ANN
AND HER MOTHER
BY
O. DOUGLAS
AUTHOR OF "THE SETONS," "PENNY PLAIN," ETC.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
ANN AND HER MOTHER. I
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
ISOBEL CUNNINGHAM
"To whatsoever things are fair
We know, through you, the road;
Nor is our grief the less thereby;
O swift and strong and dear, Good-bye."
"In this age of opulence and refinement whom can such a character
please? Such as are fond of high life will turn in disdain from the
simplicity of a country fireside. Such as mistake ribaldry for humour
will find no wit in this harmless conversation: and such as have been
taught to deride religion will laugh at one whose chief stores of
comfort are drawn from futurity."
OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
ANN AND HER MOTHER
CHAPTER I
Mrs. Douglas and her daughter Ann sat together in their living-room one
November night.
It was a wonderfully comfortable room, brightly yet softly lit, and
warmed by a noble fire. There was a pleasant space and emptiness about
it, an absence of ornaments and irrelevant photographs; each piece of
furniture, each of the few pictures, was of value.
Mrs. Douglas had a book in her lap and in her hand a half-finished
stocking, for she considered that she was wasting time if she did not
knit while reading.
Ann sat on a stool by the fire, poring over a seedsman's catalogue, a
puzzled frown on her brow.
"I wish," she said, without looking up, "I do wish I knew more about
gardening. I can't make out from this what will grow best with us....
Don't you think, Mother, it is almost _lèse-majesté_ to call a rose
Queen Mary, and describe it as 'a gross feeder? Oh, and this! _Mr.
Asquith_, 'very compact in form, rosy in colour.' What humourists the
compilers of seedsmen's catalogues are! And what poets! Where was it
we read that article about catalogues? It said that the very names
were like a procession of princes--'amber and carmine Queens, and
Princes' Feathers, and Cloth of Gold.' The names tempt one simply by
the glory of the sound. 'Love-in-a-Mist ... Love-Fire, a rich cream
with a faint suggestion of apricot primrose in petal'--and with a drop
one learns that this beauty can be bought for the sum of tuppence! ...
Delphiniums we must have--dozens of them. I can picture us next summer
lying on the lawn in deck-chairs on hot, sunny days, looking between
tall, blue delphiniums to green hilltops. Won't it be lovely, Mother?"
"H'm," said her mother in a dry voice, "at present you have only the
hilltops. I haven't imagination enough to picture the hot sun and the
lawn and the blue delphiniums."
"_Mother!_" said Ann, wheeling round on her stool and facing her
parent, who was knitting with provoking calm, "there's nothing sporting
about you at all. It always rains in November, but that's nobody's
fault, and you might at least try to look as if you didn't mind.
Nobody ever said a glen was a cheery place in winter, but, myself, I
like it frightfully. When Uncle Bob left me the Green Glen for my very
own I determined that somehow or other I would manage to build a house
in it--a little white-faced house among the heather. Not big, but big
enough to hold us all--six good bedrooms, one big living-room, a hall
we could sit in, a smaller room to feed in. You all made
objections--all except Charlotte, who encouraged me. You pointed out
all the disadvantages: six miles from a station, a steep hill road,
carting difficult! You told me that building in these days was only
the pastime of a millionaire, but--the house is built and, because the
architect was a man of sense and listened to what I wanted, it is
exactly the house I meant it to be in my dreams, so 'Dreams' it will be
called."
"I thought you hated new houses?"
"So I do, except when it is my own house in my own Green Glen. And you
will admit that it is comfortable."
"It's very bare," Mrs. Douglas said.
"Well, I like it bare. And your own room is far from bare. It is more
like a museum than anything else, with so many mementoes of other days
hung on the walls, and photographs of us all at every age and in every
attitude, and shelves and shelves of devotional books, not to speak of
all the little stucco figures you have cherished for years. Their
heads have been gummed on so often they fall off if you look at them.
Davie was always being entreated by you to mend them, and he found,
finally, that Moses' head (or was it Eli?) would only remain on if
turned the wrong way about--so his beard was down his back! ... To
return to 'Dreams,' I admit the garden is still unmade, and the road a
mere track, but wait and you will see it blossom like the rose. We
shan't have any fences--there is no need for them among the hills, and
the heather will grow to the edges of our shaven lawns, and we'll have
herbaceous borders as gay as a carnation ribbon, and beds of
mignonette..."
Mrs. Douglas laid down her stocking and looked at her daughter. "No
fences? And rabbits nibbling the mignonette--it's a thing they have a
particular fancy for; and sheep eating the vegetables..."
"Go on with your stocking, Motherkin, and don't try to be crushing.
We'll have fences then, and wire to keep out the rabbits, and we'll
cover the fences with rambler roses--the bright red single kind; I
don't like Dorothy Perkins. And there's simply no end to what we can
do with the burn; it would make any garden fairyland, with those
shining brown pools fringed with heather. _What_ luck to have a burn!
Before the house we are going to have a paved bit, so that you can go
out and take the air without getting your feet wet. There will be no
'gravel sweep,' and no one will be able to come to our door except on
their own feet, for the road will stop a long way from the house."
Ann clasped her hands round her knees, and rocked herself in joyful
anticipation.
"I remember," she went on, "hearing as a child some one praise a
neighbourhood with the phrase, 'It is full of carriage people.' I
wondered at the time what kind of people they were, and if they perhaps
had their abode in a carriage, like a snail in its shell! When 'motor
people' come to Dreams they will have to leave their motors and walk.
We shall say to them, like True Thomas, 'Light down, light down from
your horse o' pride.' ... But, Mother, is this really going to bore
you terribly? Do you miss so badly the giddy round of Priorsford? The
pavements? The shops? The tea-parties?"
Mrs. Douglas gave a long sigh. "I don't want to grumble, but, you
know, I always did say it was rash to attempt to stay a winter in the
Green Glen. It's well enough in the summer (though even then I would
prefer to be nearer civilisation), and fine for the children, but in
November, with the fields like sponges, and the road a mere Slough of
Despond, and the hills covered with mist most of the time, and the wind
coming down the glen howling like an evil spirit, and the station six
miles away, and only a pony trap between us and complete burial; Mark
and Charlotte in India, and Jim in South Africa, and the children in
Oxfordshire with their other grandmother, I feel like a pelican in the
wilderness. I told you I would, and I do."
"Poor dear, but..."
"Through the day it isn't so bad. I admit the mornings are rather
beautiful, and when it happens to be fine I can potter about outside,
and Marget is always a divert. In the afternoon when it rains (and it
has rained practically every day for three weeks) I sew and write
letters and read, and there is always tea to look forward to. But in
the evenings--and the curtains have to be drawn now about four
o'clock--when there is no chance of a ring at the bell, no postman, no
telephone-call, no stray callers, and the owls hoot, and my eyes get
tired with reading, and one can't knit for ever even with four wild
grandchildren to knit for, well----"
"But, my dear," said her daughter, "just think how you will appreciate
Priorsford when you get back. We are very much alone just now--it was
an odd chance that sent Mark and Charlotte to India and Jim to South
Africa the same winter--but don't let's have to remember it as the
winter of our discontent.... We must face facts. Neighbours we have
almost none. Mr. Sharp, at the Manse, is practically the only one, and
he is so shy that speaking to him is like trying to carry on a
conversation with a very young rabbit in a trap. The Scotts aren't so
very far away as the crow flies, only over the other side of the hill,
but it is five miles round by the road. It's an unpeopled world, but
the great thing to remember is that any moment you please you can have
a case packed, order the pony trap, drive to the station, buy a ticket,
and in about two hours you would be in Glasgow, in the Central Station
Hotel, among all the city gentlemen, feasting your eyes on people,
forgetting the owls in listening to the Glasgow accent, eating large
meals, frequenting picture houses...."
Mrs. Douglas dropped both her book and stocking in her indignation.
"Ann, you know I _never_ enter a picture house, and I haven't the least
desire to go to Glasgow in the meantime."
"I tell you what," Ann cried, "go in for a course of reading and
improve your mind. It's an opportunity that may not occur again."
"I'm too old to improve my mind; besides, it isn't very nice of you to
suggest that it needs improving."
Ann studied her mother with her head on one side. "You're sixty,
aren't you? Sixty's nothing. The late Mr. Gladstone learned Arabic
when he was eighty. Besides, you are the most absurd person for sixty
I ever saw. Your hair is as soft and brown as it was when you were
thirty, and you have a complexion that is the envy of less fortunate
women. And the odd thing is, I believe you hate to be told so. I
believe you want to look old."
"Last summer," said Mrs. Douglas, "I overheard Rory say to Alison,
'Alis, Gran is nearly sixty; I heard her say so,' and Alis, with a
depth of pity in her voice, replied, 'Oh, poor Gran!' But when I think
I'm only sixty I feel like pitying myself. In the _Times_ last night
there were six people among the 'Deaths' who were over ninety. It
frightens me to think that I may live to a great age, and, perhaps, see
you all go before me--and I get so wearied sometimes for your father
and the boys...."
Ann laid her hand on her mother's. "I know," she said, "I know. But,
Mother, are those who are gone so much more dear to you than we who are
left? As Pharaoh said to Hadad: 'What hast thou lacked with us, that,
behold, thou seekest to go to thine own country?'"
"Ah, my dear, _nothing_, but..."
"The old answer," said Ann. "Nothing, nothing--'howbeit let me go in
any wise.' ... Well, we have wandered from our subject. What do you
say, Mums, to reading Robert Louis right through? We have the
Edinburgh edition here. He will teach you to love the moorlands."
Mrs. Douglas recoiled in horror from the suggestion.
"Oh no! No. No. The very name of R.L.S. makes me think of the
eternal crying of whaups, and we are fairly beset with the creatures
here. Really to appreciate Robert Louis you must read him immersed in
a town with no hope of a holiday, or on the burning, shining plains of
India, or on the South African veldt. To read there of 'a great, rooty
sweetness of bogs' and 'the infinite, melancholy piping of hill-birds,'
and 'winds austere and pure' is like water in a thirsty land. But when
one is seated in the bogs, and deaved by the hill-birds it's only an
irritation. I'd rather read Ethel M. Dell, and warm myself with the
thought of heroes whose eyes are like slumbering volcanoes, and
heroines who generally manage to get a flogging from some one before
they win through to happiness."
Ann laughed. "It's quite true. Here we must read books hot with life,
full of intrigues and sensational developments. We have all the
simplicity we want in the Green Glen."
Her mother sighed. "I'm not really discontented, Ann, though I'm
afraid I sound so. But I seem to lead such a useless life here. A few
letters to sick and sad people is all I accomplish. If there were some
people about the doors whom I could visit and, perhaps, help a little.
Once a minister's wife always a minister's wife. I can't get out of
the habit of trying to help. But there's only old Geordie's cottage,
and he hasn't even a wife, and he wouldn't thank me for a visit."
"No," laughed Ann. "He is very proud of being able to fend for
himself, and hopes to die without being beholden to any woman. He was
telling me a sad tale the other day about an old friend of his who
lived alone until he was eighty, and then fell ill and had to have the
district nurse, who insisted on his remaining in bed. 'To think,' said
Geordie, 'that a man should live to be aichty and be overpowered by a
wumman in the end.' But I can quite see that the lack of people to
comfort and help is a great lack to you--born minister's wife that you
are."
"Ah, well, I made many mistakes, but my heart was in my job. It was a
real pleasure to me to know every soul in the church, and to listen to
all they cared to tell me of their trials and their troubles, and to be
asked to share in their merrymakings; to have the right to laugh and
cry with them. The wives used to say when your father intimated
visiting, 'I wish the mistress wad come wi' the minister, she's a
graund cracker.' Your father was sometimes ill-off knowing what to
talk about in the different houses; he wasn't one of those glib men
with a fund of easy phrases, but when they got to know him they liked
him the better for his quietness, and valued his few words more than
other people's eloquence. How he would have enjoyed this, Ann! He
loved the Green Glen, and the burn, and the whaups crying."
There was a silence, and Mrs. Douglas sat looking into the fire. She
was far away from the little house among the hills. She was young
again, and the husband of her youth was once more at her side.
Pictures, softened and beautified by time, unrolled themselves before
her eyes. Children played in a garden among flowers, their laughter
and shouting came to her ears, she could see their faces lifted to
hers; but no beckoning could bring them to her, for long ago they had
grown up and gone away; they were but dream children who played in that
garden.
Ann watched her mother with a soft look in her grey eyes. "I've been
thinking, Mums, you ought to write your _Life_."
Mrs. Douglas came back to the present with an effort. "Write my life?
But I did--don't you remember? On that yachting cruise we went, when
the sea never stayed calm except for a few hours. There was nothing
much to do, so I wrote my life in a twopenny pass-book, with a pencil,
and none of you were at all encouraging about it. I read it aloud to
you somewhere about the Azores, when you were lying seasick in your
berth, and you said it made you feel worse; and Charlotte cried from
the next cabin, 'Ann, what is wrong with Gran that she is making that
curious, whining sound?' and Mark printed on the cover, 'The Life of
auld Mistress Douglas written by herself,' and then it got lost."
"I remember," said Ann. "But this time it must be done properly.
You'll tell it to me and I'll write it down, and we'll have it typed
and perhaps printed, so that the children when they grow up will know
what a queer little grandmother was theirs. Let me see--we'll be here
alone until the Moncrieffs come about the middle of December; that will
give us a month to work at it. Two hours every night, perhaps more.
Does that please you, Motherkin?"
"Ann, you are trying to humour an old woman. I don't suppose the
children would ever trouble to read my _Life_, except perhaps
Alison--that child has a strong sense of duty; but I must say I would
enjoy remembering it all.... Here are Marget and Mysie."
The two servants came into the room accompanied by a large Persian cat,
grey, the colour of a November sky. This beautiful creature had been
named by Ann the "Tatler," because his genius for falling into
photographic attitudes reminded her, she said, of those ladies, fair
and fashionable, whose pictures adorn the weekly pages of that popular
journal.
Marget seated herself majestically. She was a tall woman, with a
broad, honest face, and hair pulled straight back and covered by a
cap--not the flippant scrap of muslin with a bow generally worn, but an
erection of coffee-coloured lace, with touches of crimson velvet, which
she alluded to as a "kep," and which gave her almost a regal air.
Marget had been thirty-five years with the Douglas family, and was so
thoroughly a Douglas that there was never any thought of keeping her in
her "place." Mysie, who was her niece, she kept under iron control,
but she allowed herself much latitude. No one knew Marget's age. It
was a subject on which she had always been excessively touchy. When
the Census came round she had said, "I'll no' pit it doon till a' the
bairns are oot, an' naebody but the maister'll ken, an' he'll no' tell."
She met all questions with "I'm as auld as ma little finger an' I'm
aulder than ma teeth." In revenge the Douglases had intimated to their
friends that they had inside knowledge that Marget was at least eighty.
After prayers Mysie left the room, but Marget generally remained for a
"crack," delighting to bandy words with "Miss Ann"--a diversion which
to-night ended in Ann being called "a daft lassie."
"_Lassie!_" cried Ann.
"Ye'll aye be a lassie to me," Marget told her; "but," turning to her
mistress, "is it true, Mem, that she's gaun to write yer _Life_? I
never ken when Miss Ann's speakin' the truth and when she's juist
haverin'.... It wad be rale interestin'. Ye wad need to pit in aboot
thon daft man wha cam' to see the maister and the pollis efter him, an'
that awfu' fricht we got wi' the big fire in the linoleum factory, and
aboot the man wha drooned hissel in the Panny Pond and floatit...."
"Yes, Marget," said Ann, "we'll need your help to decide what is to be
put in. One thing, of course, must go in--your age."
Marget rose from her chair with a we-are-not-amused look, put the
Bibles back in their proper places, dropped her delightful,
old-fashioned curtsey, walked to the door, and said before she closed
it behind her:
"Ye wadna daur. An', what's mair, ye _dinna ken it_."