by Unknown
Of course I could not go for a walk on the Sabbath day; but as I was leaving for Branders on the Monday I got up betimes to have a last wander in the glen. I did not specially want to do this, and I prefer to put it that the fillip came from the Adam I had been. The sun soon got very masterly, though there was a nip in the air at first, and I made the mistake of wearing the old topcoat.
I sat for a time among the heather by the pond, where the reflection from the Grand House is still to be seen, but it is somewhat spoilt by a small windmill having been erected close by to provide the breeze in which, ‘tis said, the trout rise best. I am told that this was Posty’s last contrivance to make things easy for the English. I thought with little respect of the Jacobites and the ‘45, and a dog that may have been of old descent drove me away.
I went on to the bield, but nothing is left of it now except the pile of stones. I stood looking for a long time at the place where we had left the basket.
I went to Joanna’s shieling, though I knew she was gone, and I found it gone too. I just went because I was sure that Joanna’s visitor had been my visitor, though we were both in a dwam when we thought we saw her. I liked to mind the Roman’s bonny act in making a pig of herself to heat the cold body of Joanna. I wished she had been given a chance to do this. She would have done it if she could.
I went to the Eagles Rock, and it looked the more sinister because there was a scarf of rime hiding the Logan stone. When the rime drifted I thought I could see the stone shogging.
I left my visit to the burnside to the end. There is now a swinging bridge for the convenience of churchgoers in the backend of the year; but though little more than a wimple of water was running and sometimes coming to a standstills I found the exact bend in the burn where I dropped her, if she had been there to drop. I stood, unruffled, keeping an iron grip on myself, my mind so rid of the old fash that I marvelled at my calm. It was not so, however, with my topcoat, which I found becoming clammy-cold, as if recalling another time by the burn and feeling we were again too near for safety. You might have said it tugged at me to come away, but that of course was just a vagary of my mind.
The young Adam in me must have had the upper hand, for looking back, I see it was to him rather than to me it happened. He thought he had catched into his arms something padding by, whose husky voice said ‘Adam’ lovingly, the while her glamorous face snuggled into his neck, the way a fiddle does. Next moment he gave a cry because he thought he was running with blood; and even I had a sinking till I tried my throat with my handkerchief. Whatever had been there was gone now; and I hurried away myself, for I was as shaken as if it had been the Spectrum.
I bided the night at Branders with Dr John, to whom all my story was so familiar except just one happening that I had always sworn never to reveal even to him.
We sat long over his pipe talking about what he called the old dead-and-done affair. We were very intimate that night, the one of us an ancient and the other getting on.
‘Let us be thankful,’ the doctor said, ‘that it can all be so easily construed, for the long and the short of it is that you were just away in your mind. Any other construing of it would be too uncomfortable to go to our beds on even now.’
I said, taking a higher line: ‘It is not even allowable’; and yet we discussed the possibility of its having had any backing to it for, I suppose, the last time. This would have meant that the glen, instead of its minister, does sometimes go queer in the terrible stillness of the time when it is locked. ‘We should have to think,’ the doctor said, with the kettle in his hand, ‘that it all depended on the stillness of the glen. If it got to be stiller than themselves it woke them up, and they were at their old ploys again.’
‘I am not seeing,’ I said, ‘how even that could bring me into it.’
‘Nor am I,’ he agreed, pouring out cosily, ‘but let us say that in such incredible circumstances you might by some untoward accident have got involved while the rest of us escaped.’
The word accident is not a friend of mine, and so, or for some other reason, I said, ‘I would rather think she had picked me out.’ He smiled at that, not grasping that I was speaking for young Adam.
‘Maybe,’ he said to make me laugh, but failing, ‘it was her echo that was back in the glen, and by some mischance you got into the echo.’
Then he grew graver, and said he would have none of those superstitions; the affair could only be construed naturally so long as we accepted the experiences I once thought I had gone through as having been nothing but the fancies of a crazy man.
‘All of them?’ I could not help saying.
‘Every one,’ said he, clapping me confidently on the shoulder; ‘do you not see, man, that if any one of them was arguable it would be less easy to dispose of the lave?’
‘That day during my illness,’ I said, ‘when I was but three parts convinced by your construing, and slipped away from you all to the bield to make certain that the basket was not there—’
‘Precisely,’ said he, ‘that would be a case in point. What strange ravels might we have got entangled in if you had found that basket!’
My many years’ old resolution to keep the thing dark from all, even from him, broke down, and I spoke out the truth. ‘Dr John,’ I told him, ‘I did find the basket that day.’
For long he threepit with me that I was away in my mind again, but he had to listen to me while I let out the tale, which has ceased to perturb me, though I have a sort of a shiver at writing it down. I found the basket with its provender in the bield where we had left it, and at that the peace which had been coming to me threatened to go, and my soul was affrichted. I prayed long, and I took the basket down to the burn and coupit its sodden gear therein, and itself I tore to bits and scattered. It was far waur to me at that time to think that she had been than that she was just a figment of the brain.
I told all this to Dr John, and at first he was for spurning it, nor can I say for certain that he believes it now. I leave it at that, but fine I know it would be like forsaking the callant that once I was to cast doubt on what lies folded up in his breast.
I am back now, secure and serene, in my mining town which, in many ways, with its enterprise and modern improvements, including gas and carts to carry away any fluff of snow that falls, is far superior to my first charge. I have a wider sphere of usefulness and a grand family life. As I become duller in the uptake, time will no doubt efface every memory of Miss Julie of the Logan; and of mornings I may be waking up without the thought that I have dropped her in the burn. Of course it is harder on young Adam. I have a greater drawing to the foolish youth that once I was than I have pretended. When I am gone it may be that he will away back to that glen.
The Short Story Collections
As a young man, Barrie enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote drama reviews for Edinburgh Evening Courant. He would go on to graduate with his M.A. on April 21, 1882.
A HOLIDAY IN BED AND OTHER SKETCHES
CONTENTS
A HOLIDAY IN BED.
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE.
LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE. A WEDDING IN A SMIDDY.
A POWERFUL DRUG. (NO HOUSEHOLD SHOULD BE WITHOUT IT.)
EVERY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR.
GRETNA GREEN REVISITED.
MY FAVORITE AUTHORESS.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL.
THOUGHTFUL BOYS MAKE THOUGHTFUL MEN.
IT.
TO THE INFLUENZA.
FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS.
RULES FOR CARVING.
ON RUNNING AFTER A HAT.
A HOLIDAY IN BED.
Now is the time for a real holiday. Take it in bed, if you are wise.
People have tried a holiday in bed before now, and found it a failure, but that was because they were ignorant of the rules. They went to bed with the open intention of staying there, say, three days, and found to their surprise that each morning they wanted to get up. This was a novel experience to them, they flung about r
estlessly, and probably shortened their holiday. The proper thing is to take your holiday in bed with a vague intention of getting up in another quarter of an hour. The real pleasure of lying in bed after you are awake is largely due to the feeling that you ought to get up. To take another quarter of an hour then becomes a luxury. You are, in short, in the position of the man who dined on larks. Had he seen the hundreds that were ready for him, all set out on one monster dish, they would have turned his stomach; but getting them two at a time, he went on eating till all the larks were exhausted. His feeling of uncertainty as to whether these might not be his last two larks is your feeling that, perhaps, you will have to get up in a quarter of an hour. Deceive yourself in this way, and your holiday in bed will pass only too quickly.
Sympathy is what all the world is craving for, and sympathy is what the ordinary holiday-maker never gets. How can we be expected to sympathize with you when we know you are off to Perthshire to fish? No; we say we wish we were you, and forget that your holiday is sure to be a hollow mockery; that your child will jam her finger in the railway carriage, and scream to the end of the journey; that you will lose your luggage; that the guard will notice your dog beneath the seat, and insist on its being paid for; that you will be caught in a Scotch mist on the top of a mountain, and be put on gruel for a fortnight; that your wife will fret herself into a fever about the way the servant, who has been left at home, is carrying on with her cousins, the milkman and the policeman; and that you will be had up for trespassing. Yet, when you tell us you are off tomorrow, we have never the sympathy to say, “Poor fellow, I hope you’ll pull through somehow.” If it is an exhibition you go to gape at, we never picture you dragging your weary legs from one department to another, and wondering why your back is so sore. Should it be the seaside, we talk heartlessly to you about the “briny,” though we must know, if we would stop to think, that if there is one holiday more miserable than all the others, it is that spent at the seaside, when you wander the weary beach and fling pebbles at the sea, and wonder how long it will be till dinner time. Were we to come down to see you, we would probably find you, not on the beach, but moving slowly through the village, looking in at the one milliner’s window, or laboriously reading what the one grocer’s labels say on the subject of pale ale, compressed beef, or vinegar. There was never an object that called aloud for sympathy more than you do, but you get not a jot of it. You should take the first train home and go to bed for three days.
To enjoy your holiday in bed to the full, you should let it be vaguely understood that there is something amiss with you. Don’t go into details, for they are not necessary; and, besides, you want to be dreamy more or less, and the dreamy state is not consistent with a definite ailment. The moment one takes to bed he gets sympathy. He may be suffering from a tearing headache or a tooth that makes him cry out; but if he goes about his business, or even flops in a chair, true sympathy is denied him. Let him take to bed with one of those illnesses of which he can say with accuracy that he is not quite certain what is the matter with him, and his wife, for instance, will want to bathe his brow. She must not be made too anxious. That would not only be cruel to her, but it would wake you from the dreamy state. She must simply see that you are “not yourself.” Women have an idea that unless men are “not themselves” they will not take to bed, and as a consequence your wife is tenderly thoughtful of you. Every little while she will ask you if you are feeling any better now, and you can reply, with the old regard for truth, that you are “much about it.” You may even (for your own pleasure) talk of getting up now, when she will earnestly urge you to stay in bed until you feel easier. You consent; indeed, you are ready to do anything to please her.
The ideal holiday in bed does not require the presence of a ministering angel in the room all day. You frequently prefer to be alone, and point out to your wife that you cannot have her trifling with her health for your sake, and so she must go out for a walk. She is reluctant, but finally goes, protesting that you are the most unselfish of men, and only too good for her. This leaves a pleasant aroma behind it, for even when lying in bed, we like to feel that we are uncommonly fine fellows. After she has gone you get up cautiously, and, walking stealthily to the wardrobe, produce from the pocket of your great coat a good novel. A holiday in bed must be arranged for beforehand. With a gleam in your eye you slip back to bed, double your pillow to make it higher, and begin to read. You have only got to the fourth page, when you make a horrible discovery — namely, that the book is not cut. An experienced holiday-maker would have had it cut the night before, but this is your first real holiday, or perhaps you have been thoughtless. In any case you have now matter to think of. You are torn in two different ways. There is your coat on the floor with a knife in it, but you cannot reach the coat without getting up again. Ought you to get the knife or to give up reading? Perhaps it takes a quarter of an hour to decide this question, and you decide it by discovering a third course. Being a sort of an invalid, you have certain privileges which would be denied you if you were merely sitting in a chair in the agonies of neuralgia. One of the glorious privileges of a holiday in bed is that you are entitled to cut books with your fingers. So you cut the novel in this way, and read on.
Those who have never tried it may fancy that there is a lack of incident in a holiday in bed. There could not be a more monstrous mistake. You are in the middle of a chapter, when suddenly you hear a step upon the stair. Your loving ears tell you that your wife has returned, and is hastening to you. Now, what happens? The book disappears beneath the pillow, and when she enters the room softly you are lying there with your eyes shut. This is not merely incident; it is drama.
What happens next depends on circumstances. She says in a low voice —
“Are you feeling any easier now, John?”
No answer.
“Oh, I believe he is sleeping.”
Then she steals from the room, and you begin to read again.
During a holiday in bed one never thinks, of course, of analyzing his actions. If you had done so in this instance, you would have seen that you pretended sleep because you had got to an exciting passage. You love your wife, but, wife or no wife, you must see how the passage ends.
Possibly the little scene plays differently, as thus —
“John, are you feeling any easier now?”
No answer.
“Are you asleep?”
No answer.
“What a pity! I don’t want to waken him, and yet the fowl will be spoilt.”
“Is that you back, Marion?”
“Yes, dear; I thought you were asleep.”
“No, only thinking.”
“You think too much, dear. I have cooked a chicken for you.”
“I have no appetite.”
“I’m so sorry, but I can give it to the children.”
“Oh, as it’s cooked, you may as well bring it up.”
In that case the reason of your change of action is obvious. But why do you not let your wife know that you have been reading? This is another matter that you never reason about. Perhaps, it is because of your craving for sympathy, and you fear that if you were seen enjoying a novel the sympathy would go. Or, perhaps, it is that a holiday in bed is never perfect without a secret. Monotony must be guarded against, and so long as you keep the book to yourself your holiday in bed is a healthy excitement. A stolen book (as we may call it) is like stolen fruit, sweeter than what you can devour openly. The boy enjoys his stolen apple, because at any moment he may have to slip it down the leg of his trousers, and pretend that he has merely climbed the tree to enjoy the scenery. You enjoy your book doubly because you feel that it is a forbidden pleasure. Or, do you conceal the book from your wife lest she should think that you are overexerting yourself? She must not be made anxious on your account. Ah, that is it.
People who pretend (for it must be pretence) that they enjoy their holiday in the country, explain that the hills or the sea gave them such an appetite. I could never my
self feel the delight of being able to manage an extra herring for breakfast, but it should be pointed out that neither mountains nor oceans give you such an appetite as a holiday in bed. What makes people eat more anywhere is that they have nothing else to do, and in bed you have lots of time for meals. As for the quality of the food supplied, there is no comparison. In the Highlands it is ham and eggs all day till you sicken. At the seaside it is fish till the bones stick in your mouth. But in bed — oh, there you get something worth eating. You don’t take three big meals a day, but twelve little ones, and each time it is something different from the last. There are delicacies for breakfast, for your four luncheons and your five dinners. You explain to your wife that you have lost your appetite, and she believes you, but at the same time she has the sense to hurry on your dinner. At the clatter of dishes (for which you have been lying listening) you raise your poor head, and say faintly:
“Really, Marion, I can’t touch food.”
“But this is nothing,” she says, “only the wing of a partridge.”
You take a side glance at it, and see that there is also the other wing and the body and two legs. Your alarm thus dispelled, you say —
“I really can’t.”
“But, dear, it is so beautifully cooked.”
“Yes; but I have no appetite.”
“But try to take it, John, for my sake.”
Then for her sake you say she can leave it on the chair, and perhaps you will just taste it. As soon as she has gone you devour that partridge, and when she comes back she has the sense to say —
“Why, you have scarcely eaten anything. What could you take for supper?”
You say you can take nothing, but if she likes she can cook a large sole, only you won’t be able to touch it.