by Unknown
At last, looking red in one street, and white in another, but resolute in all, they took their business to the office of Mr. John McLean, the writer, who had once escorted Miss Kitty home from a party without anything coming of it, so that it was quite a psychological novel in several volumes. Now Mr. John happened to be away at the fishing, and a reckless maid showed them into the presence of a strange man, who was no other than his brother Ivie, home for a year’s holiday from India, and naturally this extraordinary occurrence so agitated them that Miss Ailie had told half her story before she realized that Miss Kitty was titting at her dress. Then indeed she sought to withdraw, but Ivie, with the alarming yet not unpleasing audacity of his sex, said he had heard enough to convince him that in this matter he was qualified to take his brother’s place. But he was not, for he announced, “My advice to you is not to give T. a halfpenny,” which showed that he did not even understand what they had come about.
They begged permission to talk to each other behind the door, and presently returned, troubled but brave. Miss Kitty whispered “Courage!” and this helped Miss Ailie to the deed.
“We have quite made up our minds to let T. have the money,” she said, “but — but the difficulty is the taking it to him. Must we take it in person?”
“Why not?” asked Ivie, bewildered.
“It would be such a painful meeting to us.” said Miss Ailie.
“And to him,” added simple Miss Kitty.
“You see we have thought it best not to — not to know him,” said Miss
Ailie, faintly.
“Mother—” faltered Miss Kitty, and at the word the eyes of both ladies began to fill.
Then, of course, Mr. McLean discovered the object of their visit, and promised that his brother should take this delicate task off their hands, and as he bowed them out he said, “Ladies, I think you are doing a very foolish thing, and I shall respect you for it all my life.” At least Miss Kitty insisted that respect was the word, Miss Ailie thought he said esteem.
That was how it began, and it progressed for nearly a year at a rate that will take away your breath. On the very next day he met Miss Kitty in High Street, a most awkward encounter for her (“for, you know, Ailie, we were never introduced, so how could I decide all in a moment what to do?”), and he raised his hat (the Misses Croall were at their window and saw the whole thing). But we must gallop, like the friendship. He bowed the first two times, the third time he shook hands (by a sort of providence Miss Kitty had put on her new mittens), the fourth, fifth, and sixth times he conversed, the seventh time he — they replied that they really could not trouble him so much, but he said he was going that way at any rate; the eighth time, ninth time, and tenth time the figures of two ladies and a gentleman might have been observed, etc., and either the eleventh or twelfth time (“Fancy our not being sure, Ailie”—”It has all come so quickly, Kitty”) he took his first dish of tea at Magenta Cottage.
There were many more walks after this, often along the cliffs to a little fishing village, over which the greatest of magicians once stretched his wand, so that it became famous forever, as all the world saw except himself; and tea at the cottage followed, when Ivie asked Miss Kitty to sing “The Land o’ the Leal,” and Miss Ailie sat by the window, taking in her merino, that it might fit Miss Kitty, cutting her sable muff (once Alison Sibbald’s) into wristbands for Miss Kitty’s astrakhan; they did not go quite all the way round, but men are blind.
Ivie was not altogether blind. The sisters, it is to be feared, called him the dashing McLean, but he was at this time nearly forty years old, an age when bachelors like to take a long rest from thinking of matrimony, before beginning again. Fifteen years earlier he had been in love, but the girl had not cared to wait for him, and, though in India he had often pictured himself returning to Redlintie to gaze wistfully at her old home, when he did come back he never went, because the house was a little out of the way. But unknown to him two ladies went, to whom he had told this as a rather dreary joke. They were ladies he esteemed very much, though having a sense of humor he sometimes chuckled on his way home from Magenta Cottage, and he thought out many ways of adding little pleasures to their lives. It was like him to ask Miss Kitty to sing and play, though he disliked music. He understood that it is a hard world for single women, and knew himself for a very ordinary sort of man. If it ever crossed his head that Miss Kitty would be willing to marry him, he felt genuinely sorry at the same time that she had not done better long ago. He never flattered himself that he could be accepted now, save for the good home he could provide (he was not the man to blame women for being influenced by that), for like most of his sex he was unaware that a woman is never too old to love or to be loved; if they do know it, the mean ones among them make a jest of it, at which (God knows why) their wives laugh. Mr. McLean had been acquainted with the sisters for months before he was sure even that Miss Kitty was his favorite. He found that out one evening when sitting with an old friend, whose wife and children were in the room, gathered round a lamp and playing at some child’s game. Suddenly Ivie McLean envied his friend, and at the same moment he thought tenderly of Miss Kitty. But the feeling passed. He experienced it next and as suddenly when arriving at Bombay, where some women were waiting to greet their husbands.
Before he went away the two gentlewomen knew that he was not to speak. They did not tell each other what was in their minds. Miss Kitty was so bright during those last days, that she must have deceived anyone who did not love her, and Miss Ailie held her mouth very tight, and if possible was straighter than ever, but oh, how gentle she was with Miss Kitty! Ivie’s last two weeks in the old country were spent in London, and during that time Miss Kitty liked to go away by herself, and sit on a rock and gaze at the sea. Once Miss Ailie followed her and would have called him a —
“Don’t, Ailie!” said Miss Kitty, imploringly. But that night, when Miss Kitty was brushing her hair, she said, courageously, “Ailie, I don’t think I should wear curls any longer. You know I — I shall be thirty-seven in August.” And after the elder sister had become calm again. Miss Kitty said timidly, “You don’t think I have been unladylike, do you, Ailie?”
Such a trifle now remains to tell. Miss Kitty was the better business woman of the two, and kept the accounts, and understood, as Miss Ailie could not understand, how their little income was invested, and even knew what consols were, though never quite certain whether it was their fall or rise that is matter for congratulation. And after the ship had sailed, she told Miss Ailie that nearly all their money was lost, and that she had known it for a month.
“And you kept it from me! Why?”
“I thought, Ailie, that you, knowing I am not strong — that you — would perhaps tell him.”
“And I would!” cried Miss Ailie.
“And then,” said Miss Kitty, “perhaps he, out of pity, you know!”
“Well, even if he had!” said Miss Ailie.
“I could not, oh, I could not,” replied Miss Kitty, flushing; “it — it would not have been ladylike, Ailie.”
Thus forced to support themselves, the sisters decided to keep school genteelly, and, hearing that there was an opening in Thrums, they settled there, and Miss Kitty brushed her hair out now, and with a twist and a twirl ran it up her fingers into a net, whence by noon some of it had escaped through the little windows and was curls again. She and Miss Ailie were happy in Thrums, for time took the pain out of the affair of Mr. McLean, until it became not merely a romantic memory, but, with the letters he wrote to Miss Kitty and her answers, the great quiet pleasure of their lives. They were friendly letters only, but Miss Kitty wrote hers out in pencil first and read them to Miss Ailie, who had been taking notes for them.
In the last weeks of Miss Kitty’s life Miss Ailie conceived a passionate unspoken hatred of Mr. McLean, and her intention was to write and tell him that he had killed her darling. But owing to the illness into which she was flung by Miss Kitty’s death, that unjust letter was never w
ritten.
But why did Mr. McLean continue to write to Miss Kitty?
Well, have pity or be merciless as you choose. For several years Mr. McLean’s letters had been the one thing the sisters looked forward to, and now, when Miss Ailie was without Miss Kitty, must she lose them also? She never doubted, though she may have been wrong, that, if Ivie knew of Miss Kitty’s death, one letter would come in answer, and that the last. She could not tell him. In the meantime he wrote twice asking the reason of this long silence, and at last Miss Ailie, whose handwriting was very like her sister’s, wrote him a letter which was posted at Tilliedrum and signed “Katherine Cray.” The thing seems monstrous, but this gentle lady did it, and it was never so difficult to do again. Latterly, it had been easy.
This last letter of Mr. McLean’s announced to Miss Kitty that he was about to start for home “for good,” and he spoke in it of coming to Thrums to see the sisters, as soon as he reached Redlintie. Poor Miss Ailie! After sleepless nights she trudged to the Tilliedrum postoffice with a full confession of her crime, which would be her welcome home to him when he arrived at his brother’s house. Many of the words were written on damp blobs. After that she could do nothing but wait for the storm, and waiting she became so meek, that Gavinia, who loved her because she was “that simple,” said sorrowfully:
“How is’t you never rage at me now, ma’am? I’m sure it keepit you lightsome, and I likit to hear the bum o’t.”
“And instead o’ the raging I was prigging for,” the soft-hearted maid told her friends, “she gave me a flannel petticoat!” Indeed, Miss Ailie had taken to giving away her possessions at this time, like a woman who thought she was on her deathbed. There was something for each of her pupils, including — but the important thing is that there was a gift for Tommy, which had the effect of planting the Hanoverian Woman (to whom he must have given many uneasy moments) more securely on the British Throne.
CHAPTER XXV
A PENNY PASS-BOOK
Elspeth conveyed the gift to Tommy in a brown paper wrapping, and when it lay revealed as an aging volume of Mamma’s Boy, a magazine for the Home, nothing could have looked more harmless. But, ah, you never know. Hungrily Tommy ran his eye through the bill of fare for something choice to begin with, and he found it. “The Boy Pirate” it was called. Never could have been fairer promise, and down he sat confidently.
It was a paper on the boys who have been undone by reading pernicious fiction. It gave their names, and the number of pistols they had bought, and what the judge said when he pronounced sentence. It counted the sensational tales found beneath the bed, and described the desolation of the mothers and sisters. It told the color of the father’s hair before and afterwards.
Tommy flung the thing from him, picked it up again, and read on uneasily, and when at last he rose he was shrinking from himself. In hopes that he might sleep it off he went early to bed, but his contrition was still with him in the morning. Then Elspeth was shown the article which had saved him, and she, too, shuddered at what she had been, though her remorse was but a poor display beside his, he was so much better at everything than Elspeth. Tommy’s distress of mind was so genuine and so keen that it had several hours’ start of his admiration of it; and it was still sincere, though he himself had become gloomy, when he told his followers that they were no more. Grizel heard his tale with disdain, and said she hated Miss Ailie for giving him the silly book, but he reproved these unchristian sentiments, while admitting that Miss Ailie had played on him a scurvy trick.
“But you’re glad you’ve repented, Tommy,” Elspeth reminded him, anxiously.
“Ay, I’m glad,” he answered, without heartiness.
“Well, gin you repent I’ll repent too,” said Corp, always ready to accept Tommy without question.
“You’ll be happier,” replied Tommy, sourly.
“Ay, to be good’s the great thing,” Corp growled; “but, Tommy, could we no have just one michty blatter, methinks, to end up wi’?”
This, of course, could not be, and Saturday forenoon found Tommy wandering the streets listlessly, very happy, you know, but inclined to kick at any one who came near, such, for instance, as the stranger who asked him in the square if he could point out the abode of Miss Ailie Cray.
Tommy led the way, casting some converted looks at the gentleman, and judging him to be the mysterious unknown in whom the late Captain Stroke had taken such a reprehensible interest. He was a stout, red-faced man, stepping firmly into the fifties, with a beard that even the most converted must envy, and a frown sat on his brows all the way, proving him possibly ill-tempered, but also one of the notable few who can think hard about one thing for at least five consecutive minutes. Many took a glint at him as he passed, but missed the frown, they were wondering so much why the fur of his heavy topcoat was on the inside, where it made little show, save at blasty corners.
Miss Ailie was in her parlor, trying to give her mind to a blue and white notebook, but when she saw who was coming up the garden she dropped the little volume and tottered to her bedroom. She was there when Gavinia came up to announce that she had shown a gentleman into the blue-and-white room, who gave the name of Ivie McLean. “Tell him — I shall come down — presently,” gasped Miss Ailie, and then Gavinia was sure this was the man who was making her mistress so unhappy.
“She’s so easily flichtered now,” Gavinia told Tommy in the kitchen, “that for fear o’ starting her I never whistle at my work without telling her I’m to do’t, and if I fall on the stair, my first thought is to jump up and cry, ‘It was just me tum’ling.’ And now I believe this brute’ll be the death o’ her.”
“But what can he do to her?”
“I dinna ken, but she’s greeting sair, and yon can hear how he’s rampaging up and down the blue-and-white room. Listen to his thrawn feet! He’s raging because she’s so long in coming down, and come she daurna. Oh, the poor crittur!”
Now, Tommy was very fond of his old schoolmistress, and he began to be unhappy with Gavinia.
“She hasna a man-body in the world to take care o’ her,” sobbed the girl.
“Has she no?” cried Tommy, fiercely, and under one of the impulses that so easily mastered him he marched into the blue-and-white room.
“Well, my young friend, and what may you want?” asked Mr. McLean, impatiently.
Tommy sat down and folded his arms. “I’m going to sit here and see what you do to Miss Ailie,” he said, determinedly.
Mr. McLean said “Oh!” and then seemed favorably impressed, for he added quietly: “She is a friend of yours, is she? Well, I have no intention of hurting her.”
“You had better no,” replied Tommy, stoutly.
“Did she send you here?”
“No; I came mysel’.”
“To protect her?”
There was the irony in it that so puts up a boy’s dander. “Dinna think,” said Tommy, hotly, “that I’m fleid at you, though I have no beard — at least, I hinna it wi’ me.”
At this unexpected conclusion a smile crossed Mr. McLean’s face, but was gone in an instant. “I wish you had laughed,” said Tommy, on the watch; “once a body laughs he canna be angry no more,” which was pretty good even for Tommy. It made Mr. McLean ask him why he was so fond of Miss Ailie.
“I’m the only man-body she has,” he answered.
“Oh? But why are you her man-body?”
The boy could think of no better reason than this: “Because — because she’s so sair in need o’ are.” (There were moments when one liked Tommy.)
Mr. McLean turned to the window, and perhaps forgot that he was not alone. “Well, what are you thinking about so deeply?” he asked by and by.
“I was trying to think o’ something that would gar you laugh,” answered Tommy, very earnestly, and was surprised to see that he had nearly done it.
The blue and white notebook was lying on the floor where Miss Ailie had dropped it. Often in Tommy’s presence she had consulted this work, and c
ertainly its effect on her was the reverse of laughter; but once he had seen Dr. McQueen pick it up and roar over every page. With an inspiration Tommy handed the book to Mr. McLean. “It made the doctor laugh,” he said persuasively.
“Go away,” said Ivie, impatiently; “I am in no mood for laughing.”
“I tell you what,” answered Tommy, “I’ll go, if you promise to look at it,” and to be rid of him the man agreed. For the next quarter of an hour Tommy and Gavinia were very near the door of the blue-and-white room, Tommy whispering dejectedly, “I hear no laughing,” and Gavinia replying, “But he has quieted down.”
Mr. McLean had a right to be very angry, but God only can say whether he had a right to be as angry as he was. The book had been handed to him open, and he was laying it down unread when a word underlined caught his eye. It was his own name. Nothing in all literature arrests our attention quite so much as that. He sat down to the book. It was just about this time that Miss Ailie went on her knees to pray.