Part 6

For all his worldly success Mr. Stevenson senior remained a simple soul. His only real passion in life (apart from his sons) was for what he called "time-pieces." Every room in Lochnagar contained at least two clocks. In the drawing-room they had alabaster faces and were supported by gilt cupids; in the dining-room they were of dignified black marble; the library had one on the mantelpiece and one on the writing-table--both of mahogany with New Art ornamentations. Two grandfather-clocks stood in the hall--one on the staircase and one on the first landing. Mr. Stevenson liked to have one minute's difference in the time of each clock, and when it came to striking the result was nerve-shattering. Mrs. Stevenson had a little nut-cracker face and a cross look which, as her temper was of the mildest, was most misleading. Her toque--she wore a toque now instead of a bonnet--was always a little on one side, which gave her a slightly distracted look. Her clothes were made of the best materials and most expensively trimmed, but somehow nothing gave the little woman a moneyed look. Even the Russian sables her husband had given her on her last birthday looked, on her, more accidental than opulent. Her husband was her oracle and she hung on his words, invariably capping all his comments on life and happenings with "Ay. That's it, Pa."

Their pride in their son was touching. His height, his good looks, his accent, his "gentlemanly" manners, his love of books, his talent as an artist, kept them wondering and amazed. They could not imagine how they had come to have such a son. It was certainly disquieting for Mr. Stevenson who read nothing but the newspapers on week-days and _The British Weekly_ on the Sabbath, and for his wife who invariably fell asleep when she attempted to dally with even the lightest form of literature, to have a son whose room was literally lined with books and who would pore with every mark of enjoyment over the dullest of tomes.

His artistic abilities were not such a phenomenon, and could be traced back to a sister of Mr. Stevenson's called Lizzie who had sketched in crayons and died young.

Had Stewart Stevenson been a poor man's son he would probably have worked long without recognition, eaten the bread of poverty and found his studio-rent a burden, but, so contrariwise do things work, with an adoring father and a solid Ham and Butter business at his back his pictures found ready purchasers.

To be honest, Mr. Stevenson senior was somewhat astonished at the taste shown by his son's patrons. To him the Twopence Coloured was always preferable to the Penny Plain. He could not help wishing that his son would try to paint things with a little more colour in them. He liked Highland cattle standing besides a well, with a lot of purple heather about; or a snowy landscape with sheep in the foreground and the sun setting redly behind a hill. He was only bewildered when told to remark this "sumptuous black," that "seductive white." He saw "no 'colour' in the smoke from a chimney, or 'bloom' in dingy masonry viewed through smoke haze." To him "nothing looked fine" save on a fine day, and he infinitely preferred the robust oil-paintings on the walls of Lochnagar to his son's delicate black-and-white work.

But he would not for worlds have admitted it....

To return. As Elizabeth sat listening to the conversation of her father and Stewart Stevenson, Ellen announced "Mr. Jamieson," and a thin, tall old man came into the room. He was lame and walked with the help of two sticks. When he saw a stranger he hung back, but James Seton sprang up to welcome him, and Elizabeth said as she shook hands:

"You've come at the most lucky moment. We are talking about your own subject, old Scots songs and ballads. Mr. Stevenson is quite an authority."

As the old man shook hands with the young one, "I do like," he said, "to hear of a young man caring for old things."

"And I," said Elizabeth, "do like an old man who cares for young things. I must tell you. Last Sunday I found a small, very grubby boy waiting at the hall door long before it was time for the Sabbath school. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, 'Waitin' for the class to gang in.' Then he said proudly, 'A'm yin o' John Jamieson's bairns.'" She turned to Mr. Stevenson and explained: "Mr. Jamieson has an enormous class of small children and is adored by each of them."

"It must take some looking after," said Mr. Stevenson. "How d'you make them behave?"

Mr. Jamieson laughed and confessed that sometimes they were beyond him.

"The only thing I do insist on is a clean face, but sometimes I'm beat even there. I sent a boy home twice last Sabbath to wash his face, and each time he came back worse. I was just going to send him again, when his neighbour interfered with, 'Uch here! he _wash't_ his face, but he wipit it wi' his bunnet, and he bides in a coal ree.'"

Elizabeth turned to see if her father appreciated the tale, but Mr. Seton had got the little old ballad book and was standing in his favourite attitude with one foot on a chair, lost to everything but the words he was reading.

"Now," he said, "this is an example of what I mean by Scots practicalness. It's 'Annan Water'--you know it, Jamieson? The last verse is this:

'O wae betide thee, Annan Water, I vow thou art a drumly river; But over thee I'll build a brig, That thou true love no more may sever.'

You see? The last thought is not the tragedy of love and death, but of the necessity of preventing it happen again. He will build a brig."

He sat down, with the book still in his hand, smiling to himself at the vagaries of the Scots character.

"We're a strange mixture," he said, "a mixture of hard-headedness and romance, common sense and sentiment, practicality and poetry, business and idealism. Sir Walter knew that, so he made the Gifted Gilfillan turn from discoursing of the New Jerusalem of the Saints to the price of beasts at Mauchline Fair."

Mr. Jamieson leaned forward, his face alight with interest.

"And I doubt, Mr. Seton, the romantic side is strongest. Look at our history! Look at the wars we fought under Bruce and Wallace! If we had had any common sense, we would have made peace at the beginning, accepted the English terms, and grown prosperous at the expense of our rich neighbours."

"And look," said Stewart Stevenson, "at our wars of religion. I wonder what other people would have taken to the hills for a refinement of dogma. And the Jacobite risings? What earthly sense was in them? Merely because Prince Charlie was a Stuart, and because he was a gallant young fairy tale prince, we find sober, middle-aged men risking their lives and their fortunes to help a cause that was doomed from the start."

"I'm glad to think," said Mr. Seton, "that with all our prudence our history is a record of lost causes and impossible loyalties."

"I know why it is," said Elizabeth. "We have all of us, we Scots, a queer daftness in our blood. We pretend to be dour and cautious, but the fact is that at heart we are the most emotional and sentimental people on earth."

"I believe you're right," said Stewart Stevenson. "The ordinary emotional races like the Italians and the French are emotional chiefly on the surface; underneath they are a mercantile, hard-headed breed. Now we----"

"We're the other way round," said Elizabeth.

"You can see that when you think what type of man we chiefly admire," said Mr. Jamieson; "you might think it would be John Knox----"

"No, no," cried Elizabeth; "I know Father has hankerings after him, but I would quake to meet him in the flesh."

"Sir Walter Scott," suggested Mr. Stevenson.

"Personally I would vote for Sir Walter," said Mr. Seton.

"Ah, but, Mr. Seton," said John Jamieson, "I think you'll admit that if we polled the country we couldn't get a verdict for Sir Walter. I think it would be for Robert Burns. Burns is the man whose words are most often in our memories. It is Burns we think of with sympathy and affection, and why? I suppose because of his humanity; because of his rich humour and riotous imagination; because of his _daftness_, in a word----"

"It is odd," said Elizabeth; "for by rights, as Thomas would say, we should admire someone quite different. The _Wealth of Nations_ man, perhaps."

"Adam Smith," said Stewart Stevenson.

"You see," said Mr. Seton, "the moral is that he who would lead Scotland must do it not only by convincing the intellect, but above all by firing the imagination and touching the heart. Yes, I can think of a good illustration. In the year 1388, or thereabouts, Douglas went raiding into Northumberland and met the Percy at Otterbourne. We possess both an English and a Scottish account of the battle. The English ballad is called 'Chevy Chase.' It tells very vigorously and graphically how the great fight was fought, but it is only a piece of rhymed history. Our ballad of 'Otterbourne' is quite different. It is full of wonderful touches of poetry, such as the Douglas's last speech:

'My wound is deep I fain would sleep: Take thou the vanguard of the three; And hide me by the bracken bush That grows on yonder lilye lee. O bury me by the bracken bush, Beneath the blooming briar; Let never living mortal ken That ere a kindly Scot lies here!'"

James Seton got up and walked up and down the room, as his custom was when moved; then he anchored before the fire, and continued:

"The two ballads represent two different temperaments. You can't get over it by saying that the Scots minstrel was a poet and the English minstrel a commonplace fellow. The minstrels knew their audience and wrote what their audience wanted. The English wanted straightforward facts; the Scottish audience wanted the glamour of poetry."

"Father," said Elizabeth suddenly, "I believe that's a bit of the lecture on Ballads you're writing for the Literary Society."

Mr. Seton confessed that it was.

"I thought you sounded like a book," said his daughter.

Stewart Stevenson asked the date of the lecture and if outsiders were admitted, whereupon Elizabeth felt constrained to ask him to dine and go with them, an invitation that was readily accepted.

Teas was brought in, and John Jamieson was persuaded by Elizabeth to tell stories of his "bairns"; and then Mr. Stevenson described a walking-tour he had taken in Skye in the autumn, which enchanted the old man. At last he rose to go, remembering that it was Saturday evening and that the Minister must want to go to his sermon. When he shook hands with the young man he smiled at him somewhat wistfully.

"It's fine to be young," he said. "I was young once myself. It was never my lot to go far afield, but I mind one Fair Holiday I went with a friend to Inverary. To save the fare we out-ran the coach from Lochgoilhead to St. Catherine's--I was soople then--and on the morning we were leaving--the boat left at ten--my friend woke me at two in the morning, and we walked seventeen miles to see the sun rise on Ben Cruachan. We startled the beasts of the forest in Inveraray wood, and I mind as if it were yesterday how the rising sun smote with living fire a white cloud floating on the top of the mountain. My friend caught me by the arm as we watched the moving mist lift. 'Look,' he cried, 'the mountains do smoke!'"

He stopped and reached for his sticks. "Well! it's fine to be young, but it's not so bad to be old as you young folks think."

Elizabeth went with him to the door, and Stewart Stevenson remarked to his host on the wonderful vitality and cheerfulness of the old man.

"Yes," said Mr. Seton, "you would hardly think that he rarely knows what it is to be free of pain. Forty years ago he met with a terrible accident in the works where he was employed. It meant the end of everything to him, but he gathered up the broken bits of his life and made of it--ah, well! A great cloud of witnesses will testify one day to that. He lives beside the church, not a very savoury district as you know--but that little two-roomed house of his shines in the squalor like a good deed in a naughty world. Elizabeth calls him 'the Corregidor.' You remember?

'If any beat a horse, you felt he saw: If any cursed a woman, he took note ... Not so much a spy As a recording Chief-inquisitor.'

And with children he's a regular Pied Piper."

Elizabeth came into the room and heard the last words.

"Is Father telling you about Mr. Jamieson? He's one of the people who'll be very 'far ben' in the next world; but when you know my father better, Mr. Stevenson, you will find that when a goose happens to belong to him it is invariably a swan. His church, his congregation, his house, his servants, his sons----"

"Even his slack-tongued and irreverent daughter," put in Mr. Seton.

"Are pretty nearly perfect," finished Elizabeth. "It is one of the nicest things about Father."

"There is something utterly wrong about the young people of this age," remarked Mr. Seton, as he looked at his watch; "they have no respect for their elders. Dear me! it's late. I must get to my sermon."

"You must come again, Mr. Stevenson," said Elizabeth. "It has been so nice seeing you."

And Mr. Stevenson had, perforce, to take his leave.

"A very nice fellow," said Mr. Seton, when the visitor had departed.

"A very personable young man," said Elizabeth, "but some day he'll get himself cursed, I'm afraid, for he doesn't know when to withdraw his foot from his neighbour's house. Half-past six! Nearly Buff's bed-time!" and as Mr. Seton went to his study Elizabeth flew to see what wickedness Buff had perpetrated since tea.

_CHAPTER VII_

"How full of briars is this working-day world!" _As You Like It_.

It was Monday morning.

Buff was never quite his urbane self on Monday morning. Perhaps the lack of any other occupation on Sabbath made him overwork his imagination, for certainly in the clear cold light of Monday morning it was difficult to find the way (usually such an easy task) to his own dream-world with its cheery denizens--knights and pirates, aviators and dragons. It was desolating to have to sup porridge, that was only porridge and not some tasty stew of wild fowl fallen to his own gun, in a dining-room that was only a dining-room, not a Pirate's Barque or a Robber's Cave.

On Monday, too, he was apt to be more than usually oppressed by his conviction of the utter futility of going to school when he knew of at least fifty better ways of spending the precious hours. So he kicked the table-leg and mumbled when his father asked him questions about his lessons.

Ellen coming in with the letters seemed another messenger of Satan sent to buffet him. Time was when he had been Mercury to his family, but having fallen into the pernicious practice of concealing about his person any letters that took his fancy and forgetting about them till bed-time brought them to light, he was deposed. The memory rankled, and he gloomily watched the demure progress of Ellen as she took the letters to Elizabeth.

"Three for you, Father," said Elizabeth, sorting them out, "and three for me. The Indian letters are both here."

"Read them, will you?" said Mr. Seton, who disliked deciphering letters for himself.

"I'll just see if they're both well and read the letters afterwards if you don't mind. We'll make Buff late. Cheer up, old son" (to that unwilling scholar). "Life isn't all Saturdays. Monday mornings are bound to come. You should be glad to begin again. Why, the boys"--Walter and Alan were known as "the boys"--"wouldn't have thought of sitting like sick owls on Mondays: they were pleased to have a fine new day to do things in."

Buff was heard to ejaculate something that sounded like "Huch," and his sister ceased her bracing treatment and, sitting down beside him, cut his bread-and-butter into "fingers" to make it more interesting. She could sympathise with her sulky young brother, remembering vividly, as she did, her own childish troubles. Only, as she told Buff, coaxing him the while to drink his milk, it was Saturday afternoon she abhorred. It smelt, she said, of soft soap and of the end of things. Monday was cheery: things began again. Why, something delightful might happen almost any minute: there was no saying what dazzling adventures might lurk round any corner. The Saga of Monday as sung by Elizabeth helped down the milk, cheered the heart of Buff, and sent him off on his daily quest for knowledge in a more resigned spirit than five minutes before had seemed possible. Then Elizabeth gathered up the letters and went into the study, where she found her father brooding absorbed over the pots of bulbs that stood in the study windows. "The Roman hyacinths will be out before Christmas," he said, as he turned from his beloved growing things and settled down with a pleased smile to hear news of his sons.

Alan's letter was like himself, very light-hearted. Everything was delightful, the weather he was having, the people he was meeting, the games he was playing. He was full of a new polo-pony he had just bought and called Barbara, and he had also acquired a young leopard, "a jolly little beast but rank."

"Buff will like to hear about it," said Elizabeth, as she turned to Walter's letter, which was more a tale of work and laborious days. "Tell Father," he finished, "that after bowing in the house of Rimmon for months, I had a chance yesterday of attending a Scots kirk. It was fine to hear the Psalms of David sung again to the old tunes. I have always held that it was not David but the man who wrote the metrical version who was inspired."

"Foolish fellow," said Mr. Seton.

Elizabeth laughed, and began to read another letter. Mr. Seton turned to his desk and was getting out paper when a sharp exclamation from his daughter made him look round.

Elizabeth held out the letter to him, her face tragic.

"Aunt Alice is mad," she said.

"Dear me," said Mr. Seton.

"She must be, for she asks if we can take her nephew Arthur Townshend to stay with us for a week?"

"A very natural request, surely," said her father. "It isn't like you to be inhospitable, Elizabeth."

"Oh! it isn't that. Any ordinary young man is welcome to stay for months and months, but this isn't an ordinary young man. He's the sort of person who belongs to all the Clubs--the best ones I mean--and has a man to keep him neat, and fares sumptuously every day, and needs to be amused. And oh! the thought of him in Glasgow paralyses me."

Mr. Seton peered in a puzzled way at the letter he was holding.

"Your aunt appears to say--I wish people would write plainly--that he has business in Glasgow."

Elizabeth scoffed at the idea.

"Is it likely?" she asked. "Why, the creature's a diplomatist. There's small scope for diplomatic talents in the South Side of Glasgow, or 'out West' either."

"But why should he want to come here?"

"He _doesn't_, but my demented aunt--bless her kind heart!--adores him, and she adores us, and it has always been her dream that we should meet and be friends; but he was always away in Persia or somewhere, and we never met. But now he is home, and he couldn't refuse Aunt Alice--she is all the mother he ever knew and has been an angel to him--and I dare say he is quite good-hearted, though I can't stand the type."

"Well, well," said Mr. Seton, by way of closing the subject, and he went over to the window to take a look at the world before settling down to his sermon. "Run away now, like a good girl. Dear me! what a beautiful blue sky for November!"

"Tut, tut," said Elizabeth, "who can think of blue skies in this crisis! Father, have you thought of the question of _drinks_?"

"Eh?"

"Mr. Townshend will want wine--much wine--and how is the desire to be met in this Apollinaris household?"

"He'll do without it," said Mr. Seton placidly. "I foresee the young man will be a reformed character before he leaves us;" and he lifted Launcelot from its seat on the blotter, and sat down happily to his sermon.

Elizabeth shook her head at her provokingly calm parent, and picking up the kitten, she walked to the door.

"Write a specially good sermon this week," she advised. "Remember Mr. Arthur Townshend will be a listener," and closed the door behind her before her father could think of a dignified retort.

Mrs. Henry Beauchamp, the "Aunt Alice" who had dropped the bombshell in to the Seton household, was the only sister of Elizabeth's dead mother. A widow and childless, she would have liked to adopt the whole Seton family, Mr. Seton included, had it been possible. She lived most of the year in London in her house in Portland Place, and in summer she joined the Setons in the South of Scotland.

Arthur Townshend was her husband's nephew. As he had lived much abroad, none of the Setons had met him; but now he was home, and Mrs. Beauchamp having failed in her attempt to persuade Elizabeth to join them in Switzerland, suggested he should pay a visit to Glasgow.

Elizabeth was seriously perturbed. Arthur Townshend had always been a sort of veiled prophet to her, an awe-inspiring person for whom people put their best foot foremost, so to speak. Unconsciously her aunt had given her the impression of a young man particular about trifles--"ill to saddle," as Marget would put it. And she had heard so much about his looks, his abilities, his brilliant prospects, that she had always felt a vague antipathy to the youth.

To meet this paragon at Portland Place would have been ordeal enough, but to have him thrust upon her as a guest, to have to feed him and entertain him for a week, her imagination boggled at it.

"It's like the mountain coming to Mahomet," she reflected. "Mahomet must have felt it rather a crushing honour too."

The question was, Should she try to entertain him? Should she tell people he was coming, and so have him invited out to dinner, invite interesting people to meet him, attempt elaborate meals, and thoroughly upset the household?

She decided she would not. For, she argued with herself, if he's the sort of creature I have a feeling he is, my most lofty efforts will only bore him, and I shall have bored myself to no purpose; if, on the other hand, he is a good fellow, he will like us best _au naturel_. She broke the news to Marget, who remained unmoved.

"What was guid eneuch for oor ain laddies'll surely be guid eneuch for him," she said.

Elizabeth explained that this was no ordinary visitor, but a young man of fashion.

"Set him up!" said Marget; and there the matter rested.

Everything went wrong that day, Elizabeth thought, and for all the untoward events she blamed the prospective visitor. Her father lost his address-book--that was no new thing, for it happened at least twice a week, but what was new was Elizabeth's cross answer when he asked her to find it for him. She wrangled with sharp-tongued Marget (where she got distinctly the worse of the encounter), and even snapped at the devoted Ellen. She broke a Spode dish that her mother had prized, and she forgot to remind her father of a funeral till half an hour after the hour fixed.

Nor did the day ring to evensong without a passage-at-arms with Buff.

In the drawing-room she found, precariously perched on the top of one of the white book-cases, a large unwashed earthy pot.

"What on earth----" she began, when Buff came running to explain. The flower-pot was his, his and Thomas's; and it contained an orange-pip which, if cherished, would eventually become a lovely orange-tree.

"Nonsense," said Elizabeth sharply. "Look how it's marking the enamel;" and she lifted the clumsy pot. Buff caught her arm, and between them the flower-pot smashed on the floor, spattering damp earth around. Then Elizabeth, sorely exasperated, boxed her young brother's ears.

Buff, grieved to the heart at the loss of his orange-tree, and almost speechless with wrath at the affront offered him, glared at his sister with eyes of hate, but "You--you _puddock_!" was all he managed to say.