Chapter Fourteen. The Last.
When Robin and I reached the abode of our old friend—in a state, let me add, of almost irrepressible excitement—we found her seated in the old arm-chair by the window, gazing sadly out on the prospect.
It was not now the prospect of red brick and water-spout, with a remote distance of chimney—cans and cats, which had crushed the old lady's spirit in other days—by no means. There was a picturesque little court, with an old pump in the centre to awaken the fancy, and frequent visits from more or less diabolical street-boys, to excite the imagination. Beyond that there was the mews, in which a lively scene of variance between horses and men was enacted from morning till night—a scene which derived much additional charm from the fact that Mrs Willis, being short-sighted, formed fearfully incorrect estimates of men, and beasts, and things in general.
“Well, granny, how are you?” said I, seating myself on a stool beside her, and thinking how I should begin.
“Pretty griggy—eh?” inquired little Slidder.
“Ah! there you are, my dear boys,” said the old lady, who had latterly got to look upon me and my protégé as brothers. “You are always sure to come, whoever fails me.”
“Has any one failed you to-day, granny?” I asked.
“Yes, Dr McTougall has,” she replied as petulantly as it was possible for her to speak. “I've been feeling very low and weak to-day, and sent for him; but I suppose he thinks it's only imagination. Well, well, perhaps it is,” she added, after a pause, and with a little sigh. “I'm very foolish, no doubt.” “No, granny,” said I, “you're not foolish,”—(“Contrariwise, wery much the reverse,” interrupted Slidder)—“and I'm glad that I chanced to come in, because, perhaps, I may be able to prescribe for you as well as he.” “Better, dear boy, better”—(“That's it, cheer up!” from Slidder)—“and it always does me a world of good to see your handsome face.” “Well, granny,” said I, with a flutter at my heart, as I looked up at her thin careworn face, and began to break the ice with caution, “I've come—I—there's a little piece of—of—” “Now then, dig in the spurs, doctor, an' go at it—neck or nuffin',” murmured my impatient companion. “What are you saying, Robin?” asked Mrs Willis, with a slightly anxious look. “There's nothing wrong, I hope?” “No, no; nothing wrong, granny,” said I, hastening to the point; “very much the reverse. But—but—you heard of my accident, of course?” I said, suddenly losing heart and beating about the bush.
“Stuck again!” murmured Slidder, in a tone of disgust.
“Yes, yes; I heard of it. You don't mean to say that you're getting worse?” said the old lady, with increasing anxiety. “Oh no! I'm better—much better. Indeed, I don't think I ever felt so well in my life; and I've just heard a piece of good news, which, I'm quite sure, will make you very glad—very glad indeed!” “Go it, sir! Another burst like that and you'll be clear out o' the wood,” murmured Slidder. “In fact,” said I, as a sudden thought struck, “I'm going to be married!” “Whew! you never told me that!” exclaimed Slidder, with widening eyes.
“ Will you be quiet, Robin?” said I, rather sternly; “how can I get over this very difficult matter if you go on interrupting me so?”
“Mum's the word!” returned the boy, folding his hands, and assuming a look of ridiculous solemnity. At that moment we heard a noise of pattering feet on the landing outside. The door, which had not been properly closed, burst open, and my doggie came into the room all of a heap. After a brief moment lost in apparently searching for his hind-legs, he began to dance and frisk about the room as if all his limbs were whalebone and his spirit quicksilver.
“Oh, there's that dog again! Put it out! put it out!” cried Mrs Willis, gathering her old skirts around her feet.
“Get out, Dumps! how dare you come here, sir, without leave?”
“ I gave him leave,” said a sweet voice in the passage.
Next moment a sweeter face was smiling upon me, as Edith entered the room.
There was a feeble cry at the window. I observed that the sweet smile vanished, and a deadly pallor overspread Edith's face, while her eyes gazed with eager surprise at the old lady for a few seconds. Mrs Willis sat with answering gaze and outstretched arms.
“Edie!”
“Granny!” was all that either could gasp, but there was no need for more—the lost ones were mutually found! With an indescribable cry of joy Edith sprang forward, fell on her knees, and enfolded granny in her arms.
“'Ere you are, doctor,” whispered Robin, touching me on the elbow and presenting a tumbler of water. “How? What?”
“She'll need it, doctor. I knows her well, an' it's the on'y thing as does her good w'en she's took bad.” Slidder was right. The shock of joy was almost too much for the old lady. She leaned heavily on her granddaughter's neck, and if I had not caught her, both must have fallen to the ground. We lifted her gently into bed, and in a few minutes she recovered.
For some time she lay perfectly still. Edith, reclining on the lowly couch, rested her fair young cheek on the withered old one.
Presently Mrs Willis moved, and Edith sat up.
“John,” said the former to me, looking at the latter, “this is my Edie, thanks be to the Lord.”
“Yes, granny, I know it, and she's my Edie too!” A surprised and troubled look came on her old face. She evidently was pained to think that I could jest at such a moment. I hastened to relieve her.
“It is the plain and happy truth that I tell you, granny. Edith is engaged to marry me.—Is it not so?”
I turned towards the dear girl, who silently put one of her hands in mine.
Old Mrs Willis spoke no word, but I could see that her soul was full of joy. I chanced to glance at Robin, and observed that that waif had retired to the window, and was absolutely wiping his eyes, while Dumps sat observant in the middle of the room, evidently much surprised at, but not much pleased with, the sudden calm which had succeeded the outburst.
“Come, Robin,” said I, rising, “I think that you and I will leave them—Good-bye, granny and Edie; I shall soon see you again.”
I paused at the door and looked back.
“Come, Dumps, come.”
My doggie wagged his scrumpy tail, cocked his expressive ears, and glanced from me to his mistress, but did not rise.
“Pompey prefers to remain with me,” said Edie; “let him stay.”
“Punch is a wise dog,” observed Robin, as we descended the stairs together; “but you don't ought to let your spirits go down, sir,” he added, with a profoundly sagacious glance, “'cause, of course, he can't 'elp 'isself now. He'll 'ave to stick to you wotever 'appens—an' to me too!” I understood the meaning of his last words, and could not help smiling at the presumptuous certainty with which he assumed that he was going to follow my fortunes.
Is it needful to say that when I mentioned what had occurred to Dr McTougall that amiable little man opened his eyes to their widest?
“You young dog!” he exclaimed, “was it grateful in you to repay all my kindness by robbing me in this sly manner of my governess—nay, I may say, of my daughter, for I have long ago considered her such, and adopted her in my heart?”
“It was not done slily, I assure you,” said I; “indeed, I fought against the catastrophe with all my might—but I—I could not help it at last; it came upon me, as it were, unexpectedly—took me by surprise.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor.
“Besides,” I added, “you can scarcely call it robbery, for are not you and I united as partners, so that instead of robbing you, I have, in reality, created another bond of union between you and Edie?”
“H'm!” said the doctor. “Moreover,” I continued, “it happens most opportunely just now that the house opposite this one is to let. It is a much smaller and lower-rented house than this, and admirably suited for a very small family, so that if I secure it we will scarcely, I may say, have to quit your roof.”
“Ah! to be sure,” returned the doctor, falling in with my humour, “we will have the pleasure of overlooking and criticising each other and our respective households. We may sit at the windows and converse across the street in fine weather, or flatten our noses on the glass, and make faces at each other when the weather is bad. Besides, we can have a tunnel cut under the street and thus have subterranean communication at any time of the day or night—and what a charming place that would be for the children to romp in! Of course, we would require to have it made of bricks or cast-iron to prevent the rats connecting it with the sewers, but—”
A breeze of pattering feet overhead induced the doctor to pause. It increased to a gale on the staircase, to a tempest in the lobby. The door was burst open, and Jack, and Harry, and Job, and Jenny, and Dolly, with blazing cheeks and eyes, tumbled tumultuously into the room.
“Oh papa!” screamed Harry, “Lilly's been out an' found her mother!” “No, it's not—it's her gan-muver,” shrieked Dolly. “Yes, an' Dr Mellon's going to marry her,” cried Jenny. “Who?—the grandmother?” asked the doctor, with a surprised look.
“No—Lilly,” they all cried, with a shout of laughter, which Jack checked by stoutly asserting that it was her great-grandmother that Lilly had found. This drew an emphatic, “No, it's not,” from Job, and a firmly reiterated assertion that it was “only her gan-muver” from Dolly. “But Robin said so,” cried Jack.
“No, he didn't ,” said Job. “Yes, he did ,” cried Harry.
“Robin said she's found 'er gan-muver ,” said Dolly. “I'll go an' ask him,” cried Jenny, and turning round, she rushed out of the room. The others faced about, as one child, and the tempest swept back into the lobby, moderated to a gale on the staircase, and was reduced to a breeze—afterwards to a temporary calm—overhead.
Before it burst forth again the doctor and I had put on our hats and left the house.
From that date forward, for many weeks, the number of lost grandmothers that were found in the McTougall nursery surpasses belief. They were discovered in all sorts of places, and in all imaginable circumstances—under beds, tables, upturned baths, and basin-stands; in closets, trunks, and cupboards, and always in a condition of woeful weakness and melancholy destitution. The part of grandmother was invariably assigned to Dolly, because, although the youngest of the group, that little creature possessed a power of acting and of self-control which none of the others could equal. At first they were careful to keep as close to the original event as possible; but after a time, thirsting for variety, they became lax, and the grandmothers were found not only by granddaughters, but by daughters, and cousins, and nieces, and nephews; but the play never varied in the points of extreme poverty and woe, because Dolly refused, with invincible determination, to change or modify her part.
After a time they varied the performance with a wedding, in which innumerable Dr Mellons were united to endless Lilly Blythes; but after the real wedding took place, and the cake had been utterly consumed, they returned to their first love—Lost and Found, as they termed it or, the Gan-muver's Play. So, in course of time, the house over the way was actually taken and furnished. Edie was installed therein as empress; I as her devoted slave—when not otherwise engaged. And, to say truth, even when I was otherwise engaged I always managed to leave my heart at home. Anatomists may, perhaps, be puzzled by this statement. If so—let them be puzzled! Gan-muver was also installed as queen-dowager, in a suite of apartments consisting of one room and a closet.
It was not in Dr McTougall's nursery alone that the game of Lost and Found was played. In a little schoolroom, not far distant from our abode, that game was played by Edie—assisted by Robin Slidder and myself—with considerable success.
Robin crossed the street to me—came over, as it were—with Edith the conqueror and our doggie, and afterwards became a most valuable ally in searching for, drawing forth, tempting out and gathering in the lost. He and I sought for them in some of the lowest slums of London. Robin's knowledge of their haunts and ways, and, his persuasive voice, had influence where none but himself—or some one like him—could have made any impression. We tempted them to our little hall with occasional feasts, in which buns, oranges, raisins, gingerbread, and tea played prominent parts, and when we had gathered them in, Edith came to them, like an angel of light and preached to them the gospel of Jesus, at once by example, tone, look, and word.
Among others who came to our little social meetings was the Slogger. That unpunished criminal not only launched with, apparently, heart and soul into the good cause, but he was the means of inducing many others to come, and when, in after years, his old comrade, Mr Brassey, returned from his enforced residence in foreign parts, the Slogger sought for and found him, and stuck to him with the pertinacity of his bulldog nature until he fairly brought him in.
Thus that good work went on with us. Thus it is going on at the present time in many, many parts of our favoured land, and thus it will go on, with God's blessing, until His people shall all be gathered into the fold of the Good Shepherd—until that day when the puzzlements and bewilderments of this incomprehensible life shall be cleared up; when we shall be enabled to understand why man has been so long permitted to dwell in the midst of conflicting good and evil, and why he has been required to live on earth by faith and not by sight, trusting in the unquestionable goodness and wisdom of Him who is our Life and our Light. In all our work, whether temporal or spiritual, we had the help and powerful sympathy of our friend Dr McTougall and his family; also of his friend Dobson, the City man, who was a strong man in more ways than one, and a zealous champion of righteousness—or “rightness,” as he was fond of calling it, in contradistinction to wrongness.
I meant to let fall the curtain at this point but something which I cannot explain induces me to keep it up a few minutes longer, in order to tell you that the little McTougalls grew up to be splendid men and women; that dear old granny is still alive and well, insomuch that she bids fair to become a serene centenarian; that my sweet Edie is now “fair, fat, and forty;” that I am grey and hearty; that Dumps is greyer, and so fat, as well as stiff, that he wags his ridiculous tail with the utmost difficulty; that Brassey and the Slogger have gone into partnership in the green-grocery line round the corner; and that Robin Slidder is no longer a boy, but has become a man and a butler. He is still in our service, and declares that he will never leave it. My firm conviction is that he will keep his word as long as he can.
So now, amiable reader, with regret and the best of wishes, we make our final bow-“wow”—and:
Bid you good-bye,
My doggie and I.
The End.
