I have since been assured that grandpapa was a harmless lunatic. If so, he made lunacy more attractive to a child than sanity.
"Hush! I have that to say to you, child, which common ears may not hear. These people call me Cameron. But, Angela, my real name is Hamlet. I was born at Elsinore. I will take you to Elsinore some day. It is far away in a country called Denmark. You yourself, Angela, look like a Dane, with your yellow hair and blue eyes. Come, there is a concert at Earlsfort Terrace. They play Bach. I will take you."
Could anything be more calculated to win a child's esteem and reverence than this assertion that the world knew him by a false name?—that he was really quite another person from the person they believed him to be? Then, what sonorous words, Hamlet, Elsinore! Denmark I liked less—it sounded more like an everyday place—but Elsinore was as good as a fairy-tale in its awful beauty.
I asked him if you went in a ship over the sea to Elsinore, as Mary Jane told me you went to America; and when he nodded and said "Yes," I got to imagine there was no common sunlight on the sea as the ship crossed it to Elsinore, but the lovely white light I had seen at the theatre when the fairies danced, and all the people in the ship wore beautiful garments of white and green gauze, and there was soft music all the way, and the water shone like silver.
What I could not understand was why I should be a Dane because my eyes were blue, when grandpapa's, who was so obviously more of a Dane than I, were black. But grandpapa always frowned, and an odd flame shot into his mild glance, if you asked him questions.
He gave you facts, and expected you to make what you could of them. He was unreasonably proud, I thought, of his Scottish blood, all the same. He was a Highlander, he said, while my grandmother, he explained contemptuously, was a Glasgow lass. My uncle Douglas, he added, favoured his side, while my mother was a blonde Ferguson. Pity it was an intelligent little girl like me did not take more after the Camerons; but I had my uncle Douglas's nose, and with a Cameron nose I need never fear the future.
This was surely an excess of faith on my grandfather's side not justified by experience. He had been only saved from the poorhouse by a thrifty and judicious if hard-hearted wife, while my splendid uncle Douglas, with his curly head of Greek god, had wandered from debt through every expensive caprice, and was drowned sailing a little pleasure-boat on one of the Killarney lakes at the inappropriate age of twenty-four.
The Cameron nose has done as little for his young brother, my uncle Willie. I have always loved the image I have made to myself of my boy-uncle Willie, chiefly, I suppose, because of his brilliant promise and early death; but largely, I believe, because not only grandpapa Cameron, but others who remember him, tell me I resemble him in character and feature.
They say it was his death, coming so soon after the blow of uncle Douglas's doom, that turned my grandfather's brain. Willie had been articled to a well-known architect, who, being musical like my grandfather, was interested in his musical friend's bright-faced and witty lad, with about as much knowledge of music as a healthy puppy. This lamentable deficiency, however, brought about no disastrous clash between master and pupil.
The distinguished architect loved Willie Cameron for his good-humour, his industry, his quickness, and his impromptu jingling rhymes. He made everything rhyme with a delicious comic absurdity, even the technical terms of his profession, and in consequence no one was jealous of the master's preference for his funny Scottish pupil. You see, he was so much more of an Irish than a Scottish lad. Born on Irish soil, he seems to have inherited the best of native virtues, and was universally beloved. Even his eldest sister, who never sinned on the side of tenderness, could not speak of uncle Willie without a smile.