest difficulties is that of sustaining his own interest in a novel day by day until it is finished.

"Until your new work is completed do you fling your whole heart and soul into it? I mean, do you work straight on at it, so to speak, until you have finished the last chapter?"

"Oh, yes."

The novelists were lately reproved in a review for working too quickly, and it was said that one wrote a whole novel in two months.

"How long does it take you to write a novel?"

"Do you mean a long novel?"

"Yes."

"It takes me nearly an hour."

"For a really long novel?"

"Yes, in three volumes. I write in three exercise-books--a volume in each."

"You write very quickly."