All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography. Amelia E. Barr

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СКАЧАТЬ fools do wi’ a dream. I think you dreamed of the man who will be your husband.”

      “Then,” I said, “my husband is not among the men I know. I never saw the young man of my dream before.”

      “There’s few people in town yet,” explained Mrs. Semple. “They are at Arran, or Bute, or somewhere down the water. It will be September ere they get back to Glasgow.” At these words she lifted the morning paper, but in a few moments threw it down in great excitement, crying, “Milly! Milly! the Queen, and Prince Albert, and the Prince o’ Wales are coming to Glasgow; every blessed wife, and mother, and maid, will be here to see the Royalties. We, also, we must see them! We must hae a window; some one must get one for us!”

      “Do you know any one who can?”

      “Yes. When you come back from school, we will go and ask him.”

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      “Need I go?”

      “I’ll not go a step wanting you.”

      So I came home without delay, put on a clean white frock, and went with Mrs. Semple to a street called Virginia Street. The warehouse we entered was so old that the stone steps at its entrance were nearly worn away. A kind of porter stood at the door, and Mrs. Semple told him she wished to see his master. He led us through a long room piled to the ceiling with bundles of wool, and through a green baize door into a handsome office, where the young man of my dream sat writing.

      He turned as we entered, and Mrs. Semple said, “Weel, Robert, how’s a’ with you?”

      For a moment he did not answer. He was looking at me—perhaps expecting an introduction, but his smiling face appeared to be saying, just the words I heard in my sleep, “Come in, Milly! I have been waiting for you.”

      Really what he said was an effusive welcome to Mrs. Semple, and a polite offer of his chair to me. It was a large office chair, but I took it; after a little while he asked me if I was comfortable, and then laughing lowly added, “Now I shall forever dream dreams in that chair.”

      “Weel,” answered Mrs. Semple, “maybe the dreams will come true.” Then she explained the reason for our call, magnifying very much my desire to see the Queen. And Mr. Barr assured her there would be tickets for a good window at her house before nine o’clock that night, if it was possible to get them. It was a pleasant call, a fateful call, for I knew I had met the man whose fate—good or bad—I must share. A feeling of deep sadness overcame me. I said I was sick, lay down on my bed, and fell into a deep sleep.

      Before nine o’clock Mr. Barr brought the tickets, and, on the day appointed, went with us to see what there was to see. It was not much. Her Majesty disappointed me. Prince Albert was not as handsome as his pictures represented him to be, and the Prince of Wales was in a bad temper, and showed it as plainly as a boy nine years old could do. The Queen wore a royal Stuart tartan shawl; it was heavy and cumbersome, and she looked ungraceful in it. But this bit of sightseeing was 101 the beginning of a new order of things. My life took a turn then and there, and, as I look back, I could weep at the memory of that fateful royal visit; but through the years that hour had been fixed, and the dormant love in my soul needed but a look to awaken it.

      Until the New Year Mr. Barr was all the most devoted lover could be, then there was a pause in his attentions. It would be folly to say I did not care. I did care. I went about my duties with a heavy heart. “It is his mother,” said Mrs. Semple. “She is a hard, old soul, and she wouldna be willing for Robert to marry an angel from heaven, if she hadna plenty o’ siller. Forbye, you are English and an Arminian, when you should be a Calvinist, and, worse than that, you are over-educated.”

      “I thought the Scotch believed in education.”

      “They do—for men—not for women. They prefer them to watch cheese parings and candle-ends. It doesna need an educated woman to sweep, and darn, and cook, and save a farthing, wherever it can be saved.”

      One evening in February Mr. Barr called. He said he had been “on a long business journey through the West Riding,” and those two words softened my heart, and we began to talk of some mutual acquaintance there. Then, before he knew it, without his will or effort, love broke into audible words. It was the healing love, the comforting love, and one little word, and one long kiss, made all things fast and sure. But that night I knew the old troubler and heartache of the world had me in his power, and would have, until life with all its troubles and heartaches was over.

      I had told Robert that the first thing was to get my father’s and my mother’s consent to our marriage, and he went to Kendal the following day for this purpose, arriving there about four in the afternoon. Father was out visiting the sick, Mary and Alethia were at school, and Jane had been recently married, and had gone to live in Manchester. Mother was making some school pinafores for Alethia, and Robert’s knock did not interest her at all. Lots of people in those days came after Mr. Huddleston, and she thought it was some case of sickness or trouble. 102 But when the girl opened the parlor door and Robert entered she was astonished. However, my name and the letter he brought from me put him at once in Mother’s favor, and in a few minutes he was telling her how dear I was to him, and that I had promised to be his wife in July, if my father and mother approved it. He stayed to tea with my parents, and had a long conversation with them, and they were thoroughly satisfied that I had chosen well and wisely. As if I had had any choice in the matter! The event had been destined, even when I was born, and Robert Barr only a lad of seven years old.

      In my mother’s letter to me on the subject, she said, “I will tell you something, Milly, that I suspect neither Mr. Barr nor your father will tell you, yet you will be glad to know it, and you ought to know it. It is this. Your father told Mr. Barr about your indebtedness to the school board, and Mr. Barr asked how much it was. When Father said he thought about seventy pounds, Mr. Barr laughed, and answered, ‘Suppose, Father, we sent a donation of two hundred pounds to the school board. Won’t that be best?’ Then Father laughed, and Mr. Barr took from his valise a small book, and wrote a check for two hundred pounds, asking Father to send it the next day, which Father did.”

      In this letter I was urged to come home at once, and so I went next day to the school to remove my name from the list of Wesleyan students. Professor Hyslop looked angrily at me.

      “You will get no diploma,” he said.

      “I am going to be married, sir,” I answered.

      “I have heard—I have heard!” he continued, “and I think a marriage certificate will be the best diploma for you—Reverend Dr. Barr’s son, is it not?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Then, Miss, where will your Arminianism be? You will become a Calvinist!” And, with this Parthian fling, he left the room so quickly I had no opportunity for a denial.

      After this event I returned home, and the days went by in a dream of happiness. Robert came every Friday or Saturday to Kendal, and we rode over to Windermere, if it was fine weather, and strolled about its laurel woods, whispering to each 103 other those words which lovers have always said, and always will say, even till time shall be no more—unless, the march of what is called “progress and efficiency” put love out of the question altogether. It was a wooing that fitted wonderfully into my happy girlhood, blending itself with my childhood’s memories, with the wind and the sun, and the mountains and lakes I loved. And I took with a grateful heart the joy sent me—a joy glorified by all the enchanting glamours and extravagant hopes of youth and love. It was always the old antiphony of love:

      “I СКАЧАТЬ