The Setons left Glasgow in the end of May.
On the evening before they left Thomas and Billy made a formal farewell
visit, on the invitation of Elizabeth and Buff, who were holding high
revel in the dismantled house.
Mr. Seton had gone to stay with friends, who could be trusted to look
after him very carefully, until the bustle and discomfort of the
removal was over. Buff was to have gone with his father, but he begged
so hard to be allowed to stay and help that in spite of Marget's
opposition (she held her own views on his helpfulness), his sister gave
in.
He and his two friends had enjoyed a full and satisfying week among
wooden crates and furniture vans, and were sincerely sorry that the
halcyon time was nearly over; in fact, Thomas had been heard to remark,
"When I'm a man I'll flit every month."
Poor Thomas, in spite of the flitting, felt very low in spirits. He had
done his best to dissuade the Setons from leaving Glasgow. Every
morning for a week he had come in primed with a fresh objection. Had
Elizabeth, he asked, thought what it meant to live so far from a
station? Had Elizabeth thought what it meant to be at the mercy of
oil-lamps? "Mamma" said that six weeks of Arran in the summer was more
than enough of the country. Had Elizabeth thought that she would never
get any servants to stay?
He did not conceal from them that "Mamma" thought the whole project
"very daftlike." To judge from Thomas, "Mamma" must have expressed
herself with some vigour, and Elizabeth could only hope that that
placid lady would never know the use her son had made of her name and
conversation.
But the efforts of Thomas had been unavailing, and the last evening had
come.
Thomas and Billy, feeling the solemnity of the occasion needed some
expression, did not open the door and run in as was their custom, but
reached up and rang a peal at the bell, a peal that clanged like a
challenge through the empty house and brought Ellen hurrying up the
kitchen stairs, expecting a telegram at the very least. Finding only
the familiar figures of Thomas and Billy, she murmured to herself,
"What next, I wonder?" and leading the way to the drawing-room,
announced the illustrious couple.
Buff greeted them with a joyous shout.
"Come on. I helped to fry the potatoes."
The supper had been chosen by the boys themselves, and consisted of
sausages and fried potatoes, jam tartlets and tinned pineapple, with
home-made toffee to follow; also two syphons of lemonade.
It was spread on a small table, the tablecloth was a kitchen towel, and
there was only one tumbler and the barest allowance of knives and
forks; but Buff was charmed with his feast, and hospitably eager that
his guests should enjoy it.
"Come on," he said again.
But Thomas, gripping Billy's hand, hung back, and it was seen that he
carried a parcel.
"I've brought Buff a present," he announced.
"Oh, Thomas!" said Elizabeth, "not another! After that lovely box of
tools."
"Yes," said Thomas firmly. "It's a book--a wee religious book." He
handed it to Elizabeth. "It's about angels."
Elizabeth did not look at her young brother, but undid the paper,
opened the book and read:
"It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold:
'Peace on the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King!'
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing."
"How nice! and the pictures are beautiful, Thomas. It's a lovely
present. Look at it, Buff!"
Buff looked at it and then he looked at Thomas. "What made you think I
wanted a book about angels?" he demanded.
"Nothing in your behaviour, old man," his sister hastened to assure
him. "D'you know you've never said Thank you!"
Buff said it, but there was a marked lack of enthusiasm in his tone.
"I didn't buy it," Thomas said, feeling the present needed some
explanation. "Aunt Jeanie sent it at Christmas to Papa, and Papa wasn't
caring much about angels, and Mamma said I could give it to Buff; she
said it might improve him."
"I _knew_ he didn't buy it!" shouted Buff, passing over the aspersion
on his character. "I knew it all the time. Nobody would _buy_ a book
like that: it's the kind that get given you."
"Aunt Jeanie sent me the _Prodigal Son_," broke in Billy in his gentle
little voice (he often acted as oil to the troubled waters of Buff and
Thomas). "I like the picture of the Prodigal eating the swine's husks.
There's a big swine looking at him as if it would bite him."
"Should think so," Thomas said. "If you were a swine you wouldn't like
prodigals coming eating your husks."
"I don't think, Billy," said Elizabeth, looking meditatively at him,
"that you will ever be a prodigal, but I can quite see Thomas as the
elder brother----Ah! here comes Ellen with the sausages!"
It was a very successful party, noisy and appreciative, and after they
had eaten everything there was to eat, including the toffee, and licked
their sticky fingers, they had a concert.
Billy sang in a most genteel manner a ribald song about a "cuddy" at
Kilmarnock Fair; Buff recited with great vigour what he and Elizabeth
between them could remember of "The Ballad of the Revenge"; and Thomas,
not to be outdone, thrust Macaulay's Lays into Elizabeth's hands,
crying, "Here, hold that, and I'll do How Horatius kept the bridge."
At last Elizabeth declared that the entertainment had come to an end,
and the guests reluctantly prepared to depart.
"You're quite sure you'll invite us to Etterick?" was Thomas's parting
remark. "You won't forget when you're away?"
"Oh, Thomas!" Elizabeth asked him reproachfully, "have I proved myself
such a broken reed? I promise you faithfully that at the end of June I
shall write to Mamma and suggest the day and the train and everything.
I'll go further. I'll borrow a car and meet you at the junction. Will
that do?"
Thomas nodded, satisfied, and she patted each small head. "Good-bye, my
funnies. We shall miss you very much."
When Elizabeth had seen Buff in bed she came downstairs to the
dismantled drawing-room.
Ellen had tidied away the supper-table and made up the fire, and pulled
forward the only decent chair, and had done her best to make the room
look habitable.
It was still daylight, but just too dark to read with comfort, and
Elizabeth folded her tired hands and gave herself up to idleness. She
had been getting gradually more depressed each day, as the familiar
things were carried out of the house, and to-night her heart felt like
a physical weight and her eyes smarted with unshed tears. The ending of
an old song hurts.
Sitting alone in the empty, silent room, a room once so well peopled
and full of happy sound, she had a curious unsubstantial feeling, as if
she were but part of the baseless fabric of a vision and might dissolve
and "leave not a rack behind." ... The usually cheerful room was
haunted to-night, memories thronged round her, plucking at her to
recall themselves. It was in this room that her mother had sung to them
and played with them--and never minded when things were knocked down
and broken. Over there, in the corner of the ceiling near the window,
there was still an ugly mark made by Walter and a cricket-ball, and she
remembered how her father had said, so regretfully, "And it was such a
handsome cornice!" and her mother had laughed--peals of laughter like a
happy schoolgirl, and taken her husband's arm and said, "You dear
innocent!" It was a funny thing to call one's father, she remembered
thinking at the time, and did not seem to have any connection with the
cornice. All sorts of little things, long forgotten, came stealing
back; the boys' funny sayings--Sandy, standing a determined little
figure, assuring his mother, "_I shall always stay with you, Mums, and
if anyone comes to marry me I shall hide in the dirty clothes basket._"
And now Sandy and his mother were together for always.
Elizabeth slipped on to the floor, and kneeling by the chair as she had
knelt as a child--"O God," she prayed, "don't take anybody else. Leave
me Father and Buffy and the boys in India. Please leave them to me--if
it be Thy will. Amen."
She was still kneeling with her head on her folded arms when Marget
came into the room carrying a tray. She made no comment on seeing the
attitude of her mistress, but, putting the tray on the table, she went
over to the window, and, remarking that if they had to flit it was a
blessing Providence had arranged that they should flit when the days
were long, she proceeded to pull down the blinds and light the gas.
Then she leaned over her mistress and addressed her as if she were a
small child.
"I've brocht ye a cup o' tea an' a wee bit buttered toast. Ye wud get
nae supper wi' thae wild laddies. Drink it while it's hot, and get awa'
to your bed, like a guid lassie."
Elizabeth uncoiled herself (to use her own phrase) and rose to her
feet. She blinked in the gas-light with her tear-swollen eyes, then she
made a face at Marget and laughed:
"I'm an idiot, Marget, but somehow to-night it all seemed to come back.
You and I have seen--changes.... You're a kind old dear, anyway; it's a
good thing we always have you."
"It is that," Marget agreed. "What aboot the men's breakfasts the
morn's morning? I doot we hevna left dishes to gang roond." She stood
and talked until she had seen Elizabeth drink the tea and eat the
toast, and then herded her upstairs to bed.
* * * * *
One day in the end of June, Elizabeth fulfilled her promise to Thomas,
and wrote to Mrs. Kirke asking if her two sons could be dispatched on a
certain date by a certain train, and arrangements would be made for
meeting them at the junction.
It was a hot shining afternoon, and the Setons were having tea by the
burnside.
Mr. Jamieson (the lame Sunday-school teacher from the church in
Glasgow) was staying with them for a fortnight, and he sat in a
comfortable deck-chair with a book in his lap; but he read little, the
book of Nature was more fascinating than even Sir Walter. His delight
in his surroundings touched Elizabeth. "To think," she said to her
father, "that we never thought of asking Mr. Jamieson to Etterick
before! Lumps of selfishness, that's what we are."
Mr. Seton suggested that it was more want of thought.
"It amounts to the same thing," said his daughter. "I wonder if it
would be possible to have Bob Scott out here? You know, my little waif
with the drunken father? Of course he would corrupt the whole
neighbourhood in about two days and be a horribly bad influence with
Buff--but I don't believe the poor little chap has ever been in the
real country. We must try to plan."
Mr. Seton sat reading _The Times_. He was greatly worried about Ulster,
and frequently said "_Tut-tut_" as he read.
Buff had helped Ellen to carry everything out for tea, and was now in
the burn, splashing about, building stones into a dam. Buff was very
happy. Presently, Mr. Hamilton, the new minister at Langhope, was going
to take him in hand and prepare him for school, but in the meantime he
attended the village school--a haunt that his soul loved. He modelled
his appearances and manners on the friends he made there, acquired a
rich Border accent, and was in no way to be distinguished from the
other scholars. At luncheon that day, he had informed his family that
Wullie Veitch (the ploughman's son) had said, after a scuffle in the
playground, "Seton's trampit ma piece fair useless"; and the same youth
had summed up the new-comer in a sentence: "Everything Seton says is
aither rideeclous or confounded," a judgment which, instead of
annoying, amused and delighted both the new-comer and his family.
Things had worked out amazingly well, Elizabeth thought, as she sat
with her writing-pad on her knee and looking at her family. Her father
seemed better, and was most contented with his life. Buff was growing
every day browner and stronger. The house was all in order after the
improvements they had made, and was even more charming than she had
hoped it would be. The garden was a riot of colour and scent, and a
never-ending delight. To her great relief, Marget and Ellen had settled
down with Watty Laidlaw and his wife in peace and quiet accord, and had
even been heard to say that they _preferred_ the country.
After getting Etterick into order, Elizabeth had worked hard at
Langhope Manse.
The wedding had taken place a week before, and tomorrow Andrew Hamilton
would bring home his bride.
Elizabeth, with her gift of throwing her whole self into her friends'
interests, was as eager and excited as if she were the bride and hers
the new home. True, much of it was not to her liking. She hated a
dining-room "suite" covered in Utrecht velvet, and she thought Kirsty's
friends had been singularly ill-advised in their choice of wedding
presents.
Kirsty had refused to think of looking for old things for her
drawing-room. She said in her sensible way that things got old soon
enough without starting with them old; and she just hated old faded
rugs, there was nothing to beat a good Axminster.
She was very pleased, however, to accept the Seton's spare furniture.
It was solid mid-Victorian, polished and cared-for, and as good as the
day it was made. The drawers in the wardrobes and dressing-tables moved
with a fluency foreign to the showy present-day "Sheraton" and
"Chippendale" suites, and Kirsty appreciated this.
Elizabeth had done her best to make the rooms pretty, and only that
morning she had put the finishing touches, and looked round the rooms
brave in their fresh chintzes and curtains, sniffed the mingled odours
of new paint and sweet-peas, and thought how Kirsty would love it all.
The store-room she had taken especial pains with, and had even wrested
treasures in the way of pots and jars from the store-room at Etterick
(to Marget's wrath and disgust), and carried them in the pony-cart to
help to fill the rather empty shelves at Langhope.
So this sunny afternoon, as Elizabeth rose from her writing and began
to pour out the tea, she felt at peace with all mankind.
She arranged Mr. Jamieson's teacup on a little table by his side, and
made it all comfortable for him. "Put away the paper, Father," she
cried, "and come and have your tea, and help me to count our blessings.
Let's forget Ulster for half an hour."
Mr. Seton obediently laid down the paper and came to the table.
"Dear me," he said, "this is very pleasant."
The bees drowsed among the heather, white butterflies fluttered over
the wild thyme and the little yellow and white violas that starred the
turf, and the sound of the burn and the gentle crying of sheep made a
wonderful peace in the afternoon air. Marget's scones and new-made
butter and jam seemed more than usually delicious, and--"Aren't we well
off?" asked Elizabeth.
Mr. Jamieson looked round him with a sigh of utter content, and Mr.
Seton said, "I wish I thought that the rest of the world was as
peaceful as this little glen." He helped himself to jam. "The situation
in Ireland seems to grow more hopeless every day; and by the way,
Jamieson, did you see that the Emperor of Austria's heir has been
assassinated along with his wife?"
"I saw that," said Mr. Jamieson. "I hope it won't mean trouble."
"It seems a pointless crime," said Elizabeth.
"Buff, come out of the burn, you water-kelpie, and take your tea."
Buff was trying to drag a large stone from the bed of the stream, and
was addressing it as he had heard the stable-boy address the
pony--"Stan' up, ye brit! Wud ye, though?"--but at his sister's command
he ceased his efforts and crawled up the bank to have his hands dried
in his father's handkerchief.
It never took Buff long to eat a meal, and in a very few minutes he had
eaten three scones and drunk two cups of milk, and laid himself face
down-wards in the heather to ruminate.
"Mr. Jamieson," he said suddenly, "if a robber stole your money and
went in a ship to South Africa, how would you get at him?"
Mr. Jamieson, unversed in the ways of criminals, was at a loss.
"I doubt I would just need to lose it," he said.
This was feeble. Buff turned to his father and asked what course he
would follow.
"I think," said Mr. Seton, "that I would cable to the police to board
the ship at the first port."
Buff rejected this method as tame and unspectacular.
"What would you do, Lizbeth?"
"It depends," said Elizabeth, "on how much money I had. If it was a
lot, I would send a detective to recover it. But sending a detective
would cost a lot."
Buff thought deeply for a few seconds.
"I know what I would do," he said. "I would send a
_bloodhound_--_steerage_."
_CHAPTER XIX_
"How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?"
"As dying, and behold we live."
You know, of course, Gentle Reader, that there can be no end to this
little chronicle?
You know that when a story begins in 1913, 1914 will follow, and that
in that year certainty came to an end, plans ceased to come to
fruition--that, in fact, the lives of all of us cracked across.
Personally, I detest tales that end in the air. I like all the strings
gathered up tidily in the last chapter and tied neatly into nuptial
knots; so I should have liked to be able to tell you that Elizabeth
became a "grateful" wife, and that she and Arthur Townshend lived
happily and, in fairy-tale parlance, never drank out of an empty cup;
and that Stewart Stevenson ceased to think of Elizabeth (whom he never
really approved of) and fell in love with Jessie Thomson, and married
her one fine day in "Seton's kirk," and that all Jessie's aspirations
after refinement and late dinner were amply fulfilled.
But, alas! as I write (May 1917) the guns still boom continuously out
there in France, and there is scarce a rift to be seen in the
war-clouds that obscure the day.
Jessie Thomson is a V.A.D. now and a very efficient worker, as befits
the daughter of Mrs. Thomson. She has not time to worry about her
mother's homely ways, nor is she so hag-ridden by the Simpsons.
Gertrude Simpson, by the way, is, according to her mother, "marrying
into the Navy--a Lieutenant-Commander, no less," and, according to Mrs.
Thomson, is "neither to haud nor bind" in consequence.
Stewart Stevenson went on with his work for three months after war
began, but he was thinking deeply all the time, and one day in November
he put all his painting things away--very tidily--locked up the studio
and went home to tell his parents he had decided to go. His was no
martial spirit, he hated the very name of war and loathed the thought
of the training, but he went because he felt it would be a pitiful
thing if anyone had to take his place.
His mother sits among the time-pieces in Lochnagar and knits socks, and
packs parcels, and cries a good deal. Both she and her husband have
grown much greyer, and they somehow appear smaller. Stewart, you see,
is their only son.
It is useless to tell over the days of August 1914. They are branded on
the memory. The stupefaction, the reading of newspapers until we were
dazed and half-blind, the endless talking, the frenzy of knitting into
which the women threw themselves, thankful to find something that would
at least occupy their hands. We talked so glibly about what we did not
understand. We repeated parrot-like to each other, "It will take all
our men and all our treasure," and had no notion how truly we spoke or
how hard a saying we were to find it. And all the time the sun shone.
It was particularly hard to believe in the war at Etterick. No
khaki-clad men disturbed the peace of the glen, no trains rushed past
crowded with troops, no aeroplanes circled in the heavens. The hills
and the burn and the peeweets remained the same, the high hollyhocks
flaunted themselves against the grey garden wall; nothing was
changed--and yet everything was different.
Buff and Thomas and Billy, as pleased and excited as if it were some
gigantic show got up for their benefit, equipped themselves with
weapons and spent laborious days tracking spies in the heather and
charging down the hillside; performing many deeds of valour for which,
in the evening, they solemnly presented each other with suitable
decorations.
Towards the end of August, when they were at breakfast one morning,
Arthur Townshend suddenly appeared, having come up by the night train
and motored from the junction.
His arrival created great excitement, Buff throwing himself upon him
and demanding to know why he had come.
"Well, you know, you did invite me in August," Arthur reminded him.
"And when are you going away?" (This was Buff's favourite formula with
guests, and he could never be made to see that it would be prettier if
he said, "How long can you stay?")
Arthur shook hands with Elizabeth and her father, and replied:
"I'm going away this evening as ever was. It sounds absurd," in answer
to Elizabeth's exclamation, "but I must be back in London to-morrow
morning. I had no notion when I might have a chance of seeing you all
again, so I just came off when I had a free day."
"Dear me!" said Mr. Seton. "You young people are like Ariel or Puck,
the way you fly about."
"Oh! _is_ it to be the Flying Corps?" asked Elizabeth.
"No--worse luck! Pilled for my eyesight. But I'm passed for the
infantry, and to-morrow I enter the Artists' Rifles. I may get a
commission and go to France quite soon."
Ellen came in with a fresh supply of food, and breakfast was a
prolonged meal; for the Setons had many questions to ask and Arthur had
much to tell them.
"You're a godsend to us," Elizabeth told him, "for you remain normal.
People here are all unstrung. The neighbours arrive in excited
motorfuls, children and dogs and all, and we sit and knit, and drink
tea and tell each other the most absurd tales. And rumours leap from
end to end of the county, and we imagine we hear guns on the
Forth--which isn't humanly possible--and people who have boys in the
Navy are tortured with silly lies about sea-battles and the sinking of
warships."
Before luncheon, Arthur was dragged out by the boys to admire their
pets; but though they looked at such peaceful objects as rabbits, a
jackdaw with a wooden leg, and the giant trout that lived in Prince
Charlie's Well, all their talk was of battles. They wore sacking round
their legs to look like putties, their belts were stuck full of
weapons, and they yearned to shed blood. No one would have thought, to
hear their bloodthirsty talk, that only that morning they had, all
three, wept bitter tears because the sandy cat from the stables had
killed a swallow.
Billy, who had got mixed in his small mind between friend and foe,
announced that he had, a few minutes ago, killed seven Russians whom he
had found lurking among the gooseberry bushes in the kitchen garden,
and was instantly suppressed by Thomas, who hissed at him, "You don't
kill _allies_, silly. You inter them."
In the afternoon, while Mr. Seton took his reluctant daily rest, and
the boys were busy with some plot of their own in the stockyard,
Elizabeth and Arthur wandered out together.
They went first to see the walled garden, now ablaze with autumn
flowers; but beautiful though it was it did not keep them long, for
something in the day and something in themselves seemed to demand the
uplands, and they turned their steps to the hills.
It was an easy climb, and they walked quickly, and soon stood at the
cairn of stones that marked the top of the hill behind the house, stood
breathless and glad of a rest, looking at the countryside spread out
beneath them.
In most of the fields the corn stood in "stooks"; the last field was
being cut this golden afternoon, and the hum of the reaping-machine was
loud in the still air.
Far away a wisp of white smoke told that the little branch-line train
was making its leisurely journey from one small flower-scented station
to another. Soon the workers would gather up their things and go home,
the day's work finished.
All was peace.
And there was no peace.
The tears came into Elizabeth's eyes as she looked, and Arthur answered
the thought that brought the tears. "It's worth dying for," he said.
Elizabeth nodded, not trusting her voice.
They turned away and talked on trivial matters, and laughed, and
presently fell silent again.
"Elizabeth," said Arthur suddenly, "I wish you didn't scare me so."
"_Do_ I? I'm very much gratified to hear it. I had no idea I inspired
awe in any mortal."
"Well--that isn't at all a suitable reply to my remark. I wanted you to
assure me that there was no need to be scared."
"There isn't. What can I do for you? Ask and I shall grant it, even to
the half of my kingdom."
"When we get this job over may I come straight to you?"
Elizabeth had no coyness in her nature, and she now turned her grey
eyes--not mocking now but soft and shining--on the anxious face of her
companion and said:
"Indeed, my dear, you may. Just as straight as you can come, and I
shall be waiting for you on the doorstep. It has taken a European war
to make me realize it, but you are the only man in the world so far as
I am concerned."
Some time later Arthur said, "I'm going away extraordinarily happy. By
Jove, I ought to be some use at fighting now"; and he laughed boyishly.
"Oh, don't," said Elizabeth. "You've reminded me, and I was trying to
make believe you weren't going away. I'm afraid--oh! Arthur, I'm
horribly afraid, that you won't be allowed to come back, that you will
be snatched from me----"
"I may not come back," said Arthur soberly, "but I won't be snatched.
You give me, and I give myself, willingly. But, Lizbeth, beloved, it
isn't like you to be afraid."
"Yes, it is. I've always been scared of something. When I was tiny it
was the Last Day. I hardly dared go the afternoon walk with Leezie in
case it came like a thief in the night and found me far from my home
and parents. I walked with my eyes shut, and bumped into people and
lamp-posts, because I was sure if I opened them I should see the Angel
Gabriel standing on the top of a house with a trumpet in his hand, and
the heavens rolling up like a scroll, and I didn't know about parchment
scrolls and thought it was a _brandy-scroll_, which made it so much
worse."
"Oh! my funny Elizabeth!" Arthur said tenderly. "I wish I could have
been there to see you; I grudge all the years I didn't know you."
"Oh," said Elizabeth, "it wouldn't have been much good knowing each
other in those days. I was about five, I suppose, and you would be
nine. You would merely have seen a tiresome little girl, and I would
have seen a superior sort of boy, and I should probably have put out my
tongue at you. I wasn't a nice child; mine is a faulty and tattered
past."
"When did you begin to reform?" Arthur asked, "for it was a very sedate
lady I found in Glasgow. Tell me, Lizbeth, why were you so discouraging
to me then? You must have known I cared."
"Well, you see, I'm a queer creature--affectionate but not very
_loving_. I never think that 'love' is a word to use much if people are
all well and things in their ordinary. And you were frightfully
English, you can't deny it, and a monocle, and everything very much
against you. And then Aunt Alice's intention of being a sort of fairy
godmother was so obvious--it seemed feeble to tumble so easily in with
her plans. But I suppose I cared all the time, and I can see now that
it was very petty of me to pretend indifference."
"Petty?" said Arthur in fine scorn. "_You_ couldn't be petty. But I'm
afraid I'm still 'frightfully' English, and I've still got astigmatism
in one eye--are you sure you can overlook these blemishes? ... But
seriously, Lizbeth--if I never come back to you, if I am one of the
'costs,' if all you and I are to have together, O my beloved, is just
this one perfect afternoon, it will still be all right. Won't it? You
will laugh and be your own gallant self, and know that I am loving you
and waiting for you--farther on. It will be all right, Lizbeth?"
She nodded, smiling at him bravely.
"Then kiss me, my very own."
* * * * *
The days drew in, and the Setons settled down for the winter. James
Seton occupied himself for several hours in the day writing a history
of the district, and found it a great interest. He said little about
the war, and told his daughter he had prayed for grace to hold his
peace; but he was a comforter to the people round when the war touched
their homes.
Elizabeth was determined that she would have busy days. She became the
Visitor for the district for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families
Association; she sang at war-concerts; she amused her father and Buff;
she knitted socks and wrote letters. She went to Glasgow as often as
she could be spared to visit her friends in the Gorbals, and came back
laden with tales for her father--tales that made him laugh with tears
in his eyes, for it was "tragical mirth."
To mothers who lost their sons she was a welcome visitor. They never
felt her out of place, or an embarrassment, this tall golden-haired
creature, as she sat on a wooden chair by the kitchen fire and listened
and understood and cried with them. They brought out their pitiful
treasures for her--the half-finished letter that had been found in
"Jimmy's" pocket when death overtook him, the few French coins, the
picture-postcard of his wee sister--and she held them tenderly and
reverently while they told the tale of their grief.
"Oh! ma wee Jimmie," one poor mother lamented to her. "Little did I
think I wud never see him again. The nicht he gaed awa' he had to be at
the station at nine o'clock, and he said nane o' us were to gang wi'
him. I hed an awfu' guid supper for him, for I thinks to masel', 'It's
no' likely the laddie'll ever see a dacent meal in France,' an' he
likit it rare weel. An' syne he lookit at the time, an' he says, 'I'll
awa' then,' an' I juist turned kinda seeck-like when he said it. He
said guid-bye to the lasses an' wee John, but he never said guid-bye to
me. Na. He was a sic a man, ye ken, an' he didna want to
greet--eighteen he was, ma wee bairn. I tell't the ithers to keep back,
an' I gaed oot efter him to the stair-heid. He stood on the top step,
an' he lookit at me, 'S'long, then, Mither,' he says. An' he gaed doon
twa-three steps, an' he stoppit again, an' 'S'long, Mither,' he says.
Syne he got to the turn o' the stair, an' he stood an' lookit as if he
juist cudna gang--I can see him noo, wi' his Glengarry bunnet cockit
that gallant on his heid--and he cried, 'S'long, Mither,' an' he ran
doon the stair--ma wee laddie."
It was astonishing to Elizabeth how quickly the women became quite at
home with those foreign places with the strange outlandish names that
swallowed up their men.
"Ay," one woman told her (this was later), "I sent oot a plum-puddin'
in a cloth to ma son Jake--I sent twa o' them, an' I said to him that
wan o' them was for Dan'l Scott--his mither was a neebor o' mine an' a
dacent wumman an' she's deid--an' Jake wasna near Dan'l at the time,
but the first chance he got he tuk the puddin' an' he rum'led a' roond
Gally Polly until he fand him--and then they made a nicht o't."
Evidently, in her mind "Gally Polly" was a jovial sort of place, rather
like Argyle Street on a Saturday night. As Elizabeth told her father,
Glasgow people gave a homely, cosy feeling to any part of the world
they went to--even to the blasted, shell-strewn fields of Flanders and
Gallipoli.
The winter wore on, and Arthur Townshend got his commission and went to
France.
Elizabeth sent him a parcel every week, and the whole household
contributed to it. Marget baked cakes, Mrs. Laidlaw made
treacle-toffee, Mr. Seton sent books, Buff painted pictures, and
Elizabeth put in everything she could think of. But much though he
appreciated the parcels he liked the letters more.
In November she wrote to him: "We have heard this morning that Alan's
regiment has landed in France. He thinks he may get a few days' leave,
perhaps next month. It would be joyful if he were home for Christmas.
"Poor old Walter, hung up in the Secretariat, comforts himself that his
leave is due next year, and hopes--hopes, the wicked one!--that the war
will still be going on then. Your letters are a tremendous interest. I
read parts of them to Father and Buff, and last night your tale of the
wild Highlander who was 'King of Ypres' so excited them that Father got
up to shut the door--you know how he does when he is moved over
anything--and Buff spun round the room like a teetotum, telling it all
over again, with himself as hero. That child gives himself the most
rich and varied existence spinning romances in which he is the central
figure. He means to be a Hero when he grows up (an improbable
profession!) but I expect school will teach him to be an ordinary
sensible boy. And what a pity that will be! By the way, you won't get
any more Bible pictures from him. Father had to forbid them. Buff was
allowing his fancy to play too freely among sacred subjects, poor old
pet!
"The war is turning everything topsy-turvy. You never thought to
acquire the dignity of a second lieutenant, and I hardly expected to
come down the social scale with a rattle, but so it is. I am a
housemaid. Our invaluable Ellen has gone to make munitions and I am
trying to take her place. You see, I can't go and make munitions,
because I must stay with Father and Buff, but it seemed a pity to keep
an able-bodied woman to sweep and dust our rooms for us when I could
quite well do it. Marget waits the table now, and Mrs. Laidlaw helps
her with the kitchen work.
"Ellen was most unwilling to go--she had been five years with us, and
she clings like ivy to people she is accustomed to--but when her sister
wrote about the opportunity for clever hands and that a place was open
for her if she would take it, I unclung her, and now she writes to me
so contentedly that I am sure that she is clinging round munitions. We
miss her dreadfully, not only for her work but for her nice gentle
self; but I flatter myself that I am acting understudy quite well. And
I enjoy it. The daily round, the common task don't bore me one bit.
True, it is always the same old work and the same old dust, but _I_ am
different every day--some days on the heights, some days in the
_howes_. I try to be very methodical, and I 'turn out' the rooms as
regularly as even Mrs. Thomson, that cleanest of women, could desire.
And there is no tonic like it. No matter how anxious and depressed I
may be when I begin to clean a bedroom, by the time I have got the
furniture back in its place, the floor polished with beeswax and
turpentine, and clean covers on the toilet-table, my spirits simply
won't keep from soaring. You will be startled to hear that I rise at 6
a.m. I like to get as much done as possible before breakfast, and I
find that when I have done 'the nastiest thing in the day' and get my
feet on to the floor, it doesn't matter whether it is six o'clock or
eight. Only, my cold bath is very cold at that early hour--but I think
of you people in France and pour contempt on my shivering self. To
lighten our labours, we have got a vacuum cleaner, one of the kind you
stand on and work from side to side. Buff delights to help with this
thing, and he and I see-saw together. Sometimes we sing 'A life on the
ocean wave,' which adds greatly to the hilarity of the occasion. By the
time the war is over I expect to be so healthy and wealthy and wise
that I shall want to continue to be a housemaid....
"I don't suppose life at the Front is just all you would have our fancy
paint? In fact, it must be ghastly beyond all words, and how you all
stand it I know not. I simply can't bear to be comfortable by the
fireside--but that is silly, for I know the only thing that keeps you
all going is the thought that we are safe and warm at home. The war has
come very near to us these last few days. A boy whom we knew very
well--Tommy Elliot--has fallen. They have a place near here. His father
was killed in the Boer War and Tommy was his mother's only child. He
was nineteen and just got his commission before war broke out. The
pride of him! And how Buff and Billy and Thomas lay at his feet! He was
the nicest boy imaginable--never thought it beneath his dignity to play
with little boys, or be sweet to his mother. I never heard anyone with
such a hearty laugh. It made you laugh to hear it. Thank God he found
so much to laugh at, and so little reason for tears.
"I went over to see Mrs. Elliot. I hardly dared to go, but I couldn't
stay away. She was sitting in the room they call the 'summer parlour.'
It is a room I love in summer, full of dark oak and coolness and
sweet-smelling flowers, but cold and rather dark in winter. She is a
woman of many friends, and the writing-table was heaped with letters
and telegrams--very few of them opened. She seemed glad to see me, and
was calm and smiling; but the stricken look in her eyes made me behave
like an utter idiot. When I could speak I suggested that I had better
go away, but she began to speak about him, and I thought it might help
her to have a listener who cared too. She told me why she was sitting
in the summer parlour. She had used it a great deal for writing, and he
had always come in that way, so that he would find her just at once.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'I didn't turn my head, for I knew he liked to
"pounce"--a relic from the little-boy days when he was a black puma.'
Her smile when she said it broke one's heart. 'If I didn't happen to be
here, he went from room to room, walking warily with his nailed boots
on the polished floors, saying "Mother! Mother!" until he found me.'
"_How are the dead raised up? and with what bodies do they come?_ I
suppose that is the most important question in the world to us all, and
we seek for the answer as they who dig for hid treasure. But all the
sermons preached and all the books written about it help not at all,
for the preachers and the writers are as ignorant as everybody else. My
own firm belief is that God, who made us with the power of loving, who
thought of the spring and gave young things their darling funny ways,
will not fail us here. He will know that to Tommy's mother the light of
heaven, which is neither of the sun nor the moon but a light most
precious, even like a jasper stone clear as crystal, will matter
nothing unless it shows her Tommy in his old homespun coat, with his
laughing face, ready to 'pounce'; and that she will bid the harpers
harping on their harps of gold still their noise while she listens for
the sound of boyish footsteps and a voice that says 'Mother!
Mother!' ...
"We read some of the many letters together. They were all so kind and
full of real sympathy, but I noticed that she pushed carelessly aside
those that talked of her own feelings and kept those that talked of
what a splendid person Tommy was.
"There was one rather smudged-looking envelope without a stamp, and we
wondered where it had come from. It was from Buff! He had written it
without asking anyone's advice, and had walked the three miles to
deliver it. I think that grimy little letter did Mrs. Elliot good. We
had read so many letters, all saying the same thing, all saying it more
or less beautifully, one had the feeling that one was being sluiced all
over with sympathy. Buff's was different. It ran:
<BR>
"'I am sorry that Tommy is killed for he had a cheery face and I liked
him. But it can't be helped. He will be quite comfortable with God and
I hope that someone is being kind to old Pepper for he liked him
too.--Your aff. friend
David Stuart Seton.
"'P.S.--I'm not allowed to draw riligus pictures now or I would have
shown you God being very glad to see Tommy.'
"'Old Pepper' is a mongrel that Tommy rescued and was kind to, and it
was so like Buff to think of the feelings of the dumb animal.
"Tommy's mother held the letter in her hand very tenderly, and the only
tears I saw her shed dropped on it. Then 'Let us go out and look for
old Pepper,' she said, 'for "he liked him too."'
"I came home very heavy-hearted, trying to comfort myself concerning
those splendid boys.
"To die for one's country is a great privilege--God knows I don't say
that lightly, for any day I may hear that you or Alan have died that
death--and to those boys the honour has been given in the very
springtime of their days.
"Most of us part from our lives reluctantly: they are taken from us,
and we go with shivering, shrinking feet down to the brink of the
River, but those sons of the morning throw their lives from them and
_spring_ across. I think God will look very kindly at our little boys.
"And smug, middle-aged people say, 'Poor lads!' They dare to pity the
rich dead. Oh! the dull people dragging out their span of years without
ever finding out what living means!
"But it breaks one's heart, the thought of the buried hopes. I have
been thinking of the father, the man in business who was keeping things
going until his boy would be through and ready to help him. There are
so many of them in Glasgow, and I used to like to listen to them
talking to each other in the car coming out from business. They boasted
so innocently of their boys, of this one's skill at cricket, that one's
prowess in the football field.
"And now this cheery business man has no boy, only a room with a little
bed in the corner, a bookshelf full of adventure--stories and battered
school-books, a cricket bat and a bag of golf clubs; a wardrobe full of
clothes, and a most vivid selection of ties and socks, for the boy who
lies in France was very smart in his nice boyish way, and brushed his
hair until it shone. Oh! I wonder had anybody time to stroke just once
that shining head before it was laid away in the earth? remembering
that over the water hearts would break with yearning to see it again.
"It isn't so bad when doleful people get sorrow, they at least have the
miserable satisfaction of saying they had always known it would come,
but when happy hearts are broken, when blythe people fall silent--the
sadness of it haunts one.
"To talk of cheerier subjects. Aunt Alice is a heroine. Who would have
thought of her giving up her house for a hospital! Of course we always
knew, didn't we? that she was the most golden-hearted person in
existence, but it has taken a European war to make her practical. Now
she writes me long letters of advice about saving, and food values, and
is determined that she at least won't be a drag on her country in
winning the war.
"Talk about saving, I asked one of my women the other day if she had
ever tried margarine. 'No,' she said earnestly, 'I niver touch it; an'
if I'm oot at ma tea an' no' verra sure if it's butter, I juist tak'
jeely.' I said no more.
"And now, my very dear, it is perilously near midnight, and there is
not the slightest sound in this rather frightening old house, and not
the slightest sound on the moor outside, and I am getting rather scared
sitting up all alone. Besides, six o'clock comes very soon after
midnight! I am so sleepy, with all my housework, that, like the herd
laddie, I get no good out of my bed.--Goodnight, E."
* * * * *
A more contented woman than Kirsty Hamilton _nee_ Christie it would
have been difficult to find. Andrew Hamilton and Langhope Manse made to
her "Paradise enow." The little hard lines had gone from her face, and
she bustled about, a most efficient mistress, encouraging the small
maid to do her best work, and helping with her own capable hands. She
planned and cooked most savoury, thrifty dinners, and made every
shilling do the work of two; it was all sheer delight to her.
House-proud and husband-proud, she envied no one, and in fact sincerely
pitied every other woman because she could not have her Andrew.
July, August, and September were three wonderful months to the
Hamiltons. They spent them settling into the new house (daily finding
new delights in it), working in the garden, and getting acquainted with
the congregation.
After their one o'clock dinner, on good afternoons, they mounted their
bicycles and visited outlying members. Often they were asked to wait
for tea, such a fine farmhouse tea as town-bred Kirsty had never
dreamed of; and then they cycled home in the gloaming, talking, talking
all the time, until they came to their own gate--how good that sounded,
_their own gate_--and having wheeled their bicycles to the shed, they
would walk round the garden hand in hand, like happy children.
Andrew had generally something to show Kirsty, some small improvement,
for he was a man of his hands; or if there was nothing new to see, they
would always go and again admire his chief treasures--a mossy bank that
in spring would be covered with violets, a stone dyke in which rock
plants had been encouraged to grow, and a little humpbacked bridge hung
with ferns.
The war did not trouble Kirsty much. She was rather provoked that it
should have happened, for it hurt the church attendance and sadly
thinned the choir, and when Andrew had finished reading the papers he
would sometimes sit quite silent, looking before him, which made her
vaguely uneasy.
Her own family were untouched by it. Archie had no thought of going to
train, the notion seemed to him ludicrous in the extreme, but he saw
his way to making some money fishing in the troubled waters. The Rev.
Johnston Christie confined his usefulness to violent denunciations of
the Kaiser from the pulpit every Sunday. He had been much impressed by
a phrase used by a prominent Anglican bishop about the Nailed Hand
beating the Mailed Fist--neat and telling he considered it, and used it
on every possible occasion.
One afternoon in late October the Hamiltons were walking in their
garden. They had been lunching at Etterick, and were going in shortly
to have tea cosily by the study fire. It was a still day, with a touch
of winter in the air--_back end_, the village people called it, but the
stackyards were stocked, the potatoes and turnips were in pits, the
byres were full of feeding cattle, so they were ready for what winter
would bring them.
To Andrew Hamilton, country-born and bred, every day was a delight.
To-day, as he stood with his wife by the low fence at the foot of the
gardens and looked across the fields to the hills, he took a long
breath of the clean cold air, and said:
"This--after ten years of lodging in Garnethill! Our lives have fallen
to us in pleasant places, Kirsty."
"Yes," she agreed contentedly. "I never thought the country could be so
nice. I like the feel of the big stacks, and to think that the
stick-house is full of logs, and the apples in the garret, and
everything laid in for winter. Andrew, I'm glad winter is coming. It
will be so cosy the long evenings together--and only one meeting in the
week."
Her husband put out his hand to stop her. "Don't, Kirsty," he said, as
if her words hurt him.
In answer to her look of surprise, he went on:
"Did you ever think, when this war was changing so much, that it would
change things for us too? Kirsty, my dear, I have thought it all out
and I feel I must go."
Kirsty was apt to get cross when she was perturbed about anything, and
she now said, moving a step or two away, "What in the world d'you mean?
Where are you going?"
"I'm going to enlist, with as many Langhope men as I can persuade to
accompany me. It's no use. I can't stand in the pulpit--a young strong
man--and say Go. I must say Come!"
Now that it was out, he gave a sigh of relief.
"Kirsty," he pleaded, "say you think I'm right."
But Kirsty's face was white and drawn.
"I thought you were happy," she said at last, with a pitiful little sob
on the last word.
"So happy," said her husband, "that I have to go. Every time I came in
and found you waiting for me with the kettle singing, when I went out
in the morning and looked at the hills, when I walked in the garden and
knew that every bush in it was dear to me--then I remembered that these
things so dear were being bought with a price, and that the only decent
thing for me to do was to go and help to pay that price."
"But only as a chaplain, surely?"
Andrew shook his head.
"I'm too young and able-bodied for a chaplain. I'm only thirty-two, and
though I'm not big I'm wiry."
"The Archbishop of Canterbury says the clergy _shouldn't_ fight,"
Kirsty reminded him.
Andrew took her arm and looked very tenderly at her as he answered,
laughing, "Oh! Kirsty, since when did an Anglican bishop direct your
conscience and mine?" They walked slowly towards the house.
On the doorstep Kirsty turned.
"Andrew," she said, "have you thought it all out? Have you thought what
it may mean? Leaving the people here--perhaps they won't keep your
place open for you, for no man knows how long the war'll last--leaving
your comfortable home and your wife who--who loves you, and going away
to a life of hardship and exposure, and in the end perhaps--death. Have
you thought of this sacrifice you are making?"
And her husband answered, "Yes, I have thought of all it may mean. I
don't feel I am wrong leaving the church, because Mr. Smillie is
willing to come back and look after the people in my absence. He will
stay in the Manse and be company for you." Here poor Kirsty sniffed.
"Oh! my dear, don't think I am going with a light heart. 'Stay at home,
then,' you say. 'Better men than you are will stay at home.' I know
they will, and I only wish I could stay with them, for the very thought
of war makes me sick. But because it is such a wrench to go, makes me
sure that I ought to go. Love and sacrifice--it's the way of the Cross,
Kirsty. The 'young Prince of Glory' walked that way, and I, one of His
humblest ministers, will find my way by His footprints."
Kirsty said no more. Later, when Andrew was gone, her father came to
Langhope and in no uncertain voice expressed his opinion of his
son-in-law. That a man would leave a good down-sitting and go and be
private soldier seemed to him nothing short of madness.
"Andrew's a fool," he said, with great conviction.
"Yes," said Kirsty, "Andrew's a fool--a fool for Christ's sake, and you
and I can't even begin to understand what that means in the way of
nobility and courage and sacrifice, because we were born crawling
things. Andrew has wings, and my only hope is that they will be strong
enough to lift me with him--for oh! I couldn't bear to be left behind."
She ran from the room hurriedly, and left a very incensed gentleman
standing on the hearth-rug.
Mr. Christie was accustomed to the adulation of females. He was a most
welcome guest at the "At Home" days of his flock. He would drop in and
ask in his jovial way for "a cup of your excellent tea, Mrs.
So-and-so," make mild ministerial jokes, and was always, in his own
words, "the purfect gentleman."
And his daughter had called him "a crawling thing!" He was very cold to
Kirsty for the rest of his visit, and when he went home he told his
wife that marriage had not improved Christina.
His little invalidish wife looked at him out of her shrewd childish
eyes and said, "That's a pity, now," but asked no questions.
The old minister, Mr. Smillie (who was not so very old after all), left
his retirement and came back to Langhope, and preached with more vigour
than he had done for ten years. Perhaps he had found Edinburgh and
unlimited committees rather boring, or perhaps he felt that only his
best was good enough for this time.
"Ay," said the village folk, "we've gotten the auld man back, and dod!
he's clean yauld! Oor young yin's fechtin', ye ken"; and they said it
with pride. It was not every village that had a minister fighting.
The arrangement at the Manse worked very well. Kirsty, too, tried to do
her best, and Mr. Smillie, who had been all his life at the mercy of
housekeepers, felt he had suddenly acquired both a home and a daughter.
When Andrew got his commission, Mr. Smillie went into every house in
the village to tell them the news, and was almost as pleased and proud
as Kirsty herself.
The Sabbath before he went to France Andrew Hamilton preached in his
own pulpit. His text was, "Thou hast given a banner to them that fear
Thee."
Two months later, Kirsty got a letter from him. He said: "I played
football this afternoon in a match 'Officers _v._ Sergeants.' Perhaps
you won't hear from me very regularly for a bit, for things may be
happening; but don't worry about me, I shall be all right.... I am
going to a Company concert to-night to sing some Scots songs, and then,
with their own consent, I am going to speak to my men alone of more
serious things."