Bud: A Novel
“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.
“‘Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp?
Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court.”
She threw Aunt Ailie’s cloak over one shoulder, put forth a ridiculously little leg with an air of the playhouse, and made the gestures of Jim Molyneux.
“I thought you couldn’t read,” said Ailie. “You little fraud! You made Aunt Bell think you couldn’t spell cat.”
“Oh, Queen of Sheba! did she think I was in earnest?” cried Bud. “I was just pretending. I’m apt to be pretending pretty often; why, Kate thinks I make Works. I can read anything; I’ve read books that big it gave you cramp. I s’pose you were only making believe about that garden, and you haven’t any key at all, but I don’t mind; I’m not kicking.”
Ailie put her hand to her bosom and revealed the Twopenny she had bought to be the key to the wonderful garden of letters – the slim little gray-paper-covered primer in which she had learned her own first lessons. She held it up between her finger and thumb that Bud might read its title on the cover. Bud understood immediately and laughed, but not quite at her ease for once.
“I’m dre’ffle sorry, Aunt Ailie,” she said. “It was wicked to pretend just like that, and put you to a lot of trouble. Father wouldn’t have liked that.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking,” said Ailie, borrowing her phrase to put her at her ease again. “I’m too glad you’re not so far behind as Aunt Bell imagined. So you like books? Capital! And Shakespeare no less! What do you like best, now?’”
“Poetry,” said Bud. “Particularly the bits I don’t understand, but just about almost. I can’t bear to stop and dally with too easy poetry; once I know it all plain and there’s no more to it, I – I – I love to amble on. I – why! I make poetry myself.”
“Really?” said Ailie, with twinkling eyes.
“Sort of poetry,” said Bud. “Not so good as ‘As You Like It’ – not ‘nearly’ so good, of course! I have loads of really, really poetry inside me, but it sticks at the bends and then I get bits that fit, made by somebody else, and wish I had been spry and said them first. Other times I’m the real Winifred Wallace.”
“Winifred Wallace?” said Aunt Ailie, inquiringly.
“Winifred Wallace,” repeated Bud, composedly. “I’m her. It’s my – it’s my poetry name. ‘Bud Dyce’ wouldn’t be any use for the magazines; it’s not dinky enough.”
“Bless me, child, you don’t tell me you write poetry for the magazines?” said her astonished aunt.
“No,” said Bud, “but I’ll be pretty liable to when I’m old enough to wear specs. That’s if I don’t go on the stage.”
“On the stage!” exclaimed Ailie, full of wild alarm.
“Yes,” said the child. “Mrs. Molyneux said I was a born actress.”
“I wonder, I wonder,” said Aunt Ailie, staring into vacancy.
CHAPTER VIII
DANIEL DYCE had an office up the street at the windy corner facing the Cross, with two clerks in it and a boy who docketed letters and ran errands. Once upon a time there was a partner – Cleland & Dyce the firm had been – but Cleland was a shy and melancholy man whose only hours of confidence and gayety came to him after injudicious drams. ‘Twas patent to all how his habits seized him, but nobody mentioned it except in a whisper, sometimes as a kind of little accident, for in everything else he was the perfect gentleman, and here we never like to see the honest gentry down. All men liked Colin Cleland, and many would share his jovial hours who took their law business elsewhere than to Cleland & Dyce. That is the way of the world, too; most men keep their jovial-money in a different pocket from where they keep their cash. The time came when it behooved Mr. Cleland to retire. Men who knew the circumstances said Dan Dyce paid rather dear for that retirement, and indeed it might be so in the stricter way of commerce, but the lawyer was a Christian who did not hang up his conscience in the “piety press” with his Sunday clothes. He gave his partner a good deal more than he asked.
“I hope you’ll come in sometimes and see me whiles at night and join in a glass of toddy,” said Mr. Cleland.
“I’ll certainly come and see you,” said Dan Dyce. And then he put his arm affectionately through that of his old partner, and added, “I would – I would ca’ canny wi’ the toddy, Colin,” coating the pill in sweet and kindly Scots. Thank God, we have two tongues in our place, and can speak the bitter truth in terms that show humility and love, and not the sense of righteousness, dictate.
“Eh! What for?” said Mr. Cleland, his vanity at once in arms.
Dan Dyce looked in his alarmed and wavering eyes a moment, and thought, “What’s the use? He knows himself, they always do!”
“For fear – for fear of fat,” he said, with a little laugh, tapping with his finger on his quondam partner’s widening waistcoat. “There are signs of a prominent profile, Colin. If you go on as you’re doing it will be a dreadful expense for watch-guards.”
Colin Cleland at once became the easy-osey man again, and smiled. “Fat, man! it’s not fat,” said he, clapping himself on the waistcoat, “it’s information. Do you know, Dan, for a second, there, I thought you meant to be unkind, and it would be devilish unlike you to be unkind. I thought you meant something else. The breath of vulgar suspicion has mentioned drink.”
“It’s a pity that!” said Mr. Dyce, “for a whole cask of cloves will not disguise the breath of suspicion.” It was five years now since Colin Cleland retired among his toddy rummers, and if this were a fancy story I would be telling you how he fell, and fell, and fell, but the truth – it’s almost lamentable – is that the old rogue throve on leisure and ambrosial nights with men who were now quite ready to give the firm of Daniel Dyce their business, seeing they had Colin Cleland all to themselves and under observation. Trust estates and factorages from all quarters of the county came now to the office at the windy corner. A Christian lawyer with a sense of fun, unspotted by the world, and yet with a name for winning causes, was what the shire had long been wanting. And Daniel Dyce grew rich. “I’m making money so fast,” he said one day to his sisters (it was before Bud came), “that I wonder often what poor souls are suffering for it.”
Said Bell, “It’s a burden that’s easy put up with. We’ll be able now to get a new pair of curtains for the back bedroom.”
“A pair of curtains!” said her brother, with a smile to Ailie. “Ay, a score of pairs if they’re needed, even if the vogue was Valenciennes. Your notion of wealth, Bell, is Old Malabar’s – ‘Twopence more, and up goes the donkey!’ Woman, I’m fair rolling in wealth.” He said it with a kind of exultation that brought to her face a look of fear and disapproval. “Don’t, Dan, don’t,” she cried – “don’t brag of the world’s dross; it’s not like you. ‘He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent,’ says the Proverbs. You must be needing medicine. We should have humble hearts. How many that were high have had a fall!”
“Are you frightened God will hear me and me His bounty?” said the brother, in a whisper. “I’m not bragging; I’m just telling you.”
“I hope you’re not hoarding it,” proceeded Miss Bell. “It’s not wiselike – ”
“Nor Dyce-like either,” said Miss Ailie.
“There’s many a poor body in the town this winter that’s needful.”
“I dare say,” said Daniel Dyce, coldly. “‘The poor we have always with us.’ The thing, they tell me, is decreed by Providence.”
“But Providence is not aye looking,” said Bell. “If that’s what you’re frightened for, I’ll be your almoner.”
“It’s their own blame, you may be sure, if they’re poor. Improvidence and – and drink. I’ll warrant they have their glass of ale every Saturday. What’s ale? Is there any moral elevation in it? Its nutritive quality, I believe, is less than the tenth part of a penny loaf.”
“Oh, but the poor creatures!” sighed Miss Bell. “Possibly,” said Dan Dyce, “but every man must look after himself; and as you say, many a man well off has come down in the world. We should take no risks. I had Black the baker at me yesterday for £20 in loan to tide over some trouble with his flour merchant and pay an account to Miss Minto.”
“A decent man, with a wife and seven children,” said Miss Bell.
“Decent or not, he’ll not be coming back borrowing from me in a hurry. I set him off with a flea in his lug.”
“We’re not needing curtains,” said Miss Bell, hurriedly; “the pair we have are fine.”
Dan finished his breakfast that day with a smile, flicked the crumbs off his waistcoat, gave one uneasy glance at Ailie, and went off to business humming “There is a Happy Land.”
“Oh, dear me, I’m afraid he’s growing a perfect miser,” moaned Bell, when she heard the door close behind him. “He did not use to be like that when he was younger and poorer. Money’s like the toothache, a commanding thing.”
Ailie smiled. “If you went about as much as I do, Bell,” she said, “you would not be misled by Dan’s pretences. And as for Black, the baker, I saw his wife in Miss Minto’s yesterday buying boots for her children and a bonnet for herself. She called me Miss Ailie, an honor I never got from her in all my life before.”
“Do you think – do you think he gave Black the money?” said Bell, in a pleasant excitation.
“Of course he did. It’s Dan’s way to give it to some folk with a pretence of reluctance, for if he did not growl they would never be off his face! He’s telling us about the lecture that accompanied it as a solace to our femininity. Women, you know, are very bad lenders, and dislike the practice in their husbands and brothers.”
“None of the women I know,” protested Bell. “They’re just as free-handed as the men if they had it. I hope,” she added, anxiously, “that Dan got good security. Would it be a dear bonnet, now, that she was getting?”
Ailie laughed – a ridiculous sort of sister this; she only laughed.
Six times each lawful day Daniel Dyce went up and down the street between his house and the office at the windy corner opposite the Cross, the business day being divided by an interval of four hours to suit the mails. The town folk liked to see him passing; he gave the street an air of occupation and gayety, as if a trip had just come in with a brass band banging at the latest air. Going or coming he was apt to be humming a tune to himself as he went along with his hands in his outside pockets, and it was an unusual day when he did not stop to look in at a shop window or two on the way, though they never changed a feature once a month. To the shops he honored thus it was almost as good as a big turnover. Before him his dog went whirling and barking, a long alarm for the clerks to stop their game of Catch-the-Ten and dip their pens. There were few that passed him without some words of recognition.
He was coming down from the office on the afternoon of the Hansel Monday that started Bud in the Pigeons’ Seminary when he met the nurse, old Betty Baxter, with a basket. She put it down at her feet, and bobbed a courtesy, a thing that nowadays you rarely see in Scotland.
“Tuts! woman,” he said to her, lifting the basket and putting it in her hand. “Why need you bother with the like of that? You and your courtesies! They’re out of date, Miss Baxter, out of date, like the decent men that deserved them long ago, before my time.”
“No, they’re not out of date, Mr. Dyce,” said she, “I’ll aye be minding you about my mother; you’ll be paid back some day.”
“Tuts!” said he again, impatient. “You’re an awful blether: how’s your patient, Duncan Gill?”
“As dour as the devil, sir,” said the nurse. “Still hanging on.”
“Poor man! poor man!” said Mr. Dyce. “He’ll just have to put his trust in God.”
“Oh, he’s no’ so far through as all that,” said Betty Baxter. “He can still sit up and take his drop of porridge. They’re telling me you have got a wonderful niece, Mr. Dyce, all the way from America. What a mercy for her! But I have not set eyes on her yet. I’m so busy that I could not stand in the close like the others, watching: what is she like?”
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