A Dozen Ways Of Love - Lily Dougall (good books to read in english .txt) 📗

mirror--of what he thought other men were; it is always so. There was just this much truth in him at the bottom of his scorn and grumbling--he flattered himself that if he could see undoubted virtue he could admire it; and there was in him that possibility of grace.

After he left Madame Verine's door he thought with irritation of the girl who had rebuked him. Then he began to remember that she was only a woman and very young, and she had appealed to his heart--ah, yes, he had a heart. After all, he was not sure but that her appeal was charming. Then he thought of her with admiration. This was not the result of Marie's words--words in themselves are nothing; it is the personality of the speaker that makes them live or die, and personality is strongest when nourished long in virtue and silence and prayer. When it came to pass that the notary actually did the thing Marie told him to do, he began to think of her even with tenderness in his heart.

Now a very strange thing happened. In about a week the notary called on Madame Verine a second time; he greeted her with all ceremony, and then he sat down on a little stiff chair and explained his business in his own brief, dry way.

Marie was not there. The little _salon_, all polished and shining, gave faint lights and shadows in answer to every movement of its inmates. Madame Verine, in a voluminous silk gown, sat all attention, looking at the notary; she thought he was a very fine man, quite a great personage, and undoubtedly handsome.

'Madam,' began he, 'I am, as you know, at middle age, yet a bachelor, and the reason, to be plain with you, is that I have not believed in women. Pardon me, I would not be rude, but I am a business man. I have no delusions left, yet it has occurred to me that a young woman who would make the lives of the saints her rule of life--I do not believe in such things myself, but--in short, madam, I ask for your daughter in marriage.'

He said it as if he was doing quite a kind thing, as, indeed, he thought he was. Madame Verine thought so too, and with great astonishment, and even some apologies, gave away her daughter with grateful smiles.

Marie was married to the notary, and he made her very happy. At first she was happy because he had good manners and she had such a loving heart that she loved him. After a few years he found out that she was too good for him, and then he became a better man.


X

THE PAUPERS' GOLDEN DAY

Betty Lamb was a comely girl; she was big to look at, being tall and strong. She was never plump; she was never well clothed, not even in the best days of her youth. She had been brought up in the work-house; after that she belonged to no one. Her mind was a little astray: she had strong, rude, strange ideas of her own; she would not be humble and work day in, day out, like other folk, and for that reason she never throve in the world. She lived here and there, and did this and that. All the town knew her; she was just 'Betty Lamb'; no one expected aught of her.

It was a small town in the west of Scotland. On different sides of it long lanes of humble cottages straggled out into the fields; the cottages had grey stone walls and red tiled roofs. There were new grey churches in the town, and big buildings, and streets of shops. The people in those days thought these very fine; they thought less about the real glory of the town--a ruined abbey which stood upon an open heath just beyond the houses.

Three walls, two high gothic windows with the slender mullions unbroken, a few stately columns broken off at different heights from the ground, and one fragment of the high arch of the nave standing up against the sky in exquisite outline--these formed the ruin. It was built of the red sandstone that in its age takes upon it a delicate bloom of pink and white; it looked like a jewel in the breast of the grey hill country. Furze grew within the ruin and for acres on all sides. Sheep and goats came nibbling against the old altar steps. A fringe of wallflower and grass grew upon the top of the highest arch and down the broken fragments of the wall.

All around the stately hills looked down upon the town and the ruin, and the sky that bent over was more often than not full of cloud, soft and grey.

Betty Lamb was getting on to middle age, about thirty, when she had a baby. They had put her again in the poorshouse, but she rose when her baby was but a day old and went away from the place.

It was summer time then; the sky relented somewhat; there was sunshine between the showers, and sometimes a long fair week of silvery weather, when a white haze of lifting moisture rose ever, like incense, from the hills, and the light shone white upon the yellow bloom of the furze.

Betty Lamb found the ambry niche in the wall of the ruin at the side of the place where the altar had been. She laid her baby there. That was his cradle, and by sunlight and moonlight she was heard singing loud songs to him. The people were afraid of going too near her at that time. 'It is dangerous,' said they, 'to touch an animal when she has her young with her.'

As years went on Betty Lamb and her little boy spent summer after summer upon the moor. The child was not christened, unless, indeed, the dew falling from the sacred stones and the pity of God for fatherless innocents had christened him. In this world, at least, his name was written in no book of life, for he had no name.

He grew to be a little lithe lad. Then it was that in every pickle of mischief where a little lad could be this elf-child, with his black eyes and curly auburn hair, was to be found. So maddening indeed were his naughty tricks that the townspeople spoke not so often of beating him, as they would have beaten a human child, but of wringing his neck like a young thing that had no right to live. Yet it was more often in word than in deed that punishment of any sort was inflicted, for the preliminary stage was perforce, 'first catch your boy,' and that was far from easy.

Even when the catching was accomplished the beating did not always come. One day the minister of the Kirk looked out upon his glebe. His favourite cow, with a bridle in her mouth, was being galloped at greatest speed around the field, Betty's lad standing tip-toe upon her back. The minister, with the agility which unbounded wrath gave him, caught the boy' and swung his cane.

'I am going to thrash you,' said he.

'Ay, ye maun do that.' The small face was drawn to the aspect of a grave judge--'ye maun do that; it's yer juty.'

The minister, who had looked upon his intention rather in the light of natural impulse, felt the less inclination for the task. 'Are you not afraid of being beaten?' he asked.

'Aweel'--an air of profound reflection--'I'm thinking I can even it ony day wi' ridin' on a coo's back when she'll rin like yon.'

The sunlight of habitual benevolence began to break through the cloud of wrath upon the good minister's face. 'If I let you off, laddie, what will you do for me in return?'

An answering gleam of generosity broke upon the sage face of the child. 'I'll fair teach ye how to dae't ye'sel'.'

The lad grew apace. The neighbours said that he showed 'a caring' for his mother, but no one held toward him a helping hand. They were so sure that no good could come of him or of her. The mother had taken to drink, and one day it was found that the lad was gone. Just as he had often slipped from the grasp of one or other of the angry townsmen, dodged, darted, and disappeared for the moment, so now it seemed that he had slipped from the grasp of the town, run quickly and disappeared. No one knew why he had gone, or whither, or to what end.

Betty Lamb remained in the town, a fine figure of a woman, but bowed in the shoulders, dirty, and clad in rags. At last, when her strong defiance of poverty and need would no longer serve her, she was seen to go about from door to door in the early dawn, raking among the ashes for such articles as she chose to put in an old sack and carry upon her back. The townsfolk honestly thought that all had been done that could be done to make a decent woman of her, and now in her old age she must needs go down to the gutter.

One day a man came to the town with circus pictures and a bucket of paste. He pasted his pictures upon all the blank spaces of walls which he could find. Great was the joy of the children who stood and stared, their little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world when so great a show as this comes out of the accustomed track of shows to erect its tent in our small town!' Yet so it was; from some whim of the manager, or of some one who had the ear of the manager, the thing was decreed.

Upon these circus pictures there figured, in a series of many wonderful harlequin attitudes, a certain Signor Lambetti. Very foreign was the curl of his hair and the waxen ends of his moustache; very magnificent was his physique; he wore the finest of silken tights and crimson small clothes, and medals were depicted hanging upon his breast.

When at length the circus came for that one night's entertainment and the huge tent was set up upon the common not far from the old red ruin, all the town flocked to see the brilliant spectacle. The minister was there, and what was more, his wife and daughters too; they were far grander than he was, and wore silken furbelows and fringed shawls. The minister paid for the best seats for them to sit in. All the shopkeepers were there; every man, woman and child in all the town who could find as much as sixpence to pay for standing room was there. But the strangest circumstance was that before the show began a man went out from the brightly-lit doorway and called in a loud voice to the beggars and little ragged boys and girls who had come to survey the tent on the outside, and he brought them all in and gave them a good part of the tent to sit in, although they had not sixpence to pay, nor even a penny.

Ah! in those days it was a very grand sight. There were elephants who performed tricks, and camels who walked about with men and bundles on their backs just as they do in eastern deserts, and there were wonderful ladies who dressed and behaved like fairies, and who rode standing tip-toe on the backs of horses and jumped through