"Here's a nice state of things," said Ann.
"Is anything wrong?" asked her mother.
"Well, I don't know whether you would call it wrong or right. Mr.
Philip Scott sends me back my MS., with his criticism of it. I agree
with most of the things he says: my language is too incorrigibly noble,
my quotations _are_ very frequent----"
"But if they're good quotations," Mrs. Douglas interrupted.
"Oh, they're good quotations. 'It was the best butter,' as the poor
March Hare said. But what he objects to most is the sweetness of it.
He says, 'Put more acid into it.'"
"Into me, does he mean?"
"I suppose so. Mr. Scott evidently finds you insipid. We must change
that at once. Tell me, now, about all the people you hated and who
hated you."
Mrs. Douglas looked bewildered, and more than a little indignant.
"Nonsense, Ann. I'm sure I'm very glad to hear you have made me
sweet--anything else would have been most undutiful; and as for hating
people, I never was any good at that. I couldn't keep up grudges,
though I was sometimes very angry at people. I dare say it was a
weakness in my nature. But I think, if Mr. Scott is to be allowed to
criticise, I might be allowed to read my own _Life_."
"It's so _dull_," said Ann, looking discontentedly at the MS. "And
you're not a dull woman, Mother! Rather a comic, really. See, read
for yourself."
Ann plumped the packet on to her mother's lap and retired to the
fender-stool with the _Times_; but she could hardly have done justice
to the leaders, for her eyes often wandered from the printed page to
the expressive face of her mother reading her own _Life_.
For half an hour Ann waited; then her patience gave out, and she leant
forward and put her hand across the page.
"That's enough, Mums. Surely you can tell me now how you think it
goes."
Mrs. Douglas smiled at her daughter. "Why did you do that? I'm
enjoying it immensely, and----"
"Oh, if anybody could find it interesting, you would; but don't you
find it rather stilted?"
"Not stilted exactly, but if you would write in a more homely way, it
might be better. Take the reader more into your confidence. I'm not
clever enough to explain quite what I mean; but I think you are writing
from the outside, as it were. Try to be more--is subjective the word I
want? And don't say too much about me. After all, my life was my
husband and the children. Write about your father and the boys. Never
were brothers more loved by a sister. As for Davie--you brought him
up."
Ann's eyes filled suddenly with tears, but in a minute she said lightly:
"You see, Mother, Mr. Scott asks what I am working up to in this _Life_
of yours; how am I going to finish it, he wants to know. I hadn't
thought of that. I was just going to leave loose ends--like life. I
suppose there ought to be something--some idea that binds the whole
thing together. Oh, it is all too difficult. I'd better burn all that
I've written, and start again in an entirely new way. How would it do
to put your life into scenes? The young girl in a royal blue silk
dress and a locket and a black velvet ribbon, meeting her future
husband. The wedding. A nursery scene--very effective this!--and then
we might have scenes from your church life--you holding a Mothers'
Meeting or a Girls' Club, or your first address to the Fellowship
meeting. Do you remember you began (as you begin most things) with a
deep sigh, and it sounded rather like _Hooch_, and Robbie said you
reminded him of Harry Lauder?" Ann chuckled at the recollection, and
her mother said:
"No wonder I was nervous. It was a great ordeal to speak before you
scoffing young things. No; I don't like the idea of 'scenes.' I
prefer it as it is. How far are you on?"
"I've got us all at school, and I was going to write about Davie being
born. It was the summer after Rosamund died, wasn't it? I was at
school when I got the news, and some of the girls condoled with me, and
said a new baby in the house would be a dreadful nuisance, and I
pretended to be bored by the prospect, when really I could hardly
contain my excitement. I had to get home for a week-end to see him."
"Poor little baby, to think that we were actually disappointed when he
came. We had wanted another girl so much, and a fourth boy seemed
rather unnecessary. Of course that was only at the very beginning. He
was the plainest looking baby I ever saw, and we would not have had him
in the very least different."
"I thought he was lovely," said Ann. "When Mark saw him for the first
time, he said, 'Hullo, Peter,' and Peter he was called for years. When
I came home from school he was about three years, and he became my
special charge. You were so very busy at that time with the house and
church work, as well as a great scheme that the Member of Parliament
for the district started to teach working women how to make savoury
dinners out of nothing. You were so keen about it that you tried all
the new dishes on your family, and we nearly perished as a family. I
can remember some of the dishes. _Stuffed cod's head_--one glance at
its gruesome countenance was enough. _Mock kidney soup_, made with
grated liver, which, instead of being the rich brown proper to kidney
soup, was a sort of olive green. Sea-pie--so-called, Mark said,
because the sea was a handy place when you had eaten it. I once went
with you to see a demonstration by the principal cooking teacher, a
buxom lady with quantities of glossy black hair coiled round her head.
She showed us first what she called 'a pretty puddin'.' Instead of
sugar she had grated carrots in it, or something surprisingly like
that. Then she made shortbread, and when the cakes were finished and
ready to go into the oven she wanted something to prick them with, and
nothing was at hand. She wasn't easily beaten, for I saw her withdraw
a hairpin from the coils on her head and prick them with that. When
they were taken from the oven, and I saw that they were to be handed
round and tasted, I unobtrusively withdrew. You had noticed nothing,
and ate your bit quite happily."
"Oh, Ann, you always saw far too much. That's all nonsense about the
things we made. Everything was excellent and very cheap, and the women
in the district enjoyed the lectures amazingly, and constantly asked to
have them repeated. I enjoyed them myself. Anything to do with
cooking interests me, and I read every recipe I see."
"You are the sort of guest, Mother, who would appreciate a cookery book
in her bedroom. It seems an odd taste to me. I can make porridge,
smooth and soft, with no knots, and fry quite nice bacon and eggs, and
I can make some rather smart meringuey puddings, and there I end.
D'you remember how difficult it was to get Davie to eat when he was
tiny? I had to feed him with every meal, or I don't think he would
have eaten anything. He was such a thin little slip of a thing--like
an elf. At one time I got so desperate about his thinness that I took
to rubbing him all over every night with olive oil. What a mess it
made of everything! We took tremendous care of him, didn't we? He
never went out in his pram with only the nursemaid; I generally went,
too, in case anything happened to him. It's a wonder to me that we
didn't spoil him utterly."
"He was a dear, ugly wee laddie," Mrs. Douglas said. "When Mark came
down from Oxford he used to sit and study him from the other side of
the table, and say, 'How has that child acquired such a Mongolian cast
of countenance?''
"It was too bad," said Ann, "and Davie so admiring of Mark and all his
Oxford friends. He used to amuse them a lot. I once overheard him
explain to a man how he happened to live with us. 'I was playing quite
quietly in heaven one day when God came up to me and said, "Peter,
you've to go and live with the Douglases." I said, 'The Douglases!
_Good Lord!_' The weary boredom in his voice was delightful."
"Many a fright he gave me," said Davie's mother. "He picked up the
most extraordinary expressions, and seemed to know when to use them
with the most disastrous effect. By the time Davie was born I had
grown tired of training, besides it was impossible to do anything with
him when you older children, who should have known better, laughed at
and encouraged him. He was a plaything to you all."
"Yes," said Ann; "there's something about the baby of a family that's
different. The youngest never grows up, and to each of us Davie seemed
almost more a son than a brother, and we never lost for him--even when
he was grown up and a soldier--the almost passionate tenderness that we
had for the little delicate boy. He was the delight of our lives,
always. I remember when I arrived in India almost the first thing
Robbie wanted to be told was Davie's latest sayings. He had a name for
each of us peculiarly his own. Nobody ever called me 'Nana' but Davie,
and why he christened Jim 'Ney' no one ever knew. But, Mother, it was
only as a baby that he was so very plain. Later he developed a sort of
horsey look, and we dressed him in a 'horsey' way, with a snooty bonnet
and a fawn overcoat. I remember he got a very neat suit to go to a
party at Anthony's house, his first real party--brown with a corduroy
waistcoat--which he described in imitation of Mark and his friends as
'me blood waistcoat'--and short, tight trousers. As we dressed him we
noticed that the shirt he was wearing had been patched at the elbow,
but it was clean, and we didn't change it. When he came home he told
how this one had sung and that one had recited, and 'What,' we asked,
'did you do?' 'Oh, me,' said Davie, 'I only took off my coat and
showed them my patched shirt.'"
"It didn't matter at Anthony's house," Mrs. Douglas said; "the
Cochranes were well accustomed to the vagaries of small boys. Anthony
and Davie made a funny couple. Anthony was so solemn and fat, and so
ashamed of Davie's eccentric behaviour. Davie's way of telling himself
stories 'out loud,' and going round the room gesticulating wildly,
really shocked Anthony, who was a most self-contained child. He never
showed surprise, indeed he rarely ever showed emotion of any sort.
When he and Davie were very small and met outside, each took off his
hat to the other and made a low bow. At the first party we gave for
Davie, the child was greatly excited, and talked without ceasing,
jumping up and down in his chair. Anthony was sitting next him at the
tea-table in a green velvet suit, and he stood this Jack-in-the-box
behaviour as long as he could, then he turned very quietly, slapped
Davie's face and resumed his tea without having said a word. And Davie
bore him no ill-will; they were fast friends from that moment. D'you
remember the two going alone to a party in a cab, and they were so
thrilled about it that--we were told afterwards--they refused to do
anything but sit in the hall and wait for the cab coming back?"
"I loved Anthony," said Ann. "He took things so calmly and was so
speechless. One afternoon when he was with us people began to flock up
to his front door, carriages and motors arrived, and we called to him
to come and tell us what occasion this was. Anthony looked at the
commotion for a minute, and then said, 'It must be a party,' and not
another word passed his lips. One night we said 'Anthony will recite.'
He said neither yea nor nay, and we led him into the middle of the
room. Still he made no protest, but stood, drooping like a candle in
the sun, while large tears coursed quietly down his face. It must have
been good for Davie to have such a phlegmatic friend. But I've seen
Anthony wakened to enthusiasm. I came home once full of _Cyrano de
Bergerac_, and, of course, told Davie all about it--I was so pleased
when I heard Davie say after he was grown up, 'It was Nana made me like
poetry'--and it became his favourite game. He and Anthony would crouch
behind the sofa, 'behind the walls at Arras,' and then jump wildly up
shouting, 'Cadets of Gascony are we...' Mother, I think you and I
could talk for weeks on end about Davie...."
The door opened and Marget came in. "It's no' nine o'clock yet," she
said; "but Mysie has rin oot doon to the cottages--what wi' the mune
and the snaw it's near as light as day--an' I cam' in to speer about
your _Life_, Mem. Hoo's Miss Ann gettin' on wi't?"
"Not very well, Marget," Ann answered for herself. "I'm going to
finish it, but it's a much harder job than I expected."
Marget sniffed. "I dinna see ony hardness aboot it. You hev a' the
facts; a' that you've got to dae is write them doon."
"It certainly sounds very easy put in that way," Ann said; "but facts
alone are dull things."
"But ony thing else wad juist be lees."
Ann began to laugh. "But, Marget," she protested, "I could put all the
facts of Mother's life into one page--born, married, number of
children, and so on; but that wouldn't be any sort of record to hand
down to the children. You want all sorts of little everyday touches
that will make them see the home that their father was brought up in."
"Everyday touches," Marget repeated; "d'ye mean what we hed for oor
denners an' aboot washin' days? But thaes no things to write aboot. I
could tell ye some rale fine things to pit in a book. One Setterday I
let in a young man to see the maister--a rale weel pit-on young man he
was, an' I showed him into the study, an' what d'ye think was the very
first thing he said to the maister?"
Marget leant forward impressively. "He said that he had had a veesion
to kill a man an' had been guided to oor Manse. Eh, I say! Sic a
fricht I got when I heard aboot it! It juist lets ye see how carefu'
ye should be aboot lettin' folk in even if they look respectable."
"And how did Father get rid of him?" Ann asked.
"You tell her, Mem." Marget nodded towards her mistress, and Mrs.
Douglas said:
"He was a poor fellow whose brain had gone from over-study. Your
father talked quietly to him, and said that Saturday morning was a bad
time to come, and suggested that he should put it off till Monday. He
went away quite peaceably, and your father went out after him and had
him followed, for he was a dangerous lunatic. On the Sunday we were
afraid to leave anybody in the house in case he came back, so we all
went to church--even Jim the baby! On the Monday we heard that he was
in an asylum. It was a tragic case."
"We got some awfu' frichts in the Kirkcaple Manse," said Marget; "but I
dinna mind nane in Glesgae; we had folk a' round us there. Eh, Mem,
d'ye mind the day the maister brocht in the auld-claes wife?"
Mrs. Douglas began to laugh, and she and Marget sat and shook in silent
convulsions while Ann demanded to know what they were laughing at.
At last Mrs. Douglas steadied her voice enough to say:
"You know your father was always being accused of not being cordial to
people--he had naturally rather a dry manner. One day I was standing
at the study window and saw an old-clothes woman--Mrs. Burt was her
name--who came regularly to ask if we had anything for her, standing at
the gate as if hesitating whether or not to come in. Then I saw your
father approach, raise his hat, saw him go up to the startled woman and
shake her warmly by the hand, and then conduct her into the house.
'Nell,' he shouted, 'here's an old friend to see you--Mrs. Beattie from
Kirkcaple! She must have some lunch.'"
"Mrs. Burt turned to me a distressed, red face, and I stared at her
wondering which of us had gone mad.
"'Mrs. Burt...' I began, and then it dawned upon your father what he
had done. There was a faint resemblance between the old-clothes woman
and our old friend Mrs. Beattie, who had been such a help to us in the
Kirkcaple Church. For a moment he was absolutely nonplussed, and then
he began to laugh, and he and I reeled about while Mrs. Burt looked
more alarmed every minute. We recovered in time, and begged Mrs.
Burt's pardon for the mistake, and saw that she had a good dinner; but
your father said he had got enough of trying to be 'frank'----"
Marget wiped her eyes. "Eh, I say," she said, "it was an awfu' set
oot."