With the last days of November winter descended with real earnest on
the Green Glen. For thirty-six hours snow fell, blotting out the
paths, piling great drifts in the hollows, making the high road almost
level with the tops of the hedges. The carts from the shops, the
butcher, the baker, the grocer, had to remain in the town, the postman
could not come near, Mr. Sharp stayed snugly in his Manse, and Dreams
was entirely cut off from the rest of the world.
When the frost came, hardening the snow, Ann got out her toboggan and
spent glorious hours flying down the hillside and toilful ones dragging
the toboggan up again. Glowing with health and self-satisfaction, she
came in in the frosty twilight, to drink tea and upbraid her mother for
electing to remain by the fire.
"How can you frowst by the fire, Mother, when you might be out looking
at the most glorious sunset and drinking in great draughts of air that
is like champagne? What? Cold? Not a bit, once you are out; indeed,
I was almost too warm. The mistake about tobogganing is that the rush
down is so short and the toil up so long. I must demand, like the
Irishman, that all roads be either level or downhill. What a delicious
muffin this is! May I have the jam?"
Ann rose to get herself another cup of tea, and looked out of the
window on the way. "It's bitter hard to-night--you know the frost is
very severe when the snow creaks. 'Hech, sirs, it's winter fairly.'
Do come and look out, Mother. It's glorious being in Dreams in
snow--like living in the heart of a crystal."
Mrs. Douglas shivered as she looked out at the waste of snow. "Draw
the curtains, Ann, and shut it out. I never did like snow: cold,
unfriendly stuff, making everything uncomfortable, blocking roads and
killing sheep and delaying trains; and when it goes away, burst pipes
and dripping misery. But you children always loved it. At Kirkcaple,
when it came, you were out before breakfast snowballing the milkman."
Ann finished her tea and lay back in her chair regarding her mother,
who was finishing her "reading" for the day, taking sips of tea and
reading _Golden Grain_ at the same time.
"Mother," said Ann, "did you ever give yourself good times? You began
your married life without a honeymoon, and I'm afraid you continued on
the same principle. I don't seem to remember that you ever got rid of
us all and had a real holiday alone with Father."
Mrs. Douglas finished what she was reading and laid the little book on
the pile before she answered her daughter. Then she took off her
spectacles and took up her cup of tea, and said:
"Oh yes; when Jim was a baby we went to London for a fortnight to stay
with an uncle and aunt of your father's. Don't you remember them?
Uncle John and Aunt John, we always called them--why, I don't know.
Uncle John was rather old when he married, and had a weak heart, and
Aunt John warned me that it was safer not to contradict him. Not that
it would have entered into my head to do such a thing. I was in too
great awe of them both. They were a handsome couple, and Uncle John
had a pair of trousers for every day of the week--shepherd-tartan ones
for Sunday. Aunt was very tall, with a Roman nose, her hair parted at
one side, and was always richly dressed in silks that rustled.
"They were devoted to each other, and made such a touching pair of
middle-aged lovers, coquetting with each other in a way that amazed us,
staid married people that we were--I suppose I was about
five-and-twenty then. I overheard Aunt say to Uncle one day when she
came in with a new hat: 'How do you like my _chapeau_, Jackie?' and
always at breakfast she greeted him with a resounding kiss, as if she
had never set eyes on him from the night before. We must have been a
great nuisance to them, such a countrified couple as we were. Your
father was always fit to go anywhere, but I must have been a quaint
figure, in a lavender dress trimmed with ruching, and a black silk
dolman and a lavender bonnet. They were the efforts of the little
dressmaker in Kirkcaple, one of our church members, and we had thought
them almost alarmingly smart in the parlour behind the shop; but when I
saw myself reflected in long mirrors and shop windows, I had my doubts."
Ann sat forward in her chair, her eyes alight with interest.
"I had forgotten about the London visit. Had you a good time? Were
they kind to you?"
"They were kindness itself. Every morning Uncle planned out things for
us to do, and arranged that we should lunch somewhere with him--that
was to save our pockets. And Aunt's housekeeping seemed to me on a
scale nothing short of magnificent. When I went marketing with her it
thrilled me to see her buy salmon and turbot as I might have bought
'penny haddies,' and she seemed to me to give a dinner-party every
night. And the servants were such aloof, superior creatures. It was
all very awe-inspiring to me, a timorous little country mouse."
Ann laughed. "'Wee modest crimson-tippit beastie,' as Charlotte
renders Burns. But tell me what you saw, Mother. All the sights, I am
sure. But did you do anything exciting?"
"Oh yes. We went to hear Spurgeon, and one evening Uncle took us to
the Crystal Palace and we saw fireworks."
Ann hooted. "Mother, you are a pet! I asked you if you had done
anything exciting--meaning had you seen Ellen Terry and Irving and
heard Patti sing--and you tell me you heard Spurgeon and went to
fireworks at the Crystal Palace!"
"I don't see why you should laugh," Mrs. Douglas said, rather
affronted. "These were the things we liked to do. At least, I think
what your father really liked best was to poke about in the old
book-shops, and he did enjoy the good food. I liked it all, but the
going home was best of all. I had felt very small and shabby in
London, but when we came off that long night journey and found you all
waiting for us as fresh as the morning, you and Mark and Robbie and
Jim, I felt the richest woman in the world. I quite sympathised with
the mother of the Gracchi, though before I had always thought her
rather a fool."
"Yes," Ann said profoundly. "Sometimes things you have read and
thought merely silly suddenly become true--and did the London fortnight
last you a long time?"
"The next summer I had my trunk packed to go with your father to
Switzerland, but at the last moment I found I couldn't leave you, and
he had to go alone. It was very silly, but, anyway, I always saw that
he had a good holiday, and I was happy with you children at Etterick.
But as you grew older and went away to school I often got away for a
little. One great ploy was to go to the Assembly; sometimes we stayed
with people, but we greatly preferred to have rooms in a Princes Street
hotel. I don't mean to _lichtly_ people's hospitality, but it is a
relief when you come in tired not to have to put on a bright,
interested expression and tell your hostess all about it."
"I do so agree," said Ann; "'a bright, interested expression' is far
too often demanded of ministers' wives and families. What a joy to
scowl and look listless at a time. You know, Mums, a manse is a
regular school for diplomatists. It is a splendid training. One
learns to talk to and understand all sorts of people--just think what
an advantage that gives one over people who have only known intimately
their own class! And you haven't time to think about yourself; you are
so on the alert to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. You have to try
and remember the affairs of each different member, how many children
they possess, and all about them, and be careful to ask at the right
moment for the welfare of each. To say to a very stout lady living
alone, 'Are you all well?' savours of impertinence.... Yes, well, you
went to a hotel to avoid having to look 'bright and interested,' wise
people; and what did you do there?"
"But, Ann," Mrs. Douglas protested, having been struck with her
daughter's remarks on her early training, "you spoke as if you were
brought up to be hypocrites, and I'm sure that is the very last thing
your father and I wanted you to be----"
"Oh, well," said Ann lightly, "the best people are all more or less
hypocrites. The world would be a most unpleasant place if we had
all--like Lo, the poor Indian--untutored minds and manners. Honesty is
sometimes almost a crime, and the man who feels it necessary to speak
what he is pleased to call his mind in season and out of season is a
public nuisance. Hold your peace if you have nothing pleasant to say.
People need encouraging far oftener than you think; even bumptious
people are often only bumptious because they are uncertain of
themselves. As the White Queen said, 'A little kindness and putting
their hair in curl papers' would work wonders for them. But I don't
know why I am chattering like a swallow when what I want is to hear
about you and Father at the Assembly."
Mrs. Douglas had taken up her knitting, and with a happy smile on her
face and her fingers working busily she said:
"I remember one particularly happy Assembly. Davie was about five, and
you were at home to keep things right, so my mind was quite at ease,
and I had got a smart new coat and skirt--black, trimmed with grey
cloth and braided, and a black hat with grey feathers."
"A most ministerial outfit," said Ann, making a face. "I would rather
have seen you in the lavender and the dolman."
"It was very suitable for a minister's wife, and it must have been
becoming, for almost every one we met said I looked so young, and that
pleased your father, though, of course, it was nonsense. We were in a
mood to enjoy everything--those May mornings when we came down to
breakfast, hungry and well and eager for a new day, and sat at a little
table in a bow window looking out on the Castle, and ate fresh herring
'new cam' frae the Forth,' and bacon and eggs and hot rolls."
Mrs. Douglas stopped and said solemnly:
"Ann, if I had a lot of money, do you know what I would do? I would
send fifty pounds anonymously to all the ministers--not, of course, to
those with big stipends, and certainly not to the ones with rich
wives--to let the minister and his wife have a week at the Assembly.
It would pay their fare and hotel bill, and leave something over to
shop with. Dear me, I wonder rich people don't give themselves a good
time by doing happy things like that."
"It's a game that never palls," Ann said; "planning what you would do
if you got a sudden fortune. I'm quite sure the real owners of riches
don't get half as much pleasure out of their wealth as the paupers who
have it only in dreams. And what followed after the large breakfast?
Did you spend the whole day in the assembling of yourselves together?
Attending the Assembly is like some sort of insidious drug: the more
you do it, the more you want to do it. Since I have been your
companion at its deliberations I have found that I can sit in it quite
happily for hours. You wouldn't miss the Assembly week for a lot even
now, would you? It is odd how the sight of ministers in the mass seems
to do you good. Absolutely you get quite sleek by merely looking at
them. Do you remember when you were so very ill in London you kept
worrying Sir Armstrong to know if you would be better for the Assembly,
and the poor doctor said to Mark, 'Your mother is very anxious to go to
some assembly; but she _couldn't dance_?'"
Mrs. Douglas laughed and then sighed. "I enjoy it still," she said;
"but the Assembly Hall is a place of ghosts to me now. There are so
few of the faces that once I knew. I look up at my old place in the
Ladies' Gallery--I never aspired to the Moderator's Gallery in those
days. I always sat in the same seat, and then your father knew where
to look up and smile to me during debates. I often sat very nervous,
for he had a dreadful way of always being on the wrong side--I mean by
that the unpopular side--and it wasn't nice for me to hear him shouted
at. I thought he cared far too little for what people thought; he had
no interest in which way the cat was going to jump; he never thought of
taking the safe course simply because it was safe and would pay best.
I remember after one stormy debate in which he had held the most
unpopular view a lady beside me said, 'Can you tell me who that
unpleasant minister is?' and I said, 'I think he comes from Glasgow.'
But my sins found me out almost at once, for, on his way out to vote,
your father stood and grinned up at me, looking like a mischievous
schoolboy who knows he's going to get a row, and I had to smile at
him--and the lady beside me glared at us both suspiciously."
"It was odd," said Ann, "that in public he was such a fighter, for in
his home life, if ever man carried in his right hand gentle peace, it
was my Father. There was a time, when Mark and I first grew up, that
we thought we knew infinitely more about everything in heaven and earth
than our parents. There was a time when Father's beliefs filled me
with a kind of tender scorn: they were so hopelessly out of date. I
used to argue with him in my pert way that Free Will and Election could
not be reconciled, and he would reply, with a twinkle, 'Ann, I
sometimes think you are a very ignorant creature. Give me another cup
of tea.' I remember Father's _innocence_ amused us very much. He was
so far away from the ugliness and the vulgarity and the idiotic
smartness of modern life. He once heard Robbie singing an absurd song,
and asked him to repeat the words--I forget what they were, something
very silly and rather funny about:
'How often to myself I've said,
Cheer up, Cully, you'll soon be dead,
A short life but a gay one.'
Father listened and said gravely, 'If the wretched fellow had had any
hope of an after life...'
"And we said, 'Isn't Father _quaint_!'"
"And when he was no longer there to stand up for his old-fashioned
beliefs there wasn't one of us but would have died gladly for those
same beliefs because they had been his.... When Robbie got the cable
of his death he wrote from India: 'The best man in Scotland is
gone--now he knows what his beliefs meant to all of us'; and Davie,
that advanced young thinker, once came back from hearing a preacher of
renown, and said fiercely, 'No, I didn't like him. He _sneered at the
Shorter Catechism_.'"