"Lord Clinchum waved a careless hand. A small portion of blood royal flows in my veins, he said, but it does not worry me at all and after all, he added piously, at the Day of Judgment what will be the Odds?
Mr. Salteena heaved a sigh. I was thinking of this world, he said.—The Young Visiters.
I would like, said Pamela, "to get to know my neighbours. There are six little houses, each exactly like Hillview, and I would like to be able to nod to the owners as I pass. It would be more friendly."
Pamela and Jean, with Mhor and Peter, were walking along the road that contained Hillview and The Rigs.
Every house in this road is a twin, said Mhor, "except The Rigs. It's different from every other house."
They were coming home from a long walk, laden with spoils from the woods: moss for the bowls of bulbs, beautiful bare branches such as Jean loved to stand in blue jars against the creamy walls. Mhor and Peter had been coursing about like two puppies, covering at least four times the ground their elders covered, and were now lagging, weary-footed, much desiring their midday meal.
I don't know, said Jean, pondering on the subject of neighbours, "how you could manage to be friends with them. You see, they are busy people and—it sounds very rude—they haven't time to be bothered with you. Just smile tentatively when you see them and pass the time of day casual-like; you would soon get friendly. There is one house, the one called 'Balmoral,' with the very much decorated windows and the basket of ferns hanging in the front door, where the people are at leisure, and I know would deeply value a little friendliness. Two sisters live in it—Watson is the name—most kindly and hospitable creatures with enough to live on comfortably and keep a small servant, and ample leisure after they have, what Mrs. M'Cosh calls, 'dockit up the hoose,' to entertain and be entertained. They are West country—Glasgow, I think, or Greenock—and they find Priorsford just a little stiff. They've been here about three years, and I'm afraid are rather disappointed that they haven't made more progress socially. I love them personally. They are so genteel, as a rule, but every little while the raciness natural to the West country breaks out."
You are nice to them, Jean, I am sure.
Oh yes, but the penalty of being more or less nice to everyone is that nobody values your niceness: they take it for granted. Whereas the haughty and exclusive, if they do condescend to stoop, are hailed as gods among mortals.
Poor Jean! laughed Pamela. "That is rather hard. It's a poor thing human nature."
It is, Jean agreed. "I went to the dancing-class the other day to see a most unwilling Mhor trip fantastically, and I saw a tiny girl take the hand of an older girl and look admiringly up at her. The older child, with the awful heartlessness of childhood wriggled her hand away and turned her back on her small admirer. The poor mite stood trying not to cry, and presently a still tinier mite came snuggling up to her and took her hand. 'Now,' I thought, 'having learned how cruel a thing a snub is, will she be kind?' Not a bit of it. With the selfsame gesture the older girl had used she wriggled away her hand and turned her back."
Cruel little wretches, said Pamela, "but it's the same with us older children. Apart from sin altogether, it must be hard for God to pardon our childishness … But about the Miss Watsons—d'you think I might call on them?"
Well, they wouldn't call on you, I'm sure of that. Suppose I ask them to meet you, and then you could fix a day for them to have tea with you? It would be a tremendous treat for them, and pleasant for you too—they are very entertaining.
So it was arranged. The Miss Watsons were asked to The Rigs, and to their unbounded satisfaction spent a most genial hour in the company of Miss Reston, whose comings and goings they had watched with breathless interest from behind the elegant sash curtain of Balmoral. On their way home they borrowed a copy of Debrett and studied it all evening.
It was very confusing at first, but at last they ran their quarry to earth. "Here she is … She's the daughter (dau. must mean daughter) of Quintin John, 10th Baron Bidborough. And this'll be her brother, Quintin Reginald Feurbras—what names! Teenie, her mother was an earl's daughter!"
Oh, mercy! wailed Miss Teenie, quite over-come.
Yes, see here. 6th Earl of Champertoun—a Scotch earl too! Lady Ann was her name. Fancy that now!
And her so pleasant! said Miss Teenie.
It just lets you see, said Miss Watson, "the higher up you get in the social scale, the pleasanter and freer people are. You see, they've been there so long they're accustomed to it; their position never gives them a thought: it's the people who have climbed up who keep on wondering if you're noticing how grand they are."
Well, Agnes, said Miss Teenie, "it's a great rise in the world for you and me to be asked to tea with an earl's granddaughter. There's no getting over that. I'm thinking we'll need to polish up our manners. I've an awful habit of drinking my tea with my mouth full. It seems more natural somehow to give it a synd down than to wait to drink till your mouth's empty."
Of course it's more natural, said her sister, "but what's natural's never refined. That's a queer thing when you think of it."
The Miss Watsons called on all their friends in the next few days, and did not fail to mention in each house, accidentally, as it were, that on Wednesday they expected to take tea with Miss Reston, and led on from that fact to glowing details of Miss Reston's ancestry.
The height of their satisfaction was reached when they happened to meet Mrs. Duff-Whalley, who, remembering yeoman service rendered by the sisters at a recent bazaar, stopped them and, greatly condescending, said, "Ah, er—Miss Watson—I'm asking a few local ladies to The Towers on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the subject of a sale of work for the G.F.S. A cup of tea, you understand, and a friendly chat in my own drawing-room You will both join us, I hope?" Her tone held no doubt of their delighted acceptance, but Miss Watson, who had suffered much from Mrs. Duff-Whalley, who had been made use of and then passed unnoticed, taken up when needed and dropped, replied with great deliberation, "Oh, thank you, but we are going to tea with Miss Reston that afternoon. I dare say we shall hear from someone what is decided about the sale of work."
The epoch-making Wednesday dawned at last.
Great consultations had gone on between The Rigs and Hillview how best to make it an enjoyable occasion. Pamela wanted Jean to be present, but Jean thought it better not to be. "It would take away from the glory of the occasion. I'm only a chota Miss, and they are too accustomed to me. Ask Mrs. Jowett. She wouldn't call on the Watsons—the line must be drawn somewhere even by the gentle Mrs. Jowett—but she will be very sweet and nice to them. And Miss Mary Dawson. She is such a kind, comfortable presence in a room—I think that would be a nice little party."
Pamela obediently promised to do as Jean suggested.
I've sent to Fullers' for some cakes, though I don't myself consider them a patch on the Priorsford cakes, but they will be a change and make it more of an occasion. Mawson can make delicious sandwiches and Bella Bathgate has actually offered to bake some scones. I'll make the room look as smart as possible with flowers.
You've no photographs of relations? They would like photographs better than anything.
People they never heard of before, cried Pamela. "What an odd taste!
However, I'll do what I can."
By 11 a.m. the ladies in Balmoral had laid out all they meant to wear—skirts spread neatly on beds, jackets over chair-backs, even to the very best handkerchiefs on the dressing-table waiting for a sprinkle of scent.
At two o'clock they began to dress.
Miss Teenie protested against this disturbance of their afternoon rest, but her sister was firm.
It'll take me every minute of the time, Teenie, for I've all my underclothing to change.
But, mercy me, Miss Reston'll not see your underclothes!
I know that, but when you've on your very best things underneath you feel a sort of respect for yourself, and you're better able to hold your own in whatever company you're in. I don't know what you mean to do, but I'm going to change to the skin.
Miss Teenie nearly always followed the lead of her elder sister, so she meekly went off to look out and air her most self-respecting under garments, though she protested, "Not half aired they'll be, and as likely as not I'll catch my death," and added bitterly, "It's not all pleasure knowing the aristocracy."
They were ready to the last glove-button half an hour before the time appointed, and sat stiffly on two high chairs in their little dining-room. "I think," said Miss Watson, "we'd be as well to think on some subjects to talk on. We must try to choose something that'll interest Miss Reston. I wish I knew more about the Upper Ten."
I'd better not speak at all, said Miss Teenie, who by this time was in a very bad temper. "I never could mind the names of the Royal Family, let alone the aristocracy. I always thought there was a weakness about the people who liked to read in the papers and talk about those kind of folk. I'm sure when I do read about them they're always doing something kind of indecent, like getting divorced. It seems to me they never even make an attempt to be respectable."
She looked round the cosy room and thought how pleasant it would have been if she and her sister had been sitting down to tea as usual, with no need to think of topics. It had been all very well to tell their obviously surprised friends where they were going for tea, but when it came to the point she would infinitely have preferred to stay at home.
She'll not likely have any notion of a proper tea, Miss Watson said. "Scraps of thin bread and butter, mebbe, and a cake, so don't you look disappointed Teenie, though I know you like your tea. Just toy with it, you know."
No, I don't know, said Miss Teenie crossly. "I never 'toyed' with my tea yet, and I'm not going to begin. It'll likely be China tea anyway, and I'd as soon drink dish-water."
Miss Watson looked bitterly at her sister.
You'll never rise in the world, Teenie, if you can't give up a little comfort for the sake of refinement Fancy making a fuss about China tea when it's handed to you by an earl's granddaughter.
Miss Teenie made no reply to this except to burst—as was a habit of hers—into a series of violent sneezes, at which her sister's wrath broke out.
"
That's the most uncivilised sneeze I ever heard. If you do that before Miss Reston, Teenie, I'll be tempted to do you an injury.
"Miss Teenie blew her nose pensively. "I doubt I've got a chill changing my underclothes in the middle of the day, but 'a little pride and a little pain,' as my mother used to say when she screwed my hair with curl-papers…. I suppose it'll do if we stay an hour?"
Things are rarely as bad as we anticipate, and, as it turned out, not only Miss Watson, but the rebellious Miss Teenie, looked back on that tea-party as one of the pleasantest they had ever taken part in, and only Heaven knows how many tea-parties the good ladies had attended in their day.
They were judges of china and fine linen, and they looked appreciatively at the table. There were the neatest of tea-knives, the daintiest of spoons, jam glowed crimson through crystal, butter was there in a lordly dish, cakes from London, delicate sandwiches, Miss Bathgate's best and lightest in the way of scones, shortbread crisp from the oven of Mrs. M'Cosh.
And here was Miss Reston looking lovely and exotic in a wonderful tea-frock, a class of garment hitherto unknown to the Miss Watsons, who thrilled at the sight. Her welcome was so warm that it seemed to the guests, accustomed to the thus-far-and-no-further manner of the Priorsford great ladies, almost exuberant. She led Miss Teenie to the most comfortable chair, she gave Miss Watson a footstool and put a cushion at her back, and talked so simply, and laughed so naturally, that the Miss Watsons forgot entirely to choose their topics and began on what was uppermost in their minds, the fact that Robina (the little maid) had actually managed that morning to break the gazogene.
Pamela, who had not a notion what a gazogene was, gasped the required surprise and horror and said, "But how did she do it?" which was the safest remark she could think of.
Banged it in the sink, said Miss Watson, with a dramatic gesture, "and the bottom came out. I never thought it was possible to break a gazogene with all that wire-netting about it."
Robina, said Miss Teenie gloomily, "could break a steam-roller let alone a gazogene."
It'll be an awful miss, said her sister. "We've had it so long, and it always stood on the sideboard with a bottle of lemon-syrup beside it."
Pamela was puzzling to think what this could be that stood on a sideboard companioned by lemon-syrup and compassed with wire-netting when Mawson showed in Mrs. Jowett, and with her Miss Mary Dawson, and the party was complete.
The Miss Watsons greeted the newcomers brightly, having met them on bazaar committees and at Red Cross work parties, and having always been treated courteously by both ladies. They were quite willing to sink at once into a lower place now that two denizens of the Hill had come, but Pamela would have none of it.
They were the reason of the party; she made that evident at once.
Miss Teenie did not attempt the impossible and "toy" with her tea. There was no need to. The tea was delicious, and she drank three cups. She tried everything on the table and pronounced everything excellent. Never had she felt herself so entertaining such a capital talker as now, with Pamela smiling and applauding every effort. Mrs. Jowett too, gentle lady, listened with most gratifying interest, and Miss Mary Dawson threw in kind, sensible remarks at intervals. There was no arguing, no disagreeing, everybody "clinked" with everybody else—a most pleasant party.
And isn't it awful, said Miss Watson in a pause, "about our minister marrying?"
Pamela waited for further information before she spoke, while Mrs.
Jowett said, "Don't you consider it a suitable match?"
Oh, well, said Miss Watson, "I just meant that it was awful unexpected. He's been a bachelor so long, and then to marry a girl twenty years younger than himself and a 'Piscipalian into the bargain."
But how sporting of him, Pamela said.
Sporting? said Miss Watson doubtfully, vague thoughts of guns and rabbits floating through her mind. "Of course you're a 'Piscipalian too, Miss Reston, so is Mrs. Jowett: I shouldn't have mentioned it."
I'm afraid I'm not much of anything, Pamela confessed, "but Jean Jardine has great hopes of making me a Presbyterian. I have been going with her to hear her own most delightful parson—Mr. Macdonald."
A dear old man, said Mrs. Jowett; "he does preach so beautifully."
Mr. Macdonald's church is the old Free Kirk, now U.F., you know, said Miss Watson in an instructive tone. "The Jardines are great Free Kirk people, like the Hopes of Hopetoun—but the Parish is far more class, you know what I mean? You've more society there."
What a delightful reason for worshipping in a church! Pamela said.
"But please tell me more about your minister's bride—does she belong to Priorsford?
"English, said Miss Teenie, "and smokes, and plays golf, and wears skirts near to her knees. What in the world she'll look like at the missionary work party or attending the prayer meeting—I cannot think. Poor Mr. Morrison must be demented, and he is such a good preacher."
She will settle down, said Miss Dawson in her slow, sensible way. "She's really a very likeable girl; and if she puts all the energy she uses to play games into church-work she will be a great success. And it will be an interest having a young wife at the manse."
I don't know, said Miss Watson doubtfully. "I always think a minister's wife should have a little money and a strong constitution and be able to play the harmonium."
Miss Watson had not intended to be funny, and was rather surprised at the laughter of her hostess.
It seems to me, she said, "that the poor woman would need a strong constitution."
Well, anyway, said Miss Teenie, "she would need the money; ministers have so many claims on them. And they've a position to keep up. Here, of course, they have manses, but in Glasgow they sometimes live in flats. I don't think that's right. … A minister should always live in a villa, or at least in a 'front door.'"
Is your minister's bride pretty? Pamela asked.
Miss Watson got in her word first. "Pretty," she said, "but not in a ministerial way, if you know what I mean. I wouldn't call her ladylike."
What would you call 'ladylike'? Pamela asked.
Well, a good height, you know, and a nice figure and a pleasant face and tidy hair. The sort of person that looks well in a grey coat and skirt and a feather boa.
I know exactly. What a splendid description!
Now, continued Miss Watson, much elated by the praise, "Mrs. Morrison is very conspicuous looking. She's got yellow hair and a bright colour, and a kind of bold way of looking."
She's a complex character, sighed Mrs. Jowett; "she wears snakeskin shoes. But you must be kind to her, Miss Watson. I think she would appreciate kindness."
Oh, so we are kind to her. The congregation subscribed and gave a grand piano for a wedding-present. Wasn't that good? She is very musical, you know, and plays the violin beautifully. That'll be very useful at church meetings.
I can't imagine, said Miss Dawson, "why we should consider a minister's wife and her talents as the property of the congregation. A doctor's wife isn't at the beck and call of her husband's patients, a lawyer's wife isn't briefed along with her husband. It doesn't seem to me fair."
How odd, said Pamela; "only yesterday I was talking to Mrs. Macdonald—Jean's minister's wife—and I said just what you say, that it seems hard that the time of a minister's wife should be at the mercy of everyone, and she said, 'My dear, it's our privilege, and if I had my life to live again I would ask nothing better than to be a hard-working minister's hard-working wife.' I stand hat in hand before that couple. When you think what they have given all these years to this little town—what qualities of heart and head. The tact of an ambassador (Mrs. Macdonald has that), the eloquence of a Wesley, a largesse of sympathy and help and encouragement, not to speak of more material things to everyone in need, and all at the rate of £250 per annum. Prodigious!"
Yes, said Miss Dawson, "they have been a blessing to Priorsford for more than forty years. Mr. Macdonald is a saint, but a saint is a great deal the better of a practical wife. Mrs. Macdonald is an example of what can be accomplished by a woman both in a church and at home. I sit rebuked before her."
Oh, my dear, said Mrs. Jowett, "no one could possibly be more helpful than you and your sisters. It's I who am the drone…. Now I must go."
The Miss Watsons outstayed the other guests, and Pamela, remembering Jean's advice, produced a few stray photographs of relations which were regarded with much interest and some awe. The photograph of her brother, Lord Bidborough, they could hardly lay down. Finally, Pamela presented them with flowers and a basket of apples newly arrived from Bidborough Manor, and they returned to Balmoral walking on air.
Such pleasant company and such a tea, said Miss Watson. "She had out all her best things."
And Mrs. Jowett and Miss Dawson were asked to meet us, exulted Miss
Teenie.
And very affable they were, added her sister. But when the sisters had removed their best clothes and were seated in the dining-room with the cloth laid for supper, Miss Teenie said, "All the same, it's fine to be back in our own house and not to have to heed about manners." She pulled a low chair close to the fire as she spoke and spread her skirt back over her knee and, thoroughly comfortable and at peace with the world, beamed on her sister, who replied:
What do you say to having some toasted cheese to our supper?
"I hear the whaups on windy days
Cry up among the peat
Whaur, on the road that spiels the braes,
I've heard ma ain sheep's feet.
An' the bonnie lambs wi' their canny ways
And the silly yowes that bleat."
Songs of Angus.
Mhor, having but lately acquired the art of writing, was fond of exercising his still very shaky pen where and when he could.
One morning, by reason of neglecting his teeth, and a few other toilet details, he was able to be downstairs ten minutes before breakfast, and spent the time in the kitchen, plaguing Mrs. M'Cosh to let him write an inscription in her Bible.
What wud ye write? she asked suspiciously.
I would write, said Mhor—"I would write, 'From Gervase Taunton to
Mrs. M'Cosh.'"
That wud be a lee, said Mrs. M'Cosh, "for I got it frae ma sister
Annie, her that's in Australia. Here see, there's a post-caird for ye.
It's a rale nice yin.—Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. There's Annackers'
shope as plain's plain."
Mhor looked discontentedly at the offering. "I wish," he said slowly—"I wish I had a post-card of a hippopotamus being sick."
Ugh, you want unnaitural post-cairds. Think on something wise-like, like a guid laddie.
Mhor considered. "If you give me a sheet of paper and an envelope I might write to the Lion at the Zoo."
For the sake of peace Mrs. M'Cosh produced the materials, and Mhor sat down at the table, his elbows spread out, his tongue protruding. He had only managed "Dear Lion," when Jean called him to go upstairs and wash his teeth and get a clean handkerchief.
The sun was shining into the dining-room, lighting up the blue china on the dresser, and catching the yellow lights in Jean's hair.
What a silly morning for November, growled Jock. "What's the sun going on shining like that for? You'd think it thought it was summer."
In winter, said Mhor, "the sky should always be grey. It's more suitable."
What a couple of ungrateful creatures you are, Jean said; "I'm ashamed of you. And as it happens you are going to have a great treat because of the good day. I didn't tell you because I thought it would very likely pour. Cousin Lewis said if it was a good day he would send the car to take us to Laverlaw to luncheon. It's really because of Pamela; she has never been there. So you must ask to get away at twelve, Jock, and I'll go up with Pamela and collect Mhor."
Mhor at once left the table and, without making any remark, stood on his head on the hearthrug. Thus did his joy find vent. Jock, on the other hand, seemed more solemnised than gleeful.
That's the first time I've ever had a prayer answered, he announced. "I couldn't do my Greek last night, and I prayed that I wouldn't be at the class—and I won't be. Gosh, Maggie!"
Oh, Jock, his sister protested, "that's not what prayers are for."
Mebbe not, but I've managed it this time, and, unrepentant, Jock started on another slice of bread and butter.
Jean told Pamela of Jock's prayer as they went together to fetch Mhor from school.
But Mhor is a much greater responsibility than Jock. You know where you are with Jock: underneath is a bedrock of pure goodness. You see, we start with the enormous advantage of having had forebears of the very decentest—not great, not noble, but men who feared God and honoured the King—men who lived justly and loved mercy. It would be most uncalled for of us to start out on bypaths with such a straight record behind us. But Mhor, bless him, is different. I haven't a notion what went to the making of him. I seem to see behind him a long line of men and women who danced and laughed and gambled and feasted, light-hearted, charming people. I sometimes think I hear them laugh as I teach Mhor What is the chief end of man? … I couldn't love Mhor more if he really were my little brother, but I know that my hold over him is of the frailest. It's only now that I have him. I must make the most of the present—the little boy days—before life takes him away from me.
You will have his heart always, Pamela comforted her. "He won't forget. He has been rooted and grounded in love."
Jean winked away the tears that had forced their way into her eyes, and laughed.
I'm bringing him up a Presbyterian. I did try him with the Creed. He listened politely, and said carelessly, 'It all seems rather sad—Pilate is a nice name, but not Pontius.' Then Jock laughed at him learning, 'What is your name, A or B?' and Mhor himself preferred to go to the root of the matter with our Shorter Catechism, and answer nobly if obscurely—Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever. Indeed, he might be Scots in his passion for theology. The other night he went to bed very displeased with me, and said, 'You needn't read me any more of that narsty Bible,' but when I went up to say good-night he greeted me with, 'How can I keep the commandments when I can't even remember what they are?' … This is Mhor's school, or rather Miss Main's school.
They went up the steps of a pretty, creeper-covered house.
It once belonged to an artist, Jean explained. "There is a great big light studio at the back which makes an ideal schoolroom. It's an ideal school altogether. Miss Main and her young stepsister are born teachers, full of humour and understanding, as well as being brilliantly clever—far too clever really for this job; but if they don't mind we needn't complain. They get the children on most surprisingly, and teach them all sorts of things outside their lessons. Mhor is always astonishing me with his information about things going on in the world…. Yes, do come in. They won't mind. You would like to see the children."
I would indeed. But won't Miss Main object to us interrupting—
Miss Main at once reassured her on that point, and said that both she and the scholars loved visitors. She took them into the large schoolroom where twenty small people of various sizes sat with their books, very cheerfully imbibing knowledge.
Mhor and another small boy occupied one desk.
Jean greeted the small boy as "Sandy," and asked him what he was studying at that moment.
I don't know, said Sandy.
Sandy, said Miss Main, "don't disgrace your teachers. You know you are learning the multiplication table. What are three times three?"
Sandy merely looked coy.
Mhor?
Six, said Mhor, after some thought.
Hopeless, said Miss Main. "Come and speak to my sister Elspeth, Miss
Reston."
My sister Elspeth was a tall, fair girl with merry blue eyes.
Do you teach the Mhor? Pamela asked her.
I have that honour, said Miss Elspeth, and began to laugh. "He always arrives full of ideas. This morning he had thought out a plan to stop the rain. The sky, he said, must be gone over with glue, but he gave it up when he remembered how sticky it would be for the angels…. He has the most wonderful feeling for words of any child I ever taught. He can't, for instance, bear to hear a Bible story told in everyday language. The other children like it broken down to them, but Mhor pleads for 'the real words.' He likes the swing and majesty of them…. I was reading them Kipling's story, Servants of the Queen, the other day. You know where it makes the oxen speak of the walls of the city falling, 'and the dust went up as though many cattle were coming home.' I happened to look up, and there was Mhor with lamps lit in those wonderful green eyes of his, gazing at me. He said, 'I like that bit. It's a nice bit. I think it should be at the end of a sad story.' And he uses words well himself, have you noticed? The other day he came and thrust a dead field-mouse into my hand. I squealed and dropped it, and he said, 'Afraid? And of such a calm little gentleman?'"
Pamela asked if Mhor's behaviour was good.
Only fair, said pretty Miss Elspeth. "He always means to be good, but he is inhabited by an imp of mischief that prompts him to do the most improbable things. He certainly doesn't make for peace in the school, but he keeps 'a body frae languor.' I like a naughty boy myself much better than a good one. He's the 'more natural beast of the twain.'"
Outside, with the freed Mhor capering before them, Pamela was enthusiastic over the little school and its mistresses.
Miss Main looks like an old miniature, with her white hair and her delicate colouring, and is wise and kind and sensible as well; and as for that daffodil girl, Elspeth, she is a sheer delight.
Yes, Jean agreed. "Hasn't she charming manners? It is so good for the children to be with her. She is so polite to them that they can't be anything but gentle and considerate in return. Heaps of girls would think school-marming very dull, but Elspeth makes it into a sort of daily entertainment. They manage, she and her sister, to make the dullest child see some glimmer of reason in learning lessons. I do wish I had had a teacher like that. I had a governess who taught me like a parrot. She had no notion how to make the dry bones live. I thought I scored by learning as little as I possibly could. The consequence is I'm almost entirely illiterate…. There's the car waiting, and Jock prancing impatiently. Run in for your thick coat, Mhor. No, you can't take Peter. He chased sheep last time and fought the other dogs and made himself a nuisance."
Mhor was now pleading that he might sit in the front beside the chauffeur and cry "Honk, honk," as they went round corners.
Well, said Jean, "choose whether it will be going or coming back. Jock must sit there one time."
Mhor, as he always did, grasped the pleasure of the moment, and clambered into the seat beside the chauffeur, an old and valued friend, whom he greeted familiarly as "Tam."
The road to Laverlaw ran through the woods behind Peel, dipped into the Manor Valley and, emerging, made straight for the hills, which closed down round it as though jealous of the secrets they guarded. It seemed to a stranger as if the road led nowhere, for nothing was to be seen for miles except bare hillsides and a brawling burn. Suddenly the road took a turn, a white bridge spanned the noisy Laverlaw Water, and there at the opening of a wide, green glen stood the house.
Lewis Elliot was waiting at the doorstep to greet them. He had been out all morning, and with him were his two dogs, Rab and Wattie. Jock and Mhor threw themselves on them with many-endearing names, before they even looked at their host.
Is luncheon ready? was Mhor's greeting.
Why? Are you hungry?
Oh yes, but it's not that. I wondered if there would be time to go to the stables. Tam says there are some new puppies.
I'd keep the puppies for later, if I were you, Lewis Elliot advised. "You'd better have luncheon while your hands are fairly clean. Jean will be sure to make you wash them if you go mucking about in the stables."
Mhor nodded. He was no Jew, and took small pleasure in the outward cleansing of the cup and platter. Soap and water seemed to him almost quite unnecessary, and he had greatly admired and envied the Laplanders since Jock had told him that that hardy race rarely, if ever, washed.
I hope you weren't cold in that open car, Lewis Elliot said as he helped Pamela and Jean to remove their wraps. "D'you mind coming into my den? It's warm, if untidy. The drawing-room is so little used that it's about as cheerful as a tomb."
He led them through the panelled hall, down a long passage hung with sporting prints, into what was evidently a much-liked and much-used room.
Books were everywhere, lining the walls, lying in heaps on tables, some even piled on the floor, but a determined effort had evidently been made to tidy things a little, for papers had been collected into bundles, pipes had been thrust into corners, and bowls of chrysanthemums stood about to sweeten the tobacco-laden atmosphere.
A large fire burned on the hearth, and Lewis pulled up some masculine-looking arm-chairs and asked the ladies to sit in them, but Jean along with Jock and Mhor were already engrossed in books, and their neglected host looked at them with disgust.
Such are the primitive manners of the Jardine family, he said to Pamela. "If you want a word out of them you must lock up all printed matter before they approach. Thank goodness, that's the gong! They can't read while they're feeding."
Honourable, said Mhor, as they ate their excellent luncheon. "Isn't
Laverlaw a lovely place?"
Pamela agreed. "I never saw anything so indescribably green. It wears the fairy livery. I can easily picture True Thomas walking by that stream."
Long ago, said Jock in his gruff voice, "there was a keep at Laverlaw instead of a house, and Cousin Lewis' ancestors stole cattle from England, and there were some fine fights in this glen. Laverlaw Water would run red with blood."
Jock, Jean protested, "you needn't say it with such relish."
Pamela turned to her host.
"
Priorsford seems to think you find yourself almost too contented at Laverlaw. Mrs. Hope says you are absorbed in sheep.
"Lewis Elliot looked amused. "I can imagine the scorn Mrs. Hope put into her voice as she said 'sheep.' But one must be absorbed in something—why not sheep?"
I like a sheep, said Jock, and he quoted:
"'Its conversation is not deep,
But then, observe its face.'"
You may be surprised to hear, said Lewis, "that sheep are almost like fine ladies in their ways: they have megrims, it appears. I found one the other day lying on the hill more or less dead to the world, and I went a mile or two out of my way to tell the shepherd. All he said was, 'I ken that yowe. She aye comes ower dwamy in an east wind.' … But tell me, Jean, how is Miss Reston conducting herself in Priorsford?"
With the greatest propriety, I assure you, Pamela replied for herself. "Aren't I, Jean? I have dined with Mrs. Duff-Whalley and been introduced to 'the County.' You were regrettably absent from that august gathering, I seem to remember. I have lunched with the Jowetts, and left the table without a stain either on the cloth or my character, but it was a great nervous strain. I thought of you, Jock, old man, and deeply sympathised with your experience. I have been to quite a lot of tea-parties, and I have given one or two. Indeed, I am becoming as absorbed in Priorsford as you are in sheep."
You have been to Hopetoun, I know.
Yes, but don't mix that up with ordinary tea-parties That is an experience to keep apart. She holds the imagination, that old woman, with her sharp tongue, and her haggard, beautiful eyes, and her dead sons. To know Mrs. Hope and her daughter is something to be thankful for.
I quite agree. The Hopes do much to leaven the lump. But I expect you find it rather a lump.
Honestly, I don't. I'm not being superior, please don't think so, or charitable, or pretending to find good in everything, but I do like the Priorsford people. Some of them are interesting, and nearly all of them are dears.
Even Mrs. Duff-Whalley?
Well, she is rather a caricature, but there are oddly nice bits about her, if only she weren't so overpoweringly opulent. The ospreys in her hat seem to shriek money, and her furs smother one, and that house of hers remains so starkly new. If only creepers would climb up and hide its staring red-and-white face, and ivy efface some of the decorations, but no—I expect she likes it as it is. But there is something honest about her very vulgarity. She knows what she wants and goes straight for it; and she isn't a fool. The daughter is. She was intended by nature to be a dull young woman with a pretty face, but not content with that she puts on an absurdly skittish manner—oh, so ruthlessly bright—talks what she thinks is smart slang, poses continually, and wears clothes that would not be out of place at Ascot, but are a positive offence to the little grey town. I hadn't realised how gruesome provincial smartness could be until I met Muriel Duff-Whalley.
Oh, poor Muriel! Jean protested. "You've done for her anyway. But you're wrong in thinking her stupid. She only comes to The Rigs when she isn't occupied with smart friends and is rather dull—I don't see her in her more exalted moments; but I assure you, after she has done talking about 'the County,' and after the full blast of 'dear Lady Tweedie' is over, she is a very pleasant companion, and has nice delicate sorts of thoughts. She's really far too clever to be as silly as she sometimes is—I can't quite understand her. Perhaps she does it to please her mother."
Jean's disgustingly fond of finding out the best in people, Pamela objected.
Priorsford is a most charming town, said Mr. Elliot, "but I never find its inhabitants interesting."
No, Jean said, "but you don't try, do you? You stay here in your 'wild glen sae green,' and only have your own friends to visit you—"
Are you, Pamela asked Lewis, "like a woman I know who boasts that she knows no one in her country place, but gets her friends and her fish from London?"
No, I'm not in the least exclusive, only rather blate, and, I suppose, uninterested. Do you know, I was rather glad to hear you begin to slang the unfortunate Miss Duff-Whalley. It was more like the Pamela Reston I used to know. I didn't recognise her in the tolerant, all-loving lady.
Oh, cried Pamela, "you are cruel to the girl I once was. The years mellow. Surely you welcome improvement, even while you remind me of my sins and faults of youth."
I don't think, Lewis Elliot said slowly, "that I ever allowed myself to think that the Pamela Reston I knew needed improvement. That would have savoured of sacrilege…. Are we finished? We might have coffee in the other room."
Pamela looked at her host as she rose from the table, and said, "Years have brought clearer eyes for faults."
I wonder, said Lewis Elliot, as he put a large chocolate into Mhor's ever-ready mouth.
Before going home they went for a walk up the glen. Jean and the boys, very much at home, were in front, while Lewis named the surrounding hills and explained the lie of the land to Pamela. They fell into talk of younger days, and laughed over episodes they had not thought of for twenty years.
And, do you know, Biddy's coming home? Pamela said. "I keep remembering that with a most delightful surprise. I haven't seen him for more than a year—my beloved Biddy!"
He was a most charming boy, Lewis said. "I suppose he would be about fifteen when last I saw him. How old is he now?"
Thirty-five. But such a young thirty-five. He has always been doing the most youth-preserving things, chasing over the world after adventures, like a boy after butterflies, seeing new peoples, walking in untrodden ways. If he had lived in more spacious days he would have sailed with Francis Drake and helped to singe the King of Spain's beard. Oh, I do think you will still like Biddy. The charm he had at fifteen he hasn't lost one little bit. He has still the same rather shy manner and slow way of speaking and sudden, affection-winning smile. The War has changed him of course, emptied and saddened his life, and he isn't the light-foot lad he was six years ago. When it was all over he went off for one more year's roving. He has a great project which I don't suppose will ever be accomplished—to climb Everest. He and three great friends had arranged it all before the War, but everything of course was stopped, and whatever happens he will never climb it with those three friends. They had to scale greater heights than Everest. It is a sober and responsible Biddy who is coming back, to settle down and look after his places, and go into politics, perhaps—
They walked together in comfortable silence.
Jean, in front, turned round and waved to them.
I'm glad, said Lewis, "that you and Jean have made friends. Jean—" He stopped.
Pamela stood very still for a second, and then said, "Yes?"
Jean and her brothers are sort of cousins of mine. I've always been fond of them, and my mother and I used to try to give them a good time when we could, for Great-aunt Alison's was rather an iron rule. But a man alone is such a helpless object, as Mrs. Hope often reminds me. It isn't fair that Jean shouldn't have her chance. She never gets away, and her youth is being spoiled by care. She is such a quaint little person with her childlike face and motherly ways! I do wish something could be done.
Jean must certainly have her chance, said Pamela. She took a long breath, as if she had been under water and had come to the surface. "I've said nothing about it to anyone, but I am greatly hoping that some arrangement can be made about sending the boys away to school and letting me carry off Jean. I want her to forget that she ever had to think about money worries. I want her to play with other boys and girls. I want her to marry."
Yes, that would be a jolly good scheme. Lewis Elliot's voice was hearty in its agreement. "It really is exceedingly kind of you. You've lifted a weight from my mind—though what business I have to push my weights on to you…. Yes, Jean, perhaps we ought to be turning back. The car is ordered for four o'clock. I wish you would stay to tea, but I expect you are dying to get back to Priorsford. That little town has you in its thrall."
I wish, said Jock, "that The Rigs could be lifted up by some magician and plumped down in Laverlaw Glen."
Oh, Jock, wouldn't that be fine? sighed the Mhor. "Plumped right down at the side of the burn, and then we could fish out of the windows."
The sun had left the glen, the Laverlaw Water ran wan; it seemed suddenly to have become a wild and very lonely place.
Now I can believe about the raiders coming over the hills in an autumn twilight, said Pamela. "There is something haunted about this place. In Priorsford we are all close together and cosy: that's what I love about it."
You've grown quite suburban, Lewis taunted her. "Jean, I was told a story about two Priorsford ladies the other day. They were in London and went to see Pavlova dance at the Palace, for the first time. It was her last appearance that season, and the curtain went down on Pavlova embedded in bouquets, bowing her thanks to an enraptured audience, the house rocking with enthusiasm. The one Priorsford lady turned to the other Priorsford lady and said, 'Awfully like Mrs. Wishart!'"
As the car moved off, Jock's voice could be heard asking, "And who was
Mrs. Wishart?"
"Hast any philosophy in thee?"
As You Like It.
Miss Bella Bathgate was a staunch supporter of the Parish Kirk. She had no use for any other denomination, and no sympathy with any but the Presbyterian form of worship. Episcopalians she regarded as beneath contempt, and classed them in her own mind with "Papists"—people who were more mischievous and almost as ignorant as "the heathen" for whom she collected small sums quarterly, and for whom the minister prayed as "sitting in darkness." Miss Bathgate had developed a real, if somewhat contemptuous, affection for Mawson, her lodger's maid, but she never ceased to pour scorn on her "English ways" and her English worship. If Mawson had not been one of the gentlest of creatures she would not have tolerated it for a day.
One wet and windy evening Bella sat waiting for Mawson to come in to supper. She had gone to a week-night service at the church, greatly excited because the Bishop was to be present. The supper was ready and keeping hot in the oven, the fire sparkled in the bright range, and Bella sat crocheting and singing to herself, "From Greenland's icy mountains." For Bella was passionately interested in missions. The needs of the heathen lay on her heart. Every penny she could scrape together went into "the box." The War had reduced her small income, and she could no longer live without letting her rooms, but whatever she had to do without her contributions to missions never faltered; indeed, they had increased. Missions were the romance of her life. They put a scarlet thread into the grey. The one woman she had ever envied was Mary Slessor of Calabar.
Mawson came in much out of breath, having run up the hill to get out of the darkness.
Weel, and hoo's the Bishop? Bella said in jocular tones.
Ow, 'e was lovely. 'E said the Judgment was 'anging over all of us.
Oh, wumman, said Bella, as she dumped a loaf viciously on the platter, "d'ye need a Bishop to tell ye that? I'm sure I've kent it a' ma days."
It gives me the creeps to think of it. Imagine standin' h'up before h'all the earth and 'aving all your little bits o' sins fetched out against you! But—hopefully—"I don't see myself 'ow there'll be time."
Ay, there'll be time! There'll be a' Eternity afore us, and as far as I can see there'll be naething else to do.
Ow, Mawson wailed. "You do make it sound so 'orrid, Bella. The Bishop was much more comfortable, and 'e 'as such a nice rosy face you can't picture anything very bad 'appening to 'im. But I suppose Bishops'll be judged like everyone else."
They will that. Bella's tone was emphatic, almost vindictive.
Oh, well, said Mawson, who looked consistently on the bright sides, "I dare say they won't pay much h'attention to the likes of us when they've Kings and Bishops and M.P.'s and London ladies to judge. Their sins will be a bit more interestin' than my little lot…. Well, I'll be glad of a cup of tea, for it's thirsty work listening to sermons. I'll just lay me 'at and coat down 'ere, if you don't mind, Bella. Now, this is cosy. I was thinkin' of this as I came paddin' over the bridge listening to the sound of the wind and the water. A river's a frightenin' sort of thing at night and after 'earin' about the Judgment too."
Miss Bathgate took a savoury-smelling dish from the oven and put it, along with two hot plates, before Mawson, then put the teapot before herself and they began.
Whaur's Miss Reston the nicht? Bella asked, as she helped herself to hot buttered toast.
Dinin' with Sir John and Lady Tweedie. She's wearin' a lovely new gown, sort of yellow. It suited her a treat. I must say she did look noble. She is 'andsome, don't you think?
Terrible lang and lean, said Miss Bathgate. "But I'm no denyin' that there's a kind o' look aboot her that's no common. She would mak' a guid queen if we had ony need o' anither." "She makes a good mistress anyway," said loyal Mawson.
Oh, she's no bad, Bella admitted. "An' I must say she disna gie much trouble—but it's an idle life for ony wumman. I canna see why Miss Reston, wi' a' her faculties aboot her, needs you hingin' round her. Mercy me, what's to hinder her pu'in ribbons through her ain underclothes, if ribbons are necessary, which they're not. There's Mrs. Muir next door, wi' six bairns, an' a' the wark o' the hoose to dae an' washin's forbye, an' here's Miss Reston never liftin' a finger except to pu' silk threads through a bit stuff. That's what makes folk Socialists."
Mawson, who belonged to that fast disappearing body, the real servant class, and who, without a thought of envy, delighted in the possession of her mistress, looked sadly puzzled.
But, Beller, don't you think things work out more h'even than they seem? Mrs. Muir next door works very 'ard. I've seen her put out a washin' by seven o'clock in the morning, but then she 'as a good 'usband and an 'ealthy family and much pleasure in 'er work. Miss Reston lies soft and drinks her mornin' tea in comfort, but she never knows the satisfied feelin' that Mrs. Muir 'as when she takes in 'er clean clothes.
Weel, mebbe you're right. I'm nae Socialist masel'. There maun aye be rich and poor, Dives in the big hoose and Lazarus at the gate. But so long as we're sure that Dives'll catch it in the end, and Lazarus lie soft in Abraham's bosom, we can pit up wi' the unfairness here. An' speakin' about Miss Reston, I dinna mind her no' working. Ye can see by the look of her that she never was meant to work, but just to get everything done for her. Can ye picture her peelin' tatties? The verra thocht's rideeclus. She's juist for lookin' at, like the floors and a' the bonnie things … But it's thae new folk that pit up ma birse. That Mrs. Duff-Whalley, crouse cat! Rollin' aboot wrap up in furs in a great caur, patronisin' everybody that's daft enough to let theirselves be patronised by her. Onybody could see she's no used to it. She's so ta'en up wi' hersel'. It's kinda play-actin' for her … An' there's naebody gives less to charitable objects. I suppose when ye've paid and fed sae mony servants, and dressed yersel' in silks and satins, and bocht every denty ye can think of, and kept up a great big hoose an' a great muckle caur, there's no' that much left for the kirk-plate, or the heathen, or the hospitals … Oh, it's peetifu'!
Mawson nodded wisely. "There's plenty Mrs. Duff-Whalleys about; you be thankful you've only one in the place. Priorsford is a very charitable place, I think. The poor people here don't know they're born after London, and the clergy seem very active too."
Oh, they are that. I daur say they're as guid as is gaun. Mr. Morrison is a fine man if marriage disna ruin him.
Oh, surely not!
There's no sayin', said Bella gloomily. "She's young and flighty, but there's wan thing, she has no money. I kent a minister—he was a kinda cousin o' ma father's—an' he mairret a heiress and they had late denner. I tell ye that late denner was the ruin o' that man. It fair got between him an' his jidgment. He couldna veesit his folk at a wise-like hour in the evening because he was gaun to hev his denner, and he couldna get oot late because his leddy-wife wanted him to be at hame efter denner. There's mony a thing to cause a minister to stumble, for they're juist human beings after a', but his rich mairrage was John Allison's undoing."
Marriage, sighed Mawson, "is a great risk. It's often as well to be single, but I sometimes think Providence must ha' meant me to 'ave an 'usband—I'm such a clingin' creature."
Such sentiments were most distasteful to Miss Bathgate, that self-reliant spinster, and she said bitterly:
Ma wumman, ye're ill off for something to cling to! I never saw the man yet that I wud be pitten up wi'.
Ho! I shouldn't say that, but I must say I couldn't fancy a h'undertaker. Just imagine 'im 'andlin' the dead and then 'andlin' me!
Eh, ye nesty cratur, said Bella, much disgusted "But I suppose ye're meaning English undertakers—men that does naething but work wi' funerals—a fearsome ill job. Here it's the jiner that does a' thing, so it's faur mair homely."
Speakin' about marriages, said Mawson, who preferred cheerful subjects, "I do enjoy a nice weddin'. The motors and the bridesmaids and the flowers. Is there no chance of a weddin' 'ere?"
Miss Bathgate shook her head.
Why not Miss Jean? Mawson suggested.
Again Miss Bathgate shook her head.
Nae siller, she said briefly.
What! No money, you mean? But h'every gentleman ain't after money. Mawson's expression grew softly sentimental as she added, "Many a one marries for love, like the King and the beggar-maid."
Mebbe, said Bella, "but the auld rhyme's oftener true:
"'Be a lassie ne'er sae black,
Gie her but the name o' siller,
Set her up on Tintock tap
An' the wind'll blaw a man till her.
Be a lassie ne'er sae fair,
Gin she hinna penny-siller,
A flea may fell her in the air
Ere a man be evened till her.'
I would like fine to see Miss Jean get a guid man, for she's no' a bad lassie, but I doot she'll never manage't.
Oh, Beller, you do take an 'opeless view of things. I think it's because you wear black so much. Now I must say I like a bit o' bright colour. I think it gives one bright thoughts.
I aye wear black, said Bella firmly, as she carried the supper dishes to the scullery, "and then, as the auld wifie said, 'Come daith, come sacrament, I'm ready!'"
"Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon, may a man buy for a remuneration?"—Comedy of Errors.
The living-room at The Rigs was the stage of many plays. Its uses ranged from the tent of a ménagerie or the wigwam of an Indian brave to the Forest of Arden.
This December night it was a "wood near Athens," and to Mhor, if to no one else, it faithfully represented the original. That true Elizabethan needed no aids to his imagination. "This is a wood," said Mhor, and a wood it was. "Is all our company here?" and to him the wood was peopled by Quince and Snug, by Bottom the weaver, by Puck and Oberon. Titania and her court he reluctantly admitted were necessary to the play, but he did not try to visualise them, regarding them privately as blots. The love-scenes between Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, were omitted, because Jock said they were "awful silly."
It was Friday evening, so Jock had put off learning his lessons till the next day, and, as Bully Bottom, was calling over the names of his cast.
Are we all met?
Pat, pat, said Mhor, who combined in his person all the other parts, "and here's a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal; this green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action as we will do it before the duke."
Pamela Reston, in her usual place, the corner of the sofa beside the fire, threaded her needle with a bright silk thread, and watched the players amusedly.
Did you ever think, she asked Jean, who sat on a footstool beside her—a glowing figure in a Chinese coat given her by Pamela, engaged rather incongruously in darning one of Jock's stockings—"did you ever think what it must have been like to see a Shakespeare play for the first time? Was the Globe filled, I wonder, with a quite unexpectant first night audience? And did they realise that the words they heard were deathless words? Imagine hearing for the first time:
'When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver
white….'
and then—'The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.' Did you ever try to write, Jean?"
Pamela, said Jean, "if you drop from Shakespeare to me in that sudden way you'll be dizzy. I have thought of writing and trying to give a truthful picture of Scottish life—a cross between Drumtochty and The House with the Green Shutters—but I'm sure I shall never do it. And if by any chance I did accomplish it, it would probably be reviewed as a 'feebly written story of life in a Scots provincial town,' and then I would beat my pen into a hatpin and retire from the literary arena. I wonder how critics can bear to do it. I couldn't sleep at nights for thinking of my victims—"
You sentimental little absurdity! It wouldn't be honest to praise poor work.
Jean shook her head. "They could always be a little kind … Pamela, I love myself in this coat. You can't think what a delight colours are to me." She stopped, and then said shyly, "You have brought colour into all our lives. I can see now how drab they were before you came."
Oh dear, no, Jean, your life was never drab. It could never be drab whatever your circumstances, you have so much happiness within yourself. I don't think anything in life could ever quite down you, and even death—what of death, Jean?
Jean looked up from her stocking. "As Boswell said to Dr. Johnson, 'What of death, Sir?' and the great man was so angry that the little twittering genius should ask lightly of such a terrifying thing that he barked at him and frightened him out of the room! I suppose the ordinary thing is never to think about death at all, to keep the thought pushed away. But that makes people so afraid of it. It's such a bogey to them. The Puritans went to the other extreme and dressed themselves in their grave-clothes every day. Wasn't it Samuel Rutherford who advised people to 'forefancy their latter end'? I think that's where Great-aunt Alison got the idea; she certainly made us 'forefancy' ours! But apart from what death may mean to each of us—life itself gets all its meaning from death. If we didn't know that we had all to die we could hardly go on living, could we?"
Well, said Pamela, "it would certainly be difficult to bear with people if their presence and our own were not utterly uncertain. And if we knew with surety when we rose in the morning that for another forty years we would go on getting up, and having a bath and dressing, we would be apt to expire with ennui. We rise with alacrity because we don't know if we shall ever put our clothes on again."
Jean gave a little jump of expectation. "It's frightfully interesting. You never do know when you get up in the morning what will happen before night."
Most people find that a little wearing. It isn't always nice things that happen, Jean.
Not always, of course, but far more nice things than nasty ones.
Jean, I'm afraid you're a chirping optimist. You'll reduce me to the depths of depression if you insist on being so bright. Rather help me to rail against fate, and so cheer me.
Do you realise that Davie will be home next week? said Jean, as if that were reason enough for any amount of optimism. "I think, on the whole, he has enjoyed his first term, but he was pretty homesick at first. He never actually said so, but he told us in one letter that he smelt the tea when he made it, for it was the one thing that reminded him of home. And another time he spoke with passionate dislike of the pollarded trees, because such things are unknown on Tweedside. I'm so glad he has made quite a lot of friends. I was afraid he might be so shy and unforthcoming that he would put people off, but he writes enthusiastically about the men he is with. It is good for him to be made to leave his work, and play games; he is keen about his footer and they think he will row well! The man who has rooms on the same staircase seems a very good sort. I forget who he is—it's quite a well-known family—but he has been uncommonly kind to Davie. He wants him to go home with him next week, but of course Davie is keen to get back to Priorsford. Besides, you can't visit the stately homes of England on thirty shillings, and that's about Davie's limit, dear lamb! Jock and Mhor are looking forward with joy to hear him speak. They expect his accent to have suffered an Oxford change, and Jock doesn't think he will be able to remain in the room with him and not laugh."
I expect Jock will be 'affronted,' said Pamela. "But you aren't the only one who is expecting a brother, Jean, girl. Any moment I may hear that Biddy is in London. He wired from Port Said that he would come straight to Priorsford. I wonder whether I should take rooms for him in the Hydro, or in one of these nice old hotels in the Nethergate? I wish I could crush him into Hillview, but there isn't any room, alas!"
I wish, said Jean, and stopped. She had wanted in her hospitable way to say that Pamela's brother must come to The Rigs, but she checked the impulse with a fear that it was an absurd proposal. She was immensely interested in this brother of Pamela's. All she had heard of him appealed to her imagination, for Jean, cumbered as she was with domestic cares, had an adventurous spirit, and thrilled to hear of the perils of the mountains, the treks behind the ranges for something hidden, all the daring escapades of an adventure-loving young man with time and money at his disposal. She had made a hero of Pamela's "Biddy," but now that she was to see him she shrank from the meeting. Suppose he were a supercilious sort of person who would be bored with the little town and the people in it. And the fact that he had a title complicated matters, Jean thought. She could not imagine herself talking naturally to Lord Bidborough. Besides, she thought, she didn't know in the least how to talk to men; she so seldom met any.
I expect, she broke out after a silence, "your brother will take you away?"
For Christmas, I think, said Pamela, "but I shall come back again. Do you realise that I've been here two months, Jean?"
Does it seem so short to you?
In a way it does; the days have passed so pleasantly. And yet I seem to have been here all my life; I feel so much a part of Priorsford, so akin to the people in it. It must be the Border blood in my veins. My mother loved her own country dearly. I have heard my aunt say that she never felt at home at Bidborough or Mintern Abbas. I am sure she would have wanted us to know her Scots home, so Biddy and I are going to Champertoun for Christmas. My mother had no brothers, and everything went to a distant cousin. He and his wife seem friendly people and they urge us to visit them.
That will mean a lovely Christmas for you, Jean said.
Here Mhor stopped being an Athenian reveller to ask that the sofa might be pushed back. The scene was now the palace of Theseus, and Mhor, as the Prologue, was addressing an imaginary audience with—"Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show."
Pamela and Jean removed themselves to the window-seat and listened while
Jock, covered with an old skin rug, gave a realistic presentment of the
Lion, that very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.
The 'tedious brief' scene was drawing to an end, when the door opened and Mrs. M'Cosh, with a scared look in her eyes and an excited squeak in her voice, announced, "Lord Bidborough."
A slim, dark young man stood in the doorway, regarding the dishevelled room. Jock and Mhor were still writhing on the floor, the chairs were pushed anyway, Pamela's embroidery frame had alighted on the bureau, the rugs were pulled here and there.
Pamela gave a cry and rushed at her brother, forgetting everything in the joy of seeing him. Then, remembering her hostess, she turned to Jean, who still sat on the window-seat, her face flushed and her eyes dark with excitement, the blood-red mandarin's coat with its embroidery of blue and mauve and gold vivid against the dark curtains, and said, "Jean, this is Biddy!"
Jean stood up and held out a shy hand.
And this is Jock—and Mhor!
Having a great game, aren't you? said the newcomer.
Not a game, Mhor corrected him, "a play, Midsummer Night's Dream."
No, are you? I once played in it at the O.U.D.S. I wanted to be Bully Bottom, but I wasn't much good, so they made me Snug the joiner. I remember the man who played Puck was a wonder, about as light on his feet and as swift as the real Puck. A jolly play.
Biddy, said his sister, "why didn't you wire to me? I have taken no rooms."
Oh, that's all right—a porter at the station, a most awfully nice chap, put me into a sort of fly and sent me to one of the hotels—a jolly good little inn it is—and they can put me up. Then I asked for Hillview, mentioning the witching name of Miss Bella Bathgate, and they sent a boy with me to find the place. Miss Bathgate sent me on here. Beautifully managed, you see.
He smiled lazily at his sister, who cried:
The same casual old Biddy! What about dinner?
Mayn't I feed with you? I think Miss Bathgate would like me to. And I'm devoted to stewed beef and carrots. After cold storage food it will be a most welcome change. But, turning to Jean, "please forgive me arriving on you like this, and discussing board and lodgings. It's the most frightful cheek on my part, but, you see, Pam's letters have made me so well acquainted with The Rigs and everyone in it that I'm afraid I don't feel the need of ceremony."
We wouldn't know what to do with ceremony here, said Jean. "But I do wish the room had been tidier. You will get a bad impression of our habits—and we are really quite neat as a rule. Jock, take that rug back to Mrs. M'Cosh and put the sofa right. And, Mhor, do wash your face; you've got it all smeared with black."
As Jean spoke she moved about, putting things to rights, lifting cushions, brightening the fire, brushing away fallen cinders.
That's better. Now don't stand about so uncomfortably Pamela, sit in your corner; and this is a really comfortable chair, Lord Bidborough.
I want to look at the books, if I may, said Lord Bidborough. "It's always the first thing I do in a room. You have a fine collection here."
They are nearly all my father's books, Jean explained. "We don't add to them, except, of course, on birthdays and at Christmas, and never valuable books."
You have some very rare books—this, for instance.
Yes. Father treasured that—and have you seen this?
They browsed among the books for a little, and Jean, turning to Pamela, said, "I remember the first time you came to see us you did this, too, walked about and looked at the books."
I remember, said Pamela; "history repeats itself."
Lord Bidborough stopped before a shelf. "This is a catholic selection."
Those are my favourite books, said Jean—"modern books, I mean."
I see. He went along the shelf, naming each book as he came to it. "The Long Roll and Cease Firing. Two great books. I should like to read them again now."
Now one could read them, said Jean. "Through the War I tried to, but I had to stop. The writing was too good—too graphic, somehow…."
Yes, it would be too poignant…. John Splendid. I read that one autumn in Argyle—slowly—about two chapters a day, making it last as long as I could.
Isn't it fine? said Jean. "John Splendid, who never spoke the truth except to an enemy! Do you remember the scene with the blind widow of Glencoe? And John Splendid was so gallant and tactful: 'dim in the sight,' he called her, for he wouldn't say 'blind'; and then was terrified when he heard that plague had been in the house, and would have left without touching the outstretched hand, and Gordon, the harsh-mannered minister, took it and kissed it, and the blind woman cried, 'O Clan Campbell, I'll never call ye down—ye may have the guile they claim for ye, but ye have the way with a woman's heart,' and poor John Splendid went out covered with shame."
Jean's eyes were shining, and she had forgotten to be awkward and tongue-tied.
I remember, said Lord Bidborough. "And the wonderful descriptions—'I know corries in Argyle that whisper silken' … do you remember that? And the last scene of all when John Splendid rides away?"
Do you cry over books, Jean? Pamela asked. She was sitting on the end of the sofa, her embroidery frame in her hand and her cloak on, ready to go when her brother had finished looking at Jean's treasures.
Jean shook her head. "Not often. Great-aunt Alison said it was the sign of a feeble mind to waste tears over fiction, but I have cried. Do you remember the end of The Mill on the Floss? Tom and Maggie have been estranged, and the flood comes, and Tom goes to save Maggie. He is rowing when he sees the great mill machinery sweeping down on them, and he takes Maggie's hand, and calls her the name he had used when they were happy children together—'Magsie!'"
Pamela nodded. "Nothing appeals to you so much as family affection,
Jean, girl. What have you got now, Biddy? Nelly's Teachers?"
Oh, that, said Jean, getting pink—"that's a book I had when I was a child, and I still like it so much that I read it through every year."
Oh, Jean, you babe! Pamela cried. "Can you actually still read goody-goody girls' stories?"
Yes, said Jean defiantly, "and enjoy them too."
And why not? asked Lord Bidborough. "I enjoy Huckleberry Finn as much now as I did when I was twelve; and I often yearn after the books I had as a boy and never see now. I used to lie on my face poring over them. The Clipper of the Clouds, and Sir Ludar, and a fairy story called Rigmarole in Search of a Soul, which, I remember, was quite beautiful, but can't lay hands on anywhere."
Jean looked at him gratefully, and thought to herself that he wasn't going to be a terrifying person after all. For his age—Jean knew that he was thirty-five, and had expected something much more mature—he seemed oddly boyish. He had an expectant young look in his eyes, as if he were always waiting for some chance of adventure to turn up, and there were humorous lines about his mouth which seemed to say that he found the world a very funny place, and was exceedingly well amused.
He certainly seemed very much at home at The Rigs, fondling the rare old books with the hands of a book lover, inspecting the coloured prints, chaffing Jock and Mhor, who fawned round him like two puppy dogs. Peter had at once made friends with him, and Mrs. M'Cosh, coming into the room on some errand, edged her way out backwards, her eyes fixed on the newcomer with an approving stare. As she told Jean later: "For a' Andra pit me against lords, I canna see muckle wrang wi' this yin. A rale pleasant fellow I tak' him to be, lord or no lord. If they were a' like him, we wudna need to be Socialists. It's queer I've aye hed a hankerin' after thae high-born kinna folk. It's that interestin' to watch them. Ye niver ken whit they'll dae next, or whit they'll say—they're that audacious. We wud mak' an awfu' dull warld o' it if we pit them a' awa to Ameriky or somewhere. I often tell't Andra that, but he said it wud be a guid riddance … I'm wonderin' what Bella Bathgate thinks o' him. It'll be great to hear her breath on't. She's quite comin' roond to Miss Reston. She was tellin' me she disna think there's onything veecious about her, and she's gettin' quite used to her manners."
* * * * *
When Pamela departed with her brother to partake of a dinner cooked by Miss Bathgate (a somewhat doubtful pleasure), Mhor went off to bed, and Jock curled himself up on the sofa with Peter, for his Friday night's extra hour with a story-book, while Jean resumed her darning of stockings.
Her thoughts were full of the sister and brother who had just left. "Queer they are!" she thought to herself. "If Davie came back to me after a year in India, I wouldn't have liked to meet him in somebody else's house. But they seemed quite happy to look at books, and talk about just anything and play with Jock and Mhor and tease Peter. Now I expect they'll be talking about their own affairs, but I would have rushed at the pleasure of hearing all about everything—I couldn't have waited. Pamela has such a leisured air about everything she does. It's nice and sort of aloof and quiet—but I could never attain to it. I'm little and bustling and Martha-like."
Here Jean sighed, and put her fingers through a large hole in the toe of a stocking.
I'm only fit to keep house and darn and worry the boys about washing their ears…. Anyway, I'm glad I had on my Chinese coat.
"Her gown should be of goodliness
Well ribboned with renown,
Purfilled with pleasure in ilk place,
Furred with fine fashion.
Her hat should be of fair having,
And her tippet of truth,
Her patclet of good pansing,
Her neck ribbon of ruth.
Her sleeves should be of esperance
To keep her from despair:
Her gloves of the good governance
To guide her fingers fair.
Her shoes should be of sickerness
In syne she should not slide:
Her hose of honesty I guess
I should for her provide."
The Garment of Good Ladies, 1568.
Jock and Mhor looked back on the time Lord Bidborough spent in
Priorsford as one long, rosy dream.
It is true they had to go to school as usual, and learn their home lessons, but their lack of attention in school-hours must have sorely tried their teachers, and their home lessons were crushed into the smallest space of time so as not to interfere with the crowded hours of glorious living that Lord Bidborough managed to make for them.
That nobleman turned out to be the most gifted player that Jock and Mhor had ever met. There seemed no end to the games he could invent, and he played with a zest that carried everyone along with him.
Mhor's great passion was for trains. He was no budding engineering genius; he cared nothing about knowing what made the wheels go round; it was the trains themselves, the glorious, puffing, snorting engines, the comfortable guards' vans, and the signal-boxes that enchanted him. He thought a signalman's life was one of delirious happiness; he thrilled at the sight of a porter's uniform, and hoped that one day he too might walk abroad dressed like that, wheel people's luggage on a trolley and touch his hat when given tips. It was his great treat to stand on the iron railway-bridge and watch the trains snorting deliriously underneath, but the difficulty was he might not go alone, and as everyone in the house fervently disliked the task of accompanying him, it was a treat that came all too seldom for the Mhor.
It turned out that Lord Bidborough also delighted in trains, and he not only stood patiently on the bridge watching goods-trains shunting up and down, but he made friends with the porters, and took Mhor into prohibited areas such as signal-boxes and goods sheds, and showed him how signals were worked, and ran him up and down on trolleys.
One never-to-be-forgotten day a sympathetic engine-driver lifted Mhor into the engine and, holding him up high above the furnace, told him to pull a chain, whereupon the engine gave an anguished hoot. Mhor had no words to express his pleasure, but in an ecstasy of gratitude he seized the engine-driver's grimy hand and kissed it, leaving that honest man, who was not accustomed to such ongoings considerably confused.
Jock did not share Mhor's interest in "base mechanic happenings"; his passion was for the world at large, his motto, "For to admire and for to see." He had long made up his mind that he must follow some profession that would take him to far places. Mrs. Hope suggested the Indian Army, while Mr. Jowett loyally recommended the Indian Civil Service, though he felt bound in duty to warn Jock that it wasn't what it was in his young days, and was indeed hardly fit now for a white man.
Jock felt that Mrs. Hope and Mr. Jowett were wise and experienced, but they were old. In Lord Bidborough he found one who had come hot foot from the ends of the earth. He had seen with his own eyes, and he could tell Jock tales that made the coveted far lands live before him; and Jock fell down and worshipped.
Through the day, while the two boys were interned in school, Pamela took her brother the long walks over the hills that had delighted her days in Priorsford. Jean sometimes went with them, but more often she stayed at home. It was her mission in life, she said, to stay at home and have meals ready for people when they returned, and it was much better that the brother and sister should have their walks alone, she told herself. Excessive selfconfidence was not one of Jean's faults. She was much afraid of boring people by her presence, and shrank from being the third that constitutes "a crowd."
One afternoon Lewis Elliot called at The Rigs.
Sitting alone, Jean? Well, it's nice to find you in. I thought you would be out with your new friends.
Lord Bidborough has motored Pamela down Tweed to see some people, Jean explained. "They asked me to go with them, but I thought I might perhaps be in the way. Lord Bidborough is frightfully pleased to be able to hire a motor to drive. On Saturday he has promised to take the boys to Dryburgh and to the Eildon Hills. Mhor is very keen to see for himself where King Arthur is buried, and make a search for the horn!"
I see. It's a pity it isn't a better time of year. December days are short for excursions…. Isn't Biddy a delightful fellow?
Yes. Jock and Mhor worship him. One word from him is more to them than all the wisdom I'm capable of. It isn't quite fair. After all, I've had them so long, and they've only known him for a day or two. No, I don't think I'm jealous. I'm—I'm hurt! and to Lewis Elliot's great discomfort Jean took out her handkerchief and openly wiped her eyes, and then, putting her head on the table, cried.
He sat in much embarrassment, making what he meant to be comforting ejaculations, until Jean stopped crying and laughed.
It's wretched of me to make you so uncomfortable. I don't know what's happened to me. I've suddenly got so silly. And I don't think I like charming people. Charm is a merciless sort of gift … and I know he will take Pamela away, and she made things so interesting. Every day since he came I seem to have got lonelier and lonelier, and the sight of your familiar face and the sound of your kind voice finished me…. I'm quite sensible now, so don't go away. Tea will be in in a minute, and the boys. Isn't it fine that Davie will be home to-morrow? D'you think he'll be changed?
Lewis Elliot stayed to tea, and Jock and Mhor fell on him with acclamation, and told him wonderful tales of their new friend, and never noticed the marks of tears on Jean's face.
Jean, what is Lord Bidborough's Christian name? Jock asked.
Oh, I don't know. Richard Plantagenet, I should think.
Really, Jean?
Why not? But you'd better ask him. Are you going, Cousin Lewis? When will you come and see Davie?
Let me see. I'm lunching at Hillview on Friday May I come in after luncheon? Thanks. You must all come up to Laverlaw one day next week. The puppies are growing up, Mhor, and you're missing all their puppyhood; that's a pity.
Later in the evening, just before Mhor's bedtime Lord Bidborough came to The Rigs. Pamela was resting, he explained, or writing letters, or doing something else, and he had come in to pass the time of day with them.
The time of night, you mean, said Mhor ruefully "In ten minutes I'll have to go to bed."
Had you a nice time this afternoon? Jean asked.
Oh, ripping! Coming up by Tweed in the darkening was heavenly. I wish you had been with us, Miss Jean. Why wouldn't you come?
I had things to do, said Jean primly.
Couldn't the things have waited? Good days in December are precious, Miss Jean—and Pam and I are going away next week. Promise you will go with us next time—on Saturday, to the Eildon Hills.
What's your Christian name, please? Jock broke in suddenly, remembering the discussion. "Jean says it's Richard Plantagenet—is it?"
Jean flushed an angry pink, and said sharply:
Don't be silly, Jock. I was only talking nonsense.
Well, what is it? Jock persisted.
It's not quite Richard Plantagenet, but it's pretty bad. My name given me by my godmother and godfathers is—Quintin Reginald Fuerbras.
Gosh, Maggie! ejaculated Jock. "Earls in the streets of Cork!"
I knew, said Jean, "that it would be something very twopence-coloured."
It's not, I grant, such a jolly name as yours, said Lord
Bidborough—"Jean Jardine."
Oh, mine is Penny-plain, said Jean hurriedly.
Must we always call you Lord? Mhor asked.
Of course you must, Jean said. "Really, Mhor, you and Jock are sometimes very stupid."
Indeed you must not, said Lord Bidborough. "Forgive me, Miss Jean, if I am undermining your authority, but, really, one must have some say in what one is to be called. Why not call me Biddy?"
That might be too familiar, said Jock. "I think I would rather call you Richard Plantagenet."
Because it isn't my name?
It sort of suits you, Jock said.
I like long names, said Mhor.
Will you call me Richard Plantagenet, Miss Jean?
The yellow lights in Jean's eyes sparkled. "If you'll call me
Penny-plain," she said.
Then that's a bargain, though I don't think either of us is well suited. However—now that we are really friends, what did you do this afternoon that was so very important?
Talked to Lewis Elliot for one thing: he came to tea.
I see. An excellent fellow, Lewis. He's a relation of yours, isn't he?
A very distant one, but we have so few relations we are only too glad to claim him. He has been a very good friend to us always…. Mhor, you really must go to bed now.
Oh, all right, but I don't think it's very polite to go to bed when a visitor's in. It might make him think he ought to go away.
Lord Bidborough laughed, and assured Mhor that he appreciated his delicacy of feeling.
There's a thing I want to ask you, anyway, said Mhor.—"Yes, I'm going to bed, Jean. Whether do you think Quentin Durward or Charlie Chaplin would be the better man in a fight?"
Lord Bidborough gave the matter some earnest thought, and decided on
Quentin Durward.
I told you that, said. Jock to Mhor. "Now, perhaps, you'll believe me."
I don't know, said Mhor, still doubtful. "Of course Quentin Durward had his sword—but you know that way Charlie has with a stick?"
Well, anyway, go to bed, said Jean, "and stop talking about that horrible little man. He oughtn't to be mentioned in the same breath as Quentin Durward."
Mhor went out of the room still arguing.
The next day David came home.
The whole family, including Peter, were waiting on the platform to welcome him, but Mhor was too interested in the engine and Jock too afraid of showing sentiment to pay much attention to him, and it was left to Jean and Peter to express joy at his return.
At first it seemed to Jean that it was a different David who had come back. There was an indefinable change even in his appearance. True, he wore the same Priorsford clothes that he had gone away in, but he carried himself better, with more assurance. His round, boyish face had taken on a slightly graver and more responsible look, and his accent certainly had an Oxford touch. Enough, anyhow, to send Jock and Mhor out of the room to giggle convulsively in the lobby. To Jean's relief David noticed nothing; he was too busy telling Jean his news to trouble about the eccentric behaviour of the two boys.
David would hardly have been human if he had not boasted a little that first night. He had often pictured to himself just how it would be. Jean would sit by the fire and listen, and he would sit on the old comfortable sofa and recount all the doings of his first term, tell of his friends, his tutors, his rooms, the games, the fun—all the details of the wonderful new life. And it had happened just as he had pictured it—lucky David! The room had looked as he had known it would look, with a fire that sparkled as only Jean's fire ever sparkled, and Jean's eyes—Jean's "doggy" eyes, as Mhor called them—were lit with interest; and Jock and Mhor and Peter crept in after a little and lay on the rug and gazed up at him, a quiet and most satisfactory audience.
Jean felt a little in awe of this younger brother of hers, who had suddenly grown a man and spoke with an air of authority. She had an ache at her heart for the Davie who had been a little boy and content to lean; she seemed hardly to know this new David. But it was only for a little. When Jock and Mhor had gone to bed, the brother and sister sat over the fire talking, and David forgot all his new importance and ceased to "buck," and told Jean all his little devices to save money, and how he had managed just to scrape along.
If only everyone else were poor as well, said Jean, "then it wouldn't matter."
That's just it; but it's so difficult doing things with men who have loads of money. It never seems to occur to them that other people haven't got it. Of course I just say I can't afford to do things, but that's awkward too, for they look so surprised and sort of ashamed, and it makes me feel a prig and a fool. I think having a lot of money takes away people's imagination.
Oh, it does, Jean agreed.
Anyway, David went on, "it's up to me to make some money. I hate sponging on you, old Jean, and I'm not going to do it. I've been trying my hand at writing lately and—I've had two things accepted."
Jean all but fell into the fire in her surprise and delight.
Write! You! Oh, Davie, how utterly splendid!
A torrent of questions followed, which David answered as well as he could.
Yes, they are printed, and paid for, and what's more I've spent the money. He brought out from his pocket a small leather case which he handed to his sister.
For me? Oh, David! Her hands shook as she opened the box and disclosed a small brooch, obviously inexpensive but delicately designed.
It's nothing, said David, walking away from the emotion in his sister's face. "With the rest of the money I got presents for the boys and Mrs. M'Cosh and Peter, but they'd better be kept out of sight till Christmas Day."
Truth to tell, he had meant to keep the brooch also out of sight till Christmas, but the temptation to see Jean's pleasure had been too strong. This Jean divined and, with happy tears in her eyes, handed it back to him to keep till the proper giving-day arrived.
The next day David was introduced to Pamela and her brother, and was pleased to pronounce well of them. He had been inclined to be distrustful about the entrance of such exotic creatures as they sounded into the quiet of Priorsford, but having seen and talked to them he assured his sister they were quite all right.
Why, Lord Bidborough had been at David's own college—that alone was recommendation enough. His feats, too, were still remembered, not feats of scholarship—oh no, but of mountaineering on the college roofs. He had not realised when Jean mentioned Lord Bidborough in her letters that it was the same man who was still spoken of by undergraduates with bated breath.
Of Pamela, David attempted no criticism. How could he? He was at her feet, and hardly dared lift his eyes to her face. A smile or two, a few of Pamela's softly spoken sentences, and David had succumbed. Not that he allowed her—or anyone else—to know it. He kept at a respectable distance, and worshipped in silence.
One evening while Pamela sat stitching at her embroidery in the little parlour at Hillview her brother laid down the book he was reading, lit a cigarette, and said suddenly, "What of the Politician, Pam?"
Pamela drew the thread in and out several times before she answered.
The Politician is safe so far as I'm concerned. Only last week I wrote and explained matters to him. He wrote a very nice letter in reply. I think, on the whole, he is much relieved, though he expressed polite regret. It must be rather a bore at sixty to become possessed of a wife, even though she might be able to entertain well and manage people…. It was a ridiculous idea always; I see that now.
Lord Bidborough regarded his sister with an amused smile. "I always did regard the Politician as a fabulous monster. But tell me, Pam, how long is this to continue? Are you so enamoured of the simple life that you can go on indefinitely living in Miss Bathgate's parlour and eating stewed steak and duck's eggs?"
Pamela dropped her embroidery-frame, looked at her brother with a puzzled frown, and gave a long sigh.
Oh, I don't know, she said—"I don't know. Of course it can't go on indefinitely, but I do hate the thought of going away and leaving it all. I love the place. It has given me a new feeling about life; it has taught me contentment: I have found peace here. If I go back to the old restless, hectic life I shall be, I'm afraid, just as restless and feverishly anxious to be happy as I used to be. And yet, I suppose, I must go back. I've almost had the three months I promised myself. But I'm going to try and take Jean with me. Lewis Elliot and I mean to arrange things so that Jean can have her chance."
Why should Lewis Elliot have anything to do with it?
Her brother's tone brought a surprised look into Pamela's eyes.
Lewis is a relation as well as a very old friend. Naturally he is interested. I should think it could easily be managed. The boys will go to school, Mrs. M'Cosh will stay on at The Rigs, Jean will see something of the world. Imagine the joy of taking Jean about! She will make everything worth while. I don't in the least expect her to be what is known as a 'success.' I can picture her at a ball thinking of her latter end! Up-to-date revues she will hate, and I can't see her indulging in whatever is the latest artistic craze of the moment. She is a very select little person, Jean. But she will love the plays and pictures, and shops and sights. And she has never been abroad—picture that! There are worlds of things to show her. I find that her great desire—a very modest one—is to go some April to the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-on-Avon. She worships Shakespeare hardly on this side of idolatry.
"
Won't she be disappointed? There is nothing very romantic about Stratford of to-day.
"Ah, but I think I can stage-manage so that it will come up to her expectations. A great many things in this world need a little stage-management. Oh, I hope my plans will work out. I do want Jean.
But, Pamela—I want Jean too.
Lord Bidborough had risen, and now stood before the fire, his hands in his pockets, his head thrown back, his eyes no longer lazy and amused, but keen and alert. This was the man who attempted impossible things—and did them.
It is never an easy moment for a sister when she realises that an adored brother no longer belongs to her.
Pamela, after one startled look at her brother, dropped her eyes and tried to go on with her embroidery, but her hand trembled, and she made stitches at random.
Pam, dear, you don't mind? You don't think it an unfriendly act? You will always be Pam, my only sister; someone quite apart. The new love won't lessen the old.
Ah, my dear—Pamela held out her hands to her brother—"you mustn't mind if just at first…. You see, it's a great while ago since the world began, and we've been wonderful friends all the time, haven't we, Biddy?" They sat together silent for a minute, and then Pamela said, "And I'm actually crying, when the thing I most wanted has come to pass: what an idiot! Whenever I saw Jean I wanted her for you. But I didn't try to work it at all. It all just happened right, somehow. Jean's beauty isn't for the multitude, nor her charm, and I wondered if she would appeal to you. You have seen so many pretty girls, and have been almost surfeited with charm, and remained so calm that I wondered if you ever would fall in love. The 'manoeuvring mamaws,' as Bella Bathgate calls the ladies with daughters to marry, quite lost hope where you were concerned; you never seemed to see their manoeuvres, poor dears…. And I was so thankful, for I didn't want you to marry the modern type of girl…. But I hardly dared to hope you would come to Priorsford and love Jean at sight. It's all as simple as a fairy-tale."
Oh, is it? I very much doubt if Jean will look at me. I sometimes think she rather avoids me. She keeps out of my way, and hardly ever addresses a remark to me.
She has never mentioned you to me, said Pamela, "and that's a good sign. I don't say you won't have to wait. I'm pretty certain she won't accept you when you ask her. Even if she cares—and I don't think she realises yet that she does—her sense of duty to the boys, and other things, will hold her back, and your title and possessions will tell against you. Jean is the least mercenary of creatures Ask her before you leave, and if she refuses you appear to accept her refusal. Don't say you will try again and that sort of thing: it gives a girl a caged feeling. Go away for a while and make no sign. I know what I'm talking about, Biddy … and she is worth waiting for."
I would serve for her as Jacob served for Rachel, and not grudge one minute of the time, but the nuisance is I'm twelve years older than she is. I can't afford to wait. I'm afraid she will think me too old.
Nonsense, a boy would never do for Jean. Although she looks such a child, she is a woman, and a woman with a brain. Otherwise she would never do for you. You would tire of a doll in a week, no matter how curly the hair or flawless the complexion…. You realise, of course, that Jean is an uncompromising little Puritan? Mercy is as plain as bread and honour is as hard as stone to Jean—but she has a wide tolerance for sinners. I can imagine it won't always be easy to be Jean's husband. She is so full of compassion that she will want to help every unfortunate, and fill the house with the broken and the unsuccessful. But she won't be a wearisome wife. She won't pall. She will always be full of surprises, and an infinite variety, and find such numbers of things to laugh about…. You know how she mothers those boys—can't you see Jean with babies of her own?… To me she is like a well of spring-water a continual refreshment for weary souls.
Pamela stopped. "Am I making too much of an ordinary little country girl, Biddy?"
Her brother smiled and shook his head, and after a minute he said:
A garden enclosed is my love.
"What's to be said to him, lady? He is fortified against any
denial."—Twelfth Night.
The day before Pamela and her brother left Priorsford for their visit to
Champertoun was a typical December day, short and dark and dirty.
There was a party at Hopetoun in honour of David's home-coming, and
Pamela and her brother were invited, along with the entire family from
The Rigs.
They all set off together in the early darkening, and presently Pamela and the three boys got ahead, and Jean found herself alone with Lord Bidborough.
Weather had little or no effect on Jean's spirits, and to-day, happy in having David at home, she cared nothing for the depressing mist that shrouded the hills, or the dank drip from the trees on the carpet of sodden leaves, or the sullen swirl of Tweed coming down big with spate, foaming against the supports of the bridge.
As dull as a great thaw, she quoted to her companion cheerfully. "It does seem a pity the snow should have gone away before Christmas. Do you know, all the years of my life I've never seen snow on Christmas. I do wish Mhor wouldn't go on praying for it. It's so stumbling for him when Christmas comes mild and muggy. If we could only have it once as you see it in pictures and read about it in books—"
She broke off to bow to Miss Watson and her sister, Miss Teenie, who passed Jean and her companion with skirts held well out of the mud, and eyes, after the briefest glance, demurely cast down.
They are going out to tea, Jean explained to Lord Bidborough. "Don't they look nice and tea-partyish? Fur capes over their best dresses and snow boots over their slippers. Those little black satin bags hold their work, and I expect they have each a handkerchief edged with Honiton lace and scented with White Rose. Probably they are going to Mrs. Henderson's. She gives wonderful teas, and they will be taken to a bedroom to take off their outer coverings, and they'll stay till about eight o'clock and then go home to supper."
Lord Bidborough laughed. "I begin to see what Pam means when she talks of the lovableness of a little town. It is cosy, as she says, to see people go out to tea and know exactly where they are going, and what they'll do when they get there."
I should think, said Jean, "that it would rather appeal to you. Your doings have always been on such a big scale—climbing the highest mountains in the world, going to the very farthest places—that the tiny and the trivial ought to be rather fascinating by contrast."
Lord Bidborough admitted that it was so, and silence fell between them.
I wonder, said Jean politely, having cast round in her mind for a topic that might interest—"I wonder what you will attempt next? Jock says you want to climb Everest. He is frightfully excited about it, and wishes you would wait a few years till he is grown up and ready."
"
Jock is a jewel, and he will certainly go with me when I attempt Everest, if that time ever comes.
"They had reached the entrance to Hopetoun: the avenue to the house was short. "Would you mind," said Lord Bidborough, "walking on with me for a little bit?…"
But why? asked Jean, looking along the dark, uninviting road. "They'll wonder what's become of us, and tea will be ready, and Mrs. Hope doesn't like to be kept waiting."
Never mind, said Lord Bidborough, his tone somewhat desperate. "I've got something I want to say to you, and this may be my only chance. Jean, could you ever—I mean, d'you think it possible—oh, Jean, will you marry me?"
Jean backed away from him, her mouth open, her eyes round with astonishment. She was too much surprised to be anything but utterly natural.
Are you asking me to marry you? But how ludicrous!
The answer restored them both to their senses.
Lord Bidborough laughed ruefully and said, "Well, that's not a pretty way to take a proposal," while Jean, flushed with shame at her own rudeness, and finding herself suddenly rather breathless, gasped out, "But you shouldn't give people such frights. How could I know you were going to say anything so silly? And it's my first proposal, and I've got on goloshes!"
Oh, Jean! What a blundering idiot I am! I might have known it was a wrong moment, but I'm hopelessly inexperienced, and, besides, I couldn't risk waiting; I so seldom see you alone. Didn't you see, little blind Jean, that I was head over ears in love with you? The first night I came to The Rigs and you spoke to me in your singing voice I knew you were the one woman in the world for me.
No, said Jean. "No."
Ah, don't say that. You're not going to send me away, Penny-plain?
Don't you see, said Jean, "I mustn't let myself care for you, for it's quite impossible that I could ever marry you. It's no good even speaking about such a thing. We belong to different worlds."
"
If you mean my stupid title, don't let that worry you. A second and the Socialists alter that! A title means nothing in these days.
"It isn't only your title: it's everything—oh, can't you see?
Jean, dear, let's talk it over quietly. I confess I can't see any difficulty at all—if you care for me a little. That's the one thing that matters.
My feelings, said Jean, "don't matter at all. Even if there was nothing else in the way, what about Davie and Jock and the dear Mhor? I must always stick to them—at least until they don't need me any longer."
But Jean, beloved, you don't suppose I want to take you away from them? There's room for them all…. I can see you at Mintern Abbas, Jean, and there's a river there, and the hills aren't far distant—you won't find it unhomelike—the only thing that is lacking is a railway for the Mhor.
Please don't, said Jean. "You hurt me when you speak like that. Do you think I would let you burden yourself with all my family? I would never be anything but a drag on you. You must go away, Richard Plantagenet, and take your proper place in the world, and forget all about Priorsford and Penny-plain, and marry someone who will help you with your career and be a fit mistress for your great houses, and I'll just stay here. The Rigs is my proper setting."
Jean, said Lord Bidborough, "will you tell me—is there any other man?"
No. How could there be? There aren't any men in Priorsford to speak of.
There's Lewis Elliot.
Jean stared. "You don't suppose Lewis wants to marry me, do you? Men are the stupidest things! Don't you know that Lewis…."
What?
Nothing. Only you needn't think he ever looks the road I'm on. What a horrid conversation this is! It's a great mistake ever to mention love and marriage. It makes the nicest people silly. I simply daren't think what Jock would say if he heard us. He would be what Bella Bathgate calls 'black affrontit.'
Jean, will it always matter to you more than anything in the world what David and Jock and Mhor think? Will you never care for anyone as you care for them?
But they are my charge, Jean explained. "They were left to me. Mother said, before she went away that last time, 'I trust you, Jean, to look after the boys,' and when father didn't come back, and Great-aunt Alison died, they had only me."
Can't you adopt me as well? Do you know, Penny-plain, I believe it is all the fault of your Great-aunt Alison. You are thinking that on your death-bed you will like to feel that you sacrificed yourself to others—
Oh, cried Jean, "did Pamela actually tell you about Great-aunt Alison?
That wasn't quite fair."
She wasn't laughing. She only told me because she knew I was interested in every detail of your life, and Great-aunt Alison explains a lot of things about her grand-niece.
Jean pondered on this for a little and then said:
Pam once said I was on the verge of being a prig, and I'm not sure that she wasn't right, and it's a hateful thing to be. D'you think I'm priggish, Richard Plantagenet? Oh no, don't kiss me. I hate it…. Why do you want to behave like that? It isn't nice.
I'm sorry, Jean.
And now your voice sounds as if you did think me a prig … Here we are at last, and I simply don't know what to say kept us.
"
Don't say anything: leave it to me. I'll be sure to think of some lie. Do you realise that we are only ten minutes behind the others?
"Is that all? cried Jean, amazed. "It seems like hours."
Lord Bidborough began to laugh helplessly.
I wonder if any man ever had such a difficult lady, he said, "or one so uncompromisingly truthful?"
He rang the bell, and as they stood on the doorstep waiting, the light from the hall-door fell on his face, and Jean, looking at him, suddenly felt very low. He was going away, and she might never see him again. The fortnight he had been in Priorsford had given her an entirely new idea of what life might mean. She had not been happy all the time: she had been afflicted with vague discontents and jealousies such as she had not known before, but at the back of them all she was conscious of a shining happiness, something that illuminated and gave a new value to all the commonplace daily doings. Now, as in a flash, while they waited for the door to open, Jean knew what had caused the happiness, and realised that with her own hand she was shutting the door on the light, shutting herself out to a perpetual twilight.
If only you hadn't been a man, she said miserably, "we might have been such friends."
A servant opened the door and they went in together.
"When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu whit,
Tu whu, a merry note
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."
Mhor began to look forward to Christmas whenever the days began to shorten and the delights of summer to fade; and the moment the Hallowe'en "dooking" for apples was over he and Jock were deep in preparations.
As is the way with most things, the looking forward and preparing were the best of it. It meant weeks of present-making, weeks of wrestling with delicious things like paints and pasteboard and glue. Then came a week or two of walking on tiptoe into the little spare room where the presents were stored, just to peep, and make sure that they really were there and had not been spirited away, for at Christmas-time you never knew what knavish sprites were wandering about. The spare room became the most interesting place in the house. It was all so thrilling: the pulling out of the drawer, the breathless moment until you made sure that the presents were safe, the smell that came out of the drawer to meet you, an indescribable smell of lavender and well-washed linen, of furniture polish and cedar-wood. The dressing-table had a row of three little drawers on either side, and in these Jean kept the small eatables that were to go into the stockings—things made of chocolate, packets of almonds and raisins, big sugar "bools." To Mhor a great mystery hung over the dressing-table. No mortal hand had placed those things there; they were fairy things, and might vanish any moment. On Christmas morning he ate his chocolate frog with a sort of reverence, and sucked the sugar "bools" with awe.
A caller at The Rigs had once exclaimed in astonishment that an intelligent child like the Mhor still believed in Santa Claus, and Jean had replied with sudden and startling ferocity, "If he didn't believe I would beat him till he did." Happily there was no need for such extreme measures: Mhor believed implicitly.
Jock had now grown beyond such beliefs, but he did nothing to undermine Mhor's trust. He knew that the longer you can believe in such things the nicer the world is.
The Jardines always felt about Christmas Day that the best of it was over in the morning—the stockings and the presents and the postman, leaving long, over-eaten, irritable hours to be got through before bedtime and oblivion.
This year Jock had drawn out a time-table to ensure that the day held no longueurs.
7.30 Stockings. 8.30 Breakfast. 9 Postman. 10-12 Deliver small presents to various friends. 1 Luncheon at the Jowetts'. 4 Tea at home and present-giving. 5-9 Devoted to supper and variety entertainment.
This programme was strictly adhered to except by the Mhor in the matter of his stocking, which was grabbed from the bed-post and cuddled into bed beside him at least two hours before the scheduled time; and by the postman, who did not make his appearance till midday, thereby greatly disarranging things.
The day passed very pleasantly: the luncheon at the Jowetts' was everything a Christmas meal should be, Mrs. M'Cosh surpassed herself with bakemeats for the tea, the presents gave lively satisfaction, but the feature of the day was the box that arrived from Pamela and her brother. It was waiting when the family came back from the Jowetts', standing in the middle of the little hall with a hammer and a screw-driver laid on the top by thoughtful Mrs. M'Cosh—a large white wooden box which thrilled one with its air of containing treasures. Mhor sank down beside it, hardly able to wait until David had taken off his coat and was ready to tackle it. Off came the lid, out came the packing paper on the top, and in Jock and Mhor dived.
It was really a wonderful box. In it there was something for everybody, including Mrs. M'Cosh and Peter, but Mhor's was the most striking present. No wonder the box was large. It contained a whole railway—a train, lines, signal-boxes, a station, even a tunnel.
Mhor was rendered speechless with delight. Jean wished Pamela had been there to see the lamps lit in his green eyes. Mrs. M'Cosh's beautiful tea was lost on him: he ate and drank without being aware of it, his eyes feasting all the time on this great new treasure.
I wish, he said at last, "that I could do something for the Honourable and Richard Plantagenet. I only sent her a wee poetry-book. It cost a shilling. It was Jean's shilling really, for I hadn't anything left, and I wrote in it, 'Wishing you a pretty New Year.' I forgot about 'happy' being the word; d'you think she'll mind?"
I think Pamela will prefer it called 'pretty,' Jean said. "You are lucky, aren't you?—and so is Jock with that gorgeous knife."
It's an explorer's knife, said Jock. "You see, you can do almost everything with it. If I was wrecked on a desert island I could pretty nearly build a house with it. Feel the blades—"
Oh, do be careful. I would put away the presents in the meantime and get everything ready for the charade. Are you quite sure you know what you're going to do? You mustn't just stand and giggle.
Jean had asked three guests to come to supper—three lonely women who otherwise would have spent a solitary evening—and Mrs. M'Cosh had asked Bella Bathgate to sup with her and afterwards to witness what she dubbed "a chiraide."
The living-room had been made ready for the entertainment, all the chairs placed in rows, the deep window-seat doing duty for a stage, but Jean was very doubtful about the powers of the actors, and hoped that the audience would be both easily amused and long-suffering.
Jock and Mhor protested that they had chosen a word for the charade, and knew exactly what they meant to say, but they would divulge no details, advising Jean to wait patiently, for something very good was coming.
The little house looked very festive, for the boys had decorated earnestly, the square hall was a bower of greenery, and a gaily coloured Chinese lantern hanging in the middle added a touch of gaiety to the scene. The supper was the best that Jean and Mrs. M'Cosh could devise, the linen and the glass and silver shone, the flowers were charmingly arranged Jean wore her gay mandarin's coat, and the guests—when they arrived—found themselves in such a warm and welcoming atmosphere that they at once threw off all stiffness and prepared to enjoy the evening.
The entertainment was to begin at eight, and Mrs. M'Cosh and Miss Bathgate took their seats "on the chap," as the latter put it. The two Miss Watsons, surprisingly enough, were also present. They had come along after supper with a small present for Jean, had asked to see her, and stood lingering on the doorstep refusing to come farther, but obviously reluctant to depart.
Just a little bag, you know, Miss Jean, for you to put your work in if you're going out to tea, you know. No, it's not at all kind. You've been so nice to us. No, no, we won't come in; we don't want to disturb you—just ran along—you've friends, anyway. Oh, well, if you put it that way … we might just sit down for five minutes—if you're sure we're not in the way…. And still making a duet of protest they sank into seats.
A passage had been arranged, with screens between the door and the window-seat, and much traffic went along that way; the screens bumped and bulged and seemed on the point of collapsing, while smothered giggles were frequent.
At last the curtains were jerked apart, and revealed what seemed to be a funeral pyre. Branches were piled on the window-seat, and on the top, wrapped in an eiderdown quilt, with a laurel wreath bound round his head, lay David. Jock, with bare legs and black boots, draped in an old-fashioned circular waterproof belonging to Mrs. M'Cosh, stood with arms folded looking at him, while Mhor, almost denuded of clothing, and supported by Peter (who sat with his back to the audience to show his thorough disapproval of the proceedings), stood at one side.
When the murmured comments of the spectators had ceased, Mhor, looking extraordinarily Roman, held up his hand as if appealing to a raging mob, and said, "Peace, ho! Let us hear him," whereupon Jock, breathing heavily in his brother's face, proceeded to give Antony's oration over Caesar. He did it very well, and the Mhor as the Mob supplied appropriate growls at intervals; indeed, so much did Antony's eloquence inspire Mhor that, when Jock shouted, "Light the pyre!" (a sentence introduced to bring in the charade word), instead of merely pretending with an unlighted taper, Mhor dashed to the fire, lit the taper, and before anyone could stop him thrust it among the dry twigs, which at once began to light and crackle. Immediately all was confusion. "Mhor!" shouted Jean, as she sprang towards the stage. "Gosh, Maggie!" Jock yelled, as he grabbed the burning twigs, but it was "Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay," who really put out the fire by rolling on it wrapped in an eiderdown quilt.
Eh, ye ill callant, said Bella Bathgate.
Ye wee deevil, said Mrs. M'Cosh, "ye micht hev had us a' burned where we sat, and it Christmas too!"
What made you do it, sonny? Jean asked.
It made it so real, Mhor explained, "and I knew we could always throw them out of the window if they really blazed. What's the use of having a funeral pyre if you don't light it?"
The actors departed to prepare for the next performance Jock coming back to put his head in at the door to ask if they had guessed the first part of the word.
Jean said she thought it must be incendiarism.
Funeral, said Miss Watson brightly.
Huch, said Jock; "it's a word of one syllable."
I think, Jean said as the door shut on Jock—I think I know what the word is—pyre."
Oh, really, said Miss Watson, "I'm all shaking yet with the fright I got. He's an awful bad wee boy that—sort of regardless. He needs a man to look after him."
I'll never forget, said Miss Teenie, "once I was staying with a friend of ours, a doctor; his mother and our mother were cousins, you know, and when I looked—I was doing my hair at the time—I found that the curtain had blown across the gas and was blazing. If I had been in our own house I would just have rushed out screaming, but when you're away from home you've more feeling of responsibility and I just stood on a chair and pulled at the curtain till I brought it down and stamped on it. My hands were all scorched, and of course the curtain was beyond hope, but when the doctor saw it, he said, 'Teenie,' he said—his mither and ours were cousins, you know—'you're just a wee marvel.' That was what he said—'a wee marvel.'"
Jean said, "You were brave," and one of the guests said that presence of mind was a wonderful thing, and then the next act was ready.
The word had evidently something to do with eating, for the three actors sat at a Barmecide feast and quaffed wine from empty goblets, and carved imaginary haunches of venison. So far as could be judged from the conversation, which was much obscured by the smothered laughter of the actors, they seemed to belong to Robin Hood's merry men.
The third act took place on board ship—a ship flying the Jolly Roger—and it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that the word was pirate.
Very good, said Miss Teenie, clapping her hands; "but," addressing the Mhor, "don't you go lighting any more funeral pyres. Boys who do that have to go to jail."
Mhor looked coldly at her, but made no remark, while Jean said hastily:
You must show everyone your wonderful present, Mhor. I think the hall would be the best place to put it up in.
The second part of the programme was of a varied character. Jean led off with the old carol:
"There comes a ship far sailing then,
St. Michael was the steersman,"
and Mhor followed with a poem, "In Time of Pestilence," which had captivated his strange small boy's soul, and which he had learned for the occasion. Everyone felt it to be singularly inappropriate, and Miss Watson said it gave her quite a turn to hear the relish with which he knolled out:
"Wit with his wantonness
Tasteth death's bitterness:
Hell's executioner
Hath no ears for to hear
What vain art can reply!
I am sick, I must die—
God have mercy on us."
She regarded him with disapproving eyes as a thoroughly uncomfortable character.
One of the guests sang a drawing-room ballad in which the words "dear heart" seemed to occur with astonishing frequency. Then the entertainment took a distinctly lower turn.
David and Jock sang a song composed by themselves and set to a hymn tune, a somewhat ribald production. Mhor then volunteered the information that Mrs. M'Cosh could sing a song. Mrs. M'Cosh said, "Awa wi' ye, laddie," and "Sic havers," but after much urging owned that she knew a song which had been a favourite with her Andra. It was sung to the tune of "When the kye come hame," and was obviously a parody on that lyric, beginning:
"Come a' ye Hieland pollismen
That whustle through the street,
An' A'll tell ye a' aboot a man
That's got triple expansion feet.
He's got braw, braw tartan whuskers
That defy the shears and kaim:
There's an awfu' row in Brigton
When M'Kay comes hame."
It went on to tell how:
"John M'Kay works down in Singers's,
He's a ceevil engineer,
But his wife's no verra ceevil
When she's had some ginger-beer.
When he missed the last Kilbowie train
And had to walk hame lame,
There wis Home Rule wi' the poker
When M'Kay cam hame."
Mrs. M'Cosh sang four verses and stopped, in spite of the rapturous applause of a section of the audience.
There's aboot nineteen mair verses, she explained "an' they get kinna worse as they gang on, so I'd better stop," which she did, to Jean's relief, for she saw that her guests were feeling that this was not an entertainment such as the Best People indulged in.
And now Miss Bathgate will sing, said Mhor.
I will not sing, said Miss Bathgate. "I've mair pride than make a fool o' mysel' to please folk."
Oh, come on, Jock begged. "Look at Mrs. M'Cosh!"
Miss Bathgate snorted.
Ay, said Mrs. M'Cosh, with imperturbable good-humour, "she seen me, and she thinks yin auld fool is enough at a time. Never heed, Bella, juist gie us a verse."
Miss Bathgate protested that she knew no songs, and had no voice, but under persuasion she broke into a ditty, a sort of recitative:
"Gang further up the toon, Geordie Broon, Geordie Broon,
Gang further up the toon, Geordie Broon:
Gang further up the toon
Till ye's spent yer hale hauf-croon,
And then come singin' doon,
Geordie Broon, Geordie Broon."
I remember that when I was a child, Jean said. "We used to be put to sleep with it; it is very soothing. Thank you so much, Miss Bathgate … Now I think we should have a game."
Forfeits, Miss Teenie suggested.
That's a silly game, said Mhor; "there's kissing in it."
Perhaps we might have a quiet game, Jean said. "What was that one we played with Pamela, you remember, Jock? We took a subject, and tried who could say the most obvious thing about it."
Oh, nothing clever, for goodness' sake, pleaded Miss Watson. "I've no head for anything but fancy-work."
'Up Jenkins' would be best, Jock decreed; so a table was got in, and "up Jenkins" was played with much laughter until the clock struck ten, and the guests all rose in a body to go.
Well, said Miss Watson, "it's been a very pleasant evening, though I wouldn't wonder if I had a nightmare about that funeral pyre … I always think, don't you, that there's something awful pathetic about Christmas? You never know where you may be before another."
One of the guests, a little music-teacher, said:
The worst of Christmas is that it brings back to one's mind all the other Christmasses and the people who were with us then….
Bella Bathgate's voice was heard talking to Mrs. M'Cosh at the door: "I dinna believe in keeping Christmas; it's a popish festival. New Year's the time. Ye can eat yer currant-bun wi' a relish then. Guid-nicht, then, and see ye lick that ill laddie for near settin' the hoose on fire. It's no' safe, I tell ye, to live onywhere near him noo that he's begun thae tricks. Baith Peter an' him are fair Bolsheviks … Did I tell ye that Miss Reston sent me a grand feather-boa—grey, in a present? I've aye had a notion o' a feather-boa, but I dinna ken how she kent that. And this is no' yin o' the skimpy kind; it's fine and fussy and soft … Here, did the Lord send Miss Jean a present?… I doot he's aff for guid. Weel, weel, guid-nicht."
With a heightened colour Jean said good-night to her guests, separated
Mhor from his train, and sent him with Jock to bed.
As she went upstairs, Bella Bathgate's words rang in her ears dismally:
I doot he's aff for guid.
It was what she wanted, of course; she had told him so. But she had half hoped that he might send her a letter or a little remembrance on Christmas Day.
Better not, perhaps, but it would have been something to keep. She sometimes wondered if she had not dreamt the scene in the Hopetoun Woods, and only imagined the words that were constantly in her ears. It was such a very improbable thing to happen to such a commonplace person.
Her room was very restful-looking that night to Jean, tired after a long day's junketing. It was a plain little upper chamber, with white walls and Indian rugs on the floor. A high south wind was blowing (it had been another of poor Mhor's snow-less Christmasses!), making the curtains billow out into the room, and she could hear through the open window the sound of Tweed rushing between its banks. On the dressing-table lay a new novel with a vivid paper cover. Jean gave it a little disgusted push. Someone had lent it to her, and she had been reading it between Christmas preparations, reading it with deep distaste. It was about a duel for a man between a woman of forty-five and a girl of eighteen. The girl was called Noel, and was "pale, languid, passionate." The older woman gave up before the end, and said Time had "done her in." There were pages describing how she looked in the mirror "studying with a fearful interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light coating of powder, fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fullness of the skin below her chin," and how she saw herself going down the years, "powdering a little more, painting a little more, touching up her hair till it was all artifice, holding on by every little device…."
A man had written that. What a trade for a man, Jean thought.
She was glad she lived among people who had the decency to go on caring for each other in spite of lines and wrinkles—comfortable couples whose affection for each other was a shelter in the time of storm, a shelter built of common joys, of "fireside talks and counsels in the dawn," cemented by tears shed over common sorrows.
She smiled to herself as she remembered a little woman who had told her with great pride that, to celebrate their silver wedding, her husband was giving her a complete set of artificial teeth. "And," she had finished impressively, "you know what teeth cost now."
And why not? It was as much a token of love as a pearl necklace, and, looked at in the right way, quite as romantic.
I'd better see how it finishes, Jean said to herself opening the book a few pages from the end.
Oh yes, there they were at it. Noel, "pale, languid passionate," and the man "moved beyond control." "He drew her so close that he could feel the throbbing of her heart …" And the other poor woman with the hard lines and marking beneath the light coating of powder, where had she gone?
Jean pushed the book away, and stood leaning on the dressing-table studying her face in the glass. This was no heroine, "pale, languid, passionate." She saw a fresh-coloured face with a pointed chin, wide-apart eyes as frank and sunny as a moorland burn, an innocent mouth. It seemed to Jean a very uninteresting face. She was young, certainly, but that was all—not beautiful, or brilliant and witty. Lord Bidborough must see scores of lovely girls. Jean seemed to see them walking past her in a procession—girls who had maids to do their hair in the most approved fashion, constantly renewed girls whose clothes were a dream of daintiness all charming, all witty, all fitted to be wife to a man like Lord Bidborough. What was he doing now, Jean wondered. Perhaps dancing, or sitting out with someone. Jean could see him so clearly, listening, smiling, with lazy, amused eyes. By now he must be thankful that the penny-plain girl at Priorsford had not snatched at the offer he had made her, but had had the sense to send him away. It must have been a sudden madness on his part. He had never said a word of love to her—then suddenly in the rain and mud, when she was looking her very plainest, muffled up in a thick coat, clogged by goloshes, to ask her to marry him!
Jean nodded at the girl in the glass.
What you've got to do is to put him out of your head, and be thankful that you have lots to do, and a house to keep, and boys to make happy, and aren't a heroine writhing about in a novel.
But she sighed as she turned away. Doing one's duty is a dreary business for three-and-twenty. It goes on for such a long time.
"It was told me I should be rich by the fairies."—A Winter's
Tale.
January is always a long, flat month: the Christmas festivities are over, the bills are waiting to be paid, the weather is very often of the dreariest, spring is yet far distant. With February, hope and the snowdrops begin to spring, but January is a month to be warstled through as best we can.
This January of which I write Jean felt to be a peculiarly long, dull month. She could not understand why, for David was at home, and she had always thought that to have the three boys with her made up the sum of her happiness. She told herself that it was Pamela she missed. It made such a difference knowing that the door would not open to admit that tall figure; the want of the embroidery frame seemed to take a brightness from the room, and the lack of that little gay laugh of Pamela's left a dullness that the loudest voices did nothing to dispel.
Pamela wrote that the visit to Champertoun had been a signal success. The hitherto unknown cousins were delightful people, and she and her brother were prolonging their stay till the middle of January. Then, she said, she hoped to come back to Priorsford for a little, while Biddy went on to London.
How easy it all sounded, Jean thought. Historic houses full of all things lovely, leisured, delightful people, the money, and the freedom to go where one listed: no pinching, no striving, no sordid cares.
David's vacation was slipping past; and Jean was deep in preparations for his departure. She longed vehemently for some money to spend. There were so many things that David really needed and was doing without, so many of the things he had were so woefully shabby. Jean understood better now what a young man wanted; she had studied Lord Bidborough's clothes. Not that the young man was anything of a dandy, but he had always looked right for every occasion. And Jean thought that probably all the young men at Oxford looked like that—poor David! David himself never grumbled. He meant to make money by his pen in spare moments, and his mind was too full of plans to worry much about his shabby clothes. He sometimes worried about his sister, and thought it hard that she should have the cares of a household on her shoulders at an age when other girls were having the time of their lives, but he solaced himself with the thought that some day he would make it up to Jean, that some day she should have everything that now she was missing, full measure pressed down and running over. It never occurred to the boy that Jean's youth would pass, and whatever he might be able to give her later, he could never give her that back.
Pamela returned to Hillview in the middle of the month, just before
David left.
Bella Bathgate owned that she was glad to have her back. That indomitable spinster had actually missed her lodger. She was surprised at her own pleasure in seeing the boxes carried upstairs again, in hearing the soft voice talking to Mawson, in sniffing the faint sweet scent that seemed to hang about the house when Miss Reston was in it, conquering the grimmer odour of naphtha and boiled cabbage which generally held sway.
Bella had missed Mawson too. It was fine to have her back again in her cosy kitchen, enjoying her supper and full of tales of the glories of Champertoun. Bella's face grew even longer than it was naturally as she heard of the magnificence of that ancient house, of the chapel, of the ballroom, of the number of bedrooms, of the man-servants and maid-servants, of the motors and horses.
Forty bedrooms! she said, in scandalised tones. "The thing's rideeclous. Mair like an institution than a private hoose."
Oh, it's a gentleman's 'ouse, said Mawson proudly—"the sort of thing Miss Reston's accustomed to. At Bidborough, I'm told, there's bedrooms to 'old a regiment, and the same at Mintern Abbas, but I've never been there yet. It was all the talk in the servants' 'all at Champertoun 'oo would be Lady Bidborough. There were several likely young ladies there, but 'e didn't seem partial to any of them."
Whaur's he awa to the noo?
Back to London for a bit, I 'eard, and later on we're joining 'im at Bidborough. Beller, I was thinking to myself when they were h'all talking, what if Lady B. should be a Priorsford lady? His lordship did seem h'attentive in at The Rigs. Wouldn't it be a fine thing for Miss Jean?
Miss Bathgate suddenly had a recollection of Jean as she had seen her pass that morning—a wistful face under a shabby hat.
Hut, she said, tossing her head and lying glibly. "It's ma opeenion that the Lord askit Miss Jean when he was in Priorsford, and she simply sent him to the right about."
She took a drink of tea, with a defiant twirl of her little finger, and pretended not to see the shocked expression on Mawson's face. To Mawson it sounded like sacrilege for anyone to refuse anything to his lordship.
Oh, Beller! Miss Jean would 'ave jumped at 'im!
Naething o' the kind, said Miss Bathgate fiercely, forgetting all about her former pessimism as to Jean's chance of getting a man, and desiring greatly to champion her cause. "D'ye think Miss Jean's sitting here waitin' to jump at a man like a cock at a grossit? Na! He'll be a lucky man that gets her, and weel his lordship kens it. She's no pented up to the een-holes like thae London Jezebels. Her looks'll stand wind and water. She's a kind, wise lassie, and if she condescends to the Lord, I'm sure I hope he'll be guid to her. For ma ain pairt I wud faur rather see her marry a dacent, ordinary man like a minister or a doctor—but we've nane o' thae kind needin' wives in Priorsford the noo, so Miss Jean 'll mebbe hev to fa' back on a lord…."
On the afternoon of the day this conversation took place in Hillview kitchen, Jean sat in the living-room of The Rigs, a very depressed little figure. It was one of those days in which things seem to take a positive pleasure in going wrong. To start with, the kitchen range could not go on, as something had happened to the boiler, and that had shattered Mrs. M'Cosh's placid temper. Also the bill for mending it would be large, and probably the landlord would make a fuss about paying it. Then Mhor had put a newly-soled boot right on the hot bar of the fire and burned it across, and Jock had thrown a ball and broken a precious Spode dish that had been their mother's. But the worst thing of all was that Peter was lost, had been lost for three days, and now they felt they must give up hope. Jock and Mhor were in despair (which may have accounted for their abandoned conduct in burning boots and breaking old china), and in their hearts felt miserably guilty. Peter had wanted to go with them that morning three days ago; he had stood patiently waiting before the front door, and they had sneaked quietly out at the back without him. It was really for his own good, Jock told Mhor; it was because the gamekeeper had said if he got Peter in the Peel woods again he would shoot him, and they had been going to the Peel woods that morning—but nothing brought any comfort either to Jock or Mhor. For two nights Mhor had sobbed himself to sleep openly, and Jock had lain awake and cried when everyone else was sleeping.
They scoured the country in the daytime, helped by David and Mr. Jowett and other interested friends, but all to no purpose.
If I knew God had him I wouldn't mind, said Mhor, "but I keep seeing him in a trap watching for us to come and let him out. Oh, Peter, Peter…."
So Jean felt completely demoralised this January afternoon and sat in her most unbecoming dress, with the fire drearily, if economically, banked up with dross, hoping that no one would come near her. And Mrs. Duff-Whalley and her daughter arrived to call.
It was at once evident that Mrs. Duff-Whalley was on a very high horse indeed. Her accent was at its most superior—not at all the accent she used on ordinary occasions—and her manner was an excellent imitation of that of a lady she had met at one of the neighbouring houses and greatly admired. Her sharp eyes were all over the place, taking in Jean's poor little home-made frock, the shabby slippers, the dull fire, the depressed droop of her hostess's shoulders.
Jean was sincerely sorry to see her visitors. To cope with Mrs. Duff-Whalley and her daughter one had to be in a state of robust health and high spirits.
We ran in, Jean—positively one has time for nothing these days—just to wish you a Happy New-Year though a fortnight of it is gone. And how are you? I do hope you had a very gay Christmas, and loads of presents. Muriel quite passed all limits. I told her I was quite ashamed of the shoals of presents, but of course the child has so many friends. The Towers was full for Christmas. Dear Gordon brought several Cambridge friends, and they were so useful at all the festivities. Lady Tweedie said to me, 'Mrs. Duff-Whalley, you really are a godsend with all these young men in this unmanned neighbourhood.' Always so witty, isn't she? dear woman. By the way, Jean, I didn't see you at the Tweedies' dance, or the Olivers' theatricals.
No, I wasn't there. I hadn't a dress that was good enough, and I didn't want to be at the expense of hiring a carriage.
Oh, really! We had a small dance at The Towers on Christmas night—just a tiny affair, you know, really just our own house-party and such old friends as the Tweedies and the Olivers. We would have liked to ask you and your brother—I hear he's home from Oxford—but you know what it is to live in a place like Priorsford: if you ask one you have to ask everybody—and we decided to keep it entirely County—you know what I mean?
Oh, quite, said Jean; "I'm sure you were wise."
We were so sorry, went on Mrs. Duff-Whalley, "that dear Lord Bidborough and his charming sister couldn't come. We have got so fond of both of them. Muriel and Lord Bidborough have so much in common—music, you know, and other things. I simply couldn't tear them away from the piano at The Towers. Isn't it wonderful how simple and pleasant they are considering their lineage? Actually living in that little dog-hole of a Hillview. I always think Miss Bathgate's such an insolent woman; no notion of her proper place. She looks at me as if she actually thought she was my equal, and wasn't she positively rude to you, Muriel, when you called with some message?"
Oh, frightful woman! said Muriel airily. "She was most awfully rude to me. You would have thought that I wanted to burgle something." She gave an affected laugh. "I simply stared through her. I find that irritates that class of person frightfully … How do you like my sables, Jean? Yes—a present."
They are beautiful, said Jean serenely, but to herself she muttered bitterly, "Opulent lumps!"
David goes back to Oxford next week, she said aloud, the thought of money recalling David's lack of it.
Oh, really! How exciting for him, Mrs. Duff-Whalley said. "I suppose you won't have heard from Miss Reston since she went away?"
I had a letter from her a few days ago.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley waited expectantly for a moment, but as Jean said nothing more she continued:
Did she talk of future plans? We simply must fix them both up for a week at The Towers. Lord Bidborough told us he had quite fallen in love with Priorsford and would be sure to come back. I thought it was so sweet of him. Priorsford is such a dull little place.
Yes, said Jean; "it was very condescending of him."
Then she remembered Richard Plantagenet, her friend, his appreciation of everything, his love for the Tweed, his passion for the hills, his kindness to herself and the boys—and her conscience pricked her. "But I think he meant it," she added.
Well, Muriel said, "I fail to see what he could find to admire in Priorsford. Of all the provincial little holes! I'm constantly upbraiding Mother for letting my father build a house here. If they had gone two or three miles out, but to plant themselves in a little dull town, always knocking up against the dull little inhabitants! Positively it gets on my nerves. One can't go out without having to talk to Mrs. Jowett, or a Dawson, or some of the villa dwellers. As I said to Lady Tweedie yesterday when I met her in the Eastgate, 'Positively,' I said, 'I shall scream if I have to say to anyone else, "Yes, isn't it a nice quiet day for the time of year?"' I'm just going to pretend I don't see people now."
Muriel, darling, you mustn't make yourself unpopular. It's not like London, you know, where you can pick and choose. I quite agree that the Priorsford people need to be kept in their places, but one needn't be rude. And some of the people, the aborigines, as dear Gordon calls them, are really quite nice. There are about half a dozen men one can ask to dinner, and that new doctor—I forget his name—is really quite a gentleman. Plays bridge.
Jean laughed suddenly and Mrs. Duff-Whalley looked inquiringly at her.
Oh, she said, blushing, "I remembered the definition of a gentleman in the Irish R.M.—'a man who has late dinner and takes in the London Times.' … Won't you stay to tea?"
Oh no, thank you, the car is at the gate. We are going on to tea with Lady Tweedie. 'You simply must spare me an afternoon, Mrs. Duff-Whalley,' she said to me the other day, and I rang her up and said we would come to-day. Life is really such a rush. And we are going abroad in February and March. We must have some sunshine. Not that we need it for our health, for we're both as strong as ponies. I haven't been a day in bed for years, and Muriel the same, I'm thankful to say. We've never had to waste money on doctors. And the War kept us so cooped up, it's really pleasant to feel we can get about again. I thought on our way south we would make a tour of the battlefields. I think one owes it to the men who fought for us to go and visit their graves—poor fellows! I saw Mrs. Macdonald—you go to their church, don't you?—at a meeting yesterday, and I said if she would give me particulars I'd try and see her boy's grave. They won't be able to go themselves, poor souls, and I thought it would be a certain consolation to them to know that a friend had gone. I must say, I think she might have shown more gratitude. She was really quite off-hand. I think ministers' wives have often bad manners; they deal so much with the working classes….
Jean thought of a saying she had read of Dr. Johnson's: "He talked to me at the Club one day concerning Catiline's conspiracy—so I withdrew my attention and thought about Tom Thumb." When she came back to Mrs. Duff-Whalley that lady was saying:
Did you say, Jean, that Miss Reston is coming back to Priorsford soon?
Yes, any day.
Fancy! And her brother too?
Jean said she thought not: Lord Bidborough was going to London.
Ah! then we shall see him there. I don't know when I met anyone with whom I felt so instantly at home. He has such easy manners. It really is a pleasure to meet a gentleman. I do wish my boy Gordon had seen more of him. I'm sure they would have been friends. So good for a boy, you know, to have a man of the world to go about with. Well, good-bye, Jean. You really look very washed out. What you really need is a thorough holiday and change of scene. Why, you haven't been away for years. Two months in London would do wonders for you—
The handle of the door turned and a voice said, "May I come in?" and without waiting for permission Pamela Reston walked in, bare-headed, wrapped in a cloak, and with her embroidery-frame under her arm, as she had come many times to The Rigs during her stay at Hillview.
When Jean heard the voice it seemed to her as if everything was transformed. Mrs. Duff-Whalley and Muriel, their sables and their Rolls-Royce, ceased to be great weights crushing life and light out of her, and became small, ordinary, rather vulgar figures; she forgot her own home-made frock and shabby slippers; and even the fire seemed to feel that things were brightening, for a flame struggled through the backing and gave promise of future cheerfulness.
Oh, Pamela! cried Jean. There was more of relief and appeal in her voice than she knew, and Pamela, seeing the visitors, prepared to do battle.
I thought I should surprise you, Jean, girl. I came by the two train, for I was determined to be here in time for tea. She slipped off her coat and took Jean in her arms. "It is good to be back…. Ah, Mrs. Duff-Whalley, how are you? Have you kept Priorsford lively through the Christmas-time, you and your daughter?"
Well, I was just telling Jean we've done our best. My son Gordon, and his Cambridge friends, delightful young fellows, you know, perfect gentlemen. But we did miss you and your brother. Is dear Lord Bidborough not with you?
My brother has gone to London.
Naturally, said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, nodding her head knowingly. "All young men like London, so gay, you know, restaurants and theatres and night-clubs—"
Oh, I hope not, laughed Pamela. "My brother's rather extraordinary; he cares very little for London pleasures. The open road is all he asks—a born gipsy."
"
Fancy! Well, it's a nice taste too. But I would rather ride in my car than tramp the roads. I like my comforts. Muriel and I are going to London shortly, on our way to the Continent. Will you be there, Miss Reston?
"Probably, and if I am Jean will be with me. Do you hear that, Jean? and paying no attention to the dubious shake of Jean's head she went on: "We must give Jean a very good time and have lots of parties. Perhaps, Mrs. Duff-Whalley, you will bring your daughter to one of Jean's parties when you are in London? You have been so very kind to us that we should greatly like to have an opportunity of showing you some hospitality. Do let us know your whereabouts. It would be fun—wouldn't it, Jean?—to entertain Priorsford friends in London."
For a moment Mrs. Duff-Whalley looked very like a ferret that wanted to bite; then she smiled and said:
Well, really, it's most kind of you. I'm sure Jean should be very grateful to you. You're a kind of fairy godmother to this little Cinderella. Only Jean must remember that it isn't very nice to come back to drudgery after an hour or two at the ball, and she gave an unpleasant laugh.
Ah, but you forget your fairy tale, said Pamela. "Cinderella had a happy ending. She wasn't left to the drudgery, but reigned with the prince in the palace."
It's hardly polite surely, Muriel put in, "to liken poor little Jean to a cinder-witch."
Jean laughed and held out a foot in a shabby slipper. "I've felt like one all day. It's been such a grubby day, no kitchen range on, no hot water, and Mrs. M'Cosh actually out of temper. Now you've come, Pamela, it will be all right—but it has been wretched. I hadn't the spirit to change my frock or put on decent slippers, that's why I've reminded you all of Cinderella…. Are you going, Mrs. Duff-Whalley? Good-bye."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley had, with an effort, regained her temper, and was now all smiles.
We must see you often at The Towers while you are in Priorsford, dear Miss Reston. Muriel and I are on our way to tea with Lady Tweedie. She will be so excited to hear you are back. You have made quite a place for yourself in our little circle. Good-bye, Jean, we shall be seeing you some time. Come, Muriel. Well—t'ta.
When the visitors had rolled away in their car Jean told Pamela about
Peter.
I couldn't tell you before those opulent, well-pleased people. It's absolutely breaking our hearts. Mrs. M'Cosh looks ten years older, and Jock and Mhor go about quite silent thinking out wicked things to do to relieve their feelings. David has gone over all the hills looking for him, but he may be lying trapped in some wood. Come and speak to Mrs. M'Cosh for a minute. Between Peter and the boiler she is in despair.
They found Mrs. M'Cosh baking with the gas oven.
It's a scone for the tea. When I seen Miss Reston it kinna cheered me up. Hae ye tell't her aboot Peter?
He will turn up yet, Mrs. M'Cosh, Pamela assured her. "Peter's such a clever dog, he won't let himself be beat. Even if he is trapped I believe he will manage to get out."
It's to be hoped so, for the want o' him is something awful.
A knock came to the back door and a boy's voice said, "Is Peter in?" It was a message boy who knew all Peter's tricks—knew that however friendly Peter was with a message boy on the road, he felt constrained to jump out at him when he appeared at the back door with a basket. The innocent question was too much for Mrs. M'Cosh.
Na, she said bitterly. "Peter's no' in, so ye needna hold on to the door. Peter's lost. Deid, as likely as not." She turned away in bitterness of heart, leaving Jean to take the parcels from the boy.
The boys came in quietly after another fruitless search. They did not ask hopefully, as they had done at first, if Peter had come home, and Jean did not ask how they had fared.
The sight of Pamela cheered them a good deal.
Does she know? Jock asked, and Jean nodded.
Pamela kept the talk going through tea, and told them so many funny stories that they had to laugh.
If only, said Mhor, "Peter was here now the Honourable's back we would be happy."
There's a big box of hard chocolates behind that cushion, Pamela said, pointing to the sofa.
It was at that moment that the door opened, and Mrs. M'Cosh put her head in. Her face wore a broad smile.
The wanderer has returned, she said.
At that moment Jean thought the Glasgow accent the most delightful thing on earth and the smile on Mrs. M'Cosh's face the most beautiful. With a shout they all made for the kitchen.
There was Peter, thin and dirty, but in excellent spirits, wagging his tail so violently that his whole body wagged.
See, said Mrs. M'Cosh, "he's been in a trap, but he's gotten out.
Peter's a cliver lad."
Jock and Mhor had no words. They lay on the linoleum-covered floor while
Mrs. M'Cosh fetched hot milk, and crushed their faces against the little
black-and-white body they had thought they might never see again, while
Peter licked his own torn paw and their faces in turn.
* * * * *
It was wonderfully comfortable to see Pamela settle down in the corner of the sofa with her embroidery and ask news of all her friends. Jean had been a little shy of meeting Pamela, wondering if Lord Bidborough had told her anything, wondering if she were angry that Jean should have had such an offer, or resentful that she had refused it. But Pamela talked quite naturally about her brother, and gave no hint that she knew of any reason why Jean should blush when his name was mentioned.
And how are all the people—the Jowetts and the Watsons and the Dawsons? And the dear Macdonalds? I picked up a book in Edinburgh that I think Mr. Macdonald will like. And Lewis Elliot—have you seen him lately, Jean?
He's away. Didn't you know? He went just after you did. He was in London at Christmas—at least, that was the postmark on the parcels, but he has never written a word. He was always a bad correspondent, but he'll turn up one of these days.
Mrs. M'Cosh came in with the letters from the evening post.
Actually a letter for me, said Jean, "from London. I expect it's from that landlord of ours. Surely he won't be giving us notice to leave The Rigs. Pamela, I'm afraid to open it. It looks like a lawyer's letter."
Open it then.
Jean opened it slowly and read the enclosure with a puzzled frown; then she dropped it with a cry.
Pamela looked up from her work to see Jean with tears running down her face. Jock and Mhor stopped what they were doing and came to look at her. Peter rubbed himself against her legs by way of comfort.
My dear, said Pamela, "is there anything wrong?"
Oh, do you remember the little old man who came one day to look at the house and stayed to tea and I sang 'Strathairlie' to him? He's dead.
Jean's tears flowed afresh as she said the words. "How I wish I had been kinder to him. I somehow felt he was ill."
And why have they written to tell you? Pamela asked.
Jean picked up the letter which had fallen on the floor.
"
It's from his lawyer, and he says he has left me money…. Read it, Pamela. I don't seem able to see the words.
"So Pamela read aloud the letter that converted poverty-stricken Jean into a very wealthy woman.
Jean's face was dead white, and she lay back as if stunned, while Jock gave solemn utterance to the most complicated ejaculation he had yet achieved: "Goodness-gracious-mercy-Moses-Murphy-mumph-mumph-mumph!"
Mhor said nothing, but stared with grave green eyes at the stricken figure of the heiress.
It's awful, Jean moaned.
But, my dear, said Pamela, "I thought you wanted to be rich."
Oh—rich in a gentle way, a few hundreds a year—but this—
Poor Jean, buried under bullion.
You're all looking at me differently already, cried poor Jean. "Mhor, it's just the same me. Money can't make any real difference. Don't stare at me like that."
Will Peter have a diamond collar now? Mhor asked.
Awful effect of sudden riches, said Pamela.
Bear up, Jean—I've no doubt you'll be able to get rid of your money. Just think of all the people you will be able to help. You needn't spend it on yourself you know.
No, but suppose it's the ruin of the boys! I've often heard of sudden fortunes making people go all wrong.
Now, Jean, does Jock look as if anything so small as a fortune could put him wrong? And David—by the way, where is David?
Out, said Jock, "getting something at the stationer's. Let me tell him when he comes in."
Then I'll tell Mrs. M'Cosh, cried Mhor, and, followed by Peter, he rushed from the room.
The colour was beginning to come back to Jean's face, and the stunned look to go out of her eyes.
Why in the world has he left it to me? she asked Pamela.
"
You see the lawyer suggests coming to see you. He will explain it all. It's a wonderful stroke of luck, Jean. No wonder you can't take it in.
"I feel like the little old woman in the nursery-rhyme who said, 'This is none of I.' I'm bound to wake up and find I've dreamt it…. Oh, Mrs. M'Cosh!
It's the wee laddie Scott to say his mother canna come and wash the morn's mornin'; she's no weel. It's juist as weel, seein' the biler's gone wrang. I suppose I'd better gie the laddie a piece?
Yes, and a penny. Then Jean remembered her new possessions. "No, give him this, please, Mrs. M'Cosh."
Mrs. M'Cosh received the coin and gasped. "Hauf a croon!" she said.
Silver, said Pamela, "is to be no more accounted of than it was in the days of Solomon!"
D'ye ken whit ye'll dae? demanded Mrs. M'Cosh. "Ye'll get the laddie taen up by the pollis. Gie him thruppence—it's mair wise-like."
Oh, very well, said Jean, thwarted at the very beginning of her efforts in philanthropy. "I'll go and see his mother to-morrow and find out what she needs. Have you heard the news, Mrs. M'Cosh?"
Mrs. M'Cosh came farther into the room and folded her hands on her snow-white apron.
Weel, Mhor came in and tell't me some kinna story aboot a lot o' money, but I thocht he was juist bletherin'. Is't a fac'?
It would seem to be. The lawyer in London writes that Mr. Peter Reid—d'you perhaps remember an old man who came here to tea one day in October?—he came from London and lived at the Temperance—has left me all his fortune, which is a large one. I can't think why…. And I thought he was so poor, I wanted to have him here to stay, to save him paying hotel bills. Poor man, he must have been very friendless when he left his money to a stranger.
It's a queer turn up onyway. I juist hope it's a' richt. But I would see it afore ye spend it. I wis readin' a bit in the papers the ither day aboot a wumman who got word o' a fortune sent her, and went and got a' sorts o' braw claes and things ower the heid o't, and here it wis a' a begunk. And a freend o' mine hed a husband oot aboot Canada somewhere, and she got word o' his death, and she claimed the insurance, and got verra braw blacks, and here wha should turn up but his lordship, as leevin' as you or me! Eh, puir thing, she wis awfu' annoyed…. You be carefu', Miss Jean, and see the colour o' yer money afore ye begin giein' awa' hauf-croons instead o' pennies.
"O, I wad like to ken—to the beggar-wife says I—
Why chops are guid to brander and nane sae guid to fry,
An' siller, that's sae braw to get, is brawer still to gie.
—It's gey an' easy speirin', says the beggar-wife to me."
R.L.S.
It is always easier for poor human nature to weep with those who weep than to rejoice with those who rejoice. Into our congratulations to our more fortunate neighbour we often manage to squeeze something of the "hateful rind of resentment," forgetting that the cup of life is none too sweet for any of us, and needs nothing of our bitterness added.
Jean had not an enemy in the world, almost everyone wished her well, but in very few cases was there any marked enthusiasm about her inheritance. "Ridiculous," was the most frequent comment: or "Fancy that little thing!" It seemed absurd that such an unimportant person should have had such a large thing happen to her.
Pamela was frankly disgusted with the turn things had taken. She had intended giving Jean such a good time; she had meant to dress her and amuse her and settle her in life. Peter Reid had destroyed all her plans, and Jean would never now be dependent on her for the pleasures of life.
She wrote to her brother:
"
Jean seems to be one of the people that all sorts of odd things happen to, and now fortune has played one of her impish tricks and Jean has become a very considerable heiress. And I was there, oddly enough, when the god in the car alighted, so to speak, at The Rigs. One afternoon, just after I came to Priorsford, I went in after tea and found the Jardines entertaining a shabby-looking elderly man. They were all so very nice to him that I thought he must be some old family friend, but it turned out that none of them had seen him before that afternoon. He had asked to look over the house, and told Jean that he had lived in it as a boy, and Jean, remarking his rather shabby clothes and frail appearance, jumped to the conclusion that he had failed in life and—you know Jean—was at once full of tenderness and compassion. At his request she sang to him a song he had heard his mother sing, and finished by presenting him with the song-book containing it—a somewhat rare collection which she valued.
""
This shabby old man, it seems, was one Peter Reid, a wealthy London business man, and owner of The Rigs, born and bred in Priorsford, who had just heard from his doctor that he had not long to live, and had come back to his childhood's home meaning to die there. He had no relations and few friends, and had made up his mind to leave his money to the first person who did anything for him without thought of payment. (He seems to have been a hard, suspicious type of man who had not attracted kindness.) So Fate guided his steps to Jean, and this is the result. Yes, rather far-fetched, I agree, but Fate is often like a novelette. Mr. Peter Reid had meant to ask the Jardines to leave The Rigs and let him settle there, but—there must have been a soft part somewhere in the hard little man—he hadn't the heart to do it when he found how attached they were to the place.
""
I was at The Rigs when the lawyer's letter came. Jean as an heiress is very funny and, at the same time, horribly touching. At first she could think of nothing but that the lonely old man she had tried to be kind to was dead, and wept bitterly. Then as she began to realise the fact of the money she was aghast, suffocated with the thought of her own wealth. She told us piteously that it wouldn't change her at all. I think the poor child already felt the golden barrier that wealth builds round its owners. I don't think Mr. Peter Reid was kind, though perhaps he meant to be. Jean is such a conscientious, anxious pilgrim at any time, and I'm afraid the wealth will hang round her neck like the Ancient Mariner's albatross. … I have been wondering, Biddy, how this will affect your chances. I know you felt as I did how nice it would be to give Jean all the things that she has never had and which money can buy. I admit I am horribly disappointed about it, but I'm not at all sure that this odd trick of fortune's won't help you. Her attitude was that marriage with you was unthinkable; you had so much and she had so little. Well, this evens things up. Don't come. Don't write. Leave her alone to try her wings. She will want to try all sorts of schemes for helping people, and I'm afraid the poor child will get many bad falls. So long as she remains in Priorsford with people like Mrs. Hope and the Macdonalds to watch over her she can't come to any harm. Don't be anxious. Honestly, Biddy, I think she cares for you. I'm glad you asked her when she was poor.""
"
* * * * *
When the news of Jean's fortune broke over Priorsford, tea-parties had no lack of material for conversation.
Miss Watson and Miss Teenie, much more excited than Jean herself, ranged gaily round the circle of their acquaintances, drank innumerable cups of tea, and discussed the matter in all its bearings.
Isn't it strange to think of Miss Jean as an heiress? Such a plain little thing—in her clothes, I mean, for she has a bit sweet wee face. I don't know how she'll ever do in a great big house with butlers and things. I expect she'll leave The Rigs now. It's no place for an heiress. Perhaps she'll build a house like The Towers. No; you're right: she'll look for an old house; she always had such queer ideas about liking old things and plain things…. Well, when she had a wee house it had a wide door. I hope when she gets a big house it won't have a narrow door. Money sometimes changes people's very natures…. It's a funny business; you never really know what'll happen to you in this world. Anyway, I don't grudge it to Miss Jean, though, mind you, I don't think myself that she'll carry off money well. She hasn't presence enough, if you know what I mean. She'll never look the thing in a big motor, and you can't imagine her being haughty to people poorer than herself. She has such a way of putting herself beside folk—even a tinker-body on the road!
Miss Bathgate heard the news with sardonic laughter.
So that's the latest! Miss Jean's gaun to be upsides wi' the best o' them! Puir lamb, puir lamb! I hope the siller 'll bring her happiness, but I doot it … I yince kent some folk that got a fortune left them. He was a beadle in the U.F. Kirk at Kirkcaple, a dacent man wi' a wife and dochter, an' by some queer chance they came into a heap o' siller, an' a hoose—a mansion hoose, ye ken. They never did mair guid, puir bodies. The hoose was that big that the only kinda cosy place they could see to sit in was the butler's pantry, an' they took to drink, fair for want o' anything else to dae. I've heard tell that they took whisky to their porridges, but that's mebbe a lee. Onyway, the faither and mither sune died off, and the dochter went to board wi' the minister an' his wife, to see if they could dae onything wi' her. I mind seein' her yince. She was sittin' horn-idle, an' I said to her, 'D'ye niver tak' up a stockin'?' and she says, 'I dinna need to dae naething.' 'But,' I says, 'a stockin' keeps your hands busy, an' keeps ye frae wearyin',' but she juist said, 'I tell ye I dinna need to dae naething. I whiles taks a ride in a carriage.' … It was a sorry sicht, I can tell ye, to see a dacent lass ruined wi' siller…. Weel, Miss Jean 'll get a man noo. Nae fear o' that, and Miss Bathgate repeated her cynical lines about the lass "on Tintock tap."
Mrs. Hope was much excited when she heard, more especially when she found who Jean's benefactor was.
Reids who lived in The Rigs thirty years ago? But I knew them. I know all about them. It was I who suggested to Alison Jardine that the cottage would suit her. She had lost a lot of money and wanted a small place…. Why, bless me, Augusta, Mrs. Reid, this man's mother, came from Corlaw; her people were tenants of my father's. What was the name? I used to be taken to their house by my nurse and get an oatcake with sugar sprinkled on it—a great luxury, I thought. Yes, of course, Laidlaw. She was Jeannie Laidlaw. When I married and came to Hopetoun I often went to see Mrs. Reid. She reminded me of Corlaw, and could talk of my father, and I liked that…. Her husband was James Reid. He must have had some money, and I think he was retired. He had a beard and came from Fife. I remember the east-country tone in his voice. They went to the Free Kirk, and I overheard, one day, a man say to him as we came out of church (where a retiring collection for the next Sunday had been announced), 'There's an awfu' heap o' collections in oor kirk,' and James Reid replied, 'Ou ay, but ma way is to pay no attention.' When I told your father he was delighted and said that he must take that for his motto through life—'Ma way is to pay no attention.'
Mrs. Hope took off her glasses and smiled to herself over her recollections…. "Mrs. Reid was a nice creature, 'fair bigoted,' as they say here, on her son Peter. He was her chief topic of conversation. Peter's cleverness, Peter's kindness to his mother, Peter's good looks, Peter's fine voice: when I saw him—well, I thought we should all thank God for our mothers, for no one else will ever see us with such kind eyes…. And it's this Peter Reid—Jeannie Laidlaw's son—who has enriched Jean. Well, Augusta, I must say I consider it rather a liberty."
Augusta looked at her mother with an amused smile.
Yes, Augusta, it was a pushing, interfering sort of thing to do. What is the child to do with a great fortune? I'm not afraid of her being spoiled. Money won't vulgarise Jean as it does so many people, but it may turn her into a very burdened, anxious pilgrim. She is happier poor. The pinch of too little money is a small thing compared to the burden of too much. The doing without is good for both body and soul, but the great possessions are apt to harden our hearts and make our souls small and meagre. Who would have thought that little Jean would have had the hard hap to become heir to them. But she has a high heart. She may make a success of being a rich woman! She has certainly made a success of being a poor one.
I think, said Augusta, in her gentle voice, "that Peter Reid was a wise man to leave his money to Jean. Only the people who have been poor know how to give, and Jean has imagination and an understanding heart. Haven't you noticed what a wonderful way she has with the poor people? She is always welcome in the cottages…. And think what a delight she will have in spending money on the boys! But I hope Pamela Reston will do as she had planned and carry Jean off for a real holiday. I should like to see her for a little while spend money like water, buy all manner of useless lovely things, and dine and dance and go to plays."
Mrs. Hope put up her glasses to regard her daughter.
Dear me, Augusta, am I hearing right? Who is more severe than you on the mad women who dance, and sup, and frivol their money away? But there's something in what you say. The bairn needs a playtime…. To think that Jeannie Laidlaw's son should change the whole of Jean's life. Preposterous!
* * * * *
Mrs. Duff-Whalley was having tea with Mrs. Jowett when the news was broken to her. It was a party, but only, as Mrs. Duff-Whalley herself would have put it, "a purely local affair," meaning some people on the Hill.
Mrs. Jowett sat in her soft-toned room, pouring out tea into fragile cups with hands that seemed to demand lace ruffles, so white were they and transparent. The room was like herself, exquisitely fresh and dainty; white walls hung with pale water-colours in gilt frames, Indian rugs of soft pinks and blues and greys, plump cushions in worked muslin covers that looked as if they were put on fresh every morning. Photographs stood about of women looking sweetly into vacancy over the heads of pretty children, and books of verses, bound daintily in white and gold, lay on carved tables.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley did not care for Mrs. Jowett's tea-parties, and she always felt irritated by her drawing-room. The gentle voice of her hostess made her want to speak louder than usual, and she thought the conversation insipid to a degree. How could it be anything but insipid with Mrs. Jowett saying only "How nice," or "What a pity" at intervals? She did not even seem to care to hear Mrs. Duff-Whalley's news of "the County," and "dear Lady Tweedie," merely murmuring, "Oh, really," when told the most interesting and even startling facts.
Uninterested idiot, thought Mrs. Duff-Whalley to herself as she turned from her hostess to Miss Mary Duncan, who at least had some sense, though both she and her sisters had a lamentable lack of style.
Miss Duncan's kind face beamed pleasantly. She was quite willing to listen to Mrs. Duff-Whalley as long as that lady pleased. She thought she needed soothing, so she agreed with everything she said, and made sensible little remarks at intervals. Mrs. Jowett was pouring out a second cup of tea for Mrs. Duff-Whalley when she said, "And have you heard about dear little Jean Jardine?"
Has anything happened to her? I saw her the other day and she was all right.
She's quite well, but haven't you heard? She has inherited a large fortune.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley said nothing for a minute. She could not trust herself to speak. Despised Jean, whom she had not troubled to ask to her parties, whom she had always felt she could treat anyhow, so poor was she and of no account. It had been bad enough to know that she was on terms of intimacy with Pamela Reston and her brother: to hear Miss Reston say that she meant to take her to London and entertain for her and to hear her suggest that Muriel might go to Jean's parties had been galling, but she had thrust the recollection from her, reflecting that fine ladies said much that they did not mean, and that probably the promised visit to London would never materialise. And now to be told this! A fortune: Jean—it was too absurd!
When she spoke, her voice was shrill with anger in spite of her efforts to control it.
It can't be true. The Jardines have no relations that could leave them money.
This isn't a relation, Mrs. Jowett explained. "It's someone Jean was kind to quite by chance. I think it is so sweet. It quite makes one want to cry. Dear Jean!"
Mrs. Duff-Whalley looked at the sentimental woman before her with bitter scorn.
It would take more than that to make me cry, she snorted. "I wonder what fool wanted to leave Jean money. Such an unpractical creature! She'll simply make ducks and drakes of it, give it away to all and sundry, pauperise the whole neighbourhood."
Oh, I don't think so, Miss Duncan broke in. "She has had a hard training, poor child. Such a pathetic mite she was when her great-aunt died and left her with David and Jock and the little Gervase Taunton! No one thought she could manage, but she did, and she has been so plucky, she deserves all the good fortune that life can bring her. I'm longing to hear what Jock says about this. I do like that boy."
They are, all three, dear boys, said Mrs. Jowett. "Tim and I quite feel as if they were our own. Tim, dear," to that gentleman, who had bounced suddenly and violently into the room, "we are talking about the great news—Jean's fortune—"
Ah yes, yes, said Mr. Jowett, distributing brusque nods to the women present. "What I want is a bit of thick string." (His wife's delicate drawing-room hardly seemed the place to look for such a thing.) "No, no tea, my dear. I told you I wanted a bit of thick string…. Yes, let's hope it won't spoil Jean, but I think it's almost sure to. Fortune hunters, too. Bad thing for a girl to have money…. Yes, yes, I asked the servants and Chart brought me the string basket, but it was all thin stuff. I'll lose the post, but it's always the way. Every day more rushed than another. Remind me, Janetta, to get some thick string to-morrow. I've no time to go down to the town to-day. Why, bless me, my morning letters are hardly looked at yet," and he fussed himself out of the room.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley rose to go.
Then, Mrs. Jowett, I can depend on you to look after that collecting? And please be firm. I find that collectors are apt to be very lazy and unconscientious. Indeed, one told me frankly that in her district she only went to the people she knew. That isn't the way to collect. The only way is to get into each house—to stand on the doorstep is no use, they can so easily send a maid to refuse—and sit there till they give a subscription. Every year since I took it on there has been an increase, and I'll be frightfully disappointed if you let it go back.
Mrs. Jowett looked depressed. She knew herself to be one of the worst collectors on record. She was guiltily aware that she often advised people not to give; that is, if she thought their circumstances straitened!
I don't know, she began, "I'm afraid I could never sit in a stranger's house and insist on being given money. It's so—so high-handed, like a highwayman or something."
Think of the cause, said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, "not of your own feelings."
Yes, of course, but … well, if there is a deficit, I can always raise my own subscription to cover it. She smiled happily at this solution of the problem.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley sniffed.
'The conies are a feeble folk,' she quoted rudely. "Well, good-bye. I shall send over all the papers and collecting books to-morrow. Muriel and I go off to London on Friday en route for the south. It will be pleasant to have a change and meet some interesting people. Muriel was just saying it's a cabbage's life we live in Priorsford. I often wonder we stay here…."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley went home a very angry woman. After dinner, sitting with Muriel before the fire in the glittering drawing-room, she discussed the matter.
I know what'll be the end of it, she said. "You saw what a fuss Miss Reston made of Jean the other day when we called? Depend upon it, she knew the money was coming. I dare say she and her brother are as poor as church mice—those aristocrats usually are—and Jean's money will come in useful. Oh, we'll see her Lady Bidborough yet…. I tell you what it is, Muriel, the way this world's managed is past speaking about."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley was knitting a stocking for her son Gordon (her hands were seldom idle), and she waved it in her exasperation as she talked.
Here are you, meant, as anyone can see, for the highest position, and instead that absurd little Jean is to be cocked up, a girl with no more dignity than a sparrow, who couldn't keep her place with a washerwoman. I've heard her talking to these cottage women as if they were her sisters.
Muriel leant back in her chair and seemed absorbed in balancing her slipper on her toe.
My dear mother, she said, "why excite yourself? It isn't clever of you to be so openly annoyed. People will laugh. I don't say I like it any better than you do, but I hope I have the sense to purr congratulations. We can't help it anyway. You and I aren't attracted to Jean, but there's no use denying most people are. And what's more, they keep on liking her. She isn't a person people get easily tired of. I wish I knew her secret. I suppose it is charm—a thing that can't be acquired."
What nonsense, Muriel! I wonder to hear you. I'd like to know who has charm if you haven't. It is a silly word anyway.
Muriel shook her head. "It's no good posing when we are by ourselves. As a family we totally lack charm. Minnie tries to make up for it by a great deal of manner and a loud voice. Gordon—well, it doesn't matter so much for a man, but you can see his friends don't really care about him much. They take his hospitality and say he isn't a bad sort. They know he is a snob, and when he tries to be funny he is often offensive, poor Gordon! I've got a pretty face, and I play games well, so I am tolerated, but I have hardly one real friend. The worst of it is I know all the time where I am falling short, and I can't help it. I feel myself jar on people. I once heard old Mrs. Hope say that it doesn't matter how vulgar we are, so long as we know we are being vulgar. But that isn't true. It's not much fun to know you are being vulgar and not be able to help it."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley gave a convulsed ejaculation, but her daughter went on.
Sometimes I've gone in of an afternoon to see Jean, and found her darning stockings in her shabby frock, with a look on her face as if she knew some happy secret; a sort of contented, brooding look—and I've envied her. And so I talked of all the gaieties I was going to, of the new clothes I was getting, of the smart people we know, and all the time I was despising myself for a fool, for what did Jean care! She sat there with her mind full of books and poetry and those boys she is so absurdly devoted to; it was nothing to her how much I bucked; and this fortune won't change her. Money is nothing—
Mrs. Duff-Whalley gasped despairingly to hear her cherished daughter talking, as she thought, rank treason.
Oh, Muriel, how you can! And your poor father working so hard to make a pile so that we could all be nice and comfortable. And you were his favourite, and I've often thought how proud he would have been to see his little girl so smart and pretty and able to hold her own with the best of them. And I've worked too. Goodness knows I've worked hard. It isn't as easy as it looks to keep your end up in Priorsford and keep the villa-people in their places, and force the County to notice you. If I had been like Mrs. Jowett you would just have had to be content with the people on the Hill. Do you suppose I haven't known they didn't want to come here and visit us? Oh, I knew, but I made them. And it was all for you. What did I care for them and their daft-like ways and their uninteresting talk about dogs and books and things! It would have been far nicer for me to have made friends with the people in the little villas. My! I've often thought how I would relish a tea-party at the Watsons'! Your father used to have a saying about it being better to be at the head of the commonalty than at the tail of the gentry, and I know it's true. Mrs. Duff-Whalley of The Towers would be a big body at the Miss Watsons' tea-parties, and I know fine I'm only tolerated at the Tweedies' and the Olivers' and all the others.
Poor Mother! You've been splendid!
If you aren't happy, what does anything matter? I'm fair disheartened, I tell you. I believe you're right. Money isn't much of a blessing. I've never said it to you because you seemed so much a part of all the new life, with your accent and your manners and your little dogs, but over and over when people snubbed me, and I had to talk loud and brazen because I felt so ill at ease, I've thought of the old days when I helped your father in the shop. Those were my happiest days—before the money came. I had a girl to look after the house and you children, and I went between the house and the shop, and I never had a dull minute. Then we came into some money, and that helped your father to extend and extend. First we had a house in Murrayfield—and, my word, we thought we were fine. But I aimed at Drumsheugh Gardens, and we got there. Your father always gave in to me. Eh, he was a hearty man, your father. If it's true what you say that none of you have charm, though I'm sure I don't know what you mean by it, it's my blame, for your father was popular with everyone. He used to laugh at me and my ambition, for, mind you, I was always ambitious, but his was kindly laughter. Often and often when I've been sitting all dressed up at some dinner-party, like to yawn my head off with the dull talk, I've thought of the happy days when I helped in the shop and did my own washing—eh, I little thought I would ever live in a house where we never even know when it's washing day—and went to bed tired and happy, and fell asleep behind your father's broad back….
"
Oh, Mother, don't cry. It's beastly of me to discourage you when you've been the best of mothers to me. I wish I had known my father better, and I do wish I could remember when we were all happy in the little house. You've never been so very happy in The Towers, have you, Mother?
"No, but I wouldn't leave it for the world. Your father was so proud of it. 'It's as like a hydro as a private house can be,' he often said, in such a contented voice. He just liked to walk round and look at all the contrivances he had planned, all the hot-rails and things in the bathrooms and cloakrooms, and radiators in every room, and the wonderful pantries—'tippy,' he called them. He couldn't understand people making a fuss about old houses, and old furniture, grey walls half tumbling down and mouldy rooms. He liked the new look of The Towers, and he said to me, 'Mind, Aggie, I'm not going to let you grow any nonsense like ivy or creepers up this fine new house. They're all very well for holding together tumbledown old places, but The Towers doesn't need them. And I'm sure he would be pleased to-day if he saw it. The times people have advised me to grow ivy—even Lady Tweedie, the last time she came to tea—but I never would. It's as new-looking as the day he left it…. You don't want to leave The Towers, Muriel?
No—o, but—don't you think, Mother, we needn't work quite so hard for our social existence? I mean, let's be more friendly with the people round us, and not strive so hard to keep in with the County set. If Miss Reston can do it, surely we can.
But don't you see, her mother said, "Miss Reston can do it just because she is Miss Reston. If you're a Lord's daughter you can be as eccentric as you like, and make friends with anyone you choose. If we did it, they would just say, 'Oh, so they've come off their perch!' and once we let ourselves down we would never raise ourselves again. I couldn't do it, Muriel. Don't ask me."
No. But we've got to be happier somehow. Climbing is exhausting work. She stooped and picked up the two small dogs that lay on a cushion beside her. "Isn't it, Bing? Isn't it, Toutou? You're happy, aren't you? A warm fire and a cushion and some mutton-chop bones are good enough for you. Well, we've got all these and we want more…. Mother, perhaps Jean would tell us the secret of happiness."
As if I'd ask her, said Mrs. Duff-Whalley.
"Marvell, who had both pleasure and success, who must have enjoyed life if ever man did, … found his happiness in the garden where he was."—From an article in The Times Literary Supplement.
Mrs. M'Cosh remained extremely sceptical about the reality of the fortune until the lawyer came from London, "yin's errand to see Miss Jean," as she explained importantly to Miss Bathgate, and he was such an eminently solid, safe-looking man that her doubts vanished.
I wud say he wis an elder in the kirk, if they've onything as respectable as an elder in England, was her summing up of the lawyer.
Mr. Dickson (of Dickson, Staines, & Dickson), though a lawyer, was a human being, and was able to meet Jean with sympathy and understanding when she tried to explain to him her wishes.
First of all, she was very anxious to know if Mr. Dickson thought it quite fair that she should have the money. Was he quite sure that there were no relations, no one who had a real claim?
Mr. Dickson explained to her what a singularly lonely, self-sufficing man Peter Reid had been, a man without friends, almost without interests—except the piling up of money.
I don't say he was unhappy; I believe he was very content, absolutely absorbed in his game of money-making. But when he couldn't ignore any longer the fact that there was something wrong with his health, and went to the specialist and was told to give up work at once, he was completely bowled over. Life held nothing more for him. I was very sorry for the poor man … he had only one thought—to go back to Priorsford, his boyhood's home.
And I didn't know, said Jean, "or we would all have turned out there and then and sat on our boxes in the middle of the road, or roosted in the trees like crows, rather than keep him for an hour out of his own house. He came and asked to see The Rigs and I was afraid he meant to buy it: it was always our nightmare that the landlord in London would turn us out…. He looked frail and shabby, and I jumped to the conclusion that he was poor. Oh, I do wish I had known…."
He told me, Mr. Dickson went on, "when he came to see me on his return, that he had come with the intention of asking the tenants to leave The Rigs, but that he hadn't the heart to do it when he saw how attached you were to the place. He added that you had been kind to him. He was rather gruff and ashamed about his weakness, but I could see that he had been touched to receive kindness from utter strangers. He was amused in a sardonic way that you had thought him a poor man and had yet been kind to him; he had an unhappy notion that in this world kindness is always bought…. He had no heir, and I think I explained to you in my letter that he had made up his mind to leave his whole fortune to the first person who did anything for him without expecting payment. You turned out to be that person, and I congratulate you, Miss Jardine, most heartily. I would like to tell you that Mr. Reid planned everything so that it would be as easy as possible for you, and asked me to come and see you and explain in person. He seemed very satisfied when all was in order. I saw him a few days before he died and I thought he looked better, and told him so. But he only said, 'It's a great load off my mind to get everything settled, and it's a blessing not to have an heir longing to step into my shoes, and grudging me a few years longer on the earth.' Two days later he passed away in his sleep. He was a curious, hard man, whom few cared about, but at the end there was something simple and rather pathetic about him. I think he died content."
Thank you for telling me about him, Jean said, and there was silence for a minute.
And now may I hear your wishes? said Mr. Dickson.
Can I do just as I like with the money? Well, will you please divide it into four parts? That will be a quarter for each of us—David, Jock, Mhor, me.
Jean spoke as if the fortune was a lump of dough and Mr. Dickson the baker, but the lawyer did not smile.
I understood you had only two brothers?
"
Yes, David and Jock, but Mhor is an adopted brother. His name's Gervase Taunton.
"But—has he any claim on you?
Jean's face got pink. "I should think he has. He's exactly like our own brother."
Then you want him to have a full share?
Of course. It's odd how people will assume one is a cad! When Mhor's mother died (his father had died before) he came to us—his mother trusted him to us—and people kept saying, 'Why should you take him? He has no claim on you.' As if Mhor wasn't the best gift we ever got…. And when you have divided it, I wonder if you would take a tenth off each share? We were brought up to give a tenth of any money we had to God. I'm almost sure the boys would give it themselves. I think they would, but perhaps it would be safer to take it off first and put it aside.
Jean looked very straight at the lawyer. "I wouldn't like any of us to be unjust stewards," she said.
No, said the lawyer—"no."
And perhaps, Jean went on, "the boys had better not get their shares until they are twenty-five David could have it now, so far as sense goes, but it's the responsibility I'm thinking about."
I would certainly let them wait until they are twenty-five. Their shares will accumulate, of course, and be very much larger when they get them.
But I don't want that, said Jean. "I want the interest on the money to be added to the tenths that are laid away. It's better to give more than the strict tenth. It's so horrid to be shabby about giving."
And what are the 'tenths,' to be used for?
I'll tell you about that later, if I may. I'm not quite sure myself. I shall have to ask Mr. Macdonald, our minister. He'll know. I'm never quite certain whether the Bible means the tenth to be given in charity, or kept entirely for churches and missions…. And I want to buy some annuities, if you will tell me how to do it. Mrs. M'Cosh, our servant—perhaps you noticed her when you came in? I want to make her absolutely secure and comfortable in her old age. I hope she will stay with us for a long time yet, but it will be nice for her to feel that she can have a home of her own whenever she likes. And there are others … but I won't worry you with them just now. It was most awfully kind of you to come all the way from London to explain things to me, when you must be very busy.
Coming to see you is part of my business, Mr. Dickson explained, "but it has been a great pleasure too…. By the way, will you use the house in Prince's Gate or shall we let it?"
Oh, do anything you like with it. I shouldn't think we would ever want to live in London, it's such a noisy, overcrowded place, and there are always hotels…. I'm quite content with The Rigs. It's such a comfort to feel that it is our own.
It's a charming cottage, Mr. Dickson said, "but won't you want something roomier? Something more imposing for an heiress?"
I hate imposing things, Jean said, very earnestly "I want to go on just as we were doing, only with no scrimping, and more treats for the boys. We've only got £350 a year now, and the thought of all this money dazes me. It doesn't really mean anything to me yet."
It will soon. I hope your fortune is going to bring you much happiness, though I doubt if you will keep much of it to yourself.
Oh yes, Jean assured him. "I'm going to buy myself a musquash coat with a skunk collar. I've always wanted one frightfully. You'll stay and have luncheon with us, won't you?"
Mr. Dickson stayed to luncheon, and was treated with great respect by Jock and Mhor. The latter had a notion that somewhere the lawyer had a cave in which he kept Jean's fortune, great casks of gold pieces and trunks of precious stones, and that any lack of manners on his part might lose Jean her inheritance. He was disappointed to find him dressed like any ordinary man. He had had a dim hope that he would look like Ali Baba and wear a turban.
After Mr. Dickson had finished saying all he had come to say, and had gone to catch his train, Jean started out to call on her minister. Pamela met her at the gate.
Well, Jean, and whither away? You look very grave. Are you going to tell the King the sky's falling?
Something of that kind. I'm going to see Mr. Macdonald. I've got something I want to ask him.
I suppose you don't want me to go with you? I love an excuse to go and see the Macdonalds. Oh, but I have one. Just wait a moment, Jean, while I run back and fetch something.
She joined Jean after a short delay, and they walked on together. Jean explained that she was going to ask Mr. Macdonald's advice how best to use her money.
Has the lawyer been? Pamela asked, "Do you understand about things?"
Jean told of Mr. Dickson's visit.
It's a fearful lot of money, Pamela. But when it's divided into four, that's four people to share the responsibility.
And what are you going to do with your share?
I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to take a house and fill it with guests who will be consistently unpleasant, as the Benefactress did. And I'm not going to build a sort of fairy palace and commit suicide from the roof like the millionaire in that book Midas something or other. And I hope I'm not going to lose my imagination and forget what it feels like to be poor, and send a girl with a small dress allowance half a dozen muslin handkerchiefs at Christmas.
I suppose you know, Jean—I don't want to be discouraging—that you will get very little gratitude, that the people you try to help will smarm to your face and blackguard you behind your back? You will be hurt and disappointed times without number…. You see, my dear, I've had money for quite a lot of years, and I know.
Jean nodded.
They were crossing the wide bridge over Tweed and she stopped and, leaning her arms on the parapet, gazed up at Peel Tower.
Let's look at Peel for a little, she said. "It's been there such a long time and must have seen so many people trying to do their best and only succeeding in making mischief. It seems to say, 'Nothing really matters: you'll all be in the tod's hole in less than a hundred years. I remain, and the river and the hills.'"
Yes, said Pamela, "they are a great comfort, the unchanging things—these placid round-backed hills, and the river and the grey town—to us restless mortals…. Look, Jean, I want you to tell me if you think this miniature is at all like Duncan Macdonald. You remember I asked you to let me have that snapshot of him that you said was so characteristic and I sent it to London to a woman I know who does miniatures well. I thought his mother would like to have it. But you must tell me if you think it good enough."
Jean took the miniature and looked at the pictured face, a laughing boy's face, fresh-coloured, frank, with flaxen hair falling over a broad brow.
When, after a minute, she handed it back she assured Pamela that the likeness was wonderful.
"
She has caught it exactly, that look in his eyes as if he were telling you it was 'fair time of day' with him. Oh, dear Duncan! It's fair time of day with him now, I am sure, wherever he is…. He was twenty-two when he fell three years ago…. You've often heard Mrs. Macdonald speak of her sons. Duncan was the youngest by a lot of years—the baby. The others are frighteningly clever, but Duncan was a lamb. They all adored him, but he wasn't spoiled…. Life was such a joke to Duncan. I can't even now think of him as dead. He was so full of abounding life one can't imagine him lying still—quenched. You know that odd little poem: 'And Mary's the one that never liked angel stories,
"And Mary's the one that's dead….'
Death and Duncan seem such a long way apart. Many people are so dull and apathetic that they never seem more than half alive, so they don't leave much of a gap when they go. But Duncan—The Macdonalds are brave, but I think living to them is just a matter of getting through now. The end of the day will mean Duncan. I am glad you thought about getting the miniature done. You do have such nice thoughts, Pamela."
The Macdonalds' manse stood on the banks of Tweed, a hundred yards or so below Peel Tower, a square house of grey stone in a charming garden.
Mr. Macdonald loved his garden and worked in it diligently. It was his doctor, he said. When his mind got stale and sermon-writing difficult, when his head ached and people became a burden, he put on an old coat and went out to dig, or plant or mow the grass. He grew wonderful flowers, and in July, when his lupins were at their best, he took a particular pleasure in enticing people out to see the effect of their royal blue against the silver of Tweed.
He had been a minister in Priorsford for close on forty years and had never had more than £250 of a salary, and on this he and his wife had brought up four sons who looked, as an old woman in the church said, "as if they'd aye got their meat." There had always been a spare place at every meal for any casual guest, and a spare bedroom looking over Tweed that was seldom empty. And there had been no lowering of the dignity of a manse. A fresh, wise-like, middle-aged woman opened the door to visitors, and if you had asked her she would have told you she had been in service with the Macdonalds since she was fifteen, and Mrs. Macdonald would have added that she never could have managed without Agnes.
The sons had worked their way with bursaries and scholarships through school and college, and now three of them were in positions of trust in the government of their country. One was in London, two in India—and Duncan lay in France, that Holy Land of our people.
It was a nice question his wife used to say before the War (when hearts were lighter and laughter easier) whether Mr. Macdonald was prouder of his sons or his flowers, and when, as sometimes happened he had them all with him in the garden, his cup of content had been full.
And now it seemed to him that when he was in the garden Duncan was nearer him. He could see the little figure in a blue jersey marching along the paths with a wheelbarrow, very important because he was helping his father. He had called the big clump of azaleas "the burning bush." … He had always been a funny little chap.
And it was in the garden that he had said good-bye to him that last time. He had been twice wounded, and it was hard to go back again. There was no novelty about it now, no eagerness or burning zeal, nothing but a dogged determination to see the thing through. They had stood together looking over Tweed to the blue ridge of Cademuir and Duncan had broken the silence with a question:
What's the psalm, Father, about the man 'who going forth doth mourn'?
And with his eyes fixed on the hills the old minister had repeated:
"'That man who bearing precious seed
In going forth doth mourn,
He, doubtless, bringing back the sheaves
Rejoicing will return.'"
And Duncan had nodded his head and said, "That's it. 'Rejoicing will return.'" And he had taken another long look at Cademuir.
Many wondered what had kept such a man as John Macdonald all his life in a small town like Priorsford. He did more good, he said, in a little place; he would be of no use in a city; but the real reason was he knew his health would not stand the strain. For many years he had been a martyr to a particularly painful kind of rheumatism. He never spoke of it if he could help it, and tried never to let it interfere with his work, but his eyes had the patient look that suffering brings, and his face often wore a twisted, humorous smile, as if he were laughing at his own pain. He was now sixty-four. His sons, so far as they were allowed, had smoothed the way for their parents, but they could not induce their father to retire from the ministry. "I'll give up when I begin to feel myself a nuisance," he would say. "I can still preach and visit my people, and perhaps God will let me die in harness, with the sound of Tweed in my ears."
Mrs. Macdonald was, in Bible words, a "succourer of many." She was a little stout woman with the merry heart that goes all the way, combined with heavy-lidded, sad eyes, and a habit of sighing deeply. She affected to take a sad view of everything, breaking into irrepressible laughter in the middle of the most pessimistic utterances, for she was able to see the humorous side of her own gloom. Mrs. Macdonald was a born giver; everything she possessed she had to share. She was miserable if she had nothing to bestow on a parting guest, small gifts like a few new-laid eggs or a pot of home-made jam.
You know yourself, she would say, "what a satisfied feeling it gives you to come away from a place with even the tiniest gift."
Her popularity was immense. Sad people came to her because she sighed with them and never tried to cheer them; dull people came to her because she was never in offensive high spirits or in a boastful mood—not even when her sons had done something particularly striking—and happy people came to her, for, though she sighed and warned them that nothing lasted in this world, her eyes shone with pleasure, and her interest was so keen that every detail could be told and discussed and gloated over with the comfortable knowledge that Mrs. Macdonald would not say to her next visitor that she had been simply deaved with talk about So-and-so's engagement.
Mrs. Macdonald believed in speaking her mind—if she had anything pleasant to say, and she was sometimes rather startling in her frankness to strangers. "My dear, how pretty you are," she would say to a girl visitor, or, "Forgive me, but I must tell you I don't think I ever saw a nicer hat."
The women in the congregation had no comfort in their new clothes until Mrs. Macdonald had pronounced on them. A word was enough. Perhaps at the church door some congregational matter would be discussed; then, at parting, a quick touch on the arm and—"Most successful bonnet I ever saw you get," or, "The coat's worth all the money," or, "Everything new, and you look as young as your daughter."
Pamela and Jean found the minister and his wife in the garden. Mr. Macdonald was pacing up and down the path overlooking the river, with his next Sunday's sermon in his hand, while Mrs. Macdonald raked the gravel before the front door (she liked the place kept so tidy that her sons had been wont to say bitterly, as they spent an hour of their precious Saturdays helping, that she dusted the branches and wiped the faces of the flowers with a handkerchief) and carried on a conversation with her husband which was of little profit, as the rake on the stones dimmed the sense of her words.
Wasn't that right, John? she was saying as her husband came near her.
Dear me, woman, how can I tell? I haven't heard a word you've been saying. Here are callers. I'll get away to my visiting. Why! It's Jean and Miss Reston—this is very pleasant.
Mrs. Macdonald waved her hand to her visitors as she hurried away to put the rake in the shed, reappearing in a moment like a stout little whirlwind.
Come away, my dears. Up to the study, Jean; that's where the fire is to-day. I'm delighted to see you both. What a blessing Agnes is baking pancakes It seemed almost a waste, for neither John nor I eat them, but, you see, they had just been meant for you…. I wouldn't go just now, John. We'll have an early tea and that will give you a long evening.
Jean explained that she specially wanted to see Mr. Macdonald.
And would you like me to go away? Mrs. Macdonald asked. "Miss Reston and I can go to the dining-room."
But I want you as much as Mr. Macdonald, said Jean. "It's your advice
I want—about the money, you know."
Mrs. Macdonald gave a deep sigh. "Ah, money," she said—"the root of all evil."
Not at all, my dear, her husband corrected. "The love of money is the root of all evil—a very different thing. Money can be a very fine thing."
Oh, said Jean, "that's what I want you to tell me. How can I make this money a blessing?"
Mr. Macdonald gave his twisted smile.
And am I to answer you in one word, Jean? I fear it's a word too wide for a mouth of this age's size. You will have to make mistakes and learn by them and gradually feel your way.
The most depressing thing about money, put in his wife, "is that the Bible should say so definitely that a rich man can hardly get into heaven. Oh, I know all about a needle's eye being a gate, but I've always a picture in my own mind of a camel and an ordinary darning-needle, and anything more hopeless could hardly be imagined."
Mrs. Macdonald had taken up a half-finished sock, and, as she disposed of the chances of all the unfortunate owners of wealth, she briskly turned the heel. Jean knew her hostess too well to be depressed by her, so she smiled at the minister, who said, "Heaven's gate is too narrow for a man and his money; that goes without saying, Jean."
Jean leant forward and said eagerly, "What I really want to know is about the tenth we are to put away as not being our own. Does it count if it is given in charity, or ought it to be given to Church things and missions?"
Whatever is given to God will 'count,' as you put it—lighting, where you can, candles of kindness to cheer and warm and lighten.
I see, said Jean. "Of course, there are heaps of things one could slump money away on, hospitals and institutions and missions, but these are all so impersonal. I wonder, would it be pushing and furritsome, do you think, if I tried to help ministers a little?—ministers, I mean, with wives and families and small incomes shut away in country places and in the poor parts of big towns? It would be such pleasant helping to me."
Now, said Mrs. Macdonald, "that's a really sensible idea, Jean. There's no manner of doubt that the small salaries of the clergy are a crying scandal. I don't like ministers to wail in the papers about it, but the laymen should wail until things are changed. Ministers don't enter the Church for the loaves and fishes, but the labourer is worthy of his hire, and they must have enough to live on decently. Living has doubled. I couldn't manage as things are now, and I'm a good manager, though I says it as shouldn't…. The fight I've had all my life nobody will ever know. Now that we have plenty, I can talk about it. I never hinted it to anybody when we were struggling through; indeed, we washed our faces and anointed our heads and appeared not unto men to fast! The clothes and the boots and the butcher's bills! It's pleasant to think of now, just as it's pleasant to look from the hilltop at the steep road you've come. The boys sometimes tell me that they are glad we were too poor to have a nurse, for it meant that they were brought up with their father and me. We had our meals together, and their father helped them with their lessons. Indeed, it's only now I realise how happy I was to have them all under one roof."
She stopped and sighed, and went on again with a laugh. "I remember one time a week before the Sustentation Fund was due, I was down to one six-pence And of course a collector arrived! D'you remember that, John?… And the boys worked so hard to educate themselves. All except Duncan. Oh, but I am glad that my little laddie had an easy time—when it was to be such a short one."
He always wanted to be a soldier, Mr. Macdonald said. "You remember, Anne, when you tried to get him to say he would be a minister? He was about six then, I think. He said, 'No, it's not a white man's job,' and then looked at me apologetically afraid that he had hurt my feelings. When the War came he went 'most jocund, apt, and willingly,' but without any ill-will in his heart to the Germans.
"'He left no will but good will
And that to all mankind….'"
Mrs. Macdonald stared into the fire with tear-blurred eyes and said: "I sometimes wonder if they died in vain. If this is the new world it's a far worse one than the old. Class hatred, discontent, wild extravagance in some places, children starving in others, women mad for pleasure, and the dead forgotten already except by the mothers—the mothers who never to their dying day will see a fresh-faced boy without a sword piercing their hearts and a cry rising to their lips, 'My son! My son!'"
It's all true, Anne, said her husband, "but the sacrifice of love and innocence can never be in vain. Nothing can ever dim that sacrifice. The country's dead will save the country as they saved it before. Those young lives have gone in front to light the way for us."
Mrs. Macdonald took up her sock again with a long sigh.
I wish I could comfort myself with thoughts as you can, John, but I never had any mind. No, Jean, you needn't protest so politely. I'm a good house-wife and I admit my shortbread is 'extra,' as Duncan used to say. Duncan was very sorry as a small boy that he had left heaven and come to stay with us. He used to say with a sigh, 'You see, heaven's extra.' I don't know where he picked up the expression. But what I was going to say is that people are so wretchedly provoking. This morning I was really badly provoked. For one thing, I was very busy doing the accounts of the Girls' Club (you know I have no head for figures), and Mrs. Morton strolled in to see me, to cheer me up, she said. Cheer me up! She maddened me. I haven't been forty years a minister's wife without learning patience, but it would have done me all the good in the world to take that woman by her expensive fur coat and walk her rapidly out of the room. She sat there breathing opulence, and told me how hard it was for her to live—she, a lone woman with six servants to wait on her and a car and a chauffeur! 'I am not going to give to this War Memorial,' she said. 'At this time it seems rather a wasteful proceeding, and it won't do the men who have fallen any good.' … I could have told her that surely it wasn't waste the men were thinking about when they poured out their youth like wine that she and her like might live and hug their bank books.
Mr. Macdonald had moved from his chair in the window, and now stood with one hand on the mantelshelf looking into the fire. "Do you remember," he said, "that evening in Bethany when Mary took a box of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, so that the odour of the ointment filled the house? Judas—that same Judas who carried the bag and was a robber—was much concerned about the waste. He said that the box might have been sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor. And Jesus, rebuking him, said, 'The poor always ye have with you, but Me ye have not always.'"
He stopped abruptly and went over to his writing-table and made as though he were arranging papers. Presently he said, "Anne, you've been here." His tone was accusing.
Only writing a post card, said his wife quickly. "I can't have made much of a mess." She turned to her visitors and explained: "John is a regular old maid about his writing-table; everything must be so tidy and unspotted."
Well, I can't understand, said her husband, "why anyone so neat handed as you are should be such a filthy creature with ink. You seem positively to sling it about."
Well, said Mrs. Macdonald, changing the subject "I like your idea of helping ministers, Jean. I've often thought if I had the means I would know how to help. A cheque to a minister in a city-charge for a holiday; a cheque to pay a doctor's bill and ease things a little for a worn-out wife. You've a great chance, Jean."
I know, said Jean, "if you will only tell me how to begin."
I'll soon do that, said practical Mrs. Macdonald "I've got several in my mind this moment that I just ache to give a hand to. But only the very rich can help. You can't in decency take from people who have only enough to go on with…. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll see if Agnes is getting the tea. I want you to taste my rowan and crab-apple jelly, Miss Reston, and if you like it you will take some home with you."
* * * * *
As they left the Manse an hour later, laden with gifts, Pamela said to
Jean, "I would rather be Mrs. Macdonald than anyone else I know. She is
a practising Christian. If I had done a day's work such as she has done
I think I would go out of the world pretty well pleased with myself."
Yes, Jean agreed. "If life is merely a chance of gaining love she will come out with high marks. Did you give her the miniature?"
Yes, just as we left, when you had walked on to the gate with Mr. Macdonald. She was so absurdly grateful she made me cry. You would have thought no one had ever given her a gift before.
The world, said Jean, "is divided into two classes, the givers and the takers. Nothing so touches and pleases and surprises a 'giver' as to receive a gift. The 'takers' are too busy standing on their hind legs (like Peter at tea-time) looking wistfully for the next bit of cake to be very appreciative of the biscuit of the moment."
Bless me! said Pamela, "Jean among the cynics!"