CHAPTER VII.
If Molyneux, the actor, was to blame for sending this child of ten on her journey into Scotland without convoy, how much worse was his offence that he sent no hint of her character to the house of Dyce? She was like the carpet-bag George Jordon found at the inn door one day without a name on it, and saying “There’s nothing like thrift in a family,” took home immediately, to lament over for a week because he had not the key to open it. There should have been a key to Lennox Brenton Dyce, but Molyneux, a man of post-cards and curt and cryptic epistles generally, never thought of that, so that it took some days for the folk she came among to pick the lock. There was fun in the process, it cannot be denied, but that was because the Dyces were the Dyces; had they been many another folk she might have been a mystery for years, and in the long-run spoiled completely. Her mother had been a thousand women in her time,—heroines good and evil, fairies, princesses, paupers, maidens, mothers, shy and bold, plain or beautiful, young or old, as the play of the week demanded,—a play-actress, in a word. And now she was dead and buried, the bright white lights on her no more, the music and the cheering done. But not all dead and buried, for some of her was in her child.
Bud was born a mimic. I tell you this at once, because so many inconsistencies will be found in her I should otherwise look foolish to present her portrait for a piece of veritable life. Not a mimic of voice and manner only, but a mimic of people’s minds, so that for long—until the climax came that was to change her when she found herself—she was the echo and reflection of the last person she spoke with. She borrowed minds and gestures as later she borrowed Grandma Buntain’s pelerine and bonnet. She could be all men and all women except the plainly dull or wicked,—but only on each occasion for a little while; by-and-by she was herself again.
And so it was that for a day or two she played with the phrase and accent of Wanton Wully Oliver, or startled her aunts with an unconscious rendering of Kate’s Highland accent, her “My stars!” and “Mercy me’s!” and “My wee hens!”
The daft days (as we call New Year time) passed—the days of careless merriment, that were but the start of Bud’s daft days, that last with all of us for years if we are lucky. The town was settling down; the schools were opening on Han’sel Monday, and Bud was going—not to the Grammar School after all, but to the Pigeons’ Seminary. Have patience, and by-and-by I will tell about the Pigeons.
Bell had been appalled to find the child, at the age of ten, apparently incredibly neglected in her education.
“Of course you would be at some sort of school yonder in America?” she had said at an early opportunity, not hoping for much, but ready to learn of some hedgerow academy in spite of all the papers said of Yales and Harvards and the like.
“No, I never was at school; I was just going when father died,” said Bud, sitting on a sofa, wrapt in a cloak of Ailie’s, feeling extremely tall and beautiful and old.
“What! Do you sit there and tell me they did not send you to school?” cried her aunt, so stunned that the child delighted in her power to startle and amaze. “That’s America for you! Ten years old, and not the length of your alphabets,—it’s what one might expect from a heathen land of niggers, and lynchers, and presidents. I was the best sewer and speller in Miss Mushet’s long before I was ten. My lassie, let me tell you you have come to a country where you’ll get your education! We would make you take it at its best if we had to live on meal. Look at your Auntie Ailie—French and German, and a hand like copperplate; it’s a treat to see her at the old scrutoire, no way put about, composing. Just goes at it like lightning! I do declare if your Uncle Dan was done, Ailie could carry on the business, all except the aliments and sequestrations. It beats all! Ten years old and not to know the A B C!”
“Oh, but I do,” said Bud quickly. “I learned the alphabet off the play-bills,—the big G’s first, because there’s so many Greats and Grands and Gorgeouses in them. And then Mrs Molyneux used to let me try to read Jim’s press notices. She read them first every morning sitting up in bed at breakfast, and said, ‘My! wasn’t he a great man?’ and then she’d cry a little, ’cause he never got justice from the managers, for they were all mean and jealous of him. Then she’d spray herself with the Peau d’espagne and eat a cracker. And the best papers there was in the land said the part of the butler in the second act was well filled by Mister Jim Molyneux; or among others in a fine cast were J. Molyneux, Ralph Devereux, and O. G. Tarpoll.”