Mrs. Douglas looked at her daughter with unsmiling eyes. "Do you know what I feel?" she asked. "I feel that I have done nothing—nothing. All the opportunities I was given, I can see now how I missed them; while I was busy here and there, they were gone. And I grumbled when I trudged down to the sewing-class on Monday nights, leaving all you children. I used sometimes to envy the mothers who had no kirk, and no meetings, and could spend their evenings at home. I had to be out so many nights of the week. No wonder poor little Davie said, 'I wish I had a mother who didn't go to meetings.' And it was such a long way home. Standing shivering in the wind and rain at the corner of Bridge Street, waiting for a car, I wondered if there would ever come a time when I would sit at my ease in the evenings with no late meetings to bother about. I didn't know how blessed I was. 'The Almighty was still with me, and my children were about me.' How could I know when I yearned for ease and idleness that when I got them I should sit bereft, and ask nothing better than the old hard-working days back——"
Ann said nothing for a minute, but sat scribbling on a corner of her paper; then she looked at her mother, and her eyes were half sad, half merry:
"It's an odd thing, Motherkin, that only very good people feel their own shortcomings. Now, I, covered as with a garment by sins of omission and commission, am quite perky and well pleased with myself. I walk on my heels and think what a noble creature I am, and how much people must admire me. Try being complacent, my dear, for a change! It's much more comfortable. You know, Mother, you should have been a Roman Catholic, then you could have worn a hair shirt, and done all sorts of little penances and kept yourself happy."
"Oh, Ann!" Mrs. Douglas gave a laugh that was almost a sob. "You do talk such utter nonsense, but you look at me with your father's eyes..."
"Well, what I want is to get some information about the Glasgow part of your life. You started a lot of new things, didn't you, in connection with the church?"
"Oh yes, a sewing-class and a mother's meeting, and a fellowship meeting and a literary society—I forget what else, but they were all more or less successful. Martyrs people were delightful to work with—so appreciative."
"And very amusing," said Ann; "I always enjoyed their remarks about things. I overheard one young man say, as he wiped his heated brow after a thoroughly unventilated evening spent looking at magic-lantern slides of various mission stations—'My! I'm fair sweatin' comin' through thae Tropics.' We always called him 'Tropics' after that. What they thoroughly enjoyed was being asked to our house. It wasn't till I grew up that I appreciated those parties, but I very distinctly remember some you gave at the time of your silver wedding to let every one see the presents. We tried to assort the people—young men and women in the evening, and matrons in the afternoon. It wasn't always easy to find suitable topics to converse on with the matrons, but one afternoon some one started the subject of washing clothes, and it called forth a perfect flood of eloquence. Every one had something to say, and we thrashed out the subject from the first stage of soaking the clothes until they were starched and ironed and put away. There didn't seem to be one more word that could be said about it when the arrival of some newcomers made rearranging the room necessary. As I moved about, I saw one woman hitch her chair nearer her neighbour and heard her say thrillingly, 'Speakin' aboot washing, Mrs. Law, did ye ever try——' It became a favourite saying with us. When Robbie wanted to change the subject he always began, 'Speakin' aboot washing, Mistress Law——'"
When Mr. Philip Scott came to lunch at Dreams he stayed a long time—so long that Marget remarked to Mysie in the kitchen, "That man is surely het at hame that he's sittin' here so long clatterin'."
He had had a good lunch, had been shown the house and what would be the garden, had walked with Ann a little way along the hill road and duly admired the view, and had then returned to the living-room, where he sat talking and listening till tea was brought in, stayed for an hour after tea, and even then had seemed loath to go away.
"Well," said Mrs. Douglas, when the guest had at last departed, "it's a blessing there is a moon—and that he knows the hill road well. It will take him all his time to be at Birkshaw in time for dinner."
"You shouldn't have made yourself so agreeable, Mother. He couldn't bear to leave your interesting conversation."
"As to that," said Mrs. Douglas, "it does one good to see a man sometimes and hear a man's talk."
"Mother," laughed Ann, "you dearly love a man, and you have all the Victorian woman's reliance on a man's opinion. You love doing things for their benefit; you positivelypanderto them."
Mrs. Douglas refused to be abashed by this accusation.
"Well, why not? I think men are the lords of creation, and I do like them to have the best of everything. I like the old-fashioned way of doing everything for one's men-folk—seeing that their bags are properly packed and their clothes kept in perfect order. I can't bear the modern way of letting a man look after himself; it is so nice to feel that one's men are dependent on one for their comfort."
Ann groaned and, sitting down on the rug pulled the Tatler into her lap.
"Cat, d'you hear that? Lords of creation, indeed! Those are your sentiments, too, aren't they?"
The Tatler blinked sleepily, and stuck his claws into Ann's arm.
Ann pushed him away and got up. "Ah yes, Mother, I know you of old. I didn't mind running errands for Father when he came in tired, but I did resent being told: 'Run and pack Mark's bag.' 'Get Robbie a clean handkerchief——' That was 'fair ridiculous!''
"Yes, but, on the other hand, the boys were always being told, 'Give it to Ann; she's the girl.' You were utterly spoiled, and there's one thing, Ann, I must ask you. When I'm asking a blessing for tea, don't go on filling cups."
"But I don't," Ann said indignantly, "though what you want with a blessing for tea, I don't know. Nobody I ever heard of has a blessing for tea except Miss Barbara, and I generally had taken a large bite out of a scone before she began, and it lay on my plate and looked at me reproachfully. Poor Mr. Scott spoke right through your blessing to-day; he didn't know what you were doing."
Mrs. Douglas sighed deeply. "Ah, well, Ann, I don't suppose I'll be with you very long to worry you with my old-fashioned ways."
"Oh, Mother, that's not fair. You're hitting below the belt."
"But you may be away first," continued Mrs. Douglas, "and then I shall be left to regret."
"Well, then," said Ann flippantly, "we'll arrange that neither of us will regret anything. You and Mr. Scott made great friends, Mother. He has very nice manners, hasn't he?"
Mrs. Douglas laid downHours of Silence, which she had taken up to begin her evening's reading, and removed the large spectacles which made her look like a little owl.
"I liked him, Ann. There is something very likeable about him. He reminded me just a little of Robbie."
"I wondered if that would strike you," Ann said. "It isn't that there is any resemblance, but he has some of Robbie's ways.... He was tremendously interested about yourLife, Mother, so I gave him what I had written to look over. Oh, you needn't feel hurt about it. It's only that he may give me some advice. He writes himself, you know. As you say, it is nice to talk to a man again—one's own kind of man. Mr. Sharp is a dear, but it isn't much fun making conversation with him."
There was silence in the room as Mrs. Douglas began to read her evening portion out of each of her many volumes, and Ann sat watching the flames leap, and thinking, thinking.
"Mother," she said suddenly, "you said a little while ago that I was spoiled as a child, but I wasn't. Dear me, I was a regular burden bearer, and Mark christened me 'The Patient Cuddy'! You see, I was hampered with always having a small brother to lug about; I could never harden my heart enough to leave them at home. An only girl in a family of brothers has really a harassed existence. It would have been different if Rosamund had lived. She was too tiny to come into our games, though she meant a great deal to us—much more than we realised."
Mrs. Douglas laid down her book. "She loved being allowed to play with you," she said, "and you were good about making games that she could join in. But, somehow, she was more a companion to her father and me than your playfellow. For one thing, she shared your father's love of gardening. The rest of you helped sometimes in the garden, but you always let it be seen that it was a penance. You hardly knew one flower from another, and you sped like arrows from a bow whenever you were released. But Rosamund trotted about happily for hours, utterly contented to be with her father and the flowers. We used often to say to each other, your father and I, how different she was to you and the boys. You were healthy, ordinary children who never thought of saying pretty things to your parents or anyone else. You found the world so full of a number of things that your days were passed in a sort of breathless investigation. Rosamund was a revelation to us. She was rather dignified and aloof with strangers, but for her own people her heart was a treasure-house of love. I never knew of so young a child having such strong yet discerning affections. She wasn't in the least priggish; indeed, she could be naughty in a peculiarly impish way, and you children were always teaching her rude expressions, which she used to Marget, who adored her, but all Marget said was, 'D'ye think I'm gaun to quarrel wi' you, impident little thing that ye are?' She and Marget were great friends, and there was nothing she liked better than to help Marget work, and bake little dough rabbits with currants for eyes. The big black cat—christened by Mark, 'William Tweezer, Earl of Scullery'—superintended operations, and Marget would say to him when he got in the way, 'Awa' oot and play yersel', Weellum, like a man.' We had a game that the fairy Whuppetie Stourie hid in the nursery chimney and when little girls were good laid a present on the hearth-rug. I didn't realise it was all real to her until Jeanie Tod set the chimney on fire, and Rosamund, with a white face, sobbed, 'Jeanie, you forget I've a friend up there.' I can hear her voice now."
"How you remember, Mother. I wish I could! I can see her still, but I can't hear her voice. You see, I was only about thirteen when she died, and children forget so soon. I can remember looking down into her face and thinking that her eyes were like violets; and I remember a little white dress trimmed with 'flowering,' and a blue cloak with a hood. I remember at breakfast-time she used to walk round the table and ask for tops of eggs. She only got a whole egg on Sundays, and she never forgot to pray, 'Bless my whole egg next Sabbath day.' She was a very happy child. I think she enjoyed the little short time she had in the world, but she was very shy and timid, wasn't she? You remember, when Mrs. Lang asked her to a tea-party alone, it quite preyed on her mind? The day of the party she summoned up courage to ring the Langs' bell, but when the servant came she had no words. Three times she rang the bell without being able to give a message, and the third time Mrs. Lang came herself and said, 'Now, Rosamund, you are a naughty child, and you must not ring the bell again until it is time for the party.' Poor little Rosamund crept away without ever being able to explain that all she wanted to ask was that I might go with her! Rather unlike Robbie, when Mark and I were invited to a party, and he called at the house to ask if there had been any mistake that he hadn't been invited."
"Dear Robbie," said Mrs. Douglas, then fell silent. In a little she spoke again:
"Christmas to me, even now, always seems Rosamund's time. It is odd to think that she was only with us for five short years, and she has been away more than twenty, and yet the thought of her is always with me. She lives to me so vividly that it seems only yesterday that it all happened. As Christmas drew near, you were all excited, but Rosamund seemed utterly possessed with the spirit of the season. She wanted to give presents to every one she knew, and couldn't understand why any limit should be put to the size of our Christmas party. She loved dolls—unlike you, Ann, who never knew how to hold a doll!—and I dressed her two great big ones for her fourth Christmas, a wax one called Muriel, and Black Sam. Old Mrs. Hamilton in the church made her a wonderful rag-doll, as big as a baby, with arms and legs complete, only the face had a gruesome lack of profile. I dressed up like Father Christmas and brought all the presents into the room in a big basket, and made speeches as I gave them out, and Rosamund was speechless with delight. She could hardly tell me about it when I came into the room a few minutes later, and her great regret was that I had happened to be out of the room; she thought it was such bad luck for me. When she was dying she said, 'When Father Christmas comes this year, tell him you have no Rosamund, and ask him to give my presents to Ann.'"
Ann moved quickly in her chair, and busied herself for a little in putting some papers in order. Then she burst out, "Why did she die, Mother? What made her ill?"
Mrs. Douglas shook her head. "Ah, my dear! We have these treasures in earthen vessels. I suppose the time had come for us to give her back. It began so simply. She was a very healthy child and rarely ailed anything, but one day she got her feet wet playing in the snow, and that brought on a slight chill. It seemed to be nothing, and passed, but after that we noticed her droop a little. I didn't get the doctor at once, for I had so often got him on false pretences, and I knew he thought me an absurdly anxious mother, and when he came I was quite apologetic, expecting to be told I had been fussing again. But he didn't make light of it. He said it was slight gastric fever, and she must go to bed. That was in February. She seemed to get over it quickly, and was soon up and playing as busily as ever, but we noticed that she got tired. We had never heard the child own to being tired before, and it chilled our hearts to see her go and sit down quietly in her little chair. Then we found that her temperature had begun to rise in the afternoon. In the morning it was subnormal, but as the day advanced it crept up. We got one specialist after another, but no one seemed able to stop the horrible creeping fever. It was a very hard winter; the snow lay on the ground well into March, and I used to sit with Rosamund on my knee at the window while you children built snow-men to amuse her. There were some little wild kittens that had been turned out of their home in a stable, and Rosamund worried about them, so you built a little house for them of orange boxes in the shrubbery and made it very cosy with a bit of old carpet. She could watch them creep in and get warm. On your walks you always went to the streets so that you might glue your faces to shop windows and decide what your scraped-together pennies would buy for Rosamund."
"I know," said Ann. "One day, to my joy, I found in a small grocer's shop tiny pots of jam and marmalade that cost one penny each, and Rosamund loved them for her dolls' tea-parties. If we could find anything to interest or amuse her, we were so proud. At first she was able to have us play quietly with her, then she began not to be able to walk about, and Mark carried her round the garden to look at the snowdrops and crocuses. We never owned to ourselves or each other that she wouldn't recover. We said, 'Rosamund will be all right when the spring comes,' but the spring came—— Mother, it must have been terrible for you to see the spring flowers come and your little Rose-of-the-world fade."
Mrs. Douglas covered her eyes for a minute with a hand that shook, but when she spoke her voice was steady.
"It was the most beautiful spring and summer that I think I ever remember, and we all went away to Etterick in April. It seemed that the sun and the fresh winds and the quiet of the hills must heal, and at first she did seem to improve. But it was only for a little. The dreaded fever returned, and every Monday, when your father came back from preaching in Glasgow, he knew her to be losing. She liked being out all the time, and our days were spent by the burnside or on the hills. We had an old pony and a low basket carriage which she found comfortable, and we sometimes drove by the banks of the Tweed until we came to some place which she liked specially, when we would lift her out into a nest of cushions and she could sit and listen to the voice of the Tweed as it slipped past. And we had lunch with us, and the boys fished, and you read aloud fairy-tales, and we were almost happy in spite of the cloud that covered us.... She had her 'well days' and her 'ill days,' but she never complained; indeed, I think her patience was almost the hardest thing to bear. One day she said to me, 'I'm talking to Whuppetie, Mother. I talk to God when I'm ill and to Whuppetie when I'm well.' The year before, her great joy had been to go to the water meadow, where the banks of the ditch were blue with forget-me-nots. I had always avoided the place in her illness, and she had never asked to be taken; but one day, when we were driving past, we heard the little Crichton girls say to their mother, 'Come after us when you're ready, Mummy; we're going down to the water meadow to get forget-me-nots.' Rosamund turned and looked at me, and there was such utter sadness in her eyes that my heart seemed as if it must break.... One very lovely day in June we had been out till quite late, for she wanted to see the sunset. It was so wonderful in its rose and gold and amethyst that Rosamund, looking with wistful eyes into the glory, said that she thought she could see the twelve gates, every gate a pearl. The beauty seemed to comfort her, but she said to me: 'Mother, if you could only go with me! If there are twelve gates, how shall I know which one to watch for you at?' ... Mark carried her up to bed that night, and you all sat about on the floor for a little, talking and laughing, and she smiled at you happily while she sipped her milk. It was a very hot night, and a corn-crake was calling in a hayfield near the window. Rosamund slept a little, and woke about three. I sponged her face and hands to cool her, and put lavender water on her pillows; the windows were wide open, but she seemed to be breathless. Her father heard us moving, and came in from the dressing-room, and Rosamund held out her hands to him. The dawn was beginning to break, and he said, 'The night has passed, darling; it is morning.' She nodded. 'There's that corn-crake corn-craking yet,' she said, and then she gave a little cry. I caught her in my arms, and her head fell on my breast like a dead bird's...."
With the last days of November winter descended with real earnest on the Green Glen. For thirty-six hours snow fell, blotting out the paths, piling great drifts in the hollows, making the high road almost level with the tops of the hedges. The carts from the shops, the butcher, the baker, the grocer, had to remain in the town, the postman could not come near, Mr. Sharp stayed snugly in his Manse, and Dreams was entirely cut off from the rest of the world.
When the frost came, hardening the snow, Ann got out her toboggan and spent glorious hours flying down the hillside and toilful ones dragging the toboggan up again. Glowing with health and self-satisfaction, she came in in the frosty twilight, to drink tea and upbraid her mother for electing to remain by the fire.
"How can you frowst by the fire, Mother, when you might be out looking at the most glorious sunset and drinking in great draughts of air that is like champagne? What? Cold? Not a bit, once you are out; indeed, I was almost too warm. The mistake about tobogganing is that the rush down is so short and the toil up so long. I must demand, like the Irishman, that all roads be either level or downhill. What a delicious muffin this is! May I have the jam?"
Ann rose to get herself another cup of tea, and looked out of the window on the way. "It's bitter hard to-night—you know the frost is very severe when the snow creaks. 'Hech, sirs, it's winter fairly.' Do come and look out, Mother. It's glorious being in Dreams in snow—like living in the heart of a crystal."
Mrs. Douglas shivered as she looked out at the waste of snow. "Draw the curtains, Ann, and shut it out. I never did like snow: cold, unfriendly stuff, making everything uncomfortable, blocking roads and killing sheep and delaying trains; and when it goes away, burst pipes and dripping misery. But you children always loved it. At Kirkcaple, when it came, you were out before breakfast snowballing the milkman."
Ann finished her tea and lay back in her chair regarding her mother, who was finishing her "reading" for the day, taking sips of tea and readingGolden Grainat the same time.
"Mother," said Ann, "did you ever give yourself good times? You began your married life without a honeymoon, and I'm afraid you continued on the same principle. I don't seem to remember that you ever got rid of us all and had a real holiday alone with Father."
Mrs. Douglas finished what she was reading and laid the little book on the pile before she answered her daughter. Then she took off her spectacles and took up her cup of tea, and said:
"Oh yes; when Jim was a baby we went to London for a fortnight to stay with an uncle and aunt of your father's. Don't you remember them? Uncle John and Aunt John, we always called them—why, I don't know. Uncle John was rather old when he married, and had a weak heart, and Aunt John warned me that it was safer not to contradict him. Not that it would have entered into my head to do such a thing. I was in too great awe of them both. They were a handsome couple, and Uncle John had a pair of trousers for every day of the week—shepherd-tartan ones for Sunday. Aunt was very tall, with a Roman nose, her hair parted at one side, and was always richly dressed in silks that rustled.
"They were devoted to each other, and made such a touching pair of middle-aged lovers, coquetting with each other in a way that amazed us, staid married people that we were—I suppose I was about five-and-twenty then. I overheard Aunt say to Uncle one day when she came in with a new hat: 'How do you like mychapeau, Jackie?' and always at breakfast she greeted him with a resounding kiss, as if she had never set eyes on him from the night before. We must have been a great nuisance to them, such a countrified couple as we were. Your father was always fit to go anywhere, but I must have been a quaint figure, in a lavender dress trimmed with ruching, and a black silk dolman and a lavender bonnet. They were the efforts of the little dressmaker in Kirkcaple, one of our church members, and we had thought them almost alarmingly smart in the parlour behind the shop; but when I saw myself reflected in long mirrors and shop windows, I had my doubts."
Ann sat forward in her chair, her eyes alight with interest.
"I had forgotten about the London visit. Had you a good time? Were they kind to you?"
"They were kindness itself. Every morning Uncle planned out things for us to do, and arranged that we should lunch somewhere with him—that was to save our pockets. And Aunt's housekeeping seemed to me on a scale nothing short of magnificent. When I went marketing with her it thrilled me to see her buy salmon and turbot as I might have bought 'penny haddies,' and she seemed to me to give a dinner-party every night. And the servants were such aloof, superior creatures. It was all very awe-inspiring to me, a timorous little country mouse."
Ann laughed. "'Wee modest crimson-tippit beastie,' as Charlotte renders Burns. But tell me what you saw, Mother. All the sights, I am sure. But did you do anything exciting?"
"Oh yes. We went to hear Spurgeon, and one evening Uncle took us to the Crystal Palace and we saw fireworks."
Ann hooted. "Mother, you are a pet! I asked you if you had done anything exciting—meaning had you seen Ellen Terry and Irving and heard Patti sing—and you tell me you heard Spurgeon and went to fireworks at the Crystal Palace!"
"I don't see why you should laugh," Mrs. Douglas said, rather affronted. "These were the things we liked to do. At least, I think what your father really liked best was to poke about in the old book-shops, and he did enjoy the good food. I liked it all, but the going home was best of all. I had felt very small and shabby in London, but when we came off that long night journey and found you all waiting for us as fresh as the morning, you and Mark and Robbie and Jim, I felt the richest woman in the world. I quite sympathised with the mother of the Gracchi, though before I had always thought her rather a fool."
"Yes," Ann said profoundly. "Sometimes things you have read and thought merely silly suddenly become true—and did the London fortnight last you a long time?"
"The next summer I had my trunk packed to go with your father to Switzerland, but at the last moment I found I couldn't leave you, and he had to go alone. It was very silly, but, anyway, I always saw that he had a good holiday, and I was happy with you children at Etterick. But as you grew older and went away to school I often got away for a little. One great ploy was to go to the Assembly; sometimes we stayed with people, but we greatly preferred to have rooms in a Princes Street hotel. I don't mean tolichtlypeople's hospitality, but it is a relief when you come in tired not to have to put on a bright, interested expression and tell your hostess all about it."
"I do so agree," said Ann; "'a bright, interested expression' is far too often demanded of ministers' wives and families. What a joy to scowl and look listless at a time. You know, Mums, a manse is a regular school for diplomatists. It is a splendid training. One learns to talk to and understand all sorts of people—just think what an advantage that gives one over people who have only known intimately their own class! And you haven't time to think about yourself; you are so on the alert to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. You have to try and remember the affairs of each different member, how many children they possess, and all about them, and be careful to ask at the right moment for the welfare of each. To say to a very stout lady living alone, 'Are you all well?' savours of impertinence.... Yes, well, you went to a hotel to avoid having to look 'bright and interested,' wise people; and what did you do there?"
"But, Ann," Mrs. Douglas protested, having been struck with her daughter's remarks on her early training, "you spoke as if you were brought up to be hypocrites, and I'm sure that is the very last thing your father and I wanted you to be——"
"Oh, well," said Ann lightly, "the best people are all more or less hypocrites. The world would be a most unpleasant place if we had all—like Lo, the poor Indian—untutored minds and manners. Honesty is sometimes almost a crime, and the man who feels it necessary to speak what he is pleased to call his mind in season and out of season is a public nuisance. Hold your peace if you have nothing pleasant to say. People need encouraging far oftener than you think; even bumptious people are often only bumptious because they are uncertain of themselves. As the White Queen said, 'A little kindness and putting their hair in curl papers' would work wonders for them. But I don't know why I am chattering like a swallow when what I want is to hear about you and Father at the Assembly."
Mrs. Douglas had taken up her knitting, and with a happy smile on her face and her fingers working busily she said:
"I remember one particularly happy Assembly. Davie was about five, and you were at home to keep things right, so my mind was quite at ease, and I had got a smart new coat and skirt—black, trimmed with grey cloth and braided, and a black hat with grey feathers."
"A most ministerial outfit," said Ann, making a face. "I would rather have seen you in the lavender and the dolman."
"It was very suitable for a minister's wife, and it must have been becoming, for almost every one we met said I looked so young, and that pleased your father, though, of course, it was nonsense. We were in a mood to enjoy everything—those May mornings when we came down to breakfast, hungry and well and eager for a new day, and sat at a little table in a bow window looking out on the Castle, and ate fresh herring 'new cam' frae the Forth,' and bacon and eggs and hot rolls."
Mrs. Douglas stopped and said solemnly:
"Ann, if I had a lot of money, do you know what I would do? I would send fifty pounds anonymously to all the ministers—not, of course, to those with big stipends, and certainly not to the ones with rich wives—to let the minister and his wife have a week at the Assembly. It would pay their fare and hotel bill, and leave something over to shop with. Dear me, I wonder rich people don't give themselves a good time by doing happy things like that."
"It's a game that never palls," Ann said; "planning what you would do if you got a sudden fortune. I'm quite sure the real owners of riches don't get half as much pleasure out of their wealth as the paupers who have it only in dreams. And what followed after the large breakfast? Did you spend the whole day in the assembling of yourselves together? Attending the Assembly is like some sort of insidious drug: the more you do it, the more you want to do it. Since I have been your companion at its deliberations I have found that I can sit in it quite happily for hours. You wouldn't miss the Assembly week for a lot even now, would you? It is odd how the sight of ministers in the mass seems to do you good. Absolutely you get quite sleek by merely looking at them. Do you remember when you were so very ill in London you kept worrying Sir Armstrong to know if you would be better for the Assembly, and the poor doctor said to Mark, 'Your mother is very anxious to go to some assembly; but shecouldn't dance?'"
Mrs. Douglas laughed and then sighed. "I enjoy it still," she said; "but the Assembly Hall is a place of ghosts to me now. There are so few of the faces that once I knew. I look up at my old place in the Ladies' Gallery—I never aspired to the Moderator's Gallery in those days. I always sat in the same seat, and then your father knew where to look up and smile to me during debates. I often sat very nervous, for he had a dreadful way of always being on the wrong side—I mean by that the unpopular side—and it wasn't nice for me to hear him shouted at. I thought he cared far too little for what people thought; he had no interest in which way the cat was going to jump; he never thought of taking the safe course simply because it was safe and would pay best. I remember after one stormy debate in which he had held the most unpopular view a lady beside me said, 'Can you tell me who that unpleasant minister is?' and I said, 'I think he comes from Glasgow.' But my sins found me out almost at once, for, on his way out to vote, your father stood and grinned up at me, looking like a mischievous schoolboy who knows he's going to get a row, and I had to smile at him—and the lady beside me glared at us both suspiciously."
"It was odd," said Ann, "that in public he was such a fighter, for in his home life, if ever man carried in his right hand gentle peace, it was my Father. There was a time, when Mark and I first grew up, that we thought we knew infinitely more about everything in heaven and earth than our parents. There was a time when Father's beliefs filled me with a kind of tender scorn: they were so hopelessly out of date. I used to argue with him in my pert way that Free Will and Election could not be reconciled, and he would reply, with a twinkle, 'Ann, I sometimes think you are a very ignorant creature. Give me another cup of tea.' I remember Father'sinnocenceamused us very much. He was so far away from the ugliness and the vulgarity and the idiotic smartness of modern life. He once heard Robbie singing an absurd song, and asked him to repeat the words—I forget what they were, something very silly and rather funny about:
'How often to myself I've said,Cheer up, Cully, you'll soon be dead,A short life but a gay one.'
Father listened and said gravely, 'If the wretched fellow had had any hope of an after life...'
"And we said, 'Isn't Fatherquaint!'"
"And when he was no longer there to stand up for his old-fashioned beliefs there wasn't one of us but would have died gladly for those same beliefs because they had been his.... When Robbie got the cable of his death he wrote from India: 'The best man in Scotland is gone—now he knows what his beliefs meant to all of us'; and Davie, that advanced young thinker, once came back from hearing a preacher of renown, and said fiercely, 'No, I didn't like him. Hesneered at the Shorter Catechism.'"
"Here's a nice state of things," said Ann.
"Is anything wrong?" asked her mother.
"Well, I don't know whether you would call it wrong or right. Mr. Philip Scott sends me back my MS., with his criticism of it. I agree with most of the things he says: my language is too incorrigibly noble, my quotationsarevery frequent——"
"But if they're good quotations," Mrs. Douglas interrupted.
"Oh, they're good quotations. 'It was the best butter,' as the poor March Hare said. But what he objects to most is the sweetness of it. He says, 'Put more acid into it.'"
"Into me, does he mean?"
"I suppose so. Mr. Scott evidently finds you insipid. We must change that at once. Tell me, now, about all the people you hated and who hated you."
Mrs. Douglas looked bewildered, and more than a little indignant. "Nonsense, Ann. I'm sure I'm very glad to hear you have made me sweet—anything else would have been most undutiful; and as for hating people, I never was any good at that. I couldn't keep up grudges, though I was sometimes very angry at people. I dare say it was a weakness in my nature. But I think, if Mr. Scott is to be allowed to criticise, I might be allowed to read my ownLife."
"It's sodull," said Ann, looking discontentedly at the MS. "And you're not a dull woman, Mother! Rather a comic, really. See, read for yourself."
Ann plumped the packet on to her mother's lap and retired to the fender-stool with theTimes; but she could hardly have done justice to the leaders, for her eyes often wandered from the printed page to the expressive face of her mother reading her ownLife.
For half an hour Ann waited; then her patience gave out, and she leant forward and put her hand across the page.
"That's enough, Mums. Surely you can tell me now how you think it goes."
Mrs. Douglas smiled at her daughter. "Why did you do that? I'm enjoying it immensely, and——"
"Oh, if anybody could find it interesting, you would; but don't you find it rather stilted?"
"Not stilted exactly, but if you would write in a more homely way, it might be better. Take the reader more into your confidence. I'm not clever enough to explain quite what I mean; but I think you are writing from the outside, as it were. Try to be more—is subjective the word I want? And don't say too much about me. After all, my life was my husband and the children. Write about your father and the boys. Never were brothers more loved by a sister. As for Davie—you brought him up."
Ann's eyes filled suddenly with tears, but in a minute she said lightly:
"You see, Mother, Mr. Scott asks what I am working up to in thisLifeof yours; how am I going to finish it, he wants to know. I hadn't thought of that. I was just going to leave loose ends—like life. I suppose there ought to be something—some idea that binds the whole thing together. Oh, it is all too difficult. I'd better burn all that I've written, and start again in an entirely new way. How would it do to put your life into scenes? The young girl in a royal blue silk dress and a locket and a black velvet ribbon, meeting her future husband. The wedding. A nursery scene—very effective this!—and then we might have scenes from your church life—you holding a Mothers' Meeting or a Girls' Club, or your first address to the Fellowship meeting. Do you remember you began (as you begin most things) with a deep sigh, and it sounded rather likeHooch, and Robbie said you reminded him of Harry Lauder?" Ann chuckled at the recollection, and her mother said:
"No wonder I was nervous. It was a great ordeal to speak before you scoffing young things. No; I don't like the idea of 'scenes.' I prefer it as it is. How far are you on?"
"I've got us all at school, and I was going to write about Davie being born. It was the summer after Rosamund died, wasn't it? I was at school when I got the news, and some of the girls condoled with me, and said a new baby in the house would be a dreadful nuisance, and I pretended to be bored by the prospect, when really I could hardly contain my excitement. I had to get home for a week-end to see him."
"Poor little baby, to think that we were actually disappointed when he came. We had wanted another girl so much, and a fourth boy seemed rather unnecessary. Of course that was only at the very beginning. He was the plainest looking baby I ever saw, and we would not have had him in the very least different."
"I thought he was lovely," said Ann. "When Mark saw him for the first time, he said, 'Hullo, Peter,' and Peter he was called for years. When I came home from school he was about three years, and he became my special charge. You were so very busy at that time with the house and church work, as well as a great scheme that the Member of Parliament for the district started to teach working women how to make savoury dinners out of nothing. You were so keen about it that you tried all the new dishes on your family, and we nearly perished as a family. I can remember some of the dishes.Stuffed cod's head—one glance at its gruesome countenance was enough.Mock kidney soup, made with grated liver, which, instead of being the rich brown proper to kidney soup, was a sort of olive green. Sea-pie—so-called, Mark said, because the sea was a handy place when you had eaten it. I once went with you to see a demonstration by the principal cooking teacher, a buxom lady with quantities of glossy black hair coiled round her head. She showed us first what she called 'a pretty puddin'.' Instead of sugar she had grated carrots in it, or something surprisingly like that. Then she made shortbread, and when the cakes were finished and ready to go into the oven she wanted something to prick them with, and nothing was at hand. She wasn't easily beaten, for I saw her withdraw a hairpin from the coils on her head and prick them with that. When they were taken from the oven, and I saw that they were to be handed round and tasted, I unobtrusively withdrew. You had noticed nothing, and ate your bit quite happily."
"Oh, Ann, you always saw far too much. That's all nonsense about the things we made. Everything was excellent and very cheap, and the women in the district enjoyed the lectures amazingly, and constantly asked to have them repeated. I enjoyed them myself. Anything to do with cooking interests me, and I read every recipe I see."
"You are the sort of guest, Mother, who would appreciate a cookery book in her bedroom. It seems an odd taste to me. I can make porridge, smooth and soft, with no knots, and fry quite nice bacon and eggs, and I can make some rather smart meringuey puddings, and there I end. D'you remember how difficult it was to get Davie to eat when he was tiny? I had to feed him with every meal, or I don't think he would have eaten anything. He was such a thin little slip of a thing—like an elf. At one time I got so desperate about his thinness that I took to rubbing him all over every night with olive oil. What a mess it made of everything! We took tremendous care of him, didn't we? He never went out in his pram with only the nursemaid; I generally went, too, in case anything happened to him. It's a wonder to me that we didn't spoil him utterly."
"He was a dear, ugly wee laddie," Mrs. Douglas said. "When Mark came down from Oxford he used to sit and study him from the other side of the table, and say, 'How has that child acquired such a Mongolian cast of countenance?''
"It was too bad," said Ann, "and Davie so admiring of Mark and all his Oxford friends. He used to amuse them a lot. I once overheard him explain to a man how he happened to live with us. 'I was playing quite quietly in heaven one day when God came up to me and said, "Peter, you've to go and live with the Douglases." I said, 'The Douglases!Good Lord!' The weary boredom in his voice was delightful."
"Many a fright he gave me," said Davie's mother. "He picked up the most extraordinary expressions, and seemed to know when to use them with the most disastrous effect. By the time Davie was born I had grown tired of training, besides it was impossible to do anything with him when you older children, who should have known better, laughed at and encouraged him. He was a plaything to you all."
"Yes," said Ann; "there's something about the baby of a family that's different. The youngest never grows up, and to each of us Davie seemed almost more a son than a brother, and we never lost for him—even when he was grown up and a soldier—the almost passionate tenderness that we had for the little delicate boy. He was the delight of our lives, always. I remember when I arrived in India almost the first thing Robbie wanted to be told was Davie's latest sayings. He had a name for each of us peculiarly his own. Nobody ever called me 'Nana' but Davie, and why he christened Jim 'Ney' no one ever knew. But, Mother, it was only as a baby that he was so very plain. Later he developed a sort of horsey look, and we dressed him in a 'horsey' way, with a snooty bonnet and a fawn overcoat. I remember he got a very neat suit to go to a party at Anthony's house, his first real party—brown with a corduroy waistcoat—which he described in imitation of Mark and his friends as 'me blood waistcoat'—and short, tight trousers. As we dressed him we noticed that the shirt he was wearing had been patched at the elbow, but it was clean, and we didn't change it. When he came home he told how this one had sung and that one had recited, and 'What,' we asked, 'did you do?' 'Oh, me,' said Davie, 'I only took off my coat and showed them my patched shirt.'"
"It didn't matter at Anthony's house," Mrs. Douglas said; "the Cochranes were well accustomed to the vagaries of small boys. Anthony and Davie made a funny couple. Anthony was so solemn and fat, and so ashamed of Davie's eccentric behaviour. Davie's way of telling himself stories 'out loud,' and going round the room gesticulating wildly, really shocked Anthony, who was a most self-contained child. He never showed surprise, indeed he rarely ever showed emotion of any sort. When he and Davie were very small and met outside, each took off his hat to the other and made a low bow. At the first party we gave for Davie, the child was greatly excited, and talked without ceasing, jumping up and down in his chair. Anthony was sitting next him at the tea-table in a green velvet suit, and he stood this Jack-in-the-box behaviour as long as he could, then he turned very quietly, slapped Davie's face and resumed his tea without having said a word. And Davie bore him no ill-will; they were fast friends from that moment. D'you remember the two going alone to a party in a cab, and they were so thrilled about it that—we were told afterwards—they refused to do anything but sit in the hall and wait for the cab coming back?"
"I loved Anthony," said Ann. "He took things so calmly and was so speechless. One afternoon when he was with us people began to flock up to his front door, carriages and motors arrived, and we called to him to come and tell us what occasion this was. Anthony looked at the commotion for a minute, and then said, 'It must be a party,' and not another word passed his lips. One night we said 'Anthony will recite.' He said neither yea nor nay, and we led him into the middle of the room. Still he made no protest, but stood, drooping like a candle in the sun, while large tears coursed quietly down his face. It must have been good for Davie to have such a phlegmatic friend. But I've seen Anthony wakened to enthusiasm. I came home once full ofCyrano de Bergerac, and, of course, told Davie all about it—I was so pleased when I heard Davie say after he was grown up, 'It was Nana made me like poetry'—and it became his favourite game. He and Anthony would crouch behind the sofa, 'behind the walls at Arras,' and then jump wildly up shouting, 'Cadets of Gascony are we...' Mother, I think you and I could talk for weeks on end about Davie...."
The door opened and Marget came in. "It's no' nine o'clock yet," she said; "but Mysie has rin oot doon to the cottages—what wi' the mune and the snaw it's near as light as day—an' I cam' in to speer about yourLife, Mem. Hoo's Miss Ann gettin' on wi't?"
"Not very well, Marget," Ann answered for herself. "I'm going to finish it, but it's a much harder job than I expected."
Marget sniffed. "I dinna see ony hardness aboot it. You hev a' the facts; a' that you've got to dae is write them doon."
"It certainly sounds very easy put in that way," Ann said; "but facts alone are dull things."
"But ony thing else wad juist be lees."
Ann began to laugh. "But, Marget," she protested, "I could put all the facts of Mother's life into one page—born, married, number of children, and so on; but that wouldn't be any sort of record to hand down to the children. You want all sorts of little everyday touches that will make them see the home that their father was brought up in."
"Everyday touches," Marget repeated; "d'ye mean what we hed for oor denners an' aboot washin' days? But thaes no things to write aboot. I could tell ye some rale fine things to pit in a book. One Setterday I let in a young man to see the maister—a rale weel pit-on young man he was, an' I showed him into the study, an' what d'ye think was the very first thing he said to the maister?"
Marget leant forward impressively. "He said that he had had a veesion to kill a man an' had been guided to oor Manse. Eh, I say! Sic a fricht I got when I heard aboot it! It juist lets ye see how carefu' ye should be aboot lettin' folk in even if they look respectable."
"And how did Father get rid of him?" Ann asked.
"You tell her, Mem." Marget nodded towards her mistress, and Mrs. Douglas said:
"He was a poor fellow whose brain had gone from over-study. Your father talked quietly to him, and said that Saturday morning was a bad time to come, and suggested that he should put it off till Monday. He went away quite peaceably, and your father went out after him and had him followed, for he was a dangerous lunatic. On the Sunday we were afraid to leave anybody in the house in case he came back, so we all went to church—even Jim the baby! On the Monday we heard that he was in an asylum. It was a tragic case."
"We got some awfu' frichts in the Kirkcaple Manse," said Marget; "but I dinna mind nane in Glesgae; we had folk a' round us there. Eh, Mem, d'ye mind the day the maister brocht in the auld-claes wife?"
Mrs. Douglas began to laugh, and she and Marget sat and shook in silent convulsions while Ann demanded to know what they were laughing at.
At last Mrs. Douglas steadied her voice enough to say:
"You know your father was always being accused of not being cordial to people—he had naturally rather a dry manner. One day I was standing at the study window and saw an old-clothes woman—Mrs. Burt was her name—who came regularly to ask if we had anything for her, standing at the gate as if hesitating whether or not to come in. Then I saw your father approach, raise his hat, saw him go up to the startled woman and shake her warmly by the hand, and then conduct her into the house. 'Nell,' he shouted, 'here's an old friend to see you—Mrs. Beattie from Kirkcaple! She must have some lunch.'"
"Mrs. Burt turned to me a distressed, red face, and I stared at her wondering which of us had gone mad.
"'Mrs. Burt...' I began, and then it dawned upon your father what he had done. There was a faint resemblance between the old-clothes woman and our old friend Mrs. Beattie, who had been such a help to us in the Kirkcaple Church. For a moment he was absolutely nonplussed, and then he began to laugh, and he and I reeled about while Mrs. Burt looked more alarmed every minute. We recovered in time, and begged Mrs. Burt's pardon for the mistake, and saw that she had a good dinner; but your father said he had got enough of trying to be 'frank'——"
Marget wiped her eyes. "Eh, I say," she said, "it was an awfu' set oot."
The thaw came suddenly, and, almost in a night, the snow went, leaving the moorlands like some vast sponge. The air was full of the rushing of a great west wind and the noise of running water, as burns, heavy with spate, came tumbling down the hillsides.
Ann stood looking out at the wide view, at the hills purple-dark, with drifts of snow still in the hollows and at the back of dykes.
"'As dull as a great thaw,'" she quoted. "It's like a giant's washing day—such a sloppiness and dreariness, and that horrible steamy feeling that a house gets when the frost goes suddenly and leaves everything damp, even the walls and the furniture. A new-made road is no great treat in a thaw. I stuck, and nearly left my big boots behind me this morning. I wish it would get dark and we could draw the curtains and have tea."
"I don't want to grumble," Mrs. Douglas said, turning the heel of a stocking with a resigned air, "but these last few days have been very long. No post even! That was the last straw. I've knitted a pair of stockings for little Davie, and I've written a lot of letters, and I've tried each of the library books in turn, but nowadays nobody writes the sort of book I like. No, they don't, Ann."
"But what kind of book pleases you, Mother? I thought we had rather a good selection this week. One or two are quite interesting."
"Interesting!" repeated Mrs. Douglas. "They seemed to me the very essence of dullness. I don't think I'm ill to please, but I do like a book that is clean and kind. I put down each of those books in disgust; they're both dull and indecent. Is it easier to be clever and nasty than clever and clean?"
"Oh, much," said Ann promptly. "It's a very hard thing, I should think, to write a book that is pleasant without being mawkish, whereas any fool can be nasty and can earn a reputation of sorts by writing what Davie used to call 'hot stuff.'"
"Well, I wish some one would arise who would write for the middle-aged and elderly; there are a great many in the world, and they are neglected by nearly every one—fashion writers, fiction writers, play writers—no one caters for them. I like domestic fiction, gentle but not drivelling, good character drawing and a love story that ends all right."
"In other words," said Ann, "good print and happy ending. What about me? Why shouldn't I become the writer for middle-aged women? I might almost call myself a writer now that I have wrestled for weeks with yourLife, and I believe I would find it easier to write fiction than biography—to leave what Marget calls 'facs' and take to 'lees.' Facts crib and cabin one. Given a free hand I might develop an imagination."
"Who knows? Only don't begin anything else until you have finished the job you are at. I do hate to leave unfinished work."
"Oh, so do I," said Ann, "and I mean to plod on with theLifeto the bitter end—but I had better take bigger strides and cover the ground. From Davie's birth—do you remember he used to say when we complained of his accent, 'Well, you shouldn't have borned me in Glasgow'—on till you went to South Africa nothing of importance happened."
Mrs. Douglas stared at her daughter. "Seven years," she said. "Did nothing important happen in those years?"
"Nothing," Ann said firmly, "except that the boys left school and went to Oxford——"
"Oh, but Ann, don't hurry on so. You must put in about the boys doing so well at school and getting scholarships and almost educating themselves. It might spur on that lazy little Rory to hear about them ... and you grew up."
"My growing up wasn't much of an event," said Ann. "Indeed it was something of a disaster. I had been rather attractive-looking as a schoolgirl because my hair fluffed out round my face, but when I put it up I dragged it all back into a little tightly hair-pinned bump. The change was startling. I was like a skinned rabbit. The boys hung umbrellas on the bump and the church people came to you and asked you to make me let down my hair again because they couldn't bear the look of me. And I wore a thick brown coat and a brown hat with red in it, and I had no more notion how to dress myself becomingly than a Kaffir woman. I was a poor little object and I knew it. Then one night I went to a party—an ordinary Glasgow party, full of jokes and good things to eat—and there I met an artist; I suppose she would be about thirty—I longed prodigiously to be thirty when I was eighteen; it seemed to me the ideal age—and she wore a wonderful flowing gown, and her red hair was parted in the middle and lay in a great knot of gold at the nape of her neck. I had never seen anything like this before—all your friends had their hair tightly and tidily done up and wore bodices with lots of bones—and I sat and worshipped. I suppose she had recognised worship in the eyes of the awkward, ill-dressed young girl, for she came and sat beside me and talked to me and asked what I meant to do in the world. I hadn't thought of doing anything, I told her; I had a lot of brothers and a busy mother, and I helped at home. She told me she would like to paint me, and I was flattered beyond belief and promised to go to her studio the very next day. Margot Stronach and everything about her were a revelation to me. I thought her flat—which was probably rather tawdry and pinned together: she confessed to me that she seldom bothered to sew things—the last word in Art. Divans made out of discarded feather beds, polished floors, white walls and blue jars with cape gooseberries—what could one want more? I felt my clothes singularly out of place in such surroundings, and I gave you no peace until I had got a long straight-hanging white frock with gold embroideries which the boys called my nightgown and in which I felt perfectly happy. Margot certainly did improve my appearance vastly, you must admit that, Mother. She made me take a few dozen hairpins out of my poor hair, part it in the middle and fold it lightly back, and she taught me the value of line, but she turned me for the time being into a very affected, posing young person. It was then that I turned your nice comfortable Victorian drawing-room upside down and condemned you as a family to semi-darkness! I can't think why you were so patient with me. The boys hooted at me, but I didn't mind them, and you and Father meekly stotted about, until Father one afternoon fell over a stool and spilt all his tea, whereupon he flew into one of his sudden rages, vowed that this nonsense must cease, and pulled up the blinds to the very top."
Mrs. Douglas laughed softly. "Poor Ann, we didn't appreciate your artist friends much, but——"
"Oh, but Mother," Ann interrupted, "Margot wasn't a real artist—not like Kathleen and Jim Strang, or any of the serious artists. She was only a woman with a certain amount of money and a small talent, good looks, and a vast amount of conceit. Even my foolish young eyes saw that very soon."
"She put me very much about," Mrs. Douglas said; "she had such a wailing, affected way of talking. I never could think of anything to say in reply. Besides, I knew all the time she was thinking me an ignorant, frumpish woman, and that didn't inspire me. You admired her so much that you even copied her voice...."
Ann began to laugh. "It must have been terrible, Mother. I remember Davie meeting Margot on the stairs, and she knelt down and began to talk to him in that wailing, affected voice. Davie was a little fellow and easily frightened, and he suddenly clutched my dress and burst into tears, sobbing 'Nana, Nana, it's thebandarlog.' Fortunately Margot didn't know her 'Jungle Book,' so she missed the allusion."
"What happened to her?" Mrs. Douglas asked.
"Oh, Kathleen told me she had met her somewhere quite lately. She married a rich business man, stout and a little deaf—that was all to the good!—and, Kathleen said, looked very fat and prosperous and middle-aged. She said to Kathleen, 'Still painting away?' and Kathleen, greatly delighted, replied, 'Still painting away.'"
"Oh, yes, Kathleen would appreciate that remark.... What was your next phase, Ann?"
"I had no morephases," said Ann, and got up to get a paper to hold between her face and the fire. "I began to go to London for a month in the spring, and Uncle Bob took me with him when he went abroad, and Mark took me to Switzerland to climb—that was absolutely the best holiday of all—and I had a very, very good time."
"Yes," said her mother, "I remember a poor bed-ridden girl in the church saying to me wistfully, 'Miss Ann's life is just like a fairy tale.'"
Ann nodded. "It must have seemed so to her, poor child! And indeed I was very fortunate; I had such wonderful brothers. But I never really liked going away from home unless we went as a family. I hated to leave Davie. How quickly we all seemed to grow up after we left Kirkcaple, Mother!—Robbie especially. It seems to me, looking back, that he sprang quite suddenly from an incredibly mischievous, rough little boy into a gentle, silent schoolboy."
Mrs. Douglas stopped knitting and looked thoughtfully into the fire. "Robbie," she said—how soft, thought Ann, her mother's voice was when it named her boys—"Robbie changed quite suddenly. Up to thirteen he was the firebrand of the household. Your father alone never lost patience with his wild laddie. 'Let him alone,' he would say, 'he'll be the best of the lot yet.' Marget used to say, 'There's naething for it but to make him a sodger; the laddie canna get his fill o' fechtin'.' I don't know what changed him. I think he just got sense. Children do, if you let them alone. He began to be keen to take a good place at school. Robbie had lots of brains, Ann."
"Oh, brains! He was one of the most capable men I ever knew. In India there was no limit to the expectations his friends had for him."
"Oh, Ann, I wish he hadn't gone to India, but his heart was set on it always. The Indian Army! How he used to talk to me about it, and beg me not to make a fuss about letting him go! I would have been so pleased if all my boys had been ministers. I used to picture to myself, when you were all little, how I would go from manse to manse, and what a proud mother I would be. I never could bear the Army as a profession; your father and I never saw eye to eye about that——"
"Poor Mother, it was too bad! You wanted nice little clucking barndoor fowls, and you found yourself with young eagles! I know. It would have been a lovely life for you to do nothing but visit manses. I can see you doing it. But even you stretched your wings a little. Was the South African trip a silver-wedding jaunt?"
"Yes; don't you remember? The congregation gave us a cheque at your father's semi-jubilee, and that was how we spent it."
"Oh, the semi-jubilee!" said Ann. "That was a great occasion. A social meeting, with tea and cakes and speakers and presentations. Eminent men brought from a distance to say complimentary things to you and Father, and all sorts of old friends from Inchkeld and Kirkcaple came with offerings, and so many of them stayed with us that the family had to be boarded out! We acquired a lot of loot at that time in the way of fitted dressing-cases and silver things, and we had a gorgeous silver-wedding cake. Robbie had thought that you couldn't have a bridescake unless you were being married, and when he found he had been mistaken he said the only reason for marrying was gone! It was a glorious cake. The boys were all at home for the Christmas holidays, and when they got hungry in the forenoon they would go and cut chunks off it with a pen-knife—until we had to hide it. You didn't go away directly, Mums. It was the next November before you left for South Africa, and what a business it was getting you away!"
"'There's muckle adae when cadgers ride,'" Mrs. Douglas quoted. "And it was a great undertaking. I didn't in the least want to go, but your father was as keen as a schoolboy, and I couldn't let him go alone, and I couldn't leave Davie, so the three of us went. Mark had gone to London and was settled in his rooms in the Temple. Robbie and Jim were studying, and you had invitations to fill up all the time."
"I only visited between the boys' vacations, then we were all together at Uncle Bob's. What angels he and Aunt Katharine were to us! The rest of the time I paid visits, and very nearly had a bad nervous breakdown through having to be consistently pleasant for nine months at a stretch. You see, I stayed with such very different people, and the effort to adjust myself to each in turn was rather wearing. When the boys went back for the summer term, Uncle Bob took Aunt Katharine and me over to Touraine. We stayed at Tours, and made expeditions all round to the lovely old châteaux, and came home by Paris and London and finished up at Oxford for Eights' Week. Wasn't it kind of Uncle Bob? Oh, I do wish all the nice people weren't dead! Each one that goes takes so much of the light away with him.... You didn't regret taking the trip, Mother?"
"Not for a minute, except, perhaps, when Davie supped a whole tin of condensed milk and nearly perished, and your father was poisoned by a mosquito bite and was blind for two days. It did me a world of good to come across people who had never heard of the United Free Church of Scotland and who had no desire to hear about it, and who interested me enormously by the way they looked at life. Mark always used to tell me that with me journeys ended in Mothers' Meetings, and I was too much like that. I hadn't, perhaps, realised that people might be opposed to everything I thought right and proper and yet be good people. I worried a good deal about you children at home—it wouldn't have been me if I hadn't had a trouble—but your father and Davie were blissfully happy."
"You wrote splendid letters," said Ann, "telling every detail. Father hated writing letters—we used to tell him that he would rather walk five miles than write a p.c.—and his efforts were quite short and chiefly confined to statements such as: 'What a beautiful blue the ocean is'; 'the veldt is much what I thought it would be.' Davie wrote delicious letters on oily scraps of paper—oily because he was generally anointed with a lotion for mosquito bites—which invariably ended: 'Now I must finch up.' He never ceased to mourn the little mongoose that died before he could bring it home, but he did fetch a giant tortoise, which snowked about at Etterick until a specially cold winter finished it. And you brought home a gorgeous fur rug and piles of ostrich feathers. How did you collect so many presents?"
"Well, you see, part of the time your father was taking services for a minister home on leave, and the kindness and hospitality of the people were boundless. And I felt so mean about doing so little to entertain them when they turned up in Glasgow. We had a few to stay, but most of them were only asked to luncheon, and it sounded so shabby."
"Oh, but it's different out there," Ann said comfortably. "I felt I could never repay the hospitality of the people I met in India. But Robbie didn't at all take up that attitude. 'It's jolly nice for them to have you,' was what he said, and I suppose he meant that visitors from 'home' are sure of a welcome from exiles from 'home.' You are a stranger in the land of their adoption, and they want you to see the best side of things. It is different when they come back, then we are all at home together. Aha, tea at last, and Marget bringing it in!"
"Ay," said Marget, putting the kettle on the spirit-lamp, and carrying the covered dish of muffins to the brass stool in the fireplace. "Mysie went awa' doon to the village, seein' it was fresh again. She's young, ye ken, and juist deein' for a crack wi' some o' her frien's. There's a mune, and somebody'll see her hame I've nae doot. Will I licht the lichts the noo?"
Mrs. Douglas smiled at the old woman. "I think we'll have tea in the firelight, Marget. I'm glad Mysie has gone out for a little. It's a dull life up here for a young girl."
"Oh, her," said Marget, dismissing her niece and her possible dullness with a gesture. "D'ye mind, Mem, the maister never likit his tea in the dark. He said he couldna see the road to his mooth. 'Marget,' he would say to me, 'let's have some light on the subject.' That was aye what he said."
Marget stood in the firelight and looked at the two women at the tea-table.
"D'ye ken what I was thinkin' this afternoon when I was ma lane? I was thinkin' how queer it was that a' oor men-folk are awa' and three weemen's a' that's left."
"Marget," said Ann, "what a croaking old raven you are! We're not alone for always. Mr. Mark and Mr. Jim will be back in the spring."
Marget shook her head gloomily. "I've nae comfort in thinkin' aboot folk awa' ower the sea. It's a terrible dangerous thing to travel."
"Yes, Marget," said her mistress, "we've just been talking, Miss Ann and I, about our trip to South Africa. You washed your hands of us then."
"Me! I never thocht to see ony o' ye again. An' takin' wee Davie into sic danger! A' the sailin' I ever did was from Burntisland to Granton afore they pit up the Forth Bridge."
"You're as bad as little Tommy Hislop," said Ann. "I spoke to him the other day—you know he is going out with his mother to join his father in South Africa?—and asked him how he would like the big ship. 'I'm no gaun in a ship,' he said; 'I dinna like them. I'm gaun roond the road in a cairt wi' ma Uncle Jake.'"
"He's a wise laddie," said Marget. "But it was an awfu' set-oot when you gaed awa' to Africa. An' we thocht we'd better try and let the hoose for the winter and keep it fired, an' some queer American folk cam' aboot it, kin o' missionaries they were, an' the maister said they were decent folk and let them get it."
"Yes, and we knew nothing about them," said Mrs. Douglas. "They belonged to some sort of religious sect in America, and had come over here to do propaganda work. They seemed to live like the early Christians, having all things in common and taking no thought for the morrow, and they could only offer us a nominal rent; but your father talked to them and thought them sincere and liked them, so we gave them the house. We had a cellar full of coal and a cupboard full of jam, and we asked them if they would care to take them both over. They said they would have to ask the Lord, and they came back and said: The Lord says we may take the coal, but not the jam,' and we felt so sorry for the funny little people that we gave them the jam. They had the wildest of accents, and we had difficulty in understanding them when they asked, 'Is there a crack in the door to let the mail through?' and 'Has the yard been spaded over this fall?'"
"Wasn't it like our daft ways," said Ann, as she sipped her tea, "to let our house at a ridiculously low rent to people we knew absolutely nothing about? You know, Mother, they held meetings in the drawing-room, and the neighbours, watching the people troop in, shuddered for our carpets. I think it was some sort of faith-healing that they did. When they left, a month before you were expected back, Aunt Agatha and Jim and I went to see what the house was like, and arrange about having it thoroughly cleaned. We found it in perfect condition. Two of the women came to see us the night we were there, and told us something of the work. I asked them how they had kept the carpets so fresh, and they said quite simply, 'We asked the Lord.' I shall never forget poor Aunt Agatha's face of utter terror—you know her almost insane horror of infection—when one of those Bible Christians said, 'Would you believe it, we cured a case of smallpox in this very room?' They had replaced everything they had broken, so they did very well by us. It's nice not to have to think hardly of Christians, whatever sect they belong to."
"That's true," said Marget, "but I think the puir bodies had leeved on cocoa. Sic a cocoa-tins they left in a press!"
"Ann," said Mrs. Douglas, "I've just been thinking, you should tell about old Christina in myLife. She was a most interesting character."
Ann shook her head as she rose from the tea-table. "I've too many old women in it already. Besides, I'm not going to write just now. I'm going to lie in the most comfortable chair the room contains and read an article in theTimes Literary Supplementcalled 'Love and Shakespeare.' Does that sound good enough?"