"... When Rosamund was six months old we left Kirkcaple. It was a great uprooting. You don't live thirteen years in a place in close touch with the people without becoming deeply attached both to the place and people—and in the last year of our stay at Kirkcaple we had a wonderful experience. There was a great awakening of interest in spiritual things—a revival—and we saw many enter into life...."
Mrs. Douglas stopped abruptly and regarded her daughter.
"Ann," she said, "why do you begin to look abashed and miserable if I mention the word revival? Does conversion seem to you an improper subject?"
Ann screwed her face uncomfortably. "Oh, I don't know, but I confess I do dislike to hear people talking glibly about that sort of thing. It somehow seems rather indecent. You didn't realise, you and Father, how miserable it was for us children going to so many evangelistic meetings. We liked shouting Sankey's hymns, and the addresses were all right, but oh! those 'after-meetings,' when we sat sick with fright, watching earnest young men working their way down the church to speak personally to us. How could we say we were on the road to heaven? And we were too honest—at least the boys were too honest—simply to say Yes, when asked if we were saved. I shall never think it right or proper that any casual person should leap on one and ask questions about one's soul. I should object to anyone, other than a doctor or intimate friend, asking me questions about my bodily health, and why should I be less select about my immortal soul? And it seemed to us so dreadful that they should count the converts. I remember with what abhorrence we once heard Mrs. Macfarlane tell how she and her husband had both talked to a young man about his soul. 'And when we had shown him the light'—you remember the sort of simper she gave—'and he had gone on his way rejoicing, I said to Mr. Macfarlane, "George dear, is it your soul or mine?"' In other words, 'My bird, sir.' I suppose she was out for stars in her crown, but I would rather have none than cadge for them like that."
"Oh, Ann," cried her mother, "you don't know what you are saying. It hurts me to hear you talk in that flippant way about——"
"Mother, you needn't make a mournful face at me." Ann's face was flushed, and she looked very much in earnest. "You've simply no idea how difficult it is for a minister's family to be anything but mere formalists. You see, we hear so much about it all. From our infancy we are familiar with all the shibboleths, until they almost cease to have any meaning. I used to think as a child that it was most unfairly easy for the heathen. I pictured myself hearing for the very first time the story of Jesus Christ, and I thought with what gratitude and love I would have fallen on my knees to thank Him.... As it was, we knew the message so well that our attention was chiefly directed to the messengers, and you must admit, Mother, we had some very queer ones. You can't have forgotten the big, red-haired evangelist, as rough as the heather, who told us a story of a pump being 'off the fang,' and finished remarkably with 'Ah, my friends, God's pump's never off the fang.' I think it was the same man who said we were just like faggots, 'fit for the burning.' Oh, but do you remember the man in Glasgow who illustrated the shortness of life with a story about 'Gran'papaw' who ..."
"Ann!"
Mrs. Douglas had finished her daily reading and sat with the pile of devotional books on her knee, eyeing her daughter with a mixture of disapproval and unwilling amusement. "Ann, you turn everything into ridicule."
Ann protested. "There's no ridicule about it. It is a very good serious tale. 'Gran'papaw he gae two...'"
Again her mother interrupted her.
"I'm sure your father would be sorry to hear you laughing at evangelists. He revelled in evangelistic work."
Ann gave a squeal of rage. "Mother! D'you know what sort of picture of Father you would give to anyone who didn't know him? Someone with a smug face and a soapy manner, and a way of shaking hands as if he had a poached egg in the palm. Could there be anything less like my father? There was nothing unctuous about him, nothing of the professional religionist. He was like a Raeburn portrait to look at...
'A face filled with a fine old-fashioned grace,Fresh-coloured, frank——'
and he never thought that because he was virtuous there should be no more cakes and ale. He was a minister simply because the great fact of his life was Christ, and he desired above everything to bring men to Him. I never read of Mr. Standfast but I think of Father, for he, too, loved to hear his Lord spoken of, and coveted to set his feet in his Master's footprints...."
Ann stopped and looked in a shamefaced way at her mother.
"And now I'm preaching! It's in my blood—well, you were beginning to tell me about the revival in Kirkcaple when I started to blaspheme. Please go on."
"Well, you may laugh at evangelists..."
"Who'slaughing?" cried Ann.
Her mother went on calmly. "But I assure you that was a wonderful time in Kirkcaple. Night after night the church was crowded, and girls and young men went as blithely to those meetings as ever they went to a dance. You may talk as you like of 'emotionalism' and 'the excitement of the moment,' but remember, this all happened nearly thirty years ago, and the young people who decided for Christ then are the chief support of the Church to-day. I am very certain they have never regretted staying to the after-meeting and throwing in their lot with Christ. How easy the church work was that winter! The Wednesday prayer-meeting overflowing from the hall into the church, money forthcoming for everything—you may know conversion is real when it touches the pocket. We had a series of special meetings more or less all through that winter, and, of course, all the speakers stayed with us. Marget never grumbled at the extra work. One night, at a meeting where testimonies were asked for, to my utter amazement she got up and stammered out a few words. Long afterwards, in Glasgow, when she lost her temper about something, she said, 'Eh, I say, I'll need to be speakin' in the kirk again.' She had evidently found it beneficial. We had all sorts of ministers and evangelists staying with us, some delightful, others rather difficult. One week-end the great Dr. Bentley came to preach, a very godly but a very austere man. Your father was preaching somewhere, and I had to bear the brunt of him alone. Immediately he had had tea he suggested that we should have a little Bible-reading and prayer. It was a dreadful ordeal for me, for he kept asking me what passage I should like read, and my mind went blank and I couldn't think of any! Finally I managed to slip out of the room, leaving him to rest, and not noticing that Robbie was playing quietly behind the sofa. Shortly after that we heard an uproar in the study, Dr. Bentley's voice in trumpet notes and yells of rage from Robbie. With Ellie Robbie at my heels, I rushed to the rescue.... Dr. Bentley met me with the words: 'I have had dealings with your son.' It turned out that, seeing the old man sitting alone, Robbie had gone to the bookcase, pulled out as large a volume as he could manage, and carried it to him. Dr. Bentley told him to put the book back on the shelf and bring no more. Robbie brought another and another, and Dr. Bentley whipped him. Full of fury at the results of his well-meant efforts to entertain him, Robbie kicked Dr. Bentley—kicked the great Dr. Bentley—and was carried out of the room in Ellie Robbie's arms quite unrepentant, shouting as he went, 'Abominable gentleman!'"
Ann laughed with much enjoyment. "It isn't one of the duties of a guest to beat his host's children, but he met his match in Robbie. You must have had a dreadful week-end, poor Mother!"
"Oh, dreadful! Everything went wrong. Dr. Bentley told me that he didn't like a fire in his bedroom, but that he liked a fire in his bed. This, he explained very solemnly, meant two hot-water cans and six pairs of blankets. Marget put in one hot-water can (a 'pig' one) and had gone to fill an india-rubber one, when Ellie Robbie, wishful to help, and unaware of one 'pig' in the bed, slapped in another. They met, and each halved neatly in two. The bed was a sea, and we were looking despairingly at it when Dr. Bentley appeared in the doorway and announced that he would like to retire for the night! ... Some time afterwards Dr. Bentley was again in the neighbourhood and called, but found no one at home. Marget, telling us about his visit, said, 'It was thon auld man, I dinna mind his name; the yin the mistress is fear't for.'"
"With reason, I think," said Ann. "What an orgy of meetings you must have had that winter!"
"Yes, but I can't remember that there were any bad effects, or that we sank into indifference when the stimulus of the meetings was removed. Rather we went on resolved to do better than we had ever done, for the Lord had done great things for us.... Then came the call to Glasgow, and it was very difficult to decide what was for the best. We didn't love cities, and we had no friends in the West; on the other hand, we had to think about the education of you children. Your father was going on for forty, and he felt, if he ever meant to take a call, now was the time. You children were delighted. Any change seems a change for the better to a child; you never gave a thought to the big, sunny garden you were leaving, or the Den, or the familiar friendly house, or the kind people. The day your father and I went to Glasgow to look for a house you all stood on the doorstep and shouted after us, 'Be sure and get one near a coal-pit.'"
"Yes," Ann said; "the thought of a flitting enchanted us, and we began at once to pack. Where was it Robbie had inflammation of the lungs? Before we went to Glasgow, wasn't it?"
"The year before—in spring. He had got hot playing football and stood in the east wind. He was very ill, poor darling, and for long he needed great care. I got to know my wild boy in a different way in those days and nights of weakness."
Ann left her writing-table and sat on the fender-stool. She pushed the logs together and made them blaze, and, reaching over to the big basket that stood by the fireplace, she threw on log after log until the whole room was filled with the dancing light.
"Now, that's something like a fire," she said. "A dull fire makes one feel so despairing.... Robbie was so very proud of having had an illness; he always called it 'my inflammation,' and when he broke his arm his conceit knew no bounds. I'm afraid I broke it for him by falling off the seesaw on to the top of him. We didn't know what had happened, but we saw that his arm looked very queer, and Mark and I brought him home and helped him to take off his boots, and were quite unusually attentive to him. He didn't say a word about it hurting until he heard that it was broken, when he began to yell at once, and said, 'Will I die?—will I die?' Reassured on that point, he was very pleased about his broken arm."
"Two days later," said Robbie's mother, "he escaped from the nursery and was found on the rafters of an unfinished house (how he managed to climb with his arm in splints, I know not) singing 'I'm the King of the Castle.'"
Ann laughed softly. "He never let us forget his achievements, dear lamb. If we quarrelled about the possession of anything, Robbie was sure to say, 'Give it to me, for I've had the inflammation.' Mark made a poem about him, which ran:
'And if in any battle I come to any harm,Why, I've had the inflammation, I've had a broken arm.'
It must have been no light task to remove us all from Kirkcaple to Glasgow."
Mrs. Douglas shook her head. "A terrible undertaking. But we were young and strong. Mrs. Peat came up one day and found me crying as I packed. 'Eh, my dear,' she said, 'you're vexed to go, and I'm glad to see you're vexed to leave us all, but you're taking all your own with you. You don't know what it means to leave a grave....' Everybody made farewell parties for us, and we departed in a shower of presents and good wishes. That was nearly thirty years ago, and only the other day I met one of our Kirkcaple people in Edinburgh, and she said to me, with tears in her eyes, 'Hardly a day passes in our house without a mention of your name, and never a Sabbath comes but we say, "If only we could hear Mr. Douglas' voice again!" Who says the ministry is not a repaying job?' Well, we got to Glasgow—I think you children all went to Etterick, didn't you?"
"Only the boys," said Ann. "I went straight to Glasgow with you and Baby Rosamund. It was a great experience for me. I boasted about it for long. I was allowed to attend the Induction Soirée, and heard you and Father praised by everyone. It was my first experience of Glasgow humour, and very funny I thought it. I remember one old elder who spoke told us of what a fine speech he had made the night before in his bed. 'My,' he said, beaming round on the company, 'what grand speeches ye can make in yer bed!' but it turned out he had forgotten it on the platform. I thought the Glasgow accent fascinating, and I liked to be told that I was a 'good wee Miss.' I began to like Glasgow people that night, and I've gone on liking them better and better ever since."
"And now," said Ann, "we're done with Kirkcaple and must tackle Glasgow. And the Tatler is sitting on my MS., and that won't improve its appearance. Odd the passion that cat has for paper! Perhaps in a previous existence it was an editor. If the soul of my grandam might haply inhabit a bird, the soul of an editor—now he's done it! ..." She flew to rescue the sheets that the Tatler had scattered on the floor, while her mother put on large tortoise-shell spectacles and knelt down to help.
"Don't you think," Mrs. Douglas said, when the sheets had been rearranged in order, "that you'd better read me what you've written?"
Ann shook her head. "I think not. It's very majestical and not quite true. You see, if you're writing aLife, it's no good making a bald narrative of it. One has to polish it up a bit for the sake of posterity. I'm making you a very noble character, I assure you. As old Mrs. Buchanan said to me, after seeing me in sometableaux vivants, 'My, you were lovely. I didna ken ye.' The children will be proud to think you were their grandmother."
Mrs. Douglas turned to take up her stocking, with a bored look.
"I wonder," she said, "that you can be bothered talking so much nonsense."
"I wonder, too," said Ann, "with the world in the state it is in. But I do agree, there is nothing so trying as a facetious person! I wish I hadn't such high spirits. No wonder, Mother, that you are such a depressed wee body: to have had a husband and family who were always in uproarious spirits was enough to darken anybody's outlook on life. The first thing I remember about Glasgow is that you had a curly yellow coat and a sort of terra-cotta bonnet."
Mrs. Douglas' face lit up with a smile that made her look almost girlish. "That coat! I do remember it well. It was 'old gold' trimmed with plush of the same shade. My father bought it for me. I met him one day in Princes Street, and I must have looked very shabby, for he looked me up and down and said, 'Nell, surely the Sustentation Fund is very low,' and he took me into Jenner's, and got me that coat and bonnet. He got you a coat, too, and a delicious little astrakhan cap like a Cossack's. You were the prettiest thing in it, for your hair curled out under it like pure gold."
"I must have been a picturesque child," said Ann complacently, "for several times, you remember, artists asked me to sit for them." Then she laughed. "But I needn't boast about that, for my pride once got a severe fall. One day, at Etterick, we came on an artist (he turned out to be someone quite well known) sketching up the burnside. I obligingly posed myself in the foreground, and—he gave me sixpence to go away.And I took it!"
Mrs. Douglas smiled at the reminiscence, but her thoughts were still with the "old gold coat."
"It always pays to get a good thing. That coat wore and wore until everybody got tired of seeing me wear it, and it never really got very shabby—the bonnet, too."
"I suppose you would be about thirty," Ann said. "You said to us walking down to church one day that you were thirty, and then you said you would need to get a new bonnet. I looked at you and thought to myself: 'I shan't say it, but I'm quite sure it isn't worth while for Mother to get a new bonnet; shecan'tlive much longer.' I was shocked to hear that you had attained to such a great age, for I thought at thirty one was just toppling into the grave. Wasn't Glasgow a great change from Kirkcaple? 'East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.'"
"Oh, we hadn't much time to worry over East and West; we had our work to do. We were very fortunate in getting a suitable house in a nice district. We might have been miles from a city in that road of decent grey houses, each in its own quiet garden. And the gardens all opened into an avenue of beautiful trees that had once been the entrance to the big house of the district. We couldn't have been more happily situated, and it was a comfortable house with good-sized rooms and—what your father specially prized—a well-placed staircase with shallow steps. It also contained what we had never had before, a basement flat; but it wasn't as bad as it sounded, for the house was built on a slope, and the kitchen, though downstairs, was on a level with the garden."
"We children didn't mind the basement," said Ann; "it was a joy to us, full of funny corners, excellent for hide-and-seek. One door had the legendDark Roompainted on it, and was an endless source of speculation. Could the former tenant have been a Nihilist? or a murderer? In the bright hours of the morning we liked to dally with those thoughts, but when the shadows lengthened we told each other that he was only a man who tried to develop his own negatives. We never felt in the least cabined or confined in Glasgow. It was a joke against me for long that when we first arrived I reproved Mark and Robbie for walking on the garden wall, saying, 'We must be very genteel now that we live in Glasgow.'"
"You didn't live up to that counsel of perfection, my dear. Anything less genteel than your behaviour! One of the first things you and Mark did was to attend a wedding in the avenue—and when I say 'attend,' I mean you stood outside the gate of the house with a lot of other abandoned children and shouted, 'Hard up!' when the bride and bridegroom left without scattering pennies. Jeanie Tod nearly wept with shame when she told me of it."
"I remember Jeanie Tod," said Ann. "She was small, but very determined. She had a brother a sailor, and used to let me read his letters. One of them described the writer riding in a rickshaw, and finished: 'By Jingo, dear sister, you should have seen your Brother that Day.' ... It must have been difficult for you, Mother, to leave friendly Kirkcaple and go to a great city where you knew almost no one. Weren't you lonely at first?"
"Never for a moment; we just seemed to tumble in among friends."
"The church people, you mean?"
"Oh no—well, of course, they were friends—very dear friends—but you need outside friends, too. I found three very good ones waiting for me in Glasgow."
"One was Mrs. Burnett!" said Ann.
"Yes. Mrs. Burnett was my first friend. The day we arrived in the avenue—we were next-door neighbours—was the funeral day of her eldest daughter. With most women that would have been an excuse not to come near us for months, but she came almost at once. She said that it made a link between us, and that, in a way, our coming helped a little to fill the blank left by the dear daughter's death. Her kindness and interest were very grateful to me, a stranger in a strange land, or, as Marget put it, 'a coo on an unco loan.' It was a great pleasure to run in for an hour to the Burnetts'; it was such a big, comfortable, perfectly kept house (the servants had been with them for twenty and thirty years, and had grown into Mrs. Burnett's dainty ways), and there was always a welcome awaiting one at any time."
"They had a splendid garden," said Ann, "with a swing and all manner of amusing things; and I think they really liked having children to tea. I remember their Hallow-e'en parties!"
"Mrs. Burnett looked like an abbess," Mrs. Douglas said. "She always wore a soft black dress—cashmere or silk—and a tiny white lace shawl turned back over her white hair. The style of dress suited her perfectly, for she was very tall and graceful, and glided rather than walked. I admired her very much, being so far from dignified myself, and I used to wonder how she kept so perfectly tidy and unruffled when I always looked as if I had been in the heart of a whirlwind."
"Oh, Mother!" laughed Ann, "just look at the difference in the two lives! Mrs. Burnett with her family grown up, a household running on well-oiled wheels, and a serenity partly natural and partly gained through long years' experience; you in the very forefront of the battle, with an incredibly wild and wicked family, a church to run, small means, and not an ounce of serenity anywhere in your little active body."
"Well, but now that I have leisure I'm not any more serene," Mrs. Douglas complained. "But it was comfort unspeakable just to see Mrs. Burnett, to know that she was near. We used to think that she sat and wondered what she would send us next, she loved so to give."
"I never smell a hyacinth," said Ann, "but I think of Mrs. Burnett. She always sent us the very first pot of hyacinths that came out in the greenhouse."
Mrs. Douglas nodded. "Mrs. Burnett would like to be remembered by spring flowers. She loved them as she loved all young things. Her one little grandson, Jimmie, was the same age as Davie. Her great regret when she was dying was that she wouldn't see the two boys grow up. Ah, but if she could have known—they didn't grow up very far. Jimmie was killed at the landing in Gallipoli, and Davie at Arras, when they were still only little boys."
"You have always been well off for friends, Mother," Ann said, breaking a silence. "In Inchkeld, in Kirkcaple, Glasgow. It's because you are such a friendly person yourself."
"Oh, me! I often feel myself a poor creature, with little to give in return for treasure-houses opened to me."
Ann laughed unbelievingly and said, "I'm bound to admit we have had some wonderful friends—Miss Barbara Stewart for one. She was one of your three friends, wasn't she?"
"Indeed she was! Miss Barbara—to say her name gives me a warm feeling at my heart."
"Miss Barbara," Ann repeated. "What a lot the name conjures up! I don't know anyone who made more of life. She might have been a lonely, soured old woman, for she was the very last of her family, wasn't she? but to the great family of the poor and the afflicted she said, 'You are my brothers and my sisters.' I wonder how many men in Glasgow owe their start in life to Miss Barbara? I wonder how many lonely women died blessing her that it was their own and not a workhouse roof that covered them at the end? I wonder how many betrayed souls sinking hopelessly into hell had a succouring hand held out to them by that sharp-tongued spinster? How did you know Miss Barbara so well? She didn't belong to the church."
"Not in our time, but all her people had belonged. Miss Barbara had gone to the other side of Glasgow, and it was too far for her to come. She always took a great interest; but what good work was she not interested in? She sat there in her vast, early-Victorian dining-room, wrapped in innumerable shawls and woolly coats, for she suspected draughts from every quarter, a tall woman, broadly made, with a large, strong face. What would I not give now to go into that room and see those whimsical, shrewd, kind eyes, and feel the wealth of welcome in those big soft hands as she rose to greet me, with shawls falling from her like leaves in Vallombrosa. She generally received me with abuse. 'What d'you mean by coming out on such a day? You'll go home with a chill and bother your poor family by lying in bed. Here—see—sit down in that chair and hold the soles of your boots to the fire,' all the time doing things for one's comfort, ringing for tea to be brought in, kneeling down to make fresh toast. She hated to trouble anyone; it was almost an obsession with her, the desire not to be a nuisance. She had a very aged cook, who had been in the Stewart family all her life, and it was said that Miss Barbara, herself nearly eighty, got up every morning and carried tea to her before she would let her rise to her duties."
"Dear Miss Barbara," Ann said, stroking the Tatler's smoke-grey fur, "she wasn't only good, she was delightfully funny. Her passion for cats!—not for well-fed, comfortable cats, but for poor, lean, homeless ones. She used to send me into a butcher's shop to buy a quarter of a pound of mince-collops, and then down area steps carrying it (the horrid stuff oozing clammily through the paper) after some terrified animal that fled from me, paying no attention to my blandishments. She was utterly unlike the ordinary rich old woman, flattered and kowtowed to for her money until she thinks she isn't made of ordinary clay. I don't think Miss Barbara ever gave a thought to herself; she hadn't time, she was so busy looking after other people."
"In her youth," said Mrs. Douglas, "Miss Barbara was a great worker in the slums of Glasgow, but when I knew her she wasn't able for that, and people had to go to her. The clergy waited on her by the dozen, and everyone else who wanted money for good works, not to speak of many who were mere cranks and charlatans. Everyone who came was admitted, and Miss Barbara wouldn't have listened to a word against any of them."
"No," said Ann; "she would have said with Falstaff, 'Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men'; or, rather, she wouldn't, for she had probably never heard of Falstaff, and thought that anyone who could read Shakespeare for pleasure was eccentric almost to madness. If you told her of a book you had enjoyed, she would say, 'Is it true? No? Well, then——' But everyone who went to No. 10 got a hearing."
"Everyone got a hearing," said Mrs. Douglas, "and whatever else they got, you may be sure a good tea was never wanting. Many a tired and hungry voyager on life's ocean found sanctuary at No. 10. You remember when I had that bad breakdown, and you were all worn out with me, how Miss Barbara took me to No. 10 and coaxed and scolded me back to health! And I was too miserably ill and weak even to pretend gratitude, and, driving with her, I used to envy all the happy people walking on their own feet, and one day she said to me, with an amused twinkle in her eyes, 'Ay, and you never thought to pity the poor folk in their carriages before.''
"I think she was funniest at Etterick," said Ann. "She kept regretting all the time the street lamps and pavements, and the sight of Tweed winding in links through the glens vexed her practical soul. 'What a waste!' she said; 'couldn't it be cut straight like a canal?' Father's face! How Miss Barbara would have hated the Green Glen!" She jumped up to open the door for the Tatler. "He's tired of us. He wants to try Marget and Mysie. Who was your third great friend, Mother? You had so many, I'm interested to know which you considered your greatest."
"Mrs. Lang."
"Oh, of course—Mrs. Lang. She's been dead for a long time now."
Mrs. Douglas sighed. "Nearly all my friends are dead."
"Because," said Ann, "you always liked old people best, and made your friends among women much older than yourself. And now you mourn and say your friends are nearly all gone, and talk about the elect being gathered in—but, elect or not, people are apt to be gathered in if they are over eighty."
Mrs. Douglas sighed more deeply, and, ignoring her daughter's bracing remarks, said, "I can't care for new friends as I cared for the old; they can't go back with me. I'm not interested in their talk.... Mrs. Lang was a very good friend to me at my busiest time. What a capable woman she was. There was nothing she couldn't do with her hands. When the boys went to Oxford she practically made their outfits, and made them beautifully. She used to say that it was a kindness to let her help, for she had had such a busy life, she simply couldn't rest. I know now what she meant."
"I remember Mrs. Lang very well," Ann said—"a stately woman who rocked a little when she walked. She had crinkly white hair parted in the middle, and keen, blue eyes in a fresh-coloured face. I always think of her as dressed in a seal-skin mantle trimmed with skunk and a Mary Stuart bonnet."
Mrs. Douglas laid down her stocking. "Yes. I remember her best like that. I did like to see her come rocking in at the gate, though sometimes I was a little afraid of her. Your father used to say she was a typical Scotswoman of the old school—a type that has almost disappeared. There wasn't a trace of sickly sentiment about her. She was a stern, God-fearing woman, with a strong brain and a big heart and an unbending will. She lived to be nearly ninety, and to the end her mind was as clear as a bell. In the last letter she wrote to me: 'I go out for a walk every day, no matter what the weather is, and I am twice in church every Sabbath.'"
"Didn't Mrs. Lang come from Fife?" Ann asked. "I know there was always an east windy tang about her! She had nothing of the soft, couthy Glasgow manner. I was really very scared of her. When she discovered me hopelessly ignorant (as she was always doing) about something she thought I should have known all about, like jam-making, she had a way of saying: 'You amuse me very much,' which was utterly crushing. And she was very much given to contradicting people flat, generally prefacing her remarks with 'You willpardon me!' delivered like a sledge-hammer. Well, it's too late to write anything to-night. Marget and Mysie will be in for prayers in a few minutes, and I've an interesting book to finish. To-morrow I shall add another stone to the noble pile I am raising to you—but, no, it can't be to-morrow. To-morrow I go to Birkshaw for two nights. Mother, why did I say I would go? I can't bear to leave Dreams for two whole nights."
For two days it was as if an enchantment had been thrown over Dreams, so great a quiet held the house. Marget and Mysie went about their work hardly speaking at all; Mrs. Douglas sat alone with her stocking and her books of devotion; the Tatler slept for hours together on chairs that he knew well were prohibited; the very fire did not crackle, but lay in a deep glow; the wind was hushed, and moved softly round the white-faced house among the heather.
The enchantment lifted when the pony-cart bringing Ann back was seen coming up the hill. Mrs. Douglas at once began to pile the fire high with logs and coal; the Tatler, as if aware of an impending upheaval, awoke, stretched himself, and stalked out of the room, while in the kitchen Mysie flew to make hot toast and Marget gave a final polish to the already glittering silver.
"Hear till her," Marget said to Mysie, with a broad grin on her face, as Ann's voice was heard greeting her mother.
"She was aye like that; aye lauchin', an' aye fu' o' impudence, the cratur! It's like a death in the hoose when she's oot o't. Awa' ben wi' the tea, Mysie woman; she'll want it afore she tak's off her things."
"Well," said Mrs. Douglas, some time later, "it is good to have you back."
She had got her "reading" over early, the pile of books was put away, and she was ready to listen to Ann's news.
"After two days!" said Ann, "you remind me of Davie when he was once in bed with a bilious turn till lunch-time. The moment he got up he rushed to the window and said, with a gasp of thankfulness, 'It's good to see the green grass again.' You must have enjoyed the rest from my long tongue. I needn't ask if anyone called."
"Mr. Sharp came to tea with me yesterday."
"Did he? Good man! You've got a very attentive pastor, Motherkin."
"Yes," Mrs. Douglas agreed. "I must say I'm fond of that young man, though he does read his sermons and his theology isn't as sound as I would like. We had such a nice talk, and he told me all about his people. They are evidently not at all well off, and he says they had a great business getting the Manse furnished. But everything is paid for. His father and mother are coming to visit him about New Year time. We must try in every way we can to make their visit enjoyable. He is so young, and there is something very innocent about him—he reminds me a little of Davie."
"And were you favoured with much of Marget's conversation?" Ann asked.
"Oh yes. She came in and out; but Marget is very dull when you are away. She used to say, when you were all at Etterick and the house was peaceful and the work light, 'It's a queer thing: I like faur better when oor bairns are a' at hame.' Well, and was Birkshaw nice? Tell me all about it."
Ann had seated herself on her favourite stool in front of the fire, and she now turned round facing her mother, and nodded happily.
"Birkshaw was very nice, and the Miss Scotts are exactly the kind of hostesses I thought they would be. When I saw my room I was sure of it. Some people's spare rooms are just free-coups full of pictures that nobody else will allow in their rooms, chairs that are too hard for anything but a guest to sit on, books that no one can read. And in these spare rooms you generally find a corner of the wardrobe reserved for somebody's parasols, and a fur coat in camphor occupies the only really good drawer. My room at Birkshaw was a treasure. There was a delicious old four-post bed, with a little vallance of chintz round the top, and all the rest of the furniture in keeping. A nosegay on the dressing-table, a comfortable couch drawn up to a blazing fire, a table with a pile of most readable-looking books, and absolutely unencumbered drawers. There were only three other people staying in the house—a man and his daughter—Barnes was the name—English. Mr. Barnes was very sprightly, and looked about fifty, and so, oddly enough, did his daughter. Either she looked very old for her age or her father looked much too young for his. She was a dull little lady with protruding eyes and unbecoming clothes, and she appeared to me rather to have given up the unequal contest. I have noticed—haven't you?—that very vivacious parents have often depressed offspring, andvice versa. Mr. Barnes, though English, was a great lover of Scotland, and an ardent Jacobite. He confused me a good deal by talking about Charles III. I found him very interesting, but I had the feeling that he thought poorly of my intelligence. And, of course," Ann finished cheerfully, "I am almost entirely illiterate."
Mrs. Douglas looked mildly indignant. "Ann, when I think of the money spent on your education——"
"Oh, you spent money all right, but no one could make me learn when I didn't want to. I don't know whether I was naturally stupid, or whether it was sheer wickedness, but, anyway, it doesn't matter now, except that intelligent people are bored with me sometimes——"
"Who was the other person staying at Birkshaw? Didn't you say there were three?"
"Yes, a bachelor nephew of the Miss Scotts'—Mr. Philip Scott."
"Young?"
Ann screwed her face. "Youngish. Forty or thereabouts—forty-five, I should think. Oh yes, because he told me he was thirty-eight when the war came. He looked quite young because he was slim, and he wasn't bald; rather a good-looking man."
"Did you like him? Was he nice?"
Ann laughed as if at the remembrance of something pleasant.
"Oh yes, I liked him. He was very companionable, and it turned out we had a good many friends in common. The Miss Scotts are extraordinarily good company. There is no need to make conversation at Birkshaw; the talk was so entertaining that we sat an unconscionable time over our meals. And they never worry you to do things. If you prefer an arm-chair by the fire and a book—well and good. You know how I hate visiting, as a rule, but I really did enjoy my two nights away, and I learned a lot about gardening."
"Did you wear your new frock?" Mrs. Douglas asked.
"Oh yes. You were quite right to advise me to take it. You never know about people now. Some have never got over war-habits and still wear sort of half-and-half things in the evening—rather tired-looking afternoon dresses or jumpers; but the Miss Scotts came down charming in lace and jewels and beautifully done hair. I do like that. Heaviest of tweeds and thick boots in the daytime, but in the evening perfect in every detail—so I was glad I had a pretty fresh frock to do them honour."
Ann stretched out her feet to the blazing fire. "But it's fine to be back in this dear room, wearing slippers not quite in their first youth, and a dress that no amount of lounging will hurt. Birkshaw doesn't come up to Dreams, though it is several centuries older, and at least three times bigger and full of priceless treasures in the way of pictures and furniture and books——"
Ann stopped to laugh at her own absurdity, and her mother said, "You're like your father, child. He never saw anything to equal his own house. He didn't know the meaning of envy——"
"Ah, but I'm not like that. Envy! I'm sometimes chock-full of it——"
The door opened and Marget came in. She was primed with an excuse for her appearance, but Ann didn't give her time to make it.
"Come away, Marget, and hear all about Birkshaw, and tell me what has been happening since I went away. I've just been saying to Mother that I'm very glad to be back."
Ann pulled forward a chair, which Marget accepted primly.
"I dare say ye are. We 'gree fine, the fower o' us."
"And yet, Marget," said Ann, "I have just been reading a book by a very clever woman in which she says that women cannot live together with any profit. They fester. That is the ugly expression she uses."
Marget gave a disgusted snort. "Mebbe thae saft scented weemen, aggravatin' and clawin' at each other like cats, no' weemen wi' self-respect an' wark to do. A' the same, I'm no' sayin' I'll no' be glad when Maister Jimmie comes hame. I like a man aboot the hoose. It's kin o' hertless work cookin' for weemen; hauf the time they're no' heedin' what they're eatin'."
"Ah, Marget," said her mistress, "it's not like the days when the boys were all home from school and you couldn't make a pudding big enough."
Marget shook her head sadly. "It is not, Mem," she said, and then, turning suddenly to Ann, she asked, "Hoo's theLifegettin' on?"
Ann jumped up and went to the writing-table. "That reminds me I've no business to be sitting roasting my face at the fire when I haven't written a word for nights."
She found a notebook and pencil and came back to the fireside. "The Moncrieffs will be on us before we are half finished. We've got to Glasgow, Marget. Tell me your first impression of that great city."
Marget sat forward with one hand on each knee.
"Eh, I thocht it was an awfu' place. D'ye mind, Mem, thon day you took me awa' into Argyle Street to see the 'Poly'—a place mair like a toun than a shop? I was fair fear't."
Mrs. Douglas, picking up a stitch, stopped to laugh.
"That was a great day, Marget. You suddenly found yourself looking into a long mirror, and you turned to me and said, 'Eh, I say—there's a wumman awfu' like ma sister.'"
"Didn't you know yourself, Marget?" Ann asked.
"No' me. I had never seen the whole o' masel' afore, an' how was I to ken I was sic a queer-lookin' body?"
"I know," said Ann. "I've had some shocks myself." She turned to her mother. "I always sympathised with Trudi inThe Benefactresswhen she looked into a mirror and was disgusted to find that she wasn't looking as pretty as she felt. But, Marget, what else struck you besides the size of the 'Poly' and its mirrors?"
Marget was chuckling to herself. "I aye mind how affrontit I was in the 'Poly.' I wanted to buy something, but the only thing I could mind I wanted was a yaird o' hat elastic. A young man, like a lord, leaned over the counter and says, 'What can I do for you, Madam?'"
Here Marget became convulsed with laughter, and had to wipe her eyes before going on. "'Aw,' says I, 'a yaird o' hat elastic,' an' says he, 'One penny, Madam.' I thocht fair shame to see a braw man like that servin' me wi' hat elastic. I telt the mistress I wadna gang back there till I needed a new goon or something wise-like. Ay, there was a heap o' queer things in Glasgae that we hadna in Kirkcaple, but I likit it fine. We a' settled doon rale comfortable, an' a'body that cam' to Glasgae frae Kirkcaple cam' to oor kirk, so we never felt far frae hame. Oh, I likit Glasgae rale weel when once I fund ma way aboot."
"It's odd," said Ann, "to think of Glasgow as the 'Scottish Oxford' of the seventeenth-century traveller. How pretty it must have been, with gardens going down to the Clyde, a college in the High Street, an old cathedral on a hill overlooking the city, and with so clear an air that a mountain called 'Ben Lomond' could be seen by the shopkeepers of King Street. Alack-a-day! the green places have been laid waste.... Mother, do you remember on winter nights as we sat round the fire how we sometimes used to hear men calling 'Call-er oy-sters? That is the most vivid recollection that has remained with me of those Glasgow days—a November evening with a touch of the fog that frost was apt to bring, a clear fire burning in the nursery grate, books and games scattered about, and through the misty stillness outside the cry, 'Call-er oy-sters.' I used to lift a corner of the blind to look out, wondering if I would see some wandering sailorman with a pokeful of oysters on his back—but there was nothing, nothing but the strangely mournful cry."
"Glasgae folk," said Marget, who had not been listening, but thinking her own thoughts, "are awfu' easy to ken and rale nice, but they're no' so hospitable as they get the name for bein'."
"Why, Marget," cried Mrs. Douglas, astonished, "Glasgow people are considered the very essence of hospitality."
Marget set her mouth obstinately. "Weel, Mem, it's mebbe as you say, but I've sat whole nichts in their hooses an' they never so much as said to me, 'Collie, wull ye lick?' When ye went into a hoose at Kirkcaple the first thing they did was to pit on the kettle. Glasgae folk made a great fuss aboot ye, but they're no' great at offerin' ye meat."
"This," said Ann, sharpening a pencil, "is quite a new light on Glasgow people. They are accused of many things, but seldom of inhospitality."
"Well, I must say," said Mrs. Douglas, "that I missed in Glasgow the constant interchange of hospitality that we had in Kirkcaple. For instance, when your father exchanged with another minister it was always a question of staying the week-end; and, if the minister who came to help at the Communion was a friend, his wife (if he had one) was always invited with him. And then we had endless parties, and people dropping in casually all the time, as is the friendly country way. In a big city everything is different. Ministers came to preach, but we only saw them for a few minutes in the vestry; they had no time to come out to us for a meal. Everything was a rush; we had all so much to do that there was little coming and going between the different ministers' wives. Almost our only meeting-place was the house in which the Clerical Club was held once a month, when papers were read and we had tea."
"I liked when the Club was at our house," said Ann, "but I thought ministers had very poor taste in jokes: they laughed so much at such very poor ones. I remember one facetious minister saying to me, 'It would be a grand job ours if it weren't for the Sabbaths,' and looking startled when I cordially agreed with him. To a child of twelve the writing of sermons does seem a waste of time. But, Mother, you knew lots of ministers' wives in Glasgow. Why, Mr. Johnston is still a bosom friend of yours. Oh, do you remember how you used to tease Father by holding up Mr. Johnston as an example of what every minister should be?"
"I didn't mean it; your father knew that very well, and he didn't care a scrap who was held up to him—but I wish now I hadn't done it. But the Johnstons were really the most exemplary couple in every way, almost provoking in their perfection. Their church was quite near Martyrs, and their house was quite near ours, and we were very good friends; but sometimes I couldn't help being envious a little. In Inchkeld and Kirkcaple we had had prosperous, well-attended churches, but in Glasgow that was changed. Our new field, so to speak, was a difficult one. Martyrs was in the heart of the town, in a district full of Jews and Roman Catholics, which meant that we had a very small population to draw from, and most of our people came from distant suburbs. When we came to Glasgow, Martyrs was known as 'the scrapit kirk' because of its white, unpainted seats. No hymn had ever been sung in it; rarely, if ever, a paraphrase. A precentor in a box led the people in the Psalms of David. Everything was as it had been for the last hundred years. The congregation looked a mere handful in the great church, and I must say I quailed in spirit when I saw the wilderness of empty seats."
"Jeanie Tod, the nursemaid," said Ann, "always let me read not only the letters she received, but the letters she wrote, and in one I read: 'The church is verytoom, but Mr. Douglas will soon fill it.' It was indeedtoom, but every Sunday we expected quite suddenly it would fill up and we would go in and find a crowd. It did fill up a little, didn't it Mother?"
"Oh yes, a lot of new people came; but it was never anything like full. Mr. Johnston, with the very same difficulties to contend with, had his filled to overflowing. He was a splendid organiser, and very wise and prudent; and his wife was just as good in her own way. She was a miracle for cutting out—I was no good at that—and her sewing-classes and Mothers' Meetings, and indeed everything she attempted, were the best in the district, and she was so pretty and neat that it was a pleasure to look at her. If I held Mr. Johnston up to your father, I held Mrs. Johnston up to myself."
"But Father worked just as hard as Mr. Johnston," Ann said.
"Oh yes, but he hadn't Mr. Johnston's business capacity. He was the despair of those who look for the reality of things in minute-books and financial statements. A small audience never troubled him. Every one was there that the message was meant for, he sometimes told me. For what the world calls success he never craved. I could see that it was fine, but it was rather annoying, too."
Ann laughed, and Marget said reminiscently, "It was a braw kirk when we got it a' pentit and the seats widened, and a choir and organ and hymns..."
"Yes," said Mrs. Douglas; "gradually the service was brought into line with present-day ideas. I confess I was rather sorry, and your father would have been very pleased to leave it as it was. He infinitely preferred the Psalms of David to mere 'human' hymns."
"I should think so," said Ann. "Imagine singing a chirruppy hymn when one might sing 'O thou, my soul, bless God the Lord,' to the tune of 'French.'"
"'Deed," said Marget, "a buddy never gets tired o' the psalms; they're wonderfu' comfortin', but some o' the hymns are ower bairnly even for bairns. I've a fair ill-will at that yin aboot 'What can little eyes do?' but I like fine to sing 'There is a happy land far, far away.' We aye sung that on Sabbath nichts when ye were a' wee."
"There's a lot in association," Ann said. "Words you have loved as a child have always a glamour over them. I liked the sound of the psalms, but I got dreadfully tied up in the hymns. I always sang:
'Can a woman's tender careCease towards the child she-bear?'
with the picture in my mind of a dear fubsey bear being petted. D'you remember Robbie always chose hymns that mentioned Satan?"
"Ay," Marget said seriously. "Puir Maister Robbie had aye an awfu' wark wi' Satan, when he was a wee laddie."
Ann laughed, and, getting up from the fender-stool, went over to the bureau.
"Mother," she said, "I promised to ask Mr. Scott over to see our funny little house. Would luncheon on Thursday be a suitable sort of time?"
Ann had been writing steadily for nearly an hour.
Her mother, watching her, said:
"I'm afraid, if you write so hard, your brain will go."
Ann, as if glad of the interruption, laid her pen in a china dish, pushed away the sheets of paper, sighed deeply, and, rising, came over to the fire.
"I know it will," she said. "I can feel it doing it. It's that oldLifeof yours—I can't make it sound right. Sir Walter Raleigh talks somewhere of men whose true selves are almost completely obscured beneath their ragged and incompetent speech. I'm afraid I'm concealing you completely under my 'ragged and incompetent' words. If you live to be ninety, as you threaten, it will be all right; the children will be able to make their own estimate, but, if they have to depend on myLife, I don't quite know what they'll make of you."
Ann began to laugh in a helpless way. "It's funny. I know so well what impression I want to give, but when I try to write it down it's just nothing—stilted, meaningless sentences. I want to make a picture of Dr. Struthers. I've been trying for the last hour, labouring in rowing, covering my brow in wrinkles, with no result. How would you describe him?"
Mrs. Douglas thought for a minute. "It would be difficult to make a true picture of him. If you simply told of the views that were his, how he wouldn't sing a paraphrase, let alone a hymn, and held the Sabbath day as something that must not be broken, you would give an impression of narrowness and rigid conservatism that wouldn't at all be the Dr. Struthers that we knew. When we heard that the Glasgow church had a senior minister, we thought it was a drawback; your father rather wondered how he would comport himself as a 'colleague and successor,' but we didn't know Dr. Struthers then. Sometimes, in Glasgow, when we were inclined to regret Kirkcaple and the flourishing congregation, and the peaceful time we enjoyed there—but when I say peaceful I mean only comparatively, no minister's wife ever attains to peace in this world!—your father would say, 'But if we had stayed in Kirkcaple we would never have known Dr. Struthers,' and that closed the matter. When I first met him I thought he was more like some fresh, hearty old country laird than a parson. But he was really very frail, and to walk even a short distance was a great effort. He had a place about fifty miles from Glasgow, Langlands, and as long as he was able he came to preach in Martyrs about once a month. The old congregation adored to have him come, but the newcomers, who had no romance about the old man, thought his sermons much too long. And they were too long as sermons go now. We are not the patient listeners our forefathers were. Dr. Struthers once said to me that no man could do justice to a subject under fifty-five minutes, and we used sometimes to think that he was done before his allotted time, but he just went on."
"We children dearly loved Dr. Struthers," said Ann; "but we did not appreciate the length of his sermons. My friend, Mrs. Smail—the butcher's wife, you remember?—used to sit with a most forlorn face while he preached; thinking, I expect, that she would be half an hour late, and that the numerous young Smails would have fallen in the fire. Dear me, it's a long time since I thought of Mrs. Smail. I liked her very much. There was a sort of bond of sympathy between us, and she invited me sometimes to tea-parties where we got tea and cookies and penny cakes and hot roast beef. I never learned to appreciate the combination, but the rest of the company seemed to enjoy it. I sat beside one gentleman who, after doing full justice to the meal, wiped his forehead with a red silk handkerchief, and, turning to me, said, 'A grand house this for flesh.' After the 'flesh' we all contributed songs and recitations—great evenings. Well, what I mean to say is that Mrs. Smail represented the new people who were impatient of Dr. Struthers and impatient of all the old traditions of the church which the original members clung to with such pathetic loyalty."
"But in time," said Mrs. Douglas, "the new-comers got to see how very fine the old man was, and everybody was sorry when he got too frail to preach. It was quite extraordinary how fond you children were of him, for he never told you stories or played with you."
"No," said Ann thoughtfully, "he never did anything to make himself popular. We didn't expect it any more than we would have expected a god from Mount Olympus to jest with a mortal. They say we needs must love the highest when we see it, but that isn't true; often the highest simply irritates. I think it was his simple goodness that made us fond of him, and a certain understanding and sympathy that he had for bad children. And he never talked down to us or became facetious."
Mrs. Douglas nodded. "I know. Children like to be taken seriously, and Dr. Struthers was certainly not given to making fun of them."
Ann clasped her hands round her knees and looked into the fire.
"One thing we liked about the Glasgow Sundays was that we stayed down in the vestry for lunch. It was our weekly picnic, and the fact that it was eaten in the church premises gave a touch of solemnity to the occasion. When Dr. Struthers was preaching, we had a more elaborate meal. Strong beef-tea was made at home and brought down in a bottle to be heated, for he was often very exhausted after preaching. One never-to-be-forgotten day I was told to watch the pan of beef-tea heating, and I had evidently begun to dream, for the pan fell into the fire and the contents were lost. I felt as badly about it as any of you, but I only made a sulky face. I knew it was a real deprivation for the old man, though he made light of it, and said cocoa would be a nice change, and I felt very unhappy all through lunch. There was a particularly fine orange among some apples on a plate, and you asked Dr. Struthers to take it, but he looked across at my small sullen face and said, with that most delightful smile of his, 'I think we must give this orange to Ann.' I never forgot the way he did it; the 'pretty and sweet manner' of it quite conquered me and made me far sorrier for my carelessness than any scolding would have done. I don't believe scoldings ever do any good, only harm."
"Some children," said Mrs. Douglas, "are the better of scoldings. Mark always 'took a telling,' but the more you and Robbie were scolded, the worse you got.... Generally Dr. Struthers stayed with his daughter, but now and again he stayed with us. We liked having him, but it made rather an upheaval in our modest establishment. You see, he had to bring his man, Samuel Thomson, with him, and Samuel Thomson was such a very superior, silver-haired, apple-cheeked gentleman's gentleman, we could hardly ask him to take his meals in the kitchen, so the boys' study had to be given up to him. Davie was very fond of sitting with him, and I once overhead Samuel Thomson reading aloud to him from the Bible some Old Testament story, and commenting on what he read. Those were grand angels, Master David,' he was saying. It was the time when Davie cared for nothing but to be like a jockey."
"'Angels!' he said, 'I thought you were talking about horses,' and he straddled away in deep disgust."
Ann laughed. "Davie was very much against all things religious at that time, and he wouldn't even say his prayers. Marget used to toil up from the kitchen to reason with him, and when he heard her coming he would give a wicked wallop in his bed and say, 'That's Marget comin' to convert me.' You know, Mother, in some ways Davie was a much more abandoned character than we were as children. We reverenced the Covenanters, but Davie said he preferred Claverhouse, and most blasphemously said of John Brown, of Priesthill—he must have got the expression from Marget—'I think John Brown was agey lawd.' Speaking of conversion, I think Dr. Struthers was the only person we didn't mind 'speaking personally' to us. We realised that he, like Nehemiah, 'feared the Lord above many.' When Mark told him he meant to go to Oxford and then to the Bar, he said, 'Look higher than the Woolsack, Mark.' He spoke kindly to Jeanie Tod about her home in Kirkcaple, and said, 'Do you ever think where you are going?' and I shall always remember how one day he laid his big soft hand on my unruly head and said, 'Little Ann,take Jesus.' Do you remember one day when he was preaching I announced that I had a sore throat and couldn't possibly go to church, and was allowed to remain at home? Dr. Struthers missed me, and asked why I wasn't there, and you—not greatly believing, I daresay, in the excuse—said I had a sore throat. Mark rushed home between services to tell me that Dr. Struthers had prayed for me in church, prayed that my bodily affliction might pass from me! Guiltily aware of perfect health—my sore throat hadn't kept me from eating apples and reading a story-book—I didn't know what awful consequences the prayer might have. Anyway, I flew upstairs, flung on my coat and hat, and was in my place for the afternoon service, determined to ward off any more petitions on my behalf. But I was never frightened for Dr. Struthers after I found he liked adventure books and didn't even mind the swear words. He was surely a very rich man, Mother? Ministers don't as a rule have places like Langlands, and man-servants and maid-servants. A house and a wife, and a stranger within the gates are about all they ever attain to."
"Yes, he was rich, but I never met anyone who gave one so little an impression of great possessions. Having his treasure laid up where thieves cannot break through and steal, he cared little for the gold of this world. He gave largely, but so unobtrusively that it wasn't until his death that we realised the extent of his givings. He was the humblest of men, lowly and a peacemaker."
"Once," said Ann, "Robbie and Jim and I went from Etterick to spend the day at Langlands. It was after Mrs. Struthers died, and Miss Calder kept house. I somehow think we weren't expected. There was something queer about it, anyway, and Miss Calder, although she was kind, as she always was, looked very worried. She had some engagement in the village that morning, so she sent us up the hill to play till luncheon. We went obediently up the hill, but as soon as we saw Miss Calder walk down the avenue, back we pranced. Samuel Thomson saw us, and, conducting us to the croquet lawn, advised us to have a game. He helped us to put out the hoops, and we began to play. Unfortunately Robbie and I soon fell into a discussion about the right and wrong way to play, and I regret to say I kicked Robbie, who at once retaliated, and the next thing the horrified eyes of Samuel Thornton saw was Robbie and me hitting one another with croquet mallets. It was only the beginning of a thoroughly ill-spent day, and if Dr. Struthers and Miss Calder hadn't been the most patient and forgiving of people we would never have been asked back."
"It was odd," said Mrs. Douglas; "but you and Robbie could never behave properly if you were together. I wonder I was so rash as to let you go away for a whole day, and to Langlands of all places. Its beautiful tidiness seemed to act on you in a pernicious way. It was always a treat to me to go to Langlands. I enjoyed the beauty and the peace of it, and it seemed exactly the right setting for Dr. Struthers. I was thankful that, when the end came, it came at Langlands, suddenly, painlessly, and most fittingly on the Sabbath day. 'I am going,' he said to Samuel Thomson, and in a minute he was gone, almost 'translated unaware.'"
"What a beautiful way to die," said Ann. "His task accomplished and the long day done. Without weariness of waiting, with no pain of parting, suddenly to find his boat in the harbour and to see his Pilot face to face."
The arrival of the post was almost the only excitement at Dreams, and on the days that the Indian and South African mails came, Mrs. Douglas could do nothing but pore over the precious letters. She pounced on them when they arrived, and read them anxiously; after luncheon she read them again, and in the evening she read them aloud in case she or Ann had missed a word.
One evening she sat with a pile of letters on her lap, her large tortoise-shell spectacles on the top of the pile, and said, with a satisfied sigh:
"This has been a good day—news from all quarters. I am glad Jim is having this tour. He does love to see the world, and to be able to combine business and pleasure makes a holiday ideal. Charlotte and Mark seem to be enjoying their trip greatly, but I can see Charlotte's thoughts are always with the children. She says she knows they won't be missing her, but I think she is wrong. I dare say they are quite happy, but they must feel a lack. Charlotte has such pretty ways with her children, and I think they realise that they have got rather a special mother, though Rory says, 'Poor Mummy's English, but we're Scots.' I do wonder, Ann, when Rory is going to begin to write better. This letter is a disgrace, both in writing and spelling, and his school report said that he cared for nothing but cricket and food."
"What does it matter, Mother?" said Ann comfortably; "he is only nine. I'm glad he isn't precocious, and I like his staggering little letters. He said to me once, 'P'r'aps you notice that I always say the same thing in my letters?' I said that I had noticed a certain lack of variety in his statements, and he explained, 'You see, those are the only words I can spell, and I don't like to ask people.' It isn't in the least that he lacks brains. He knows all sorts of things outside his ordinary lessons: about the ways of birds and beasts you can't fickle him; and he reads a lot and has his own ideas about things. He hates Oliver Cromwell and all his works. One day at table some one mentioned that great man, and Rory's face got pink all over, and he said, 'I hate him, the sieve-headed brute.' It was funny to see Mark, whose admiration for Oliver Cromwell is unbounded, surveying his small son. A more unjust accusation was never made, but Rory is a born Royalist."
Mrs. Douglas shook her head. "He ought to write better than he does. I don't think children are taught properly now. Have they copy-books? I used to write copperplate; indeed, I got a prize for writing."
"I know," said Ann, "and one for spelling, and one for dictation, and one for composition, and one for French. You used to reel them off to me when I came home without a single one. The only prize I got was for needlework, and I fear it was more by way of a consolation prize than anything else. No wonder I feel for poor old Rory. Alis is more of your school of thought; she is a clever child."
Mrs. Douglas refused to be optimistic. "Alis picks things up almost too easily. I'm afraid she will be a Jack-of-all-trades. Did you read Nannie's letter? Rob and Davie seem to be thriving. Charlotte will find a great difference in the little pair." Mrs. Douglas put on her spectacles and took up a letter to read extracts, but Ann caught her hand.
"Not now, Mother, please; we must talk of Glasgow now. I want to finish yourLifethis week and get begun to my Christmas presents. You'll read the letters to us when Marget and Mysie come in to prayers.... I wish you would give me your advice, for, after all, it is your affair. So far I have drawn your portrait as a very efficient, very painstaking, and, I fear, very dull minister's wife. You see, that side of you is so easy to draw. But the other side is so much moreyou. If I could only write about you as I remember you at home with us, anxiously doing your best for every one, slaving away with Sales of Work and Mothers' Meetings, incorrigibly hospitable, pretending deep and abiding pessimism, but liable at any moment to break into bursts of delightful nonsense and rash talking—the person who never talks rashly is a weariness to the flesh—a most excellent mimic—when you came in from visiting, you made us see the people you had been seeing—with a rare talent for living..."
Mrs. Douglas laid down her stocking and gasped at her daughter:
"Ann! I don't know what you mean. There never was a more ordinary woman, and if you try to make me anything else, you are simply romancing. I'm sure you have always said that you would know me for a minister's wife a mile away."
"In appearance, my dear lady, you are a typical minister's wife, but your conversation is often a pleasing surprise. And, oh! surely, Mother, all ministers' wives don't behave to congregations as you did.Given to hospitalityshould be your epitaph. I remember when we left Glasgow, Mrs. Nicol, bemoaning to me your going away, said, 'Well, we'll never get another like her. Who else would have bothered to have me and my wild boys in her house?' and I, remembering John and Mackenzie, could have echoed, 'Who, indeed?'"
Mrs. Douglas was about to speak, but Ann hurried on:
"No, Mother, don't defend them. You can't have forgotten that black day when the Nicol family arrived to spend the afternoon—John and Mackenzie, ripe for any wickedness. The house had just been spring cleaned, and was spotless, and those two boys went through it like an army with banners. It was wet, and they couldn't go out to the garden, and they scoffed at the very idea of looking at picture-books. They slid down the banisters, they tobogganed down the white enamelled stairs, they kicked the paint off the doors. They broke Davie's cherished air-gun, and their mother, instead of rebuking them, seemed to admire their high spirits. Utterly worn out, I left them to work their wicked will in the box-room—I thought they would be comparatively harmless there; but presently we smelt burning, and found them in your bedroom with the towel-horse on fire. No man knows how they accomplished it, for a towel-horse isn't a particularly inflammable thing, but if I hadn't managed to throw it out of the window, I believe the house might have been burned down."
Mrs. Douglas laughed, and told her daughter not to exaggerate.
"Mrs. Nicol was a particularly nice woman, and there was nothing wrong with John and Mackenzie except high spirits. Mackenzie came to see us at Priorsford—I think you must have been away from home—such a quiet, well-mannered young fellow. Both he and his brother are doing very well. The Nicols were mild compared to the Wrights—you remember Phil and Ronald?"
Ann threw up her hands at the mention of the names.
"The Wrights," she said, "were really the frozen edge. The only thing Mrs. Wright had ever been able to teach her offspring was to call her 'Mother dear,' which they did religiously. Davie was no model, but he sat round-eyed at the performance of the Wrights when they came to tea. They mounted on the table and pranced among the butter and jam dishes, and to all their mother's anguished entreaties to desist they replied, in the broadest of accents, 'We wull not, Mother dear—we wull not.' They thought Davie's accent rather finicking—Davie's accent which at that stage was a compound of low Glasgow and broad Linlithgow picked up from the nursemaid—and asked, 'Is Davie English, Mother dear?'
"'No, no, darlings' (Mrs. Wright's own accent was all that there was of the most genteel), 'he only speaks nicely.' Marget used to shake her head over the Wrights and say, 'Eh, I say, thae bairns need a guid skelpin'.'"
"Yes," said Mrs. Douglas; "but the last time I saw the Wright boys they were the most glossy-looking creatures—you know the kind of young men whose hair looks unnaturally bright and whose clothes fit almost too well; don't you call them 'knuts'?—with supercilious manners and Glasgow-English voices, and I rather yearned for the extremely bad but quite unaffected little boys they once had been."
"I know; one often regrets the 'lad that is gone.' Boys are like pigs, they are nicest when they are small. Talking of the Wrights reminds me of a children's party we once gave, to which you invited a missionary's little girl, and two black boys. You had never seen them and thought they would be quite tiny, and when they came they were great strong creatures withpointed teeth. Somebody told us they had teeth like that because they were cannibals, and, after hearing that, it was a nightmare evening. We played hide-and-seek, and every one screamed with terror when caught by the poor black boys. It was terrible to see them eating sandwiches at supper and reflect on what they would havelikedto eat."
"Oh, Ann! The poor innocents! They weren't cannibals; they were rescued by the missionaries when they were babies. But I must say I was rather alarmed when I saw how big they were. They didn't realise their own strength, and I was afraid they might hurt some of the little ones. I spent an anxious evening, too."
"Mother," said Ann, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her face supported in her two hands, "you were dreadfully given to spoiling the look of my parties. The boys didn't mind, but I was a desperate little snob. It seemed impossible for me to have the kind of party other girls had, with all the children prettily dressed, and dancing, and a smart supper. At the last moment you were always discovering some child who was crippled and didn't get any fun, or some one who hadn't a proper party frock and hadn't been asked to any parties. You told them it didn't matter what they wore to our house, and insisted on their coming—'compelled them to come in.' Oh, you were a real 'highways and hedges person'! As a matter of fact, it wasn't at all kind to ask those children. They felt out of it and unhappy, no matter how much one tried. If you had asked them when there wasn't a party, and they could have had all the attention, it would have been infinitely better."
"Oh, I dare say," said Mrs. Douglas. "I've spent my life doing impulsive things and regretting them. But, Ann, though you laugh at me about having so many people to the house, the trouble we took was nothing compared to the pleasure it gave. In our church there were so many who needed encouragement: single women fighting for a living and coming home after a long day's work to cook their supper over a gas-ring were glad at times to get a well-cooked and daintily served meal, with people to talk to while they ate; and mothers cooped up in tiny flats with noisy children liked to walk to a green suburb, and get tea and home-made scones and jam; and it does make a difference to boys from the country, living in lodgings, if they know there is some house they can go to whenever they like."
"True, my dear, true, and I don't suppose you ever denied yourself to anyone, no matter how tired, or ill, or grieved you were feeling. You welcomed them all with 'gently smiling jaws.' Do you remember the only occasion on which we said 'Not at home'? We had been at the church hall all afternoon preparing it for a church 'At Home' and had just come in for tea and a short rest, with the prospect of three hours' solid smiling later in the evening. When I found the housemaid going to answer the door-bell I hissed at her, 'Say not at home,' and by sheer bad luck the caller turned out to be a minister's wife from a distance, who had depended on being warmed and fed at our house. She had gone home cold and tealess and, as a consequence, got a bad chill, and we felt so guilty about it we trailed away to see her, and on hearing she had a sale of work in prospect—when has a minister's wife not a sale of work in prospect?—we felt bound to send her a handsome contribution. I sadly sacrificed on the altar of remorse some pretty silver things I had brought from India, feeling it an expensive pleasure to say 'Not at home.' But of course you are right. Now that it is all over and we have long hours to read and write and think long thoughts, it is nice to feel that you helped a lot of people over rough bits of the road and didn't think of how tired it made you."