CHAPTER III
Both my grandmothers were very religious, one more ostentatiously than the other. When a young child I distinguished them by calling one the grandmother who said prayers, and the other the grandmother who made cakes. I had a strong preference for the one who made cakes. Her plain fruit cake, undefiled by messy icing of chocolate or sugar, was a production worthy of remembrance.
My great-grandfather was to me just an old man, very old and blind, who sat by the fire all day long, and spoke little, and then in a harsh cold voice, with a strong Scotch accent. He lived in a large house on a dingy, but a highly respectable street, with four old daughters and one son, who I discovered did not love him very much.
Visiting my great-grandfather’s house was like passing suddenly into old-fashioned long-passed times. My ancient great-aunts were very prim and very properly made-up ladies, looking as much alike and as smooth and shiny as four silk hats just out of bandboxes.
“Here’s Jack,” Aunt Elizabeth would say when I arrived, and I would be gently pushed towards my great-grandfather who sat in the hall in a big high-backed arm-chair, combing his long white beard with his fingers. “Weel, laddie?” the old fellow would growl, and he would reach out to feel me and pat my head with his large hand.
My great-aunts were very proud of their descent,which they claimed from the Duke of Argyle. I never was interested enough to ask how far they had descended from the noble duke. They helped out a meagre fortune by keeping a genteel dressmaking establishment patronised by a few select people. In their house I played Blind Man’s Buff, Puss in the Corner, and other dead and gone games; drank raspberry vinegar and ate plum cake.
My great-uncle was a curiosity. He did not drink, smoke nor work. He was a little wizened, dried-up fellow with a much wrinkled face the colour of a potato. He lived on his sisters, who made everything he wore but his hat and boots, and his clothes were certainly remarkable.
After his death I heard my father say to some card-playing cronies, “We planted Uncle Allan to-day.” Everybody laughed, but I thought it was hard-hearted. Nothing about my great-uncle seemed, however, to matter, or to be serious, not even his death. He inspired neither dislike nor fondness. He was just one of those who do not count—a human vegetable.
A pack of cards was a thing never seen in the houses of my great-grandfather or either of my grandmothers, but in our house they were the main source of amusement. Father could not see the harm in cards that the older branches of our family saw. My earliest memories are associated with cards. Father played nearly nightly except on Sundays. Every one who came to our house was a card-player. The neighbours with whom we associated were card players. Possibly cards are a safe amusement for a certain type of character. They are like everything else—used with discretion they are good; without discretion, and in league with drink and gambling, they are bad.
Thus it came about quite naturally that while still young I learned many games of cards. If father and I were left alone together of an evening we played cribbage. If we were three—mother, he and I—we played bezique. If we were four it was whist. If others dropped in, or were invited, we played draw-poker for a small stake. Draw-poker never got disreputable or blood-thirsty in our house, as a very low stake was the rule.
Through cards I came to distrust my father’s judgment. He played games of cards the way he felt, sometimes playing with rare skill, at other times madly and feverishly, without thought or judgment. He was a man of impulse. If I had wholly distrusted his wisdom, instead of allowing myself to be dominated by his high-handedness, his life and mine might have been very different. But I was brought up in the days when authority of whatever kind was worshipped. To-day authority must “show cause.” I see now that my father played the game of life the same as he played cards—by impulse, by intuition. I was taught to believe that what he said was sound and wise; and if I continued in this belief for many years, it is not to be wondered at. I had better card-sense than he; but it does not follow that my sense was better in other things.