Part 14

"I wouldn't," said Elizabeth. "Fiction is always stranger and more interesting. By the way, are you to be permanently at the Foreign Office now?"

"I haven't the least notion, but I shall be there for the next few months. When do you go to London?"

In the spring, she told him, probably in April, and added that her Aunt Alice had been a real fairy godmother to her.

"Very few ministers' daughters have had my chances of seeing men and cities. And some day, some day when Buff has gone to school and Father has retired and has time to look about him, we are going to India to see the boys."

"You have a very good time in London, I expect," Arthur said. "I can imagine that Aunt Alice makes a most tactful chaperon, and I hear you are very popular."

"'Here's fame!'" quoted Elizabeth flippantly. "What else did Aunt Alice tell you about me?"

Arthur Townshend put the end of his cigarette carefully into the ash-tray and leant forward.

"You really want to know--then here goes. She told me you were tall--like a king's own daughter; that your hair was as golden as a fairy tale, and your eyes as grey as glass. She told me of suitors waiting on your favours----"

Elizabeth dropped her knitting with a gasp.

"If Aunt Alice told you all that--well, I've no right to say a word, for she did it to glorify me, and perhaps her kind eyes and heart made her think it true; but surely you don't think I am such a conceited donkey as to believe it."

"But isn't it true?--about the suitors, I mean?"

"Suitors! How very plural you are!"

"But I would rather keep them in the plural," he pleaded; "they are more harmless that way. But Aunt Alice did talk about some particular fellow--I think Gordon was his wretched name."

"Bother!" said Elizabeth. "I've dropped a stitch." She bent industriously over her knitting.

"I'm waiting, Elizabeth."

"What for?"

"To hear about Mr. Gordon."

"Oh! you must ask Aunt Alice," Elizabeth said demurely. "She is your fount of information." Then she threw down her knitting. "Arthur, don't let's talk any more about such silly subjects. They don't interest me in the least."

"Is Mr. Gordon a silly subject?"

"The silliest ever. No--of course he isn't. Why do you make me say nasty things? He is only silly to me because I am an ungrateful creature. I don't expect I shall ever marry. You see, I would never be a grateful wife, and it seems a pity to use up a man, so to speak, when there are so few men and so many women who would be grateful wives and may have to go without. I think I am a born spinster, and as long as I have got Father and Buff and the boys in India I shall be more than content."

"Buff must go to school soon," he warned her. "Your brothers may marry; your father can't be with you always."

"Oh, don't try to discourage me in my spinster path. You are as bad as Aunt Alice. She thinks of me as living a sort of submerged existence here in Glasgow, and only coming to the surface to breathe when I go to London or travel with her. But I'm not in the least stifled with my life. I wouldn't change with anybody; and as for getting married and going off with trunks of horrid new unfamiliar clothes, and a horrid new unfamiliar husband, I wouldn't do it. I haven't much ambition; I don't ask for adventures; though I look so large and bold, I have but a peeping and a timorous soul."

She smiled across at Arthur, as if inviting him to share her point of view; but he looked into the fire and did not meet her glance.

"Then you think," he said, "that you will be happy all your life--alone?"

"Was it Sydney Smith who gave his friends forty recipes for happiness? I remember three of them," she counted on her fingers, "a bright fire, a kettle singing on the hob, a bag of lollipops on the mantelshelf--all easy to come at. I can't believe that I shall be left entirely alone--I should be so scared o' nights. Surely someone will like me well enough to live with me--perhaps Buff, if he continues to have the contempt for females that he now has; but anyway I shall hold on to the bright fire and the singing kettle and the bag of lollipops."

She sat for a moment, absent-eyed, as if she were looking down the years; then she laughed.

"But I shall be a frightfully long gaunt spinster," she said.

Arthur laughed with her, and said:

"Elizabeth, you aren't really a grown-up woman at all. You're a schoolboy."

"I like that 'grown-up,'" she laughed; "it sounds so much less mature than the reality. I'm twenty-eight, did you know? Already airting towards spinsterhood."

Arthur shook his head at her.

"In your father's words, you are an absurd creature. Sing to me, won't you? seeing it's my last night."

"Yes." She went to the piano. "What shall I sing? 'A love-song or a song of good life'?"

"A love-song," said Arthur, and finished the quotation. "'I care not for good life.'"

Elizabeth giggled.

"Our language is incorrigibly noble. You know how it is when you go to the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford? I come away so filled with majestic words that I can hardly resist greeting our homely chemist with 'Ho! apothecary!' But I'm not going to sing of love. 'I'm no' heedin' for't,' as Marget says.... This is a little song out of a fairy tale--a sort of good-bye song:

'If fairy songs and fairy gold Were tunes to sell and gold to spend, Then, hearts so gay and hearts so bold, We'd find the joy that has no end. But fairy songs and fairy gold Are but red leaves in Autumn's play. The pipes are dumb, the tale is told, Go back to realms of working day.

The working day is dark and long, And very full of dismal things; It has no tunes like fairy song, No hearts so brave as fairy kings. Its princes are the dull and old, Its birds are mute, its skies are grey; And quicker far than fairy gold Its dreary treasures fleet away.

But all the gallant, kind and true May haply hear the fairy drum, Which still must beat the wide world through, Till Arthur wake and Charlie come. And those who hear and know the call Will take the road with staff in hand, And after many a fight and fall, Come home at last to fairy-land.'"

* * * * *

They were half-way through breakfast next morning before Buff appeared. He stood at the door with a sheet of paper in his hand, looking rather distraught. His hair had certainly not been brushed, and a smear of paint disfigured one side of his face. He was not, as Mr. Taylor would have put it, looking his "brightest and bonniest."

"I've been in Father's study," he said in answer to his sister's question, and handed Arthur Townshend the paper he carried.

"It's for you," he said, "a sea-fight. It's the best I can do. I've used up nearly all the paints in my box."

He had certainly been lavish with his colours, and the result was amazing in the extreme.

Mr. Townshend expressed himself delighted, and discussed the points of the picture with much insight.

"We shall miss you," Mr. Seton said, looking very kindly at him. "It has been almost like having one of our own boys back. You must come again, and to Etterick next time."

"Aw yes," cried Buff, "come to Etterick and see my jackdaw with the wooden leg." He had drawn his chair so close to Arthur's that to both of them the business of eating was gravely impeded.

"Come for the shooting," said Mr. Seton.

"Yes," said Elizabeth, as she filled out a third cup of tea for her father, "and the fourth footman will bring out your lunch while the fifth footman is putting on his livery. Don't be so buck-ish, Mr. Father. Our shooting, Arthur, consists of a heathery hillside inhabited by many rabbits, a few grouse--very wild, and an ancient blackcock called Algernon. No one can shoot Algernon; indeed, he is such an old family friend that it would be very ill manners to try. When he dies a natural death we mean to stuff him."

"But may I really come? Is this a _pukka_ invitation?"

"It is," Elizabeth assured him. "As the Glasgow girl said to the Edinburgh girl, 'What's a slice of ham and egg in a house like ours?' We shall all be frightfully glad to see you, except perhaps old Watty Laidlaw--I told you about him? He is very anxious when we have guests, he is so afraid we are living beyond our means. One day last summer I had some children from the village to tea, and he stood on the hillside and watched them cross the moor, then went in to Marget and said in despairing accents, 'Pit oot eighty mair cups. They're comin' ower the muir like a locust drift.' The description of the half-dozen poor little stragglers as a 'locust drift' was almost what Robert Browning calls 'too wildly dear.'"

"This egg's bad," Buff suddenly announced.

"Is it, Arthur?" Elizabeth asked.

Mr. Townshend regarded the egg through his monocle.

"It looks all right," he said; "but Buff evidently requires his eggs to be like Caesar's wife."

"Don't waste good food, boy," his father told him. "There is nothing wrong with the egg."

"It's been a nest-egg," said Buff in a final manner, and began to write in a small book.

Elizabeth remarked that Buff was a tiresome little boy about his food, and that there might come a time when he would think regretfully of the good food he had wasted. "And what are you writing?" she finished.

"It's my diary," said Buff, putting it behind his back. "Father gave it me. No, you can't read it, but Arthur can if he likes, 'cos he's going away"; and he poked the little book into his friend's hand.

Arthur thanked him gravely, and turned to the first entry:

_New Year's Day._

_Good Rissolution. Not to be crool to gerls._

The other entries were not up to the high level of the first, but were chiefly the rough jottings of nefarious plans which, one could gather, generally seemed to miscarry. On 12th August was printed and emphatically underlined the announcement that on that date Arthur Townshend would arrive at Etterick.

That the diary was for 1911 and that this was the year of grace 1913 troubled Buff not at all: years made little difference to him.

Arthur pointed this out as he handed back the book, and rubbing Buff's mouse-coloured hair affectionately, quoted:

"Poor Jim Jay got stuck fast in yesterday."

"But I haven't," Buff protested; "I'll know it's 1914 though it says 1911."

He put his diary into his safest pocket and asked if he might go to the station.

"Oh, I think not," his father said. "Why go into town this foggy morning?"

"He wants the 'hurl,'" said Elizabeth. "Arthur that's a new word for you. Father, we should make Arthur pass an examination and see what knowledge he has gathered. Let's draw up a paper:

I. What is-- (_a_) A Wee Free? (_b_) A U.P.? II. Show in what way the Kelvinside accent differs from that of Pollokshields. III. What is a 'hurl'?

I can't think of anything else. Anyway, I don't believe you could answer one of my questions, and I am only talking for talking's sake, because we are all so sad. By the way, when you say Good-bye to Marget and Ellen shake hands, will you? They expect it."

"Of course," said Arthur.

The servants came in for prayers.

Mr. Seton prayed for "travelling mercies" for the friend who was about to leave them to return to the great city.

"Here's the cab!" cried Buff, and rushed for his coat. His father followed him, and Arthur turned to Elizabeth.

"Will you write to me sometimes?"

Elizabeth stooped to pick up Launcelot, the cat.

"Yes," she said, "if you don't mind _prattle_. I so rarely have any thoughts."

He assured her that he would be grateful for anything she cared to send him.

"Tell me what you are doing; about the church people you visit, if the Peggy-child gets better, if Mr. Taylor makes a joke, and of course about your father and Buff. Everything you say or do interests me. You know that, don't you--Lizbeth?"

But Elizabeth kept her eyes on the purring cat, and--"Isn't he a polite young man, puss-cat?" was all she said.

Buff's voice was raised in warning from the hall.

"Coming," cried Arthur; but he still tarried.

Elizabeth put the cat on her shoulder and led the way.

"Launcelot and I shall see you off from the doorstep. You mustn't miss your train. As Marget says, 'Haste ye back.'"

"You've promised to write.... There's loads of time, Buff." He was on the lowest step now. "Till April--you are sure to come in April?"

"Reasonably sure, but it's an uncertain world.... My love to Aunt Alice."

_CHAPTER XVI_

"Then said he, I wish you a fair day when you set out for Mount Zion, and shall be glad to see that you go over the river dry-shod. But she answered, Come wet, come dry, I long to be gone; for however the weather is on my journey, I shall have time to sit down and rest me and dry me." _The Pilgrim's Progress._

"Pure religion and undefiled," we are told, "before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and keep ourselves unspotted from the world." If this be a working definition of Christianity, then James Seton translated its letter as but few men do, into a spirit and life of continuous and practical obedience. No weary, sick, or grieved creature had to wait for his minister's coming. The congregation was widely scattered, but from Dennistoun to Pollokshields, from Govanhill to Govan, in all weathers he trudged--cars were a weariness to him, walking a pleasure--carrying with him comfort to the comfortless, courage to the faint-hearted, and a strong hope to the dying.

On the day that Arthur Townshend left them he said to his daughter:

"I wonder, Elizabeth, if you would go and see Mrs. Veitch this afternoon? She is very ill, and I have a meeting that will keep me till about seven o'clock. If you bring a good report I shan't go to see her till to-morrow."

"Mrs. Veitch who makes the treacle-scones? I am sorry. Of course I shall go to see her. I wonder what I could take her? She will hate to be ill, indomitable old body that she is! Are you going, Father? I shall do your bidding, but I'm afraid Mrs. Veitch will think me a poor substitute. Anyway, I'm glad it isn't Mrs. Paterson you want me to visit. I so dislike the smug, resigned way she answers when I ask her how she is: 'Juist hingin' by a tack.' I expect that 'tack' will last her a good many years yet. Buff, what are you going to do this afternoon?"

"Nothing," said Buff. He sat gloomily on a chair, with his hands in his pockets. "I'm as dull as a bull," he added.

His sister did not ask the cause of his depression. She sat down on a low chair and drew him on to her lap, and cuddled him up and stroked his hair, and Buff, who as a rule sternly repulsed all caresses, laid his head on her shoulder and, sniffing dolefully, murmured that he couldn't bear to have Arthur go away, and that he had nothing to look forward to except Christmas and that was only one day.

"Nothing to look forward to! Oh, Buff! Think of spring coming and the daffodils. And Etterick, and the puppies you haven't seen yet. And I'll tell you what. When Arthur comes, I shouldn't wonder if we had a sea-fight on the mill-pond--on rafts, you know."

Buff sat up, his grubby little handkerchief still clutched in his hand, tears on his lashes but in his eyes a light of hope.

"Rafts!" he said. He slid to the floor. "_Rafts!_" he repeated. There was dizzy magic in the word. Already, in thought, he was lashing spars of wood together.

Five minutes later Elizabeth, carrying a basket filled with fresh eggs, grapes, and sponge-cakes, was on her way to call on Mrs. Veitch, while at home Marget stood gazing, speechless with wrath, at the wreck Buff had made of her tidy stick-house.

When Elizabeth reached her destination and knocked, the door was opened by Mrs. Veitch's daughter Kate, who took her into the room and asked her to take a seat for a minute and she would come. Left alone, Elizabeth looked round the cherished room and noticed that dust lay thick on the sideboard that Mrs. Veitch had dusted so frequently and so proudly, and that the crochet antimacassars on the sofa hung all awry.

She put them tidy, pulled the tablecover even, straightened a picture and was wondering if she might dust the sideboard with a spare handkerchief she had in her coat (somehow it hurt her to see the dust) when her attention was caught by a photograph that hung on the wall--a family group of two girls and two boys.

She went forward to study it. That funny little girl with the pulled-back hair must be Kate she decided. She had not changed much, it was the same good, mild face. The other girl must be the married daughter in America. But it was the boys she was interested in. She had heard her father talk of Mrs. Veitch's sons, John and Hugh. John had been his mother's stand-by, a rock for her to lean on; and Hugh had been to them both a joy and pride.

Elizabeth, looking at the eager, clever face in the faded old picture, understood why, even after twenty years, her father still talked sometimes of Hugh Veitch, and always with that quick involuntary sigh that we give to the memory of those ardent souls so well equipped for the fight but for whom the drums ceased to beat before the battle had well begun.

John and his mother had pinched themselves to send Hugh to college, where he was doing brilliantly well, when he was seized with diphtheria and died. In a week his brother followed him, and for twenty years Mrs. Veitch and Kate had toiled on alone.

Elizabeth turned with a start as Kate came into the room. She looked round drearily. "This room hasna got a dust for days. I'm not a manager like ma mother. I can sew well enough, but I get fair baffled in the house when there's everything to do."

"Poor Kate! Tell me, how is your mother?"

"No' well at all. The doctor was in this morning, and he's coming up again later, but he says there is nothing he can do. She's just worn out, and can you wonder? Many a time I've been fair vexed to see her toilin' with lodgers; but you see we had just ma pay, and a woman's pay is no' much to keep a house on, and she wanted to make a few shillings extra. And, Miss Seton, d'ye know what she's been doing a' these years? Scraping and hoarding every penny she could, and laying it away, to pay ma passage to America. Ma sister Maggie's there, ye know, and when she's gone she says I'm to go to Maggie. A' these years she's toiled with this before her. She had such a spirit, she would never give in." Kate wiped her eyes with her apron. "Come in and see ma mother."

"Oh, I don't think so. She oughtn't to see anyone when she is so ill."

"The doctor says it makes no difference, and she'll be vexed no' to see you. I told her you were in. She had aye a notion of you."

"If you think I won't do her harm, I should love to see her," said Elizabeth, getting up; and Kate led the way to the kitchen. The fog had thickened, and the windows in the little eyrie of a kitchen glimmered coldly opaque. From far beneath came the sounds of the railway.

Mrs. Veitch lay high on her pillows, her busy hands folded. She had given in at last.

Elizabeth thought she was sleeping, but she opened her eyes, and, seeing her visitor, smiled slightly.

"Are ye collectin' the day?" she asked.

"No," Elizabeth said, leaning forward and speaking very gently. "I don't want any money to-day. I came to ask for you. I am so sorry you are ill."

Mrs. Veitch looked at her with that curious appraising look that very sick people sometimes give one.

"Ay. I'm aboot by wi' it noo, and I em no' vexed. I'm terrible wearied."

"You are very wearied now," Elizabeth said, stroking the work-roughened hands that lay so calmly on the counterpane--all her life Mrs. Veitch had been a woman of much self-control, and in illness the habit did not desert her--"you are very wearied now, but you will get a good rest and soon be your busy self again."

"Na, I've been wearied for years.... Ma man died forty years syne, an' I've had ma face agin the wind ever since. That last nicht he lookit at the fower bairns--wee Hugh was a baby in ma airms--and he says, _'Ye've aye been fell, Tibbie. Be fell noo.'_ Lyin' here, I'm wonderin' what ma life's been--juist a fecht to get the denner ready, and a fecht to get the tea ready, an' a terrible trauchle on the washin'-days. It vexes me to think I've done so little to help ither folk. I never had the time."

"Ah! but you're forgetting," said Elizabeth. "The people you helped remember. I have heard--oh! often--from one and another how you did a sick neighbour's washing, and gave a hot meal to children whose mothers had to work out, and carried comfort to people in want. Every step your tired feet took on those errands is known to God."

The sick woman hardly seemed to hear. Her eyes had closed again, and she had fallen into the fitful sleep of weakness.

Elizabeth sat and looked at the old face, with its stern, worn lines. Here was a woman who had lived her hard, upright life, with no soft sayings and couthy ways, and she was dying as she had lived, "uncheered and undepressed" by the world's thoughts of her.

The fog crept close to the window.

Kate put the dishes she had washed into the press. The London express rushed past on its daily journey. The familiar sound struck on the dim ear, and Mrs. Veitch asked, "Is that ma denner awa' by?"

Kate wiped her eyes. The time-honoured jest hurt her to-day.

"Poor mother!" she said. "She's aye that comical."

"When I was a lassie," said Mrs. Veitch, "there was twae things I had a terrible notion of--a gig, an' a gairden wi' berries. Ma mither said, 'Bode for a silk goon and ye'll get a sleeve o't,' and Alec said, 'Bide a wee, lassie, an I'll get ye them baith.' Ay, but, Alec ma man, ye've been in yer grave this forty year, an' I've been faur frae gairdens."

The tired mind was wandering back to the beginning of things. She plucked at the trimming on the sleeve of her night-dress.

"I made this goon when I was a lassie for ma marriage. They ca'ed this 'flowering.' I mind fine sittin' sewin' it on simmer efternunes, wi' my mither makin' the tea. Scones an' new-kirned butter an' skim-milk cheese. _I can taste that tea._ Naebody could mak' tea like ma mither. I wish I had a drink o' it the noo, for I'm terrible dry. There was a burn ran by oor door an' twae muckle stanes by the side o' it, and Alec and me used to sit there and crack--and crack."

Her voice trailed off, and Elizabeth looked anxiously at Kate so see if so much talking was not bad for her mother; but Kate said she thought it pleased her to talk. It was getting dark and the kitchen was lit only by the sparkle of the fire.

"I'd better light the gas," Kate said, reaching for the matches. "The doctor'll be in soon."

Elizabeth watched her put a light to the incandescent burner, and when she turned again to the bed she found the sick woman's eyes fixed on her face.

"You're like your faither, lassie," said the weak voice. "It's one-and-twenty years sin' I fell acquaint wi' him. I had flitted to this hoose, and on the Sabbath Day I gaed into the nearest kirk to see what kinna minister they hed. I've niver stayed awa' willingly a Sabbath sin' syne.... The first time he visited me kent by ma tongue that I was frae Tweedside."

"'Div 'ee ken Kilbucho?' I speired at him.

"'Fine,' he says.

"'Div 'ee ken Newby and the gamekeeper's hoose by the burn?"

"'I guddled in that burn when I was a boy,' he says; and I cud ha' grat. It was like a drink o' cauld water.... I aye likit rinnin' water. Mony a time I've sat by that window on a simmer's nicht and made masel' believe that I could hear Tweed. It ran in ma ears for thirty years, an' a body disna forget. There's a bit in the Bible about a river ... read it."

Elizabeth lifted the Bible and looked at it rather hopelessly.

"I'm afraid I don't know where to find it," she confessed.

"Tuts, lassie, yer faither would ha' kent," said Mrs. Veitch.

"There is a river," Elizabeth quoted from memory,--"there is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God."