Bud: A Novel

“Nonsense! I don’t believe it,” said he. “That would be very unlike our William.”

“It’s true – I tried her myself!” said Bell. “She was never at a school; isn’t it just deplorable?”

“H’m!” said Mr. Dyce, “it depends on the way you look at it, Bell.”

“She does not know a word of her catechism, nor the name of Robert Bruce, and says she hates counting.”

“Hates counting!” repeated Mr. Dyce, wonderfully cheering up; “that’s hopeful; it reminds me of myself. Forbye its gey like Brother William. His way of counting was ‘one pound, ten shillings in my pocket, two pounds that I’m owing some one, and ten shillings I get to-morrow – that’s five pounds I have; what will I buy you now?’ The worst of arithmetic is that it leaves nothing to the imagination. Two and two’s four and you’re done with it; there’s no scope for either fun or fancy as there might be if the two and two went courting in the dark and swapped their partners by an accident.”

“I wish you would go in and speak to her,” said Bell, distressed still, “and tell her what a lot she has to learn.”

“What, me!” cried Uncle Dan; “excuse my grammar,” and he laughed. “It’s an imprudent kind of mission for a man with all his knowledge in little patches. I have a lot to learn, myself, Bell; it takes me all my time to keep the folk I meet from finding out the fact.”

But he went in humming, Bell behind him, and found the child still practising “Man’s chief end,” so engrossed in the exercise she never heard him enter. He crept behind her, and put his hands over her eyes.

“Guess who,” said he, in a shrill falsetto.

“It’s Robert Bruce,” said Bud, without moving.

“No – cold – cold! – guess again,” said her uncle, growling like Giant Blunderbore.

“I’ll mention no names,” said she, “but it’s mighty like Uncle Dan.”

He stood in front of her and put on a serious face. “What’s this I am hearing, Miss Lennox,” said he, “about a little girl who doesn’t know a lot of things nice little girls ought to know?”

“‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever,’” repeated Bud, reflectively. “I’ve got that all right, but what does it mean?”

“What does it mean?” said Mr. Dyce, a bit taken aback. “You tell her, Bell; what does it mean? I must not be late for the court.”

“You’re far cleverer than I am,” said Bell. “Tell her yourself.”

“It means,” said Daniel Dyce, the lawyer, seating himself on the sofa beside his niece, “that man in himself is a gey poor soul, no’ worth a pin, though he’s apt to think the world was made for his personal satisfaction. At the best he’s but an instrument – a harp of a thousand strings God bends to hear in His leisure. He made that harp – the heart and mind of man – when He was in a happy hour. Strings hale and strings broken, strings slack or tight, there are all kinds of them; the best we can do’s to be taut and trembling for the gladness of God who loves fine music, and set the stars themselves to singing from the very day He put them birling in the void. To glorify’s to wonder and adore, and who keeps the wondering, humble heart, the adoring eye, is to God pleasing exceedingly. Sing, lassie, sing, sing, sing, inside ye, even if ye are as timmer as a cask. God knows I have not much of a voice myself, but I’m full of nobler airs than ever crossed my rusty thrapple. To be grateful always, and glad things are no worse, is a good song to start the morning.”

“Ah, but sin, Dan, sin!” said Bell, sighing, for she always feared her own light-heartedness. “We may be too joco.”

“Say ye so?” he cried, turning to his sister with a flame upon his visage. “By the heavens above us, no! Sin might have been eternal; each abominable thought might have kept in our minds, constant day and night from the moment that it bred there; the theft we did might keep everlastingly our hand in our neighbor’s kist as in a trap; the knife we thrust with might have kept us thrusting forever and forever. But no – God’s good! sleep comes, and the clean morning, and the morning is Christ, and every moment of time is a new opportunity to amend. It is not sin that is eternal, it is righteousness and peace. Joco! We cannot be too joco, having our inheritance.”

He stopped suddenly, warned by a glance of his sister’s, and turned to look in his niece’s face to find bewilderment there. The mood that was not often published by Dan Dyce left him in a flash, and he laughed and put his arms round her.

“I hope you’re a lot wiser for my sermon, Bud,” said he. “I can see you have pins and needles worse than under the Reverend Mr. Frazer on the Front. What’s the American for haivers – for foolish speeches?”

“Hot air,” said Bud, promptly.

“Good!” said Dan Dyce, rubbing his hands together. “What I’m saying may seem just hot air to you, but it’s meant. You do not know the Shorter Catechism; never mind; there’s a lot of it I’m afraid I do not know myself; but the whole of it is in that first answer to ‘Man’s chief end.’ Reading and writing, and all the rest of it, are of less importance, but I’ll not deny they’re gey and handy. You’re no Dyce if you don’t master them easily enough.”

He kissed her and got gayly up and turned to go. “Now,” said he, “for the law, seeing we’re done with the gospels. I’m a conveyancing lawyer – though you’ll not know what that means – so mind me in your prayers.”

Bell went out into the lobby after him, leaving Bud in a curious frame of mind, for “Man’s chief end,” and Bruce’s spider, and the word “joco,” all tumbled about in her, demanding mastery.

“Little help I got from you, Dan!” said Bell to her brother. “You never even tried her with a multiplication table.”

“What’s seven times nine?” he asked her, with his fingers on the handle of the outer door, his eyes mockingly mischievous.

She flushed and laughed, and pushed him on the shoulder. “Go away with you!” said she. “Fine you ken I could never mind seven times!”

“No Dyce ever could,” said he – “excepting Ailie. Get her to put the little creature through her tests. If she’s not able to spell cat at ten she’ll be an astounding woman by the time she’s twenty.”

The end of it was that Aunt Ailie, whenever she came in, upon Bell’s report went over the street to Rodger’s shop and made a purchase. As she hurried back with it, bareheaded, in a cool drizzle of rain that jewelled her wonderful hair, she felt like a child herself again. The banker-man saw her from his lodging as she flew across the street with sparkling eyes and eager lips, the roses on her cheeks, and was sure, foolish man! that she had been for a new novel or maybe a cosmetic, since in Rodger’s shop they sell books and balms and ointments. She made the quiet street magnificent for a second – a poor wee second, and then, for him, the sun went down. The tap of the knocker on the door she closed behind her struck him on the heart. You may guess, good women, if you like, that at the end of the book the banker-man is to marry Ailie, but you’ll be wrong; she was not thinking of the man at all at all – she had more to do, she was hurrying to open the gate of gold to her little niece.

“I’ve brought you something wonderful,” said she to the child – “better than dolls, better than my cloak, better than everything; guess what it is.”

Bud wrinkled her brows. “Ah, dear!” she sighed, “we may be too joco! And I’m to sing, sing, sing, even if I’m as – timmer as a cask, and Robert Bruce is the savior of his country.” She marched across the room, trailing Ailie’s cloak with her, in an absurd caricature of Bell’s brisk manner. Yet not so much the actress engrossed in her performance, but what she tried to get a glimpse of what her aunt concealed.

“You need not try to see it,” said Ailie, smiling, with the secret in her breast. “You must honestly guess.”

“Better’n dolls and candies; oh, my!” said Bud. “I hope it’s not the Shorter Catechism,” she concluded, looking so grave that her aunt laughed.

“It’s not the Catechism,” said Ailie; “try again. Oh, but you’ll never guess! It’s a key.”

“A key?’’ repeated Bud, plainly cast down.

“A gold key,” said her aunt.

“What for?” asked Bud.

Ailie sat herself down on the floor and drew the child upon her knees. She had a way of doing that which made her look like a lass in her teens; indeed, it was most pleasing if the banker-man could just have seen it! “A gold key,” she repeated, lovingly, in Bud’s ear. “A key to a garden – the loveliest garden, with flowers that last the whole year round. You can pluck and pluck at them and they’re never a single one the less. Better than sweet-pease! But that’s not all, there’s a big garden-party to be at it – ”

“My! I guess I’ll put on my best glad rags,” said Bud. “And the hat with pink.” Then a fear came to her face. “Why, Aunt Ailie, you can’t have a garden-party this time of the year,” and she looked at the window down whose panes the rain was now streaming.

“This garden-party goes on all the time,” said Ailie. “Who cares about the weather? Only very old people; not you and I. I’ll introduce you to a lot of nice people – Di Vernon, and – you don’t happen to know a lady called Di Vernon, do you, Bud?”

“I wouldn’t know her if she was handed to me on a plate with parsley trimmings,” said Bud, promptly.

“ – Di Vernon, then, and Effie Deans, and Little Nell, and the Marchioness; and Richard Swivefler, and Tom Pinch, and the Cranford folks, and Juliet Capulet – ”

“She must belong to one of the first families,” said Bud. “I have a kind of idea that I have heard of her.”

“And Mr. Falstaff – such a naughty man, but nice, too! And Rosalind.”

“Rosalind!” cried Bud. “You mean Rosalind in ‘As You Like It?”’

Ailie stared at her with astonishment. “You amazing child!” said she, “who told you about ‘As You Like It’?”

“Nobody told me; I just read about her when Jim was learning the part of Charles the Wrestler he played on six ‘secutive nights in the Waldorf.”

“Read it!” exclaimed her aunt. “You mean he or Mrs. Molyneux read it to you.”

“No, I read it myself,” said Bud.