November is a poor time to go to a new place, and Kirkcaple certainly
looked a most unattractive part of the world when we arrived on a cold,
wet afternoon. 'The queer-like smell' from the linoleum factories, the
sea drearily grey and strange to my inland eyes, the drive through
narrow streets and up the steep Path, past great factories and mean
houses, until we reached the road, knee-deep in mud, where the Manse
stood, combined to depress me to the earth. It might have been
infinitely worse. I saw that in the light of the next morning. There
was a field before the Manse, and though there was a factory and a
rope-work and a bleach-field and a coal-pit all in close proximity to
it, there was also the Den, where hyacinths grew in spring, and where
you could dig fern roots for your garden. The Manse itself stood in a
large garden, and in time we forgot to notice the factories. The
people were very unlike the courteous Inchkeld people--miners and
factory workers, who gave one as they passed a
Jack's-as-good-as-his-master sort of nod. We grew to understand them
and to value their staunch friendship, but at first they were as
_fremt_ as the landscape.
"When the cab lurched through the ruts to the Manse gate and I got out
and saw my new home I quailed. From the front it was a gloomy-looking
house--one window on each side of the front door, and three windows
above, and the kitchen premises on one side. There was a wide
gravelled space in front, with a small shrubbery to shelter us from the
road. It was a sombre and threatening place to enter on a dark night,
and when alone I always made a mad rush from the gate to the front
door. One night when I reached my haven I found a tall man standing
against it. I had hardly strength to gasp, 'Who are you?' and the man
replied, 'Weelum Dodds. I cam' to see the minister aboot gettin' the
bairn bapteezed, but the lassie wadna open the door.' I had told the
servants, who were young girls, to keep the chain on the door at night,
and the poor patient soul had just propped himself up against the door
and awaited developments.... The back of the house, looking to the
garden, was delightful. You don't remember the garden?"
"_Don't_ I?" said Ann. "I was only about nine when we left Kirkcaple,
but I remember every detail of it. Just outside the nursery window
there was a bush of flowering currant. Do _you_ remember that? And
jasmine, and all sorts of creepers grew up the house. There was a big
square lawn before the window, rather sloping, with two long flowerbeds
at the top and herbaceous borders round the high walls. Our own
especial gardens were at the top of the kitchen garden. Mark had a
Rose of Sharon tree in his garden about which he boasted; it seemed to
set him a little apart. I had a white lilac tree in mine; Robbie,
severely practical, grew nothing but vegetables, while Jim, when asked
what his contained, said simply and truthfully, 'Wurrums.' Rosamond
was a tiny baby when we left Kirkcaple, and the little lad knew only
Glasgow. It was surely a very large garden, Mother? The gooseberry
bushes alone seemed to me to extend for miles, and in a far-away corner
there was the pigsty. Why was it called 'the pigsty'? In our day
there was never anything in it but two much-loved Russian rabbits with
pink eyes, Fluffy and Pluffy. I have a small red text-book in which,
on a certain date, is printed in large round hand:
'This day Fluffy died.
" " Pluffy " '
A ferret got in and sucked their blood. What a day of horror that was!
The roof of the pigsty sloped up to the top of the wall, and we liked
to sit on the wall and say rude things to the children on the road,
they retorting with stones and clods of earth. We were all bonnie
fighters. You had no notion, you and Father, when we came down to tea
with well-brushed hair and flannel-polished faces, of the grim battles
we had just emerged from. The enemy was even then at the gate. We,
with ears to hear, knew what sundry dull thuds against the front door
meant. Marget, wrathful but loyal, wiped away the dirt and said
nothing to you--lots to us, though! ... But I'm getting years ahead.
You were just arriving with baby Mark to an empty, echoing Manse,
through ways heavy with November mud. Sorry I interrupted."
"As to that," said her mother, "I was really just talking to myself.
It is good of you to listen to my maunderings about the past."
"Not at all," Ann said solemnly; and then, "You daft wee mother, now
that courtesies have been exchanged will you go on with that _Life_ of
yours? It will take us years at this rate. What happened when you
tottered into the Manse? Did you regret the little sunny, bow-windowed
Manse in Inchkeld?"
"Regret! I ached for it. I couldn't picture us being happy in this
muddy mining place; I couldn't see this bare barracks ever getting
homelike. But it was a roomy house. The dining-room was to the right
of the front door, the study to the left, and the nursery was on the
ground floor, too. They were all big square rooms: the dining-room was
cosy in the evening but rather dark in the day time; the study was a
very cheerful room, with books all round the walls, and a bright red
carpet, and green leather furniture."
"And a little square clock," Ann added, "with an honest sort of face,
and a picture of John Knox, long white beard and all, above the
mantelpiece, and the carpet had a design on it of large squares; I
know, for I used to play a game on it, jumping from one to another.
Some deceased elder had left to the Manse and to each succeeding
minister a tall glass-doored bookcase containing, among other books, a
set of Shakespeare's plays illustrated. It was funny to see how the
artist had made even Falstaff and Ariel quite early Victorian--and as
for merry Beatrice I think she wore a bustle! Not that it worried us;
we were delighted with his efforts ... and in that glass-doored
bookcase there stayed also a very little book dressed in fairy green,
with gilt lettering on its cover. I have tried for years to find
another copy, but I have nothing to go on except that it was a very
tiny book and that it contained fairy tales, translations from the
German I think, for it talked in one of a king lying under the green
lindens! I thought linden the most lovely word I had ever heard! it
seemed to set all the horns of Elfland blowing for me. One of the
stories must have been _Lohengrin_, there was a swan in it and 'a frail
scallop.' How I wept when it appeared for the second time and took the
knight away for ever! I loved Germany then because it was the home of
green lindens and swans with scallops, and houses with pointed roofs
and wide chimneys where storks nested. Even in the war I couldn't hate
it as much as I ought to have done, because of that little green
book.... But we're straying again, at least I am.... You got to like
the house, didn't you?"
"Oh dear, yes. It was terribly gaunt at first, but before we left it I
thought it was pretty nearly perfect. When we got fresh paper and
paint, and the wide upper landing and staircase carpeted with crimson,
and curtains shading the high staircase window, everyone said how
pretty it was. The drawing-room was always a pleasant room, with two
sunny windows, and all my treasures (you would call them atrocities) in
the way of gilt and alabaster clocks with glass shades, and
marble-topped chiffonier, and red rep furniture. But the big night
nursery was the nicest room of all, with its row of little beds, each
with a gay counterpane! There was a small room opening from it where
your clothes stayed, with a bath and a wash-hand basin--a very handy
place."
"Yes," said Ann; "and in one corner stood a very tall basket for soiled
clothes. I remember Robbie, after hearing of someone's marriage,
coming to you and saying so earnestly, 'I'll stay with you always,
Mums, and if anyone comes to marry me I'll hide in the dirty-clothes
basket.'"
Robbie's mother looked into the dancing flames. "That was always his
promise," she said softly, "I'll stay with you always.... It wouldn't
have been so bad beginning in a new place, with a new baby (and me so
utterly new myself!) if Mark hadn't been so fragile. I daresay he
suffered from my inexperience, I almost smothered him with wraps, and
hardly dared let him out of the warm nursery, but he must have been
naturally delicate as well. He got bronchitis on the smallest
provocation, and my heart was perpetually in my mouth with the frights
I got. I spent hours listening to his breathing and touching him to
see if he felt hot, and I kept your father racing for the doctor until
both he and the doctor struck. I was so wrapped up in my baby that I
simply never turned my head to look at the congregation; but they
understood and were patient. I really was very absurd. Some people
gave a dinner-party for us, and your father said I simply must go. On
the night of the party I was certain Mark was taking croup, and I could
hardly be dragged from him to dress. I was determined that anyway I
must be home in good time, and I ordered the cab to come back for us at
a quarter to nine! We had hardly finished dinner when it was
announced, but I rose at once to go. The hostess, astonished but kind,
said on hearing my excuses, 'Ah, well, experience teaches.' 'Finish
your proverb, Mrs. Smeaton,' my dinner neighbour (a clergyman from a
neighbouring parish) broke in, 'Experience teaches fools.' Now I
realise that the man was embittered--and little wonder!--by having
tried to make conversation to me for a dreary hour, but at the moment I
hated him. When we left Kirkcaple he and his wife were our greatest
friends.... There were four houses in our road. The large one nearest
the Den belonged to one of the linoleum people, we came next, and then
there was a low, bungalow sort of house where the Mestons lived with
their three little girls, and at the end of the road lived one of the
elders in the church--Goskirk was the name--with his wife and eight
sons. How they all got into that small house I know not, but it was
always comfortable, and there was always a welcome, and Mrs. Goskirk
was the busiest, happiest little woman in Kirkcaple, and a great
stand-by to me. 'How's baby to-day?' she would come in saying, every
word tilted up at the end as is the accent of Fife. As rich in
experience as I was poor, she could soothe my fears and laugh at my
forebodings. She prescribed simple, homely remedies and told me not to
fuss. She gave me a new interest in life, and kept me happily engaged
by teaching me how to make clothes for Mark. Her little boys trotted
in and out, coming to show me all their treasures, and going away
pleased with a sweetie or a sugar biscuit! They did much to make me
feel at home.... When I went back to Etterick in summer I thought Mark
was a lovely baby, and that he had a wonderful mother! He wore a
pelisse I had made him (under Mrs. Goskirk's eye), cream cashmere, with
a wide band of lavender velvet, and a soft, white felt hat with a
lavender feather round it. I paid fifteen shillings for the feather
and thought it a great price.... For three years we had only Mark,
then you and Robbie quite close together. But Mark was never put in
the 'stirk's stall'; for you were a healthy, placid baby, and my dear
Robbie was just like you. I remember his coming so well. It was a
February morning, and Mrs. Perm, the nurse, said: 'Another deil o' a
laddie.' She much preferred girls. Robbie was such a _caller_ baby,
so fat and good-natured and thriving."
"My very first recollection of Robbie," Ann said, "is in the garden. I
think it must have been an April morning, for I remember daffodils, and
the sun was shining, and the wind tumbling us about, and Mark said to
me that he thought Ellie Robbie meant to run away with Robbie, and that
it behoved us to save him. As he told me his terrible suspicions
Robbie came down the walk pulling behind him a large rake--a little boy
with an almost white head, very blue eyes, and very chubby, very rosy
cheeks. I remember we separated him from his rake and Mark dragged us
both into the gooseberry bushes, where we lay hid until Ellie Robbie
(the suspect) came to look for us, bringing us a treat in the shape of
a slice each of brown scone spread with marmalade, and two acid drops.
That closed the incident."