Chapter XVIII

DR. PETER AND ATHOLE MURRAY MAKE THEIR STAND.

An elderly man with his young daughter, living in full sound of the periodical revolution in Glasgow habits and manners, did not follow suit. Life at Barley Riggs went on exactly as it had done before these busy, delirious days. Not a change did the family make in their routine, for they had still plenty of time for everything. Not a fresh incongruous article was added to the old simple seasoned household gods. Athole had not an additional gown of costlier material. Dr. Peter even bought fewer books than usual, and denied himself an improved telescope which he had thought of buying. He could do star-gazing without it, every time he was called out on a clear night, and perhaps it was not worth the while of a man of his age to fix the study on the latest scientific basis. It seemed as if the family were called upon to testify to a different order of things, and to utter their small protest against the opposite extreme.

The only one who murmured was the handmaiden Jeannie. For she would come and lay siege to Athole with tales of the dainties and ‘bonny-dies’ [pretty things], the cakes and puddings, the trays and mirrors, which were now to be seen in the houses of the Haugh work-people, as plentiful as blackberries. Jeannie appeared to feel it as a personal injury that the table at Barley Riggs was not more richly furnished, but was kept as wholesomely plain and light in its good and sufficient cookery as ever; and that her young mistress would not launch into the attire of an extravagant countess, in order to afford Jeannie a precedent for doing likewise within her sphere. The maiden was not very wise, but she was a kindly-disposed girl, knew a good place when she had it, and, though she was restive, retained a creditable respect and regard for the master and mistress who had taken a constant interest in her welfare.

There were many more than Jeannie, among people who ought to have known better, who thought it very absurd that the household at Barley Riggs should be standing still while the rest of the world was advancing. These judges viewed with loud scorn the old-fashioned, poor-spirited, unneighbourly pair. Yes, Dr. Peter and Athole, who in their corner, with their stinted means, kept abreast of much of the thought of the day, were called old-fashioned, and the man and woman who had entered the breach to deliver the Miss Mackinnons, were styled poor-spirited and unneighbourly. To row against the stream is not only hard work--it strikes the mass as an ungracious performance.

Certainly Dr. Peter’s income did not vary much with the rise of the popular funds. He did not take the money he had saved out of the old investment, in order to put it into the new, and quadruple the interest. Tam Drysdale had proposed that the men with their higher wages should contribute a larger moiety, as he himself agreed to do from his increased profits, to their doctor’s pay. The men were willing, but Dr. Peter interfered, and limited the addition to the lowest sum. He said the working world would have need of all their spare pennies when the rate of orders and wages had fallen again, as it was bound to subside. He had no more doubt of slack times coming round, in a kind of natural order, than that cloudy strata would follow upon tracts of blue sky, and the east wind succeed the west. Most people agreed with him in theory, but in practice he was thought a Jeremiah for his pains.

There was a peculiarities element of coolness and repose about Barley Riggs at this time, in contrast to the fever and unrest in its vicinity. Yet life was not without its excitement there, as elsewhere. Dr. Peter had specially interesting cases and problems which engrossed him. Athole hit on a new pattern, or was inspired with a design beyond the range of calico-printing, which she burned to express in wood or on earthenware, and managed to work out in a halting manner that did not render the idea barren, but by the very difficulty of clothing it in material form, made it fruitful in amended ideals, if in nothing else. All the news of all the world, ancient and modern, came to them in books and journals which the couple could study, digest, talk of in earnest and in jest, for Dr. Peter and Athole were great and good talkers together.

The seasons were constantly bringing some new thing--the first snowdrop, the catkin on the willow, the blossom on the gean-tree, the earliest rose, the latest hazel-nut. Dr. Peter and Athole, though the latter in a less degree--for the young are too full of the mystery of themselves to be always open to nature--scarcely ever missed a fine sunset, the evening star hanging tremulous in a daffodil sky, or the full moon when she was riding without check, white and glittering, in the purple darkness beyond her track. The two rarely lost the look of the garden before the morning sun had melted the cranreuch on bough and leaf; or that other aspect when spring had come, and the earth was brown, with the grass springing, the reddened buds swelling, the softest haze of genial mist hovering over the tender, everlasting youth of the scene.

There was never a day or an hour when some event did not happen in the animal kingdom at Barley Riggs, and it never happened without observation and interest--another calf, another kid, a brood of spring chickens; the patriarchal dog held fast in a rabbit-trap, the baby kitten catching a mouse; this bird beginning to sing, that to moult; Dr. Peter’s pony undergoing a clipping, Athole’s old Shetland treated for a cough; the first butterfly, the first swallow.

Early morning hours were kept at Barley Riggs, though Dr. Peter had not to bolt his breakfast and start for Glasgow by the nine o’clock train. On the contrary, he rose not later than seven, and--unless it were raining pigs and whistles--took a stroll over the place to see that all was right, leant a minute over the gate to have a ‘crack’ with this or that familiar working man or woman who had been home for breakfast. Or he made a bolt out to inquire for some patient who might have had a restless night and be wearying to see his doctor, for Athole did not approve, if the obligation were not urgent, of her father’s attending his sick before he had broken his fast. Then Dr. Peter walked back to the house as fresh as a daisy, and ate his meal in a leisurely, sensible fashion.

He hailed the postman, read his letters, glanced over the newspaper, and cleaned and fed such furred and feathered retainers as fell to his care. Next he changed his coat, and set out on his morning round, leaving Athole and her handmaiden to the household cares which belonged to the early part of the day, and were as regularly and satisfactorily discharged on their part as another mission was fulfilled on his.

Dr. Peter practised what he preached. He recommended early dining as the rule of life for working-men and invalids alike, and he came home in anticipation of his dinner an hour after noon, and did a little work in the surgery--the constant accompaniment of a country doctor’s house, where he was training a homely assistant, whose college terms were yet to begin. In addition to this assistant, Dr. Peter had the services of a stout boy for his pony and in the garden, and on him the doctor bestowed a few additional minutes of his time before he appeared in the parlour at the sound of the dinner-bell.

There was a smoking season after dinner, when the great advantages of a veranda which had been erected on one side of the house were regularly recognised. Athole was generally with Dr. Peter then--‘playing,’ as he called it, taking her part in a lively argument, teasing or being teased, hearing and giving the gossip of the morning.

A little later the two frequently walked out together when he had such professional visits as he could pay in this way, or he took another round to keep his evening clear, or he worked in the garden. In the latter case he would call to Athole where she sat at work in the window, every ten minutes or so, to come out and listen to some weighty piece of information he had to give her--on the state of the mould, which would require special treatment; about a singular grub he had turned up; with regard to the flight of the rooks, which determined the next day’s weather; or the appearance of the gooseberry-blossom as a criterion of next July’s crop of gooseberries. If the weather were hot, and he felt tired, Dr. Peter would withdraw to the old Dutch summer-house, in which he remembered his young brothers holding merry smoking-parties, and read or meditate, or take a nap, as the humour moved him.

In winter Dr. Peter would be more in his surgery, or he would retire to the loft in which he did his joinery and turning, when Athole would look in upon him, and put a summary stop to his working more than he was able.

At the tea-table--set out in the old methodical substantial fashion, with Cowper’s ‘hissing urn’ in the place of honour--Dr. Peter came out in full force. He was as fond of tea as if he had been Dr. Samuel Johnson, or an old washerwoman, he was accustomed to say. He insisted if people would drink the beverage rationally, well ‘wafted’ with bread, or perhaps a slice of tongue or corned beef, or ewe-milk cheese, he would stake his credit as a medical man that it would not do the veriest old wife harm. It was the unnatural, senseless ‘babbling’ at the drink at all hours of the day which played the mischief. At the same time he regarded the meal as essentially feminine, the woman’s hour, to which, if you would cultivate her good graces, you must do justice by rendering yourself as agreeable as it was in your power to be. He thought no woman ever looked better than when she was presiding at a tea-table, and dispensing her own peculiar good things. He liked to see Athole in his sister’s place; his wife, whom he had married and immediately taken abroad, where she died, had never been at Barley Riggs.

Dr. Peter generally revealed at the tea-table what book he had unearthed from his shelves, or intercepted at the railway station, and deposited in his pocket to surprise Athole. ‘Ah ha, lassie! you do not know what I have got here,’ he would cry in glee, patting the bulging-out pocket. And Athole would guess wildly, wide of the mark, till she grew impatient. Then he would give up his treasure, and she would handle it, peep into it, read sentences from it like a connoisseur. She would hurry to get her work, when he would read to her till his eyes were weary, and she would take her turn and read to him, with plenty of pauses for comment, contradiction, or agreement.

If the book were either not interesting enough, or too interesting, he would call a halt, and bid Athole sing to him, which she did pleasantly enough, either with or without the piano. She had a gift for quaint ‘genteel comedies’ and farces, for old songs like ‘Major Macpherson heaved a sigh,’ ‘_Monsieur, je vous n’entend pas_,’ ‘My face is my fortune;’ though she could not give ‘Logie o’ Buchan,’ or ‘Wha’s at the window, wha, wha?’ with such naïve sweetness as young Eppie Drysdale rendered them.

If there was anything left of the evening, Dr. Peter would challenge his daughter to draughts or bézique, and whoever the victor was, he or she was rarely great enough to refrain from crowing over the vanquished.

The master of the house was a country doctor, and suffered in full from the lingering dilatoriness and sudden panic which causes the poorer, more ignorant country people to try every remedy in illness save sending for the qualified judge, and to practise the patience of Job till the small hours, then to rush helter-skelter, disturbing the lieges generally, and knocking an unhappy man out of his hard-earned bed, for help which he might have bestowed with comparatively little trouble, and to more purpose, half-a-dozen hours before. Still, Dr. Peter could generally manage to keep his hours sufficiently regulated for him to act as family priest. He could appear with his household for a brief time in what he believed to be the Great Presence, acknowledge an Almighty Father’s supremacy, and supplicate His mercy.

Sometimes patients were so thriving and considerate as to permit their doctor to eat in peace his simple supper of a haddock or a herring, or ‘a shape of potted head,’ and drink the single glass of toddy which was supposed to fortify him against the effects of exposure and fatigue, if he were summoned late, which occurred sufficiently often to have tried the constitution, mental and bodily, of a much younger man. Then Dr. Peter would rise and stretch himself, cry cheerily:

‘Hey for boot and horse, lads,’ charge Athole not to sit up herself, or let Jeannie sit up for him, and go his way, perhaps not to be back till daybreak.

Sunday could not, in the nature of things, absolve Dr. Peter from the duties of his profession, since men sicken and die on the Saturday and Sunday indiscriminately. But, taken in their highest sense, these duties fitted in well with the day of Him who, on the Jewish Sabbath, restored the withered hand, and bade the palsied man take up his bed and walk. They rarely prevented Dr. Peter from going with Athole to join his neighbours in public worship, in the church where he held the office of an elder, the minister of which was one of his oldest and most esteemed friends. In other respects, Sunday was a day of rest to Dr. Peter, in the sense of a day quiet, and calm, and bright--for knitting closer family ties, for still more intimate association with nature, for reading his best books, for remembering friends near and far away, for communing with the unseen, and penetrating behind the veil.

Not only was Dr. Peter well content with these unhurrying days, as a leisurely end to an active career, a slight experience of the land of Beulah before he passed beyond the light of sun and star; Athole had the feeling and taste to be sensible of their fine flavour. She said to herself, truly, that she would not change her father and their home-life together for any other father--however well endowed and indulgent; or any other life--however full of change and movement. This was in spite of the fact that Athole’s heart was ‘hot and restless,’ like other young hearts, that she felt tempted to welcome variety, emulation, opposition, so that it promised excitement, to be in the thick of the conflict, the rush of the strife--of a good deal that was going on in St. Mungo’s city at this moment. She could even have welcomed a passage at arms with young Tam Drysdale, to strike a spark from the steel. But always, when Athole came to think of it, she grew sorry for such a mood. She knew she was wronging herself and her father, and wished, in an exalted mood, that nothing at Barley Riggs might ever alter, for nothing on earth could be better.

Barley Riggs was not out of the range of visiting and visitors, while Dr. Peter was hospitable with all the friendly hospitality of a man who has lived at a foreign station, and known what a neighbour may be at a pinch. But though he put his best before his guests, it must be his natural best, what was in keeping with his position and habits, and only outran in a cordial, gracious way his ordinary experience. From the first day that Dr. Peter returned to Barley Riggs and settled there, he set his face steadfastly against display and competition for the prize in extravagant outlay, or in _recherché_ attainment, the sole virtue of which was that it happened to be _recherché_.

‘Our friends know what to expect from us, Athie,’ Dr. Peter would counsel his daughter; ‘and upon my soul I believe they will be better pleased with that than with something out of all bounds. If they’re not, I am mistaken in them, that is all; and they had better stay away, and go where they can be served according to their fancy.’

‘In what way?’ inquired Athole tentatively.

‘In what way? When a man looks round on crystal, silver, and flowers enough to dazzle and bewilder him, and reads a _menu_ as long as his arm, containing three times as many dishes as he can touch.’

‘There is no great harm in that,’ said Athole mischievously.

‘Wait. He eats what he is not accustomed to; what, very likely, is not good for him, and what his instincts are often sound enough to warn him away from, if he would attend to them. But no, he must ape his neighbours, pretend to tastes he never felt, and bolster up his gastronomical feats by drinking less or more of all the wines and liqueurs that are handed round, and pretending to like them, too, till he is miserable. And if he does come to feel the liking he has feigned, the worse for him.’

‘Father, I am afraid you are talking shop,’ objected Dr. Peter’s daughter. ‘You ought to have thrown the substance of that speech into a paper for the _Lancet_.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense, child. We could not afford such dinners, Athole, and we will not try. People have enough of that kind of thing elsewhere. When they come to us they must come for more than the bill of fare, or for such a bill of fare as is perfectly good and appetizing--even tasty of its kind.’

‘Now you overwhelm me,’ professed Athole.

‘Lassie, what would the soldiers in the Crimea, or in Zululand, or in Egypt have thought of it? Yet it has not cost what is equivalent to a poor man’s house-rent for a year, and will not spoil anybody’s digestion, or ruin me, though I were to give a dinner to a dozen friends once a month.’

To the credit of mankind, no less than of Dr. Peter and his housekeeper, when he did indulge in giving unpretending, well-cooked dinners, they were highly popular with rich and poor alike. Their success might be due, in a degree, to his excellent qualities as a host, and his gifts as a _raconteur_, and to the able manner in which Athole abetted him in both these directions. Yet it seemed as if, in the leap which the west had taken in wealth and luxury, there was a little less relish for the mother-wit of the past, a little less inclination to be reminded of ancient thrift or waste, stoic endurance, or passionate assertion. The present, the crowded present, threatened to become all in all. But to Dr. Peter the old records and stories never lost their charm. He delighted in picturing Glasgow when Queen Mary was said to have given its name to a certain suburb, then a country village, as she looked at the crucifix in the palm of her hand, and swore, in defiance of the rebel army barring her way, ‘By the cross in my loof, I will sleep in Dumbarton this night!’ He had equal pleasure in recalling later centuries, when golf was still played on Glasgow Green, and a walk round it before breakfast was the ‘constitutional’ of all the active old gentlemen in the town. He would fain have known the ingredients of that hot herb ale which the pedestrians afterwards drank, with such relish and benefit, in Currie’s Close.

Dr. Peter fairly angered auld Tam by speculating on whether he (Dr. Peter) would not have liked Glasgow better when fish was her sole trade, and Clyde’s banks were bonnie and blooming, and the air caller and sweeter from Hamilton to Campbelton; when the inhabitants of St. Mungo’s city thought nothing fairer or grander than their own cathedral, beneath which good Kentigern slept; when a double rainbow spanning the Clyde, or a troop of ‘merry dancers’ in the northern sky, was an event worthy of notice, spoken of for days, no more eclipsed and obscured by the rushing, noisy obligations of trade, than by the reek of a forest of chimneys which did not yet exist.