text:
Phantom Perfumes

HE old mansion stood on a little eminence, shadowed by towering elms and rock-maples. Its plain Georgian front looked down to the main road, across a long slope of what had once been lawn. The narrow double-galleried porch at the back commanded a great sweep of farm-dotted valley, encircled by cradling hills that seemed to enfold the quiet spot lovingly.

Key in hand, Phoebe Sands walked around the house. Her suit-case lay on the stone slab before the front door, but as yet she had not entered into her kingdom. She wanted to comprehend it all, to realize that this was hers—this—her inheritance. Peace, beauty, security—all hers.

There was no tinge of sadness in her ecstasy of possession, not even when she passed the little enclosure where two mossy headstones recorded the names of her Great-aunt Aurelia and her Great-uncle Stephen. Aunt Cornelia, their only daughter, was not buried beside them. Phoebe did not know where the body of her benefactress reposed. She had never seen her Aunt Cornelia. The separation between the members of the family had been complete. Aunt Cornelia had clung to the home town, and her brother's determination to seek the golden West had met with her strong disapproval.

UT, as the twilight of life had merged into the night of death, she had remembered that blood was blood and that her brother's marriage out in California had resulted in the continuance of the honored strain. Therefore, her will—a lean, hard document without even the color of affectionate hypocrisy—had left her wide acres and her tiny income to “Phoebe Sands, daughter of my deceased brother, Milton Sands.”

Phoebe's young, adventurous heart had responded eagerly to this call of a home in far-away New England. For this was romance—Cinderella's mice and pumpkin turning into coach and six. Pride in her blood, her family, her heritage, entered her heart, now that she stood in the shadow of the ancestral walls. “My land, my people, the home of my people—it belongs to me and I am part of it.”

The thrill of ownership deepened as at length she thrust the key into the lock and turned it deliberately, savoring the moment.

The sunlight leaped into the silent hall, throwing her slim shadow sharply on the worn oak flooring. The entry ran straight through to the Dutch door at the back that gave out onto the porch. To left and right opened great rooms. Solid shutters made them dark, but through the gloom Phoebe Sands could distinguish the shapes of a huge sofa, a desk-bureau, an oblong table surrounded by chairs, drawn up as if for a committee meeting of ghosts.

Light! She wanted to see the sunshine flooding in. This dusk in broad daylight was forbidding. She forced up the heavy iron hooks that secured the shutters of the nearest window and, exerting all her strength, thrust them back against the outer walls, where they jarred, with a whack, against the clapboards. A heavy smell of box swept into the room. The next window gave to her hand. Then she caught her breath sharply.

What was this? She found herself looking out upon a little lake with lily-pads dotting its polished surface, a lilac hedge, a path leading to the water, with unclipped box bushes outlining its length and willow trees in the far distance! Surely, in her wanderings about the grounds, she had seen no such place as this! She closed her eyes for a moment and gazed again. Two white butterflies were fluttering over the walk; a fish jumped in the pond, sending a crinkle of rings to the farther marge. These windows must be in an ell, she reasoned. This was a part of the grounds she had not visited.

She turned her back on the disturbing landscape and looked within the room. Now she saw the heavy, old-fashioned furniture in detail—rugs rolled, tied, and wrapped in newspapers lay against the baseboard; pictures, covered with pink mosquito-netting, adorned the walls. She noted her own footprints outlined in the dust that lay heavy on the floor.

The scent of box was overpowering! Strange, she had seen none outside! Now the window next to the fireplace yielded to her efforts. It must open upon the side lawn and the picket enclosure of the graves, she reasoned. Blinding sunlight rushed in. Shading her eyes, she stared before her. There was a garden, bright with flowers, and a high hedge with a little gate, beyond which she glimpsed feathery rows of carrots and the purple-red of beet tops. A sparkle of water, where the pond turned, glinted in the distance.

LINGING to the sill, she leaned out. To the right the grass grew long under the branches of apple trees. It was a big orchard, for in orderly ranks it climbed a rise and marched on over it. A soft murmur of anxious bees filled the air and the scent of box lay over all.

Phoebe drew back. Certainly no orchard grew upon this elm-and-maple-planted knoll. There was no pond with willows at its brink, no box hedges, no bee-inviting garden. This was an illusion, a dream, or else the outside world she had left was utterly changed.

Hardly knowing what she did, she turned and ran, stumbling, outside the open door to the three wide granite steps before it. She glanced back at the windows of the drawing-room. They were wide open, their shutters resting against the house, and it was from these very windows that she had looked upon a lily-dotted pond and seen two white butterflies fluttering above a box-enclosed walk! This was madness! Below her fell the easy descent of the lawn till it met the highway. Maples bordered it. On either side great elms rose and drooped their fine foliage above the roof.

Steadying herself along the wall, she reached the corner of the house and stood beside that other opened window from which she had seen lush grass and the ranks of apple trees. The scent of box no longer assailed her with its aromatic fragrance. Instead, there was the perfume of peonies in their bed along the stone foundation. Between the elms she could see the edge of the iron pickets that guarded the sleep of Stephen and his wife, Aurelia.

She was not frightened; fear was absent from this strange experience. It never for a moment entered her head that she could not spend the night there, as she had planned to do. She told herself that she was simply overtired. Like all modern young women, she had a smattering of science. The “subconscious mind,” she knew, was quite capable of any freak. If one were very tired—and she was tired

For days and nights she had been traveling. She had come straight through from California to Stonevale and, being unused to trains, she had slept but little.

Defiantly, she turned to the front door, took up her suit-cases, set them inside, and entered the drawing-room; and, still defiant, crossed to the window.

The strange pictures were were no longer there. The view corresponded to what she knew lay without. Gone were the willows and the pond. No smell of box hung on the air. Each window framed its proper outlook. There were no apple trees and no old-fashioned garden.

The sun was gliding down the sky toward the horizon. Soon night would come. She whistled a little tune as she found a lamp half full of oil and lit it. She had been informed where to find linen and blankets. In her suit-case was a comfortable packet of emergency food. She would light a fire. She would take possession—yes, possession. Again that wonderful sense of ownership and of oneness with the past came over her. She was at home! The house itself was telling her. This was her home, now and as long as she should live.

Morning found her up with the larks to greet it. She had slept refreshingly in the antique low-post bed, between the heavy linen sheets under the hand-woven blankets. She had contemplated her reflection in the wavy green mirror that hung above a massive chest of drawers in her bedroom and, with a giggle, pulled back her rebellious black hair into a hard knot, trying to imagine herself in a gray print wrapper. She must dress the part of a New England spinster, she decided, though her only experience of the type was of the theatrical variety. The pulled back hair could not dim the beauty of the soft oval of her face and her great, black eyes defied New England and all its works.

There was very little left from her last night's supper and she found that the telephone, the one concession to modernity in the place, was disconnected.

“What to do? What to do?” she inquired of the empty air as she twirled her hat on one finger. “Not a house in sight—milk—eggs—bread—the village two miles away.” Walk? She was without a pair of sensible shoes till the arrival of her trunk. Well, people in country places always gave one another a “lift.” She'd go down to the road and intercept the first village-going car. She slapped on her hat and ran down the path to the stone horse-block, where she settled herself, her feet swinging.

She had not long to wait. A roadster rounded the bend and came toward her with slackening speed as if it anticipated the appeal of her upraised hand. It was driven by a young man whose intent blue eyes seemed to catch and hold her own even from the first moment of his appearance. He compelled attention not only by the brilliant magnetism of his turquoise-colored eyes, but by his whole appearance. His hair, uncovered to the morning, glinted with high lights. His body filled the space behind the wheel with easy grace, but it was his sudden smile that set her heart beating. From him came a calm greeting, “Hello, Phoebe Sands!”

“Yes, I'm Phoebe Sands,” she admitted, somewhat taken aback, “and also, who are you?”

“I'm Clinton Wade. Thought you might want a lift to town. Am I right?” He opened the door.

“You must be a mind reader,” she said as she settled herself.

He grinned at her. “I have to be. It's important self-protection, you see. You're my Hereditary Enemy.”

He started the car before she could formulate her puzzlement.

“Hereditary Enemy?”

He frowned quizzically. “Didn't the old girl leave a curse on me? Didn't she warn you against the Wades?”

“If you mean my Aunt Cornelia,” Phoebe said testily, “she never said anything to me about you or anybody else. I'm her heir, that's all.”

“She never saw you, did she? 1 wonder” he broke off meditatively. “You don't look like a Sands at all," he added.

She bridled. “Appearances are deceitful then. But why are you an enemy—what's the joke?"

“No joke about it,” he replied seriously. “Your aunt hated my father and mother like poison.”

“What in the world for?" she wanted to know. “I didn't know they had feuds in New England.”

“You didn't?) Well—you're in the line of one. I'm glad it wasn't deeded to you.”

“But why?” she persisted.

“It isn't nice to say of a lady that she got mad when she was jilted,” he observed abstractly.

“Po you mean to say,” she cried indignantly, “that your father jilted my Aunt Cornelia? That wasn't very nice either.”

He smiled at her. “Don't blame me. I wasn't there, and now that I know you weren't willed the Hate—I take it all back. Anyway, I'm glad you're here.”

“So am I.” she spoke with unconscious warmth. “I'm glad you're a neighbor, too. You are a neighbor, aren't you?"

“The neighest sort of a neighbor—just over the hill there,” he answered. “and at your service. Who's going to live with you?”

“Nobody,” she informed him. “I haven't anyone. I'm all alone on the family tree—the last leaf, so to speak—but 1 love the idea of being by myself in my very own house. You see, I've worked since I was seventeen. Hard work, stores and factories, and to make both ends meet I had to room with other girls—girls that I didn't like sometimes. You can guess what this freedom means to me. It's just heaven.”

“You poor kid,” he said gently. “You poor kid. Well, you've got your own house now—forget the past.” His tone changed to one of gaiety. 'And here we are in Stonevale Village. Welcome to our city.”

“Stonevale Village,” she repeated softly. “Father used to tell me about it.” She remained seated in the car, looking up the shaded Main Street with its little colonnaded shops, unchanged since the days when her father was “little Milton Sands,” running errands, barefooted and carefree, along its “feather-stitch” brick sidewalks.

“There's the Bank,” she whispered. “Red sandstone, just like he said. And there's the Doctor's house beyond, with the iron dogs in the yard. And that's the same name over the General Store: 'Madham Brothers.' Isn't it funny that he never once described his home to me? It was always the Village and the boys and girls he used to play with, but never a word about his house. I wonder why?”

Wade made no suggestion, and she descended from the automobile. He shut off the motor and swung himself to her side.

His own business could wait, he assured her. It wasn't every day that Phoebe Sands came to town and he admitted he had anticipated her coming and had planned to be on hand to help her.

Their presence together seemed to attract surprised comment; evidently, the whole town knew of the feud and had wondered whether Miss Sands had handed on a legacy of hatred with her more solid possessions. There were looks, questioning and smiling—underbrow glances that she caught from the tail of her eye—but her fellow townsmen and women proved most kind and attentive, most cordial in their offers of assistance and hospitality.

“Coming home”—yes, that's what it was—“coming back home.”

Her companion, responding to her mood, was sympathetically silent as they drove homeward. She relaxed gently in the warmth of his understanding.

He assisted her with her packages, arranging them as she directed on the pantry shelves—together they investigated the countless cupboards, the quaint ovens, the elaborately hidden back stairs and mysterious ham-closet. She watched him, wondering. Why was he so intent? Why did his face wear that strange expression, as if he listened achingly for distant voices? Why did his hands so insistently caress the worn woodwork, his fingers pass with such soft touches over the cracked paneling of the ancient walls? Could it possibly be that he, too, might see the strange visions she had seen?

She led him into the hall and through the great rooms, pausing before each window with a thrill of expectancy, but as they contemplated each outlook, no scent of box drifted into them. The long slopes with their elms and maples remained unchanging.

He turned from the window and faced the fireplace, a beautiful Georgian bit of classic architecture. Above it hung a crayon portrait in a bright gold frame, mercifully obscured by faded pink mosquito-netting.

UR Aunt Cornelia,” he said musingly. He stared at the grim dull eyes of the picture. “This is the first time I've ever set foot in your house, Miss Cornelia Sands,” he said, “and now I've come, you won't get me out!”

He said it with such concentrated determination that Phoebe started. It was as if the picture was the actual presence of her benefactress. The black eyes stared back from behind their pink veil. Phoebe held her breath, almost fearful of an answer to the uttered defiance.

“Don't,” she said, laughing quickly. “You'll make her come alive and I don't want to live with Aunt Cornelia, I tell you flat—and I want the house to learn to like me. Don't call her back!”

“I won't,” he promised, solemnly, and turned to Phoebe with sudden smile. “I'm sure I don't want her back.” He straightened his wide shoulders and drew himself to his full height. “And now I'll leave you, Miss Sands. I'll see that they connect your phone, and don't forget, I'm right on the other end of it. Good-by.” He paused, words seemed to press behind his lips; his strange eyes were full of meaning; he was on the point of saying something—something that intimately concerned her. The look passed from his face. “Good-by,” he repeated, and turned toward the door.

She watched him as he bounded down the path to the waiting car, and waved her hand in farewell. Why had he hesitated? She returned to the living-room window, to stand gazing after the cloud of dust in his wake. The rattle of the car's departure shook the window panes. Then silence. All sound ceased, hushed to the droning of bees. The aromatic breath of sun-warmed box pervaded the room in a sudden hot breath. The highway with its bordering trees was no more. Before her, level with the stone steps of the entrance, stood a box walk to a little wharf. Beyond it, the lily-dotted pond spread its shining length, pale willows shutting off the distant view.

With a stifled cry, she fled across to the window by the fireplace and stared from the casement. Lush grass and apple trees, spikes of larkspur, poppies, and bleeding heart—a box hedge and the corner of a vegetable garden behind a white gate!

Turning her back on the peaceful vision, she flung herself at the windows sheltered by the porch, the windows that ought to look out upon the broad sweep of the valley and the distant cradling hills. But the hills were not there. A sweep of grass-grown lawn through which a brook meandered; a far meadow, its fence-line marked by a row of gnarled cedars. A clapboarded barn, with a huge fanlight on either side of the open hay-loft door. She imagined the stir of cattle and the thump of horses' hoofs. But there was no sound at all now; even the hum of anxious bees was stilled.

Phoebe Sands drew up one of the ancient chairs and sat down. Spellbound, she stared at the landscape; peace, beauty, security—all hers. It, too, was hers, this other vista. It was deeply hers. She wished it would not vanish. It came upon her that she wished it would stay always. She did not want the elms and maples to return. She wanted the house just like that, cuddled down in homely comfort with bees and flowers and countless apple trees. She wanted the gay little lily pond and the smell of sun-warmed box—oh, always, always the smell of sun-warmed box.

She took no heed of the passing hours as she watched the changing lights and shadows. Time was not. She was at peace.

AYS passed and Phoebe Sands settled into the routine of her new life. People came to call—the minister and his wife; the president of the bank; prim old ladies and up-to-date young ones whose clothes were cut on the very latest models and whose talk was flavored with a little bit of all the world. Her Aunt Cornelia had had no friends at all, they informed her. Why, indeed, should she? She had despised the community in which she had lived, as cordially as it had despised her.

That there was something strange about the house, Phoebe could not help but gather. Several times her visitors had started to say something and had suddenly become reticent.

The enmity between her Aunt Cornelia and the Wades was touched upon not infrequently. There was no concealment about that and the constant presence of the inherited enemy came in for plenty of amused comment. But she sensed that something was being withheld.

To her inquisitive and kindly neighbors she frankly told her simply story. To them all she was friendly and welcoming. But to none did she speak of the strange duality of the house.

More and more she came to look forward to the coming of the change, whose first intimation was always the scent of box and the humming of bees.

Never did the substitution take place [when she] was out-of-doors. The moment across the threshhold she was  of actuality. Sometimes she the high with the scent of dew-[drops and] box in her nostrils and, running away to her bedroom window, would sit for hours watching the moonlight break in over spangles on the lake and the slow-waving silhouettes of long willow fringes. It was her secret—the mysterious confidence the house gave to her alone. Something to treasure, never to reveal, not even to Clinton Wade who more and more took hold of her thoughts and longings. Dear Enemy! Surely Aunt Cornelia must have relented in her heart of hearts, since she had made no mention of the feud in her will. She must have fancied—Phoebe got no further with her musings. There was a veiled presence in her soul that she would not look at, face to face.

Summer cooled and ripened into Autumn. The maples turned to gold and crimson, and the elms crisped to bronze. She had seen the valley yellow with stubble and the hills aflame with color.

And from the windows opening into the mystic garden she had watched the blue of the larkspurs give place to the brown and yellows and wine-stained ivories of button-chrysanthemums; had seen the apples turn red and russet, and now, mingled with the scent of box, their luscious smell, clean and honest as their ruddy cheeks, made anew fragrance. The fringes of the willows had thinned. The cypress hedges gave glimpses of the green of winter wheat. The pond reflected a bluer sky. The lily-pads were darkening, and the white stars of their blooms no longer dotted the quiet surface of the pool.

S the evenings grew chill, she no longer sat with Clint on the stone step before the door. Now they drew up to the fire, crackling and leaping behind the massive brass andirons, and chatted idly of each day's happenings. He seemed to belong there by her side, his blue, intent eyes glinting in the warm light, his strong hands quiescent on the polished arms of Aunt Cornelia's best mahogany chair.

She could not prevent the visions that crowded to her heart. He must be there always, close to her. Her husband some day. But never as his wife would she enter that stucco renovated, electric-lighted, up-to-date house of his, never! He belonged here in the old mansion, amid its faded grandeurs. He was part of its dream duality. He must come to her. She could not, would not, go to him. She could not abandon the house, not even for him.

“Nobody asked you to, sir, she said,” she quoted to herself, upbraiding her errant fancy. But she knew that the unseen ties that bound them together were as real and as mysterious as the visions of the house. They were not to be explained or argued about; they were.

Autumn burned down to its embers, and the white ash of Winter blew in snow along hill and dale. Sharp, crusty mornings followed crystal nights. Noon days sparkled like diamonds or darkened to gray dusks of bitter sleet. Now the dream pond was black with ice. The willows streamed funereal fringes before the gale. The box hedges were snow-dotted, the apple trees purple-brown with moisture and outlined with ermine. Now the long view of the valley was stained in mauves and pale yellow, varnished thinly with white. The water courses marked themselves with brittle cleanness. When the vision faded, the elms and rock-maples, divested of their gold and scarlet, held up black lace against the sky. The long lawn was glare-ice over smooth-laid snow, neat as a well-set table-cloth.

Christmas was close at hand. Her first Christmas at home, she thought happily.

The afternoon and evening of Christmas Eve, Clint had promised to spend with her. He'd come early and help her prepare. He had promised her the biggest bunch of mistletoe to be bought, the finest holly wreaths to be found. The house was to have a festival—a wreath in every window with a candle in the middle. Over every mantelpiece were fastened evergreen boughs. Not a nook or corner but had its festive sign.

“The house hasn't had a party for forty years,” they decided.

N Christmas Eve, Phoebe stood before the glowing stove where a cake, a wonderful, pretentious cake, was baking, along with a turkey—a present from the banker's wife—stuffed according to an old and respected recipe. The plum pudding came out of a can, but what of that? The side table was loaded with “fixin's,” all the tidbits she could remember as ever being served on this occasion, First they'd have a little run-around of calls in the car, then return for dinner tête-à-tête. How shocked the town would be if it knew, which doubtless it did, after the manner of towns.

But suppose he didn't come, after all? Suppose he should jilt her first party as his father had jilted Aunt Cornelia? The absurd thought flashed through her mind and turned her heart cold just as she was removing the cake from the oven, and, in her panic, she almost dropped it to the floor. Perhaps people inherited traits like that. She set down the pan and stood beside the kitchen table, her face twisted with pain at the sudden realization of what such a disaster would mean to her. Why, she could hate in return, as long and as abominably as Aunt Cornelia! People did inherit queer things. But Clint—no, no! Her hands shook as she spread the thick chocolate between the layers. No, not Clint.

At last, all was ready for his coming. She put on her new black-and-white flowered chiffon frock and the long string of pearls.

She heard his car purr to a stop before the horse-block and the quick clip of his steps up the path. Before he could knock, she opened the door and curtseyed before him.

He came in, bringing a cold breath of outer air. He closed the door and stood looking at her as he pulled off his heavy gloves with nervous fingers. They moved into the dining room and stood for a moment by an open window, breathing the crisp air—joyous to be alive.

Neither spoke. Suddenly they were in each other's arms, straining close. A tearing, rapturous thrill passed over and engulfed them. They clung together, dizzily, caught in the age-old maelstrom.

As if on a rush of sudden wind came the sharp odor of box.

She drew away and looked up, wide-eyed.

He was staring out of the window. his face white. his eyes fixed in amazed wonder.

She twisted in his grasp, looking over her shoulder. Yes, it had come, the mysterious change! There, before them, stretched the path to the lake: the willows waving in the winter wind; the copper light of the setting sun casting royal purple shadows in patterns on the snow.

“Clint,” she cried, “don't be frightened. It comes like that often and often. Don't look that way, don't! It's nothing to hurt, really!”

She shook him frantically. He released his hold of her and covered his eyes with both hands. Then he raised his head and looked again.

“Have I gone crazy?” he ejaculated.

She threw herself upon him, panting with eagerness. She was glad, so glad, that he saw too.

“You mustn't mind it. I love it. I wait for it to come!”

“The apple orchard—the brook!” he said in an awed whisper.

Amazment [sic] fell upon her. “How did you know?” she stammered. “How could you know? You haven't looked out of the other windows.” She felt him quiver, shaken as if by an inner storm.

“And you've seen this all the time?” he asked thickly.

“Ever since I came. I never know when, till I smell the box.”

“The box—yes—the old box hedges” he repeated in a voice so strange that her fears renewed.

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” she begged. “What does it mean?”

“But it can't be!” he cried and lurched to the other side of the room, where he leaned heavily against the sill and looked out. “But it is, it is!” He drew himself erect suddenly as if galvanized with joyous energy. “Come—come with me—now!”

He threw her coat about her, pulled her fur cap down on her head, jerked open the door, and dragged her to the car. Obediently, she sat down beside him, as with wild eyes and set lips he turned and drove recklessly down the road: For a half mile or more the car flew down the highway. Then he slowed, got out, let down a bar, and turned into a country lane. No macadam here, but frozen brown earth with tangled purple and wine-colored briar burning red in the snow. Another half mile and a pair of high stone gates came into view.

Clinton Wade stopped the car with shrieking brakes and turned to Phoebe. “Will you do as I tell you, Phoebe Sands?”

She nodded.

“Close your eyes, then, and let me lead you. Don't open them till I say when.”

E put his arm about her shoulders and took her right hand in his. She heard their feet crunch on frosted gravel and knew it had been long neglected, for she stumbled over hummocks, and thorns tore at her skirt. They progressed slowly. Now the scent of box was in the keen air, growing stronger, and a faint, ciderish smell as stored apples. Close to her she felt his heart beating hard and fast and heard his breath in a shuddering sigh.

“Open your eyes,” he whispered.

She looked up. Green mounds of box surrounded her. A green, box-bordered alley opened before her—a path that ended in a frozen pond. Beyond were willows like whips of gold. And over on the right, rank on rank, marched the battalions of bare apple trees.

“Why, this is the place,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “See.” He turned her about.

There, beyond, was the barn, whose hay-mow door swung creaking in the wind and whose fanlights gaped, glassless.

He eased her to a seat on a stone wall. Then she realized that below, half filled with débris and snow, yawned cellars. There was the place where a chimney had been. She was seated on the foundation of a house. She could trace its form and extent. Here had been a garden. The box still flourished. Yonder, through the cypress, the meadow showed, striped with white in the furrows of brown earth. She did not question it. It was within and without her, beauty, security, peace. Home—the place of the vision.

He was speaking, his lips close to her hair.

“Phoebe, dear, I didn't want you to know how your Aunt Cornelia got the house. You'd never be happy in it, if you knew. I made everybody swear not to tell you. But now this has happened, you ought to know what the house is trying to tell you.” He was silent a moment as if choosing his next words. “It, isn't the home of your people, dearest—it was the home of mine.” She gazed at him, astonished. “My father and your Aunt Cornelia were engaged to be married,” he explained. “He made over to her his old homestead as his wedding gift. And then—he met my mother. He jilted your Aunt and she never forgave him. Part of her vengeance was that she kept the house. She knew how he loved it, how much it meant to him.

“It cost her half of all she had, to do it, but she had the house put on rollers and moved to the place where it is now. The old Sands mansion had burned down two years before, and so she set it up on the stone foundation that was hers by right. And there they lived, the house and Cornelia. Now, do you understand?”

There was a long silence, then she spoke very softly. “I think she forgave.”

E shook his head. “I won't try to explain it. I've always had the strangest feeling about the old place. Even when I was little, I used to come here and imagine how it used to be; how I could look out from the windows, if I ever got inside, and see all this around it. I wouldn't let myself think of it up there on the hill. I used to try and make myself believe the house was lonely and homesick, and wanted to come back. Just a kid's rebellious fancying, I guess, but I wanted my father's house—wanted it always. And then, when I was grown and your Aunt Cornelia died, I couldn't buy it. I tried to, but it was left to you. And since you came—well, I can't think of the house without you in it. I can't think of any house of mine except as yours.”

“You felt like that, and yet you told everybody to keep mum about how Aunt Cornelia stole your father's house—because you knew I'd feel I'd have to give it back! You couldn't know then that the house wanted us together.”

He drew her closer. “It was no fault of yours, no matter who you were. It wouldn't have been fair, that's all.”

She turned trusting, adoring eyes to him. “You're so dreadfully good,” she whispered, “that if it wouldn't hurt the house's feelings, I wouldn't marry you.”

He seemed not to hear her. His eyes were set, his head inclined as if intently listening—the familiar look she had leanred [sic] to know. She, too, bent her head. Her gaze sought the distance.

“I know,” she said softly. “I hear it, too. The House is calling. It says: 'Come here at once, you two; you'll catch your deaths of cold, and besides, my fires are burning low. Come at once and begin to make your plans to move back home.”

title: Phantom Perfumes


text: Talk:Davit Lunnan

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Davit Lunnan


text:
Davit Lunnan

IS grizzled head strained in its socket against a cramped left arm that sprawled over the paper, Davit Lunan added his signature to the laboured letter, transcribing both it and the fancy flourish beneath from a slate-pencil scroll. With a complacent tightening of his lips he corked the ink-bottle, and retreating cautiously from the table, as if to take the letter unawares, breathed more freely, the while he regarded his handiwork with a satisfaction that was not unmixed with awe. The bairn, Effie, looked on open-eyed, and when he balanced his pen on the unaccustomed ear that would not grip it of its own accord, the solemnity of her little face reflected his. After a momentary struggle an obstinate sunbeam asserted its right of rule, and tumbled all the puckers into a chubby dimple.

The four-year-old lassie crowed gleefully, and with one roguish eye on the pen made a strenuous attempt to scale her father's legs. A dull, vacant face was Davit Lunan's, but a light came into it when his horny hand trembled through her yellow hair, and he struggled nervously with his wistful mouth. The jaws that had opened stiffly refused to close, and Davit sat helpless as the mite of a bairn hung on to his knees, and climbed merrily into his lap. He looked furtively toward the door that separated the kitchen from his saw-mill, but there was no one there to smile. He strained his motherless child to his breast and then there slunk down his brave old cheek the last tear that Davit ever shed. Shamefacedly he kissed the laughing "litlin." I don't know why, unless God told him to do it, for it was not like a severe.

Davit had "redd" up his but and ben, sweeping the lumpy earthen floor and scraping the potatoes for a twelve o'clock dinner, as he had done every day, except on the Sabbath, since Effie's mother died. The splashing stream that the old man had brought into the house to rock her cradle and close the infant's drowsy eyes to its purring lullaby, was buffeted by the great mill-wheel, that had a hard time of it to keep its ground, not to speak of climbing the bouncing burn, and the ill-fitting knotted window-bole rattled peevishly to an occasional rush of wind. The bairn could hear her father's saw puling and rasping through the white wood in the mill, and his back-bent frame showed through the doorway in a shower of flying sawdust. Davit was gay, and the sparkling drops of water leapt high from the wheel to catch a glimpse of him humming or whistling at his work—

Effie's fascinated eyes were on the "chimley," where the lordly letter stood, and she sat solemnly blinking at it from her three-legged stool. It was the only letter she had ever seen her father write, but she knew all about them. It should be posted, and there was no one to drop it into the hole. "Yallowchy"-haired Effie stood up on her stool, stretching forth her dimpled arm for the letter. With a giggle of delight, quickly suppressed lest the sound should bring her father ben, she clutched it triumphantly, and tripping noiselessly over the sand with which Davit had strewn the floor, slipped out of the house, a knowing smile on her important face. There was music in her father's squealing saw, but she had to go to the post. Across the brig of planks and into the Tenements the litlin trotted, glancing neither to right nor left, her lips puckered into an elated chuckle. Down the straggling wynd, and across the square, and through Andra Allardice's close, grasping the letter in her hand. The life had faded from her wee baby face now, but her mouth was firm set, and her bewildered eyes fixed straight ahead. The letter had to be dropped down the hole. Hendry, the dummy, on his way to the woods with his empty barrow to dig out resiny roots for firewood, met her at the brae head. Then she toddled past Davie Haggart, breaking stones on the Whunny road, and was seen no more.

By-and-by the flapping mill-wheel came to rest, its sodden green boards showing rotten when they got the chance, and Davit Lunan, the sawdust still sticking to his patched and faded corduroys, came ben the house. He looked expectant as he sidled through the narrow doorway, but when his eyes realized the empty stool, the expression died from his patient face. That was all. Davit's bones creaked as he sank with an effort into his old-fashioned arm-chair, bought at a "roup" half a century before, and "wraxed" over his arm to the pot on the fire to lift it a link higher up the joist. The bairn liked her potatoes "birstled." Then he rose stiffly, and went bareheaded to look slowly over the burn in the direction of the Tenements. There were children playing round the old wooden pump, chasing their scampering rabbits through the bits of gardens, but do you think Davit had to look twice to know that Effie was not there?

"Ye'll cry in at Janet Gow's," he asked of a passing neighbour, "and tell Effie to come till her dinner."

But Effie was not at Janet Gow's.

Lang Tammas paused, wob on back, to inquire after the bit lassie, and Davit answered without a quiver in his voice.

"I'se warrant her at Bell Dundas's," said Tammas, passing on. And Davit answered—

"Ay," as if he knew she was with Bell Dundas.

A barefooted, mischievous laddie whom he saw climbing into the saw-mill by the dark hole through which went the axle of the dripping wheel, he accosted cheerily, as though this was the usual mode of entering his workshop. One of the rogues who made capital out of Davit's laughable affection for his child. The bantam cock that had crowed on his kitchen rafters almost since Effie's birth was offered freely to the boy, and cunning Davit opened a way to his heart by talking of yellow yites' eggs and destructive flies. Then his voice grew husky all at once.

"She's been sae wi' me, Archie," he said apologetically; "an' I've nae mair. It's—it's Effie, ye ken. Ye'll hae her hodden some gait?"

But Archie knew nothing of the child.

"Maybe," he said, "she'll hae fa'en into the burn."

Lunan returned to the house to mend the fire, and, forgetting his errand, wandered out again into the Tenements, the peat in his hand, a shabby old saw-miller, nodding genially to all he met, to induce them to give him back his bairn.

"If we had haen ony mair," he repeated timidly; "but her mither's died, an'—an' she was so sma'."

The strength went gradually from Davie Haggart's shrivelled arm, and, resting deliberately on his hammer, he removed his spectacles and wiped them on his grimy "brot." He took a slow, comprehensive glance around at the fields and dykes, as if he now had an opportunity of seeing them for the first time during his fifty years' pilgrimage in those parts, and his eyes wandered aimlessly from the sombre firs and laughing yellow beeches of the three-cornered wood to the white-washed farms that dotted the valley. In the foreground two lazy colts, surveying him critically over a broken stile; in the distance, the frowning Whunny hill with a white scarf round its neck.

But though Davie looked long, he saw nothing of the infant that had toddled by him two hours before.

"Davit Lunan's lassieky," he said to himself, thinking he had at last solved the mystery that had troubled him.

He untied the red handkerchief that served as his provision-basket on week days, and was carried to the kirk in his hat on the Sabbath, and seating himself cautiously on the stones, dawdled over his dinner. When he had smacked his lips over his flagon of cold kail, and seen the last of his crumbling oatmeal cake and cheese, his uneasiness returned, and he looked long and thoughtfully down the road.

"I maun turn the crittur," was his reflection; but though the sun was his watch, he felt that it most be a long time now since Effie passed his cairn.

He lifted his hammer again, puzzling what he ought to do between the strokes, but soon let it drop from his hands. Tightening the cords that bound his legs below the knee, like garters outside his trousers, he slowly worked his way into his coat and waistcoat, the latter uppermost, and gathering his things over his shoulder, with a final dog-like look down the road, hobbled back to the village.

It was market-day, and the poor square had made its weekly attempt at bustle. Half a dozen ramshackle vegetable carts resting in line on their clumsy shafts; a dozen farmers' wives, in the douce costumes of their mothers, hunkering under the shadow of the town-house, between walls of unhappy chickens and new-laid eggs, and rolls of butter spread temptingly on cabbage-leaves; the "dulse-man" vociferating beside his barrow; two rowdy fish«cadgers screaming libels at each other over a street array of crockery.

As Davie dandered into the square by the kirk brae, Snecky Hobart's cracked bell tinkled up the back-wynd, and the bellman immediately afterwards took his stand by the side of Tam Alexander's (pronounced Elshioner) fish-cart, half a dozen startled boys at his heels.

Snecky gave them time to gather, tinkling approval when the farmers' wives left their baskets to squeeze and hirstle nearer the bell; but too full of his official duties to return the familiar nod of the yarn-covered weavers who hurried to him down the dark closes that gaped all round the square.

Davie Haggart stood on the outskirt of the crowd with gradually opening mouth.

Not every day was it given to Snecky to "cry" a lost bairn, and the pitiful words fell slowly from his reluctant lips. Before he spoke he was the observed of all eyes, the possessor of exclusive news, but his tongue had hardly ceased to roll round the concluding sentence when the fickle crowd took up the cry itself. All that was left for Hobart was to bustle into another street with his doleful news, to find that it had clattered there before him. Wives flung up their windows to shout their fears shrilly across the wynd; the racket of the looms was hushed, and the laddies put their humming "peeries" in their pockets. It was Effie Lunan that had wandered from the saw-mill—Davit's bairn. What could Davit be thinking of to let her out of his sight? Was he taking on terrible?

Of one accord the men gathered on the saw-mill brig, and looked perplexedly into the face of the laughing burn that swivelled, a sawdust colour, between wooden banks; but the women pressed their bairns closely to their wrappers, and stared in each other's whitening faces.

Davie Haggart was one of the last to leave the square, and when he moved slowly from it, it was in the direction of his own house. Both leaves of its door were open, and when Davie had entered and sat down, he saw that his wife was out. The porridge, that should have awaited him on his return home in the gloaming, hung from no link on the joist over the fire, nor did the "porter," which he took with it in lieu of milk, stand on the well-scoured dresser. For some minutes Davie felt uneasy, but his dull face took some animation as he remembered that he had left his work earlier than usual. Putting on his old glengarry bonnet, he stumbled to the door, and gaping up and down the Tenements, moved off to the saw-mill, his face troubled and perplexed.

A log of wood, with which some one had sought to improvise a fire between the bricks that narrowed Davit Lunan's grate, turned peevishly to charcoal without casting any light on the faces of the men and women gathered gloomily in the saw-mill kitchen. Already the burn near the mill had been carefully searched, with Davit Lunan's white face staring at the searchers from his door; and not even the minister could suggest another step. The room was small and close. A closet bed with the door off afforded sitting room for more than one Auld Licht, and the worn dresser, the "little table," and the "big table," had been similarly utilized. A great eight-day clock solemnly ticked away Davit's life in a dingy corner, and over the mantelpiece hung a gaudy sampler in many colours, the work of Effie's mother. The narrow "chimley" supported nothing heavier than two China figures, both of which had lost their heads, and the half of an unframed looking-glass clung to the peeling wall. Overhead the heavy rafters were crossed with old sticks and saws, and a pitcher and a pan of water—such as no village home in the North showed separately—stood together in the narrow passage. Over the cage of the canary at the small window an Auld Licht anticipating the worst had flung an empty sack, and the bird, which had scandalized the minister by trilling forth on the Sabbath, had ceased to sing.

Davie Haggart hesitated on the threshold, and then dandering in, drew attention to himself by a laboured "pech," and looked around him for a seat. It would have been poor manners to fling to the door behind him.

"Fine growin' day, Davit," he said deliberately.

"It is so, Davie," answered hospitable Davit Lunan.

"No muckle drouth, I'm thinkin'," said the Wright, as if much relieved by the turn taken by the conversation.

After that there was silence, and Davie sat him down on a three-legged stool. All the company turned their eyes on Lunan.

"Ye'll maybe tak' anither seat, Davie," he said humbly—he could not help it. "That's her stool, an' she was on't when I gae'd ben i' mornin'."

He looked imploringly round the room at the stern Auld Licht faces he had known all his weak, unselfish life.

"It's oncommon foolish," he said, with rattling jaws, "but the twa 'ose bein' sae muckle thegither, an—an"

Poor Davit Lunan broke down utterly.

"Oh, Davie, man," he cried, "she was michty sma'."

Haggart looked perplexedly before him.

"She was juist a bairnie," Easie Whamond said.

Then Davie found his tongue.

"Juist a bairnie," he repeated cheerily.

"That's hit," Davit said wistfully. "There was naething o' her ava."

The saw-miller turned away his head, and as Davie saw the others gathering round the minister at the door, he moved restlessly on his chair.

"Hoo's Effie?" he said at last.

"Did ye no ken she was tint, Davie?" Davit asked in a voice that was not his own.

"Ay, I kint," Davie said. "She's upi' Whunny road."

Lunan drew a long breath and stepped forward, but the minister was before him.

"Tell us what you know at once, Haggart," he said, taking Davie by the shoulder. Only a growing boy in broadcloth was the minister, but out of the pulpit he had a heart. Yet was it a sad tale Davie had to tell, and not an Auld Licht there but shook his head when he heard it.

"The Whunny road!" they exclaimed solemnly, and when Davit Lunan heard them he covered his face with his hands.

"I meant to turn her," Davie said to the bairn's father in the kitchen, while the minister hurriedly organized a search party on the saw' mill brig, "but she was ower quick for 's."

The brig that Lunan had floored anew but the other day, because the bairn's little boot had caught in a worn plank! The brig from which she had crowed to see the whirls of sawdust cloud the burn with Davit Lunan looking on entranced. Ah, Lunan, the rotten old planks would have served your turn.

"It's—it's a kin' o' peety," was all the reproach the saw-miller spoke; and he staggered feebly to the door.

"The Whunny road," were the words passed from mouth to month, and the driblet of weavers fell into line. Impetuous is youth, nor was the minister perhaps much to blame for starting at once. But Lang Tammas, his chief elder, paused on the threshold.

"The Lord giveth," he said solemnly, raising his hand, "and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

Lunan bravely opened his mouth, but the "Amen" stuck in his throat.

"Ye'll excyeuse me, Tammas," he said.

The little party of searchers, back-bent weavers for the most part, filed as quickly as their stiff limbs would allow them up the brae head, and took the Whunny road. Out of respect to Davit several of them had donned their most funereal garments, and their threadbare "blacks" gleamed in the sun. Hobart's bell tinkled in the van, until inverting it, he carried it by the tongue; and Lang Tammas had his proper place by the minister's side. Thrummy Cable was there, an unfathomable man, who had been discovered in tears on the morning of his wedding—no Auld Licht could say why; and Sandy Dundas, who had once been the minister's right hand, but had fallen from his high estate; and Finny's grieve, with an unenviable notoriety for sleeping in church; and Sam'l Todd, who was said to do as he liked with the women. The wright had attended so many very similar processions before (in the interests of the coffin) that he may be excused for now and then mistaking this for a funeral; and between him and Davie Haggart tottered Davit Lunan, his worn face looking old and done, and his mean limbs cracking in their corduroys. Shabby showed his patched trousers against the wright's shining blacks; but what sarcastic tongue would ridicule the legs browned by an old man as he hunkered over a dying fire mending a bairn's frock. Easie Haggart and Mag Whamond and Eppie Allardice were all famous housewives, but they did not titter to see Davit sewing on baby buttons with cord and a gully knife.

The day was fresh and bright, the clover lands lazily returning the salute of the beaming sun, and violets tipping the bleating meadows with a frame of blue. The smell of flowers was in the air, flowers in holiday garments that smiled indifference to the fate of Effie Lunan. Ah! the fickle flowers that had clustered round her, and nestled on the bairnie's neck on the long Saturday afternoons when prattling Effie's wee hand drew Davit Lunan through the woods. Electricity, they say, was only discovered the other day, but there have been baby fists since the beginning of time. The wizened saw-miller, ashamed to look so young and happy, told you in an imploring look not to smile when you met him trotting gaily behind his litlin, and took you so timidly aside to offer his snuffmull, and say that she was all he had. Even the yellow buttercups that had twined themselves into garlands as they cuddled in her lap, that her father had never known the wonder of till they were laid by the bairn in his hand or showered on his frosty brow, smiled heartlessly on Davit when he came alone. Glazed might be Effie's eyes to-day, but her old friends the bluebells by the roadside, that look like bits of the heavens, nodded brightly to every passer-by. All but the daisies. The daisies that never played wee Effie false had stretched out their stems after her to call her back as she tripped over them, and bowed their sad little heads when she heedlessly toddled on. It was from them we learned the bairn's track after she wandered from the Whunny road, and wistfully they looked after us when we left them on the skirt of the Bruckle Wood.

The hills had ceased to echo back their wailing response to Hobart's cracked bell, weary, as even, so-called inanimate things may be, of taking up a cry that led to nothing. Far in the rear of the more eager searchers, the bellman and the wright had found a seat among the mossy stones of a broken dyke, and others, footsore and depressed, had fallen oat of the ranks at various bends in the road. Even the sun looked weary in the heavens. But the minister and his little band of followers scattered over the fields and on the hill-sides, despondent of visage, but daring not to lag. As night dame on, strange looking women in short petticoats and men's coats, appeared on the edges of the thin woods, cutty pipe in mouth; and in the meadows, the mole-catcher ceased his labours. Dummy left the roots of the trees in peace, tinkers cowered round their kettles under overhanging banks, and the squirrels were shadows gliding ghost-like from tree to tree. At a distant farm-town on the hill a fitful light, winking to the wind, blinked itself to death, and all the land was hushed. But no one had seen Davit Lunan's bairn, not even the ragged angler on his way homeward from the Whunny burn. It was gloaming, and the search party moved silently like a funeral procession of the dead. The buttercups and the bluebells closed their petals, and the daisies grew heavy on their stems.

Old and feeble was Davit Lunan, nor the heaven-sent gift of tears for such as he. Blessed the moaning mother by the cradle of her eldest-born; and the maid in tears for the lover who went out so brave in the morning, and was not at evenfall; and the weeping parents who can pray for soldier sons; and the wife on her husband's bosom. But Effie was Davit's bond to earth; and Lisbeth, her mother, who had given a life for a life, lay dead in the crammed kirkyard. No sun nor flower for him as he hobbled along the base of the Whunny hill, nodding patiently to what the minister said, and forcing to his reluctant face a kindly smile that would have made a dumb animal turn away its head.

Only the laddies who had fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, jeered when Davit, at the rumble of an approaching cart, would stop short in the middle of a plank, and hurrying out snatch his babbling treasure in his arms, and bear her jealously to her seat beside him in the saw-mill. The bairn, sunk in a bed of shavings, crowed to see the sawdust buzzing like flies about her father's head, and Davit, too, would laugh and make merry for her edification, and whistle "Ower the Watter for Chairlie." The knowing litlin, who lifted her father's saws to within an inch of her baby-face, and held them there till, petrified, Davit looked, when she let them fall with a wicked dimple of delight, and fled gleefully to his arms, as sure of her lover as ever maiden was of man.

Hardly old enough were Effie's playmates to smile when two darned stockings suggested Davit's needle. The kersecky made from his bairn's shawl saved his spending money on himself, and there was nothing very diverting in a dull old man surrendering the luxury of tobacco for a lassie's sake. The time had come when he looked wistfully back to a fevered litlin tossing in his closet bed, the time when a feeble light burned through the silent night in Davit Lunan's dwelling, and a trembling, heavy-eyed man sat motionless on a high-backed chair. How noiselessly he approached the bonny mite, and replaces the hot arm that had wandered from beneath the coverlet of many colours. The love that surged up to his mouth as he bent imploringly over the bed! How pitiful the fond old man, whose years reach their close, crawling with a peat to the fire on his hands and knees that his shadow may not come between his sickly bairn and the light. Restless and fevered she, but Effie never in all that nightmare time heard her father rake the fire. Ah, for the old time when imperious Effie told her father to lie down beside her, and he climbed shamefacedly into the bed, looking so timidly at the minister as who would say he would not, but he could not help it. And Mr. Dishart put his hat over his eyes. But such things are not to be told. They are between a man and his God.

It was far up the Whunny hill that we got Effie's little shoe, one of the pair her father had found it so hard to make with the laughing bairn making off mischievously with the leather. Davit took it in his hands, the muddy worn shoe, with its gay lining sadly draggled, and looked up, oh, so pitifully on the faces that had aged and wrinkled with his own. His jaws cracked, the feeble head swung loose, and the glazed eyes wandered all round the little group till they rested on Davie Haggart.

"I'm dootin' she's died, Davie," he said.

The Auld Lichts grouped severely round him, trouble in their furrowed cheeks, and Davit stood still among the brackens, looking rather helpless. He held the soiled little shoe tenderly in both hands, and it almost looked as if he mistook it for a bairn.

"I'd'na ken," Davie Haggart said, after a pause, to the others, "but what its kin' o' nat'ral."

Lunan looked into Haggart's face, and then every eye was turned away. He laid his shaking head on the shoulder of the friend of his youth, and the soul of Davie Haggart went out to Davit Lunan. It was no longer the gloomy Whunny hill peopled with sombre shadows, but two bare-footed herd-laddies wiling [sic] away the days with "knifey" on the green fields of two adjoining farms, and sharing the early swede, and guddling for trout in the bubbling burn' The moon peeping over the hills had found them on their ragged backs with the cattle mowing around in a narrowing circle. They had grown different boys, nor known why, among the wild roses of red and white, and trampling breast-high among the ferns. The raspberry bushes they had stripped together into flagons gleaming in the grass, and how often their lips had shown the blackberry juice! Davie had provided the bent pin with which Davit first lured a trusting trout to its undoing, and Davit in return had let him thraw the neck of a condemned farm hen. They had climbed together up the dark sides of a dank and frowning den, through which a rush of water passionately flings itself against jagged cliffs and boulders, and breathlessly they had held each others hands to look down in awe at the foaming sing, where the water gathers solid between banks so close that the farmers can spring across, before taking a blind appalling leap that carries it over the trees, tearing themselves out by the root in their effort to bridge the torrent, to turn somersaults in the air, and fall lifeless in the sunless depths below. They had wandered knee-deep through thirsty hay when sweeping scythes sang in the cornfields, and larks trilled in the blue sky, and all the braes were golden with the yellow broom.

The flashing shuttle rattles along the loom, and two broad-shouldered men toil from misty morn till gloaming at the wob. Their backs round together as they bow their heads among the thrums of thread, and peddles groan under their heavy boots. Broken threads of yarn gather on the festering looms, on the bumpy earthen floor, and on the walls and window, as if a monster spider had gripped them in its crafty web. The place smells of yarn, and the less stolid of the two men is beginning to learn "Come ower the Watter for Chairlie." They are stoitering down the Tenements under a load of crashing wobs that bear them to the ground, or that rest on barrows, supported by ropes of yarn from their drooping shoulders; or it is Saturday night, and they are in the square, clean and dapper, talking with other gallants about lassies. They are courting the same maid, Cree Dundas's daughter, and she sits on a stool by the door, working a stocking, with a lover on each side. They drop in upon her mother, straining the marmalade juice through a bag suspended between two chairs; they sheepishly admire while Bell singes the well-plucked hen; for love of her they help Cree to pit his potatoes, and then for love of the other each gives her up.

It is a Friday night, and from a but and ben around which the rabble fling themselves, shouting for largess, like a roaring sea in a dark night dashing against a lighthouse, Auld Licht couples emerge in strangely gay and bright apparel.

Davit Lunan leads the way with a self-conscious lass, and Davie is at his heels with another. It must be Lunan's wedding-day, and this the procession from the bride's old home to her new one. Many a year rolls on. Davit is at the saw-mill now, and by-and-by the grumpy gravedigger goes out to dig a grave. A handful of sober, emotionless mourners wind their slow way up a steep brae through beds of fallen leaves, with something black on their shoulders; the white cords are dropped silently on the lowered coffin, and Davit Lunan returns to the old home that will know his wife no more. Ay, with an unbecoming haste, for Lisbeth has not gone away without leaving a legacy behind, and he thinks that Effie can pick him out already.

A dingy, comfortless kirk, with a solemn saw-miller in black standing on the pulpit-stairs; a minister whirling like a teetotum above him; a congregation rising from its seat as one man, not to miss the heckling, and a blotch of white in a proud godmother's arms. In true Auld Licht fashion Effie is christened on the Sabbath following her birth; and after that—ah, to look back upon it!—the saw whistles once more through the wood, the water glides beneath the cradle's peddles, and Effie winds and winds herself round poor old Davit's heart. He sings her to sleep with no more manliness than a woman. He tells her the wonderful story of how she was first found in a cabbage-blade, and when Effie can toddle down the wynd with her exulting father it is the bairn leads.

Alas! for the flash into bygone days that sorrow gives! As Davit Lunan and Davie Haggart hold each other's hands, the light dies from their eyes, backs grow round and bent; silvered the hair that lay in tousled locks on laddies' heads, and shrunken limbs mock the lustiness of youth. In the morning Davit Lunan had a bairn, but where is she now?

The day was closing in, and obscured the tree-tops on the Whunny hill. The weary searchers might have been smugglers laden with whisky-casks, such as haunted the mountains in the dim days of the past, and no one knew where to turn. Far away in the Tenements, mothers still wrung their hands for Effie, but the rest of the village grew drowsy, and candles went out A nipping wind cut the search party, and fled from them down the hill, by-and-by to bear into the valley the solemn drone of a clerical voice raised in prayer. Bared were the Auld Licht, the breeze even lifting Davit Lunan's scant locks, and bowed their reverent heads. Then they glanced at the minister, and raised aloft a fallen rowan tree, from which all the sap had gone. One of the old-world psalms of David trembled straight to heaven:—

Mr. Dishart gave the solemn signal, and the tree was allowed to fall as it listed. Straight down the hill it pointed. It was the last attempt, but when the others turned to follow the minister down hill, Davit Lunan was standing still with the draggled shoe in his arms. Not his the blame. He could not move, only smiled helplessly in response to the minister's beckoning, and there was agony in his face, and still there came no tears.

Davie Haggart took him by the hand.

"Davit, man—Davit Lunan," he said, "she was but fower year auld!"

Davit did not speak. Hardly he seemed to hear, but with slow and shaking hand he unbuttoned his trouser pocket, and drew from it a worn snuffmull. With a gaping mouth he handed it to Davie, but the wind carried away its contents, and the mull fell among the heather.

"Keep yourselves from idols," said Lang Tammas sternly.

But the minister was young, and children lisped his name at the white manse among the trees at home. They would be saying their prayers by their white bedsides now. He took the gay, bespattered shoe gently from Davit's hands, and went down the hill, the old man following him like a dog that has lost his bone.

A bonny wee bairn with closed eyes lay cold and stiff on the brink of the burn that gurgled on to the old saw-mill, one little bare foot washed by the running stream. So the Whunny of her baby days had rocked Effie to sleep alter all. Half-covered with white daisies, the chubby hand clutched a letter; and when Davit Lunan saw her, he sat down beside her.

title: Davit Lunnan


text:
Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 9.pdf/426

 A vast proportion of these accessions to the American population since 1840 has, with the exception of the East European Jews, consisted of peasantry, mainly or totally illiterate, accustomed to a low standard of life and heavy bodily toil. For most of them the transfer to a new country meant severance from the religious communion in which they had been bred and from the servilities or subordinations to which they were accustomed. They brought little or no positive social tradition to the synthesis to which they brought their blood and muscle.

The earlier German, English and Scandinavian incomers were drawn from a somewhat higher social level, and were much more closely akin in habits and faith to the earlier founders of the Republic.

Our inquiry is this: What social structure is this pool of mixed humanity developing or likely to develop?

If we compare any European nation with the American, we perceive at once certain broad differences. The former, in comparison with the latter, is evolved and organised; the latter, in comparison with the former, is aggregated and chaotic. In nearly every European country there is a social system often quite elaborately classed and defined; each class with a sense of function, with an idea of what is due to it and what is expected of it. Nearly everywhere you find a governing class, aristocratic in spirit, sometimes no doubt highly modified by recent economic and industrial changes, with more or less of the tradi-