Mrs. Donald came with them to the door and thanked them for coming. They had cheered Peggy, she said.
Elizabeth looked at her wistfully.
"Do you think it unseemly of me to talk about new clothes and foolish things to little Peggy? But if it gives her a tiny scrap of pleasure? It can't do her any harm."
"Mebbe no'," said Peggy's mother. "But why do you speak about her going to visit you in summer? She is aye speaking about it, and fine you know she'll never see Etterick." Her tone was almost accusing.
Elizabeth caught both her hands, and the tears stood in her eyes as she said, "Oh! dear Mrs. Donald, it is only to help Peggy over the hard bits of the road. Little things, light bright ribbons and dresses, and things to look forward to, help when one is a child. If Peggy is not here when summer comes, we may be quite sure it doesn't vex her that she is not seeing Etterick. She"—her voice broke—"she will have far, far beyond anything we can show her—the King in His beauty and the land that is very far off."
"They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims."
"Let's walk home," suggested Arthur, as they came out into the street. "It's such a ripping evening."
Elizabeth agreed, and they started off through the busy streets.
After weeks of dripping weather the frost had come, and had put a zest and a sparkle into life. In the brightly lit shops, as they passed, the shop-men were serving customers briskly, with quips and jokes for such as could appreciate badinage. Wives, bare-headed, or with tartan shawls, ran down from their stair-heads to get something tasty for their men's teas—a kipper, maybe, or a quarter of a pound of sausage, or a morsel of steak. Children were coming home from school; lights were lit and blinds were down—life in a big city is a cheery thing on a frosty November evening.
Elizabeth, generally so alive to everything that went on around her, walked wrapped in thought. Suddenly she said:
"I'mhorriblysorry for Mrs. Donald. Inarticulate people suffer so much more than their noisy sisters. Other mothers say, 'Well, it must just have been to be: everything was done that could be done,' and comfort themselves with that. She says nothing, but looks at one with those suffering eyes.My dear little Peggy!No wonder her mother's heart is nearly broken."
Arthur murmured something sympathetic, and they walked on in silence, till he said:
"I want to ask you something. Don't answer unless you like, because it's frightful cheek on my part.... Do you really believe all that?"
"All what?"
"Well, about the next world. Are you as sure as you seem to be?"
Elizabeth did not speak for a moment, then she nodded her head gravely.
"Yes," she said, "I'm sure. You can't live with Father and not be sure."
"It seems to me so extraordinary. I mean to say, I never heard people talk about such things before. And you all know such chunks of the Bible—even Buff. Why do you laugh?"
"At your exasperated tone! You seem to find our knowledge of the Bible almost indecent. Remember, please, that you have never lived before in Scots clerical circles, and that ministers' children are funny people. We are brought up on the Bible and the Shorter Catechism—at least the old-fashioned kind are. In our case, the diet was varied by an abundance of poetry and fairy tales, which have given us our peculiar daftness. But don't you take any interest in the next world?"
Arthur Townshend screwed his short-sighted eyes in a puzzled way, as he said:
"I don't know anything about it."
"As much as anybody else, I daresay," said Elizabeth. "Don't you like that old song I sang to Peggy?—
'Thy gardens and thygallant walksContinually are green....'
One has a vision of smooth green turf, and ladies 'with lace about their delicate hands' walking serenely; and gentlemen ruffling it with curled wigs and carnation silk stockings. Such a deliciously modish Heaven! Ah well! Heaven will be what we love most on earth. At Etterick——"
"Tell me about Etterick," begged Arthur. "It's a place I want very much to see. Aunt Alice adores it."
"Who wouldn't! It's only a farmhouse with a bit built on, and a few acres of ground round it but there is a walled garden where old flowers grow carelessly, and the heather comes down almost to the door. And there is a burn—what you would call a stream—that slips all clear and shining from one brown pool to another; and the nearest neighbours are three good miles away, and the peeweets cry, and the bees hum among the wild thyme. You can imagine what it means to go there from a Glasgow suburb. The day we arrive, Father swallows his tea and goes out to the garden, snuffing the wind, and murmuring like Master Shallow, 'Marry, good air.' Then off he goes across the moor, and we are pretty sure that the psalm we sing at prayers that night will be 'I to the hills will lift mine eyes.'"
"Etterick belongs to your father?"
"Yes, it is our small inheritance. Father's people have had it for a long time. We can only be there for about two months in the summer, but we often send our run-down or getting-better people for a week or two. The air is wonderful, but it is dull for them, lacking the attractions of Millport or Rothesay—the contempt of your town-bred for the country-dwellers is intense, and laughable. I was going to tell you about the old man who along with his wife keeps it for us. He has the softest, most delicious Border voice, and he remarked to me once, 'A' I ask in the way o' Heaven is juist Etterick—at a raisonable rent.' I thought the 'raisonable rent' rather nice. Nothing wanted for nothing, even in the Better Country."
Arthur laughed, and said the idea carried too far might turn Heaven into a collection of Small Holdings.
"But tell me one thing more. What do you do it for? I mean visiting the sick, teaching Sunday schools, handing people tracts. Is it because you think it is your duty as a parson's daughter?"
Elizabeth turned to look at her companion's face to see if he were laughing; but he was looking quite serious, and anxious for an answer.
"Do you know," she asked him, "what the Scots girl said to the Cockney tourist when he asked her if all Scots girls went barefoot? No? Then I'll tell you. She said, 'Pairtly, and pairtly they mind their ain business.'"
"I deserve it," said Arthur. "I brought it on myself."
"I'm not proud, like the barefoot girl," said Elizabeth. "I'll answer your questions as well as I can. I think I do it 'pairtly' from duty and 'pairtly' from love of it. But oh! isn't it best to leave motives alone? When I go to see Peggy it is a pure labour of love, but when I go to see fretful people who whine and don't wash I am very self-conscious about myself. I mean to say, I can't help saying to myself, 'How nice of you, my dear, to come into this stuffy room and spend your money on fresh eggs and calf's-foot jelly for this unpleasant old thing.' Then I walk home on my heels. You've readValerie Upton? Do you remember the loathly Imogen and her 'radiant goodness,' and how she stood 'forth in the light'? I sometimes have a horrid thought that I am rather like that."
"Oh no," said Arthur consolingly. "You will never become a prig. If your own sense of humour didn't save you I know what would—the knowledge thatFish would lawff."
Their walk was nearly over: they had come to the end of the road where the Setons' house stood.
"It is nice," said Elizabeth, with a happy sigh, "to think that we are going in to Father and Buff and tea. Have you got the paint-box all right? Let me be there when you give it to him."
They walked along in contented silence, until Elizabeth suddenly laughed, and explained that she had remembered a dream Buff once had about Heaven.
"He was sleeping in a little bed in my room, and he suddenly sprang up and said, 'It's a good thing that's not true, anyway.' I asked what was the matter, and he told me. He was, it seems, in a beautiful golden ship with silver sails, sailing away to Heaven, when suddenly he met another ship—a black, wicked-looking ship—bound for what Marget calls 'the Ill Place,' and to his horror he recognized all his family on board. 'What did you do, Buff?' I asked, and poor old Buff gave a great gulp and said,'I came on beside you.'"
"Sound fellow!" said Arthur.
"'O tell me what was on yer road, ye roarin' norland wind,As ye cam' blowin' frae the land that's never frae my mind?My feet they traivel England, but I'm deein' for the North—''My man, I heard the siller tides rin up the Firth o' Forth.'"Songs of Angus.
Since the afternoon when Mr. Stewart Stevenson had called and talked ballads with Mr. Seton he had been a frequent visitor at the Setons' house. Something about it, an atmosphere homely and welcoming and pleasant, made it to him a very attractive place.
One afternoon (the Thursday of the week of Arthur Townshend's visit) he stood in a discouraged mood looking at his work. As a rule moods troubled Stewart Stevenson but little; he was an artist without the artistic temperament. He had his light to follow and he followed it, feeling no need for eccentricity in the way of hair or collars or conduct. He was as placid and regular as one of his father's "time-pieces" which ticked off the flying minutes in the decorous, well-dusted rooms of "Lochnagar." His mother summed him up very well when she confessed to strangers her son's profession. "Stewart's a Nartist," she would say half proud, half deprecating, "but you'd niver know it." Poor lady, she had a horror of artist-life as it was revealed to her in the pages of the Heart's Ease Library. Sometimes dreadful qualms would seize her in the night watches, and she would waken her husband to ask if he thought there was any fear of Stewart being Led Away, and was only partially reassured by his sleepy grunts in the negative. "What's Art?" she often asked herself, with a nightmare vision in her mind of ladies lightly clad capering with masked gentlemen at some studio orgy—"What's Art compared with Respectability?" though anyone more morbidly respectable and less likely to caper with females than her son Stewart could hardly be imagined, and her mind might have been in a state of perfect peace concerning him. He went to his studio as regularly as his father went to the Ham and Butter place, and both worked solidly through the hours.
But, as I have said, this particular afternoon found Stewart Stevenson out of conceit with himself and his work. It had been a day of small vexations, and the little work he had been able to do he knew to be bad. Finally, about four o'clock, he impatiently (but very neatly) put everything away and made up his mind to take Elizabeth Seton the book-plate he had designed for her. This decision made, he became very cheerful, and whistled as he brushed his hair and put his tie straight.
The thought of the Setons' drawing-room at tea-time was very alluring. He hoped there would be no other callers and that he would get the big chair, where he could best look at the picture of Elizabeth's mother above the fireplace. It was so wonderfully painted, and the eyes were the eyes of Elizabeth.
He was not quite sure that he approved of Elizabeth. His little mother, with her admiring "Ay, that's it, Pa," to all her husband's truisms, had given him an ideal of meek womanhood which Elizabeth was far from attaining to. She showed no deference to people, unless they were poor or very old. She laughed at most things, and he was afraid she was shallow. He distrusted, too, her power of charming. That she should be greatly interested in his work and ambitions was not surprising, but that her grey eyes should be just as shining and eager over the small success of a youth in the church was merely absurd. It was her way, he told himself, to make each person she spoke to feel he was the one person who mattered. It was her job to be charming. For himself, he preferred more sincerity, and yet—what a lass to go gipsying through the world with!
When he was shown into the drawing-room a cosy scene met his eyes. The fire was at its best, the tea-table drawn up before it; Mr. Seton was laughing and shaking his head over some remark made by Elizabeth, who was pouring out tea; his particular big chair stood as if waiting for him. Everything was just as he had wished it to be, except that, leaning against the mantelpiece, stood a tall man in a grey tweed suit, a man so obviously at home that Mr. Stevenson disliked him on the spot.
"Mr. Townshend," said Elizabeth, introducing him. "Sit here, Mr. Stevenson. This is very nice. You will help me to teach Mr. Townshend something of Scots manners and customs. His ignorance isintense."
"Is that so?" said Mr. Stevenson, accepting a cup of tea and eyeing the serpent in his Eden (he had not known it was his Eden until he realized the presence of the serpent) with disfavour.
The serpent's smile, however, as he handed him some scones was very disarming, and he seemed to see no reason why he should not be popular with the new-comer. "My great desire," he confided to him over the table, "is to know what a 'U.P.' is?"
"Dear sir," said Elizabeth, "'tis a foolish ambition. Unless you are born knowing what a U.P. is you can never hope to learn. Besides, there aren't any U.P.'s now."
"Extinct?" asked Arthur.
"Well—merged," said Elizabeth.
"It's very obscure," complained Arthur. "But it is absurd to pretend that I know nothing of Scotland. I once stayed nearly three weeks in Skye."
"And," put in Mr. Seton, "the man who knows his Scott knows much of Scotland. I only wish Elizabeth knew him as you do. I believe that girl has never read one novel of Sir Walter's to the end."
"Dear Father," said Elizabeth, "I adore Sir Walter, but he shouldn't have written in such small print. Besides, thanks to you, I know heaps of quotations, so I can always make quite a fair show of knowledge."
Mr. Seton groaned.
"You're a frivolous creature," he said, "and extraordinarily ignorant."
"Yes," said his daughter, "I'm just, as someone said, 'a little brightly-lit stall in Vanity Fair'—all my goods in the shop-window. I suppose," turning to Mr. Stevenson, "you have read all Scott?"
"Not quite all, perhaps, but a lot," said that gentleman.
"Yes, I had no real hope that you hadn't. But I maintain that the knowledge you gain about people from books is a very queer knowledge. In books and in plays about Scotland you get the idea that we 'pech' and we 'hoast,' and talk constantly about ministers, and hoard our pennies. Now we are not hard as a nation——"
"Pardon me," broke in Arthur, "the one Scots story known to all Englishmen seems to point to a certain carefulness——"
"You mean," cried Elizabeth, interrupting in her turn, "that stupid tale, 'Bang gaed sixpence'? But you know the end of the tale? I thought not.'Bang gaed sixpence, maistly on wines and cigars.'The honest fellow was treating his friends."
Arthur shouted with laughter, but presently returned to the charge. "But you can't deny your fondness for ministers, or at least for theological discussion, Elizabeth?"
"Lizbeth!" said her father, "fond of ministers? This is surely a sign of grace."
"Father," said Elizabeth earnestly, "I'm not. You know I'm not. Ministers! I know all kinds of them, and I don't know which I like least. There are the smug complacent ones with sermons like prize essays, and the jovial, back-slapping ones who talk slang and hope thus to win the young men. Then there is a genteel kind with long, thin fingers and literary leanings who read the Revised Version and talk about 'a Larger Hope'; and the kind who have damp hands and theological doubts—the two always seem to go together, and——"
"That will do, Lizbeth," broke in Mr. Seton. "It's a deplorable thing to hear a person so far from perfect dealing out criticism so freely."
"Oh," said his daughter, "I am only talking aboutyoungministers. Old, wise padres, full of sincerity and simplicity and all the crystal virtues, I adore."
"Have you any more tea?" asked Mr. Seton. "I don't think I've had more than three cups."
"Four, I'm afraid," said Elizabeth; "but there's lots here."
"These are very small cups," said Mr. Seton, as he handed his to be filled again. "You will have to add that to your list of the faults of the clergy—a feminine fondness for tea."
The conversation drifted back, led by Mr. Stevenson, to the great and radical differences between England and Scotland. To emphasize these differences seemed to give him much satisfaction. He reminded them that Robert Louis Stevenson had said that never had he felt himself so much in a foreign country as on his first visit to England.
"It's quite true," he added. "I know myself I'm far more at home in France. And I don't mind my French being laughed at, I know it's bad, but it's galling to be told that my English is full of Scotticisms. They laughed at me in London when I talked about 'snibbing' the windows."
"They would," said Elizabeth, and she laughed too. "They 'fasten' their windows, or do something feeble like that. We're being very rude, Arthur; stand up for your country."
"I only wish to remark that you Scots settle down very comfortably among us alien English. Perhaps getting all the best jobs consoles you for your absence from Scotland."
"Not a bit of it," Elizabeth assured him. "We're home-sick all the time: 'My feet they traivel England, but I'mdeein'for the North.' But I'm afraid Mr. Stevenson will look on me coldly when I confess to a great affection for England. Leafy Warwick lanes, lush meadowlands, the lilied reaches of the Cherwell: I love the mellow beauty of it all. It's not my land, not my wet moorlands and wind-swept hills, but I'm bound to admit that it is a good land."
"Yes," said Mr. Stevenson, "England's a beautiful rich country, but——"
"But," Elizabeth finished for him, "it's just the 'wearifu' South' to you?"
"That's so."
"You see," said Elizabeth, nodding at Arthur Townshend; "we're hopeless."
"Do you know what you remind me of?" he asked.
"Something disgusting, I can guess by your face."
"You remind me of a St. Andrew's Day dinner somewhere in the Colonies.... By the way, where's Buff?"
"Having tea alone in the nursery, at his own request."
"Oh! the poor old chap," said Arthur. "May I go and talk to him?"
Buff, it must be explained, was in disgrace—he said unjustly. The fault was not his, he contended. It was first of all the fault of Elizabeth, who had once climbed the Matterhorn and who had fired him with a desire to be a mountaineer; and secondly, it was the fault of Aunt Alice, who had given him on his birthday a mountaineering outfit, complete with felt hat with feather, rücksack, ice-axe, and scarlet-threaded Alpine rope. Having climbed walls and trees and out-houses until they palled, he had looked about for something more difficult, and one frosty morning, when sitting on the Kirkes' ash-pit roof, Thomas drew his attention to the snowy glimmer of a conservatory three gardens away; it had a conical roof and had been freshly painted. Thomas suggested that it looked like a snow mountain. Buff, never having seen a snow mountain, agreed, adding that it was very much the shape of the Matterhorn. They decided to make the ascent that very day. Buff said that as it was the first ascent of the season the thing to do was to take a priest with them to bless it. He had seen a picture of a priest blessing the real Matterhorn. Billy, he said, had better be the priest.
Thomas objected, "I don't think Mamma would like Billy to be a priest and bless things;" but he gave in when Buff pointed out the nobility of the life.
They climbed three garden-walls, and wriggled Indian-fashion across three back-gardens; then, roping themselves securely together, they began the ascent. All went well. They reached the giddy summit, and, perilously poised, Buff was explaining to Billy his duties as a priest, when a shout came from below—an angry shout. Buff tried to look down, slipped, and clutched at the nearest support, which happened to be Billy, and the next instant, with an anguished yell, the priest fell through the mountain, dragging his companions with him.
By rights, to use the favourite phrase of Thomas, they should have been killed, but except for scrapes and bruises they were little the worse. Great, however, was the damage done to glass and plants, and loud and bitter were the complaints of the owner.
The three culprits were forbidden to visit each other for a week, their pocket-money was stopped, and various other privileges were curtailed.
Buff, seeing in the devastation wrought by his mountaineering ambitions no shadow of blame to himself, but only the mysterious working of Providence, was indignant, and had told his sister that he would prefer to take tea alone, indicating by his manner that the company of his elders in their present attitude of mind was far from congenial to him.
"May I go and talk to him?" Arthur Townshend asked, and was on his feet to go when the drawing-room door was kicked from outside, the handle turned noisily, and Buff entered.
In one day Buff played so many parts that it was difficult for his family to keep in touch with him. Sometimes he was grave and noble as befitted a knight of the Round Table, sometimes furtive and sly as a detective; again he was a highwayman, dauntless and debonair. To-night he was none of these things; to-night, in the rebound from a day's brooding on wrongs, he was frankly comic. He stood poised on one leg, in his mouth some sort of a whistle on which he performed piercingly until his father implored him to desist, when he removed the thing, and smiling widely on the company said, "But I must whistle. I'm 'the Wee Bird that cam'.'"
Elizabeth and her father laughed, and Arthur asked, "Whatdoes he say he is?"
"It's a Jacobite song," Mr. Seton explained,—"'A wee bird cam' tae oor ha' door.' He's an absurd child."
"Lessons done, Buff?" his sister asked him.
"Surely the fowls of the air are exempt from lessons," Arthur protested; but Buff, remembering that although he had allowed himself to unbend for the moment, his wrongs were still there, said in a dignified way that he had learned his lessons, and having abstracted a cheese-cake from the tea-table, he withdrew to a table in a corner with his paint-box. As he mixed colours boldly he listened, in an idle way, to the conversation that engaged his elders. It sounded to him dull, and he wondered, as he had wondered many times before, why people chose the subjects they did when there was a whole world of wonders to talk about and marvel at.
"Popularity!" Elizabeth was saying. "It's the easiest thing in the world to be popular. It only needs what Marget calls 'tack.' Appear always slightly more stupid than the person you are speaking to; always ask for information; never try to teach anybody anything; remember that when people ask for criticism they really only want praise. And of course you must never, never make personal remarks unless you have something pleasant to say. 'How tired you look!' simply means 'How plain you look!' It is so un-understanding of people to say things like that. If, instead of their silly, rude remarks, they would say, 'What a successful hat!' or 'That blue is delicious with your eyes!' and watch how even the most wilted people brighten and freshen, they wouldn't be such fools again. I don't want them to tell lies, but there is alwayssomethingthey can praise truthfully."
Her father nodded approval, and Arthur said, "Yes, but a popular man or woman needs more than tact. To be agreeable and to flatter is not enough—you must be tremendouslyworth while, so that people feel honoured by your interest. I think there is a great deal more in popularity than you allow. Watch a really popular woman in a roomful of people, and see how much of herself she gives to each one she talks to, and what generous manners she has. Counterfeit sympathy won't do, it is easily detected. It is all a question really of manners, but one must be born with good manners; they aren't acquired."
"Generous manners!" said Mr. Seton. "I like the phrase. There are people who give one the impression of having to be sparing of their affection and sympathy because their goods are all, so to speak, in the shop-window, and if they use them up there is nothing to fall back upon. Others can offer one a largesse because their life is very rich within. But, again, there are people who have the wealth within but lack the power of expression. It is the fortunate people who have been given the generous manners—Friday's bairns, born loving and giving—others have the warm instincts but they are 'unwinged from birth.'"
Stewart Stevenson nodded his head to show his approval of the sentiment, and said, "That is so."
Elizabeth laughed. "There was a great deal of feeling in the way you said that, Mr. Stevenson."
"Well," he said, with rather a rueful smile, "I've only just realized it—I'm one of the people with shabby manners."
"You have not got shabby manners," said Elizabeth indignantly. "Arthur, when I offer a few light reflections on life and manners there is no need to delve—you and Father—into the subject and make us uncomfortable imagining we haven't got things. Personally, I don't aspire to such heights, and I flatter myself I'm rather a popular person."
"An ideal minister's daughter, I'm told," said Arthur.
"Pouf! I'm certainly not that. I'm sizes too large for the part. I have positively to uncoil myself like a serpent when I sit at bedsides. I'm as long as a day without bread, as they say in Spain. But I do try very hard to be nice to the church folk. My face is positively stiff with grinning when I come home from socials and such like. An old woman said to me one day, 'A kirk is rale like a shop. In baith o' them ye've to humour yer customers!'"
"A very discerning old woman," said her father. "But you must admit, Elizabeth, that our 'customers' are worth the humouring."
"Oh! they are—except for one or two fellows of the baser sort—and I do think they appreciate our efforts."
This smug satisfaction on his sister's part was too much for Buff in his state of revolt against society. He finished laying a carmine cloud across a deeply azure sky, and said:
"It's a queer thing thatallthe Elizabeths in the world have been nasty—Queen Elizabeth and—and"—failing to find another historical instance, he concluded rather lamely, pointing with his paint-brush at his sister—"you!"
"This," Mr. Townshend remarked, "is a most unprovoked attack!"
"Little toad," said Elizabeth, looking kindly at her young brother. "Ah, well, Buff, when you are old and grey and full of years and meet with ingratitude——"
"When I'm old," said Buff callously, "you'll very likely be dead!"
She laughed. "I dare say. Anyway, I hope I don't live to beveryold."
"Why?" Mr. Stevenson asked her. "Do you dread old age? I suppose all women do."
"Why women more than men?" Elizabeth's voice was pugnacious.
"Oh, well—youth's such an asset to a woman. It must be horrible for a beautiful woman to see her beauty go."
"'Beauty is but a flowerWhich wrinkles will devour,'"
Arthur quoted, as he rose to look at Buff's drawing.
Elizabeth sat up very straight.
"Oh! If you look at life from that sort of 'from-hour-to-hour-we-ripe-and-ripe-and-then—from-hour-to-hour-we-rot-and-rot' attitude, it is a tragic thing to grow old. But surely life is more than just a blooming and a decay. Life seems to me like a Road—oh! I don't pretend to be original—a road that is always going round corners. And when we are quite young we expect to find something new and delightful round every turn. But the Road gets harder as we get farther along it, and there are often lions in the path, and unpleasant surprises meet us when we turn the corners; and it isn't always easy to be kind and honest and keep a cheerful face, and lines come, and wrinkles. But if the lines come from being sorry for others, and the wrinkles from laughing at ourselves, then they are kind lines and happy wrinkles, and there is no sense in trying to hide them with paint and powder."
"Dear me," Mr. Seton said, regarding his daughter with an amused smile. "You preach with vigour, Lizbeth. I am glad you value beauty so lightly."
"But I don't. I think beauty matters frightfully all through one's life, and even when one is dead. Think how you delight to remember beloved lovely people! The look in the eyes, the turn of the head, the way they moved and laughed—all the grace of them.... But I protest against the littleness of mourning for the passing of beauty. As my dentist says, truly if prosaically, we all come to a plate in the end; but I don't mean to be depressed about myself, no matter how hideous I get."
Mr. Townshend pointed out that the depression would be more likely to lie with the onlookers, and Buff, who always listened when his idol spoke, laughed loudly at the sally. "Haw," he said, "Elizabeth thinks she's beautiful!"
"No," his sister assured him, "I don't think I'm beautiful; but, as Marget—regrettably complacent—says of herself spiritually, 'Faigs! I'm no' bad!'"
They all laughed, then a silence fell on the room. Buff went on with his painting, and the others looked absently into the fire. Then Mr. Seton said, half to himself, "'An highway shall be there and a way ... it shall be called the way of holiness ... the wayfaring man though a fool shall not err therein.' Your Road, Lizbeth, and the Highway are one and the same. I think you will find that.... Well, well, I ought not to be sitting here. I have some visits to make before seven. Which way are you going, Mr. Stevenson? We might go together."
Stewart Stevenson murmured agreement and rose to go, very reluctantly. It had not been a satisfactory visit to him—he had never even had the heart to produce the book-plate that he had taken such pains with, and he greatly disliked leaving Elizabeth and this stranger to talk and laugh and quote poetry together while he went out into the night. This sensible and slightly stolid young man felt, somehow, hurt and aggrieved, like a child that is left out of a party.
He shivered as he stood on the doorstep, and remarked that the air felt cold after the warm room. "Miss Seton," he added, "makes people so comfortable."
"Yes," Mr. Seton agreed, "Elizabeth has the knack of making comfort. The house always seems warmer and lighter when she is in it. She is such a sunny soul."
"Your daughter is very charming," Stewart Stevenson said with conviction.
When one member of the Seton family was praised to the others they did not answer in the accepted way, "Oh! do you think so? How kind of you!" They agreed heartily. So now Mr. Seton said, "Isn'tshe?"
Then he smiled to himself, and quoted:
"'A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,And something of the Shorter Catechist.'"
Stewart Stevenson, walking home alone, admitted to himself the aptness of the quotation, and wondered what his mother would make of such a character. She would hardly value such traits in a daughter-in-law. Not, of course, that there was any question of such a thing. He knew he had not the remotest chance, and that certainty sent him in to the solid comfort of the Lochnagar dining-room feeling that the world was a singularly dull place, and nothing was left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.
*****
"Are ye going out to-night, Stewart?" his mother asked him, as they were rising from the dinner-table. There was just a note of anxiety in her voice: the Heart's Ease Library and the capering ladies were always at the back of her mind.
"It's the Shakespeare Reading to-night, and I wasn't at the last. I think I'll look in for an hour. I see that it's at Mrs. Forsyth's to-night."
Mrs. Stevenson nodded, well satisfied. No harm could come to a young man who went to Shakespeare Readings. She had never been at one herself, and rather confused them in her mind with Freemasons, but she knew they were Respectable. She had met Mrs. Forsyth that very day, calling at another villa, and she had mentioned that it was her evening for Shakespeare.
Mrs. Forsyth was inclined to laugh about it.
"I don't go in all the evening," she told Mrs. Stevenson, "because you have to sit quiet and listen; but I whiles take my knitting and go in to see how they're getting on. There they all are, as solemn as ye like, with Romeo, Romeo here and somebody else there—folk that have been dead very near from the beginning of the world. I take a good laugh to myself when I come out. And it's hungry work too, mind you. They do justice to my sangwiches, I can tell you."
But though she laughed, Mrs. Forsyth had a great respect for Shakespeare. Her son Hugh thought well of him and that was enough for her.
Stewart Stevenson was a little late, and the parts had been given out and the Reading begun.
He stood at the door for a moment looking round the room. Miss Gertrude Simpson gave him a glance of recognition and moved ever so slightly, as if to show that there was room beside her on the sofa, but he saw Jessie Thomson over on the window-seat—it was at the Thomson's that he had met Elizabeth Seton; the Thomsons went to Mr. Seton's church; it was not the rose but it was someone who at times was near the rose—and he went and sat down beside Jessie.
That young woman got no more good of Shakespeare that evening. (She did not even see that it was funny that Falstaff should be impersonated by a most genteel spinster with a cold in her head, who got continual shocks at what she found herself reading, and murmured, "Oh! I beg your pardon," when she waded into depths and could not save herself in time.) The beauty and the wit of it passed her unnoticed. Stewart Stevenson was sitting beside her.
There was no chance of conversation while the reading lasted, but later on, over the "sangwiches" and the many other good things that hearty Mrs. Forsyth offered to her guests, they talked.
He recalled the party at the Thomsons' house and said how much he had enjoyed it; then she found herself talking about the Setons. She told him about Mrs. Seton, so absurdly pretty for a minister's wife, about the Seton children who had been so wild when they were little, and about Mr. Seton not being a bit strict with them.
"It's an awful unfashionable church," she finished, "but we're all fond of Mr. Seton and Elizabeth, and Father won't leave for anything."
"Your father is a wise man. I have a great admiration for Mr. Seton myself."
"Elizabeth's lovely, isn't she?" said Jessie. "So tall." Jessie herself was small and round.
"Too tall for a woman," said Mr. Stevenson.
"Oh! do you think so?" said Jessie, with a pleased thrill in her voice.
Before they parted Jessie had shyly told Mr. Stevenson that they were at home to their friends, "for a little music, you know," on the evenings of first and fourth Thursdays; and Mr. Stevenson, while he noted down the dates, asked himself why he had never noticed before what a sensible, nice girl Miss Thomson was.
"Sir, the merriment of parsons is very offensive."Dr. Johnson.
When Mr. Seton had gone, and taken Stewart Stevenson with him, Elizabeth and Arthur sat on by the fire lazily talking. Arthur asked some question about the departed visitor.
"He is an artist," Elizabeth told him. "Some day soon, I hope, we shall allude to him as Mr. Stewart Stevensontheartist. He is really frightfully good at his job, and he never makes a song about himself. Perhaps he will go to London soon and set the Thames on fire, and become a fashionable artist with a Botticelli wife."
"I hope not," Arthur said. "He seems much too good a fellow for such a fate."
"Yes, he is. Besides, he will never need to think of the money side of his art—the Butter and Ham business will see to that—but will be able to work for the joy of working. Dear me! how satisfactory it all seems, to be sure. My good sir, you look very comfortable. I hope you remember that you are going to a party to-night."
"What!My second last evening, too. What a waste! Can't we send a telephone message, or wire that something has happened? I say, do let's do that."
Elizabeth assured him that that sort of thing was not done in Glasgow. She added that it was very kind of the Christies to invite them, and having thus thrown a sop to hospitality she proceeded to prophesy the certain dulness of the evening and to deplore the necessity of going.
"Why people give parties is always a puzzle to me," Arthur said. "I don't suppose they enjoy their own parties, and as a guest I can assure them that I don't. Who and what and why are the Christies?"
"Don't speak in that superior tone. The Christies are minister's folk like ourselves. One of the daughters, Kirsty, is a great friend of mine, and there is a dear funny little mother who lies a lot on the sofa. Mr. Johnston Christie—he is very particular about the Johnston—I find quite insupportable; and Archie, the son, is worse. But I believe they are really good and well-meaning—and, remember, you are not to laugh at them."
"My dear Elizabeth! This Hamlet-like advice——"
"Oh, I know you don't need lessons in manners from me. It will be a blessing, though, if you can laugh at Mr. Christie, for he believes himself to be a humorist of a high order. The sight of him takes away any sense of humour that I possess, and reduces me to a state of utter depression."
"It sounds like being an entertaining evening. When do we go?"
"About eight o'clock, and we ought to get away about ten with any luck."
Mr. Townshend sighed. "It will pass," he said, "but it's the horrid waste that I grudge. Promise that we shan't go anywhere to-morrow night—not even to a picture house."
"Have I ever taken you to a picture house? Say another word and I shall insist on your going with me to the Band of Hope. Now behave nicely to-night, for Mr. Christie, his own origin being obscure, is very keen on what he calls 'purfect gentlemen.' Oh! and don't change. The Christies think it side. That suit you have on will do very nicely."
Mr. Townshend got up from his chair and stood smiling down at Elizabeth.
"I promise you I shan't knock the furniture about or do anything obstreperous. You are an absurd creature, Elizabeth, as your father often says. Your tone to me just now was exactly your tone to Buff. I rather liked it."
*****
At ten minutes past eight they presented themselves at the Christies' house. The door was opened by a servant, but Kirsty met them in the hall and took them upstairs. She looked very nice, Elizabeth thought, and was more demonstrative than usual, holding her friend's hand till they entered the drawing-room.
It seemed to the new-comers that the room was quite full of people, all standing up and all shouting, but the commotion resolved itself into Mr. Johnston Christie telling one of his stories to two clerical friends. He came forward to greet them. He was a tall man and walked with a rolling gait; he had a stupid but shrewd face and a bald head. His greeting was facetious, and he said every sentence as if it were an elocution lesson.
"Honoured, Miss Seton, that you should visit our humble home. How are you, sir? Take a chair. Taketwochairs!!"
"Thank you very much," Elizabeth said gravely, "but may I speak to Mrs. Christie first?"
She introduced Mr. Townshend to his hostess, and then, casting him adrift on this clerical sea, she sat down by the little woman and inquired carefully about her ailments. The bronchitis had been very bad, she was told. Elizabeth would notice that she was wearing a shawl? That was because she wasn't a bit sure that she was wise in coming up to the drawing-room, which was draughty. (The Christies as a general rule sat in their dining-room, which between meals boasted of a crimson tablecover with an aspidistra in a pot in the middle of the table.) Besides, gas fires never did agree with her—nasty, headachy things, that burned your face and left your feet cold. (Mrs. Christie glared vindictively as she spoke at the two imitation yule logs that burned drearily on the hearth.) But on the whole she was fairly well, but feeling a bit upset to-night. Well, not upset exactly, but flustered, for she had a great bit of news. Could Elizabeth guess?
Elizabeth said she could not.
"Look at Kirsty," Mrs. Christie said.
Elizabeth looked across to where Kirsty sat beside a thin little clergyman, and noticed she looked rather unusually nice. She was not only more carefully dressed, but her face looked different; not so sallow, almost as though it had been lit up from inside.
"Kirsty looks very well," she said, "very happy. Has anything specially nice happened?"
"She's just got engaged to the minister beside her," Mrs. Christie whispered hoarsely.
The whisper penetrated through the room, and Kirsty and her fiancé blushed deeply.
"Kirsty!Engaged!" gasped Elizabeth.
"Well," said her mother, "I don't wonder you're surprised. I was myself. Somehow I never thought Kirsty would marry, but you never know; and he's a nice wee man, and asks very kindly after my bronchitis—he's inclined to be asthmatic himself, and that makes a difference. He hasn't got a church yet; that's a pity, for he's been out a long time, but Mr. Christie'll do his best for him.He's mebbe not a very good preacher." Again she whispered, to her companion's profound discomfort.
"I am sure he is," Elizabeth said firmly.
"He's nothing to look at, and appearances go a long way."
"Oh! please don't; he hears you," Elizabeth implored, holding Mrs. Christie's hand to make her stop. "He looks very nice. What is his name?"
"Haven't I told you? Andrew Hamilton, and he'sthree years younger than Kirsty."
"That doesn't matter at all. I do hope they will be very happy. Dear old Kirsty!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Christie, "but we can't look forward. We know not what a day may bring forth—nor an hour either, for that matter. Just last night I got up to ring the bell in the dining-room—I wanted Janet to bring me a hot-water bottle for my feet—and before I knew I had fallen over the coal-scuttle, and Janet had to carry me back to the sofa. I felt quite solemnised to think how quickly trouble would come. No, no, we can't look forward——Well, well, here's Mr. M'Cann. Don't go away, Elizabeth;I can't bear the man!" Again that fell whisper, which, however, was drowned in the noise that Mr. Christie and the new-comer made in greeting each other. Mr. M'Cann was a large man with thick hands. He was an ardent politician and the idol of a certain class of people. He boasted that he was a self-made man, though to a casual observer the result hardly seemed a subject for pride.
He came up to his hostess and began to address her as if she were a large (and possibly hostile) audience. Mrs. Christie shrank farther into her shawl and looked appealingly at Elizabeth, who would fain have fled to the other side of the room, where Arthur Townshend, with his monocle screwed tightly into his eye, was sitting looking as lonely as if he were on a peak in Darien, though the son of the house addressed to him a condescending remark now and again.
Mr. M'Cann spoke with a broad West Country accent. He said it helped him to get nearer the Heart of the People.
"Yes, Mrs. Christie," he bellowed, "I'm alone. Lizzie's washin' the weans, for the girrl's gone off in a tantrum. She meant to come to-night, for she likes a party—Lizzie has never lost her girrlish ways—but when I got back this evening—I've been down in Ayrshire addressin' meetin's for the Independent Candidate. What meetin's! They just hung on my lips; it was grand!—when I got back I found the whole place turned up, and Lizzie and the weans in the kitchen. It's a homely house ours, Miss Seton. So I said to her, 'I'll just wash my dial and go off and make your apologies'—and here I am!"
Here indeed he was, and Elizabeth wanted so much to know why he had not stayed at home and helped his little overworked wife that she felt if she stayed another moment she must ask him, so she fled from temptation, and found a vacant chair beside Kirsty.
Archie Christie strolled up to speak to her; he rather admired Elizabeth—'distangay-looking girl' he called her in his own mind.
"Frightfully clerical show here to-night," he said.
Elizabeth agreed; then she pinched Kirsty's arm and asked her to introduce Mr. Hamilton.
It did not take Elizabeth many minutes to make up her mind that Kirsty had found a jewel. Mr. Hamilton might not be much to look at, but goodness shone out of his eyes. His quiet manner, his kind smile, the simple directness of his speech were as restful to Elizabeth after the conversational efforts of Mr. M'Cann as a quiet haven to a storm-tossed mariner.
"I haven't got a church yet," he told her, "though I've been out a long time. Somehow I don't seem to be a very pleasing preacher. I'm told I'm too old-fashioned, not 'broad' enough nor 'fresh' enough for modern congregations."
Elizabeth struck her hands together in wrath.
"Oh!" she cried, "those hateful expressions! I wonder what people think they mean by them? When I hear men sacrificing depth to breadth or making merry-andrews of themselves striving after originality, I long for an old-fashioned minister—one who is neither broad nor fresh, but who magnifies his office. That is the proper expression, isn't it? You see I'm not a minister's daughter for nothing!... But don't let's talk about worrying things. We have heaps of nice things in common. First of all, we have Kirsty in common."
So absorbing did this topic prove that they were both quite aggrieved when Mr. Christie came to ask Elizabeth to sing, and with many fair words and set phrases led her to the piano.
"And what," he asked, "do you think of Christina's choice?"
Elizabeth replied suitably; and Mr. Christie continued:
"Quite so. A fine fellow—cultured, ye know, cultured and a purfect gentleman, but a little lacking in push. Congregations like a man who knows his way about, Miss Seton. You can't do much in this world without push."
"I dare say not. What shall I sing? Will you play for me, Kirsty?"
At nine o'clock the company went down to supper.
Mrs. Christie, to whom as to Chuchundra the musk-rat, every step seemed fraught with danger, said she would not venture downstairs again, but would slip away to bed.
At supper Arthur Townshend found himself between the other Miss Christie, who was much engrossed with the man on her right, and an anæmic-looking young woman, the wife of one of the ministers present, who when conversed with said "Ya-as" and turned away her head.
This proved so discouraging that presently he gave up the attempt, and tried to listen to the conversation that was going on between Elizabeth and Mr. M'Cann.
"Let me see," Mr. M'Cann was saying, "where is your father's church? Oh ay, down there, is it? A big, half-empty kirk. I know it fine. Ay, gey stony ground, and if you'll excuse me saying it, your father's not the man for the job. What they want is a man who will start a P.S.A. and a band and give them a good rousing sermon. A man with a sense of humour. A man who can say strikin' things in the pulpit." (He sketched the ideal man, and his companion had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of Mr. M'Cann himself.) "With the right man that church might be full. Not, mind you, that I'm saying anything against your father, he does his best; but he's not advanced enough, he belongs to the old evangelicals—congregations like something brighter."
Presently he drifted into politics, and lived over again his meetings in Ayrshire, likening himself to Alexander Peden and Richard Cameron, until Elizabeth, whose heart within her was hot with hate, turned the flood of his conversation into another channel by asking some question about his family.
Four children he said he had, all very young; but he seemed to take less interest in them than in the fact that Lizzie, his wife, found it quite impossible to keep a "girrl." It was surprising to hear how bitterly this apostle of Freedom spoke of the "bit servant lasses" on whose woes he loved to dilate from the pulpit when he was inveighing against the idle, selfish rich.
Two imps of mischief woke in Elizabeth's grey eyes as she listened.
"Yes," she agreed, as her companion paused for a second in his indictment. "Servants are a nuisance. What a relief it would be to have slaves!"
"Whit's that?" said Mr. M'Cann, evidently not believing he had heard aright.
Elizabeth leaned towards him, her face earnest and sympathetic, her voice, when she spoke, honey-sweet, "like doves taboring upon their breasts."
"I said wouldn't it be delightful if we had slaves—nice fat slaves?"
Mr. M'Cann's eyes goggled in his head. He was quite incapable of making any reply, so he took out a day-before-yesterday's handkerchief and blew his nose; while Elizabeth continued: "Of course we wouldn't be cruel to them—not like Legree inUncle Tom's Cabin. But just imagine the joy of not having to tremble before them! To be able to make a fuss when the work wasn't well done, to be able to grumble when the soup was watery and the pudding burnt—imagine, Mr. M'Cann, imagine havingthe power of life and death over the cook!"
Arthur Townshend, listening, laughed to himself; but Mr. M'Cann did not laugh. This impudent female had dared to make fun of him! With a snort of wrath he turned to his other neighbour and began to thunder platitudes at her which she had done nothing to deserve, and which she received with an indifferent "Is that so?" which further enraged him.
Elizabeth, having offended one man, turned her attention to the one on her other side, who happened to be Kirsty's fiancé, and enjoyed snatches of talk with him between Mr. Christie's stories, that gentleman being incorrigibly humorous all through supper.
When they got up to go away, Kirsty went with Elizabeth into the bedroom for her cloak.
"Kirsty, dear, I'm so glad," Elizabeth said.
Kirsty sat solidly down on a chair beside the dressing-table.
"So am I," she said. "I had almost given up hope. Oh! I know it's not a nice thing to say, but I don't care. You don't know what it means never to be first with anyone, to know you don't matter, that no one needs you. At home—well, Father has his church, and Mother has her bronchitis, and Kate has her Girl's Club, and Archie has his office, and they don't seem to feel the need of anything else. And you, Lizbeth, you never cared for me as I cared for you. You have so many friends; but I have no pretty ways, and I've a sharp tongue, and I can't help seeing through people, so I don't make friends.... And oh! how I have wanted a house of my own! That's not the proper thing to say either, but I have—a place of my own to polish and clean and keep cosy. I pictured it so often—specially, somehow, the storeroom. I knew where I would put every can on the shelves."
She rubbed with her handkerchief along the smooth surface of the dressing-table. "Every spring when I polished the furniture I thought, 'Next spring, perhaps, I'll polish my own best bedroom furniture'; but nobody looked the road I was on. Then Andrew came, and—I couldn't believe it at first—he liked me, he wanted to talk to me, he looked at me first when he came into the room.... He's three years younger than me, and he's not at all good-looking, but he's mine, and when he looks at me I feel like a queen crowned."
Elizabeth swallowed an awkward lump in her throat, and stood fingering the crochet edge of the toilet-cover without saying anything.
Then Kirsty jumped up, her own bustling little self again, rather ashamed of her long speech.
"Here I am keeping you, and Mr. Townshend standing waiting in the lobby. Poor man! He seems nice, Lizbeth, but he'sawfullyEnglish."
Elizabeth followed her friend to the door, and stooping down, kissed her. "Bless you, Kirsty," she said.
She was rather silent on the way home. She said Mr. Christie's jocularity had depressed her.
"I supposeImay not laugh," Mr. Townshend remarked, "but I think Fish would have 'lawffed.' That's a good idea of yours about slaves."
"Were you listening?" she smiled ruefully. "It was wretched of me, when you think of that faithful couple, Marget and Ellen. That's the worst of this world, you can't score off one person without hurting someone quite innocent."
They found Mr. Seton sitting by the drawing-room fire. He had had a harassed day, waging warfare against sin and want (a war that to us seems to have no end and no victory, for still sin flaunts in the slums or walks our streets with mincing feet, and Lazarus still sits at our gates, "an abiding mystery," receiving his evil things), and he was taking the taste of it out of his mind with a chapter fromGuy Mannering.
So far away was he under the Wizard's spell that he hardly looked up when the revellers entered the room, merely remarking, "Just listen to this." He read:
"'I remember the tune well,' he said. He took the flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody.... She immediately took up the song:
'Are these the links of Forth, she said;Or are they the crooks of Dee,Or the bonny woods of Warrock HeadThat I so plainly see?'