CHAPTER XXX.
MR STUART'S TROUBLES.
Very slowly the days and weeks went by, but at last the end of November drew near. The coast was bleak and cold now, and it was only on exceptionally fine days that Mona could spend a quiet hour at Castle Maclean. When she escaped from the shop she went for a scramble along the coast; and when physical exercise was insufficient to drive away the cobwebs, she walked out to the Colonel's wood to see old Jenny, or, farther still, beyond Kilwinnie to have a chat with Auntie Bell.
With the latter she struck up quite a cordial friendship, and she had the doubtful satisfaction of hearing the Colonel's yarn corroborated in Auntie Bell's quaint language.
"Rachel's queer, ye ken," said Auntie Bell, as Mona took her farewell in the exquisitely kept, old-fashioned garden. "She's a' for the kirk and the prayer-meetin'; an' yet she's aye that keen tae forgather wi' her betters."
"She wants to make the best of both worlds, I suppose," said Mona. "Poor soul! I am afraid she has not succeeded very well as regards this one."
"Na," said Auntie Bell tersely. "An' between wersels, I hae ma doots o' the ither."
Mona laughed. It was curious how she and Auntie Bell touched hands across all the oceans that lay between them.
"Are ye muckle ta'en up wi' this 'gran' bazaar,' as they ca' it!"
"Not a bit," said Mona; "I hate bazaars."
"Eh, but we're o' ae mind there!" and Auntie Bell clapped her hands with sufficient emphasis to start an upward rush of crows from the field beyond the hedge.
Nearly half the county at this time was talking of one thing and of only one—the approaching bazaar at Kirkstoun. It was almost incredible to Mona that so trifling an event should cause so much excitement; but bazaars, like earthquakes, vary in importance according to the part of the world in which they occur.
And this was no sale for church or chapel, at which the men could pretend to sneer, and which a good burgher might consistently refuse to attend; it was essentially the bazaar of the stronger sex—except in so far as the weaker sex did all the work in connection with; it was for no less an object than the new town hall.
For many years the inhabitants of Kirkstoun had felt that their town hall was a petty, insignificant building, out of all proportion to the size and importance of the burgh; and after much deliberation they had decided on the bold step of erecting a new building, and of looking mainly to Providence—spelt with a capital, of course—for the funds.
All this, however, was now rapidly becoming a matter of ancient history; the edifice had been complete for some time; about one-third of the expense had been defrayed; and, in order that the debt might be cleared off with a clean sweep, the ladies of the town had "kindly consented" to hold a bazaar.
"Man's extremity is woman's opportunity" had been the graceful, if not original, remark of one of the local bailies; but men are proverbially ungrateful, and this view of the matter had not been the only one mooted.
"Kindly consented, indeed!" one carping spirit had growled. "Pretty consent any of you would have given if it had not been an opportunity for dressing yourselves up and having a ploy. Whose pockets is all the money to come out of first or last? That's what I would like to know!"
It is quite needless to remark that the first of these speeches had been made on the platform, the second in domestic privacy.
Like wildfire the enthusiasm had spread. All through the summer, needles had flown in and out; paint-brushes had been flourished somewhat wildly; cupboards had been ransacked; begging-letters had been written to friends all over the country, and to every man who, in the memory of the inhabitants, had left Kirkstoun to make his fortune "abroad."
It was very characteristic of "Kirkstoun folk" that not many of these letters had been written in vain. Kirkstoun men are clannish. Scatter as they may over the whole known world, they stand together shoulder to shoulder like a well-trained regiment.
The bazaar was to be held for three days before Christmas, and was to be followed by a grand ball. Was not this excitement enough to fill the imagination of every girl for many miles around? The matrons had a harder time of it, as they usually have, poor souls! With them lay the solid responsibility of getting together a sufficiency of work—and alas for all the jealousies and heart-burnings this involved!—with them lay the planning of ball-dresses that were to cost less, and look better, than any one else's; with them lay the necessity of coaxing and conciliating "your papa."
Rachel Simpson was not a person of sufficient social importance to be a stall-holder, or a receiver of goods; and she certainly was not one of those women who are content to work that others may shine, so Mona had taken little or no interest in the projected bazaar.
One morning, however, she received a letter from Doris which roused her not a little.
"Kirkstoun is somewhere near Borrowness, is it not?" wrote her friend. "If so, I shall see you before Christmas. Those friends of mine at St Rules, to whom you declined an introduction, have a stall at the Town Hall bazaar, and I am going over to assist them. It is a kind of debt, for they helped me with my last enterprise of the kind, but I should contrive to get out of it except for the prospect of seeing you.
"You will come to the bazaar, of course: I should think you would be ready for a little dissipation by that time; and I will promise to be merciful if you will visit my stall."
"How delightful!" was Mona's first thought; "how disgusting!" was her second; "how utterly out of keeping Doris will be with me and my surroundings!" was her conclusion. "Ponies and pepper-pots do not harmonise very well with shops and poor relations. But, fortunately, the situation is not of my making."
She was still meditating over the letter when Rachel came in looking flushed and excited.
"Mona," she said, "I have made a nice little engagement for you. You know you say you like singing?"
"Yes," said Mona, with an awful premonition of what might be coming.
"I met Mr Stuart on the Kirkstoun road just now. He was that put about! Two of his best speakers for the soirée to-night have fallen through, he says. Mr Roberts has got the jaundice, and Mr Dowie has had to go to the funeral of a friend. Mr Stuart said the whole thing would be a failure, and he was fairly at his wits' end. You see there's no time to do anything now. He said if he could get a song or a recitation, or anything, it would do; so of course I told him you were a fine singer, and I was sure you would give us a song. You should have seen how his face brightened up. 'Capital!' said he; 'I have noticed her singing in church. Perhaps she would give us "I know that my Redeemer liveth," or something of that kind?'"
"My dear cousin," said Mona, at last finding breath to speak, "you might just as well ask me to give a performance on the trapeze. I have never sung since I was in Germany. It is one thing to chirp to you in the firelight, and quite another to stand up on a public platform and perform. The thing is utterly absurd."
"Hoots," said Rachel, "they are not so particular. Many's the time I have seen them pleased with worse singing than yours."
Then ensued the first 'stand-up fight' between the two. As her cousin waxed hotter Mona waxed cooler, and finally she ended the discussion by setting out to speak to Mr Stuart herself.
She found him in his comfortable study, his slippered feet on the fender, and a polemico-religious novel in his hand.
"I am sorry to find my cousin has made an engagement for me this evening," she said. "It is quite impossible for me to fulfil it."
"Oh, nonsense!" he said kindly. "It is too late to withdraw now. Your name is in the programme," and he glanced at the neatly written paper on his writing-table, as if it had been a legal document at the least. "My wife is making copies of that for all the speakers. You can't draw back now."
"It might be too late to withdraw," said Mona, "if I had ever put myself forward; but, although my cousin meant to act kindly to every one concerned, she and I are two distinct people."
"Come, come! Of course I quite understand your feeling a little shy, if you are not used to singing in public; but you will be all right as soon as you begin. I remember my first sermon—what a state I was in, to be sure! And yet they told me it was a great success."
"I am very sorry," said Mona. "It is not mere nervousness and shyness—though there is that too, of course—it is simply that I am not qualified to do it."
"We are not very critical. There won't be more than three persons present who know good singing from bad."
"Unfortunately I should wish to sing for those three."
"Ah," he said, with a curl of his lip, "you must have appreciation. The lesson some of us have got to learn in life, Miss Maclean, is to do without appreciation." He paused, but her look of sudden interest was inviting. "One is tempted sometimes to think that one could speak to so much more purpose in a world where there is some intellectual life, where people are not wholly blind to the problems of the day; but to preach Sunday after Sunday to those who have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, to suppress one's best thoughts——"
He stopped short.
"It is a pity surely to do that, unless one is a prophet indeed."
"Ah," he said, "you cannot understand my position. It is a singular one, unique perhaps.—You will sing for us to-night?"
"Mr Stuart," said Mona, struggling against the temptation to speak sharply, "I should not have left my work to come here in the busiest time of the day, if I had been prepared to yield in the end. And indeed why should I? There are plenty of people in the neighbourhood who sing as well as I; and people who are well known have a right to claim a little indulgence. I have none. It is not even as if I were a member of the Chapel."
"I hope you will be soon."
"Well," said Mona, rising with a smile, "you have more pressing claims on your attention at present than my conversion to Baptist principles. Good morning."
"Yes," he said reproachfully, "I must go out in this rain, and try to beat up a substitute for you. A country minister's life is no sinecure, Miss Maclean; and his work is doubled when he feels the necessity of keeping pace with the times." He glanced at the book he had laid down.
"I suppose so," said Mona, somewhat hypocritically. She longed to make a very different reply, but she was glad to escape on any terms. "I wish you all success in your search. You will not go far before you find a fitter makeshift than I."
"I doubt it," he said, going with her to the door. "Did any young lady's education ever yet fit her to do a thing frankly and gracefully, when she was asked to do it?"
Mona sighed. "Education is a long word, Mr Stuart," she said. "It savours more of eternity than of time. 'So many worlds, so much to do.' If we should meet in another life, perhaps I shall be able to sing for you then."
He was absolutely taken aback. What did she mean? Was she really poaching in his preserves? It was his privilege surely to give the conversation a religious turn, and he did not see exactly how she had contrived to do it. However, it was his duty to rise to the occasion, even although the effort might involve a severe mental dislocation.
"I hope we shall sing together there," he said, "with crowns on our heads, and palms in our hands."
It was Mona's turn to be taken aback. She had not realised the effect of her unconventional remarks, when tried by a conventional standard.
"Behüte Gott!" she said as she made her way home in the driving rain. "There are worse fates conceivable than annihilation."
Rachel was severely dignified all day, but she was anxious that Mona should go with her to the soirée, so she was constrained to bury the hatchet before evening. Mona was much relieved when things had slipped back into their wonted course. Her life was a fiasco indeed if she failed to please Rachel Simpson.