Then he will stroll down the lanes towards Nipper's shop, making butcher's eyes at all the cows which look at him over the hedges. He is secretly calculating how they will cut up – jealous of Nipper, who has it to do really every day.
He lounges into his son's shop – where not long ago he ruled supreme. Nipper, serving a customer, nods cheerfully to his father, and the Butcher, whose fingers itch for the apron and the swinging steel, clutches the gold head of his cane more tightly to keep him from applying the supple part of it to "every lazy man-Jack" in the establishment. Ah, things are not as they were in his time. The floor is not so clean and cool, in spite of the black and white marble squares on which Nipper had insisted. The eye of "Mister" Donnan could detect signs of wasteful cutting-up in the dismembered animals a-swing on the hooks. But Nipper was now "Butcher" Donnan, while he is no more than proprietor of "New Erin Villa," with nothing to do, and too much time and too much money to do it on.
Sadly he goes out again. His place is not there. He could not stay in that shop ten minutes without breaking the head of one of these stupid "assistants." Even Nipper might not get off scot-free. But Butcher Donnan knows that his son Nipper is of his own temper, a true Donnan, and, young as he is, will be master within his own gates.
So he says sadly, "So long, Nipper!" And, what is the greatest proof of his changed condition, goes out without offering any criticism. Then he "troddles" round the village on the look-out for little jobs, which he considers as his specialities, or even perquisites – though he takes no money for doing them. He can graft rose-trees better than any gardener in the parish. At least he says he can, and by reason of his repeating it often enough and offering to fight anybody who thinks otherwise, people have got to say so too. You believe an old middle-weight champion when he tells you a thing like that, his little eyes twinkling out suspiciously at you, and a fist the size of a mutton ham thrust under your nose.
Just now – "Watch him, Sis!" he is on the look-out for wasp nests. Edam is the most wasp-free parish for miles, all owing to him. He marks them down in the daytime, and then in the evening he will come with his utensils and a dark lantern to make an end. With hung nests under eaves, or attached to branches of trees, he deals by drenching them with petroleum and setting a match to them. Sometimes he will drop a big one into a pail of water and stand ready to clap on the lid. The swarming deep-sunk nests in dry banks he attacks more warily. He brings a little apparatus for heating pitch, and pours it, liquid and sinuous, into the hole till the startled hum sinks into silence. Since an accident which happened last year (owing to the wasp-nest operated upon having a back-door) Butcher Donnan has always taken a quick-sighted boy or two to spy out the land. I suspect our Sir Toady has acted as scout pretty often. Do you remember when he came home all bulgy about the eyes and with one of his ears swelled up double? He said he thought he must have taken cold, and I saw from the twinkle in Fuz's eye that he thought he had been fighting. But I took my magnifying glass and got out two of the wasp-stings. Sir Toady had been doing "scout" for Butcher Donnan. He had not "scouted" quite quick enough – that was all.
Butcher Donnan, born Irish, had spent some time in America. So he started politics here, and as he hoists the green flag with a harp, and hauls down the Union Jack on the occasion of every Irish debate in Parliament, you may be sure that he gets his windows broken.
He does not object. He likes putting the panes in again himself, because it is something for him to do. Sometimes he catches some local Unionist patriot and (what he calls) "lathers" him! Afterwards he supports him liberally during a prolonged convalescence. It is counted rather a good thing to be loyal and get battered by that furious Irish Revolutionary, Butcher Donnan. He has illuminations, too, and has stood for the School Board and County Council on purely Fenian lines. He said nothing, however, when young Nipper was elected instead of him, on that most popular of all municipal tickets which consists in "keeping down the rates."
In despair of other employment Butcher Donnan has married a second time, and his wife is a buxom woman, overcome with the glory of living in a villa. But she makes regular first-class custards, I tell you. And for toffee and shortcake there is not the like of her in the whole village of Edam. If it were not for Butcher Donnan's (senior's) dignity, he might be a happy man. For Mrs. Donnan could conduct the finest confectioner's shop that ever was, and if the Butcher could be kept from cutting up a mince-pie with a cleaver, and sharpening a jelly-spoon on a "steel," he might be the best of salesmen and the happiest of men.
Meanwhile, he has found the big wasp-nest behind the Mains entrance gate, and he will be off to get his pitch-kettle ready, the mask for his face, and the gloves for his hands. He does not mean to suffer if he can help it.
His wife, who cannot be all the time in the kitchen, is miserable because she has to do fancy work and receive callers (or at least sit waiting for them) in the fruit season, which is a clear waste of time. She has been so long making a green Berlin wool cushion for a bazaar – the "Sons of Clan-na-Gael Mutual Assistance Sale" – that it is just chock-full of moths, and in time will pollute the entire household into which it is "raffled." It is wrong to raffle, anyway, says the chief of police, so it will serve them quite right —I shall not take a ticket. Now (said Hugh John, shaking his wise head) if they would only listen to me and start a confectioner's shop, they would both be chirpy as the day is long, and in the winter time long after dark – she over her dishes and patty-pans in the kitchen, and he in a white cap and apron behind the counter, talking to everybody, busy as honey-bees in clover-time, radiating sweetness and coining money.
And underneath the white apron Donnan could wear the butcher's "steel" if he liked, just to make him feel like himself.
Oh, I could arrange for people to be happy if they would only let me!
"And why don't you tell him?" I said to Hugh John, a little impatiently.
"Oh," said Hugh John, "you see, I have fought Nipper so long that there is a kind of hereditary household enmity."
"Nonsense," I said; "why, I saw Fuz talking to the old fellow for an hour the other day, the two of them sitting and smoking as thick as thieves. Besides, there's Toady!"
"Yes," said Hugh John. "Father has no sense of the dignity of the house or of what a 'vendetta' means. He always says that if he has a chance of getting to heaven on that clause about forgiving your enemies, he does not care a dump. Or words that mean just the same. And as for Sir Toady – well, give him liberty to go into the woods at night – only an excuse, mind you, and there is no sin that he will not commit – short, that is, of mutiny. Neither of them knows how to conduct a family quarrel on proper lines. I – you and I, I mean, have to sustain the honor of the house, eh, Sis?"
"Oh, nonsense, Hugh John," I said; "you know you have always been good friends with Nipper. And it was you that brought the whole of them here to listen to the Scott Redcap Tales at the Feudal Tower!"
"That was quite another matter," said Hugh John, hard pushed for an explanation. "It was a sort of Ossianic gathering where all the chiefs came to Morven, and made truce to listen to the tales and songs of the minstrel!"
"Oh, very likely," I said; "but why not put father or Sir Toady on to advise Butcher Donnan? There is need of such a shop as that in Edam. I have often felt the want myself."
Hugh John agreed, and added that he had too. But he said that Sir Toady could not be expected to act, seeing that he had already "sucked up" to the maker of the strawberry shortcake, not to mention the maple-sugar toffee. He could therefore get as much as he wanted for himself without paying, owing to Mrs. Donnan's weakness!
"And do you think that a young dev – imp like Sir Toady does not know when he is well off?" concluded Hugh John. "As for father, he has too much to do to bother his head about things like that – at least I shan't ask him; no, Sis, if anybody, it is you who ought to suggest to Butcher Donnan, or better, to Mrs. Donnan – "
"But," said I, "he is a violent man, and would not listen to a word his wife says. You know that very well!"
Hugh John considered, throwing his chin into the air with a gesture which, if he had not worn his hair of military shortness, would have cast it back elegantly and poetically. But he disdained such things.
"Oh, yes," he said, "Donnan makes a lot of noise, I know. He pretends to authority, but – don't tell anybody – he has it not. His wife can wear him down! She seems to submit. His authority at home is undisputed. So he tires of it, and finishes by letting her have her own way. That is the secret. Of course at the least word of objection it would be, 'What ho! my highest of high horses!' And crying aloud he would mount and ride. But Mrs. Donnan never gives him a chance. She knows better. And as he is really a good-hearted man – if he does bully, she just waits till he is sorry for it! It does not take long."
Thus in the depths of the cave, his chin on his hands and his eye glued to the telescope, spake the Philosopher of Esk Water Side.
I could not but admit that in the main he was right. Hugh John follows a truth with a certain slow, patient, tireless, sleuth-hound trot, which never puts him out of breath. But in the end he finishes by getting there. And now without ever moving he extorted from me the promise that, when I could (and as soon as I could) I should take in hand the task of restoring the married happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Donnan – retired from business, and fallen into the practice of idleness as a profession, and unhappiness as the wages thereof.
IX
THE NEW SHOP
Aged about Fifteen. The Cave, in July.
It wasn't a job I liked. Nor would almost anybody. Still people can't say very much to a girl, and I had been at school and so had lost my – what shall I call it? – "sensitiveness."
As Sir Toady says, the golden rule is a first-rate thing – when you leave school. Even with a little addition, it flourishes there too. But you don't want to set up as a Christian martyr at school, I can tell you. It was very noble in the time of St. Francis, and Dr. Livingstone, and these people, and now-a-days there are people to whom we have to send our sixpences – people we never see. Perhaps I shall be one when I am older, but at school – these are Sir Toady's words – you find out what boy has a down on you and down him first! It saves trouble.
Afterwards you can be as sweet and child-like as possible, and go about the world taking people in with blue Madonna eyes all your life. But at school, if you don't want to have the life of a dog, it has got to be different.
Hugh John, of course, says that the principle of school life is for everybody to obey one person. But, you see, that person is Hugh John. If they don't, most likely he will hammer them. And afterwards he will prove how they were wrong. He will do it at length, and at breadth, and at depth, and unto the fourth dimension, till even fellows who can stand up to his fists give in to him so as not to get lectured – or "jawed" as they ignorantly call it. For really what Hugh John says could be taken down and printed right off in a book.
And you have got to believe it, too. For he is always ready to support his opinion, in the same manner as the Highland chief in Kidnapped. "If any gentleman is not preceesely satisfied, I shall be proud to step outside with him."
Joined to this faculty for laying down the law, he possesses an admirable barbaric power of enforcing it, which would have been invaluable in feudal times, and is not without its uses even now.
Well, three days after I went and called on Mrs. Donnan. It came about quite naturally. She is a first-class person to call upon. No fuss or anything – only you have to catch her on the hop. This time I saw her in the garden gathering gooseberries, and in a moment she had her sunbonnet half off her head, and the basket dropped in the furrow, but I was upon her before she could get away.
"Oh, Mrs. Donnan, do let me help you!" I said.
"But, Miss – " she began, not knowing how to go on.
"I should love it," I added quickly, "and I promise not to eat a single one. In fact I shall whistle all the time!"
"Oh, miss," she said, all in a flurry, "you know it is not that! You or any of your family are only too welcome to come, and take as many as they like."
"If you want to keep any for the preserving pot," I said, smiling at her, "I should advise you not to say that to my entire family. There are certain members of it who are capable of cleaning up the branches as your dog Toby there would clean a bone!"
"Oh, you mean Master Toady," she said, all dimples in a moment at the recollection. "He comes here often. But the garden is large, and bless him! even he can't eat more than he can. More than that, he often leaves a rabbit, or even a brace – and my man havin' been a butcher, is remarkable fond of a bit o' game."
"Yes," I said, "my brother's shootings are like your garden, extensive. Still, it is a wonder how he can keep them up on a shilling a day, and all but twopence of it deferred pay!"
"It is a wonder, now I come to think of it!" said the good lady meditatively. "He must be a careful lad with his money!"
"What I wonder at," – I went on talking as soon as I had got her settled back again at the picking of the gooseberries – "is that you never thought of making the prettiest little shop-window in the world of your cakes and pasties and jams and candies. You know nobody can make them in the least like you. Besides, I have spoken to my father and others who know lots more about it, and every one is sure that such a thing would be a great boon to Edam, and that you are the very person to take it in hand. It would not be like an ordinary shop. For every one knows that your husband has made his fortune and retired. But it would give you something to do. Shall I speak to Mr. Donnan about it?"
The poor woman flushed with pleasure at the very idea. So much I could see. Yet she hesitated.
"HE would never consent – his position – his politics – Oh, no!" Mrs. Donnan considered that I had better not speak to the master – at least not then.
However, I thought differently, and it was after the good lady had asked me to stay to tea that my chance came.
Donnan came in, fanning himself with his broad-brimmed Panama. Things had not been going well that afternoon. Nipper had been busy on account of a rush of trade, and had not welcomed his father's criticisms too gratefully. You see, the old man was accustomed to find fault with Nipper's management, and that day there had been a shortage of ice in the shop and a corresponding shortage in Nipper's temper.
Also, Mr. Donnan's more general perambulation had not turned out well. Some rude and vagrant boys had dug out the pet wasp-nest he had been saving up for the next dark night, and there were green flies all over his best Lasalle rose-tree. Two of his best Dorkings had "laid away."
"I don't want any tea to-day, Cynthia!" he grumbled crossly. And without looking at me he went to the sofa and threw himself down with a heavy creaking of furniture.
"My dear," said his wife, "surely you have not seen this young lady who has come to do you the honor of taking tea with you?"
"Nonsense," said I, "as long as there are such cakes to be had at New Erin Villa, the honor is all on my side."
But the polite Irishman was already on his feet.
"Miss Sweetheart – Miss Sweetheart!" he said, "what a blind old hedge-carpenter ye must have thought me! And you your own folks' daughter, and your father treating me like a long-lost brother, and instructin' me on hist'ry and the use of the globes!"
So we had tea, the prettiest little tea imaginable, with Mrs. Donnan going about as soft-footed as a pussy cat, and purring like one too.
Butcher Donnan looked after her with a kind of sudden bitterness. "It's all very well for her," he said; "she makes her life out of such things, but what is there for me to do? I'm about at the end of my tether!"
"Why, help her!" said I.
"Help her!" he muttered, not understanding. "Me, Butcher Donnan – why, the girl is mazed! I can't do housework!"
But I soon showed him I was not so mazed as he thought. He was tired of doing nothing. He wanted a change. Very well then; here was this little house right at the top of Edam Common, with the railway station opposite, and everybody's business taking him that way two or three times a day. What Edam wanted was a confectioner's shop. His wife was dying to have one. He would look a fine figure of a man in a white overall and cap! Hugh John had said it!
He whistled softly, and his little, deep-set eyes twinkled.
"I might ha' known," he said, "when I saw that long-legged brother of yours looking at me as if to calculate what I was good for. He's the fellow to make plans. Now the other – "
Here he laughed as he remembered Sir Toady Lion.
"More like me when I was his age!" he said. "But about the pastry-cook foolishness. What put that into his head?"
"It isn't foolishness," I answered, "and nobody that I know of ever puts anything into Hugh John's head!"
"He certainly is a wonder!" ("Corker" was what he said.)
Then I explained. One side of the villa was certainly expressly designed for a shop, the drawing-room and back drawing-room having side connections with the kitchen, only needed to be fitted with shelves and counters. The other side of the house and all above stairs might remain intact.
To my surprise Mr. Donnan never said a word concerning his position, his political aspirations, his illuminations, and disporting of the green harp of Ireland.
"But what are we to do with Cynthia's parlor furniture?" he asked instead. I could see a look of joy flash across his wife's face.
"Donnan," she said, "we will make the empty room above into a parlor. It's a perfect god-send. That boy should be paid by Government to make plans for people!"
Butcher Donnan bent his brows a moment on his wife. "Oh, you are in it, are you, Cynthia? Then I suppose I may as well go and order my white apron and cap?"
"Think how well they will become you!" said his wife, who also must have kissed the Blarney stone – the old one, not the new.
I agreed heartily. Butcher Donnan heaved a sigh. "And me, that never was seen but in decent blue," he said, "me to put on white like a mere bun-baker – and at my time of life!"
I said that it was certainly scandalous, but seeing that he would have nothing to do with the work except to sell, and arrange the windows for market-days, it would not matter so much.
"I shall need a small oven!" said his wife, "and a new set of French 'casserole molds' (which is to say patty-pans) and some smaller brass pans, also – "
"Perhaps I was wrong," I interposed cunningly, "to lead Mr. Donnan into so much expense."
I knew that, if anything, this would fetch him, and it did.
"Expense, is it? Expense, Miss Sweetheart! Ha, Ha!" He slapped his pocket. "Ask your friend Mr. Anderson down at the Bank (not that he will tell you!) whether Butcher Donnan is a warm man or not? He did not retire on four bare walls and a pocket-handkerchief of front-garden like some I could tell you of. Cynthia, you shall have all the brass pans you want, and as for the front shop – well, there won't be the like of it, not as far as Dumfries! We shall have a van too, gold and blue!"
Butcher Donnan was all on fire now, and when Nipper came in he clapped him on the shoulder, crying that he had better look sharp. He, Butcher Donnan, was going to set up such a shop as never was seen in Edam, and people would never be wanting "fresh meat" any more, but live on pies and shortcake and sweets for ever and ever.
At this Nipper looked no little relieved, and even listened to the details with a secret satisfaction.
"Father," he said, "the shop down town can run itself the first day of the opening of yours. I'm coming up to see you face the public in your new nursing togs!"
"You're an impudent young jackanapes," said his father, clenching his fists, "and if it were not that you have to stick to business and pay me the money you owe me, I would thrash you on the spot, old as you are!"
"Oh, let Nipper alone," said I, as cheerfully as I could, "he has the sweet tooth. I know it well, and I will wager he will yet be one of your best customers!"
"He will bring his money along with him then every time," growled his father. "And now I am off to see Mr. Hetherington, the architect. We must get things ship-shape!"
"But," cried his wife, "you have never tasted your tea!"
"Oh, bother my tea!" said Butcher Donnan, flouncing out, having fallen a victim to Hugh John's dangerous imagination. But he looked in again, his topper hat of Do-Nothing Pride already exchanged for the cap of Edam Commerce.
"Tell that young gentleman of yours," he said, "that, if things turn out well, he is always welcome at our shop, eh, Cynthia? And nothing to pay! And you, Miss Sweetheart, I hope to live long enough to bake your bride's-cake!"
"There he goes!" murmured his wife, "in a week Donnan will think that he has made every single thing in the shop, from the brass weights on the counter to the specimen birthday-cake in the window!"
X
NIPPER NEGLECTS HIS BUSINESS
August eighth. Aged Fifteen.
It is only a month since the Donnans opened their new shop up on the open square facing the market hill, and not far from the railway station. It was one of a row of villas, mostly tenanted by men who had returned from the "pack" – that is, who had made a neat little fortune in the business which calls itself Credit Drapery, but which, perhaps undeservedly, is called much harder names by its clients, especially when its back is turned.
These, being the aristocracy of a Shilling-a-Week and Cent. – per-Cent., objected exceedingly to a mere confectioner's shop thrusting its nose into the midst of their blue-stone walls, picked out by window-sills and lintels of raw-beef Locharbriggs freestone. But they could not help it, and after the chief of them all, Oliphant McGill, had smelt the now floury fist of the Reformed Idler, and been informed what would happen if he "heard a wurrrd out of the heads av wan o' them" – there fell a great peace on Whinstone Villas.
Some even became customers, and the new business increased with wonderous rapidity. Butcher Donnan became Sweet-Cake Donnan, but that made no difference to his force of arm, or to the respect in which he was universally held.
As he had prophesied, it was not long till he had a pale-blue-and-gold covered van on the road, dandily hooded in case of rain, and with two spy-holes so that the driver could see for himself what was coming up behind him.
From the Cave of Mystery high up on Hugh John's hill we could see it crawling along the roads (really it was going quite fast), like a lumpy cerulean beetle, the like of which for brilliance is not to be found in Curtis.
And the driver was Butcher Donnan himself. He knew all the farmers, and as he had made one fortune already, as fortunes went in Edam, the people were the readier to deal with him. Sometimes even the poorest would save up a penny for one of Mrs. Donnan's sponge-cakes. It was soon called the "Watering Cart," because in hot weather you could tell when it had gone along the road by the drip from the ice underneath, by means of which the jellies and confections were kept cool, while in winter the blue-and-gold beetle steamed like a volcano with hot mince-pies. Oh, Butcher Donnan believed in delivering his goods to the customer in the finest possible condition!
But this same Butcher Donnan being now driver and salesman-out-of-doors, and Mrs. Donnan equally busy in the kitchen, it was obvious that some one must be found for the shop. How I should have loved the job! But a certain Eben Dickson, apprentice with Nipper at the down town business, was called in, and so thoroughly proved his liking for the place in the course of a single afternoon that a more permanent and less appreciative successor was sought for.
