The Dew of Their Youth Part 33

"What's enough for one is abundance for two!" was his motto. And the aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of the tortoise-sh.e.l.l snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became one learned in the law.

"I began the same way myself," he said, "and though I have a bigger house now and serving men in kneebreeks and powder in their hair, I never go by that cottage out by Comely Bank without a 'pitter-patter' of my sinful old heart!"

He thought for a while, and then added, "Aye, aye--there's no way for young folk to start life like being poor and learning to hain on the gowns and the broadcloth! What matter the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, when ye have one another?"

As to the house, it was naturally Irma who did most of the searching.

For me, I had to be early at the secretary's office, and often late at the printer's. But there was always some time in the day that I had to myself--could I only foresee it before I left home in the morning.

"Home" was, so far, at Mrs. Craven's, where the good Amelia had given us up her chamber, and Freddy rose an hour earlier, so that his wall-press bed might be closed and the "room" made ready for Irma's breakfast parlour.

All the three begged that we might stay on. We were, they declared with one voice, not putting them to the smallest inconvenience. But I knew different, and besides, I had a constant and consuming desire for a house of mine own, however small.

Ever since I first knew Irma, a dream had haunted me. In days long past it had come, when I was only an awkward laddie gazing after her on the Eden Valley meadows. Often it had returned to me during the tedious silences of three years--when, quite against the proverb, love had grown by feeding upon itself.

And my dream was this.

I was in a great city, hara.s.sed by many duties, troubled by enemies open and concealed. There was the drear emptiness of poverty in my pocket, present anxiety in my heart, and little hope in the outlook. But I had work--I did not know in my dream what that work was--only that it sufficed to keep body and soul together, but after it was done I was weak and weary, a kind of unsatisfied despondency gnawing at my heart.

Then I got loose for an hour or so from my unknown tasks. My path lay across a kind of open place into which many narrow streets ran, while some dived away into the lower deeps of the city. People went their ways as I was doing mine, dejected and sad. But always, as I crossed toward the opening of a wide new street, where against the sky were tall scaffoldings and men busy with hod and mortar, I saw Irma coming towards me. She was neat and youthful, but dressed poorly in plain things--homespun, and in my dream, I judged, also home-made.

I saw her afar off, and the heart within me gave a great leap. She came towards me smiling, and lo! I seemed to stand still and worship the lithe carriage and elastic step. The world grew all sweet and gay. The lift above became blue and high. The sun shone no longer grey and brown, but smiling and brilliant--as--as the face of Irma.

Strangely enough she did not greet me nor hold out her hand as acquaintances do. She came straight up to me as if the encounter were the merest matter-of-course, while as I stood there, with the hunger and the wretchedness all gone out of me, the weariness and misery melted in the grace of that radiant smile, she uttered just these words, "I have found the Little House Round the Corner!"

Now I will tell of a strange thing--so strange that I have consulted Irma about it, whether I should write it down here or keep it just for ourselves.

And she said, "It is true--so why not set it down?" Well, this is what happened. One day I had arranged to meet Irma at the corner of the quaint little village of Laurieston, which, as all the world knows, looks down on the saughs of the Meadows and out upon the slopes of Bruntsfield where, among the whins, the city golfers lose their b.a.l.l.s.

At that time, as all the world knows, there was undertaken a certain work of opening out that part of the ancient wall which runs westward from Bristo Port at the head of the Potter Row. Some great old houses had gone down, and I mind well that I was greatly attracted by the first view of the Greyfriars Kirk that ever I had from that quarter. (It was soon lost again behind new constructions, but for a time it was worth seeing, with its ancient "through" stones, and the Martyrs' Monument showing its bossy head over the low wall.)

So much taken up with this was I, that I did not notice the altered aspect of the place. Yet I looked about me like one who is suddenly confronted by something very familiar. There was the wide s.p.a.ce. There were the narrow streets I knew so well. Yonder was the Candlemaker Row diving down into the bowels of the earth. Away towards the Greyfriars were the tall "lands" which the masons were pulling down. Nearer were men climbing up ladders with hods on their shoulders. Highest of all, against the blue sky, naked as a new gibbet, stood out the framework of a crane.

It was the very place of my dream. I knew it well enough, indeed, but never until that day it had looked so. And there, coming smiling down the midst, easily as one might down the aisle of an empty church, was Irma herself, as plain and poor in habiliment as my dream, but smiling--ah, with a smile that turned all my heart to water, so dear it was. It was good of G.o.d to let us love each other like that--and be poor.

And as she came nearer, she did not hold out her hand, nor greet me--but when she was quite close she said, exactly as in the dream, "I have found the Little House round the Corner!" Yet she had never heard of my dream before.

That this is true, we do solemnly bear witness, each for our own parts, thereof, and hereto append our names--

Duncan MacAlpine.

Irma MacAlpine.

Irma had found it, indeed, but as I judged at the first sight of the house, it was bound to be too expensive for our purses. I immediately decided that something must be wrong somewhere, when I heard that we could have this pleasant cottage with its sc.r.a.p of garden, long and narrow certainly, but full of shade and song of birds, for the inconsiderable rent of ten pounds a year. We thought of many dangers and inconveniences, but Irma was infinitely relieved when it came out to be only ghosts. Servants, it appeared, could not be got to stay.

"Is that all?" said Irma scornfully. "Well, then, I don't mean to keep any servants, and as for ghosts, Louis and I have lived in a big house in a wood full of them from cellar to roof-tree! You let ghosts alone, they will let you alone! 'Freits follow them that look for them!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

AND THE DOOR WAS SHUT

We were poor, very poor indeed in these days. Irma had many a wrinkled brow and many an anxious heart over the weekly expenses--so much to be set aside for rent, so much for mysterious things called taxes--which, seeing no immediate good arise from them, my little rebel hated with all her heart, and devised all sorts of schemes to evade.

But every week there was the joy of a victory won. Untoward circ.u.mstances had been vanquished--the butcher, the baker had been settled with or--done without. For sometimes Amelia Craven came to give us a day's baking, and an array of fragrant scones and girdle-cakes, which I was taken into the kitchen to see on my return home, gave us the a.s.surance of not having to starve for many days yet.

I was glad, too, for it was my busy season, and I had to be much from home. There was, indeed, a certain nondescript Mistress McGrier, who came to help with the heavier duties of the house. She was the daughter of one janitor at the college, the wife of yet another (presently suspended for gross dereliction of duty), and she did some charing to earn an honest penny. But there was little human to be found about her.

Whisky, poor food, neglect, and actual ill treatment had left her mind after the pattern of her countenance, mostly blank. Yet I was not sorry when she stayed, especially as the autumnal days shortened, till near the time of my return. Mrs. McGrier frankly tarried for her tea, and her conversation was not enlivening, since she could talk of little save her sorrows as a wife, and how she was trusting to some one in the office (meaning me) for the future reinstatement of her erring janitor.

Sometimes, on Sundays, she would bring him, as it were framed and glazed to a painful pitch of perfection. His red hair was plastered with pomatum, identical with that which had been used upon his boots. Janitor McGrier had been a soldier, and always moved as if to words of command unheard to other mortals. If he had only two yards to go, he started as if from the halt. His pale blue eyes were fixed in his head, and he chewed steadily at lozenges of peppermint or cinnamon to hide the perfume of the gla.s.s of "enlivener" with which his wife had bribed him as an argument for submitting to get up and be dressed.

It was only on such show occasions that Mrs. McGrier was voluble. And that, solely, because "Pathrick" said nothing. Even as I remembered him in the days of his pride at the door of the Greek cla.s.sroom, Pathrick had always possessed the shut mouth, the watery, appealing eye, and the indicative thumb which answered the question of a novice only with a quick jerk in the requisite direction.

I think Pathrick sometimes conceived dark suspicions that I had changed Irma in the intervals of his visits. You see, this small witch had but two dresses that were any way respectable--that is to say, street-going or Sabbath-keeping. But then she had naturally such an instinct of arrangement that a sc.r.a.p of ribbon, or the lace scarf my grandmother had given her, made so great a difference that she seemed to have an entire wardrobe at her command. No doubt a woman would have picked out the fundamental sameness at a glance. But it did very well for men, who only care for the effect.

Even the Advocate would look in on his way to or from the Sciennes for a cup of tea from Irma. And in our little parlour he would sit and rap on his snuffbox, talking all the while, and forgetting to go till it was dark--as gentle and human as any common man.

When Freddy and Amelia Craven came in he would give the student advice about his work, or ask Amelia when she was going to call in his a.s.sistance to get married--which was his idea of jocularity, and, I must admit, also, that of Amelia. Indeed, we were wonderfully glad to see him, and he brightened many a dull afternoon for Irma.

Sometimes, if I got away early, I would find him already installed, his hat stuck on his gold-headed cane in the corner--as it were, all his high authority laid aside, while he regarded with moist eyes the work-basket in which Irma kept her interminable sc.r.a.plets of white things which I would not have meddled with the tip of one of my fingers, but which the Advocate turned over with an ancient familiarity, humming a tune all the while--a tune, however, apt to break off suddenly with a "_Humph_," and an appeal to the much-enduring lid of the tortoise-sh.e.l.l snuffbox.

But I think the dearest and best remembered of all these early experiences happened one winter's evening in the midst of the press and bustle which always attended the opening of the autumn session. The winter number of the _Universal_ was almost due, and we were backward, having had to wait for the copy of an important contributor, whose communication, in the present state of affairs, might even overturn a policy--or, at least, in the opinion of the Advocate, could not be done without. I need not say that the article in question represented his own views with remarkable exact.i.tude, and he looked to it to further his rising influence in London. As he grew greater, he was more often in the south, and we saw less and less of him. On the other hand, the practical work of the _Review_ fell more and more upon me.

So this night, as I say, I was late, and on turning out into the south-going street which leads past the Surgeons' Hall and St. Patrick's Square--my mind being busy with an extra article which I must write to give our readers the necessary number of sheets--for the first and certainly for the last time in my life I continued my train of thought without remembering either that I was a married man, or that my little Irma must be tired waiting for me.

In mitigation of sentence I can only urge the day-long preoccupations in which I had been plunged, and the article, suddenly become necessary, which I must begin to write instanter. But at any rate, excuse or no excuse, it is certain that I woke from my daydream to find myself in Rankeillor Street, almost at the foot of the old Craven stairs which, as a bachelor, I had climbed so often.

Then, with a sudden shamed leap of the heart and a plunge of the hand into my breeches pocket for my door key, I turned about. I had forgotten, though only for a moment, the little wife working among her cloud of feathery linen and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and the little white house round the corner above the Meadows. You may guess whether or no I hurried along between ash "backets" of the most unparklike Gifford Park, how sharply I turned and scudded along Hope Park, dodging the clothes' posts to the right, from which prudent housewives had removed the ropes with the deepening of the twilight.

The dark surface of the Meadows spread suddenly before me in an amplitude of bleakness. A thin, sleety scuff of pa.s.sing snow-cloud beat in my face. A tall man wrapped in a cloak edged suspiciously nearer as if to take stock of me, but my haste, and perhaps a certain wildness in the disorder of my dress and hat made him think better of it--that is, if indeed he ever thought ill of it--and with a muttered "Good-e'en to ye," he pa.s.sed upon his way.

I could see it now. The light in the window, the two candles that were always set at the elbow of the busy little housewife, the supper, frugal but well-considered, simmering on the hob, the table spread white and dainty, with knives and forks of silver (the Advocate's gift) laid out in order.

Then all the warm and loving things that sleep in the breast of a man rose up within me. The long, weary day was forgotten. The article I must write was shoved into a corner out of the way. For this one hour, in spite of whistling wintry winds and scouring sleet-drifts, the little light yonder in the window was sufficient.

Two farthing dips, a hearth fire, and a loving heart! Earth had nothing more to give, and my spirit seemed glorified within me. I had a curious feeling of melting within me, which was by no means a desire to weep, but rather as if all the vital parts of the man I was had been suddenly turned to warm water. I cannot tell if any one has ever felt the like before, but certainly I did that night, and "warm water" comes as near to the real thing as I can find words to express.

It seemed an age while I was crossing the short, stubbly gra.s.s of the Meadows. The light within beaconed redder and warmer. On the window-blind I saw a gracious silhouette. Then there was the putting aside the edge of the blind with exploring finger--sure sign that my little wife had been regarding the clock and finding me a little late in getting home.

As I ran up the short path to the gate I blew into my key. The latch of the garden-gate clicked in the blast which swept across from the Blackfords. But there at last before me was the door. The key glided, well-accustomed, into its place, not rattling, but with the slide of long-polished and intimate steel--soft, like silk on silk.

But the key never turned. The door opened, seemingly of itself, and, gloriously loving, a candle held high in her hand, her full, white house-gown sweeping to her feet, the little wife stood waiting.

I said nothing about the overplus of work that had filled my head as I turned from the high, bleak portals of the University--nothing of how, all unknowing, my traitor feet had carried me to the stairway in Rankeillor Street--nothing of the long way, or the suspicious man in the cloak, of the blast and the bent and the sting of the sleet in my face.

I was at home, just she and I--the two of us alone. And upon us two the door was shut.