"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 flower
Which 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't_ she?"
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.
_CHAPTER XIV_
"_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 Stevenson _the_ artist. 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. Take _two_ chairs!!"
"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 fiance
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's _three 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
anaemic-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 in _Uncle 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 having _the
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 fiance, 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's _awfully_ English."
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 suppose _I_ may 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 from _Guy
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 Head
That I so plainly see?'
"'By Heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'"
Mr. Seton closed the book with a sigh of pleasure, and asked them where
they had been.
Elizabeth told him, and "Oh, yes, I remember now," he said. "Well, I
hope you had a pleasant evening?"
"I think Mr. Christie had, anyway. That man's life is one long
soiree-speech. And I wouldn't mind if he were really gay and jolly and
carefree; but I know that at heart he is shrewd and calculating and
un-simple as he can be. But, Father, the nicest thing has happened.
Kirsty has got engaged to a man called Andrew Hamilton, a minister, a
real jewel. You would like him, I know. But he hasn't got a church yet,
although he is worth a dozen of the people who do get churches, and I
was wondering what about Langhope? It's the nearest village to
Etterick," she explained to Arthur. "It's high time Mr. Smillie
retired. He is quite old, and he has money of his own, and could go and
live in Edinburgh and attend all the Committees. It is such a good
manse, and I can see Kirsty keeping it so spotless, and Mr. Hamilton
working in the garden--and hens, perhaps--and everything so cosy.
There's a specially good storeroom, too. I know, because we used to
steal raisins and things out of it when we visited Mr. Smillie."
Mr. Seton laughed and called her an absurd creature, and Arthur asked
if a good store-room was necessary to married happiness; but she heeded
them not.
"You know, Father, it would be doing Langhope a really good turn to
recommend Mr. Hamilton as their minister. How do I know, Arthur? I just
know. His father was a Free Kirk minister, so he has been well brought
up, and I know exactly the kind of sermons he will preach--solid
well-reasoned discourses, with now and again an anecdote about the
'great Dr. Chalmers,' and with here and there a reference to 'the
sainted Dr. Andrew Bonar' or 'Dr. Wilson of the Barclay.' Fine Free
Kirk discourses. Such as you and I love, Father."
Her father shook his head at her; and Arthur, as he lit a cigarette,
remarked that it was all Chinese to him. Elizabeth sat down on the arm
of her father's chair.
"You had quite a success to-night, Arthur," she said kindly. "Mr.
Christie called you a 'gentlemanly fellow,' and Mrs. Christie said,
speaking for herself, she had no objection to the Cockney accent, she
rather liked it! And oh! Father, your friend Mr. M'Cann was there. You
know who I mean? He talked to me quite a lot. He has been politic-ing
down in Ayrshire, and he told me that he rather reminds himself of the
Covenanters at their best--Alexander Peden I think was the one he
named."
Mr. Seton was carrying Guy Mannering to its place, but he stopped and
said, "_The wretched fellow!_"
The utter wrath and disgust in his tone made his listeners shout with
laughter, and Elizabeth said:
"Father, I love you. 'Cos why?"
Mr. Seton, still sore at this defiling of his idols, only grunted in
reply.
"Because you are not too much of a saint after all. Oh! _don't turn out
the lights!_"
_CHAPTER XV_
"There was a lady once, 'tis an old story,
That would not be a queen, that would she not
For all the mud in Egypt."
_Henry VIII._
"It is funny to think," Elizabeth said, "that last Friday I was looking
forward to your visit with horror."
"Hospitable creature!" Arthur replied.
"And now," she continued, "I can't remember what it was like not to
know you."
They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner. Mr. Seton had gone
out, and Buff was asleep after such an hour of crowded life as seldom
fell to his lot. He had been very down at the thought of losing his
friend, and had looked so small and forlorn when he said his reluctant
good-night, that Arthur, to lighten his gloom, asked him if he had ever
taken part in a sea-fight, and being answered in the negative, had
carried him upstairs shoulder-high. Then issued from the bathroom such
a splashing of water, such gurgles of laughter and yells of triumph as
Buff, a submarine, dashed from end to end of the large bath, torpedoing
warships under Arthur's directions, that Elizabeth, Marget, and Ellen
all rushed upstairs to say that if the performance did not stop at once
the house would certainly be flooded.
As it was, fresh pyjamas had to be fetched, the pair laid out being put
out of action by the wash of the waves. Then Arthur carried Buff to his
room and threw him head-over-heels into bed, sitting by his side for
quite half an hour and relating the most thrilling tales of pirates;
finally presenting him with two fat half-crowns, and promising that he,
Buff, should go up in an aeroplane at the earliest opportunity.
Buff, as he lay pillowed on that promise, his two half-crowns laid on a
chair beside him along with one or two other grubby treasures, and his
heart warm with gratitude, wondered and wondered what he could do in
return--and still wondering fell asleep.
Elizabeth was knitting a stocking for her young brother, and counted
audibly at intervals; Arthur lay in a large arm-chair and looked into
the fire.
"Buff is frightfully sorry to lose you. _One two_--_one two._ This is a
beautiful 'top,' don't you think? Rather like a Persian tile."
"Yes," said Arthur rather absently.
There was silence for a few minutes; then Elizabeth said, "There is
something very depressing about last nights--we would really have been
much better at the Band of Hope, and I would have been doing my duty,
and thus have acquired merit. I hate people going away. When nice
people come to a house they should just stay on and on, after the
fashion of princes in fairy-tale stories seeking their fortunes. They
stayed about twenty years before it seemed to strike them that their
people might be getting anxious."
"For myself," said Arthur, "I ask nothing better. You know that, don't
you?"
"_One two_--_one two_," Elizabeth counted. She looked up from her
knitting with twinkling eyes. "Did you hate very much coming? or were
you passive in the managing hands of Aunt Alice?"
He looked at her impish face blandly, then took out his cigarette case,
chose a cigarette carefully, lit it, and smoked with placid enjoyment.
"Cross?" she asked, in a few minutes.
"Not in the least. Merely wondering if I might tell you the truth."
"I wouldn't," said Elizabeth. "Fiction is always stranger and more
interesting. By the way, are you to be permanently at the Foreign
Office now?"
"I haven't the least notion, but I shall be there for the next few
months. When do you go to London?"
In the spring, she told him, probably in April, and added that her Aunt
Alice had been a real fairy godmother to her.
"Very few ministers' daughters have had my chances of seeing men and
cities. And some day, some day when Buff has gone to school and Father
has retired and has time to look about him, we are going to India to
see the boys."
"You have a very good time in London, I expect," Arthur said. "I can
imagine that Aunt Alice makes a most tactful chaperon, and I hear you
are very popular."
"'Here's fame!'" quoted Elizabeth flippantly. "What else did Aunt Alice
tell you about me?"
Arthur Townshend put the end of his cigarette carefully into the
ash-tray and leant forward.
"You really want to know--then here goes. She told me you were
tall--like a king's own daughter; that your hair was as golden as a
fairy tale, and your eyes as grey as glass. She told me of suitors
waiting on your favours----"
Elizabeth dropped her knitting with a gasp.
"If Aunt Alice told you all that--well, I've no right to say a word,
for she did it to glorify me, and perhaps her kind eyes and heart made
her think it true; but surely you don't think I am such a conceited
donkey as to believe it."
"But isn't it true?--about the suitors, I mean?"
"Suitors! How very plural you are!"
"But I would rather keep them in the plural," he pleaded; "they are
more harmless that way. But Aunt Alice did talk about some particular
fellow--I think Gordon was his wretched name."
"Bother!" said Elizabeth. "I've dropped a stitch." She bent
industriously over her knitting.
"I'm waiting, Elizabeth."
"What for?"
"To hear about Mr. Gordon."
"Oh! you must ask Aunt Alice," Elizabeth said demurely. "She is your
fount of information." Then she threw down her knitting. "Arthur, don't
let's talk any more about such silly subjects. They don't interest me
in the least."
"Is Mr. Gordon a silly subject?"
"The silliest ever. No--of course he isn't. Why do you make me say
nasty things? He is only silly to me because I am an ungrateful
creature. I don't expect I shall ever marry. You see, I would never be
a grateful wife, and it seems a pity to use up a man, so to speak, when
there are so few men and so many women who would be grateful wives and
may have to go without. I think I am a born spinster, and as long as I
have got Father and Buff and the boys in India I shall be more than
content."
"Buff must go to school soon," he warned her. "Your brothers may marry;
your father can't be with you always."
"Oh, don't try to discourage me in my spinster path. You are as bad as
Aunt Alice. She thinks of me as living a sort of submerged existence
here in Glasgow, and only coming to the surface to breathe when I go to
London or travel with her. But I'm not in the least stifled with my
life. I wouldn't change with anybody; and as for getting married and
going off with trunks of horrid new unfamiliar clothes, and a horrid
new unfamiliar husband, I wouldn't do it. I haven't much ambition; I
don't ask for adventures; though I look so large and bold, I have but a
peeping and a timorous soul."
She smiled across at Arthur, as if inviting him to share her point of
view; but he looked into the fire and did not meet her glance.
"Then you think," he said, "that you will be happy all your
life--alone?"
"Was it Sydney Smith who gave his friends forty recipes for happiness?
I remember three of them," she counted on her fingers, "a bright fire,
a kettle singing on the hob, a bag of lollipops on the mantelshelf--all
easy to come at. I can't believe that I shall be left entirely alone--I
should be so scared o' nights. Surely someone will like me well enough
to live with me--perhaps Buff, if he continues to have the contempt for
females that he now has; but anyway I shall hold on to the bright fire
and the singing kettle and the bag of lollipops."
She sat for a moment, absent-eyed, as if she were looking down the
years; then she laughed.
"But I shall be a frightfully long gaunt spinster," she said.
Arthur laughed with her, and said:
"Elizabeth, you aren't really a grown-up woman at all. You're a
schoolboy."
"I like that 'grown-up,'" she laughed; "it sounds so much less mature
than the reality. I'm twenty-eight, did you know? Already airting
towards spinsterhood."
Arthur shook his head at her.
"In your father's words, you are an absurd creature. Sing to me, won't
you? seeing it's my last night."
"Yes." She went to the piano. "What shall I sing? 'A love-song or a
song of good life'?"
"A love-song," said Arthur, and finished the quotation. "'I care not
for good life.'"
Elizabeth giggled.
"Our language is incorrigibly noble. You know how it is when you go to
the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford? I come away so filled with
majestic words that I can hardly resist greeting our homely chemist
with 'Ho! apothecary!' But I'm not going to sing of love. 'I'm no'
heedin' for't,' as Marget says.... This is a little song out of a fairy
tale--a sort of good-bye song:
'If fairy songs and fairy gold
Were tunes to sell and gold to spend,
Then, hearts so gay and hearts so bold,
We'd find the joy that has no end.
But fairy songs and fairy gold
Are but red leaves in Autumn's play.
The pipes are dumb, the tale is told,
Go back to realms of working day.
The working day is dark and long,
And very full of dismal things;
It has no tunes like fairy song,
No hearts so brave as fairy kings.
Its princes are the dull and old,
Its birds are mute, its skies are grey;
And quicker far than fairy gold
Its dreary treasures fleet away.
But all the gallant, kind and true
May haply hear the fairy drum,
Which still must beat the wide world through,
Till Arthur wake and Charlie come.
And those who hear and know the call
Will take the road with staff in hand,
And after many a fight and fall,
Come home at last to fairy-land.'"
* * * * *
They were half-way through breakfast next morning before Buff appeared.
He stood at the door with a sheet of paper in his hand, looking rather
distraught. His hair had certainly not been brushed, and a smear of
paint disfigured one side of his face. He was not, as Mr. Taylor would
have put it, looking his "brightest and bonniest."
"I've been in Father's study," he said in answer to his sister's
question, and handed Arthur Townshend the paper he carried.
"It's for you," he said, "a sea-fight. It's the best I can do. I've
used up nearly all the paints in my box."
He had certainly been lavish with his colours, and the result was
amazing in the extreme.
Mr. Townshend expressed himself delighted, and discussed the points of
the picture with much insight.
"We shall miss you," Mr. Seton said, looking very kindly at him. "It
has been almost like having one of our own boys back. You must come
again, and to Etterick next time."
"Aw yes," cried Buff, "come to Etterick and see my jackdaw with the
wooden leg." He had drawn his chair so close to Arthur's that to both
of them the business of eating was gravely impeded.
"Come for the shooting," said Mr. Seton.
"Yes," said Elizabeth, as she filled out a third cup of tea for her
father, "and the fourth footman will bring out your lunch while the
fifth footman is putting on his livery. Don't be so buck-ish, Mr.
Father. Our shooting, Arthur, consists of a heathery hillside inhabited
by many rabbits, a few grouse--very wild, and an ancient blackcock
called Algernon. No one can shoot Algernon; indeed, he is such an old
family friend that it would be very ill manners to try. When he dies a
natural death we mean to stuff him."
"But may I really come? Is this a _pukka_ invitation?"
"It is," Elizabeth assured him. "As the Glasgow girl said to the
Edinburgh girl, 'What's a slice of ham and egg in a house like ours?'
We shall all be frightfully glad to see you, except perhaps old Watty
Laidlaw--I told you about him? He is very anxious when we have guests,
he is so afraid we are living beyond our means. One day last summer I
had some children from the village to tea, and he stood on the hillside
and watched them cross the moor, then went in to Marget and said in
despairing accents, 'Pit oot eighty mair cups. They're comin' ower the
muir like a locust drift.' The description of the half-dozen poor
little stragglers as a 'locust drift' was almost what Robert Browning
calls 'too wildly dear.'"
"This egg's bad," Buff suddenly announced.
"Is it, Arthur?" Elizabeth asked.
Mr. Townshend regarded the egg through his monocle.
"It looks all right," he said; "but Buff evidently requires his eggs to
be like Caesar's wife."
"Don't waste good food, boy," his father told him. "There is nothing
wrong with the egg."
"It's been a nest-egg," said Buff in a final manner, and began to write
in a small book.
Elizabeth remarked that Buff was a tiresome little boy about his food,
and that there might come a time when he would think regretfully of the
good food he had wasted. "And what are you writing?" she finished.
"It's my diary," said Buff, putting it behind his back. "Father gave it
me. No, you can't read it, but Arthur can if he likes, 'cos he's going
away"; and he poked the little book into his friend's hand.
Arthur thanked him gravely, and turned to the first entry:
_New Year's Day._
_Good Rissolution. Not to be crool to gerls._
The other entries were not up to the high level of the first, but were
chiefly the rough jottings of nefarious plans which, one could gather,
generally seemed to miscarry. On 12th August was printed and
emphatically underlined the announcement that on that date Arthur
Townshend would arrive at Etterick.
That the diary was for 1911 and that this was the year of grace 1913
troubled Buff not at all: years made little difference to him.
Arthur pointed this out as he handed back the book, and rubbing Buff's
mouse-coloured hair affectionately, quoted:
"Poor Jim Jay got stuck fast in yesterday."
"But I haven't," Buff protested; "I'll know it's 1914 though it says
1911."
He put his diary into his safest pocket and asked if he might go to the
station.
"Oh, I think not," his father said. "Why go into town this foggy
morning?"
"He wants the 'hurl,'" said Elizabeth. "Arthur that's a new word for
you. Father, we should make Arthur pass an examination and see what
knowledge he has gathered. Let's draw up a paper:
I. What is--
(_a_) A Wee Free?
(_b_) A U.P.?
II. Show in what way the Kelvinside accent
differs from that of Pollokshields.
III. What is a 'hurl'?
I can't think of anything else. Anyway, I don't believe you could
answer one of my questions, and I am only talking for talking's sake,
because we are all so sad. By the way, when you say Good-bye to Marget
and Ellen shake hands, will you? They expect it."
"Of course," said Arthur.
The servants came in for prayers.
Mr. Seton prayed for "travelling mercies" for the friend who was about
to leave them to return to the great city.
"Here's the cab!" cried Buff, and rushed for his coat. His father
followed him, and Arthur turned to Elizabeth.
"Will you write to me sometimes?"
Elizabeth stooped to pick up Launcelot, the cat.
"Yes," she said, "if you don't mind _prattle_. I so rarely have any
thoughts."
He assured her that he would be grateful for anything she cared to send
him.
"Tell me what you are doing; about the church people you visit, if the
Peggy-child gets better, if Mr. Taylor makes a joke, and of course
about your father and Buff. Everything you say or do interests me. You
know that, don't you--Lizbeth?"
But Elizabeth kept her eyes on the purring cat, and--"Isn't he a polite
young man, puss-cat?" was all she said.
Buff's voice was raised in warning from the hall.
"Coming," cried Arthur; but he still tarried.
Elizabeth put the cat on her shoulder and led the way.
"Launcelot and I shall see you off from the doorstep. You mustn't miss
your train. As Marget says, 'Haste ye back.'"
"You've promised to write.... There's loads of time, Buff." He was on
the lowest step now. "Till April--you are sure to come in April?"
"Reasonably sure, but it's an uncertain world.... My love to Aunt
Alice."
_CHAPTER XVI_
"Then said he, I wish you a fair day when you set out for Mount Zion,
and shall be glad to see that you go over the river dry-shod. But she
answered, Come wet, come dry, I long to be gone; for however the
weather is on my journey, I shall have time to sit down and rest me and
dry me."
_The Pilgrim's Progress._
"Pure religion and undefiled," we are told, "before God and the Father
is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and
keep ourselves unspotted from the world." If this be a working
definition of Christianity, then James Seton translated its letter as
but few men do, into a spirit and life of continuous and practical
obedience. No weary, sick, or grieved creature had to wait for his
minister's coming. The congregation was widely scattered, but from
Dennistoun to Pollokshields, from Govanhill to Govan, in all weathers
he trudged--cars were a weariness to him, walking a pleasure--carrying
with him comfort to the comfortless, courage to the faint-hearted, and
a strong hope to the dying.
On the day that Arthur Townshend left them he said to his daughter:
"I wonder, Elizabeth, if you would go and see Mrs. Veitch this
afternoon? She is very ill, and I have a meeting that will keep me till
about seven o'clock. If you bring a good report I shan't go to see her
till to-morrow."
"Mrs. Veitch who makes the treacle-scones? I am sorry. Of course I
shall go to see her. I wonder what I could take her? She will hate to
be ill, indomitable old body that she is! Are you going, Father? I
shall do your bidding, but I'm afraid Mrs. Veitch will think me a poor
substitute. Anyway, I'm glad it isn't Mrs. Paterson you want me to
visit. I so dislike the smug, resigned way she answers when I ask her
how she is: 'Juist hingin' by a tack.' I expect that 'tack' will last
her a good many years yet. Buff, what are you going to do this
afternoon?"
"Nothing," said Buff. He sat gloomily on a chair, with his hands in his
pockets. "I'm as dull as a bull," he added.
His sister did not ask the cause of his depression. She sat down on a
low chair and drew him on to her lap, and cuddled him up and stroked
his hair, and Buff, who as a rule sternly repulsed all caresses, laid
his head on her shoulder and, sniffing dolefully, murmured that he
couldn't bear to have Arthur go away, and that he had nothing to look
forward to except Christmas and that was only one day.
"Nothing to look forward to! Oh, Buff! Think of spring coming and the
daffodils. And Etterick, and the puppies you haven't seen yet. And I'll
tell you what. When Arthur comes, I shouldn't wonder if we had a
sea-fight on the mill-pond--on rafts, you know."
Buff sat up, his grubby little handkerchief still clutched in his hand,
tears on his lashes but in his eyes a light of hope.
"Rafts!" he said. He slid to the floor. "_Rafts!_" he repeated. There
was dizzy magic in the word. Already, in thought, he was lashing spars
of wood together.
Five minutes later Elizabeth, carrying a basket filled with fresh eggs,
grapes, and sponge-cakes, was on her way to call on Mrs. Veitch, while
at home Marget stood gazing, speechless with wrath, at the wreck Buff
had made of her tidy stick-house.
When Elizabeth reached her destination and knocked, the door was opened
by Mrs. Veitch's daughter Kate, who took her into the room and asked
her to take a seat for a minute and she would come. Left alone,
Elizabeth looked round the cherished room and noticed that dust lay
thick on the sideboard that Mrs. Veitch had dusted so frequently and so
proudly, and that the crochet antimacassars on the sofa hung all awry.
She put them tidy, pulled the tablecover even, straightened a picture
and was wondering if she might dust the sideboard with a spare
handkerchief she had in her coat (somehow it hurt her to see the dust)
when her attention was caught by a photograph that hung on the wall--a
family group of two girls and two boys.
She went forward to study it. That funny little girl with the
pulled-back hair must be Kate she decided. She had not changed much, it
was the same good, mild face. The other girl must be the married
daughter in America. But it was the boys she was interested in. She had
heard her father talk of Mrs. Veitch's sons, John and Hugh. John had
been his mother's stand-by, a rock for her to lean on; and Hugh had
been to them both a joy and pride.
Elizabeth, looking at the eager, clever face in the faded old picture,
understood why, even after twenty years, her father still talked
sometimes of Hugh Veitch, and always with that quick involuntary sigh
that we give to the memory of those ardent souls so well equipped for
the fight but for whom the drums ceased to beat before the battle had
well begun.
John and his mother had pinched themselves to send Hugh to college,
where he was doing brilliantly well, when he was seized with diphtheria
and died. In a week his brother followed him, and for twenty years Mrs.
Veitch and Kate had toiled on alone.
Elizabeth turned with a start as Kate came into the room. She looked
round drearily. "This room hasna got a dust for days. I'm not a manager
like ma mother. I can sew well enough, but I get fair baffled in the
house when there's everything to do."
"Poor Kate! Tell me, how is your mother?"
"No' well at all. The doctor was in this morning, and he's coming up
again later, but he says there is nothing he can do. She's just worn
out, and can you wonder? Many a time I've been fair vexed to see her
toilin' with lodgers; but you see we had just ma pay, and a woman's pay
is no' much to keep a house on, and she wanted to make a few shillings
extra. And, Miss Seton, d'ye know what she's been doing a' these years?
Scraping and hoarding every penny she could, and laying it away, to pay
ma passage to America. Ma sister Maggie's there, ye know, and when
she's gone she says I'm to go to Maggie. A' these years she's toiled
with this before her. She had such a spirit, she would never give in."
Kate wiped her eyes with her apron. "Come in and see ma mother."
"Oh, I don't think so. She oughtn't to see anyone when she is so ill."
"The doctor says it makes no difference, and she'll be vexed no' to see
you. I told her you were in. She had aye a notion of you."
"If you think I won't do her harm, I should love to see her," said
Elizabeth, getting up; and Kate led the way to the kitchen. The fog had
thickened, and the windows in the little eyrie of a kitchen glimmered
coldly opaque. From far beneath came the sounds of the railway.
Mrs. Veitch lay high on her pillows, her busy hands folded. She had
given in at last.
Elizabeth thought she was sleeping, but she opened her eyes, and,
seeing her visitor, smiled slightly.
"Are ye collectin' the day?" she asked.
"No," Elizabeth said, leaning forward and speaking very gently. "I
don't want any money to-day. I came to ask for you. I am so sorry you
are ill."
Mrs. Veitch looked at her with that curious appraising look that very
sick people sometimes give one.
"Ay. I'm aboot by wi' it noo, and I em no' vexed. I'm terrible wearied."
"You are very wearied now," Elizabeth said, stroking the work-roughened
hands that lay so calmly on the counterpane--all her life Mrs. Veitch
had been a woman of much self-control, and in illness the habit did not
desert her--"you are very wearied now, but you will get a good rest and
soon be your busy self again."
"Na, I've been wearied for years.... Ma man died forty years syne, an'
I've had ma face agin the wind ever since. That last nicht he lookit at
the fower bairns--wee Hugh was a baby in ma airms--and he says, _'Ye've
aye been fell, Tibbie. Be fell noo.'_ Lyin' here, I'm wonderin' what ma
life's been--juist a fecht to get the denner ready, and a fecht to get
the tea ready, an' a terrible trauchle on the washin'-days. It vexes me
to think I've done so little to help ither folk. I never had the time."
"Ah! but you're forgetting," said Elizabeth. "The people you helped
remember. I have heard--oh! often--from one and another how you did a
sick neighbour's washing, and gave a hot meal to children whose mothers
had to work out, and carried comfort to people in want. Every step your
tired feet took on those errands is known to God."
The sick woman hardly seemed to hear. Her eyes had closed again, and
she had fallen into the fitful sleep of weakness.
Elizabeth sat and looked at the old face, with its stern, worn lines.
Here was a woman who had lived her hard, upright life, with no soft
sayings and couthy ways, and she was dying as she had lived, "uncheered
and undepressed" by the world's thoughts of her.
The fog crept close to the window.
Kate put the dishes she had washed into the press. The London express
rushed past on its daily journey. The familiar sound struck on the dim
ear, and Mrs. Veitch asked, "Is that ma denner awa' by?"
Kate wiped her eyes. The time-honoured jest hurt her to-day.
"Poor mother!" she said. "She's aye that comical."
"When I was a lassie," said Mrs. Veitch, "there was twae things I had a
terrible notion of--a gig, an' a gairden wi' berries. Ma mither said,
'Bode for a silk goon and ye'll get a sleeve o't,' and Alec said, 'Bide
a wee, lassie, an I'll get ye them baith.' Ay, but, Alec ma man, ye've
been in yer grave this forty year, an' I've been faur frae gairdens."
The tired mind was wandering back to the beginning of things. She
plucked at the trimming on the sleeve of her night-dress.
"I made this goon when I was a lassie for ma marriage. They ca'ed this
'flowering.' I mind fine sittin' sewin' it on simmer efternunes, wi' my
mither makin' the tea. Scones an' new-kirned butter an' skim-milk
cheese. _I can taste that tea._ Naebody could mak' tea like ma mither.
I wish I had a drink o' it the noo, for I'm terrible dry. There was a
burn ran by oor door an' twae muckle stanes by the side o' it, and Alec
and me used to sit there and crack--and crack."
Her voice trailed off, and Elizabeth looked anxiously at Kate so see if
so much talking was not bad for her mother; but Kate said she thought
it pleased her to talk. It was getting dark and the kitchen was lit
only by the sparkle of the fire.
"I'd better light the gas," Kate said, reaching for the matches. "The
doctor'll be in soon."
Elizabeth watched her put a light to the incandescent burner, and when
she turned again to the bed she found the sick woman's eyes fixed on
her face.
"You're like your faither, lassie," said the weak voice. "It's
one-and-twenty years sin' I fell acquaint wi' him. I had flitted to
this hoose, and on the Sabbath Day I gaed into the nearest kirk to see
what kinna minister they hed. I've niver stayed awa' willingly a
Sabbath sin' syne.... The first time he visited me kent by ma tongue
that I was frae Tweedside."
"'Div 'ee ken Kilbucho?' I speired at him.
"'Fine,' he says.
"'Div 'ee ken Newby and the gamekeeper's hoose by the burn?"
"'I guddled in that burn when I was a boy,' he says; and I cud ha'
grat. It was like a drink o' cauld water.... I aye likit rinnin' water.
Mony a time I've sat by that window on a simmer's nicht and made masel'
believe that I could hear Tweed. It ran in ma ears for thirty years,
an' a body disna forget. There's a bit in the Bible about a river ...
read it."
Elizabeth lifted the Bible and looked at it rather hopelessly.
"I'm afraid I don't know where to find it," she confessed.
"Tuts, lassie, yer faither would ha' kent," said Mrs. Veitch.
"There is a river," Elizabeth quoted from memory,--"there is a river
the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God."
"Ay! that's it." She lay quiet, as if satisfied.
"Mother," said Kate. "Oh! Mother!"
The sick woman turned to her daughter.
"Ay, Kate. Ye've been a guid lassie to me, and noo ye'll gang to Maggie
in Ameriky. The money is there, an' I can gang content. Ye wudna keep
me Kate, when I've waited so lang? I'll gang as blythe doon to the
River o' Death as I gaed fifty years syne to ma trystin', and Alec will
meet me at the ither side as he met me then ... and John, ma kind son,
will be waitin' for me, an' ma wee Hughie----"
"And your Saviour, Mother," Kate reminded her anxiously.
Mrs. Veitch turned on her pillow like a tired child.
"I'll need a lang, lang rest, an' a lang drink o' the Water of Life."
"Oh! Mother!" said Kate. "You're no' going to leave me."
Elizabeth laid her hand on her arm. "Don't vex her, Kate. She's nearly
through with this tough world."
The doctor was heard at the door.
"I'll go now, and Father will come down this evening. Oh! poor Kate,
don't cry. It is so well with her."
That night, between the hours of twelve and one, at the turning of the
tide, the undaunted soul of the old country-woman forded the River, and
who shall say that the trumpets did not sound for her on the other side!
_CHAPTER XVII_
"He was the Interpreter to untrustful souls
The weary feet he led into the cool
Soft plains called Ease; he gave the faint to drink:
Dull hearts he brought to the House Beautiful.
The timorous knew his heartening on the brink
Where the dark River rolls.
He drew men from the town of Vanity,
Past Demas' mine and Castle Doubting's towers,
To the green hills where the wise shepherds be,
And Zion's songs are crooned among the flowers."
J.B.
The winter days slipped past. Christmas came, bringing with it to Buff
the usual frantic anticipations, and consequent flatness when it was
borne in on him that he had not done so well in the way of presents and
treats as he felt he deserved.
It was a hard winter, and there was more than the usual hardships among
the very poor. James Seton, toiling up and down the long stairs of the
Gorbals every day of the week and preaching three times on the Sabbath,
was sometimes very weary.
Elizabeth, too, worked hard and laughed much, as was her way.
It took very little to make her laugh, as she told Arthur Townshend.
"This has been a nasty day," she wrote. "The rain has never
ceased--dripping _yellow_ rain. (By the way, did you ever read in
Andrew Lang's _My Own Fairy Book_ about the Yellow Dwarf who bled
yellow blood? Isn't it a nice horrible idea?)
"At breakfast it struck me that Father looked frail, and Buff sneezed
twice, and I made up my mind he was going to take influenza or measles,
probably both, so I didn't feel in any spirits to face the elements
when I waded out to do my shopping. But when I went into the fruit shop
and asked if the pears were good and got the reply 'I'm afraid we've
nothing startling in the pear line to-day,' I felt a good deal cheered.
Later, walking in Sauchiehall Street, I met Mrs. Taylor in her
'prayer-meeting bonnet,' her skirt well kilted, goloshes on her feet,
and her circular waterproof draping her spare figure. After I had
assuaged her fears about my own health and Father's and Buff's I
complimented her on her courage in being out on such a day.
"'I hed to come,' she assured me earnestly; 'I'm on ma way to the
Religious Tract Society to get some _cards for mourners_.'
"The depressing figure she made, her errand, and the day she had chosen
for it, sent me home grinning broadly. Do you know that in spite of ill
weather, it is spring? There are three daffodils poking up their heads
in the garden, and I have got a new hat to go to London with some day
in April. What day, you ask, is some day? I don't know yet. When Buff
was a very little boy, a missionary staying in the house said to him,
'And some day you too will go to heaven and sing among the angels.'
Buff, with the air of having rather a good excuse for refusing a dull
invitation, said, 'I can't go _some day_; that's the day I'm going to
Etterick.'"
But Elizabeth did not go to London in April.
One Sabbath in March, James Seton came in after his day's work
admitting himself strangely tired.
"My work has been a burden to me to-day, Lizbeth," he said; "I'm
getting to be an old done man."
Elizabeth scoffed at the idea, protesting that most men were mere
youths at sixty. "Just think of Gladstone," she cried. (That eminent
statesman was a favourite weapon to use against her father when he
talked of his age, though, truth to tell, his longevity was the one
thing about him that she found admirable). "Father, I should be ashamed
to say that I was done at sixty."
Albeit she was sadly anxious, and got up several times in the night to
listen at her father's door.
He came down to breakfast next morning looking much as usual, but when
he rose from the table he complained of faintness, and the pinched blue
look on his face made Elizabeth's heart beat fast with terror as she
flew to telephone for the doctor. A nurse was got, and for a week James
Seton was too ill to worry about anything; but the moment he felt
better he wanted to get up and begin work again.
"It's utter nonsense," he protested, "that I should lie here when I'm
perfectly well. Ask the doctor, when he comes to-day, if I may get up
to-morrow. If he consents, well and good; but if he doesn't, I'll get
up just the same. Dear me, girl," as Elizabeth tried to make him see
reason, "my work will be terribly in arrears as it is."
Elizabeth and Buff were in the drawing-room when the doctor came that
evening. It was a clear, cold March night, and a bright fire burned on
the white hearth; pots of spring flowers stood about the room, scenting
the air pleasantly.
Buff had finished learning his lessons and was now practising standing
on his head in the window, his heels perilously near the plate glass.
Both he and Elizabeth were in great spirits, the cloud of their
father's illness having lifted. Elizabeth had been anxious, how anxious
no one knew, but to-night she welcomed the doctor without a qualm.
"Come to the fire, Dr. Nelson," she said; "these March evenings are
cold. Well, and did you find Father very stiff-necked and rebellious?
He is going to defy you and get up to-morrow, so he tells me. His work
is calling him--but I don't suppose we ought to allow him to work for a
time?"
Then the doctor told her that her father's work was finished.
With great care he might live for years, but there was serious heart
trouble, and there must be no excitement, no exertion that could be
avoided: he must never preach again.
* * * * *
A week later Elizabeth wrote to Arthur Townshend:
"Thank you for your letters and your kind thoughts of us. Aunt Alice
wasn't hurt, was she? that we didn't let her come. There are times when
even the dearest people are a burden.
"Father is wonderfully well now; in fact, except for occasional
breathless turns, he seems much as usual. You mustn't make me sorry for
myself. I am not to be pitied. The doctor says 'many years'; it is so
much better than I dared to hope. I wonder if I could make you
understand my feeling? If you don't mind a leaf from a family journal,
I should like to try.
"'Tell me about when you were young,' Buff sometimes says, and it does
seem a long time ago since the world began.... When I remember my
childhood I think the fairy pipes in Hans Andersen's tale that blew
everyone into their right place must have given us our Mother. She was
the proper-est Mother that ever children had.
"'_Is Mother in?_' was always our first question when we came in from
our walks, and if Mother was in all was right with the world. She had a
notion--a blissful notion as you may suppose for us--that children
ought to have the very best time possible. And we had it. Funny little
happy people we were, not penned up in nurseries with starched nurses,
but allowed to be a great deal with our parents, and encouraged each to
follow our own bent.
"Our old nurse, Leezie, had been Father's nurse, and to her he was
still 'Maister Jimmie.' You said when you were here that you liked the
nursery with its funny old prints and chintzes, but you should have
seen it with Leezie in it. She kept it a picture of comfort, and was
herself the most comfortable thing in it, with her large clean rosy
face and white hair, her cap with bright ribbons, and her most
capacious lap. Many a time have I tumbled into that lap crying from
some childish ache--a tooth, a cut finger, perhaps hurt feelings, to be
comforted and told in her favourite formula 'It'll be better gin
morning.' She had no modern notions about bringing up children, but in
spite of that (or because of that?) we very rarely ailed anything.
Once, when Alan's nose bled violently without provocation, Mother,
after wrestling with a medical book, said it might be connected with
the kidneys. 'Na, na,' said Leezie, and gave her 'exquisite reason' for
disbelief, 'his nose is a lang gait frae his kidneys.' In the evenings
she always sat, mending, on a low chair beside a table which held the
mending basket and a mahogany workbox, a gift to her from our
grandmother. As a great treat we were sometimes allowed to lift all the
little lids of the fittings, and look at our faces in the mirror, and
try to find the opening of the carved ivory needlecase which had come
from India all the way. Our noise never disturbed Leezie. 'Be wise,
noo, like guid bairns,' she would say when we got beyond reason; and if
we quarrelled violently, she would shake her head and tell herself,
'Puir things! They'll a' gree when they meet at frem't kirk doors'--a
dark saying which seldom failed to quell even the most turbulent.
"On Sabbath evenings, when the mending basket and the workbox were shut
away in the cupboard, the little table was piled with vivid religious
weeklies, such as _The Christian Herald_, and Leezie pored over them,
absorbed, for hours. Then she would remove her glasses, give a long
satisfied sigh, and say, 'Weel, I hev read mony a stert-ling thing this
day.'
"Above the mantelshelf hung Leezie's greatest treasure--a text, _Thou
God seest me_, worked in wool, and above the words, also in wool, a
large staring eye. The eye was, so to speak, a cloud on my young life.
I knew--Mother had taken it down and I had examined it--that it was
only canvas and wool, but if I happened to be left alone in the room it
seemed to come alive and stare at me with a terrible questioning look,
until I was reduced to wrapping myself up in the window curtains,
'trembling to think, poor child of sin,' that it was really the eye of
God, which seems to prove that, even at a very tender age, I had by no
means a conscience 'void of offence.'
"We were brought up sturdily on porridge (I can hear Leezie's voice
now--'Bairns, come to yer porridges') and cold baths, on the Shorter
Catechism, the Psalms of David, and--to use your own inelegant
phrase--great chunks of the Bible. When I read in books, where people
talk of young men and women driven from home and from the paths of
virtue by the strictness of their Calvinistic parents and the
narrowness and unloveliness of their faith, I think of our childhood
and of our father, and I 'lawff,' like Fish. Calvinism is a strong
creed, too apt, as someone says, to dwarf to harsh formality, but those
of us who have been brought up under its shadow know that it can be in
very truth a tree of life, with leaves for the healing of the nations.
"Why do some families care so much more for each other than others? Has
it anything to do with the upbringing? Is it the kind of mother one
has? I don't know, but I know we grew up adoring each other in the
frankest and most absurd way. Not that we showed it by caresses or by
endearing names. The nearest we came to an expression of affection was
at night, when the clamour of the day was stilled and bedtime had come.
In that evening hour Sandy, who fought 'bitter and reg'lar' all day but
who took the Scriptures very literally, would say to Walter and Alan,
'Have I hit you to-day? Well, I'm sorry.' If a handsome expression of
forgiveness was not at once forthcoming, 'Say you forgive me,' he
warned them, 'or I'll hit you again.'
"When we were safely tucked away in bed, my door being left open that I
might shout through to the boys, Sandy would say, 'Good-night,
Lizbeth,' and then '_Wee_ Lizbeth' and I would reply, 'Good-night,
Sandy. _Wee_ Sandy.' The same ceremony was gone through with Walter and
Alan, and then but not till then, we could fall asleep, at peace with
all men.
"We were none of us mild or docile children, but Sandy was much the
wickedest--and infinitely the most lovable. Walter and Alan and I were
his devoted slaves. He led us into the most involved scrapes, for no
one could devise mischief as he could, and was so penitent when we had
to suffer the consequences with him. He was always fighting boys much
bigger than himself, but he was all tenderness to anything weak or ugly
or ill-used. At school he was first in both lessons and games, and as
he grew up everything seemed to come easy to him, from boxing to sonnet
writing.
"It isn't always easy to like beautiful, all-conquering sort of people,
but I never heard of anyone not liking Sandy. He had such a disarming
smile and such kind, honest eyes.
"He was easily the most brilliant man of his year at Oxford; great
things were predicted for him; he seemed to walk among us 'both hands
full of gifts, carrying with nonchalance the seeds of a most
influential life.' And he died--he died at Oxford in his last
summer-term, of a chill got on the river. Even now, after five years, I
can't write about it; my eyes dazzle.... Three months later my mother
died.
"We hardly realized that she was ill, for she kept her happy face and
was brave and gay and lovely to the end. Mother and Sandy were so like
each other that so long as we kept Mother we hadn't entirely lost
Sandy, but now our house was left unto us desolate.
"Of course we grew happy again. We found, almost reluctantly, that we
could remember sad things yet be gay! The world could not go on if the
first edge of grief remained undulled--but the sword had pierced the
heart and the wound remains. On that June night when the nightingale
sang, and the grey shadow crept over Sandy's face, I realized that
nothing was too terrible to happen. Before that night the earth had
seemed a beautifully solid place. I had pranced on it and sung the
'loud mad song' of youth without the slightest misgiving, but after
that I knew what Thomas Nash meant when he wrote:
'Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen's eyes,'
and I said, 'I will walk softly all my days.'
"Only Father remained to us. I clung to him as the one prop that held
up my world. Since then I have gone in bondage to the fear that he
might be snatched from me as Mother and Sandy were. When otherwise
inoffensive people hinted to me that my father looked tired or ill, I
hated them for the sick feeling their words gave me. So, you see, when
the doctor said that with care he might live many years, I was so
relieved for myself that I could not be properly sorry for Father. It
is hard for him. I used to dream dreams about what we would do when he
retired, but I always knew at the bottom of my heart that he would
never leave his work as long as he had strength to go on. If he had
been given the choice, I am sure he would have wanted to die in
harness. Not that we have ever discussed the question. When I went up
to his room after the doctor had told me (I knew he had also told
Father), he merely looked up from the paper he was reading and said,
'There is an ignorant fellow writing here who says Scott is little read
nowadays,' and so great was his wrath at the 'ignorant fellow' that
such small things as the state of his own health passed unremarked on.
"There is no point in remaining in Glasgow: we shall go to Etterick.
"You say you can't imagine what Father will do, forbidden to preach (he
who loved preaching); forbidden to walk except on level places (he who
wore seven-league boots); forbidden to exert himself (he who was so
untiring in his efforts to help others). I know. It will be a life of
limitations. But I promise you he won't grumble, and he won't look
submissive or resigned. He will look as if he were having a perfectly
radiant time--and what is more, he will feel it. How triumphantly true
it is that the meek inherit the earth! Flowers are left to him, flowers
and the air and the sky and the sun; spring mornings, winter nights by
the fire, and books--and I may just mention in passing those two
unconsidered trifles Buff and me! As I write, I have a picture in my
mind of Father in retirement. He will be interested in everything, and
always apt at the smallest provocation to be passionately angry at
Radicals. (They have the same effect on him as Puritans had on gentle
Sir Andrew Aguecheek--you remember?) I can see him wandering in the
garden, touching a flower here and there in the queer tender way he has
with flowers, listening to the birds, enjoying their meals, reading
every adventure book he can lay his hands on (with his Baxter's
_Saints' Rest_ in his pocket for quiet moments), visiting the cottage
folk, deeply interested in all that interests them, and never leaving
without reminding them that there is 'something ayont.' In the words of
the old Covenanter, 'He will walk by the waters of Eulai, plucking an
apple here and there'--and we who live with him will seem to hear the
sound of his Master's feet."
Later she wrote:
"I don't suppose you ever 'flitted,' did you? That is our Scots
expression for removing ourselves and our belongings to another
house--a misleading bird-like and airy expression for such a ponderous
proceeding.
"Just at present all our household gods, and more especially the heavy
wardrobes, seem to be lying on my chest. The worry is, we have far too
much furniture, for Etterick is already furnished with old good things
that it would be a shame to touch, so we can only take the things from
here that are too full of associations to leave. We would hate to sell
anything, but I wish we could hear of a nice young couple setting up
house without much money to do it with, and we would beg of them to
take our furniture.
"You would be surprised how difficult it is to leave Glasgow and the
church people. I never knew how much I liked the friendly old place
until the time came for leaving it; it is like digging oneself up by
the roots.
"And the church people are so pathetic. It never seems to have occurred
to them that Father might leave them, and they are so surprised and
grieved, and so quite certain that if he only goes away for a rest he
will soon be fit again and able for his work.
"But I am not really sorry for them. I know quite well that in a few
months' time, flushed with tea and in most jocund mood, they will be
sitting at an Induction Soiree drinking in praise of their new
minister--and thank goodness I shan't be there to hear the speeches! Of
course there are some to whom Father simply made life worth living--it
hurts me to think of them.
"Life is a queer, confusing thing! There are one or two people in the
church who have enjoyed making things difficult (even in the most
lamb-like and pleasant congregations such are to be found), and I have
always promised myself that some day, in a few well-chosen words, I
should tell them what I thought of them. Well, here is my opportunity,
and I find I don't want to use it! After all, they are not so
complacent, so crassly stupid, so dead to all fine feeling as I thought
they were. They are really quite decent folk. The one I disliked
most--the sort of man who says a minister is well paid with 'three
pounds a week and a free house'--a Socialist, a leveller, this man came
to see Father the other night after he had 'cleaned hissel' after the
day's work. There were actually tears in his suspicious small eyes when
he saw Father so frail-looking, and he talked in what was for him quite
a hushed small voice on uncontroversial subjects. As he was going out
of the room he stopped and blurted out, 'I niver believed a Tory could
be a Christian till I kent you." ... I am glad I won't have to say
good-bye to Peggy. I saw her yesterday afternoon, and she didn't seem
any worse, and we were happy together. This morning they sent up to
tell me she had died suddenly in the night. She went away 'very
peaceably,' her father said. It wasn't the word he meant, but he spoke
more truly than he knew. She went 'peaceably' because there was no
resentment or fear in her child's heart. To souls like Peggy's,
innocent and quiet, God gives the knowledge that Death is but His
angel, a messenger of light in whom is no darkness at all....
"I have opened this to tell you a piece of news that has pleased me
very much. Do you remember my friend Kirsty Christie and her fiance Mr.
Hamilton? Perhaps you have forgotten them, though I expect the evening
you spent at the Christies' house is seared on your memory, and I
assure you your 'Cockney accent' has quite spoiled Mrs. Christie for
the plain Glasgow of her family circle; well, anyway, Kirsty can't
marry Mr. Hamilton until he has got a church, and it so happened that
the minister at Langhope, the nearest village to Etterick, was finding
his work too much and felt he must resign. Here was my chance! (Oh for
the old bad days of patronage!) I don't say I didn't pull strings. I
did. I pulled about fifty, and tangled most of them; but the upshot is
that they have elected Mr. Hamilton to be minister of Langhope. They
are a wise and fortunate people, for he is one of the best; and just
think of the fun for me having Kirsty settled near us!
"It is the nicest thing that has happened for a long time. I have just
thought of another thing--it is a solution of the superfluous furniture
problem.
"Langhope Manse is large and the stipend small, and I don't think
Kirsty would mind taking our furniture. I shall ask her delicately,
using 'tack.'"
_CHAPTER XVIII_