MEYSIE'S BAIRNS
At the time I had no idea how difficult this would be. But at any rate
I wanted to find out for certain what it was that I had found. He
could give me no other answer than that I would know in good time, and
that in the meantime we were going to old Caleb Fergusson's for tea.
Now I make no objections to tea at any time--that is, a proper
sit-down, spread-table, country tea--not one of those agonies at which
you do tricks with a cup of tea, a plate, the edge of a chair, and a
snippet of bread. I knew that at the Fergusson's I would find plenty
to eat and drink.
We slid back through the woods, rising higher all the time as the land
trended toward the moor. Then out and away across the road I could see
far away to the right the roofs of Breckonside, shining like silver
after a shower which must have passed over them, the winding Brom
Water, the threaded roads, pale pink in colour, the dry stone dykes
dividing the fields. Never had my native village seemed so small to
me. Perhaps because I had just been in some considerable danger, a
thing which enlarges the mental horizon. I looked for Elsie's house
down there. But though I could see the silver glint of the water, I
could not make out the cottage at the Bridge End. There was a mist,
however, creeping up from the sea, so that in a little while, even as I
looked, the whole valley became a pearl-grey lake, with only the tall
ash trees and the solitary church spire standing up out of the smother.
We found old Caleb, an infrequent smile on his face, leaning over the
bars of his yard gate.
"Them that hasna their hay weel covered," he chuckled, "runs a chance
o' gettin' it sprinkled a wee!"
"Then," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "you owe me something for the afternoon's
work I gave you!"
"Yon!" cried the old man, ungratefully, "caa ye that half a day's wark?
But I'm far frae denyin' that, sic as it was, it helped. Ow, ay, it
was aye a help! And at ony rate the hay's under cover--some
thack-and-rape, and some in the new-fangled shed. But what's your
wull? Ye are no seekin' wages, I'm thinkin'. Maybe ye want me to turn
my coat and come doon to your bit tabernacle? Aweel, ye may want."
"Oh, no," said Mr. Ablethorpe, smiling. "I was just hoping that
perhaps your good wife would brew us a cup of tea. I think both Joe
and I would be the better of it."
You should have seen how the old farmer's face lit up. Hospitality was
a beautiful thing to him. He rejoiced in that, at least. And if, as
some folk say--not Mr. Ablethorpe--an elder is the same as a bishop,
then the old Free Kirker had at least one of the necessary qualities.
He was "given to hospitality." Whether he was, as is also required,
"no striker," I would not just like to say, or to try.
But Caleb took us indoors out of the slight oncoming drizzle, which was
beginning to spray down from the clouds, or creep up from the
valleys--I am not sure which. At any rate, it was there,
close-serried, wetting.
Now heretofore I had only seen Mrs. Caleb when she was ordered down
from the long stack under the zinc-roofed shed, which her husband was
never tired of declaiming against as "new-fangled," yet to which he
owed that night the safety of his crop.
Mrs. Caleb was a good twenty years younger than her lord, still,
indeed, bearing traces of that special kind of good looks which the
Scots call "sonsiness." Susan Fergusson at five-and-forty was sonsy to
the last degree. Her husband, twenty years older, was sun-dried and
wind-dried and frost-bitten till he had become sapless as a leaf blown
along the highway on a bask March day, when the fields are full of
sowers, and the roads cloudy with "stoor."
"Come ben! This way, sir--and you, too, Joe," she cried, opening a
door into an inner room, "ye will no hae seen Meysie's bairns?"
As I had never even heard of Meysie, I certainly had not.
But the goodwife's next words enlightened me.
"Caleb, ye see, was marriet afore he took up wi' me. 'Deed, his lassie
Meysie is maybe aulder than I am mysel'--and a solit, sensible woman.
But this is the first time her bairns hae comed sae far to see me!"
She flung the door open, and there, sitting one on a sofa, and the
other on a footstool by the fire, I saw two grown-up young ladies--so
at least they appeared to me. And I began to fear that my tea was
going to cost me dear. For at that time conversation was a difficult
art to me with anyone whom I could neither fight nor call names.
The girls--twenty or twenty-two they seemed--oh, ever so old--looked
just as if they had been doing nothing. That is, the one with the
straight-cut face, very dignified, who made a kind of long droopy
picture of herself on the sofa, was reading a book, or pretending to,
while the other on the stool did nothing but nurse her knees and look
out at the window.
That was the one I liked best, though, of course, not like Elsie--I
should think not, indeed. But she was little, she had a merry face,
and I am sure she had been laughing just before we came in. Indeed, I
am none so sure that she had not been listening at the keyhole and made
a rush for the footstool.
"Bairns," said Mrs. Caleb the Second, "this is the Englishy minister,
and a kind friend o' us auld folk. Though Caleb, your gran'dad, gies
him awfu' spells o' argumentincation aboot things I ken nocht aboot!
'Deed, I wonder whiles that Maister Ablethorpe ever looks near us
again!"
"Oh, no," said the Hayfork Minister, smiling, "it takes two to make an
argument, and I never argue with Mr. Fergusson. I only receive
instruction, as a younger from an elder!"
"Hear to him," cried the goodwife, "he doesna mean a word he is
sayin'--I can aye tell by the glint in his e'e."
Then she introduced the girls in due form. One, the tall tired-looking
girl on the sofa, was Constantia, and the little merry one was named
Harriet. To my great astonishment they were of the same age, being
twins.
It seemed as if I were to be left out altogether, but Harriet looked
across at me and asked demurely if I were going to be a minister, too.
She was making fun of me, of course, and that is what I do not allow
any girl to do. Only Elsie, and she is really too serious to abuse the
privilege--not like this Harriet. I could see in a minute that she was
a regular magpie--a "clip," as they say in Breckonside.
Meanwhile, Constantia did not say very much. She gave Mr. Ablethorpe
her hand as if she were doing him a valuable kindness. And at this I
could hear her sister gurgle. The next minute, Harriet was on her
feet, and, taking me by the shoulder, she said: "Come on, Joe--Joe is
your name, isn't it? That's good, for it's just the name I like best
of all boys' names. Come on and help Susan Fergusson to get tea."
That was the way she spoke of her grandmother--off-hand and kindly,
with a glint of fun more in the manner than in the words.
"What's your other name?" I asked, because I did not like to call her
Harriet so suddenly. Besides, I did not know how Elsie might take to
all this. I was sure they would like one another no end. Because they
were both the same kind of girl--jolly, so that almost any boy could
get on with them. At least, that was what I thought at the time, not
knowing any better.
"Caw," she said; "that is my name; same as a crow says 'Caw--Caw--Caw!'
You needn't be surprised, I couldn't help it being my father's name.
But it's short, and if you should forget it, you have only to go out
and stand beneath a rookery, and you'll remember it in a minute. That
is, unless you are deaf."
Then I told Harriet Caw my name, Joseph Yarrow, which she thought
funny. And she gave me bread to cut while she stood by me and buttered
it--doing everything so quickly, and talking all the time, that indeed
it was very nice. And I wished Elsie had been there to laugh at
Harriet's jokes, which seemed very funny to me then. But, oh, how
stupid and feeble they seemed when I came to tell them to Elsie after!
And Elsie wasn't a bit amused, as I had hoped. Girls hardly ever seem
to get on with other girls as a fellow thinks they will. It is
different with men. Now I got on first-class with Mr. Ablethorpe, even
when I thought--but it's no matter about that now.
Well, it was a tea! The table was loaded from one end to the other.
There were soda scones, light and hove up so as to make your teeth
water. There were farrels of oat-cake, crisp and curly, with just the
proper amount of browning on the side where the red ashes of the fire
had toasted it. Four or five kinds of jams there were, all better one
than the other. Old Caleb came in and ate quickly, sermonizing Mr.
Ablethorpe all the time, and as long as he was there we were all as
quiet as mice. But I am sure everyone was glad when he rose, tumbled
things about on the window seat in search of his blue bonnet (which
only he of all the countryside still wore), and finally went out to the
hill. Before going he warned us to behave and to remember that, _such
as he was_, we had one who deemed himself a minister among us.
But as soon as we were alone, up jumped Harriet Caw, and catching me
round the waist, she cried, "Dance, Joseph--dance, Joe! He's gone.
Never mind Granny Susan. She does not count!"
That was actually the way she spoke of her grandmother--or
step-grandmother, rather. And, indeed, that good lady only laughed,
and, shaking her head at the minister, repeated, what I afterwards
found to be her favourite maxim--that "young folk would be young folk."
The philosophy of which was that they would get over it all too soon.
The Hayfork Minister nodded back to Susan, and I was not sorry to see
him (as I thought) much taken up with the picture-book girl, as in my
heart I called Constantia. For in our house at home, up in the attic,
there are a lot of old "Annuals" and "Keepsakes"--oh, I don't know how
old, all in faded watered-silk covers loose at the back--some faded and
some where the colour has run, but choke full of pictures of scenery,
all camels and spiky palms and humpy camels, with "Palmyra" and
"Carthage" written beneath time about. But these are not half bad,
though deadly alike. The weary parts are the pictures of
girls--leaning out of windows before they have done their washing and
hair-brushing in the morning. I should just like to see my father
catch them at it. That was called "Dreaming of Thee." And there were
lots of others. "Sensibility" was a particularly bad one. She was
spread all over a sofa, and had a canary on her finger. She had saved
it from a little snappy-yappy spaniel--only just, for two tail feathers
were floating down. And there were two big dewdrops of tears on her
cheeks to show how sorry she was for the canary bird--or, perhaps, for
the spaniel.
Anyway, it was the only time I ever really liked a spaniel.
Well, I needn't describe the others. At any rate, if you've ever seen
the "Keepsake" kind of young women, you won't have forgotten them. You
will cherish a spite, especially if you have had to stay in one room
and choose between looking at them and flattening your nose against the
window-panes, down which the water is running in big blobs, during a
week of wet holiday weather.
Constantia was a "Keepsake" girl.
I suppose it must be, as it is with snakes. Some like them and some
not. I don't. But I will never deny (not being, like Elsie, a girl)
that Constantia was good looking. If (and the Lord have mercy on your
soul!) you really liked that sort of thing, Constantia was just the
sort of thing you would like.