THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE MEADOWS
Irma and I had a great seeking for the little house, great enough for two, with such convenience as, at the time, could be called modern, and yet within reach of our very moderate means. First of all Freddy and I had gone to the Nun’s House to ask for Irma’s box and accoutrement. These made no great burden. Nevertheless, we borrowed a little “hurley,” or handcart, from the baker’s girl opposite, who certainly bore no malice. I had our marriage lines in my pocket, lest any should deny my rights. But though we did not see the Lady Kirkpatrick, the goods were all corded and placed ready behind the door of the porter’s lodge. We had them on the “hurley” in a minute. The Lady Frances passed in as we were carrying out the brass-bound trunk of Irma’s that had been my grandmother’s. She went by as if she had not seen us, her curiously mahogany face more of the punchinello type than ever—yet somehow I could not feel but that most of this anger was assumed. These women had shown Irma no kindness, indeed had never troubled themselves about her existence, all the long time she had stayed at Heathknowes. Why, then, begin so suddenly to play upon the sounding strings of family and long descent?
Indeed, we two thought but little more about the matter. Our minds were fully enough occupied. The wonder of those new days—the unexpected, unforeseen glory of the earth—the sudden sweetness of love, unbelievable, hardly yet realized, overwhelmed and confounded us.
And, more than all, there was the search for a house. The Advocate met me every day with his queer smile, but though he put my salary on a more secure basis, and arranged that in future I should be paid by the printer and not by himself, the sum total of my income was not materially altered.
“What’s enough for one is abundance for two!” was his motto. And the aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of the tortoise-shell snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became one learned in the law.
“I began the same way myself,” he said, “and though I have a bigger house now and serving men in kneebreeks and powder in their hair, I never go by that cottage out by Comely Bank without a ‘pitter-patter’ of my sinful old heart!”
He thought for a while, and then added, “Aye, aye—there’s no way for young folk to start life like being poor and learning to hain on the gowns and the broadcloth! What matter the trimmings, when ye have one another?”
As to the house, it was naturally Irma who did most of the searching. For me, I had to be early at the secretary’s office, and often late at the printer’s. But there was always some time in the day that I had to myself—could I only foresee it before I left home in the morning. “Home” was, so far, at Mrs. Craven’s, where the good Amelia had given us up her chamber, and Freddy rose an hour earlier, so that his wall-press bed might be closed and the “room” made ready for Irma’s breakfast parlour.
All the three begged that we might stay on. We were, they declared with one voice, not putting them to the smallest inconvenience. But I knew different, and besides, I had a constant and consuming desire for a house of mine own, however small.
Ever since I first knew Irma, a dream had haunted me. In days long past it had come, when I was only an awkward laddie gazing after her on the Eden Valley meadows. Often it had returned to me during the tedious silences of three years—when, quite against the proverb, love had grown by feeding upon itself.