The thaw came suddenly, and, almost in a night, the snow went, leaving
the moorlands like some vast sponge. The air was full of the rushing
of a great west wind and the noise of running water, as burns, heavy
with spate, came tumbling down the hillsides.
Ann stood looking out at the wide view, at the hills purple-dark, with
drifts of snow still in the hollows and at the back of dykes.
"'As dull as a great thaw,'" she quoted. "It's like a giant's washing
day--such a sloppiness and dreariness, and that horrible steamy feeling
that a house gets when the frost goes suddenly and leaves everything
damp, even the walls and the furniture. A new-made road is no great
treat in a thaw. I stuck, and nearly left my big boots behind me this
morning. I wish it would get dark and we could draw the curtains and
have tea."
"I don't want to grumble," Mrs. Douglas said, turning the heel of a
stocking with a resigned air, "but these last few days have been very
long. No post even! That was the last straw. I've knitted a pair of
stockings for little Davie, and I've written a lot of letters, and I've
tried each of the library books in turn, but nowadays nobody writes the
sort of book I like. No, they don't, Ann."
"But what kind of book pleases you, Mother? I thought we had rather a
good selection this week. One or two are quite interesting."
"Interesting!" repeated Mrs. Douglas. "They seemed to me the very
essence of dullness. I don't think I'm ill to please, but I do like a
book that is clean and kind. I put down each of those books in
disgust; they're both dull and indecent. Is it easier to be clever and
nasty than clever and clean?"
"Oh, much," said Ann promptly. "It's a very hard thing, I should
think, to write a book that is pleasant without being mawkish, whereas
any fool can be nasty and can earn a reputation of sorts by writing
what Davie used to call 'hot stuff.'"
"Well, I wish some one would arise who would write for the middle-aged
and elderly; there are a great many in the world, and they are
neglected by nearly every one--fashion writers, fiction writers, play
writers--no one caters for them. I like domestic fiction, gentle but
not drivelling, good character drawing and a love story that ends all
right."
"In other words," said Ann, "good print and happy ending. What about
me? Why shouldn't I become the writer for middle-aged women? I might
almost call myself a writer now that I have wrestled for weeks with
your _Life_, and I believe I would find it easier to write fiction than
biography--to leave what Marget calls 'facs' and take to 'lees.' Facts
crib and cabin one. Given a free hand I might develop an imagination."
"Who knows? Only don't begin anything else until you have finished the
job you are at. I do hate to leave unfinished work."
"Oh, so do I," said Ann, "and I mean to plod on with the _Life_ to the
bitter end--but I had better take bigger strides and cover the ground.
From Davie's birth--do you remember he used to say when we complained
of his accent, 'Well, you shouldn't have borned me in Glasgow'--on till
you went to South Africa nothing of importance happened."
Mrs. Douglas stared at her daughter. "Seven years," she said. "Did
nothing important happen in those years?"
"_Nothing_," Ann said firmly, "except that the boys left school and
went to Oxford----"
"Oh, but Ann, don't hurry on so. You must put in about the boys doing
so well at school and getting scholarships and almost educating
themselves. It might spur on that lazy little Rory to hear about them
... and you grew up."
"My growing up wasn't much of an event," said Ann. "Indeed it was
something of a disaster. I had been rather attractive-looking as a
schoolgirl because my hair fluffed out round my face, but when I put it
up I dragged it all back into a little tightly hair-pinned bump. The
change was startling. I was like a skinned rabbit. The boys hung
umbrellas on the bump and the church people came to you and asked you
to make me let down my hair again because they couldn't bear the look
of me. And I wore a thick brown coat and a brown hat with red in it,
and I had no more notion how to dress myself becomingly than a Kaffir
woman. I was a poor little object and I knew it. Then one night I
went to a party--an ordinary Glasgow party, full of jokes and good
things to eat--and there I met an artist; I suppose she would be about
thirty--I longed prodigiously to be thirty when I was eighteen; it
seemed to me the ideal age--and she wore a wonderful flowing gown, and
her red hair was parted in the middle and lay in a great knot of gold
at the nape of her neck. I had never seen anything like this
before--all your friends had their hair tightly and tidily done up and
wore bodices with lots of bones--and I sat and worshipped. I suppose
she had recognised worship in the eyes of the awkward, ill-dressed
young girl, for she came and sat beside me and talked to me and asked
what I meant to do in the world. I hadn't thought of doing anything, I
told her; I had a lot of brothers and a busy mother, and I helped at
home. She told me she would like to paint me, and I was flattered
beyond belief and promised to go to her studio the very next day.
Margot Stronach and everything about her were a revelation to me. I
thought her flat--which was probably rather tawdry and pinned together:
she confessed to me that she seldom bothered to sew things--the last
word in Art. Divans made out of discarded feather beds, polished
floors, white walls and blue jars with cape gooseberries--what could
one want more? I felt my clothes singularly out of place in such
surroundings, and I gave you no peace until I had got a long
straight-hanging white frock with gold embroideries which the boys
called my nightgown and in which I felt perfectly happy. Margot
certainly did improve my appearance vastly, you must admit that,
Mother. She made me take a few dozen hairpins out of my poor hair,
part it in the middle and fold it lightly back, and she taught me the
value of line, but she turned me for the time being into a very
affected, posing young person. It was then that I turned your nice
comfortable Victorian drawing-room upside down and condemned you as a
family to semi-darkness! I can't think why you were so patient with
me. The boys hooted at me, but I didn't mind them, and you and Father
meekly stotted about, until Father one afternoon fell over a stool and
spilt all his tea, whereupon he flew into one of his sudden rages,
vowed that this nonsense must cease, and pulled up the blinds to the
very top."
Mrs. Douglas laughed softly. "Poor Ann, we didn't appreciate your
artist friends much, but----"
"Oh, but Mother," Ann interrupted, "Margot wasn't a real artist--not
like Kathleen and Jim Strang, or any of the serious artists. She was
only a woman with a certain amount of money and a small talent, good
looks, and a vast amount of conceit. Even my foolish young eyes saw
that very soon."
"She put me very much about," Mrs. Douglas said; "she had such a
wailing, affected way of talking. I never could think of anything to
say in reply. Besides, I knew all the time she was thinking me an
ignorant, frumpish woman, and that didn't inspire me. You admired her
so much that you even copied her voice...."
Ann began to laugh. "It must have been terrible, Mother. I remember
Davie meeting Margot on the stairs, and she knelt down and began to
talk to him in that wailing, affected voice. Davie was a little fellow
and easily frightened, and he suddenly clutched my dress and burst into
tears, sobbing 'Nana, Nana, it's the _bandarlog_.' Fortunately Margot
didn't know her 'Jungle Book,' so she missed the allusion."
"What happened to her?" Mrs. Douglas asked.
"Oh, Kathleen told me she had met her somewhere quite lately. She
married a rich business man, stout and a little deaf--that was all to
the good!--and, Kathleen said, looked very fat and prosperous and
middle-aged. She said to Kathleen, 'Still painting away?' and
Kathleen, greatly delighted, replied, 'Still painting away.'"
"Oh, yes, Kathleen would appreciate that remark.... What was your next
phase, Ann?"
"I had no more _phases_," said Ann, and got up to get a paper to hold
between her face and the fire. "I began to go to London for a month in
the spring, and Uncle Bob took me with him when he went abroad, and
Mark took me to Switzerland to climb--that was absolutely the best
holiday of all--and I had a very, very good time."
"Yes," said her mother, "I remember a poor bed-ridden girl in the
church saying to me wistfully, 'Miss Ann's life is just like a fairy
tale.'"
Ann nodded. "It must have seemed so to her, poor child! And indeed I
was very fortunate; I had such wonderful brothers. But I never really
liked going away from home unless we went as a family. I hated to
leave Davie. How quickly we all seemed to grow up after we left
Kirkcaple, Mother!--Robbie especially. It seems to me, looking back,
that he sprang quite suddenly from an incredibly mischievous, rough
little boy into a gentle, silent schoolboy."
Mrs. Douglas stopped knitting and looked thoughtfully into the fire.
"Robbie," she said--how soft, thought Ann, her mother's voice was when
it named her boys--"Robbie changed quite suddenly. Up to thirteen he
was the firebrand of the household. Your father alone never lost
patience with his wild laddie. 'Let him alone,' he would say, 'he'll
be the best of the lot yet.' Marget used to say, 'There's naething for
it but to make him a sodger; the laddie canna get his fill o'
fechtin'.' I don't know what changed him. I think he just got sense.
Children do, if you let them alone. He began to be keen to take a good
place at school. Robbie had lots of brains, Ann."
"Oh, brains! He was one of the most capable men I ever knew. In India
there was no limit to the expectations his friends had for him."
"Oh, Ann, I wish he hadn't gone to India, but his heart was set on it
always. The Indian Army! How he used to talk to me about it, and beg
me not to make a fuss about letting him go! I would have been so
pleased if all my boys had been ministers. I used to picture to
myself, when you were all little, how I would go from manse to manse,
and what a proud mother I would be. I never could bear the Army as a
profession; your father and I never saw eye to eye about that----"
"Poor Mother, it was too bad! You wanted nice little clucking barndoor
fowls, and you found yourself with young eagles! I know. It would
have been a lovely life for you to do nothing but visit manses. I can
see you doing it. But even you stretched your wings a little. Was the
South African trip a silver-wedding jaunt?"
"Yes; don't you remember? The congregation gave us a cheque at your
father's semi-jubilee, and that was how we spent it."
"Oh, the semi-jubilee!" said Ann. "That was a great occasion. A
social meeting, with tea and cakes and speakers and presentations.
Eminent men brought from a distance to say complimentary things to you
and Father, and all sorts of old friends from Inchkeld and Kirkcaple
came with offerings, and so many of them stayed with us that the family
had to be boarded out! We acquired a lot of loot at that time in the
way of fitted dressing-cases and silver things, and we had a gorgeous
silver-wedding cake. Robbie had thought that you couldn't have a
bridescake unless you were being married, and when he found he had been
mistaken he said the only reason for marrying was gone! It was a
glorious cake. The boys were all at home for the Christmas holidays,
and when they got hungry in the forenoon they would go and cut chunks
off it with a pen-knife--until we had to hide it. You didn't go away
directly, Mums. It was the next November before you left for South
Africa, and what a business it was getting you away!"
"'There's muckle adae when cadgers ride,'" Mrs. Douglas quoted. "And
it was a great undertaking. I didn't in the least want to go, but your
father was as keen as a schoolboy, and I couldn't let him go alone, and
I couldn't leave Davie, so the three of us went. Mark had gone to
London and was settled in his rooms in the Temple. Robbie and Jim were
studying, and you had invitations to fill up all the time."
"I only visited between the boys' vacations, then we were all together
at Uncle Bob's. What angels he and Aunt Katharine were to us! The
rest of the time I paid visits, and very nearly had a bad nervous
breakdown through having to be consistently pleasant for nine months at
a stretch. You see, I stayed with such very different people, and the
effort to adjust myself to each in turn was rather wearing. When the
boys went back for the summer term, Uncle Bob took Aunt Katharine and
me over to Touraine. We stayed at Tours, and made expeditions all
round to the lovely old châteaux, and came home by Paris and London and
finished up at Oxford for Eights' Week. Wasn't it kind of Uncle Bob?
Oh, I do wish all the nice people weren't dead! Each one that goes
takes so much of the light away with him.... You didn't regret taking
the trip, Mother?"
"Not for a minute, except, perhaps, when Davie supped a whole tin of
condensed milk and nearly perished, and your father was poisoned by a
mosquito bite and was blind for two days. It did me a world of good to
come across people who had never heard of the United Free Church of
Scotland and who had no desire to hear about it, and who interested me
enormously by the way they looked at life. Mark always used to tell me
that with me journeys ended in Mothers' Meetings, and I was too much
like that. I hadn't, perhaps, realised that people might be opposed to
everything I thought right and proper and yet be good people. I
worried a good deal about you children at home--it wouldn't have been
me if I hadn't had a trouble--but your father and Davie were blissfully
happy."
"You wrote splendid letters," said Ann, "telling every detail. Father
hated writing letters--we used to tell him that he would rather walk
five miles than write a p.c.--and his efforts were quite short and
chiefly confined to statements such as: 'What a beautiful blue the
ocean is'; 'the veldt is much what I thought it would be.' Davie wrote
delicious letters on oily scraps of paper--oily because he was
generally anointed with a lotion for mosquito bites--which invariably
ended: 'Now I must finch up.' He never ceased to mourn the little
mongoose that died before he could bring it home, but he did fetch a
giant tortoise, which snowked about at Etterick until a specially cold
winter finished it. And you brought home a gorgeous fur rug and piles
of ostrich feathers. How did you collect so many presents?"
"Well, you see, part of the time your father was taking services for a
minister home on leave, and the kindness and hospitality of the people
were boundless. And I felt so mean about doing so little to entertain
them when they turned up in Glasgow. We had a few to stay, but most of
them were only asked to luncheon, and it sounded so shabby."
"Oh, but it's different out there," Ann said comfortably. "I felt I
could never repay the hospitality of the people I met in India. But
Robbie didn't at all take up that attitude. 'It's jolly nice for them
to have you,' was what he said, and I suppose he meant that visitors
from 'home' are sure of a welcome from exiles from 'home.' You are a
stranger in the land of their adoption, and they want you to see the
best side of things. It is different when they come back, then we are
all at home together. Aha, tea at last, and Marget bringing it in!"
"Ay," said Marget, putting the kettle on the spirit-lamp, and carrying
the covered dish of muffins to the brass stool in the fireplace.
"Mysie went awa' doon to the village, seein' it was fresh again. She's
young, ye ken, and juist deein' for a crack wi' some o' her frien's.
There's a mune, and somebody'll see her hame I've nae doot. Will I
licht the lichts the noo?"
Mrs. Douglas smiled at the old woman. "I think we'll have tea in the
firelight, Marget. I'm glad Mysie has gone out for a little. It's a
dull life up here for a young girl."
"Oh, her," said Marget, dismissing her niece and her possible dullness
with a gesture. "D'ye mind, Mem, the maister never likit his tea in
the dark. He said he couldna see the road to his mooth. 'Marget,' he
would say to me, 'let's have some light on the subject.' That was aye
what he said."
Marget stood in the firelight and looked at the two women at the
tea-table.
"D'ye ken what I was thinkin' this afternoon when I was ma lane? I was
thinkin' how queer it was that a' oor men-folk are awa' and three
weemen's a' that's left."
"Marget," said Ann, "what a croaking old raven you are! We're not
alone for always. Mr. Mark and Mr. Jim will be back in the spring."
Marget shook her head gloomily. "I've nae comfort in thinkin' aboot
folk awa' ower the sea. It's a terrible dangerous thing to travel."
"Yes, Marget," said her mistress, "we've just been talking, Miss Ann
and I, about our trip to South Africa. You washed your hands of us
then."
"Me! I never thocht to see ony o' ye again. An' takin' wee Davie into
sic danger! A' the sailin' I ever did was from Burntisland to Granton
afore they pit up the Forth Bridge."
"You're as bad as little Tommy Hislop," said Ann. "I spoke to him the
other day--you know he is going out with his mother to join his father
in South Africa?--and asked him how he would like the big ship. 'I'm
no gaun in a ship,' he said; 'I dinna like them. I'm gaun roond the
road in a cairt wi' ma Uncle Jake.'"
"He's a wise laddie," said Marget. "But it was an awfu' set-oot when
you gaed awa' to Africa. An' we thocht we'd better try and let the
hoose for the winter and keep it fired, an' some queer American folk
cam' aboot it, kin o' missionaries they were, an' the maister said they
were decent folk and let them get it."
"Yes, and we knew nothing about them," said Mrs. Douglas. "They
belonged to some sort of religious sect in America, and had come over
here to do propaganda work. They seemed to live like the early
Christians, having all things in common and taking no thought for the
morrow, and they could only offer us a nominal rent; but your father
talked to them and thought them sincere and liked them, so we gave them
the house. We had a cellar full of coal and a cupboard full of jam,
and we asked them if they would care to take them both over. They said
they would have to ask the Lord, and they came back and said: The Lord
says we may take the coal, but not the jam,' and we felt so sorry for
the funny little people that we gave them the jam. They had the
wildest of accents, and we had difficulty in understanding them when
they asked, 'Is there a crack in the door to let the mail through?' and
'Has the yard been spaded over this fall?'"
"Wasn't it like our daft ways," said Ann, as she sipped her tea, "to
let our house at a ridiculously low rent to people we knew absolutely
nothing about? You know, Mother, they held meetings in the
drawing-room, and the neighbours, watching the people troop in,
shuddered for our carpets. I think it was some sort of faith-healing
that they did. When they left, a month before you were expected back,
Aunt Agatha and Jim and I went to see what the house was like, and
arrange about having it thoroughly cleaned. We found it in perfect
condition. Two of the women came to see us the night we were there,
and told us something of the work. I asked them how they had kept the
carpets so fresh, and they said quite simply, 'We asked the Lord.' I
shall never forget poor Aunt Agatha's face of utter terror--you know
her almost insane horror of infection--when one of those Bible
Christians said, 'Would you believe it, we cured a case of smallpox in
this very room?' They had replaced everything they had broken, so they
did very well by us. It's nice not to have to think hardly of
Christians, whatever sect they belong to."
"That's true," said Marget, "but I think the puir bodies had leeved on
cocoa. Sic a cocoa-tins they left in a press!"
"Ann," said Mrs. Douglas, "I've just been thinking, you should tell
about old Christina in my _Life_. She was a most interesting
character."
Ann shook her head as she rose from the tea-table. "I've too many old
women in it already. Besides, I'm not going to write just now. I'm
going to lie in the most comfortable chair the room contains and read
an article in the _Times Literary Supplement_ called 'Love and
Shakespeare.' Does that sound good enough?"