Chapter VI. GRANDFATHER CAMERON.
The unhappiest little child that ever drew breath has immediate compensations between the dark hours undreamed of by elders. One of the persons that lent the relief of sparkle to those sombre months, and by whose aid I wandered blithely enough down the sunny avenues of imagination, which, like a straight road running into the sky, lead to Paradise, was my Scottish grandfather.
Grandpapa was a sombre-visaged little gentleman, not in the least like his formidable daughter. He had very dark eyes, and he often assured me that Stevie got his beautiful red-brown hair from him. I needed the assurance pretty frequently, for grandpapa's hair was white. He proudly drew my attention to the fact that there was not a bald spot, however.
In all ordinary matters of existence, grandpapa was of a happy facility. He tolerated every error, every crime, I believe, except a false note or an inferior taste in music. He loved me, not because of the accuracy of my ear, for I had none to speak of, but because of my instinctive passion for music. Still, in middle life, I can say there never has been for me a grief that could resist the consolation of music well interpreted.
If grandpapa found me in a corner white and dejected, he asked no questions,—he wished to be in ignorance of his daughter's domestic affairs, which was the reason, I suppose, he so sedulously avoided the society of my stepfather—but he took me off with him to hear music or singing somewhere. In winter he took me to the pantomime, and we sat in the pit, and he indulged me with an orange to suck.
In the Dublin season he took me to the Opera or the Opera-Bouffe with equal readiness. Sometimes there were morning or afternoon concerts, and I sat out with exemplary gravity sonatas and concerts or part-singing, and woke up to genial comprehension of the ballads and simple melodies.
Grandpapa had one great charm. He never spoke to me as a child, and I rarely understood the tenth of his talk. That was why, no doubt, as a personage grandpapa appealed so delightfully to my imagination. He was a mystery, a problem, a permanent excitement. A month or a year—perhaps, to be more accurate, a month—would elapse without my seeing him, and then suddenly he would again enter the chaos of dreams and visions, a smiling dark-eyed old gentleman, with a long black cloak flung round his shoulder and a slouched felt hat that left revealed his abundant white hair.
He would place a finger on his lip and say, "Hush!" so mysteriously, looking round the room. How well I, who lived in such fear of my mother's presence, understood that attitude and look.