Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/91

THE AMBITIONS OF SIR JAMES BARRIE 65 a newspaper to save the carpet. For is not this the very room, with the identical colour-scheme ("every- thing in it blue, or white, or both"), wherein Miss Ailie, years and years ago, kept the Hanky School at Thrums and listened with delicious shame to a certain Tommy reading gloatingly borrowed love-stories full of Words We Have No Concern With ? To be sure it is ! And Miss Phoebe's curls ? Are Miss Kitty's, of course ! And Patty the maid? Dagont, it's Gavinia! And Patty's follower? Corp himsel', by all that's michty, disguised as an English sergeant ! The whole thing is a rally of revenants. It reminds us of the old doings in the Den. And not from one book alone do the figures come trooping; nor do they shrink from ex- changing characteristics. Miss Susan, to put us ofP, employs a trick of Tammas Haggart's. Livvy, again, is only Timothy. The little boy who weeps bitterly because Miss Phcebe fails to cane him is borrowing beforehand one of the deeds of little David — the little David of The Little White Bird. The large S chalked on Georgy'a tiny waistcoat may remind us, with one wriggle, of Mr. Cathro branding Tommy — but it curls its other tail towards "Little Mary." Phoebe herself is pure Grizel when she cries " Oh you sweet ! " but she is Babbie when she works mischief at the Ball. It is a masked meeting and medley of characters dead and unborn, a bal masqu4 of bygones and about-to-be's. . . . And the initiates who can see this see something more. They understand why this assemblage is con- vened. The thing is a conspiracy, the blue-and-white room a dark rendezvous : creeping together so cun- ningly, with their false names and swapped nose^, these characters are here to hatch a plot. They state loudly that the year is 1815. It is really a second and subtler '45. They all talk ostentatiously of the defeat of Napoleon. It is to drown the fact that England is in peril. A Scotch raid is in progress, unconscious Men of Letters. Q