A Knight on Wheels. Ian Hay
being whom he called Nanny. He saw more dimly a big silent man, who occasionally took him on his knee and fed him furtively with the tops of eggs, and made laborious conversation. And most dimly of all he saw a lady, very dainty and sweet-smelling, who always appeared to be talking. When she talked to a group of other ladies and gentlemen, she seemed to smile and sparkle like some pretty jewel. But when she was alone with the big silent man she neither smiled nor sparkled, and her voice sounded shrill and hard. Philip had a vague recollection that on these occasions the room always seemed to grow darker.
The pretty lady took little notice of Philip, but Philip took sufficient notice of her to be able to realize, one day, that she was gone. Nothing else about the house seemed changed except that. Philip still played in the nursery, and went out walking with his Nanny: he even received the tops of eggs from the big silent man, who seemed to grow more silent and less big as the days went by. But the pretty lady never came back. Once Philip ventured to enquire of the Man what had become of her, but the question was not answered, and the Man seemed to grow even smaller than before; so Philip, fearing lest he should fade away altogether, refrained from further investigations.
Not long after this Philip was taken to see the Man in bed, and he noted with concern that the Man had shrunk away almost to nothing. Philip was lifted up, and the Man kissed him, which he had never done before, and said something which Philip did not understand, but which made Nanny cry. Philip cried, too, when he was taken back to the nursery, and Nanny endeavoured to comfort him by giving him an egg with his tea. But Philip would only eat the top. The Man would have been pleased if he had known this, and perhaps he did; for during the hour of Philip's tea-time he passed on to a place where people know everything, and—which is far better—the reason of everything.
After that came a period when the windows were darkened and people came and went in great numbers throughout the house. Philip had a new black velvet suit, and rather enjoyed the stir and bustle. But when this émeute was over the days grew very dull, for Nanny and Philip and one or two maids seemed to have the house to themselves. Everybody appeared to be waiting for something. Even the glories of the black velvet suit began to pall, and Philip was genuinely relieved when one day a carriage drove up to the door and a gentleman stepped out and rang the bell with an authoritative peal. Most gratifying of all, the gentleman was shown straight up to the nursery, where he shook hands with Philip and directed him to address him as Uncle Joseph. The gentleman strongly resembled the Man, except that his back was stiffer, and he held his head more proudly, and spoke in a staccato and commanding voice.
It was Philip's last day in the nursery, for Uncle Joseph took him away that very afternoon. Non sine pulvere, however. For a most unexpected and memorable conflict arose between Uncle Joseph and Nanny. Philip, who sat on the window-seat an interested witness, never forgot that spectacle. He had seen Nanny cross and he had seen Nanny cry; but he had never before seen Nanny cross and crying at the same time. Her voice rose higher and higher, and then broke. Philip heard her say "That lamb!" several times, and Uncle Joseph replied, in a very steady resolute voice: "Never again! Never again to one of your sex!"
After that events moved rapidly, and Philip remembered little more except a hurricane of tearful farewells from Nanny and the maids, and a long journey in the carriage to the house in Hampstead. Here he was introduced to James Nimmo, who provided him with an excellent tea, and then washed him (with surprising skill) and put him to bed. After a few days Philip, with the happy adaptability of extreme youth, grew so accustomed to his new surroundings that it would have embarrassed him extremely to have had his face washed by a lady.
Now, after ten years, the visions of his nursery days came but rarely. The pretty lady he had almost forgotten. Once a whiff of scent, emanating from an houri who passed him in the Finchley Road, brought her memory back to him, but only for a moment. Poor, cross, faithful Nanny was a mere shadow. The Man dwelt most strongly in his recollection, but he was becoming inextricably merged with Uncle Joseph.
James Nimmo and Uncle Joseph divided Philip's upbringing between them. Uncle Joseph taught him to read and write, while James Nimmo instructed him in the arts of cookery and needlework. By the time he was ten Philip could make an omelette, repair a rent in his own garments, or "sort"—to use James Nimmo's expression—a faulty electric bell.
Uncle Joseph broke to him the news that the world was round, and initiated him into the mysteries of latitude and longitude and the geography of continents and oceans. James Nimmo's discourses had a more human and personal touch. He spoke of far-reaching steamer-tracks as if they had been London thoroughfares, alluding to mighty liners with no more emphasis than if they had been so many motor omnibuses—as, indeed, they are. He criticised New York, Colombo, or Melbourne in no mere scientific spirit, but from the point of view of a thrifty Scot ashore for a few hours' pleasure.
Neither was Philip's literary education neglected. Uncle Joseph cultivated his intellect, while James Nimmo enriched his vocabulary. From Uncle Joseph he learned to enjoy the masterpieces of his native tongue, and to express himself in direct and cogent English; but it was from James Nimmo that he picked up such colloquial patois as "ashet" and "gigot" and "besom." He also referred at times to "the morn's morn," and was accustomed to enquire of his uncle, "Are you not for another cup of tea?" or, "Will I open the window?"
It was to James Nimmo, too, that Philip owed his first introduction to poetry. James was in the habit of referring constantly to a friend of his, apparently deceased, whose full name Philip never rightly ascertained, but whose invariable appellation was "Rabbie." "Rabbie," it appeared, was the only real poet who had ever existed. His soul was the soul of Scotland. Rabbie had never penned a line which did not get home to his countrymen: conversely, no Scot could ever be overtaken by a great thought, or conceive a moving sentiment, without finding that thought or sentiment already expressed, in perfection, in some work of Rabbie's.
James Nimmo could quote whole stanzas of him, and kept a store of apposite tags and passages from his works upon the tip of his tongue. He was addicted to the recital of lengthy selections from an intensely respectable poem entitled, "The Cotter's Saturday Night"; and would throw off shorter masterpieces—"The Twa Dogs," "Scots Wha Hae," and "Auld Lang Syne"—in their entirety. Most of these performances Philip secretly considered rather dull, but he made an exception in favour of a curious little poem about a mouse, which James Nimmo used to recite with great tenderness and a certain pathetic effect. Our affections must have an outlet somewhere. Old maids cherish pug-dogs: perhaps it was the same instinct which softened the sere and yellow heart of James Nimmo towards the "wee sleekit, cowerin', timorous beastie," whose schemes had gone agley too, and whose efforts to found a home for itself had met with no better success than his own.
The fact that Rabbie was subject to human weaknesses of any description, or had ever experienced any other passions than those arising from patriotic fervour or political animus, was concealed from Philip for many a year. Once only did James Nimmo lift a corner of the curtain.
"He went tae his grave at seven-and-thirty," he mentioned one day.
"Why?" enquired the ingenuous Philip.
"Because they had drained the life oot o' him," replied James Nimmo, his face hardening. "I mind a vairse he yince wrote. It micht ha' been his ain epitaph:—
"As father Adam firrst was fooled— A case that's still too common— Here lies a man that wumman ruled, The deevil ruled the wumman!"
—A summary of the life and character of Scotland's national bard which his most ardent admirer will admit errs a little on the side of leniency towards Rabbie and ingratitude towards a sex which, all things considered, had no special cause to bless him.
After luncheon Uncle Joseph disposed himself to slumber for half an hour, while Philip, who in common with his kind always felt particularly energetic when distended with food, practised high-jumping in the garden.
At two the pair went out for a walk. If it happened to be a Thursday—as it was to-day—they repaired to a large bank in Finchley Road, where the notes and gold which had come out of the morning's envelopes were handed over to a polite cashier. Uncle Joseph was a well-known figure here. When he strode in on Thursday afternoons the