"Say it to me Lizbeth," said Buff, who had left his book when his
sister began to read aloud.
"You wouldn't understand it, sonny."
"But I like the sound of the words," Buff protested. So Elizabeth said
it again.
"Who said Peacock Pie?
The old King to the Sparrow...."
"I like it," said Buff, when she had finished. "Say me another."
"Not now, son. I want to talk to Kirsty now. When you go to bed I shall
read you a lovely one about a Zebra called Abracadeebra. Have you done
your lessons for to-morrow? No? Well, do them now. Thomas and Billy
will do them with you--and in half an hour I'll play 'Yellow Dog
Dingo.'"
Having mapped out the evening for her young brother, Elizabeth rose
from her lowly position on the hearth-rug, drew forward a chair, and
said, "Now, Kirsty, we'll have a talk."
That Elizabeth Seton and Christina Christie should be friends seemed a
most improbable thing. They were both ministers' daughters, but there
any likeness ended. It seemed as if there could be nothing in common
between this tall golden Elizabeth with her impulsive ways, her rapid
heedless speech, her passion for poetry, her faculty for making new
friends at every turn, and Christina, short, dark, and neat, with a
mind as well-ordered as her raiment, suspicious of strangers and
chilling with her nearest--and yet a very true friendship did exist.
"How is your mother?" asked Elizabeth.
"Mother's wonderful. Father has been in the house three days with
lumbago. Jeanie has a cold too. I think it's the damp weather. This is
my month of housekeeping. I wish, Elizabeth, you would tell me some new
puddings. Archie says ours are so dull."
Elizabeth immediately threw herself into the subject of puddings.
"I know one new pudding, but it takes two days to make and it's very
expensive. We only have it for special people. You know 'Aunt Mag,' of
course? and 'Uncle Tom'? That's only 'Aunt Mag' with treacle. Semolina,
sago, big rice--we call those milk things, we don't dignify them by the
name of pudding. What else is there? Tarts, oh! and bread puddings, and
there's that greasy kind you eat with syrup, suet dumplings. A man in
the church was very ill, and the doctor said he hadn't any coating or
lining or something inside him, because his wife hadn't given him any
suet dumplings."
"Oh, Elizabeth!"
"A fact, I assure you," said Elizabeth. "We always have a suet dumpling
once a week because of that. I'm afraid I'm not being very helpful,
Kirsty. Do let's think of something quite new, only it's almost sure
not to be good. That is so discouraging about the dishes one
invents.... Apart from puddings, how is Archie?"
"Oh, he's quite well, and doing very well in business. He has Father's
good business head."
"Yes," said Elizabeth. She did not admire anything about the Rev.
Johnston Christie, least of all his business head. He was a large
pompous man, with a booming voice and a hearty manner, and he had what
is known in clerical circles as a "suburban charge." Every Sunday the
well-dressed, well-fed congregation culled from villadom to which he
ministered filled the handsome new church, and Mr. Christie's heart
grew large within him as he looked at it. He was a poor preacher but an
excellent organiser: he ran a church as he would have run a grocery
establishment. His son Archie was exactly like him, but Christina had
something of her mother, a deprecating little woman with feeble health
and a sense of humour whom Elizabeth called Chuchundra after the
musk-rat in the _Jungle Book_ that could never summon up courage to run
into the middle of the room.
"Yes," said Elizabeth, "I foresee a brilliant future for Archie, full
of money and motor-cars and knighthoods."
"Oh! I don't know," said Christina, "but I think he has the knack of
making money. How are your brothers?"
"Both well, I'm glad to say. Walter has got a new job--in the
Secretariat--and finds it vastly entertaining. Alan seems keener about
polo than anything else, but he's only a boy after all."
"You talk as if you were fifty at least."
"I'm getting on," said Elizabeth. "Twenty-eight is a fairly ripe age,
don't you think?"
"No, I don't," said Christina somewhat shortly. Christina was
thirty-five.
"Buff asked me yesterday if I remembered Mary Queen of Scots," went on
Elizabeth, "and he alluded to me in conversation with Thomas as 'my
elderly nasty sister.'"
"Cheeky little thing!" said Christina. "You spoil that child."
Elizabeth laughed, and by way of turning the conversation asked
Christina's advice as to what would sell best at coming bazaars. At all
bazaar work Christina was an expert, and she had so many valuable hints
to give that long before she had come to an end of them Elizabeth was
hauled away to play "Yellow Dog Dingo."
Christina had little liking for children, and it was with unconcealed
horror that she watched her friend bounding from _Little God Nqu_
(Billy) to _Middle God Nquing_ (Buff), then to _Big God Nquong_
(Thomas), begging to be made different from all other animals, and
wonderfully popular by five o'clock in the afternoon.
It was rather an exhausting game and necessitated much shouting and
rushing up and down stairs, and after everyone had had a chance of
playing in the title role, Elizabeth sank breathless, flushed and
dishevelled, into a chair.
"Well, I _must_ say----" said Christina.
"Come on again," shouted Billy, while Thomas and Buff loped up and down
the room.
"No--no," panted Elizabeth, "you're far too hot as it is. What will
'Mamma' say if you go home looking like Red Indians?"
Mr. Seton, quite undisturbed by the noise, had been engrossed in the
poetry book, but now he laid it down and looked at his watch.
"I must be going," he said.
But the three boys threw themselves on him--"A bit of Willy Wud; just a
little bit of Willy Wud," they pleaded.
James Seton was an inspired teller of tales, and Willy Wud was one of
his creations. His adventures--and surely no one ever had stranger and
more varied adventures--made a sort of serial story for "after tea" on
winter evenings.
"Where did we leave him?" he asked, sitting down obediently.
"Don't you remember, Father?" said Buff. "In the Robbers' Cave."
"He was just untying that girl," said Thomas.
"She wasn't a girl," corrected Billy, "she was a princess."
"It's the same thing," said Thomas. "He was untying her when he found
the Robber Chief looking at him with a knife in his mouth."
So the story began and ended all too soon for the eager listeners, and
Mr. Seton hurried away to his work.
"Say good-night, Thomas and Billy," said Elizabeth, "and run home. It's
very nearly bed-time."
"To-morrow's Saturday," said Thomas suggestively.
"So it is. Ask 'Mamma' if you may come to tea, and come over directly
you have had dinner."
Thomas looked dissatisfied.
"Couldn't I say to Mamma you would like us to come to dinner? Then we
could come just after breakfast. You see, there's that house we're
building----"
"I'm going to buy nails with my Saturday penny," said Billy.
"By all means come to dinner," said Elizabeth, "if Mamma doesn't mind.
Good-night, sonnies--now run."
She opened the front-door for them, and watched them scud across the
road to their own gate--then she went back to the drawing-room.
"I must be going too," said Miss Christie, sitting back more
comfortably in her chair.
"It's Band of Hope night," said Elizabeth.
Buff had been marching up and down the room, with Launcelot in his
arms, telling himself a story, but he now came and leant against his
sister. She stroked his hair as she asked, "What's the matter, Buffy
boy?"
"I wish," said Buff, "that I lived in a house where people didn't go to
meetings."
"But I'm not going out till you're in bed. We shall have time for
reading and everything. Say good-night to Christina, and see if Ellen
has got your bath ready. And, Buff," she said, as he went out of the
door, "pay particular attention to your knees--scrub them with a brush;
and don't forget your fair large ears, my gentle joy."
"Those boys are curiosities," said Miss Christie. "What house is this
they're building?"
"It's a Shelter for Homeless Cats," said Elizabeth, "made of orange
boxes begged from the grocer. I think it was Buff's idea to start with,
but Thomas has the clever hands. Must you go?"
"These chairs are too comfortable," said Miss Christie, as she rose;
"they make one lazy. If I were you, Elizabeth, I wouldn't let Buff talk
to himself and tell himself stories. He'll grow up queer.... You
needn't laugh."
"I'm very sorry, Christina. I'm afraid we're a frightfully eccentric
family, but you'll come and see us all the same, won't you?"
Miss Christie looked at her tall friend, and a quizzical smile lurked
at the corner of her rather dour mouth. "Ay, Elizabeth," she said, "you
sound very humble, but I wouldn't like to buy you at your own
valuation, my dear."
Elizabeth put her hands on Christina's shoulders as she kissed her
good-night. "You're a rude old Kirsty," she said, "but I dare say
you're right."
_CHAPTER VI_
"How now, sir? What are you reasoning with yourself?
Nay, I was rhyming; 'tis you that have the reason."
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_.
About a fortnight later--it was Saturday afternoon--an April day
strayed into November, and James Seton walked in his garden and was
grateful.
He had his next day's sermon in his hand and as he walked he studied
it, but now and again he would lift his head to look at the blue sky,
or he would stoop and touch gently the petals of a Christmas-rose,
flowering bravely if sootily in the border. Behind the hedge, on the
drying green, Thomas and Billy and Buff disported themselves. They had
been unusually quiet, but now the sound of raised voices drew Mr. Seton
to the scene of action. Looking over the hedge, he saw an odd sight.
Thomas lay grovelling on the ground; Billy, with a fierce black
moustache sketched on his cherubic face, sat on the roof of the
ash-pit; while Buff, a bulky sack strapped on his back, struggled in
the arms of Marget the cook.
"Gie me that bag, ye ill laddie," she was saying.
"What's the matter, Marget?" Mr. Seton asked mildly.
Buff was butting Marget wildly with his head, but hearing his father's
voice, he stopped to explain.
"It's my sins, Father," he gasped.
"It's naething o' the kind, sir; it's ma bag o' claes-pins. Stan' up,
David, this meenit. D'ye no' see ye're fair scrapin' it i' the mud?"
Thomas raised his head.
"We're pilgrims, Mr. Seton," he explained. "I'm Hopeful, and Buff's
Christian. This is me in Giant Despair's dungeon;" and he rolled on his
face and realistically chewed the grass to show the extent of his
despair.
"But you've got your facts wrong," said Mr. Seton. "Christian has lost
his load long before he got to Doubting Castle."
"Then," said Buff, picking himself up and wriggling out of the straps
which tied the bag to his person--"then, Marget, you can have your old
clothes-pins."
"Gently, my boy," said his father. "Hand the bag to Marget and say
you're sorry."
"Sorry, Marget," said Buff in a very casual tone, as he heaved the bag
at her.
Marget received it gloomily, prophesied the probable end of Buff, and
went indoors.
Buff joined Thomas in the dungeon of Doubting Castle.
"Why is Billy sitting up there?" asked Mr. Seton.
"He's Apollyon," said Thomas, "and he's coming down in a minute to
straddle across the way. By rights, I should have been Apollyon----"
Mr. Seton's delighted survey of the guileless fiend on the ash-pit roof
was interrupted by Ellen, who came with a message that Mr. Stevenson
had called and would Mr. Seton please go in.
In the drawing-room he found Elizabeth conversing with a tall young
man, and from the fervour with which she welcomed his appearance he
inferred that it was not altogether easy work.
"Father," said Elizabeth, "you remember I told you about meeting Mr.
Stevenson at the Thomsons' party? He has brought us such a treasure of
a ballad book to look over. Do let my father see it, Mr. Stevenson."
James Seton greeted the visitor in his kind, absent-minded way, and sat
down to discuss ballads with him, while Elizabeth, having, so to speak,
laboured in rowing, lay back and studied Mr. Stevenson. That he was an
artist she knew. She also knew his work quite well and that it was
highly thought of by people who mattered. He had a nice face, she
thought; probably not much sense of humour, but tremendously decent.
She wondered what his people were like. Poor, she imagined--perhaps a
widowed mother, and he had educated himself and made every inch of his
own way. She felt a vicarious stir of pride in the thought.
As a matter of fact she was quite wrong, and Stewart Stevenson's
parents would have been much hurt if they had known her thoughts.
His father was a short, fat little man with a bald head, who had dealt
so successfully in butter and ham that he now occupied one of the
largest and reddest villas in Maxwell Park (Lochnagar was its name) and
every morning was whirled in to business in a Rolls-Royce car.
For all his worldly success Mr. Stevenson senior remained a simple
soul. His only real passion in life (apart from his sons) was for what
he called "time-pieces." Every room in Lochnagar contained at least two
clocks. In the drawing-room they had alabaster faces and were supported
by gilt cupids; in the dining-room they were of dignified black marble;
the library had one on the mantelpiece and one on the
writing-table--both of mahogany with New Art ornamentations. Two
grandfather-clocks stood in the hall--one on the staircase and one on
the first landing. Mr. Stevenson liked to have one minute's difference
in the time of each clock, and when it came to striking the result was
nerve-shattering. Mrs. Stevenson had a little nut-cracker face and a
cross look which, as her temper was of the mildest, was most
misleading. Her toque--she wore a toque now instead of a bonnet--was
always a little on one side, which gave her a slightly distracted look.
Her clothes were made of the best materials and most expensively
trimmed, but somehow nothing gave the little woman a moneyed look. Even
the Russian sables her husband had given her on her last birthday
looked, on her, more accidental than opulent. Her husband was her
oracle and she hung on his words, invariably capping all his comments
on life and happenings with "Ay. That's it, Pa."
Their pride in their son was touching. His height, his good looks, his
accent, his "gentlemanly" manners, his love of books, his talent as an
artist, kept them wondering and amazed. They could not imagine how they
had come to have such a son. It was certainly disquieting for Mr.
Stevenson who read nothing but the newspapers on week-days and _The
British Weekly_ on the Sabbath, and for his wife who invariably fell
asleep when she attempted to dally with even the lightest form of
literature, to have a son whose room was literally lined with books and
who would pore with every mark of enjoyment over the dullest of tomes.
His artistic abilities were not such a phenomenon, and could be traced
back to a sister of Mr. Stevenson's called Lizzie who had sketched in
crayons and died young.
Had Stewart Stevenson been a poor man's son he would probably have
worked long without recognition, eaten the bread of poverty and found
his studio-rent a burden, but, so contrariwise do things work, with an
adoring father and a solid Ham and Butter business at his back his
pictures found ready purchasers.
To be honest, Mr. Stevenson senior was somewhat astonished at the taste
shown by his son's patrons. To him the Twopence Coloured was always
preferable to the Penny Plain. He could not help wishing that his son
would try to paint things with a little more colour in them. He liked
Highland cattle standing besides a well, with a lot of purple heather
about; or a snowy landscape with sheep in the foreground and the sun
setting redly behind a hill. He was only bewildered when told to remark
this "sumptuous black," that "seductive white." He saw "no 'colour' in
the smoke from a chimney, or 'bloom' in dingy masonry viewed through
smoke haze." To him "nothing looked fine" save on a fine day, and he
infinitely preferred the robust oil-paintings on the walls of Lochnagar
to his son's delicate black-and-white work.
But he would not for worlds have admitted it....
To return. As Elizabeth sat listening to the conversation of her father
and Stewart Stevenson, Ellen announced "Mr. Jamieson," and a thin, tall
old man came into the room. He was lame and walked with the help of two
sticks. When he saw a stranger he hung back, but James Seton sprang up
to welcome him, and Elizabeth said as she shook hands:
"You've come at the most lucky moment. We are talking about your own
subject, old Scots songs and ballads. Mr. Stevenson is quite an
authority."
As the old man shook hands with the young one, "I do like," he said,
"to hear of a young man caring for old things."
"And I," said Elizabeth, "do like an old man who cares for young
things. I must tell you. Last Sunday I found a small, very grubby boy
waiting at the hall door long before it was time for the Sabbath
school. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, 'Waitin' for the
class to gang in.' Then he said proudly, 'A'm yin o' John Jamieson's
bairns.'" She turned to Mr. Stevenson and explained: "Mr. Jamieson has
an enormous class of small children and is adored by each of them."
"It must take some looking after," said Mr. Stevenson. "How d'you make
them behave?"
Mr. Jamieson laughed and confessed that sometimes they were beyond him.
"The only thing I do insist on is a clean face, but sometimes I'm beat
even there. I sent a boy home twice last Sabbath to wash his face, and
each time he came back worse. I was just going to send him again, when
his neighbour interfered with, 'Uch here! he _wash't_ his face, but he
wipit it wi' his bunnet, and he bides in a coal ree.'"
Elizabeth turned to see if her father appreciated the tale, but Mr.
Seton had got the little old ballad book and was standing in his
favourite attitude with one foot on a chair, lost to everything but the
words he was reading.
"Now," he said, "this is an example of what I mean by Scots
practicalness. It's 'Annan Water'--you know it, Jamieson? The last
verse is this:
'O wae betide thee, Annan Water,
I vow thou art a drumly river;
But over thee I'll build a brig,
That thou true love no more may sever.'
You see? The last thought is not the tragedy of love and death, but of
the necessity of preventing it happen again. He will build a brig."
He sat down, with the book still in his hand, smiling to himself at the
vagaries of the Scots character.
"We're a strange mixture," he said, "a mixture of hard-headedness and
romance, common sense and sentiment, practicality and poetry, business
and idealism. Sir Walter knew that, so he made the Gifted Gilfillan
turn from discoursing of the New Jerusalem of the Saints to the price
of beasts at Mauchline Fair."
Mr. Jamieson leaned forward, his face alight with interest.
"And I doubt, Mr. Seton, the romantic side is strongest. Look at our
history! Look at the wars we fought under Bruce and Wallace! If we had
had any common sense, we would have made peace at the beginning,
accepted the English terms, and grown prosperous at the expense of our
rich neighbours."
"And look," said Stewart Stevenson, "at our wars of religion. I wonder
what other people would have taken to the hills for a refinement of
dogma. And the Jacobite risings? What earthly sense was in them? Merely
because Prince Charlie was a Stuart, and because he was a gallant young
fairy tale prince, we find sober, middle-aged men risking their lives
and their fortunes to help a cause that was doomed from the start."
"I'm glad to think," said Mr. Seton, "that with all our prudence our
history is a record of lost causes and impossible loyalties."
"I know why it is," said Elizabeth. "We have all of us, we Scots, a
queer daftness in our blood. We pretend to be dour and cautious, but
the fact is that at heart we are the most emotional and sentimental
people on earth."
"I believe you're right," said Stewart Stevenson. "The ordinary
emotional races like the Italians and the French are emotional chiefly
on the surface; underneath they are a mercantile, hard-headed breed.
Now we----"
"We're the other way round," said Elizabeth.
"You can see that when you think what type of man we chiefly admire,"
said Mr. Jamieson; "you might think it would be John Knox----"
"No, no," cried Elizabeth; "I know Father has hankerings after him, but
I would quake to meet him in the flesh."
"Sir Walter Scott," suggested Mr. Stevenson.
"Personally I would vote for Sir Walter," said Mr. Seton.
"Ah, but, Mr. Seton," said John Jamieson, "I think you'll admit that if
we polled the country we couldn't get a verdict for Sir Walter. I think
it would be for Robert Burns. Burns is the man whose words are most
often in our memories. It is Burns we think of with sympathy and
affection, and why? I suppose because of his humanity; because of his
rich humour and riotous imagination; because of his _daftness_, in a
word----"
"It is odd," said Elizabeth; "for by rights, as Thomas would say, we
should admire someone quite different. The _Wealth of Nations_ man,
perhaps."
"Adam Smith," said Stewart Stevenson.
"You see," said Mr. Seton, "the moral is that he who would lead
Scotland must do it not only by convincing the intellect, but above all
by firing the imagination and touching the heart. Yes, I can think of a
good illustration. In the year 1388, or thereabouts, Douglas went
raiding into Northumberland and met the Percy at Otterbourne. We
possess both an English and a Scottish account of the battle. The
English ballad is called 'Chevy Chase.' It tells very vigorously and
graphically how the great fight was fought, but it is only a piece of
rhymed history. Our ballad of 'Otterbourne' is quite different. It is
full of wonderful touches of poetry, such as the Douglas's last speech:
'My wound is deep I fain would sleep:
Take thou the vanguard of the three;
And hide me by the bracken bush
That grows on yonder lilye lee.
O bury me by the bracken bush,
Beneath the blooming briar;
Let never living mortal ken
That ere a kindly Scot lies here!'"
James Seton got up and walked up and down the room, as his custom was
when moved; then he anchored before the fire, and continued:
"The two ballads represent two different temperaments. You can't get
over it by saying that the Scots minstrel was a poet and the English
minstrel a commonplace fellow. The minstrels knew their audience and
wrote what their audience wanted. The English wanted straightforward
facts; the Scottish audience wanted the glamour of poetry."
"Father," said Elizabeth suddenly, "I believe that's a bit of the
lecture on Ballads you're writing for the Literary Society."
Mr. Seton confessed that it was.
"I thought you sounded like a book," said his daughter.
Stewart Stevenson asked the date of the lecture and if outsiders were
admitted, whereupon Elizabeth felt constrained to ask him to dine and
go with them, an invitation that was readily accepted.
Teas was brought in, and John Jamieson was persuaded by Elizabeth to
tell stories of his "bairns"; and then Mr. Stevenson described a
walking-tour he had taken in Skye in the autumn, which enchanted the
old man. At last he rose to go, remembering that it was Saturday
evening and that the Minister must want to go to his sermon. When he
shook hands with the young man he smiled at him somewhat wistfully.
"It's fine to be young," he said. "I was young once myself. It was
never my lot to go far afield, but I mind one Fair Holiday I went with
a friend to Inverary. To save the fare we out-ran the coach from
Lochgoilhead to St. Catherine's--I was soople then--and on the morning
we were leaving--the boat left at ten--my friend woke me at two in the
morning, and we walked seventeen miles to see the sun rise on Ben
Cruachan. We startled the beasts of the forest in Inveraray wood, and I
mind as if it were yesterday how the rising sun smote with living fire
a white cloud floating on the top of the mountain. My friend caught me
by the arm as we watched the moving mist lift. 'Look,' he cried, 'the
mountains do smoke!'"
He stopped and reached for his sticks. "Well! it's fine to be young,
but it's not so bad to be old as you young folks think."
Elizabeth went with him to the door, and Stewart Stevenson remarked to
his host on the wonderful vitality and cheerfulness of the old man.
"Yes," said Mr. Seton, "you would hardly think that he rarely knows
what it is to be free of pain. Forty years ago he met with a terrible
accident in the works where he was employed. It meant the end of
everything to him, but he gathered up the broken bits of his life and
made of it--ah, well! A great cloud of witnesses will testify one day
to that. He lives beside the church, not a very savoury district as you
know--but that little two-roomed house of his shines in the squalor
like a good deed in a naughty world. Elizabeth calls him 'the
Corregidor.' You remember?
'If any beat a horse, you felt he saw:
If any cursed a woman, he took note
... Not so much a spy
As a recording Chief-inquisitor.'