"The actors are at hand,
And by their show
You shall know all that you are like to know."
Midsummer Night's Dream.
It was tea-time in Priorsford: four-thirty by the clock on a chill
October afternoon.
The hills circling the little town were shrouded with mist. The wide bridge that spanned the Tweed and divided the town proper—the Highgate, the Nethergate, the Eastgate—from the residential part was almost deserted. On the left bank of the river, Peel Tower loomed ghostly in the gathering dusk. Round its grey walls still stood woods of larch and fir, and in front the links of Tweed moved through pleasant green pastures. But where once ladies on palfreys hung with bells hunted with their cavaliers there now stood the neat little dwellings of prosperous, decent folk; and where the good King James wrote his rhymes, and listened to the singing of Mass from the Virgin's Chapel, the Parish Kirk reared a sternly Presbyterian steeple. No need any longer for Peel to light the beacon telling of the coming of our troublesome English neighbours. Telegraph wires now carried the matter, and a large bus met them at the trains and conveyed them to that flamboyant pile in red stone, with its glorious views, its medicinal baths, and its band-enlivened meals, known as Priorsford Hydropathic.
As I have said, it was tea-time in Priorsford.
The schools had skailed, and the children, finding in the weather little encouragement to linger, had gone to their homes. In the little houses down by the riverside brown teapots stood on the hobs, and rosy-faced women cut bread and buttered scones, and slapped their children with a fine impartiality; while in the big houses on the Hill, servants, walking delicately, laid out tempting tea-tables, and the solacing smell of hot toast filled the air.
Most of the smaller houses in Priorsford were very much of one pattern and all fairly recently built, but there was one old house, an odd little rough stone cottage, standing at the end of a row of villas, its back turned to its parvenu neighbours, its eyes lifted to the hills. A flagged path led up to the front door through a herbaceous border, which now only held a few chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies (Perdita would have scorned them as flowers for the old age), but in spring and in summer blazed in a sweet disorder of old-fashioned blossoms.
This little house was called The Rigs.
It was a queer little house, and a queer little family lived in it. Jardine was their name, and they sat together in their living-room on this October evening. Generally they all talked at once and the loudest voice prevailed, but to-night there was not so much competition, and Jean frequently found herself holding the floor alone.
David, busy packing books into a wooden box, was the reason for the comparative quiet. He was nineteen, and in the morning he was going to Oxford to begin his first term there. He had so long looked forward to it that he felt dazed by the nearness of his goal. He was a good-looking boy, with honest eyes and a firm mouth.
His only sister, Jean, four years older than himself, left the table and sat on the edge of the box watching him. She did not offer to help, for she knew that every man knows best how to pack his own books, but she hummed a gay tune to prove to herself how happy was the occasion, and once she patted David's grey tweed shoulder as he leant over her. Perhaps she felt that he needed encouragement this last night at home.
Jock, the other brother, a schoolboy of fourteen, with a rough head and a voice over which he had no control, was still at the tea-table. He was rather ashamed of his appetite, but ate doggedly. "It's not that I'm hungry just now," he would say, "but I so soon get hungry."
At the far end of the room, in a deep window, a small boy, with a dog and a cat, was playing at being on a raft. The boy's name was Gervase Taunton, but he was known to a large circle of acquaintances as "the Mhor," which, as Jean would have explained to you, is Gaelic for "the great one." Thus had greatness been thrust upon him. He was seven, and he had lived at The Rigs since he was two. He was a handsome child with an almost uncanny charm of manner, and a gift of make-believe that made his days one long excitement.
He now stood like some "grave Tyrian trader" on the table turned upside down that was his raft, as serious and intent as if it had been the navy of Tarshish bringing Solomon gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks. With one arm he clutched the cat and assured that unwilling voyager, "You're on the dangerous sea, me old puss. You don't want to be drowned, do you?" The cat struggled and scratched. "Then go—to your doom!"
He clasped his hands behind him in a Napoleonic manner and stood gloomily watching the unembarrassed progress of the cat across the carpet, while Peter (a fox-terrier, and the wickedest dog in Priorsford) crushed against his legs to show how faithful he was compared to any kind of cat.
Haven't you finished eating yet, Jock? Jean asked. "Here is Mrs.
M'Cosh for the tea-things."
The only servant The Rigs possessed was a middle-aged woman, the widow of one Andrew M'Cosh, a Clyde riveter, who had drifted from her native city of Glasgow to Priorsford. She had a sweet, worn face, and a neat cap with a black velvet bow in front.
Jock rose from the table reluctantly, and was at once hailed by the Mhor and invited on to the raft.
Jock hesitated, but he was the soul of good nature. "Well, only for five minutes, remember. I've a lot of lessons to-night." He sat down on the upturned table, his legs sprawling on the carpet, and hummed "Tom Bowling," but the Mhor leaned from his post as steersman and said gravely, "Don't dangle your legs, Jock; there are sharks in these waters." So Jock obediently crumpled his legs until his chin rested on his knees.
Mrs. M'Cosh piled the tea-things on a tray and folded the cloth. "Ay, Peter," she said, catching sight of that notorious character, "ye look real good, but I wis hearin' ye were efter the sheep again the day."
Peter turned away his head as if deeply shocked at the accusation, and Mrs. M'Cosh, with the tea-cloth over her arm, regarded him with an indulgent smile. She had infinite tolerance for Peter's shortcomings.
Peter was kinna late last night, she would say, as if referring to an erring husband, "an' I juist sat up for him." She had also infinite leisure. It was no use Jean trying to hurry the work forward by offering to do some task. Mrs. M'Cosh simply stood beside her and conversed until the job was done. Jean never knew whether to laugh or be cross, but she generally laughed.
Once when the house had been upset by illness, and trained nurses were in occupation, Jean had rung the bell repeatedly, and, receiving no answer, had gone to the kitchen. There she found the Mhor, then a very small boy, seated on a chair playing a mouth-organ, while Mrs. M'Cosh, her skirts held coquettishly aloft, danced a few steps to the music. Jean—being Jean—had withdrawn unnoticed and slipped upstairs to the sick-room much cheered by the sight of such detachment.
Mrs. M'Cosh had been eight years with the Jardines and was in many ways such a treasure, and always such an amusement, that they would not have parted from her for much red gold.
Bella Bathgate's expectin' her lodger the morn. The tea-tray was ready to be carried away, but Mrs. M'Cosh lingered.
Oh, is she? said Jean. "Who is it that's coming?"
I canna mind the exact name, but she's ca'ed the Honourable an' she's bringin' a leddy's maid.
Gosh, Maggie! ejaculated Jock.
I asked you not to say that, Jock, Jean reminded him.
Ay, Mrs. M'Cosh continued, "Bella Bathgate's kinna pit oot aboot it.
She disna ken how she's to cook for an Honourable—she niver saw yin."
Have you seen one? Jock asked.
No' that I know of, but when I wis pew opener at St. George's I let in some verra braw folk. One Sunday there wis a lord, no less. A shaughly wee buddy he wis tae. Ma Andra wud hae been gled to see him sae oorit.
The eyes of the Jardines were turned inquiringly on their handmaid. It seemed a strange reason for joy on the part of the late Andrew M'Cosh.
Weel, his widow explained, "ye see, Andra wis a Socialist an' thocht naething o' lords—naething. I used to show him pictures o' them in the Heartsease Library—fine-lukin' fellays wi' black mustacheys—but he juist aye said, 'It's easy to draw a pictur', and he wouldna own that they wis onything but meeserable to look at. An', mind you, he wis richt. When I saw the lord in St. George's, I said to masel', I says, 'Andra wis richt,' I says." She lifted up the tray and prepared to depart. "Weel, he'll no' be muckle troubled wi' them whaur he's gone, puir man. The Bible says, Not many great, not many noble."
D'you think, said Mhor in a pleasantly interested voice, "that Mr. M'Cosh is in heaven?" (Mhor never let slip an opportunity for theological discussions.) "I wouldn't care much to go to heaven myself, for all my friends are in"—he stopped and cast a cautious glance at Jean, and, judging by her expression that discretion was the better part of valour, and in spite of an encouraging twinkle in the eyes of Jock, finished demurely—"the Other Place."
Haw, haw, laughed Jock, who was consistently amused by Mhor and his antics. "I'm sorry for your friends, old chap. Do I know them?"
Well, said Mhor, "there's Napoleon and Dick Turpin and Graham of
Claverhouse and Prince Charlie and——"
Mhor—you're talking too much, said David, who was jotting down figures in a notebook.
It's to be hoped, said Jean to Mrs. M'Cosh, "that the honourable lady will suit Bella Bathgate, for Bella, honest woman, won't put herself about to suit anybody. But she's been a good neighbour to us. I always feel so safe with her near; she's equal to anything from a burst pipe to a broken arm…. I do hope that landlord of ours in London will never take it into his head to come back and live in Priorsford. If we had to leave The Rigs and Bella Bathgate I simply don't know what we'd do."
We could easy get a hoose wi' mair conveniences Mrs. M'Cosh reminded her. She had laid down the tray again and stood with her hands on her hips and her head on one side, deeply interested "Thae wee new villas in the Langhope Road are a fair treat, wi' a pantry aff the dining-room an' hot and cold everywhere."
Villas, said Jean—"hateful new villas! What are conveniences compared to old thick walls and queer windows and little funny stairs? Besides, The Rigs has a soul."
Oh, mercy! said Mrs. M'Cosh, picking up the tray and moving at last to the door, "that's fair heathenish!"
Jean laughed as the door shut on their retainer, and perched herself on the end of the big old-fashioned sofa drawn up at one side of the fire. She wore a loose stockinette brown dress and looked rather like a wood elf of sorts with her golden-brown hair and eyes.
If I were rich, she said, "I would buy an annuity for Mrs. M'Cosh of at least £200 a year. When you think that she once had a house and a husband, and a best room with an overmantel and a Brussels carpet, and lost them all, and is contented to be a servant to us, with no prospect of anything for her old age but the workhouse or the charity of relations, and keeps cheery and never makes a moan and never loses her interest in things …"
But you're not rich, said Jock.
No, said Jean ruefully. "Isn't it odd that no one ever leaves us a legacy? But I needn't say that, for it would be much odder if anyone did. I don't think there is a single human being in the world entitled to leave us a penny piece. We are destitute of relations…. Oh, well, I daresay we'll get on without a legacy, but for your comfort I'll read to you about the sort of house we would have if some kind creature did leave us one."
She dived for a copy of Country Life that was lying on the sofa, and turned to the advertisements of houses to let and sell.
It is good of Mrs. Jowett letting us have this every week. It's a great support to me. I wonder if anyone ever does buy these houses, or if they are merely there to tantalize poor folk? Will this do? 'A finely timbered sporting estate—seventeen bedrooms——'
Too small, said Jock from his cramped position on the raft.
'A beautiful little property——' No. Oh, listen. 'A characteristic Cotswold Tudor house'—doesn't that sound delicious? 'Mullioned windows. Fine suite of reception-rooms, ballroom. Lovely garden, with trout-stream intersecting'—heavenly. 'There are vineries, peach-houses, greenhouses, and pits'—what do you do with pits? "Keep bears in them, of course," said Jock, and added vaguely—"bear baiting, you know."
It isn't usual to keep bears, David pointed out.
No, but if you had them, Jock insisted, "you would want pits to keep them in."
Jock, said Jean, "you are like the White Knight when Alice told him it wasn't likely that there would be any mice on the horse's back. 'Not very likely, perhaps, but if they do come I don't choose to have them running all about.' But I agree with the White Knight, it's as well to be provided for everything, so we'll keep the pits in case of bears."
They had pits in the Bible, said Mhor dreamily, as he screwed and unscrewed his steering-wheel, which was also the piano stool, "for Joseph was put in one."
Jean turned over the leaves of the magazine, studying each pictured house, gloating over details of beauty and of age, then she pushed it away with a "Heigh-ho, but I wish we had a Tudor residence."
I'll buy you one, David promised her, "when I'm Lord Chancellor."
Thank you, David, said Jean.
By this time the raft had been sunk by a sudden storm, and Jock had grasped the opportunity to go to his books, while Mhor and Peter had laid themselves down on the rug before the fire and were rolling on each other in great content.
Jean and David sat together on the sofa, their arms linked. They had very little to say, for as the time of departure approaches conversation dies at the fount.
Jean was trying to think what their mother would have said on this last evening to her boy who was going out into the world. Never had she felt so inadequate. Ought she to say things to him? Warn him against lurking evils? (Jean who knew about as much of evil as a "committed linnet"!) But David was such a wise boy and so careful. It always pinched Jean's heart to see him dole out his slender stock of money, for there never was a Jardine born who did not love to be generous.
She looked at him fondly. "I do hope you won't find it too much of a pinch, David. The worst of it is, you will be with people who have heaps of money, and I'm afraid you'll hate to feel shabby."
It's no crime to be poor, said David stoutly. "I'll manage all right. Don't you worry. What I hate is thinking you are scrimping to give me every spare penny—but I'll work my hardest."
I know you'll do that, but play too—every minute you can spare. I don't want you to shut yourself up among books. Try and get all the good of Oxford. Remember, Sonny, this is your youth, and whatever you may get later you can never get that back. She leaned back and gave a great sigh. "How I wish I could make this a splendid time for you, but I can't, my dear, I can't…. Anyway, nobody will have better china. I've given you six of Aunt Alison's rosy ones; I hope the scout won't break them. And your tablecloths and sheets and towels are all right, thanks to our great-aunt's stores…. And you'll write as often as you can and tell us everything, if you get a nice scout, and all about your rooms, and if cushions would be any use, and oh, my dear, eat as much as you can—don't save on food."
Of course not, said David. "But several nights a week I'll feed in my own room. You don't need to go to Hall to dinner unless you like."
He got up from the sofa and went and stood before the fire, keeping his head very much in the air and his hands in his pockets. He was feeling that home was a singularly warm, kind place, and that the great world was cold and full of strangers; so he whistled "D'ye ken John Peel?" and squared his shoulders, and did not in the least deceive his sister Jean.
Peter, me faithful hound, said the Mhor, hugging the patient dog.
What would you like to play at?
Peter looked supremely indifferent.
Red Indians?
Peter licked the earnest face so near his own.
The Mhor wiped his face with the back of his hand (his morning's handkerchief, which he alluded to as "me useful little hanky," being used for all manner of purposes not intended by the inventor of handkerchiefs, was quite unpresentable by evening) and said:
I know. Let's play at 'Suppose.' Jean, let's play at 'Suppose.'
Don't worry, darling, said Jean.
The Mhor turned to Jock, who was sitting at a table with his head bent over a book. "Jock, let's play at 'Suppose.'"
Shut up, said Jock.
David. The Mhor turned to his last hope. "Seeing it's your last night."
David never could resist the Mhor when he was beseeching.
Well, only for ten minutes, remember.
Mhor looked fixedly at the clock, measuring with his eye the space of ten minutes, then nodded, murmuring to himself, "From there to there. You begin, Jean."
I can't think of anything, said Jean. Then seeing Mhor's eager face cloud, she began: "Suppose when David was in the train to-morrow he heard a scuffling sound under the seat, and he looked and saw a grubby little boy and a fox-terrier, and he said, 'Come out, Mhor and Peter.' And suppose they went with him all the way to Oxford, and when they got to the college they crept upstairs without being seen and the scout was a kind scout and liked dogs and naughty boys and he gave them a splendid supper——"
What did he give them? Mhor asked.
Chicken and boiled ham and meringues and sugar biscuits and lemonade (mentioning a few of Mhor's favourite articles of food), "and he tucked them up on the sofa and they slept till morning, and got into the train and came home, and that's all."
Me next, said Mhor. "Suppose they didn't come home again. Suppose they started from Oxford and went all round the world. And I met a magician—in India that was—and he gave me an elephant with a gold howdah on its back, and I wasn't frightened for it—such a meek, gentle, dirty animal—and Peter and me sat on it and it pulled off cocoanuts with its trunk and handed them back to us, and we lived there always, and I had a Newfoundland pup and Peter had a golden crown because he was king of all the dogs, and I never went to bed and nobody ever washed my ears and we made toffee every day, every single day…." His voice trailed away into silence as he contemplated this blissful vision, and Jock, wooed from his Greek verbs by the interest of the game, burst in with his unmanageable voice:
"
Suppose a Russian man-of-war came up Tweed and started shelling Priorsford, and the parish church was hit and the steeple fell into Thomson's shop and scattered the haddocks and kippers and things all over the street, and——
"Did you pick them up, Jock? squealed Mhor, who regarded Jock as the greatest living humorist, and now at the thought of the scattered kippers wallowed on the floor with laughter.
Jock continued: "And another shell blew the turrety thing off The Towers and blew Mrs. Duff-Whalley right over the West Law and landed her in Caddon Burn——"
Hurray! yelled Mhor.
Jock was preparing for a further flight of fancy, when Mrs. M'Cosh, having finished washing the dishes, came in to say that Thomson had never sent the sausages for Mr. David's breakfast, and she could not see him depart for England unfortified by sausages and poached eggs.
I'll just slip down and get them, she announced, being by no means averse to a stroll along the lighted Highgate. It was certainly neither Argyle Street nor the Paisley Road, but it bore a far-off resemblance to those gay places, and for that Mrs. M'Cosh was thankful. There was a cinema, too, and that was a touch of home. Talking over Priorsford with Glasgow friends she would say, "It's no' juist whit I wud ca' the deid country—no juist paraffin-ile and glaury roads, ye ken. We hev gas an' plain-stanes an' a pictur hoose."
When Mrs. M'Cosh left the room Jock returned to his books, and the Mhor, his imagination fermenting with the thought of bombs on Priorsford, retired to the window-seat to think out further damage.
* * * * *
Some hours later, when Jock and Mhor were fast asleep and David, his packing finished, was preparing to go to bed, Jean slipped into the room.
She stood looking at the open trunk on the floor, at the shelves from which the books had been taken, at the empty boot cupboard.
Two large tears rolled over her face, but she managed to say quite gaily, "December will soon be here."
In no time at all, said David.
Jean was carrying a little book, which she now laid on the dressing-table, and, giving it a push in her brother's direction, "It's a Daily Light," she explained.
David did not offer to look at the gift, which was the traditional
Jardine gift to travellers, a custom descending from Great-aunt Alison.
He stood a bit away and said, "All right."
And Jean understood, and said nothing of what was in her heart.
"They have their exits and their entrances." As You Like It.
The ten o'clock express from Euston to Scotland was tearing along on its daily journey. It was that barren hour in the afternoon when luncheon is over and forgotten, and tea is yet far distant, and most of the passengers were either asleep or listlessly trying to read light literature.
Alone in a first-class carriage sat Bella Bathgate's lodger—Miss Pamela Reston. A dressing-bag and a fur-coat and a pile of books and magazines lay on the opposite seat, and the lodger sat writing busily. An envelope lay beside her addressed to
THE LORD BIDBOROUGH,
c/o KING, KING, & Co.,
BOMBAY.
The letter ran:
"
DEAR BIDDY,—We have always agreed, you and I (forgive the abruptness of this beginning), that we would each live our own life. Your idea of living was to range over the world in search of sport, mine to amuse myself well, to shine, to be admired. You, I imagine from your letters (what a faithful correspondent you have been, Biddy, all your wandering life), are still finding zest in it: mine has palled. You will jump naturally to the brotherly conclusion that I have palled—that I cease to amuse, that I find myself taking a second or even a third place, I who was always first; that, in short, I am a soured and disappointed woman. Honestly, I don't think that is so. I am still beautiful: I am more sympathetic than in my somewhat callous youth, therefore more popular: I am good company: I have the influence that money carries with it, and I could even now make what is known as a 'brilliant' marriage. Did you ever wonder—everybody else did, I know—why I never married? Simply, my dear, because the only man I cared for didn't ask me … and now I am forty. (How stark and almost indecent it looks written down like that!) At forty, one is supposed to have got over all youthful fancies and disappointments, and lately it has seemed to me reasonable to contemplate a common-sense marriage. A politician, wise, honoured, powerful—and sixty. What could be more suitable? So suitable that I ran away—an absurdly young thing to do at forty—and I am writing to you in the train on my way to Scotland…. You see, Biddy, I quite suddenly saw myself growing old, saw all the arid years in front of me, and saw that it was a very dreadful thing to grow old caring only for the things of time. It frightened me badly. I don't want to go in bondage to the fear of age and death. I want to grow old decently, and I am sure one ought to begin quite early learning how.
"
"'Clear eyes do dim at last
And cheeks outlive their rose:
Time, heedless of the past,
No loving kindness knows.'
Yes, and 'youth's a stuff will not endure,' and 'golden lads and girls all must like chimney-sweepers come to dust.' The poets aren't at all helpful, for youth—poor brave youth—won't listen to their warnings, and they seem to have no consolation to offer to middle age.
"
The odd thing is that up to a week or two ago I greatly liked the life I led. You said it would kill you in a month. Was it only last May that you pranced in the drawing-room in Grosvenor Street inveighing against 'the whole beastly show,' as you called it—the freak fashions, the ugly eccentric dances, the costly pageant balls, the shouldering, the striving, the worship of money, the gambling, the self-advertisement—all the abject vulgarity of it? And my set, the artistic, soulful literary set, you said was the worst of all: you actually described the high-priestess as looking like a 'decomposing cod-fish,' and added by way of a final insult that you thought the woman had a kind heart. And I laughed and thought the War had changed you. It didn't change me, to my shame be it said. I thought I was doing wonders posing about in a head-dress at Red Cross meetings, and getting up entertainments, and even my neverceasing anxiety about you simply seemed to make me more keen about amusing myself.
""
Do you remember a story we liked when we were children, The Gold of Fairnilee? Do you remember how Randal, carried away by the fairies, lived contented until his eyes were touched with the truth-telling water, and then Fairyland lost its glamour and he longed for the old earth he had left, and the changes of summer and autumn, and the streams of Tweed and his friends? Is it, do you suppose, because we had a Scots mother that I find, deep down within me, that I am 'full of seriousness'? It is rather disconcerting to think oneself a butterfly and find out suddenly that one is a—what? A bread-and-butter fly, shall we say? Something quite solid, anyway.
""
As I say, I suddenly became deadly sick of everything. I simply couldn't go on. And it was no use going burying myself at Bidborough or even dear Mintern Abbas; it would have been the same sort of trammelled, artificial existence. I wanted something utterly different. Scotland seemed to call to me—not the Scotland we know, not the shooting, yachting, West Highland Scotland, but the Lowlands, the Borders, our mother's countryside. I remembered how Lewis Elliot (I wonder where he is now—it is ages since I heard of him) used to tell us about a little town on the Tweed called Priorsford. It was his own little town, his birthplace and I thought the name sung itself like a song. I made inquiries about rooms and found that in a little house called Hillview, owned by one Bella Bathgate, I might lodge. I liked the name of the house and its owner, and I hope to find in Priorsford peace and great content.
""
Having been more or less of a fool for forty years, I am now going to try to get understanding. It won't be easy, for we are told that 'it cannot be gotten with gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof…. No mention shall be made of coral and pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.' I am going to walk on the hills all day, and in the evening I shall read the Book of Job and Shakespeare and Sir Walter.
""
In one of the Jungle Books there was a man called Sir Purun Dass—do you remember? Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., who left all his honours and slipped out one day to the sun-baked highway with nothing but an ochre-coloured garment and a beggar's bowl. I always envied that man. Not that I could rise to such Oriental heights. The beggar's bowl wouldn't do for me. I cling to my comforts: also, I am sure Sir Purun Dass left himself no loophole whereby he might slip back to his official position whereas I——-Well, the Politician thinks I have gone for a three months' rest cure, and at sixty one is not impatient. You will say, 'How like Pam!' Yes, isn't it? I always was given to leaving myself loopholes; but, all the same, I am not going to face an old age bolstered up by bridge and cosmetics. There must be other props, and I mean to find them. I mean to possess my soul. I'm not all froth, but, if I am, Priorsford will reveal it. I feel that there will be something very revealing about Miss Bella Bathgate. Poor Biddy, to have such an effusion hurled at you!
""
But you'll admit I don't often mention my soul. I doubt if you will be able to read this letter. If you can make it out, forgive it being so full of myself. The next will be full of quite other things. All my love, Biddy.—Yours, PAM.""
"
* * * * *
Three hours later the express stopped at the junction. The train was waiting on the branch line that terminated at Priorsford, and after a breathless rush over a high bridge in the dark Pamela and her maid, Mawson, found themselves bestowed in an empty carriage by a fatherly porter.
Mawson was not a real lady's maid: one realised that at once. She had been a housemaid for some years in the house in Grosvenor Street, and Pamela, when her own most superior maid flatly refused to accompany her on this expedition, had asked Mawson to be her maid, and Mawson had gladly accepted the offer. She was a middle-aged woman with a small brown face, an obvious toupée, and an adventurous spirit.
She now tidied the carriage violently, carefully hiding the book Pamela had been reading and putting the cushion on the rack. Finally, tucking the travelling-rug firmly round her mistress, she remarked pleasantly, "A h'eight hours' journey without an 'itch!"
Certainly without an aitch, thought Pamela, as she said, "You like travelling, Mawson?"
Oh yes, m'm. I always 'ave 'ad a desire to travel. Specially, if I may say so, to see Scotland, Miss. But, oh, ain't it bleak? Before it was dark I 'ad me eyes glued to the window, lookin' out. Such miles of 'eather and big stones and torrents, Miss, and nothing to be seen but a lonely sheep—'ardly an 'ouse on the 'orizon. It gave me quite a turn.
And this is nothing to the Highlands, Mawson.
Ain't it, Miss? Well, it's the bleakest I've seen yet, an' I've been to Brighton and Blackpool. Travelled quite a lot, I 'ave, Miss. The lydy who read me 'and said I would, for me teeth are so wide apart. Which cryptic saying puzzled Pamela until Priorsford was reached, when other things engaged her attention.
* * * * *
There was another passenger for Priorsford in the London express. He was called Peter Reid, and he was as short and plain as his name. Peter Reid was returning to his native town a very rich man. He had left it a youth of eighteen and entered the business of a well-to-do uncle in London, and since then, as the saying is, he had never looked over his shoulder; fortune showered her gifts on him, and everything he touched seemed to turn to gold.
While his mother lived he had visited her regularly, but for thirty years his mother had been lying in Priorsford churchyard, and he had not cared to keep in touch with the few old friends he had. For forty-five years he had lived in London, so there was almost nothing of Priorsford left in him—nothing, indeed, except the desire to see it again before he died.
They had been forty-five quite happy years for Peter Reid. Money-making was the thing he enjoyed most in this world. It took the place to him of wife and children and friends. He did not really care much for the things money could buy; he only cared to heap up gold, to pull down barns and build greater ones. Then suddenly one day he was warned that his soul would be required of him—that soul of his for which he had cared so little. After more than sixty years of health, he found his body failing him. In great irritation, but without alarm, he went to see a specialist, one Lauder, in Wimpole Street.
He supposed he would be made to take a holiday, and grudged the time that would be lost. He grudged, also, the doctor's fee.
Well, he said, when the examination was over, "how long are you going to keep me from my work?"
The doctor looked at him thoughtfully. He was quite a young man, tall, fair-haired, and fresh-coloured, with a look about him of vigorous health that was heartening and must have been a great asset to him in his profession.
I am going to advise you not to go back to work at all.
What! cried Peter Reid, getting very red, for he was not accustomed to being patient when people gave him unpalatable advice. Then something that he saw—was it pity?—in the doctor's face made him white and faint.
You—you can't mean that I'm really ill?
You may live for years—with care.
I shall get another opinion, said Peter Reid.
Certainly—here, sit down. The doctor felt very sorry for this hard little business man whose world had fallen about his ears. Peter Reid sat down heavily on the chair the doctor gave him.
I tell you, I don't feel ill—not to speak of. And I've no time to be ill. I have a deal on just now that I stand to make thousands out of—thousands, I tell you.
I'm sorry, James Lauder said.
Of course, I'll see another man, though it means throwing away more money. But—his face fell—"they told me you were the best man for the heart…. Leave my work! The thing's ridiculous Patch me up and I'll go on till I drop. How long do you give me?"
As I said, you may live for years; on the other hand, you may go very suddenly.
Peter Reid sat silent for a minute; then he broke out:
Who am I to leave my money to? Tell me that.
He spoke as if the doctor were to blame for the sentence he had pronounced.
Haven't you relations?
None.
The hospitals are always glad of funds.
I daresay, but they won't get them from me.
Have you no great friends—no one you are interested in?
I've hundreds of acquaintances, said the rich man, "but no one has ever done anything for me for nothing—no one."
James Lauder looked at the hard-faced little man and allowed himself to wonder how far his patient had encouraged kindness.
A pause.
I think I'll go home, said Peter Reid.
The servant will call you a taxi. Where do you live?
Peter Reid looked at the doctor as if he hardly understood.
Live? he said. "Oh, in Prince's Gate. But that isn't home…. I'm going to Scotland."
Ah, said James Lauder, "now you're talking. What part of Scotland is 'home' to you?"
A place they call Priorsford. I was born there.
I know it. I've fished all round there. A fine countryside.
Interest lit for a moment the dull grey eyes of Peter Reid.
I haven't fished, he said, "since I was a boy. Did you ever try the Caddon Burn? There are some fine pools in it. I once lost a big fellow in it and came over the hills a disappointed laddie…. I remember what a fine tea my mother had for me." He reached for his hat and gave a half-ashamed laugh.
How one remembers things! Well, I'll go. What do you say the other man's name is? Yes—yes. Life's a short drag; it's hardly worth beginning. I wish, though, I'd never come near you, and I would have gone on happily till I dropped. But I won't leave my money to any charity, mind that!
He walked towards the door and turned.
I'll leave it to the first person who does something for me without expecting any return…. By the way, what do I owe you?
And Peter Reid went away exceeding sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
It is the only set of the kind I ever met with in which you are neither led nor driven, but actually fall, and that imperceptibly into literary topics; and I attribute it to this, that in that house literature is not a treat for company upon invitation days, but is actually the daily bread of the family.—Written of Maria Edgeworth's home.
Pamela Reston stood in Bella Bathgate's parlour and surveyed it disconsolately.
It was papered in a trying shade of terra-cotta and the walls were embellished by enlarged photographs of the Bathgate family—decent, well-living people, but plain-headed to a degree. Linoleum covered the floor. A round table with a red-and-green cloth occupied the middle of the room, and two arm-chairs and six small chairs stood about stiffly like sentinels. Pamela had tried them all and found each one more unyielding than the next. The mantelshelf, painted to look like some uncommon kind of marble, supported two tall glass jars bright blue and adorned with white raised flowers, which contained bunches of dried grasses ("silver shekels" Miss Bathgate called them), rather dusty and tired-looking. A mahogany sideboard stood against one wall and was heavily laden with vases and photographs. Hard lace curtains tinted a deep cream shaded the bow-window.
This is grim, said Pamela to herself. "Something must be done. First of all, I must get them to send me some rugs—they will cover this awful floor—and half a dozen cushions and some curtains and bits of embroidery and some table linen and sheets and things. Idiot that I was not to bring them with me!… And what could I do to the walls? I don't know how far one may go with landladies, but I hardly think one could ask them to repaper walls to each stray lodger's liking."
Miss Bathgate had not so far shown herself much inclined for conversation. She had met her lodger on the doorstep the night before, had uttered a few words of greeting, and had then confined herself to warning the man to watch the walls when he carried up the trunks, and to wondering aloud what anyone could want with so much luggage, and where in the world it was to find room. She had been asked to have dinner ready, and at eight o'clock Pamela had come down to the sitting-room to find a coarse cloth folded in two and spread on one-half of the round table. A knife, a fork, a spoon lay on the cloth, flanked on one side by an enormous cruet and on the other by four large spoons, laid crosswise, and a thick tumbler. An aspidistra in a pot completed the table decorations.
The dinner consisted of stewed steak, with turnip and carrots, and a large dish of potatoes, followed by a rice pudding made without eggs and a glass dish of prunes.
Pamela was determined to be pleased.
How right it all is, she told herself—"so entirely in keeping. All so clean and—and sufficient. I am sure all the things we hang on ourselves and round ourselves to please and beautify are very clogging—this is life at its simplest," and she rang for coffee, which came in a breakfast-cup and was made of Somebody's essence and boiling water.
Pamela had gone to bed very early, there being absolutely nothing to sit up for; and the bed was as hard as the nether millstone. As she put her tired head on a cast-iron pillow covered by a cotton pillow-slip, and lay crushed under three pairs of hard blankets, topped by a patchwork quilt worked by Bella's mother and containing samples of the clothes of all the family—from the late Mrs. Bathgate's wedding-gown of puce-coloured cashmere to her youngest son's first pair of "breeks," the whole smelling strongly of naphtha from the kist where it had lain—regretful thoughts of other beds came to her. She felt she had not fully appreciated them—those warm, soft, embracing beds, with satin-smooth sheets and pillow-cases smelling of lavender and other sweet things, feather-light blankets, and rose-coloured eiderdowns.
She came downstairs in the morning to the bleak sitting-room filled with a distaste for simplicity which she felt to be unworthy. For breakfast there was a whole loaf on a platter, three breakfast rolls hot from the baker, and the family toast-rack full of tough, damp toast. A large pale-green duck's egg sat heavily in an egg-cup, capped, but not covered, by a strange red flannel thing representing a cock's head, which Pamela learned later was called an "egg-cosy" and had come from the sale of work for Foreign Missions. A metal teapot and water-jug stood in two green worsted nests.
Pamela poured herself out some tea. "I'm almost sure I told her I wanted coffee in the morning," she murmured to herself, "but it doesn't matter." Already she was beginning to hold Bella Bathgate in awe. She took the top off the duck's egg and looked at it in an interested way. "It's a beautiful colour—orange—but"—she pushed it away—"I don't think I can eat it."
She drank some tea and ate a baker's roll, which was excellent; then she rang the bell.
When Bella appeared she at once noticed the headless but uneaten egg, and, taking it up, smelt it.
What's wrang wi' the egg? she demanded.
Oh, nothing, said Pamela quickly. "It's a lovely egg really, such a beautiful colour, but"—she laughed apologetically—"you know how it is with eggs—either you can eat them or you can't. I always have to eat eggs with my head turned away so to speak. There is something about the yolk so—so——" Her voice trailed away under Miss Bathgate's stolid, unsmiling gaze.
There was no point in going on being arch about eggs to a person who so obviously regarded one as a poor creature. But a stand must be taken.
Er—Miss Bathgate—— Pamela began.
There was no answer from Bella, who was putting the dishes on a tray.
Had she addressed her rightly?
You are Miss Bathgate, aren't you?
Ou ay, said Bella. "I'm no' mairret nor naething o' that kind."
I see. Well, Miss Bathgate, I wonder if you would mind if Mawson—my maid, you know—carried away some of those ornaments and photographs to a safe place? It would be such a pity if we broke any of them, for, of course, you must value them greatly. These vases now, with the pretty grasses, it would be dreadful if anything happened to them, for I'm sure we could never, never replace them.
Uch ay, Bella interrupted. "I got them at the pig-cairt in exchange for some rags. He's plenty mair o' the same kind."
Oh, really, Pamela said helplessly. "The fact is, a few things of my own will be arriving in a day or two—a cushion or two and that sort of thing—to make me feel at home, you know, so if you would very kindly let us make room for them, I should be so much obliged."
Bella Bathgate looked round the grim chamber that was to her as the apple of her eye, and sighed for the vagaries of "the gentry."
Aweel, she said, "I'll pit them in a kist until ye gang awa'. I've never had lodgers afore." And as she carried out the tray there was a baleful gleam in her eye as if she were vowing to herself that she would never have them again.
Pamela gave a gasp of relief when the door closed behind the ungracious back of her landlady, and started when it opened again, but this time it was only Mawson.
She hailed her. "Mawson, we must get something done to this room. Lift all these vases and photographs carefully away. Miss Bathgate says she will put them somewhere else in the meantime. And we'll wire to Grosvenor Street for some cushions and rugs—this is too hopeless. Are you quite comfortable Mawson?"
Yes, Miss. I 'ave me meals in the kitchen, Miss, for Miss Bathgate don't want to keep another fire goin'. A nice cosy kitchen it is, Miss.
Then I wish I could have my meals there, too.
Oh, Miss! cried Mawson in horror.
Does Miss Bathgate talk to you, Mawson?
Not to say talk, Miss. She don't even listen much; says she can't understand my 'tongue.' Funny, ain't it? Seems to me it's 'er that speaks strange. But I expect we'll be friends in time, Miss. You do 'ave to give the Scotch time: bit slow they are…. What I wanted to h'ask, Miss, is where am I to put your things? That little wardrobe and chest of drawers 'olds next to nothing.
Keep them in the trunks, said Pamela. "I think Miss Bathgate would like to see us departing with them to-day, but I won't be beat. In Priorsford we are, in Priorsford we remain…. I'll write out some wires and you will explore for a post office. I shall explore for an upholsterer who can supply me with an arm-chair not hewn from the primeval rock."
Mawson smiled happily and departed to put on her hat, while Pamela sat down to compose telegrams.
These finished, she began, as was her almost daily custom, to scribble a letter to her brother.
"
c/o Miss B. BATHGATE, HILLVIEW, PRIORSFORD, SCOTLAND. BIDDY DEAR,—The beds and chairs and cushions are all stuffed with cannon-balls, and the walls are covered with enlarged photographs of men with whiskers, and Bella Bathgate won't speak to me, partly because she evidently hates the look of me, and partly because I didn't eat the duck's egg she gave me for breakfast. But the yolk of it was orange, Biddy. How could I eat it?
""
I have sent out S.O.S. signals for necessaries in the way of rugs and cushions. Life as bald and unadorned as it presents itself to Miss Bathgate is really not quite decent. I wish she would speak to me, but I fear she considers me beneath contempt. What happens when you arrive in a place like Priorsford and stay in lodgings? Do you remain seated alone with your conscience, or do people call?
""
Perhaps I shall only have Mawson to converse with. It might be worse. I don't think I told you about Mawson. She has been a housemaid in Grosvenor Street for some years, and she maided me once when Julie was on holiday, so when that superior damsel refused to accompany me on this trek I gladly left her behind and brought Mawson in her place. She is really very little use as a maid, but her conversation is pleasing and she has a most cheery grin. She reads the works of Florence Barclay, and doesn't care for music-halls—'low I call them, Miss.' I asked her if she were fond of music, and she said, 'Oh yes, Miss,' and then with a coy glance, 'I ply the mandoline.' I think she is about fifty, and not at all good-looking, so she will be a much more comfortable person in the house than Julie, who would have moped without admirers.
""
Well, at present Mawson and I are rather like Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday on the island….
"* * * * *
Pamela stopped and looked out of the window for inspiration. Miss Bathgate's parlour was not alluring, but the view from it was a continual feast—spreading fields, woods that in this yellowing time of the year were a study in old gold, the winding river, and the blue hills beyond. Pamela saw each detail with delight; then, letting her eyes come nearer home, she studied the well-kept garden belonging to her landlady. On the wall that separated it from the next garden a small boy and a dog were seated.
Pamela liked boys, so she smiled encouragingly to this one, the boy responding by solemnly raising his cap.
Pamela leaned out of the window.
Good morning, she said. "What's your name?"
"
My name's Gervase Taunton, but I'm called 'the Mhor.' This is Peter Jardine, patting the dog's nose.
"I'm very glad to know you, said Pamela. "Isn't that wall damp?"
It is rather, said Mhor. "We came to look at you."
Oh, said Pamela.
I've never seen an Honourable before, neither has Peter.
You'd better come in and see me quite close, Pamela suggested. "I've got some chocolates here."
Mhor and Peter needed no further invitation. They sprang from the wall and in a few seconds presented themselves at the door of the sitting-room.
Pamela shook hands with Mhor and patted Peter, and produced a box of chocolates.
I hope they're the kind you like? she said politely.
I like any kind, said Mhor, "but specially hard ones. I don't suppose you have anything for Peter? A biscuit or a bit of cake? Peter's like me. He's always hungry for cake and never hungry for porridge."
Pamela, feeling extremely remiss, confessed that she had neither cake nor biscuits and dared not ask Miss Bathgate for any.
But you're bigger than Miss Bathgate, Mhor pointed out. "You needn't be afraid of her. I'll ask her, if you like."
Pamela heard him cross the passage and open the kitchen door and begin politely, "Good morning, Miss Bathgate."
What are ye wantin' here wi' thae dirty boots? Bella demanded.
I came in to see the Honourable, and she has nothing to give poor Peter to eat. Could he have a tea biscuit—not an Abernethy one, please, he doesn't like them—or a bit of cake?
Of a' the impidence! ejaculated Bella. "D'ye think I keep tea biscuits and cake to feed dowgs wi'? Stan' there and dinna stir." She put a bit of carpet under the small, dirty boots, and as she grumbled she wiped her hands on a coarse towel that hung behind the door, and reached up for a tin box from the top shelf of the press beside the fire.
"
Here, see, there's yin for yerself, an' the broken bits are for Peter. Here he comes snowkin', as Peter ambled into the kitchen followed by
"Pamela. That lady stood in the doorway.
Do forgive me coming, but I love a kitchen. It is always the nicest place in the house, I think; the shining tins are so cheerful, and the red fire. She smiled in an engaging way at Bella, who, after a second, and, as it were, reluctantly, smiled back.
I see you have given the raider some biscuits, Pamela said.
He's an ill laddie. Bella Bathgate looked at the Mhor standing obediently on the bit of carpet, munching his biscuit, and her face softened. "He has neither father nor mother, puir lamb, but I must say Miss Jean never lets him ken the want o' them."
Miss Jean?
He bides at The Rigs wi' the Jardines—juist next door here. She's no a bad lassie, Miss Jean, and wonderfu' sensible considerin'…. Are ye finished, Mhor? Weel, wipe yer feet and gang ben to the room an' let me get on wi' ma work.
Pamela, feeling herself dismissed, took her guest back to the sitting-room, where Mhor at once began to examine the books piled on the table, while Peter sat himself on the rug to await developments.
You've a lot of books, said Mhor. "I've a lot of books too—as many as a hundred, perhaps. Jean teaches me poetry. Would you like me to say some?"
Please, said Pamela, expecting to hear some childish rhymes. Mhor took a long breath and began:
"'O take me to the Mountain O,
Past the great pines and through the wood,
Up where the lean hounds softly go,
A whine for wild things' blood,
And madly flies the dappled roe.
O God, to shout and speed them there
An arrow by my chestnut hair
Drawn tight, and one keen glittering spear—
Ah, if I could!'"
For some reason best known to himself Mhor was very sparing of breath when he repeated poetry, making one breath last so long that the end of the verse was reached in a breathless whisper—in this instance very effective.
So that is what 'Jean' teaches you, said Pamela. "I should like to see Jean."
Well, said Mhor, "come in with me now and see her. I should be doing my lessons anyway, and you can tell her where I've been."
Won't she think me rather pushing? Pamela asked.
Oh, I don't know, said Mhor carelessly. "Jean's kind to everybody—tramps and people who sing in the street and little cats with no homes. Hadn't you better put on your hat?"
So Pamela obediently put on her hat and coat and went with her new friends down the road a few steps and up the flagged path to the front door of the funny little house that kept its back turned to its parvenu neighbours, and its eyes lifted to the hills.
In Mhor led her, Peter following hard behind, through a square, low-roofed entrance-hall with a polished floor, into a long room with one end coming to a point in an odd-shaped window, rather like the bow of a ship.
A girl was sitting in the window with a large basket of darning beside her.
Jean, cried Mhor as he burst in, "here's the Honourable. I asked her to come in and see you. She's afraid of Bella Bathgate."
Oh, do come in, said Jean, standing up with the stocking she was darning over one hand. "Take this chair; it's the most comfortable. I do hope Mhor hasn't been worrying you?"
Indeed he hasn't, said Pamela; "I was delighted to see him. But please don't let me interrupt your work."
The boys make such big holes, said Jean, picking up a damp handkerchief that lay beside her; and then with a tremble in her voice, "I've been crying," she added.
So I see, said Pamela. "I'm sorry. Is anything wrong?"
Nothing in the least wrong, Jean said, swallowing hard, "only that I'm so silly." And presently she found herself pouring out her troubled thoughts about David, about the lions that she feared stood in his path at Oxford, about the hole his going made in the little household at The Rigs. It was a comfort to tell it all to this delightful-looking stranger who seemed to understand in the most wonderful way.
I remember when my brother Biddy went to Oxford, Pamela told her. "I felt just as you do. Our parents were dead, and I was five years older than my brother, and took care of him just as you do of your David. I was afraid for him, for he had too much money, and that is much worse than having too little—but he didn't get changed or spoiled, and to this day he is the same, my own old Biddy."
Jean dried her eyes and went on with her darning, and Pamela walked about looking at the books and talking, taking in every detail of this girl and her so individual room, the golden-brown hair, thick and wavy, the golden-brown eyes, "like a trout-stream in Connemara," that sparkled and lit and saddened as she talked, the mobile, humorous mouth, the short, straight nose and pointed chin, the straight-up-and-down belted brown frock, the whole toning so perfectly with the room with its polished floor and old Persian rugs, the pale yellow walls (even on the dullest day they seemed to hold some sunshine) hung with coloured prints in old rosewood frames—"Saturday Morning," engraved (with many flourishes) by T. Burke, engraver to His Serene Highness the Reigning Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt; "The Cut Finger," by David Wilkie—those and many others. The furniture was old and good, well kept and well polished, so that the shabby, friendly room had that comfortable air of well-being that only careful housekeeping can give. Books were everywhere: a few precious ones behind glass doors, hundreds in low bookcases round the room.
I needn't ask you if you are fond of reading, Pamela said.
Much too fond, Jean confessed. "I'm a 'rake at reading.'"
You know the people, said Pamela, "who say, 'Of course I love reading, but I've no time, alas!' as if everyone who loves reading doesn't make time."
As they talked, Pamela realised that this girl who lived year in and year out in a small country town was in no way provincial, for all her life she had been free of the company of the immortals. The Elizabethans she knew by heart, poetry was as daily bread. Rosalind in Arden, Viola in Illyria, were as real to her as Bella Bathgate next door. She had taken to herself as friends (being herself all the daughters of her father's house) Maggie Tulliver, Ethel Newcome, Beatrix Esmond, Clara Middleton, Elizabeth Bennet——
The sound of the gong startled Pamela to her feet.
You don't mean to say it's luncheon time already? I've taken up your whole morning.
It has been perfectly delightful, Jean assured her. "Do stay a long time at Hillview and come in every day. Don't let Bella Bathgate frighten you away. She isn't used to letting her rooms, and her manners are bad, and her long upper lip very quelling; but she's really the kindest soul on earth…. Would you come in to tea this afternoon? Mrs. M'Cosh—that's our retainer—bakes rather good scones. I would ask you to stay to luncheon, but I'm afraid there mightn't be enough to go round."
Pamela gratefully accepted the invitation to tea, and said as to luncheon she was sure Miss Bathgate would be awaiting her with a large dish of stewed steak and carrots saved from the night before—so she departed.
* * * * *
Later in the day, as Miss Bathgate sat for ten minutes in Mrs. M'Cosh's shining kitchen and drank a dish of tea, she gave her opinion of the lodger.
Awfu' English an' wi' a' the queer daft ways o' gentry. 'Oh, Miss Bathgate,' a' the time. They tell me Miss Reston's considered a beauty in London. It's no' ma idea o' beauty—a terrible lang neck an' a wee shilpit bit face, an' sic a height! I'm fair feared for ma gasaliers. An' forty if she's a day. But verra pleasant, ye ken. I aye think there maun be something wrang wi' folk that's as pleasant as a' that—owre sweet to be wholesome, like a frostit tattie! … The maid's ca'ed Miss Mawson. She speaks even on. The wumman's a fair clatter-vengeance, an' I dinna ken the one-hauf she says. I think the puir thing's defeecient!
" … Ruth, all heart and tenderness
Who wept, like Chaucer's Prioress,
When Dash was smitten:
Who blushed before the mildest men,
Yet waxed a very Corday when
You teased the kitten."
AUSTIN DOBSON.
Before seeking her stony couch at the end of her first day at Priorsford, Pamela finished the letter begun in the morning to her brother.
* * * * *
"
… I began this letter in the morning and now it is bedtime. Robinson Crusoe is no longer solitary: the island is inhabited. My first visitors arrived about 11 a.m.—a small boy and a dog—an extremely good-looking little boy and a well-bred fox-terrier. They sat on the garden wall until I invited them in, when they ate chocolates and biscuits, and the boy offered to repeat poetry. I expected 'Casabianca' or the modern equivalent, but instead I got the song from Hippolytus, 'O take me to the Mountains, O.' It was rather surprising, but when he invited me to go with him to his home, which is next door, it was more surprising still. Instead of finding another small villa like Hillview with a breakneck stair and poky little rooms, I found a real old cottage. The room I was taken into was about the nicest I ever saw. I think it would have fulfilled all your conditions as to the proper furnishing of a room; indeed, now that I think of it, it was quite a man's room. It had a polished floor and some good rugs, and creamy yellow walls with delicious coloured prints. There were no ornaments except some fine old brass: solid chairs and a low, wide-seated sofa, and books everywhere.
""
The shape of the room is delightfully unusual. It is long and rather low-ceilinged, and one end comes almost to a point like the bow of a ship. There is a window with a window-seat in the bow, and as the house stands high on a slope and faces west, you look straight across the river to the hills, and almost have the feeling that you are sailing into the sunset. In this room a girl sat, darning stockings and crying quietly to herself—crying because her brother David had gone to Oxford the day before, and she was afraid he would find it hard work to live on his scholarship with the small help she could give him, afraid that he might find himself shabby and feel it bitter, afraid that he might not come back to her the kind, clear-eyed boy he had gone away.
""
She told me all about it as simply as a child. Didn't seem to find it in the least odd to confide in a stranger, didn't seem at all impressed by the sudden appearance of my fashionably dressed self! People, I am often told, find themselves rather in awe of me. I know that they would rather have me for a friend than an enemy. You see, I can think of such extraordinarily nasty things to say about people I don't like. But this little girl treated me as if I had been an older sister or a kind big brother, and—well, I found it rather touching.
""
Jean Jardine is her funny little name. She looks a mere child, but she tells me she is twenty-three and she has been head of the house since she was nineteen. It is really the strangest story. The father, one Francis Jardine, was in the Indian Civil Service—pretty good at his job, I gather—and these three children, Jean and her two brothers, David and Jock, were brought up in this cottage—The Rigs it is called—by an old aunt of the father's, Great-aunt Alison. The mother died when Jock was a baby, and after some years the father married again, suddenly and unpremeditatedly, a beautiful and almost friendless girl whom he met in London when home on leave. Jean offered no comment on the wisdom or the unwisdom of the match, but she told me the young Mrs. Jardine had sent for her (Jean was then a schoolgirl of fourteen) and had given her a good time in London before she sailed with her husband for India. Rather unusual when you come to think of it! It isn't every young wife who has thought on the honeymoon for schoolgirl stepdaughters, and Jean had seen that it was kind and unselfish, and was grateful. The Jardines sailed for India, and were hardly landed when Mr. Jardine died of cholera. The young widow stayed on—I suppose she liked the life and had little to bring her back to England—and when the first year of her widowhood was over she married a young soldier, Gervase Taunton. I'm almost sure I remember meeting him about—good-looking, perfect dancer, crack polo player. They seem, in spite of lack of money, to have been supremely happy for about three years, when young Taunton was killed playing polo. The poor girl broke her heart and slipped out of life, leaving behind one little boy. She had no relations, and Captain Taunton had no one very near, and when she was dying she had left instructions. 'Send my boy to Scotland. Ask Jean to bring him up. She will understand.' I suppose she had detected even in the schoolgirl of fourteen Jean's most outstanding quality, steadfastness, and entrusted the child to her without a qualm.
""
So the baby of two was sent to the child of eighteen, and Jean glows with gratitude and tells you how good it was of her at-one-time stepmother to think of her! That is how she seems to take life: no suspecting of motives: looking for, therefore perhaps finding, kindness on every side. It is rather absurd in this wicked world, but I shouldn't wonder if it made for happiness. The Taunton child has, of course, no shadow of claim on the Jardines, but he is to them a most treasured little brother. 'The Mhor,' as they call him, is their great amusement and delight. He is quite absurdly good-looking, with great grave green eyes and a head most wonderfully set on his shoulders. He has a small income of his own, which Jean keeps religiously apart so that he may be able to go to a good school when he is old enough.
""
The great-aunt who brought up the Jardines must have been an uncommon old woman. She died (perhaps luckily) just as the young Gervase Taunton came on the scene. It seems she always dressed in rustling black silk, sat bolt upright on the edge of chairs for the sake of her figure, took the greatest care of her hands and complexion, and was a great age. She had, Jean said, 'come out at the Disruption.' Jean was so impressive over it that I didn't like to ask what it meant. Do you suppose she made her début then?
""
Perhaps 'the Disruption' is a sort of religious tamasha. Anyway, she was frightfully religious—a strict Calvinist—and taught Jean to regard everything from the point of view of her own death-bed. I mean to say, the child had to ask herself, 'How will this action look when I am on my death-bed?' Every cross word, every small disobedience, she was told, would be a 'thorn in her dying pillow.' I said, perhaps rather rudely, that Great-aunt Alison must have been a horrible old ghoul, but Jean defended her hotly. She seems to have had a great admiration for her aged relative, though she owned that her death was something of a relief. Unfortunately most of her income died with her. I think perhaps it was largely this training that has given Jean her particular flavour. She is the most happy change from the ordinary modern girl. Her manners are delightful—not noisy, but frank and gay like a nice boy's. She neither falls into the Scylla of affectation nor the Charybdis of off-handness. She has been nowhere and seen very little; books are her world, and she talks of book-people as if they were everyday acquaintances. She adores Dr. Johnson and quotes him continually.
""
She has no slightest trace of accent, but she has that lilt in her voice—I have noticed it once or twice before in Scots people—that makes one think of winds over heathery moorlands, and running water. In appearance she is like a wood elf, rather small and brown, very light and graceful. She is so beautifully made that there is great satisfaction in looking at her. (If she had all the virtues in the world I could never take any interest in a girl who had a large head, or short legs, or thick ankles!) She knows how to dress, too. The little brown frock was just right, and the ribbon that was tied round her hair. I'll tell you what she reminded me of a good deal—Romney's 'Parson's Daughter.' What a find for my first day at Priorsford!
""
I went to tea with the Jardines and I never was at a nicer tea-party. We said poems to each other most of the time. Mhor's rendering of Chesterton's 'The Pleasant Town of Roundabout' was very fine, but Jock loves best 'Don John of Austria.' You would like Jock. He has a very gruff voice and such surprised blue eyes, and is fond of weird interjections like 'Gosh, Maggie!' and 'Earls in the streets of Cork!' He is a determined foe to sentiment. He won't read a book that contains love-making or death-beds. 'Does anybody marry?' 'Does anybody die?' are his first questions about a book, so naturally his reading is much restricted. The Jardines have the lovable habit of becoming suddenly overpowered with laughter, crumpled up, and helpless. You have it, too; I have it; all really nice people have it. I have been refreshing myself with Irish Memories since dinner. Do you remember what is said of Martin Ross? 'The large conventional jest had but small power over her; it was the trivial absurdity, the inversion of the expected the sublimity getting a little above itself and failing to realise that it had taken that fatal step over the border—those were the things that felled her, and laid her, wherever she might be, in ruins….'
""
Bella Bathgate, I must tell you, remains unthawed. She hinted to me to-night that she thought the Hydropathic was the place for me—surely the unkindest cut of all. People dress for dinner every night there, she tells me, and most of them are English, and a band plays. Evidently she thinks I would be at home in such company. Some day I think you must visit Priorsford and get to know Miss
"Bathgate.—Yours,
"PAM. I forgot to tell you that for some dark reason the Jardines call their cat Sir J.M. Barrie.
""
I asked why, but got no satisfaction. 'Well, you see, there's Peter,' Mhor said vaguely.
"
Jock looked at the cat and observed obscurely, 'It's not a sentimental beast either'—while Jean asked if I would have preferred it called Sir Rabindranath Tagore!
"O, the land is fine, fine,
I could buy it a' for mine,
For ma gowd's as the stooks in Strathairlie."
Scots Song.
When Peter Reid arrived at Priorsford Station from London he stood for a few minutes looking about him in a lost way, almost as if after thirty years he expected to see a "kent face" coming to meet him. He had no -notion where to go; he had not written for rooms; he had simply obeyed the impulse that sent him—the impulse that sends a hurt child to its mother. It is said that an old horse near to death turns towards the pastures where he was foaled. It is true of human beings. "Man wanders back to the fields which bred him."
After a talk with a helpful porter he found rooms in a temperance hotel in the Highgate—a comfortable quiet place.
The next day he was too tired to rise, and spent rather a dreary day in his rooms with the Scotsman for sole companion.
The landlord, a cheery little man, found time once or twice to talk for a few minutes, but he had only been ten years in Priorsford and could tell his guest nothing of the people he had once known.
D'you know a house called The Rigs? he asked him.
The landlord knew it well—a quaint cottage with a pretty garden. Old Miss Alison Jardine was living in it when he came first to Priorsford; dead now, but the young folk were still in it.
Young folk? said Peter Reid.
Yes, said the landlord, "Miss Jean Jardine and her brothers. Orphans, I'm told. Father an Anglo-Indian. Nice people? Oh, very. Quiet and inoffensive. They don't own the house, though. I hear the landlord is a very wealthy man in London. By the way, same name as yourself, sir."
Do I look like a millionaire? asked Peter Reid, and the landlord laughed pleasantly and non-committally.
The next day was sunny and Peter Reid went out for a walk. It was a different Priorsford that he had come back to. A large draper's shop with plate-glass windows occupied the corner where Jenny Baxter had rolled her toffee-balls and twisted her "gundy," and where old Davy Linton had cut joints and weighed out mince-collops accompanied by wise weather prophecies, a smart fruiterer's shop now stood furnished with a wealth of fruit and vegetables unimagined in his young days. There were many handsome shops, the streets were wider and better kept, unsightly houses had been demolished; it was a clean, prosperous-looking town, but it was different.
Peter Reid (of London) would have been the first to carp at the tumbledown irregular old houses, with their three steps up and three steps down, remaining, but Peter Reid (of Priorsford) missed them. He resented the new shops, the handsome villas, the many motors, all the evidences of prosperity.
And why had Cuddy Brig been altered?
It had been far liker the thing, he thought—the old hump-backed bridge with the grass and ferns growing in the crannies. He had waded in Cuddy when he was a boy, picking his way among the broken dishes and the tin cans, and finding wonderful adventures in the dark of the bridge; he had bathed in it as it wound, clear and shining, among the green meadows outside the town, and run "skirl-naked" to dry himself, in full sight of scandalised passengers in the Edinburgh train; he had slid on it in winter. The memory of the little stream had always lain in the back of his mind as something precious—and now to find it spanned by a staring new stone bridge. Those Town Councils with their improvements!
Even Tweed Bridge had not been left alone. It had been widened, as an inscription in the middle told the world at large. He leant on it and looked up the river. Peel Tower was the same, anyway. No one had dared to add one cubit to its grey stature. It was a satisfaction to look at something so unchanging.
The sun had still something of its summer heat, and it was pleasant to stand there and listen to the sound of the river over the pebbles and see the flaming trees reflected in the blue water all the way up Tweedside till the river took a wide curve before the green slope on which the castle stood. A wonderfully pretty place, Priorsford, he told himself: a home-like place—if one had anyone to come home to.
He turned slowly away. He would go and look at The Rigs. His mother had come to it as a bride. He had been born there. Though occupied by strangers, it was the nearest he had to a home. The house in Prince's Gate was well furnished, comfortable, smoothly run by efficient servants, but only a house when all was said. He felt he would like to creep into The Rigs, into the sitting-room where his mother had always sat (the other larger rooms, the "good room" as it was called, was kept for visitors and high days), and lay his tired body on the horsehair arm-chair by the fireside. He could rest there, he thought. It was impossible, of course. There would be no horsehair arm-chair, for everything had been sold—and there was no mother.
But, anyway, he would go and look at it. There used to be primroses—but this was autumn. Primroses come in the spring.
Thirty years—but The Rigs was not changed, at least not outwardly. Old Mrs. Reid had loved the garden, and Great-aunt Alison, and Jean after her, had carried on her work.
The little house looked just as Peter Reid remembered it.
He would go in and ask to see it, he told himself.
He would tell these Jardines that the house was his and he meant to live in it himself. They wouldn't like it, but he couldn't help that. Perhaps he would be able to persuade them to go almost at once. He would make it worth their while.
He was just going to lift the latch of the gate when the front door opened and shut, and Jean Jardine came down the flagged path. She stopped at the gate and looked at Peter Reid.
Were you by any chance coming in? she asked.
Yes, said Mr. Reid; "I was going to ask if I might see over the house."
Surely, said Jean. "But—you're not going to buy it, are you?"
The face she turned to him was pink and distressed.
Did you think of buying it yourself? Peter Reid asked.
Me? You wouldn't ask that if you knew how little money I have. But come in. I shall try to think of all its faults to tell you—but in my eyes it hasn't got any.
They went slowly up the flagged path and into the square, low-roofed hall. This was not as his mother had it. Then the floor had been covered with linoleum on which had stood two hard chairs and an umbrella-stand. Now there was an oak chest and a gate-table, old brass very well rubbed up, a grandfather clock with a "clear" face, and a polished floor with a Chinese rug on it.
It is rather dark, said Jean, "but I like it dark. Coming in on a hot summer day it is almost like a pool; it is so cool and dark and polished." Mr. Reid said nothing, and Jean was torn between a desire to have her home appreciated and a desire to have this stranger take an instant dislike to it, and to leave it speedily and for ever.
You see, she pointed out, "the little staircase is rather steep and winding, but it is short; and the bedrooms are charming—not very big, but so prettily shaped and with lovely views." Then she remembered that she should miscall rather than praise, and added, "Of course, they have all got queer ceilings; you couldn't expect anything else in a cottage. Will you go upstairs?"
Mr. Reid thought not, and asked if he might see the sitting-rooms.
This, said Jean, opening a door, "is the dining-room."
It was the room his mother had always sat in, where the horsehair arm-chair had had its home, but it, too, had suffered a change. Gone was the arm-chair, gone the round table with the crimson cover. This room had an austerity unknown in the room he remembered. It was small, and every inch of space was made the most of. An old Dutch dresser held china and acted as a sideboard; a bare oak table, having in its centre a large blue bowl filled with berries and red leaves, stood in the middle of the room; eight chairs completed the furniture.
This is the least nice room in the house, Jean told him, "but we are never in it except to eat. It looks out on the road."
Yes, said Peter Reid, remembering that that was why his mother had liked it. She could sit with her knitting and watch the passers-by. She had always "infused" the tea when she heard the click of the gate as he came home from school.
You will like to see the living-room, said Jean, shivering for the effect its charm might have on a potential purchaser. She led him in, hoping that it might be looking its worst, but, as if in sheer contrariness, the fire was burning brightly, a shaft of sunlight lay across a rug, making the colours glow like jewels, and the whole room seemed to hold out welcoming hands. It was satisfactory (though somewhat provoking) that the stranger seemed quite unimpressed.
You have some good furniture, he said.
Yes, Jean agreed eagerly. "It suits the room and makes it beautiful. Can you imagine it furnished with a 'suite' and ordinary pictures, and draped curtains at the windows and silver photograph frames and a grand piano? It would simply be no sort of room at all. All its individuality would be gone. But won't you sit down and rest? That hill up from the town is steep."
Peter Reid sank thankfully into a corner of the sofa, while Jean busied herself at the writing-table so that this visitor, who looked so tired, need not feel that he should offer conversation.
Presently he said, "You are very fond of The Rigs?"
Jean came and sat down beside him.
It's the only home we have ever known, she said. "We came here from India to live with our great-aunt—first me alone, and then David and Jock. And Father and Mother were with us when Father had leave. I have hardly ever been away from The Rigs. It's such a very affectionate sort of house—perhaps that is rather an absurd thing to say, but you do get so fond of it. But if I take you in to see Mrs. M'Cosh in the kitchen she will tell you plenty of faults. The water doesn't heat well, for one thing, and the range simply eats up coal, and there is no proper pantry. Your wife would want to know about these things."
Haven't got a wife, said Peter Reid gruffly.
No? Well, your housekeeper, then. You couldn't buy a house without getting to know all about the hot water and pantries.
There is no question of my buying it.
Oh, isn't there? cried Jean joyfully. "What a relief! All the time I've been showing you the house I've been picturing us removing sadly to a villa in the Langhope Road. They are quite nice villas as villas go, but they have only tiny strips of gardens, and stairs that come to meet you as you go in at the front door, and anyway no house could ever be home to us after The Rigs—not though it had hot and cold water in every room and a pantry on every floor."
Dear me, said Peter Reid.
He felt perplexed, and annoyed with himself for being perplexed. All he had to do was to tell this girl with the frank eyes that The Rigs was his, that he wanted to live in it himself, that if they would turn out at once he would make it worth their while. Quite simple—They were nice people evidently, and would make no fuss. He would say it now—but Jean was speaking.
I think I know why you wanted to see through this house, she was saying. "I think you must have known it long ago when you were a boy. Perhaps you loved it too—and had to leave it."
I went to London when I was eighteen to make my fortune.
Oh, said Jean, and into that "Oh" she put all manner of things she could not say. She had been observing her visitor, and she was sure that this shabby little man (Peter Reid cared not at all for appearances and never bought a new suit of clothes unless compelled) had returned no Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. Probably he was one of the "faithful failures" of the world, one who had tried and missed, and had come back, old and tired and shabby, to see his boyhood's home. The tenderest corner of Jean's tender heart was given to shabby people, and she longed to try to comfort and console, but dared not in case of appearing impertinent. She reflected dismally that he had not even a wife to be nice to him, and he was far too old to have a mother.
Are you staying in Priorsford? she asked gently.
I'm at the Temperance Hotel for a few days. I—the fact is, I haven't been well. I had to take a rest, so I came back here—after thirty years.
Have you really been away for thirty years? Great-aunt Alison came to The Rigs first about thirty years ago. Do you, by any chance, know our landlord in London? Mr. Peter Reid is his name.
I know him.
He's frightfully rich, they say. I don't suppose you know him well enough to ask him not to sell The Rigs? It can't make much difference to him, though it means so much to us. Is he old, our landlord?
A man in his prime, said Peter Reid.
That's pretty old, isn't it? said Jean—"about sixty, I think. Of course," hastily, "sixty isn't really old. When I'm sixty—if I'm spared—I expect I shall feel myself good for another twenty years."
I thought I was, said Peter Reid, "until I broke down."
Oh, but a rest at Priorsford will put you all right.
Could he afford a holiday? she wondered. Even temperance hotels were rather expensive when you hadn't much money. Would it be very rash and impulsive to ask him to stay at The Rigs?
Are you comfortable at the Temperance? she asked. "Because if you don't much care for hotels we would love to put you up here. Mhor is apt to be noisy, but I'm sure he would try to be quiet when he knew that you needed a rest."
My dear young lady, gasped Peter Reid. "I'm afraid you are rash. You know nothing of me. I might be an impostor, a burglar—"
Jean threw back her head and laughed. "Do forgive me, but the thought of you with a jemmy and a dark lantern is so funny."
You don't even know my name.
I don't, said Jean, "but does that matter? You will tell it me when you want to."
My name is Reid, the same as your landlord.
Then, said Jean, "are you a relative of his?"
A connection. It was not what he meant to say, but he said it.
How odd! said Jean. She was trying to remember if she had said anything unbecoming of one relative to another. "Oh, here's Jock and Mhor," as two figures ran past the windows; "you must stay and have tea with us, Mr. Reid."
But I ought to be getting back to the hotel. I had no intention of inflicting myself on you in this way. He rose to his feet and looked about for his hat. "The fact is—I must tell you—I am——"
The door burst open and Mhor appeared. He had forgotten to remove his cap, or wipe his muddy boots, so eager was he to tell his news.
Jean, he shouted, oblivious in his excitement of the presence of a stranger—"Jean, there are six red puddock-stools at the bottom of the garden—bright red puddock-stools." He noticed Mr. Reid and, going up to him and looking earnestly into his face, he repeated, "Six!"
Indeed, said Peter Reid.
He had no acquaintance with boys, and felt extremely ill at ease, but Mhor, after studying him for a minute, was seized with a violent fancy for this new friend.
You're going to stay to tea, aren't you? Would you mind coming with me just now to look at the puddock-stools? It might be too dark after tea. Here is your hat.
But I'm not staying to tea, cried the unhappy owner of The Rigs. Why, he asked himself had he not told them at once that he was their landlord? A connection! Fool that he was! He would say it now—"I only came—"
It was very nice of you to come, said Jean soothingly. "But, Mhor, don't worry Mr. Reid. Everybody hasn't your passion for puddock-stools."
But you would like to see them, Mhor assured him. "I'm going to fill a bowl with chucky-stones and moss and stick the puddock-stools among them and make a fairy garden for Jean. And if I can find any more I'll make one for the Honourable; she is very kind about giving me chocolates."
They were out of doors by this time, and Mhor was pointing out the glories of the garden.
You see, we have a burn in our garden with a little bridge over it; almost no one else has a burn and a bridge of their very own. There are minnows in it and all sorts of things—water-beetles, you know. And here are my puddock-stools.
When Mr. Reid came back from the garden Mhor had firm hold of his hand and was telling him a long story about a "mavis-bird" that the cat had caught and eaten.
Tea's ready, he said, as they entered the room; "you can't go away now, Mr. Reid. See these cookies? I went for them myself to Davidson the baker's, and they were so hot and new-baked that the bag burst and they all fell out on the road."
Mhor! You horrid little boy.
They're none the worse, Jean. I dusted them all with me useful little hanky, and the road wasn't so very dirty.
All the same, said Jean, "I think we'll leave the cookies to you and
Jock. The other things are baked at home, Mr. Reid, and are quite safe.
Mhor, tell Jock tea's in, and wash your hands."
So Peter Reid found himself, like Balaam, remaining to bless. After all, why should he turn these people out of their home? A few years (with care) was all the length of days promised to him, and it mattered little where he spent them. Indeed, so little profitable did leisure seem to him that he cared little when the end came. Mhor and his delight over a burn of his own, and a garden that grew red puddock-stools, had made up his mind for him. He would never be the angel with the flaming sword who turned Mhor out of paradise. He had not known that a boy could be such a pleasant person. He had avoided children as he had avoided women, and now he found himself seated, the centre of interest, at a family tea-table, with Jean, anxiously making tea to his liking, while Mhor (with a well-soaped, shining face, but a high-water mark of dirt where the sponge had not reached) sat close beside him, and Jock, the big schoolboy, shyly handed him scones: and Peter walked among the feet of the company, waiting for what he could get.
Peter Reid quite shone through the meal. He remembered episodes of his boyhood, forgotten for forty years, and told them to Jock and Mhor, who listened with most gratifying interest. He questioned Jock about Priorsford Grammar School, and recalled stories of the masters who had taught there in his day.
Jean told him about David going to Oxford, and about Great-aunt Alison who had "come out at the Disruption"—about her father's life in India, and about her mother, and he became every minute more human and interested. He even made one or two small jokes which were received with great applause by Jock and Mhor, who were grateful to anyone who tried, however feebly, to be funny. They would have said with Touchstone, "It is meat and drink to me to see a clown."
Jean watched with delight her rather difficult guest blossom into affability. "You are looking better already," she told him. "If you stayed here for a week and rested and Mrs. M'Cosh cooked you light, nourishing food and Mhor didn't make too much noise, I'm sure you would feel quite well again. And it does seem such a pity to pay hotel bills when we want you here."
Hotel bills! Peter Reid looked sharply at her. Did she imagine, this girl, that hotel bills were of any moment to him? Then he looked down at his shabby clothes and recalled their conversation and owned that her mistake was not unjustifiable.
But how extraordinary it was! The instinct that makes people wish to stand well with the rich and powerful he could understand and commend, but the instinct that opens wide doors to the shabby and the unsuccessful was not one that he knew anything about: it was certainly not an instinct for this world as he knew it.
Just as they were finishing tea Mrs. M'Cosh ushered in Miss Pamela
Reston.
You did say I might come in when I liked, she said as she greeted Jean. "I've had tea, thank you. Mhor, you haven't been to see me to-day."
I would have been, Mhor assured her, "but Jean said I'd better not. Do you invite me to come to-morrow?"
I do.
There, Jean, said Mhor. "You can't un-vite me after that."
Indeed she can't, said Pamela. "Jock, this is the book I told you about…. Please, Miss Jean, don't let me disturb you."
We've finished, said Jean. "May I introduce Mr. Reid?"
Pamela shook hands and at once proceeded to make herself so charming that Peter Reid was galvanised into a spirited conversation. Pamela had brought her embroidery-frame with her, and she sat on the sofa and sorted out silks, and talked and laughed as if she had sat there off and on all her life. To Jean, looking at her, it seemed impossible that two days ago none of them had beheld her. It seemed—absurdly enough—that the room could never have looked quite right when it had not this graceful creature with her soft gowns and her pearls, her embroidery-frame and heaped, bright-hued silks sitting by the fire.
Miss Jean, won't you sing us a song? I'm convinced that you sing Scots songs quite perfectly.
Jean laughed. "I can sing Scots songs in a way, but I have a voice about as big as a sparrow's. If it would amuse you I'll try."
So Jean sat down to the piano and sang "Proud Maisie," and "Colin's
Cattle," and one or two other old songs.
I wonder, said Peter Reid, "if you know a song my mother used to sing—'Strathairlie'?"
Indeed I do. It's one I like very much. I have it here in this little book. She struck a few simple chords and began to sing: it was a lilting, haunting tune, and the words were "old and plain."
"O, the lift is high and blue,
And the new mune glints through,
On the bonnie corn-fields o' Strathairlie;
Ma ship's in Largo Bay,
And I ken weel the way
Up the steep, steep banks o' Strathairlie.
When I sailed ower the sea,
A laddie bold and free,
The corn sprang green on Strathairlie!
When I come back again,
It's an auld man walks his lane
Slow and sad ower the fields o' Strathairlie.
O' the shearers that I see
No' a body kens me,
Though I kent them a' in Strathairlie;
An' the fisher-wife I pass,
Can she be the braw lass
I kissed at the back o' Strathairlie?
O, the land is fine, fine,
I could buy it a' for mine,
For ma gowd's as the stooks in Strathairlie;
But I fain the lad would be
Wha sailed ower the saut sea
When the dawn rose grey on Strathairlie."
Jean rose from the piano. Jock had got out his books and had begun his lessons. Mhor and Peter were under the table playing at being cave-men. Pamela was stitching at her embroidery. Peter Reid sat shading his eyes from the light with his hand.
Jean knelt down on the rug and held out her hands to the blazing fire.
It must be sad to be old and rich, she said softly, almost as if she were speaking to herself. "It is so very certain that we can carry nothing out of this world…. I read somewhere of a man who, on every birthday, gave away some of his possessions so that at the end he might not be cumbered and weighted with them." She looked up and caught the gaze of Peter Reid fixed on her intently. "It's rather a nice idea, don't you think, to give away all the superfluous money and lands, pictures and jewels, everything we have, and stand stripped, as it were, ready when we get the word to come, to leap into the beyond?"
Pamela spoke first. "There speaks sweet and twenty," she said.
Yes, said Jean. "I know it's quite easy for me to speak in that lordly way of disposing of possessions, for I haven't got any to dispose of."
Then, said Pamela, "we are to take it that you are ready to spring across any minute?"
So far as goods and gear go; but I'm rich in other things. I'm pretty heavily weighted by David, and Jock, and Mhor.
Then Peter Reid spoke, still with his hand over his eyes.
Once you begin to make money it clings. How can you get rid of it?
I'm saving up for a bicycle, the Mhor broke in, becoming aware that the conversation turned on money. "I've got half a crown and a thru-penny-bit and fourpence-ha'penny in pennies: and I've got a duster to clean it with when I've got it."
Jean stroked his head. "I don't think you'll ever be overburdened with riches, Mhor, old man. But it must be tremendous fun to be rich. I love books where suddenly a lawyer's letter comes saying that someone has left them a fortune."
What would you do with a fortune if you got it? Peter Reid asked.
Need you ask? laughed Pamela. "Miss Jean would at once make it over to
David and Jock and Mhor."
Oh, well, said Jean, "of course they would come first, but, oh, I would do such a lot of things! I'd find out where money was most needed and drop it on the people anonymously so that they wouldn't be bothered about thanking anyone. I would creep about like a beneficent Puck and take worried frowns away, and straighten out things for tired people, and, above all, I'd make children smile. There's no fun or satisfaction got from giving big sums to hospitals and things—that's all right for when you're dead. I want to make happiness while I'm alive. I don't think a million pounds would be too much for all I want to do."
Aw, Jean, said Mhor, "if you had a million pounds would you buy me a bicycle?"
A bicycle, said Jean, "and a motor and an aeroplane and a Shetland pony and a Newfoundland pup. I'll make a story for you in bed to-night all about what you would have if I were rich."
And Jock, too?
Being assured that Jock would not be overlooked Mhor grabbed Peter round the neck and proceeded to babble to him about bicycles and aeroplanes, motors and Newfoundland pups.
Jean looked apologetically at her guests.
When you're poor you've got to dream, she said. "Oh, must you go, Mr. Reid? But you'll come back to-morrow, won't you? We would honestly like you to come and stay with us."
Thank you, said Peter Reid, "but I am going back to London in a day or two. I am obliged to you for your hospitality, especially for singing me 'Strathairlie.' I never thought to hear it again. I wonder if I might trouble you to write me out the words."
But take the book, said Jean, running to get it and pressing it into his hands. "Perhaps you'll find other songs in it you used to know and like. Take it to keep."
Pamela dropped her embroidery-frame and watched the scene.
Mhor and Peter stood looking on. Jock lifted his head from his books to listen. It was no new thing for the boys to see Jean give away her most treasured possessions: she was a born "Madam Liberality."
But, Peter Reid objected, "it is rather a rare book. You value it yourself."
Of course I do, said Jean, "and that is why I am giving it to you. I know you will appreciate it."
Peter Reid took the book as if it was something fragile and very precious. Pamela was puzzled by the expression on his face. He did not seem so much touched by the gift as amused—sardonically amused.
Thank you, he said. And again, "Thank you!"
Jock will go down with you to the hotel, Jean said, explaining, when the visitor demurred, that the road was steep and not very well lighted.
I'll go too, said Mhor, "me and Peter."
Well, come straight back. Good-bye, Mr. Reid. I'm so glad you came to see The Rigs, but I wish you could have stayed….
Is he an old friend? Pamela asked, when the cavalcade had departed.
I never saw him before to-day. He once lived in this house and he came back to see it, and he looks ill and I think he is poor, so I asked him to come and stay with us for a week.
My dear child, do you invite every stranger to stay with you if you think he is poor?
Of course not. But he looked so lonely and lost somehow, and he doesn't seem to have anyone belonging to him, and I was sorry for him.
And so you gave him that song-book you value so much?
Yes, said Jean, looking rather ashamed. "But," she brightened, "he seemed pleased, don't you think? It's a pretty song, 'Strathairlie,' but it's not a pukka old one—it's early Victorian."
Miss Jean, it's a marvel to me that you have anything left belonging to you.
Don't call me Miss Jean!
Jean, then; but you must call me Pamela.
Oh, but wouldn't that be rather familiar? You see, you are so—so—
Stricken in years, Pamela supplied.
No—but—well, you are rather impressive, you know. It would be like calling Miss Bathgate 'Bella' to her face. However—Pamela—
"For 'tis a chronicle of day by day."
The Tempest.
About this time Jean wrote a letter to David at Oxford. It is wonderful how much news there is when people write every other day; if they wait for a month there is nothing that seems worth telling.
Jean wrote:
"
… You have been away now for four days, and we still miss you badly. Nobody sits in your place at the table, and it gives us such a horrid bereaved feeling when we look at it. Mhor was waiting at the gate for the post yesterday and brought your letter in in triumph. He was particularly interested in hearing about your scout, and has added his name to the list he prays for. You will be glad to hear that he has got over his prejudice against going to heaven. It seems it was because someone told him that dogs couldn't go there, and he wouldn't desert Micawber—Peter, in other words. Jock has put it right by telling him that the translators of the Bible probably made a slip, and Mhor now prays earnestly every night: 'Let everyone in The Rigs go to heaven,' hoping thus to smuggle in his dear companion. It is an extraordinary thing, but almost the very minute you left
"Priorsford things began to happen.
"I told you in the note I wrote the day you left that Bella Bathgate's lodger had arrived and that I had seen her, but I didn't realise then what a difference her coming would make to us. I never knew such a friendly person; she comes in at any sort of time—after breakfast, a few minutes before luncheon, for tea, between nine and ten at night. Did I tell you her name is Pamela Reston, and her brother, who seems to be ranging about India somewhere, is Lord Bidborough ('A lord-no-less,' as Mrs. M'Cosh would say). She calls him Biddy, and seems devoted to him. Although she is horribly rich and an 'honourable,' and all that sort of thing, she isn't in the least grand. She never impresses one with her opulence as, for instance, Mrs. Duff-Whalley does. Her clothes are beautiful, but so much a part of her personality that you never think of them. Her pearls don't hit you in the face as most other people's do. Because she is so unconscious of them, I suppose. I think she is lovely. Jock says she is like a greyhound, and I know what he means—it is the long, swift, graceful way she has of moving. She says she is forty. I always thought forty was quite old, but now it seems to me the very prettiest age. Age doesn't really matter at all to people who have got faces and figures and manners like Pamela Reston. They will always make whatever age they are seem the perfect age.
""
I do wonder what brings her to Priorsford! I rather think that having been all her life so very 'twopence coloured' she wants the 'penny plain' for a change. Perhaps that is why she likes The Rigs and us. There is no mistake about our 'penny-plainness'—it jumps to the eye! I am just afraid she won't stay very long. There are so many pretty little houses in Priorsford, and so many kind and forthcoming landladies, it was bad luck that she should choose Hillview and Bella Bathgate. Bella is almost like a stage-caricature of a Scotswoman, so dour she is and uncompromising and she positively glories in the drab ugliness of her rooms. Ugliness means to Bella respectability; any attempt at adornment is 'daft-like.'
""
Pamela (she has asked me to call her that) trembles before her, and that makes Bella worse. She wants someone to stand up to her, to laugh at her grimness; she simply thinks when Pamela is charming to her that she is a poor creature. She is charming to everyone, this lodger of Bella's. Jock and Mhor and Mrs. M'Cosh are all at her feet. She brings us books and papers and chocolates and fruit, and makes us feel we are conferring the favour by accepting them. She is a real charmer, for when she speaks to you she makes you feel that no one matters to her but just you yourself. And she is simple (or at least appears to be); she hasn't that Now-I-am-going-to-be-charming manner that is so difficult to bear. It is such fun talking to her, for she is very—pliable I think is the word I want. Accustomed to converse with people who constantly pull one up short with an 'Ah, now I don't agree,' or 'There, I think you are quite wrong,' it is wonderfully soothing to discuss things with someone who has the air of being convinced by one's arguments. It is weak, I know, but I'm afraid I agree with Mrs. M'Cosh, who described a friend as 'a rale nice buddy. She clinks wi' every word ye say.'
""
I am thinking to myself how Great-aunt Alison would have dreaded Pamela's influence. She would have seen in her the personification of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil—albeit she would have been much impressed by her long descent: dear Aunt Alison. All the same, Davie, it is odd what an effect one's early training has. D'you remember how discouraged G.-A. Alison was about our levity—especially mine? She once said bitterly that I was like the ell-woman—hollow—because I laughed in the middle of the Bible lesson. And how antiquated and stuffy we thought her views, and took pleasure in assuring ourselves that we had got far beyond them, and you spent an evening tea-less in your room because you said you would rather be a Buddhist than a Disruption Worthy—do you remember that?
""
Yes, but Great-aunt Alison had builded better than she knew. When Pamela laughs 'How Biblical!' or says in her pretty, soft voice that our great-aunt's religion must have been a hard and ugly thing, I get hot with anger and feel I must stick unswervingly to the antiquated views. Is it because poor Great-aunt isn't here to make me? I don't know. Mhor is really surprisingly naughty. Yesterday I heard angry shouts from the road, and then I met Mhor sauntering in, on his face the seraphic expression he wears when some nefarious scheme has prospered, and in his hand the brass breakfast kettle. He had been pouring water on the passers-by from the top of the wall. 'Only,' he explained to me, 'on the men who wore hard black hats, who could swear.'
""
I told him the police would probably visit us in the course of the afternoon, and pointed out to him how ungentleman-like was his behaviour, and he said he was sorry; but I'm afraid he will soon think of some other wickedness. He thinks he can do anything he hasn't been told not to do, but how could I foresee that he would want to pour water on men with hard black hats, capable of swearing?
""
I had almost forgotten to tell you, an old man came yesterday and wanted to see over the house. You can imagine what a scare I got—I made sure he wanted to buy it; but it turned out that he had lived at The Rigs as a boy, and had come back for old sake's sake. He looked ill and rather shabby, and I don't believe life had been very good to him. I did want to try and make up a little, but he was difficult. He was staying at the Temperance, and it seemed so forlorn that he should have no one of his own to come home to. He didn't look as if anybody had ever made a fuss of him. I asked him to stay with us for a week, but he wouldn't. I think he thought I was rather mad to ask him, and Pamela laughed at me about it…. She laughs at me a good deal and calls me a 'sentimentalist.' … There is the luncheon bell.
""
We are longing for your letter to-morrow to hear how you are settling down. Mrs. M'Cosh has baked some shortbread for you, which I shall post this afternoon. Love from each of us, and Peter.—Your
"
JEAN.
"Is this a world to hide virtues in?"
Twelfth Night.
You should never wear a short string of beads when you are wearing big earrings, Pamela said.
But why? asked Jean.
Well, see for yourself. I am wearing big round earrings—right. I put on the beads that match—quite wrong. It's a question of line.
I see, said Jean thoughtfully. "But how do you learn those things?"
You don't learn them. You either know them, or you don't. A sort of instinct for dress, I suppose.
Jean was sitting in Pamela's bedroom. Pamela's bedroom it was now, certainly not Bella Bathgate's.
The swinging looking-glass had been replaced by one which, according to Pamela, was at least truthful. "The other one," she complained, "made me look pale green and drowned."
A cloth of fine linen and lace covered the toilet-table which was spread with brushes and boxes in tortoiseshell and gold, quaint-shaped bottles for scent, and roses in a tall glass.
A jewel-box stood open and Pamela was pulling out earrings and necklaces, rings and brooches for Jean's amusement.
Most of my things are at the bank, Pamela was saying as she held up a pair of Spanish earrings made of rows of pearls. "They generally are there, for I don't care a bit about ordinary jewels. These are what I like—odd things, old things, things picked up in odd corners of the world, things that have a story and a meaning. Biddy got me these turquoises in Tibet: that is a devil charm: isn't that jade delicious? I think I like Chinese things best of all."
She threw a string of cloudy amber round Jean's neck and cried, "My dear, how it becomes you. It brings out all the golden lights in your hair and eyes."
Jean sat forward in her chair and looked at her reflection in the glass with a pleased smile.
I do like dressing-up, she confessed. "Pretty things are a great temptation to me. I'm afraid if I had money I would spend a lot in adorning my vile body."
I simply don't know, said Pamela, "how people who don't care for clothes get through their lives. Clothes are a joy to the prosperous, a solace to the unhappy, and an interest always—even to old age. I knew a dear old lady of ninety-four whose chief diversion was to buy a new bonnet. She would sit before the mirror discarding model after model because they were 'too old' for her. One would have thought it difficult to find anything too old for ninety-four."
Jean laughed, but shook her head.
Doesn't it seem to you rather awful to care about bonnets at ninety-four?
Not a bit, said Pamela. She was powdering her face as she spoke. "I like to see old people holding on, not losing interest in their appearance, making a brave show to the end…. Did you never see anyone use powder before, Jean? Your eyes in the glass look so surprised."
Oh, I beg your pardon, said Jean, in great confusion, "I didn't mean to stare—" She hastily averted her eyes.
Pamela looked at her with an amused smile.
"
There's nothing actively immoral about powdering one's nose, you know, Jean. Did Great-aunt Alison tell you it was wrong?
"Great-aunt Alison never talked about such things, Jean said, flushing hotly. "I don't think it's wrong, but I don't see that it's an improvement. I couldn't take any pleasure in myself if my face were made up."
Pamela swung round on her chair and laid her hands on Jean's shoulders.
Jean, she said, "you're within an ace of being a prig. It's only the freckles on your little unpowdered nose, and the yellow lights in your eyes, and the way your hair curls up at the ends that save you. Remember, please, that three-and-twenty with a perfect complexion has no call to reprove her elders. Just wait till you come to forty years."
Oh, said Jean, "it's absurd of you to talk like that. As if you didn't know that you are infinitely more attractive than any young girl. I never know why people talk so much about youth. What does being young matter if you're awkward and dull and shy as well? I'd far rather be middle-aged and interesting."
That, said Pamela, as she laid her treasures back in the box, "is one of the minor tragedies of life. One begins by being bored with being young, and as we begin to realise what an asset youth is, it flies. Rejoice in your youth, little Jean-girl, for it's a stuff will not endure…. Now we'll go downstairs. It's too bad of me keeping you up here."
How you have changed this room, said Jean. "It smells so nice."
It is slightly less forbidding. I am quite attached to both my rooms, though when Mawson and I are both here together I sometimes feel I must poke my arms out of the window or thrust my head up the chimney like Bill the Lizard, in order to get room. It is a great disadvantage to be too large for one's surroundings.
The parlour was as much changed as the bedroom.
The round table with the red-and-green cover that filled up the middle of the room had been banished and a small card-table stood against the wall ready to be brought out for meals. A Persian carpet covered the linoleum and two comfortable wicker-chairs filled with cushions stood by the fireside. The sideboard had been converted into a stand for books and flowers. The blue vases had gone from the mantelshelf and two tall candlesticks and a strip of embroidery took their place. A writing-table stood in the window, from which the hard muslin curtains had been removed; there were flowers wherever a place could be found for them, and new books and papers lay about.
Jean sank into a chair with a book, but Pamela produced some visiting-cards and read aloud:
"
MRS. DUFF-WHALLEY. MISS DUFF-WHALLEY. THE TOWERS, PRIORSFORD. Who are they, please? and why do they come to see me?""
"
Jean shut her book, but kept her finger in as if hoping to get back to it soon, and smiled broadly.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley is a wonderful woman, she said. "She knows everything about everybody and simply scents out social opportunities. Your name would draw her like a magnet."
Why is she called Duff-Whalley? and where does she live? I'm frightfully intrigued.
As to the first, said Jean, "there was no thought of pleasing either you or me when she was christened—or rather when the late Mr. Duff-Whalley was christened. And I pointed out the house to you the other day. You asked what the monstrosity was, and I told you it was called The Towers."
I remember. A staring red-and-white house with about thirty bow-windows and twenty turrets. It denies the landscape.
Wait, said Jean, "till you see it close at hand. It's the most naked, newest thing you ever saw. Not a creeper, not an ivy leaf is allowed to crawl on it; weather seems to have no effect on it: it never gets to look any less new. And in summer it is worse, for then round about it blaze the reddest geraniums and the yellowest calceolarias and the bluest lobelias that it's possible to imagine."
Ghastly! What is the owner like?
Small, with yellowish hair turning grey. She has a sharp nose, and her eyes seem to dart out at you, take you all in, and then look away. She is rather like a ferret, and she has small, sharp teeth like a ferret. I'm never a bit sure she won't bite. She really is rather a wonderful woman. She hasn't been here very many years, but she dominates everyone. At whatever house you meet her she has the air of being hostess. She welcomes you and advises you where to sit, makes suitable conversation and finally bids you good-bye, and you feel yourself murmuring to her the grateful 'Such a pleasant afternoon,' that was due to the real hostess. She is in constant conflict with the other prominent matrons in Priorsford, but she always gets her own way. At a meeting she is quite insupportable. She just calmly tells us what we are to do. It's no good saying we are busy; it's no good saying anything. We walk away with a great district to collect and a pile of pamphlets under one arm…. Her nose is a little on one side, and when I sit and look at her presiding at a meeting I toy with the thought that someone goaded to madness by her calm persistence had once heaved something at her, and wish I had been there to see. Really, though, she is rather a blessing in the place; she keeps us from stagnation. I read somewhere that when they bring tanks of cod to this country from wherever cod abound, they put a cat-fish in beside them, and it chases the cod round all the time, so that they arrive in good condition. Mrs. Duff-Whalley is our cat-fish.
I see. Has she children?
Three. A daughter, married in London—Mrs. Egerton-Thomson—a son at Cambridge, and a daughter, Muriel, at home. I think it must be very bad for the Duff-Whalleys living in such a vulgar, restless-looking house.
Pamela laughed. "Do you think all the little pepper-pot towers must have an effect on the soul? I doubt it, my dear."
Still, said Jean, "I think more will be expected at the end from the people who have all their lives lived in and looked at lovely places. It always worries me, the thought of people who live in the dark places of big cities—children especially, growing up like 'plants in mines that never saw the sun.' It is so dreadful that sometimes I feel I must go and help."
What could you do?
That's what common sense always asks. I could do nothing alone, but if all the decent people tried their hardest it would make a difference…. It's the thought of the cruelty in the world that makes me sick. It's the hardest thing for me to keep from being happy. Great-aunt Alison said I had a light nature. Even when I ought to be sad my heart jumps up in the most unreasonable way, and I am happy. But sometimes it feels as if we comfortable people are walking on a flowery meadow that is really a great quaking morass, and underneath there is black slime full of unimagined horrors. A paragraph in the newspaper makes a crack and you see down: women who take money for keeping little babies and allow them to die, men who torture: tales of horror and terror. The War made a tremendous crack. It seemed then as if we were all to be drawn into the slime, as if cruelty had got its fangs into the heart of the world. When you knelt to pray at nights you could only cry and cry. The courage of the men who grappled in the slime with the horrors was the one thing that kept one from despair. And the fact that they could laugh. You know about the dying man who told his nurse some joke and finished, 'This is the War for laughs.'
Pamela nodded. "It hardly bears thinking of yet—the War and the fighters. Later on it will become the greatest of all sagas. But I want to hear about Priorsford people. That's a clean, cheerful subject. Who lives in the pretty house with the long ivy-covered front?"
The Knowe it is called. The Jowetts live there—retired Anglo-Indians. Mr. Jowett is a funny, kind little man with a red face and rather a nautical air. He is so busy that often it is afternoon before he reads his morning's letters.
What does he do?
"
I don't think he does anything much: taps the barometer, advises the gardener, fusses with fowls, potters in the garden, teaches the dog tricks. It makes him happy to feel himself rushed, and to go carrying unopened letters at tea-time. They have no children. Mrs. Jowett is a dear. She collects servants as other people collect prints or old china or Sheffield plate. They are her hobby, and she has the most wonderful knack of managing them. Even now, when good servants seem to have become extinct, and people who need five or six are grubbing away miserably with one and a charwoman, she has four pearls with soft voices and gentle ways, experts at their job. She thinks about them all the time, and considers their comfort, and dresses them in pale grey with the daintiest spotted muslin aprons and mob caps. It is a pleasure to go to the Jowetts for a meal, everything is so perfect. The only drawback is if anyone makes the slightest mark on the cloth one of the silver-grey maids brings a saucer of water and wipes it off, and it is apt to make one nervous. I shall never forget going there to a children's party with David and Jock. Great-aunt Alison warned us most solemnly before we left home about marking the cloth, so we went rather tremblingly. There was a splendid tea in the dining-room with silver candlesticks and pink shades, and lovely china, and a glittering cloth, and heaps of good things to eat—grown-up things like sandwiches and rich cakes, such as we hardly ever saw. Jock was quite small and loved his food even more than he does now, dear lamb. A maid handed round the egg-shell china—if only they had given us mugs—and as she was putting down Jock's cup he turned round suddenly and his elbow simply shot it out of her hand, and sent it flying across the table. As it went it spattered everything with weak tea and then smashed itself against one of the candlesticks. I wished at that moment that the world would come to an end. There seemed no other way of clearing up the mess. I was so ashamed, and so sorry for my poor Jock, I couldn't lift my eyes, but Mr. Jowett rose to the occasion and earned my affection and unending gratitude. He pretended to find it a very funny episode, and made so many jokes about it that stiffness vanished from the party, and we all became riotously happy. And Mrs. Jowett, whose heart must have been wrung to see the beautiful table ruined at the outset, so mastered her emotion as to be able to smile and say no harm had been done…. You must go with me and see Mrs. Jowett, only don't tell her anything in the very least sad: she weeps at the slightest provocation.""
"
Tell me more, said Pamela—"tell me about all the people who live in those houses on the hill. It's like reading a nice Cranfordy book."
But, Jean objected, "we're not in the least like people in a book. I often wonder why Priorsford is so unlike a story-book little town. We're not nearly interested enough in each other for one thing. We don't gossip to excess. Everyone goes his or her own way. In books people do things or are suspected of doing things, and are immediately cut by a feverishly interested neighbourhood. I can't imagine that happening in Priorsford. No one ever does anything very striking, but if they did I'm sure they wouldn't be ostracised. Nobody would care much, except perhaps Mrs. Hope, and she would only be amused."
Mrs. Hope?
Have you noticed a whitewashed house standing among trees about half a mile down Tweed from the bridge? That is Hopetoun, and Mrs. Hope and her daughter live there.
Nice?
Jean nodded her head like a wise mandarin. "You must meet Mrs. Hope. To describe her is far beyond my powers."
I see. Well, go on with the houses on the hill. Who lives in the one at the corner with the well-kept garden?
The Prestons. Mr. Preston is a lawyer, but he isn't much like a lawyer in appearance—not yellow and parchmenty, you know. He's a good shot and an ardent fisher, what Sir Walter would have called 'a just leevin' man for a country writer.' There are several daughters, all musical, and it is a very hospitable, cheerful house. Next the Prestons live the Williamsons. Ordinary nice people. There is really nothing to say about them…. The house after that is Woodside, the home of the two Miss Speirs. They are not ordinary. Miss Althea is a spiritualist. She sees visions and spends much of her time with spooks. Miss Clarice is a Buddhist. Their father, when he lived, was an elder in the U.F. Church. I sometimes wonder what he would say to his daughters now. When he died they left the U.F. Church and became Episcopalians, then Miss Clarice found that she couldn't believe in vicarious sacrifice and went over to Buddhism. She took me into her bedroom once. There was a thick yellow carpet, and a bed with a tapestry cover, and almost no furniture, except—is it impious to call Buddha furniture?—a large figure of Buddha with a lamp burning before it. It all seemed to me horribly unfresh. Both ladies provide much simple amusement to the townsfolk with their clothes and their antics.
I know the Speirs type, said Pamela. "Foolish virgins."
Next to Woodside is Craigton, went on Jean, "and there live three spinsters—the very best brand of spinsters—the Duncans, Miss Mary, Miss Janet, and Miss Phemie. I don't know what Priorsford would do without these good women. Spinsters they are, but they are also real mothers in Israel. They have time to help everyone. Benign Miss Mary is the housekeeper—and such a housekeeper! Miss Janet is the public one, sits on all the Committees. Miss Phemie does the flowers and embroiders beautiful things and is like a tea-cosy, so soft and warm and comfortable. Somehow they always seem to be there when you want them. You never go to their door and get a dusty answer. There is the same welcome for everyone, gentle and simple, and always the bright fire, and the kind, smiling faces, and tea with thick cream and cake of the richest and freshest…. You know how some people beg you to visit them, and when you go they seem to wear a surprised look, and you feel unexpected and awkward? The Duncans make you feel so pleased with yourself. They are so unselfishly interested in other people's concerns; and they are grand laughers. Even the dullest warm to something approaching wit when surrounded by that appreciative audience of three. They don't talk much themselves, but they have made of listening a fine art."
Jean, said Pamela, "do you actually mean to tell me that everybody in Priorsford is nice? Or are you merely being charitable? I don't know anything duller than your charitable person who always says the kind thing."
Jean laughed. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid the Priorsford people are all more or less nice. At least, they seem so to me, but perhaps I'm not very discriminating. You will tell me what you think of them when you meet them. All these people I've been telling you about are rich people, 'in a large way,' as Priorsford calls it. They have all large motor-cars and hothouses and rich things like that. Mrs. M'Cosh says Priorsford is a 'real tone-y wee place,' and we do fancy ourselves a good deal. It's a community largely made up of women and middle-aged retired men. You see, there is nothing for the young men to do; we haven't even mills like so many of the Tweedside towns."
Will people call on me? Pamela asked. "Is Priorsford sociable?"
Jean pursed up her mouth in an effort to look worldly wise. "I think you will find it sociable, but if you had come here obscure and unknown, your existence would never have been heard of, even if you had taken a house and settled down. Priorsford hardly looks over its shoulder at a newcomer. Some of the 'little' people might call and ask you to tea—the kind 'little' people—but—"
Who do you call the 'little' people?
All the people who aren't 'in a large way,' all the dwellers in the snug little villas—most of Priorsford in fact. Jean got up to go. "Dear me, look at the time! The boys will be home from school. May I have the book you spoke of? Priorsford would be enraged if it heard me calmly discussing its faults and foibles." She laughed softly. "Lewis Elliot says Priorsford is made up of three classes—the dull, the daft, and the devout."
Pamela, looking for the book she wanted to lend to Jean, stopped and stood still as if arrested by the name.
Lewis Elliot!
Yes, of Laverlaw. D'you know him, by any chance?
I used to know a Lewis Elliot who had some connection with Priorsford, but I thought he had left it years ago.
Our Lewis Elliot inherited Laverlaw rather unexpectedly some years ago. Before that he was quite poor. Perhaps that is what makes him so understanding. He is a sort of distant cousin of ours. Great-aunt Alison was his aunt too—at least, he called her aunt. It will be fun if he turns out to be the man you used to know.
Yes, said Pamela. "Here is the book, Jean. It's been so nice having you this afternoon. No, dear, I won't go back with you to tea. I'm going to write letters. Good-bye. My love to the boys."
But Pamela wrote no letters that evening. She sat with a book on her knee and looked into the fire; sometimes she sighed.
"I have, as you know, a general prejudice against all persons who do not succeed in the world."—JOWETT OF BALLIOL.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley was giving a dinner-party. This was no uncommon occurrence, for she loved to entertain. It gave her real pleasure to provide a good meal and to see her guests enjoy it. "Besides," as she often said, "what's the use of having everything solid for the table, and a fine house and a cook at sixty pounds a year, if nobody's any the wiser?"
It will be seen from this remark that Mrs. Duff-Whalley had not always been in a position to give dinner-parties; indeed, Mrs. Hope, that terror to the newly risen, who traced everyone back to their first rude beginnings (generally "a wee shop"), had it that the late Mr. Duff-Whalley had begun life as a "Johnnie-a'-things" in Leith, and that his wife had been his landlady's daughter.
But the "wee shop" was in the dim past, if, indeed, it had ever existed except in Mrs. Hope's wicked, wise old head, and for many years Mrs. Duff-Whalley had ruffled it in a world that asked no questions about the origin of money so obviously there.
Most people are weak when they come in contact with a really strong-willed woman. No one liked Mrs. Duff-Whalley, but few, if any, withstood her advances. It was easier to give in and be on calling and dining terms than to repulse a woman who never noticed a snub, and who would never admit the possibility that she might not be wanted. So Mrs. Duff-Whalley could boast with some degree of truth that she knew "everybody," and entertained at The Towers "very nearly the highest in the land."
The dinner-party I write of was not one of her more ambitious efforts. It was a small and (with the exception of one guest) what she called "a purely local affair." That is to say, the people who were to grace the feast were culled from the big villas on the Hill, and were not "county."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley was an excellent manager, and left nothing to chance. She saw to all the details herself. Dressed and ready quite half an hour before the time fixed for dinner, she had cast her eagle glance over the dinner-table, and now sailed into the drawing-room to see that the fire was at its best, the chairs comfortably disposed, and everything as it should be. Certainly no one could have found fault with the comfort of the room this evening. A huge fire blazed in the most approved style of grate, the electric light (in the latest fittings) also blazed, lighting up the handsome oil-paintings that adorned the walls, the many photographs, the china in the cabinets, the tables with their silver treasures. Everywhere stood vases of heavy-scented hothouse flowers. Mrs. Duff-Whalley approved of hothouse flowers; she said they gave a tone to a room.
The whole room glittered, and its mistress glittered with it as she moved about in a dress largely composed of sequins, a diamond necklace, and a startling ornament in her hair.
She turned as the door opened and her daughter came into the room, and looked her carefully up and down. She was a pretty girl dressed in the extreme of fashion, and under each arm she carried a tiny barking dog.
Muriel was a good daughter to her mother, and an exemplary character in every way, but the odd thing was that few people liked her. This was the more tragic as it was the desire of her heart to be popular. Her appearance was attractive, and strangers usually began acquaintance with enthusiasm, but the attraction rarely survived the first hour's talk. She was like a very well-coloured and delightful-looking apple that is without flavour. She was never natural—always aping someone. Her enthusiasms did not ring true, her interest was obviously feigned, and she had that most destroying of social faults, she could not listen with patience, but let her attention wander to the conversation of her neighbours. It seemed as if she could never talk at peace with anyone for fear of missing something more interesting in another quarter.
You look very nice, Muriel! I'm glad I told you to put on that dress, and that new way of doing your hair is very becoming. One lovable thing about Mrs. Duff-Whalley was the way she sincerely and openly admired everything that was hers. "Now, see and do your best to make the evening go. Mr. Elliot takes a lot of amusing, and the Jowetts aren't very lively either."
Is that all that's coming? Muriel asked.
I asked the new Episcopalian parson—what's his name?—yes—Jackson—to fill up.
You don't often descend to the clergy, mother.
No, but Episcopalians are slightly better fitted for society than Presbyterians, and this young man seems quite a gentleman—such a blessing, too, when they haven't got wives. Dear, dear, I told Dickie not to send in any more of that plant—what d'you call it? (It was a peculiarity of Mrs. Duff-Whalley that she never could remember the names of any but the simplest flowers.) "I don't like its perfume. What was I saying? Of course, I only got up this dinner on the spur of the moment, so to speak, when I met Mr. Elliot in the Highgate. He comes and goes so much you never know when he's at Laverlaw; if you write or telephone he's always got another engagement. But when I met him face to face I just said, 'Now, when will you dine with us, Mr. Elliot?' and he hummed and hawed a bit and then fixed to-night."
Perhaps he didn't want to come, Muriel suggested as she snuggled one of the small dogs against her face. "And did it love its own mummy, then, darling snub-nose pet?"
Her mother scouted the idea.
Why should he not want to come? Do put down those dogs, Muriel. I never get used to see you kissing them. A good dinner and everything comfortable, and you to play the piano to him taught by the best masters—he's ill to please. And he's not very well off, though he does own Laverlaw. It's the time the family has been there that gives him the standing. I must say, he isn't in the least genial, but he gets that from his mother. A starchier old woman I never met. I remember your father and I were staying at the Hydro when old Elliot died, and his son was killed before that, shooting lions or something in Africa, so this Lewis Elliot, who was a nephew, inherited. We thought we would go and ask if by any chance they wanted to sell the place, so we called in a friendly way, though we didn't know them, of course. It was old Mrs. Elliot we saw, and my word, she was cold. As polite as you like, but as icy as the North Pole. Your father had some vulgar sayings I couldn't break him off, and he said as we drove out of the lodge gates, 'Well, that old wife gave us our heads in our laps and our lugs to play wi'.'
Why, mother! Muriel cried, astonished. Her mother was never heard to use a Scots expression and thought even a Scots song slightly vulgar.
I know—I know, said Mrs. Duff-Whalley hastily. "It just came over me for a minute how your father said it. He was a very amusing man, your father, very bright to live with, though he was too fond of low Scots expressions for my taste; and he would eat cheese to his tea. It kept us down, you know. I've risen a lot in the world since your father left us, though I miss him, of course. He used to laugh at Minnie's ideas. It was Minnie got us to send Gordon to an English school and then to Cambridge, and take the hyphen. Your father had many a laugh at the hyphen, and before the servants too! You see, Minnie went to a high-class school and made friends with the right people, and learned how things should be done. She had always assurance, had Minnie. The way she could order the waiters about in those grand London hotels! And then she married Egerton-Thomson. But you're better-looking, Muriel."
Muriel brushed aside the subject of her looks.
What made you settle in Priorsford? she asked.
Well, we came out first to stay at the Hydro—you were away at school then—and your father took a great fancy to the place. He was making money fast, and we always had a thought of buying a place. But there was nothing that just suited us. We thought it would be too dull to be right out in the country, at the end of a long drive—exclusive you know, but terribly dreary, and then your father said, 'Build a house to suit ourselves in Priorsford, and we'll have shops and a station and everything quite near.' His idea was to have a house as like a hydropathic as possible, and to call it The Towers. 'A fine big red house, Aggie,' he often said to me, 'with plenty of bow-windows and turrets and a hothouse off the drawing-room and a sweep of gravel in front and a lot of geraniums and those yellow flowers—what d'you call 'em?—and good lawns, and a flower garden and a kitchen garden and a garage, and what more d'you want?' Well, well, he got them all, but he didn't live long to enjoy them. I think myself that having nothing to do but take his meals killed him. I hear wheels! That'll be the Jowetts. They're always so punctual. Am I all right?
Muriel assured her that nothing was wrong or lacking, and they waited for the guests.
The door opened and a servant announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Jowett."
Mrs. Jowett walked very slowly and delicately, and her husband pranced behind her. It might have been expected that in their long walk together through life Mr. Jowett would have got accustomed to his wife's deliberate entrances, but no—it always seemed as if he were just on the point of giving her an impatient push from behind.
"I will the country see
Where old simplicity,
Though hid in grey,
Doth look more gay
Than foppery in plush and scarlet clad."
THOMAS RANDOLPH, 1605-35.
A letter from Pamela Reston to her brother.
"
… It was a tremendous treat to get your budget this morning after three mails of silence. I got your cable saying you were back before I knew you contemplated going, so I never had to worry. I think the War has shaken my nerves in a way I hadn't realised. I never used to worry about you very much, knowing your faculty of falling on your feet, but now I tremble. Sikkim must be marvellous, and to try an utterly untried route was thrilling, but what uncomfortable times men do give themselves! To lie in a tiny tent in the soaking rain with your bedding crawling with leeches, 'great, cold, well-nourished fellows.' Ugh! And yet, I suppose you counted the discomforts as nothing when you gazed at Everest while yet the dawn 'walked tiptoe on the mountains' (will it ever be climbed, I wonder!), and even more wonderful, as you describe it, must have been the vision from below the Alukthang glacier, when the mists slowly unveiled the face of Pandim to the moon….
""
And I shall soon hear of it all by word of mouth. It is the best of news that you are coming home. I don't think you must go away again without me. I have missed you dreadfully these last six months. Besides, you ought to settle at home for a bit now, don't you think? First, your long exploring expedition and then the War: haven't you been across the world, away long enough to make you want to stay at home? You are one of the very worst specimens of an absentee landlord…. After profound calculations I have come to the conclusion that you will get two letters from me from Priorsford before you leave India. I am sending this to Port Said to make sure of not missing you. You will have lots of time to read it on board ship if it is rather long.
""
Shall I meet you in London? Send me a wire when you get this. What I should like to do would be to conduct you personally to Priorsford. I think you would like it. The countryside is lovely, and after a week or two we could go somewhere for Christmas. The Champertouns have asked me to go to them, and of course their invitation would include you. They are second or third cousins, and we've never seen them, but they are our mother's people, and I have always wanted to see where she was brought up. However, we can settle all that later on…. I feel myself quite an old resident in Priorsford now, and have become acquainted with some of the people—well-to-do, hospitable, not at all interesting (with a few exceptions), but kind.
""
The Jardines remain my great interest. What a blessing it is when people improve by knowing—so few do. I see the Jardines once every day, sometimes oftener, and I like them more every time I see them. I've been thinking, Biddy, you and I haven't had a vast number of people to be fond of. There was Aunt Eleanor, but I defy anyone to be fond of her. Respect her one might, fear her we did, but love her—it would have been as discouraging as petting a steam road-roller. We hadn't even a motherly old nurse, for Aunt Eleanor liked machine-made people like herself to serve her. I don't think it did you much harm, you were such a sunny-tempered, affectionate little boy, but it made me rather inhuman.
""
As we grew up we acquired crowds of friends and acquaintances, but they were never like real home-people to whom you show both your best and your worst side, and who love you simply because you are you. The Jardines give me that homey feeling. The funny thing is I thought I was going to broaden Jean, to show her what a narrow little Puritan she is, bound in the Old Testament thrall of her Great-aunt Alison—but not a bit of it. She is very receptive, delighted to be told about people and clothes, cities, theatres, pictures, but on what she calls 'serious things' she is an absolute rock. It is like finding a Roundhead delighting in Royalist sports and plays, or a Royalist chanting Roundhead psalms—if you can imagine an evangelical Royalist. Anyway, it is rather a fine combination.
""
I only wish I could help to make things easier for Jean. I have far more money than I want; she has so little. I'm afraid she has to plan and worry a good deal how to clothe and feed and educate those boys. I know that she is very anxious that David should not be too scrimped for money at Oxford, and consequently spends almost nothing on herself. A warm coat for Jock; no evening gown for Jean. David finds that he must buy certain books and writes home in distress. 'That can easily be managed,' says Jean, and goes without a new winter hat. She and Mrs. M'Cosh are wonders of economy in housekeeping, and there is always abundance of plain, well-cooked food. I told you about Mrs. M'Cosh? She is the Jardines' one servant—an elderly woman, a widow from Glasgow. I like her way of showing in visitors. She was a pew-opener in a church at one time, which may account for it. When you ask if Jean is in, she puts her head on one side in a considering way and says, 'I'm no' juist sure,' and ambles away, leaving the visitor quite undecided whether she is intended to remain on the doorstep or follow her in. I know now that she means you to remain meekly on the doorstep, for she lately recounted to me with glee of another caller, 'I'd went awa' up the stair to see if Miss Jean wis in, an' whit d'ye think? When I lukit roond the wumman wis at ma heels.' The other day workmen were in the house doing something, and when Mrs. M'Cosh opened the door to me she said, 'Ye see the mess we're in. D'ye think ye should come in?' leaving it to my better nature to decide.
""
She is always serene, always smiling. The great love of her life is Peter, the fox-terrier, one of the wickedest and nicest of dogs. He is always in trouble, and she is sorely put to it sometimes to find excuses for him. 'He's a great wee case, is Peter,' she generally finishes up. 'He means no ill' (this after it has been proved that he has chased sheep, killed hens, and bitten message-boys); 'he's juist a wee thing playful.' Peter attends every function in Priorsford—funerals, marriages, circuses. He meets all the trains and escorts strangers to the objects of interest in the neighbourhood. He sees people off, and wags his tail in farewell as the train moves out of the station.
""
He and Mhor are fast friends, and it is an inspiring sight to see them of a morning, standing together in the middle of the road with the whole wide world before them, wondering which would be the best way to take for adventures. Mhor has had much liberty lately as he has been infectious after whooping-cough, but now he has gone back to the little school he attends with some twenty other children. I'm afraid he is a very unwilling scholar. You will be glad to hear that Bella Bathgate (I'm taking a liberty with her name I don't dare take in speaking to her) is thawing to me slightly. It seems that part of the reason for her distaste to me was that she thought I would probably demand a savoury for dinner! If I did ask such a thing—which Heaven forbid!—she would probably send me in a huge pudding dish of macaroni and cheese. Her cooking is not the best of Bella.
""
She and Mawson have become fast friends. Mawson has asked Bella to call her Winifred, and she calls Miss Bathgate 'Beller.' Miss Bathgate spends any leisure moments she has in doing long strips of crochet, which eventually become a bedspread, and considers it a waste of time to read anything but the Bible, the Scotsman and the Missionary Magazine (she is very keen on Foreign Missions), but she doesn't object to listening to Mawson's garbled accounts of the books she reads. I sometimes overhear their conversations as they sit together by the kitchen fire in the long evenings.
""
'And,' says Mawson, describing some lurid work of fiction, 'Evangeline was left shut up in the picture-gallery of the 'ouse.' 'D'ye mean to tell me hooses hev picture-galleries?' says Bella.
""
'Course they 'ave—all big 'ouses.' 'Juist like the Campbell Institution—sic a bother it must be to dust!'
""
'Well,' Mawson goes on, 'Evangeline finds 'er h'eyes attracted—' Again Bella interrupts. 'Wha was Evangeline? I forget aboot her.'
""
'Oh, don't you remember? The golden-'aired 'eroine with vilet eyes.' 'I mind her noo. The yin wi' the black hair was the bad yin.'
""
'Yes, she was called 'Ermione. Well, Evangeline finds 'er h'eyes attracted to the picture of a man dressed like a cavalier.' 'What's that?'
""
'I don't rightly know,' Mawson confesses. 'Kind of a fancy dress, I believe, but anyway 'er h'eyes were attracted to the picture, and as she fixed 'er h'eyes on it the h'eyes in the picture moved.' 'Oh, murder!' says Bella, much thrilled.
""
'You may say it. Murder it was, h'attempted murder, I should say, for of course it would never do to murder the vilet-h'eyed 'eroine. As it 'appened …' and so on … One of the three months gone! Perhaps at the beginning of the year I shall have had more than enough of it, and go gladly back to the fleshpots of Egypt and the Politician.
""
It is a dear thing a little town, 'a lovesome thing, God wot,' and Priorsford is the pick of all little towns. I love the shops and the kind, interested way the shopkeepers serve one: I have shopped in most European cities, but I never realised the full delight of shopping till I came to Priorsford. You can't think what fun it is to order in all your own meals, to decide whether you will have a 'finnan-haddie' or a 'kipper' for breakfast—much more exciting than ordering a ball gown. I love the river, and the wide bridge, and the old castle keeping watch and ward, and the pends through which you catch sudden glimpses of the solemn round-backed hills. And most of all I love the lights that twinkle out in the early darkness, every light meaning a little home, and a warm fireside and kindly people round it.
""
To live, as you and I have done all our lives, in houses where all the difficulties of life are kept in oblivion, and existence runs on well-oiled wheels is very pleasant, doubtless, but one misses a lot. I love the nearness of Hillview, to hear Mawson and B.B. converse in the kitchen, to smell (this is the most comfortable and homely smell) the ironing of clean clothes, and to know (also by the sense of smell) what I am going to have for dinner hours before it comes. Of course you will say, and probably with truth, that what I enjoy is the newness of it, that if I knew that my life would be spent in such surroundings I would be profoundly dissatisfied.
""
I dare say. But in the meantime I am happy—happy in a contented, quiet way that I never knew before. It is strange that our old friend Lewis Elliot is living near Priorsford, at a place called Laverlaw, about five miles up Tweed from here. Do you remember what good times we used to have with him when he came to stay with the Greys? That must be more than twenty years ago—you were a little boy and I was a wild colt of a girl. I don't think you have ever seen much of him since, but I saw a lot of him in London when I first came out. Then he vanished. Some years ago his uncle died and he inherited Laverlaw. He came to see me the other day, not a bit changed, the same dreamy, unambitious creature—rather an angel. I sometimes wonder if little Jean will one day go to Laverlaw. It would be very nice and fairy-tale-ish!""
""You that are old," Falstaff reminds the Chief Justice, "consider not the capacities of us that are young."
One afternoon Jean called for Pamela to take her to see Mrs. Hope.
It was a clear, blue-and-white day, with clouds scudding across the sky, and a cold, whistling wind that blew the fallen leaves along the dry roads—a day that made people walk smartly and gave the children apple-red cheeks and tangled curls.
Mhor and Peter were seated on The Rigs garden wall as Pamela and Jean came out of Hillview gate. Peter wagged his tail in recognition, but Mhor made no sign of having seen his sister and her friend.
Aren't you cold up there? Pamela asked him.
Very cold, said Mhor, "but we can't come down. We're on sentry duty on the city wall till sundown," and he shaded his eyes with his hand and pretended to peer into space for lurking foes.
Peter looked wistfully up at him and hunched himself against the scratched bare knees now blue with cold.
When the sun touches the top of West Law, said Jean, pointing to a distant blue peak, "it has set. See—there…. Now run in, sonny, and tell Mrs. M'Cosh to let you have some currant-loaf for tea. Pamela and I are going to tea at Hopetoun."
Aw, said Mhor, "I hate when you go out to tea. So does Jock. So does
Peter. Look out! I'm going to jump."
He jumped and fell prostrate, barking his chin, but no howl came from him, and he picked himself up with dignity, merely asking for the loan of a handkerchief, his own "useful little hanky," as he explained, having been used to mop up a spilt ink-bottle.
Fortunately Jean had a spare handkerchief, and Pamela promised that on her return he should have a reel of sticking-plaster for his own use, so, battered but content, he returned to the house, Peter remaining behind to investigate a mole-heap.
What a cheery day for November, Pamela remarked as they took the road by Tweedside. "Look at that beech tree against the blue sky, every black twig silhouetted. Trees are wonderful in winter."
Trees are wonderful always, said Jean. "'Solomon spake of trees'—I do wonder what he said. I suppose it would be the cedars of Lebanon he 'spake' of, and the hyssop that grows in the walls, and sycamores, but he would have been worth hearing on a rowan tree flaming red against a blue September sky. Look at that newly ploughed field so softly brown, and the faded gold of the beech hedge. November is a cheery time. The only depressing time of the year to me is when the swallows go away. I can't bear to see them wheeling round and preparing to depart. I want so badly to go with them. It always brings back to me the feeling I had as a child when people read Hans Andersen to me—the storks in The Marsh King's Daughter, talking about the mud in Egypt. Imagine Priorsford swallows in Egypt!… As the song says:
"'It's dowie at the hint o' hair'st
At the way-gaun o' the swallow.'"
What a lovely sound Lowland Scots has, said Pamela. "I like to hear you speak it. Tell me about Mrs. Hope, Jean. I do hope we shall see her alone. I don't like Priorsford tea-parties; they are rather like a foretaste of eternal punishment. With no choice you are dumped down beside the most irrelevant sort of person, and there you remain. I went to return Mrs. Duff-Whalley's call the other day, and fell into one. Before I could retreat I was wedged into a chair beside a woman whom I hope I shall never see again. She was one of those bleak people who make the thought of getting up in the morning and dressing quite insupportable. I don't think there was a detail in her domestic life that she didn't touch on. She told me all her husband could eat and couldn't eat; she called her children 'little tots,' and said she couldn't get so much as a 'serviette' washed in the house. I thought nobody talked of serviettes outside Wells and Arnold Bennett. Mrs. Duff-Whalley rescued me in the nick of time before I could do anything desperate, and then she cross-examined me as to my reasons for coming to Priorsford."
Jean laughed. "What a cheery afternoon! But it will be all right to-day. Mrs. Hope never sees more than one or two people at a time. She is pretty old, you see, and frail, though she has such an extraordinary gift of being young. I do hope you will like each other. She has an edge to her tongue, but she is an incomparable friend. The poor people go to her in flocks, and she scolds them roundly, but always knows how to help them in the only wise way. Her people have been in Priorsford for ages; she knows every soul in the place, and is vastly amused at all the little snobberies that abound in a small town. But she laughs kindly. Pretentious people are afraid of her; simple people love her."
Am I simple, Jean?
Jean laughed and refused to give an opinion on the subject, beyond quoting the words of Autolycus—"How blessed are we that are not simple men."
They were in the Hopetoun Woods now, and at the end of the avenue could see the house standing on a knoll by the river, whitewashed, dignified, home-like.
Talk to Mrs. Hope about the view, Jean advised "She is as proud of the Hopetoun Woods as if she had made them. Isn't it a nice place? Old and proud and honourable—like Mrs. Hope herself."
Are there sons to inherit?
Jean shook her head. "There were three sons. Mrs. Hope hardly ever talks about them, but I've seen their photographs, and of course I have often been told about them—by Great-aunt Alison, and others—and heard how they died. They were very clever and good-looking and well-liked—the kind of sons mothers are very proud of, and they all died imperially, if that is an expression to use. Two died in India, one—a soldier—in one of the Frontier skirmishes: the other—an I.C.S. man—from over-working in a famine-stricken district. The youngest fell in the Boer War … so you see Mrs. Hope has the right to be proud. Aunt Alison used to tell me that she made no moan over her wonderful sons. She shut herself up for a short time, and then faced the world again, her kindly, sharp-tongued self. She is one of those splendid people who take the slings and arrows thrown at them by outrageous fortune and bury them deep in their hearts and go on, still able to laugh, still able to take an interest. Only, you mustn't speak to her of what she has lost. That would be too much."
Yes, said Pamela. "I can understand that."
She stopped for a minute and stood looking at the river full of "wan water from the Border hills," at the stretches of lawn ornamented here and there by stone figures, at the trees thrawn with winter and rough weather, and she thought of the three boys who had played here, who had lived in the whitewashed house (she could see the barred nursery windows), bathed and fished in the Tweed, thrown stones at the grey stone figures on the lawn, climbed the trees in the Hopetoun Woods, and who had gone out with their happy young lives to lay them down in a far country.
Mrs. Hope was sitting by the fire in the drawing-room, a room full of flowers and books, and lit by four long windows. Two of the windows looked on to the lawns, and the stone figures chipped by generations of catapult-owning boys; the other two looked across the river into the Hopetoun Woods. The curtains were not drawn though the lamps were lit, for Mrs. Hope liked to keep the river and the woods with her as long as light lasted, so the warm bright room looked warmer and brighter in contrast with the cold, ruffled water and the wind-shaken trees outside.
Mrs. Hope had been a beautiful woman in her day, and was still an attractive figure, her white hair dressed high and crowned with a square of lace tied in quaint fashion under her chin. Her black dress was soft and becoming to her spare figure. There was nothing unsightly about her years; she made age seem a lovely, desirable thing. Not that her years were so very many, but she had lived every minute of them; also she had given lavishly and unsparingly of her store of sympathy and energy to others: and she had suffered grievously.
She kissed Jean affectionately, upbraiding her for being long in coming, and turned eagerly to Pamela. New people still interested her vividly. Here was a newcomer who promised well.
Ah, my dear, she said in greeting, "I have wanted to know you. I'm told you are the most interesting person who ever came to this little town."
Pamela laughed. "There I am sure you have been misled. Priorsford is full of exciting people. I expected to be dull, and I have rarely been so well amused."
Mrs. Hope studied the charming face bent to her own. Her blue eyes were shrewd, and though she stood so near the end of the way she had lost none of her interest in the comings and goings of Vanity Fair.
Is Priorsford amusing? she said. "Well" (complacently), "we have our points. As Jane Austen wrote of the Misses Bingley, 'Our powers of conversation are considerable—we can describe an entertainment with accuracy, relate an anecdote with humour, and laugh at our acquaintances with spirit.'"
Laugh! Jean groaned. "Pamela, I must warn you that Mrs. Hope's laughter scares Priorsford to death. We speak her fair in order that she won't give us away to our neighbours, but we have no real hope that she doesn't see through us. Have we, Miss Augusta?" addressing the daughter of the house, who had just come into the room.
Ah, said Mrs. Hope, "if everyone was as transparent as you, Jean."
Oh, don't, Jean pleaded. "You remind me that I am quite uninteresting when I am trying to make believe that I am subtle, or 'subtile,' as the Psalmist says of the fowler's snare."
Absurd child! Augusta, my dear, this is Miss Reston.
Miss Hope shook hands in her gentle, shy way, and busied herself putting small tables beside her mother and the two guests as the servant brought in tea. Her life was spent in doing small services.
Once, when Augusta was a child, someone asked her what she would like to be, and she had replied, "A lady like mamma." She had never lost the ambition, though very soon she had known that it could not be realised. It was difficult to believe that she was Mrs. Hope's daughter, for she had no trace of the beauty and sparkle with which her mother had been endowed. Augusta had a long, kind, patient face—a drab-coloured face—but her voice was beautiful. She had never been young; she was born an anxious pilgrim, and now, at fifty, she seemed infinitely older than her ageless mother.
Pamela, watching her as she made the tea, saw all Augusta's heart in her eyes as she looked at her mother, and saw, too, the dread that lay in them—the dread of the days that she must live after the light had gone out for her.
During tea Mrs. Hope had many questions to ask about David at Oxford, and Jean was only too delighted to tell every single detail.
And how is my dear Jock? He is my favourite.
Not the Mhor? asked Pamela.
No. Mhor is 'a'body's body.' He will never lack for admirers. But Jock is my own boy. We've been friends since he came home from India, a white-headed baby with the same surprised blue eyes that he has now. He was never out of scrapes at home, but he was always good with me. I suppose I was flattered by that.
Jock, said Jean, "is very nearly the nicest thing in the world, and the funniest. This morning Mrs. M'Cosh caught a mouse alive in a trap, and Jock, while dressing, heard her say she would drown it. Down he went, like an avalanche in pyjamas, drove Mrs. M'Cosh into the scullery, and let the mouse away in the garden. He would fight any number of boys of any size for an ill-treated animal. In fact, all his tenderness is given to dumb animals. He has no real liking for mortals. They affront him with their love-making and their marriages. He has to leave the room when anything bordering on sentiment is read aloud. 'Tripe,' he calls it in his low way. Do you remember his scorn of knight-errants who rescued distressed damsels? They seemed to him so little worth rescuing."
I never cared much for sentiment myself, said Mrs. Hope. "I wouldn't give a good adventure yarn for all the love-stories ever written."
Mother remains very boyish, said Augusta. "She likes something vivid in the way of crime."
And now, said her mother, "you are laughing at an old done woman, which is very unseemly. Come and sit beside me, Miss Reston, and tell me what you think of Priorsford."
Oh, said Pamela, drawing a low chair to the side of her hostess, "it's not for me to talk about Priorsford. They tell me you know more about it than anyone."
Do I? Well, perhaps; anyway, I love it more than most. I've lived here practically all my life, and my forbears have been in the countryside for generations, and that all counts. Priorsford … I sometimes stand on the bridge and look and look, and tell myself that I feel like a mother to it.
I know, said Pamela. "There is something very appealing about a little town: I never lived in one before."
But, said Mrs. Hope, jealous as a mother for her own, "I think there is something very special about Priorsford. There are few towns as beautiful. The way the hills cradle it, and Peel Tower stands guard over it, and the links of Tweed water it, and even the streets aren't ordinary, they have such lovely glimpses. From the East Gate you look up to the East Law, pine trees, grey walls, green terraces; in the Highgate you don't go many yards without coming to a pend with a view of blue distances that takes your breath, just as in Edinburgh when you look down an alley and see ships tacking for the Baltic…. But I wish I had known Priorsford as it was in my mother's young days, when the French prisoners were here. The genteel supper-parties and assemblies must have been vastly entertaining. It has changed even in my day. I don't want to repeat the old folks' litany, 'No times like the old times,' but it does seem to me—or is it only distance lending enchantment?—that the people I used to know were more human, more interesting; there was less worship of money, less running after the great ones of the earth, certainly less vulgarity. We were content with less, and happier."
But, Mrs. Hope, said Pamela, laying down her cup, "this is most depressing hearing. I came here to find simplicity."
You needn't expect to find it in Priorsford. We aren't so provincial as all that. I just wish Mrs. Duff-Whalley could hear you. Simplicity indeed! I'm not able to go out much now, but I sit here and watch people, and I am astonished at the number of restless eyes. So many people spend their lives striving to keep in the swim. They are miserable in case anyone gets before them, in case a neighbour's car is a better make, in case a neighbour's entertainments are more elaborate…. Two girls came to see me this morning, nice girls, pretty girls, but even my old eyes could see the powder on their faces and their touched-up eyes. And their whole talk was of daft-like dances, and bridge, and absurdities. If they had been my daughters I would have whipped them for their affected manners. And when I think of their grandmother! A decent woman was Mirren Somerville. She lived with her father in that ivy-covered cottage at our gates, and she did sewing for me before she married Banks. She wasn't young when she married. I remember she came to ask my advice. 'D'you care for him, Mirren?' I asked. 'Well, mem, it's no' as if I were a young lassie. I'm forty, and near bye caring. But he's a dacent man, and it's lonely now ma faither's awa, an' I'm a guid cook, an' he would aye come in to a clean fireside.' So she married him and made a good wife to him, and they had one son. And Mirren's son is now Sir John Banks, a baronet and an M.P. Tuts, the thing's ridiculous…. Not that there's anything wrong with the man. He's a soft-tongued, stuffed-looking butler-like creature, with a lot of that low cunning that is known as business instinct, but he was good to his mother. He didn't marry till she died, and she kept house for him in his grand new house—the dear soul with her caps and her broad south-country accent. She managed wonderfully, for she had great natural dignity, and aped nothing. It was the butler killed her. She could cope with the women servants, but when Sir John felt that his dignity required a butler she gave it up. I dare say she was glad enough to go…. 'Eh, mem, I am effrontit,' she used to say to me if I went in and found her spotless kitchen disarranged, and I thought of her to-day when I saw those silly little painted faces, and was glad she had been spared the sight of her descendants…. But what am I raging about? What does it matter to me, when all's said? Let the lassies dress up as long as they have the heart; they'll have long years to learn sense if they're spared…. Miss Reston, did you ever see anything bonnier than Tweed and Hopetoun Woods? Jean, my dear, Lewis Elliot brought me a book last night which really delighted me. Poems by Violet Jacob. If anyone could do for Tweeddale what she has done for Angus I would be glad….
You care for poetry, Miss Reston? In Priorsford it's considered rather a slur on your character to care for poetry. Novels we may discuss, sensible people read novels, even now and again essays or biography, but poetry—there we have to dissemble. We pretend, don't we, Jean?—that poetry is nothing to us. Never a quotation or an allusion escapes us. We listen to tales of servants' misdeeds, we talk of clothes and the ongoings of our neighbours, and we never let on that we would rather talk of poetry. No. No. A daft-like thing for either an old woman or a young one to speak of. Only when we are alone—Jean and Augusta and Lewis Elliot and I—we 'tire the sun with talking and send it down the sky.' … Miss Reston, Lewis Elliot tells me he knew you very well at one time.
Yes, away at the beginning of things. I adored him when I was fifteen and he was twenty. He was wonderfully good to me and Biddy—my brother. It is delightful to find an old friend in a new place.
I'm very fond of Lewis, said Mrs. Hope, "but I wish to goodness he had never inherited Laverlaw. He might have done a lot in the world with his brain and his heart and his courage, but there he is contentedly settled in that green glen of his, and greatly absorbed in sheep. Sheep! The country is run by the Sir John Bankses, and the Lewis Elliots think about sheep. It's all wrong. It's all wrong. The War wakened him up, and he was in the thick of it both in the East and in France, but never in the limelight, you understand, just doggedly doing his best in the background. If he would marry a sensible wife with some ambition, but he's about as much sentiment in him as Jock. It would take an earthquake to shake him into matrimony."
Perhaps, said Pamela, "he is like your friend Mirren—'bye caring.'"
Nonsense, said Mrs. Hope briskly. "He's 'bye' the fervent stage, if he ever was a prisoner in that cage of rushes, which I doubt, but there are long years before him, I hope, and if there isn't a fire of affection on the hearth, and someone always about to listen and understand, it's a dowie business when the days draw in and the nights get longer and colder, and the light departs."
But if it's dreary for a man, said Pamela, "what of us? What of the 'left ladies,' as I heard a child describe spinsters?"
Mrs. Hope's blue eyes, callously calm, surveyed the three spinsters before her.
You will get no pity from me, she said. "It's practically always the woman's own fault if she remains unmarried. Besides, a woman can do fine without a man. A woman has so much within herself she is a constant entertainment to herself. But men are helpless souls. Some of them are born bachelors and they do very well, but the majority are lost without a woman. And angry they would be to hear me say it!… Are you going, Jean?"
Mhor's lessons, said Jean. "I'm frightfully sorry to take Pamela away."
May I come again? Pamela asked.
Surely. Augusta and I will look forward to your next visit. Don't tire of Priorsford yet awhile. Stay among us and learn to love the place. Mrs. Hope smiled very kindly at her guest, and Pamela, stooping down, kissed the hand that held her own.