Neil Munro - The Daft Days

Her gift, said Bell, was management.

Tripping round the little attic, she came back by-and-by to the table at the window to take one last wee glimpse inside ‘The Golden Treasury,’ that was her own delight and her notion of happy half-hours for the ideal boy, and her eye fell for the first time on the pea-sling and the note beside it.

She read, and laughed, and upon my word, if laughter like Ailie Dyce’s could be bought in perforated rolls, there would be no demand for Chopin and Schumann on the pianolas. It was a laugh that even her brother could not resist: a paroxysm of coughing burst from behind the curtains, and he came out beside her chuckling.

“I reckoned without my hoast,” said he, gasping.

“I was sure you were upstairs,” said Alison. “You silly man! Upon my word! Where’s your dignity, Mr Dyce?”

Dan Dyce stood for a second a little bit abashed, rubbing his chin and blinking his eyes as if their fun was a thing to be kept from brimming over. “I’m a great wag!” said he. “If it’s dignity you’re after, just look at my velvet coat!” and so saying he caught the ends of his coat skirts with his fingers, held them out at arm’s-length, and turned round as he might do at a fit-on in his tailor’s, laughing till his hoast came on again. “Dignity, quo’ she, just look at my velvet coat!”

“Dan, Dan! will you never be wise?” said Ailie Dyce, a humorsome demoiselle herself, if you believe me.

“Not if I keep my health,” said he. “You have made a bonny-like show of the old garret, between the two of you. It’s as smart as a lass at her first ball.”

“I think it’s very nice; at least it might be worse,” interrupted Alison defensively, glancing round with satisfaction and an eye to the hang of the frame round “Watch and Pray.” Bell’s wool-work never agreed with her notions, but, as she knew that her tarts never agreed with Bell, she kept, on that point, aye discreetly dumb.

“Poor little Chicago!” said her brother. “I’m vexed for the wee fellow. Print chintz, or chint prints, or whatever it is; sampler texts, and scent, and poetry books – what in the world is the boy to break?”

“Oh, you have seen to that department, Dan!” said Ailie, taking the pea-sling again in her hand. “‘A New Year’s Day Present for a Good Boy from an Uncle who does not like Cats.’ I declare that is a delightful way of making the child feel quite at home at once.”

“Tuts! ’Tis just a diversion. I know it’ll cheer him wonderfully to find at the start that if there’s no young folk in the house there’s some of the eternal Prank. I suppose there are cats in Chicago. He cannot expect us to provide him with pigs, which are the usual domestic pets there, I believe. You let my pea-sling alone, Ailie; you’ll find it will please him more than all the poetry and pink bows. I was once a boy myself, and I know.”

“You were never anything else,” said Alison. “And never will be anything else. It is a pity to let the child see at the very start what an irresponsible person his uncle is; and besides, it’s cruel to throw stones at cats.”

“Not at all, not at all!” said her brother briskly, with his head quizzically to the side a little, in a way he had when debating in the Court. “I have been throwing stones for twenty years at those cats of Rodger’s that live in our garden and I never hit one yet. They’re all about six inches too short for genuine sport. If cats were Dachshund dogs, and I wasn’t so fond of dogs, I would be deadly. But my ado with cats is just one of the manly old British sports, like trout-fishing and curling. You take your fun out in anticipation, and the only difference is you never need to carry a flask. Still, I’m not without hope that my nephew from Chicago may have a better aim than I have.”

“You are an old – an old goose, Dan Dyce, and a Happy New Year to you!” said his sister, putting her arms suddenly round his neck and kissing him.

“Tuts! the coming of that child’s ta’en your head,” said the brother, reddening, for sisters never kiss their own brothers in our part, – it’s so sentimental, it’s so like the penny stories. “A Good New Year to you, Ailie,” and “Tuts!” he said again, looking quite upset, till Ailie laughed and put her arm through his and drew him downstairs to the breakfast to which she had come to summon him.

The Chicago child’s bedroom, left to itself, chilly a bit like Highland weather, but honest and clean, looked more like a bower than ever: the morning sun, peeping over garden trees and the chimneys of the lanes, gazed particularly on the table where the pea-sling and the poetry book lay together.

And now the town was thronged like a fair-day, with such stirring things happening every moment in the street that the servant, Kate, had a constant head out at the window, “putting by the time,” as she explained to the passing inquirer, “till the Mustress would be ready for the breakfast.” That was Kate, – she had come from an island where they make the most of everything that may be news, even if it’s only brandy-sauce to pudding at the minister’s; and Miss Dyce could not start cutting a new bodice or sewing a button on her brother’s trousers but the maid billowed out upon the window-sash to tell the tidings to the first of her sex that passed.

Over the trodden snow she saw the people from the country crowd in their Sunday clothes, looking pretty early in the day for gaiety, all with scent on their handkerchiefs (which is the odour of festive days for a hundred miles round burgh towns); and town people, less splendid in attire, as folk that know the difference between a holiday and a Sabbath, and leave their religious hard hats at home on a New Year’s day; children, too, replete with bun already, and all succulent with the juice of Divine’s oranges. She heard the bell begin to peal again, for Wully Oliver – fie on Wully Oliver! – had been met by some boys who told him the six o’clock bell was not yet rung, and sent him back to perform an office he had done with hours before. He went to his bell dubiously, something in the dizzy abyss he called his mind that half convinced him he had rung it already.

“Let me pause and consider,” he said once or twice when being urged to the rope, scratching the hair behind his ears with both hands, his gesture of reflection. “Was there no’ a bairn – an auld-fashioned bairn – helped to ca’ the bell already, and wanted to gie me money for the chance? It runs in my mind there was a bairn, and that she had us aye boil-boiling away at eggs; but maybe I’m wrong, for I’ll admit I had a dram or two and lost the place. I don’t believe in dram-dram-dramming, but I aye say if you take a dram, take it in the morning and you get the good of it all day. It’s a tip I learned in the Crimea.” But at last they convinced him the bairn was just imagination, and Wanton Wully Oliver spat on his hands and grasped the rope, and so it happened that the morning bell on the New Year’s day on which my story opens was twice rung.

The Dyce handmaid heard it pealing as she hung over the window-sash with her cap agee on her head. She heard from every quarter – from lanes, closes, tavern rooms, high attics, and back-yards – fifes playing; it was as if she leaned over a magic grove of great big birds, each singing its own song – “Come to the Bower,” or “Monymusk,” or “The Girl I left Behind Me,” noble airs wherein the captain of the band looked for a certain perfection from his musicians before they marched out again at midday. “For,” said he often in rehearsals, “anything will do in the way of a tune in the dark, my sunny boys, but it must be the tiptop of skill, and no discordancy, when the eyes of the world are on us. One turn more at ‘Monymusk,’ sunny boys, and then we’ll have a skelp at yon tune of my own composure.”