AT THE PEAR-TREE WELL.
He was almost glad that Meenie was going away for these two days, for he was desperately anxious to make up for the time he had lost; and the good-natured little Mr. Weems, instead of showing any annoyance or resentment, rather aided and abetted this furious zeal on the part of his pupil. All the same, Ronald found occasion to be within easy distance of the railway station on the morning of Meenie's departure and about a few minutes to eight he saw herself and her sister step out of one of the cabs that were being driven up. If only he could have signalled a good-bye to her! But he kept discreetly in the background; glad enough to see that she was looking so fresh and bright and cheerful—even laughing she was, over some little mishap, as he imagined. And then so trim and neat she was in her travelling attire; and so daintily she walked—the graceful figure moving (as he thought) as if to a kind of music. The elder sister took the tickets; then they entered one of the carriages; and presently the train had slowly rolled away from the platform and was gone.
That glimpse of Meenie had filled his heart with unutterable delight; he scarcely knew what he was doing when he got out into the open air again. The day seemed a festal day; there was gladness abroad in the very atmosphere; it was a day for good-companionship, and the drinking of healths, and the wishing of good wishes to all the world. His thoughts were all with Meenie—in that railway carriage flying away down to Greenock; and yet here, around him, there was gladness and happiness that seemed to demand some actual expression and recognition! Almost unconsciously—and with his brain busy with very distant matters—he walked into a public-house.
'Give me a glass of Highland whisky, my lad,' said he to the young man standing behind the counter: 'Talisker, if ye have it.'
The whisky was measured out and placed before him. He did not look at it. He was standing a little apart. And now Meenie would be out by Pollokshields, in the whiter air; by and by she would pass through Paisley's smoke; then through the placid pastoral country until she would come in sight of Dumbarton's castled crags and the long wide valley of the Clyde. And then the breezy waters of the Firth; and the big steamboat; and Meenie walking up and down the white deck, and drawing the sealskin coat a little tighter round the slight and graceful figure. There would be sunlight there; and fresh sea-winds blowing up from Arran and Bute, from Cumbrae and Cantire. And Meenie—
But at this moment his attention was somehow drawn to the counter, and he was startled into a consciousness of where he was and what he was doing. He glanced at the whisky—with a kind of shiver of fright.
'God forgive me—I did not want it,' he said to the astonished youth who was looking at him, 'but here's the money for 't.'
He put down the few coppers on the counter and hurriedly left the place. But the sudden fright was all. As he sped away out to Pollokshaws he was not haunted by any consciousness of having escaped from danger. He was sure enough of himself in that direction. If a mortal craving for drink had seized him, he would almost have been glad of the fight; it would be something to slay the dragon, for Meenie's sake. But he had naturally a sound and firm constitution; his dissipation had not lasted long enough to destroy his strength of will; and indeed this incident of the public-house, so far from terrifying him with any doubts as to the future, only served to remind him that dreams and visions—and brains gone 'daft' with access of joy—are not appropriate to the thoroughfares of a business city.
No; as he walked rapidly away from the town, by way of Strathbungo and Crossmyloof and Shawlands, what he was chiefly busy with was the hammering out of some tune that would fit the winter song he had chanced upon a few days before. And now he did not regard those gay and galloping verses with a stupefied wonder as to how he ever came to write them; rather he tried to reach again to that same pitch of light-heartedness; and of course it was for Meenie's delight, and for hers only, that this tune had to be got at somehow. It was a laughing, glad kind of a tune that he wanted:
O then the warm west winds will blow,