"Now that the visitors are gone," said Ann, "we'll go on with our
wedding number. Who complained of the dullness of the Green Glen?
Three visitors--the whole neighbourhood you may say--in one afternoon:
first the parson, then the two Miss Scotts. As I came down the
burnside I saw them go up to the door, and I said to myself in the
words of the old beadle who was asked what sort of congregation was
gathering: 'Graund! Twa weemen pourin' in.' Didn't you like them,
Mother? The Miss Scotts, I mean? I thought their weather-beaten faces
very attractive, and their voices so surprisingly soft and clear.
Somehow I had expected voices rather loud and strident, to go with
their workman-like clothes and heavy boots. The younger one specially
attracted me--they way she beamed through her spectacles and said 'Yes'
unexpectedly, whenever a pause occurred in the conversation. They are
going to help me a lot with the garden; their own place is lovely.
It's a nice happy way to end one's days--living peacefully among
growing flowers! Think of all the old women who live in hotels and
boarding-houses, quite comfortable, I dare say, so far as fires and
light and a good bed, and well-cooked food go, but so barren of all
interest except a morbid curiosity about their fellow-prisoners! How
spacious a country life is! ..."
"Oh yes," her mother broke in impatiently; "but hotel life can be very
interesting, and there is nothing I enjoy so much as watching my
neighbours.... I wonder why Mr. Sharp likes telling funny stories?"
"Shyness goads him to it," Ann said. "It's the same thing that makes
me chatter like a swallow when I am with impressive people and ought to
hold my peace. He's a decent lad, Mr. Sharp, but I wish that when I
meet him outside he wouldn't treat me like a funeral. He doesn't look
at me, but removes his hat when passing. Shyness again, I suppose."
"He has a housekeeper," Mrs. Douglas said, as she picked up a stitch.
"It's a pity he hasn't a wife. In a quiet place like this the Manse
should be a centre for the district. Don't you think, Ann, if we asked
Nina Strachen, or----"
"Mother," said Ann solemnly, "I utterly refuse to have anything to do
with your matchmaking efforts. Just let your mind dwell for a little
on the result of your last."
Mrs. Douglas sighed. "Poor George Reid! But it wasn't marrying killed
him. He couldn't have got a better wife than Jeanie Robb. The doctors
said the trouble had been going on for a long time, and, anyway, the
last months of his life were as comfortable as they could be made. If
he hadn't married he would have been dependent on _fremt_ women, for he
hadn't a soul of his own; and Jeanie gets the Widows' Fund, so you
can't regret the marriage having taken place."
"Practical woman!" laughed Ann. "But we must get on with your own
wedding now--we are making no progress at all. When I think of what
Hugh Walpole or Compton Mackenzie can make out of somebody's childhood,
I blush for my few bald sentences. About your wedding--did my
grandmother choose your things? When I knew her she took very little
interest in clothes, just wore whatever was brought to her."
"Ah, but she wasn't always like that. I remember Agatha and myself
almost in tears begging her not to get a purple silk dress and bonnet
which she much desired, as we thought them absurdly youthful for her
years. Poor body! I don't believe she was more than forty. Daughters
can be very unfeeling."
"They can," Ann agreed, with a twinkle. "My poor grandmother! What a
shame to deprive her of her purple silk! If you and Aunt Agatha could
have looked forward forty years and seen grandmothers with dresses
almost to their knees, dancing, playing tennis, frivolling, hardly
recognisable from the eighteen-year-olds, I wonder what you would have
thought. Well, who did buy your trousseau? Aunt Agatha?"
"No, she was less sophisticated even than I was. My stand-by was Miss
Ayton. My mother trusted her judgment and her taste and asked her
help, and Miss Ayton was only too willing to give it; for, spinster of
fifty as she was, she loved a marriage. She was one of those
delightful women who can be vividly interested in their neighbours'
business without ever being a nuisance, and she presided like a stout,
benign fairy over my nuptials, getting things done, it seemed, by a
wave of her wand."
Mrs. Douglas let her knitting fall on her lap, and lay back in her
chair, smiling.
"First I was whisked off to Edinburgh to have some lessons in cooking
(I knew absolutely nothing about anything). _High-class_ cooking it
was called, I suppose because nearly every recipe called in the most
casual way for a dozen of eggs and a bottle of sherry. Not the sort of
cooking required for a manse, you will say...."
Ann looked up from her writing. "Hadn't you--I seem to remember--a
cookery book from that class, a fat green book? It stood, for some
reason, on the nursery bookshelf, and was a sort of Aladdin's Cave to
us children. We pored over it, reading aloud the rich, strange
ingredients, and lay on our faces gazing enraptured at the picture of a
dinner-table laid for about sixty people, where each napkin was folded
in a different way, and pheasants with long tail-feathers sat about in
dishes, and brightly tinted jellies and creams and trifles made it
blossom like a fairy garden. That picture always made us so hungry
that we had to have 'a piece' all round after looking at it.... Why do
I connect that cookery book with Communions?"
Mrs. Douglas laughed. "Because at Communion times, when we had strange
ministers assisting we had puddings out of that book, at least
expurgated editions of them. I have that book in my room now. It is
too much a bit of my past for me ever to part with it. It has been
with me since the start. At first it was all that stood between me and
blank ignorance, and now it is a reminder of the days that seem like a
happy dream. Well, the book and the cookery lessons were due to Miss
Ayton. Or, was it Mrs. Watts first suggested I should learn cooking?
I believe it was. There was never anyone so practical as Mrs. Watts,
dear woman. I always regret that she was gone before you grew up, Ann;
you would have delighted in her. She was a daughter of the great Dr.
Grierson--that mighty preacher and statesman--and she had much of the
Grierson charm. Her husband, Dr. Watts, was laird as well as minister,
and they didn't live at the Manse, but at their own place, Fennanhopes.
It was about the greatest treat we had as children, to be invited to
Fennanhopes, and I can't think why we liked it so much, for whenever we
arrived Mrs. Watts would say, 'Now, friends,' and in a trice she had us
all working hard. Some picked currants, some went to bring in the
eggs, some weeded--but we all did something. We wouldn't have done it
for anyone else, but we liked to please Mrs. Watts. She kept everybody
busy: visitors (the house was always full), village, the whole
countryside, and there is no doubt that the state of being pleasantly
busy is the best we can attain to in this world. Mrs. Watts was a
noted housewife, and servants trained by her were eagerly sought for.
I remember going, during one Assembly time in Edinburgh, to a meeting
at which Mrs. Watts was to speak. One knew what to expect as a rule--a
rather gasped-out, tepid little homily from the wife of one or other
well-known divine; but I rather thought Mrs. Watts would be different.
I waited with interest, and presently she stepped on to the platform,
looking so big and fine and of the open air, spoke for a few minutes in
her clear, round voice, and then, looking round the meeting with
friendly eyes she said, 'Now, friends, I am going to tell you how to
make _really good coffee_.'"
Ann laughed. "What a dear! I wish I had known her. I can just
remember Dr. Watts. It seemed to me, standing somewhere about his
knees, that his head must be dangerously near the clouds, and I
remember his gentle voice saying to me, 'It will take you a long time
to grow as big as I am.' ... Yes, and so between Mrs. Watts and Miss
Ayton you learned something about cooking. And who chose your
trousseau, and all your 'providing'?"
"Miss Ayton, really, but of course my mother was there too, and I was
there, though I don't think I was supposed to have an opinion. You
would laugh at my things now, but they were considered very
handsome--the best that could be had at Kennington & Jenner's."
"What! Was Jenner's in Princes Street in those days?" cried Ann,
astonished.
"Dear me, why shouldn't Jenner's have been in Princes Street then?
Really, Ann, you talk as if it were before the Flood. I assure you my
clothes caused something of a sensation in the countryside."
"I'm sure they did. I knew you had a sealskin coat, for it ended its
long and useful existence as capes for Robbie and me. I liked mine,
but Robbie wept bitterly, and said only coachmen wore capes. And you
had a bonnet, hadn't you? A bonnet at seventeen!"
"A prune-coloured bonnet," said Mrs. Douglas, "high in front, and worn
with a prune-coloured silk dress and the sealskin coat. Those were my
'going-away' things. But the dress your father liked best was navy
blue, what was called a Princess dress, buttoned straight down with
small brass buttons. I had a sort of reefer coat to wear with that,
and a hat with a blue veil. And I had a black satin for evenings (no
self-respecting bride would have been without a black satin) besides my
bridal white satin."
"You must have looked a duck with those little white kid shoes with the
big rosettes on the toes and the blue silk laces. I suppose you were
married in the house?"
"Oh yes. Church weddings were practically unknown then. I was married
in the drawing-room. Do you remember it? Rather a gloomy room, and
not often used. The partition between the dining-room and the room
next it was taken down, and the luncheon was laid on long tables.
People came from Priorsford the day before and cooked and made ready.
It had been a terrible storm, and the drifts were piled up high, but I
don't think any of the invited guests stayed away, although many of
them had long distances to drive. The preparations were very exciting.
I remember the great rich cakes from Edinburgh being cut down with a
lavish hand, and big, round, thick cakes of shortbread with white
sweeties on them, so the guests must have had tea as well as luncheon,
and been well warmed and fed. Rather unlike our modern weddings, with
a crumb of bridescake and a thimbleful of champagne, followed by a cup
of tea and a sandwich. Hare soup, and roasts of all sorts, and creams
and trifles galore. I was child enough to enjoy it all."
Ann stopped writing and sat with her fountain-pen poised in her hand,
looking into the fire.
"I can just imagine," she said, "how jolly it must have been. The
comfortable old house in the village street, all the rooms with blazing
fires, and the kitchen with the flagged, uneven floor, hot and
simmering with good things cooking, and the snow outside, and the
horses stamping in the cold, frosty air, and the guests coming in
laughing and talking. And Father so young and tall and blue-eyed, and
you such a nice little white and gold bride, blue-eyed, too (no wonder
there is such a lamentable lack of variety in the looks of your
children; I do admire a family where some are dark, and some fair, and
some red-haired--it isn't so dreadfully monotonous), and the
bridesmaids in white with scarlet berries, and your little brothers all
agape for good things. It must all have been so young and merry. A
good send-off to a very happy married life, eh, Mother?"
Mrs. Douglas looked at her daughter without speaking, the tears slowly
gathering in her eyes. Ann bent forward and laid her hand on her
mother's. "Just say to me as Marget says, 'Oh, lassie, haud yer
tongue!' I know that is what you are feeling like. It breaks your
heart to look back. There has been so much happiness and such great
sorrow; but the sad bits are as precious as the happy bits, and they
all help to make the pattern. On the whole a gay pattern, Mother."
"Oh yes, yes. I have had far beyond my deserts. For many years life
was almost cloudless, except for the clouds I made with my own foolish
fears and forebodings. Why did nobody shake me for my silliness?
Fussing over trifles, worrying about the congregation, feverishly
trying to lay by for an evil day. I wonder now how I could ever have
made a trouble of anything when I had your father with me and all my
children about me. And I knew I was happy, but I daren't say it even
to myself, in case I brought disaster. What pagans we are at
heart--afraid of envious fates! And then Rosamund died.... We thought
we could never be happy again--but we were. It was never quite the
same again; we walked much more softly, for the ground seemed brittle
somehow, and the sorrow of the world came closer to us, and we went
with a different understanding to the house of mourning--but we were
happy. I think I must often have been very trying to my friends during
those prosperous years. They talked of 'the Douglas luck,' for
everything the boys tried for they seemed to get. And the educating
being over we had more money in our hands, and you got about to see the
world, and we could all go abroad at a time, and I could spend some
money on the house--I always made a god of my house. How proud I was
of my drawing-room when we got the green velvet carpet that was like
moss, and the soft blue walls and hangings, and the big Chesterfield
with the down cushions! And the tea-table set out with plates and
green knives, while the people round were still handing their visitors
a cup in their hand, and cake and scones on a cake-stand! I was a
queen and no widow.... Why, Marget, is it nine o'clock already?"
Marget gave her demure, respectful curtsey, which was so oddly at
variance with her frank and fearless comments on things in general, and
sat down on a chair beside Mysie.
"Ay, Mem, it's nine o'clock. It's juist chappit on the lobby clock."
She directed a suspicious glance towards the table where Ann sat. "Is
Miss Ann gettin' on wi' yer _Life_? Dinna let her put in ony lees
aboot us. How faur has she gotten? Juist to yer marriage? Oh, that's
a' richt. I wasna there then. But I can keep ye richt aboot what
happened ony time in the last five-and-thirty years."