Читать книгу The Complete Works - O. Douglas (Anna Buchan) - Страница 17

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"How now, sir? What are you reasoning with yourself?

Nay, I was rhyming; 'tis you that have the reason."

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

About a fortnight later—it was Saturday afternoon—an April day strayed into November, and James Seton walked in his garden and was grateful.

He had his next day's sermon in his hand and as he walked he studied it, but now and again he would lift his head to look at the blue sky, or he would stoop and touch gently the petals of a Christmas-rose, flowering bravely if sootily in the border. Behind the hedge, on the drying green, Thomas and Billy and Buff disported themselves. They had been unusually quiet, but now the sound of raised voices drew Mr. Seton to the scene of action. Looking over the hedge, he saw an odd sight. Thomas lay grovelling on the ground; Billy, with a fierce black moustache sketched on his cherubic face, sat on the roof of the ash-pit; while Buff, a bulky sack strapped on his back, struggled in the arms of Marget the cook.

"Gie me that bag, ye ill laddie," she was saying.

"What's the matter, Marget?" Mr. Seton asked mildly.

Buff was butting Marget wildly with his head, but hearing his father's voice, he stopped to explain.

"It's my sins, Father," he gasped.

"It's naething o' the kind, sir; it's ma bag o' claes-pins. Stan' up, David, this meenit. D'ye no' see ye're fair scrapin' it i' the mud?"

Thomas raised his head.

"We're pilgrims, Mr. Seton," he explained. "I'm Hopeful, and Buff's Christian. This is me in Giant Despair's dungeon;" and he rolled on his face and realistically chewed the grass to show the extent of his despair.

"But you've got your facts wrong," said Mr. Seton. "Christian has lost his load long before he got to Doubting Castle."

"Then," said Buff, picking himself up and wriggling out of the straps which tied the bag to his person—"then, Marget, you can have your old clothes-pins."

"Gently, my boy," said his father. "Hand the bag to Marget and say you're sorry."

"Sorry, Marget," said Buff in a very casual tone, as he heaved the bag at her.

Marget received it gloomily, prophesied the probable end of Buff, and went indoors.

Buff joined Thomas in the dungeon of Doubting Castle.

"Why is Billy sitting up there?" asked Mr. Seton.

"He's Apollyon," said Thomas, "and he's coming down in a minute to straddle across the way. By rights, I should have been Apollyon——"

Mr. Seton's delighted survey of the guileless fiend on the ash-pit roof was interrupted by Ellen, who came with a message that Mr. Stevenson had called and would Mr. Seton please go in.

In the drawing-room he found Elizabeth conversing with a tall young man, and from the fervour with which she welcomed his appearance he inferred that it was not altogether easy work.

"Father," said Elizabeth, "you remember I told you about meeting Mr. Stevenson at the Thomsons' party? He has brought us such a treasure of a ballad book to look over. Do let my father see it, Mr. Stevenson."

James Seton greeted the visitor in his kind, absent-minded way, and sat down to discuss ballads with him, while Elizabeth, having, so to speak, laboured in rowing, lay back and studied Mr. Stevenson. That he was an artist she knew. She also knew his work quite well and that it was highly thought of by people who mattered. He had a nice face, she thought; probably not much sense of humour, but tremendously decent. She wondered what his people were like. Poor, she imagined—perhaps a widowed mother, and he had educated himself and made every inch of his own way. She felt a vicarious stir of pride in the thought.

As a matter of fact she was quite wrong, and Stewart Stevenson's parents would have been much hurt if they had known her thoughts.

His father was a short, fat little man with a bald head, who had dealt so successfully in butter and ham that he now occupied one of the largest and reddest villas in Maxwell Park (Lochnagar was its name) and every morning was whirled in to business in a Rolls-Royce car.

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.