CHAPTER XIX.—A RUN-DOWN HEEL AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
The Motor Maids had tasted the fine flavor of an old romance, and that in the very heart of the most romantic city in the world. And now, with the three friends united at last after nearly half a century’s obstinate separation, they all departed on a wonderful excursion to the Scotch lakes. For nearly a week they lingered in that enchanting and historic country and quite forgot the affairs of the outside world.
The mystery that enshrouded Marie-Jeanne and her strange mother; their old friend, Telemac Kalisch, whom they liked and still half feared; Maria Cortinas and the handsome Lord Glenarm; Beatrice Colchester; and last of all the kidnapping of little Arthur,—all these persons and the incidents with which they somehow had been connected had been relegated to the backs of their minds.
On the day before they had departed to the lake country Feargus O’Connor, the one link which bound them to the early associations of their journey, had resigned from his position as courier and general factotum and hastily left Edinburgh.
So it was that, having cut loose from all former connections, they returned to Edinburgh one Saturday morning near the end of June, their minds crammed full of legends and history and scenery.
A disagreeable, drizzling rain was falling and the prospects from the hotel window were not of a cheerful character.
“Just the time for taking a nap,” Miss Campbell remarked after lunch and proceeded to retire to her room and lock the door.
Mary and Elinor followed her example, but those two indefatigable travelers, Billie and Nancy, were determined not to spend their last day in Edinburgh shut up in a hotel bedroom.
“With overshoes on, and a mackintosh and an umbrella, I could face a cloudburst,” Billie observed.
“When I am prepared for it, I really like the rain,” said Nancy.
“That’s because your hair curls naturally. It’s only people who have straight hair and try to curl it who dislike rain. Now, I don’t mind it, because I don’t bother to curl my hair. Once, years ago, a lady asked papa why he didn’t have my hair curled, and he said, ‘What! make a martyr of my daughter? You’ll be asking me to have her ears pierced next.”
“I don’t call it being martyred to have one’s ears pierced,” said Nancy with subdued indignation.
Billie laughed. It was a great joke among the Motor Maids that Nancy had secretly had her ears pierced and bought a pair of pearl earrings.
“Confess, now, Nancy-Bell, didn’t it hurt like forty?”
“Whither shall we go?” answered the other, pretending not to have heard the question. “Shall we do the pictures and churches again or go to Holyrood Palace and nose around among old murders?”
“Heavens, no! Let’s do the Old Town. Don’t you think it would be rather interesting to skulk about that old place in the rain?”
Nancy assented and the two girls climbed up the steep slippery streets on a slumming expedition which Miss Campbell would certainly have forbidden had she been informed. The fine rain washed against their faces and the breeze from, the ocean tasted salty on their lips.
“This is truly a city built upon a hill,” said Billie. “And what shall we do now we are here, Nancy? Can’t you think of some excuse?”
“Let’s do the first thing that suggests itself. The spirit moves me to go into this old courtyard and look about.”
They turned through an archway leading into a quadrangular court, the pavings of which were worn into uneven surfaces. Ragged children peeped at them from the windows and doors of the rickety houses forming the quadrangle, and from the window of the nearest house a sallow-faced woman, washing clothes, gave them a sour glance and silently went about her work. An ugly visaged man scowled at them from over her shoulder. Feeling a little frightened, the two girls hastened toward an arched entrance to a hallway where hung several signs conspicuously placed.
“Billie, I have an inspiration,” whispered Nancy. “Suppose we get Mr. A. Ritchie, Cobbler, to straighten the heel on my left shoe.”
Having reached a decision as soon as the suggestion was made, they entered the hallway on what Billie always termed afterward “Nancy’s left-heel adventure.”
Up an interminable flight of steps they began their climb, and those they met on the way, mostly sandy-haired children with sad, hungry eyes and thin gaunt women with sullen faces, scarcely noticed them at all. On each landing they paused and searched for Mr. Ritchie’s sign, which had been one of those at the entrance, but evidently his abode was still higher.
“Would you be kind enough to tell me where Mr. Ritchie, the cobbler, has his—shop?” Billie asked hesitatingly of a woman who had opened a door and was peering into the hallway.
“Since you hae na’ found it at the bottom, I hae no doot ye’ll find it at the top,” she answered and banged the door to.
“Crusty isn’t the word to describe her,” remarked Nancy. “I hae no doot either since we are verra near the top,—we are there, in fact,” she added as they reached the last landing at the end of seven flights of stairs.
And there indeed was Mr. Ritchie’s sign and a symbol of his labor in the form of a wooden Wellington boot.
They knocked timidly and a voice shouted angrily:
“Well, well, canna ye read? Dinna ye ken this is a shop and there’s nae necessity to go bangin’ and rappin’ at the door?”
“Let’s run, Billie. I’m afraid,” whispered Nancy.
They grasped hands and were making for the stairs at the far end of the corridor when an old man opened the door and glared out into the passage. He carried a thick knotted stick in one hand and his face was distorted with rage. What he said it was impossible to understand, a volley of words that all seemed to end in “cht.” But he ran so nimbly after them down the steps and was so close on their heels that on the floor below, without pausing to consider, the terrified girls opened the nearest door and rushed inside. There was a key in the lock and Billie promptly turned it.
Bang! went the club on the door.
“I hope he won’t burst it in,” whispered Billie, crouching on the floor, and Nancy, kneeling beside her, was too frightened to reply. But they presently heard steps retreating along the hall and up the stairs, and Mr. A. Ritchie returned to his lair like an angry lion.
The girls, who had been too intent on one danger to think of another, now stood up and looked about them fearfully. They found themselves in a very comfortable, clean kitchen. A kettle hummed on the little stove. On the shelves were rows of dark blue china dishes and underneath on nails hung a glistening array of tins. A white cloth was spread on the kitchen table, which was set for three, and in the center stood a bowl of wild flowers. Muslin curtains were at the windows, and near one stood a big easy chair and a small table on which were books and papers. In the brief instant in which they paused to examine this rather surprising interior, there was a step outside the door and some one lifted the latch. Finding the door bolted, there was a tap, a pause, and two more taps like a signal. The girls held a whispered conference.
“We’ll have to open the door, Nancy,” whispered Billie.
She turned the key, the latch was lifted, the door opened, and Marie-Jeanne walked into the room! There was an expression of amazed relief on the faces of all three; then they fell on each other’s necks, all laughing at once.
“But where did you get my address?” faltered Marie-Jeanne.
“We didn’t have it. It was purely accidental like the last time,” answered Billie, and they explained how they happened to wander into the tenement house, and take refuge in that room.
“Old Ritchie wouldn’t really have harmed you,” said Marie-Jeanne. “He carries on, but he never does anything. He’s quite nice when you get to know him.”
“I almost didn’t know you, Marie-Jeanne,” put in Nancy. “You have grown so plump and strong since we saw you.”
“It’s all because I am happy. One can’t be well if one isn’t happy, and I was never so happy in all my life. I’m cooking,” cried Marie-Jeanne, in the tone of one who had surmounted all obstacles and arrived at the very acme of her ambitions. “I’m cooking three meals a day. Look at my tins,—look at my stove,” she went on excitedly. “Aren’t they shiny and clean? See my blue china. Isn’t it beautiful? I love to set the table so much that I can’t wait for meal time to come because I want to make it pretty. We use candles at night.” She pointed to a pair of old silver candlesticks on the mantel shelf. “Aren’t they beautiful? I found them in an old shop.”
“But who else is with you, Marie-Jeanne, besides your mother?” asked Billie.
“Besides my mo——” began the other and broke off. “A friend,” she added.
She glanced at the clock hastily. It lacked a few minutes of four.
“There is plenty of time,” she exclaimed. “We shall have tea. I always wanted you to drink tea with me. How things do come out as one wishes at last. You must eat some of the cake I made this morning. It’s a beautiful four-egg cake with white icing.”
The girls were well pleased to drink tea with Marie-Jeanne. They had much to say to each other. Where had Marie-Jeanne been since they last saw her on London Bridge? Did she like Edinburgh and was her mother quite well? Had she heard about little Arthur, who was still lost or kidnapped? To all of which questions Marie-Jeanne replied with bright nods and brief answers while she prepared the tea.
“But I can’t get over your looks, dear Marie-Jeanne,” cried Billie. “You must have gained many pounds, and it makes you so pretty, and what a pretty dress you are wearing.”
Marie-Jeanne glanced proudly down at her neat blue serge.
“It’s happiness and work and good air that have improved my appearance,” she answered, cutting the cake with a professional flourish.
Then the three girls sat down around the little stove and sipped their tea and ate cake and talked of many things.
“Doesn’t your mother find it rather hard to climb these stairs?” asked Nancy.
Marie-Jeanne looked very uncomfortable.
“Have you seen the view?” she asked, pretending not to have heard Nancy’s question and glancing rather uneasily at the clock.
Immediately the two girls rose to go. Perhaps Mrs. Le Roy-Jones would not be pleased to have her daughter entertaining guests in this humble lodging.
Before they left, Billie parted the muslin curtains and looked across a sea of wet roofs to the real sea beyond.
“How beautiful, Marie-Jeanne!”
“Isn’t it?—and we love it. The air is splendid. Sometimes it brings a smell of heather from the moors and sometimes a salty sea smell. We are so far removed, it’s like being in a tower.”
Billie’s glance fell to the table near the window. Besides several novels and heavier-looking books, she saw a child’s book of animals. She glanced curiously at Marie-Jeanne, who was gathering up the tea things and preparing to wash them. Underneath the big chair by the table was a pair of man’s bedroom slippers almost as small as a boy’s.
The three girls embraced. Perhaps they might never meet again. Certainly it did not seem likely; for the Motor Maids were leaving the Land of the Thistle in the morning and in another week would be in Ireland.
As they were parting, Billie said to Marie-Jeanne:
“Do you remember what you said to us on London Bridge that afternoon, Marie-Jeanne, about wanting to live in a house that was all glass so that you could have no secrets? Are you living in one now?”
Marie-Jeanne shook her head.
“It’s not a glass house,” she answered. “But it’s a good deal better than Miss Rivers’, and sometimes I deceive myself into thinking it’s really a little home. It’s a kind of an imitation happiness, I suppose. Always, deep down in my heart, I know it can’t last very long, but it’s the nearest I have ever been to being really happy in my life.”
Just as Billie and Nancy passed under the arch leading from the courtyard and turned toward the New Town, a very old man and a little boy, walking hand in hand and talking happily together, crossed the narrow street.
“There goes Billie,” cried the little boy excitedly.
“I think not, my son,” answered the old man, and the two disappeared under the archway.
“Wait a moment, Nancy,” exclaimed Billie, with a sudden determination.
“What is it?” asked her friend.
Billie hurried back. There was a name and number at the entrance, which she ’graved in her memory; also the name of the street.
“We might just as well keep Marie-Jeanne’s address,” she said.
“I remember the number on the door,” said Nancy. “It was No. 7, and the way I happened to remember it is when we were climbing up I noticed it and thought, ‘Here are some people who live in a seventh heaven.’”
But that ended the adventures of the Motor Maids in the Land of the Thistle. The next morning they turned their faces southward. In the Land of the Shamrock, Billie was to realize how important small impulses sometimes are in the shaping of great events.