Bud: A Novel

Bud: A Novel
Neil Munro

Neil Munro

Bud: A Novel

CHAPTER I

THE town’s bell rang through the dark of the winter morning with queer little jolts and pauses, as if Wanton Wully Oliver, the ringer, had been jovial the night before. A blithe New-Year’s-time bell; a droll, daft, scatter-brained bell; it gave no horrid alarms, no solemn reminders that commonly toll from steeples and make good-fellows melancholy to think upon things undone, the brevity of days and years, the parting of good company, but a cheery ditty – “boom, boom, ding-a-dong boom, boom ding, hie, ding-dong,” infecting whoever heard it with a kind of foolish gayety. The burgh town turned on its pillows, drew up its feet from the bed-bottles, last night hot, now turned to chilly stone, rubbed its eyes, and knew by that bell it was the daftest of the daft days come. It cast a merry spell on the community; it tickled them even in their cosey beds. “Wanton Wully’s on the randan!” said the folk, and rose quickly, and ran to pull aside screens and blinds to look out in the dark on window-ledges cushioned deep in snow. The children hugged themselves under the blankets, and told one another in whispers it was not a porridge morning, no, nor Sunday, but a breakfast of shortbread, ham, and eggs; and behold! a beautiful, loud drum, careless as ‘twere a reveille of hot, wild youths, began to beat in a distant lane. Behind the house of Dyce, the lawyer, a cock that must have been young and hearty crew like to burst; and at the stables of the post-office the man who housed his horses after bringing the morning mail through night and storm from a distant railway station sang a song:

“‘A damsel possessed of great beauty
Stood near by her own father’s gate:
The gallant hussars were on duty;
To view them this maiden did wait.
Their horses were capering and prancing,
Their accoutrements shone like a star;
From the plains they were quickly advancing —
She espied her own gallant hussard”

“Mercy on us, six o’clock!” cried Miss Dyce, with a startled jump from her dreams to the floor of her bedroom. “Six o’clock on the New Year’s morning, and I’ll warrant that randy Kate is sound asleep yet,” she said, and quickly clad herself and went to the head of the stair and cried, “Kate! Kate! are ye up yet, Kate? Are ye hearing me, Kate MacNeill?”

From the cavern dark of the lower story there came back no answer.

She stood with a curious, twirly wooden candlestick in her hand in the midst of a house that was dead dumb and desperate dark and smelled deliciously of things to eat. Even herself, who had been at the making of most of them the day before, and had, by God’s grace, still much of a child’s appetite, could not but sniff with a childish satisfaction at this air of a celestial grocery – of plum-puddings and currant-buns, apples and oranges, cordials and spices, toffee and the angelic treacly sweet we call Black Man – her face lit rosily by the candle low, a woman small and soft and sappy, with the most wanton reddish hair, and a briskness of body that showed no sign as yet of her accomplished years. What they were I will never tell you; but this I’ll say, that even if they had been eighty she was the kind to cheerily dance a quadrille. The daft bell, so plainly in the jovial mood of Wanton Wully Oliver, infected her: she smiled to herself in a way she had when remembering droll things or just for simple jollity, and whoever saw Bell Dyce smile to herself had never the least doubt after that she was a darling. Over the tenements of the town the song of the bell went rollicking, and in its hiccoughing pauses went wonderfully another sound far, far removed in spirit and suggestion – the clang of wild geese calling: the “honk, honk” of the ganders and the challenge of their ladies come down adrift in the snow from the bitter north.

But there was no answer from the maid in the kitchen. She had rolled less deliberately than was usual from her blankets to the summons of the six-o’clock bell, and already, with the kitchen window open, her bounteous form surged over the two sashes that were always so conveniently low and handy for a gossip with any friendly passer-by on the pavement. She drank the air of the clean, chill morning dark, a heady thing like old Tom Watson’s autumn ale, full of the sentiment of the daft days. She tilted an ear to catch the tune of the mail-boy’s song that now was echoing mellow from the cobwebbed gloom of the stable stalls, and, making a snowball from the drift of the window-ledge, she threw it, woman wise, aimlessly into the street with a pretence at combat. The chill of the snow stung sweet in the hot palm of her, for she was young and strong.

“Kate, you wretch!” cried a voice behind her. She drew in her head, to find her mistress in the kitchen with the candlestick in her hand.

“Oh, m’em,” cried the maid, no way abashed, banging up the window and hurriedly crushing her more ample parts under the final hooks and eyes of her morning wrapper – “oh, m’em, what a start you gave me! I’m all in a p-p-palpitation. I was just takin’ one mouthful of air and thinkin’ to myself yonder in the Gaelic that it was time for me to be comin’ in and risin’ right.”

“A happy New Year to you, Kate MacNeill,” said the mistress, taking her hand.

“Just that, just that! and the same to you yourself, Miss Dyce. I’m feeling fine; I’m that glad with everything,” said the maid, in some confusion at this unusual relation with her mistress. She shook the proffered hand rapidly from side to side as if it were an egg-switch.

“And see and get the fires on quick now, like a good lass. It would never do to be starting the New Year late – it would be unlucky. I was crying to you yonder from the stair-head, and wondering if you were ill, that you did not answer me so quickly as you do for ordinar’.”

“Ill, Miss Dyce!” cried the maid, astounded. “Do you think I’m daft to be ill on a New Year’s Day?”

“After yon – after yon shortbread you ate yesterday I would not have wondered much if you were,” said Miss Dyce, shaking her head solemnly. “I’m not complaining, but, dear me! it was an awful lump; and I thought it would be a bonny-like thing, too, if our first-foot had to be the doctor.”

“Doctor! I declare to goodness I never had need of a doctor to me since Dr. Macphee in Colonsay put me in order with oil and things after I had the measles,” exclaimed the maid, as if mankind were like wag-at-the-wa’ clocks, and could be guaranteed to go right for years if you blew through them with a pair of bellows or touched their works with an oily feather.

“Never mind about the measles just now, Kate,” said Miss Dyce, with a meaning look at the black-out fire.

“Neither I was mindin’ them, m’em – I don’t care a spittle for them; it’s so long ago I would not know them if I saw them; I was just – ”

“But get your fire on. You know we have a lot to do to-day to get everything nice and ready for my nephew who comes from America with the four-o’clock coach.”

“America!” cried the maid, dropping a saucepan lid on the floor in her astonishment. “My stars! Did I not think it was from Chickagoo?”

“And Chicago is in America, Kate,” said her mistress. “Is it? is it? Mercy on me, how was Kate to know? I only got part of my education – up to the place where you carry one and add ten. America! Dear me, just fancy! The very place that I’m so keen to go to. If I had the money, and was in America – ”

It was a familiar theme; Kate had not got fully started on it when her mistress fled from the kitchen and set briskly about her morning affairs.

And gradually the household of Dyce, the lawyer, awoke wholly to a day of unaccustomed stillness and sound, for the deep snow piled in the street and hushed the traffic of wheel and hoof and shoe, but otherwise the morning was cheerful with New-Year’s-Day noise. For the bell-ringing of Wanton Wully was scarcely done, died down in a kind of brazen chuckle, and the “honk, honk” of the wild geese sped seaward over gardens and back lanes – strange, wild music of the north, far-fetched and undomestic – when the fife band shrilly tootled through the town to the tune of “Hey, Johnny Cope, are Ye Waukin’ Yet?” Ah, they were the proud, proud men, their heads dizzy with glory and last night’s wine, their tread on air. John Taggart drummed – a mighty drummer, drunk or sober, who so loved his instrument he sometimes went to bed with it still fastened to his neck, and banged to-day like Banagher, who banged furiously, never minding the tune much, but happy if so be that he made noise enough. And the fifers were not long gone down the town, all with the wrong step but Johnny Vicar, as his mother thought, when the snow was trampled under the feet of playing children, and women ran out of their houses, and crossed the street, some of them, I declare, to kiss each other, for ‘tis a fashion lately come, and most genteel, grown wonderfully common in Scotland. Right down the middle of the town, with two small flags in his hat and holly in the lapel of his coat, went old Divine, the hawker, with a great barrow of pure gold, crying: “Fine Venetian oranges! wha’ll buy sweet Venetian oranges? Nane o’ your foreign trash. Oranges! Oranges! – rale New Year oranges, three a penny; bloods, a bawbee each!” The shops opened just for an hour for fear anybody might want anything, and many there were, you may be sure, who did, for they had eaten and drunken everything provided the night before – which we call hogmanay – and now there were currant-loaves and sweety biscuits to buy; shortcake, sugar, and lemons, ginger cordial for the boys and girls and United Presbyterians, boiled ham for country cousins who might come unexpected, and P. & A. MacGlashan’s threepenny mutton-pies (twopence if you brought the ashet back), ordinarily only to be had on fair-days and on Saturdays, and far renowned for value.

Miss Minto’s Millinery and Manteau Emporium was discovered at daylight to have magically outlined its doors and windows during the night with garlands and festoons of spruce and holly, whereon the white rose bloomed in snow; and Miss Minto herself, in a splendid crimson cloak down to the heels and cheeks like cherries, was standing with mittens and her five finger-rings on, in the middle door, saying in beautiful, gentle English, “A happy New Year” to every one who passed – even to George Jordon, the common cowherd, who was always a little funny in his intellects, and, because his trousers were bell-mouthed and hid his feet, could never remember whether he was going to his work or coming from it, unless he consulted; the school-master. “The same to you, m’em, excuse my hands,” said poor George, just touching the tips of her fingers. Then, because he had been stopped and slewed a little from his course, he just went back the way he had come.

Too late got up the red-faced sun, too late to laugh at Wanton Wully’s jovial bell, too late for Taggart’s mighty drumming, but a jolly winter sun – ‘twas all that was wanted among the chimneys to make the day complete.

First of all to rise in Dyce’s house, after the mistress and the maid, was the master, Daniel Dyce himself.

And now I will tell you all about Daniel Dyce: it is that behind his back he was known as Cheery Dan.

“Your bath is ready, Dan,” his sister had cried, and he rose and went with chittering teeth to it, looked at it a moment, and put a hand in the water. It was as cold as ice, because that water, drinking which men never age, comes from high mountain bens.

“That for ye to-day!” said he to the bath, snapping his fingers. “I’ll see ye far enough first!” And contented himself with a slighter wash than usual, and shaving. As he shaved he hummed all the time, as was his habit, an ancient air of his boyhood; to-day it was

“’ Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,’”

with not much tone but a great conviction – a tall, lean, clean-shaven man of over fifty, with a fine, long nose, a ruddy cheek, keen, gray eyes, and plenty of room in his clothes, the pockets of him so large and open it was no wonder so many people tried, as it were, to put their hands into them. And when he was dressed he did a droll thing, for from one of his pockets he took what hereabouts we call a pea-sling, that to the rest of the world is a catapult, and having shut one eye, and aimed with the weapon, and snapped the rubber several times with amazing gravity, he went up-stairs into an attic and laid it on a table at the window with a pencilled note, in which he wrote:

“A New Year’s Day Present for a Good Boy, from an Uncle who does not like Cats.”

He looked round the little room that seemed very bright and cheerful, for its window gazed over the garden to the east and to the valley where was seen the King’s highway. “Wonderful! wonderful!” he said to himself. “They have made an extraordinary job of it. Very nice, indeed, but just a shade ladylike. A stirring boy would prefer fewer fallals.” There was little, indeed, to suggest the occupation of a stirring boy in that attic, with its draped dressing-table in lilac print, its looking-glass flounced in muslin and pink lover’s-knots, its bower-like bed canopied and curtained with green lawn, its shy scent of potpourri and lavender. A framed text in crimson wools, the work of Bell Dyce when she was in Miss Mushet’s seminary, hung over the mantel-piece enjoining all beholders to

“Watch and Pray”

Mr. Dyce put both hands into his trousers-pockets, bent a little, and heaved in a sort of chirruping laughter. “Man’s whole duty, according to Bell Dyce,” he said, “‘Watch and Pray’; but they do not need to have the lesson before them continually yonder in Chicago, I’ll warrant. Yon’s the place for watching, by all accounts, however it may be about the prayer. ‘Watch and Pray’ – h’m! It should be Watch or Pray – it clearly cannot be both at once with the world the way it is; you might as well expect a man to eat pease-meal and whistle strathspeys at the same time.”

He was humming “Star of Peace” – for the tune he started the morning with usually lasted him all day – and standing in the middle of the floor contemplating with amusement the lady-like adornment of the room prepared for his Chicago nephew, when a light step fell on the attic stairs, and a woman’s voice cried: “Dan! Dan Dyce! Coo-ee!”

He did not answer.

She cried again after coming up a step or two more, but still he did not answer. He slid behind one of the bed-curtains.

CHAPTER II

ALISON DYCE came lightly up the rest of the stair, whistling blithely, in spite of her sister Bell’s old notion that whistling women and crowing hens are never canny. She swept into the room. People in the town – which has a forest of wood and deer behind it – used to say she had the tread and carriage of a young wild roe, and I can well assure you she was the girl to walk with on a winter day! She had in her hand a book of poems called The Golden Treasury and a spray of the herb called Honesty, that thrives in poor men’s gardens. Having laid them down on the table without noticing her brother’s extraordinary Present for a Good Boy, she turned about and fondled things. She smoothed the bedclothes as if they covered a child, she patted the chair-backs with an air of benediction, she took cushions to her breast like one that cuddled them, and when she touched the mantelpiece ornaments they could not help it but must start to chime. It was always a joy to see Alison Dyce redding-up, as we say, though in housewifery, like sewing, knitting, and cooking, she was only a poor second to her sister Bell. She tried, from duty, to like these occupations, but oh, dear! the task was beyond her: whatever she had learned from her schooling in Edinburgh and Brussels, it was not the darning of hose and the covering of rhubarb-tarts.

Her gift, said Bell, was management.

Tripping round the little attic, she came back by-and-by to the table at the window to take one last wee glimpse inside The Golden Treasury, that was her own delight and her notion of happy half-hours for the ideal boy, and her eye fell for the first time on the pea-sling and the note beside it.

She read, and laughed, and upon my word, if laughter like Ailie Dyce’s could be bought in perforated rolls, there would be no demand for Chopin and Schumann on the pianolas. It was a laugh that even her brother could not resist: a paroxysm of coughing burst from behind the curtains, and he came out beside her chuckling.

“I reckoned without my hoast,” said he, gasping.