“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 L250 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?”
CHAPTER XII
“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?”
CHAPTER XIII
“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!'”
CHAPTER XIV
“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 menagerie 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.”
CHAPTER XV
“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.”
CHAPTER XVI
“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.
CHAPTER XVII
“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,