CHAPTER XVI.
"JOHN HOGG'S MACHINE."
"He is curiously simpatico," said Mona to herself the next morning. "I don't know that I ever knew any one with whom I felt less necessity for clearing up my fog-beswathed utterances, or for breaking down my brilliant metaphors in milk; it is pleasant to be able to walk straight off into the eternals with somebody; but I like a man to be more of a healthy animal." And a sunshiny memory passed through her mind of the "moral Antiseptic," the dear brotherly Sahib.
"I wonder who the other botanist was?" she went on presently, tumbling her pillows into a more comfortable position. "The Professor's assistant perhaps, or possibly a professor himself. He certainly was a scientist, every inch of him, from his silent tongue to the tips of his ill-groomed fingers."
It would have surprised her not a little if she could have seen the subject of her speculations an hour or so later. He was sitting behind the counter of a draper's shop in Kilwinnie, his head resting on his hand in an attitude of the deepest dejection. Mona was perfectly right when she declared him to be every inch a scientist; he was more so perhaps than even the great Professor himself: but the lines had fallen unto him in a narrow little world, where his studies were looked upon as mere vagaries, on a par with kite-making and bullet-casting; where his college classes at St Rules had to be paid for out of his own carefully saved pocket-money; where his experiments and researches had to be conducted in a tumble-down summer-house at the foot of the old garden; and where, at the age of twenty, he was left an orphan with four grown-up sisters to support.
Had they all lived thirty years later, or in a less secluded part of the world, the sisters would probably have looked out for themselves, and have left their brother to make a great name, or to starve in a garret over his weeds and his beetles, according as the Fates might decree; but such an idea never occurred to any one of the five, although the sisters had all received sufficient instruction in music, painting, and French, to make them rather hard to please in the matter of husbands.
The lad was cut out for patient, laborious, scientific research, and he knew it; but with four sisters on one's hands, and a balance at the bank scarcely large enough to meet doctor's bills and funeral expenses, scientific research seems sadly vague and indefinite, while a well-established drapery business is at least "something to lippen to."
So he laid aside his plans, and took up the yardstick as a mere matter of course, without any posing and protestations even to himself.
He so far asserted himself, that the microscope, the hortus siccus, and the neat pine-wood cabinets, took up a place of honour in the house, instead of skulking in out-of-the-way corners; but now that fifteen years had passed away, although he was known to all the initiated as the greatest living authority on the fauna and flora of the eastern part of the county, he was beginning to pursue his hobby at rarer intervals and in a more dilettante spirit. Now and then when some great scientist came into the neighbourhood, and appealed to him as to the habitat of this and as to the probable extinction of that, when his personal convoy on an expedition was looked upon as an honour and a great piece of luck, when in the course of walks round the coast he drank in the new theories of which the scientific world was talking, he felt some return of the old fire; but in the main, to the great relief of his sisters, he was settling down into a good and useful burgher, with a place on the town council and on sundry local boards, with an excellent prospect of the provostship, and with no time for such frivolities as butterfly-hunting and botanising.
When his acquaintances questioned him, he always stated his conviction that he had chosen, on the whole, the better part; but he never gave any account of hours like the present, in which he loathed the very thought of civic honours and dignity, and in which he painted to himself in glowing colours the life that might have been.
He was thinking much just now of the burly old professor whose visit he had keenly enjoyed; and more even than of the professor he was thinking of Mona Maclean. All things are relative in life. Scores of men had met Mona who had scarcely looked at her a second time. She might be nothing and nobody in the great bright world of London; but into this man's dark and lonely life she had come like a meteor. He could scarcely have told what it was that had fascinated him. It was partly her bright young face, though he dreaded good-looking women; partly her light-hearted song, though he scorned frivolous women; partly her botany, though he laughed at learned women; and partly her frank outspoken manner, though he hated forward women. She bore no smallest resemblance to the mental picture that had sometimes floated vaguely before him of a possible helpmeet for him; and yet, and yet—look where he would, he could see her sitting on that rock, with all the light of the dancing waves in her eyes,—the veritable spirit of the coast as the professor had said. He even found himself trying to hum in a very uncertain bass,
"For he's going to marry Yum-Yum;"
but this was a reductio ad absurdum, and with a heavy frown he proceeded to make out some bills.
It never occurred to him to question that she was far out of his reach. Anybody, he thought, could see at a glance that she was a lady, in a different sense from that in which his sisters bore the name. It was right and fitting that the great professor should give her his card, but who was he—the draper of Kilwinnie—that he should suggest another meeting?
But the second meeting was nearer than either he or Mona anticipated.
"We're going to take tea with Auntie Bell this afternoon," said Rachel next day. "Mr Hogg is going in to Kilwinnie on business, and he says if we don't mind waiting half an hour in the town, he will drive us on to Balbirnie. I want to buy a couple of mats at Mr Brown's; you can depend on the quality there better than anywhere here or in Kirkstoun; and we'll just wait in the shop till Mr Hogg is ready."
"But can he spare the time?" asked Mona uneasily. She knew that Rachel could quite well afford to hire a trap now and then.
"Oh, he's always glad to have a crack with Auntie Bell, not to say a taste of her scones and cream. She is a great hand at scones."
This was magnanimous on Rachel's part, for her own scones were tough and heavy, and—though that, of course, she did not know—constituted one of the minor trials of Mona's life.
"But, dear," said Mona, "we are neglecting the shop dreadfully between us."
"Oh, Sally can mind it all right when she's cleaned herself in the afternoon. She is only too glad of a gossip with anybody. It is not as if it was for a constancy like; this is our last call in the meantime. Now the folks will begin to call on us, and some of them will ask us to tea."
Mona tried to smile cordially, but the prospect was not entrancing.
About half-past two, Mr Hogg came round in his "machine." Now "machine," as we all know, is a radical and levelling word, and in this case it was a question of levelling up, not of levelling down, for Mr Hogg's machine was simply a tradesman's cart. It was small, to be sure, and fairly new and fresh, and nicely varnished, but no one could look at it and doubt that it was what Lucy would have called a "common or garden" cart. Rachel and Mona got in with some difficulty, and they started off along the Kirkstoun road. Here they met Dr Dudley. His short-sighted eyes would never have recognised them had not Rachel leaned forward and bowed effusively; then he lifted his hat and passed on.
They rattled through the streets of Kirkstoun, past the post-office, the tannery, the Baptist chapel, and other buildings of importance; and then drove out to Kilwinnie, where Mr Hogg politely deposited them at Mr Brown's door.
Here, then, Mona saw her "professor" measuring out a dress length of lilac print for a waiting servant-girl, and here the draper saw his fairy princess, his spirit of the coast, alighting with as much grace as possible from John Hogg's cart.
Mr Brown knew Rachel Simpson. She stopped occasionally to purchase something from him on her way to Auntie Bell's; his sisters often amused themselves by laughing at her dress, and the traveller told him comical stories about the way in which she kept shop.
For it must be clearly understood that Mr Brown's shop was a very different thing from Rachel Simpson's. It was well stocked with substantial goods, and was patronised by all the people round about who really respected themselves. It was no place for "bargains" in the modern sense of the word. It was a commercial eddy left behind by the tide in days when things were expected to wash and to wear. There was no question here of "locking the door, and letting folks see that you did not require to keep the shop." A place like this must, on the face of it, be the chief aim and end of somebody's existence.
Rachel's descent from the cart was a somewhat tedious process, but at length it was accomplished successfully, and Mr Hogg drove away, promising to return for them in half an hour.
Poor Rachel was not a little flattered by the draper's cordial greeting. Leaving the "young man" to do up the print, he came forward, with stammering, uncertain words indeed, but with a beaming smile and outstretched hand. And he might be Provost next year!
"This is my cousin, Miss Maclean," she said.
Mr Brown looked absolutely petrified.
"I think we have met before," said Mona, not a little surprised herself, taking his offered hand. "This is one of the gentlemen, dear, who helped me with my plants."
"Oh," said Rachel rather blankly.
It had required all her "manners" to keep her from giving Mona a candid opinion of the common weeds which were the sole fruit of a long day's ramble, and Rachel had a very poor opinion of any man who could occupy himself with such trash. But, to be sure, he was a good draper—and he might be Provost next year!
And then he was so very cordial and friendly—that in itself would have covered a multitude of sins. As soon as Rachel had made up her mind about the mats, he hastened up-stairs, and returned with a stammering invitation from his sisters. Would Miss Simpson and her cousin come up to the drawing-room and wait there? When Mona came to know a little more of the Brown ménage, she wondered how in the world he had ever succeeded in getting that invitation.
But up-stairs they went, and were graciously received by the sisters. Mr Brown was wildly happy, and utterly unable to show himself to any advantage. He wandered aimlessly about, showing Mona this and that, and striving vainly to utter a single sentence consecutively.
"Can't you have tea?" he said in a stage-whisper to his sister.
"Oh, thank you," interposed Rachel with a somewhat oleaginous smile, "it's very kind, I'm sure, but we're on our way to Mrs Easson's, and we won't spoil our appetites."
"Are you going to be here long?" said the draper to Mona.
"At Borrowness? A few months, I expect."
"Then you'll be doing some more botanising?"
"Oh yes."
"There's some very nice things a little bit farther round the coast than we went the other day. Would you come some time with my sister and me?"
"I should be very glad indeed," said Mona warmly. "It is an immense advantage to go with some one who knows the neighbourhood."
"Well, we will arrange the day—later on," and he sighed; "but it won't do to wait too long now."
At this moment Mr Hogg rattled up to the door, and the draper went down and helped his visitors into the cart.
"Why, I declare he's getting to be quite a lady's man," said Rachel when they were well out of hearing. "I wonder what his sisters would say if he was to get married after all."
Meanwhile the Browns discussed their visitors,
"It's last year's mantle," said Number one, "but the bonnet's new."
"And what a bonnet!" said Number two.
"And she still shows two or three good inches of red wrist between her glove and her sleeve," said Number three, "Nobody would think that girl was her cousin."
"She's not at all pretty," said Number four, "but she's quite ladylike. Do you know what she is, Philip?"
"I don't," he said nervously, "but I fancy she must be a teacher or something of that kind. She has been very well educated."
"Ah, that would account for it," said Number two. "It must be a nice change for her to come and stay with Miss Simpson."
The draper stood at the window counting up his happiness. There was not a snobbish line in his nature, and Mona was not any the less a fairy princess in his eyes because she seemed suddenly to have come within his reach. He knew his sisters did not want him to marry, and he was grateful to them now for having crushed in the bud certain little fancies in the past; but if he once made up his mind,—he laughed to himself as he thought how little their remonstrances would weigh with him. Of course there was a great chance that so bright and so clever a girl might refuse him; but fifteen years of his sisters' influence had not taught him to exaggerate this probability, and in that part of the country there is a strong superstition to the effect that a woman teacher is not likely to refuse what is commonly known as "an honest man's love.”