Part 4

In the village Miss Esperance was familiarly known as "the wee leddy": and in the eyes of Burnhead the fact that she lived in an extremely small house with one old servant, and did a large portion of the household work herself, in no way detracted from her dignity. In Burnhead, too, there were people who remembered her father, the Admiral--"a gran' man yon! A radgy man whiles, mind ye, but a rale man. When he gave ye a glass he aye looket the ither way and left ye to help yersen--eh, but he was a gran' man yon!"

Lady Alicia had described Robina as "douce," and that young woman fully acted up to this reputation during her first weeks at Remote. She trembled and cringed before Elsa. She dropped whatever she happened to be holding if suddenly addressed by Miss Esperance, while in the presence of Mr. Wycherly extreme shyness lent to her appearance an expression of such abject imbecility as caused that gentleman to demand anxiously of her mistress whether she thought it was safe to allow Robina to take the children for walks.

Once outside the walls of Remote, however, Robina's whole attitude changed. She bridled: she minced: she was positively swollen with pride in the importance of her position; and when she condescended to exchange remarks with such neighbours as she met, her demeanour was distant and haughty. No sooner had she set forth with Edmund in the perambulator and Montagu trotting by her side, than she at once radiated an atmosphere of "say nothing to nobody" so forbidding as to discourage all attempts at sociability except on the part of the boldest. Everybody wanted to see the little boys, who were, themselves, most friendly and approachable and always ready to respond to the overtures of kindly neighbours.

A comely lass was Robina, sturdy and thickset, but with the exquisite colouring often to be found among the Lowland Scottish peasantry; and of late her rosy cheeks had bloomed to a deeper rose, while her forehead and chin and neck were white as the elder flower growing against the wall at the bottom of the garden. Very blue eyes had Robina, and thick, wavy hair--red hair that would escape from its tight braids in frivolous little curls at the nape of her neck and round her ears. From far away, Sandie, the flesher, would espy that brilliant hair burning like a lamp, and wheresoever that beacon shone there would Sandie be fain to follow. He escorted her from her home to Remote in the early morning, and was generally waiting at a safe distance from Remote to walk home with her in the evening. So devoted was he, that Robina had as yet made an exception in his favour, and in spite of her exalted position treated him with moderate friendliness.

The day that Edmund was lost she had got off comparatively lightly. The household at Remote was so excited over finding the baby in Mause's kennel that they all forgot to inquire till some time afterwards, how in the world he had got there without the knowledge of his nurse. Robina did not consider it necessary to mention her conversation with Sandie, and beyond a moderate amount of cavilling on the part of Elsa, very little had been said.

One afternoon, during the same week, she took the small boys for a walk along the highroad leading to Edinburgh; and as she, with stately mien, was pushing the perambulator on the pathway, a young man, driving a light spring cart, overtook her and pulled up and hailed her with the inquiry, "Well, Robiny, hoo's a' wi' ye the day?"

Robina stopped and pretended to be absorbed in settling Edmund in his perambulator; for the moment the baby spied the trap, he began to wriggle out of the strap that bound him in his seat, waving his arms and shouting, "Me go 'ide in caht."

"I would like a ride, too," Montagu remarked in his usual deliberate fashion, and he smiled up at Sandie engagingly.

Sandie saw the little boy and smiled back broadly, but he was mostly looking at Robina.

"Is they wee things Piskeys tae?" Sandie asked, nodding his head toward the children.

"Na, na," Robina replied, shaking her head emphatically, "there's noan o' the wee leddy's flesh and blood's Piskeys, I'se warrant. They'll gang tae the kirk wi' their auntie like ither Christian folk."

"What's a Piskey?" asked Montagu of the inquiring mind.

"I'm no very sure," the girl said slowly. "It's a new-fangled kin' o' kirk--is't no?" she added, looking up at Sandie.

Sandie grinned broadly and drew himself up. "I once went into one o' they kirks in Edinbory--" he said with the air of one who has passed through many strange adventures, "on a Sabbath evening," he continued hastily, as Robina looked disapproving. "I gang no place else than oor ain kirk in the mornin'."

"And what like was it?" asked Robina, somewhat reassured by this assertion of orthodoxy.

"Dod' an' it's more than I can say. Ye was aye hoppin' up an' sittin' doon, wi' a wee thing singin' here an' a wee bit prayin' there, an' a wee sma' readin'. Ma certy! there was sae monny preeleeminaries 'at I never thocht we'd reach the sairmon. An' when we did it was just as scampit as a' the rest. An' what wi' human hymns an men i' their sarks jumpin' up here an' there, it was mair like play-actin' than a kirk. Nae mair Piskeys for me, I can tell ye!"

"But what is a Piskey?" Montagu again demanded.

"The auld gentleman wha' lives wi' us is a Piskey, so I've heard," Robina said in a low voice.

"I can well believe that," Sandie remarked meaningly, and tapped his forehead.

"Me go jive in caht!" Edmund exclaimed for about the thirtieth time, this time with an ominous warning of tears in his voice.

Sandie looked up the road and down the road. There was not a soul in sight.

"Wull I gie them a wee bit hurrl?" he asked Robina.

"The wee stoot yen couldna' sit wi'oot some person to hold him," Robina said irresolutely, "an' I daurna' let them oot o' my sight. Mine's is a poseetion o' great responsibeelity." And once more she lifted the struggling Edmund back into his seat, from which he instantly wriggled so that he was hung up under the arms by the strap.

"Pit the pram inside yon gate," suggested the ready Sandie, "and come tae. No harm'll happen it, an' I'll gie ye a bit hurrl doon the rod."

"Me go jive in caht!" Edmund shouted joyfully, and held out his arms to Sandie. Edmund looked upon mankind in general as a means specially provided for his quick transit from place to place. "Uppie! Uppie!" the baby cried impatiently.

"Let the bairn have his hurrl," pleaded Sandie.

Montagu as yet found it somewhat difficult to follow the Scots tongue, but he realised that Sandie was inviting them to go for a drive, and forthwith declared his own intention of accepting the invitation without Robina if she declined to avail herself of it.

Finally the perambulator was put inside a field, well out of sight. The two small boys were lifted into the cart, where Robina, with much display of white-stockinged substantial ankles, followed them. Away went the butcher's cart with four "precious souls and all agog" seated abreast upon the wooden seat. Robina firmly clutched the "wee stoot yen" who chattered incessantly, giving the loudest expression to his satisfaction.

They had gone about half a mile along the Edinburgh road when a gray bobtailed sheepdog was seen trotting along towards them, followed by a small pony tub driven by an old lady.

"Megsty me!" Robina exclaimed in great consternation, "if yon's no the wee leddy hersel', and I thocht she was up at the hoose. Turn man, turn! and get back afore she comes."

Sandie tried to turn, but "Moggie," the butcher's mare, knew that she was on the homeward way and had no wish to defer her arrival. Moggie was fresh and frisky and very obstinate, and the more Sandie tried to turn her the more did she back into the side of the road, finally starting to rear and plunge, with an occasional rattle of hoofs on the splash-board.

Robina screamed with terror, and had it not been that the four on the seat were a pretty tight fit, the little boys would undoubtedly have been thrown out.

Miss Esperance was jogging slowly homeward in her little pony tub with only a village boy in attendance. She generally picked up some stray urchin as she drove through Burnhead to hold the pony while she paid visits or did her shopping. As she drew nearer she perceived Moggie's antics, and pulled up.

"That seems a very restive horse," she remarked anxiously. "I hope the young man is able to manage it, for I see he has children in the cart. It would be terrible to have a collision. I think, Davie, you had better get out and hold Jock's head--and I," added the intrepid little lady, "will go and speak to that horse and see if I can catch hold of its head."

Davie looked at her admiringly. "It's the flesher's mare, Moggie," he murmured shyly, "an' she's awfu' flechty. Tak heed, mem, that she does na fell ye."

Miss Esperance carefully descended from her little trap and walked towards the mare who was getting a little tired of fighting with Sandie, although she had no intention of giving in. Sandie had a firm hand, but he did not dare to beat his steed while Robina and the children were in the cart. He sawed at Moggie's mouth and roared directions at her, and was so busily engaged in trying to get her round that he did not see the little old lady till she was close upon him, then he nearly dropped his reins in his consternation, and was stricken absolutely dumb.

This was just what Miss Esperance wanted. All her life she had been used to horses, and she stepped up to the sweating, trembling, plunging mare, laid a small, firm hand fearlessly upon her bridle, and spoke so soothingly and gently that Moggie ceased to plunge and in a few minutes was standing quiet, though trembling, with the cart still blocking the road.

"Which way do you want her to go and I'll turn her for you," she called to Sandie.

"_He_ wants to go home, Aunt Espa'nce, but we don't. We'd much rather go on. D'you mind if we go on for a little more drive?"

And the amazed Miss Esperance looked up to perceive her great-nephews and Robina perched up in Sandie's cart.

Sandie was crimson and confused: Robina, pale and tearful: the little boys bright-eyed and rosy with excitement.

"Robina!" Miss Esperance ejaculated, in deepest displeasure. "What are you doing there with the children? Come down at once while the horse is quiet."

Hastily and ungracefully Robina scrambled out of the cart and the little boys were handed down by Sandie, both deeply disappointed that their "hurrl" had come to this untimely end. Edmund was not one to conceal his feelings at any time, and he forthwith began to roar so lustily that further discussion was impossible, especially as Mause considered it incumbent upon her to bark loudly in joy at this unexpected reunion.

Miss Esperance packed all three into her pony tub, dismissing Davie to walk home and bring the perambulator.

Moggie was the only one who scored, for she was driven off without delay in the direction she had all along wanted to go, and she went like the wind.

"What," asked Montagu of his aunt some days later, "is a Piskey?"

Miss Esperance drew her delicate eyebrows together. "Where have you heard the word?" she inquired in her turn.

"Robina said Mr. Wycherly's a Piskey, and I want to know what it is."

"Robina," said Miss Esperance, "is rather apt to talk about things she does not understand. 'Piskey,' my dear Montagu, is a vulgar way of saying Episcopalian, and the English form of worship is called by that name in Scotland. I beg that you will not let me hear the word, 'Piskey,' again."

"I think it's rather a nice little word," Montagu retorted; "short and cheerful-sounding. I suppose we're Presbeys?"

"Abbreviations," said Miss Esperance, "are nearly always foolish and often in bad taste. I have never heard of a Presbey in my life."

"Piskey and Presbey were two pretty men," Montagu murmured dreamily, with a hazy recollection of some nursery rhyme, "though I think Piskey's far prettier than Presbey, just like Mr. Wycherly's prettier than Mr. Gloag."

"That will do, Montagu."

"D'you love Sandie, Aunt Esp'ance?" Montagu asked with an abrupt change of subject.

"Certainly not," Miss Esperance answered hastily, "though I believe him to be a well-doing young man on the whole."

"I love him," said Montagu, "but we don't see him very often now. Robina's taken the huff at him--he told me so. It's a pity isn't it?"

"The less Robina sees of Sandie, the more likely is she to attend to her duties," Miss Esperance remarked austerely. Then suddenly, her whole face beaming, she added softly, as though to herself, "The lassie's full young for that sort of thing yet awhile."

If Robina had escaped lightly when Edmund was lost, Nemesis was by no means leaden-footed as regarded her latest escapade. She very nearly lost her situation, and only by the combined and reiterated entreaties of herself and her mother was Miss Esperance prevailed upon to give the girl another trial. Therefore did Robina, with the unreason of her sex, lay the whole blame upon Sandie; and considered that he, and he alone, was responsible for the mistrustful attitude of the authorities with regard to her. She declined to speak to him or even to look at him for a whole fortnight. Morning and evening she passed him by, till at last he threatened that if she remained so obdurate he would forsake the church of his fathers and become a Piskey. Then, and only then, did Robina relent. "I couldna hae that on my conscience," she reflected. But all the same, although she condescended to speak to Sandie "whiles," he found that he had to do most of his wooing all over again; and Robina would smile to herself from time to time as she reflected that "it's an ill wind blows nobody good."

Robina was one of those who believed that what a man wants he will ask for over and over again; and that the harder a thing is to obtain the more it is valued. So she was very niggardly in the matter of her favours to Sandie, and her work prospered in consequence.

*CHAPTER VI*

*THE AWAKENING OF MR. WYCHERLY*

Ay; you would gaze on a wind-shaken tree By the hour, nor count time lost. PARACELSUS.

Montagu's education was taken in hand at once, and a very curious course of instruction it proved to be. Mr. Wycherly taught him to read, and to read Latin at the same time that he learned to read English. He also, which Montagu very much preferred, told him endless stories, historical and mythological, and in illustration thereof gave him for himself his own two precious oblong folios of Flaxman's "Compositions," on the very first birthday the little boy spent with Miss Esperance. These books were for Montagu the only nursery picture books he knew, and Ulysses and Hector were as real and familiar to him as "Jack the Giant Killer" or "Bluebeard" to the ordinary child. He treasured them and treated them always with the greatest care and tenderness. They were the one possession he declined to share with Edmund, who was careless, and tore things, to whom wide margins and spacious pages made no appeal. He pored over the pictures for hours at a time, arriving at a very clear conception of the beauty of pure line.

When the children first came Mr. Wycherly might have been seen, during all such time as those energetic young people left to him, immersed in the study of a serviceable sheepskin volume, the Wrexham edition of Roger Ascham's "Schoolmaster," making notes on the margins of the same, and marking such passages as seemed to him especially applicable to the matter under consideration.

Years after the owner's death Montagu found and read the wise old book, and realised how humbly and patiently Mr. Wycherly had set himself to follow out whatever he considered most valuable in the teaching of one whose mental attitude toward youth was certainly centuries in advance of his age. On the flyleaf he had written in his small, delicate handwriting: "In all my life, if I have done but little harm, I have done no good or useful thing. God help me that I may do this thing well," and Montagu, with an almost rapturous remembrance of his teaching, could testify that the prayer had not been made in vain.

It was no doubt a good thing for Montagu that his tutor had such a common-sense standard of teaching always before him, for Mr. Wycherly's own inclination was apt to draw him away from the grind of grammar to discourse with enthusiasm on the beauties and solemnities of the authors he so loved. Montagu was quick and receptive, with considerable power of concentration, and because he loved his teacher, he speedily grew to love the subjects that he taught, so that he might truly have said with Lady Jane Grey: "My book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me."

Mr. Wycherly's sitting-room was much the largest in the little house. It was on the first floor and of a cheerful aspect, having two windows facing east and south, respectively. Here, for Montagu's own special use, were placed a little square oak table with stout, stumpy legs, of a solid steadiness that even the most fidgety of little boys could not shake, and a three-legged stool that had once served Elsa as a milking-stool. These were set sideways in the window looking on to the kitchen garden, as being a view less likely to distract the learner than that of the other, from which one beheld the front garden with the green railings, and the village street with all its possible excitements. The little table possessed a drawer with bright handles, and in this drawer Montagu kept his own exercise books, his pen with the pebble handle that Elsa had given him, his box of pencils, and every scrap of paper suitable for drawing on, that he could collect--generally half sheets torn off letters by the careful hand of Miss Esperance. The table itself, in imitation of Mr. Wycherly's, was piled with books, but they were in orderly piles, and never set open, one on the top of the other, as was the older scholar's habit.

There was another reason why Mr. Wycherly chose that window for Montagu: the morning sun shone straight through it, and the scholar, always something of a stranger in this chill north, craved all the sunshine he could get for the child. He liked to lean back in his own deep-seated revolving chair, set by the big knee-hole table in the centre of the room, and watch the little stooping figure in the patch of sunshine in the window, laboriously tracing the Greek characters so neatly and carefully. A large-eyed thin-faced boy was Montagu, somewhat sallow, with the round shoulders got during those early studies which he never lost in later life.

It was not only during lessons that Montagu sat at his little table: long hours did he spend there on wet days while the wind howled round the little house like a hungry wolf, and the rain battered on the panes like shot--making drawings for himself of the battle in the "great harbour of Syracuse," which he had read about in Thomas Hobbes's translation. For Mr. Wycherly's shelves abounded in translations as well as in the "original texts," and although, like most translators, he disagreed with all accepted renderings, yet he encouraged Montagu's use of them, perhaps that he, himself, might the better, by-and-by, point out where he considered that they failed.

These drawings were afterwards bestowed upon Edmund, who would listen to Montagu's classic stories when they dealt with battles or ships, but who otherwise infinitely preferred Elsa's more homely legends regarding the doings of "Cockie Lockie and Henny Penny."

But there was more than the garden to be seen from Montagu's window: far away, sharp against the sky line, lay the lion back of Arthur's Seat, and whenever Montagu raised his eyes from his work to look out, it was there that they rested. And inasmuch as at that time the Odyssey and its hero filled all his thoughts, the great gaunt hill became for him actually that Ithaca long sought and longed for by the many-counselled one: till every sight of it would thrill him with a sense of personal possession and delighted recognition.

Sometimes Montagu, looking back into the room, would find his old friend watching him, and the little boy would nod gaily without speaking, smiling the while the confident, comrade smile of childhood, and thinking that, failing Achilles, he would like to look like Mr. Wycherly when he was old.

There is always something pleasantly surprising in the conjunction of white hair and very dark eyes and eyebrows, and in Mr. Wycherly's case the expression of the dark eyes was extremely gentle, the features sharply cut and refined, the whole face of that clean-shaven, regular, aristocratic type, which the Reverend Peter Gloag--half in admiration, half in derision--described as so "intensely Oxfordish."

"He has got such a tidy face," Montagu said to his aunt one day.

"My dear, Mr. Wycherly is always considered a man of great personal attractions," she replied, rather shocked at his choice of an adjective.

"Yes, aunt, dear, I know, but it's a tidy sort of handsomeness; not a bit like Noah and Jacob and those hairy prophets in the parlour."

The walls of his aunt's sitting-room were adorned by many engravings illustrative of the Scriptures, and Montagu, fresh from the study of his beloved Flaxman, would compare these bearded Hebrew prophets, so hampered by heavy draperies, with his airily attired and clean-limbed Greeks, always to the advantage of the latter. Yet he was forced to acknowledge to himself that his adored Mr. Wycherly resembled them equally little both in appearance and manner of life: for nothing could savour less of the adventurous than his existence. So Montagu "put the question by" as one to be answered in that wonderful, grown-up time that children think will solve so many riddles. Mr. Wycherly was immensely happy in this new work and approached his task with a certain tender reverence, rare among teachers, for he agreed with wise old Roger Ascham in thinking that "the pure, clean wit of a sweet, young babe is like the newest wax, most able to receive the best and fairest printing, and like a new bright silver dish never occupied to receive and keep clean any good thing that is put in it."

One morning in early October, Montagu was sitting, as usual, at his little table copying the Greek alphabet, while Mr. Wycherly sat watching him with pleased, dreamy eyes. As the little boy completed his task he raised his head with a sigh of satisfaction and happened to look down into the garden.

"Do you think?" he suddenly asked Mr. Wycherly, "I might go out and help Aunt Esperance dig the potatoes? The ground seems so heavy this morning."

Mr. Wycherly rose hastily, crossed over to Montagu's window and looked out.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, and fled from the room.

Much astonished at this outburst from his usually serene tutor, Montagu tore downstairs after him.

What Mr. Wycherly had seen to cause him such consternation was what he might have seen any time during the last fifteen years--namely, the tiny, stooping figure of Miss Esperance digging the potatoes for the day's dinner. But if it ever happened that he did look out he had never chanced to look down into the homely garden below, or if he had his eyes were holden, and he was wrapped in his dreams. So that he beheld only the things of the spirit, nor did he know how often the palms of those little hands, so ready to help others, were hard and blistered by their labours.