Barrie, J M - Tillyloss Scandal

by Tillyloss Scandal

  LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. HI

  Mr. Rowand. Mr. Marr went the way of all the earth some years ago, but still Teacher M' Queen is an elder in the church, still Janet and he shake their heads at each other, and he is still violent in his opposition to the white- washing of the session-house.

  142 LIFE IN A COUNTEY MANSE.

  CHAPTEE IV.

  THE POST.

  WHEN a carriage is going one way along our glen road, and the post's bicycle is coming the other way, there is an anxious moment for the persons in the carriage. They will squeeze their vehicle, if they are wise, into a recess, but even then the bicycle may charge into it, for the post's " machine " is more like a restive horse than a thing of wheels, and, except when there is a brae to climb, it is constantly running away with him. It used to back in the middle of braes and whirl him down the way he had come, much like a canoe trying to ascend a rush of water and giving up the contest when near the top. Now, however, the post is more cautious. When he comes to a brae he jumps (and falls) from his velocipede, as he calls it, and drags it up the hill. When he is tired of

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  dragging, he pushes. It has been noticed of our glen that it is all cli mbing. The road the post has to go is more like a switchback railway than anything else, so that he is oftener off his velocipede than on it. To the calm out- sider the machine doubles his daily work, yet it is the one thing in this world he is proud of. He is a lanky man, with hair that the wind blows across his eyes, and his age is uncertain. He thinks he must be sixty, but some in the glen say he is seventy. Every day he has some eighteen miles to walk (or " cycle "), but we do not consider this astounding, there being several men of threescore-and-ten in the glen who can still walk their thirty miles on occasion. One of them, indeed, can even fish after it. How- ever, John had set his heart on a velocipede, and two years ago a subscription was started to enable him to buy a second-hand one. Nearly twelve shillings were gathered in a single even- ing at the school-house for this purpose, the teacher having got up a concert (at which I read Mr. Stanley's account of how he found Liv- ingstone though the hit of the evening was made by our comic singer). After the money had been presented to the post, he changed his

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  mind about the bicycle and bought a fiddle, to the great indignation of the subscribers. He showed considerable canniness when taken to task.

  " How have I cheated you ? " he asked the smith's wife.

  " We gave money to let you buy a velocipede, and you've bought a fiddle. That's how you've cheated us."

  " No, Mary, you misjudge me. In the testi- monial I got with the siller, it said that the money was raised in recognition of my long and valuable services."

  " Yes, and to let you buy a velocipede."

  " There's not a word about a velocipede."

  " Maybe it's called a hi bicycle, but that's the same thing."

  " It's hardly the same thing, but I assure you bicycles are no mentioned any more than veloci- pedes."

  " Havers ! did I no hear the testimonial read out?"

  " You did ; and I can repeat it to you by heart, for often I say it to myself when stand- ing beneath a tree till the rain stops. The words you're thinking of are as follows : -

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  c This gift is raised to enable him to buy some- thing that will make his journeys easier/ ' a And surely that means a velocipede ? " " I don't see but what it might mean a fiddle. The roads don't seem so long if you have music to brighten them."

  O

  66 Well aware you are that these words were just put in because the dominie's heart failed him at the word ' velocipede/ he no being sure how many s's were in it."

  "If that's so," said John, cunningly, "the blame for buying the fiddle should be charged to the dominie."

  It was apparently only to " stop talk " that the post by and by began to construct a velocipede out of his own head. At first he took little interest in the enterprise, perhaps because he was hopeless, but soon he became so enamored of it that he grudged the time spent in deliver- ing letters. My housekeeper wanted me to have him dismissed promptly (Janet thinks the Government would not dare to disobey the orders of a Free Church minister), because one day he said to her :

  " Hie, Janet ; there's twa or three letters for the minister in my bag. You'll better cry

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  in at the smith's for them. They're on the mantelpiece."

  " Bring them yourself," said Janet, indig- nantly.

  "I'll try to run up with them," said the audacious post, " before supper time, but I'm terribly busy making my velocipede."

  " Are you paid by the Government for mak- ing velocipedes," demanded Janet, " or for de- livering letters ? "

  " I disdain to argue with a woman," replied John. " Stand out of the light, woman."

  " Woman indeed ! " said Janet, holding her head high.

  John and the smith are only on speaking terms now when the velocipede is broken, which is once a week or so. Then they mend it be- tween them. Their quarrel arose in this way. John began to make his vehicle in his own kitchen, from which he was driven by his wife to a shed that is cold in winter, because it wants half of the roof. Having made a machine here that looked complete when leaning against the side of the shed, but came to pieces if you tried to sit on it, John had to call in -the smith, and for a month, the two men were engaged in the

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  evenings in giving it finishing touches. They were great friends during this period, and, in- deed, up to the memorable day when the post's steed was first seen by the glen at large. It was so much admired that John felt it to be his duty to himself and the Postmaster-General to claim full credit for the construction. From the same day the smith took to maintaining that he had made the velocipede.

  " The smith lent me some nails and a hammer," John said, " but I made the thing."

  " Him make a bicycle ! " said the smith, scornfully. "I let him hold the nails till I needed them, but I did all the work."

  " A laddie could have done all the smith did," John explained.

  "That's true," retorted the smith, "if a laddie could have made the bicycle."

  So fierce did the controversy run that the smith turned his back when John came clatter- ing along on his wooden horse. Nevertheless, both love that bicycle, and when anything is wrong with it they rush for hammers and twine. There is a great deal of twine about the machine, and, when it cuts, the wheels go different ways.

  148 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE.

  To describe the post's velocipede is alto- gether beyond my pen. To me it looks like a little carfc wheel in chase of a big one, with an excited rider trying to keep them apart.

  " The post's coming ! " some one says at the " clachan," and then mothers dart into the road for their children to save them from death, while terrified hens run this way and that. Then with a clatter John bears down upon us, shouting :

  " Clear the road there."

  " Stop him," some one cries to John.

  " I canna," says John ; " he's away with me again. Grip him at the back."

  Some bold spirit seizes the little wheel, and is dragged along by the infuriated bicycle until John is able to descend.

  " Bring me a drink of water," he pants.

  But it is not always thus that the post ar- rives. Sometimes he is hours late, and we say :

  " I can't make out why John is so late."

  " He'll have broken down," is suggested next.

  By and by John walks into the hamlet, push- ing his bicycle before him, or laden with various parts of it.

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  " We've had an accident," he explains, as if an explanation were necessary.

  Sometimes the post comes to grief as well as his machine, and we have to sally forth to look for him. Once something still more remark- able happened. The bicycle arrived alone. We hurried up the brae, at th
e foot of which the hamlet lies, and near the top we found John prone in the middle of a wet road.

  " Don't bother about me," he cried, " but help me to find the velocipede. It's bolted."

  I should say that it would be easier to walk forty miles on our roads than to ride five on that demon machine, but the post by no means agrees with me.

  " That velocipede's like a watch," he says, fondly. " So long as I never had one I didn't miss it, but now I couldn't do without it."

  150 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE.

  CHAPTER V.

  A WEDDING IN THE SMIDDY.

  I PROMISED to take the world at large into my confidence on the subject of our wedding at the smiddy. You in London, no doubt, dress more gorgeously for marriages than we do though we can present a fine show of color and you do not make your own wedding-cake, as Lizzie did. But what is your excitement to ours ? I suppose you have many scores of mar- riages for our one, but you only know of those from the newspapers. " At so-and-so, by the Eev. Mr. Such-a-one, John to Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Thomas." That is all you know of the couple who were married roiind the corner, and therefore, I say, a hundred such weddings are less eventful in your community than one wedding in ours.

  Lizzie is off to Southampton with her hus-

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  band. As the carriage drove off behind two horses that could with difficulty pull it through the snow, Janet suddenly appeared at my elbow and remarked :

  "Well, well, she has him now, and may she have her joy of him."

  " Ah, Janet," I said, " you see you were wrong. You said he would never come for her."

  "No, no," answered Janet. "I just said Lizzie made too sure about him, seeing as he was at the other side of the world. These Bailors are scarce to be trusted."

  " But you see this one has turned up a trump."

  " That remains to be seen. Anybody that's single can marry a woman, but it's no so easy to keep her comfortable."

  I suppose Janet is really glad that the sailor did turn up and claim Lizzie, but she is annoyed in a way too. The fact is that Janet was skeptical about the sailor. I never saw Janet reading anything but the Free Church Monthly, yet she must have obtained her wide knowledge of sailors from books. She con- siders them very bad characters, but is too shrewd to give her reasons.

  152 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE.

  " We all ken what sailors are/' is her dark way of denouncing those who go down to the sea in ships, and then she shakes her head and purses up her mouth as if she could tell things about sailors that would make our hair rise.

  I think it was in Glasgow that Lizzie met the sailor three years ago. She had gon e there to be a servant, but the size of the place (according to her father) frightened her, and in a few months she was back at the clachan. We were all quite excited to see her again in the church, and the general impression was that Glasgow had " made her a deal more lady- like." In Janet's opinion she was just a little too lady-like to be natural.

  In a week's time there was a wild rumor through the glen that Lizzie was to be married.

  " Not she," said Janet, uneasily.

  Soon, however, Janet had to admit that there was truth in the story, for " the way Lizzie wandered up the road looking for the post showed she had a man on her mind."

  Lizzie, I think, wanted to keep her wonder- ful secret to herself, but that could not be done.

  " I canna sleep at nights for wondering who

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  Lizzie is to get/' Janet admitted to me. So in order to preserve her health Janet studied the affair, reflected on the kind of people Lizzie was likely to meet in Glasgow, asked Lizzie to the manse to tea (with no result), and then asked Lizzie's mother (victory). Lizzie was to be married to a sailor.

  " I'm cheated," said Janet, " if she ever sets eyes on him again. Oh, we all ken what sailors

  are."

  You must not think Janet too spiteful. Marriages were always too much for her, but after the wedding is over she becomes good- natured again. She is a strange mixture, and, I rather think, very romantic, despite her cyni- cal talk.

  Well, I confess now that for a time I was somewhat afraid of Lizzie's sailor myself. His letters became few in number, and often I saw Lizzie with red eyes after the post had passed. She had too much work to do to allow her to mope, but she became unhappy and showed a want of spirit that alarmed her father, who liked to shout at his relatives and have them shout back at him.

  "I wish she had never set eyes on that

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  sailor/' he said to me one day when Lizzie was troubling him.

  " She could have had William Simpson/' her mother said to Janet.

  " I question that/' said Janet, in repeating the remark to me.

  But though all the clachan shook its head at the sailor, and repeated Janet's aphorism about sailors as a class, Lizzie refused to believe her lover untrue.

  " The only way to get her to flare up at me," her father said, " is to say a word against her lad. She will not stand that."

  And, after all, we were wrong and Lizzie was right. In the beginning of the winter Janet walked into my study and parlor (she never knocks), and said *

  "He's come!"

  " Who ? " I asked.

  " The sailor. Lizzie's sailor. It's a perfect disgrace."

  " Hoots, Janet, it's the very reverse. I'm delighted ; and so, I suppose, are you in your heart."

  " I'm not grudging her the man if she wants him/' said Janet, flinging up her head, " but

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  the disgrace is in the public way he inarched past me with his arm round her. It aifronted

  me."

  Janet gave me details. She had been to a farm for the milk and passed Lizzie, who had wandered out to meet the post as usual.

  " I've no letter for ye, Lizzie," the post said, and Lizzie sighed.

  " No, my lass," the post continued, " but I've something better."

  Lizzie was wondering what it could be, when a man jumped out from behind a hedge, at the sight of whom Lizzie screamed with joy. It was her sailor.

  " I would never have let on I was so fond of him," said Janet.

  " But did he not seem fond of her ? " I asked.

  " That was the disgrace," said Janet. " He marched off to her father's house with his arm round her ; yes, passed me and a wheen other folk, and looked as if he neither kent nor cared how public he was making himself. She did not care either."

  I addressed some remarks to Janet on the subject of meddling with other people's affairs,

  156 LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE.

  pointing out that she was now half an hour late with my tea ; but I, too, was interested to see the sailor. I shall never forget what a change had come over Lizzie when I saw her next. The life was back in her face, she bustled about the house as busy as a bee, and her walk was springy.

  " This is him," she said to me, and then the sailor came forward and grinned. He was usually grinning when I saw him, but he had an honest, open face, if a very youthful one.

  The sailor stayed on at the clachan till the marriage, and continued to scandalize Janet by strutting "past the very manse gate" with his arm round the happy Lizzie.

  " He has no notion of the solemnity of mar- riage," Janet informed me, " or he would look less jolly. I would not like a man that joked about his marriage."

  The sailor undoubtedly did joke. He seemed to look on the coming event as the most comi- cal affair in the world's history, and when he spoke of it he slapped his knees and roared. But there was daily fresh evidence that he was devoted to Lizzie.

  The wedding took place in the smiddy,

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  because it is a big place, and all the glen was invited. Lizzie would have had the company comparatively select, but the sailor asked every one to come whom he fell in with, and he had few refusals. He was wonderfully " flush " of money, too, and had not Lizzi
e taken control of it, would have given it all away before the marriage took place.

  " It's a mercy Lizzie kens the worth of a bawbee," her mother said, " for he would scatter his siller among the very bairns as if it was corn and he was feeding hens."

  All the chairs in the five houses were not sufficient to seat the guests, but the smith is a handy man, and he made forms by crossing planks on tubs. The smiddy was an amazing sight, lit up with two big lamps, and the bride, let me inform those who tend to scoff, was dressed in white. As for the sailor, we have perhaps never had so showily dressed a gentle- man in our parts. For this occasion he dis- carded his seafaring " rig-out " (as he called it), and appeared resplendent in a black frock coat (tight at the neck), a light blue waistcoat (richly ornamented), and gray trousers with a green stripe. His boots were new and so

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  genteel that as the evening wore on he had to kick them off and dance in his stocking soles.

  Janet tells me that Lizzie had gone through the ceremony in private with her sailor a num- ber of times, so that he might make no mistake. The smith, asked to take my place at these rehearsals, declined on the ground that he for- got how the knot was tied ; but his wife had a better memory, and I understand that she even mimicked me for which I must take her to task one of these days.

  However, despite all these precautions, the sailor was a little demonstrative during the ceremony, and slipped his arm round the bride "to steady her." Janet wonders that Lizzie did not fling his arms from her, but Lizzie was too nervous now to know what her swain was about.