Part 11

"Heaps, but I haven't much time for seeing them. The winter is so crowded with church-work; then in spring, when things slacken off, I go to London to Aunt Alice; and in summer we are at Etterick. But I do dine out now and again, and sometimes we have little parties. Would you care to meet some people?"

He hastily disclaimed any such desire, and assured her he was more than content with the company he had. "But," he added, "I should like to see more of the church people."

"You shall," Elizabeth promised him.

One o'clock found them again in Sauchiehall Street, and Arthur asked Elizabeth's advice as to the best place for luncheon.

"This is my day," she reminded him. "You will have lunch with me, please. If you'll promise not to be nasty about it, I'll take you to my favourite haunt. It's a draper's shop, but don't let that prejudice you."

He found himself presently in a large sunny room carpeted in soft grey and filled with little tables. The tablecloths were spotless, and the silver and glass shone. Elizabeth led the way to a table in the window and picked up a menu card.

"This," she said, "is where Glasgow beats every other town. For one-and-sixpence you get four courses. Everything as good as can be, and daintily served." She nodded and smiled to a knot of waitresses. "I come here quite often, so I know all the girls; they are such nice friendly creatures, and never forget one's little likes and dislikes. Let's choose what we'll have. What do you say to asparagus soup, fish cakes, braised sweetbreads, fruit salad, and coffee?"

"What! All for for one-and-sixpence?"

"All except the coffee, and seeing that this is no ordinary day we shall commit the extravagance. It's a poor heart that never rejoices."

One of the smiling waitresses took the order, and conveyed it down a speaking-tube to the kitchen far below.

"I always sit here when I can get the table," Elizabeth confided to Arthur. "I like to hear them repeating the orders. Listen."

A girl was speaking. "Here, I say! Hurry up with another kidney: that one had an accident. Whit's that? The kidneys are finished! Help!"

The luncheon-room, evidently a very popular one, was rapidly filling up. Arthur Townshend fixed his monocle in his eye and surveyed the scene. The majority of the lunchers were women--women in for the day from the country, eagerly discussing purchases, purchases made and purchases contemplated; women from the suburbs lunching in town because their men-folk were out all day; young girls in town for classes--the large room buzzed like a beehive on a summer's day. A fat, prosperous-looking woman in a fur coat sat down at a table near and ordered--"No soup, but a nice bit of fish."

"Isn't her voice nice and fat?" murmured Elizabeth--"like turtle-soup."

A friend espied the lady and, sailing up to the table, greeted her with "Fancy seeing you here!" and they fell into conversation.

"And what kind of winter are you having?" asked one.

"Fine," said the other. "Mr. Jackson's real well, his indigestion is not troubling him at all, and the children are all at school, and I've had the drawing-room done up--Wylie and Lochhead--handsome. And how are you all?"

"Very well. I was just thinking about you the other day and minding that you have never seen our new house. I've changed my day to first Fridays, but just drop a p.c. and come any day."

"Aren't the shops nice just now? And it's lovely to see the sun shining.... Are you going? Well, be sure you come soon. Awful pleased to have met you. Good-bye."

"An example of 'wee-pleasedness,'" said Elizabeth.

"I find," said Arthur, "that I like the Glasgow accent. There is something so soft and--and----"

"Slushy?" she suggested. "But I know what you mean: there is a cosy feeling about it, and it is kindly. But don't you think this is a wonderfully good luncheon for one-and-sixpence?"

"Quite extraordinarily good. I can't think how they do it."

"An Oxford friend of Alan's once stayed with us, and the only good thing he could find to say of Glasgow was that in the tea-shops you could make a beast of yourself for ninepence."

Elizabeth laid down her coffee-cup with a sigh.

"I'm always sorry when meals are over," she said. "I like eating, though Mrs. Thomson would say, in her frank way, that I put good food into a poor skin--meaning that I'm a thin creature. I don't mind a bit a home--I'm quite content with what Marget gives me--but when I am, say, in Paris, where cooking is a fine art, I revel."

"And so ethereal-looking!" commented Arthur.

"That's why I can confess to being greedy, of course," said she. "Well, Ulysses, having seen yet another city, would you like to go home?"

Arthur stooped to pick up Elizabeth's gloves and scarf which had fallen under the table, and when he gave them to her he said he would like to do some shopping, if she were agreeable.

"I promised Buff a paint-box, for one thing," he said.

"Rash man! He will paint more than pictures. However, shopping of any kind is a delight to me, so let's go."

The paint-box was bought (much too good a one, Elizabeth pointed out, for the base uses it would almost certainly be put to), also sweets for Thomas and Billy. Then a book-shop lured them inside, and browsing among new books, they lost count of time. Emerging at last, Arthur was tempted by a flower-shop, but Elizabeth frowned on the extravagance, refusing roses for herself. In the end she was prevailed upon to accept some flowering bulbs in a quaint dish to take to a sick girl she was going to visit.

"What is the use," she asked, "of us having a one-and-sixpenny luncheon if you are going to spend pounds on books and sweets and flowers? But Peggy will love these hyacinths."

"Are you going to see her now?"

"Yes. Will you take the purchases home? Or wait--would it bore you very much to come with me? If Peggy is able to see people, it would please her, and we'd only stay a short time."

Arthur professed himself delighted to go anywhere, and meekly acquiesced when Elizabeth vetoed the suggestion of a taxi as a thing unknown in church visitation. "It isn't far," she said, "if we cross the Clyde by the suspension bridge."

The sun was setting graciously that November afternoon, gilding to beauty all that, in dying, it touched. They stopped on the bridge to look at the light on the water, and Arthur said, "Who is Peggy?"

"Peggy?" Elizabeth was silent for a minute, then she said, "Peggy Donald is a bright thing who, alas! is coming quick to confusion. She is seventeen and she is dying. Sad? Yes--and yet I don't know. She has had the singing season, and she is going to be relieved of her pilgrimage before sorrow can touch her. She is such an eager, vivid creature, holding out both hands to life--horribly easy to hurt: and now her dreams will all come true. My grief is for her parents. They married late, and are old to have so young a daughter. They are such bleak, grey people, and she makes all the colour in their lives. They adore her, though I doubt if either of them has ever called her 'dear.' She doesn't know she is dying, and they are not at all sure that they are doing right in keeping it from her. They have a dreadful theory that she should be 'prepared.' Imagine a child being 'prepared' to go to her Father!... This is the place. Shall I take the hyacinths?"

As they went up the stair (the house was on the second floor) she told him not to be surprised at Mrs. Donald's manner. "She has the air of not being in the least glad to see one," she explained; "but she can't help her sort of cold, grudging manner. She is really a very fine character. Father thinks the world of her."

Mrs. Donald herself opened the door--a sad-faced woman, very tidy in a black dress and silk apron. In reply to Elizabeth's greeting, she said that this happened to be one of Peggy's well days, that she was up and had hoped that Miss Seton might come.

Arthur Townshend was introduced and his presence explained, and Mrs. Donald took them into the sitting-room. It was a fairly large room with two windows, solidly furnished with a large mahogany sideboard, dining-table, chairs, and an American organ.

A sofa heaped with cushions was drawn up by the fire, and on it lay Peggy; a rose-silk eiderdown covered her, and the cushions that supported her were rose-coloured with dainty white muslin covers. She wore a pretty dressing-gown, and her two shining plaits of hair were tied with big bows.

She was a "bright thing," as Elizabeth had said, sitting in that drab room in her gay kimono, and she looked so oddly well with her geranium-flushed cheeks and her brilliant eyes.

Elizabeth put down the pot of hyacinths on a table beside her sofa, a table covered with such pretty trifles as one carries to sick folk, and kneeling beside her, she took Peggy's hot fragile little hands into her own cool firm ones, and told her all she had been doing. "You must talk to Mr. Townshend, Peggy," she said. "He has been to all the places you want most to go to, and he can tell stories just like _The Arabian Nights_. He brought you these hyacinths.... Come and be thanked, Mr. Townshend."

Arthur came forward and took Peggy's hand very gently, and sitting beside her tried his hardest to be amusing and to think of interesting things to tell her, and was delighted when he made her laugh.

While they were talking, Mrs. Donald came quietly into the room and sat down at the table with her knitting.

Arthur noticed that in the sick-room she was a different woman. The haggard misery was banished from her face, and her expression was serene, almost happy. She smiled to her child and said, "Fine company now! This is better than an old dull mother." Peggy smiled back, but shook her head; and Elizabeth cried:

"Peggy thinks visitors are all very well for an hour, but Mothers are for always."

Elizabeth sat on the rug and showed Peggy patterns for a new evening dress she was going to get. They were spread out on the sofa, and Peggy chose a vivid geranium red.

Elizabeth laughed at her passion for colour and owned that it was a gorgeous red. But what about slippers? she asked. The geranium could never be matched.

"Silver ones," said Peggy's little weak voice.

"What a splendid idea! Of course, that's what I'll get."

"I should like to see you wear it," whispered Peggy.

"So you shall, my dear, when you come to Etterick. We shall all dress in our best for Peggy. And the day you arrive I shall be waiting at the station with the fat white pony, and Buff will have all his pets--lame birds, ill-used cats, mongrel puppies--looking their best. And Father will show you his dear garden. And Marget will bake scones and shortbread, and there will be honey for tea.... Meanwhile, you will rest and get strong, and I shall go and chatter elsewhere. Why, it's getting quite dark!"

Mrs. Donald suggested tea, but Elizabeth said they were expected at home.

"Sing to me before you go," pleaded Peggy.

"What shall I sing? Anything?" She thought for a moment. "This is a song my mother used to sing to us. An old song about the New Jerusalem, Peggy;" and, sitting on the rug, with her hand in Peggy's, with no accompaniment, she sang:

"There lust and lucre cannot dwell, There envy bears no sway; There is no hunger, heat nor cold, But pleasure every way.

Thy walls are made of precious stones, Thy bulwarks diamonds square; Thy gates are of right Orient pearls, Exceeding rich and rare.

Thy gardens and thy gallant walks Continually are green! There grow such sweet and pleasant flowers As nowhere else are seen.

Our Lady sings Magnificat, In tones surpassing sweet; And all the virgins bear their part, Sitting about her feet."

Mrs. Donald came with them to the door and thanked them for coming. They had cheered Peggy, she said.

Elizabeth looked at her wistfully.

"Do you think it unseemly of me to talk about new clothes and foolish things to little Peggy? But if it gives her a tiny scrap of pleasure? It can't do her any harm."

"Mebbe no'," said Peggy's mother. "But why do you speak about her going to visit you in summer? She is aye speaking about it, and fine you know she'll never see Etterick." Her tone was almost accusing.

Elizabeth caught both her hands, and the tears stood in her eyes as she said, "Oh! dear Mrs. Donald, it is only to help Peggy over the hard bits of the road. Little things, light bright ribbons and dresses, and things to look forward to, help when one is a child. If Peggy is not here when summer comes, we may be quite sure it doesn't vex her that she is not seeing Etterick. She"--her voice broke--"she will have far, far beyond anything we can show her--the King in His beauty and the land that is very far off."

_CHAPTER XII_

"They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims."

"Let's walk home," suggested Arthur, as they came out into the street. "It's such a ripping evening."

Elizabeth agreed, and they started off through the busy streets.

After weeks of dripping weather the frost had come, and had put a zest and a sparkle into life. In the brightly lit shops, as they passed, the shop-men were serving customers briskly, with quips and jokes for such as could appreciate badinage. Wives, bare-headed, or with tartan shawls, ran down from their stair-heads to get something tasty for their men's teas--a kipper, maybe, or a quarter of a pound of sausage, or a morsel of steak. Children were coming home from school; lights were lit and blinds were down--life in a big city is a cheery thing on a frosty November evening.

Elizabeth, generally so alive to everything that went on around her, walked wrapped in thought. Suddenly she said:

"I'm _horribly_ sorry for Mrs. Donald. Inarticulate people suffer so much more than their noisy sisters. Other mothers say, 'Well, it must just have been to be: everything was done that could be done,' and comfort themselves with that. She says nothing, but looks at one with those suffering eyes. _My dear little Peggy!_ No wonder her mother's heart is nearly broken."

Arthur murmured something sympathetic, and they walked on in silence, till he said:

"I want to ask you something. Don't answer unless you like, because it's frightful cheek on my part.... Do you really believe all that?"

"All what?"

"Well, about the next world. Are you as sure as you seem to be?"

Elizabeth did not speak for a moment, then she nodded her head gravely.

"Yes," she said, "I'm sure. You can't live with Father and not be sure."

"It seems to me so extraordinary. I mean to say, I never heard people talk about such things before. And you all know such chunks of the Bible--even Buff. Why do you laugh?"

"At your exasperated tone! You seem to find our knowledge of the Bible almost indecent. Remember, please, that you have never lived before in Scots clerical circles, and that ministers' children are funny people. We are brought up on the Bible and the Shorter Catechism--at least the old-fashioned kind are. In our case, the diet was varied by an abundance of poetry and fairy tales, which have given us our peculiar daftness. But don't you take any interest in the next world?"

Arthur Townshend screwed his short-sighted eyes in a puzzled way, as he said:

"I don't know anything about it."

"As much as anybody else, I daresay," said Elizabeth. "Don't you like that old song I sang to Peggy?--

'Thy gardens and thy _gallant walks_ Continually are green....'

One has a vision of smooth green turf, and ladies 'with lace about their delicate hands' walking serenely; and gentlemen ruffling it with curled wigs and carnation silk stockings. Such a deliciously modish Heaven! Ah well! Heaven will be what we love most on earth. At Etterick----"

"Tell me about Etterick," begged Arthur. "It's a place I want very much to see. Aunt Alice adores it."

"Who wouldn't! It's only a farmhouse with a bit built on, and a few acres of ground round it but there is a walled garden where old flowers grow carelessly, and the heather comes down almost to the door. And there is a burn--what you would call a stream--that slips all clear and shining from one brown pool to another; and the nearest neighbours are three good miles away, and the peeweets cry, and the bees hum among the wild thyme. You can imagine what it means to go there from a Glasgow suburb. The day we arrive, Father swallows his tea and goes out to the garden, snuffing the wind, and murmuring like Master Shallow, 'Marry, good air.' Then off he goes across the moor, and we are pretty sure that the psalm we sing at prayers that night will be 'I to the hills will lift mine eyes.'"

"Etterick belongs to your father?"

"Yes, it is our small inheritance. Father's people have had it for a long time. We can only be there for about two months in the summer, but we often send our run-down or getting-better people for a week or two. The air is wonderful, but it is dull for them, lacking the attractions of Millport or Rothesay--the contempt of your town-bred for the country-dwellers is intense, and laughable. I was going to tell you about the old man who along with his wife keeps it for us. He has the softest, most delicious Border voice, and he remarked to me once, 'A' I ask in the way o' Heaven is juist Etterick--at a raisonable rent.' I thought the 'raisonable rent' rather nice. Nothing wanted for nothing, even in the Better Country."

Arthur laughed, and said the idea carried too far might turn Heaven into a collection of Small Holdings.

"But tell me one thing more. What do you do it for? I mean visiting the sick, teaching Sunday schools, handing people tracts. Is it because you think it is your duty as a parson's daughter?"

Elizabeth turned to look at her companion's face to see if he were laughing; but he was looking quite serious, and anxious for an answer.

"Do you know," she asked him, "what the Scots girl said to the Cockney tourist when he asked her if all Scots girls went barefoot? No? Then I'll tell you. She said, 'Pairtly, and pairtly they mind their ain business.'"

"I deserve it," said Arthur. "I brought it on myself."

"I'm not proud, like the barefoot girl," said Elizabeth. "I'll answer your questions as well as I can. I think I do it 'pairtly' from duty and 'pairtly' from love of it. But oh! isn't it best to leave motives alone? When I go to see Peggy it is a pure labour of love, but when I go to see fretful people who whine and don't wash I am very self-conscious about myself. I mean to say, I can't help saying to myself, 'How nice of you, my dear, to come into this stuffy room and spend your money on fresh eggs and calf's-foot jelly for this unpleasant old thing.' Then I walk home on my heels. You've read _Valerie Upton_? Do you remember the loathly Imogen and her 'radiant goodness,' and how she stood 'forth in the light'? I sometimes have a horrid thought that I am rather like that."

"Oh no," said Arthur consolingly. "You will never become a prig. If your own sense of humour didn't save you I know what would--the knowledge that _Fish would lawff_."

Their walk was nearly over: they had come to the end of the road where the Setons' house stood.

"It is nice," said Elizabeth, with a happy sigh, "to think that we are going in to Father and Buff and tea. Have you got the paint-box all right? Let me be there when you give it to him."

They walked along in contented silence, until Elizabeth suddenly laughed, and explained that she had remembered a dream Buff once had about Heaven.

"He was sleeping in a little bed in my room, and he suddenly sprang up and said, 'It's a good thing that's not true, anyway.' I asked what was the matter, and he told me. He was, it seems, in a beautiful golden ship with silver sails, sailing away to Heaven, when suddenly he met another ship--a black, wicked-looking ship--bound for what Marget calls 'the Ill Place,' and to his horror he recognized all his family on board. 'What did you do, Buff?' I asked, and poor old Buff gave a great gulp and said, _'I came on beside you.'_"

"Sound fellow!" said Arthur.

_CHAPTER XIII_

"'O tell me what was on yer road, ye roarin' norland wind, As ye cam' blowin' frae the land that's never frae my mind? My feet they traivel England, but I'm deein' for the North--' 'My man, I heard the siller tides rin up the Firth o' Forth.'" _Songs of Angus._

Since the afternoon when Mr. Stewart Stevenson had called and talked ballads with Mr. Seton he had been a frequent visitor at the Setons' house. Something about it, an atmosphere homely and welcoming and pleasant, made it to him a very attractive place.

One afternoon (the Thursday of the week of Arthur Townshend's visit) he stood in a discouraged mood looking at his work. As a rule moods troubled Stewart Stevenson but little; he was an artist without the artistic temperament. He had his light to follow and he followed it, feeling no need for eccentricity in the way of hair or collars or conduct. He was as placid and regular as one of his father's "time-pieces" which ticked off the flying minutes in the decorous, well-dusted rooms of "Lochnagar." His mother summed him up very well when she confessed to strangers her son's profession. "Stewart's a Nartist," she would say half proud, half deprecating, "but you'd niver know it." Poor lady, she had a horror of artist-life as it was revealed to her in the pages of the Heart's Ease Library. Sometimes dreadful qualms would seize her in the night watches, and she would waken her husband to ask if he thought there was any fear of Stewart being Led Away, and was only partially reassured by his sleepy grunts in the negative. "What's Art?" she often asked herself, with a nightmare vision in her mind of ladies lightly clad capering with masked gentlemen at some studio orgy--"What's Art compared with Respectability?" though anyone more morbidly respectable and less likely to caper with females than her son Stewart could hardly be imagined, and her mind might have been in a state of perfect peace concerning him. He went to his studio as regularly as his father went to the Ham and Butter place, and both worked solidly through the hours.

But, as I have said, this particular afternoon found Stewart Stevenson out of conceit with himself and his work. It had been a day of small vexations, and the little work he had been able to do he knew to be bad. Finally, about four o'clock, he impatiently (but very neatly) put everything away and made up his mind to take Elizabeth Seton the book-plate he had designed for her. This decision made, he became very cheerful, and whistled as he brushed his hair and put his tie straight.

The thought of the Setons' drawing-room at tea-time was very alluring. He hoped there would be no other callers and that he would get the big chair, where he could best look at the picture of Elizabeth's mother above the fireplace. It was so wonderfully painted, and the eyes were the eyes of Elizabeth.

He was not quite sure that he approved of Elizabeth. His little mother, with her admiring "Ay, that's it, Pa," to all her husband's truisms, had given him an ideal of meek womanhood which Elizabeth was far from attaining to. She showed no deference to people, unless they were poor or very old. She laughed at most things, and he was afraid she was shallow. He distrusted, too, her power of charming. That she should be greatly interested in his work and ambitions was not surprising, but that her grey eyes should be just as shining and eager over the small success of a youth in the church was merely absurd. It was her way, he told himself, to make each person she spoke to feel he was the one person who mattered. It was her job to be charming. For himself, he preferred more sincerity, and yet--what a lass to go gipsying through the world with!