"I don't know," said Mrs. Douglas, "when I first realised what was
expected of me as a minister's wife. I suppose I just grew to it. At
first I visited the people and tried to take an interest in them,
because I felt it to be my duty, and then I found that it had ceased to
be merely duty, and that one couldn't live among people and not go
shares with them. It was the long anxiety about Mark that really drew
us together and made us friends in a way that years of prosperity would
never have done. There was hardly a soul in the congregation who
didn't try to do us some little kindness in those dark days. Fife
people are suspicious of strangers and rather aloof in their manner,
but once you are their friend you are a friend for life. Ours was a
working-class congregation (with a sprinkling of well-to-do people to
help us along)--miners, and workers in the linoleum factories--decent,
thrifty folk. Trade was dull all the time we were in Kirkcaple, and
wages were low--ridiculously low when you think of the present-day
standard, and it was a hard struggle for the mothers with big young
families. Of course, food was cheap--half a loaf and a biscuit for
twopence--and 'penny haddies,' and eggs at ninepence a dozen--and
people hadn't the exalted ideas they have now."
"Well," said Ann, who was busy filling her fountain-pen, "I seem to
remember rather luxurious living about the Mid Street, and the Nether
Street, and the Watery Wynd. Don't you remember I made friends with
some girls playing 'the pal-lals' in the street, and fetched them home
with me, and when upbraided for so doing by Ellie Robbie in the
nursery, I said, 'But they're _gentry_; they get kippers to their tea.'
My 'bare-footed gentry' became a family jest."
Mrs. Douglas laughed, "I remember. To save your face we let them stay
to tea, but you were told 'Never again.'"
"It was a way I had," said Ann. "I was full of hospitable instincts,
and liked to invite people; but as I had seldom the moral courage to
confess what I had done, the results were disastrous. Once I invited
eight genteel young friends who, thinking it was a pukka invitation,
arrived washed and brushed and dressed for a party, only to find us
tearing about the garden in our old Saturday clothes. Ellie Robbie was
justly incensed, as she hadn't even a sugar-biscuit to give an air of
festivity to the nursery tea, and you were out. In private she
addressed me as 'ye little dirt'; but she didn't give me away in
public. And the dreadful thing was that I repudiated my guests, and
looked as if I wondered what they were doing there."
"Poor Ellie Robbie!" Mrs. Douglas said. "She was an anxious pilgrim,
and you children worried her horribly. She came when she was sixteen
to be nursemaid to Mark, and she stayed on till we left Kirkcaple, when
she married the joiner. Do you remember her much?"
"I remember one evening in the Den. We were getting fern-roots, and
Ellie Robbie and Marget were both with us, and Marget said to Ellie,
'My, how neat your dress kicks out at the back when you walk!' Isn't
memory an extraordinary thing? I've forgotten most of the things I
ought to have remembered, but I can recall every detail of that
scene--the earthy smell of the fern-roots, the trowel sticking out of
Mark's pocket, the sunlight falling through the trees, the pleased
smirk on Ellie Robbie's face. I suppose I would be about five. At
that time I was completely lost about my age. When people asked me how
old I was, I kept on saying, 'Five past,' but to myself I said, 'I must
be far more, but no one has ever told me.' ... What was Ellie Robbie's
real name?"
"Ellen Robinson. Her father's name was Jack, and he was supposed by
you children to be the original of the saying, 'Before you can say Jack
Robinson.' Marget and Ellie got on very well together, although they
were as the poles asunder--Ellie so small and neat and gentle, Marget
rather like a benevolent elephant. She is a much better-looking old
woman than she was a young one."
"Did Marget come when Maggie Ann married?"
"Yes. No--there was one between--Katie Herd. She stayed a month and
was doing very well, but she suddenly announced that she was going
home. When we asked her why, she replied with great candour, 'I dinna
like it verra weel,' and off she went. Marget was a success from the
first. We knew it was all right as soon as she began to talk of 'oor
bairns.' When the work was over she liked to go to the nursery, and
you children welcomed her with enthusiasm, and at once called on her to
say her poem. Then she would stand up and shuffle her feet, and say:
'Marget Meikle is ma name,
Scotland is ma nation,
Harehope is ma dwelling place--
A pleasant habitation.'
You delighted in her witticisms. 'Ca' me names, ca' me onything, but
dinna ca' me ower,' was one that had a great success. Both she and
Ellie were ideal servants for a minister's house; they were both so
discreet. No tales were ever carried by them to or from the Manse.
There was one noted gossip in the congregation who was a terror to
Ellie. Her husband had a shop, and of course we dealt at it--he was an
elder in the church--and Ellie dreaded going in, for she knew that if
Mrs. Beaton happened to be there she would be subjected to a fire of
questions. Marget enjoyed an encounter, and liked to think out ways of
defeating Mrs. Beaton's curiosity. Not that there was any harm in Mrs.
Beaton and her desire to know all our doings. I dare say it was only
kindly interest. I got to like her very much; she was a racy talker
and full of whinstone common sense. I was sorry for her, too, for no
woman ever worked harder, both in the shop and in the house, and her
husband and family took it all for granted. She did kind things in an
ungracious way, and was vexed when people failed to appreciate her
kindness. Across the road from Mrs. Beaton lived another elder's wife,
Mrs. Lister, who, Mrs. Beaton thought, got from life the very things
she had missed.
"'Never toil yourself to death,' she used to tell me, 'for your man and
your bairns; they'll no thank you for it. Look at the Listers over
there. Willie Lister goes about with holes like half-crowns in his
heels, but he thinks the world of his Aggie.' And it was quite true.
I knew that gentle little Mrs. Lister was everybody's favourite, for
she contradicted no one, ruffled no one's feelings, while
rough-tongued, honest, impudent Mrs. Beaton was both feared and
disliked. And yet there was no doubt which of the two women one would
have chosen to ride the ford with. Had a tea-meeting to be arranged, a
sale of work to be organised, or a Christmas-tree to be provided for
Sunday school, Mrs. Beaton was in it--purse and person.
"Mrs. Lister always took 'the bile' when anything was expected of her.
Once a year we were invited to tea at the Listers' house, and as sure
as we found ourselves seated before a table groaning with bake-meats
and were being pressed by Mr. Lister to partake of them because they
were all baked by 'Mamaw,' Mrs. Lister would say, 'Ay, and I had a job
baking them--for I was bad with "the bile" all morning.' As Marget
says, 'The mistress is awfu' easy scunnered,' and after hearing that my
tea was a pretence. It was worse when Agatha was there, for then we
were apt to wait for the announcement, and when it came give way to
painful, secret laughter. Agatha always laughed, too, when Mrs. Lister
capped her husband's sayings with 'Ay, that's it, Paw.' She was a most
agreeable wife, but she was a mother before everything. She would have
talked all day about her children, bursting out with odd little
disjointed confidences about them in the middle of a conversation about
something else. 'He's an awful nice boy, Johnnie; he's got a fine
voice,' would occur in a conversation about the Sustentation Fund, and
in the middle of a discussion about a series of lectures she would
whisper, 'He's a queer laddie, our Tommy. When Nettie was born he put
his head round my bedroom door and said, "Is she a richt ane, Maw?" He
meant not deaf or dumb or anything, you know.' She sometimes irritated
her husband by her overanxiety about the health of her children. If
one coughed in the night she always heard and, fearful of waking Mr.
Lister, she would creep out of bed and jump from mat to mat (I can see
her doing it--a sort of anxious little antelope), and listen to their
breathing, and hap them up with extra bedclothes. Nettie was the
youngest, and the delicate one, and had to be tempted to eat. 'Oh, ma
Nettie,' she would say, 'could you take a taste of haddie to your tea
or a new-laid egg?'
"She was afraid of nearly everything--mice, and wind, and thunder, and
she hated the sea. One morning I met her almost distraught because her
boys had all gone out in a boat. 'Is their father with them?' I asked.
'No, no,' she said, 'I didna let him go; it was just the more to
drown.' Poor, anxious little body! God took her first, and she never
had the anguish of parting with her children.... What an opportunity
ministers and ministers' wives have of getting to know people as they
are--their very hearts!"
"Yes," said Ann; "but it isn't every minister or every minister's wife
who can make anything of the opportunity. Just think of some we
know--sticks. Can you think of any poor stricken soul going to them to
be comforted 'as one whom his mother comforteth'? What would they say?
'Oh, indeed! How sad!' or 'Really! I'm very sorry.' Some little
stilted sentence that would freeze the very fount of tears. You,
Mother, I don't think you would say anything. To speak to those who
weep is no use; you must be able in all sincerity to weep with them.
As for Father, his voice was enough. Isn't it in one of the Elizabeth
books that someone talking of the futility of long, dull sermons, says,
'If only a man with a voice of gold would stand up and say, "Children,
Christ died for you," I would lay down my head and cry and cry...' Oh,
it's a great life if a minister and his wife are any good at their job,
and, above all, if they have a sense of humour!"
"Well, I don't know about the sense of humour," Mrs. Douglas said
doubtfully. "I have often envied the people who never seem overcome by
the ludicrous side of things, who don't even seem aware that it is
there. Do you remember Mrs. Daw? I dare say not. My first meeting
with her was in the Path on a hot summer's day. I saw an enormously
stout woman toiling in front of me with a heavy basket, and as I passed
her she laid down her load, and turning to me a red, perspiring, but
surprisingly bland countenance, said, 'Hech! but it's a sair world for
stout folk.' There was something so Falstaffian and jocund about the
great figure, and the way she took me into her confidence, that I
simply stood still and laughed, and she laughed with me. We shared the
basket between us the rest of the way, and after that I often visited
her. But I could never let your father come with me; Mrs. Daw was too
much for us together. Only once we tried it, and she told us that the
doctor had advised her to take 'sheriff-wine and Van Houtong's cocoah,'
and her genteel pronunciation was too much for us. She was never at
her best when your father was there; she didn't care for the clergy.
"'A lazy lot,' she called them. 'No wan o' them does a decent day's
work. If it was me I wad mak' a' the ministers pollismen as weel, and
that wad save some o' the country's siller.' She condescended to say
that she rather liked your father's preaching, though her reason for
liking it was not very flattering. 'I like him because he's no what ye
ca' a scholarly preacher. I dinna like thae scholars, they're michty
dull. I like the kind o' minister that misca's the deevil for aboot
twenty meenits and then stops.'
"Mrs. Daw had me bogged at once when we started on theological
discussions. She would ask questions and answer them herself as she
knelt before the kitchen fire, engaged in what she called 'ringein' the
ribs.'
"'Ay,' she would say, 'I'm verra fond o' a clear fire. Mercy me, it'll
be an awfu' want in heaven--a guid fire. Ye read aboot golden streets
and pearly gates, but it's cauld comfort to an auld body wha likes her
ain fireside. Of coorse we'll a' be speerits.' (It needed a
tremendous effort of imagination to picture Mrs. Daw as a spirit!)
'Wull speerit ken speerit?' and then, as if in scorn at her own
question, 'I daur say no! It wad be little use if they did. I could
get sma' enjoyment frae crackin' wi' a neebor, if a' the time I was
lookin' through her, and her through me. An' what wad we crack aboot?
Nae couthy bits o' gossip up there--juist harps an' angels fleein'
aboot....'
"I would suggest diffidently that when we had gone on to another and
higher life we wouldn't feel the want of the homely things so necessary
to us here, and Mrs. Daw, shaking her head, would say, 'I dinna ken,'
and then with her great laugh (your father used to quote something
about a thousand beeves at pasture when he heard it) she would finish
the profitless discussion with 'Weel, sit ye doun by ma guid fire and
I'll mak' ye a cup o' tea in ma granny's cheeny teapot. We'll tak' our
comforts so long as we hae them, for think as ye like the next warld's
a queer turn-up onyway....'"