CHAPTER x.x.xIV
A VISIT FROM BOYD CONNOWAY
"I wonder," said Irma one Sat.u.r.day morning when, by a happy accident, I had no pressing need to go from home, so could stay and linger over breakfast with my little wife like a Christian, "I wonder what that man is doing down there? He has been sitting on the step outside our gate ever since it was light, and he looks as if he were taking root there!"
I made but one bound from the table to the window. For I remembered the cloaked man who had crossed me in the Meadows the other night. Also my inbred, almost instinctive curiosity as to the purposes and antecedents of lurking folk of all kinds, p.r.i.c.ked me. We were easy enough to get on with in Eden Valley once you knew us, but our att.i.tude towards strangers was distinctly hostile.
This man was m.u.f.fled to the nose in a cloak, and might very well have been my inquiring friend of the other night. But when I had opened the door and marched with the firm ringing steps of a master down the paven walk towards the gate, the face I saw turned to my approach, altered my mood in a second.
"Why, Boyd Connoway," I cried, "who would have thought of seeing you here? What are you doing in Edinburgh? But first come in--there is a friend here who will be glad to see you!"
"Eh, Mr. Duncan, but I am not sure that I dare venture. "Tis no more than decent I am, and the young lady, your wife--oh, but though to see her sweet face would be a treat for poor Boyd Connoway, what might she not be sayin" about me dirtying her carpets, the craitur? And as for sittin" in her fine arm-chairs----"
"Come your ways in, Boyd," I cried. "Have you had any breakfast?
No--then you are just in time! And you will find that our chairs are only wood, and you would not hurt our fine carpets, not if you danced on them with clogs!"
"D"ye tell me, now?" said Boyd, much relieved. "Sure, and it"s a told tale through the whole parish that you are livin" in the very lap of luxury--with nothing in the world to do for it but just make scratch-scratches on paper with a quill-pen!"
By this time Irma was at the door, hiding herself a little, for she had still the morning ap.r.o.n on--that in which she had been helping Mrs.
Pathrick. But she was greatly delighted to see Boyd, who, if the truth must be told, made his best service like an Irishman and a gentleman--for, as he said, "Even five-and-thirty years of Galloway had not wiped the sclate of his manners!"
Now Boyd was always a favourite with Irma, and I fear that she was fonder of him than she ought to have been, instead of pitying his hard-driven Bridget--just because Bridget had not his beautiful manners.
Presently, as his mouth ceased to fill and empty itself so wonderfully expeditiously, Boyd began to talk.
"As to what fetched me, Miss Irma," he said, in answer to questions, "faith, I walked all the road, taking many a house on the way where kenned folk dwelt. Here were pigs to kill and cure. And I killed and cured them. Farther on there were floors to lay, and I laid them, or fish-hooks to busk, and I busked them."
I put a question here.
"Oh, Bridget," he said, shrugging his shoulders with a wearied air, "Bridget doesn"t know when she"s well off. Och, the craitur! It began with the night of the September Fair. Now, it is known to all the countryside that Boyd Connoway is no drinker. He will sit and talk, as is just and sociable, but nothing more. No, Miss Irma. And so I told Bridget. But it so chanced that Fair Monday was a stormy day, which is the most temptatious for poor lads in from the country, with only two holidays in the year, most of them. And what with the new watch and the councilmen being so strict against disorder--why, I could not let a dog get into trouble if I could help it. So I spent the most of the night seeing them home out of harm"s way--and if ever there was a work of necessity and mercy, that was.
"But Bridget, she thought different, and declared that I had never so much as thought of her and the childer all day, but left her at the wash-tub, while they, the poor craiturs, were poppin" out and in of the stalls and crawlin" under the slatting canvas of the shows, as happy as larks, having their fun all for nothing, and double rations of it when they were caught, cuffed, and chased out. Well, Bridget kept it up on me so long and got so worked up that she would not have a bite ready for me when I came home tired and weary, bidding me go and eat my meat where I had worked my work. So it seemed a good time for me to be off somewhere for my health. But--such was my consideration, that not to leave Bridget in distress I went asking about till I got her the washin" at General Johnstone"s--the minister"s she had before--so there was Bridget well provided for, Miss Irma--and here am I, Boyd Connoway, a free man on my travels!"
We asked news of friends and acquaintances--the usual Galloway round of questions.
"Faith," said Boyd, "but there"s just one cry among them--when are ye coming down to let us have a look at your treasure, Mister Duncan? Sure, it"s selfish ye are, now, to keep her all this long time to yourself!
The little chap"s holidays! Ah, true for you. We had forgotten him. And ye are sure that he is well done to, and safely lodged where they have put him, Miss Irma?"
"If you bide a minute or two, Boyd," said Irma, smiling, well-pleased, "you may very likely have the chance of judging for yourself. For it is almost his time to be here, for to-day is a holiday!"
In fact, it was not a quarter of an hour before a shout, the triumphal opening of the outer gate with a rush and a clang, and a merciless pounding on the front door announced the arrival of Sir Louis. He had grown out of all knowledge, declared the visitor, "but no doubt the young gentleman had forgotten old Boyd Connoway."
"Oh, no," said Louis; "come and show me some more cat"s cradles; I know two more "liftings" already than any boy in the school. But _you_ can do at least a dozen!"
And so, with the woven string about his long clever fingers, Louis watched the deft and sure manipulation of Boyd Connoway as he "lifted"
and wove, changing the pattern indefinitely. For the time being the village "do-nothing"--in the sense that he was the busiest man in the place about other folk"s business--was merely another boy at Louis"s school. And as he worked, he talked, delightfully, easily, dramatically.
He made the old life of Eden Valley pa.s.s before us. We heard the brisk tongue of my grandmother from the kitchen, that of Aunt Jen ruling as much of the roost as was permitted to her, but constantly made aware of herself by her mother"s dominating personality.
With equal facility he recalled my father in his cla.s.ses, looking out for collegers to do him credit, my mother pa.s.sing silently along her retired household ways, Agnes Anne dividing her time between helping her mother in the house, and teaching the cla.s.ses for which I used to be responsible in the school.
It was a memorable day in the little house above the Meadows. Louis played with Boyd Connoway all the time, learning infinite new tricks with string, with knife-blades, perfecting himself in the art of making fly-hooks, of kite manufacture, and the art of lighting a fire.
He had presented to him Boyd"s spare "sulphur" box, in which were tinder, flint and steel, matches dipped in brimstone, and a pair of short thick candles which could be set one at a time in a socket formed by the box itself, the raised lid sheltering the flame from the wind.
Never was a happier boy. And when the Advocate looked in, the surprising boyishness of Boyd rubbed off even on him. We did not inform our old friend of the high place which "the Advocate" held in the judicial hierarchy of his country. For we knew well that nothing Boyd said in our house would ever be used as evidence against him.
But no doubt my lord gained a great deal of useful information as to the habits of smugglers, their cargoes, destinations, ports of call and sympathizers. Boyd crowned his performances by inviting the Advocate down to undertake the defence of the next set of smugglers tried at the a.s.sizes, a task which the Advocate accepted with apparent grat.i.tude and humility. For from the little man"s snuff-taking and easy-going, idling ways, Boyd had taken him for a briefless advocate.
"Faith, sir, come to Galloway," he cried open-heartedly--"there"s the place to provide work for the like of you lads. And it"s Boyd Connoway will introduce you to all the excise-case defendants from Annan Port to Loch Ryan. It"s him that knows every man and mother"s son of them! And who, if ye plaise, has a better right?"
CHAPTER x.x.xV
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
"The strongest mental tonic in the world is solitude, but it takes a strong mind, fully equipped with thoughts, aims, work, to support it long without suffering. But once a man has made his best companion of his own mind, he has learned the secret of living."
So I had written in an essay on Senancour during the days when the little white house was but a dream, and Irma had never come to me across the cleared s.p.a.ce in front of Greyfriars Kirk amid the thud of mallets and the "chip" of trowels. But Irma taught me better things. She knew when to be silent. She understood, also, when speech would slacken the tension of the mind. As I sat writing by the soft glow of the lamp I could hear the rustle of her house-dress, the sharp, almost inaudible, _tick-tick_ of her needle, and the soft sound as she smoothed out her seam. Little things that happen to everybody, but--well, I for one had never noticed them before.
It seemed as if this period of contentment would always continue. The present was so good that, save a little additional in the way of income, I asked for no better.
But one day the Advocate rudely shook my equanimity.
"You must have some of your family--some good woman--to be with Irma.
Write at once!"
I could only look at him in amazement.
"Why, Irma is very well," I said; "she never looked better in her life."
"My boy," said the Advocate, laying his hand gently on my arm, "I have loved a wife, and I have lost a wife who loved me; I do not wish to stand by and let you do the same for the want of a friend"s word. Write to-night!"
And he turned on his heel and marched off. At twenty steps" distance he turned. "Duncan," he said, "we will need all your time at the _Review_; you had better give up the Secretary"s office. I have spoken to Morrison about it. I shall be so much in London for a year or two that you will be practically in charge. We will get a smart young colleger to take your place."
That night I wrote to my Aunt Janet. It was after Irma, fatigued more easily than was usual with her, had gone to bed. Four days afterwards, I was looking over some ma.n.u.script sheets which that day had to go to the printer. Mistress Pathrick, who had just arrived to prepare the breakfast (I had lit the kitchen fire when I got up), burst in upon me with the announcement that there was "sic a gathering o" folk" at the door, and a "great muckle owld woman coming in!"
I hastened down, and there in the little lobby stood--my grandmother.
She was arrayed in her oldest black bombazine. A travel-crushed beaver bonnet was clapped tightly on her head. The black velvet band about her white hair had slipped down and now crossed her brow transversely a little above one bushy eyebrow, giving an inconceivably rakish appearance to her face. She held a small urchin, evidently from the Gra.s.smarket or the Cowgate, firmly by the cuff of his ragged jacket. She was threatening him with her great blue umbrella.
"If ye hae led me astray, ye skirmishing blastie, I"ll let ye ken the weight o" this!"
The youth was guarding himself with one hand and declaring alternately that, "This is the hoose, mem," and, "I want my saxpence!"