When the Bour-Tree Blooms

Front matter

A iSee page 1 1. WHEN THE BOUR-TREE BLOOMS BY LESLIE KEITH AUTHOR OP 'OIR STREET,' 'OF ALL DEGREES,' 'MR. BY-ENDS OF FAIR SPEECH,' ETC. LONDON THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 56, Paternoster Row, and 65, St. Paul's Churchyard CONTENTS CHAPTER rAGE I. The First Difference ... ... 7 II. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 17 III. Putting away Childish Things ... ... 26 IV. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 42 V. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... ... 51 VI. The Garden's Story ... ... ... 60 VII. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... ... 6g VIII. The Squire ... ... ... ... 7S IX. At One for Once ... ... ... ... SS X. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... g6 XI. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... ... 104 XII. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 112 XIH. How the Cholera came to Milton ... ... 123 XIV. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 130 XV.

Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 1 39 XVI. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 148 XVII. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... ... 155 XVIII. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 164 XIX. The Question of the Baby ... ... ... 173 XX. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXI. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ••■ -■■ '93 XXII. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 202 XXIII. The Open Gate 211 XXIV. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... 222 XXV. Miss Nancy's Diary... ... •■• 23S XXVI. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... 246 XXVII. Miss Nancy's Diary ... ... ... BLOOMS

Chapter I. The First Difference

HE doctor and his wife had their first difference upon the seventh anniversary of their wedding-day. It was not, at least in its beginnings, what might be called a quarrel. Each had too large a share of inner rectitude to yield readily to the vulgar device of recrimination, and in neither bosom did good admoni tions knock in vain. It was but one of those divergences of opinion which cleave even those whom the marriage vow has united, and hurt, it is said, more than the wounds and blows dealt by those less near of kin. The point upon which they were at variance matters little, and concerns us not at all ; indeed, in most dis putes, the original ground of contest is speedily forgotten, buried under a swift accumulating sense of injury, and very likely neither could have clearly recalled the first unguarded word that opened the gate to a mutual sense of bitterness. ' It takes two to make a quarrel,' says the proverb ; and, to be sure, if one were always ready with the disarming answer that turns away wrath, the other could not long hug his discontent.

But who ever heard of a disagreement between friends, in which each did not hold himself to be in the right ? For the first time since young Tom Stirling fell in love with his wife, and entered on that long honeymoon which had lasted unbroken in its recurring cycles till now, he held Marcia to be unreasonable, impervious to just argument — as unreasonable, as illogical, as once upon a time, in his unfledged and cynical days, before love had converted him, he had held all women to be ; and Marcia, her fair, round face flushed, her dark eyes full of a kind of sorrowful wrath that half pitied, half condemned him, was saying to herself that he whom she had held beyond reproach was but as other men, after all — ready to crush when he could not persuade. He was no longer the Tom she had married and believed in — and oh ! the bitterness of that acknowledgment.

And this to happen on their wedding-day ! — the day they had always crowned with special observance, and service of meats and drinks under the bour-tree,1 which, Marcia averred, hung out its creamy, perfumed tasselsin sympathy with their rejoicing. For with the rest of the village-folk they had come, I know not with what sanction of truth, or with what mere idle acceptance of tradition, to hold that by the blossoming of the bour tree Queen Summer announced her presence, and the long procession of flowers that loom in her wake begun. But so it was in Inglegreen, the clock of the year was set to that fragrant signal, and many a little habit and custom, which use and wont had exalted into unalter able law, took date from it. ' It is all the same,' Marcia would say, with her happy laugh, ' our summer began for us the day we married, and it has lasted ever since.' And was that happy, confident assurance to be hers no more — that certainty of love that could not fail ?

Oh, the thought was not to be borne ! ' I had rather have died with the baby ! ' she whispered, the sobs in her throat. 1 Homely Scotch name for the flowering elder. The young doctor had stepped back into the house, and she stood alone under the bour-tree, where the forlorn little feast was spread ; the earliest fruit, the sweetest flowers, and the pretty cups, just two of them, that she had bought for this family festival. For six years husband and wife had spent this evening together and alone ; however busy he was — and he was usually busy — he contrived to dedicate this one hour to happy memories, telling himself, with a smile of indulgence, that Marcia, dear heart, loved these little relapses into sentimentality, as if he were not as ready as she to rehearse the old sweet story. And now he had left her ; turned away from the untouched meal, going not in angry petulance or haste — she might have forgiven that — but slowly, saunteringly, pausing to examine the ravages the caterpillars had made among the roses, and to measure the day's growth of the clematis upon the bare angle of the wall, where the Ayrshire climber had been killed by the frost.

Now, undoubtedly, if a man finds himself unable to 'hang plummets upon the heels' of his anger, the best thing he can do is to take to his own heels, to walk, to run even, in pursuit of his self-control. Tom Stirling had the kind of heart that may always be counted on to obey its finer impulses. Sooner or later the desire for reunion with Marcia would conquer his sense of irritated annoyance ; in five minutes more or less — just long enough to justify himself and blame himself almost in the same breath, to condemn her and absolve her — he would go back to the table spread on the little lawn, put an arm round her waist, and seal reconciliation with a kiss. ; But Marcia was not ready yet to be forgiven, or even to forgive ; she was cut to the heart by Tom's indifference. Now and again, as in the lives of the happiest, there had been little storms — flashes of transient anger, harmless as summer lightning, from Tom ; moments of pouting waywardness on Marcia's part, which only proved her not too good for human nature's daily food.

These little tiffs had been quickly made up, and, like the summer storms, had but cleared the air and made the returning sunshine the brighter. But this time there was no kissing and making friends, after the fashion of children and lovers. Tom did not even care that she was hurt ; he left her— left her alone upon their wedding-day. She could not see the gaily decked table for the blinding tears that rushed to her eyes ; the fair green world had become a desert, the sunlight sickened her. She, too, turned away. Pride was aroused. She would not wait here on Tom's pleasure, humbly thankful to be taken into favour again. She had done no wrong. The principle she had affirmed was right ; hers was the just, the moral, the Christian view. That last word, even as she repeated it, struck Marcia, used to keeping her conscience strictly like a ledger.

It moved her uncomfortably. Ought one to invoke the sanction of Christianity to justify a quarrel — for quarrel it was now, sure enough ? Can any wrong — and strife, be sure, is wrong, let the cause one strives for be blameless — be made right by sheltering it under the name of the Divine Master, who came to bring peace to His own ? She had fled to the yard, where her husband was not likely to follow her. Beyond its clean paved space, where an hour ago she had fed her chickens, a little gate led to the meadows, in which the doctor's horses and Marcia's Alderney grazed in company. Marcia and Tom had a little private income, which rendered them independent of professional earnings, and gave them one of the prettiest homes in Inglegreen. She leaned on the yard gate and watched, half absently, the coquettish bending and swaying of the long grass by the verge of the field, as the wind passed over it ; the sorrel stems burned red in the evening sunlight, and the uncropped fringe of buttercups beyond the ditch twinkled like buttons of gold ; the big willow that leaned over the yard gate was swayed by the same playful wind, and sent lighthearted shadows dancing across the waving grasses.

Marcia, slim and tall in her white summer dress, leaned her elbows on the gate rail and reviewed the situation. Was it so certain, after all, that her position was unassail able ? There are two sides to most questions (though a woman can seldom be made to recognize more than one), but could there be two opposing sides, and both of them right ? This seemed to open too wide a door to metaphysics ; and besides, it did not at all help to mend matters, for if neither she nor Tom was wrong, who was to give in ? And if neither of them yielded, were they to go on turning their backs on each other for the next seven years ? At this moment Bess, the little bay mare, climbed up to the crest of the paddock, which sloped down ward towards the marshes, and, catching sight of her mistress, came trotting towards her, expectant of sugar. ' There are no rewards to-night, Bess,' she said, stroking the long, soft nose poked into her hands ; and the creature's mild, reproachful eyes seemed to say, 'Why should I be punished because you have done wrong?' Had she done wrong?

By this time she was ready to own it, ready for anything that promised reconciliation. She yearned to justify her husband ; to take all the blame, if peace demanded it. She longed for the old sweet habit of kindness, of mutual trust. One may pay too big a price for the lonely grandeur of an unassailable position ; it is chill up there, and when one has a husband who has always shared everything, even the administration of lumps of sugar to Bess, and that jocund summer dance of shine and shade — When Tom's voice was heard calling, in his quick, eager way, ' Marcia, Marcia, where are you ? ' she had wholly capitulated, and was ready to run to him, to fling her arms about his neck, and to cry — ' Tom, forgive me, I was wrong — at least, if I was right, you were right too — and— and— oh ! how foolish we have been ! ' ' How foolish I have been ! ' ' No — I — there would have been no Dunmow flitch for us this year, Tom, if we had coveted that reward.' ' But if we were both right, as you say ? ' said the doctor, with a twinkle in his eye. ' Still, we quarrelled.

It is just as easy to quarrel if you are right, as if you are wrong.' ' So it appears. Well, then, we had better both repent of the quarrel, and make our peace over that.' ' You did come because — because you wanted to be friends, didn't you, Tom ? ' She lifted her head from his shoulder ; she was uneasy, her quick sense read some hurry in his light words. His glance went past her, and rested on the little mare still lingering near the gate, and there was that bright light in his eyes, that anxious furrow on his brow, she knew so well. But his look came back to her, full of tenderness. 'I've got to go, Marcia,' he said, 'it's the first time, but it can't be helped ; but if you think that after seven years I could leave you with this black cloud of distrust between us ' ' No, no,' she said, clinging to him, ' it was I who ought to have come to you.' ' Well, well,' he laughed, ' we'll not fall out again in settling our individual share of responsibility ; we've been like bairns, each clamorous for our own way, and we've found, as they do, that it wasn't worth striving for.

Let us kiss and be friends before I go.' ' You must go to-night ? ' She could not keep the disappointment out of her voice. ' I must.' His look grew anxious again. ' I ought to have been off. Have you seen Joe ? That boy is never to be found when he is wanted.' ' I will saddle Bess,' said Marcia, making a determined grasp on her self-control ; ' go and get ready, dear, and I'll bring her round.' ' Do, and as quickly as you can.' He rushed off as he spoke. Marcia had determined when she married to be a true helpmeet to her husband, and never, so far as in her lay, a clog upon his heels when duty called him. His heart was in his profession — the noblest there is, if a man has grace to practise it aright — and the tender, womanly fibre in her was quick to vibrate to every claim upon his skill and sympathy. ' You belong to the sick first,' she would say. ' You gave yourself to them before you became mine,' and she sent him forth upon his mission of kindness without a grudging thought for her own loneliness.

But to-night, as she saddled the mare with expeditious haste, she was conscious of a new heartache. She would fain have had a moment more for the sweet reassurances of love ; woman-like, she yearned to be fully comforted, wholly consoled. A man finds an outlet in his work, and where it is all-absorbing, has no long memory for the wounds it heals ; but a woman's household tasks, while they fill her hands, leave her mind at leisure to dwell, perhaps too exclusively, upon her lapses from love and duty. It is her weakness, while in its measure it may also be her best strength. For when one has been straying on the hazardous brink of wrong-doing, the uninterrupted quiet that permits of self-examination and self-arraignment before the bar of conscience may be made more morally bracing than the hurry of life, that blunts the edge of memory, and lets the lesson go unheeded.

We are not set to live like hermits, and the workaday path, where we meet and jostle in daily toil, is the safest travelling ground ; but he learns most of the mystery of Divine love who now and then withdraws himself from the outer world, and hears no voice but God's speaking to the soul. In the solitude of the green garden Marcia took her marriage vows once more upon her, and prayed for greater grace to keep them faithfully. Before long, as she sat under the verandah, she heard a step she knew upon the gravel-path, and looking up, greeted the schoolmaster with a smile. His, perhaps, was the only voice that would not jar upon her mood, for there was a curious sympathy between the grey, bent old man and the young wife. They loved the same things, green growing things, trees and plants, the older-fashioned sort the best, and poetry which was old-fashioned too, and perhaps had music in it for nobody else.

The schoolmaster had not many friends ; he had a shy and shrinking nature, and was nervous in com pany ; and Inglegreen, which was a very friendly, sociable, open-hearted little place, could find no good reason for his sensitiveness, and was at first a little offended by it. But in the years that he had lived there he had gathered a good deal of respect and regard, and after some time his neighbours recognized that the kindest thing was to let him alone, or to hand him over to Mrs. Stirling, who seemed to understand him. They called him 'the schoolmaster,' because it was seen that he liked that title better than his own name, which was Bax ; but he had never taught either in the village or in the mining town three miles distant, and it was understood that he had come on a visit from the south (which usually means London in the north), and liking the look of the place, had stayed.

Inglegreen could understand that preference, at least, for it was very proud of its own looks ; and, indeed, there was scarcely, at the time I write, a sweeter spot on all the Border. It lay low (it is there still), in a green dip, a hollow cup among the purple hills. You can see it nestling in the warm valley, from the train which dashes northwards, but in those days there was no express, there were no ugly rows of new houses ; even Milton, where shafts were sunk, and cinder-heaps abounded, and foul smoke went up to heaven, was hidden by a friendly green shoulder, and that is more than can be said now, for Ingle green and Milton have met and married, and the hill no longer divides them. So the schoolmaster did well to settle in this peaceful spot, and nowhere could his overstrained nerves have found greater solace than in Marcia's green garden.

They made the round of it together, minutely examining the ripe, quick growth, for a single night works magic in the June warmth. Marcia never tired of her companion's discourse, though he said the same thing many times ; he taught her a new language, and the trees spoke it to her. Her own bour-tree — she loved it only the more because of the eldritch stories of witches and warlocks that had gathered about it since she listened to the schoolmaster. Some simple, credulous soul had planted it long ago as a shield against evil spells ; and here, to a later generation, it was the herald and promise of summer. When she led the schoolmaster to it, the feast she had not had the heart to order away was still spread, and she persuaded him to sit and eat of it. It made her glad to think there was occasion for it, after all. ' Tom was called suddenly to Milton,' she explained ; ' I'm afraid there is a great deal of illness there.' ' Yes,' he said ; ' but what can you expect if men will defile the face of Nature ?

They've made it the abomination of desolation, in their haste to be rich ; they pollute the air, and then wonder that it disagrees with their lungs.' ' " How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and green are Thy works ! " ' " God made the world a garden, and of the trees that He planted men fashioned for His Son a cross." ' ' Poor little quivering aspen ! ' said Marcia, following the vague course of his thoughts. ' I wonder if, in the days when people believed those old traditions, any human conscience was ever touched to a sense of guilt by the reproach of those shuddering leaves ? ' ' As well hope that the pink-blossomed Judas-tree would scare a man from playing the traitor's part, and meeting the traitor's fate. If Christ's death and passion has no power over the heart, what would any sign or wonder avail?

But to those who love Him, God still stoops as of old to talk with His children in the garden. ' " God is not dumb, that He should speak no more. If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness, And find not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor " ' Then, after a pause, he burst forth — ' " Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God ; But only he who sees takes off his shoes." ' He looked before him, lost in thoughts that seemed sad. Then she led him down the grassy walks in the peaceful twilight silence, and he fell silent too, listening, perhaps, for that voice of which he had spoken. Marcia thought that she should always remember her seventh wedding-day, because of the pain of her first real estrangement from Tom, for the pain remains long after peace is restored ; but she had afterwards, as we shall see, another and even a stronger ground to single out this anniversary from those that had gone before, and those that were to follow. '7

Chapter II. Miss

nancy's diary. SP§j?™§Shere is an unwritten law in the Dawson .X=_i $5!$» family that one member of it should X__i ■___• keep a diary, in which every event of |!5«__c_|l any importance concerning it should be chronicled. The first to institute this practice was our own greatgreat-grandmother, but I do not find that she was justified by having anything very thrilling to record. She seems to have been a housewifely soul, much taken up with the price of victuals and the small delinquencies of her servants, and that is perhaps why Susan so much oftener looks into this old, brown diurnal than into any of those that succeeded it, for Susan has all the noted Dawson talent for housekeeping, and has absorbed my share of this virtue as well as her own. She says it is very useful and instructive to inform oneself of the price of groceries and farm produce three or four generations ago (and adds that servant nature — as if it were something quite different from human nature — is the same in all ages), but, for myself, I cannot understand what satisfaction there is in knowing that the necessaries of life have quadrupled in price since the days when this slender record was penned.

For my own part, I like better the little volume, thf B E very badly written, and still worse spelled, that tells how our beautiful ancestress, Nancy Dawson, ran away with the then reigning Squire Morton. The story is to me the more graphic because of the writer's entire lack of art or artifice in the setting of it forth ; but I think if Susan had not such an immense respect for everything belonging to the family, from our great grandfather's snuff-box to our grandmother's egg-shell brocade, she would have laid hands on this little book and burned it long ago. ' It was no honour to a Dawson to enter the Morton family,' she says ; ' the Dawsons -j|l have ever been sober and God-fearing folk, and it was an ill day for her and for those that came after her when Nancy Dawson set her cap at the laird.' Then she points a moral with an allusion to the present squire, who is certainly not a very desirable relative.

It is by virtue of a certain vein of sentimentality which she finds in me, and holds to be inherited from the said Nancy (I would she had bequeathed to me her beauty instead, but that has been denied me), that Susan has deputed me to keep the family chronicle. It is in vain for me to point out to her that we can add no lustre or picturesqueness to the Dawson history — we, the last representatives of a long line which is likely to die with us, for Susan and I have reached an age when nothing very romantic is likely to happen to us ; and it is certain, at least, that the escapade of the Nancy whose name I bear will not be repeated by either of us. Yes, we, the two Miss Dawsons of the Homestead, are old maids, there is no doubt about that, but if we had been ever so willing to avert this catastrophe, I don't see how we could have helped it.

There are a great many more women than men in this part of the world, and, as Susan says, it isn't every man a Dawson could consent to marry. To be sure, she has a right to a firm opinion on this point, for there was a certain minister who came from the other side of the Border — but Susan tore out the page wherein that story was set forth, and she would not like me to allude to it again. As for our travels, one memorable visit to Edin burgh !>y coach, and a trip thence on the canal to visit our aunt, Bethia McKay at Glasgow, defines our widest flight, though we know all the little towns and villag^ in our own neighbourhood, and have visited them periodically on market days since we first made their acquaintance seated beside our father in the spring cart. These limited experiences do not promise much in the way of adventure or variety, but Susan never will allow this plea. ' Do you mean to tell me, Nancy Dawson,' she asks, her comely face almost stern, ' that God gave all the sense and discernment to married women, and that He meant them to have all the pleasure ?

For my part, I think she is little better than a fool who can't see except through her husband's spectacles ; you've got ears and eyes and a mind (though it's a mercy you have not to exercise it on housekeeping), and good health — the Dawsons never were sickly. You've the same sky over you, and the same earth under your feet, and a good deal more leisure to enjoy them than if you had bairns to fend for. It puts me past patience to be told that every single woman is to go yammering through life, and hanging her head, because she isn't taigled to a man ; but there, if you've got the talents, I suppose the common sense was left to me.' But I shouldn't like it to be supposed by any McKay or Morton cousin who may one day read these pages, that I am what the world calls a disappointed woman. It would be a sin in one who has had such a happy life to find any fault with its arrangement, and I firmly believe that the blessings as well as the penalties are more equally divided than we are willing to recognize ; all I would maintain is, that this journal might have been more interesting to us and to those who come after us, supposing Susan and the minister— well, that is a forbidden subject.

I have thought of a way out of the difficulty. I shall write a history of our village. Since Susan expects me to read my entries aloud to her, reserving to herself the right of criticism, I should certainly in any case be spared the two great dangers that beset the diarist — morbid introspection, and the temptation to write the spiteful things one would be ashamed to say ; but since I am going to chronicle the affairs of our neighbours as well as our own, I am not likely, even if Susan were to permit it, to fall into those faults ; for, in the first place, it is manifest that as an historian I cannot all the time be feeling my own moral and spiritual pulse ; and in the second, Inglegreen is such a friendly little place, that it would take a St. Simon to say anything ill-natured of it. Ruth Ellis ran in this morning with a great branch of flowering elder in her hand (we call it the bour tree in these parts).

It stands at this moment in the blue Delft jug on the sideboard, sign and token that summer is here. Ruth herself looked like an embodied bit of the summer in her green and white cotton — the child grows prettier every day — but I think Susan was more glad to receive the message even than the messenger. For Susan is orderly and loves the observance of times and seasons. She has been in a bustle all day hanging up clean curtains, removing the drugget from the carpet in the best parlour, and otherwise putting a brighter face to match the outside glory upon our little world. She came upstairs while I was writing by the window, to take from the cedar-press the grey linen dresses which are our summer compromise for the grey woollens of winter (the day for green and white prints is gone by for us).

We had a little dispute over the exact date at which the elder blossomed last year, but I found on reference to the calendar that she was right, as she usually is, where it is a question of a date. The buds have been a whole week later in opening this season ; we have had a long wet spring, truly a green spring, but here at last is summer come with a rush. ' As I was putting the gilt shavings in the grate,' said Susan, our difference settled, ' the young doctor went by, and when I went to the window he pulled up. I knew it must be something pretty serious that would take him from home to-night, and Mrs. Stirling so proud of the cake she baked from our grandmother's recipe.' 'A cake wouldn't keep him at home if he was wanted.' ' It's his wedding-day,' said Susan, looking as if she felt that this interesting fact ought to appeal to my romantic nature. ' " Miss Dawson," he said, in his quick way, " fever has broken out in the Back Row ; I've been looking for it all spring, and now that it has come it is not very likely to leave us in a hurry."