The Rose of the Wilderness.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 129, 30 May 1908, Page 16

The Rose of the Wilderness.

BY S. R. CROCKETT! [JAuthor of "The Stickit Minister/ etcjl

xin. SAX GILFILLAX. SPECIALIST IX MATRIMONY. "My husband!" said Nan Gilfillan, iwith a pride which she could not hide — Inot altogether, that is—though to hear !her go at him you would have thought that he was the worst good-for-nothing that ever was, and made a daily practice of clearing out the bank till! "The 'hippo , is outside doing up the leaves. Go outside and grunt at one another." she commanded after we had shaken hands. "Dalna Whyte is coming, and we are going to try on each other's new hats!" This, of course, was only to get him out of the way. It happened on the evening of the day v>hen he told mc about the picnicking—or camping out in tents. Mr Walter Uilfil3an came from my own part of the country, and I found him a very happy man in his home, and in especial deeply devoted to Nan, who, to tell the truth, used him not much better than a dog. That is, beiore folk.

He was a great banker—everyone said. But in his own house you could see that it was Xan. Nan's cleverness, her wit, her driving power, her unexpectedness, Nan's Nannishness in fact —that made him far prouder of being her husband—than of having risen from the position of junior cleric in Cairn Edward branch, to that of General Manager of his Bank. For the first two or three days Nan let mc alone. She did not ask mc a question. If I had anything to tell her, Nan Gilfillan knew very well that I would tell it. But she took mc to shops. In fact we almost lived in Jenner's, where all the people smiled as they caught sight of her, and I declared that I had never seen so many people with good manners all collected together before. Xan said that was the "note" of the place, and came from the chief partner having married a Galloway wife. But I think she just said that to be nice to mc. At the end of three days, however, I could hold out no longer. I had to tell. Nan was lyiug on the sofa of her little room with a pillow under her head halftray through the act of '"changing." She had her fingers netted behind her head, and as she listened little fitful flickers •went and came on her face as I mentioned this name and that. Xan was a woman of experience, and never hurried things, except when catching the train. She heard mc to the end. "I shall have to go down to the Dungeon and see about this," she said at the end, —"you and I can share a room. And the change -will set mc up before the ■winter season begins. We shall soon have concerts to attend here, and for mc, really, stonebreaking is easier! Also Walter has to entertain. Or rather I have —mostly men who know the multiplication table up to 99 times. Though that, to tell the truth, does not interfere with their appreciation of our Pommery and Greno, extra sec, ten years old!" Every day she went out and superintended Muckle Tamson, who became more and more foolish about her, tai, eventual- -%. ly he made her a present of his long cher- — ""~^3slie* —*%>apin-eti<* J ' —the same° with . which he had "regulated" Andro the pigdealer and his men! It chanced on the fourth day that Muckle Tamson was cleaning up the leaves in front of the little empty lodge—the gardener, a man with a family, dwelling elsewhere. Suddenly, at the hour of the afternoon tea, -v. appeared Mr Fitzgerald to call upon Nan, for as it turned out, he was an old friend of hers. Indeed, most people were. But at the gate he found that he had counted without Muckle Tamson. "Hey, man, what are ye doin' here ?" demanded the Colossus with the big Etahle-broom. -Mr. Fitzgerald smilingly said that if the lady were at home, he meant to do himself the pleasure of calling upon Mrs. Walter GirfiDan. At this Tamson leaned nearer to the yoong man. "See here, laddie;" he said, "I hae naetbing against you. But if yon ither loon is followin' ye np—and you no tellin' mc o't—Mnckle Tamson will tak' ye •bajth by the slack o' your trews and ding your 'hams' oot again the waa' 1" . Mr. Fitzgerald understood but little of this address, delivered in a Doric far more ornamental than I have ventured to transcribe in this place. But, seeing that he had to do with a "friend of the family," he answered that he was wholly alone, and that Tamson might return peacefully to his sweeping , . I do not think that I had more than mentioned the name of Mr. Fitzgerald to Nan in my narrative. Nor on this occasion did he exchange a dozen words with mc. Bnt Nan had for other women that exquisite sixth sense, which most women have in the matter of their own affairs— ■which like an alarm-clock tells long beforehand -when it is going to happen, which makes them swear that tnever, never again—yet all the time knowing that as enre as the stars run in their courses, that vow will be broken—and that out of the very breaking will come that bitter sweetness so beloved of women, as when the first boughs of the Marah tree splashed into the waters thereof. Nature perhaps meant this instinct to be protective, but women have made of it something infinitely finer—even selfdeceptive. After Mr. Fitzgerald had gone she took mc by the hand. "Hose," she said, "Tie will not do for the Wilderness. We must go back there you and I!" Yet I had said nothing. No, not a word. Indeed there was nothing to say. "Come."' said Nan, "I will take the •hippo's' present, and he shall teach mc how to use it, if to redd up your love tangles, I must venture into these fastnesses of yours." So with that., we went out and hunted up Muckle Tamson. He came towards us in three strides as soon as he saw the leaping-pole in Xan Gilfillan's hands. There was a hopeful look on his face. "Has he been impident?" he said in a hurried whisper. "Will I mell him yet? There is nocht to hinder. I could catch Mm easy!" However, Nan calmed the ardours of Muckle Tamson, and led the way to the lower rose-garden, where secure from observation, in the midst of his own outbursts of almost suffocating laughter, Muckle Tamson taught Mistress Nan the whole theory and practice of how to leap over a four-foot box hedge. '"'But ye>* hae to kilt your kirtles before ye try the Cooran, my leddy!" he said, wagging his head at his pupil. "What does lie say 2" demanded Nan. Translate!" - "That yoor city skirts interfere with, j i your -freedom'of action" I answered.

indeed go straight back, or this hippopotamus from the Black Water of Dee will be teaching mc tricks unbecoming the wife of a past president of the Actuarial Society!" And, as a matter of fact, the very next day, we went. It was on the journey that I first saw how wonderfully clever Xan Gilfillan was. Older than I, of course, and having lived long in a city with hosts of admirers, she had kept through all a breezy freshness of manner, and ecquired a certainty of judgment which I had hitherto supposed to belong to those who had to do with black-faced sheep. On the way she instructed mc in the general, out of the rich Golconda of her wisdom. Her subject was love and lovers, past, present, and to come. But she neither named herself, nor yet would let mc name any particular person. If I did. she immediately called my attention to a large stone by the wayside or commented on the beauty of the day for the time of year. But left to "gang her am gait," Nan produced eggs of gold—that is, philosophically speaking. "'There is a time when you like boys,"' she said, 'young officers and suchlike. They don't really care much about you, preferring your seniors and others. But they put up with you. They may even condescend to amuso themselves with you. It, is as well to get this stage over as early and quickly as possible. It is the 'horned-moustache and brass-buttoned period.' One dances with these brings. One gazes upon their incipient lordliness with admiration. But, with the mumps and the chicken-pox, they pass away. ■'True, the disease recurs at'intervals, but after the first time the symptoms are of no importance. The cure is radical, though 1 have known relapses, perfectly unnatural at a very late period of life. "But after this attack and recovery —listen, Rose—power is given to you. And as for these young men clad in scarlet and blue, riding upon horses like the Assyrian captains mentioned m the Bible, you have no trouble with them. You can.lead them at your will, drum beating, banners in air. .Let them brown-polish your boots. Make them carry parcels. But as for the others —mon. that is, ripe enough to be worth talking to, manage them as if each were a horse too long in stable —you have noticed how I do with Walter?"

I had noticed, and if ever the tambours rattled and the banners fluttered, it was when Nan Gilfillan led her Walter in Duty's stern pathway. But the practice of the wisest agrees not always with their precept—specially after many years of marriage, as was Nan's case

This time we travelled first-class, and Tamson, laying the leaping-pole, which was now Nan Gilfillan's, along the scat, went comfortably to sleep with his boots against the opposite window blind, looking so like the Scottish national emblem and motto, that not even the Dumfries ticket-collector, a man used to .ill desperate deeds with Locharbriggs quarrymen, dared to ask him for his ticket with impunity. If it had not been for Nan, I think I should have been somewhat shamefaced in this returning home. But she never mentioned either my father or Absalom Kenmore. She took my visit to Edinburgh and herself as the most natural thing in the world. And I could see that she was going to represent mc to my father as a kind of surprise packet—filled with all feminine irresponsibility, and brought to reason by the sage and savoury wisdom of his kinswoman. Nan Gilfillan. With his usual forethought, Muckle Tamson had ordered in advance a "machine" (which is to say wagonette) to convey us and our baggages—i.e., Nan's and—the leaping-pole as far as the Clattering Shaws. Arrived there, we found that he had commandeered a couple of moor ponies to carry us as fast and as far as was possible towards the Dungeon. For mc Muckle Tamson would have taken no thought any more than for the two sparrows which are sold for a farthing. In spite of town boots —contemned of Tamson (except on Nstn Gilfillan's feet) —he expected mc to vault or find my way round all obstacles, as became a good daughter of the Wilderness. But it was different with Nan.

Considered as a "speerity" woman, Tamson thought her able for anything in towns and public places—but, she was taken up to the Dungeon like a swaddled babe.

Nan accepted all this as part of her ordinary superiority over the male sex. There was nothing abnormal in Muckle Tamson's bowing down and worshipping her. Did not her own husband, Walter Everard Gilfillan, do the same— after all these years?

My father came down the brae halting on his stick to meet his favourite kinswoman—or for that matter kinsman either. I could see Mr. Kenmore, younger looking because of the tan upon his face, got from following sheep-tracks and fetching home the hay!—l could see him, I say, but he kept discreetly in the background. Perhaps he was ashamed of his new quality of landlord.. Perhaps, on the other hand he was conscious tnat Nan. as arbiter of hearts, had been called in to consult upon his case. His clerical manner also was plainly leaving him,. It did my heart good to see him set his hand on the top of a stile and vault over, just as Will Gillespie might have done, at my father's sumHe came forward' to greet Nan, his straw hat in his hand, the oaten-coloured hair shining in the low October sun. and as it seemed to mc now, hardly a grey hair to be seen. Yes, he looked handsome—a distinguished looking man anywhere, even at Nan's afternoon parties, which filled up every good Saturday in the house and garden out Corstorphinc way. Though Nan smiled, I think Absalom was conscious that her kind, half-mirth-ful eyes were looking , through and through him.There was a wistful look on his face as he galneed from one to the other of us—like a boy taken in a fault. " Have you judged mc and condemned mc unheard?' he seemed to be saying. Whether my father had taken in the sense of my letters to him from Glasserton Station and Edinburgh, assuredly Absalom Kenmore had read between and around the lines. But anything more reassuring than Nan —when she wanted to be—could not well be imagined. Dinner was hardly over—a belated feast, waiting for our apneaxao.ee through, the Nick of, Dee—wben.

Xan declared herself ready for a walk upon the hills.

I " You, Rose, will have a great deal to J tell your father," she said, easily, " Mr. i Kenmore, perhaps, will 3how mc the boundaries. Mind you, though, don't abuse mc too much in my absence, or say that the poor man my husband, does not care to call his soul his own. It is true enough, of course—only don't say it! " And with these words, Nan, in her prettiest short-skirted costume and.crimson canoeing hat (the like of which had never before been seen between Dee and Cree) took Mr. Kenmore out for a walk. I declare that in the brief interval between receiving Xan's commands, and stepping out from the doorstep, Absalom Kenmore had changed l his tie. He now wore one the colour of a mavis's egg— one which I had never seen before! He had never done a≤ much for mc, and really as he went off by Nan's side, with his straight back and broad shoulders, he looked almost unnecessarily young. *" They make a handsome couple," said my father, watching them go over the heather side by s ide, turning their heads now and again towards each other in speech, or Xan taking Absalom's hand in lieu of a leaping-pole when they came to little runlets she could have skipped over without a thought. " They would," I said, in answer to my father's compliment, " be well enough ~l only they had been younger! " I meant this to be double-edged, and so it was. " Yes, they are about the same age," said Hfnry Gordon, " let mc see —let mc see! Little more than half my age —aye —aye, a bonny couple, and a pity that Walter Gilfillan should come in the roaa —he i≤ not half the man Mr. Kenmore is! " I turned away. For the first time in my life I diid not care about my father's conversation. He seemed ageing fast, and if his remarks did not improve in good sense, I really began to fear the approach of dotage! I went up to my room and took a hook, but as it happened from the window 1 could still see the two figures upon the moor, which distracted mc curiously. Of course 1 did not care what they might be saying. Why should I? I had far too much pride! But all the same it is difficult to read " Ben Johnson's Every Man in His Humour " alone in a room with a woman in a thoroughly bad one—l mean by myself!

Yes, I was, and I had a right to be! I was disappointed with Nan. Consulting physicians are all very well, but I did not bargain for so much applied science. I thought of the parable of the one ewe lamt>—though I am bound to admit tbat Absalom Kenmore did not look in the least like that over-praised quadruped. Furthermore, I know about sheep, and it certainty was a disgusting habit for the owner to let it lie in his bosom, and be unto him as a daughter. He ought to have known better.

But that does not matter —though afl the same it is quite true, unless it was some different breed from' ours of the hills. Well, when Nan and Mr Kenmore came back (for at last it occurred to them, better late than never), Absalom looked much liker his namesaice who took the hearts of Israel sitting in the gate of Jerusalem. He held his hat in his hand, and the sun struck level over the moorland of brown heather and golden bent on a head that shone like dull unpolished gold. It was- the only time that the reddish colour came out.

He certainly looked—but no matter. Nan had no right to go on like that. I could not have believed it of Nan— a married woman, and over thirty! She had taken his arm! And he, actually, didn't seem to mind. He had lost his stoop, and walked proudly all because of that. Such a tiling is man! Oh, such a thing! And to think that once I should have—no, not that—but thought well ot his intellect and his learning and his —! "Hose —Rose—Rose!" my name rang through the house in Nan's clear voice. "Where are you, Rose?" Thee I could hear her feet, light and rapid, mounting our little uncarpeted wooden stairs. She burst in. 1 was crying, or, rather, I had just stopped. Now comes what shows Nan Gilfillan to be no ordinary woman. If she had been, she would have petted mc, and babylied mc, and so made mc cry ever so much more. But she did not even notice —I mean she did not show that she did. For of course she could not have missed such a thing—being a woman, not if she had been blind. She would have caught it in my voice with the very iirst words I uttered. But she only rattled on, looking bright as over and taking not the least notice. "I've been out with Absalom-- Mr Kenmore, I mean, he has showed mc everything—oh, everything!" The little—falsifier—! She had nsver looked at one single thing, but iad kept glancing up all the time at Mr Kenjiwre from under her lashes—l saw her. Not that it mattered—only it told mc what to believe of Jfan Gilfiilaa for the future.

"Yes, and he talked so delightfully about his travels," she went on. "He wants to go abroad again—France—Italy —the Mediterranean—oh, everywhere' Ho knows all about the histories of these countries, too, and can tell about it in the most interesting way—so amusing! He made mc laugh—shamefully I have asked him to go with Walte and mc the next time we get a long trip." (Oh. you have, have you?) "And he will make it far more interesting for mc!" ,~ (He will!— Will he?) Nan went on impsrturbably. "Because, you know, Walter is a good feliow, but he does not care for going to places. He likes a book, a pipe, and a glass of something—says it rests him after the office. So Mr Kenmore will be able to lake mc to the Hoboli gardens, to Fiesole to hear the nightingales, to Mnrano in a yondcl.a, and best of all, to the Lido to walk along the sandy beach, and see Ml a moon rise and shine upon .Venice!—Ah, what is the matter?" For I had flung myself iace down on the sofa, hiding my tears among the pillows. But Nan did not ■waste her time on mc. She went quickly to the window, opened it, and called out one word. "Absalom!" Ah, she was a wise woman among the wisest women this Nan. And (as she had foreseen) it was not with her that Mr. Kenmore saw the glades upon Arnoside, nor yet the moon rise upon the magic towers and palaces where .Venice dips her feet in Adria.