The Stickit Minister's Wooing/A Scientific Symposium

papers of mine have been getting out of hand of late. I am informed from various quarters that they are becoming so exceedingly popular and discursive in their character, that they are enough to ruin the reputation of any professing man of science. I will therefore be severe with myself (and, incidentally, with my readers), and occupy one or two papers with a consideration of some of the minor characteristics common to the female sex. Indeed, upon a future occasion I may even devote an entire work to this subject.

I have mentioned before that my wife's younger sister was called the "Hempie," which, being interpreted, signifies a wild girl. This had certainly been her character at one time; and though she deserves the name less now than of yore, all her actions are still marked by conspicuous decision and independence.

For instance, the year after Nance and I were married, the Hempie abruptly claimed her share of her mother's money, and departed to Edinburgh "to get learning."

Now it was a common thing enough in our part of the country for boys to go out on such a quest. It was unheard of in a girl. And the parish would have been shocked if the emigrant had been any other than the Hempie. But Miss Elizabeth Chrystie, daughter of Peter of Nether Neuk, was a young woman not accustomed to be bound by ordinary rules. In person she had grown up handsome rather than pretty, and was so athletic that she stood in small need of the ordinary courtesies which girls love—hands over stiles, and so forth. Eyes and hair of glossy jet, the latter crisping naturally close to her head, a healthy colour in her cheeks, an ironic curl to her firm fine lips,—that is how our Hempie came back to us.

Of her career in the metropolis, of the boarding-school dames, strait-laced and awful, whom she scandalised, the shut ways of learning which somehow were opened before her, I have no room here to tell. It is sufficient to say that out of all this the Hempie came home to Nether Neuk, and at once established herself as the wonder of the neighbourhood.

Nance was gone, Grace going; Clemmy Kilpatrick, the unobtrusive little woman whom Peter Chrystie had married as a kind of foot-warmer, had been laid aside for six weeks with an "income" on her knee. The maidservants naturally took advantage. Every individual pot and pan in the house cumbered the back kitchen unwashed and begrimed. In the byres you did not walk—you waded. The ploughmen hung about the house half the morning, gossiping with the half-idle maidens. The very herds on the hill eluded Peter's feeble judicature, and lay asleep behind dyke-backs, while the week-weaned lambs, with many tail-wagglings, rejoined their mothers on the pastures far below.

Upon this confusion enter the New Hempie. And with her gown pinned up and a white apron on that met behind her shapely figure, she set to and helped the servants.

In six days she had the farm town of Nether Neuk in such a state of perfection as it had not known since my own Nance left it. For Grace, though a good girl enough, cared not a jot for house work. Her sphere was the dairy and cheese-room, where in an atmosphere of simmering curds and bandaged cheddars she reigned supreme.

So much to indicate to those who are not acquainted with Miss Elizabeth Chrystie the kind of girl she was.

For the rest, she despised love and held wooers in contempt, as much as she had done in the old days when she ascended the roofs of the pigstyes, and climbed into the beech-tree tops in the courtyard of Nether Neuk, rather than meet me face to face as I went to pay my court to her eldest sister.

"Love" she said, scornfully, when I questioned her on the subject the first time she came to see us at Cairn Edward, "love—have Nance and you no got ower sic nonsense yet? Love" (still more scornfully); "as if I hadna seen as much of that as will serve me for my lifetime, wi' twa sisters like Grace and Nance there!"

It did not take us much by surprise, therefore, when one morning, while we sat at breakfast, the Hempie dropped in with the announcement that she could not stand her father any longer, and that she had engaged herself to be governess in the house of a certain Major Randolph Fergus of Craignesslin.

To a young lady so determined there was no more to be said. Besides which, the Hempie was of full age, perfectly independent as far as money went, and more than independent in character.

"Now," she said, "I have just fifteen minutes to catch my train: how am I to get my bag up to the station?"

"If you wait," I said, "the gig will be round at the door in seven minutes. I have a case, or I should go up with you myself."

"Who is driving the gig?"

"Tad Anderson," said I.

The Hempie picked up a pair of tan gloves and straightened her tall lithe figure.

"Good-morning," she said; "give me a lift with my box and wraps to the door. I would not trust Tad Anderson to get to the station in time if he had seven hours to do it in!"

At the door a boy was passing with a grocer's barrow. The Hempie swung her box upon it with a deft strong movement.

"Take that to the station, boy," she commanded, "and tell Muckle Aleck that Elizabeth Chrystie of the Nether Neuk will be up in ten minutes."

"But—but," stammered the boy, astonished, "I hae thae parcels to deliver."

"Then deliver them on your road down!" said the Hempie. And her right hand touched the boy's left for an instant.

"A' richt, mem!" he nodded, and was off.

"Don't trouble, Alec. Nance, bide where you are—I have three calls to make on the way up. Good-morning!"

And the Hempie was off. We watched her through the little oriel window, Nance nestling against my coat sleeve pleasantly, and, in the shadow of the red stuff curtain, even surreptitiously kissing my shoulder—a thing I had often warned her against doing in public. So I reproved her.

"Nance, mind what you are about, for heaven's sake! Suppose any one were to see you. It is enough to ruin my professional reputation to have you do that on a market day in your own front window."

"Well, please may I hold your hand?" (Then, piteously, and, if I might call it so, "Nancefully") "You know I shall not see you all day."

"The Hempie would not do a thing like that!" I answer, severely.

Nance watches the supple swing of her sister's figure, from the stout-soled practical boots to the small erect head, with its short black curls and smart brown felt hat with the silver buckle at the side.

"No," she said, "she wouldn't." Then, after a sigh, she added, "Poor Hempie!"

That was the last we saw of our sister for more than a year. Elizabeth Chrystie did not come back even for Grace's marriage to the laird of Butterhole.

"I am of more use where I am," she wrote. "Tell Grace I am sending her an alarm clock!"

Whether this was sarcasm on the Hempie's part, I am not in a position to say. Grace had always been the sleepy-head of the family. If, however, it was meant ironically, the sarcasm was wasted, for Grace was delighted with the present.

"It is so useful, you know," the Mistress of Butterhole told Nance. "I set it every morning for four o'clock. It is so nice to turn over and know that you do not need to get up till eight!"

As suddenly as she had gone away, so suddenly the Hempie returned, giving reasons to no man. I am obliged to say that even I would never have known the true story of the adventures which follows had I not shamefully played the eavesdropper.

It happened this way.

My study, where I try upon occasion to do a little original work and keep myself from dropping into the rut of the pill-and-potion practitioner so common in rural districts, is next the little room where Nance sits reading, or sewing at the garmentry, white and mysterious, which some women seem never to be able to let out of their reach. Here I have a small wall-press, in which I keep my microscopes and preparations. It is divided by a single board from a similar one belonging to Nance on the other side. When both doors are open you can hear as well in one room as in the other. I often converse with Nance without rising, chiefly as to how long it will be till dinner-time, together with similar important and soul-elevating subjects. But it never seems to strike her that I can hear as easily what is said in her room when I am not expected to hear.

Now, if you are an observant man, you have noticed, I daresay, that so soon as women are alone together, they begin to talk quite differently from what they have done when they had reason to know of your masculine presence. Yes, it is true—especially true of your nearest and dearest. Men do something of the same kind when women go out after dinner. But quite otherwise. A man becomes at once broader and louder, more unrestrained in quotation, allusion, illustration, more direct in application. His vocabulary expands. In anecdote he is more abounding and in voice altogether more natural. But with women it is not so. They do not look blankly at the tablecloth or toy with the stem of a wineglass, as men do when the other sex vanishes. They glance at each other. A gentle smile glimmers from face to face, in which is a world of irony and comprehension. It says, "They are gone—the poor creatures. We can't quite do without them; but oh, are they not funny things?" Then they exchange sighs equally gentle. If you listen closely you can hear a little subdued rustle. That is the chairs being moved gently forward nearer each other—not dragged, mark you, as a man would do. A man has no proper respect for a carpet.

"Well, dear?"

"Well?"

And then they begin really to talk. They have only "conversed" so far. How do I know all this? Well, that's telling. As I say, I eavesdropped part of it—in the interests of science. But the facts are true, in every case.

The Hempie came in one Saturday morning. It was in August, and a glorious day. There was nothing pressing. I had been out early at the only case which needed to be seen to till I went on my afternoon round.

Nance was upstairs giving a wholly supererogatory attention to a certain young gentleman who had already one statutory slave to anticipate his wants. He was getting ready to be carried into the garden. I could detect signs from the basement that cook also was tending nursery-wards. The shrine would have its full complement of devout worshippers shortly.

It was thus that I came to be the first to welcome the Hempie upon her return. She opened the glass door and walked in without ceremony, putting her umbrella in the rack and hanging her hat on a peg like a man, not bringing them in to cumber a bedroom as a woman does. These minor differences of habit in the sexes have never been properly collated and worked out. As I said before, I think I must write a book on the subject.

At any rate, the Hempie's action was the exception which proved the rule.

Then she strolled nonchalantly into my study and flung herself into a chair without shaking hands. I leaped to my feet.

"Hempie," I cried, "I am dreadfully glad to see you." And I stooped to kiss her.

To my utter astonishment she took the salute as a matter of course, a thing she had never done before. Yes, somehow the Hempie was startlingly different.

"What," she said, "are you as glad as all that? What a loving brother!"

But I think she was pleased all the same.

"Where's Nance?" The question was shot out rather than asked.

I indicated the upper regions of the house with my thumb, and inclined my ear to direct her attention.

A high voice of wonderful tone and compass (if a little thin) was lifted up in a decimating howl. Ensued a gentle confused murmur: "Didums, then? Was it, then?" together with various lucid observations of that kind.

A change passed over the Hempie's face.

"Now we are in for it," I thought. "She will leave the house and never enter it again. The Hempie hates babies. She has always been particularly clear on that point."

"Why did you never tell me, Alec?"

"Because—because—we thought you would not care to hear. I understood you didn't like"

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Boy."

There was a sudden uprising from the depths of the easy-chair, a rustle of skirts, the clang of a door, hasty footsteps on the stairs, a clamour of voices from which, after a kind of confused climax as the hope of the house blared his woes like a young bull of Bashan, there finally emerged the following remarkable sentiments:

"Oh, the darling! Isn't he a pet? Give him to me. Was they bad to him? Then—well then! They shan't—no, indeed they shan't! Now, then! Didums, then!"

And da capo.

I could not believe my ears. The words were the words of Nance, but the voice was undoubtedly the voice of the Hempie. It was half an hour and more before they descended the stairs, the Hempie still carrying young "Bull of Bashan," now pacifically sucking his thumb and gazing serenely through and behind his nurse in the disconcerting way which is common to infants of the human species—and cats.

The Hempie passed out across the little strip of garden we had at the back. The sunlight checkered the grass, and the new nurse carried her charge as if she had never done anything else all her life. Every moment she would stop to coo at him. Then she would duck her head like a turtle-dove bowing to his mate; and finally, as if taken by some strange contortive disease, she would bend her neck suddenly and nuzzle her whole face into the child's, as a pet pony does into your hand—a hot, fatiguing, and wholly unscientific proceeding on an August day.

I called Nance back on pretext of matters domestic.

"What's the matter with the Hempie?" I said.

"Matter with the Hempie?" repeated Nance, trying vainly to look blank. "Why, what should be the matter with the Hempie?"

"Don't try that on with me, you little fraud. There is something! What is it?"

"I have not the least idea."

"Have you kissed her?"

"No, she never looked at me—only at the baby, of course."

"Then go and kiss her."

Nance went off obediently, and the sisters walked a while together. Presently the baby took the red thumb out of his mouth, and through the orifice thus created issued a bellow. The nurse came running. Nance took him in her arms, replaced the thumb, and all was well. Then she handed him back to the Hempie and kissed her as she did so. The Hempie raised her head into position naturally, like one well accustomed to the operation.

Nance came slowly back and rejoined me. She was unusually thoughtful.

"Well?" I said.

She nodded gravely and shook her head.

"It is true," she murmured, as if convinced against her will; "there is something. She is different."

"Nance," said I, triumphantly, for I was pleased with myself, "the Hempie is in love at last. You must find out all about it and tell me."

She looked at me scornfully.

"I will do no such thing" she began.

"It is not curiosity—as you seem to think," I remarked with dignity. "It is entirely in the interests of science," I said.

"Rats!" cried Nance, rudely.

As I have had occasion to remark more than once before, she does not show that deference to her husband to which his sterling worth and many merits entitle him. Indeed, few wives do—if any.

"Well, I will find out for myself," I said, carelessly.

"You!"

Scorn, derision, challenge were never more briefly expressed.

"Yes, I."

"I'll wager you a new riding-whip out of my house money that you don't find out anything about it!"

"Done!" said I.

For I remembered about the little wall-press where I kept my microscope. Not that I am by nature an eavesdropper; but, after all, a scientific purpose—and a new riding-whip, make some difference.

I was busy mounting my slides when I heard them come in. Instantly I needed some Canada balsam out of the wall-press—in the interests of science. I heard Nance go to the door to listen "if baby was asleep." I have often represented to her that she does not require to do this, because the instant baby is awake he advertises the fact to the whole neighbourhood, as effectually as if he had been specially designed with a steam whistle attachment for the purpose. But I have never succeeded.

"You think you are a doctor, Alec," is the answer, "but you know nothing about babies! You know you don't!"

Which shows that I must have spent a considerable part of my medical curriculum in vain.

There ensued the soft muffled hush of chairs being pushed into the window. Then came the first click-click, jiggity-click of a rocking-chair, which Nance had bought for me "when you are tired, dear"—and has used ever since herself. I did not regret this, for it left the deep-seated chintz-covered one free. They are useless things, anyway: a man cannot go to sleep on a rocking-chair, or strike a match under the seat, or stand on it to put up a picture—or, in fact, do any of the things for which chairs are really designed.

Now when a woman goes to sleep in a chair, she always wakes up cross. All that stuff in romances about kissing the beloved awake in the dear old rose-scented parlour, and about the lids rising sweetly from off loving and happy eyes, is, scientifically considered, pure nonsense. Believe me, if she greets you that way the lady has not been asleep at all, and was waiting for you to do it.

But when she, on the other hand, wakes with a start and opens her eyes so promptly that you step back quickly (having had experience); when she speaks words like these, "Alec, I have a great mind to give you a sound box on the ear—coming waking me up like that, when you know I didn't have more than an hour's good sleep last night!"—this is the genuine article. The lady was asleep that time. The other kind may be pretty enough to read about, but that is its only merit.

It was Nance who spoke first. I heard her drop the scissors and stoop to pick them up. I also gathered from the tone of her first words that she had a pin in her mouth. Yet she goes into a fit if baby tries to imitate her, and wonders where he can learn such habits. This also is incomprehensible.

"Have you left Craignesslin for good?" said Nance, using a foolish expression for which I have often reproved her.

"I am going back," said the Hempie. I am not so well acquainted with the nuances of the Hempie's voice and habit as I am with those of her sister, but I should say that she was leaning back in her chair with her hands clasped behind her head, and staring contentedly out at the window.

"I thought perhaps the death of the old major would make a difference to you," said Nance. I knew by the mumbling sound that she was biting a thread.

"It does make a difference," said the Hempie, dreamily, "and it will make a greater difference before all be done!"

Nance was silent for a while. I knew she was hurt at her sister's lack of communicativeness. The rocking-chair was suddenly hitched sideways, and the stroking rose from fifty in the minute to about sixty or sixty-five, according, as it were, to the pressure on the boiler.

Still the Hempie did not speak a word.

The rocking-chair was doing a good seventy now—but it was a spurt, and could not last.

"Elizabeth," said Nance, suddenly, "I did not think you could be so mean. I never behaved like this to you."

"No?" said the Hempie, with serene interrogation, but did not move, so far as I could make out. The rocking-chair ceased. There was a pause, painful even to me in my little den. The strain on the other side of the wall must have been enormous.

When Nance spoke it was in a curiously altered voice. It sounded even pleading. I wish the Hempie would teach me her secret.

"Who is it?—tell me, Hempie," said Nance, softly.

I did not catch the answer, though obviously one was given. But the next moment I heard the unbalanced clatter of the abandoned rocker, and then Nance's voice saying: "No, it is impossible!"

Apparently it was not, however, for presently I heard the sound of more than one kiss, and I knew that my dear Mistress Impulsive had her sister in her arms.

"Then you know all about it now, Hempie?"

"All about what?"

"Don't pretend,—about love. You do love him very much, don't you?"

"I don't know. I have never told him so!"

"Hempie!"

"It is true, Nance!"

"Then why have you come home?"

"To get married!" said the Hempie, calmly.