Читать книгу The Complete Works - O. Douglas (Anna Buchan) - Страница 22

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"As we came in by Glasgow town

We were a comely sight to see."

Old Ballad.

Arthur Townshend was what Elizabeth called a repaying guest. He noticed and appreciated things done for his comfort, he was easily amused; also he had the air of enjoying himself. Mr. Seton liked him from the first, and when he heard that he re-read several of the Waverley Novels every year he hailed him as a kindred spirit.

He won Buff's respect and admiration by his knowledge of aeroplanes. Even Marget so far unbent towards him as to admit that he was "a wise-like man"; Ellen thought he looked "noble." As for Elizabeth—"You're a nice guest," she told him; "you don't blight."

"No? What kind of guest blights?"

"Several, but the Blight devastates. Suppose I've had the drawing-room done up and am filled with pride of it, open the door and surprise myself with it a dozen times in the day—you know, or rather I suppose you don't know, the way of a house-proud woman with a new room. The Blight enters, looks round and says, 'You've done something to this room, haven't you? Very nice. I've just come from the Puffington-Whalleys, and their drawing-rooms are too delicious. I must describe them to you, for I know you are interested in houses,' and so on and so on, and I have lost conceit of my cherished room. Sometimes the Blight doesn't say anything, but her glance seems to make one's belongings shrivel. And she is the same all the time. You stay her with apples and she prattles of nectarines; you drive her in a hired chaise and she talks of the speed of So-and-so's Rolls-Royce."

"A very trying person," said Arthur Townshend. "But it isn't exactly fulsome flattery to compliment me on not being an ill-bred snob. Do you often entertain a Blight?"

"Now that I think of it," Elizabeth confessed, "it only happened once. Real blights are rare. But we quite often have ungracious guests, and they are almost as bad. They couldn't praise anything to save their lives. Everything is taken, as the Scotsman is supposed to have taken his bath, for granted. When you say 'I'm afraid it is rather a poor dinner,' they reply, 'Oh, it doesn't matter,'—the correct answer, of course, being, 'What could be nicer?'"

"I shall remember that," said Arthur Townshend, "and I'm glad that so far you find me a fairly satisfactory guest, only I wish the standard had been higher. I only seem white because of the blackness of those who went before."

Mr. Seton carried out his plan of showing Mr. Townshend the sights of Glasgow, and on Monday morning they viewed the chrysanthemums in the Park, in the afternoon the Cathedral and the Municipal Buildings; and whatever may have been the feelings of the guest, Mr. Seton drew great enjoyment from the outing.

On Tuesday Elizabeth became cicerone, and announced at the breakfast-table her intention of personally conducting Mr. Townshend through Glasgow on top of an electric car.

Buff was struggling into his overcoat, watched (but not helped) by Thomas and Billy, but when he heard of his sister's plan he at once took it off again and said he would make one of the party.

Thomas looked at his friend coldly.

"Mamma says," he began, "that's it's a very daft-like thing the way you get taken to places and miss school. By rights I should have got staying at home to-day with my gum-boil."

"Poor old Thomas!" said Elizabeth. "Never mind. You and Buff must both go to school and grow up wise men, and you will each choose a chocolate out of Mr. Townshend's box for a treat."

The sumptuous box was produced, and diverted Buff's mind from the expedition; and presently the three went off to school, quite reconciled to attempting another step on the steep path to knowledge.

"Isn't Thomas a duck?" said Elizabeth, as she returned to the table after watching them go out of the gate. "So uncompromising."

"'Mamma' must be a frank and fearless commentator," said Mr. Townshend.

"Thomas makes her sound so," Elizabeth admitted. "But when I meet her—I only know her slightly—she seems the gentlest of placid women. Well, can you be ready by eleven-thirty? Of course I want to go. I'm looking forward hugely to seeing Glasgow through your eyes. Come and write your letters in the drawing-room while I talk to Marget about dinner."

Punctually they started. It was a bright, frosty morning, and the trim villas with their newly cleaned doorsteps and tidily brushed-up gardens looked pleasant, homely places as they regarded them from the top of a car.

"This is much nicer than motoring," said Elizabeth. "You haven't got to think of tyres, and it only costs twopence-ha'penny all the way."

She settled back in her seat, and "You've to do all the talking to-day," she said, nodding her head at her companion. "On Sunday I deaved you, and you suffered me gladly, or at least you had the appearance of so doing, but it may only have been your horribly good manners; anyway, to-day it is your turn. And you needn't be afraid of boring me, because I am practically unborable. Begin at the beginning, when you were a little boy, and tell me all about yourself." She broke off to look down at a boy riding on a lorry beside the driver. "Just look at that boy! He's being allowed to hold the whip and he's got an apple to eat! What a thoroughly good time he's having—and playing truant too, I expect."

Arthur Townshend glanced at the happy truant, and then at Elizabeth smiling unconsciously in whole-hearted sympathy. She wore a soft blue homespun coat and skirt, and a hat of the same shade crushed down on her hair which burned golden where the sun caught it. Some nonsensical half-forgotten lines came into his mind:

"Paul said and Peter said,

And all the saints alive and dead

Vowed that she had the sweetest head

Of yellow, yellow hair."

Aloud he said, "You're fond of boys?"

"Love them," she said. "Even when they're at their roughest and naughtiest and seem all tackety boots. What were you like when you were little?"

"Oh! A thoroughly uninteresting child. Ate a lot, and never said or did an original thing. Aunt Alice cherishes only one mot. Once, when the nursery clock stopped, I remarked, 'No little clock now to tell us how quickly we're dying,' which seems to prove that besides being commonplace I was inclined to be morbid. I went to school very early, and Aunt Alice gave me good times in my holidays; then came three years at Oxford—three halcyon years—and since then I have been very little in England. You see, I'm a homeless, wandering sort of creature, and the worst of that sort of thing is, that when the solitary, for once in a way, get set in families, they don't understand the language. Explain to me, please, the meaning of some of your catch-words. For instance—Fish would laugh."

"You mean our ower-words," said Elizabeth. "We have a ridiculous lot; and they must seem most incomprehensible to strangers. Fish would lawff. It is really too silly to tell. When Buff was tiny, three or four or thereabouts, he had a familiar spirit called Fish. Fish was a loofah with a boot-button for an eye, and, wrapped in a duster or anything that happened to be lying about, he slept in Buff's bed, sat in his chair, ate from his plate, and was unto him a brother. His was an unholy influence. When Buff did anything wicked, Fish said 'Good,' or so Buff reported. When anyone did anything rather fine or noble, Fish 'lawffed'—you know the funny way Buff says words with 'au'? Fish was a Socialist and couldn't stand Royalties, so when we came to a Prince in a fairy tale we had to call him Brother. He whispered nasty things about us to Buff: his mocking laughter pursued us; his boot-button eye got loose and waggled in the most sinister way. He really was a horrid creature—but how Buff loved him! Through the day he alluded to him by high-sounding titles—Sir John Fish, Admiral Fish, V.C., Brigadier-General Fish—but at night, when he clutched him to his heart in bed, he murmured over him, 'Fishie beastie!' He lost his place in time, as all favourites do; but the memory of him still lives with us, and whenever anyone bucks unduly, or too obviously stands forth in the light, we say, Fish would lawff!"

The thought of Fish so intrigued Arthur that he wanted to hear more of him, but Elizabeth begged him to turn his eyes to the objects of interest around him.

"Now," she said, "we are on the Broomielaw Bridge, and that is Clyde's 'wan water.' I'm told Broomielaw means 'beloved green place,' so it can't always have been the coaly hole it is now. I don't know what is up the river—Glasgow Green, I think, and other places, but"—pointing down the river—"there lies the pathway to the Hebrides. It always refreshes me to think that we in Glasgow have a 'back-door to Paradise.'"

"Yes," said Mr. Townshend, leaning forward to look at the river. "Edinburgh, of course, has the Forth. I've been reading Edinburgh Revisited—you know it, I suppose?—and last week when I was there I spent some hours wandering about the 'lands' in the Old Town. I like Bone's description of the old rooms filled with men and women of degree dancing minuets under guttering sconces. You remember he talks of a pause in the dance, when the musicians tuned their fiddles, and ladies turned white shoulders and towering powdered heads to bleak barred windows to meet the night wind blowing saltly from the Forth? I think that gives one such a feeling of Edinburgh."

"I know. I remember that," said Elizabeth. "Doesn't James Bone make pictures with words?"

"Oh! It's extraordinary. The description of George Square as an elegant old sedan-chair gently decaying, with bright glass still in its lozenge-panels! I like the idea of the old inhabitants of the Square one after another through the generations coming back each to his own old grey-brown house—such a company of wit and learning and bravery."

"And Murray of Broughton," she cried, her grey eyes shining with interest, "Murray, booted and cloaked and muffled to the eyes, coming down the steps of No. 25 and the teacup flying after him, and the lame little boy creeping out and picking up the saucer, because Traitor Murray meant to him history and romance! Yes.... But it isn't quite tactful of you to dilate on Edinburgh when I am trying to rouse in you some enthusiasm for Glasgow. You think of Edinburgh as some lovely lady of old years draped as with a garment by memories of unhappy far-off things. But you haven't seen her suburbs! No romance there. Rows and rows of smug, well-built houses, each with a front garden, each with a front gate, and each front gate remains shut against the casual caller until you have rung a bell—and the occupants have had time to make up their minds about you from behind the window curtains—when some mechanism in the vestibule is set in motion, the gate opens, and you walk in. That almost seems to me the most typical thing about Edinburgh. Glasgow doesn't keep visitors at the gate. Glasgow is on the doorstep to welcome them in. It is just itself—cheerful, hard-working, shrewd, kindly, a place that, like Weir of Hermiston, has no call to be bonny: it gets through its day's work. Edinburgh calls Glasgow vulgar, and on the surface we are vulgar. We say 'Ucha,' and when we meet each other in July we think it is funny to say 'A good New Year'; and always our accent grates on the ears of the genteel. I have heard it said that nothing could make Glasgow people gentlefolks because we are 'that weel-pleased'; and the less apparent reason there seems for complacency the more 'weel-pleased' we are. As an Edinburgh man once said to me in that connection, 'If a Glasgow man has black teeth and bandy legs he has cheek enough to stand before the King.' But we have none of the subtle vulgarity that pretends: we are plain folk and we know it.... I am boring you. Let's talk about something really interesting. What do you think of the Ulster Question?"

The car went on its way, up Renfield Street and Sauchiehall Street, till it left shop-windows behind, and got into tracts of terraces and crescents, rows of dignified grey houses stretching for miles.

Elizabeth and her companion got out at a stopping-place, and proceeded to walk back to see the University. Arthur, looking round, remarked that the West End of one city was very like the West End of any other city.

"It's the atmosphere of wealth I suppose," he said.

Elizabeth agreed that it was so. "What do you think wealth smells like?" she asked him. "To me it is a mixture of very opulent stair-carpets and a slight suspicion of celery. I don't know why, but the houses of the most absolutely rolling-in-riches-people that I know smell like that—in Glasgow, I mean."

"It is an awesome thought," Arthur said, as he looked round him, "to think that probably every one of those houses is smelling at this moment of carpets and celery."

"This," said Elizabeth, "is where the city gentleman live—at least the more refined of the species. We in the South Side have a cruder wealth."

"There is refinement, then, in the West End?" Elizabeth made a face.

"The refinement which says 'preserves' instead of 'jam.'"

Then she had one of her sudden repentances.

"I didn't mean that nastily—but of course, you know, where one is in the process of rising one is apt to be slightly ridiculous. There is always a striving, an uneasiness, a lack of repose. To be so far down as to fear no fall, and to be so securely up as to fear no fall, tends to composure of manner. You who have, I suppose, lived always with the 'ups,' and I who consort almost entirely with the 'downs,' know that for a fact. It is an instructive thing to watch the rise of a family. They rise rapidly in Glasgow. In a few years you may see a family ascend from a small villa in Pollokshields and one servant—known as 'the girrl'—to a 'place' in the country and a pew in the nearest Episcopal church; and if this successful man still alludes to a person as a 'party' and to his wife in her presence as 'Mistress So-and-so here,' his feet are well up the ladder. A few years more and he will cut the strings that bind him to his old life: his boys, educated at English schools, will have forgotten the pit from whence they were dug, his daughters will probably have married well, and he is 'county' indeed. But you mustn't think Glasgow is full of funnies, or that I am laughing at the dear place—not that it would care if I did, it can stand a bit of laughing at. I have the most enormous respect for Glasgow people for all they have done, for their tremendous capacity for doing, for their quite perfect taste in things that matter, and I love them for their good nature and 'well-pleasedness.' A very under-sized little man—one whose height might well have been a sore point—said to me once, 'They tell me my grandfather was six-foot-four—he would laugh if he saw me. And he thoroughly enjoyed the joke."

"But tell me," said Arthur, "have you many friends in Glasgow?"

"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."