"That shows how much you know, young Harry Lauder!" he said, scornfully. "Would a pistol bullet hurt a ghost? Talk of what ye ha"
some knowledge of----"
"Aye," I said. "That"s good advice, Jock. I suppose I"m not knowing so much as you do about ghosts. But tell me, man--would a ghost be making a noise like this?"
And I made the self-same noise I"d made before, when I was playing the ghost for Jock"s benefit. He turned purple; he was clever enough to see the joke I"d played on him at once. And the other miners--they were all in the secret began to roar with laughter. They weren"t sorry to see puir Jock shown up for the liar and boaster he was. But I was a little sorry, when I saw how hard he took it, and how angry he was.
He aimed a blow at me that would have made me the sorry one if it had landed fair, but I put up my jukes and warded it off, and he was ashamed, after than, wi" the others laughing at him so, to try again to punish me. He was very sensitive, and he never came back to the Eddlewood Colliery; the very next day he found a job in another pit.
He was a good miner, was Jock, so that was no matter to him. But I"ve often wondered if I really taught him a lesson, or if he always kept on telling his twisters in his new place!
I stayed on, though, after Jock had gone, and after a time I drove a pony instead of tending a gate. That was better work, and meant a few shillings a week more in wages, too, which counted heavily just then.
I handled a number of bonnie wee Shetland ponies in the three years I drove the hutches to and from the pitshaft. One likable little fellow was a real pet. He followed me all about. It was great to see him play one trick I taught him. He would trot to the little cabin and forage among all the pockets till he found one where a man had left a bit of bread and cheese at piece time. He"d eat that, and then he would go after a flask of cold tea. He"d fasten it between his forefeet and pull the cork with his teeth--and then he"d tip the flask up between his teeth and drink his tea like a Christian. Aye, Captain was a droll, clever yin. And once, when I beat him for stopping short before a drift, he was saving my life. There was a crash just after I hit him, and the whole drift caved in. Captain knew it before I did. If he had gone on, as I wanted him to do, we would both ha" been killed.
CHAPTER IV
After I"d been in the mine a few years my brother Matt got old enough to help me to support the family, and so, one by one, did my still younger brothers. Things were a wee bit easier for me then; I could keep a bit o" the siller I earned, and I could think about singing once in a while. There were concerts, at times, when a contest was put on to draw the crowd, and whenever I competed at one of these I usually won a prize. Sometimes it would be a cheap medal; it usually was. I shall never forget how proud I was the night a manager handed me real money for the first time. It was only a five shilling piece, but it meant as much to me as five pounds.
That same nicht one of the other singers gave me a bit of advice.
"Gae to Glasga, Harry," he said. "There"s the Harmonic Compet.i.tion.
Ye"re dead certain to win a prize."
I took his advice, and entered, and I was one of those to win a medal.
That was the first time I had ever sung before total strangers. I"d always had folk I knew well, friends of mine, for my audience before, and it was a nerve racking experience. I dressed in character, and the song I sang was an old one I doubt yell ha" heard-"Tooralladdie" it was called. Here"s a verse that will show you what a silly song it was:
"Twig auld Tooralladdie, Don"t he look immense? His watch and chain are no his ain His claes cost eighteenpence; Wi" cuffs and collar shabby, 0" mashers he"s the daddy; Hats off, stand aside and let Past Tooralladdie!"
My success at Glasgow made a great impression among the miners.
Everyone shook hands with me and congratulated me, and I think my head was turned a bit. But I"d been thinking for some time of doing a rash thing. I was newly married then, d"ye ken, and I was thinkin" it was time I made something of myself for the sake of her who"d risked her life wi" me. So that night I went home to her wi" a stern face.
"Nance!" I said. "I"m going to chuck the mine and go in for the stage.
My mind"s made up."
Now, Nance liked my singin" well enough, and she thought, as I did, that I could do better than some we"d heard on the stage. But I think what she thought chiefly was that if my mind was made "up to try it she"d not stand in my way. I wish more wives were like her, bless her!
Then there"d be fewer men moaning of their lost chances to win fame and fortune. Many a time my wife"s saved me from a mistake, but she"s never stood in the way when I felt it was safe to risk something, and she"s never laughed at me, and said, "I told ye so, Harry," when things ha" gone wrong--even when her advice was against what I was minded to try.
We talked it all over that nicht--"twas late, I"m tellin" ye, before we quit and crept into bed, and even then we talked on a bit, in the dark.
"Ye maun please yersel", Harry," Nance said. "We"ve thought of every thing, and it can do no harm to try. If things don"t go well, ye can always go back to the pit and mak" a living."
That was so, ye ken. I had my trade to fall back upon. So I read all the advertis.e.m.e.nts, and at last I saw one put in by the manager of a concert party that was about to mak" a Scottish tour. He wanted a comic, and, after we"d exchanged two or three letters we had an interview. I sang some songs for him, and he engaged me, at thirty- five shillings a week--about eight dollars, in American money--a little more.
That seemed like a great sum to me in those days. It was no so bad.
Money went farther then, and in Scotland especially, than it does the noo! And for me it was a fortune. I"d been doing well, in the mine, if I earned fifteen in a week. And this was for doing what I would rather do than anything in the wide, wide world! No wonder I went back to Hamilton and hugged my wife till she thought I"d gone crazy.
I had been engaged as a comic singer, but I had to do much more than sing on that tour, which was to last fourteen weeks--it started, I mind, at Beith, in Ayrshire. First, when we arrived in a town, I had to see that all the trunks and bags were taken from the station to the hall. Then I would set out with a pile of leaflets, describing the entertainment, and distribute them where it seemed to me they would do the most good in drawing a crowd. That was my morning"s work.
In the afternoon I was a stage carpenter, and devoted myself to seeing that every thing at the hall was ready for the performance in the evening. Sometimes that was easy; sometimes, in badly equipped halls, the task called for more ingenuity than I had ever before supposed that I possessed. But there was no rest for me, even then; I had to be back at the hall after tea and check up part of the house. And then all I had to do was what I had at first fondly supposed I had been engaged to do--sing my songs! I sang six songs regularly every night, and if the audience was good to me and liberal in its applause I threw in two or three encores.
I had never been so happy in my life. I had always been a great yin for the open air and the sunshine, and here, for years, I had spent all my days underground. I welcomed the work that went with the engagement, for it kept me much out of doors, and even when I was busy in the halls, it was no so bad--I could see the sunlight through the windows, at any rate. And then I could lie abed in the morning!
I had been used so long to early rising that I woke up each day at five o"clock, no matter how late I"d gone to bed the nicht before. And what a glorious thing it was to roll right over and go to sleep again!
Then there was the travelling, too. I had always wanted to see Scotland, and now, in these fourteen weeks, I saw more of my native land than, as a miner, I might have hoped to do in fourteen years--or forty. Little did I think, though, then, of the real travelling I was to do later in my life, in the career that was then just beginning!
I made many friends on that first tour. And to this day nothin"
delights me more than to have some in an audience seek me out and tell me that he or she heard me sing during those fourteen weeks. There is a story that actually happened to me that delights me, in connection with that.
It was years after that first tour. I was singing in Glasgow one week, and the hall was crowded at every performance--though the management had raised the prices, for which I was sorry. I heard two women speaking. Said one:
"Ha" ye heard Harry sing the week?"
The other answered:
"That I ha" not!"
"And will ye no"?"
"I will no"! I heard him lang ago, when he was better than he is the noo, for twapence! Why should I be payin" twa shillin" the noo?"
And, do you ken, I"m no sure she was"na richt! But do not be tellin" I said so!
That first tour had to end. Fourteen weeks seemed a long time then, though, the last few days rushed by terribly fast. I was nervous when the end came. I wondered if I would ever get another engagement. It seemed a venturesome thing I had done. Who was I, Harry Lauder, the untrained miner, to expect folk to pay their gude siller to hear me sing?
There was an offer for an engagement waiting for me when I got home. I had saved twelve pounds of my earnings, and it was proud I was as I put the money in my wife"s lap. As for her, she behaved as if she thought her husband had come hame a millionaire. The new engagement was for only one night, but the fee was a guinea and a half--twice what I"d made for a week"s work in the pit, and nearly what I"d earned in a week on tour.
But then came bad days. I was no well posted on how to go aboot getting engagements. I could only read all the advertis.e.m.e.nts, and answer everyone that looked as if it might come to anything. And then I"d sit and wait for the postie to come, but the letters he brought were not for me. It looked as though I had had all my luck.
But I still had my twelve pounds, and I would not use them while I was earning no more. So I decided to go back to the pit while I waited. It was as easy--aye, it was easier!--to work while I waited, since wait I must. I hauled down my old greasy working clothes, and went off to the pithead. They were glad enough to take me on--gladder, I"m thinkin", than I was to be taken. But it was sair hard to hear the other miners laughing at me.
"There he gaes--the stickit comic," I heard one man say, as I pa.s.sed.
And another, who had never liked me, was at pains to let me hear _his_ opinion, which was that I had "had the conceit knocked oot o" me, and was glad tae tak" up the pick again."
But he was wrong, If it was conceit I had felt, I was as full of it as ever--fuller, indeed. I had twelve pounds to slow for what it had brought me, which was more than any of those who sneered at me could say for themselves. And I was surer than ever that I had it in me to make my mark as a singer of comic songs. I had listened to other singers now, and I was certain that I had a new way of delivering a song. My audiences had made me feel that I was going about the task of pleasing them in the right way. All I wanted was the chance to prove what was so plain to me to others, and I knew then, what I have found so often, since then, to be true, that the chance always comes to the man who is sure he can make use of it.
So I plied my pick cheerfully enough all day, and went hame to my wife at nicht with a clear conscience and a hopeful heart. I always looked for a letter, but for a long time I was disappointed each evening.
Then, finally, the letter I had been looking for came. It was from J.
C. MacDonald, and he wanted to know if I could accept an engagement at the Greenock Town Hall in New Year week, for ten performances. He offered me three pounds--the biggest salary anyone had named to me yet. I jumped at the chance, as you may well believe.
Oh, and did I no feel that I was an actor then? I did so, surely, and that very nicht I went out and bought me some astrachan fur for the collar of my coat! Do ye ken what that meant to me in yon days? Then every actor wore a coat with a fur trimmed collar--it was almost like a badge of rank. And I maun be as braw as any of them. The wife smiled quietly as she sewed it on for me, and I was a proud wee man when I strolled into the Greenock Town Hall. Three pounds a week! There was a salary for a man to be proud of. Ye"d ha" thought I was sure already of making three pounds every week all my life, instead of havin" just the one engagement.
Pride goeth before a fall ever, and after that, once more, I had to wait for an engagement, and once more I went back to the pit. I folded the astrachan coat and put it awa" under the bed, but I would"na tak"
off the fur.
"I"ll be needin" you again before sae lang," I told the coat as I folded it. "See if I don"t."