The Dew of Their Youth by Samuel Rutherford Crockett (ebook offline .txt) 📕

in London. As he grew greater, he was more often in the south, and we saw less and less of him. On the other hand, the practical work of the _Review_ fell more and more upon me.
So this night, as I say, I was late, and on turning out into the south-going street which leads past the Surgeons' Hall and St. Patrick's Square--my mind being busy with an extra article which I must write to give our readers the necessary number of sheets--for the first and certainly for the last time in my life I continued my train of thought without remembering either that I was a married man, or that my little Irma must be tired waiting for me.
In mitigation of sentence I can only urge the day-long preoccupations in which I had been plunged, and the article, suddenly become necessary, which I must begin to write instanter. But at any rate, excuse or no excuse, it is certain that I woke from my daydream to find myself in Rankeillor Street, almost at the foot of the old Craven stairs which, as a bachelor, I had climbed so often.
Then, with a sudden shamed leap of the heart and a plunge of the hand into my breeches pocket for my door key, I turned about. I had forgotten, though only for a moment, the little wife working among her cloud of feathery linen and trimmings, and the little white house round the corner above the Meadows. You may guess whether or no I hurried along between ash "backets" of the most unparklike Gifford Park, how sharply I turned and scudded along Hope Park, dodging the clothes' posts to the right, from which prudent housewives had removed the ropes with the deepening of the twilight.
The dark surface of the Meadows spread suddenly before me in an amplitude of bleakness. A thin, sleety scuff of passing snow-cloud beat in my face. A tall man wrapped in a cloak edged suspiciously nearer as if to take stock of me, but my haste, and perhaps a certain wildness in the disorder of my dress and hat made him think better of it--that is, if indeed he ever thought ill of it--and with a muttered "Good-e'en to ye," he passed upon his way.
I could see it now. The light in the window, the two candles that were always set at the elbow of the busy little housewife, the supper, frugal but well-considered, simmering on the hob, the table spread white and dainty, with knives and forks of silver (the Advocate's gift) laid out in order.
Then all the warm and loving things that sleep in the breast of a man rose up within me. The long, weary day was forgotten. The article I must write was shoved into a corner out of the way. For this one hour, in spite of whistling wintry winds and scouring sleet-drifts, the little light yonder in the window was sufficient.
Two farthing dips, a hearth fire, and a loving heart! Earth had nothing more to give, and my spirit seemed glorified within me. I had a curious feeling of melting within me, which was by no means a desire to weep, but rather as if all the vital parts of the man I was had been suddenly turned to warm water. I cannot tell if any one has ever felt the like before, but certainly I did that night, and "warm water" comes as near to the real thing as I can find words to express.
It seemed an age while I was crossing the short, stubbly grass of the Meadows. The light within beaconed redder and warmer. On the window-blind I saw a gracious silhouette. Then there was the putting aside the edge of the blind with exploring finger--sure sign that my little wife had been regarding the clock and finding me a little late in getting home.
As I ran up the short path to the gate I blew into my key. The latch of the garden-gate clicked in the blast which swept across from the Blackfords. But there at last before me was the door. The key glided, well-accustomed, into its place, not rattling, but with the slide of long-polished and intimate steel--soft, like silk on silk.
But the key never turned. The door opened, seemingly of itself, and, gloriously loving, a candle held high in her hand, her full, white house-gown sweeping to her feet, the little wife stood waiting.
I said nothing about the overplus of work that had filled my head as I turned from the high, bleak portals of the University--nothing of how, all unknowing, my traitor feet had carried me to the stairway in Rankeillor Street--nothing of the long way, or the suspicious man in the cloak, of the blast and the bent and the sting of the sleet in my face.
I was at home, just she and I--the two of us alone. And upon us two the door was shut.


CHAPTER XXXIV
A VISIT FROM BOYD CONNOWAY
"I wonder," said Irma one Saturday morning when, by a happy accident, I had no pressing need to go from home, so could stay and linger over breakfast with my little wife like a Christian, "I wonder what that man is doing down there? He has been sitting on the step outside our gate ever since it was light, and he looks as if he were taking root there!"
I made but one bound from the table to the window. For I remembered the cloaked man who had crossed me in the Meadows the other night. Also my inbred, almost instinctive curiosity as to the purposes and antecedents of lurking folk of all kinds, pricked me. We were easy enough to get on with in Eden Valley once you knew us, but our attitude towards strangers was distinctly hostile.
This man was muffled to the nose in a cloak, and might very well have been my inquiring friend of the other night. But when I had opened the door and marched with the firm ringing steps of a master down the paven walk towards the gate, the face I saw turned to my approach, altered my mood in a second.
"Why, Boyd Connoway," I cried, "who would have thought of seeing you here? What are you doing in Edinburgh? But first come in--there is a friend here who will be glad to see you!"
"Eh, Mr. Duncan, but I am not sure that I dare venture. 'Tis no more than decent I am, and the young lady, your wife--oh, but though to see her sweet face would be a treat for poor Boyd Connoway, what might she not be sayin' about me dirtying her carpets, the craitur? And as for sittin' in her fine arm-chairs----"
"Come your ways in, Boyd," I cried. "Have you had any breakfast? No--then you are just in time! And you will find that our chairs are only wood, and you would not hurt our fine carpets, not if you danced on them with clogs!"
"D'ye tell me, now?" said Boyd, much relieved. "Sure, and it's a told tale through the whole parish that you are livin' in the very lap of luxury--with nothing in the world to do for it but just make scratch-scratches on paper with a quill-pen!"
By this time Irma was at the door, hiding herself a little, for she had still the morning apron on--that in which she had been helping Mrs. Pathrick. But she was greatly delighted to see Boyd, who, if the truth must be told, made his best service like an Irishman and a gentleman--for, as he said, "Even five-and-thirty years of Galloway had not wiped the sclate of his manners!"
Now Boyd was always a favourite with Irma, and I fear that she was fonder of him than she ought to have been, instead of pitying his hard-driven Bridget--just because Bridget had not his beautiful manners. Presently, as his mouth ceased to fill and empty itself so wonderfully expeditiously, Boyd began to talk.
"As to what fetched me, Miss Irma," he said, in answer to questions, "faith, I walked all the road, taking many a house on the way where kenned folk dwelt. Here were pigs to kill and cure. And I killed and cured them. Farther on there were floors to lay, and I laid them, or fish-hooks to busk, and I busked them."
I put a question here.
"Oh, Bridget," he said, shrugging his shoulders with a wearied air, "Bridget doesn't know when she's well off. Och, the craitur! It began with the night of the September Fair. Now, it is known to all the countryside that Boyd Connoway is no drinker. He will sit and talk, as is just and sociable, but nothing more. No, Miss Irma. And so I told Bridget. But it so chanced that Fair Monday was a stormy day, which is the most temptatious for poor lads in from the country, with only two holidays in the year, most of them. And what with the new watch and the councilmen being so strict against disorder--why, I could not let a dog get into trouble if I could help it. So I spent the most of the night seeing them home out of harm's way--and if ever there was a work of necessity and mercy, that was.
"But Bridget, she thought different, and declared that I had never so much as thought of her and the childer all day, but left her at the wash-tub, while they, the poor craiturs, were poppin' out and in of the stalls and crawlin' under the slatting canvas of the shows, as happy as larks, having their fun all for nothing, and double rations of it when they were caught, cuffed, and chased out. Well, Bridget kept it up on me so long and got so worked up that she would not have a bite ready for me when I came home tired and weary, bidding me go and eat my meat where I had worked my work. So it seemed a good time for me to be off somewhere for my health. But--such was my consideration, that not to leave Bridget in distress I went asking about till I got her the washin' at General Johnstone's--the minister's she had before--so there was Bridget well provided for, Miss Irma--and here am I, Boyd Connoway, a free man on my travels!"
We asked news of friends and acquaintances--the usual Galloway round of questions.
"Faith," said Boyd, "but there's just one cry among them--when are ye coming down to let us have a look at your treasure, Mister Duncan? Sure, it's selfish ye are, now, to keep her all this long time to yourself! The little chap's holidays! Ah, true for you. We had forgotten him. And ye are sure that he is well done to, and safely lodged where they have put him, Miss Irma?"
"If you bide a minute or two, Boyd," said Irma, smiling, well-pleased, "you may very likely have the chance of judging for yourself. For it is almost his time to be here, for to-day is a holiday!"
In fact, it was not a quarter of an hour before a shout, the triumphal opening of the outer gate with a rush and a clang, and a merciless pounding on the front door announced the arrival of Sir Louis. He had grown out of all knowledge, declared the visitor, "but no doubt the young gentleman had forgotten old Boyd Connoway."
"Oh, no," said Louis; "come and show me some more cat's cradles; I know two more 'liftings' already than any boy in the school. But _you_ can do at least a dozen!"
And so, with the woven string about his long clever fingers, Louis watched the deft and sure manipulation of Boyd Connoway as he "lifted" and wove, changing the pattern indefinitely. For the time being the village