"Love them," she said. "Even when they're at their roughest and
naughtiest and seem all tackety boots. What were you like when you were
little?"
"Oh! A thoroughly uninteresting child. Ate a lot, and never said or did
an original thing. Aunt Alice cherishes only one _mot_. Once, when the
nursery clock stopped, I remarked, 'No little clock now to tell us how
quickly we're dying,' which seems to prove that besides being
commonplace I was inclined to be morbid. I went to school very early,
and Aunt Alice gave me good times in my holidays; then came three years
at Oxford--three halcyon years--and since then I have been very little
in England. You see, I'm a homeless, wandering sort of creature, and
the worst of that sort of thing is, that when the solitary, for once in
a way, get set in families, they don't understand the language. Explain
to me, please, the meaning of some of your catch-words. For
instance--_Fish would laugh_."
"You mean our ower-words," said Elizabeth. "We have a ridiculous lot;
and they must seem most incomprehensible to strangers. _Fish would
lawff._ It is really too silly to tell. When Buff was tiny, three or
four or thereabouts, he had a familiar spirit called Fish. Fish was a
loofah with a boot-button for an eye, and, wrapped in a duster or
anything that happened to be lying about, he slept in Buff's bed, sat
in his chair, ate from his plate, and was unto him a brother. His was
an unholy influence. When Buff did anything wicked, Fish said 'Good,'
or so Buff reported. When anyone did anything rather fine or noble,
Fish 'lawffed'--you know the funny way Buff says words with 'au'? Fish
was a Socialist and couldn't stand Royalties, so when we came to a
Prince in a fairy tale we had to call him Brother. He whispered nasty
things about us to Buff: his mocking laughter pursued us; his
boot-button eye got loose and waggled in the most sinister way. He
really was a horrid creature--but how Buff loved him! Through the day
he alluded to him by high-sounding titles--Sir John Fish, Admiral Fish,
V.C., Brigadier-General Fish--but at night, when he clutched him to his
heart in bed, he murmured over him, _'Fishie beastie!'_ He lost his
place in time, as all favourites do; but the memory of him still lives
with us, and whenever anyone bucks unduly, or too obviously stands
forth in the light, we say, _Fish would lawff!_"
The thought of Fish so intrigued Arthur that he wanted to hear more of
him, but Elizabeth begged him to turn his eyes to the objects of
interest around him.
"Now," she said, "we are on the Broomielaw Bridge, and that is Clyde's
'wan water.' I'm told Broomielaw means 'beloved green place,' so it
can't always have been the coaly hole it is now. I don't know what is
up the river--Glasgow Green, I think, and other places, but"--pointing
down the river--"there lies the pathway to the Hebrides. It always
refreshes me to think that we in Glasgow have a 'back-door to
Paradise.'"
"Yes," said Mr. Townshend, leaning forward to look at the river.
"Edinburgh, of course, has the Forth. I've been reading _Edinburgh
Revisited_--you know it, I suppose?--and last week when I was there I
spent some hours wandering about the 'lands' in the Old Town. I like
Bone's description of the old rooms filled with men and women of degree
dancing minuets under guttering sconces. You remember he talks of a
pause in the dance, when the musicians tuned their fiddles, and ladies
turned white shoulders and towering powdered heads to bleak barred
windows to meet the night wind blowing saltly from the Forth? I think
that gives one such a feeling of Edinburgh."
"I know. I remember that," said Elizabeth. "Doesn't James Bone make
pictures with words?"
"Oh! It's extraordinary. The description of George Square as an elegant
old sedan-chair gently decaying, with bright glass still in its
lozenge-panels! I like the idea of the old inhabitants of the Square
one after another through the generations coming back each to his own
old grey-brown house--such a company of wit and learning and bravery."
"And Murray of Broughton," she cried, her grey eyes shining with
interest, "Murray, booted and cloaked and muffled to the eyes, coming
down the steps of No. 25 and the teacup flying after him, and the lame
little boy creeping out and picking up the saucer, because Traitor
Murray meant to him history and romance! Yes.... But it isn't quite
tactful of you to dilate on Edinburgh when I am trying to rouse in you
some enthusiasm for Glasgow. You think of Edinburgh as some lovely lady
of old years draped as with a garment by memories of unhappy far-off
things. But you haven't seen her suburbs! No romance there. Rows and
rows of smug, well-built houses, each with a front garden, each with a
front gate, and each front gate remains shut against the casual caller
until you have rung a bell--and the occupants have had time to make up
their minds about you from behind the window curtains--when some
mechanism in the vestibule is set in motion, the gate opens, and you
walk in. That almost seems to me the most typical thing about
Edinburgh. Glasgow doesn't keep visitors at the gate. Glasgow is on the
doorstep to welcome them in. It is just itself--cheerful, hard-working,
shrewd, kindly, a place that, like Weir of Hermiston, has no call to be
bonny: it gets through its day's work. Edinburgh calls Glasgow vulgar,
and on the surface we are vulgar. We say 'Ucha,' and when we meet each
other in July we think it is funny to say 'A good New Year'; and always
our accent grates on the ears of the genteel. I have heard it said that
nothing could make Glasgow people gentlefolks because we are 'that
weel-pleased'; and the less apparent reason there seems for complacency
the more 'weel-pleased' we are. As an Edinburgh man once said to me in
that connection, 'If a Glasgow man has black teeth and bandy legs he
has cheek enough to stand before the King.' But we have none of the
subtle vulgarity that pretends: we are plain folk and we know it.... I
am boring you. Let's talk about something really interesting. What do
you think of the Ulster Question?"
The car went on its way, up Renfield Street and Sauchiehall Street,
till it left shop-windows behind, and got into tracts of terraces and
crescents, rows of dignified grey houses stretching for miles.
Elizabeth and her companion got out at a stopping-place, and proceeded
to walk back to see the University. Arthur, looking round, remarked
that the West End of one city was very like the West End of any other
city.
"It's the atmosphere of wealth I suppose," he said.
Elizabeth agreed that it was so. "What do you think wealth smells
like?" she asked him. "To me it is a mixture of very opulent
stair-carpets and a slight suspicion of celery. I don't know why, but
the houses of the most absolutely rolling-in-riches-people that I know
smell like that--in Glasgow, I mean."
"It is an awesome thought," Arthur said, as he looked round him, "to
think that probably every one of those houses is smelling at this
moment of carpets and celery."
"This," said Elizabeth, "is where the city gentleman live--at least the
more refined of the species. We in the South Side have a cruder wealth."
"There is refinement, then, in the West End?" Elizabeth made a face.
"The refinement which says 'preserves' instead of 'jam.'"
Then she had one of her sudden repentances.
"I didn't mean that nastily--but of course, you know, where one is in
the process of rising one is apt to be slightly ridiculous. There is
always a striving, an uneasiness, a lack of repose. To be so far down
as to fear no fall, and to be so securely up as to fear no fall, tends
to composure of manner. You who have, I suppose, lived always with the
'ups,' and I who consort almost entirely with the 'downs,' know that
for a fact. It is an instructive thing to watch the rise of a family.
They rise rapidly in Glasgow. In a few years you may see a family
ascend from a small villa in Pollokshields and one servant--known as
'the girrl'--to a 'place' in the country and a pew in the nearest
Episcopal church; and if this successful man still alludes to a person
as a 'party' and to his wife in her presence as 'Mistress So-and-so
here,' his feet are well up the ladder. A few years more and he will
cut the strings that bind him to his old life: his boys, educated at
English schools, will have forgotten the pit from whence they were dug,
his daughters will probably have married well, and he is 'county'
indeed. But you mustn't think Glasgow is full of funnies, or that I am
laughing at the dear place--not that it would care if I did, it can
stand a bit of laughing at. I have the most enormous respect for
Glasgow people for all they have done, for their tremendous capacity
for doing, for their quite perfect taste in things that matter, and I
love them for their good nature and 'well-pleasedness.' A very
under-sized little man--one whose height might well have been a sore
point--said to me once, 'They tell me my grandfather was
six-foot-four--he would laugh if he saw me. And he thoroughly enjoyed
the joke."
"But tell me," said Arthur, "have you many friends in Glasgow?"
"Heaps, but I haven't much time for seeing them. The winter is so
crowded with church-work; then in spring, when things slacken off, I go
to London to Aunt Alice; and in summer we are at Etterick. But I do
dine out now and again, and sometimes we have little parties. Would you
care to meet some people?"
He hastily disclaimed any such desire, and assured her he was more than
content with the company he had. "But," he added, "I should like to see
more of the church people."
"You shall," Elizabeth promised him.
One o'clock found them again in Sauchiehall Street, and Arthur asked
Elizabeth's advice as to the best place for luncheon.
"This is my day," she reminded him. "You will have lunch with me,
please. If you'll promise not to be nasty about it, I'll take you to my
favourite haunt. It's a draper's shop, but don't let that prejudice
you."
He found himself presently in a large sunny room carpeted in soft grey
and filled with little tables. The tablecloths were spotless, and the
silver and glass shone. Elizabeth led the way to a table in the window
and picked up a menu card.
"This," she said, "is where Glasgow beats every other town. For
one-and-sixpence you get four courses. Everything as good as can be,
and daintily served." She nodded and smiled to a knot of waitresses. "I
come here quite often, so I know all the girls; they are such nice
friendly creatures, and never forget one's little likes and dislikes.
Let's choose what we'll have. What do you say to asparagus soup, fish
cakes, braised sweetbreads, fruit salad, and coffee?"
"What! All for for one-and-sixpence?"
"All except the coffee, and seeing that this is no ordinary day we
shall commit the extravagance. It's a poor heart that never rejoices."
One of the smiling waitresses took the order, and conveyed it down a
speaking-tube to the kitchen far below.
"I always sit here when I can get the table," Elizabeth confided to
Arthur. "I like to hear them repeating the orders. Listen."
A girl was speaking. "Here, I say! Hurry up with another kidney: that
one had an accident. Whit's that? The kidneys are finished! Help!"
The luncheon-room, evidently a very popular one, was rapidly filling
up. Arthur Townshend fixed his monocle in his eye and surveyed the
scene. The majority of the lunchers were women--women in for the day
from the country, eagerly discussing purchases, purchases made and
purchases contemplated; women from the suburbs lunching in town because
their men-folk were out all day; young girls in town for classes--the
large room buzzed like a beehive on a summer's day. A fat,
prosperous-looking woman in a fur coat sat down at a table near and
ordered--"No soup, but a nice bit of fish."
"Isn't her voice nice and fat?" murmured Elizabeth--"like turtle-soup."
A friend espied the lady and, sailing up to the table, greeted her with
"Fancy seeing you here!" and they fell into conversation.
"And what kind of winter are you having?" asked one.
"Fine," said the other. "Mr. Jackson's real well, his indigestion is
not troubling him at all, and the children are all at school, and I've
had the drawing-room done up--Wylie and Lochhead--handsome. And how are
you all?"
"Very well. I was just thinking about you the other day and minding
that you have never seen our new house. I've changed my day to first
Fridays, but just drop a p.c. and come any day."
"Aren't the shops nice just now? And it's lovely to see the sun
shining.... Are you going? Well, be sure you come soon. Awful pleased
to have met you. Good-bye."
"An example of 'wee-pleasedness,'" said Elizabeth.
"I find," said Arthur, "that I like the Glasgow accent. There is
something so soft and--and----"
"Slushy?" she suggested. "But I know what you mean: there is a cosy
feeling about it, and it is kindly. But don't you think this is a
wonderfully good luncheon for one-and-sixpence?"
"Quite extraordinarily good. I can't think how they do it."
"An Oxford friend of Alan's once stayed with us, and the only good
thing he could find to say of Glasgow was that in the tea-shops you
could make a beast of yourself for ninepence."
Elizabeth laid down her coffee-cup with a sigh.
"I'm always sorry when meals are over," she said. "I like eating,
though Mrs. Thomson would say, in her frank way, that I put good food
into a poor skin--meaning that I'm a thin creature. I don't mind a bit
a home--I'm quite content with what Marget gives me--but when I am,
say, in Paris, where cooking is a fine art, I revel."
"And so ethereal-looking!" commented Arthur.
"That's why I can confess to being greedy, of course," said she. "Well,
Ulysses, having seen yet another city, would you like to go home?"
Arthur stooped to pick up Elizabeth's gloves and scarf which had fallen
under the table, and when he gave them to her he said he would like to
do some shopping, if she were agreeable.
"I promised Buff a paint-box, for one thing," he said.
"Rash man! He will paint more than pictures. However, shopping of any
kind is a delight to me, so let's go."
The paint-box was bought (much too good a one, Elizabeth pointed out,
for the base uses it would almost certainly be put to), also sweets for
Thomas and Billy. Then a book-shop lured them inside, and browsing
among new books, they lost count of time. Emerging at last, Arthur was
tempted by a flower-shop, but Elizabeth frowned on the extravagance,
refusing roses for herself. In the end she was prevailed upon to accept
some flowering bulbs in a quaint dish to take to a sick girl she was
going to visit.
"What is the use," she asked, "of us having a one-and-sixpenny luncheon
if you are going to spend pounds on books and sweets and flowers? But
Peggy will love these hyacinths."
"Are you going to see her now?"
"Yes. Will you take the purchases home? Or wait--would it bore you very
much to come with me? If Peggy is able to see people, it would please
her, and we'd only stay a short time."
Arthur professed himself delighted to go anywhere, and meekly
acquiesced when Elizabeth vetoed the suggestion of a taxi as a thing
unknown in church visitation. "It isn't far," she said, "if we cross
the Clyde by the suspension bridge."
The sun was setting graciously that November afternoon, gilding to
beauty all that, in dying, it touched. They stopped on the bridge to
look at the light on the water, and Arthur said, "Who is Peggy?"
"Peggy?" Elizabeth was silent for a minute, then she said, "Peggy
Donald is a bright thing who, alas! is coming quick to confusion. She
is seventeen and she is dying. Sad? Yes--and yet I don't know. She has
had the singing season, and she is going to be relieved of her
pilgrimage before sorrow can touch her. She is such an eager, vivid
creature, holding out both hands to life--horribly easy to hurt: and
now her dreams will all come true. My grief is for her parents. They
married late, and are old to have so young a daughter. They are such
bleak, grey people, and she makes all the colour in their lives. They
adore her, though I doubt if either of them has ever called her 'dear.'
She doesn't know she is dying, and they are not at all sure that they
are doing right in keeping it from her. They have a dreadful theory
that she should be 'prepared.' Imagine a child being 'prepared' to go
to her Father!... This is the place. Shall I take the hyacinths?"
As they went up the stair (the house was on the second floor) she told
him not to be surprised at Mrs. Donald's manner. "She has the air of
not being in the least glad to see one," she explained; "but she can't
help her sort of cold, grudging manner. She is really a very fine
character. Father thinks the world of her."
Mrs. Donald herself opened the door--a sad-faced woman, very tidy in a
black dress and silk apron. In reply to Elizabeth's greeting, she said
that this happened to be one of Peggy's well days, that she was up and
had hoped that Miss Seton might come.
Arthur Townshend was introduced and his presence explained, and Mrs.
Donald took them into the sitting-room. It was a fairly large room with
two windows, solidly furnished with a large mahogany sideboard,
dining-table, chairs, and an American organ.
A sofa heaped with cushions was drawn up by the fire, and on it lay
Peggy; a rose-silk eiderdown covered her, and the cushions that
supported her were rose-coloured with dainty white muslin covers. She
wore a pretty dressing-gown, and her two shining plaits of hair were
tied with big bows.
She was a "bright thing," as Elizabeth had said, sitting in that drab
room in her gay kimono, and she looked so oddly well with her
geranium-flushed cheeks and her brilliant eyes.
Elizabeth put down the pot of hyacinths on a table beside her sofa, a
table covered with such pretty trifles as one carries to sick folk, and
kneeling beside her, she took Peggy's hot fragile little hands into her
own cool firm ones, and told her all she had been doing. "You must talk
to Mr. Townshend, Peggy," she said. "He has been to all the places you
want most to go to, and he can tell stories just like _The Arabian
Nights_. He brought you these hyacinths.... Come and be thanked, Mr.
Townshend."
Arthur came forward and took Peggy's hand very gently, and sitting
beside her tried his hardest to be amusing and to think of interesting
things to tell her, and was delighted when he made her laugh.
While they were talking, Mrs. Donald came quietly into the room and sat
down at the table with her knitting.
Arthur noticed that in the sick-room she was a different woman. The
haggard misery was banished from her face, and her expression was
serene, almost happy. She smiled to her child and said, "Fine company
now! This is better than an old dull mother." Peggy smiled back, but
shook her head; and Elizabeth cried:
"Peggy thinks visitors are all very well for an hour, but Mothers are
for always."
Elizabeth sat on the rug and showed Peggy patterns for a new evening
dress she was going to get. They were spread out on the sofa, and Peggy
chose a vivid geranium red.
Elizabeth laughed at her passion for colour and owned that it was a
gorgeous red. But what about slippers? she asked. The geranium could
never be matched.
"Silver ones," said Peggy's little weak voice.
"What a splendid idea! Of course, that's what I'll get."
"I should like to see you wear it," whispered Peggy.
"So you shall, my dear, when you come to Etterick. We shall all dress
in our best for Peggy. And the day you arrive I shall be waiting at the
station with the fat white pony, and Buff will have all his pets--lame
birds, ill-used cats, mongrel puppies--looking their best. And Father
will show you his dear garden. And Marget will bake scones and
shortbread, and there will be honey for tea.... Meanwhile, you will
rest and get strong, and I shall go and chatter elsewhere. Why, it's
getting quite dark!"
Mrs. Donald suggested tea, but Elizabeth said they were expected at
home.
"Sing to me before you go," pleaded Peggy.
"What shall I sing? Anything?" She thought for a moment. "This is a
song my mother used to sing to us. An old song about the New Jerusalem,
Peggy;" and, sitting on the rug, with her hand in Peggy's, with no
accompaniment, she sang:
"There lust and lucre cannot dwell,
There envy bears no sway;
There is no hunger, heat nor cold,
But pleasure every way.
Thy walls are made of precious stones,
Thy bulwarks diamonds square;
Thy gates are of right Orient pearls,
Exceeding rich and rare.
Thy gardens and thy gallant walks
Continually are green!
There grow such sweet and pleasant flowers
As nowhere else are seen.
Our Lady sings Magnificat,
In tones surpassing sweet;
And all the virgins bear their part,
Sitting about her feet."
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."
_CHAPTER XII_
"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'm _horribly_ sorry 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 thy _gallant walks_
Continually 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 read
_Valerie 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 that _Fish 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.
_CHAPTER XIII_
"'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 is _intense_."
"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 about _young_ ministers.
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'm _deein'_ 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, ruecksack, 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, "_What_ does 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 always
_something_ they 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 tremendously _worth 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 that _all_ the 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!"