“What’s G. T.?” asked Auntie Bell; and Bud laughed slyly and looked at her smiling Auntie Ailie, and said: “We know, Auntie Ailie, don’t we? It’s GRAND! And if you want to know, Auntie Bell, it’s just Mr. Lovely Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. That’s a book, my Lord! I expected there’d be battles every day – ”
“What a blood-thirsty child!” said Miss Ailie.
“I don’t mean truly, truly battles,” Bud hurried to explain, “but the kind that’s the same as a sound of revelry off – no blood, but just a lot of bang. But I s’pose battles are gone out, like iron suits. Then I thought there’d be almost nothing but cataracts and ravines and – and – mountain passes, and here and there a right smart Alick in short trunks and a feather in his hat winding a hunting-horn. I used to think, when I was a little, wee, silly whitterick, that you wound a horn every Saturday night with a key just like a clock; but I’ve known for years and years it’s just blowing. The way father said, and from the things I read, I calc’lated all the folk in Scotland’d hate one another like poison, and start a clan, and go out chasing all the other clans with direful slogans and bagpipes skirling wildly in the genial breeze. And the place would be crowded with lovelorn maidens – that kind with the starched millstones round their necks like Queen Mary always wore. My, it must have been rough on dear old Mary when she fell asleep in church! But it’s not a bit like that; it’s only like Scotland when I’m in bed, and the wind is loud, and I hear the geese. Then I think of the trees all standing out in the dark and wet, and the hills, too, the way they’ve done for years and years, and the big, lonely places with nobody in them, not a light even; and I get the croodles and the creeps, for that’s Scotland, full of bogies. I think Scotland’s stone-dead.”
“It’s no more dead than you are yourself,” said Miss Bell, determined ever to uphold her native land. “The cleverest people in the world come from Scotland.”
“So father used to say; but Jim, he said he guessed the cleverer they were the quicker they came. I’m not a bit surprised they make a dash from home when they feel so dead and mopish and think of things and see that road.”
“Road?” said Uncle Dan. “What road?”
“My road,” said the child. “The one I see from my window – oh, how it rises and rises and winds and winds, and it just shrieks on you to come right along and try.”
“Try what?” asked her uncle, curiously.
“I dunno,” said Bud, thinking hard; “Auntie Ailie knows, and I ‘spect Auntie Bell knows, too. I can’t tell what it is, but I fairly tickle to take a walk along. Other times I fee I’d be mighty afraid to go, but Auntie Ailie says you should always do the things you’re afraid to do, for they’re most always the only things worth doing.”
Mr. Dyce, scratching the ear of Footles, who begged at the side of his chair, looked over the rims of his glasses and scrutinized the child.
“All roads,” said he, “as you’ll find a little later, come to the same dead end, and most of us, though we think we’re picking our way, are all the time at the mercy of the School-master, like Geordie Jordon. The only thing that’s plain in the present issue is that we’re not brisk enough here for Young America. What do you think we should do to make things lively?”
“Hustle,” said Bud. “Why, nobody here moves faster ‘n a funeral, and they ought to gallop if they want to keep up with the band.”
“I’m not in a hurry myself,” said her uncle, smiling. “Maybe that’s because I think I’m all the band there is myself. But if you want to introduce the Chicago system you should start with Mrs. Wright’s Italian warehouse down the street – the poor body’s losing money trying to run her shop on philanthropic principles.”
Bud thought hard a while. “Phil – phil – What’s a philanthropic principle?” she asked.
“It’s a principle on which you don’t expect much interest except in another world,” said her uncle. “The widow’s what they call a Pilgrim hereabouts; if the meek were to inherit the earth in a literal sense, she would long ago have owned the whole county.”
“A truly Christian woman!” said Miss Bell.
“I’m not denying it,” said Mr. Dyce; “but even a Christian woman should think sometimes of the claims of her creditors, and between ourselves it takes me all my time to keep the wholesale merchants from hauling her to court.”
“How do you manage it?” asked Ailie, with a twinkle in her eyes; but Dan made no reply – he coughed and cleaned his spectacles.
CHAPTER XVII
THERE was joy a few days later in the Dyces’ kitchen when Peter the postman, with a snort that showed the bitterness of his feelings, passed through the window a parcel for Kate that on the face of it had come from foreign parts. “I don’t ken who it’s from, and ye’re no’ to think I’m askin’,” said he; “but the stamps alone for that thing must have cost a bonny penny.”
“Did they, indeed!” said Kate, with a toss of her head. “Ye’ll be glad to ken he can well afford it!” and she sniffed at the parcel redolent of perfumes strange and strong.
“Ye needna snap the nose off me,” said the postman; “I only made the remark. What – what does the fellow, do?”
“He’s a traveller for railway tunnels,” retorted the maid of Colonsay, and shut the window with a bang, to tear open the parcel in a frenzy of expectation and find a bottle of Genuine Riga Balsam – wonderful cure for sailors’ wounds! – another of Florida Water, and a silver locket, with a note from Charles saying the poem she had sent was truly grand, and wishing her many happy returns of the day. Like many of Charles’s letters now, its meaning was, in parts, beyond her, until she could learn from Bud the nature of the one to which it was an answer – for Bud was so far enraptured with the wandering sailor that she sometimes sent him letters which the servant never saw. That day the breakfast service smelled of Florida Water, for Kate had drenched herself with the perfume, and Miss Bell was sure she had washed the dishes again with scented soap, as was the habit of the girl when first she came from Colonsay and thought that nothing but Brown Windsor would do justice to Grandma Buntain’s tea-set used on Sundays. But Bud could see the signs of Shipping Intelligence, and as soon as she could she hastened to the kitchen, for it was Saturday, and on Saturdays there were no lessons in the Dyce Academy. Oh, how she and Kate fondled the bottles lovingly, and sniffed passionately at their contents, and took turn about of the locket! The maid had but one regret, that she had no immediate use for Riga Balsam; but Bud was more devoted than that – she gently pricked the palm of her hand with a pin and applied the Genuine. “Oh, how he must love me – us, I mean!” she exclaimed, and eagerly devoured his letter.
“What did you say to him in the last?” asked Kate. “He’s talking there about a poetry, and happy returns of the day.”
Bud confessed she had made a poem for him from his beloved Kate, and had reckoned on fetching a gift of candy by telling him her birthday was on Monday. “It really I’d just as lief have the balsam,” said she; “it’s perfectly lovely; how it nips!”
“It’s not my birthday at all,” said Kate. “My birthday’s always on the second Sunday in September. I was born about the same time as Lady Anne – either a fortnight before or a fortnight after; I forget mysel’ completely which it was, and I dare say so does she.”
“No, but Monday’s my birthday, right enough,” said Bud, “and seeing that we’re sort of loving him in company, I s’posed it would be all the same.”
“So it is; I’m not complainin’,” said the maid. “And now we’ll have to send him something back. What would you recommend?”
They considered many gifts appropriate for a sailor – sou’westers, Bible-markers, woollen comforters, and paper-knives, scarf-pins, gloves, and ties. Bud was sure that nothing would delight him like a book about a desert island, but Kate said no, a pipe was just the very ticket – a wooden pipe with silver mountings; the very one to suit was in the window of Mrs. Wright’s Italian warehouse.
“What’s an Italian warehouse?” asked the child. “You have me there,” said Kate, “unless, maybe, her husband was Italian before he went and died on her. ‘Italian Warehouse’ is the only thing that’s on her sign. She sells a thing for almost any price you like to offer, because the Bible says it’s not the thing at all to argy-bargy.”
“I know,” said Bud; “it’s what we call running a business on – on – on philanthropic principles. I’d love to see a body do it. I’ll run out and buy the pipe from Mrs. Wright, Kate.”
She departed on her errand down the town, at the other side of the church; and the hours of the forenoon passed, and dinner-time was almost come, and still there was no sign of her returning. Kate would have lost her patience and gone to seek for her, but found so much to interest her at the window that she quite forgot her messenger. Something out of the ordinary was happening on the other side of the church. Wanton Wully knew what it was, but of course he was not telling, for he was out as public crier, rousing the town with his hand-bell, and shouting “Notice!” with an air that promised some tremendous tidings; but beyond mysterious words like “bed-rock prices,” which he mumbled from a paper in his hand, there was nothing to show this proclamation differed from the common ones regarding herring at the quay or a sale of delft down-by at John Turner’s corner. “What are ye crying?” they asked him, but being a man with the belief that he had a voice as clear as a concert singer he would not condescend to tell them. Only when some one looked across his shoulder and read the paper for himself was it found that a sale described as “Revolutionary” was taking place at the Italian warehouse. Half the town at once went to see what the decent body was up to. Kate saw them hurrying down, and when they came back they were laughing. “What’s the ploy?” she asked a passer-by.
“A sale at the Pilgrim weedow’s,” she was told. “She’s put past her Spurgeon’s Sermons and got a book aboot business, and she’s learnin’ the way to keep an Italian warehouse in Scotch.”
Kate would have been down the town at once to see this marvel for herself, but her pot was on the boil, and here was the mistress coming down the stair crying, “Lennox, Lennox!” The maid’s heart sank. She had forgotten Lennox, and how could she explain her absence to a lady so particular? But for the moment she was spared the explanation, for the bark of Footles filled the street and Mr. Dyce came into the lobby laughing.
“You’re very joco!” said his sister, helping him off with his coat. “What are you laughing at?”
“The drollest thing imaginable,” said he. “I have just left Captain Consequence in a terrible rage about a letter that a boy has brought to him from Mrs. Wright. He’s one of the folk who brag of paying as they go but never make a start. It seems he’s as much in debt to her as to most of the other merchants in the place, but wasn’t losing any sleep about it, for she’s such a softy. This letter has given him a start. He showed it to me, with the notion that it was a libel or a threat that might be actionable, but I assured him I couldn’t have written one more to the point myself. It said that unless he paid at once something would be apt to happen that would create him the utmost astonishment.”
“Mercy on us! That’s not very like the widow; she must be getting desperate.”
“It was the wording of the thing abused me,” said Mr. Dyce, walking into the parlor still chuckling – “‘something will be apt to happen that will create you the utmost astonishment’ – it suggests such awful possibilities. And it’s going to serve its purpose, too, for the Captain’s off to pay her, sure it means a scandal.” Kate took the chance to rush round the kirk in search of her messenger. “This way for the big bargains!” cried some lads coming back from the Italian warehouse, or, “Hey! ye’ve missed a step” – which shows how funny we can be in the smallest burgh towns – but Kate said nothing only “trash!” to herself in indignation, and tried by holding in her breath to keep from getting red.
The shop of the Pilgrim widow suffered from its signboard, that was “far too big for its job, like the sweep that stuck in my granny’s chimney,” as Mr. Dyce said. Once the sign had been P. & A.‘s, but P. & A’s good lady tired of hearing her husband nicknamed the Italian, and it went back to the painter, who partly paid with it a debt to the Pilgrim widow, who long since rued her acquisition. She felt in her soul it was a worldly vanity – that a signboard less obtrusive on the public eye would more befit herself and her two meek little windows, where fly-papers, fancy goods, sweetmeats, cigarettes, country eggs, and cordial invitations to the Pilgrims’ Mission Bethel every Friday (D. V.), eight o’clock, kept one another incongruous and dusty company. A decent, pious widow, but ah! so wanting any saving sense of guile. The Pilgrim Mission was the thing she really lived for, and her shop was the cross she bore. But to-day it was scarcely recognizable: the windows had been swept of their stale contents’, and one was filled with piles of rosy apples, the other with nuts that poured in a tempting cataract from a cask upset with an air of reckless prodigality. A large, hand-lettered bill was in each window; one said:
“HALLOWE’EN! ARISE AND SHINE!” and the other:
“DO IT NOW!”what was to be done being left to the imagination. All forenoon there had been a steady flow of customers, who came out of the shop with more than nuts or apples, greatly amazed at the change in the Pilgrim widow, who was cracking up her goods like any common sinner. Behind the railed and curtained box, in which she was supposed to keep her books and pray for the whole community, there seemed to be some secret stimulating influence, for when bad payers tried to-day to get a thing on credit, and she was on the point of yielding, she would dart into the box and out again as hard as steel, insisting that at every Revolutionary Sale the terms were cash. She was giving bargains, but at her own price, never at her customers’, as it used to be. The Health Saline – extract of the finest fruit, Cooling, Refreshing, Invigorating, Tonic (though indeed it looked like an old friend from Rochelle with a dash of sugar and tartaric) – was down a ha’penny, to less than what it cost, according to another hand-done bill upon the counter. When they asked her how she could afford to sell the stuff below its cost, she seemed ashamed and startled, till she had a moment in behind the curtains, and then she told them it was all because of the large turn-over; she could not afford to sell the saline under cost if she did not sell it in tremendous quantities.
Did they want Ward’s Matchless Polishing Paste? – alas! (after a dash behind the curtains) she was completely out of it. Of late it had been in such great demand that she got tired of ordering it every other week wholesale. Yes, she was out of Ward’s, but (again the curtained box) what about this wonderful line in calf-foot jelly, highly praised by the – by the connoisseurs? What were connoisseurs? A connoisseur (again on reference behind the curtains) was one of those wealthy men who could swallow anything.
“I’ll tell ye what it is,” said the tailor, “I see’t at last! She’s got a book in there; I’ve seen’t before —The Way to Conduct a Retail Business– and when she runs behind, it’s to see what she should say to the customers. That’s where she got the notions for her window and the ‘Do it Now!’”
But he was wrong – completely wrong, for when Kate came into the shop with “Have you seen Miss Lennox, Mrs. Wright? I sent her here a message hours ago,” Lennox herself came from the curtained box saying, “Hello, Kate; saw you first! What can we do for you to day?”
“My stars! you’ll catch it!” said the maid. “They’re waiting yonder on you for your dinner.”
“I was just heading for home,” said Bud, making for the door.
“My child! my child! my angel child!” cried the Pilgrim widow, going to kiss her, but Bud drew back.
“Not to-day, please; I’m miles too big for kissing to-day,” said she, and marched solemnly out of the Italian warehouse.
“What in the world were you doing away so long?” asked Kate. “Were you carrying on at anything?”
“I was paying for Charles’s pipe,” said the child, returning the money she had got for its purchase. “That’s the sweetest lady, Mrs. Wright, but my! ain’t she Baby Mine when it settles down to business? When I wanted to buy the pipe, she was so tickled she wanted me to have it for nothing, seeing I was Mr. Dyce’s niece. She said Uncle Dan was a man of God, who saved her more than once from bankruptcy, and it was a pretty old pipe anyway, that had been in the window since the time she got changed and dropped brocaded dolmans. You’d think it made her ache to have folk come in her shop and spend money; I guess she was raised for use in a free-soup kitchen. I said I’d take the pipe for nothing if she’d throw in a little game with it. ‘What game?’ said she – oh, she’s a nice lady! – and I said I was just dying to have a try at keeping a really really shop, and would show her Chicago way. And you bet I did, Kate MacNeill!”
She came in with the soup, but no question was put till her uncle asked the blessing, and then, before a spoon was lifted, Auntie Bell said, “Lassie, lassie, where in the world have you been?”
“Keeping shop for Mrs. Wright,” said Bud.
“Tcht! tcht! you’re beyond redemption,” cried her aunt. “A child like you keeping shop!”
“A bonny pair of shopkeepers, the widow and you! which of you counted the change?” said Uncle Dan. “Tell us all about it.”
“Well, I had the loveliest time,” said Bud. “It would take till tea-time to tell just ‘zactly what a lovely day it was, but I’ll hurry up and make it a front scene. What you said, Uncle Dan, about her running a shop on phil – on philanthropic principles made me keen to see her doing it, and I went down a message for Kate, and offered to help. She lowed herself she wasn’t the best there was in the land at keeping shop, and didn’t seem to make much money at it, but said thank the Lord she had the priceless boon of health. I was the first customer she’d set eyes on all the morning, ‘cept a man that wanted change for half a crown and hadn’t the half-crown with him, but said he’d pay it when he didn’t see her again, and she said she felt sure that trade was going to take a turn. I said I thought it would turn quicker if – if – if she gave it a push herself, and she said she dared say there was something in it, and hoped I was in the fold. I said I was, sure, and at that she cried out ‘Hallelujah!’ Every other way she was ‘a perfectly perfect lady; she made goo-goo eyes at me, and skipped round doing anything I told her. First she cleared all the old truck out of the windows, and filled them up with nuts and apples for Hallowe’en, till they looked the way windows never looked in Scotland in all creation before, I s’pose. ‘They’ll think it kind of daft,’ says she, scared-like, ‘they’re not like any other windows in the place.’ ‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘and that’s the very thing to jar the eye of the passer-by.’ Jim Molyneux said a shop-window was like a play-bill, it wanted a star line – a feature – a whoop. Then I tried to think of the ‘cute things shopkeepers print in Chicago, but couldn’t remember any ‘cepting ‘Pants two dollars a leg, seats free,’ but the widow said she didn’t sell pants. Then I thought of some natty little cards I’d seen that said ‘Arise and Shine!’ and ‘Do it Now!’ so I got her to print these words good and big, and put them in the window. She wanted to know what they meant, but I said I couldn’t tell from Adam, but they would make the people wonder, and come in the shop to find out, and then it would be up to her to sell them something and pry the money out of them before they balked. Oh, Auntie, how I go on!” and here Bud stopped almost breathless and a little ashamed.
“Go on! go on!” cried Ailie.
“Well, I got behind a curtain into a little box-office, where the widow kept a cash-book awfully doggy-eared, and a pile of printed sermons, and heaps of tracts about doing to others as you should be done by, and giving to the poor and lending to the Lord. She read bits of them to me, and said she sometimes wondered if Captain Brodie was too poor to pay for eighteen months’ tobacco, but she didn’t like to press him, seeing he had been in India and fought his country’s battles. She said she felt she must write him again for her money, but couldn’t think of what to say that would be Christian and polite and gentle, but still make him see she wanted the money pretty bad. I said I would tell her what to say that would suit just fine, and I dictated it – ”
“I saw the letter,” said Uncle Dan, twinkling through his glasses. “It was a work of genius – go on! go on!”
“Then folk began to come in for nuts and apples, and asked what ‘Arise and Shine’ and ‘Do it Now’ meant. She said they were messages from the angel of the Lord – meaning me, I s’pose – though, goodness knows, I’m not much of an angel, am I, Auntie Bell? Then the folk would fade away, looking a bit rattled, and come back in a while and ask the price of things. She’d say she wasn’t sure, but she thought about a shilling, or maybe ninepence, seeing they had a young family, and then they’d want the stuff on credit, and she’d yammer away to them till I got wild. When they were gone I had a good heart-to-heart talk with her, and said phil-philanthropic principles were a great mistake in a small Italian warehouse, and that she ought to give the customers a chance of doing unto others as they would be done by. She made more goo-goo eyes at me, and said I was a caution, sure enough, and perhaps I was right, for she had never looked at it that way before. After that she spunked up wonderful. I got her to send Mr. Wanton through the town with his bell, saying there was everything you wanted at Mrs. Wright’s at bed-rock prices; and when people came in after that and wanted to get things for nothing, or next to it, she’d pop into the box where I lay low, and ask me what she was to say next, and then skip out to them as sharp as a tack and show they needn’t try to toy with her. She says she made more money to-day by my playing shop Chicago-way than she’d make in a week her own way. Why, I’m talking, and talking, and talking, and my soup’s stone cold!”
“So’s mine,” said Uncle Dan, with a start.
“And mine!” said Auntie Ailie, with a smile.
“And mine too, I declare!” cried Miss Bell, with a laugh they all joined in, till Footles raised his voice protesting.
CHAPTER XVIII
YES, that was one bright day in the dismal season, the day she tutored the Pilgrim widow in the newer commerce. There was a happy night to follow soon, and it is my grief that my pen cannot grasp the spirit of it, so that reading you would laugh with her and whiles be eerie. ‘Tis true there was little in the thing itself as in most that at the age of twelve impresses us for all our lives, but it met in some degree the expectations that her father’s tales of Scotland had sent home with her. Hitherto all had been natural and wellnigh commonplace that she had experienced, all except the folk so queer and kind and comical in a different way from those in Chicago, the sounds she could hear as she lay in her attic bed – the wind-call, and the honk of geese, and the feeling of an island hopelessly remote from the new bright world that best she knew – remote and lost, a speck on the sea far, far from great America. The last things vaguely troubled her. For she was child enough as yet to shiver at things not touched by daylight nor seemingly made plain by the common-sense of man. She could laugh at the ghosts that curdled the blood of the maid of Colonsay; and yet at times, by an effort of the will, she could feel all Kate’s terror at some manifestation no more alarming than the cheep of mice or a death-watch ticking in a corner cupboard. These were but crude and vulgar fears, self-encouraged little actress terrors. It took more than the hint of ghost or the menace of the ticking insect in the wood to wake in her the feeling of worlds unrealized, encompassing, that she could get from casual verses in her auntie Ailie’s book of Scottish ballads, or find o’erwhelm her of a sudden on looking from her window into the garden bare and palid below the moon.
This night there should be moon according to the penny almanac, and Wanton Wully lit no lamps, but went home for a good sleep to himself, as his saying went, and left the burgh to such illumination as should come to it by the caprice of the clouds. It lay, the little place, for most of the night in darkness: a mirk so measureless deep, when the shops were shut, that the red-lit skylight windows at the upper end of the town seemed by some miracle to lift themselves and soar into the heavens – square, monstrous, flitting stars to the vision of Bud, as she stood with Auntie Ailie at the door watching for Uncle Dan’s return from his office. To bring the soaring windows back to their natural situation, she had to stand a little way inside the lobby and establish their customary place against the darkness by the lintel of the door.
