Betty Grier Part 4

him but he bood come hame an' tak' things in haun. He was strongly advised to have nothing to do wi' it, an' to let the creditors handle what was left as best it was likely to pay them. But Tom said, "No." All he asked frae the creditors was time an' secrecy as far as was possible as to how things stood, an' frae the Almighty health an' strength, an', given these, he promised to clear his dead faither's name an' see every yin get his ain. That's three years ago past the May term, an', honour an' praise to the puir laddie, he's nearly succeeded. But it has been a terrible struggle for him; an' had it no' been for his determination, his sobriety, his pride in his faither's guid name, an' abune a' the help o' a lovin' wife wha's a perfect mother in Israel, he wad ha'e gi'en it up lang or noo as an impossible, thankless job. Nathan and me lent his faither sixty pounds. We had nae writin' to speak o', only his signed name. I showed the paper to Tom shortly efter he had settled doon here, an' instead o' questionin' it he thanked us for our kindness an promised to pay it back in the same proportion as the ithers. Up to noo we've got back thirty pounds. I was in his shop the ither day, an' he said he thocht he wad be able to gi'e's anither ten pounds at the November term. What think ye o' that noo, Maister Weelum?'

'I think your neighbour is a splendid fellow, Betty, and I would like to shake hands with him. Have you the paper beside you on which his father's name appears for sixty pounds?'

'Ay, that I have,' said Betty. She went downstairs, and returned a minute later with a sheet of notepaper.

I glanced at the unstamped promise, and smiled. 'Betty,' I said seriously, 'are you aware this is not worth the paper it is written on?'

'Ay, perfectly,' she said with unconcern.

'How did you find that out?' I inquired.

'Oh, when I showed it to Tom Jardine he used exactly the same words as you did; but, said he, "My faither signed that. I have every confidence in you an' Nathan. My faither an' mither thought the world o' ye, an'

wi' my a.s.surance that ye'll be paid back, I tender you my best thanks for your kindness in time o' need."'

Betty folded up her worthless doc.u.ment and put it in the breast of her gown. 'An honest man like Tom Jardine makes up for a lot o' worthless yins, Maister Weelum,' she said as she lifted her tea-tray; and I looked through the wee round window to Tom's back-yard with an increased appreciation of the coatless and hatless grocer, who was sitting down on an empty soap-box with a long needle and a roset-end, mending his old gray mare's collar.

It has rained continuously for three days, and according to Nathan something has gone very far wrong, as St Swithin's Day from early morn to dewy eve was cloudless and fair, and accordingly we had every right to antic.i.p.ate forty days of dry, fine weather.

Harvest is early with us this year. The corn, which was waving green when Betty and I drove south from Elvanfoot, is already studding the fields in regular rows of yellow stooks, and but for this break in the weather it would even now be on its way to the stackyard in groaning, creaking carts. The Newton pippins on the apple-tree at the foot of the garden are showing a bright red cheek, and the phloxes and gladioli in the plot at the kitchen window are crowned with a ma.s.s of bloom so rich and luxuriant that every one of Betty's cooking utensils reflects their colourings and appears to be blushing rosy-red. During these past three days I have missed Tom's cheery song, and I am beginning to wonder if the gloomy weather has chilled his lightsome heart and silenced the chords of his tuneful throat.

Time was when I loved to be abroad on a rainy day, whether as an unprotected boy fishing away up Capel Linn and Cample Cleugh, with the rain dribbling down the neckband of my shirt and oozing through the lace-holes of my boots, or as a man with waterproof and hazel staff, breasting the scarred side of Caerketton or the gra.s.sy slopes of Allermuir, with the pelting, pitiless raindrops blinding my eyes and stinging my cheek, and the vivid fire of heaven lighting up Halkerside and momentarily showing the short zigzag course of that 'nameless trickle' whose rippling music the Wizard of Swanston loved.

How I enjoyed these Pentland rambles, alone in the rain and the soughing winds! Underfoot, the dank, sodden gra.s.s and the broken fern; overhead, the sombre sky, the scurrying clouds, and the drifting mist; on every side the gra.s.sy mounds of the Dunty Knowes, with their shivering birks tossing to windward, and a rain-soaked hogg beneath every sheltering crag. Alone, yet not alone; for a Presence was with me, guiding me on, showing me through the gathering gloom the sun-bathed crown of Allermuir, bringing to my ear from out the rage of the storm the wail of the curlew, and summoning to my side the plaided shepherd 'Honest John'

and his gray, rough-coated collie Swag.

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, hara.s.sed 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 manoeuvred 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 a.s.sertion 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 a.s.siduously. '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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.surance, 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 G.o.dsend 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, G.o.d-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, G.o.dless, 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 a.s.sociations, 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, p.r.i.c.kly brambles, and with extraordinary intensity the desire sprang up within me to view its charms once more.

Buoyed up by pleasurable antic.i.p.ations, 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 gra.s.ses, 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 gra.s.sy 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.