The arrival of the post was almost the only excitement at Dreams, and
on the days that the Indian and South African mails came, Mrs. Douglas
could do nothing but pore over the precious letters. She pounced on
them when they arrived, and read them anxiously; after luncheon she
read them again, and in the evening she read them aloud in case she or
Ann had missed a word.
One evening she sat with a pile of letters on her lap, her large
tortoise-shell spectacles on the top of the pile, and said, with a
satisfied sigh:
"This has been a good day--news from all quarters. I am glad Jim is
having this tour. He does love to see the world, and to be able to
combine business and pleasure makes a holiday ideal. Charlotte and
Mark seem to be enjoying their trip greatly, but I can see Charlotte's
thoughts are always with the children. She says she knows they won't
be missing her, but I think she is wrong. I dare say they are quite
happy, but they must feel a lack. Charlotte has such pretty ways with
her children, and I think they realise that they have got rather a
special mother, though Rory says, 'Poor Mummy's English, but we're
Scots.' I do wonder, Ann, when Rory is going to begin to write better.
This letter is a disgrace, both in writing and spelling, and his school
report said that he cared for nothing but cricket and food."
"What does it matter, Mother?" said Ann comfortably; "he is only nine.
I'm glad he isn't precocious, and I like his staggering little letters.
He said to me once, 'P'r'aps you notice that I always say the same
thing in my letters?' I said that I had noticed a certain lack of
variety in his statements, and he explained, 'You see, those are the
only words I can spell, and I don't like to ask people.' It isn't in
the least that he lacks brains. He knows all sorts of things outside
his ordinary lessons: about the ways of birds and beasts you can't
fickle him; and he reads a lot and has his own ideas about things. He
hates Oliver Cromwell and all his works. One day at table some one
mentioned that great man, and Rory's face got pink all over, and he
said, 'I hate him, the sieve-headed brute.' It was funny to see Mark,
whose admiration for Oliver Cromwell is unbounded, surveying his small
son. A more unjust accusation was never made, but Rory is a born
Royalist."
Mrs. Douglas shook her head. "He ought to write better than he does.
I don't think children are taught properly now. Have they copy-books?
I used to write copperplate; indeed, I got a prize for writing."
"I know," said Ann, "and one for spelling, and one for dictation, and
one for composition, and one for French. You used to reel them off to
me when I came home without a single one. The only prize I got was for
needlework, and I fear it was more by way of a consolation prize than
anything else. No wonder I feel for poor old Rory. Alis is more of
your school of thought; she is a clever child."
Mrs. Douglas refused to be optimistic. "Alis picks things up almost
too easily. I'm afraid she will be a Jack-of-all-trades. Did you read
Nannie's letter? Rob and Davie seem to be thriving. Charlotte will
find a great difference in the little pair." Mrs. Douglas put on her
spectacles and took up a letter to read extracts, but Ann caught her
hand.
"Not now, Mother, please; we must talk of Glasgow now. I want to
finish your _Life_ this week and get begun to my Christmas presents.
You'll read the letters to us when Marget and Mysie come in to
prayers.... I wish you would give me your advice, for, after all, it
is your affair. So far I have drawn your portrait as a very efficient,
very painstaking, and, I fear, very dull minister's wife. You see,
that side of you is so easy to draw. But the other side is so much
more _you_. If I could only write about you as I remember you at home
with us, anxiously doing your best for every one, slaving away with
Sales of Work and Mothers' Meetings, incorrigibly hospitable,
pretending deep and abiding pessimism, but liable at any moment to
break into bursts of delightful nonsense and rash talking--the person
who never talks rashly is a weariness to the flesh--a most excellent
mimic--when you came in from visiting, you made us see the people you
had been seeing--with a rare talent for living..."
Mrs. Douglas laid down her stocking and gasped at her daughter:
"_Ann_! I don't know what you mean. There never was a more ordinary
woman, and if you try to make me anything else, you are simply
romancing. I'm sure you have always said that you would know me for a
minister's wife a mile away."
"In appearance, my dear lady, you are a typical minister's wife, but
your conversation is often a pleasing surprise. And, oh! surely,
Mother, all ministers' wives don't behave to congregations as you did.
_Given to hospitality_ should be your epitaph. I remember when we left
Glasgow, Mrs. Nicol, bemoaning to me your going away, said, 'Well,
we'll never get another like her. Who else would have bothered to have
me and my wild boys in her house?' and I, remembering John and
Mackenzie, could have echoed, '_Who, indeed?_'"
Mrs. Douglas was about to speak, but Ann hurried on:
"No, Mother, don't defend them. You can't have forgotten that black
day when the Nicol family arrived to spend the afternoon--John and
Mackenzie, ripe for any wickedness. The house had just been spring
cleaned, and was spotless, and those two boys went through it like an
army with banners. It was wet, and they couldn't go out to the garden,
and they scoffed at the very idea of looking at picture-books. They
slid down the banisters, they tobogganed down the white enamelled
stairs, they kicked the paint off the doors. They broke Davie's
cherished air-gun, and their mother, instead of rebuking them, seemed
to admire their high spirits. Utterly worn out, I left them to work
their wicked will in the box-room--I thought they would be
comparatively harmless there; but presently we smelt burning, and found
them in your bedroom with the towel-horse on fire. No man knows how
they accomplished it, for a towel-horse isn't a particularly
inflammable thing, but if I hadn't managed to throw it out of the
window, I believe the house might have been burned down."
Mrs. Douglas laughed, and told her daughter not to exaggerate.
"Mrs. Nicol was a particularly nice woman, and there was nothing wrong
with John and Mackenzie except high spirits. Mackenzie came to see us
at Priorsford--I think you must have been away from home--such a quiet,
well-mannered young fellow. Both he and his brother are doing very
well. The Nicols were mild compared to the Wrights--you remember Phil
and Ronald?"
Ann threw up her hands at the mention of the names.
"The Wrights," she said, "were really the frozen edge. The only thing
Mrs. Wright had ever been able to teach her offspring was to call her
'Mother dear,' which they did religiously. Davie was no model, but he
sat round-eyed at the performance of the Wrights when they came to tea.
They mounted on the table and pranced among the butter and jam dishes,
and to all their mother's anguished entreaties to desist they replied,
in the broadest of accents, 'We wull not, Mother dear--we wull not.'
They thought Davie's accent rather finicking--Davie's accent which at
that stage was a compound of low Glasgow and broad Linlithgow picked up
from the nursemaid--and asked, 'Is Davie English, Mother dear?'
"'No, no, darlings' (Mrs. Wright's own accent was all that there was of
the most genteel), 'he only speaks nicely.' Marget used to shake her
head over the Wrights and say, 'Eh, I say, thae bairns need a guid
skelpin'.'"
"Yes," said Mrs. Douglas; "but the last time I saw the Wright boys they
were the most glossy-looking creatures--you know the kind of young men
whose hair looks unnaturally bright and whose clothes fit almost too
well; don't you call them 'knuts'?--with supercilious manners and
Glasgow-English voices, and I rather yearned for the extremely bad but
quite unaffected little boys they once had been."
"I know; one often regrets the 'lad that is gone.' Boys are like pigs,
they are nicest when they are small. Talking of the Wrights reminds me
of a children's party we once gave, to which you invited a missionary's
little girl, and two black boys. You had never seen them and thought
they would be quite tiny, and when they came they were great strong
creatures with _pointed teeth_. Somebody told us they had teeth like
that because they were cannibals, and, after hearing that, it was a
nightmare evening. We played hide-and-seek, and every one screamed
with terror when caught by the poor black boys. It was terrible to see
them eating sandwiches at supper and reflect on what they would have
_liked_ to eat."
"Oh, Ann! The poor innocents! They weren't cannibals; they were
rescued by the missionaries when they were babies. But I must say I
was rather alarmed when I saw how big they were. They didn't realise
their own strength, and I was afraid they might hurt some of the little
ones. I spent an anxious evening, too."
"Mother," said Ann, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and
her face supported in her two hands, "you were dreadfully given to
spoiling the look of my parties. The boys didn't mind, but I was a
desperate little snob. It seemed impossible for me to have the kind of
party other girls had, with all the children prettily dressed, and
dancing, and a smart supper. At the last moment you were always
discovering some child who was crippled and didn't get any fun, or some
one who hadn't a proper party frock and hadn't been asked to any
parties. You told them it didn't matter what they wore to our house,
and insisted on their coming--'compelled them to come in.' Oh, you
were a real 'highways and hedges person'! As a matter of fact, it
wasn't at all kind to ask those children. They felt out of it and
unhappy, no matter how much one tried. If you had asked them when
there wasn't a party, and they could have had all the attention, it
would have been infinitely better."
"Oh, I dare say," said Mrs. Douglas. "I've spent my life doing
impulsive things and regretting them. But, Ann, though you laugh at me
about having so many people to the house, the trouble we took was
nothing compared to the pleasure it gave. In our church there were so
many who needed encouragement: single women fighting for a living and
coming home after a long day's work to cook their supper over a
gas-ring were glad at times to get a well-cooked and daintily served
meal, with people to talk to while they ate; and mothers cooped up in
tiny flats with noisy children liked to walk to a green suburb, and get
tea and home-made scones and jam; and it does make a difference to boys
from the country, living in lodgings, if they know there is some house
they can go to whenever they like."
"True, my dear, true, and I don't suppose you ever denied yourself to
anyone, no matter how tired, or ill, or grieved you were feeling. You
welcomed them all with 'gently smiling jaws.' Do you remember the only
occasion on which we said 'Not at home'? We had been at the church
hall all afternoon preparing it for a church 'At Home' and had just
come in for tea and a short rest, with the prospect of three hours'
solid smiling later in the evening. When I found the housemaid going
to answer the door-bell I hissed at her, 'Say not at home,' and by
sheer bad luck the caller turned out to be a minister's wife from a
distance, who had depended on being warmed and fed at our house. She
had gone home cold and tealess and, as a consequence, got a bad chill,
and we felt so guilty about it we trailed away to see her, and on
hearing she had a sale of work in prospect--when has a minister's wife
not a sale of work in prospect?--we felt bound to send her a handsome
contribution. I sadly sacrificed on the altar of remorse some pretty
silver things I had brought from India, feeling it an expensive
pleasure to say 'Not at home.' But of course you are right. Now that
it is all over and we have long hours to read and write and think long
thoughts, it is nice to feel that you helped a lot of people over rough
bits of the road and didn't think of how tired it made you."
Mrs. Douglas looked at her daughter with unsmiling eyes. "Do you know
what I feel?" she asked. "I feel that I have done nothing--_nothing_.
All the opportunities I was given, I can see now how I missed them;
while I was busy here and there, they were gone. And I grumbled when I
trudged down to the sewing-class on Monday nights, leaving all you
children. I used sometimes to envy the mothers who had no kirk, and no
meetings, and could spend their evenings at home. I had to be out so
many nights of the week. No wonder poor little Davie said, 'I wish I
had a mother who didn't go to meetings.' And it was such a long way
home. Standing shivering in the wind and rain at the corner of Bridge
Street, waiting for a car, I wondered if there would ever come a time
when I would sit at my ease in the evenings with no late meetings to
bother about. I didn't know how blessed I was. 'The Almighty was
still with me, and my children were about me.' How could I know when I
yearned for ease and idleness that when I got them I should sit bereft,
and ask nothing better than the old hard-working days back----"
Ann said nothing for a minute, but sat scribbling on a corner of her
paper; then she looked at her mother, and her eyes were half sad, half
merry:
"It's an odd thing, Motherkin, that only very good people feel their
own shortcomings. Now, I, covered as with a garment by sins of
omission and commission, am quite perky and well pleased with myself.
I walk on my heels and think what a noble creature I am, and how much
people must admire me. Try being complacent, my dear, for a change!
It's much more comfortable. You know, Mother, you should have been a
Roman Catholic, then you could have worn a hair shirt, and done all
sorts of little penances and kept yourself happy."
"Oh, Ann!" Mrs. Douglas gave a laugh that was almost a sob. "You do
talk such utter nonsense, but you look at me with your father's eyes..."
"Well, what I want is to get some information about the Glasgow part of
your life. You started a lot of new things, didn't you, in connection
with the church?"
"Oh yes, a sewing-class and a mother's meeting, and a fellowship
meeting and a literary society--I forget what else, but they were all
more or less successful. Martyrs people were delightful to work
with--so appreciative."
"And very amusing," said Ann; "I always enjoyed their remarks about
things. I overheard one young man say, as he wiped his heated brow
after a thoroughly unventilated evening spent looking at magic-lantern
slides of various mission stations--'My! I'm fair sweatin' comin'
through thae Tropics.' We always called him 'Tropics' after that.
What they thoroughly enjoyed was being asked to our house. It wasn't
till I grew up that I appreciated those parties, but I very distinctly
remember some you gave at the time of your silver wedding to let every
one see the presents. We tried to assort the people--young men and
women in the evening, and matrons in the afternoon. It wasn't always
easy to find suitable topics to converse on with the matrons, but one
afternoon some one started the subject of washing clothes, and it
called forth a perfect flood of eloquence. Every one had something to
say, and we thrashed out the subject from the first stage of soaking
the clothes until they were starched and ironed and put away. There
didn't seem to be one more word that could be said about it when the
arrival of some newcomers made rearranging the room necessary. As I
moved about, I saw one woman hitch her chair nearer her neighbour and
heard her say thrillingly, 'Speakin' aboot washing, Mrs. Law, did ye
ever try----' It became a favourite saying with us. When Robbie
wanted to change the subject he always began, 'Speakin' aboot washing,
Mistress Law----'"