CHAPTER X
IT was a saying of Daniel Dyce's that all the world is under one's own waistcoat. We have a way of spaeing fortunes in the North, when young, in which we count the waistcoat buttons from top to bottom, and say:
“Tinker,
Tailor,
Soldier,
Sailor,
Rich man,
Poor man,
Prodigal,
Or Thief?”
Whichever name falls upon the last button tells what is your destiny, and after the county corps has been round our way recruiting, I see our school-boys with all their waistcoat buttons but three at the top amissing. Dan Dyce had a different formula: he said, “Luckiness, Leisure, Ill or Well, Good World, Bad World, Heaven or Hell?”
“Not Heaven, Dan!” said Bell. “The other place I'll admit, for whiles I'm in a furious temper over some trifle;” to which he would answer, “Woman! the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
So, I think sometimes, all that's worth while in the world is in this little burgh, except a string-quartette and a place called Florence I have long been wishing to see if ever I have the money. In this small town is every week as much of tragedy and comedy and farce as would make a complete novel full of laughter and tears, that would sell in a jiffy. I have started, myself, a score of them—all the essential inspiration got from plain folk passing my window, or from hearing a sentence dropped among women gossiping round a well. Many a winter night I come in with a fine catch of tales picked up in the by-going, as we say, and light the candles in a hurry, and make a gallant dash at “Captain Consequence. Chapter I.” or “A Wild Inheritance. Part I. The Astounding Mary.” Only the lavishness of the material hampers me: when I'm at “Captain Consequence” (which would be a splendid sombre story of an ill life, if I ever got beyond Chapter I. and the old scamp's fondness for his mother), my wife runs in with something warm to drink, and tells me Jonathan Campbell's goat has broken into the minister's garden, and then I'm off the key for villany; there's a shilling book in Jonathan's goat herself.
But this time I'm determined to stick by the fortunes of the Dyce family, now that I have got myself inside their door. I hope we are friends of that household, dearer to me than the dwellings of kings (not that I have cognizance of many). I hope that no matter how often or how early we rap at the brass knocker, or how timidly, Kate will come, and in one breath say, “What is't? Come in!” We may hear, when we're in, people passing in the street, and the wild geese call—wild geese, wild geese! this time I will not follow where you tempt to where are only silence and dream—the autumn and the summer days may cry us out to garden and wood, but if I can manage it I will lock the door on the inside, and shut us snugly in with Daniel Dyce and his household, and it will be well with us then. Yes, yes, it will be well with us then.
The wild-goose cry, heard in the nights, beyond her comprehension, was all that Bud Dyce found foreign in that home. All else was natural and familiar and friendly, for all else she knew was love. But she feared at first the “honk, honk” of the lone wild things that burdened her with wonder and awe. Lying in her attic bower at night, they seemed to her like sore mistaken wanderers, wind-driven, lost; and so they are, I know. Hans Andersen and Grimm for her had given to their kind a forlorn and fearsome meaning. But Kate MacNeill had helped, to some degree, these childish apprehensions.