The Red Book Magazine/Volume 10/Number 4/For Auld Lang Syne

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

For Auld Lang Syne

 

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

Author of “The Adoption of Eliza” etc.

 

OLD MR. MacDOUGALL submitted ill-humoredly to being prepared for his daily walk. Ruth, his granddaughter, got down on her knees to clasp the red-lined arctics, while her mother fastened a wadded muffler around the old man's neck. When he was all ready—the ear-muffs of his seal-skin cap had been pulled over his ears, and the last button of his overcoat fastened—he picked up his cane with a long sigh of resignation.

“I don't know what's got into you, Barbara,” he said querulously, as a breath of frosty air from the opened door struck him. “I'll cough my head off to-night, after five minutes in that wind.”

Barbara held the door resolutely open, but she looked distressed.

“The doctor said 'every day,'” she protested. “He said if you didn't want to go, to coax you to. It would be better than medicine.”

Mr. MacDougall coughed. The first cough being shamelessly forced, and giving every evidence of it, he tried again, with more success.

“Of course,” Barbara said anxiously, “if you think it will make you ill—” She shivered in the draught, in her thin white waist. “Perhaps you'd better not go after all, father. I'm sure I don't want you to be sick.”

The old man looked out across the street. A fine snow was falling—a hard-frozen snow that pelted the pedestrians like needles, and blew knee-high along the car-tracks with stinging velocity. Then he took a firmer grip on his cane and went out into the vestibule.

“I'm going,” he said testily. “I don't intend to be fussed over and swathed and swaddled like a mummy for nothing.”

He coughed again, very successfully, and Ruth, who had been consulting the thermometer beside the door, turned to her mother.

“It's only twenty above zero, mother,” she said doubtfully.

But the old gentleman had descended the steps now and stood with his feet well apart, bracing himself against the wind by holding to the area-railing. The sight of another elderly gentleman, similarly clad, and seeking the support of the area-railing next door, decided him. He threw out his chest and squared his shoulders aggressively.

“Go in and shut the door,” he called. “You've started me on this thing and I'm going to see it through. But you might telephone to that nincompoop of a doctor, to stop in to-night.”

He coughed again, and then buried his chin in his muffler and started slowly down the street.

“Barbara,” he called, turning, “if that Thompson jack-a-dandy comes to see Ruth, now that you've got me out of the house, remember what I told you—and go in and shut the door. The furnace wont heat the universe.”

Ruth's face was crimson as the door closed obediently, and she faced her mother in the hall.

“I'll not stand it,” she said. “Old people ought to forget their malice and hatefulness, and think of—eternity and—”

“Hush,” Barbara said quickly. “I'm sure Wallace Thompson understands. And as for old Mr. Thompson, he and your grandfather are just two children who are 'mad,' that's all. They were two little boys playing marbles, and Mr. Thompson got the most marbles.”

Ruth smiled suddenly. The hall was very dark, even for a city one, and at the bend of the stairs a feeble imitation of sunlight revealed the famous MacDougall stained-glass window—famous once, but now obscured by the twelve-inch proximity of a spite-wall. For between the two houses, reaching to the topmost floor, and extending the length of the properties, was a brick wall as relentless, as impermeable to sunshine, and as hard as the heart of an outraged elderly gentleman can ever be. Whereupon, brick walls being among the particular things that telephones were made to circumvent, and being better than locksmiths in the service of love, Ruth called up the house next door, and thus kept within the letter of the law.

“In an hour,” she said. “By the lake, Wallace. Why no, it's not cold here. Your wall keeps the wind away like a blanket.”

She smiled as she cut off his vehement “Oh, I say, Ruth.”

Meanwhile, a dozen feet from the door, Mr. MacDougall had felt a hand timidly touch his arm, and had stopped—not at once, but slowing down gradually, as the icy pavement required.

“Well?” he demanded fiercely.

The wind struck him in the face and a glance back at the house showed that Ruth and her mother had disappeared. Beside him stood, shivering, an elderly man in a derby-hat and a short black overcoat. The coat, lacking buttons, was fastened together with heavy brown twine, making an eccentric but efficacious closure. One ungloved hand was thrust into a pocket, while in the other, dirty, blue with cold, and rough with long exposure, he held out a bundle of lead-pencils.

“Buy a pencil, sir?” he whined.

The wind gave a vicious jerk at the end of Mr. MacDougall's muffler, and loosened it.

“Lead pencils!” he grunted. “Do I look as if I needed lead-pencils? Why don't you offer me a hot stove?”

Perhaps there was something exhilarating, after all, in the air—for Mr. MacDougall was chuckling a little at his own joke as he started on. The man followed a step or two.

“I'm not able to work, sir,” he persisted, “and I haven't a chick or child to look after me—not a relation in the world.”

“Thank Heaven for it, man,” threw back Mr. MacDougall, with a resentful memory of his comfortable chair and his pipe by the library-fire.

Then he plodded on, leaving the fakir looking after him.

At the end of the street, the trees of the park shivered darkly through a veil of white—and the snow of the previous day still lay, massed deep in thick billowy drifts. Old Mr. MacDougall fixed his eyes on a tall maple which marked the entrance, and stumbled doggedly on. At the corner of the next street, however, he collided with another muffled and fur-capped figure. The force of the impact was not great, but it was sufficient to dislodge and send hurling into the snow an object which the stranger had been carrying with the utmost care.

“Why don't you look where you are going?”' demanded Mr. MacDougall, acidly.

But the stranger paid no attention. He was stooping over the drift and tenderly excavating the object of his solicitude.

“Ah,” he said at length, “not a scratch!”

He stood up, panting with the effort, and indicated for inspection a large, round and polished stone, with a metal handle set in the top. Tied around the glittering brass was a bow of bright blue ribbon.

“Belonged to my grandfather, and to his father before him,” said the stranger with pride, polishing the handle with his handkerchief. “It came from Scotland almost ninety years ago—after a glorious career in Auld Reekie?”

“What is it?” asked Mr. MacDougall, touching it gingerly with his cane.

“Man! Did ye never curl?” The stranger took off his cap to mop his forehead, using the handkerchief that had done duty for the stone. He was a stranger no longer; Mr. MacDougall knew him for Saunderson, the grocer, around the corner. “And you a MacDougall!”

Saunderson had picked up the curling-stone in one sinewy hand, and now he gripped Mr. MacDougall's arm with the other.

“Come awa' with me to the lake in the park; ye'll see sic sport—steady, steady,” as the old man's feet slid under the vigor of Saunderson's enthusiasm.

The wind was dying; from a steady gale it was blowing in fitful gusts. The snow was still sifting down, but graciously now, and there was promise of a sunset. Half-dazed, Mr. MacDougall allowed himself to be led along, steered into the park by the big maple, over the path between waist-high banks of snow, and so to the lake. Saunderson was in a hurry, and as he half-pushed, half-led his guest—or his prisoner—his tongue, falling back into the Scotch, kept pace with his feet. Long dormant memories of notable contests on the black ice of the Wastrel wakened at the weight of the stone in his hand, and Mr. MacDougall became gradually infected. He had never curled, but his father—ah, his father was a great man for the game.

Part way across the frozen waste they encountered Mr. Campbell, the Presbyterian minister. He was walking very slowly, his head bent, his hands behind him. Rumor said he was growing feeble, and there was talk of a new minister, who would bring some young blood into the church. Saunderson adapted his pace to the feeble step of the octogenarian, and the three went on together.

“I used to curl a bit myself, when I was a boy,” said Mr. Campbell modestly. “If it's not too far I might watch a little. It is a great sport.”

When they reached the lake Mr. MacDougall had unaccountably forgotten the wind and his grievances. His face was glowing as it had not glowed for years, and a gentle sensation of warmth was stealing over his body. He stooped at the bank and gathering up a handful of snow made it skillfully into a ball. Then he nudged the minister and tossed it after Saunderson, forging eagerly ahead. It lodged in the aperture between the grocer's heavy gray hair and his collar, whereon he turned and brandished a threatening fist.

“Upon my soul,” said old Mr. MacDougall, “if I had a pair of skates I could beat those youngsters yet.”

He had ceased using his cane, and carried it over his shoulder like a musket; he began to whistle, quaveringly at first, and to the stirring notes of “The Campbells are Coming,” with an occasional break in the tune while the whistler got his breath, he and Mr. Campbell followed Saunderson over the ice. And some distance behind them, walking aimlessly, because one direction was as good—or as bad—as another, was the lead-pencil fakir.

At one end of the lake was a group of men. Mr. MacDougall recognized Stewart, the politician, among them, and Dr. Mackey, the “young nincompoop” who had ordered his daily exercise. There were a dozen or so, most of them gray headed, some like the minister and himself, almost at the end of the furrow. Scattered over the ground were curling-stones adorned with red and blue ribbons, and on his knees, carefully measuring and marking the concentric circles of the game, was a man whose face was vaguely familiar. It was some time before Mr. MacDougall placed him as the street-sweeper of his neighborhood.

“Good for you, Mr. MacDougall!” said Dr. Mackey, heartily. “Mr. Stewart over here needs help. You'll not let a Douglas beat a Stewart, surely.”

Mr. MacDougall stooped over and “hefted” one of the stones. It was as heavy as a small boy, and as unwieldly.

“I don't know—” he began.

But the doctor was gone, and he heard Stewart entering his name with the “blues.” Old Mr. Campbell was already enrolled with the “reds.”

“I'll not be able to stir to-morrow,” he confided to Mr. MacDougall, “and I have a sermon to finish, but—”

“There's sermons in stones, even curling-stones,” said Mr. MacDougall, with a readiness of wit that astonished himself. “You can preach that 'there's no fool like an old fool,'” he chuckled. Then the smile faded somewhat; old David Thompson had come feebly across the lake and joined the group.

The vendor had put his pencils away, and stood eyeing the curling-stones wistfully, while over on the bank a uniformed park-policeman watched him with the instinct of his profession for a beggar. After a minute, while the doctor was vainly searching for a recruit, the fakir leaned over and touched one of the stones lovingly with his roughened hands. When no one protested he lifted it a little and swung it back and forth, measuring the distance along the course with his eye. The doctor pounced on him.

“Do you know anything about the game?” he said suddenly.

“I do thot,' said the newcomer in broad Scotch.

The doctor cast a practised eye over him—from his broken shoes to the string which fastened his overcoat, and then to the unhealthy pallor of the cheek above the thin white beard. It told the story clearly enough: scant food, lodging or station-house nights, equally bad. Being a young man of decision, the doctor did two things at once. He enrolled the Scot, whose name was Moore, among the blues, and sent a small boy to the park-restaurant for hot coffee and sandwiches for one.

Sometime later, two young people came briskly across the snowy plain. The girl's eyes were shining in the cold, and she held her chinchilla muff against a distractingly pretty cheek. The young man objected to the muff; he was jealous of it for one thing, and it hid from him the girl's face, which might have been scornful or amused—but, was neither.

Finally he slipped around on the other side, and surprised a singularly soft and happy expression behind the muff.

“You do!” he exulted. “Stop this minute and look at me, and deny it if you dare!”

“We'll be beggars,” she expostulated, shifting the muff and going a little faster. “Our grandfathers—”

“Granny fiddlesticks,” he said valiantly.“Hello! What's this?”

Just before them on the ice was an excited, gesticulating group of men, engaged in a most erratic performance nothing more or less than the sliding of a number of mighty stones along a straight and narrow way, amid shouts of forcible English and broken Scotch.

“Good! Good for the old man!” the street-sweeper was shouting, endangering his own sixty years by a boyish hop and skip.

Mr. Campbell, the aged minister of the church at the corner, had given a mighty heave, then sat down suddenly on the ice, and there remained, undignified but intent, watching the triumphant onward sweep of the stone.

An anomalous being, in a shabby overcoat tied together with brown string, came next. The crowd surged forward, breathless; there was a second's hush, the sudden swift scrape of the flying stone, a click, and a chorus of yells. “Diamond Jim” Stewart, the ward boss, was seen offering the shabby individual a drink out of his silver pocket-flask, assuring him, it was the best Scotch.

“Look!” Ruth gasped, and pointed.

Down at the end of the course two old gentlemen, fur caps on one side, wadded mufflers stuffed in their pockets, and clutching dilapidated old park-brooms, shook hands frantically. As the next stone swept down the course the two old gentlemen swept madly at imaginary specks of snow on the course, yelling encouragement to the oncoming stone. Shouting, sweeping, perspiring, they hopped back out of the way like boys and beamed at each other as the stone settled into position near the pot-lid. It was Mr. MacDougall and Mr. Thompson!

The minister, having got down, was having trouble in getting up. Finally, no one paying any attention, he got on all-fours, to be spied at that auspicious moment by the president of Select Council.

“Whoop!” he yelled, and putting his hands on the ecclesiastical back, went over with a flourish. On the snowy bank Father O'Brien shook his comfortable sides and Wallie Thompson slipped his arm through Ruth's and tried to see her face.

“Take down the muff, Ruth,” he said, very close to her. “The spite-devils have been frozen out. The walls of Jericho are about to tumble—”

Then he slipped, and they both went down in the snow.

“Something tumbled!” Ruth said, looking up at him with smiling eyes, as he leaped to his feet. “Oh, Wallie, just listen.”

The game was over. Twilight had come, a twilight of vague, indefinite white and vivid black shadow. Over the ice came the doctor's hearty voice, urging the pencil-fakir to share his bachelor-dinner. Old Mr. Campbell and Father O'Brien now stood together, deep in parochial confidences; the president of Select Council was arm in arm with Drape, who had opposed his latest pet ordinance.

But Ruth and the boy beside her, with the love-light in his earnest eyes, were looking down toward the end of the lake, where two elderly gentlemen, caps askew, and carrying dilapidated broomsticks, plodded over the snow. Through the frosty air came back the mingling notes of two thin old voices raised in the song of another day:

“And there's a hand, my trusty frien'
And gie's a hand o' thine:
An' we'll tak' a right guid willie-waught
For auld lang syne.”