Chapter VI

"THE OLD LADY HAD A WOMAN'S HEART AFTER ALL."

"_Veni, vidi, vici_" (I came, I saw, I conquered).

So said Cæsar of old, by way of describing the ease with which he gained a victory against his enemies.

"_Veni, vidi, vici,_" Johnnie Greybreeks might have said, after his first interview with that stately and aristocratic dame his grandmother.

But wait a minute, reader. I fear I must call our little hero Johnnie Greybreeks no longer--at least not while he is under the lordly roof-tree of Drumglen. He must be Jack.

Well, it was Dawson himself who brought Johnnie--no, I mean Jack--to the mansion-house, and led him into the presence of his grandma.

Johnnie--that is Jack; you see I can't get into the swing of it all at once--was very neatly dressed in Highland tweeds, and brave he looked. The old lady sat erect in her high-backed chair. She could not but notice the striking resemblance between the boy and her Donald of the olden days; yet she had meant to receive him most soberly and stately.

"This is Jack," said Dawson, leading the boy, who was looking shy, forward.

The grandam drew herself up. She looked at Jack once. She looked at him twice. Then she opened wide her arms; and as Jack flew like a bird to her embrace, she pressed him to her heart and fairly burst into tears.

Even Dawson was affected, and wisely withdrew.

Old Mrs. Mackenzie had a woman's heart then, after all.

* * * * *

What a long, delightful letter that was Jack wrote to his mother and sister next day! It did both their hearts good.

Mrs. Mackenzie, junior, was glad, for her boy's sake, that he had found a friend that would advance him in life. For her own part, she would have died at the foot of a pine tree rather than accept a favour from the proud owner of Drumglen, albeit she was her late husband's mother.

Ah! pride, and especially Scotch pride, is a bitter feeling, and often even a cruel. Pride has been called the devil's darling sin, and by Pope

"The never-failing vice of fools."

Says Goldsmith,--

"Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by."

Well, I do believe that with Grandam Mackenzie the stream of life now began to run backwards for a time. She had invited Jack to stay but for a week or two; but the sweet summer-time was coming on, and the boy required no second invitation to make Drumglen his home for a time. The words "for a time" are Mrs. Mackenzie's own, and perhaps she hardly knew the full meaning of them herself.

Jack wasn't going to forget old friends, however, and he wrote to Mrs. Malony, and to Little Peter also, and promised to write again.

I think that young Jack had not been at Drumglen for even a week before the rigidity of the mansion began to thaw.

Jack was jolly, but never with a jollity approaching to vulgarity. Indeed, in company and at table, thanks to his mother's tuition, the boy behaved himself like a little lord. But he often said droll things that made everybody laugh, and caused even the orthodox Mr. M'Thump to smile.

As a rule, the ladies and gentlemen who assembled at a dinner-party here were as stiff and straight in the back, physically and morally, as the chairs in which they sat.

When the ladies retired, however, the men folks did unbend, and some of them drew Jack out; and Jack--he did not require a very great deal of encouragement--gave his ideas about life and things in general in such a comically philosophical way, that old-fashioned lairds thumped the table and laughed aloud.

There was just one subject, however, on which Jack was wisely silent--namely, his sad life of poverty and distress in stony-hearted Glasgow.

Some things are better left unsaid, some stories better left untold. And Jack knew this instinctively as it were, and held his peace--for his grandma's sake.

Moreover he kept his own counsel concerning the whereabouts of his mother and sister, even when so eminent and dignified an individual as the Rev. Mr. M'Thump endeavoured to draw him out.

In this, again, Jack pleased his grandma very much. Drumglen mansion-house was in itself a somewhat antiquated and dreary abode, although situated in the midst of the most beautiful Highland scenery--hill and dale, river, loch, scaur, and wild wood.

The weeping birch trees were nowhere of sweeter, softer green in early spring than on the banks and braes around here; and among their branches the mavis and blackbirds trilled their songs with a joy that seemed half hysterical, while from far aloft, skimming the clouds, the laverock showered his notes of love. Nowhere did the primroses grow bigger, cooler, sweeter, than by the banks of the bickering burn that went singing over the stones on its way to the loch, forming many a clear pool wherein the minnows darted hither and thither, and where the crimson-ticked trout loved to bask in the sunshine. Then in autumn the hills around were purpled and encrimsoned with heather and heath high up their sides, till their rugged heads were lost in the clouds.

But the garden walls of Drumglen were high and strong, and the gates of ponderous iron. It seemed as if they had been built to stand a siege in the stormy days of old.

Inside these walls the garden itself was wide and wild, and away aloft, in the black and gloomy foliage of the pine trees, the hoody crow had his nest, and eke that bird of ill-omen the magpie.

The walls of the house itself were very thick and the windows small. Not a sound did your footsteps make as you glided about the rooms. So silent did you move on the thick, soft carpets, that you could scarce help thinking at times that you were your own ghost.

The furniture of this gloomy house seemed a thousand years old at least. The stairs were of oak; and when Jack first beheld his grandmother's bed, he gazed at it with a feeling of awe. It was a huge, dark, and curtained edifice, with drapery of the snowiest white. To have slept under such a weight as that would have made a stranger dream he was about to be smothered alive.

The old dame's servants had always been chosen for their solemnity, one would have said, and their reverential stateliness. They had never been heard to laugh till Jack went to reside at the mansion.

But now things were a little bit altered. For the boy moved about the house like a ray of sunshine, and you could no more have kept him from laughing, or singing the fag-ends of old Scotch songs, than you could have prevented a lark from trilling his love-lilts in May.

I may tell you that Jack knew well enough that his grandam wished him to keep his place if ever he entered the servants' hall. So he did; and yet his presence there never failed to bring sunshine, light, and music, and oftentimes now the dark oak ceilings re-echoed the mirth of servants who had ever before been as sad and solemn as church beadles or funeral mutes.

With all her orthodox conservativeness, however, Mrs. Mackenzie seemed to know that boys like Jack cannot live without amusement, and so at no time was she averse to the visits of youngsters of his own age. She even gave entertainments, and invited to them the children of neighbouring lairds, so that on the whole Jack's life was not so solemn an affair as it might otherwise have been.

In the evenings when alone together, the old lady used to make him draw his low stool up close beside her knee and talk to her. She would even encourage him to tell her about life in what might well be called the lower regions of the great city of Glasgow.

The disinterested kindness of Mrs. Malony and poor Little Peter, the hunch-backed fiddler boy, visibly affected Jack's grandmother.

"I did not think," she said, "that the poor could be so kind to each other as that. I will send Mrs. Malony, and Peter too, a Christmas-box when the time comes round. And so they were going to make a blacksmith of my brave boy, were they?"

"Yes, grandma; but I love work."

"How terrible!"

Jack bent down to smooth an old grimalkin that snoozed upon the rug.

"Malony wasn't so very terrible, though," he said; "and I suppose, grandma, if nobody was a smithy-John, nobody's horses would have any shoes to wear."

"True, my dear, quite true. As the potter makes his wares, some to honour and some to dishonour, so are we too made, and we should do our duty in the station of life which God has appointed us to fill."

Jack didn't reply. He was gazing into the bright fire of peats and coal that blazed so cheerfully on the low hearth, and wondering what station in life it would be his to fill.

"Jack," she said, after a pause, "did it ever occur to you that you would like to be something?"

Jack looked up at her now with glowing, happy face.

"Oh yes, indeed, grandma!"

"And what have you thought of?--the church?"

"Oh no, grandma."

"But think of the honour and glory of serving Him even in this world, and the richness of the reward hereafter. Think of our minister, the Rev. Titus M'Thump. He has ere now been honoured by dining even with royalty."

"I daresay I'm not good enough," said Jack simply.

"Well, child, the law affords facilities for rising to eminence in the world. Mr. Dawson, my own solicitor, is both a great and a good man. But," she added, as Jack did not reply, "how would you like to be a leech?"

Jack looked up astonished, with eyes about as big as billiard-balls. He had seen Malony apply a leech once to his sister's neck when she was ill of quinsy, and did not know that "leech" was the old name for physician.

"A leech, grandma! a nasty, black, creepie-crawlie, blood-sucking leech! Oh no, grandma. You are making fun, aren't you?"

"Well," said the old dame gravely, "you are quite right. I don't care for the profession myself. Your strictures on the leech are probably somewhat severe, however. I had one to dine with me a few months back, and really he seemed fairly intelligent."

"Dine with a leech!" thought Jack; "why, grandmother must be going out of her mind."

"Well, Jack, what would you like to be?"

"I would like, grandma, to be a Highland soldier, and wear a feather bonnet."

Grandma smiled sadly, and for a time gazed silently at the fire.

"No, Jack, no. I would not like you to be a soldier. Anything else?"

"Oh yes," replied the boy, eagerly enough. "You see, grandma, Mr. Dawson says there is going to be a big, big war with Russia."

"Perhaps so, dear, perhaps."

"Well, sailors fight as well as soldiers, and dress all in blue and gold, for I've seen some. They don't have feather bonnets, though--only just cocked hats and long swords. Well, I would like to be a sailor like that; and I'm sure when I grow bigger I could cut off an enemy's head beautifully."

"O boy, boy, how horrible! Well, I'll think about it; and if your mother will let you stay with me for a time, I will get you a good and clever tutor."

Jack did not answer, but he took his grandma's soft hand in both his, and leaned his cheek upon it in a gently caressing way.

"Strange," thought old Mrs. Mackenzie; "that is the way poor Donald used to caress my hand when he was quite a boy. Surely the Lord has given me this child's love to cheer my old age, and to prove that he has forgiven me."

* * * * *

Dawson and Mrs. Mackenzie the elder had a consultation soon after this. The subject to be considered was this: How best could she do something for her daughter-in-law that would not wound her pride?

"I felt sure," said the solicitor, with straightforwardness, "that you would put this question to me, and I have thought it well out. The doctor has told me that she is now almost well, but that if she returns to her life of poverty and hard work in Glasgow, she will soon find her last home in the mools."

"Well, Mr. Dawson?"

"Well, my dear madam, the cottage hospital down the Clyde is turning a great success; if you could add two beds to it--"

"Nothing would please me better. I will build a small additional wing to it, with a little cottage and garden near for the matron."

"Oh, thanks. You quite anticipate what I was going to say."

"Yes--that my daughter-in-law could be appointed manageress, with Jack's sister as nurse."

"That is it."

"Well, it is as good as accomplished. Only let it be between ourselves. No one is to know who the donor is."

"Agreed."

"It is to be our little secret, Mr. Dawson; and, after all, I think one may just as well do good with one's money while alive as after death."

"It certainly is more satisfactory. How about the man-o'-war ship, then?"

"Ah! that is another subject I hope to discuss with you one day. Perhaps--but--well, the matter needs further consideration, so for the present we shall dismiss it."

* * * * *

Jack stayed all the summer at Drumglen; but when the autumn came round, his grandmother, one evening as they sat by the fire, opened the conversation by saying,--

"My dear boy, your tutor, Mr. Newington, tells me you have been working very hard, and made capital progress in your studies; so I am going to send you home for six whole weeks to your mother and sister, at the Cottage Hospital. I hear there has been a new wing built to it, and a little house and garden for the matron, and that your mother has been appointed to that position. Well, dear boy, write and tell them you are coming; and I'll give you an envelope with something in it, so that you can pay your way, and be quite the little gentleman."

Jack took her hand in the old caressing way; but he did even more--he drew her arm right round his neck and nestled more closely up to her knee.

"Dear grandma," he said, "you are so good to me."

Mrs. Malony was busy making her husband's supper one evening about a week after this, when the door opened, and in bounced Jack.

"Och, sure," she cried, "and is it me own dear bhoy, Johnnie Greybreeks? Indade and indade it was only this blissed morning I was talking to Phatrick about ye. An' how well you are looking, alanna! troth it's the foine young gintleman ye are already entoirely. See there, the very cat knows ye; and won't Peter be plazed!"

And so she rattled on. By-and-by the husband himself came in, smiling all over his black and smutty face, and right heartily Johnnie shook his hard and brooky fist.

After supper Peter came down, and brought the fiddle too. That was one of the happiest nights ever Johnnie remembered spending.

Next day he went to see Mr. Dawson and the Morgans, but only for a hurried visit. Then the steamer _Iona_ took him down stream, and at sunset he was seated beside his mother's cottage fire, with the dearest ones on earth beside him--one on each side.

How cosy and home-like everything looked around him! even the canary and the cat seemed as if they had been specially ordained for the cheerful room. There were flowers, too, everywhere, inside and out; but Maggie Mackenzie was the sweetest flower of all--so even her brother Jack thought.

She was dressed primly, it is true, as became her position as a nurse, but that did not detract in the slightest degree from her lady-like appearance.

Jack's mother, too, was looking well.

"Strange how things come about, dear boy," she said. "You see the Lord heard our prayers, and has raised us up friends. For ever blessed be his name!"

As she spoke she wiped away a tear with her white apron. It was a tear of joy and gratitude, however.

For this evening Jack's mother felt that her heart was full to overflowing.